Bride of New France (27 page)

He shouldn’t watch her in the garden, shouldn’t watch her as she sleeps. Laure isn’t as blind or deaf as he thinks. He must have torn his legs on the bark and the pointed edges of the branches as he climbed the tree to look into her window. Did he see the bright eyes of animals in the woods on his way here? Did he wonder if Laure would be in the same body and hair at night, asleep like a living woman, or did he think she might be out wandering, hungry like the animals and spirits of the dead?

She had told Deskaheh which window was hers, pointed up at it with her chin from the garden. Her arms were full of corn. She told him she had her own room because she was a Queen. He disagreed and said Laure was alone because she had been bad to the Manitou women. But she hadn’t expected him to remember where she slept at night, to store it in his mind. Tonight Laure will let Deskaheh know that she isn’t as blind or
deaf as the other congregation women. That she knows he is there.

He has climbed the tree to the perfect height and is close to the window. Laure pulls the remains of her dress down her arms. The cloth belongs to the grave. It is frail as spider web, falls off her like dust. Undressing for Deskaheh is the same as offering him vegetables. She wants to fill his arms with the contents of the garden. So he can taste the wheat, grapes, and pears that won’t take to this land, along with his corn, pumpkins, and berries. She wants to steal for him from the soil until the garden is empty and nothing more will grow.

Laure takes her comb and begins to run it through her hair. Once she has covered her shoulders and breasts, she puts it down. She picks up her pen and dips it in the little ink pot. She doesn’t know what else to do.

She writes with a trembling hand:
The Savage from the funeral is here. Deskaheh. At night and right up to my window. He must think that I’m blind because he just sits there a few inches from the pane, staring right in. A Savage man is in my dreams now. He climbed a tree to come and see me. There are no vegetables here so I know he has come just for me. I should probably be afraid of him like the other girls are. They run when they see these men on the street. Even the ones who are supposed to be our allies. The Savages, like most things here, are the business of the men. His scarred face is really the only thing that interests me in Canada. Everyone else here thinks I’m odd, and I think even less of them
.

Just as I expected, he enjoys it. He isn’t laughing tonight. Wait, I’ll show him a bit more of what he wants to see. I think he
likes this black hair of mine that is a curse because it repels all the men of stature. The look on his face when I part it makes me want to reach out the window and pull him through it
.

But it’s too late
.

The game is over and for now I have won
.

Laure waits until Deskaheh leaves before she gets into bed. She hugs the remains of the old dress against her naked chest and runs her fingers along her stomach. A new ache has entered her life. It is joyful and sad and shrouds all the others. She was able to make Deskaheh stop laughing. She gave him what he wanted more than vegetables. Laure tightens her legs remembering how serious his eyes were. She can’t help but shudder at the vastness of the new country, wondering how much further her body still has to go. But, just like with all the other tender moments in her life, Laure is already saying goodbye. She knows that this new fire must be extinguished. If her life in Canada is to have any meaning at all, if the Laure who is a seamstress, former
Bijou
of the largest poorhouse in all of the French empire and even beyond, is to continue, then she must put an end to this unholy friendship.

    16    

L
aure finally agrees to marry Mathurin in October. It is the only thing she can possibly do, as all the other
filles à marier
staying at the congregation have been married and are now living with their new husbands. It is why hundreds of women have been sent to Canada at great expense to the royal coffer. A few of the girls were happy to take the first man who came to Mère Bourgeoys seeking a wife from among her charges. Others, especially those marrying for a second time, were shrewder about their choice, enquiring about the material conditions of their new life. Would there be a cabin for them to go to? What furniture, what fortune, did their future husband already possess?

Like at Québec, those women who had brought with them some livres of their own did not wish to see these squandered on a man who possessed nothing. Strong women of proper child-bearing age, not too old or young, were able to be more selective about their matches. News of several pregnancies has already reached the congregation. But, like at Québec, two marriages have been annulled here as well. Both of these occurred when the new wife discovered that her husband had
lied about the state of his fortune. But many of the women, even from previous years, have not been heard from since they left the congregation with their new husbands and are presumed to be happy.

Laure put off her inevitable fate for as long as she could. Her attempts to meet with Frédéric, the young officer promised in marriage to Mireille, were thwarted; she learned that he had already married a girl from the 1668 shipload of women from France, one of the
filles de bonne naissance
sent especially to marry the officers. It is good, thinks Laure, that Mireille did not make it all the way to the colony only to discover that she was one year too late. Mireille, with her good manners and careful words, would have been forced to marry a peasant the way some of the high-born women had done at Québec. Laure thinks that sometimes it is better to die than to live out what life has in store for you.

As for Deskaheh, how can Laure explain to him her decision to marry Mathurin? Does she need to? What difference does it make to the Savages what the congregation women do so long as they sometimes offer food and other goods at the door? Still, Laure whispered the news of her upcoming marriage to Deskaheh through the garden fence, over the fall wind, with all the vegetable stalks turned brown and withered at her feet. Deskaheh nodded along as Laure spoke, but she wasn’t sure if he understood, since he usually nodded at the things she said to him.

Deskaheh didn’t return to see her any more at their usual time in the afternoon, but Laure wasn’t sure if it was because the night frost had put an end to the garden or if he understood that she was soon to be married and he should therefore stay away.

Laure’s wedding will be a quick affair. Like for the other girls, the legal ceremony will be held in the entrance of the Congrégation Notre-Dame. The two witnesses who will sign Laure’s marriage contract are the Superior, Marguerite Bourgeoys, and a lower-ranked sister. Laure has been around for a number of these ceremonies since her arrival in Ville-Marie last summer.

Throughout the early fall, Laure met several times with Mathurin before agreeing to the match. These meetings in the congregation’s parlour weren’t really necessary, since Laure knew all there was to know about her future husband on the day she first met him, at the welcome ceremony on the hill. Mathurin is more than eager to please her. He has an inflated sense of his accomplishments in Ville-Marie, which should at least give him the enthusiasm needed to survive here. Laure doesn’t expect any pleasant surprises from her marriage to Mathurin and hopefully no unpleasant ones either.

Mathurin had been a poor man in France. Although Laure’s future husband had been better off than those languishing in the men’s division of the General Hospital in Paris, he was only one misfortune away from joining them. Mathurin had come to Canada, been a soldier for three years, and was now a free man with a wooded plot of land and a bride with a chest of supplies from Paris and a promise from the King of a fifty-livres dowry. He claimed that the hundreds of soldiers who returned to France, refusing the royal offer of free land, had been fools. That it is better to look toward the future than back at the past.

Mathurin’s arms are as thick as his cheeks and neck. He is thirty-two and says that it is his first marriage. This was not the
case for some of the other suitors who had shown an interest in Laure, including a fifty-three-year-old widower, a criminal from the King’s galleys, proud that he had been released from his prison sentence in France because he had agreed to come to the colony. Mère Bourgeoys had scolded Marie Raisin for setting up that particular meeting. Another of Laure’s suitors had been a sixteen-year-old
Canadien
accompanied by his father.