Bride of New France (35 page)

“I know better than you do what the French King, Onontio as you call him, wants from us. He wants you to make Savage babies to serve him and for me to make babies with that dog to serve him as well.” Laure reaches her hand across the table to Deskaheh’s arm. “It looks like at least one of us is doing their duty for your new master.” Laure feels vindicated when she sees his features tighten.

He sits down at the table. “The French King across the waters is not my master.”

“He certainly is. Look at you, bringing him the thickest furs from deep within the forest where his men are too afraid to travel. And what do you get in exchange?” Laure reaches into her purse and extracts the pouch from it. She pours out the contents, and the beads she took from Mathurin, made of glass from Venice, come rolling out onto the table. Deskaheh scrambles to catch them as they bounce and roll across the hard wood. “In France these are worthless. Even a poor woman like me can have a bag full of them.” Laure stands up.

Deskaheh tries to catch the beads in his hands, to save them from rolling off the table. He cannot grab them all before they hit the hard floor.

“You use these to write prayers to God?” Laure picks up one of the beads. “If yours is anything like my God, he won’t hear you anyway. Wait here a bit and I will bring you another gift. This one means more to me.”

Deskaheh looks stunned.

Up in her room, Laure reaches in her sack for the knife she packed. It is the blade Mathurin left her for skinning animals and scaling fish, the same one she used to slice open the hide of the deer Deskaheh brought her. Laure’s hands tremble as she raises the blade to her cheek. She must have known she would run into Deskaheh here. Only one summer has passed and everything is irrevocably changed. How innocent the two of them were, watching the fruits and vegetables of the congregation garden grow, seeking solace in their strange friendship for the losses of their youth.

It feels as if Laure has been preparing all along for this, for the inevitable severing.

She unties the ribbon that holds her hair back. The long tresses fall over her shoulders, a familiar weight. She raises the blade to her scalp. She thinks for a brief moment how much easier it all would be if she could start cutting at the forehead, slice straight across, the way Mathurin told her that the Iroquois do with their enemies. But she isn’t that brave.

Instead, Laure grabs a fistful of the hair that has been with her since her years at the hospital. The strands contain the memory,
the smells and the deprivations, of all the nights she spent in the crowded dormitory, the musky traces of Mireille and then Madeleine’s funerals, of the sea salt and vomit of the crossing. Laure’s hair has been with her throughout the brief, searing heat and interminable cold winter of the past year in Canada. But most of all, her hair is alive with the memory of meeting the Savage Deskaheh, the first man she offered herself to.

The sound of the knife slicing through the strands of hair makes Laure shiver. But she continues to cut, until it is all around her feet and a few shorn tresses cling to her shoulders. She has severed her hair from her scalp the way the male settlers chop at the trees to clear forests for their crude cabins. She gathers the mass into her arms and smoothes it out, tying around it the yellow ribbon given to her by Madame du Clos. Onto her head Laure fastens the bonnet she received at Marguerite Bourgeoys’ congregation but has so far refused to wear. It is the badge of a peasant housewife.

When she goes back downstairs, Deskaheh is still sitting at the table. He must have picked up all the beads because they are no longer there.

Laure’s hair covers her outstretched arms as if she is carrying an offering to an altar. “When I was still in France, I was warned that the Savages in the New World stole the hair of French women.” She places the plaits of her hair over Deskaheh’s arms.

His face fills with revulsion to see what she has done. Laure is satisfied, glad even, to see disgust in his eyes. It is what she has expected all along. She has wanted to prove to him that she is ugly. That they are both ugly and deserve to be alone in separate worlds.

In the alleyways of Ville-Marie, men meet to trade stories and occasionally to spill each other’s blood. The French have given the streets Savage names like Michilimackinac and Outaouaise. Even during the day, women are cautioned against walking outside in Ville-Marie. At night it is unheard of to do so. The fur traders, both the
voyageurs
and the illicit
coureurs de bois
, as well as the colony’s soldiers, emerge from the taverns with eyes turned glossy and red. There are even more men out drinking and causing trouble during the annual fur-trade fair.

Through the open window of her room at the inn, Laure can hear their voices, loud and slurred, echoing between the stone walls of the streets. It is against the law for innkeepers to serve spirits to any of the Savage men. But very few actually heed this rule, especially at this time. For the fur-trade fair, there are almost as many taverns as homes in Ville-Marie. There are enough establishments so that each Savage nation that has travelled to Ville-Marie can frequent its own tavern to avoid fights between rivals.

When the girls from France first arrived, they were warned by the sisters of the congregation about the dangers of the town. The religious orders blame the French for providing the brandy, the beer, and the cider that make the Savages do awful things like smash canoes, set fires, and destroy cabins. So long as they commit crimes under the influence of brandy, the Savages feel that they should be immune from punishment for their actions. The French men complain that no laws are enforced to punish the Savages for their violent acts because the furs they bring to be traded are so valuable to the authorities.

There is no question that New France is a lawless place compared to the rigid discipline Laure was accustomed to at the Salpêtrière in Paris. The King’s arm cannot reach with the
same authority across the sea and into the woods of Canada, although none would dare to say so in public. How else could Laure be staying by herself in a room above a tavern in a town filled with revelling drunkards? She was probably safer in the Parisian dormitory with the diseased and mad women, but how much more exciting that there is nobody to watch over her here.

After she offered him her shorn hair, Deskaheh asked Laure to meet him later behind the inn. She agreed to see him even though she was frightened by the idea of going out alone at night in Ville-Marie. Laure lies upstairs in her hot enclosed room waiting for the hours to pass. All the while she attempts to determine Deskaheh’s intentions in asking her to meet him again. He seemed angry with Laure for cutting her hair and giving him the crude offering, so she is surprised that he still wants to see her. She is wearing the yellow dress from Paris, the one he saw her in last summer. She has covered her head in the shawl she wore to the funerals of Madame d’Aulnay and Mireille.

Laure invokes the memory of Madeleine. How she wishes her friend were here beside her so she could recount the events of the past day to her. Of course Laure knows that Madeleine would have little to say about Deskaheh. She would surely tell Laure not to meet him tonight. There is nothing to be gained for her soul in meeting a Savage on the sinful streets of this fur-trading town.

Once the final raucous cheers have faded downstairs and the last man has left the inn for the night, Laure gets out of bed and steps out into the hallway. She creeps past the closed doors of the other rooms and downstairs to the tavern. Madame Rouillard is still awake. She is behind the counter cleaning the
glasses and dishes left over from the evening’s debauchery. Madame Rouillard doesn’t look surprised to see Laure standing on the stairs wearing a dress from Old France that is several ranks above her station. There must be very little that surprises a woman who is a midwife and runs an inn in a French colony.

The old woman takes a towel and wipes her hands. Although fleshy, Madame Rouillard’s features are firm and unreadable. Only her eyes gleam with emotion. “You want me to open the door for you?” she asks, putting down the towel and crossing her arms over her bosom.

Laure cannot think of a lie and wouldn’t dare utter one to this woman. She nods.

“You know that a girl out alone at night in this fur-crazed town is no safer than a fox or a rabbit.” Madame Rouillard’s eyes widen as they move down the length of Laure’s dress. “Especially a young one like you. When you get to be my age, you know that trouble will find you soon enough. You don’t have to go out looking for it.”

Laure’s face burns. What a fool she must seem in the eyes of this old innkeeper and midwife. She considers fleeing back upstairs to her room.

“Don’t worry. I’ve kept plenty of secrets in my day. The lives of the women who live along the banks of this river are filled with them. I could recount stories of sin and heartbreak that would have a priest recanting his vows.” Madame Rouillard laughs. “There’s no doubt that some of these girls are enjoying their new freedom. Of course, the price we pay for freedom is that we have to live here.” She laughs again. “Although I must say, and it does indeed surprise me, not many of the French women go for the Savage men. You see plenty of the other way around. But that’s not to say it doesn’t happen.” Madame
Rouillard comes out from behind the counter, her ample hips making short strides toward the door of the inn. “Some people insist on making life more complicated than it needs to be.”

Laure follows behind her. “Thank you,” she says as Madame Rouillard opens the door onto the street.

“Don’t thank me. Sometimes when God gives us what we pray for, it’s actually a curse. Wait until morning before you come back here. That way I can get some sleep and the ones who are staying upstairs will think you just stepped out to get some bread.”

Laure nods again.

“I know that one you’re going to meet. He’s actually a decent character compared to most of them.”

The night is deep, and the blackness is lessened only by a single torch at the end of the alley. Laure uses her hands to guide herself around to the back of the wooden building. Deskaheh is already there, waiting for her. When he sees her, his expression is similar to that of Madame Rouillard. It is as if the Savage and the old midwife had known all along that Laure was capable of wanton behaviour, that it was only a matter of time before she became an adulterous woman.

The Salpêtrière teems with these women, their poverty and sins imprisoning them for perpetuity. Abortion is the only crime worse than adultery that a woman can commit in New France. Because women are still so much fewer than men in the colony, the laws about adultery are more lenient than in France. Some husbands decide to take their wife back, or to send her to a nunnery, so long as her dowry can cover the price, rather
than to punish her according to the law. Abortion, however, is punishable by death, with the law enforced more strictly than in Paris, where there is an abundance of children filling the hospitals and workhouses at royal expense.

Laure wonders what Mathurin would do if he knew she had come to the fur-trade fair and parted ways with the Tardifs so she could meet the Iroquois Savage Deskaheh alone in an alley behind an inn. Would he free her from her prison sentence and bear the shame of her actions?