Bride of New France (28 page)

Each time Laure descended the congregation stairs to meet with Mathurin, he had been polite enough, perhaps overly so. He tells her that his cabin is fully constructed and is larger and sturdier than the houses of most settlers. A completed cabin is the most important thing the women look for in a husband. The two girls who had returned to the congregation seeking annulments had discovered that they would be sleeping in tents in the woods because their new husbands had not yet constructed their cabins. Given Laure’s options, marrying Mathurin made the most sense. Once they have a few children, there is a chance that he will leave Laure to her own devices. She might still have the opportunity to become a seamstress.

Laure wears Mireille’s gown on her wedding day. It is still stained with Deskaheh’s blood, although she has since fixed the seam of the bodice where it tore when he pushed her to the ground. Laure is happy to see that after several months of eating the congregation’s more ample food, the dress now fits her better. She even had to let out a few inches to accommodate her new shape. Since it is her wedding day, Laure decides to pin her hair loosely on her head. She leaves the alcove and
the now empty dormitory and walks down to the parlour. The sisters who helped her change follow Laure downstairs.

It looks like Mathurin has also tried to dress impressively for the occasion. He has traded his forest breeches for a cleaner pair and has on a coat trimmed with rabbit fur, although it looks tatty and a little rotted. His hair has been greased back with animal fat, giving prominence to his bright cheeks. He appears to be sweating despite the cold.

Ville-Marie is already colder in October than Paris in January. The sisters are concerned that Laure won’t have enough time to adjust to her new household tasks before the hardest months of winter hit the colony. Mathurin has brought with him a list of his belongings, written up by the notary. Laure’s coffer contains all that she owns. One of the hired boys of the congregation carries it down for the ceremony.

Mathurin is grinning at her. Seeing her bridegroom, Laure remembers the words from the Intendant’s speech on her first day in the colony. He had said that the newly arrived women would be like biblical helpmates to the colony’s men. The work ahead of them here was far more than was expected of wives in Old France. Laure had only half listened at the time, concerned as she had been about Madeleine and exhausted from the months-long journey, but now the words return to her. Laure managed to ward off men on the ship and suitors who came to the house only to finally settle for Mathurin. She thinks of the girls who requested annulments after their first marriages, trying a second time in hopes of a better match. But Laure has heard that some of these second attempts end up worse than the first. She is resigned to a life with Mathurin. After all, what other hope is there for her now that she has left Paris and her companion and best friend has died?

The notary arrives with the legal documents and to list the couple’s goods. Along with the witnesses, the newly married pair signs the marriage contract. Mathurin makes his mark, a jagged cross, on the document that contains the date and place of their union as well as the places of their birth and the names of his parents. Laure is understood to be an orphan. She doesn’t bother to correct them. The ceremony takes only a few minutes, and then they move on to the chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu on rue Saint-Paul for the Mass.

Afterwards, they return to the congregation house. Mathurin tells her that he has brought a cart in which to carry her to his cabin. He has in mind that he will pull her through the branches and fallen leaves of the forest path all the way to Pointe-aux-Trembles, the settlement where he has built his cabin on the land given to him by the King.

Laure sees that Deskaheh is standing by the entrance to the congregation. Does he know she has been married today? Word must travel quickly throughout the settlement. Deskaheh is wearing a fur jacket and the pants of a French man. He looks first at Laure, then at Mathurin. Laure can detect a hint of mockery in the tilt of Deskaheh’s head.

Mathurin frowns at the way this Savage is looking at his new wife. Laure wonders if Mathurin recognizes Deskaheh from Madeleine’s funeral. And if Deskaheh remembers being punched by Mathurin, what must he think to see them together now? Although Deskaheh is ugly, he is less so than the man she has just married. Perhaps somewhere deep in the forest he has a home that is more comfortable than the one she is being taken to. And he might not carry her to it in a ridiculous cart like a chicken. These thoughts are of little use, though, as no French woman has ever married a Savage.

Her new husband has stopped fidgeting with the cart’s wheel and is now standing next to it waiting for Laure to get inside.

“Didn’t I tell you about the Savages? How dangerous they are? Even the ones that seem friendly can’t be trusted.” Mathurin waves his hand at Deskaheh as if he is a pesky dog. “That one was captured too late by the Algonquins. He doesn’t know where he belongs. Those are the most dangerous ones.”

Laure remains quiet as they set off on the jostling ride to Pointe-aux-Trembles. She wonders how far the forest extends ahead of them.

Before long she tires of Mathurin’s grunting and panting as he struggles to pull the cart over the uneven terrain. At this rate they won’t arrive at their destination before nightfall. She orders him to stop and clambers out. She comes up beside her new husband and walks with him for the rest of the journey. She even helps him push the cart over the worst stretches of the path.

After they have been walking for a few hours, Laure feels as if her toes and fingertips are on fire. Mathurin drops the cart and takes her fingers in his hands. They are so red, she thinks they will start to bleed. He releases her hand and tells her that she is fine so long as her fingertips don’t turn white. But he says it isn’t cold enough yet for that. Laure can’t imagine colder weather, but Mathurin says the worst of it will come in January and February. He says she will get used to the winters in Canada. When all things are considered, this is a healthier place to live than Old France. The distances between settlements and the air that is frozen for half the year prevent diseases from spreading. Not to mention that she must be eating better by the looks of things. She ignores this comment.

The healthy air is turning Laure’s lungs to ice much like the puddles they pass that are beginning to freeze over.

“This is nothing. Wait until you see how high the snow piles up in the winter.” Mathurin sticks his toe in one of the puddles, cracking the thin layer of ice over the mud. “This path will be covered in it. We’ll have to send men to Ville-Marie to get supplies before the bad weather comes.”

Laure gazes through the bare trees. She feels her mind looking for something she knows isn’t there. A street in Paris, maybe. The bustling river road from the hospital into the city.

She doesn’t speak the whole afternoon except to ask questions about the cold, about how much farther they still have to go. Mathurin talks non-stop.

Each time they come across a new type of tree, he points it out to her. He caresses the thick bark of the oaks and maples with his stout fingers. As the afternoon wears, on they begin to see the thin trunks of aspens along the trail. The new settlement has been named after this tree. Laure thinks they look like spears sprouting from the forest floor. Mathurin tells her that in the summer, the wind from the river makes the aspens come to life, that from spring to fall they will hear nothing but the leaves shimmering around them. They are silent only on the hottest days of summer.

“It will take us ten years to become self-sufficient,” he says and laughs.

Laure’s mind tries to move through ten years with this man, but sees only trees and snow. Ten years ago Laure was standing in the city with her father singing country songs for coins. She hadn’t yet been taken by archers to the Salpêtrière, she hadn’t learned to sew and make lace and chant prayers in Latin, nor had she met Madeleine. Ten years ago Mireille Langlois was still
alive, living in a comfortable home with her father; Madeleine was hiding under the table while her mother was a prostitute to the sailors at La Rochelle; Madame d’Aulnay was still alive. “Ten years is a very long time,” Laure says.

Mathurin continues talking, telling Laure about the plans to build a church at Pointe-aux-Trembles. It will be the first stone building of the settlement. His energy seems to increase as he tells her about the men who travel out west for furs. These are the other Carignan-Salières soldiers who have been granted plots of land in Pointe-aux-Trembles. They leave their wives for the winter. He says they are only trading furs until they have cleared enough land for farming.

“For the next ten years, you mean?” Laure asks.

Mathurin talks on and on. Laure can tell this is a great day for him. He has found a wife to make his forest life a little easier. While her new husband is getting excited about the future, Laure is searching the frozen landscape for signs of the past. But there is no trace of her existence along this trail. Once again, she is moving away from the familiar contours of her life.

By the time they reach the settlement, it is dusk. Across the river from Pointe-aux-Trembles, two rounded mountains block the view of the horizon. The charred remains of trees surround the settlers’ cabins. Laure can smell the smoke of the chimneys. The whole scene is grey and squalid, as if an army has just passed through this stretch of the forest. Laure is hungry enough to eat whatever is available. But first Mathurin must show her his cabin among the smoking huts.

Mathurin explains that they are still waiting for a seigneurial home to be built in Pointe-aux-Trembles and that next summer they will construct the windmill. For now the
habitants
, as the residents are called, must pay their rents in Ville-Marie. On the Fête Saint-Martin on the eleventh of November, each
habitant
must bring to the seigneurial domain a bushel of French wheat, two live capons, and four deniers in money. Laure wonders how they will come up with this payment, but Mathurin assures her that this year they don’t have to pay as there hasn’t been much of a harvest. He is certain that next year, if they get started early in the spring, they will produce more.

“The King will take care of us this year, my wife.”

Laure has less faith than her new husband in the generosity of the King.

When they arrive outside Mathurin’s cabin, a priest is waiting to greet them. He has been staying with another family, the Tardifs, awaiting the arrival of the new couple so he can bless their conjugal bed. The cabin is much smaller than Laure expected. The wooden boards used to make it are rougher even than the servants’ quarters at the Salpêtrière. The house Mathurin built over the summer is just an extension of the trees he has talked about all afternoon. It is a forest hut.

There is only one room inside the cabin where Mathurin has been living alone. In one corner, there are several logs, a rude attempt at a dining table and chairs, made of the same wood as the walls. In the other corner is a bed. It is a proper
lit-cabane
, and Mathurin is proud of its construction. In the centre of the cabin is an open firepit. Laure smells smoke, and
her eyes burn, even though the fire is not lit and the cabin is as cold as outside. Otherwise, the room smells of sour leather and rotten meat. Mathurin has hung animal pelts from various hooks on the wall. More are piled on the dirt floor near the door.