Song of Batoche

by Caron, Maia;

  Moulin stood with his mouth open. Le culot. This was not the proper order of things.

  Riel had started on the traditional mealtime blessing, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty.”

  Moulin walked forward and raised his hand higher in benediction. A few heads lifted and Riel mumbled, losing his place. Moulin overpowered the man’s voice with his own, almost shouting, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  With some hesitation, the people murmured, “Amen.” Already doubt crept into their eyes, questioning Church authority. Father André had been right. He can’t be trusted.

  After an awkward pause, Moulin turned to face him. “Monsieur Riel,” he said, “I bless your service to the half-breeds.” Riel returned his gaze with eyes dark beneath a furrowed brow. Steeling his jaw, Moulin added, “And may you be free of evil influence.”

  Riel’s rosary was wound so tightly around his left fingers the knuckles had turned white.

  Only when Letendre announced, “Come mes amis, allons manger,” did the moment pass, and Riel turned with a laugh.

  “Oui, let us eat.”

  david

  Later that night, Louis Riel stood with Gabriel Dumont beside a smudge fire on the bluff overlooking the river. A tangle of willow and small aspen sloped to the banks of the Saskatchewan. He imagined it not unlike the great river Jordan, running silent in the dark, and he lifted his face to the sky. I have returned, Lord.

  It had not rained in months, but every grass and rock was holy. Today they had ridden out of a forest of poplar onto a wide plain when a kind of whirlwind kicked up, and the Saviour was there in the mounting sky, dust in the hair, in the eyes, wind raking the earth with fury then descending until He was little more than a breath in the trees.

  For the past fifteen years, Riel had dreamed of coming back to his people, and they had welcomed him as a hero, but his stomach was cramping from the rich food, and he felt distinctly overcome by what had happened before the feast. A Sioux warrior had openly declared his allegiance, if the white soldiers come. At first, Riel had panicked, fearing an omen, but in the next moment, he had heard the voice of God.

  Here are the Indians, come to your side.

  With so many eyes on him, he had recovered and said there was no need of a fight, but the local priest had soon checked his elation and had the nerve to suggest that he was under the influence of the devil.

  Gabriel stood on the other side of the fire, smoking and watching him with an odd expression. Riel guessed that many a man had been the target of the buffalo hunter’s intense gaze, and many a man had looked away. Even in this heat, Gabriel wore a faded wool ceinture fléchée around his waist. On the buffalo hunts, his sash had kept out the cold and held a skinning knife, or was used to haul meat back to the carts. But Riel suspected that Gabriel and some of his old capitaines wore them in nostalgia for the days when the herds had been the centre of their existence. If it were not for Gabriel’s unkempt beard and long hair, he would resemble an Indian chief. His nose is French, Louis thought, but facial features aside, he was left with the feeling that here was a beautiful animal.

  Riel tried to calm himself yet his mind rebounded with possibilities. When Gabriel had arrived in Sun River, he brought a letter of welcome from the Métis, and Riel had read the words with anticipation and pride.

  Where is the half-breed who does not feel the blow of your banishment and is not ready to defend you to the last drop of his blood? The whole race is calling for you!

  It would be simple to get Métis signatures on his petition. But that would not be enough. God had told him the government would listen only if they feared the Indians were involved.

  “I did not expect to see the Sioux,” Gabriel said, taking the pipe from between his teeth. “Pray Ottawa will not hear the men that killed Custer have thrown their support behind you.”

  Riel felt nauseous, sweating as the fire blazed higher. The night was hotter than the day in this country. And Custer? He had not expected to hear that name. These were fierce warriors then, men he would want on his side. Of course, there would be no rebellion, but he had learned the hard way in Red River: Macdonald responded only to impending threats. Despite the gratifying sound of a fiddler tuning his instrument around a large fire that burned in Gabriel’s front pasture, the pressure was building in Riel’s chest, the old, dangerous pressure. He removed his tie as a harmonium joined the fiddle, and watched more Métis drawn by the music, already forming into couples as a reel started up.

  There was a time when only the fear of the straitjacket, or being chained to the bed with men screaming down the halls, had kept Riel from expressing his suffocating frustration. On those lonely dark nights, he had learned to control a disappointment so profound it was like blood in his mouth.

  He noticed that the Sioux had begun to dance in the outer circle where sparks rained down among them. “Their chief is young,” he said, straining his eyes to pick out Little Ghost.

  “Lean Crow is the headman,” Gabriel said. “Little Ghost is his war chief.”

  Riel glanced quickly up at him. “The scalps on his leggings …”

  “His father was Inkpaduta, one of the war chiefs at Little Bighorn.” Gabriel eyed him, his gaze direct. “Little Ghost was only a boy, but he shot his arrows into the dying soldiers and took their hair.”

  The wind changed direction, and Riel moved to escape the trailing smoke. Gabriel’s eyes moved with him. The buffalo hunter was like a dog that studied a man to see not where he looked, but what he might be thinking while he looked. Riel was fascinated with those eyes. Integrity there, but also the suggestion of danger. When they were on the trail, he’d seen the scar that ran across the left side of Gabriel’s forehead. If a Blackfoot had once tried to take his scalp, Riel was certain the man had died trying.

  “Inkpaduta’s sons are protected north of the line,” Gabriel said. “Lean Crow’s band brought Little Ghost here. Some of our men have married their women.”

  Riel said a silent prayer to God for this blessing. “When Macdonald hears that Sitting Bull’s braves from the Battle of the Little Bighorn have pledged their allegiance to me on my first day in the South Branch, he will take notice.”

  There it was. Macdonald. It had been years since he had spoken aloud the name of that foul vampire who had left him for dead. The man who had offered him money to disappear and not show his face again. Fifteen years without a country, but Macdonald’s name had been in his head that long, turning his blood cold. Now Riel had come up to Jerusalem, crossed magnificent plains without end, rolling hills, sloughs filled with wild fowl. Bounty. That was why Macdonald wanted it, too.

  Gabriel’s deep-set eyes were on him again. “We will watch the Sioux while you write a petition that the English half-breeds and men like Charles Nolin will sign.”

  Nolin. Another name that made Riel flinch. Before the feast, Charles Nolin had embraced him and said in his ear, “I had been told you were ill, but you look good, my cousin. Have you come back to finish the job?” Riel had brought Manitoba into Confederation and won land claims for the Métis, only to have Macdonald chase him out like a criminal. Yet he was still haunted by his failures. Somehow Nolin had heard of the illness—one he had kept even from Marguerite. Mososkwan, he said to himself in Cree, the private nickname he had always used to describe Nolin. Moose nose. He knew the man would harbour his secret until it suited him to tell.

  Nolin had written the welcome letter Gabriel had brought, but he’d always resented his leadership in Red River. “It is Nolin who needs to be watched,” Riel said.

  Gabriel took the pipe stem out of his mouth. “What did he say to you earlier? Something you did not like.”

  Riel hesitated before answering. “He heard I’d been ill.” His doctors had warned him to avoid excitement, avoid talk of his health and competence and lead a quiet life. And yet words from his old mentor, Bishop Bourget, echoed in his head.<
br />
  God has given you a mission, which you must fulfill in all respects.

  Ten years ago the Spirit of God had come upon him in a cloud of flames and revealed his true purpose. But when he had shared the revelations with friends and family, they’d sent him to a madhouse. If Gabriel heard of this through Nolin, Riel would lose his loyalty. Non, if he wanted the man’s trust, it must be done now. He breathed, his skin prickling, tried to find the right words to begin. As if sensing the change in his mood, Gabriel squinted through the smoke at him, waiting.

  “In the years after I was exiled, I prayed to God,” Riel said carefully. “It was thought that perhaps … I prayed too much, that I was possessed with an unnatural affliction of faith.” Firelight played across Gabriel’s face and those resolute eyes that bore down on him. It was a candid look of admiration from one of the most admired men in the North-West. It was right to tell him. Riel ignored the rising panic in his throat. “What I want to tell you is—my friends felt I went mad with all this praying. They committed me to an asylum … a madhouse.”

  Gabriel’s gaze slipped back to the fire. He blinked a few times, appeared to be thinking. In a moment, he said, “I take a man as I find him. And it doesn’t matter—”

  “Oui, it does.”

  Gabriel took a deep draw on his pipe, inhaling and exhaling with enviable rhythm. “How long were you in this place?”

  With the toe of his moccasin, Riel poked at a log that had fallen off the fire. “Long enough.” Memories rushed at him and he pushed them down. The Métis are like the Children of Israel—he wanted to tell Gabriel—persecuted, deprived of their heritage, and I will be like a second David to them, wrest justice from the tyrant. Instead, he forced himself to think of those two tortured years in the Beauport Asylum. “That time,” he said, “made me love the Métis more and strengthened my mission. We must obtain our rights, what is promised us. Do you understand?”

  He hated himself for rambling, but he was still unnerved, perhaps cowed. Yes, he might as well admit it. This was the kind of man who could sniff out lies and conceit. And he was moved by Gabriel’s devotion. Perhaps the great Métis warrior should know all of what God had said to him. He would understand when others hadn’t. But the hand of God held him back. It is not yet time.

  “I tell you because you are my Métis brother,” he said. “I bare my soul to you. And we must go with conviction.” He fought the need to explain himself. “I will tell you of the Night Watchers at Beauport. Every hour, they would walk the floors—” He broke off, for he had noticed lights advancing toward them, the eyes of otherworldly creatures. Coyotes and wolves had bothered their camps travelling north, and Riel had lain awake listening to them, arms around his wife and children.

  Muscles tightened in his chest, and he forced himself to take a full breath. Many times he’d camped on the high Missouri and not heard such packs hunting at night. The red eyes grew closer, and Riel could now see these were not coyotes or wolves, but the light from four men’s pipes, men who had left the main fire and were making their way to the bluff. Suddenly the weight of his mission seemed impossibly heavy. He slipped a hand into his breast coat pocket, where he carried the letter from his mentor, a letter that he kept with him at all times. He let the words wash over him.

  I have the deep conviction that you will receive in this world, and sooner than you think, the reward for all your mental sacrifices, a thousand times more crushing than the sacrifices of material and visible life.

  Three weeks ago, before their delegation left the Montana Territory, Riel had gone to the local priest, said that his people had sent for him and asked for his blessing. When he knelt before Father Eberschweiler, the priest had hesitated, saying, “I see your trip to the North-West ending in bloodshed and defeat.” This had almost shaken his resolve, but the priest would have said the same thing to Christ himself as He came out of the desert. Now that Riel was in the North-West, he must establish himself as a prophet to the Métis. What did Christ do when he prepared to share his message with the world? Chose disciples. Gabriel was already here as Peter, firmly loyal, resolute. But he needed more.

  He looked upon the four figures as they made their way to the mount. Here were Maxime Lépine, Michel Dumas, and Damase Carrière, old friends and Gabriel’s inner circle of scouts. Men he’d trusted on the buffalo hunts. More would show themselves worthy in time. The last man came into sight. Charles Nolin. Riel closed his eyes.

  And immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judas.

  le maudit anglais

  Gabriel dumont’s mind raced as the men joined them at the fire. Each had influence in the Saskatchewan. Lépine had been a supporter of Riel in Red River, and Nolin too, although he was up in Prince Albert doing business with white men more than he was in Batoche. Dumas served as One Arrow Reserve’s Indian agent, and Carrière had just rode in from Fort Pitt where he’d been cutting and squaring timber. Gabriel wanted to speak to him and hear news of the North Saskatchewan.

  But first he needed to think. He was a man of the plains, of the hunt, and knew nothing of insanity among men. His experience with madness was limited to horses or dogs. If their eyes rolled and mouths foamed, Gabriel shot them in the head without a second thought. Among the Indians, if someone started a rant and tore their hair—that was a haunting, a Wîhtikow had taken them. Move to the next camp and leave them behind. But here was Riel admitting he’d been in a lunatic asylum, looking and sounding saner than any of them.

  The men had brought out plugs of tobacco by the time Gabriel’s adopted son, Alexandre, arrived carrying a billycan of water. The boy set it on a hooked branch over the fire and shook loose-leaf tea and some sugar into the water. Michel Dumas produced a flask of whiskey and offered it around, his eyes swimming. Le Rat, drinking all day. Any excuse to get in the bottle. Other men wore their longish hair loose about the ears, but Dumas had his smoothed back in town fashion—even a damn handkerchief tied around his throat.

  Riel refused the flask, and said he’d wait for his favourite drink—black tea, sweet and hot. He hadn’t wet his lips in the saloon earlier, but it didn’t stop the others from nipping at Dumas’ flask while they waited for the tea to boil. Maxime Lépine stood beside Riel as he had in Red River, a godly man, modest and restrained. Not a fighter, but one you’d want to have with you in a fight, regardless. Alexandre hung back just out of the fire’s halo, gazing at the Métis hero he’d grown up hearing stories about. There was the first touch of beard on his son’s raw-boned face, but he was too young to be invited to sit with them.

  Could you be insane and the next moment not? Gabriel looked at Riel speaking with the men and thought of his neighbour, Norbert Lavoie, fallen from a horse and hurt his head. Now he was lazy, didn’t care for work, and like a dog that lived under the porch, snarled at those that passed by, too dangerous to let in the house, too useful yet to take out and shoot.

  The tea had boiled and Riel dipped a tin cup into the billycan. By reflex or habit, Gabriel put his hand to the chiseled grip of his hunting knife in the leather sheath at his waist. He had made the sheath as a boy, from the hide of his first kill. Riel didn’t look crazy, but you wouldn’t guess a buffalo bull could react before you turned in the saddle—he’d get your horse on the jump and outrun it too.

  Whites in the east called the Métis “buffalo hunters” or “miserable French half-breeds.” When Ottawa tried to push them out of Red River fifteen years ago, it was Riel pushed back. He’d brought Métis, English half-breeds, and white settlers together to draft a bill of rights. Gabriel admired Riel, how he’d forced Macdonald to make Red River a province and offer title to their lands. Riel had come to them rested, both champion and hero. He would challenge the old man in Ottawa again, the way a young bull defied the ailing leader for his cows—growl low and deep, scent the ground, make himself known.

  He and Riel had been ten days on the trail from Montana Territory. Plenty of time for him to share that he’d been in an asylum. Why now? Gab
riel glanced up at Charles Nolin, who was at his third swig of Dumas’ whiskey. Nolin had a nose that gave him the look of barnyard or pasture and too much drink. His left hand, two fingers blown off from a misfired gun, rested on his barrel chest. Slippery bâtard profited from any situation, good or bad. Riel had seemed troubled, maybe angry, when Nolin greeted him today. Gabriel suspected that just the three of them knew about the asylum, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  “Macdonald ignores your petitions,” Riel was saying to the men. “Just as he did in Red River.”

  Nolin lowered the flask and wiped his mouth. “In time, he will give us what we want.”

  Gabriel wanted to leap the fire and grab Nolin by the throat. But it was four years since the buffalo had disappeared across the boundary line, with him captain of the chase. The days long over when he held the power to enforce hunt rules with his fist.

  Riel had his head down but raised his eyes in a glare. “In time? Macdonald promised Métis rights would be secured in the North-West. Has this been done? Ottawa does not intend to govern this territory so much as to plunder it.”

  Gabriel was relieved to see that Riel had settled. He had not liked the look on his face earlier—roused at the idea of Lean Crow and Little Ghost’s pledge of allegiance. The Métis needed a man who knew the words to make a petition, not accept support from Indians with scalps on their leggings.

  “A claim in Duck Lake was jumped last month by a white settler,” Michel Dumas said.

  “Macdonald wants we should move west,” Damase Carrière offered, and then fell silent, a man of few words.

  “Or roll over like dogs,” added Lépine. He swatted at a mosquito with his hat, then put it back on and crossed his arms, staring into the flames.

  “Louis will make le maudit Anglais listen,” Gabriel said.

  “When my brother Ambroise arrives,” Maxime said, “the other Métis leaders in the Saskatchewan will come to us.”