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Page 7


  How strange and wonderful it feels, she thought to herself. The ground no longer rocks, or rattles my bones!

  The elation was short-lived, however, for when she returned to her traveling suitcase to examine her precious instrument, she was devastated to discover that the guitar case was missing. It was only then that she realized that she had failed to replace the precious cargo into the larger case at the end of the ship’s long voyage. It must have remained under the bunk of her cabin as she herself was being bundled off the ship and into the jostling carriage. The thought of this crushed her into the small of her own soul.

  Isabelle wept hopelessly as she realized that she might never see her mother’s beloved instrument again, and this brought more tears and an angry fist on her thigh for her carelessness. She felt disheartened beyond redemption, but in time realized that regret would not remedy the situation. No more tears, she promised herself resolutely. The loss of her mother’s guitar meant she must leave her childhood behind and embrace her new life here as an adult. And like her mother, she too would not be afraid of hard work.

  The months quickly passed and Isabelle found that life at her uncle’s home was not unlike her previous life. Like her Maman, Father Jacob was a person of few words, yet he managed to supervise the construction of a new house of worship in the camp, just as her mother had been able to inspire a whole generation of young musicians in her small village back home. The priest’s distance, however, meant that he did not feature largely in her daily routine for nearly a year. The new church was to be constructed of saw-milled timber and roofed in fired-clay shingles. It would be the first European style structure in Solpetrière, and it was a momentous occasion when Father Jacob stepped up to the open-air pulpit to preside over the ground-breaking and blessed the site, sanctifying the land with a sprinkle of Holy water and a kiss from his own dry lips.

  When he had arrived seven and a half years ago, the camp contained merely a handful of log cabins. Many of the workers still lived in stretched animal-skin lean-to tents and cooked on a campfire. There was no milling shed and the logs were transported by a team of six draft horses to the closest mill nearly a day’s journey eastward. Father Jacob’s work was mainly to provide a weekly sermon to a dozen fellows, fortnightly confessions and absolution to the same men, and the occasional last rites to a dying logger felled either by consumptive conditions or a fatal accident.

  The last year and a half brought a sharp increase in the population when it was decided that Solpetrière was a productive area and the quality of its timber out of the ordinary. The ancient cedars found just north of the camp were fine-grained, barely knotted, and remarkably easy to cut. The priest found that his congregation had more than doubled in that time, including the arrival of a few reluctant young — and not so young — ladies, and their requirements expanded rapidly to include an occasional wedding, weekly confessions, and eventually a few baptisms. The donations to the church construction grew fast. Over a six-month period, just before he departed for France to pick up his orphaned niece, the funds reached a sufficient level to warrant his dispatch to the Holy See, along with the Archbishop of St.-Boniface of Manitoba, to seek approval from the Bishop, and perhaps the Pope himself, and pay the required liege to the almighty Catholic Church.

  By the time the Church’s superiors had appropriated their handsome shares, quickly blessed what was left of the monies, and sent him back to Canada forthwith, the priest felt fleeced like a senseless sheep, dismayed and fretful. The recriminations his congregation would lay upon him for the paucity of remaining funds allocated to their much-anticipated church played in his mind. It weighed heavily upon the prudent priest throughout the entirety of the return journey, and right up to the moment a week later that the first sod was turned on the building site as the loggers cheered. Father Jacob kept up a beneficent appearance but underneath the fine black robes his nerves were on edge and lurched with anxiety while his sermons were not equal to the grand occasion.

  The issue of the unforeseen reduction of funds initially outraged the congregation, but quickly indignation turned to resignation, and soon the most able of the members stepped forward to volunteer their labor and skills in the name of the Church. Among them were the original settlers of the camp, those men who had no wives or children but secretly hoped the building of the church would help attract more feminine prospects. Construction took place every evening after the mill stopped operation and before the sun dropped below the edge of forest, completely obscuring the workable light.

  So it was that the church came to be built over the course of a year, while its interior remained unpainted with bare rafters and hand-finished timber benches instead of polished Italian pews imported via Montréal. Father Jacob himself was required to act as the construction foreman, as the wages for a hired one were no longer available. Working with plans sent to him by the Church from other similar construction sites in New France, the priest was quickly overwhelmed by the complexity of the task, and prayed frantically each night in a delirious dialogue with The Lord begging him in bring the project to a satisfactory end.

  Slowly the construction lurched toward completion — first a foundation, then a sheltered structure, then timber cladding. More than once, roof trusses and floor joists required re-cutting to an appropriate length, and a window frame or two moved to line up with its opposite. The bell tower, which was to be structured out of bricks, fell a few feet short due to an underestimation of the quantity of required bricks, but in all, the project moved forward at a respectable pace, and by the end of autumn, just as the muskrats were completing their own frantic efforts for the long winter, the congregation enjoyed its first Sunday mass under the roof of their own spare and rough-hewn cathedral.

  The only thing amiss was the large stained glass window, which was promised by the Archbishop but never delivered. In its place the men fixed ordinary panes of glass shaped to fit the gothic arched frame, but as clear and uncolored as a cloud-covered sea. Through it, an expanse of evergreen was majestically framed, creating a magnificent backdrop to the parishioners’ eventual realizations that the ever-present cedar was as much a suitable depiction of their Almighty Savior as any other.

  As the church construction progressed throughout the spring and summer, Isabelle found little time to lament the loss of her music. Madame Lowell was a kind and compassionate woman who never hesitated to give her new charge a motherly embrace when she looked like she needed one, but she was also an immaculate housekeeper and expected the girl to follow suit. Each morning, Isabelle was awakened at the first light to collect the eggs, tend to the boisterous chickens, and milk three moody cows. By noon she would have dusted and polished every piece of furniture and shelving in her uncle’s house, as well as mopped the floors and scrubbed the pots from the previous night. Madame Lowell was pleased by the girl’s dedication and handiwork and praised her heartily to Father Jacob, who only smiled wanly, then returned to his nightly inspection of the building plans with a distracted stare.

  The late afternoon hours were free while Madame Lowell had her daily nap. Isabelle would have liked to spend that time playing the guitar or composing a new piece of music, but that was not to be, and soon she discovered that the fragrant woods and meandering creeks and rivers beyond the camp offered a whole new fascinating world of unfamiliar sights and sounds, animals, plants, and an occasional breath-taking vista. As summer approached and the daylight hours stretched to their maximum, the church construction efforts picked up and Father Jacob did not often return to the house for his evening meal until almost dark — nearly eight and sometimes nine o’clock. Preparations of the meals became later and later, and Madame Lowell’s naps grew longer and longer, ironically stretching nearly to bedtime before she was required to rise. But Isabelle delivered her chores regardless of the season and used the additional hours of the summer to distract herself with new activities. At her usual time in the early afternoon,
she peeled the potatoes and prepared the soup stock, or plucked and trussed the occasional chicken.

  At the first opportunity, the girl headed out to explore the wilderness, first on foot then eventually on a horse that was given to her uncle — the priest had stepped up on behalf of one of the parishioner’s sons who fell afoul of the law, and helped defuse a potential tragedy. The old gray mare was a gift he could not refuse. Quite to her surprise the horse became Isabelle’s new charge and she accepted with reluctance. The haughty beast was skittish initially but with the assistance of the young man, who owed his freedom to her uncle, she learned quickly how to feed, groom and ride it and before long the girl came to appreciate the proud animal. By the following summer she was confident with saddling and riding the horse, and her daily errands on horseback became a pleasure with purpose. She renamed the horse Béatrice.

  One mid-summer afternoon, Isabelle saddled the mare and wandered into the forest. On a previous visit she had seen that there were large patches of forest that had been cleared of their particularly large trees some years before, and the open area around the stumps was often covered with grasses and herbaceous plants not found elsewhere on the pine forest floor. She arrived this day with eager plans to gather herbs she knew were edible, and bring them back to the house to identify using Father Pascal’s Directory of New World Medicinal Plants, a hand-illustrated volume that looked as enticing as the plants themselves. She also brought a small notebook and drawing pencil which Madame Lowell had given her as a belated birthday present, not long after their arrival at the camp.

  It took less than two hours to arrive at her favorite clearing in the forest, following the meandering creek which gave the camp its name. It was very shallow in parts and just barely flowing as it had not rained for nearly two months. And, although this lack of precipitation aided the church’s construction considerably, it also worried many of the residents as dry hot summers sometimes spelt disaster in the form of ravaging fires caused by sparks from the logger’s saws at the cutting sites. As Isabelle approached along the winding creek, she noticed it was particularly well-lit from above. It was her first mid-summer day in her new world and the high afternoon sun seemed brighter and more intense than any sun she had seen before. As she brought the mare into the clearing, however, the horse saw something that spooked her and abruptly reared and bolted, with the girl hanging on desperately, screaming at the top of her lungs. But the frightened horse shot through the forest as if she had seen a ghost and galloped for a mile or more before she managed to lose her rider. Girl and basket spilled unceremoniously from the saddle at a sharp bend in the creek where the horse turned suddenly right and the girl fell left. The spooked horse kept running and all Isabelle hoped was that the mare would somehow make its way home without her.

  Isabelle was amazed that she managed to remain in her saddle for the wild ride as long as she did. It had taken her deeper into the forest than she’d ever been, crossing several shallow waterways that may have been tributaries to her familiar creek — or not. She felt hopelessly lost and her heart was still pounding long after the sound of the horse’s hooves had disappeared into the forest. In the relatively open and benign clearing alongside the water, she picked herself up and checked for scratches or bruises. Surprisingly there were none. The soft pine floor had been her salvation; it was nature’s own cushion for life’s painful spills and falls. The notebook and basket fell not far from her and she gathered them up, surprised and amazed that the pencil had managed to stay wedged between two pages of the book and was unbroken. She sat down again, now more calm, and leaned against a cedar whose branches nearly swept the ground with its low pine cones. Her eyes closed for a long moment.

  When she re-opened them they scanned the ground and re-focused on the multitudinous shades of green and yellow in the grasses that sprung up between the low-lying shrubs. Not far from where she sat, a long wavering line of red army ants marched resolutely through the dry blades like soldiers to a battle. She watched patiently as the ants delivered randomly cut pieces of leaf from a low-lying bush, holding the ragged green sheets vertically in their strong jaws while their nimble feet traced the exact steps of the warrior ant before them. Watching them disappear one by one under a fallen branch directly in front of her, she surmised that they would eventually re-emerge on the other side to continue their journey to an unknown anthill perhaps a great distance from where she witnessed their initial foray.

  Her gaze was interrupted by a rustle and a movement in the bushes to her left, caught in the periphery of her vision. For a moment her heartbeat quickened again and she thought with trepidation of all the large creatures Madame Lowell had cautioned her about: the deer-like creatures called “moose,” and the frightening black bears of which she was particularly fearful. They sometimes came into the camps and disturbed chickens and the occasional unfortunate human, but then she rationalized that many small harmless animals also inhabited the forest. My fears are unnecessary, she thought to herself, for this rustle in the trees sounded decidedly smaller. She relaxed for a moment and sat absolutely still waiting for another rustle in the bushes to confirm her thoughts.

  No sound came after a long while so she resumed her position against the large tree and relaxed her shoulders. There was no reason to panic, she convinced herself. Whatever was there was now gone. She had come to draw, enjoy the afternoon, and gather herbs; a fall from her horse was no reason to abandon her plans.

  “Just a few minutes more and then I shall find my way back,” she declared loudly to herself. “Béatrice will likely return to the stables and with luck Madame Lowell will send a rider back to get me.” Reaching for the notebook and pencil, she looked about slowly to find a suitable view to render. The curve of the creek rounding another large tree caught her eye where the sparkling water formed a small waterfall over some large rocks caught up in its roots. Never having had drawing instructions, only good hand-to-eye coordination and the willingness to discipline it, she tentatively began a sketch.

  Painstakingly she labored at the drawing, taking her time and not rushing the lines onto the page. Then, just as her first drawing began to take shape, the small movement in the bushes suggested itself again, in the same spot out of the corner of her eye. With her pencil held in mid-stroke she looked to the left and caught sight of a dark eye peering at her between the tall blades of grass and shrubbery. She stared back at it, determined not to appear frightened as she was instructed to do if ever faced with a dangerous animal. For what seemed an eternity, the two individuals stared at each other, both determined not to show fear or aggression. It was Isabelle finally who put down her pencil and notebook and stood up with open hands to show she was not armed or dangerous.

  The boy who saw her through the tall grass looked with curiosity at her pale skin, strange curving dark hair that gleamed coppery-red like a hawk’s back feathers under the sunlight, and even stranger eyes that seemed the color of the forest. The skin and hair were no surprise, but he had never really come this close to the White Man before, and this girl with her bottled glass–like eyes was fascinating. He was not much older than she, and when she stood up he realized that she was quite small.

  Walk-Tall had been coming to this particular area of the forest since he was old enough to hold a bow and arrow and allowed to wander out of his family’s campsite alone. He had walked nearly two hours this morning to arrive just as the sun reached its highest point in its summer arc and had been taking a nap in the shade of the tall grass when he was awakened by the sound of a horse approaching in the distance. He had sat up calmly to discover the nature of the intruder, and it was with all his willpower that he did not stand up straight away to help the rider whom he saw thrown from the horse just a few feet in front of him. It was his nature to help others, but he had been given strict instructions to avoid contact, if possible, with any of the members of the White Man’s people. When he saw that she was not hurt, however, he f
elt much relieved.

  But now, with the pale girl standing facing him boldly with her hands strangely turned out toward him, he felt he must do the same and show a similar boldness, and also respect her turned-out hands. The lines on her pale pinkish palms were very clearly marked, he observed, and wondered if that was the reason she held them out to him. He stood up slowly, parting the tall grass so he could step through it and move closer to inspect the girl’s palms. She stood completely still with her hands held awkwardly out as he stepped closer and closer. When he was near enough to reach out and touch her he stopped, amazed that she suddenly closed her eyes, as if to say, I trust you, but you may kill me if you desire.

  His desire at that moment was only to look into her eyes and see the forest reflected in them. “Please open your eyes,” he said slowly in his own dialect of the Iroquois nation. He did not expect her to understand and was startled to see her eyes abruptly open. A smile quickly followed the look of surprise on his face, and as the girl opened her eyes to discover the friendly face looking at her, she felt a huge relief that must have been apparent to her observer because he then began to laugh, shyly at first then more heartily, shaking mirthfully in his moccasins.

  Isabelle could not believe her eyes. Here a “Savage” was standing before her and she felt completely unencumbered with fear. It was helpful that he was not much older than she, but it was the timbre of the boy’s laugh that relaxed her, and she recognized the boyish mischief in that laughter, knowing that it was in his heart as well. His plain buckskin vest was trimmed with a simple pattern of small wooden beads which revealed to the observant girl that a mother had lovingly sewn these intricate beads into her beloved son’s clothing. Observing that he was taller than she was by a head and wore his long hair in braids tied up with animal hide and a few brightly colored bird feathers on his adorned plaits, she also saw that he was a strong and good-looking young man; all at once she felt shy and embarrassed.