Song of Batoche

by Maia Caron

  Cleophile’s lower lip trembled and Josette waited for her to speak, but Moulin had come up the steps and rushed at her, his face purple with outrage. Caught off guard by the intensity of his attack, she tried to pull away from him, but he held her arm fast. Panicked, she began to flail, and the two other priests grabbed her.

  Moulin’s breath came in gasps. “You must leave.”

  “Excommunicate me now,” she said, as the priests and nuns tried to wrestle her toward the stairs. “Before you lose your hatred and anger.”

  “We will do it when this war is done.” Moulin looked at Cleophile, who shrank back in the doorway.

  “She is no longer innocent.” Josette’s voice was hoarse. “But you know that, don’t you?”

  The nuns had come up and stood with eyes wide in astonishment at the scene. One of them said, “Surely the girl knows her mother’s sins.”

  Moulin appeared to think for a moment then let go of Josette’s arm and took a step back. “You are formerly accused of committing the mortal sin of abortion, and are hereby excommunicated from the Holy Roman Church.”

  “Include the reason I wilfully aborted a child,” she said. “Was it out of spite or evil intent?” The priests exchanged looks. “To save my own life, wasn’t it? That my children would not be left with a man like Norbert.” She held Moulin’s angry gaze. “You cannot hurt me with excommunication. I have never loved your God.”

  At this, Moulin and the priests turned their backs on her in a symbolic gesture, meant to signal her banishment from both church and community. The nuns shifted on their feet and avoided her glance. Cleophile had disappeared into the bedroom, unable to bear the sight of her either. Josette went down the stairs as if in a trance, ignoring the nuns’ murmurs of disapproval.

  Behind the church, she almost stumbled into an abandoned rifle pit, hidden but for a blanket or two left by the men. Wind roared in the trees, clouds drawn across the moon like a funeral shroud. Norbert had been there today. She pressed fingers to her temples in an effort to keep herself from screaming; the sounds of gunfire and war cries in the distance reverberated like the pulse beat of her heart.

  “Nikâwiy.”

  She turned to find Cleophile there in sudden moonlight, a child’s body, frail arms hanging powerless at her sides. Her daughter had not called her the Cree name for “mother” in years.

  Cleophile stood in quiet horror, almost struggling for breath. Gone was the open rage, that feral longing to be seen. Had Josette ever truly seen her? La p’tite mère, who had taken up her mother’s obligations as they were discarded, one by one. The final duty an enormous betrayal. Her daughter had kept more than a secret and had been, quite possibly, broken by her father’s sin.

  Nikâwiy. It was a dare to trust, one that she had not earned. Her arms went around Cleophile’s trembling shoulders and they held onto each other at the edge of the rifle pit, the still bare branches of the trees lifting in the wind, like skeletons against the starred sky, summoning flesh to their bones.

  more to eat yet

  Shortly after midnight, Gabriel crouched in a thicket of willow, pouring gunpowder into an old packing tin. Pierre Parenteau had found an unexploded cannon shell south of the village, and had brought it out to him with the idea of using the powder to make a bomb. Thirty of Gabriel’s core fighters and some of the Sioux knelt in the grass, several of them giving Michel Dumas advice on how to fashion a fuse from a strip of his ceinture fléchée.

  The shadow of Middleton’s encampment spread across the Carons’ hayfield. The general’s teamsters had pulled hundreds of wagons into a circle until a barricade had formed, three wagons deep to the outside. Scores of horses were in there, almost a thousand soldiers, too, attempting to sleep. Middleton had positioned several officers and their men outside the wagons to prevent an attack from the Métis.

  Dumas carefully wound his piece of sash around the tin. “Enough gunpowder here,” he said, “to blow us to kingdom come.”

  Charles Trottier and Little Ghost carried the bomb closer to the camp, the two of them bent so low to the ground, they almost seemed to melt into the dark field. Gabriel watched with nervous anticipation. This was their chance to stampede Middleton’s horses and oxen and capture the Rababou gun, turn it on the soldiers fleeing in chaos. If it worked, the war would soon be over.

  Out on the prairie, Trottier and Little Ghost had stopped and leaned over their package. The others followed one by one and Gabriel crept after them, his muscles aching, and the bandage under his hat wet with blood. He should be the one to throw the bomb, but he had passed out an hour ago, overcome by fatigue and the pain in his head. He had regained consciousness, disoriented, to find his men standing over him, agonizing over his ability to continue.

  There was a sudden flash on the prairie when Trottier sparked the fuse, his face briefly lit up as he stood to hurl the bomb into the enclosure. Middleton’s sentries had seen it too, and shot at him, but Trottier had thrown himself down the moment the bomb left his hand. A moment of trepidation and then an intense bang and shower of sparks just inside the corral were followed by shouts from soldiers and the sound of horses screaming and kicking at the sides of wagons. The Indians and Métis yipped and howled. Gabriel was emboldened at the confusion among the sentries, who were running about like chickens, but an officer shouted orders and within a minute, control had been restored.

  Dumas took off the handkerchief around his neck. “Les Anglais here like fucking rats in a trap,” he said, mopping his face with it. “And we can’t get at them.” He looked at his commander as if to say, “What next?”

  Gabriel sank to one knee. Riel was somewhere, celebrating the fulfillment of his prophecy. But Middleton’s retreat was far from a miracle. The Métis had foiled the general’s every move and killed enough soldiers that he had withdrawn to avoid losing more men. Gabriel would like to rest easy on this thought, but he could not ignore one truth: the old man had sent for reinforcements, and with supplies to wait them out, the Métis were again at a disadvantage. Tomorrow they must capture the Rababou gun or pray that Poundmaker would arrive in time to save them.

  Little Ghost was far from disheartened. Hidden in the willow bush, he kept up a string of insults to the sentries around the camp. “I am Little Ghost,” he yelled. “I have eaten many whites. I think I have more to eat yet.”

  Another warrior, not to be outdone, shouted, “White Faces—are you women that you must hide under your skirts? Don’t sleep—tomorrow you will sleep soundly.”

  Gabriel clasped Lean Crow’s hand. “Keep the Rababou man awake,” he said, “and afraid of his hair.”

  He and Dumas pulled back from the encampment and went to the rectory, where they found Madeleine and Marguerite in the kitchen with Pierre Parenteau and the nuns. Two men who had been wounded earlier were stretched out on straw pallets in the hall. They had been bandaged and given some herbal decoction, but groaned in fitful sleep. Gabriel asked one of the nuns if she’d also tended the injured government troops. With a bowed head, she said that she had.

  “Why?”

  She did not look up at him. “He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good.”

  Gabriel turned away before he said something disrespectful to a bride of Christ. Riel had come in to find him. He was in a strange mood: his eyes darting about and muttering one of his prayers. Gabriel climbed the stairs of the rectory, followed by Riel and Dumas. They found Moulin, Fourmond, and Vegreville, kneeling in the small chapel.

  “What did you tell Middleton?” Gabriel demanded.

  Moulin did not look up, but Fourmond regarded them with defiance. “That you are a formidable foe and they should be careful.”

  “Lies,” said Dumas. “You betrayed us.”

  Father Moulin blinked and crossed himself, but Fourmond remained confident, unwavering. “It does not look like they are winning. What do you care if we tell them you are making these poor people fight against their will?”

  To Gabriel’s r
elief, Riel had gone to the altar on the far side of the room, distracted at the image of Christ on the cross. He knelt, took out his rosary, and began to pray.

  Fourmond eyed him suspiciously and said to Gabriel, “We are trying to save you with our mediation.”

  “You think your talk helps us?” he said. “It helps the other side.”

  “Today we learned what evil lurks in the Métis Nation,” Moulin said. “We have been praying for one of your own, who was excommunicated from the Church for committing a mortal sin.”

  Gabriel looked up at him. “Quoi?”

  “Josette,” said Moulin with satisfaction. “She has wilfully ended the life of her unborn child.”

  Gabriel shook his head. Why would she have done such a thing? Then he remembered the women’s gossip over Josette, almost bleeding to death in childbed. “Men are dying,” he said. “And you excommunicate a woman who would save herself from that fate?”

  “Her husband has also sinned.” Moulin straightened his soutane. “He must be brought to us.”

  Riel had not moved from his place, kneeling at the crucifix, but now he made the sign of the cross, his back set in a hard line. “Norbert?” he asked. “What has he done?”

  Moulin snorted. “He shall be excommunicated for offending the dignity of a child.”

  Riel got to his feet and walked slowly toward him. “You have refused the sacraments from all who follow me. Yet God has shown Himself to the Métis this day.” He raised his hand and the priests shrank back. “I hereby excommunicate you from the Catholic Apostolic Church of the New World.”

  Colour had risen in Father Moulin’s face. “Insanity and sin runs rampant in your people—it is like Sodom and Gomorrah. Josette should have left her pregnancy in God’s hands. It is a mortal sin—just below murder—”

  “It is murder going on out there,” Gabriel shouted. A wave of nausea overtook him, and he went down the stairs and out into the night, leaving Riel and the priests to trade insults. He paced near the cemetery, trying to clear his head. Josette was still in his mind, and he forced himself to think of strategies he could use tomorrow against Middleton. A group of Métis had come up from the riverbank, plates of stew in their hands. Gabriel said to Emmanuel Champagne, “Get some men and start digging pits south of the burnt houses.”

  “Why?” Champagne said, his mouth crammed with food. “There are pits all over here.”

  “Not that far out. Middleton thinks he’ll come down here in the morning and stand on the land he did today. We won’t let him.” Despite the pain in his head, Gabriel seized a potato shovel and hacked at the hard ground. Soon, out of guilt, a dozen Métis were digging alongside him. He decided that he would order them to sleep in the pits. If they spent the night with their wives and children in the riverbank camp, they might be persuaded to desert.

  A movement in the shadow of the poplars caught his eye, and Gabriel turned quickly. Josette. He handed his shovel to one of the young men and, saying he meant to find something to eat, walked under the trees.

  “Norbert is back in Batoche,” he said when he was near to her.

  “You said he was gone.” She did not look at him. “You said Cleophile was safe.”

  Her voice was flat, emotionless and Gabriel stared through the dark. That face, tragic, yet beautiful. Or it was the tragedy that made him love her. He shook his head. Not love. What had war done to him that he thought of another woman and excused a man for hurting his own child because he needed him to fight? But Josette did not wish for him to kill Norbert. She wanted to do it herself.

  “Can you wait?”

  She didn’t answer, and he watched her for a moment, felt the odd stirring in his chest. When he had discovered that Madeleine was dying, he resolved to put Josette out of his thoughts. But the bullet had done more than addle his brain. Constant pain and lack of sleep made him weak, made him need her. He had kept up a brave front to the men, to his wife, who spoke of her worries in their dugout on the riverbank. Gabriel had listened when she said Riel was mad and could not be trusted. Madeleine, asking the impossible.

  Leave him.

  Gabriel wanted to tell Josette what he had not admitted to anyone else: Poundmaker wouldn’t come and the Métis would lose this war. But she knew it too, knew he could not turn from the man who had helped them in Red River. She stood with him under the trees, her fine features settled in the grave look she had in the old days as an outcast among the women.

  Finally, she said, “Have you been down to the farm?”

  He nodded.

  “Were the houses burned?”

  “Oui,” he said. “Everything.”

  Her expression didn’t change. Middleton would soon capture Batoche and either kill the men or take them prisoner. Families would be torn apart, their lands lost. Josette had aborted a child to save herself and faced shunning from the women. If her husband didn’t die in this war, she would kill him. She could not go to her grandfather’s people, fugitives from the government. Big Bear’s camp was in ruins, his only future—death or imprisonment.

  Don’t think these things, he told himself. Get back to the business of war. Encourage the men digging, even now whispering, planning to desert.

  “Moulin tells me that Riel spent two years in a mental hospital,” she said. He glanced at her briefly but did not answer. “You knew,” she went on, “and would not tell me, even after I tried to convince you he was losing his mind.”

  She looked hurt, as if he had betrayed her. Maybe he had. “You did not tell me of his vision to create a separate state with his church at its head,” Gabriel said. “We are even.”

  He could see that she was crying and he reached to her, his hand careful, detached, brushing the coarse wool of the shawl over her thin shoulder. He had not bargained for the feel of her, and his heart beat wildly in his chest. Lifting his hand, he let it drop, fingers hesitating at the fringe of her shawl. It was quiet among the trees, only the sound of digging out on the meadow, the men talking amongst themselves. He should have pulled his hand away, but let it slip beneath the fringe, a quiver at the tips of his fingers as they traced the line of her back, followed the curve of her waist. The top of her head was only inches away. She had become very still, almost not breathing, a slight resistance then turning into him, the smell of her, like woodsmoke and the river when the ice broke up in spring. She looked up at him, a strand of her black hair caught in a sudden lift of wind. The moon had come out and rained light through the bare branches, onto those eyes, dark and unfathomable. He touched her cheek, still wet with tears.

  “Wâwâc,” he said in Cree. Even now.

  He released her before it went any further and looked away, feeling strangely bereft, and more shaken than he would have thought possible.

  a gathering

  of souls

  Before noon the next day, Riel left the village for the church and rectory pits, armed only with his Bible. With him were Baptiste Gladu and Alexandre Dumont, who had helped kill and butcher two steers that morning and carried meat the women had cooked for their men. The camp south of the village was in ruins after the previous day’s attack. Meadowlarks were hunting bugs, swooping to search the holes left by exploding shells then flying to the trees, breaking into celebratory song. The sun was almost overhead, the cloudless sky a dome of light.

  Les Anglais had been shelling the rifle pits around the church and cemetery at intervals since dawn. Gabriel had not let Middleton’s troops advance beyond the small hill. For safety, Métis families had moved out of range of the cannon to abandoned houses north of the Carlton Trail. Lean Crow had sent his women and children away, but White Cap’s and Trottier’s clans were still there. Now that they were fully engaged in battle, Riel found himself acting as his war general’s aide-de-camp. The council had not met in two days, and it was left to him and Pierre Parenteau to run an army of two hundred men and their prodigious families.

  Yesterday, Riel had been dismayed to find that, despite God’s protection,
a bullet had grazed his coat sleeve, leaving a slash mark that no one seemed to have noticed. Yet it was necessary to go back out and efface the sins of Gabriel’s army. Last night, he had allowed himself a moment to celebrate God’s miracle, only to be told by Moulin that Josette had wilfully ended the life of her unborn child and Norbert had offended the dignity of his own daughter. He had panicked when Moulin mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah. Riel had fasted, prayed, and laid his own sins before God to work miracles, so that the Métis would not be consumed by His wrath.

  When Gabriel had stormed out after the priest’s accusations, Riel was sure that Norbert was halfway to Battleford by now, suffering another one of Gabriel’s acts of retribution. There was still the matter of Josette’s sin. Riel had not been able to find her this morning, but he could at least remind the Métis who had slept in the pits, that they would win this battle only if they repented before God.

  Riel found the bush trail, Baptiste and Alexandre following. At the sound of another pounding fusillade from the south, they picked up their pace. A few high-powered rifle shots answered from across the river then a period of silence followed, and with caution, the birds began to sing again.

  In Riel’s prayers this morning, the Spirit of God had told him that he should foresee a mutiny. Always he had faced this threat, even in Red River. He could still not accept that the English half-breeds had betrayed the cause. He thought of the letter that Gabriel had brought last June. Who is not ready to defend you to the last drop of his blood? The whole race is calling for you!

  The “whole race.” If the English half-breeds came in, if every Métis and Indian in the Territories rose up against Ottawa, against the treaties, they would win all of their rights. Yet he struggled to keep even the French Métis free of sin and remind them of their promise to defend him.

  In the bush close to the church, they passed a line of rifle pits. As Alexandre and Baptiste handed out the meat, Riel held up his Bible. “Lord, bless these men who seek redemption before you.” He paused and regarded them expectantly. One after another, they knelt in the dirt and took out their rosaries. “They are vigilant, obedient,” he continued. “Their penitence will bring the conqueror to his knees.”