A Mass Burial and a Wedding

XIV

Part Two of The Wampum Keeper, 
a work in progress

"Hannoe asked me to give you these," Lante murmured, handing Shalinka a small bundle of fur.

The wampum keeper nodded and placed the gift in his satchel. Afterwards, he gazed down again into the pit. Hannoe lay on her side, her knees drawn up. Seven dead Amiskou victims of the French contagion lay near the body of the Ottawa huntress.

Ten other mourners stood at the rim of the pit with Shalinka, Lante, and Sorihia. Four were members of Achawi's fur fleet who'd refused to start north without their ill relatives; the other six had travelled south with Hannoe.

Governor Maisonneuve had ordered all contagion victims buried well away from the town, in a large clearing halfway along the portage trail to Lachine. All the victims in Hannoe's pit had been baptized, and buried with one or two worn-out iron blades, scraps of food, and Jesuit devotional aids. The grave goods came from citizens of Ville-Marie and visitors from Trois-Rivières and Quebec in town for Charles' wedding. Spruce boughs and sprigs of wildflowers adorned the edges and sloping sides of the pit, offerings from the thirteen mourners.

Father Le Moyne said his final prayer and the French soldiers shovelled the limestone gravel and loamy soil back into the pit. The Jesuit priest said his good-byes and soon hurried off back to town with the soldiers. He had chores to attend to before setting out for Onnontagé, and Claude needed his help with Charles' wedding ceremony.

Shalinka, Lante, and Sorihia stayed on at the graveside with the other mourners. Three of the four members of Achawi's fur fleet and two of Hannoe's companions appeared quite unwell as they shuffled over the loose-packed earth chanting songs to the souls of their departed friends.

All ten were anxious to catch up with the fur fleet and get back up to their homes alive. They accepted Sorihia's medicinal herbs and listened intently to her explain how to prepare the teas.

When finally they disappeared up the portage trail, the Algonquin healer turned away and strode to the far edge of the clearing where she sank down on a fallen log, and flung her medicine bundle into a thorn bush! This shocking act told Shalinka and Lante all they needed to know about Sorihia's emotional state.

In Lante' case, however, good manners dictated that she leave her two older friends together. This would be Shalinka's farewell visit with Sorihia. "I'll run and catch up with Ouane," she said, "and see you one last time at the wedding. Shalinka nodded and touched her elbow before walking over and hunkering down in front of Sorihia.

The Algonquin eyed him sharply from beneath the brim of her black felt hat. "I hope those sick ones die before they overtake Achawi's canoes," she growled. "They will spread this sickness wherever they go. And they will die! No medicine of mine can help them!"

"Your medicine is keeping Iroquet alive. He's much better this morning," Shalinka replied.

Sorihia snorted. "My medicine didn't do that. He's better because he's up where the air is fresh and clean. Do you not see that this foulness is passed on in the breath of the sick ones?"

"Passed on in their breath!" Shalinka cried. "What is passed on? What is this foulness? Surely it's the work of some evil oki!"

"Well, if so, he's using invisible bugs to do his dirty work," Sorihia replied. "And these bugs aren't just in the breath of the sick ones, but in their spit, shit, piss, snot, sweat, and so on!"

Shalinka grimaced in disgust. "Invisible bugs! How do you know the bugs are there if you can't see them?"

"Jeanne Mance saw them in France when she looked through a rounded glass and down a hollow tube into a dish of spit. The rounded glass made the bugs look bigger. It's like what happens when we look at a bug through a raindrop on a leaf."

"Well, that's a different matter!" Shalinka replied rashly. "We see the bug on the leaf before we roll the raindrop over it!"

Sorihia brushed a mosquito out from under the brim of her hat and took out her handkerchief and pressed it to her lips. She made no reply.

Shalinka regretted his spate of nonsense. Why shouldn't tiny bugs reveal themselves through a piece of rounded French glass? Ouane's eyeglasses made his writing look bigger, so did his fire-making glass. But the hollow tube, what role did it play?

Harsh caws rang out across the clearing. Shalinka glanced around and saw three black crows pecking at the soil over the burial pit.

"How do these invisible bugs get into us?" he muttered uneasily.

"I don't know," Sorihia replied in a testy voice. "I haven't time to sit around and think about these things the way you do. Pijart says contagions are caused by clouds of smelly air. Or by dirt. He's always on at the Christians to clean their cabins. He's afraid of swamps too."

It was at this point that Sorihia attempted to rise to her feet and fell back down onto the log. Alarmed at this sudden frailty, Shalinka rose and fetched her medicine bundle out of the bush.

"Smelly clouds do occur over swamps," he murmured. "Invisible bugs could get into us when we breathe the air in those clouds."

"Jeanne thinks so," Sorihia replied, accepting her bundle. "But why do so few French die from these contagions? And can these bugs live outside smelly clouds, on writings say, or in blankets and capes? These are things I want to know.

The healer's voice trailed off. Shalinka watched in dismay as she stroked the empty linen sling hanging at her side, the sling that had held her little black and white cat. Kitty too had died at Ville-Marie.

Before leaving the clearing, the two friends stood and gazed down a final time at the earth over the burial pit. At Sorihia's request, they recited a Christian prayer and said ten Hail Marys.

As they set off down the trail, a fit of anger seized Shalinka. It was all senseless! The entire Christian story was rubbish! A human Jesus born of a human virgin... rising up from the dead... flying off to heaven... a bit of biscuit turning into flesh and blood when a French shaman says a prayer! And now the Sisters saying they see invisible bugs...

"We're here," Sorihia rasped out, turning to watch Shalinka stomp along the trough of the path. "Here's where I leave you."

Their parting had been prearranged. Sorihia would continue up the west flank of the mountain to Iroquet and Chepi, while Shalinka, having said his farewells to those two friends, was heading down to the fort to spend the night before setting out with Ouane on the journey to Onnontagé.

"I'd hoped to accompany you on your journey. I wanted to visit the Tahontaenrat healers in their new village of Gandougarae," the Algonquin murmured. At the mention of Gandougarae, a look of anxiety flitted across Shalinka's face.

"Sebequa lives now in Ganondagan," he exclaimed. "I must find her and speak to her."

Sorihia tottered and would have fallen over had Shalinka not caught her arms. Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing laboured.

"I'm sorry I won't be escorting you to Gandougarae," he murmured. "I'll tell the people there that you send them greetings."

Sorihia nodded and sank down on the edge of the trail. "I'm alright, she said. "I'm going to rest a bit before I go on."

"This false peace won't last!" Shalinka cried. "You're not safe in Ville-Marie, Sorihia! Go back to Sillery or to Quebec. The Senecas and Onondagas are busy fighting the Eries this year, but they'll not forget old resentments. Atsina's Hurons have left for the Île d'Orleans. They don't feel safe in Trois-Rivières"

The Algonquin healer waved aside these words and for a time stared off into the forest shadows. "You keep safe too," she murmured at last. "Be sure to put Hannoe's gift in your pouch."

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When Shalinka arrived at the fort, the wedding party for Charles Le Moyne and Catherine Therry was nearly over. Dozens of guests - sitting on empty munitions crates at tables made from sawhorses and planks - had consumed many fine dishes prepared by Marguerite and the twelve Frenchwomen she had chaperoned on the Saint-Nicolas. The tables were still covered with the considerable remains of this splendid banquet.

A male singsong was in progress, with the governor providing accompaniment on his lute. Other groups of men stood around bonfires lit to ward off the swarms of mosquitoes. The lack of female company, and the fatigue brought on by gruelling summer workdays, dampened the festive air a little.

For many of Ville-Marie's hundred new recruits, a sense of fear was also in the air. The attack near Lachine had unleashed a torrent of false sightings of prowling Mohawks; most had come from this motley collection of novice frontiersmen.

The town's old hands were more sanguine. The peace delegation agreed to by Negabamat and Tekarihoken was on its way to Agnié. And even if a Mohawk war party arrived on the island, Tekarihoken and his fellow captives provided surety against an attack. Moreover, the new recruits, however raw, increased the town's numbers to almost three hundred souls. Ville-Marie had never had so many defenders.

At one of the tables, Marguerite Bourgeoys sat with the women she'd chaperoned on the voyage from France. Three were already married; two would wed at summer's end; others were awaiting or mulling over marriage offers. The nine single women were living with Marguerite in the governor's house, and all were earning their keep. There was no scarcity of women's work in Maisonneuve's official residence, or in the homes of Company officials, or in the Hôtel-Dieu, or coming out of the hastily thrown up bachelor shacks of the new recruits.

Marguerite - like the Hôtel-Dieu's administrator Jeanne Mance who with Maisonneuve had founded the Ville-Marie settlement - was deeply religious. She'd come to New France at the request of the governor, to embark on a ministry of school teaching. The lack of a school in Ville-Marie, or youngsters to teach, had in no way discouraged her.

Indeed, her resolve had been strengthened the day of her trek up the mountain with Shalinka, Maisonneuve, and Father Le Moyne. On that day, amid the wreckage of the old cross and its fencing, she found the banner that she and the other Sisters of the Congregation de Troyes had given Maisonneuve before he set out on his mission as governor. The words they'd chosen were still legible on the banner: "Holy Mother of God, Pure Virgin with a Royal Heart, Keep Us a Place in Your Ville-Marie."

In recent weeks, Marguerite had traded her sewing and mending services and collected alms to pay the new recruits in exchange for their work on the site for the new church dedicated to Mary.

Shalinka sat in a place of honour at the bride and groom's table. The staff of the Hôtel-Dieu of necessity had come in relays to the wedding feast, and Jeanne Mance arrived on the parade ground at the same time as the Chonnonton chief. He accepted her invitation to dine with her group but before they got seated, Catherine Therry rushed up and invited them all to sit with her.

It wasn't lost on Shalinka that he was the only male at the head table, or that he was sitting in the groom's place.

He could see Charles at one of the bonfires. The Company's fur counter keeper was deep in conversation with Eustache Lambert, Pierre Boucher, Guillaume Couture, and Louis Chaboyer. It wasn't just Charles' wedding that brought the four men together, Shalinka knew. They were furious at Onontio for seizing control of the fur trade, and they were determined to build a consensus to seek redress from the French king.

It wasn't all bad sitting with the womenfolk, Shalinka decided. Lante and Marie Chaboyer soon arrived to translate from the French for him, and he also got to meet Catherine's step-mother Martine Messier, the most famous of Ville-Marie's heroines during the decade-long war with the Mohawks. Of some interest too was Jeanne Mance saying that Sorihia had taught her how to save scalp victims, and that the two Mohawks Chepi had bludgeoned now wished to become Christians.

Only one of the new recruits standing around the bonfires drew Shalinka's attention: a top sawyer with the dit name La Flèche. He'd been the last person to see and speak with the recruit who'd gone missing on the boat trip up to Ville-Marie.

Shalinka's recent meeting with La Flèche had raised more questions than answers. The basic facts concerning the disappearance of the recruit named La Jarrie were clear enough. He'd gone into the long grasses at Cap-Rouge to relieve himself and not been missed until nightfall. The fleet captain, when told of his absence, assumed he'd walked back to Quebec. La Flèche thought he'd boarded another boat.

During his meeting with La Flèche, Shalinka removed two loops of coarse string from his satchel and asked if La Jarrie had used such strings to hold up his stockings. La Flèche nodded and pointed to an identical set of strings on his own stockings.

Shalinka continued with his questioning. La Flèche shared a hammock with La Jarrie on the Saint-Nicolas. Had he seen a gold cross on the Frenchman's right shoulder-blade?

La Flèche drew back as if stunned. There was a cross on La Jarrie's right shoulder-blade, but not a gold cross. His cross was outlined in black tattoo pricks. What's more, La Jarrie always insisted he had no cross, that he'd never had a tattoo.

"La Jarrie," he shrilled, "was a good-hearted fellow but a Huguenot! Why would a French heretic have a gold cross on his shoulder? How could the One True God choose him as King of Kings?"

Lante and Shalinka glanced at each other. Both thought of Old Tabor in Beaupré, yammering on about the great chief who would rise up in France to champion the poor before Jesus came back to earth.

Since his meeting with La Flèche, Shalinka had thought often about the sly Frenchman. La Flèche lied to him, he was certain of that, but not about the black pricked cross on La Jarrie's right shoulder. The black cross had changed into a gold cross! But when? How? Why?

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