Song of Batoche

by Caron, Maia;

  Madame Dumont fussed with Marguerite’s daughter, Angélique, ten months old and not yet walking. Young Jean had climbed up on the bed, his cheek pressed against a pillow, fighting sleep. Marguerite put her hand to the curtain. Hundreds of miles from home, in a house with two floors, a room with a real bed and feather mattress. And yet she craved solitude.

  In the front pasture, more horses were arriving: Métis from all over, eager to see the great Louis Riel. Women were in and out of the house, setting up feast tables. Her husband stood outside of Gabriel’s saloon, a crowd of men around him. Louis wore the only suit he owned—a dark blue worsted he had traded three buffalo robes for in the Montana Territory. How he held himself while she wilted, sad and wretched. She slipped a hand into her skirt pocket and found her rosary.

  Hail Mary full of grace, forgive me the sin of begrudging my husband’s proud frame.

  A smartly dressed Métis embraced Louis and held his hand a moment longer than necessary. The man said something low in Louis’ ear that disturbed him—she could see it by the way he held himself—but they were interrupted by Gabriel Dumont, who had brought another Métis and a white man to meet him. The four of them spoke briefly, and Louis followed the small group into the saloon.

  Marguerite had not cried since she was a child, but she felt like crying now. They were poor in Sun River, but at least she had him to herself. Since Gabriel Dumont had arrived, inviting him to the Saskatchewan, Louis spent hours talking to him and when she asked him something, he regarded her with a peculiar, bewildered expression.

  There was a noise at the door, and Marguerite turned to find another woman in the room, a beauty with long black hair unbound around her face. Madame Dumont introduced them, and Marguerite extended her hand as she had many times downstairs, greeting the women whose names she would not remember. But Josette Lavoie looked away, and Marguerite let her hand drop. By Josette’s wild-eyed look, she thought something must be wrong with her head.

  Marguerite lifted a hand to her hair. It was a tangled matt, much as it had been when Louis had first seen her seated on a pony, the sun’s rays directly upon her. He often said he knew then that he’d found his Virgin Mary, but she had lost her innocence on a buffalo hunt many years before and was prone to melancholy. She kept her secret well, modulating her voice to sweetness, pretending that she was above anger and opinions of her own.

  The thought of coming to the North-West had terrified her, leaving family and the familiar, yet Louis did not ask her thoughts when making his decision. She had tried to convince him to stay, using his own words.

  “You once told me,” she said, as Gabriel Dumont waited outside their house, “that it was best for your health not to be in the North-West, mixed up with the Métis politics.”

  “Their sacred cause reclaims me,” he replied. “I cannot refuse them my life and my blood.”

  Madame Dumont was suddenly there, unbuttoning Marguerite’s coat. Her face loomed, black hair parted low over her forehead, expression grim, and a double-beaded rosary at her neck. Marguerite wanted to push her away, but let herself be undressed, like a child. She was in awe of those hands, the fingers swollen from years of hard work and large as a man’s.

  “So much dust,” Madame Dumont said as she got her out of the coat. “I will wash it for you.”

  She started in on the dress and Marguerite burned with shame that she would soon stand in her underthings before these strange women. Madame Dumont spoke with pride of her hand-crank washing machine, the only one in the South Branch. Josette stood in the corner, fidgeting. She and Madame Dumont exchanged a private glance, almost imperceptible. Marguerite had seen this look among the women in Sun River and imagined their whispers.

  That dark one, too plain, she is not good enough for the great Riel.

  “Where are the men?” Madame Dumont asked.

  “In Gabriel’s saloon,” said Josette. “Drinking and talking politics.”

  “Louis does not drink,” Marguerite said with a smile.

  Josette gave a short laugh. “He does now.”

  Marguerite’s smile faded. Josette came to the window and looked down from behind the curtain, as if searching for someone. Marguerite did not care for her blunt manner, but she sized up Josette as if seeing her through Louis’ eyes. The other Métis women she’d met downstairs wore their good black church dresses. Josette’s was faded blue, the hem frayed and thick with dust, her apron stained. A pair of moccasins on her feet looked as though they’d been recently in water. Her long dark hair almost hid eyes that were shrouded in an expression somewhere between sadness and hate. And yet her face was thin and beautiful.

  Louis will notice this one, she thought, glancing toward the saloon. Louis, who had surprised her shortly after their marriage with talk of the prophets Abraham and Moses, men whom God had granted many wives. Marguerite had listened, appalled, obsessed first with jealousy and fear, and then a thought that she could live with: her husband was too poor to support more than one wife.

  Madame Dumont cleared her throat and nodded toward a bucket near the door. Josette moved reluctantly, pouring water into a crockery bowl on the dresser. She took up a comb and loosened the knot at the nape of Marguerite’s neck but it snagged and her head was yanked back.

  “Pardon,” Josette said.

  “It’s nothing.” Before she had married Louis, Marguerite’s sister had combed her hair. This kind of treatment was reserved for brides or women who had died in childbirth, readying them for burial.

  Madame Dumont had thrown Marguerite’s coat on the bed and picked up Angélique. Josette stepped around, and Marguerite cast her eyes to the floor, uncomfortable at having her so close. There was something absurd about having her hair fixed by a woman whose own was in worse shape.

  “You have lost your pêpîm to Madeleine now.” Josette said this in Cree, switching easily from French.

  Madame Dumont cooed at Angélique. “We will let your maman rest before the feast.” She stifled a cough. “It is the dust,” she said before rushing out with the little girl. Besides the muffled sound of a coughing fit from the hallway, it was silent in the room. Marguerite wanted to go after them, take her daughter back into her arms, for she recognized the signs. She had watched the old ones suffer with lung disease before they passed with blood fits, yet now she too had the beginnings of the same affliction. It had become another secret she kept from Louis, blaming it on drafts or dust.

  Josette began to fashion three curls over her forehead. “I wish my hair was straight,” Marguerite said, in a fit of frustration, “like yours.”

  “You can have it if you like.”

  Marguerite’s mouth twisted into a smile. She had not made friends in Sun River, and felt that maybe here she would find someone to share her fears, and the burdens only the wife of a great man was forced to bear.

  But just as suddenly, Josette, as she gathered her hair back to fasten in a bun, crushed these hopes by asking a simple question. “Did you bring books?”

  Marguerite looked down, confused. “Louis has brought some.”

  Josette’s eyes came alive for the first time. “Which ones have you read?”

  Marguerite took the comb out of her hand. “Women do not read.” It was for men to do the thoughts and read the words. Then an awful thing occurred to her. Women in the Saskatchewan could read. And write. She felt she could not breathe, that she was too much under the eyes of those who saw her as a country simpleton.

  Louis had written a poem about her. When he first read it aloud, she was moved to tears, but now the line, “Ah … she is a tender creature, always attentive to her duty,” made her feel profoundly inadequate in the eyes of Josette.

  the enemy

  Josette went quietly down the stairs. If it were possible, Riel had sunk lower in her estimation. Women do not read. She thought of her diary, her Spinoza, lying behind a rock in the birch grove. With her luck, rain would fall for the first time in months and ruin it.

  In the ki
tchen, women crowded around Madeleine’s stove, warming the dishes they had brought. Others were taking food out to the feast tables. Louise Boucher held Riel’s youngest in her arms. Madeleine was likely in the summer kitchen in a fluster of last minute preparations.

  Josette meant to slip unnoticed out the back door, but the sound of horses arriving drew the women out on the porch. She followed, hesitating in the doorway. Lean Crow’s band had come in on their ragged ponies, Lakota Sioux who had been in the South Branch for the past four years, freighting and trapping with the Métis.

  Lean Crow and two of his men dismounted, their long, leather-bound braids swinging. Josette did not think it strange that the Sioux were here to greet Riel, but one of the braves had his face painted red and black, as if going to war. His name was Little Ghost, a boy of nineteen, who wore a buckskin war shirt fringed with horsehair and red handprints beaded up the sides. Despite his youth, he owned an elaborately beaded pair of leggings, with two decorated scalp locks sewn to the panels.

  The crowd parted and there was Riel. Josette drew back behind the door, heart pounding at her ribs. He seemed taller than she remembered, but she’d been fourteen the last time she’d set eyes on him in Red River. He was older too, of course, creases around the eyes, which were intense, almost black and brooding, older than the man who had attended meetings at their house late at night, speaking of politics with her father and other supporters. She could not recall his light skin and Anglais manner of dress, or the pomade that had been applied to tame his waved hair. If it weren’t for the moccasins on his feet, she’d think he was a Frenchman. The suit he wore must have caused him grief in this heat, but he would not remove the jacket, although a wicked sun beat down upon his head. He had grown a beard on the trail and it was untrimmed, something he seemed to regret, for his hand went to it as he strode forward to speak with Lean Crow.

  But it was Little Ghost who greeted him. The warrior unleashed a string of declarations in Sioux, gesturing widely to his people. Gabriel acted as a go-between, translating the language he’d known from his trading days.

  “He says that if the white soldiers come, they cannot kill him, for he is a ghost,” Gabriel said in French. He seemed almost reluctant to add the rest of it. “He has come to show you his men. They will fight with you against the great white chief.”

  Josette thought that Riel hesitated to clasp Little Ghost’s hand. “You have many fine men,” he said, his face suddenly flushed. “But there will be no fight. We need your marks on our petition so the white chief will hear us.”

  Father Moulin had come down from Batoche and pushed his way through the crowd. He watched the proceedings as if he’d come across sinning and meant to force a confession.

  Little Ghost cut his eyes at the priest then back to Riel. He said, “You have business with that one?”

  “The White Queen loves his God.” Riel exchanged a brief look with Gabriel. “We need his support as much as we need yours.”

  Gabriel translated this to Little Ghost, who nodded and accepted an invitation to join them. The Sioux were off their horses and eyeing food that had come out on the tables. Father Moulin stood with his cross in hand ready to bless the feast, but Riel was hurried off to Gabriel’s saloon by some English half-breeds from Prince Albert.

  Josette stared after him. Despite the heat, she felt a shiver go up her spine. Riel was already taking oaths of allegiance and speaking of petitions, as he had in Red River. She went out the back door and past the summer kitchen to the paddock where Norbert had tied their horses. After unlashing La Noire’s reins, she paused for a long moment. If Norbert found that she had escaped again, there would be consequences, but she would rather face his wrath than suffer another moment in Riel’s presence. Her fingers twisted into her horse’s thick mane and for the second time that day, she leaped on its back.

  they are all

  going to hell

  Father moulin stood near the feast tables where the Sioux dog was skulking and giving him the evil eye. Moulin stared back at the Indian youth, his blood boiling. Riel had accepted help from painted heathens. Not just any Indians, but ones who wore the scalps of white men they’d massacred at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

  Father André, head priest in the South Branch, had called him up to Prince Albert last week after learning that Gabriel would return from the Montana Territory with the legendary half-breed leader. André had said, “Keep an eye on Riel. He can’t be trusted. If you catch a whiff of trouble, let me know immediately.”

  This was a whiff of trouble if he’d ever seen it. Riel had studied to be a priest himself, but a man of God would not be, at this very moment, in a saloon. Already Moulin had caught hints of immorality. In the front pasture, men were passing bottles of homebrew from pocket to pocket. For over fifty years, many good priests had accompanied the half-breeds on their buffalo hunts. Blood and suffering they had endured, weeding out pagan ceremonies and belief in Kisê-Manitow. It was a blessing that the buffalo had died out and the half-breeds had settled to farm, but the old ways were still plain to see in the hide bags some of the men carried. These contained the games of their Indian ancestors, which Moulin strictly forbade—throwing buffalo bones etched in pagan symbols, drinking and wagering their horses—but they would do it later, after he went home. His rectory was eight miles north in Batoche, far enough that he would not be forced to lie abed and listen to the scrape of their fiddles, the stomping of many feet and think, they are all going to hell.

  He had unhooked the large wooden cross that was tucked into his belt, anxious to bless the feast, but everyone was made to wait. Half-breeds had arrived from all over the South Branch. They were devoted to God, but when they came for the sacraments, they still whispered of superstitions and talked of omens and dreams. Moulin expected Riel to turn up in the confessional as well as Mass on Sunday. John A. Macdonald had forced him into a five-year exile. By choice, Riel had stayed away another ten. Macdonald might think fifteen years was punishment enough for Riel’s part in the execution of Thomas Scott, but God had a longer memory.

  Many tents had been pitched on the bluff overlooking the river, and children ran across the yard, eager to fill their bellies with dishes made only for celebrations. It was sweltering hot where he stood, sweat building under his wool cap, but Moulin would not remove the only protection he had from the blistering sun. His long black soutane had seen many years of service and was a point of contention for the Batoche matriarchs, who competed with each other to get it off his back and into a wash tub. The same good women who now arranged their dishes on the feast tables. Flies were getting to the food, and they whisked them away with their shawls. This waiting. And the Sioux war chief, paint not dry on his face. The squaws and children had tagged along behind on foot, anticipating a feast, and would lay waste to it if the half-breeds let them.

  Lean Crow, their headman, stood in the long shadow cast by the house, his dour expression revealing nothing. That he had let an insolent young buck greet Riel was both symbolic and disturbing. Little Ghost possessed an air of authority, and Riel had taken notice. It was clear that Gabriel Dumont had arranged this welcoming party of savage Indians originally from south of the line—rag-tag fugitives without a reserve, who had made a permanent camp across the river at Batoche. Once, when he had thought Lean Crow was out hunting, Moulin had gone over there with a Bible to convert a few of the squaws, but Lean Crow returned and chased him out with a horse whip, saying he did not want the white man’s religion. It didn’t bode well that he was here pledging to fight with the Métis “against the great white chief.”

  Riel finally emerged from the saloon, followed by a group of men. He shook hands as he approached, and the people crowded close, impatient for a glimpse of him. Moulin was pleased to see that Riel had on simple moccasins, free of the elaborate beading he would have expected.

  Moulin narrowed his eyes at Gabriel Dumont, who followed him in a deferential manner. He had a healthy respect for Dumont, who he
had seen dedicate meat from his kills on the buffalo hunts to poor half-breed families. He was often called “Uncle Gabriel” by men older than him by many years. Men had entrusted their lives to him as captain of the hunts and on the trail. He was considered a judge in the district; if men had a dispute, they would visit him to solve it. He could not read or write but had organized petitions to Ottawa for the past ten years with the help of the priests. That he had given over that task to Riel impressed itself upon Moulin as significant. If Gabriel wanted Riel here, everyone wanted Riel here.

  Riel stepped up to the feast tables and praised the bounty. Father Moulin watched as he made an effort to commend each woman, a politician through and through. He had a fine way with the French tongue. Moulin waited for him to finish so that he could administer the blessing. Stomachs were growling. What was he waiting for?

  Riel presented himself to Moulin with reverence, and to the old priest’s surprise, got down on one knee before him. The priest cleared his throat. Eh bien, this was a promising start. Riel crossed himself and kissed a rosary he’d taken from his pocket.

  The good, pious half-breeds like Letendre and Goulet, merchants in Batoche, expected him to sanctify the work Riel would do here. Moulin was about to place his hand on the man’s head, but Riel suddenly rose and turned to the tables, lifting his hand to recite a blessing only a priest could make.

  “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” Riel made the sign of the cross over the food. The half-breeds bowed their heads. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end … Amen.”