River City (70 page)
Cinq-Mars shifted and bucked her off him. He pinned her under him and kissed her, ceasing only when he discovered that she was poking him in the back.
“The story,” she insisted. He’d forgotten for a moment that she had a vested interest in the Cartier Dagger.
He readjusted himself and perused the papers. “Okay. So … the English were arriving in Montreal half-dead. To make a long story short, the bishop of Montreal gave them land by present-day Lake of Two Mountains, which is a widening of the Ottawa River. That’s where Sarah Hanson lived.”
“Why there?”
“Mainly because no parish church existed anywhere around, and because of that, no French would settle in the area.” “Makes sense.”
“In a nineteenth-century kind of way, yeah.”
“Then what?”
Was she in love? she wondered. Had this happened to her? Had she hooked up with the most unlikely of men—a cop, a practising Catholic, a moralist, a federalist politically—who was not only the most unlikely of men but the worst sort of man for her? His profession seemed almost to belie her family history. Her father had been a crook, a tough guy, a goon at times, although none of those descriptions suited her memory of the man. She preferred to think of him as a former hockey player who had gone to prison to cover her mom’s union activity. He had been a beautiful and loving and attentive dad—she still remembered that. No matter how she pictured him, though, goon or daddy, he was not a cop, and he had had a difficult time with cops. On the other hand, she knew that her dad had formed a friendship of sorts with Armand Touton, so perhaps he’d understand, if he were here now, that she was drawing close to this policeman.
And papa,
she thought to herself,
he’s on your case. He’ll catch your killers.
“The Church had no means to distribute land to the English. So the bishop made a deal with the Sun Life Assurance Company, and here things get interesting, historically speaking.”
They had to shift around a bit more. Anik supported her head in one hand with her elbow on the bed, while her boyfriend lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling. She loved the intensity in his eyes, the way he’d absorbed the tales of their history and made them so much a part of his mindset.
“An Englishman, if he wanted land, had to approach Sun Life Assurance on bended knee, and after a lifetime of paying insurance premiums, he might expect a payout for his heirs. A Frenchman had to beg the Church for land, and commit to a lifetime of piety that might get him into heaven. So the cultural divide between the English and French was written in stone.”
He might be a cop,
she was telling her dad,
but he’s not like any kind of cop you ever knew.
“That still doesn’t tell me what happened to the dagger,” Anik pointed out. “The English put in farms along the Ottawa, across the river from Mohawks and Sulpicians. On their side of the river, Sarah Hanson’s descendants
would be their only pre-existing neighbours. One day, the Sun Life representative came out to visit the landowners, to collect their signatures on policies with his company.”
Anik was getting this, nodding. “Sun Life grants them land, then
suggests,
shall we say, that they sign up for life insurance. What the company gives the company takes back.”
“Exactly. If a man looks over his brood of sons and wonders where they will go when they’re grown, well, he realizes he had better be on the good side of the Sun Life. Every farmer took out a policy. Then the agent, riding home on his buggy, stopped by the Hanson-Sabourin family farm.”
“Don’t tell me.”
Émile kissed her first. He told himself to kiss her without regret, without shame. He was a Catholic, but their lovemaking was done for the day—that sin was behind him. He would have to deal with it later before his maker and his priest. Or perhaps he’d confess in some out-of-the-way parish where nobody knew him. But this kiss would be delivered with the fullness of his love and desire for her, and his clammy doubts and sticky second thoughts would be set aside like his suit of oil and grime. For this kiss, he would give wholly of himself, and he did.
“The agent,” he whispered, not stopping kissing her yet, “was the kind of salesman who’s a manipulator of human fears. He sold the family on the need for a policy, exactly like the ones their neighbours were acquiring.” His mouth moved up and down her neck. “If they didn’t take one out, their offspring would be poor when they died, he said, while all around them the offspring of the new arrivals would be made rich by life insurance.”
Anik was becoming as interested in the tale as she was with the fluctuations of his lips, and gently eased him away from her a few inches.
“The Hanson-Sabourin family agreed to take out a policy. But they didn’t have money to pay for the luxury. A member of the Sabourin-Hanson family brought out the Cartier Dagger and offered it in trade. The agent made a big scene about how he was being generous, but really he knew that he was robbing the family blind. He signed the policy and absconded with the knife. Sun Life had its most cherished possession. Some say it’s why the company became so
powerful. After the Second World War, the artifact was loaned to the National Hockey League to commemorate the work its president had contributed at Nuremberg, and the league became all-powerful throughout Canada. Some say that’s why—because it possessed the knife. So, the question crops up: who owns it now?”
Anik lay back, prone beside him on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. After a minute, she said, “I know who.”
“You do?” Cinq-Mars propped himself up. “Trudeau.”
“That’s the rumour. But there’s no reason to believe it. Just because he’s become so powerful—”
“It’s not a rumour.” She faced him on her side. “I was in a closet when Camillien Houde said his final confession to his priest. I heard it then. Trudeau bought the knife.”
He examined her eyes for any trace of doubt or fabrication. “Then help me with this case.”
She nodded, then switched and shook her head. “I don’t know everything.”
“Is that why you’re a separatist—because Trudeau has the relic?”
“Don’t be silly. But it’s why I threw the first stone at him that night. It’s why I regret missing.”
They did not kiss again on the bed, yet remained facing one another. Cinq-Mars was disturbed—by his love for her, and by a new surge of eroticism that undercut his moral code. He figured he’d have to marry her. He was also troubled by being a policeman who had just discovered a treasure trove of information. Where did his allegiance lie—with the girl, or with his work?
Anik also wondered what he’d do. Love her, or love his investigation more? She had put him on the spot. He’d have a hard time figuring this one out. In the meantime, facing each other, gazing into the other’s eyes and longing to determine a place for themselves in the midst of their anarchic world, they’d wait and see. They were both aware that love and passion were involved, but so were certain intellectual convictions. That emotional tempest—electric, it felt, scintillating, inviting—sang between them.
S
HE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THIS MEANT. ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF
March, 1937, a day that turned her life “upside-down, inside-out and backwards, then way inside-out again,” Carole Bonsecours arrived home to discover that her front door had been shackled shut. A small pane in the door’s window was smashed. A heavy chain ran through it, and out a side window that had been left open a crack for fresh air. A padlock secured the links. Carole wanted to remain strong, but disbelief and torment got the better of her. In a full-blown rage, she kicked the door.
Then slumped down on her stoop.
This was real despair. She wept.
The premier, Duplessis, was cracking down on all those who offended him. Supported by the Church preaching against the red menace, he brought in the Padlock Law. Any communist or unionist, any Jew who might easily be presumed to be a communist or unionist, any unkind journalist or unfortunate jaywalker who also happened to be an immigrant and so was probably a communist sympathizer, a unionist or secretly a Jew, no matter whether he claimed otherwise, could arrive home to discover that he’d been permanently locked out of his house.
The law was now being applied to the woman who possessed the temerity to organize seamstresses, to poor Carole.
She noticed, recovering from her futile tears, that the men responsible for the sabotage were still standing around nearby and enjoying a smoke. A pair of them had had a good laugh as she kicked her house. They weren’t even
policemen—mere thugs. That galled her. The small, wiry woman did what her instincts and courage demanded. She attacked.
“Whoa!”
one man cried out, laughing, as she flailed away. The more pathetic her assault, the more angry she became, and she redoubled her efforts. He’d skip away like a prizefighter on the run and easily fended off her blows.
She wanted him to stop laughing. She whacked his arms and shoulders and reared back and tried to punch him in the nose, but these more serious attempts also went for naught. She lost her balance once, and he caught her and propped her up. She was so frustrated that the fight of her life had to be entirely under his control. If only she were a boy, or a very large man. If only she had a gun, she’d kill him.
She was crying, and she didn’t know for sure, but perhaps she was hysterical. He had quit laughing, and now was trying to calm her down. So she stopped her useless flailing and screamed bloody murder instead.
“This is my
house!
You can’t lock me out of my own house. Who do you think you are, you
punk?”
The others behaved more badly, taunting her. At least this guy wanted her to calm down and spoke with basic human kindness.
But she couldn’t calm down.
“My father, you
goat,
left my mother this house when he died. I took care of this house since I was sixteen. My sick mother, she died—you
asshole
—in this house. Don’t tell me you got any right locking me out of my own house.”
All of it welled up. The hard life. Her father’s tragic death. Her mother’s long, sordid, crushing illness. The job that kept her exhausted and penniless, and the endless crusade to improve working conditions for women, which she could never cease because it had become her lifeline, kept her alive. That cause embodied the last dregs of her hope.
“You got no fucking right to do this.”
What had allowed her to persevere without succumbing had been ownership of this small, sad, sagging house. Through that gift by her father, and thanks to his life insurance policy, she had enjoyed a half-decent place to live, one that cost her next to nothing to maintain. The house gave her dignity, an advantage that other women in the rag trade could only envy.
“Give me the fucking key, you bastard. I want the key.”
Even the snakiest man was feeling less inclined to continue tormenting her. Neighbours were appearing on the sidewalk, including a few burly guys, and everybody knew that men could muster a wild ardour in a woman’s defence. If a few more showed up, the situation could worsen. The thugs now felt that their friend was doing the wise thing by trying to calm her down.
“Tough guy! Tough
shit
! So you can lock a woman out of her home, huh? Makes you feel big? Hardens you up? Like you got more than a hose between your legs? What did I ever do to you? You don’t even know me.”
One of the men, perhaps thinking that he was helping the situation, said something. All anyone heard was the word “communist.”
Carole Bonsecours turned on him with her venom throttled up. “You little pipsqueak shit. You think I’m a communist? Well, am I? Am I? Take a good look. Is this what you’re so afraid of? I’m half your size. You could snap my neck like a chicken’s, it wouldn’t be no different. Is this what you’re so afraid of? Is this why you wet your bed at night, praying to the Lord to keep you from being swallowed up by the big red monster? If I’m a communist, then I’m the one you’re so afraid of. I’m
it.
I’m the
beast.
So take a good look. Now tell me, what exactly are you so afraid of?”
She had a point, and the people gathering on the sidewalk nodded and murmured amongst themselves.
She spun back towards the first man she’d attacked and aimed a forefinger at him. “I work as a seamstress. That’s all I do. I sew. We’re trying to organize. The International Garment Workers’ Union will not be intimidated by these tactics.” She swept her eyes across the people in the streets, who were suddenly applauding her tirade, then her sights settled back on the first man again. “Look at my hands.
Look at them!
These are the hands of a seamstress. If I want to make an extra nickel an hour, why do you want to stop me? You stupid fat thug.”
“I’m not fat,” the man interjected.
A few people chuckled. Everyone could see Carole’s bile, already cranked to the limit, rise. She kept her palms raised. “So you admit it. You’re a
stupid
thug.”