River City (35 page)
The next full raid also came at dawn. Dollard repeated the phrase that had energized them and become their secret battle cry.
“We’ll die with our hair on!” he shouted, as the next fight commenced.
The other riflemen shouted back, “Hair on!”
The refrain rang along the ramparts.
“Hair on!”
“We’ll die with our hair on!”
They did, that day—all but one. In the dawn’s false light, the attack was ferocious and sustained and unrelenting. Iroquois died in numbers, but the soldiers could not load their rifles quickly enough, and the fort was overrun. Iroquois vaulting the ramparts impaled themselves on the makeshift spears, but the next men to come over landed safely upon their bodies, and with their flailing tomahawks and slashing knives and superior numbers, they battled the twelve remaining French and four Huron, and one by one the sixteen fell.
Adam Dollard des Ormeaux was not the last to die, but he fought as fiercely as any, his sword ripping through the flesh of the Iroquois around him even as his hunting knife repelled the hands and knives of others. He died with his hair intact, a tomahawk shattering his breastbone and blasting his heart apart. Only after he fell was his hair removed by the Iroquois he had wounded.
The youngest among them hid amid a clutch of boulders and stabbed at the hands reaching in to grab him. Finally, an Indian stuck a rifle into his cubbyhole and shot him through the rectum. Wriggling in his great torment, he was pulled from his lair and was the only one among them to be scalped alive, the knife itching across the top of his head, his spirit rising in the torment of his ordeal, before he fell silent, his skull cracked open by a tomahawk, the last to die.
As light came up over the trees, Iroquois whooped and cried out in the glory of their victory, yet only for a few moments. Someone noticed the eyes and expression of Nomotigneega. He was looking around at the Iroquois dead, lumped like driftwood and castaway boulders upon the beach. A stunning array of Iroquois lay dead, including Donaagatai, a skilled fighter who had commenced the battle as the war chief and had been one of the most promising young leaders. Inside the fort, Iroquois formed a floor of dead, their lives lost in hand-to-hand combat. Everyone still alive looked around them and went quiet. Each man saw the same sight. So many of their brothers dead, or beseeching to be killed, delivered from their agonies. Even those who remained standing began to notice, as the fury of war eased in their bloodstreams, that they also bled.
The Iroquois gazed around the pile of rocks and trees that had formed the fort. The white men who lay dead were so few. They looked like sleeping adolescents, but with bloodied heads. The chief kept looking and looking, trying to understand this. He could not believe that he could count only sixteen. Sixteen young men and four Huron had killed scores of warriors.
Inland, they found a cavern they could hurl their dead down. They covered the grave with stones and tree limbs to protect the bodies from the humiliation of animals. They let the French lie where they had fallen, for the carrion. Then they paddled on and veered onto a tributary south, homeward bound, for they’d done enough fighting for a season.
The sun rose and set and rose again, and Groseilliers and Radisson and their substantial party of
coureurs de bois
and Indians passed by. They came across the dead Frenchmen. They did not see the masses of Indian dead, but noticed the blood upon the stones. They did not know what the lads had been doing in that place, what they could have been thinking.
“Idiots,” Radisson murmured.
“Maybe,” Des Gros acknowledged. “But if they weren’t lying here, dead, we’d be fighting Iroquois now. We’d be lying here dead soon enough.”
They had to move on as a delay could imperil their lives. A party from Ville-Marie could be sent back later, with priests, to either bury the dead or transport the bodies home to the colony. They had no room in their canoes for brave dead young men and no time to bury them. Instead, they adjusted the bodies into respectful rows upon the ground and covered their heads to preserve their dignity awhile.
Over their bodies, Groseilliers would stammer a prayer remembered from his days as a Jesuit servant.
Radisson overturned the body of Adam Dollard des Ormeaux to drag it away. He discovered, under the lad’s belly, the Cartier Dagger. He recognized it, for he had seen it in the hands of Maisonneuve, though he had never been allowed to touch the artifact. He wondered what circumstance had brought the knife here, if these few weren’t merely thieves. But no, they had fought too hard to be thieves. They had not been hacked up, a sign of their vanquishers’ respect. He tucked the knife inside his deerskin jacket and dragged the fallen hero off.
The contingent of one hundred canoes then completed its portage and paddled safely on towards Fort Perilous.
Farther away, a runner located his Iroquois friends on the Richelieu River. He told of a great battle that would still be raging. During his trip, the fight had only grown in the mind of the runner, and the story he told was one of dreadful conditions and stark surprise. Hearing these facts, the chief decided to countermand the attack on Montreal, for he feared that their foray had been revealed, that an ambush awaited him as well, and he returned his forces to Lake Champlain.
Through misfortune, then accident, folly and bravery, the colony once again was spared.
Passing by Ville-Marie, the
coureurs de bois
were celebrated for their return and for the astonishing array of furs they were carrying. Then they told their sad news. Missing the young soldiers, the colonists had prepared themselves for such a report, yet they were much aggrieved. Maisonneuve pressed Radisson to tell him what he had seen, and the young man repeatedly told a tale of courage and much blood upon the stones. The Iroquois, Groseilliers had emphasized, were no longer on the river, and for that he believed they had the dead Frenchmen to thank.
Radisson kept the Cartier Dagger to himself. He intended to return it, but only if he and his partner were properly paid for their furs. If they were robbed blind, like the last time, he would keep the knife as his reward.
At Quebec, the sounds of one hundred cannon greeted the arrival of the hundred canoes, a grand sight. The people cheered, and a ship on the verge of returning empty to France delayed its departure. The sale in furs was brisk, and the woodsmen expected a handsome payout. They were enjoying a well-deserved beer in a local tavern, waiting for the final negotiation, when the new governor arrived with armed guards and asked to speak to Groseilliers.
Pierre de Voyer d’Argenson congratulated him on his success, and spoke of the significant contribution he’d made to New France.
“Thank you, Your Excellency.”
“Nevertheless, Groseilliers, you did not seek permission to embark upon this expedition. You were trapping without a license. Sir, you are under arrest.”
Radisson had to be restrained by friends as his partner was dragged off. After the shock, he was less surprised when he learned that his furs had been seized and his compensation established as a pittance. The moment Des Gros was released months later, the two men commenced plotting their next expedition. Within the plan, they embedded the seeds of their revenge.
As Maisonneuve journeyed to a meeting with the bishop of Quebec, Laval, ostensibly to be introduced to the newly arrived lieutenant-governor of New France, the Marquis de Tracy, he felt trepidatious. The politics had changed once more, as New France had become a royal province. The news had been welcomed, for now the full participation of the mother country would come to the aid of the struggling communities. This required a further consolidation of power, and the bishop seemed to be holding sway over the new men in charge. Yet Laval and the others were being persistently thwarted in their ambition by the popularity and power of Maisonneuve. Those at Ville-Marie seemed to rule themselves with a sense of divine autonomy, as though to inflict a decision upon them demanded the consent of Maisonneuve, the pope, the king and God Himself. The trinity formed by the pope, the king, and God he could do nothing about, but Maisonneuve was a problem Bishop Laval might presume to master, and now he believed he had found the occasion.
Laval spoke to him over brandy. “In 1652, you travelled back to France.”
Maisonneuve nodded, remembering those days. The conversation with the new authority was going well, he thought. The new man, Tracy, was keen to understand the colony’s history. Laval and Maisonneuve were filling him in. “Desperate years. We needed fresh and able recruits or we might have succumbed.”
“An ambitious undertaking. How did you finance that journey, I wonder?” Laval inquired.
An innocent question. “More than a dozen years ago now, Your Excellency.”
“Ah,” the bishop remarked, “may I refresh your brandy?”
Maisonneuve smiled, although he was suddenly feeling leery. His senses were alert as he held out his glass for a refill.
After he had poured the glass and returned to his seat, Laval eyed him closely. “You took twenty thousand livres from the hospital purse, did you not? I’ve checked the records. Why deny it?”
Maisonneuve finally deduced that the conversation was a trap. He looked first at Tracy, to gauge his reaction, and deduced that the man had been expecting the question. “Your Grace, Madame de Bullion created the fund. Jeanne Mance and myself entered into an agreement to borrow the money against the promise of land. She approved the transaction.”
“Paul,” Laval said, although they did not know one another well enough for him to address his guest by his Christian name, “you embezzled twenty thousand livres for your own purposes, for your enrichment, so that you could spend two years indulging yourself back in France. I understand. A life of hardship here. What could it hurt to eat and drink lavishly and comport yourself with the ladies?”
“Meanwhile,” Tracy added, “the colony at Montreal struggled on in near-starvation. Now that I am lieutenant-governor of New France, it is my duty to call you to account.”
“This is preposterous!” Maisonneuve forgot himself and jumped to his feet. “Madame de Bullion will attest to the agreement! As will Jeanne Mance! We did not keep records because our benefactor insisted on anonymity—”
“Enough with these false stories!” Tracy stormed back at him, while Bishop Laval sipped his brandy. “You stole the money. You ought to confess for the sake of your own immortal soul! In any case, pending the judgment of God, the people shall be informed and you shall be removed from office. I have explained the circumstances to the king and he agrees. You are to be recalled to France.”
“I will not go!”
“You are a subject of your king, sir. You will follow his commands!”
The two men glared at one another.
“Or do I command my guards to ship you back in chains?” Tracy asked him.
“You pompous ass!” Maisonneuve declared. He’d been outmanoeuvred for the moment. “I’ll go to France. But I will clear my name. And I will return.”
He did not know that of these three vows, he’d manage only the first—that he would die, still trying to clear his name, in a country he now despised, dreaming of his island home on the St. Lawrence among the trees and the Iroquois.
“A ship departs in three days for St. Malo,” Laval informed him. “You shall be a passenger on it. I bid you
adieu.
I wish you a
bon voyage,
Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve.”
Three days. He would never see Montreal again.
A
N ESPECIALLY TRYING DAY, THANKS TO AN ILL-TIMED CONFLU
ence of professional and domestic upsets, had failed to guide Detective Gaston Fleury towards much-needed restful slumber. August’s sweltering temperatures and close humidity didn’t help. Collapsed on his bed, under the warm breeze of a creaky fan, he lay there, helpless, tossing, contorted. Sweat slickened his skin.
Somehow, his wife was managing to ignore the heat. While she was lost to the world beside him, Fleury had been out of bed three times to attend to his son, Guy. The boy’s tonsils had been extracted and, home from the hospital just that afternoon, he was playing upon parental sympathy. As the clock slipped past 3
A.M.,
the policeman acknowledged that he would not be sleeping anytime soon. He’d be going to work in a surly mood, again, coaxed upright by caffeine. He propped himself higher on the pillows, partially sitting, to await morning and another day of blistering sun. In deference to the heat wave, he lay in the nude, on top of the sheets, his legs apart, even his fingers splayed to catch every possible particle of cooler air.
“The humidity,” Montrealers were found of saying. “It’s the humidity.” Only later would he recall that he had heard a few telltale nocturnal sounds. A car’s motor idling. A door being opened, then slammed. Footsteps hurrying along the sidewalk in one direction, then hurrying back. Tire squeals. In the city, such noises were irritating but commonplace, and had registered neither alarm nor curiosity in the tetchy detective from Policy.
The bomb blast, though, shot him out of bed.
He fell back as quickly, disoriented and stunned. Fleury was sliding off the damp sheets as the walls continued to convulse and the windows rattled. He braced himself to keep from catapulting onto the floor, and his wife glommed onto his wrist, awakening in a panic.
From his room, his son’s wail flared up.
He didn’t bother with clothes as he fled to the balcony to see what on earth had occurred. Wide open to the air, the door had admitted the full concussive blast. That noise. The impact. Had an apartment blown up? A gas leak?
Parked on the sidewalk two doors down, a vehicle had had its windows blown out, and its interior was now engulfed in flames. As bombs go, this had probably been a small one, although he’d never experienced a blast before. Glass littered the street and sidewalk, reflecting firelight, and he heard the fission of the blaze and worried that the gas tank would be next. He shouted to an old lady on her balcony fifteen feet from the car, “Go back! The gas tank!” She retreated instantly, either heeding his warning or propelled by the sight of a nude, skinny man madly exhorting her to flee. Fleury returned inside to put on clothes, then stopped, rushing back out again. He was looking at the car afire while a different neighbour on the next balcony stubbornly glared at his naked form.
