Barkskins. Annie Proulx

us drink a toast to that man whose sugar mouth disguises his gall-choked heart.” They opened the jenever and drank to the riddance of Duquet.

      “Perhaps you’d rather have coffee,” mocked Toussaint.

      “Oh no, it is too bitter for one so backward as I,” answered Fernand.

       17

       “unto a horse belongeth a whip”

       (Guy du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac)

      He could barely waste time sleeping, for his mind was in ferment, his body burned with the intense desire to get on with things. All was occurring as he had hoped. The first morning light was like an armful of dry wood tossed on a fire, and he was choking with energy and ambition as he pulled on his clothes. He despised men who slept until the sun was high—inept laggards who would never be anyone.

      In Ville-Marie, before he had found the Trépagny brothers, Duquet had hired bûcherons to find and cut white and red cedar, balsam fir and fragrant sumac, others to shape and finish the wood into small boards. These were packed in odorless birch chests to preserve their natural fragrances. Indian women had gathered ginseng roots, bundles of sweetgrass, other plants and roots for him.

      He chartered a ship, the Hendrik, to take him, his fragrant woods, his magic roots and furs to La Rochelle, where he would meet Captain Verdwijnen. The ship’s captain was Gabriel Deyon, the son of Captain Deyon with whom he had first traveled to France years before. The son told Duquet his father had been lost, ship and all hands aboard, in the treacherous Strait of Magellan, whose narrow passageway he had chosen as a safe alternative to Cape Horn.

      “One never knows,” said Duquet piously. But he knew.

      Deyon’s ship stopped at every settlement along the river. At dusk it moored for the night at Wobik and Duquet went ashore to see what changes had come in the years since he had left.

      He could scarcely believe it. Where was the forest? The landscape had been corrupted. The village had swollen by fifty houses, a grain mill, a water-powered sawmill, a large sheep commons. The forest had been pushed out of sight, and in the place of woodlands were rough fields with crops growing between stumps. The muddy trail west that he remembered was now a fair road. For a moment he was frightened; if miles of forest could be removed so quickly by a few men with axes, was the forest then as vulnerable as beaver? No, the forest returned with vigor, resprouted from cut stumps, cast seeds, sent out mother roots from which new trees grew. These forests could not disappear. In New France they were vast and eternal.

      One thing had not changed; Monsieur Bouchard still handled the passage money for river travel, still welcomed newcomers.

      The old man, looking strong though white-haired, did not recognize him. Duquet asked him to open the ledger where he had made his mark half his lifetime earlier. He pointed.

      “There. That is my ignorant mark.” A few lines above he saw the pathetically elaborate R of René Sel and asked if he was still alive.

      “Certainement. He has Monsieur Trépagny’s old house, where he lives very comfortably with his wife and children. You knew, did you not, that Claude Trépagny met his untimely end seeking you, whom he determined to punish as a runaway?”

      “I did not know. He was a vindictive, unforgiving master and I was justified in leaving because of that maltraitement. He treated me badly.”

      “There are some who believe you had him dispatched by the Iroquois.”

      “What a canard! If the Iroquois killed him it is because they had their own reasons.”

      And although he did not care, he diverted the conversation. “So, René Sel has become a landowning farmer?”

      “He is a woodcutter and keeps a few cows and sheep out in the forest. But there are several farms near his place these days. He cuts firewood and makes potash. There are perhaps six good farms between here and Sel’s place. As you can see, Wobik has made tremendous progress in clearing and destroying the wilderness. The only person who laments this labor is that sauvage Mari, René’s wife. She has become a woman of some importance for her abilities to heal the sick. She mourns the loss of woodland grottoes where certain plants once grew but are no more because of the industry of the settlers. She speaks out more and more against the white settlers. We cannot subdue that streak of vengeance that is part of their character. Her Indan sons have gone to the village of St. Francis, which is crowded with rebellious Indans of every tribe.”

      “Mari!” cried Duquet. “Married to Mari? But she is much older. Surely a country marriage.”

      “No. Trépagny forced it years ago so that he would not lose his rich French wife. In the end he lost her and everything else, even his life.”

      “His brothers do not know this,” said Duquet.

      “Ah, but they do. I told them myself at the time of the events. By rights they should have inherited at least Claude’s big stone house, but they did not wish it. They are wandering men with good hearts and said the house should go to one who was content to be a woodcutter. I expect they are both dead by now, killed by Indans or drowning.”

      “No doubt,” said Duquet, “if they are not in the Caribbean whipping slaves.” With that he took his leave and returned to the ship. He felt stifled, he was ready to get away. He had longed to be back in the northern forest but now that he was here he wished for the glittering worlds of La Rochelle, Paris, Amsterdam, even Canton, as the English called Guangzhou. New France had nothing for him now except timber.

      “A hard one,” murmured Monsieur Bouchard to himself. “Hardened. Very much hardened.”

       18

       reunion

      As the ship entered the Bay of Biscay the pale limestone cliffs of La Rochelle gleamed in the first strike of sunlight. Duquet could smell salted cod, the smoke of twisted salt grass from the fires of the poor. Despite the early hour a crowd of fishermen and mariners were on the wharf looking for share employment. Once they had worked the Newfoundland coast, but this was increasingly dangerous and difficult as the English and the New England colonists and even the Spanish and Dutch were pushing in. The La Rochelle boats now fished the offshore Grand Banks, where the poissons were larger, stouter and sweeter than those along the coast—and closer to home.

      In La Rochelle while he waited for Captain Verdwijnen and his ship, Duquet carried two boxes of his specialty woods one day to the shop of Claude Citron, the merchant who, on his first journey years earlier, had expressed warm interest in unusual cabinet woods. Citron was older now but no less fervent on the subject of woods.

      “Ah,” he said as if Duquet had been in only the day before instead of long years, “let us see what you have brought from New France—delights, I am sure.”

      Duquet set his sample boxes of scented cedar and balsam on the table, a few pieces of figured maple. He explained that he was taking most of his stock to China. Citron handled the satiny wood, sniffed and tilted the pieces to catch the light.

      “You know I am connected with esteemed cabinetmakers always anxious to buy fine woods. You are taking your fragrant woods to China? They would find a market here as well, you know, but I suppose the profits will be greater in China, though the cost of shipping and the possibility of loss to pirates and storms greater. You might consider it.”

      He would make some money selling the cabinet