The High Missouri (4 page)

“Aye, laddo, he disappeared. Of course, there are those who scoff. The British, ever the subjugators, would rather see an Italian Colombo and an Englishman Raleigh, better those than a Celt. When it suits them, though, as when they want to lay claim to this vast land, they remember Madog, and his priority, and try to trump the French and Spanish with their sovereignty. Welsh sovereignty, there’s a truth it is.”

The Druid chuckled at the thought. “When I was your age, some rich Welshmen expatriates in London sent John Evans, said to be a good man of Y Cymry, to the New World to find the Welsh Indians. What he found we shall never know. Evans traveled in the interior, then went to New Orleans, and there he died.

“Yet even before we find the Welsh Indians, what a legacy, what a legacy Madog left. On not one continent, but two.

“First here on Turtle Island. He left signs everywhere. I have seen with my own eyes burial mounds such as the Celts made. I heard from a Methodist minister’s own lips how his grandfather, a missionary, was saved. The good man was captured by Hurons and was about to be tortured at the stake when he cried out in his native Welsh tongue for God’s mercy. And the elders of the tribe answered him in that language, called him friend, cut him free, and made him their honored guest for some months.

“Blue-eyed, red-haired, fair-skinned Indians—Turtle Island is alive with reports of them, among the red people and the white people. They were supposed to be the Mandans, but they are not, to my grief. But everyone has seen them or heard of them—the Snake Indians of the far western deserts report fighting them. The Aztecs knew of them. The Blackfoot say they once were great enemies. Somewhere, around some corner on this continent, we will find ourselves among them.

“And words, laddo, words everywhere, we Welshmen are word men. They say the Mandan words for ‘valley,’ ‘hill,’ and ‘blue’ are identical to the Welsh words for these enchantments,
cym
,
prydferth
, and
glas
. They say the words for one through ten in the Kutenai language are the same as the Welsh.

“It is like the smell of spring, laddo, or the signs of spirit—everywhere, in the air, the earth, the rain, manifest in the very feel of things, save to those who will not smell, breathe, feel. The strains of the Welsh Indians of Turtle Island are everywhere. One day I will find a small band of their descendants still speaking the Cymraeg, and I shall live with them forever.”

“Remember, laddo, I said on two continents. For Madog brought back to Wales on his second journey the mixed-blood children of his men. He left them to marry among the Cymry. He married one lass to his nephew and a lad to his niece. Through them the blood of red men runs in the veins of the House of Gwynedd and the House of Tudor. Through them you and I are those creatures of legend, the Welsh Indians.

“As I hope you were raised to know, Welshmen are natural Indians anyway. Both are conquered peoples, both stepped on by the bloody Britons, not only then but now. Both are thought barbarous by the conquerors. Both are attuned to nature, which is why I am called the Druid. Both give high place to the poet, the singer of songs. Both are trying to keep their ancient and holy places and their ancient and holy ways. Both are, well, the way I put it, blood and breath mystics.”

He fell silent for a moment, pondering. “It is as always that we lost this kingdom, there is truth it is. We men of Wales are visionaries, which is why we sing, write poetry, and hear songs in the empty air. We are adventurers. We are even soldiers, men of the bond of blood. But we are not conquerors, not empire builders. We leave that to the bloody British.”

Dylan nearly quaked with fear. He felt drawn to this stranger, this countryman, this Druid. Yet the man held a terror for him, a terror he recognized, both old and familiar friend and malicious nemesis. He feared in this man what he feared most in himself. The man was mad. And it was a siren song madness, a call, a will-o’-the-wisp Dylan could not resist, and it would lead him to his doom.

Dylan wanted to pull back. He wanted sanity. Order. Predictability. Safety. He asked, “What will you do to find these Welsh Indians?”

The Druid smiled an easy and genial smile. “Why, I will look my whole life through, and discover them everywhere and nowhere, and come to know on my deathbed that what I sought was within me all along.”

Dylan felt both relieved and obscurely disappointed. There would be no mad quest after all.

“There is one particular place, by reputation most wild, most beautiful, most strange, that I especially want to search.”

“Where?” asked Dylan breathlessly.

“The High Missouri,” said the Druid.

“Where is it?” asked Dylan eagerly. “What is it?”

“Perhaps it is our blood’s country, and our heart’s pastureland,” answered Dru. “Would you care to hear a song I’ve written called “The High Missouri’?”

Dru set the stage. This, Dylan must recognize, was the
canu penillion
, the ancient and honorable Welsh art of the singing of verses, the singer accompanying himself on the Welsh harp. They had no harp, of course, but then they were only poor wayfarers, far from Cymru and too late in the centuries, there is truth there is. Dylan would have to imagine the harp, its harmonies gentle but piquantly colored, and soft as the breeze. The language, of course, would be Yr Hen Iaith, the Old Language of the country. Dylan was to listen not with his ordinary ear, the one that treated words like mere signposts pointing to objects in simpleton fashion, but with his dreaming ear, the one attuned to mysteries, to the meanings within things.

The Druid assumed an erect sitting pose, his fingers poised over emptiness, or on the strings of an imaginary harp on his knee, and lifted his voice into the air.

Dylan couldn’t understand a word. He had not quite realized that the song would be in a foreign language. His mother’s tongue or not, it was alien to him. He could find no knowledge in it, and felt impatient.

After a few stanzas, though, the song began to work on him in subtle ways. Perhaps it was the strong and elaborate meter that propelled the words. Perhaps it was impressions from the sheer sounds of the words, sounds that somehow meant rushing waters, winds among leaves, the cries of strange, strange birds, the lonely calls of wolf dogs, the murmurings of grasses. Surely he heard something—or was this just his imagination?

He listened far into the music and the verses, and in his imagination traveled to the exotic world of the High Missouri, wherever that was, whatever it might be, a steppe, a plain, a mountain enlivened by a river. The name itself was all of the song he understood in the ordinary sense, the High Missouri, but it took on an allure for him, a romance beyond sense. And somehow, watching the Druid’s plucking fingers, by the end of the song he could hear the music of the Welsh harp, an interplay of tones, soft, sensual, many-colored, whispering, whirling gently like mists, ever-moving and yet motionless at its heart. It was as though beyond the mists of a Welsh dawn, impossible but visible to the dreaming eye, stood radiant, still, and gleaming, a rainbow of sound.

The Druid’s voice fell silent. He set down the harp he never held. The music evaporated into the emptiness of a musty barn.

Dylan felt no need to know, until some other time, the ordinary meanings of the magical words.

At Morgan’s suggestion they slept in the loft. “The owner doesn’t mind if we bed down,” he said, “as long as we don’t turn it into a hotel.”

Dylan looked up at the floorboards of the loft. In the weak light of the rag candle, they looked rickety. “Is it safe, Mr. Bleddyn?” he asked, pronouncing the name Bleh-then, as the creature did.

“Call me Dru,” said the man.

“Dru,” Dylan corrected.

“Safe? Well, laddo, let’s hope the likes of you,” said the Druid, “can find a song of danger and adventure with the likes of me.”

Chapter Four

Father Quesnel was not in at nine o’clock. Nor at ten o’clock. Nor at eleven o’clock.

The
marguillier
, a pockmarked fellow of officious manner, seemed to think Dylan was presumptuous to come back so often and ask. But he didn’t say so. He wouldn’t have given Dylan the courtesy of that many words, nor the kindness of saying when the good father would be in.

Dylan had a suspicion that his godfather was right behind that closed door, and the apprehension that he was in to everyone but Dylan Elfed Davis Campbell.

He thought of the abbreviation of his patronymic by Morgan Bleddyn. The way this Druid renamed him, left out his bloody father’s Campbell, tickled Dylan. Where was Dru? he wondered. Would he ever see Morgan Bleddyn again? When Dylan woke this morning, the old boy had been gone. By the light of day, the world of romance was gone and a mundane world was in its place.

No sense sitting around where he wasn’t welcome. Dylan closed the outer door on Pockmark Pompous and looked out on the day. The reason he didn’t mind waiting for Father Quesnel was the weather. It was a gorgeous rendition of the first real day of spring, one of the vernal goddess’s best efforts, he was sure, a miracle after yesterday’s storms—balmy, with only a warm, gentle breeze, high, pillowy clouds, and sunlight flung prodigally between the clouds. The light made the dun-colored winter grass and the gray branches of the trees shine. The branches were barren—except for robins.

A grand day to be starting out on your life’s adventure. Not the fanciful sort of adventure the Druid conjured up. Real adventure, witnessing for civilization in the midst of barbarism.

He was bored with wandering the streets, looking in the open doors of the coffeehouses where rich people ate when he had no money, feeling disheveled because he’d slept in his clothes. Maybe Claude would go to his father’s house later and get his steamer trunk with all his worldly belongings. Dylan resolved he would never go there again.

He was hungry. He thought of the chunk of pemmican he’d breakfasted on. He looked at the warm sun. He decided to be hungry sitting down. There would be a bench by the site of the old church graveyard.

Would he ever see Bleddyn again? Being with the old man was entirely new and wonderful, a variety of enchantment. Perhaps this Druid was a wizard. Being with him was being in another world. It was like walking into a lake—the water was cold at first, but you kept walking until your eyes were underwater. It was frightening. Your reward was seeing a different world beneath the waters, perhaps a castle in shining, white marble, with mermaids singing and eels guarding the gate.

He shook himself. That dream world was child’s stuff, and there was nothing to be gained from it. Except stories of his mother’s native country.

He sat on the bench and yearned for more pemmican. Strange stuff, but good. Great, when you’re hungry.

He looked around at the gravestones, many of them slightly tilted, the grounds a little unkempt. This cemetery had been full since before he was born. A melancholy sight.

Wasn’t it fine? He had no home, no family, no place to live, no job. He was starting out in the world naked as a newborn babe.

Unaccommodated man.

He was newly afloat on the sea of the world, the sea of the world as it is, whether monstrous or beatific, as the Druid put it. He looked around at the end of all men represented all around him, slabs and monuments of stone marking their final resting places.

Full fathom five my father lies.

He did have his faith in God to assuage his fears about this naked launch. But even aside from that, he felt that all was well, the face of the earth to walk on was good. Even the darkness of wilderness was good, he felt sure, when walked in the right spirit. This was not a conscious thought but an unstated experience, probably the euphoric result of the sun on his skin, and the songs of the robins in his ears.

Came a voice,

“Let’s talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs.”

Dylan jumped.

The Druid clapped his shoulder cheerfully. He recited resonantly,

“Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.”

“You scared me,” Dylan said.

“Graveyards scare all of us,” the Druid replied. “Old graveyards even more.” Winking his one green eye and smiling, he sat down next to Dylan. He offered him a piece of pemmican. Dylan wondered if the aquamarine eye could blink, or if it always shone, like a lighthouse lamp.

Dylan took the pemmican and started chewing. “What was that drivel you were spouting as you came up?”

Dru turned the one eye baleful. “The bard of Avon, laddo. God created him British to balance a little all the poetry He gave to the Welsh, there is justice there is.” His friend looked as much like the beaver hunters as Dylan feared—a
bandeau
of fur around the head, knee leggings, moccasins, and a
gage d’amour
with a white clay pipe around the neck. A white man reduced to a barbarian, Ian Campbell would have said.

“How did you find me?”

Dru shrugged. “You said you were going to ask to become a priest this morning. I know Father Quesnel is your family’s friend. Who else would you ask? Half an hour ago he went out the back door of the rectory, by the way.”

Dylan scowled.

“He just came back in. You could probably see him now, for the good it will do you.”

Dylan jumped up. “The good it will do me? I told you—”

“Go on with you, laddo, and do what ’ee must. When you’re finished, meet me here. I have an idea. A grand idea.”

After the bright spring sunshine outdoors, the room was dark, and it smelled of snuff. Father Quesnel often joked that snuff, fine snuff, was the final, irrefutable proof of God’s fundamental goodness.

Father Quesnel sat behind his desk regarding his godson solemnly. He didn’t offer his hand. He nodded toward the ladder-backed chair in front of the desk, and Dylan sat down. It was a hard, uncomfortable chair.

Until now Dylan had never been struck with the realization that Father Quesnel looked like his own father. Not in form or feature—his godfather was painfully thin and had features too large for his face—but in demeanor, in style. In owlishness. In superior attitude toward him, perhaps.

The young man fidgeted in the hard chair.

Father Quesnel regarded Dylan. The silence was getting oppressive.

Finally: “I have a note from Peche this morning.”

“Peche” was his pet name for Ian Campbell. Dylan had never known why.

“Your father says you want to be a priest.”

“Yes, Father.”

Quesnel looked at Dylan. He scooted his chair forward and looked more. It seemed to Dylan that his face became more kindly.

“I’m your godfather, Dylan, and I think you would make an excellent priest. You’re a young man of high ideals and a certain nobility of spirit. You’d be a credit to the seminary. I think you have a grand future before you, no matter how you serve man and God.”

Dylan’s heart sank. So I am to be turned down.
Why?
screeched through his mind.
Why?

Father Quesnel opened a desk drawer, got something out, reached across the desk to Dylan. A piece of stationery. His father’s script.

“Your father reports that you and he have quarreled. Quarreled seriously.”

Quesnel looked at Dylan for confirmation. Dylan nodded.

“He’s concerned about you. You’re without a job, he says. Without money. Without clothes, even. He says all your belongings are there.”

Father Quesnel looked hard at Dylan. Dylan kept his face unreadable.

“Are you and your father estranged, Dylan?”

Dylan hesitated, then nodded.

“I’m sorry to hear it. From your point of view, what’s the problem?”

“He doesn’t give a
damn
about me.” Dylan meant his language to be harsh.

Father Quesnel cocked his head, looked quizzically at Dylan, arranged his wide, fluid mouth into a smile.

“He only cares about what I can do for him. Live respectably, unlike him. Get good connections for the family. Increase the family fortunes.”

“Dylan.” Said softly, sympathetically.

“He despises me.”

“Dylan, your father loves you. You know that.”

“He hit me over the head with a table.”

“I’m sure he gets frustrated and angry. And I’m sure he loves you.”

“I’ll never go back to his house. Never.”

“It’s understandable to feel that way. Clinging to that resolution would only hurt both of you.”

Dylan shrugged his shoulders.

Father Quesnel waited.

Dylan screwed the words together. He felt like he was prostrating himself. “Father, I want to become a priest. My ambition, my heart’s desire, is to become a missionary. Will the order accept me as a seminarian?”

The words seemed to Dylan to ring in the air fatefully. He had a sense of abyss.

“Dylan, as I said, you would make an excellent priest, and I would welcome you to our seminary. There would be some questions to be answered. But we have talked about your yearning for mission work in the past, and you know that a priest must accept the duties the Church gives him.”

Dylan interrupted, “My calling to the missions is unmistakable, Father.” He touched his heart with a flat hand.

Quesnel considered and inclined his head sympathetically. “Yes. I understand. Admirable. You would help return the Canadian Church to its historic mission.”

The priest waited, looking at Dylan. “My son, I ask you to mend your relations with your father and come back with your request.”

“Impossible,” Dylan burst out.

“Dylan, Dylan. There can be no question of accepting you for the priesthood under circumstances like these. Our seminarians need, among other things, the full support of their families. We avoid young men who come to us in a moment of disruption.”

Dylan moaned. “Father, this calling has been in me from boyhood.”

“Yes.” Father Quesnel looked at Dylan thoughtfully. “I believe it has.”

The priest rose. Dylan stood up as well. He repeated, “I believe it has. I believe you will be a missionary. And do good work for the Mother Church.”

He offered Dylan his hand. “There will be questions to be answered, considerations, plans to be made. You can start upon this path as soon as you get right with your father.”

Dylan felt hot tears well in his eyes as he shook Father Quesnel’s hand. The young man jerked his hand back quickly and turned his head away. He hurried toward the door.

“Dylan,” Father Quesnel called after him, “I hope to see you back here tomorrow, and to present you to the abbot.”

Dylan didn’t look back.
Impossible
, he screamed in his mind.

He opened the door to the outside. The sun shafted into the dark room and hit him in the eyes. He felt weak in the knees. He staggered.

The Druid was standing there, smiling. He closed the door behind Dylan with a final-sounding click.

“Come now, laddo,” he said. “How about an adventure? A dalliance with life and death?”