by Frieda Watt
Like his brother, Tomas Thibault had become a merchant and had shown a flair for business as well. Corruption wasn’t as prevalent here as it was in Louisbourg, but Louisbourg was in a category of its own, being a trading centre where nobody did anything unless his pockets were lined.
After a few twists and turns, Pierre found Uncle Tomas’s home at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was a three-storey townhouse that was attached to its neighbour on one side. The two houses were divided by a thick firewall, which stuck up about three feet above each roof. Pierre wondered absently if Marie’s home had had that feature. All the houses he had seen so far were protected in that way.
The house was only a short stroll from Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, but it also backed onto the harbour, making for easy access to the vaulted cellars in the basement that housed the most potentially profitable merchandise of all: alcohol.
Pierre had met his Uncle Tomas once when he was a child. Tomas’s two sons were a few years older than he was, so both would be in their early twenties now, but he had no idea what to expect as he knocked sharply on the front door. He just hoped they would give him a slightly more welcoming greeting than the one he typically received from his father.
Tomas answered the door. He was as tall as his brother and nephew but painfully thin, his pale skin stretched tightly over his sharp cheekbones. Pierre immediately thought of a cadaver. Had it not been for Tomas’s reddish beard and dancing blue eyes, he might have been mistaken for one.
Tomas greeted his nephew with a bone-cracking bear hug and ushered him into the house. For someone so thin, his strength was surprising. Pierre wasn’t used to being greeted with such warmth. He looked around the house amazed. He had been led to believe that his father was the more successful of the two brothers, but this didn’t seem to be the case. While nothing compared to the expensive taste of a nobleman like Claude, fine wooden furniture and paintings of landscapes filled the rooms, and a gilded mirror hung opposite the front door. He thought that maybe his father’s home would have looked like this if his mother hadn’t been gone for so many years, but then he remembered that Tomas’s wife had died in childbirth twenty years before.
He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the mirrors and realized that he looked every part of the exhausted, starving refugee.
Tomas watched him kindly. “You look as if you could sleep for days.”
Pierre just nodded. His uncle no doubt wanted information that only he could give about what was really happening on the island, but he couldn’t launch into that now. He was afraid that a simple statement would start a flood of information that he couldn’t control. He wasn’t ready to give so much horrible news right now. He was too bone weary and didn’t want to start things off on such a negative note.
Tomas seemed to be content with silence for the time being. He showed Pierre the room where he’d be spending the night, then left him in peace there and ordered one of his servants to take a bowl of thick beef stew to his nephew. Pierre’s rucksack fell to the floor with a heavy thunk, and when the food arrived, he devoured it as if he was a wild animal. He hadn’t had any meat or fish since his departure from the fortress, and before that, everyone had been surviving on the stores of salted cod from the summer before. He moaned as he bit into a crusty loaf of fresh brown bread. With his stomach full and the presence of a soft feather bed that wasn’t swaying with wave action, he collapsed into bed without undressing.
He awoke several hours later, the pink rays of the setting sun streaking across his quilt. He stretched deliciously, debating whether he should undress and keep sleeping or go downstairs to see his family and find more food. His stomach rumbled loudly. He chose food.
He found his uncle and two cousins in the dining room clearly halfway through their evening meal. Not wanting to interrupt, he turned away, but one of the boys spotted him and called for him to come and take a seat at the table.
Pierre would never have recognized his cousins as being part of his family if he’d met them on the street. The grown men they’d become didn’t match up with the boys he remembered chasing around the countryside when he was last in Quebec. Neither of them were as tall as he was, though they would never be considered short. Daniel, the oldest, had mousy brown hair and brown eyes. He had a clean, round, shaven face and a quick smile. His brother, Jean, surprised Pierre. He looked more like Nic than the rest of his family, with black hair, dark eyes, and a bushy beard that obscured most of his face.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” Pierre said hastily.
“Nonsense,” Tomas boomed. “I’m not about to let my nephew starve under my roof.” Pierre was about to say he wasn’t starving when his stomach announced the opposite. Tomas laughed and called for another plate.
Pierre spent the rest of the evening with his uncle and cousins and couldn’t believe how easily they all related to each other. Dinnertimes with his father were usually silent affairs, but here, the atmosphere was jovial, with each man apparently trying to outdo the others with the sound of his voice.
Daniel worked in the family business, hoping to take over in a few years when Tomas finally decided to retire. The war with Britain had not spared the colony along the rushing river as Pierre had originally supposed. The ship traffic had thinned considerably, and supplies were dwindling. However, unlike the case in Louisbourg, the colony had a good quantity of its own food supplies and livestock. Tomas’s business was suffering, but it wasn’t in danger of folding.
Jean seemed to be the odd one out. He apparently had no desire to work in the warehouse or offices. He’d worked as a trapper for most of his youth, never officially finishing school, and had spent the last season as a voyageur.
“Went all the way to Les Saults de Sainte-Marie to trade with the Ojibway,” he boasted proudly. “Took the better part of the season to get there and back, but I made enough on that one voyage to live off for a year.”
Pierre’s eyes went wide with amazement. He had heard of the mighty rapids of the Sainte-Marie River, but he had never met anyone who’d travelled there. On any map he had ever seen, it looked unimaginably far away.
Jean laughed when Pierre expressed his amazement. “It wasn’t easy—portaging those canoes and all that cargo, but with twelve men per canoe, it makes the job easier.”
“That’s astounding.”
Jean shrugged as if it were not a big deal. “Didn’t you have voyageurs in Louisbourg?”
Voyageurs did pass through Louisbourg from time to time, but those men were strangers to Pierre. They appeared inside the fortress walls only sporadically, with fantastical tales of the interior. Pierre never thought of them as living, breathing men before.
“Will you go again next year?” Pierre asked, still enthralled by his cousin’s courage.
Daniel chuckled, pushing his peas around on his plate. “He only did the one year. Couldn’t stand the smell of the bear and skunk oil they put on to keep the bugs away. Made him sick.”
Jean seemed unembarrassed. “I’d rather be eaten alive by mosquitoes than wear that stuff again. I thought I was going to suffocate from the smell the first night I put it on.”
Pierre wasn’t sure whether Jean was joking or not, but he laughed along with the rest of them. Jean then started rambling on about how he now worked as a clerk in one of the government-run warehouses. Pierre thought that must be a boring occupation for someone who had once paddled deep into the continent, but Jean didn’t reveal what he thought about his current job.
“I can take you to see Dominique Renault tomorrow,” Tomas offered, draining his glass of wine. “He’s an old friend of mine; he’ll treat you well.”
“He also has four daughters,” Daniel piped up happily. “Beautiful girls, them.”
Tomas rolled his eyes. “Leave him alone. Pierre’s here to work.”
For some reason, the comment bothered Pierre deeply. His mind raced back to Louisbourg, to the large manor house by the water. Was Marie still there?
“Has there b
een any news about Louisbourg?” Pierre asked. The atmosphere around the table changed dramatically. Daniel and Jean busied themselves with their almost empty plates.
Tomas leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “Not yet,” he said finally. “A few people from Louisbourg arrived before you, but they would, of course, know less than you.”
Pierre nodded.
“What was it like there?” Daniel asked, staring at him from across the table. A quick glance at Jean told Pierre that he was listening even though his bushy head was bent over his plate.
Pierre shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it, but the silence continued to stretch. “Augustus was still alive when I left. Very few people have died if you don’t include the soldiers.” He stared at a grease mark on the linen tablecloth, not wanting to make eye contact. “The British had begun bombing before I left. The army is running out of artillery, so whatever the British send over is being collected and sent back. There isn’t any food. The walls are starting to crumble despite their great thickness. There’s … ,” his voice failed him. He tried to clear the lump in his throat, but it wouldn’t budge.
“That’s enough,” Tomas said, standing up. “I’m sure word will come eventually. In the meantime, let’s not dwell on what we can’t control.” He gave his sons a sharp look.
Pierre felt thoroughly embarrassed, but Jean broke the tension.
“Vivienne, Renault’s wife, is an excellent cook. We’ll be rolling you onto the boat by the time you leave.”
Everyone laughed. Even Pierre managed a chuckle.
“But don’t get too fat. Remember his daughters.”
“Daniel!”
***
With a full stomach for the first time in months, Pierre slept like the dead until the sound of cannon fire jolted him from sleep. Heart hammering out of his chest, he sat up drenched in sweat, his hand automatically reaching for the dagger he’d put on his nightstand. It took him a moment to remember that he wasn’t in his room in Louisbourg. The bear skin rug on the floor was his first clue. Panting, he slowly crept to the window to see what the problem was.
The sun was barely above the horizon. With the ever-present mist of the fortress absent, he could see clearly down to the street below. A Clydesdale was standing not far from Pierre’s window, looking far too big for its city surroundings, attached to a cart full of barrels. One of the barrels had slipped off the back, cracking open and spilling its contents of grain all over the dirt road.
Annoyed at himself, Pierre sat back on the bed and threw the pillow over his head to block out the light. He was in terrible shape if a cracked barrel of wheat could cause him this much anxiety. He tried to go back to sleep, but he couldn’t. Eventually, he gave up and dressed in the clean clothes he had carried with him all the way from Île-Royale. He tried his best to wash the grime off his face and hands. But by the time he felt clean again, the water in the wash basin in his room looked like mud. He also shaved off the bushy beard that had grown with alarming speed during his journey.
Pierre looked in the glass hanging over the wash basin. His cheeks were sunken from lack of proper food, and there were dark bags under his eyes. There was also a haunted look in his eye that he didn’t recognize, but this was as good as he was going to get.
As quietly as he could, he crept down the stairs and out of the house. He left a note to his uncle on the hall table, thanking him for the hospitality and for the job recommendation and saying that he looked forward to more visits despite the intensity of learning his new responsibilities. Tomas would happily have accompanied him to Dominique Renault’s office, but Pierre felt more comfortable going there alone. He’d enjoyed spending time with his uncle and cousins the night before, but he’d felt like an outsider, an interloper who didn’t really belong. He wondered if he would ever feel normal again among these people who hadn’t experienced the horrors of war. The last attack on Quebec had been in 1690. His father hadn’t even been born yet.
The city was waking up. The smell of fresh-baked bread hung in the air, the docks were filling with sailors and labourers, and vendors were setting up their stalls in the markets. He suddenly realized that most people didn’t even know the fate of Louisbourg, so how could they mourn it?
As Procurator General for the area of the Saint-Laurent Valley and the Great Lakes interior, Dominique Renault was in charge of all investigation and prosecution of crime. There were very few actual lawyers in New France, since one could be considered a lawyer only if he had graduated from law school. Since the closest one was in Paris, most judges and criminal advocates had studied under someone in Quebec and attended lectures of the few lawyers who did give classes in the colony. They’d also done their best to personally study the law. Obviously, it was far from a perfect system. Often, those enforcing justice had as little knowledge as those they were prosecuting.
As Procurator, Renault sat on the Superior Council, the governing body of New France. He answered only to the Intendant, the official in charge of all things civil and financial. The Intendant was second only to the Governor, the viceroy of the King. The Governor was in charge of the entire French colony, spanning all of Canada and south to the Gulf of Mexico. The Governor oversaw every aspect of colonial life from the civil to the military. As for Renault, he had a say in all the laws and regulations of Canada. Little went on in his area of jurisdiction that he didn’t know about and even less that he couldn’t control.
Renault lived in the Upper Town with the rest of the members of the governing body. His home near Sainte-Anne Street looked over the cliffs to the Saint-Charles River. As Pierre approached the place, he found the sounds of the water comforting, since they reminded him of the ocean’s waves at home during peace time.
Renault’s offices were located on the first floor of his home, the family dwelling being on the second and third floors. Renault employed two clerks, both of whom had been hired when in their late twenties. Judges, police officers, and criminal advocates all sought meetings with him on a regular basis. He also travelled around the colony, trying to govern and restore order to the small settlements that dotted the countryside. He was a busy and powerful man but a man without a son.
After graduating from law school, Renault borrowed the money he needed to secure his position from his father and travelled to New France. As a young man, Renault sought adventure and the colonies were sufficiently wild to fill that need. He became wealthy and well respected, but as his body aged and his joints started to ache with arthritis, he found he wasn’t able to keep up with his workload. With no son or other close relative to help him, he found himself in a problematical position. His clerks were competent, but they were nearing middle age themselves. With the vast majority of the population illiterate, it seemed he would have to send for someone from France, who would know nothing of the world he was stepping into.
Renault had talked over the problem with his good friend, Tomas Thibault, and that is how Tomas ended up recommending Pierre as an assistant-apprentice. Pierre was intelligent and well educated and familiar with the ways of New France, even though he was from the far-flung region of Île-Royale. His father was willing to send him, hoping to give the boy a second chance where no one knew of his youthful indiscretions. Renault decided to hire him.
Pierre stood at the carved oak door, trying to work up the nerve to open it. Then he noticed a little brass bell suspended above the doorframe by a thin wire. His father had one just like it above his own door. Another comforting sight from home. The bell tinkled just as it did in front of his father’s office, bringing a smile to his lips. He pushed the door open and walked in.
Pierre had been expecting something like his father’s operation, a utilitarian work space that put function and practicality above all else. Instead, he was greeted by a handsome room with a large stone fireplace and lit by sunlight coming through several large windows. Most of the room was occupied by what Pierre imagined was Renault’s personal space, including a large oak des
k and padded chairs. That must be where he held most of his meetings and did most of his paperwork. Around the corner, in a separate room, were two plain wooden tables with spindle stools.
The office was empty, although some documents were spread out on the desk, suggesting that someone had been there not long ago. Dust motes swirled through the air, and a general smell of paper and ink filled the office. Pierre walked slowly around the room. He had to duck slightly to pass under the exposed rafters that spanned its length. Footsteps on the stairs leading down from Renault’s living quarters announced his arrival.
Dominique Renault was in his early fifties. Having lived the last thirty years in Quebec, he considered himself a Canadian through and through. His black hair hadn’t gone grey yet, apart from the white at his temples, but his goatee was streaked liberally with white hairs.
“Are you Pierre?” His low, gravelly voice sounded loud in the quiet room.
“Yes.” Pierre stuck out his hand.
Renault had a strong handshake. “Excellent. Otherwise, I would have asked you what you were doing in my office.” He looked Pierre over; his yellow eyes reminded Pierre of a hawk’s. “Is your uncle here?”
“No, I came on my own.”
Renault was a muscular man despite his age, well dressed to demonstrate his station in life, and he held himself with an air of authority.
The Procurator General continued to gaze at Pierre with his piercing yellow eyes. “You survived the trip. I am of the understanding that it was a dangerous one.” Something about the way he said it made Pierre realize that Renault understood the magnitude of what Pierre had endured.
Standing in this refined space, Pierre felt slightly healed. The plight of Louisbourg wasn’t completely forgotten then. “It went as well as it could have.”
Renault nodded sadly. “Do you think they will prevail?”
