When the first streaks of dawn lightened the eastern sky, I felt
safe enough to release my hold on the crucifix. I was shivering. I spoke
to myself as though I were my own friend, ordering myself to rise and
collect some firewood in order to build up the fire and warm myself.
There would be no one else to guide, help, protect, or support me in my
aims unless, by some miracle, I found life and shelter at my destination.
Askuwheteau had told me that the Mission was half a day’s walk
from where we had camped. He told me to mark the trees and walk in
a northerly direction until I found the inland lake that bordered the
Mission. He said it would be unmistakable. He had told me to follow the
perimeter of the lake until I came to the place where great cliffs rose
behind it. Then, he said, I would be at St. Barthélemy. The Mission was
adjacent to the lake, below the cliffs.
The Indians had left me a portion of dried meat, bread made from
corn, and beans. Some of this I warmed up in the fire and ate. I wrapped
the rest of it and placed it carefully in my pack on top of the blankets.
Then, taking up a stout stick, which could as easily serve as a weapon as
it did a staff, I began to walk north.
In spite of the general terror of my new, unkind station, I took both
pleasure and comfort from the rising sun, which spoke to me not only of
safety (for I felt that even in this place, the demons must likely absent
themselves in the daylight, even if the Hiroquois did not) but of hope.
While I knew that it was entirely likely that I would reach St.
Barthélemy and find it burned to the ground and all its inhabitants dead,
there was also a possibility that I would, at the very least, find shelter
there, if not companionship in my abandonment. When I did not return
with news of Father de Céligny, the Indians would be interrogated and
the Fathers might yet send rescue of some sort. Failing that, perhaps
some passers-by, either friendly Savages or French, would find me and
help.
I told myself these things over and over again, even if I did not believe
most of them. At least they calmed me somewhat as I walked. I measured
out the hours through the medium of an eternity of footsteps across the
carpet of dead leaves on the forest floor. And yet, every sound of a tree
branch cracking in the distance and every scream of a bird brought me to
the very cusp of madness.
The cold hard sun followed me as I walked. By midday, the forest
thinned out, and I felt the air grow cooler and damper. It was my fervent
prayer that the unnamed lake was just beyond the next part of the forest,
and that my prayer, unlike so many others of late, was answered.
In a very short time, there it was in the near distance, larger than I
expected, the water calm and the colour of dull iron. The cliffs did indeed
rise up behind it like great hulking shoulders, giving the region a pagan
look, as though it were once the realm of ancient gods. I realized, even as
I thought these things, that I was skirting the outer edge of blasphemy.
But in the face of the terror of my abandonment here by the Indians,
nothing in the world looked the same to me and, likely, never would
again.
While I knew God was in His Heaven looking down on His earth,
I truly felt in that moment that He must be looking elsewhere, for the
silence of the place was both a temporal and spiritual vacuum. The wind
did not blow, and no bird sang in the trees.
I hurried along the perimeter of the lake, always in sight of the water
lest I somehow lose my way, even this close to my destination. I scanned
the horizon in vain for some plume of smoke that might signal human
habitation, but there was none.
And then, over the crest of one of those infernal mounds of rock
that seemed to burst forth out of the ground everywhere like monstrous
teeth, I saw it in the distance: the village wherein lay the Mission of St.
Barthélemy.
I had arrived at my destination at long last.
My first impression of the
humble Jesuit house in the village (the
residence building itself, containing the chapel for Mass and the refectory,
situated on a small hill) was that it seemed as fresh-built as the day upon
which the construction was completed by the tribe. It rose up out of a
clearing in the forest like some miraculous flower of civilization in the
midst of a wasteland of rock and pine.
Around it was a scattering of crude huts of bent poplar and bark
where the Indians of the village themselves obviously lived. What struck
me immediately was the absence of the cacophony that accompanied
life in their villages, the screaming children, the barking dogs, and the
general tumult. The eerie silence persisted here as it had in the forest
leading to it, but there was no smell of smoke in the air, and none of the
buildings looked like any flame had scorched them.
My joy at this was boundless for, at the very least, this meant that I
would have shelter tonight, barring any discovery of a gruesome nature
inside the buildings themselves.
As I drew close to the Jesuit house, I was met with a distressing
sight: the wooden cross that stood in front of the residence building
housing the chapel had been torn down. That is to say, while the pine
pole, which formed the primary pillar of the cross, was still firmly
entrenched in the earth, the crossbeams had been broken off, or pulled
down. I told myself that it had been caused by some storm of wind and
rain, for surely if the intent had been desecration, the entire cross would
have been demolished.
I climbed the small hill with trepidation and pushed open the door.
In the dimness of the chapel, nothing seemed immediately awry, though
dirt from the outside lay heavily on the floor, and even the altar. Here too,
there was no evidence of the symbol of Our Lord’s martyrdom, though
neither was there anything suggesting destruction or other mischief,
though again I was aware of that unnerving, tomb-like silence that lay
over the chapel like a pall.
Instinctively I sniffed the air, at once terrified that I would catch the
smell of death and relieved that I did not. The smell was one of general
airlessness—lifelessness, even.
I walked slowly through the two “rooms” of the house, only to find
more of the same.
In the section that obviously served as a kitchen, there was a crude
table with cutlery and plates laid out as though for supper, but they too
were covered with a dusting of dirt, as though those meant to dine had
simply walked out and not returned. In the dead hearth, a black iron pot
hung from a hook. In the pot, I observed, a spoon was encased in a dried
mulch of some sort of grain stew that had petrified, but even from the
pot there was no odour, for this meal had been cooked and abandoned a
very long time ago.
The trappers who had reported back to Samuel de Champlain had
not been wrong: St. Barthélemy was indeed entirely deserted. While
there was ample evidence of the settlement having been inhabited, there
was quite literally no trace of any living person in any part of it.
Feeling again that infernal chill, I stepped outside to retrieve some
wood from the stack I’d noticed near the entrance. On a table, I found a
tinder-box. I struck the steel and flint to some straw and built a fire in
the hearth to warm myself. In the crude cupboards I found several bottle
of wine, as well as stores of dry goods: beans, corn and the like.
I opened one of the bottles of wine and poured a healthy draught
into one of the tankards on the table, caring little for its cleanliness after
those many weeks on the water with the Indians. The taste of the wine
on my tongue was wonderful. I had drunk nothing but lake water since
we had left Trois-Rivières and my palette was starved for variance of
flavour.
Before sunset, I hiked back to the lake and drew water, both for
drinking and for cooking. It was a more arduous walk back carrying the
water, but I made haste and imagine an hour or less passed between my
departure and my return.
I boiled some of the beans on the hearth and ate plentifully for the
first time in many days.
After I had eaten, I washed the plate and went back inside, where I
found a crude bed made of a sheet of bark. Above it was a shelf. Clearly
this had been the abode of Father de Céligny, for there I found some
books and some clothes. His Bible and crucifix were not among the store.
I dragged the bark-bed close enough to the hearth that I would be warm
as I slept. I arranged the blankets on top of it and lay down, but not
before bolting the door from the inside. Without thinking, I removed my
own heavy crucifix for the sake of comfort.
The exhaustion of the past week on the water, coupled with my
ordeal of abandonment by the Indians, had exhausted me beyond
endurance and I fell deeply asleep before I could say any prayers for my
own safety and protection during the night.
And then, there was a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently awake. I
opened my eyes. In the glow of the embers in the fireplace I beheld the
figure of a pale old man bending over me, dressed entirely in the black
robes of the Jesuit.
My eyes widened in disbelief and for a moment I wondered if I was
beholding a ghost, merely one more in a long line of nightmarish sights
in this godforsaken Land.
The figure lovingly caressed my face. His fingers felt cold, as though
he had just come in from outside. He pulled back the blanket and lifted
my robe, exposing my leg where the child had bitten me. This he touched,
tracing the injury with his finger, gently, as though he were a surgeon
inspecting an infected wound. Then he leaned down and kissed me on
both cheeks, a chaste kiss of welcome.
“You have found us,” he said in French—the first proper French
I had heard since leaving Trois-Rivières. His voice was cultured, even
aristocratic, a far cry from the coarse guttural peasant French of the
voyageurs
and
hivernants
in Trois-Rivières. “Praise God. I had given up
hope that anyone would. I have been waiting for so very long.”
I struggled to sit up. Through eyes suddenly full of tears of joy and
relief, I said, “Father de Céligny? Can it really be you?” I grasped his
arms, finding them solid and real, not spectral. “I—we, all of us in TroisRivières—we feared you had been killed by the Hiroquois.”
“Yes, Father,” he replied. “I am de Céligny. I am not dead. Now, rest.
We will speak tomorrow. All is well. You are safe, here, from harm. Sleep,
now.”
“But the Hiroquois . . .”
My eyelids were heavy. I heard Father de Céligny’s voice as from
a great distance, urging me to sleep. I tried to open my eyes, and with
seemingly superhuman strength, I half-raised my lids to see him drawing
away into blackness as he stepped from my bedside. I saw the glint of
reflected firelight in his eyes, and then he was gone.
I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed of the young
girl in the lake with the torn throat.
In my dream, her eyes were not opaque and lightless; they sparkled
with bright black life. I looked to the Indians for succour, but found I was
alone in the canoe, floating on an endless ocean of ash-coloured water
with no land or horizon anywhere in sight. As I stared, trying desperately
to scream and being unable to, her throat healed itself before my eyes
until there was no mark or blemish anywhere on the wet bronze skin.
The dead girl swam up to the canoe, drifting snakelike through the
water, her wet black hair plastered to her head and face. She reached up
and grasped the gunwale of the canoe and began to rock it gently, and then with increasing violence. I believed she meant to swamp it and
drown me, pulling me beneath the surface to live there with her there for
a thousand years.
“You have brought terrible things here with you,” she said in a voice
full of cold dark water and rotted black pine needles. Her voice was the
voice of Askuwheteau, my Judas-abandoner. “You have brought death,
and worse.” Then she opened her mouth to smile, and I saw her terrible
teeth.
I woke myself with the sound of my own screams.
In the weak daylight that
crept through the windows and under the doors
of that haunted place, I wondered if I had only dreamed the appearance
of Father de Céligny, for the door was still crudely barred from the
inside, just as I had left it before falling asleep. Otherwise, the room was
undisturbed. The windows were likewise barred and there were no tracks
in any direction upon the floor other than my own. From outside came
the sound of the trees shuddering with rain.
I touched the side of my face. I could still feel the imprint of the
priest’s cold fingers on my cheek. If that was a dream, I told myself, it had
been a most vivid and realistic one. Were dreams even dreams in this evil
place, where the legends spoke of the dead walking in the forest, going
about as they had when they were living? Or were they auguries, visions,
or portents? I thought of my dream of the smiling dead girl in the water
and I shuddered.
After a Spartan breakfast and an hour of prayer, I set out to find
Father de Céligny, if only to prove to myself that I hadn’t been dreaming.
While there was no evidence of him anywhere in the building, I believed
in my heart that he was real and that I had not been dreaming. The
puzzle of the door barred from the inside was one I would consider later,
I told myself. So eager was I to believe I was not the only living soul in
St. Barthélemy, I was prepared to overlook even the evidence of my own
senses.
But if he were nowhere in the buildings, he must be nearby, perhaps
in some secondary domicile, or perhaps dwelling among the Indians
away from the village itself, however unlikely that seemed. I knew, for
instance, that the Indians liked to visit our homes in the settlements,
that they were attracted to objects of mystery to them, our crucifixes, our
books, our writing instruments, and our clocks. But I had not seen them even in their own houses here, so why would they be elsewhere in the
forest?