River City (46 page)
Three historic visits to the little grille through which she spoke gave evidence of her life and spiritual responsibility. The first startled her, yet she was prepared for the task by her days as a small child watching the voyageurs punch one another senseless. When she was told that the Huron chief Kondiaronk had requested an audience with Sister Jeanne Le Ber, the mother superior assumed that she would decline, yet the recluse promptly agreed, for she believed that the meeting had been ordained by God. Wobbly on his feet, accompanied to the Congregation of Notre Dame by sixteen Huron warriors, the chief, in his finery and elegant countenance, was guided to the rear of the chapel alone. He sat on the small stool before the scant opening and adjusted his attire, waiting. He had been informed that the sister would respond to him only when her prayers had properly concluded, that he was not to knock or cough to announce his presence. Yet he was troubled, for a cough had indeed seized his diaphragm, and to suppress it took immense will. Then the port was slid away, and while he could not see her, he was aware of the breathing of Jeanne Le Ber, then he heard her voice, distinct and low, in frail greeting. Rather than say hello, he released his pent-up cough, and the frail woman returned one of her own. The Indian’s own breathing proved difficult, and he often had to interrupt himself to cough again, to which Jeanne Le Ber would cough in return, for both were feeling unwell.
“Do you know who I am?” The Rat asked the ascetic.
“I have heard of you. Yet not for some time. News from the outside rarely extends to me. I remember that you are called The Rat. I remember also that you were a Christian. Are you still?”
“I am, Sister.” Part of her contract called for her to be admitted to the Order of the Congregation of Notre Dame, and referred to as Sister, although she would never be obliged to participate in the life of the convent. Then the chief surprised her by asking, “Are you?”
“Has my solitude claimed my spirit, you’re asking? Chief Kondiaronk, my spirit is ever the more fervently committed to the Blessed Sacrement.”
“And are you comfortable in there, are you happy, are you content?”
“I must dissuade you from this discourse. My happiness, my contentment, my comforts, are of no interest to me and should be of no concern to anyone. I will permit no such indulgence. Now, if you have come seeking help for yourself, or for your people, then that is a matter we might discuss.”
He had wanted to speak to this saintly creature, this prisoner of God, who had removed her beauty from the world of men and her intelligence from the affairs of her colony to devote herself to life’s mysteries and to the command of God. What did she learn from the experience, or was learning in itself an excitement to the senses she had vowed to decline? He had been close to shamans who had delivered themselves to personal cleansing in the forests and a solitude of the spirit, yet they would return and dwell among their people. This refusal to walk under the sky, to be brightened by the sun, this repudiation of human contact, was a fanaticism that he wanted to witness before he died. “There is one thing,” The Rat confided.
He told her then of his predicament. Of how he had been working to create a peace among all the Indian tribes, that one thousand and three hundred peace delegates had arrived to represent them. From Wisconsin to the west, and Acadia to the east, the Indians had come, an occasion that was grand and festive. The Montagnais and Assiniboine from the north were there, as were the Sioux, Cree, Saulteurs and his own Huron nation from the west. Indians had arrived even from Florida. The Iroquois had also paddled to the meeting.
“The Iroquois are here, in Ville-Marie, to make peace?” She had difficulty suffocating her enthusiasm, for she forbade herself such interests in any form.
“Yes, the Iroquois are here. If you heard guns firing in recent weeks, they were fired to honour the arrival of delegates. We have a rather new governor in New France, Louis-Hector de Callières. He’s been here for a couple of years now. A nice man. Together, with great difficulty, we have fabricated this peace. The Indians agree that we shall never again war with one another. We agree also that if the English and the French make war upon one another, all the Indian tribes shall remain neutral. This will allow the French to control the lands to the west and down the Mississippi. The English will lose their allies, and therefore their power. But they will not be attacked, either—not by the French, who do not have enough warriors. The only difficulty may be that the English have the power to attack the French on their own. This may yet occur, and it disturbs me, Sister.”
News of the outside world was not unwelcome. She had to moderate the pleasure this conversation had provided, and terminate it quickly. Still, she needed to know if she could be of service. “Is there something, Chief Kondiaronk, that I may do for you, under the eyes of God?”
The Rat leaned in more closely to the grille. “Sister, part of the agreement requires that each tribe bring its prisoners and its slaves here to the island of Montreal. Here, they will be returned to their tribes, or, if they are French, to the French. If they are English, we will send them home.”
The scratchy, coughing voice behind the grille praised him. “You have created a wonderful peace.”
“Yet there is a problem. The Iroquois have arrived, and they have not brought their slaves with them, nor have they brought any prisoners. We know they have more than anyone. What shall I do, Sister? I need to be guided on this matter by one so close to God as you.”
Jeanne Le Ber pondered the problem awhile. “In this life, I hope that I am the furthest soul from God in all the world. To be close to God is to know His comfort, and I wish no such relief in this life, lest that gift separate me from the Blessed Sacrament.”
“I am sorry for my words, Sister,” The Rat told her.
“The Iroquois,” Jeanne Le Ber continued, “accept that they are the most hated ones. They have given you a reason to hate them more. If you are to
break the peace, then break the peace over this issue, Chief Kondiaronk. If you are not to break the peace, then ignore this matter, and the Iroquois will then know that you do not intend to break the peace. For if you do not do it when they give you a reason, they know that you will not do it when they give you none. Now, I must retire. The time has come to recite my prayers.”
Kondiaronk thanked her, but the grille plate had already slid shut.
The Rat did as Jeanne Le Ber suggested. He oversaw the transfer of prisoners, including Iroquois prisoners back to the Iroquois, and made no mention to them that their own account was in deficit. Many of the other tribes saw this as a humiliation directed at Kondiaronk, and they wondered how he might respond. If the peace were broken here, each man knew, it would never be regained.
His cough had progressed to a fever, and he felt too weak to stand when the time came for him to address the sacred gathering. Thirteen hundred warriors, delegates from all the tribes, and the French governor and the governors of the largest French towns, were waiting, but he could not stand. The French brought him a stool. He did not have the strength to sit upon it, and swayed in his fever. Out of the home of a merchant, a large and imposing armchair was brought to him, a rich man’s extravagance, and this satisfied his posture, his dizziness and his weakened knees. All looked upon the Huron chief in the sumptuous chair and waited for him to speak. Still, his voice was weak, his throat parched. Kondiaronk was offered wine. He stated a preference for the syrup of the maidenhair fern. After considerable delay, this was brought to him, and at last The Rat began to speak.
Though his voice was scarcely audible, so anxious was everyone to hear his words that the silence of the gathering was complete. Everyone leaned in to hear. Would Kondiaronk bring peace or war?
Humbly, yet comprehensively, he described the steps that he had undertaken to bring a lasting peace to the Indian nations. He counselled them on the necessity of peace, and reiterated the prosperity and benefits that it might
bring. Then, still in his big armchair, he turned toward Governor Callières. “Act,” he told him, “in a manner that no man can accuse you of betraying the trust we place in you today.”
At that, his voice failed. He was done. The great throng of French and Indians applauded and whooped. Indians beat their drums. He was carried, still in the armchair, to the Hôtel-Dieu. Early the next morning, having offered his prayers to God and received the sacraments, Kondiaronk died.
The French carried his body from the Hôtel-Dieu to his tepee, where they laid him upon beaver skins. His gun and his sword were placed by his side, and a kettle, for his use in the spirit world. Sixty Iroquois moved in solemn procession towards him, and they, his most vicious enemies in life, paid tribute to him in death. Their chief declared the day to be devoted to grieving, and the Iroquois themselves were the ones who covered the body in sorrow and in dignity.
Not since the procession of Jeanne Le Ber to her chapel had Ville-Marie seen one that matched The Rat’s funeral. Sixty military men led the entourage, followed by sixteen Huron warriors, four abreast. Wearing beaver skins, the natives had painted their faces black in mourning, and they held their guns with the barrels pointed down. The clergy followed in their black robes, genuflecting and carrying their Bibles. Six war chiefs from six different tribes bore the body. The corpse was covered in flowers, and upon his stomach The Rat held a plumed hat, a gorget over his throat, and, at his side, a sword. His brothers and children followed immediately behind the body, then the remaining chiefs of the tribes and the leaders of the tribal councils. Then came the wife of the intendant of New France, the governor of Montreal, and the governor of New France, who had worked so closely with him to create the peace. Like a Moses of old, Kondiaronk had been allowed to see the paradise of his vision, but he would not be permitted to inhabit the realm. As his body was buried in the crypt at Notre Dame, muskets—military and Indian—fired in his honour.
In her cell, Jeanne Le Ber permitted herself to smile at the sound of the guns. The Iroquois wars were over. Never again would her people fear being scalped overnight or live with the horror of knowing that their children might be roasted or that they themselves might be slowly burned from the feet up.
Peace with the Iroquois had depended upon the acumen of the governor and the vision of a far-flung Huron chief who lived all the way in Michilimackinac, and she was glad that in his final days they had had a chance to speak. God had arranged that meeting, a knowledge that strengthened her faith. Even from her cell, she might be of use to others.
The second call upon Jeanne Le Ber came in 1711, a decade after the peace with the Iroquois had been signed and Kondiaronk had died. The English, finally realizing that the continent was becoming French, that the Iroquois no longer imposed their will on the people to the north or moved to restrict their movements or commerce, embarked upon a full-scale attack to rout the French once and for all and seize the entire colony for England. They moved an army overland toward Montreal and sent a great fleet up the St. Lawrence to Quebec. The people heard the dire reports and knew that their military was ill prepared. Once again, the colony lay in mortal peril, with scant hope of salvation.
Jeanne Le Ber was told of these perilous circumstances and was exhorted to intercede. To the dismay of the clergy, she turned to her needlepoint.
Normally, she slept only briefly, rising at 4 a.m. between Easter and All Saint’s Day, and at four-thirty through the darker, cold months. Now she did not sleep, but embroidered a banner. On one side, she created an exquisite image of the Virgin Mary, and on the other she inscribed the words, “She is as terrible as an army in battle array. She will help us to vanquish our enemies.”
When she was done, she called for the
abbé
to visit her again.
The banner was blessed by the Abbé de Belmont, although he feared it might be too little, too late. But that night, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a storm ransacked the English fleet. Ships were damaged, a few floundered on rocks, others lost their bearings, and every ship lost contact with the other. One by one, the surviving vessels limped back to Boston. As the commanders in the field were informed of the disaster, their own interest in the expedition quickly faded, and after days of deliberations, the army returned home as well. Once
again, Montreal had been spared. This time, Jeanne Le Ber did not indulge herself in a smile, but prostrated herself before the altar of the chapel at night, and pleaded forgiveness for her ongoing involvement in temporal affairs.
She would live three more years, and near the end of her days she received another visit from the Abbé de Belmont. He asked her if she had benefited well and been sustained by her life of devotion. She told him she had received sweetness and tranquility from her life of prayer when she had been at home in her father’s house. Since entering her cell, she had experienced no such blessings, but had given herself to the gloom and despair of her days, receiving no divine guidance or consolation, no satisfaction or delight. Yet she persevered, and as she lay dying, she dispatched her nurse to the chapel so that she would be more alone, and she had the curtains drawn to complete the coming shroud of death. At nine o’clock in the morning, on the third day of October, at the age of fifty-three, after twenty years in her crypt, Jeanne Le Ber stepped into the death she had so long cherished, and this time it proved both real and final.
The gentleman who called in 1710 was dressed smartly, if not as a man of royalty, then from a class that had not crossed Radisson’s door in many years. He had heard the man give his name—perhaps it had rung a bell, perhaps not—to be sure, his recollections were not what they had once been. “You are, sir, by name?” he asked, perhaps for the fifth time, but he could not be confident of the number of repetitions either.
“Charles Smythe Hamilton, sir,” the man replied, smiling, willing to indulge the feeble man his proclivities. “I am waiting for you to recognize me, sir. Perhaps that will be best. If you come to understand that you know me, I think it will be the preferred course for our discussions.”