Song of Batoche

by Maia Caron

  “I saw him, too,” said someone. “Whipping up the horse. If I’d known he was deserting, I would have smashed his head in.”

  When he tried to rise, Gabriel was shot through with a sudden, agonizing pain. “Go after him,” he said. “Don’t kill him—save it for me.”

  Édouard took off his ceinture fléchée and wrapped it around his head. Gabriel insisted that he be put on his own horse and taken to Isidore. With difficulty, they got his foot into the stirrup, and he shouted with pain as they hoisted him to the saddle. Michel Dumas took up the reins, leading his horse slowly forward. Riel and the remaining Métis fighters followed behind quietly as if they were in a funeral procession.

  There was movement in the trees; one of the Prince Albert volunteers had been hit in the leg and was hauling himself toward the trail, using his gun as a crutch. Little Ghost and another one of Lean Crow’s men set off at a run, plunging toward him through the drifts; a few Métis followed after them. The volunteer was halfway to the trail when he seemed to realize that he had been left behind. He reeled and almost fell, but when he spotted the Sioux warriors, he went to his knees and cried, “Don’t let the black devils get my hair.”

  When Little Ghost lifted his gun to club him in the head, one of the Métis rushed to stop him. The Sioux war chief stared around at the half-breeds. “Why do you not finish him off? A man left alive after battle will return in revenge.”

  “He will go in with the other prisoners,” Riel called to him.

  In their hasty retreat, the police had left behind three sleighs and half a dozen good horses. Abandoned rifles were scattered about, and Métis claimed them as they came up the trail. Michel Dumas had found Clarke’s lynx coat. He held it out to Riel. “Look at what le bâtard left us. He wore this when he said the police were coming to arrest you.”

  Gabriel’s eyes had not left the familiar shape that lay motionless in the snow. With Alexandre’s help, he got off his horse and approached what was left of his older brother. The world was devoid of sound. His own breathing echoed in his head as he drew closer. Any minute now, Isidore would get up and brush himself off, laugh. Or it wasn’t Isidore at all. It couldn’t be. How often had they been charged by angry bulls on the hunt? Or almost had a tree fall on them when cutting wood in the bush? Too many times to cheat death and find it now. He stood over his brother’s body. Isidore was smaller than he remembered. The wide shoulders that could carry three hundred pounds on a portage, his feet now skewed, the ruined head. How would he tell Judith, his wife … their eleven children?

  He wanted to fall to his knees, but too many eyes were on him. The old Indian who had found himself in the middle of the whole affair was not far down the trail, moaning from his gut wound. Pierre Gariépy knelt beside him, but it was obvious from his expression that the man was dying. Another body lay near—not a red-coated police—a Prince Albert volunteer. One who looked too much like Crozier’s scout, Joe McKay. Gabriel swung himself forward, his eyes hazed with sweat and blood. This one he could turn over. The volunteer had been shot through the heart, probably dying before he hit the ground. Gabriel pulled out his knife and went down on one knee, grabbing the dead man’s hair.

  He had never taken a scalp, but had seen it done and heard the war songs of the Cree who told of those they had won in battle. Gabriel had just begun to slice into the delicate skin of the white man’s forehead when he found himself staring into blue eyes gazing lifelessly into the void. He dropped him in the snow, staggered and fell.

  Alexandre and Édouard carried him back to the horses. Frightened whispers, “Look at his head … Will he die? … Non, merte, it’s his brother. Can’t you see?”

  Gabriel drifted into a fog and when he came to, found himself on the front steps of Mitchell’s store. He lunged through the door and up the stairs. On the landing, two Métis stood guard with rifles in their hands, astonished to see him, confused and feverish, pushing his way into the room. Here were the prisoners, including Honoré Jaxon, who stood almost paralyzed with fear at the sight of him.

  The sash that held the top of Gabriel’s head together had soaked through. Blood flowed from his hairline along the side of his nose, dripping off his chin and down the front of his coat. He pointed at Crozier’s two scouts—Astley and another one—that he’d taken prisoner earlier in the day. “Get them into the yard.” He turned, expecting the guards to obey him immediately, but they stared at him, wide-eyed. “Get them out and shoot them!” If he could not kill McKay or Clarke, someone else would take their place.

  Napoléon Nault put a hand on his arm. “Come, I’ll take you to your wife.”

  Gabriel wrestled with one of the guards for his rifle. “I’ll do it here,” he said, but slumped sideways. Someone caught him before he hit the doorframe.

  Before he lost consciousness, he heard Nault say to the prisoners, “God must be with you.”

  rababou

  A week after the battle at Duck Lake, Riel’s council was meeting in Xavier Letendre’s house, and Josette went with a few of the women to bring them food. Strict rules had come down from the Exovedate—rules for “Kitchen Service”—and what times of the day each meal should be served, because too many women had been coming in, curious to hear news of a British general who had arrived on a train from Ottawa and already marched north with a contingent of soldiers as far as the Touchwood Hills. Josette had not been on the list of “acceptable persons having special business with the council without seeking to impede their work,” but earlier, at the cooking fire, she had inserted herself in the preparation of the food and the women had relented for Riel’s Magdalene. They did not guess that she insisted on going only to see Honoré Jaxon, who was being held with other prisoners on the second floor.

  When she stepped through the door of Letendre’s house, the room went silent and every man turned to look at her except for Riel, at the head of the table, brooding over a handful of papers. She narrowed her eyes at Philippe Garnot, sitting beside him. The short French Canadian had his pen raised over a minute book, an expression of shame upon his weaselly face. Riel had said the Spirit of God claimed she still had a role to play in his mission, yet he’d chosen a white saloon owner over her, to replace Honoré as secretary of the council.

  When Riel continued to ignore Josette’s arrival, Maxime Lépine tentatively reached to take a bannock from her, his eyes downturned. She hesitated. Was it possible they’d just been speaking about her? Non. The women had simply interrupted talk of strategy.

  Gabriel sat on a rocking chair by the stove. He placed his hands on his knees, as if to get up, but decided against it and regarded her with a conflicted expression she found puzzling. A cloth wrapped around his head had bled through to a patch of dark red over his wound, which the women had said was an angry gash that pulsed blood and refused to heal.

  At dawn on the morning of the battle, Riel had come to Josette’s house and taken both Honoré and Norbert. She had bundled the children in the cutter and gone up to Batoche, waiting all morning with the women by a fire near Fisher’s Crossing for news of their men. And then a long, unbearable hour listening to the sound of distant shooting from the west. Riel eventually sent back an Indian from One Arrow’s reserve wearing a fine lynx coat.

  “Police crawled through the trees,” he said in Cree, “afraid of the scalping knife.”

  After he told them that four Métis had been killed, the women surrounded him, asking him to name the dead. Cries and screams rose out of wives, children and extended relations of Augustin Laframboise, Isidore Dumont, Baptiste and Joseph Montour. He added that Gabriel had been wounded and Madeleine pulled at the Indian’s saddle demanding to know how badly, but he shrugged and kicked his horse into a trot away from them.

  By late afternoon, dark shapes began to show at the line of trees and bush on the west bank. As their men crossed the frozen river in silent groups, the women whispered among themselves. “It was our victory, non?” and strained their eyes, desperate to identify a certai
n horse, a specific slouch hat or coat that meant their husbands had returned without harm. When Gabriel finally appeared, tears sprang into Josette’s eyes, but her relief was short-lived when she saw that he was tied to his horse.

  She glanced at him now, seated by Letendre’s stove, staring as if he could see inward to the fire itself. He lifted his eyes and held hers for a moment before looking away. With her knife, Josette cut slices of bannock and meat for the men, indignant that she was not sitting among them, privy to the council’s secrets instead of in servitude to its needs. But Riel punished her with silence, shamed her for refusing to go north to her grandfather.

  Some of the council members were discussing an enemy scout, who had been captured by Gabriel’s men down at Clark’s Crossing, as he mapped the path his general planned to take north to Batoche.

  Moise Ouellette scraped his chair back and stood. “What will we do with him?”

  “Send word to Macdonald,” said Riel, his eyes still on the papers. “Title for our lands in return for his release.”

  Gabriel stared at his right hand, splaying his fingers and then flexing them into a fist. “Macdonald did not send this General Middleton to parley.”

  Riel shook his head. “The Anglais general cannot move an army until spring.” He waited while the men muttered their concerns about the weather. The first of April had brought a thaw and melted most of the snow, but the river ice had not yet gone out. “His English half-breed scouts have already told him l’eau surie in the sloughs will give his horses the scours,” Riel went on. “And he must wait another month for grass to come up on the prairie. By then, Poundmaker will have come to us.”

  Josette’s hand slipped on the knife. She glanced at Riel. He had talked so much about her grandfather coming, she was taken aback to hear him speak of Chief Poundmaker instead.

  “Poundmaker will come only if we have a decisive victory,” said Gabriel, his voice suddenly loud in the room.

  “We had one at Duck Lake,” Riel insisted.

  “Did we?” Gabriel winced, as though mention of the battle had caused him pain.

  “We will defeat Middleton here,” Riel said. “Who is this Philistine that he should defy the army of the living God? Let Goliath advance in his ignorance.”

  Gabriel listened with a deepening frown. “David went out to Goliath. And there are many good places for ambush in the Touchwood Hills.” He sat forward in the chair. “Let me go down there with a few good men before more soldiers arrive to strengthen the general’s camp.”

  A shadow seemed to pass over Riel’s face, but before Josette could ask why her grandfather was now out of the picture, he finally looked directly at Gabriel. “The Lord delivered me from the paw of the lion, the paw of the bear. He will deliver us from the hand of this Philistine.”

  There was a profound silence in the room, the strain between Riel and his adjutant general, palpable. Josette folded some meat inside a slice of bannock, determined to take it to Riel and force him to acknowledge her presence.

  One of the women stopped her. “Non,” she whispered. “He only eats milk and broth since the battle.”

  Josette went to him anyway. “Let me take food to the prisoners,” she said, gesturing at the stairs.

  Riel had returned his attention to the sheaf of papers he held on his lap. What was the look on his face? A confusing mix of aloofness and regret. “Go up and give it to Fleury. He will take it in to them.”

  “I want to see Honoré.” When he did not answer, she felt the sudden urge to push him off the chair. “He walked eight miles to see me. You saw it yourself.”

  “There was a motion made yesterday,” Riel said, “that no person have permission to see the prisoners without an order from the council.” He turned his head to address Garnot. “Was it not carried unanimously?” His secretary flipped through the minute book and found the entry. Without looking up, he nodded.

  “Let her see him,” Gabriel said angrily. “You owe her that much.”

  Riel’s stare was fixed, as if he thought he hadn’t heard right. “Tell her, why don’t you,” he said. “She will know soon enough—”

  He was cut off by the sound of arriving horsemen. Whoops and yells came from the yard, then the voice of the Sioux war chief, Little Ghost. “We will shoot the white dog!”

  Riel went outside with the men. When the women gathered at the door, Josette took two rounds of bannock from the table and went up the stairs. She would know soon enough about … what? On the second floor, Patrice Fleury stood with his gun outside a locked door in the hall, and she showed him the bannocks.

  “For the prisoners,” she said. “Riel says I am to give them.”

  Fleury unlocked the door. Four of the men were at one of the windows, anxious to see what was going on outside. The room was in disarray. She knew the owner and clerk from Walter & Baker’s store across the river, and had heard that the other two white men were from Prince Albert, but she did not recognize a prisoner who leaned against the wall, his arms folded. He glanced up briefly to give her an insolent stare. The army scout, she thought, setting the bannocks on a table.

  Honoré crouched in a corner, listening to what was happening in the yard. “Rababou, rababou,” he stuttered, as though he were proud to have remembered the French word the Métis used for a great noise.

  She put a hand on his arm and glanced out the other window. The Sioux still galloped around the house, their rifles held high. Lean Crow slowed his horse, mud splashed all the way up to its flanks, and let Little Ghost take charge.

  Riel grabbed at the reins of his horse, and lifted his hand, as if trying to calm him. “No,” the young war chief shouted in reply to something Riel had said. He pulled back on the reins, and his horse reared. “If Big Bear can kill whites, we can kill whites.”

  A flurry of high-pitched yips and Sioux war cries ensued, and Josette leaned closer to the window. Had she just heard her grandfather’s name in the company of the words “kill” and “whites?”

  One of the men from Prince Albert said to the others, “I told Riel myself—told him he’d burn in hell for riling the Indians. He can’t control these bloodthirsty dogs. They’ll have us for dinner.”

  The clerk from Walter & Baker’s had seen her and nudged him. “Quiet, Astley, here’s Big Bear’s granddaughter.”

  Astley turned. Now she remembered him from an encounter last summer in Batoche. He had been getting his horse shod and thought she was an Indian from One Arrow’s band. He’d looked her up and down as she passed and made a few lewd remarks to the blacksmith as to her availability. When told who she was, he had immediately shut his mouth, but now his blue eyes sparked with both fear and a curious bravado.

  “Are you here to deliver us to these hounds?”

  The army scout had unfolded his arms. “You should run with your tail between your legs,” he said, and when she looked around at him, confused, he laughed. “If General Middleton don’t catch your granddaddy, he might catch you.”

  She struggled to absorb what he was saying, but misunderstanding must have been writ large on her face, for Astley now regarded her in the way a cat plays with a cornered mouse. “She doesn’t know Big Bear’s been out murdering. Shooting white men—priests—in the back.”

  “Careful,” said the owner of Walter & Baker’s, “she’s Riel’s woman.”

  Astley inclined his head toward the window. “The irony is you follow that crazy bastard who riled him up. Sending his letters—inciting the Indians to do his dirty work.”

  She stood there, numb, as he told her of letters that Riel had rushed to the Métis in Fort Pitt and Battleford. Letters that recounted the victory at Duck Lake and urged them to take the forts. Her grandfather’s warriors had worked themselves into a frenzy and killed Thomas Quinn, the Indian agent at their reserve, who had withheld rations. Big Bear was unable to stop them from killing eight other white men.

  Josette’s eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere over Astley’s shoulder. Her mind w
as spinning, trying to make sense of this unbelievable news. What had Riel said not one week ago, as he knelt in the chapel? “The council has agreed to send two emissaries to Big Bear—ready yourself to leave with them tomorrow morning for Frog Lake with a letter for your grandfather.” The council has agreed. All minutes and correspondence were transcribed by the secretary and dictated by Riel. He had been the one to send the letter. Josette could not see Riel now and went to the other window. The prisoners parted to make way, as if she, too, were capable of violence.

  Below in the yard, Little Ghost now gestured at the house with his rifle. “Give us the White Queen’s man—we will knock his head in.”

  Riel was asking the women to bring out food, his face flushed with the effort of placating the Sioux war chief. “The White Queen’s scout is valuable to the half-breeds,” he said. “And will be used to trade with his people.”

  Little Ghost said, “It is not our way to take prisoners for bait,” but he had already begun to pass the bannocks and meat among them.

  Riel stepped back out of the mud, a relieved smile on his face. He glanced up at the prisoner’s windows, as if to convince himself that his tools of barter were safe. When he saw her, his features settled into an expression of alarm. Their eyes met for a long, impossible moment, before Josette turned away.

  the confessor

  Three days later, Josette woke at dawn, quietly closing the backroom door to avoid waking Norbert and the children. After starting a fire in the stove and mixing bannock dough, she went out to milk the cow. A fine misted rain fell, melting the last remaining patches of snow in the pastures. The river ice had begun to break up and shift, its surface roiling with slush and great frozen sheets, the jagged edges pitched against each other in the current.

  When she emerged from the barn fifteen minutes later, the sky had lightened, and the air was fragrant with wood smoke. She slowly walked toward the house to avoid spilling milk from the pail and, as she did each morning, looked south to Gabriel’s. He had gone scouting, but smoke rose from their chimney. Josette glanced up at his back fields and stopped in her tracks at the sight of many tipis standing shock white in the pale morning air.