Читать книгу High Towers - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Jean-Baptiste breakfasted pensively but enormously on a fried fish, right out of the river, a crusty loaf of bread, and white wine diluted generously with water. Then he went to the smithy, one of the huddle of wooden buildings within the château walls, and talked with Sooty-Arms, the name by which Jacques Descaries, the smith, was usually known. There was a mystery about Sooty-Arms which no one had ever solved satisfactorily. It was suspected that he had been a man of good birth and an officer in the royal army of Flanders, and that some great tragedy had upset his life. He was a silent man who lived sparsely and always seemed interested in the horizon.

They were comparing D’Iberville with the royal marshals of the day when a message reached Jean-Baptiste that the seigneur desired his presence. He got eagerly to his feet. “Claude-Elizabeth has spoken to him already,” he thought.

The seigneur’s room was in the northeast tower and was reached by a winding stairway cut into the stone of the wall. It had many advantages. It was large and airy, with windows facing in all directions, and it afforded a view of the great cross on the crest of the mountain as well as of the family island of Ste. Hélène. Here Charles le Moyne had collected reminders of his father. He had felt, when he began on the erection of this imposing structure, that it was to be a monument to the memory of the great man who had laid the foundations of the family grandeur and who was still called by everyone at Longueuil Old M’sieur Charles. Less sentimental in all other respects than the rest of the brothers, the head of the family had a feeling for his father which amounted to idolatry. There was peace as well as satisfaction for him in having about him some of the first seigneur’s possessions.

The roughhewn beams of red pine on the ceiling had been brought from the first Le Moyne store in Montreal. There was a black walnut corner cupboard with sixteen small panes of glass, none of them so much as cracked, which had been a source of family pride when they lived on St. Joseph Street. The silver-hilted sword of Old M’sieur Charles hung on a wall with a silver cord.

Beside the sword was a hat which had belonged to the old man. It was of beaver and it was out of shape, which was not surprising in a hat which had known the icy spray of the river rapids, the smoke of Indian encampments, the bite of wind and storm. None of the older brothers (the youngest of them, beginning with Jean-Baptiste, did not remember their father very well, for he had brought sons into the world almost to the time of his death, twelve years before) could look at the old beaver without seeing his resolute face under it. They were even prone to believe that the hat projected itself into the discussions held in this room, its crown slipping over like a nod of approval or wrinkling itself in dissent. Even the three youngest had come to have this feeling about their father’s hat and to regard it as a sort of family oracle.

When Jean-Baptiste entered, the seigneur looked as though he had been struggling with a decision on which the advice of the shabby hat of Old M’sieur Charles might have been helpful.

“Jean-Baptiste,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve reached a conclusion which won’t give me cause for regret later, I most earnestly hope.”

The younger brother said to himself exultantly, “He’s going to let me go.”

The seigneur’s mind might be made up but he seemed reluctant to commit himself. He rubbed a finger along the bridge of his nose and frowned.

“I’m going to let you go with Pierre,” he said abruptly. “As you know, I’ve been against the idea. But—well, you’re reaching a man’s years, Jean-Baptiste, and you feel strongly about this chance to show your mettle. I yield to your wishes, my boy.” He stretched a hand across the desk and laid it on his brother’s shoulder. “I give in. I can’t see you unhappy, Jean-Baptiste.”

It seemed to the boy that the hot rays of the morning sun which poured in through the east window had become celestial beams. He was to have his chance! He seized the seigneur’s hand and shook it exuberantly. “Thank you, Charles, thank you! I’ll always remember this! I’ll always think of you as the best of brothers!”

The seigneur studied the smiling face in front of him before proceeding. “You must make me a promise. You must promise not to take unnecessary risks. I must be sure you won’t—throw your life away as Louis did in the bay and François at Repentigny. There was no need for those splendid boys to prove their courage the way they did. They seemed to think that death couldn’t touch them; even that it didn’t matter. You mustn’t court death, as they did. You are, after all, a Le Moyne. No son of Old M’sieur Charles could fail of having courage. Everyone knows that.”

Jean-Baptiste hesitated over his reply. “I must never hold back from doing my full duty because of risks,” he said. “But this much I do promise, that I won’t do foolhardy things—as Louis and François may have done.”

Charles snapped him up on this with the alacrity he sometimes displayed in commercial deals. “That’s all I ask. Always obey orders but never walk into the mouth of cannon or stand up under fire. To die may be glorious but victories are won by surviving.” He nodded his head vigorously. “I happen to be quite fond of you, my boy. You’ve always seemed to me like a son as well as a brother. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I mean to keep my promise, Charles.”

“You must never forget it.” The tone of the seigneur had become urgent, even a shade peremptory. “I’m going to need you later. For the most important kind of work, Jean-Baptiste—work which you alone of the younger ones can do. You have gifts which will make you a great man, if you use them. I’ve said this to you before but I want to impress it on you again, now that you’re to serve with Pierre. I see a shining future for you. Who knows, you may someday be governor of New France!”

“If any of us becomes governor, it will be you, Charles.”

The older brother shook his head. “The mind of Versailles won’t change soon enough for that. The old King is set against putting anyone of Canadian birth in a high post. A change of policy will come about but it’s more likely to be in your time than in mine.” He leaned back in his chair. “And now there’s another matter, my boy. I have your promise about this girl, and I know you’ll keep it. Always remember this, that you must marry well. You must ally yourself with one of the great families of France. Oh, it’s not impossible! The name of Le Moyne is beginning to mean a great deal. Your wife, when you take one, must bring you wealth and high connections.”

Jean-Baptiste was plunged back into his earlier mood of melancholy by this reopening of a sore subject. “I’m never going to marry, Charles,” he said. Then he nodded his head with a suggestion of determination. “Can’t we make a bargain between us never to—to mention the subject again? All I want to think of now is that I have some fighting to do!”