River City (9 page)

“I’ve got another family to talk to now,” Touton said. “What the hell is going on here?”

Miron was hoping he was not expected to answer. His body trembled. He was breathing deeply, his heart thumping in his chest. He had never fired a weapon in action before and was sorry that he had missed. He knew that a shotgun had to be aimed well in front of a moving target, but in the heat of the moment, with the Caddy accelerating, he failed. He stood beside the famous captain, beating himself up, having blown his first big opportunity to impress a superior.

Touton touched his elbow. “In a war, lots of guys, probably three-quarters, never discharge their weapon in battle. Too chickenshit. You did all right, kid. You hit the car. Took out the tail light. Good. That’ll help us trace it.”

At that moment, an ambulance under full siren raced down Dorchester, carrying wounded from the riot’s front lines. Touton watched it go, and wondered again what the hell was going on. His city was in chaos.

He wondered if, by morning, or in a day or two, it might not lie in ruins.

CHAPTER 4
1535 ~ 1534 ~ 1535–36

A
BREEZE CAME UP, RIPPLING THE RIVER. ON THE AIR WITH THE
rise of the sun also rose the migrant birds—ducks and snow-white geese and black-backed geese larger than any fowl these strangers had seen. Cantankerous calls as cacophonous as a ship’s cannons. The rhythmic swoosh of wings louder than the flogging sails of an entire fleet. To look up, gaze upon the long-necked birds in flight, the astonishing breadth of their V-formations, row upon row southbound beyond the horizon, overtook the sensibilities of these sailors as a dread, an awe, not previously experienced.

They sensed their trespass in an unknown realm.

Felt their lives become infinitesimal.

Jacques Cartier ruminated on the significance of the migration as he watched the birds embark in a noisy rush and ascend. “They fly to a destination.” Indians claimed that the great birds departed for the winter and, come spring, returned, which indicated that they travelled far enough south to reach a different climate. How great, he pondered, could this land be?

How vast?

He rarely awoke among the first. Cartier had remained ignorant of a ritual that had developed among his sailors. Strewn along the deck, the men greeted first light. They demonstrated no interest in chores, and instead observed the waterfowl, listened to the racket, felt the warmth of the sun on their necks and hands, and in the naked hour breathed, rapt. About to shout a command, the captain let the impulse pass. Standing above his men on the high aft deck,
he felt oddly joined with them in the astonishment of this land’s mystery. He shared in their privilege.

A cascade of colours across the hills vibrated in the breeze. Wind snatched leaves from their branches, crimson and oranges, a myriad of yellows sashayed down to the riverbank to float among the dabbling waterfowl. Upon this threshold he would cast his fate. Meeting a newer, more powerful band of Indians, he could not foresee how events would unfold. Still, he would endeavour to execute his plan, to perform a feat of magic, to extract a gift from the chief for his king so beguiling that future journeys would be well financed. To do so would require his cunning while meeting a people who no doubt possessed great cunning of their own.

Like a gopher’s, Donnacona’s head poked up through the fo’c’sle. The Iroquois chief from the village downstream, known as Stadacona, inhaled great breaths of fresh air, a relief from the calamity of rancid pale-skins’ stink and other wretched emanations from the crew’s quarters. Men shat in a bucket overnight and breathed the fetid reek through their sleep. They dozed above and below one another, as entangled as nesting squirrels, oozing sweat, their raucous gasps whistling and mournful, the air humid with the pong of fusty breath.

The chief was dismayed by his experience with the pale-skins, by their rituals and giant canoe. To sleep aboard such a vessel had been humiliating. Previously, he had slipped away from his berth and, under the stars, slept on deck as the
Émérillon
slowly plied the river waters. How such a fortress floated on its belly without sinking remained incomprehensible to him. How it rode so high above the waves without toppling perplexed him. As it rolled from side to side, death was surely imminent.

Donnacona had sighted the ship the previous year as, ghostlike, it plodded north off the Gaspé coast within the horizon’s broad rim. He had brought his people to fish and draw mussels from the ocean’s shores, and the men and women had stood in wonderment. Stymied by fear. They looked to the sky as though this weird creation had dropped through a rip there, and finally they sat upon the beach in silence. Donnacona felt the claws of a crow dig into his back. He was being lifted into the sky, in pain—it felt that way. A few women wept. The youngest children danced and occasionally threw stones in
the direction of the giant canoe. The lips of an older man trembled, yet soon, everyone’s capacity to be surprised or frightened was eclipsed by a true and profound apprehension. They saw the world, the whole of the universe, as different. Who were these sea beings? From what other place had they descended?

As chief, Donnacona accepted the responsibility to act, lest the people squat upon the shore forever. He called upon the tribe to gather old wood from the beach and forest, and by twilight he had ignited a huge fire that stopped the boat’s progress and lured the sea beings ashore. As the leader clambered out of his longboat, the chief walked down alone to the rocky waterline to meet Cartier for the first time.

In the firelight of the traveller’s torches, he gazed into the eyes of the sea being and conceded that he resembled a man. A stinking man, with a ghost’s skin and frightful black fur upon his face. A strange creature in ridiculous clothing, yet this man-like creature possessed a giant canoe, which carried smaller canoes with giant paddles that brought more man-like beings ashore. Ghosts, these men, white-fleshed, whose odd clothing had not been cut from animal pelts. This pale-skinned man indicated that he had come from a land across the sea. An incomprehensible story. Cartier had been shocked to learn that Donnacona and his people had also come to this shore from far away.

The women kept looking for women among the pale-skins, but there were none. Such a strange people. How did they fornicate? With whom? But what women could fornicate with men who stank so foully? Someone deduced, “It’s a war party. That’s why no women go with them.”

Donnacona needed to comprehend the idea that more people lived upon the earth than lived upon the earth. More land rose up from the waters than rose up from the waters. What were the people to understand about these terrible truths?

Cartier had carried on, to explore the shores and islands further north, and when he departed for his land across the waters before the return of winter, he took with him not only Donnacona’s gifts but also the man’s two sons, Domagaya and Taignoagny. They would fare well across the sea, and in the following year they returned home with wild stories of villages as large as forests, and of a house as huge as a mountain, made primarily of gold, in which the
white chief dwelled. They spoke of other wonders so astounding that the chief had threatened to punish his sons if they did not stop uttering such terrible lies. In the land of the pale-skins, massive four-legged creatures taller than moose pulled land canoes in which they carried a man’s belongings, the man himself, and his wife and children. These giant beasts obeyed the white man’s words and allowed the white man to ride upon their backs.

“I will drown you!” Donnacona had cried out.

In the land of the snow-skins, the women sang like birds in the morning.

“I will slice open your bellies and feed you to the crows!”

In the land of the limestone-skins, trees gave beautiful, sweet-tasting berries the size of a man’s fists to eat.

Perhaps they
were
gods, these cloud-skinned, black-furred strangers.

That other world had changed his boys. They had adapted to the vessel and to the white man’s oily seal-stink and now laughed at their father’s dismay. As a matter of honour, then, Donnacona had had to demonstrate a modicum of courage, yet he chose to wait until the ship merely bobbed at anchor before sleeping below. Throughout the long night, the chief fretted that he’d go mad from the stench. He slept little and under duress, yet endured until dawn without fleeing to the mercy of an open deck and the rebuke of his sons. Life inside a whale, Donnacona believed, might be more pleasant.

He observed sailors in their rapt state. They looked as though they had never seen geese as they watched the flight patterns overhead, all of them curiously silent under the belligerent honking. Had they never seen forests so charged with colour? His sons were right about one thing: the pale-skins were fascinating—their canoe was pushed and pulled by the wind, no man paddled!—they possessed magic, but they behaved in curious ways and seemed to possess little useful knowledge.

Donnacona climbed higher and stood on deck. Sailors gazed upon him now as attentively as they had stared at the ducks. He wore different clothing today—a deerskin laced by coloured caribou thread and decorated by beads—for he had stripped off the contaminated skins in which he’d slept and applied a ceremonial paint. He was expecting to meet his own people soon, another tribe, and was dressed for the occasion. Looking back across the deck at him,
Cartier determined to take his cue, to don ceremonial dress himself. Better to look as though he expected to be welcomed than to wear the garb of a soldier gearing for a fight. He called over his cabin boy, Petit Gilles, and commanded that he prepare his formal attire. If he was going to meet the Indians of Hochelaga, these men and women who held the key to the riches of this land, he would do so properly.

Domagaya, fresh, eager, and his younger brother, Taignoagny, generally taciturn, heaved themselves up onto the deck as well, and were also surprised by the silent, stiff stillness of the sailors. They were in a strange mood. The men only began to stir when Gastineau, the king’s man, rumbled up the main companionway. His presence broke a spell.

“Jacques! Good morning to you!” Even ducks peaceably paddling near the
Émérillon
took flight, quacking madly, in response to his loud greeting.

“Gastineau,” Cartier replied, sighing. Secretly, the men loved the way their captain put him in his place.

“Today’s the day!”

“Enh?
What day is that, Gastineau?”

“Hochelaga!”

Cartier shook his head. “If you can row that far that fast, you’re a better man than me.” Cartier habitually kept Gastineau in the dark about the details of any excursion. “We shall embark by longboat. We will not complete our journey before nightfall.”

“But the fires—I saw them last night!” the king’s man protested.

“You thought they were campfires?” Cartier asked as he headed to the lower deck before re-entering his aft cabin. “They were large fires at a great distance. Wind and current are against us. Look for yourself: the channel narrows. Time to row, and row hard. Two days yet. Unless you can fly with the birds.”

Gastineau fumed. Cartier could have explained all this to him last night. He would not have looked like such a fool. “When do we embark?” he demanded.

“Is your belly full? When it is, we’ll go. I’ve never seen you in such a rush. Finally, an adventure that appeals to you.”

“Our adventure,” Gastineau called back, “will cost us our lives if we freeze here for the winter. We have to be on our way soon, Jacques.”

“I’ve decided to winter over,” Cartier announced.

“What!” Gastineau was outraged, and speechless.

“At Stadacona.”

The captain of the
Émérillon
disappeared while the king’s man, and the crew, absorbed this shock. Winter over? Experienced sailors knew how cold the weather had turned the previous autumn, and the Indian lads had told stories of frigid temperatures and great mountains of snow. The men had seen for themselves how a multitude of waterfowl eagerly fled this climate as the cold season advanced. Yet, a few sailors breathed easier and proffered a different thought. Spending the winter in the New World meant not having to brave the north Atlantic in the late season. Tomorrow was the first day of October. Even if they set sail immediately, they would not make France before the beginning of the new year, which meant a frightful time at sea in nasty weather. Holing up for the winter seemed a lesser ordeal.

Gastineau was bounding across the deck to pursue Cartier into his cabin when Petit Gilles blocked the path. “The captain is changing his attire, sir,” the lad proclaimed. The king’s man promptly seized him by an arm and hauled him aside for a private word.

“You didn’t warn me about this!” Gastineau hissed under his breath. He partially bent the boy over the ship’s gunwales.

“Pardon me, sir?” the boy asked, frightful. “About what, sir?”

“We may spend the winter here!”

“The captain never mentioned it, sir! Not to me!”

“Then find these things out using your own devices! Remember, Petit Gilles, you work for your king. That means you work for
me!”

“I cannot see into the captain’s mind, sir!” protested the boy.

“Take my advice! Learn how!” The king’s man gave him a rough push, and the tall, skinny boy caught himself as he grasped a ratline.

Some men commenced loading longboats while others went below for the morning meal and to prepare themselves for a tedious row. Donnacona strolled forward to the bow, where his sons joined him. The three gazed across
the waters. Observing them, Gastineau wondered what they might be plotting. For his liking, the Indians were too close to Cartier.

Belowdecks, the captain was fitting himself into a frilly shirt with a multi-layered stiff gorget, similar to a beehive’s comb, that ran higher than his ears, and an embroidered vest and jacket with lengthy tails. He tried on his wide-brimmed hat with its elegant, flowing plume, and asked himself if he did not strike a dashing figure. While seeing to such preparations, and like the king’s man, he was also wondering what was going through the mind of Donnacona.