• • •
It was midmorning when they left the house, Mari with her few possessions in a willow basket pack, the children each carrying a bundle. Renardette said to Mari in a low voice that she did not want to go to Wobik, that the people there treated her badly. Mari glanced at Chama, busy sharpening knives but listening attentively.
“Here bad stay you. Come you. Safe that mission.”
The little group went down the steps to where Monsieur Trépagny stood in the yard watching, legs spraddled like a colossus. Suddenly he turned to René.
“What are you gaping at? Go with them! And in Wobik arrange with Philippe Bosse to bring out my trunks on his cart. They are by now surely at the deputy’s house. Be back in five days’ time.”
René carried Theotiste across the river, Elphège stumbling behind. Mari, gripping Renardette’s reluctant hand, was the first across, moving as though on a firm path beneath the water, then striding eastward along the dim path to Wobik.
“Are your people in Wobik?” René asked her, although everything he had heard indicated otherwise.
“No. No Wobik.” She spoke in a low voice.
“Then — where?”
For a long time she said nothing. When they stopped at noon to make tea she said, “Sipekne’katik. River people we. All our life that river, other river. Mi’kma’ki our place. Good rivers. Good food. Eel, fish. Good medicine plant. Better. Here no good.” She handed corn cakes spread with cacamos to the children.
“How did you come to Monsieur Trépagny’s house?” he asked, but she did not answer and they walked in silence until they reached Wobik the next noon. Mari stopped at the edge of the settlement near the path to the mission church. “Here,” she said. “Confession, mass. Read, write, talk French by Père Perreault.” She gave him two corn cakes for his return journey.
“You read? You write?” said René, astonished and jealous. He had seen no evidence of these skills in Mari.
“Bientôt,” she said, “soon,” and with the silent children she took the path to the mission and the priest’s house. Only Elphège turned to look at him. René’s glance swept the ground and when he saw a Sabot de la Vierge he picked it and pinned it to his shirt with a willow sliver, enjoying the musky perfume.
• • •
He went on to the deputy’s house. A hundred yards away the river glittered and pranced in the sunlight. Two huge canoes were drawn up on the shore and under the spruce trees a group of men and a few Indian women were making camp — fur traders from the pays d’en haut heading for Tadoussac or Kébec. They were a rough-looking lot, great triangles of shoulders, chest, neck and arms balanced on bandy legs, bearded, dark-skinned from smoky fires, their tasseled red hats covering oily hair. One muscular fellow lurching under two heavy packs caught his eye; there was something about him René thought he knew. The man swiveled away and went into the shadow under the trees.
“Ah, Monsieur Sel.” Monsieur Bouchard, the deputy, was cordial and smiling, his yellow eyebrows raised in pleasure at seeing the young woodcutter from the forest. René explained that Monsieur Trépagny had renamed Léonardette Renardette because he thought the birthmark resembled a fox face, and he had sent Mari and the children away. He wanted to have his trunks brought out to his house.
“Ah, that is what fine fellows do when a moneyed lady with connections comes in sight. Yes, Philippe Bosse can bring his trunks out — for a consideration which I’m sure the elegant Monsieur Trépagny du Triomphe will be happy to pay, now that he is marrying the wealthy Mélissande du Mouton-Noir. I’ll see to it this afternoon so that he may continue to appear as a gentleman. Likely he wants them delivered to his big edifice he calls the ‘manor house’?”
“He said nothing of that.” As he looked around the room René saw Monsieur Bouchard had a shelf of books with gold letters on the spines. He discerned an R.
“Philippe can find him and ask. And you, are you clearing your own land now? Have you built your house? Have you also found someone to marry?”
“Monsieur Trépagny has not yet granted me land.” René had lost any sense of years.
“Indeed?” Monsieur Bouchard took down the big ledger and turned the pages. “Well, I believe it is well past the time. You have worked for him five years and four months. He will owe you wages. I will send him a note with Philippe. But have you found land to settle on?”
“I have seen several good places west of Monsieur Trépagny, one in an old Indian clearing about a mile from the river but near a small stream that runs all summer and autumn. Another is in the forest with a clear spring issuing from under a yellow birch. It has a fine mix of hardwoods.”
Monsieur Bouchard glanced at the wilted lady’s slipper fastened to René’s shirt. “Ah, a boutonniere. You know, a young doctor has recently come to Kébec who is much interested in the Indan pharmacognosy. Every day more men of talent arrive. And you shall certainly have your land.”
Monsieur Bouchard’s haul of long words made René uneasy, but he nodded as one intimate with the Indian pharmacognosy.
“Of course it is best to choose a wooded site and clear it — the more trees we cut down the sooner we’ll have fine farms and more settlers. Be sure not to cut down that yellow birch. If you do your spring will dry up. Use the clearing for pasture for your cows.” He sighed. “And of course Monsieur Trépagny will continue to be the seigneur of those lands. As they say, ‘No land without a lord.’ He has an extensive holding. When you raise grain you will bring it to his mill to be ground into the fine flour of New France.”
“I do not think he has a mill.”
“He will certainly build one. It is one of the duties of a seigneur to his habitants. Presumably he will persuade more people to come to his holding.” Monsieur Bouchard put the ledger away and smiled in dismissal.
“Sir,” said René. “I have a question.”
“Yes?” The deputy’s face grew serious.
“Mari the Mi’kmaq woman told me she was learning to read and write from the priest at the mission. Could that be true?”
“Père Perreault tries to teach the Indians their letters, to read a little and write. To what end except to read scripture I do not know, but that is the way of many of the French, especially fur traders, to be cordial to native people. Not all, of course. Most farmers and settlers dislike les sauvages.”
“Would he—?”
“What, teach you? You must ask him, but I am almost certain you would have to come to the mission. If you lived nearer Wobik you could easily learn those skills from him. Already almost twenty people are living here. Why not think about choosing land close to Wobik instead of a two-day journey away in the wilderness?” His yellow eyebrows went up and down in conspiratorial inquiry.
René said he would consider all of this. But the deputy knew he would not. He saw the stubborn face of a man with a mind like a stone, a man who preferred to live in the rough forest, the endless forest that amazed and frightened.
On the return trip there was much to think about: Mari, an Indian woman who could — perhaps — read and write; the possibility that he, too, could learn these arts; and the great news that the time for his land grant and freedom from Monsieur Trépagny was at hand. Despite the allure of living near the mission and the settlement, he had a feeling for the woods. As for Wobik, that muddy, tiny scrap of settlement was too much like France.