The Tale-Teller (4 page)

***

ESTHER LAY IN THE bath, finally, ecstatically alone. She felt like she was exhaling for the first time since she ran away from home. And after three months of hiding her body from others, sleeping between huge stinking men and washing only sketchily and in secret, clean hot water was a luxury she was in no haste to relinquish. If only she could stay here, dreaming of where she'd been and where she might go next, rather than facing the challenges that awaited her. For as much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, a life of adventure was more fun to imagine than to experience.

Her solitary childhood had given her ample time to imagine her escape; indeed, for years she'd dreamed of little else. She'd practically memorized
Le Télémaque, Le Solitaire Espagnol, Le Paysan Gentilhomme,
and many other works describing both real and fantastic voyages, including translations of
Gulliver's Travels
and her favourite book of all:
The Strange and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
. Most people insisted that Defoe's book was a pack of lies but Esther didn't care; as a role model, Crusoe was more meaningful to her than Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci, or Henry Hudson.

The literature of travel gave her hope. If there were so many other worlds, maybe she could find a place where she belonged: a place without arbitrary divisions between people based on where they were from, who their parents were, whether they were male or female. As a last resort, she dreamed of finding a desert island like Crusoe's, with fruit trees and friendly animals but without any visiting cannibals, where she would live happily on her own.

So she'd copied maps, and memorized trade routes, and studied the lives of famous explorers. A couple of times she'd even sneaked over the bridge and down to the docks to see the big ships that sailed up the river with cargoes of exotic goods from faraway places. She watched sailors load and unload silk and cotton and spices, coffee beans and cocoa beans and aromatic wood, filling warehouses with the wealth of the world: wealth her father was allowed to store for others but not to share in himself. As little as he cared about Esther, he certainly would have intervened had he known how his daughter was spending her days. But she was not in danger, for the mariners recognized in her a kindred spirit: defiant, lonely, and reckless. Someone with nothing to lose.

She stretched, feeling her tense muscles unknot. Her toes looked like a strange pink fringe waving from the end of her feet. She flexed them one by one: stunted country cousins to her aristocratic fingers, clumsy yokels unable to flourish a pen or wield a sword. Apes certainly had that advantage over humans; they could peel bananas with their feet. Esther tried to pick up a bar of soap with her own feet, but failed. It was too slippery and she was too tired to keep trying.

It was frustrating that her disguise had been so quickly discovered, for it would have been so much easier to continue living as a boy in New France. She hoped she wouldn't be sent home immediately; as arduous as the westward crossing had been, travelling against headwinds and through tempests, the return would be worse with winter coming on. And besides, having survived the journey, she wanted to explore her destination. She had to find some way of persuading the authorities to let her stay in this odd outpost with its silver candlesticks and baskets of woven grass, handmade lace and swamp-smelling mud.

She doubted she could win over the Marquis. She winced, remembering the contempt in his eyes: that old familiar contempt that told her she was utterly worthless. It made her feel tired in a way that the hard physical labour she'd undertaken on the
Saint Michel
never had. She wondered what it was about her the Governor General hated so much, her swarthy complexion or her meagre figure. Or was it that she had dared to dress as a boy? Something about Esther obviously repelled him even though he didn't know the whole truth yet. She must make sure he never learned it.

But Monsieur Hocquart was a different type altogether, less tyrannical, much more sympathetic; he had been entranced by her first story and would surely want to hear others. He had a kind of softness about him, an inwardness that meant he too had been wounded by life. She might succeed with the Intendant if she continued to appeal to his imagination.

***

DINNER THAT NIGHT WAS onion soup, a fat roast duck with savoury carrots and beans, and stewed fruit. It was accompanied by a loaf of real bread and a bottle of fine Bordeaux, which Esther greatly appreciated after the crude vin de table served on board ship, a beverage so acidic it would have done better service polishing silver than quenching people's thirst. Even plain water tasted so good here: cold and clean and sweet, as though the distant ice-capped mountains she dreamed of visiting had been distilled into a glass. Esther had always loved food; her favourite place back home had been the kitchen, where she sought both sanctuary and comfort. She sighed, savouring both past and present pleasure.

“You have a healthy appetite, Mademoiselle,” said Hocquart, who had watched in astonishment as his slender guest — now wearing a simple dress of brown wool with a creamy white collar and matching cuffs, her cropped hair tucked under a white cap — demolished second helpings of whatever she was offered. She was also drinking considerably more wine than he would have anticipated. They had sat uncomfortably opposite each other for some time, exchanging occasional comments about the food, he answering her questions about the number of people who lived in the colony, and of those how many lived in the city, and of those how many had been born here and how many were immigrants from France. The girl had inquired with genuine interest about which crops grew best in the local soil and which industries seemed most promising of future prosperity. She had been polite and intelligent but now it was Hocquart's turn to ask the questions; after all, he needed to determine her true identity in order to decide whether she ought to be allowed to remain in New France. He cleared his throat and began.

“You may not be a boy, but you certainly eat like one. Nonetheless, you did a bad thing, deceiving those who trusted you.”

“How?” She looked up at him with a surprised expression on her face.

“Imagine how those who slept next to you will feel when they discover that their chamber-mate was a woman.”

“But all we did was sleep like good children; we were so tired after a day at sea.”

“Children are innocent,” he snapped, frustrated by such obtuseness. “You are not.”

“Only God can judge the innocence of my heart.”

“Aha, you must be a Huguenot, as your name suggests.” He smiled, gratified to have discovered something useful by his indirect method of interrogation. This revelation also made his decision simpler — the girl would have to be sent back to France, since Huguenots were banned from the colony.

“No, Mon Seigneur, I am not.”

“Then if you are a good Catholic, you ought to be obedient to the authority of the Church and not disgrace yourself by such immodesty.”

“But Joan of Arc dressed as a man and she is revered by all of France,” Esther said, regretting the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Pretending to be masculine had clearly liberated her speech as well as her actions; it felt like all the rebellious thoughts she had been suppressing for years were trying to break out at the same time. But it wouldn't do to antagonize her host so recklessly; he held her fate in his hands.

“How dare you compare yourself to La Pucelle?” Hocquart shouted, before giving in to a fit of coughing.

“Please forgive me, Monsieur Hocquart. I am not accustomed to drinking and the wine has made me speak foolishly.”

Hocquart stared at her, baffled, trying to regain his own composure. This “Esther,” whoever she really was, confounded all his expectations about the weaker sex. She was his prisoner, all alone in the New World, and still defiant. Such stubbornness inclined him to believe her story of being a feral child, for hadn't he been told that no ordinary woman could keep a secret?

He'd also been led to believe that women were abstemious in their habits and modest in their appetites, and she'd defied that expectation as well. Women were supposed to be deferential to men, leaving adventure and politics to them, passing their days in gossip and housework, music and embroidery, not undertaking ocean voyages. Was their passive behaviour merely a facade? Did they hide themselves in yards of fabric, layers of face-paint, and towering wigs so that no one could discern their true desires? Meeting this girl made him uncomfortably aware of his ignorance on the topic, which ordinarily was not a problem since he had so few dealings with the fair sex. But there sat Esther, a poor specimen perhaps but definitely female, tossed up on the shores of Quebec as she had once been on the island of the apes.

He winced at the memory of his own arrival so many years ago, which had been, in many ways, as disappointing as hers. The
Eléphant
, which had set out so bravely from France, ran aground at Île aux Grues and stuck fast. He had been compelled to splash through the frigid surf as the crew, running nimbly through the waves despite their cargo of cumbersome trunks and crates, snickered at his weakness. At one point he stubbed his toe on a hidden rock and fell, only to be rescued by a sinewy old tar twice his age. It had been the most shameful moment of his life. But the wreck of the Eléphant had also inspired him to the scheme that would redeem him: the scheme that would provide financial security for the colony, lure new immigrants from France, and make his name famous forever. He was determined to establish a shipbuilding industry in New France to produce the sturdiest and best-designed vessels to cross the Atlantic.

Hocquart realized suddenly that the girl was staring at him from under her thick dark brows. The girl from the sea.

Her story made him think of Botticelli's painting of Venus, floating on a shell clothed only by long golden hair — a reproduction of which he had studied throughout his adolescence, scarcely daring to hope that one day he might encounter such a figure in the pink and white, high-breasted, long-legged flesh. Of course Esther, with her sunburned face and scrawny figure, scarcely resembled that delectable goddess of love and beauty. Indeed, she scarcely resembled any sort of woman at all; it was amazing that Varin had been able to recognize that she was one! Still, her arrival here was as remarkable as it was unprecedented. Could she have been sent to him as some kind of omen? But an omen of
what
, that was the question. He had no idea.

FOUR

“Dame un grano de mazal,
y echame en las fundinas de la mar.”
(Give me a bit of luck,
and throw me into the depths of the sea.)

RESTRICTED TO THE INTENDANT's palace for three weeks now, Esther and Marie-Thérèse had developed a comfortable routine. During the day Esther stayed by the housekeeper's side and asked her innumerable questions about Quebec. According to the housekeeper, it was as close to heaven as she expected to get in this life. People treated her with respect here; that was the main thing. She, an illiterate country girl, commanded a staff of a dozen. The gentry knew her by name and all the merchants in the market bowed to her. Such a life would never have been possible back in France.

And she never went hungry — in fact, no one did here. The habitants were able to keep far more of their produce than her own family ever had on their miserable farm. In

France the peasantry hardly ever got meat, but here even the Natives could hunt and fish as much as they liked. The rivers teemed with fish; the forests with game; fruit and berries grew in abundance. Where others saw a howling wilderness, she saw the Garden of Eden.

Unfortunately for Esther, who was fascinated by the Natives and wanted to know everything about them, Marie-Thérèse knew remarkably little about those who had occupied this paradise before the French arrived with their copper pots and gunpowder, their wineglasses and smallpox. Marie-Thérèse had no Native friends, did not speak a word of any of their barbaric languages, and avoided them whenever possible. Having heard too many stories about Indians massacring saintly missionaries, the housekeeper was convinced that they might rise up at any moment and slaughter innocent Christians in their beds if the army didn't maintain strict control. And she disapproved strongly of the
coureurs de bois
who took Native wives and produced half-breed offspring. Besides undermining the Natives' respect for the French it wasn't fair to the children, who got left behind when their fathers returned to France, which they usually did.

Eventually Marie-Thérèse — though flattered at having her opinions taken so seriously — would tire of being interviewed and shoo Esther away, telling her that if she couldn't make herself useful she might as well go read a book, since the Intendant was kind enough to permit her to use his library. Then the strange girl would run off gratefully to the other side of the building, skirting the vast meeting room in which the Sovereign Council deliberated, and sit enraptured for hours until someone remembered to call her for dinner (which, after her first interview with Hocquart, she took with the servants). She was delighted to discover that Hocquart possessed French translations of many of her favourite books: Homer's
Odyssey
, Plutarch's
Lives
, Herodotus's
Histories
, Ptolemy's
Geography
, Mandeville's
Travels
, Hakluyt's
Voyages
, and many other tales by such as Leo Africanus, François Bernier, and Christopher Columbus. Clearly, under that fussy exterior, the Intendant had a romantic soul. She was lucky indeed to have ended up living here.

Despite her rapport with Marie-Thérèse, Esther remained shy with the rest of the household, saying almost nothing while they ate, listening intently to their gossip about daily life in New France. English traders at Hudson Bay were stealing all the best furs — there might be peace in Europe but skirmishes continued here, that's for sure. There was nothing to worry about; the Sieur de la Vérendrye and his sons were working hard to break the English monopoly. He was a hero, that one; a true patriot. Yes, unlike those greedy merchants from France, taking advantage of the poor habitants, suffering after a year of bad crops. It wasn't just the crops, it had been altogether an unlucky year: smallpox had broken out again and the church bells tolled steadily for the dead. And speaking of the church, where on earth was Bishop Dosquet? Had he abandoned them permanently?

Later in the evening, as she and Marie-Thérèse sat by the enormous hearth in the kitchen, the housekeeper busy with knitting needles or a crochet hook, it was Esther's turn to talk. Suspecting that whatever she said was being faithfully relayed to the authorities, she put in lots of details like longitude and latitude, number of days at sea, trade goods and their values, and the locations of various ports. She poured every single idea or image she thought might seduce her audience into each tale.

The first story she told Marie-Thérèse was what happened after her childhood rescue by the Spanish sailors.