With each shot a contraction waves through her, leaving her gasping. As blood spills scarlet over the waving, yellow grass, so too it flows from her womb, following the emerging child.
Hands wring in concern as the head crowns, announced by a wail of grief and pain. A deer hide is placed before the emerging life: a head, an arm, a red fist clenched tight. While the last fleeing man falls into the grass with his heart pierced by a ball, the infant slides onto the wet cloth accompanied by a warm, living flow.
The dying man’s shriek mingles with the cries of the child, and in that small dark room on the prairie, birth and death are conjugated.
Alexander lies on his back and stares up at the day’s blue firmament that seems without end, his eyes taking him to a height that seems to continue on forever. He wonders if heaven indeed exists in that blue depth; even the clouds and the wheeling hawk above him seem hopelessly earth-bound when compared to the heights he feels within his breast. As life prepares to abandon him, he reaches a bloodied hand skyward, feeling impossibly remote from that high, lovely place.
Epilogue
The Métis sit upon their horses, the settlers and Company men filing out through the fort gates, their dragging feet lifting a saffron-coloured cloud of dust. A few children cry. Now and then, a widow shrieks and faints, seeing the damp scalps — red, brown, or yellow — hanging from several of the Half-breeds’ horses. Above them all, the new flag of the Métis nation snaps in the rising wind.
Rose walks with Declan limping beside her. She lifts her pale face to see Cuthbert Grant at the head of his men, presiding over the surrender and abandonment of Fort Douglas. His grey eyes meet hers, and with a great effort of will she returns his gaze; tears gather, but she refuses them freedom. She pulls her infant tighter to her breast and looks to the horizon, Declan’s arm moving around her. Together with the rest of her people, they shuffle from the fort.
Do you want to hear sung
A song that is true?
Last June the 19th
The band of bois-brûlés
Arrived like a band of warriors.
Arriving at la grenouillère,
We took three prisoners.
Three prisoners from the Orkneys,
Who are here to steal our homeland.
We were about to dismount
When two of our men arrived.
“Here are the English,
Who are coming to attack us!”
Right away we turned around,
And we trapped the band of grenadiers.
They are caught; they all dismounted.
We acted like honourable folks.
We sent an ambassador.
“Mr. Governor, would you stop for a moment?
We want to speak with you.”
The governor who was enraged.
He told his men to shoot.
The governor who thought himself emperor,
He tried to take tough action.
Having seen go by all the bois-brûlés,
He set out to scare them
Having set out to rout them.
He made a mistake and got himself killed.
He well got killed
A number of his grenadiers
We killed almost all his army
From this mistake
Four or five escaped.
Oh, if you only had seen these Englishmen
And the bois-brûlés after them.
From hill to hill the English stumbled.
And the Bois-Brûlés let out shouts of joy!
And who has composed this song?
It is Pierriche Falcon this good lad.
It has been made and composed
About the victory that we have won.
— Métis National Anthem by Pierre (Pierriche) Falcon
Acknowledgements
The writing of any full-length work of fiction is an arduous task, especially when writing about a location and period where there were few literate witnesses, and even fewer records kept. The explosion of information on the Internet has helped writers a great deal, but most of the research for this novel was done when the Internet had yet to find its wings. It was a slow, plodding process.
Part of the challenge was not only discovering the information, but also locating it in the proper time and place. I tried wherever possible to use the correct language of the era, but when quoting Aboriginal terms, at times I had to reference modern sources because I could not find records from that early period. Even if I could, often the language had specific dialects; those speaking Swampy Cree on the coast might be quite different from those inland. Sometimes it just becomes an educated guess.
But I had a lot of help. I’d like to thank Hilda Fitzner for sending me her hand-written dictionary of common Swampy Cree terms and expressions. I’d also like to thank the knowledgeable staff of Fort Carlton Provincial Park in Saskatchewan, who showed me many small details of life during the fur trade that I had not found elsewhere
This book couldn’t have happened without the firm and wise hand of Bernice Lever who edited my manuscript before submitting it to Dundurn. She greatly improved the manuscript, and even suggested Dundurn as a perfect fit for the book. One is always very grateful for the publisher who first takes a chance on an unknown author, and I know Bernice’s support facilitated that. It is a debt I shall never be able to fully repay.
Lastly, as we all know, the real power lies behind the throne. I likely would have spent my declining years labouring in salt mines or marching on foreign battlefields if my ever-patient, ever-supportive, lovely wife had not deigned to allow me to play the Bohemian and dedicate a large chunk of my life to drinking too much and chasing ideas in fiction. Livers can be replaced, but stories are priceless. I hope this work proves worthy of her faith.
Copyright © Nathaniel Poole, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Shannon Whibbs
Design: Courtney Horner
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Cover design by Laura Boyle
Cover photo © wynnter/iStock
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Poole, Nathaniel, 1961-, author
A dark and promised land / Nathaniel Poole.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-2200-2
I. Title.
PS8631.O633D37 2014 C813'.6 C2014-901025-7
a C2014-901026-5
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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