Song of Batoche

by Maia Caron

  He stopped to exchange greetings with a group of people who waited to speak to him. Marguerite stood with the children, impatient to have him back to herself. Josette lived near Gabriel Dumont, eight miles south of Batoche. Moise Ouellette, one of Louis’ closest supporters, and husband to Gabriel’s sister, had recently built a fine home for his large family in St. Laurent, and had invited them to use his old log house on the property. Marguerite had thought it too far for Louis to go back and forth from Batoche ten miles south, but now it did not seem far enough.

  As her husband approached, she decided she would not let him know that she had already met Josette. But she could not resist asking, “Why were you speaking to that woman?”

  “Who?” he said, still distracted. “Oui, Big Bear’s granddaughter.”

  When Marguerite was a child on one of her father’s buffalo hunts, they’d come across a band of Indians gathered at a crossing on the high Missouri, and her father had pointed out a man seated on a spotted pony, the saddle ornately beaded. “That is Mistahi-maskwa, Big Bear,” he had said to her, “a man that will not listen to anyone but himself.”

  She had studied the old chief then and thought he was the most dignified man she’d ever laid eyes on. To think that Josette was his granddaughter somehow added insult to injury.

  “Strange she doesn’t look like him.” Although fine in bearing, Big Bear was not a handsome man. Compared to some of the Sioux she’d known in the Montana Territory, he was homely, his pock-marked face creased with wrinkles from many summers on the plains.

  “Non,” Louis said, “but she’s going to bring me Big Bear.”

  The prick of sudden panic, sweat under her arms and at the back of her neck. When Louis had told her that God permitted a man more than one wife, he had seen her horrified reaction, and never spoke of it again, but there had not been women like Josette Lavoie in Sun River. “Why were you smiling after her?”

  “I mean to gift her paper,” he replied, “to write her poems.” He turned to greet a Métis from St. Laurent who had come toward him, hand outstretched, anxious to meet the famous Riel.

  Poems. The word was like a brand on her heart. Although she was proud of Louis, she could not read his poems, much less write her own. Now here was a woman, admittedly married, but with the same passions as her husband.

  She’s going to bring me Big Bear. This statement bothered her with its vague threat of future contact. She watched as Josette and her children drove south in their wagon. If her husband was to “need” someone, Marguerite would rather she not be a beautiful woman who could read, write poetry, and might very well test his faith.

  take genesis

  Mimoux planted her hooves over the milking bucket and brayed. In the dimly lit barn, Josette examined her swollen udder with dismay. Mastitis. Most likely carelessness on behalf of Cleophile, whose chore it was to keep the hay for the cow’s bed clean and dry. Mimoux had slept in a puddle of her own urine, contaminating her teats. For once, Josette did not curse the extra work. This morning, Norbert had made a production of dragging out his saddle bags and packing a pair of work gloves and some bannock from breakfast. She had watched with trepidation and followed him outside.

  “I go to Fort Battleford,” he said as he drew the bridle over his horse’s head. “They’re building a new outpost and need wood cutters.”

  It was like him to make work a sacrifice, when he most likely had cabin fever and wanted to be with his amis on the trail. Or perhaps he had taken up with an Indian woman on one of the nearby reserves. In any case, he hadn’t touched her the last few weeks.

  When Norbert had ridden away, the dust from his horse’s hooves made Josette gag, and she had run to the latrines in time to lean over the hole and heave up her breakfast. Positive now that she was pregnant, she had begun to desperately mix her herbal abortives. She could tolerate feeling dizzy and weak, but tremors and nightmares were signs that she might be harming herself. The only solution was to visit her grandfather’s band. Her Nôhkom was a medicine woman with the right herbs to stop Norbert’s seed from taking greater hold in her womb. Tears stung Josette’s eyes. She yearned for another bibi, but the thought of leaving her children with a man like Norbert firmed her resolve to end the pregnancy.

  Mimoux kicked over the empty pail. Josette leaned to stroke her belly, applying a salve of garlic to her teats. Even a cow suffered to give milk. With this drought, there would be less hay in the back fields for winter feed, and diminished milk production as a result. If Norbert stuck to his work in Battleford, it might keep them going over the winter.

  When Josette had visited Father Moulin, she had not planned to ask for an indulgence, but when he was so arrogant as to use her to spy on Louis Riel for the Church, she could not resist. She had underestimated the old priest. Two days after her confession, Madeleine had visited her with a freshly baked flan, in guilt, Josette thought, for speaking to her harshly on the day of Riel’s arrival.

  “The Old Crows think you have seen the error of your ways,” she had said, and waited to hear an explanation as to why her neighbour had, without warning, found God. But Josette now considered Madeleine an Old Crow. It would not occur to her that a woman who had humbled herself before God and received an indulgence might commit the mortal sin of abortion.

  The Old Crows had eyed her when Riel had come across the field after Mass on Sunday, inching closer to hear why he had singled her out. When she’d said her father’s name and Thomas Scott’s too, Riel had looked to his wife with the eyes of a drowning man. It had thrown him when she knew the name of the poet who had written the words he quoted. Lamartine had been a favourite of Father Dubois in Red River. But Riel had acted as if she were a genius. And yet there was something he had said that stuck with her:

  Do you remember the names of the soldiers who killed your father?

  Fixing blame on the men who had beaten him to death had not occurred to her. She leaned back on the milking stool and called for Cleophile. A few minutes later, the girl appeared in silhouette at the barn door, Norbert’s dogs bounding after her. Josette was about to tell her that they would go to Big Bear’s camp and to get their things together, when she saw a figure on horseback riding away from Gabriel and Madeleine’s house. She squinted to see who it might be and stood up quickly, overturning the stool. On Sunday, she had walked away from Louis Riel, showing him she could not be easily won over, but here he was again. Would he not leave her alone? Wiping her hands on her skirt, she came out of the barn.

  Riel got off his horse and ignored the barking dogs, removing a tied bundle of foolscap paper from his saddle bag.

  When he gave it to her, she said, “Bien,” and put her hand to the paper. She would not let him see how delighted she was to touch its smooth surface.

  He brought out a blunt pencil. “Not the finest, but it will do for now.” He bent his head to look into her eyes, and she turned her face, still conscious of her bruised cheek. “I once had my papers and books taken from me,” he said. “I know how precious these things are to one of a sensitive nature.”

  He followed her back into the barn, and Josette could not decide if he considered a sensitive nature a blessing or a kind of weakness. Cleophile had disappeared, too shy to meet the great Riel. Josette felt his eyes on her as she straddled the milking stool. She set the paper and pencil beside the grubby feed pails to show him that the gift would not change her feelings toward him.

  “I have just been to Gabriel’s.” He paused, but she said nothing. “We leave tomorrow. Big Bear is on the trail to Battleford. They say he wants to meet Poundmaker and hold a sun dance …” He trailed off, his face reddening as she let the silence grow. After a long moment, he drew himself up and said, “There is talk that Ottawa will send police from Fort Carlton—to find your grandfather before I do.” She granted him a brief look and he continued with greater confidence. “They will bribe him with rations to stay away from me.”

  Riel had shaved off his beard since she had last
seen him and his moustache was carefully trimmed. There was a deep cleft in his chin that made him seem less imposing. Yet she could not look long into those dark, secretive eyes. “Why do you want my Mosom’s allegiance?” she finally said in English. “He does not give it easily.”

  “Big Bear should hear how Macdonald has been plotting.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have political contacts in Ottawa.”

  A tremor shook her hand, an effect of the herbs, and she pulled at one of the cow’s teats to hide it. Although she had just decided to ride north to her people, she wanted to see how far Riel would go to convince her.

  “Not many Métisse learned English or poetry,” he said. “What else did you study in Red River?”

  She did not like to remember her time in school. The Grey Nuns had thought they could make her love Jesus, transform her into a nun. She had tried, and found some solace in the Bible. But it had been a priest who opened her mind by giving her Spinoza’s Ethics. “I spent a lot of time on my knees,” she said, surprised to hear bitterness in her voice. “Father Dubois taught me science and arithmetic.”

  “Good, good,” Riel said. “When I went to school, only boys studied those things.”

  “Yes—a girl must learn to be a wife.”

  He laughed. “What did you read, besides Lamartine?”

  “I asked too many questions of the nuns. Father Dubois lent me his books.”

  “He must have thought you remarkable.”

  Had the old priest found her remarkable? She recalled Father Dubois’ face when she had come to him after reading Spinoza, so pleased to have discovered a thing called “reason.”

  “You do not yearn for reason,” he had said. “You yearn for God.”

  She thought of this often and it still confused her, for she did not yearn for any god, much less the heartless, punishing one that seemed resolved on making her suffer.

  Riel asked what her Cree mother had thought of a religious education. Josette would not tell him that her mother had been forced, out of propriety, to attend church in Red River, but remained at odds with the Catholic God. A sudden bout of morning sickness rose in her throat and she panicked at the thought of retching in front of Louis Riel. “Maman has thoughts of how the world was made,” she said, as the moment passed, “that do not resemble Genesis.”

  “The children I taught in Sun River said their ‘Our Fathers’ but would not forsake their mothers’ superstitions.” He smiled indulgently. “They whispered prayers to spirits of the Cree.”

  Josette hid her face behind the cow’s rump. She had not taken him for another religious fanatic. “I learned my scripture to please the nuns and Father Dubois,” she said. “As a piece of poetry, yes, but there were inconsistencies.”

  “Where?”

  She stole a look at him. When Father Moulin had called the Spinoza a “vile attack on divine revelation,” she had enjoyed baiting him with heretical talk and could not resist doing the same with Louis Riel. “Genesis—that is like the Cree stories. How the world was made.”

  A spark of disapproval in his eyes, then it was gone. “Genesis came directly from the hand of God.”

  Last year, four Grey Nuns had come from the east to teach school at St. Laurent. Josette had anticipated having them in the district, hoping that at least one of them would have an open mind. But they had regarded her as Riel did now, asking polite questions to trip up her mistaken logic.

  She patted her cow. “Why can’t there be a cause for Mimoux that’s contained in her own nature?” Riel’s colour was rising. It amused her that he would not stomach such blasphemy if he did not need her.

  He took off his hat and kneaded it in his hands. “I’m curious how Genesis resembles the Cree creation myth.”

  Josette felt the muscles tighten in her jaw to hear him speak of her people’s stories as myths. “Well, it doesn’t,” she said. “I was mistaken.”

  He put his hat back on and adjusted the brim. He looked at the far wall—as if he had found something of interest there—and then directly at her. “What kind of poetry do you write?”

  She wanted to hate him, but it was impossible. Not since Father Dubois had someone, man or woman, spoken to her of poetry. “I write nothing that would interest you.”

  Riel raised his eyebrows. “Blessed is she who does not profane her talents.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted in a reluctant smile. He was close-minded, yet engaging, different from any man she had ever met. There was something about the set of his nose and the way he stood, hands idle yet dynamic, like a Roman statue she had seen in one of Father Dubois’ books.

  Riel fumbled in his pocket, asked if she would read a poem that he had written. She took the paper he held out to her. His expression as he watched her fold the poem and put it in her skirt pocket was that of a hopeful child. As a learned man, he must long, as she did, to converse with an educated member of his people. Maxime Lépine and a few other men could read and write, but Gabriel and the rest could not.

  What harm would it do to go north with him? The idea fascinated her, that he would be forced to listen to Spinoza’s theories of existence or risk ruining his chance at wooing Big Bear. She got up from the stool. “I will go with you tomorrow,” she said, leading the cow by its halter.

  When she passed Riel, his eyes betrayed a fleeting look of relief or triumph, as if he’d won her over, and her heart hardened toward him. She would let him think that he’d succeeded due to his charm. And perhaps she would take up Father Moulin’s suggestion, that she get inside the great man’s head.

  Josette let go of Mimoux’s halter, and they watched as she ambled toward the back pasture. Riel told her that a wagon would slow them down on the journey north tomorrow, and Madeleine had already volunteered to take her children. She was indignant that others had been so sure of her answer, they had made plans without her knowledge, but she said nothing. Riel studied her a moment. “What happened there?” he asked, his eyes going to her cheek.

  She put her hand to it without thinking, and offered the same excuse she’d given Father Moulin. “Norbert’s horse,” she muttered. “Reared in its stall.”

  Riel nodded and she watched him leave from between a gap in the barn door. He mounted his horse, jerking the reins. Then he stopped and looked around; his expression seemed a mix of doubt as to the truth of her story and gratitude for accepting his offer. If he discovered that she travelled north with him to end an unwanted pregnancy, he would think her soul forever banned to purgatory. Riel could not possibly see her, but she drew back, an unspeakable grief descending on her like the beat of a raven’s wing.

  bestow on me

  the grace

  Josette thrashed her way through a thicket of wolf willow, taking no notice that her shawl had been torn off on a thorny bush. When she was far enough from the trail, she leaned against a tree and heaved up what was in her stomach, retching until tears ran down her face. How could a ruined man like Norbert have such a strong seed?

  Louis Riel waited for her, but they were hours away from making camp for the night. It was early afternoon, the sun hidden behind a thick haze of cloud. Diffused light slanted through a stand of birch trees, lined up in rows here as if someone had planted them in a garden. Josette undid the top buttons of her dress and fanned herself. Her anxiety had been building since yesterday, thinking more of her father, who had died because he supported Riel. That she now went to persuade her grandfather to his side seemed a betrayal of his memory. Not that she thought Mosom would listen. Many Cree chiefs had distinguished themselves as warriors against the Blackfoot, which Big Bear had done in his youth, but her grandfather was known to guide his people with spiritual visions and prophetic dreams. He already knew what was in Riel’s heart.

  Her hand slipped into her pocket to feel for the poem Riel had given her yesterday. After his visit to her farm, she had gone about her chores. Only after the children were in bed and she was alone, did she unfold the paper
and hold it close to a candle in the kitchen. Since then, she’d committed it to memory.

  “O My God, help Thou my fate.

  Rescue me, no longer wait;

  Bestow on me the grace

  Not to frighten men away;

  And teach me how to trace

  The path which is Your holy way.

  Support me, so men take

  Me seriously. And see

  That my words in them awake

  Respect for my authority.

  Oh, let me have such charm

  That in speaking to men,

  Both they and their chiefs will open

  Their hearts and salute my designs

  Without alarm.”

  Riel obviously hoped his poetic words would impress her that God had His imperious hand in the affair. Yet she had been struck by the mention of two words: “designs” and “charm,” which resonated more with contrivance than integrity of vision.

  She broke off a birch twig and chewed it, spitting out the pulp. There were better times to harvest, but she could not pass by these fine trees without gathering bark to make tea for her daughter, who had been born ailing and often fell sick with deadly coughs in winter. Josette feared losing her and experimented with combinations of remedies to strengthen her heart. After carefully cutting several branches, she left a pinch of red willow tobacco at the base of a trunk, singing to the spirit of the tree. At the sound of movement behind her, she turned to find Gabriel standing quietly, her shawl draped over the tip of his rifle.

  “Riel did not want you lost,” he said, handing her the shawl. The Métis of Batoche spoke French among themselves, but Gabriel addressed her in Cree, the language of his grandmothers. His eyes followed a game trail, one finger almost caressing the smooth wooden stock of his gun, as though he would rather be on the hunt.