Bride of New France (37 page)

Unlike some of the more established Pointe-aux-Trembles families, Laure and Mathurin still don’t have any more furniture than they did the previous year. The furniture that comes in from the ships is designated first for the nobles and religious houses of Québec, then for the wealthier settlers of Trois-Rivières, and finally what remains is transported to the nobles and religious of Ville-Marie. It will take years before the ordinary people will have furniture in their cabins, except for those who can make their own rudimentary versions or buy pieces from the few furniture makers in the town.

“Well, it looks like you have learned a thing or two in my absence. That smells good. I’ve been eating nothing but Savage stews for the past months. You know how foul those can be.”

Laure nods. “Yes, day after day of eating that corn soup of theirs must be terrible.” Does Mathurin think she knows nothing about the Algonquins and their ways?

Laure fills the two bowls with the broth and vegetables and carries them to the table. When she sets Mathurin’s bowl in front of him, he reaches for her breast and gives it a hard squeeze. The swift movement and sharp pain makes her spill some of the hot broth from her bowl onto his lap. For the moment he doesn’t try for anything more.

After finishing his soup, Mathurin leaves Laure sitting at the makeshift table and crawls into bed. Before long he is snoring and the sound fills every crack in the room’s walls. Laure doesn’t have an appetite for her soup. She is reminded of the trouble that has been gnawing away any reassurance that the bountiful crops could have brought. She rises from her coffer, opens the door to the cabin, and retches beside the entrance. Her stomach is empty, and so she heaves out only air and deep animal sounds.

Although it is still early, darkness is falling on the settlement and the air is sharp with the new cold. Looking out over the cabins, the most prosperous of which have lit extravagant early fires, and into the bare branches of the forest beyond, Laure can be fooled into believing that all is peaceful. The onset of the cold, already predictable and well prepared for, seems a trifling concern. Like death, winter is a certainty to be endured and ultimately surrendered to. Laure is accustomed to death, to the long trials of enclosement, to hunger, to the burying force of this country.

It is the new thing that she cannot accept, that is making her sick. Even now, bile is rising into her throat. She forces herself to put aside for the moment what cannot be ignored for long. When her stomach feels a little settled, she closes the door and comes into bed beside her husband.

In the morning she crawls out of the
lit-cabane
where Mathurin is still lying asleep and opens the cabin door again. The sickness is gone. Outside the sun has not yet risen and the air is cold and damp. The others in the
seigneurie
are still sleeping. With the crops all picked for the year, there isn’t as much reason to wake up early any more. Besides, these days the sun barely rises until late morning. Soon there will be snow.

They say there are ways, even in New France, to procure the necessary herbs. If Laure were at the Salpêtrière, she could easily arrange to meet with one of these women by passing the message of her terrible dilemma from girl to girl. There has been rumour of a few abortionists practising their illicit trade in the colony. But these are only rumours. She certainly can’t ask anyone in Pointe-aux-Trembles to help her find an abortionist. There is not a soul that Laure can trust with her secret.

For Laure, prayers are a last resort. Madeleine would tell her that she should turn to prayer first. Laure would answer that
God, like a good dormitory officer, would expect his children to exhaust all their own means of coming up with a solution before bothering him. Besides, Laure did pray last summer that no child would come of the nights she spent with Deskaheh in Ville-Marie. By late September, she knew for certain her prayer had not been answered. Ever since, she has struggled to think of a way to explain to the others in Pointe-aux-Trembles how she can be pregnant even though Mathurin has been away since April. Even heaven, Laure fears, will have no solution to offer. She must pay the consequences, however grave, for making such a terrible mistake. How easy it is to regret now what she could only surrender to in August.

Her prayer is simple. “Lord, there is a Savage baby growing within me. I ask only that you somehow take it from me and let me live. If you do this one thing for me, I will not disobey any of your commandments again.”

Laure doesn’t know if the help comes from God or simply from her own mind turning over the problem for so long while Mathurin was away. Now that her husband has returned, there is one other option. It might not be too late. Babies often come early, after all. Of course this is only a temporary solution, for when the child is born, Mathurin will soon see that the baby does not belong to him. But many things could happen between now and then. Perhaps as Laure has been hoping for, there is still a chance that the beginnings of the child will fall out of her womb in a miscarriage, although with each passing week that becomes less likely. She has done vigorous work in the garden all fall to bring about this result. She has heard
the French men say that it is the hard work of the Savage girls that keeps them from having so many children like the French women. But, even if the baby, which has so far seemed resistant to her efforts, is born after all, perhaps Mathurin won’t see the Savage origins of the child immediately. It might take years for the features to appear. At least for now Laure can buy herself some time by lying with Mathurin and in a few weeks claiming the pregnancy as his. Laure boils pine branches for the occasion and pours the perfumed water into her hair and over her chest.

When Mathurin awakens, Laure is standing in front of him in her nightdress. She looks into his ruddy face and gives him her most seductive smile. He is surprised by this attention and pleased. At least the first part of her plan is easy enough to orchestrate.

“I’ve wanted so long for you to be my wife,” he says, pulling her up against the soft weight of his body. “Laure, I’ve been waiting just for you.” He looks like he might cry, such is his agitation at her willingness to have him.

She pats his back. She really wishes he wouldn’t make this more difficult by lying to her about the Savage women. She winces as he enters her, but pretends to feel pleasure.

Two weeks later, Laure sits with Mathurin and announces to him that she is expecting his baby. By this time she is in fact three months pregnant and her stomach and breasts are so swelled that she can no longer wear her bodice.

To celebrate the pregnancy, Mathurin has killed two squirrels. He chased a rabbit for a few minutes, but couldn’t shoot it. With her sickness now gone, Laure feels ravenous. Even Mathurin’s
squirrels—strung upon a stick—look delicious. It is as if she needs to eat for the whole winter ahead, for all the past weeks of sickness. There is not enough food in the cabin to satisfy her, but she adds what she can to Mathurin’s catch. She prepares enough for six people. She boils one of the squirrels for several minutes, but can’t wait to eat it. The smell of it cooking drives her mad. She pulls it from the pot and throws the hot carcass across the table. She sits on her chest and eats the entire animal, its soft flesh and salty blood satisfying her like no food ever has. Mathurin watches her, a contented look spread across his wide features.

    21    

L
aure’s fingers move along the stitches. She is embroidering a blanket. The baby will emerge naked into the cold of Canada and will need to be wrapped up, she tells herself. The child must be covered in something if it is to survive even an hour in this country. But does she really want the baby to live for an hour? Two hours? For a day? How long will Laure be able to hold the creature that has no future?

Madame Tardif sits on a wooden chair across from Laure. Although it is rustic, without any carving or a smooth surface, the chair is a luxurious item purchased by Madame Tardif’s husband in Ville-Marie. Madame Tardif is a model colony mother, with children nearby as she works in the cabin. Her offspring are strong and her cabin is outfitted with the simple necessities. Heavy drapes cover the windows; there is a table and four chairs besides the one recently purchased by Monsieur Tardif. There are also cooking utensils and a wash basin. But it is the children, the beginning of a large family, that are the most obvious sign of Madame Tardif’s success.

How much simpler it would be if Laure were having Mathurin’s baby. But what would she feel for the offspring of
her pig husband? It would be some other baby that she half reviled and not this child twisting in her gut filling her thoughts with Deskaheh, God, animals, and her own passions.

Mathurin stayed in the cabin with his pregnant wife until the middle of November, but grew more restless each day watching one fur-trade convoy after another being discussed, planned for, and departing Pointe-aux-Trembles. Finally, at the very last, Mathurin left, promising Laure that he would be back early in the spring, well before the baby was born.

Madame Tardif took Laure in with more affection than she had shown her in the past, if such a shrewd woman could ever be described as affectionate. Surely she was relieved that Laure was finally pregnant. Having Laure stay with Madame Tardif was a courteous agreement between neighbours that was arranged by Mathurin, at Laure’s urging, before he left. Laure decided she could not face another winter alone with just the cabin’s fire and this new baby within her.

Madame Tardif incorporated caring for Laure, the pregnant
citadine
, into her winter schedule. The
Canadienne
has three children in their two-room cabin, the youngest being barely weaned. She reassures Laure that having children is what a woman is meant to do. That they will come into the world less painfully than anticipated, unless of course you or the baby or the both of you die, but of course nothing can be done about that anyway, so there is no sense thinking about it. According to Madame Tardif, raising the children God gives you will be no harder than salting meat, darning socks, or weeding the garden. They are just another of the countless chores of colony life.