Song of Batoche

by Maia Caron

Someone in the pit closest to him shouted at Norbert to get down or behind a tree, but he disregarded the warning and cocked his rifle again. As though he had felt himself watched, he turned to look directly at Gabriel, his handsome features distorted in a grimace. Then he burst into a run toward the cemetery.

  He was here to die.

  Gabriel fought a begrudging respect for him. Norbert had preyed upon his own daughter. He was a monster. But if he killed a few Anglais on his way to hell, Gabriel would not stop him.

  goliath

  Wooden crucifix in hand, Riel ran through the bush behind the church, bullets from the Rababou gun flying past him, tearing bark off the trees. He slowed at the edge of a rifle pit and slid into it with as much dignity as he could muster.

  Immaculate Mary, in Your great mercy, ward off sin, death, and any wound …

  He looked out from a hole in the log barricade, appalled at the sight of too many red-coated soldiers scattered from Mission Ridge to the small hill, where Middleton and his officers had gathered. It was sunny, still cool in the bush, but sweat had broken out on the back of his neck. He clutched the wooden crucifix, his knees weak and stomach achingly empty.

  “Where is Gabriel?” he asked the men in the pit. They didn’t know any more than he did, and he prayed to bring them strength, his hand on old Joseph Ouellette’s shoulder. “They who seek our lives will be destroyed,” he said. “They will go down to the depths of the earth.”

  Joseph nodded his head after saying his amen. He was ninety-three years old, but had insisted on joining the fight with his old muzzle-loader. He seemed to remember that Riel had urged them to provide each other the sacraments and mumbled, “I wish to confess that I have killed an English—” He broke off as the shadowed figures of Sioux warriors ran silently past them through the trees.

  “It’s a sign,” Riel told the men. “Poundmaker will soon be here.”

  He had hoped that God would grant His first miracle with the Northcote, but they had not succeeded in capturing it. When Riel had been overseeing the relocation of the women and children from the riverbank to the village, Baptiste Gervais had arrived with news that the boat lay up on a shoal downstream and could not come back against the current without engine power. He had dispatched Gervais on a fast horse north to find Poundmaker, with a message that they had their first victory over les Anglais and were defending Batoche. As Gervais spurred his horse, Riel called after him, “Do not mention that we failed to seize the ship.” Now he was desperate to find Gabriel and remind the men that there was still plenty of time for God to bring his miracle.

  He turned his attention to the hill, where Middleton surveyed the ground with field glasses and the air of a man who would not take chances. The general spoke to one of his aides, and a few shouted orders came down. Riel waited, but the soldiers did not move from their positions.

  Salomon Boucher ran past and Riel followed on impulse. In a pit behind the church, they found Michel Dumas, four other men, and Gabriel down on his haunches against the earthen wall. Riel jumped down beside his war lieutenant. “The devil walks about on the hill like a roaring lion,” he said, “seeking whom he may devour.” Gabriel would not look at him or respond. “What did the priests say to Middleton?” Riel asked.

  Gabriel spat through his teeth. “Our secrets.”

  “How did les Anglais get this far?”

  “The Rababou gun.”

  Riel stared out at it from between the logs. “Custer refused to take one of these to the Little Bighorn,” he said. “He thought it was useless against the Sioux.”

  “Do you see it useless here?” Gabriel said.

  “Break the Anglais cannon,” Riel said, closing his eyes in prayer. “Break them in two—”

  Gabriel stood and gestured toward the hill. “Here is Goliath. In the City of God. Will we hold him off for three days?”

  Riel opened one eye. He had prayed long and hard before making his announcement to council last night, a strategy to bring Poundmaker, but Gabriel was obviously in pain and unable to conceal his disappointment over failing to take the boat. Riel turned, raising his voice so that others could hear in the nearby pits. “Did you see the Rababou attack the church? God told the English to fire at the priests. You must remember we have the right to this land. Your claims are not false. They are just! Les Anglais are trespassers!”

  Some of the men had taken out their rosaries and were mumbling the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth …”

  Gabriel’s eyes moved like those of a hawk, watching Mission Ridge, but the troops did not advance. There was a flash of movement up on the hill as three men rode out to the east, spurring their horses into a gallop. Among them was an older officer with handlebar moustaches and a white pith helmet, his long sabre flashing in the sun. Gabriel followed their progress with his field glasses.

  “Where are they going?” Riel asked.

  “To a working telegraph,” he said bluntly, “for reinforcements.”

  Riel turned to the men and shouted, “Les Anglais are already afraid of our bullets. God is here.”

  The Métis were cheering, taking this as proof of weakness, but Gabriel still had his attention on General Middleton, who paced on the crest of the hill, hands clasped behind his back.

  “What is it?” Riel asked, watching him closely.

  Gabriel’s reply was cryptic. “The old man is planning something.”

  “Take the Rababou gun,” Riel urged him. “Capture the ammunition and supplies. God will protect you.”

  Gabriel looked at him for the first time, frustration raw on his face. “You think I should walk across and no Anglais will shoot me?”

  Riel prayed for peace, for relief from the constant tide of refusal and dissent that had thwarted every effort of his life. He spotted Moise Ouellette in a far pit and raised his voice to get his attention. “Spirit of God,” he shouted, “I beg you, through Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Saint John the Baptist, grant us Your Holy spirit of courage and strength so that we may complete all Your good works.” Moise looked back at him and nodded, crossing himself. Riel took it as a sign and allowed himself a moment of reprieve.

  A lone officer rode down to the soldiers near the cemetery. Gabriel sighted with his gun, but he was out of range. Then God brought His miracle. Within seconds, the company started to leave its position. Riel waited for them to advance again, yet they kept moving back. The company to their right began its retreat. A few soldiers broke into a run, but their officers shouted at them and the men slowed to a reluctant walk. Soon they were disappearing over the hill and into Caron’s plowed fields. The Métis watched with disbelief as two uniformed doctors issued from the rectory, their aprons covered in blood, followed close behind by soldiers carrying stretchers with the Anglais wounded.

  “God is with us,” Riel cried, turning to the men, aware that they still had not lowered their guns. “Gabriel has succeeded in holding off an army of thousands. Three cheers for our hero.”

  But Gabriel looked over his shoulder and behind him, as if he expected Middleton to charge from another direction.

  “God has intervened on our behalf.” Riel raised his hands in supplication.

  Gabriel suddenly leapt from the pit, whistling for the men around him to start a prairie fire.

  “Goliath is running,” he yelled, surging forward. “Capture the Rababou gun!”

  the visit

  Long after darkness had fallen, Moulin sat on the bottom stair of the rectory, listening to Fathers Fourmond and Vegreville in the upstairs chapel, praying for the souls of their misguided parishioners. From across the river came the steady throb of Sioux war drums, broken only by the periodic crack of rifle shots, from at least a mile away.

  The nuns were in the rectory kitchen, scrubbing the table, determined to remove bloodstains from the wood. Anglais doctors had worked on their wounded and dying soldiers until late afternoon when their commanders had mysteriously and without war
ning ordered a retreat. Cleophile was upstairs in one of the nuns’ beds, trying to rest. The poor girl had cried today as the big guns boomed over their heads. Despite his encouragement, she still refused to speak.

  Moulin had just been pondering Josette’s visit last night, attempting to reconcile her question, “How could you let this happen?” with, her curious admonition, “You don’t know!” when there was a rap at the door.

  He cautiously got up off the step. A visit at this time of night could bring only bad news. His hand hovered over the door handle. It was a possibility that one of the women had come up from the riverbank camp with food, and he was too hungry to refuse. He opened the door to the familiar face of Madame Dumont.

  She held out four eggs nestled in a cloth, her eyes wide with anxiety. “Give Gabriel absolution.”

  Moulin gazed at the eggs, his mouth watering. They hadn’t had any for a week. Was he desperate enough to forgive the man who followed Riel into certain death? “Non,” he said. “I cannot.”

  “You owe me this much.”

  He gnawed at his thumbnail. Did he owe her? She had been one of his supporters since the early days, and had often brought him food, but if he let her in, every woman would think the priests had forgiven them for following Riel.

  “It pains me,” he said, “that the best man in the South Branch has become a lunatic’s henchman.” Outrage spread across her blunt features, and in an effort to calm her, he hastened to add, “I would like to remember Gabriel as the good man who brought Josette in on New Year’s, after Norbert beat her.”

  Madeleine backed away. “Josette?” she said, livid or crying, he couldn’t decide which. “Even you think she is a saint. She is more like the Magdalene than anyone guesses.” She coughed uncontrollably, and he tried to get her indoors, but she disappeared into the darkness, off toward their sad riverbank camp.

  Moulin had gone in to speak with the nuns, when the rectory door opened again. He looked up, expecting to find Madame Dumont with an apology on her lips, but a man stood there, hat brim pulled down over his face, rifle held in big hands crusted with dirt and blood.

  “I will not give sacraments to any of you.” He walked toward the man to show that he would not be trifled with. But Norbert Lavoie refused to budge out of the doorway. His gun was now all too near, and the priest’s irritation gave way to alarm.

  Norbert looked over his shoulder into the night. “Grant me absolution.”

  “You fight for Riel’s new church. Ask him to bless you.”

  Norbert lifted his head, and Moulin could see that his eyes were unfocused, the pupils dark. “I have seen my death,” he said, “I dreamed it, on the trail.”

  “You all will die from the Anglais rifles if you do not surrender.”

  “I would rather die with honour than at the hands of my wife.”

  Moulin knew the half-breeds were superstitious, but this was going too far. “Maintenant tu rêves en couleurs,” he said. “Now you are dreaming.”

  Norbert laughed humourlessly, and the nuns came to the kitchen door to see what was going on. “Josette wishes to see me in the ground.” He grabbed at the sleeve of Moulin’s soutane, the smell of rum on his breath. “I want the last rites.”

  The priest threw off his hand. “Surrender. The general would receive you.”

  “Give me the sacraments,” Norbert demanded. “I wish to die with Christ.”

  Moulin remembered Cleophile. “Your daughter is upstairs. You can take her back—”

  He was not able to finish, for Norbert started violently. “Do not believe what she tells you!”

  Father Fourmond had heard the commotion. He charged down the stairs to help Moulin push Norbert back. Together they managed to slam the door and held it closed, hardly daring to breathe.

  Norbert’s voice came loud from the other side. “You don’t know her. She has killed to save her own life.”

  The priests looked at each other. When they were assured that he had gone, Moulin told Fourmond that Norbert had dreamed his own death and demanded the last rites.

  Fourmond tutted. “What did he say of his wife?”

  “That she wanted to kill him.”

  “Impossible!”

  Unnerved, Moulin thought of Josette’s confession last summer. What was her sin?

  I refused my husband.

  And why? Fear of death in childbirth. She had been visibly ill then and worse in berry-picking camp only days later. Josette with her herbs and potions. La Vieille. More like the Magdalene than anyone guesses. Sudden understanding made the bile rise in his throat at the thought of her, on her knees in his chapel, begging God for forgiveness.

  Murderess.

  Cleophile had crept down the stairs, pale as a ghost. “He is gone?” she said, as though she were terrified of her own father.

  Moulin forced a smile to calm her. The beautiful young girl, innocent, yet born to an evil woman. And the father no better. Gone mad, begging for absolution. Why would Josette want to kill him?

  Cleophile stared back at him, her eyes red with crying.

  Do not believe what she tells you.

  Moulin’s smile quickly faded. Heat flushed his neck and bloomed into his face as comprehension slowly dawned on him.

  nikâwiy

  Josette had been with her three children in the village all day, out of range of enemy cannon balls that had exploded in the south meadow, destroying tents and leaving gaping craters in the earth. When les Anglais retreated, the women went back to the riverbank camp to start cooking for the men who filed down before dusk. Some told of Gabriel’s failed bid to capture the Rababou gun, and how he had led the Sioux in chasing Middleton’s retreating troops to their encampment in the Carons’ back fields. But most of them were silent, disturbed. When Josette overheard that General Middleton had ridden down to talk with the priests after attacking the rectory, she stole away, leaving Eulalie with the boys.

  On the bluff, she put her hand to the cemetery fence and listened. Stars wheeling and the smell of earth, the newly dug mass grave of those who had died at Duck Lake and Tourond’s Coulee. Smoke still rose from the burned houses on the meadow. She had thought Cleophile was safe in the rectory, but to find that it had come under fire and the Anglais general at its door. Unbearable. The rectory would be in the middle of the fight tomorrow. And Moulin did not know what kind of sin had been done to her.

  Erratic gunfire came from the army encampment, followed by whoops and shouted insults in Sioux and Cree. Her fingers closed over the handle of the skinning knife in her pocket. Where was Norbert now? Her first thought had been that he’d go to Red River, but even his relations there would not forgive his sin. Out of shame and fear, he would ride across the line into the States. There was a chance he might return, placing her daughter in danger again. When this war was over, she would find him and kill him.

  Josette broke into a run up the slope toward the church, stumbling once or twice over ruts left in the grass where English soldiers had been that day. In the shadow of the rectory, she made an attempt to tie her hair into a knot, compose herself. It had not worked earlier to enter as a harridan, fighting Moulin to get up the stairs. If she acted reasonably, would he let Cleophile go? She knocked and when there was no answer, opened the door to find the priests and nuns standing around the kitchen table. They turned their heads at the same moment and saw her, their expressions ripe with condemnation, perhaps even revulsion.

  “I’ve come for my daughter,” she said, painfully aware that she had interrupted a heated discussion.

  Moulin managed to look both appalled and guarded in equal measure. “Cleophile has gone back to sleep after a long day of upset.”

  “Her father has sinned against her,” Josette said, expecting Moulin to be confused at her meaning, but he did not flinch. She glared at him. “You know that Cleophile has been misused and do nothing?”

  “I will do something,” he shouted, then looked to the ceiling. When he spoke again, his voice had droppe
d to a heated whisper. “As soon as this war is over, you will be excommunicated from the Holy Roman Church.”

  She blinked hard, struggling to understand. “You have already refused the sacraments to me and every Métis who follows Riel.”

  “Sacraments are one thing,” he said. “Excommunication is the only answer to mortal sin.”

  Somehow the priests had discovered what she had tried so hard to hide from them. From everyone. “Norbert will never return to receive his punishment,” she cried. “His is the mortal sin.”

  Moulin’s eyes blazed with righteous anger. “Norbert was just here begging for the last rites. He told us he would rather die with honour at the hands of the English than have you kill him.”

  Norbert here. In Batoche. He knew her too well, that she would not let him live. But he would not go to his God with honour. He would die an ugly death at her own hand. And these priests would not keep her daughter a moment longer.

  Moulin had come closer, his breath rank in her face. “It is you who are possessed of the devil here, Josette—you who have murdered an innocent to save your own life.”

  “What proof do you have to accuse me?” She waited for his answer with a kind of fatalistic relief, that she would soon be finished with a religion that failed to honour a woman’s life.

  “We have certain proof.”

  Josette leapt toward the stairs, taking them two at a time, her skirts hiked up around her knees. The priests and nuns jostled with each other, trying to follow, but she was up on the second-floor landing before they had started on the first step.

  And there was Cleophile, standing in the doorway of one of the rooms, her face swollen from crying, eyes red-rimmed with grief. A girl who had become a woman too soon. Josette forced herself not to look away, to register the ruin of neglect, her failure. Relieved that Norbert had left her alone, she had become blind to where he turned his attentions. Obsessed with staying alive, she had died to herself, to her own daughter.