He was so worried about her he had not even noticed his unfortunate mistake. He picked her up in his arms and ran towards the house, calling loudly for Gansagonas.
Still not responding, Jeanne let herself go, wondering if that was what death was like. Her sinking heart pained her, and her constricted throat let not a word escape. Her heavy limbs hung limp like those of Isabelle’s doll.
Helped by Gansagonas, to whom he gave brief orders in her own language, Simon undressed Jeanne and wrapped her in the quilt.
Galvanized into action by Simon’s instructions that were spiced with oaths, Mathurin lit a gigantic fire in the fireplace. Simon set his inert wife in front of the flames and covered her with all the furs in the house. Usually so dexterous, he upset the pot of warm water and alcohol he was heating. He forced the liquid between her blue lips. Soaked to the skin, he forgot that he, too, was shivering with cold.
He bustled about, vigorously rubbing her frozen hands and feet.
He muttered between his teeth, “Silly little fool. You gave me a terrible fright. And you didn’t even let go of that damned gun that was dragging you down. Jeanne, don’t ever do that again.”
He called her “Jeanne” now, absolutely unaware of the cry that had escaped his lips in a moment of stress.
Close by her, Jeanne heard frightened little Isabelle crying and Nicolas asking in a choked voice, “She’s not dead, too, is she?”
Moved by the children’s despair, she turned her head with great effort.
“Don’t cry, my darlings. I’m fine now.”
At least those two needed her, even if she was just a borrowed mother for them.
For Simon, she was and would remain the copy of the wife he had lost. Aimée had lent her her face, her children, her house, but even in death she jealously held on to her husband’s heart.
Tears ran slowly down Jeanne’s pale cheeks. Kneeling beside her, Simon cradled her in his too strong arms and whispered tender words in her ear. Weary, she turned her head away and refused to listen to those words of love meant for someone else. With the same sensation she had felt when the icy water drew her towards the refuge of forgetfulness a short while before, she fell into a dreamless sleep.
25
ON THE FIRST day of December, four large canoes halted in front of Monsieur de Rouville’s domain. Carrot-Top, some Hurons and trappers were coming to get their hunting companion for the winter expedition.
The Richelieu’s swift current made the river navigable, but very soon ice would set in for many months. Then the voyageurs would abandon their canoes for snowshoes. After the spring breakup they would take to their small boats again. The rivers were still the best routes for the rapid transport of furs to the warehouses of Ville-Marie and Quebec.
Recent treaties with the Iroquois raised hopes for a time of peace. The coureurs de bois were less fearful of disappearing into the forest and leaving their families for several months.
With shouts and laughter, the men cheered Simon and greeted their old friend, Limp. Since his accident, he had had to give up going with them.
Simon, the fate of his wife and son assured, waited on the river bank, standing beside his pack. Nicolas, his arm in a sling, solemnly promised not to stray away again. He had been assigned to watch over his mother and his sister.
Jeanne was still pale and out of sorts. Leaning against the cabin door, she watched the departure scene. Her husband was going off with a light heart, knowing he was leaving behind a competent wife and happy children.
From the door, Jeanne waved at him one final time. She still felt his passionate kiss on her lips, a kiss that was meant for another. With relief she watched his tall figure recede, at the prow of one of the canoes. She could not stand to play the role of the strong and happy wife anymore, and gladly she looked forward to these weeks of solitude.
Perhaps a broken heart does mend in time, as a broken bone does. When the last canoe disappeared at the bend in the river, Jeanne closed the door and tried to convince herself she had been wishing for his departure, that it had become a necessity.
Her energetic nature quickly took the upper hand. Long periods of despair did not fit in with her optimism.
They settled down to a peaceful existence in the snow that fell the first night. Curled up in the big empty bed, Jeanne refused to think of Simon sleeping right on the frozen ground, somewhere in the forest. As long as he had not already met up again with the beautiful Indian woman who mends shirts with her hair.
During the months that followed, the mistress of the Rouville domain tried to better her and her family’s lot in every possible way. Nicolas and Isabelle, grateful for their good fortune, came down to share her bed. Contrary to Simon’s predictions, Gansagonas voluntarily abandoned her precarious shelter and moved into the loft. Only her brother Anonkade refused to live in the house.
When it was very cold, Mathurin was cordially invited to come sleep by the fire. He kept it going all night, which saved the mistress of the house a task.
As foreseen, Gansagonas became more and more open, won over by the king’s daughter’s warm friendship. Gansagonas turned out to be a very resourceful teacher. She taught the songs of her tribe and country recipes. In the evenings before the fire, the disparate groups listened with fascination to Jeanne’s marvellous stories. The expert storyteller made mythology, ancient history and tales of chivalry live again.
On those occasions, even Anonkade came and sat on the ground near the door. He never spoke, but his sister assured Jeanne that he understood French very well.
As Pierre Boucher said in his book on Canada, “The winter, though the ground is covered with snow and the cold a bit harsh, is not always unpleasant. It’s a cheerful cold.”
When the temperature permitted, the group went out for some fresh air. Anonkade and Gansagonas fashioned snowshoes for everyone, including tiny Isabelle. They hardened the light wooden hoops in the fire and bent them into an oval shape, then crisscrossed them with thin strips of leather called “babiches.” Fur-lined moccasins let them walk lightly and quickly. Muffled up to the eyes, Jeanne and the children learned how to snowshoe.
Carried away by Jeanne’s enthusiasm, Anonkade fashioned a rough toboggan with two wooden planks raised at one end and fastened with straps.
Miraud was growing every day, much to Jeanne’s dismay. The dog agreed to pull Nicolas and Isabelle in that unstable vehicle. The operation ended with tumbles in the snow and cries of delight. The three comrades, Jeanne and the children, also discovered the pleasure of sliding down the slope to the frozen river, all piled together on the fast-moving toboggan.
Jeanne had always been one to frolic. For weeks she had forced herself to be levelheaded in her husband’s presence, and now her true nature rose to the surface. The more she laughed and sang, the more the children blossomed.
It was not until evening, in the silence of the night, punctuated only by Gansagonas’s and Limp’s snoring, that Jeanne would again feel the pain she had managed to dull during the day. A proud woman, she chased away these dark thoughts, refusing to cry over an ungrateful man who, when he thought of her, called her by another woman’s name.
Jeanne often accompanied Mathurin as he dragged his foot through the snow to make the rounds of his traps. The old hunter soon noted with surprise that she knew almost as much as he did. Despite the frigid temperature, the habits of the animals of the Canadian forest were not so different from those of her grandfather’s quarry. Even the traps were similar.
Soon she was able to make the rounds for him when the poor crippled man’s rheumatism kept him home by the fire.
Several times before Simon had left, coureurs de bois or Indians had stopped their canoes to greet the lord. If the visitors brought along someone who was hurt or sick, which happened quite frequently, Jeanne’s medical talents were put to use. She had learn
ed Sister Bourgeoys’s notebook by heart, and it enabled her to face every situation. The advice and herbs offered by the healers of Sorel and Chambly proved invaluable.
Little by little, the reputation of the “little Rouville lady” grew and spread. Several times during the winter, people arrived on snowshoes, coming to ask for advice or remedies for stubborn illnesses.
Always hospitable, Jeanne would add a hot meal to her detailed prescriptions. People even came to get her for desperate cases, taking her miles away to cabins hidden in the forest. Jeanne learned that she did have neighbours in New France—neighbours who lived five, ten or twenty miles away.
They escorted the healer or pulled her on a sled if the journey was too long. She was often absent for several days, but Limp and Gansagonas looked after the children. “In New France, you don’t refuse very often. Everybody has to do his share,” Carrot-Top had said.
With her practical spirit, Jeanne asked for payment in kind when people offered to reward her for her services. She was promised a pig and some chickens in the spring. Jeanne cared for an old lady’s son who had gashed his foot with an axe, and the lady gave her some grey wool and taught her to knit. When she returned home, she awkwardly and laboriously knitted mittens for everyone, from Mathurin to Zeanne the doll.
She accumulated rare and sought-after potatoes and sacks of dried apples. She fell heir to a kitten who elected to live in Zeanne’s cradle; its satisfied purring blended with that of the fire on the hearth. Miraud, as large as a wolf, patiently played the role of adoptive father to the tyrannical little feline.
Jeanne learned to deliver babies, set fractured bones and, unfortunately, wrap the dead.
One unforgettable night, a taciturn Huron took her on a mad dash to his village, eight miles from her house. In one of the longhouses where the Indians were gathered together in silence, they showed her a child, the son of one of the tribe’s great chiefs. The boy was suffocating from an attack of false croup.
Jeanne remembered Old Hippolyte from Chambly telling her that many tribes had a custom of building “sweat rooms.” The Indian people would shut themselves up in these sorts of ovens. Coming out of these bathhouses, they would jump into the river and give themselves a vigorous rubdown. Unfortunately, there was no sweat room in the longhouse, so Jeanne ordered the men to erect a tent made of blankets in the middle of the floor. Shut up in that shelter with the sick child in her arms, Jeanne had burning hot stones brought to her and cold water poured on them. The heavy steam helped the child breathe.
By morning the child was safe. Jeanne, exhausted and dripping with sweat, handed him back to his mother. Jeanne saw the gratitude in her eyes and considered herself rewarded.
Some time later, the Hurons returned for her to treat the hundred-year-old chief, who was asking nothing more than to go and join his ancestors. As she listened to the dying man, the poacher’s granddaughter discovered that the Great Manitou’s hunting grounds were very similar to those where her grandfather, Honoré Chatel, awaited her. It was easy for her to imagine the two worthy old men sitting together beside a stream, lying in wait for the celestial game. The idea warmed her heart.
As destiny decreed, the old chief died. The chief’s grandson revered his grandfather, but had been waiting impatiently for his turn to govern. He gave Jeanne a wolfskin coat, so warm and comfortable that she was never cold again.
A delegation of Hurons brought her home, dressed in furs, seated on a sled pulled along at a good clip by warriors shod in snowshoes. For a moment she wished that Simon could see her. Her heart sank anew as she reminded herself that even then he would probably imagine Aimée instead of her. She resolutely banished her heart’s instinctive wish to make her husband party to her slightest undertakings.
At Jeanne’s instigation, Christmas was a joyous and boisterous holiday for all the members of a household that had never known such amenities. They exchanged gifts that they had laboriously made on the sly. The mistress of the house served a festive meal. Limp drank to excess and was overcome by emotion while telling Jeanne that she was just as good a woman as his late mother.
Gansagonas declared confidentially that no one had ever laughed or sung in the Rouville house before. The lord’s first wife was always sad and the house silent.
In her bed, Jeanne thought bitterly that that fact had not stopped Simon from loving Aimée forever. If their future happiness depended on her own silence, then it wouldn’t last for long.
26
MARCH BROUGHT milder weather. A few tardy snow showers attempted to bring back winter, but spring was in the air.
One morning the ice of the Richelieu settled with a loud crack. It was the famous “break-up.” The river was always among the first to become navigable because of its boiling current.
Two days later, a long, piercing whistle announced Simon’s arrival well before the canoes appeared around the bend in the river.
Miraud, who suspected all strangers, got his hackles up and sounded the alarm. The children jumped up and down on the shore. Limp waved his arms and shouted in his falsetto voice. Choking with emotion, Jeanne bounded towards the riverbank without even thinking of putting on her cape. Carried away by her impulsiveness, she had forgotten all reticence.
The sight of Simon’s familiar figure and the resounding call of his strong voice quickened her blood. His pale eyes set in a thinner face sought her out, ignoring all else.
Leaving the heavily laden canoe to the Hurons who were paddling it, he jumped into the icy water and came closer, arms outstretched.
Nicolas and Isabelle did not doubt for a moment this accolade was for them. They rushed to him with squeals of delight. For the first time in his life, Simon was being received with a show of welcome. He knelt and clasped his children to his heart. Above their heads, he looked into his pretty wife’s fresh, smiling face; her eyes were full of tenderness.
Immediately the familiar demon whispered in Jeanne’s ear: “It’s Aimée he’s coming back for.” An icy chill filled her and, without her realizing it, spread to her overly expressive face. A shiver travelled through her.
Simon leaped to his feet and encircled her with authoritarian arms. As always, he did not measure his strength and she suffocated in his embrace.
Reclaiming his rights, as if she had been unable to think for herself during his absence, he scolded, “You’re not dressed for walking around in the snow. Let’s go inside right now.”
He did not want to be too demonstrative while his mocking comrades and the Indians with their politely impassive faces were looking on. He had not realized his impetuosity had already betrayed him.
Monsieur de Rouville left Mathurin and Carrot-Top to organize the unloading of his rare possessions and many bundles of furs, and he went up to the cabin, whose chimney was sending out a brave stream of smoke. A ray of sunlight made their unique and magnificent two-foot square window, the pride of the family, shine in all its glory.
Miraud at their heels, the four Rouvilles went into their house, and the door closed behind them. Two minutes later, it opened again and Simon was seen pushing Nicolas and Isabelle outside; he had just given them a message as urgent as it was useless to pass on to Carrot-Top. Even Miraud and the cat found themselves ignominiously chased outside.
The plank that barricaded the door fell firmly into place. Alone at last, Simon turned to his wife and whirled her around in the narrow room. His exuberance always brought the walls that enclosed him dangerously near. Any house became too small when he walked in, carrying with him the forest and the wide open spaces.
“Jeanne, Jeanne,” he murmured into her hair. She listened, untrusting, awaiting the error that would betray him. And yet how much she wanted to abandon herself and know happiness with no restrictions!
27
FOR TWO WEEKS a frenzy of activity had the cabin in an uproar. Monsieur de Rouville felled
trees and enlarged his estate, aided by Mathurin and Carrot-Top.
Unfortunately, when the month of April rolled around, he would have to leave again for Katarakoui, near Lake Ontario, to help his friend Cavalier de la Salle construct a fort for Governor Frontenac. The Builder’s reputation laid some heavy responsibilities on him.
Limp and the Carrot-Top from Amiens were happy to be together again, and all day long they squabbled in a friendly way.
“Our Carrot-Top has changed all of a sudden,” Simon confided to his wife. “He stands up to everyone, gets into more fights than a wolverine and doesn’t take orders from anyone but me anymore. He talks about you with an exasperating reverence. Since this winter he’s been a new man. I don’t know what’s got into him.
“In all honesty,” Simon concluded, “it makes life more difficult, but in my heart I’m happy for him. He was a good fellow, but too timid and self-effacing.”
“What” had gotten into the boy was careful not to reveal her part in the emancipation of her husband’s protégé. A simple liberating remark had accomplished what ten years of his boss’s affectionate joking had not been able to: “The important thing Carrot-Top, is that you are here.”
If only Jeanne could solve her own dilemma with one sentence!
Simon often spoke of his friend who was to come and join him for the voyage to Lake Katarakoui.
“De Preux is returning from a long expedition in the north with La Salle. The three of us have already been on several trips together.”
Jeanne sensed the regret that rang through Simon’s voice, despite his attempts to hide it. It is not easy to give up the intoxication of freedom; she knew something about that herself.
Suddenly he raised his head, abandoning the bench he was building. His wife had asked for it to replace the uncomfortable log on the doorstep.
“Now that I think about it, Jeanne, de Preux is one of your compatriots. He told me he comes from Troyes. Perhaps you know him?”
The King's Daughter Page 12
