Blood Brothers in Louisbourg (17 page)

Epilogue

T
he deer stood alone in the clearing, a buck with an imposing set of antlers. He sniffed the air, suspicious of something. Two-feathers reached for an arrow. Behind him, five little heads crouched. Having practised invisibility in the fortress, they were learning invisibility in the woods.

“Now,” whispered Two-feathers, “we apologize to the deer and thank him for giving us his life.”

The children nodded in agreement. Then one of them said, “But he hasn't given us his life yet. Why are we thanking him for it already?”

“Because he is going to,” whispered Two-feathers.

“How do you know?” asked the child.

“Because I am going to shoot him now.”

But when Two-feathers looked up, the buck was gone. It took two more hours to track him again. This time the children agreed not to say anything but to make their prayers silently in their heads. As they furrowed their brows and concentrated hard, Two-feathers fitted his arrow and let it fly. The arrow pierced the front left flank of the buck and he dropped to his knees. A second arrow immediately followed and brought the buck down. Two-feathers shot a third into the neck. Too many times he had seen a fallen deer rise to its feet and bolt. Running over, he stabbed the heart to make certain the suffering was over. Then he dropped his head in gratitude. The children came and admired the deer.

“He is so beautiful.”

“It is sad that he had to die.”

“It is not sad,” said Two-feathers. “We all die. Then we live as spirits. Then we are always happy. So it is not sad to die.”

“Tell us more about the spirits,” said the children.

“Tonight, while we eat our supper I will begin to tell you about them.”

He hung the buck from a tree and let the children watch as he skinned it. The hide, he explained, would make very comfortable clothing for the fall. They would all need some. He also took the antlers and pieces of bone for making needles and various other tools. He cut as much meat as he felt they could eat, and some to carry, then burned the carcass in a fire, intending to place the bones in the river the next morning. The children watched everything with fascination.

When they returned to their teepee it was dark. The children huddled together in the bearskin as Two-feathers began to roast their supper over the fire. The boy with the black case opened it and pulled out a smooth wooden instrument with strings. He also took out a stick tied with horsehair. Two-feathers watched curiously as the boy twisted one end of the stick and fitted the instrument between his chin and shoulder. He raised his arm and laid the stick across the strings. Tapping his foot three or four times, he slipped the stick back and forth and the instrument began to sing. Two-feathers stood up. He was amazed. This was the music he had heard trading parties and soldiers play in the woods. It was wonderful. On and on the boy played, with a skill that impressed Two-feathers
greatly. The children smiled and sang along, and eventually they got up and danced.

“What is it called?” Two-feathers asked them.

“A fiddle,” said the children.

“How do you play it?”

The boy handed the fiddle to Two-feathers and showed him how to hold it and how to draw the bow across the strings. But the sound he produced was weak and scratchy. The children laughed. Two-feathers smiled and handed the instrument back. “I will hunt,” he said to the boy, “and you will play. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said the boy.

After they ate, the children sat around the fire and listened as Two-feathers explained how all of the animals and plants had spirits. Even the rivers had spirits, he said, and the wind and the rain. There were spirits everywhere, all of the time. They were always there and you could talk to them. But you had to learn to be very, very quiet if you wanted to hear them talking back. There were many things that he could teach them himself, such as how to hunt and cook, how to sew and fashion baskets and canoes, how to build shelters and survive in the winter. But there were many more things that only the spirits could teach them, and for that they would have to learn to listen, each in his or her own way.

The children listened carefully because Two-feathers only spoke when he had something interesting to say. But one question would always lead to another. There was one thing in particular the children wanted to know. The oldest put it into words.

“Two-feathers, if we are not French, and we are not Mi'kmaq, then who are we?”

Two-feathers took a stick out of the fire and pointed to two stars in the sky. “We are some of both,” he said, “and we are neither.” Then he pointed to a third star burning brightly. “We are something new.”

The End

Acknowledgements

I
have received so much support and good advice on the writing of this book from family and friends. In particular I want to acknowledge my mother, Ellen; my daughter, Julia; and sons, Peter and Thomas. I also want to mention Lydia Race, who has been such an enthusiastic reader of the story; and greatest friends, Chris, Natasha and Chiara, who put a smile on everything. I would like to acknowledge my friends, Diana, Maria and Sammy; Dale and Jake; Hugh; my dear Zaan; and my darling Leila (and Fritzi). Mike Hunter at CBU has given terrific guidance, and I am indebted to the sharp eye and critical pen of Kate Kennedy.

An Acadian-Mi'kmaw Background

T
en generations ago, my ancestor, Jean Roy du Laliberté, sailed from St. Malo, France, to the land that would eventually become Nova Scotia. At Cap-Sable, the most southwestern tip of the peninsula, he married Marie (Christine) Aubois (Dubois), a woman of Maliseet blood, or, as she is listed in the historical record, “Amérindienne.” Their marriage was registered on the 3rd of March, 1706. They were no spring chickens; he was fifty-five and she was forty-one. In fact, Marie had borne nine children by then, though one of them had died. It was common for a marriage to be registered years after it actually took place. It was also common for a French soldier to take a wife from the Mi'kmaq, or neighboring Maliseet people. It gave them considerable advantage in the New World.

It is difficult to imagine any physical likeness to Jean or Marie after so many generations – the blood has been thinned by some fiercely individualistic Scottish and Irish farmers – yet the heritage is there; the name is there. If you go back a generation or two in family photos, you see Métis blood in the faces there.

It seems that the older we get the more interest we take in people who came before us – they walked the same soil, climbed the same hills, trekked through the same woods and stared at the ocean from the same beaches. Did they ever wonder about us, as we might wonder about those who will come after us? Perhaps they did from time to time, though they must have been preoccupied with the business of survival, and they must have been very tough because this was a rugged place before there were roads and railways, electricity and modern medicine. Now, we have the leisure to look back and study them, write about them, dramatize them – yet behind the dramas that we create are individuals who really stood here in this place and made a claim upon it. The longer one contemplates this, the more remarkable it becomes.

My mother's people were Scottish and Irish. Her paternal ancestors made the trip from Scotland in the 1780s aboard the
Hector
, a rather small, fat, aged sailing ship that has been replicated and sits in the water as a museum in Pictou Harbour, Nova Scotia. My mother's people –staunch Catholics – settled in the Protestant community of Pictou, where they adopted the Protestant faith just long enough to get the wherewithal to move to Cape Breton, reclaiming their Catholicism and setting roots. My grandfather, Joe (Big Joe) MacDonald, heralds from Troy, Cape Breton.

In my research for this novel I came upon an interesting item in J. S. McLennan's celebrated book
Louisbourg: From its Foundations to its Fall
. Among the ships McLennan lists as having supported the 1745 siege of Louisbourg is the
Hector
. She was a much younger ship then. A generation after helping defeat the French and allies – my father's ancestors – she would carry my mother's people to the same land. This is exactly the kind of coincidental historical fact that tweaks my imagination. Come to think of it, there's probably a whole novel in that.

P.R.

About the Author

P
hilip Roy was born and raised in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He studied music with Sister Rodriquez Steele and Professor James Hargreaves and aspired to a career as a pianist. After graduating from high school, he left Antigonish to work and travel. As a young man, he returned to the study of piano with Oriole Aitchison in Halifax, where he also began composing music. After getting married, Philip moved to Ontario and devoted his time to raising his children, later returning to school and degrees in history at University of Waterloo and McMaster University. Master's degrees in hand, he moved to the island of Saipan in Micronesia, where he taught English and history in a high school for two years. Following that, he returned to Canada and settled for a time in Ontario, teaching piano.

The lure of his home province eventually brought Philip back to Nova Scotia, where he began writing young adult novels and stories for children. In 2008, his first novel,
Submarine Outlaw
, was published by Ronsdale Press of Vancouver. The fifth book in the series,
Outlaw in India
, will be released at the same time as
Blood Brothers in Louisbourg
. Philip currently lives in Halifax, where he continues to write novels and compose music.