A Land Apart

by Ian Roberts

  “Well, the cross certainly does not look very convincing now,” mutters de Clemont.

  Pulled from his musings, Champlain counters, “We will put up another while we are here.”

  De Clemont motions for Champlain and de Valery to come closer. Champlain can feel the conspiracy brewing; his eyes meet de Valery’s, who also wants no part of it. De Valery has experienced moments here that truly astonished him. He has changed. Yes, he would love to be in France. Yes, he would love to be more comfortable. But he also knows that to rebel and break company could mean prison. Or, at the least, something unimaginably worse than this. He has watched de Clemont slowly let his demons get the better of him and has made a point of spending less and less time with him. He knows that de Clemont somehow imagines that if only he could get home, his parents or court friends would have the power to save him.

  De Clemont tries to gather their attention but just as he is about to speak again his opportunity is foiled. A sentry calls, pointing out to a single canoe heading straight towards them across the lake.

  A hundred yards from shore, the canoe rides low in the water, barely afloat. Three men paddle while another bails water furiously. Everyone in camp turns to stare at their approach. Except for sighting a couple of Algonquin fishing camps in their first week out of Québec, they have seen no one in over three weeks.

  As they near the camp, Brulé sees Champlain head towards the landing where the canoes lie along the shore. Two men follow. Even from this far away, Brulé recognizes their awkwardness; they do not seem to belong here, one in particular. He also notices soldiers, and aides and Algonquin, and on the far side of the camp, the priest.

  He’d been elated since seeing the Iroquois far down the lake and realizing they have beaten them to Champlain’s camp. Since the idea to go down the Smoke River had initially come to him two days ago, all his thinking had been about beating the Iroquois here. And in arriving first, with his news of the Iroquois, he felt his escape plan would guarantee Champlain’s gratitude, and the assurance of guns for the Wendat. He knew it. Even the oddness of the Jesuit superior being out here now seemed a blessing for he, too, would see the dire need of guns for the Wendat.

  When they had first found the tortured Algonquin, the pressing question had been why Champlain was out here at all considering the warnings the Wendat had given about the Iroquois earlier in the summer. And why they had risked the three Algonquin in the mad urgency of, what seemed, a suicide mission. Yet once the idea had hatched to reach Champlain before the Iroquois, all these questions and concerns had evaporated in the heat of that one objective.

  Champlain stands waiting for them at the edge of the lake. The moment he saw the canoe, he knew it was Brulé. He breathed a deep sigh of relief, smiling, content that finally he had arrived. He knows Brulé will bring much needed clarity and direction. He always did.

  The canoe slides into shallow water and Brulé steps out and wades to shore.

  “You are early,” shouts Champlain in greeting. “I did not think we would see you for several days yet. You must have got our message.” Brulé approaches closer. But he does not respond immediately. As he embraces Champlain, his elation at having beaten the Iroquois gives way to anger. He feels suddenly incensed at the stupidity of their being out here at all, at the danger they are all exposed to. While still close to Champlain so no one else might hear, Brulé chastises him, “You are such a fool, coming now.”

  Champlain pulls back in surprise, “I have not seen you for over a year and you welcome me like that.”

  “Samuel, what in the name of hell are you doing here? And we did get that message, but off the tortured and mutilated bodies of those Algonquin. Whose stupid idea was that?”

  At that, Champlain rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but before he can respond, Brulé suddenly notices Petashwa walking towards him. Wrapping his arm around the Algonquin’s neck, he pulls his head towards him so that their foreheads touch. “It is good to see you, old friend.”

  “Good to see you, my brother.”

  Savignon leads the distraught LeCharon to shore. His robe, ripped and torn, his arms and legs lacerated and bleeding, the priest surveys his surroundings with a dull incomprehension, exhaustion and inner confusion.

  “Samuel, you remember Father LeCharon,” as Brulé introduces the priest. Champlain remembers the priest well, seated in his office a year ago, fresh from France. Bright, clear, alert. He looks at him now in dismay. Or at what is left of him. Du Barre, surprised to find the priest here, strides across the camp and now stands twenty feet away. He calls to him.

  LeCharon looks up, searching for who has just spoken. Du Barre steps forward and calls his name again. LeCharon stares in wide-eyed confusion at the priest. “Woe to him, Brother, who preaches to others and himself is a castaway.” He intones like some lost prophet. Du Barre studies him in horror as LeCharon hobbles towards him. He lifts him by the arm and leads him away from the others. Champlain embraces Savignon warmly, “Ah, my good friend, the Frenchman,” he jokes. “And you Atsan. It is an honor to finally meet you. I have heard of you many times over the years,”

  “You are a man now, Atsan,” adds Petashwa, who has not seen Atsan in three or four years.

  Champlain gestures towards de Valery, “The Count de Valery, Etienne Brulé.” Brulé nods. “And The Marquis de Clemont.” The Marquis remains a few feet away behind his elaborately set table, as if its presence might somehow ward off the untamed, wild power of this man who just stepped ashore. Again Brulé nods in greeting, but his expression is wary as he tries to understand why the two nobles are here.

  “The wilderness suits you,” he says to de Clemont, looking at his outfit. “I cannot imagine what blunder in court could have landed you here.”

  De Clemont flushes. He feels completely exposed, and so effortlessly. He glares at Brulé, and in his most condescending manner begins, “Well, really for someone…” But Brulé ignores him. He notices du Barre handing LeCharon a clean, neatly folded robe. Then he surveys the camp, assessing who’s present, how many soldiers, their strength, the palisade, the number of canoes. He’s immediately uneasy. Looking to Champlain, “What is going on here?”

  “The whole trip is madness. The more so when you hear its purpose,” answers Champlain. But the purpose now seems unimportant to Brulé and he pulls the conversation into focus. “Samuel, we have to break camp and go. We are surrounded by Iroquois. Or will be by morning. We must get out now.”

  “Iroquois!” Champlain exclaims. “Where? We have not seen any sign of them.” He notices du Barre advancing quickly towards them. Brulé can feel the man’s approach and turns.

  “Father du Barre, I wish to introduce —” But the priest holds up a hand to stop Champlain. A fury bristles just behind the priest’s mask of pious serenity, threatening to engulf it. Brulé’s whole being leaps to attention before the priest. Not from fear, or at least bodily fear, but rather from the danger of a fanatical discipline and authority. The man exudes menace. Brulé feels it immediately. “I am not interested in pleasantries,” the priest says. “A Jesuit priest has been murdered. Is that correct?” jutting his face towards Brulé.

  “What?” cries Champlain.

  “And what have you done to Father LeCharon? He is mad!” Du Barre doesn’t speak so much as hiss and spit his words.

  His ferocious intensity distracts Brulé, momentarily undermines his concentration and focus. The singular force of the priest’s mind astonishes him. He quickly regroups, “You can worry about that later. Right now you have a bigger problem.”

  “There is no bigger problem than dealing with the murder of one of our Jesuit brothers by these savages. That we will deal with now. And we will begin with your part in it.”

  Champlain steps forward, impatient with the priest’s misguided priorities. “Du Barre. Iroquois. You must understand. We are surrounded by Iroquois.”

  But Brulé perceives right away that Champlain’s words have no effect on du Barre.
Instead the priest’s eyes narrow, he steps toward Brulé and pushes his face up close to his. “You think me a fool. I see through your game. You bring Father LeCharon here, what is left of him, Lord knows what horror you have put him through. You aim to scare us with this story of Iroquois, the dreaded Iroquois, so we run back to Québec, and you go home to your Wendat and this murderer goes free.”

  Brulé scrutinizes the fuming priest. He has lived for decades with only one reasonable response to Iroquois danger: complete attention and immediate action. The Iroquois created a visceral readiness. His plan for escape, everything he had been going over in his mind for two days, rests on everyone immediately understanding the danger. And acting. The priest’s response takes him completely by surprise. Brulé points over to Savignon, Atsan and Tonda, who all immediately signal the need to act.

  The priest flicks his hand in dismissal.

  “Ask Charon. He saw —”

  “I am not sure what Father LeCharon sees right now. Probably anything you want him to see. I have sent him to wash and change.”

  Brulé realizes any further exchange with this man wastes time. They have to stop talking and move forward with a concrete plan to escape. He looks to Champlain, but as he is about to speak, du Barre continues in a clipped fury, “I tell you what I propose. We go to the Wendat as planned —”

  “To the Wendat?” interrupts Brulé. In his mind, everyone needs to head across the lake in the exact opposite direction, and from there they might escape, or at least defend themselves.

  “— as planned,” continued du Barre, “We find this savage, we arrest him and hang him.”

  Brulé looks in disbelief at du Barre, thinking now he must be as mad as LeCharon. But it seems finally the danger posed by the Iroquois has at last registered with someone. Tales of their ferocious cruelty, tales perhaps exaggerated around the campfire at night, leap to de Valery’s mind. “You say there are Iroquois?”

  “They have guns,” says Brulé.

  “Guns!” cries Champlain. This thought terrifies him.

  “And how are they getting guns?” du Barre asks as if to a lying child, another ploy Brulé has perhaps invented to frighten them.

  “The English do not seem to care for the Iroquois soul the way you Jesuits care for the Wendat,” answers Brulé.

  At this moment, laughter erupts from the other side of camp. Brulé knows this sound only too well from Québec. He looks over at four Algonquin sitting on the far side of camp. As he turns back to du Barre, the priest continues, “You know we will consider trading guns with any savage willing to convert and prove their fidelity to Christ.”

  “We need guns now,” replies Brulé.

  “Then perhaps this will fuel their faith in Christ,” adds the priest. Brulé, has forced himself to resist the constant undertow of the priest’s intensity pulling the focus away from what must be done. But this final comment breaks the spell. He says to Champlain “You have to do something. You have to save yourselves.”

  For the last few weeks, ever since du Barre had belittled and undermined his leadership, Champlain has busied himself with his maps and journals. But now, recognizing du Barre’s complete failure to grasp their danger, his natural instinct to command reasserts itself. “Du Barre, we must break camp. Now. You have —”

  The priest ignores Champlain and thrusts back directly at Brulé, “I have a mandate. From Cardinal Richelieu personally. Nothing will interfere with that. Not you. Or your Iroquois scare.”

  “You have a mandate to do what?”

  Brulé had put all his questions about Champlain’s presence out here to the back of his mind but that one word — mandate — brings his queries back with a force. What was this mandate that so gripped this priest’s mind that it blocked common sense?

  “Why are you out here?”

  “To colonize this land for the glory of France and the glory of God,” proclaims the priest, spitting out each word as if to rub it in his face.

  “I’ve seen what the French do in the name of God,” counters Brulé. “But this is no place for a colony.”

  And as the words leave his mouth suddenly the full impact of the man’s statement hits him. “The Wendat. You want to colonize the Land of the Wendat.” Brulé had succeeded in keeping the French out for over two decades and now an expedition wasn’t just visiting the Land of the Wendat, they wanted to occupy it. He yells as he jabs a finger hard against du Barre’s chest, “They live there damn it.”

  Du Barre steps back, shocked and affronted by Brulé’s aggressive gesture. No one, ever, treats him like that. “They have lived there forever and what have they got to show for it? Some bark huts. We want to build something permanent. Roads, Towns.”

  “On Wendat land?”

  “This is French land. Governed by French law. Our authority comes from God. And from the Crown. These savages need the yoke of Christ.”

  With these last words, something breaks in Brulé. A fraction of a second later his tomahawk smashes once, twice, three times on the crystal and china set on the nobles’ table beside him. Shards, chips and splinters of glass and porcelain fly and bounce around him as the two nobles gape in disbelief at the destruction.

  But those few physical blows, release his anger and Brulé’s head is clear. He turns to du Barre, “You are naked here. God and your laws can do nothing. You have no idea the hell that is about to come down on you.”

  Du Barre again steps back before Brulé’s fury. Clearly, he knows that Brulé would have preferred those blows had come down on his head. But he rallies himself, steels his right of authority. He speaks with a sense of forced, aloof disdain, “I am sure you understand hell, Brulé. Or, if you do not, you will. This is a Catholic colony. And I want you out of it.”

  Brulé turns to Champlain, “You need to do something Samuel or you will all die.”

  “We will not be frightened by you into returning to Québec. Cardinal Richelieu himself has commanded me and we will continue. We will go to the Land of the Wendat and claim it for France. We will find the one responsible for the murder of Father Marquette, and we will arrest him.”

  Brulé realizes that if they are to succeed with this escape, he must ignore this man and team with Champlain. But the vast affront and incomprehension of the priest pulls him back in.

  “Arrest him? Just walk into their village and take him. What are you thinking? You say you want to live there and you start with that.”

  “These savages must understand the meaning of French law and justice.”

  “They will cut you to pieces.”

  “Then guns for the Wendat would hardly be timely would they? I will see this savage is tried and hung.”

  Brulé, tomahawk still in hand, now slams it down on the noble’s table itself, splitting it in two. With this one final blow, the last vestige of the nobles’ civilized property has been destroyed, lying now splintered and useless at their feet.

  Brulé is furious that he has let this priest get to him again. Behind du Barre, he sees LeCharon stepping into the water just beyond the gap at the end of the palisade. Near the priest, two soldiers talk. One leans against the edge of the palisade, the other nestles himself in the fork of a tree to have a view over the palisade wall into the forest. Another burst of laughter escapes from the four Algonquin on the other side of camp. A drunken laughter. And not far from them, six French men lounge against the palisade wall.

  “Who are they?” Brulé asks.

  “The company’s new men,” answers du Barre. “Those that will replace you.”

  But Brulé is already striding towards them. His frustration and fury with the priest now overflow at the sight unfolding before him. He hated nothing more than seeing the French give alcohol to the Wendat when they came to Québec. He hates what it did to them. And what it has done to the Algonquin.

  As Brulé approaches closer, one of the aides rises to welcome him, oblivious of what is about to be unleashed. Brulé grabs the man by the throat, lifting him
off the ground and pins him against a tree. Two aides rush to help. Lightening fast, Brulé’s tomahawk swings up, clipping one man on the jaw, and he sprawls back onto the ground. The second attacker stops, Brulé’s tomahawk poised above his head.

  “Sit down.”

  The attacker backs away and sits. Brulé swings the butt of his tomahawk head into the groin of the man he holds by the neck. The man howls in agony, his eyes bulge, he can’t breath. Brulé pulls the tomahawk back and turns it over. “This time I cut them off. Where is it?”

  He tightens his grip on the man’s neck, his face by now almost purple, “One, two…”

  The man gestures madly with one hand. Brulé turns to the aide nearest him. “Get it.” The man hesitates and Brulé again lifts his tomahawk up to strike. The man in Brulé’s grip wails and the aid scurries to a nearby pack. “Open it.” He unties the straps and tips it on its side. Blankets, two rolls of canvas and then four one-gallon wooden casks roll onto the ground.

  “Is there more?” Brulé clenches his throat tighter. He shakes his head and Brulé releases him. He drops to his knees gagging and sucking for air. Brulé pulls out his second tomahawk and in four swift blows, a tomahawk in each hand, he splits the casks. Rum pours out. He rolls each cask with his foot, making sure they are empty. Then he walks back to the aides. He drops down to one knee so his eyes are level with theirs.

  “If I catch you bringing alcohol to the Wendat I will gut you like a fish.” They eye him like deer before a wolf. He stares hard at each of them in turn, then gets up. “All this for some Goddamn hats in Paris.”

  Brulé feels better, energized from actually doing something, as he walks back to Champlain. He is convinced that despite all the priest’s outrageous interruptions, they might still get everyone away across the lake in time.

  As Brulé passes, the priest tries to assure him that he’d been promised there would be no trade in alcohol. But Brulé ignores him. He turns instead to Champlain, “Samuel, we came to warn you. We need guns. The Wendat are finished without them. The fur trade is finished. Québec is finished. I am leaving now for Québec. Join me and I think we can still make it to safety. If you do not, none of you will make it alive. It is your decision.”