Читать книгу The Champlain Road - Franklin Davey McDowell - Страница 14

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The construction of a new village was one of the few occasions in Huron community effort when a genuine spirit of co-operation was shown. Even the warriors, usually lethargic in everything except the hunt and the making of war, displayed a commendable activity. Godfrey lounged by the supply camp and watched the workers with angry scowl: such energy and unity of purpose would never be shown in defence of the village when built. Felled saplings were dragged from the forest, holes scooped out of the ground for setting them upright, and poles split down the centre lay ready to be lashed into place. Once the saplings were set upright, much as rows of gaunt backbones thrusting to the sky, the poles would be lashed crosswise by ropes of linden bark. The saplings would then be drawn down at the top, so that each side met in an unfinished arch, a space of a foot in the centre of the roof open for ventilation and light. The framework completed, there remained the comparatively easy task of lashing the thick sheets of bark into position and erecting a wide shelf, or endicha, four feet above the ground, down each side of the interior to form at once beds and, beneath, a storage space for firewood. There was required only the addition of a porch at each end, entrance and store-room for foodstuffs combined, and the building would be complete.

The house would arise without variation of design, the product of a primitive system of mass production, each of uniform height and width, on a 24-foot scale of standardization, the length only varying according to the number of fires that would burn in a straight line down the centre of the earthen floor. Godfrey remembered that in Teanaostaiaë there had been houses of 100 feet in length, with as many as 10 fires burning on the ground. The longest of the new houses, not exceeding 50 feet, stood as evidence of the losses incurred in the destruction of Teanaostaiaë.

Father Garnier, worn gown tucked about his waistline and displaying two shanks not more shapely than the split poles strewing the ground, joined him. Godfrey stifled a smile at the priest’s appearance, yet, as he had seen, these thin legs, when driven by the father’s indomitable will, were tireless. Worried lines marked his face. “I have been searching for you, Captain. Philip told me where you had gone and I wish that I might benefit by your example, only there remains much to be done.”

“Anything amiss, Father?” Godfrey asked carelessly. The difficulties of the priests were often dismissed by him as inconsequential, as they, in turn, failed to appreciate his problems. Long ago he had learned to accept such a divergence of view-point with equanimity. Two worlds met in the House of Ste. Marie, the finer, illimitable realm of spirit, and the grosser, earthy region of men and events. To reconcile these two worlds, fit them into a single pattern of daily life required the keen understanding of the Father Superior. “Things seem to be moving without mischance,” Godfrey said casually, nodding to the industrious workers.

“True. There is no longer the atmosphere of antagonism,” Father Garnier answered, as one vainly struggling to translate a sensory perception into words, “yet there are what might be described as currents of evil in the air. I can feel their invisible touch. I do not know what to do; it is as though the Cord Clan is as a fly caught in a spider’s web. I wonder if it could be the malign influence of that devil woman, Hinonaia the Hurons call her.”

Godfrey sniffed.

“She is a spirit of evil, there is no doubt of that,” the Father said sternly. “We must try to exorcise her.”

“I don’t know what she is,” Godfrey snapped. “I only know that after this disaster we must unite the Hurons or perish.”

“We will meet evil with the might of the Lord,” was the confident reply. “He will smite with His sword. We will be victorious.”

There was no reply. Godfrey was looking at Arakoua, as she walked nonchalantly toward them. Her eyes swept the priest with cold indifference, then lingered upon him in silent mirth. If he squirmed inwardly at what she might say, he was as impassive as a hunter watching deer approach. She looked at beads of sweat upon his face and spoke with mock sympathy, “Andeskara is melting. The sun turns the white of the icicle to gold and red.”

He ignored the pleasantry. “Tell Ouracha, O daughter of a chief, what you know of this Hinonaia?”

She flashed a glance at Father Garnier. “This black robe seeks word of her?”

“I know of no woman with more tongues than you. I did not ask what your mind says, I asked of the Little Thunder.”

The priest was shocked at the roughness of the words. Arakoua was the daughter of Annaotaka and a person of importance in her right and his. Father Garnier was surprised and relieved when she answered readily.

“Some day I will burn her: she will shriek in the slow fire.”

“Then you do not think she is an evil spirit?” he questioned.

“She came from the fire, to the fire she will go.”

Godfrey turned to Father Garnier, “We can find nothing helpful here.”

“Her skin is as gold as the sun,” Arakoua continued, as if nothing had been said, and jerked her head toward the missionary. “What does he of the leg sticks know of any woman? Now you, O Guardian of the River, your skin—”

“You are a hopeless pagan,” Godfrey cut in wrathfully. “I have a mind to give you a clout over the head.”

“An icicle beat a sunbeam!” Arakoua shrieked with laughter.

“That girl is a confounded heathen,” Godfrey mumbled, as he returned to camp with Father Garnier. “There is nothing that can be done with her.”

“She appears to be a creature of likes and dislikes,” the Father said slyly. “Perhaps her heart can be softened.”

“Only with a club.” Godfrey hastily changed the subject. “The Father Superior will be waiting for me to report. If you are agreeable, I would suggest that he send Master Builder Boivin to erect the church and your cabin.”

A suggestion which Father Garnier warmly endorsed.

The Father Superior was at work in his outdoor cabinet. The western sun was pouring its light through the iron-barred window in a golden flood as Father Ragueneau looked up from the plain table at which he was sitting. He greeted Godfrey with a pleasant nod. “Sit down upon the bench, my son.” He looked up at the iron bars of the window and frowned.

“We must have them for this cabin, mon père, otherwise the Hurons would be all over the place and raid the apothecary shop.” Godfrey’s head inclined to the frame partition separating the dispensary.

“Unfortunately that is true. Nothing wrong, I trust, in what you have to report?”

“Everything is moving in good order, mon père.”

The Father Superior eyed his captain shrewdly and wiped the perspiration from his face. “I know you have many things to speak of. Let us go to the palisades. There may be a breeze there.”

Father Ragueneau leaned against the pointed logs and eyed the river in silence. “Yes, it is a little fresher here: there is a breath of air moving. Now give me your report. I gathered you encountered no difficulties from the way you spoke. I am pleasurably surprised.”

“Then I am afraid I unintentionally deceived you, mon père.” He related the occurrences terminating with the execution of Totiri. “It was unfortunate but it was necessary.”

“I feared something would happen,” Father Ragueneau said sadly. “You may not uproot a people without misunderstanding and trouble. Some natures are so constituted that adversity does not soften but turns them to the hardness of flint. I am not sure, Godfrey. I fear you have sinned.”

“I trust not, mon père. A thing of evil was stamped out. For in my judgment Totiri held the fate of the venture in the balance. His influence was quite capable of undoing all our work. Thodatouan saw that when he struck.”

“It is not for me to judge. You have taken upon yourself the full responsibility. I do not know what I should have done. It is not a situation I should care to face. You faced it as a soldier.” The Father Superior stood as one who travels vast distances in memory. He spoke softly. “When I bargained for you, Godfrey, that day so long ago on the shores of Lake Champlain, I saw a mighty soldier in the making—a modern Godfrey de Bouillon fighting a new crusade against evil. That is why, if anything, I encouraged your natural disposition to arms. You will be a tower of strength to New France when you settle on your own lands.”

“What have I accomplished, sir?” Godfrey asked despondently. “I tried to bestir the Hurons, get them to unite and attack the Iroquois in self-defence. They sit about like men frightened by a bad dream.”

“It is no bad dream.” The Father Superior fingered his square chin. “It is the lethargy of despair. I read despair in their eyes as surely as I read it in the eyes of your mother, that day I saw you both in the Abenaki camp.”

Godfrey’s mouth tightened. In thought he fled a dozen years down the corridors of time. He was no longer an officer of His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIV of France. He was a backwoods lad living precariously upon a New England frontier ... he saw again the rude log cabin, the rough clearing ... his mother standing beside the lever well as a neighbour’s daughter sobbed out her message ... saw his mother’s drawn face as she raced to him, grasped his hand and rushed with him to the dark, dangerous forest ... saw her slip in the slush of the early spring trails and sprawl upon the ground. “To escape the whipping post.” He voiced his thoughts harshly. “A kind neighbour helped her after Father was killed felling a tree and the bigots of Salem could not understand Christian charity.”

“Bitter words, my son.” Father Ragueneau chided gently. “Had it not been for the magistrates thinking evil where no evil existed, had they not sent the good neighbour to the whipping post for helping your mother about the farm in his spare time, you would not now be a captain of the Musketeers in New France.”

“The neighbour’s girl warned Mother just in time,” Godfrey mused. “We spent a month with friendly Indians, a great adventure to me, but beyond her strength. She wanted to reach New Amsterdam and sail for England; we went, instead, to trade the winter’s catch of fur. And Mother was never strong.”

“It was at the point of trade I found you and your mother. The Abenakis were camped close to the Iroquois band.”

Godfrey knocked his knuckles against the palisade. That day would never be forgotten ... the arrival of the French traders and a black-robed figure with them ... the man who was now Father Superior of the Huron Missions, then on a trip of good-will to the Mohawks ... his keen eyes searching out mother and son, his ransoming them with gifts of powder and shot ... and the mother, tears streaming down her face at Father Ragueneau’s kindness, drawing frail frame to full height and crying in choked voice, “You are a good man and a Christian. I have fled from shameful fanatics. I renounce their teachings and go with you; for you will be good to my boy and I have not long to be with him.”

A tender light touched the blue-grey hardness of Godfrey’s eyes, as he thought of a little churchyard on the banks of the St. Lawrence. There his mother had found that rest denied her in life; for within a year she had pined away, leaving him a ward of her benefactor, the Society of Jesus.

“She was a fine woman, Godfrey,” Father Ragueneau said quietly, “and her gallant spirit lives on in you. The Abenakis sold you and your mother: there was one I could not buy.”

“Little Diana Woodville, sir?”

“Yes, little Diana. I will never forget her. A child only, much younger than you, and a good Catholic. I often wondered how the Iroquois came by her and their refusal to accept ransom.”

“I played with her for the first few days we were together,” Godfrey said. “I think she came from Virginia. When she tried to tell about herself, the chief snatched her away. I never saw her alone again.”

“He evidently attached some importance to her. I offered everything I had to buy her and he only growled she had to go before the Council of the Sachems.” Father Ragueneau coughed. “If a gathering of great chiefs had to dispose of her, the matter was one affecting the confederacy. Poor child! She was a tender, spindly thing and no doubt is dead.”

“Yes, sir. Such a weakling couldn’t survive a year in a dirty, Indian village. She is dead and it is for the best.”

The Father Superior tapped an admonishing finger against the pointed stake of the parapet. “It is not for us to dispose, Godfrey, though her life, had she lived, would have been torture to a white child. She spoke the Iroquois tongue, I believe.”

“After a fashion, sir.”

“Children pick up a new tongue quickly. You have kept up your English?”

“Yes, sir. You helped me and there was plenty of practice at Quebec with officers who had been on foreign service. And I more or less mastered the rapier.”

“I am told you are an accomplished swordsman.” Father Ragueneau concealed a smile. “And you speak Iroquois and Huron.”

“The Mohawk dialect, mon père. Fluently, not grammatically, picked up from visiting Iroquois. The Huron was not difficult. They are of the same family as the Iroquois stock and all Huron nations use an understandable dialect.”

“Ah, yes, but we stray from pressing matters.”

Godfrey outlined in detail the progress made by the new village and concluded with a request that Master Builder Boivin and men be sent to construct the church and cabin.

“Certainly we should erect our own buildings,” the Father Superior concurred. “In a time of calamity, such as this, we cannot ask them to do otherwise.”

Layman Charles Boivin found himself leading a small flotilla of canoes to Isiaragui, rubicund face pulled in a scowl, and short, thick body jerking spasmodically, as annoyance boiled over and made long, stout arms stab a paddle into the water, to the agitation of workmen with him. The Master Builder disapproved of the plan in its entirety. Plenty of work remained to be done within the fort—palisades to strengthen, a cedar grove to be cleared away to remove the last shelter to prowling Iroquois, and the moat and water ditches to be deepened. Master Boivin heartily endorsed these suggestions of the Captain of the Musketeers and to be dragged from such important work to relieve the Hurons of their just duty in constructing a church was sheer nonsense to him. He snorted disgust and thrust at the river in a way to send the canoe dancing a crazy course.

Foreman Carpenter Jean Guiet grinned unfeelingly from the last canoe. He did not share the Master Builder’s views. To whack down a few saplings and run up a bark church came by way of pleasant relief from the distinctly tough job of preparing elm logs for the palisades. He looked at the spades and sharp axes with affectionate eyes. Foreman Guiet was minded to enjoy his holiday to the full.

The Master Builder greeted Father Garnier with sour deference, nor was he mollified by the priest’s evident pleasure at his arrival. Godfrey located Enons pacing the western boundary of the village. “Ah, my brother,” the chief said with distant formality, “I was considering defences. A double palisade, with towers at each end, or would you say something stronger?”

“It is not for me to speak, O Chief. You are wise in the ways of war,” Godfrey temporized.

“We come together as warriors. We should not think two thoughts and speak with one tongue.”

“You are generous, O Chief, to ask my mind.” Godfrey assumed indifference. “I have one thought and little voice.”

“Without the voice I cannot know the thought.”

“My thought is the Hodenosaunee are gone and will not return until the moon of the deep snow is past. The Clan of the Cord must eat and your fields are far away and soon will be turning yellow. A deep ditch and high, earthen breastwork will do until the spring rains. Palisades did not save Teanaostaiaë.”

“There is much wisdom in your words,” Enons said. “Our people must not starve. I will take counsel with the elders.”

Godfrey looked toward the south. Fitful gusts of wind came and went, and on the horizon billows of fleece scudded. “The Thunder Bird is restless. We will hear him soon. I must return to camp.”

“You say what is right and true.” Enons stamped a moccasined heel on the ground. “The earth is now hard. It will soon be easy to break.”

The far-off spearheads of the forest and pine crests tossed and bent as the sweep of the storm drove forward. Leaves of the elms were showing as silvery flakes as Godfrey and the soldiers worked quickly lashing the oiled cloth fast. Arakoua ran over as he stood back and inspected the work. “It is well done, O Teanaosti. Let us send these two away and you and I will be alone with the Thunder Birds.”

“You will have to send a third away. Here is Ouaracha.”

“He who does not pluck his beard,” she returned with distaste. “He was with my people. Why did he not stay there?”

“His place is here with me. Your place is with your people.”

“My place is with my Guardian of the River.” She stooped to enter the camp and sat down on a corn bag, demurely adjusting deerskin robe. “I do not like Ouracha.”

“It is you who are wrong-headed,” Godfrey said severely. “He is a fine man, much better than any of us here. Be courteous—”

His words were drowned in a clash of thunder. A great knife of fire cut the blackness with flaming blade. Arakoua laughed. “The Thunder Birds are flying.”

“Such things as Thunder Birds never existed.” Father Garnier entered as the rain spattered huge drops. “Thunder is merely gases imprisoned in the skies. They explode as a musket explodes when discharged and the lightning you see is the same as the fire when a musket speaks.”

“The Thunder Bird is a man dressed like a turkey-cock living up in aronhaia. He speaks with the voice of Hinonaia.”

Father Garnier opened his mouth soundlessly. Godfrey answered roughly. “The Thunder Bird makes fire opening and shutting his wings. Why do you think such evil thoughts?”

Arakoua pointed. “Look!”

The storm beat over the land on the wild sweep of dark wings. The heavens opened their flood-gates and a water curtain enfolded forest and lake. Great blades of fire cut and stabbed in the skies and the roar and howl rocked the ground with its might. Godfrey swore softly to himself. He could imagine the Hurons scattering in terror. He glanced at his companions. Father Garnier sat in a corner, legs outstretched before him, eyes closed. His tranquil face told of peace and repose. Philip and Louis were mumbling prayers. Arakoua was hunched head on knees. For once her wagging tongue was still.

Godfrey went to the opening and peered out. In the south, the sun had broken through the low ceiling of clouds; two shafts of light dropped to earth. As he looked they widened and merged into a brilliant skyline of gold. The storm had rushed past them on its furious way. The land lay in glistening revival after the heat, giving forth those sweet, enticing smells of earthy freshness which comes after the rain. Father Garnier blinked and stood up. The two soldiers ceased their prayers. Arakoua lifted her head somewhat fearfully. Godfrey stepped outside and muttered astonishment. The new village stood as he had last seen it, bark houses reflecting the sun-rays in their wetness. He called Arakoua. “Look, O fool! The Thunder Bird has flown away. It is you who thought foolish things.”

She looked at him sideways. “My Guardian of the River calls me a fool. Was not the great Teanaosti frightened?” She fled laughing.

An exclamation from Philip drew Godfrey’s attention. Master Boivin was heading a procession of carpenters and polemen from the forest, two shoulders to a sapling and garments clinging to them as wet silk. At the camp the Master Builder stopped. “Drop your loads, men,” he ordered, “and hang up your shirts here. They can dry where these copper-coloured thieves can’t get them.”

“I do not approve of your language, Master Boivin,” Father Garnier said sternly. “It is neither just or meet to say such a thing.”

“I apologise to your reverence. I will not offend again.”

With flushed face he stripped off his shirt, removed the oiled cloth and hung up the shirt on the cross-pole to dry. He eyed the village. “I must say those Hurons can build houses to stand up,” he commented with grudging admiration, then snapped at his brawny crew. “Come along, men, bring the spades. We’ll show these—these people how to put up a building.”

Carpenters and polemen plucked the saplings from the ground as if they were so many sticks, threw them to shoulders and trudged away. Godfrey followed to meet Enons. The chief was in high good humour. “A good oki watches over the aonchia. Never do I remember the Thunder Bird so angry and yet never a house was touched by his beak or wing. You spoke words of wisdom when you told of this place.”

Godfrey brightened at the use of the Huron noun aonchia. It indicated that the clan had not accepted the site as definite. St. Ignace and St. Louis, two villages of a few months old, also were without native place names and accordingly were not considered permanent, although St. Ignace was the strongest fortified village in Huronia and would not be quickly abandoned. “Your words gladden my heart, O Chief. I am happy you came here and found the place good.”

“We will make our ditch and ramparts at once, now the ground is soft. The palisades can wait, for food is more important and it must be stored for the moons of frost.” Enons looked about. “The oki of the wind has shown us that he is glad Totiri has gone to the Land of the Shades. Totiri lived too long.”

Godfrey rambled over to the site of the new church. Carpenters and polemen were labouring energetically. The framework was almost completed. Groups of Indians stood about in wonderment at the speed of construction. Such unconcealed admiration quickly caught the frayed ends of Master Boivin’s temper and wove them into a prideful humour. Godfrey smiled at the foibles of the good Master Builder and decided to return to Fort Ste. Marie. The village seemed to be firmly established.

The Father Superior received Godfrey with quiet eagerness. He was seated at the table in the great hall, with Father Le Mercier at his right and Father Chastelain at the left. There was a third at the table, Father Chabanel, who was assisting Father Brébeuf in the mission field of St. Ignace. Godfrey was surprised at his presence in the hall. Not a member of the Advisory Council, he surmised that something unusual had brought Father Chabenel to the main residence for consultation. Godfrey glanced keenly at the priest and thought of his tragic missionary experience.

But six and thirty years and a missionary in Huronia since 1645, only, Noël Chabanel’s scholarly face was pinched and drawn with lines of suffering and frustration. He had taught rhetoric in France with credit to himself, yet in Huronia he displayed such a singular inaptitude for learning the language that even after three years’ work in the field he could barely stumble through a simple conversation. This was a source of keen mortification to him and his discomfort of mind was accentuated by a natural aversion to Indian life. The smoke-filled, vermin-infested houses, the dirty food and filthy habits of the natives outraged his sensibilities, and the temptation to abandon the mission and return to the cultured halls of learning assailed him again and again, until he terminated the enticing thought by a vow of life-long servitude to the Hurons. Without hope of useful occupation and in misery of service, Father Chabanel lived a life of perpetual martyrdom and its mark was stamped in the determined glint of his eye, an index of the sterling qualities of heart and mind.

Godfrey’s thoughts snapped to the present, as he heard the deep voice of the Father Superior speaking. “You did well to return so promptly, Captain. Now tell us of the storm; did it do much damage to the village?”

“None whatever, mon père.” He repeated Enons’ conversation. Godfrey saw the priests’ faces clear as the skies had cleared after the storm.

“Your report is a great relief to us,” the Father Superior said. “As matters stood it would have required little to disperse the Cord Clan; then we would be without hope of restoring the southern frontier.”

“The shield of St. Michael mercifully turned aside the storm,” Father Chastelain said, “for it raged here with such strength that our fields are flattened and the great pine in the meadows was blasted in twain.”

“The fields will rise again, Father,” Godfrey answered. He did not offer his solution that storms often vary a point or so off their course by reason of their own fury. He looked to Father Chabanel, who now spoke:

“And that bears out the vision which Father Brébeuf was privileged to see only a few nights ago.”

The three priests leaned forward in rapt attention. Godfrey straightened on the bench. Of racial characteristics as different from his Latin associates as the moon is from the sun, his temperament was coldly analytical and, although he accepted the doctrines of miraculous intervention as he accepted the ordered day of existence, his inquiring mind frequently assigned natural causes to occurrences which the missionaries accepted as supernatural. It was not that Godfrey was the more sceptical or the less devout: it was the functional difference between a man reared in an intellectual atmosphere and transplanted to a wilderness of primitive forces, and a man bred and born in the backwoods, where he unwittingly absorbed the laws of nature from infancy. Godfrey’s interest was no less than that of the priests, as he bent forward to hear Father Chabanel.

“The miracle happened in our church of St. Ignace,” the Father was saying. “Father Brébeuf was sitting alone meditating when the altar was transformed into a great mountain. Up it arose until it would seem that the very skies were split and the village covered by its base. The lower part of the mountain was thronged with saints and above them stood the virgins. All were clad in white and their faces were radiant with the adoration of the Holy Queen of Virgins, enthroned on the summit. So great and golden was her glory that the intense light that he had miraculously seen illuminated his face with its sublimity for hours.”

“Truly a holy man,” Father Chastelain murmured. “To him God has conferred a rare privilege of looking upon the Holy Mother and the saints.”

“It was a blessed moment,” Father Chabanel said in a whisper. “The Holy Mary, Queen of the Martyrs, and the saints were assembled to await the spirit of the martyr, Father Daniel, for even then the Iroquois and that spirit of evil incarnate, Hinonaia, were closing in on St. Joseph.”

The Father Superior had been brooding in silence. He aroused himself with an effort. “I have called Father Chabanel, even though the work at St. Ignace is heavy. He will relieve Father Garnier at the new village tomorrow.” He drew a long breath. “Truly it will strain our meagre resources to provide what is necessary but we must do what we can.”