The King's Daughter (21 page)

“What's the matter with him?” whispered Jeanne, her heart seized with apprehension.

Carrot-Top pulled back the blanket and uncovered the tanned, emaciated torso. A dirty bandage had been awkwardly wound around the injured man's heaving chest.

“It was an Iroquois ambush,” Carrot-Top explained. “They surprised us much farther north. We managed to escape them, but a Huron and Belzile died. Simon got an arrow in his side but he had to run, crawl and paddle for a long time in spite of it. When we were far enough away, I tried to get the arrow out. I didn't succeed. The second time I tried, he got mad and hit me over the head. Then he asked to be taken south. When we got here, he couldn't go any farther. He said to me, ‘Go and get Jeanne.' I didn't dare leave him alone. I sent the Algonquins. That's all there is to tell.”

Jeanne was already getting down to work. She took off the bandage stuck to his flesh and asked, “When did it happen?”

“I don't really know.”

Carrot-Top was haggard and exhausted, too. “Six days ago, a week. I forget. Maybe less.”

Simon groaned and opened his feverish eyes. His pupils were dilated. He gazed at the anxious face bending over him. With effort he spoke in the plaintive voice of those who have suffered greatly and long.

“Jeanne, help me. Jeanne, do something.”

The proud man's supplication moved Jeanne even more than the sight of his tortured face. As she would to a sick child, she repeated in a calm, reassuring voice while she examined the horrible wound, “I'm here, Simon. I'm going to cure you. You won't hurt anymore. I'm going to help you. You'll go back home and everything will be fine.”

Her laudable optimism was entirely verbal. Her throat tight, she looked at the infected wound from which emerged the broken end of the Iroquois arrow.

Burning with fever, Simon closed his eyes again and turned his head aside.

Should she wait until daylight to remove the projectile that made every breath so painful? When a person is suffering so much, time drags on forever.

Once her resolution was made, Jeanne went into action. She issued orders and instructions in the spirit of Thérèse de Bretonville.

The three men carried water and set it to boil in the well-scrubbed pot. They doubled the size of the fire, the best source of light. Jeanne inspected her very inadequate instruments. Fortunately, she had the tongs the blacksmith had given her.

A while later she took Carrot-Top aside. His freckled face was pale with emotion.

“Listen, Carrot-Top. You keep talking to me, encourage me, distract me so I won't hear him and so I won't weaken. You know, I'm not a very good healer yet and I'm afraid.”

“I understand,” Carrot-Top said. His simple soul urged him to take an impulsive action. Squeezing Jeanne's arm, he added confidentially, “The important thing, madame, is that you are here.”

The magic phrase that had transformed his life he now offered as a talisman. The two accomplices smiled weakly at each other.

Finally everything was ready. The sides of the tent were rolled up to let in the light and the heat. Two flaming resin torches planted in the ground lit the gloomy scene. Sitting on her heels beside her husband, Jeanne faced the fire. One last time she mentally reviewed everything she would have to do, digging into her memories of Sister Bourgeoys's operation and into her own very inadequate experience. Once she began, she must not hesitate.

Her sleeves were tied up, her hands washed, her instruments laid out beside her. The petticoats cut into bandages were properly rolled. The white thread was there as well as the pine gum gathered during the full moon by old Hippolyte.

Simon watched these preparations. His pale sea-green eyes were still strangely luminous. Despite his parched lips, he tried to smile, both to give her courage and to ask for it in return.

For the past hour Carrot-Top had been making the injured man swallow mouthfuls of brandy, the remains of the bottle borrowed from the dead man at Quatre-Ruisseaux. Monsieur de Rouville hadn't completely emptied it that day and, like any practical woman, Jeanne had kept it.

The heaviest Algonquin sat on the injured man's legs to hold him down. By his head, kneeling on his outstretched arms, Carrot-Top held the piece of wood he would slip between Simon's teeth as Jeanne had told him to. Even if the firelight indicated their presence, it would be dangerous to tip off potential enemies with screams that could carry very far in the silence of the night.

Jeanne set to work rapidly to shorten her husband's agony. Carrot-Top's voice sustained her, though she did not hear the words he said.

The tongs slipped, slid off the end of the arrow, then took hold again. Calling for strength from heaven, Jeanne pulled with every muscle in her body. Finally, after an eternity of effort, the projectile lodged under the bone in Simon's side was torn from his flesh.

Simon shuddered, writhed, then pushed against the ground, his jaws clamped on the piece of wood. He struggled long, only to collapse into unconsciousness at last, relieving the others as much as himself.

Now he was resting under the wolfskin coat. In the heat of the fire, his hair was plastered to his forehead, and his breathing was almost imperceptible. Stretched out beside him, Jeanne kept a vigil, attentive to his slightest breath. Her part was done. Providence and nature would do the rest.

For three days and three nights, Monsieur de Rouville was delirious and believed he was a prisoner of the Iroquois. He swore at them, embarrassing Carrot-Top, who blushed crimson. At other times the rough life led by Monsieur de Rouville, trapper and builder, passed before his eyes.

All the solitude and exile of the winters in the forest and the disappointment of his first marriage came out in his wandering speech. The death of Aimée and his baby haunted him.

Jeanne's name recurred constantly. Her undemonstrative husband who did not know how to say “I love you” said it in a hundred different ways, in broken phrases.

When he struggled too much in the bonds they were forced to retighten, Jeanne washed his tormented face and spoke to him gently, as she had to Nicolas during the night they had spent under a tree. Passively, her patient swallowed potions, water or soup, only to vomit them up the next minute. Tireless, Jeanne cleaned him and started all over.

Now and then Carrot-Top made her take a few hours' rest while he did his best to take her place.

On the morning of the fourth day, Simon opened his eyes, turned his head and looked at his wife; she was pale and had circles under her eyes. She was sleeping in a sitting position, her head on her bent knees. Warned by her sixth sense, she, too, opened her eyes and rose painfully to her feet, her back aching.

A ghost of his authoritarian voice ordered, “Go get some sleep right now. And untie me. I won't run away.”

Simon was on the road to recovery. He was making rapid progress.

At the end of the week, the council of war from which Simon was excluded but which he dominated with his orders and advice, decided to return as quickly as possible to civilization before the cold and ice forced them to winter on the spot.

Stretched out in the bottom of the canoe, his head on Jeanne's lap, Simon either slept soundly or demanded to be told stories he only half listened to.

“I'm wasting my time,” Jeanne finally burst out impatiently when he closed his eyes at the best part of her story of the “Knight of Azur.”

A blissful smile spread over Simon's face, pale under his tan. He assured her, “Not at all, go on. It's not the story that particularly interests me. It's your voice and your choice of words.”

“Isn't my choice of words right?”

“It's adorable, just like you, scholarly and down-to-earth at the same time. What did the poor knight of Azur do when his girlfriend slammed the door of the chateau?”

Resigned, the storyteller took up her tale as she combed her husband's short black beard with her fingers. It made him look like a pirate of the high seas. After five minutes, she fell silent. He was sleeping, and his hand, like Isabelle's in her sleep, was clinging fast to the king's daughter's fingers.

34

SIMON'S CONVALESCENCE
began with the first snow; he was making progress and getting worse at the same time. As he recovered his strength, the little house seemed to grow smaller. Soon Jeanne, exasperated, had the feeling the walls were about to burst from holding in so much energy under pressure.

To restore her patience while Simon grumbled against the cold, the snow, the logs in the fireplace and the heat, the mistress of the house hummed absent-mindedly:

Lui y a longtemps que je t'aime,

Jamais je ne t'oublierai...

An unexpected silence made her look up. Simon was sitting up in bed, his back against the wall, staring at her severely.

“What's the matter now? Am I singing off-key?”

“Off-key wouldn't matter. The song itself worries me.”

Too late, Jeanne realized that, for a few moments, she had become Jean Chatel again, the boy with the big ears who had learned much on his travels.

“Come over here right now and tell me how a lady like you could have heard—and most of all remembered—those verses. Forget that endless mending and sit here beside me. A husband has serious responsibilities, even if he is a cripple.”

Falsely submissive, Jeanne set her work aside. Through the window she spied Nicolas and Isabelle riding down the slope on their crude toboggan, Miraud chasing them. She settled down on the bed beside Simon, her head on his left shoulder to avoid the still-sensitive scar.

Monsieur de Rouville declared anxiously, “I cannot permit that kind of language under a roof that shelters a king's daughter. And what will our future son say when he hears his mother singing like that?”

“It will be a girl, and you know it. She'll think I've got a lot of spirit to sing in these conditions, with a husband like you within earshot to tell me what to do every step of the way. Come on. Put on your coat. We're going for a walk in the snow. You're pampering yourself.”

That was the most beautiful Christmas in the twenty years of Jeanne Chatel de Rouville's eventful life.

Simon gave her a cradle he thought he had built without her knowing. She presented him with a fringed shirt she had made while he was taking his naps. Indiscreetly, he had kept his eyes half-open, secretly admiring her.

Nicolas and Isabelle solemnly recited the poems their mother had patiently taught them, and that their father had heard them stumble through a thousand times.

Miraud and the cat, side by side, warmed themselves in front of the fire.

Carrot-Top, Mathurin, Gansagonas and even the two Hurons, attracted by so much happiness and warmth, shared in the feast served on wooden plates. The little house nestled in the snow rang with laughter and song. Through the glass window, a ray of golden light spread its cheerful message onto the snow.

35

JEANNE AND
Mathurin were notching the maple trees as they tried to predict the quantity of sugar they would produce this time. It was a good year for sap.

“It's a good year for everything,” Jeanne decided. “Simon has recovered, Nicolas knows how to read, Isabelle doesn't suck her thumb anymore, and I'm expecting a baby.”

Not to be left out, Limp added to the happy litany. “Miraud no longer chases rabbits. Gansagonas cured my rheumatism...in my legs, at least. My arm will need more poultices.”

Nicolas, who was carving the wooden pegs that would be stuck into the trunks, got into the act. “There are no more stones in the garden. Papa and Carrot-Top are going to bring back a lot of furs, even if they started too late. And Mama will have another boy.”

“I haven't fallen into the water yet with my new fur-lined coat, and Mama will have another girl,” Isabelle added to this enumeration of good things.

Miraud stood up and turned towards the river. Was it visitors... or was it Father returning sooner than expected?

Everyone ran to the river bank, full of anticipation. Two canoes were passing, rapid and silent, full to the water line with people. Their frightened eyes glanced at the intrigued spectators without seeing them.

A third craft slowed down for a moment. Jeanne recognized the Bibeau family whose daughter had married the summer before.

Without raising his voice, the father said, “Iroquois. They're everywhere. Run. They're following us.”

His wife hushed him, thinking only of herself in her terror.

“Don't waste time. Quick. Keep going. They're going to catch us. They're right behind.”

The Bibeaus hastened away in a panic.

Jeanne looked at Mathurin, her face ghastly pale. Miraud growled, his hackles raised, trembling with rage. She put her hand around his muzzle and whispered an order. “Children, lie down under the canoe. Don't move.”

She pulled the dog with her behind a bush. Limp was already stretched out on the ground, his musket in front of him.

Four Iroquois appeared at the bend in the river, hunched over their paddles. Two other canoes followed right behind them. Almost crushed by Jeanne, Miraud was strangling in silent rage.

Without a glance at the whites crouched on the river bank, the Indians disappeared, gaining ground on their victims.

Motionless, the group waited. Ten minutes passed with no change. Cautiously Jeanne released the dog, who didn't make a move. For the time being, there were no enemies in sight.

Mathurin motioned at the canoe with his chin. “Should we go?”

Jeanne held her head in both hands to think things over better. She had already made a hundred different plans in anticipation of this type of situation. Which of all those plans was the best one now?

“No. Not the canoe. They're ahead and behind. Let's stay here.”

“We can't take to the woods, that's for sure. They'll come that way, too.”