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. Barthelemy.
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. Barthelemy 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-Rivieres 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 Celigny, 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-Rivieres. His voice was cultured, even aristocratic, a far cry from the coarse guttural peasant French of the
I struggled to sit up. Through eyes suddenly full of tears of joy and relief, I said, “Father de Celigny? Can it really be you?” I grasped his arms, finding them solid and real, not spectral. “I-we, all of us in TroisRivieres-we feared you had been killed by the Hiroquois.”
“Yes, Father,” he replied. “I am de Celigny. 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 Celigny’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.
