Order of Good Cheer (33 page)

Andy heard himself say, “Sorry about your mom.” He was determined not to say, How was your flight? He would not say that, not in a million silences.

“You know, it feels like she's given me a gift,” Laura said softly, after a pause, and it sounded a bit rehearsed.

She looked at him quickly and smiled. Other travellers milled about them in the sterile room, waiting for luggage to come down the chute. Laura appeared nervous in a wary rather than vulnerable way, the way he'd hoped for. Her nervousness spoke
of, What is Andy Winslow going to ask? What is he going to ask, and when's he going to ask it?

“So,” said Laura Schultz, “it's good to see you.”

“We both look
great,”
Andy said back.

Her glance up held his eye and joined him in his humour a little, but the Laura he knew hadn't arrived, and he was still waiting for her.

TONIGHT, ALL IS
a frightened boat, drifting backwards.

Samuel senses he is not alone in this unwanted clarity of mind. Even now, as his feet break virgin snow outside the walls, the sky so close with cloud and starless and black that he needs must keep one hand on the rough logs to guide his way, even in this quiet can he sense the minds and the open eyes of other sleepless men still in their beds yet as awake as he. This night-mind seems a mind more awake than that of day. Yet these other wakeful men — like his, their thoughts entangled willy-nilly yet cutting as razors — are more in need of sleep in this time than ever, what with the plague lurking at their innermost defences. They have six gravely ill for certain. Several more, their state still in question, share the same furtive eyes: either they are sick and not admitting it, or not sick but convinced they are. It is exceeding strange how many will search deeply in themselves for sign of sickness, and therefore find it, but not fall as truly ill.

Why then is he walking tonight? One thing Samuel has learned is that the weak and the worn do invite the scurve more eagerly than the healthy. And what one could use most, in such a winter as this, is the healthful long sleep of the bear. So why then is he, why are any of them, so wakeful? What robs their sleep? Perhaps the Night Daemon walks hand in hand with this
plague, helping its arrival. Or perhaps it is one of his conniving brothers, the Lunatic. It is not encouraging to envision the Beast with a family.

He knows he should not have favourites amongst the stricken common men, but of course he worries most for Lucien. And, he won't deny it, with some guilt. Indeed, guilt that owns both the heft and the colour of gunmetal.

Clouds part and the half-moon appears, more than sufficient to light the snow and his way. Snow is silver-blue. Stumps are black. A simple landscape. In no more than fifty paces Samuel stops at the forest edge. The moonlight does not penetrate in there. He could go in, or walk the perimeter of their cleared land. He knows not what he'll do. It takes all his courage just to succumb to this wakefulness, rise from a warm bed and go walking alone in the dark. He, a man who sleeps soundly through a tempestuous sea, who admires the shrillest tunes of wind in rigging and smiles at the shocked creaking of oak, who navigates the rocks, river mouths, and tidal chaos known only to local savages. What are the dangers of a small walk on New French land? The bears run at the merest breath of a man, and in any case they sleep. Wolves, which have been heard piping from their lofty slope, engorge come winter on the snowbound moose and deer. Lions may exist, but so far they remain a rumour. In other words, Nature offers no impediment to a midnight walk. A wayward savage, starving or enraptured with hate, might offer some cause for staying within walls, but there must be few of these kind around, thanks be to those same weakened moose and to the steady guidance of Membertou.

He can admit it only to himself, but his fear caused him to place around his bare neck, right upon the skin so he can feel it sharply, the necklace of black bird bills he fashioned over the course of several months and many bad suppers. Truly, as he
has overheard, in their curvature they do resemble a poor man's idea of eagle talons; and the design does travel any way it wishes; still, he grew fond of it in the making. And it seems that, lacking any particular female friend back in France, or indeed even here, to whom he might give it — it seems he has given it to himself. He has worn it more than once now, and though it feels like comedy, it does give him courage. The fearlessness of a fool! All savages make their own talismans, or are given them, and could it be that they all feel strength in them?

He skirts the edge of trees, sometimes lightly touching these trunks that are the forest's fence. If he can stay his thoughts — here, outside, tonight, is beautiful. The windless silence is purer than the crystal southern sea. He hears his breathing, and his small steps. His mind widens irresistibly beyond the confines of his skull. It feels like health itself to gain some distance from men's walls, which hold within their ragged snores, smells, and idiots' carnival of dreams. Last winter it was even worse in this regard — all too clearly can he hear the ghastly moaners. Most of those stricken, and no man knows why, chose the night to become vocal. Save for voluptuous breathing, they would lie silent through all the daylight hours and then come darkness their moans began, and gathered until the sickroom was so deep with moans that two healthy men trying to communicate between themselves would need raise their voices to be heard. Samuel doesn't think he is exaggerating this memory. Why would he? But the thunder of moaning each night caused the other men some distress, rupturing as it did their healthy sleep, and threatening weakness upon them too and then perhaps, indeed, the scurve itself. Were it not for the chance that some stricken do find their way back to health, Samuel doesn't doubt that the moaners would have been popularly dispatched with a midnight club. And he has even less doubt that, of anyone, it's
the moaners themselves who most want the silence that comes with death — which, to the dying, must beckon like the longest, blackest, and purest of nights.

Samuel pauses and asks forgiveness of God for not instantly assuming Heaven for his men. It seems that these late hours fixed him with the bugging eyes that see only bleakly, and only inward.

He has reached the slight promontory on the north slope of their cleared land, and the rise is enough to show him their inner courtyard from above. He fancies he can hear snoring, but this is impossible. The courtyard is a square of bright white, scored with darker pathways indicating their daily industry. Indeed it is strange to see the compound so: a square of walls enclosing all the labours, dreams, and delusions of near fifty men, and making all of it look easily held, and small.

Though impossible because of the distance, what tries to catch his eye is the silver sovereign their Sieur had his boy attach to the post by pounding it through with a square nail, piercing it just above King Henri's hairpiece. Poutrincourt, who'd had more wine that night than was his habit, mounted the coin there after the ceremonies of savage baptismal, and his logic escaped Samuel then as it continues to escape him now. For he'd proudly announced, speaking to the French and not the savages, and jabbing at the coin, “And now in this they can see the visage of their King!” Except that the savages of New France had already been made subjects of the King, whether knowing it or not, and becoming Christians had changed their state in this regard not at all. No, if they had a new status, and a new ruler to be reminded of, it would have made some more sense to install on the post the face of Jesus! But the coin remains glinting there still, and Samuel doesn't know but that it isn't a cruel temptation to the Mi'qmah themselves, for they know well what
a silver coin means, and it would take little more than a good metal blade and ten heartbeats of privacy to pry it from the post. Still, what would they do, here, with a silver coin? They could not trade it back! Even if they took it by canoe to be traded many leagues from here, word would follow that it was Poutrincourt's coin, and its ownership temporary, and injurious in the end.

Samuel wonders if maybe Poutrincourt's logic was to instill a reminder and a fear of the King in
all
of them. For the common spirit has slumped, and this in itself is, according to the letter of the law, a form of rebellion. So does King Henri's profile inspire?

No. Indeed it is not difficult for Samuel to envision one of their own men coming out in a night like this one and taking the coin for himself, even prying it with his teeth if needs be, and securing it in some nether place until he is safely home in St-Malo. Should that day ever come.

But again taking advantage of the moon to gaze into what distance makes itself available — the two mountains, the gut of sea between them, the span of west beyond — Samuel has the notion that they will never live here. It is a notion he has had before, and it is daunting in its clarity. Sometimes he has it at sea, approaching a landform, scanning it for habitability. From such a vantage, nine times out of ten there arises the certain sense that no French will occupy the shore he now holds in his eyeglass. No French grandchildren will play amongst those rocks, that slope of pine. Tonight, similarly, the sweep of moonlight lets his eyes gaze west and he has the feeling again that, though they might occupy these lands, they will never truly live here, however far west they may go. They — French or English — would never rest, at home on these slopes or plains. He sees that they will explore farther and farther inland, denuding the place of fur, and somewhat of forest, as they go, but that, gaining as
much western land as is possible, all the way to the next sea, they will look about them in anxiety, and always wonder about home. Some say that France was once all under forest. That is to say, it looked just like these dark, treed lands they gaze fearfully into here. One wonders if, when similarly surrounded by forest, their forebears also could not sleep.

LUCIEN HAS LITTLE
to do but stare at the lantern's flame, just out of arm's reach. They have trimmed the wick to almost nothing, so the flame is as weak as he is himself, and urine-coloured. He feels a kinship with the dirty little light.

He has heard he is the seventh. The first, Gascon, died, as has the second, Vermoulu the priest. A single cannon shot marked both funerals. Though the earth is too hard for burial. Lucien has heard that Poutrincourt's boy will be next. He has heard nothing about any one of them growing better.

He knows only that he is the seventh. Men come and stand over him as if he cannot hear and they say, “There, the seventh of us.” In their voices he hears less of pity for him than fear for themselves.

Lucien was astonished that the scurve took hold of him so quickly. However, even his astonishment then became sluggish, for that is the nature of the disease. Lucien has hardly the vigour to be properly appalled at what, it seems, his body has chosen for itself.

He does think it began by entering his spirit on the long night of the natives' conversion. Following that affair there was the long walk in the snow with Ndene, and their making love, and Lucien walking back alone, tired and, for some reason, in low humour. Then arriving at the open gate, to be confronted
by Samuel Champlain, no longer his democratic friend and ally, but a monster.

Champlain's face had spoken of surprise; that is, he was not lying in wait but merely passing near. It was as if, having been surprised by Lucien, he now had to respond, and he responded with an anger that Lucien could not help but make his own and carry during his entire walk. The words would not leave his ears: “Go back out and walk off your bestial heat for one hour more.
Two
hours more.”

Lucien had thought the mapmaker a reasonable man, and also a friend. He does not know which of the two betrayals gives him more pain.

But so he had gone out, and walked two hours more. He walked to Ndene's encampment, saw their fire-smoke rising hardly at all, mere wisps as they weakened, untended. He had the queer suspicion she knew he was without, but because he knew this might just be his hope, and conceit, he did not wake her. And then he walked back. He felt foul, cold and ghostlike. He had no heat, none whatsoever, bestial or otherwise, to walk off. He was cold to the bone the entire time, and of spirit colder still, for Ndene was not happy he had left her, and neither Champlain, Poutrincourt, the King of France, nor God was happy he had gone to her at all. He was angered by a question that would not leave him: why weren't all the men doing as he was, that is, loving, if love presented itself? Was love not the most natural course a man could take? Didn't God grace a man with the heartiest urge to know a woman and explore her, and in the end plant his seed? Any men who would deny this are angry at themselves, and over-married to philosophy. Lucien hoped it wasn't pride telling him that, of all the men, he alone was respecting his time here.

Unfortunately, the scowling thoughts that grew in him while walking were not themselves a source of heat either. They
were only right and logical and all told, they amounted less to anger than a frowning wonder at the opacity of his brothers. Perhaps he could ask Monsieur Champlain his thoughts on this night. The mapmaker had till then seemed reasonable, had seemed less bound by . . . certain maps. And, saddest, he had had in his eye the welcoming light of friendship, not too tainted by his rank.

No. How would such a topic be broached? This thing would never be spoken of.

Finally, l'Habitation came to view. Lucien leaned upon and spoke lightly to the gate, a growling dog and sleepy sentry let him in, he strode cold and empty through the quiet compound and fell into a cold bed that seemed to stay cold. And then he was astonished — though somehow not surprised — to wake in the morning with an ache to his legs that felt like the Devil himself had made his new home there. By evening, confirming his ailment, here was this loose flesh in his mouth and some blood in his spit.