The Broken Blade Read online

  When they finally shot out into the light, La Londe called, “Hold the right channel.” The paddlers on the left dug hard.

  Then Pierre saw one of the tricky turns that Charbonneau had mentioned. At a place where the river momentarily widened into a foaming pool, they had to make a quick right turn. Since their speed threatened to carry them straight ahead onto the rocks, the men on the left paddled with all their might. Those on the right obeyed La Londe’s command: “Ship your oars,” and they stopped paddling.

  The bow veered faster to the right than anyone expected, and La Londe called, “Backwater left,” but their abrupt right turn continued. The long canoe swung directly toward a foam-topped boulder. La Londe set his paddle against the rock.

  Pierre heard a sharp crack as La Londe’s paddle snapped in two. “Backwater,” the bowman yelled one more time as he bent to grab a spare blade.

  Just then the bow bumped up onto the boulder and the stern began to swing around. Pierre heard a yell behind him. He turned to see McKay’s canoe flying out of the chute above them, bearing straight for their canoe.

  La Londe took a quick glance upriver, and then he tried one last, desperate shove against the submerged boulder. The muscles under his loose shirt quivered, but the bow wouldn’t budge. The stern swung faster now in the current, and despite the frantic backpaddling of the crew, it looked as if they would be broadsided when McKay’s canoe arrived.

  “No,” Charbonneau bellowed. Pierre closed his eyes, anticipating the shuddering crunch of a canoe shearing through their hull. When there was no impact, he opened his eyes just in time to see La Londe leap over the side. Still clinging to the gunwale, the bowman planted both feet on the slippery boulder, grabbed the projecting bow in his hands, and heaved upward.

  As the front of the canoe came free, the fierce backpaddling of the middlemen finally took effect. The stern swung back just as McKay’s canoe brushed past, cutting so close that it knocked a paddle out of one man’s hand.

  In that same instant La Londe lost his footing. Before anyone could extend a hand or even cry out, he was gone. One moment he was there, and an instant later there was only the boulder and a white horsetail of water.

  Pierre turned to Charbonneau and yelled, “A rope! Get a rope!” but everyone’s eyes were already turned downstream, searching for a reason to hope.

  CHAPTER 12

  A Broken Blade

  BY THE TIME Charbonneau’s canoe reached Lake Huron, Pierre could see that McKay had already ordered the search to begin. Three of the Montréals paddled back and forth across the outlet of the French River, while the crewmen scanned the water with hopeful eyes. A dozen men combed the shore of the lake, while a dozen others ran back up the river, hoping to find some trace of the missing man. A half hour later La Petite returned from his search upriver. He was holding the blade of La Londe’s paddle.

  They searched for an hour in silence. Just before sundown Charbonneau found the second half of La Londe’s paddle floating well out into the lake. He scooped up the broken piece, declaring simply, “The big lakes don’t like to give up their dead.”

  For a long while no one moved or spoke, and the canoe floated silently across the black water. Finally Emile spoke to no one in particular: “It’s a cold, mean place to lie forever.”

  A few minutes later Charbonneau turned the boat toward shore. The cool, damp smell of night was already in the air. Pierre fought back his tears, remembering what Bellegarde said that first day on the beach about never feeling sorry “for no man what’s still alive.”

  Pierre recalled the coffin they’d met at St. Anne’s Chapel. He closed his eyes a moment and imagined the corpse of La Londe drifting in the cold current of Huron. His hair waved gently in green light, as his body, pale arms and legs extended, sank deeper into the darkness.

  Later, as the men rolled out their blankets, there was none of the usual joking. Emile, who was preparing his bed nearby, looked toward Pierre just as he reached to untie his knife. Emile stared at the carved handle and asked, “Why did it have to be him?”

  Pierre shook his head. He had seen the same question in every man’s eyes tonight, and he suspected no one knew the answer. For now he didn’t want to talk or think. Though he wasn’t physically tired, he felt an incredible weariness, and he wanted to lie down.

  “And look what we’re stuck with,” Emile continued, tilting his head toward Jean Beloît. “That fellow’s deserved drowning every day of his life, but hell probably live to a hundred.”

  Pierre nodded. Feeling wicked, he almost smiled at the thought of Beloît drowning. If only that cackling fool had been silenced by the dark waters!

  Though the next morning was warm and brilliant blue, the men moved as if they were numb with cold. In silence they paddled up and down the shore for an hour, dutifully trying one last time to find their bowman’s body.

  Then Pierre helped La Petite and Charbonneau tie La Londe’s broken paddle together in the shape of a cross and paint it with vermilion dye borrowed from a parcel of trade goods. They hiked up the hill and set the cross in a pile of rocks next to a half dozen markers. La Petite and Charbonneau started back, but Pierre lingered a moment.

  He looked to the east and suddenly hated the calm blueness of Huron. He picked up a rock and heaved it as far as he could. Before the first stone clattered onto the boulders that rimmed the French River gorge, he threw another and another. When Pierre finally stopped, he was panting hard. He wasn’t sure how many stones he’d flung at the river, but the edge of his anger was blunted.

  Before the brigade headed out, John McKay assembled the men on the beach and said a few words. McKay ran his hand through his bushy red beard and coughed once before he started. “In life,” he began, “we knew Charles La Londe as a loyal friend and a skilled ca-noeman. For the past two decades he was a dedicated servant to the North West Company. Even as we grieve we are grateful to him for his service and for his recent act of heroism, which saved an entire canoe from certain destruction. He is an example of courage and commitment to us all.” McKay stopped a moment and looked at his men. Pierre bit his lip.

  “It is hard for us to say goodbye,” he continued, “to a man so kind and good.” Pierre was impressed with the ministerlike tone in McKay’s voice. “Yet lest we be tempted in our grief to question Providence, may I remind you of the Ninety-eighth Psalm.” McKay paused to open a small brown Bible. “The Lord warns us to prepare, saying, ‘What man is he that liveth and shall not see death?’”

  McKay looked up at his men and continued. “Whether our parting from this world comes early or late, sudden or slow, it is not our place to question. We take up our journey without knowing where or when it will end. Each man in his turn must one day pass on to greater kingdoms.

  “For as the prophet Job reminds us: ‘The waters wear away the stones and wash away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth. Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.’”

  After a moment of silence, the commander concluded, reciting as the men joined in: “‘The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters …’”

  The men stood a few minutes in silence before walking to their canoes. After they boarded their canoe, Charbonneau’s crew paused to look up at the red marker. Each man doffed his cap and crossed himself before taking up his paddle. Then one by one the blades began their familiar dip and pull.

  A hundred yards out, Pierre glanced back at the hill one last time. La Londe’s newly painted marker made the old ones look shabby. His cross looked larger, too, catching more light than all the rest and casting a shadow back over the hill that looked like a huge arrow about to be released on a blurring, upstream flight.

  CHAPTER 13

  La Cloche Rock

  WHEN PIERRE WAS only eight his grandfather back in France had died. Since he had neve
r met the man, he hadn’t understood his mother’s tears. Though Mother told him her father was “a wise man … tall and noble … a professor at the Sorbonne,” to Pierre he remained a faceless shadow.

  With La Londe it was the opposite situation. La Londe had been all too real. Awake or asleep—it made no difference—Pierre could see La Londe’s face grinning above the gunwale as he lifted the canoe free, not knowing that only an instant later he would be dead. Without thinking, Pierre would listen for La Londe’s singing; then every time he looked up and saw that La Londe was gone, the horror of the French River flashed back into his mind.

  Their second night on Huron, Emile was sitting next to Pierre at the campfire. Pierre finally felt like talking about La Londe. He asked his friend, “Do you ever wonder if there’s justice?” Both boys were staring at Jean Beloît, who was off by himself and being unusually silent.

  “It’s hard to say,” Emile said, pausing to pull off his cap and run his fingers through his tangled hair. “Maybe what seems unfair for now will even out in the end?”

  “In other words,” Pierre said, “if we’re patient, one day certain disgusting idiots will get what they deserve, and then—”

  Charbonneau overheard the boys and interrupted. Pierre braced himself for a lecture. The steersman would tell them to toughen up and get on with their lives. Instead, his voice was soft rather than soldierly. “There’s nothing harder to accept than a good man dying young. Calling it fate or the will of God or bad luck doesn’t help, either.” He paused with his steely eyes reflecting bits of embers from the fire. “Everyone of us is just as angry as you young fellows, but the years have a way of numbing a man. We’ve all seen it happen so many times that a part of us has died with every mate that went down. We care, but we can’t let the sadness touch us too deep. A good man is gone, but if we lose our edge, the lake will be burying us all.”

  When Charbonneau walked off, Pierre stared after him with new respect. There was clearly more to this man than the tough face he showed to the world.

  The north shore of Lake Huron was two hundred miles of spectacular canoeing. With no portages to slow them down, and with a string of islands to protect them from onshore winds, the brigade made great time.

  The days were clear and warm, and Pierre paddled without his shirt or cap. When he went bareheaded the old timers teased him about being “out of uniform,” but after the chilly days on the Ottawa, Pierre enjoyed the feel of the sun. Like his father, he tanned quickly, and like his sisters’, his hair bleached to an almost white blond. The muscles in his arms and shoulders began to stand out as a result of his thousands of paddle strokes. But with La Londe gone from his place in the bow, the beauty of the days was empty for Pierre.

  On the third consecutive day of clear skies, Pierre was surprised when Charbonneau started complaining. “I don’t like the look of this. It’s all wrong. This isn’t what Huron’s supposed to be in June.”

  “Don’t be such a doomsayer,” Emile declared with a grin.

  “We’ll pay for this later,” Charbonneau insisted. “We’ll be begging this weather back. I tell you, it’s not normal.”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Beloît chided him.

  Charbonneau waved a hand at the islands. “I’ve seen good weather wasted on Huron before. We can take anything here. It’s on Superior we’ll be wanting the help. That lake is two hundred fathoms in places and so cold she makes a climate all her own. It might be summer up on those hills, but here on the water, a squall can bring it down to freezing in minutes.”

  The crew bullied their steersman into silence with a chorus of boos, but his comments made Pierre nervous. Father called Superior the Big Lake, and he often spoke of its wild spring storms. Pierre also knew that La Londe’s death weighed heavily on everyone. Voyageurs liked to pretend they would never die, but the bowman’s tragic end served notice to everyone.

  For Charbonneau’s crew, La Londe’s absence was even harder. Their newly appointed bowman was Beloît. While La Londe had urged the men on with his songs and positive encouragement, Beloît was like a snarling dog.

  “Paddle, ladies,” he’d yell at the crew. “You pull like a bunch of old hags. Is it time for the rocking chairs?”

  He saved his best insults for Pierre, calling him whatever came to mind: puppy, whelp, snail, baby. It made no difference that his strokes were getting quick and clean. Pierre knew it was selfish, but when the name-calling was at its worst, he almost felt angry at La Londe for dying and leaving him with Beloît.

  Though he’d dreaded taking on full days of paddling, Pierre discovered that the open water was small work compared to the Ottawa. The portages and the miles of upstream paddling had toughened both his body and his mind. He could paddle for hours at a time now, free from the effort of thought.

  “How many strokes so far today, Pierre?” Charbonneau teased him.

  “How many strokes?” Pierre echoed, remembering his former clumsy self. Those first few days of the trip he’d shared his counting with no one. “Who says I count strokes?”

  “You did, but you don’t, right?” Charbonneau laughed. “It was that way with us all. At first you count every paddle stroke and mark every mile, then soon you are too tired to do anything but forget. The work comes easier, and most important of all”—he chuckled—“the rest of us stay dry.” Pierre was surprised at Charbonneau’s gentle humor, and he was proud that the steersman had noticed the improvement in his paddling.

  The weather stayed perfect as they worked their way along Huron’s shore. To the north, bare, quartz-flecked hills rose up from the water’s edge. To the south, beyond the offshore islands, Huron stretched off in open blue.

  One day, while they were navigating through a strait barely wide enough for the canoes, they passed a magical boulder called La Cloche. In anticipation of this event Beloît had scavenged a rock during their last pipe stop.

  “Listen to the bell, schoolboy,” Beloît said, turning and waving to Pierre as they approached the huge rock.

  Pierre wished they could maroon this fool on the boulder. He would die a slow death as he deserved, and the seagulls would peck out his dirty black eyes.

  The men shipped their paddles, and the canoe went into a silent glide. Beloît leaned over and rapped the gigantic basalt boulder with the rock in his fist. A deep, mournful tolling issued from the very core of the stone, startling Pierre. It sounded like a bell within a bell. He’d never heard anything to match the depth of its tone. Every crewman listened in silence as the note echoed like a chord struck in an earth-locked cavern.

  Pierre was still enjoying the beauty of the moment when Beloît started his infernal cackling. “Pretty music, ain’t it?” he crowed. “I swear, it’s as sweet as a church choir—”

  “Church choir?” Charbonneau interrupted. “Just what would you know about a church or a choir?”

  “Ha!” Beloît laughed. “That’s a good one. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  Pierre pulled again on his paddle, glad to work at forgetting evil men and nicknames and deaths that shouldn’t be.

  CHAPTER 14

  Huron’s Revenge

  THE FINE WEATHER held for their traverse of Huron and a two-day layover in Sault Sainte Marie. Their first full day on Lake Superior was perfect as well. Then, after breaking camp on the second morning, the brigade decided to save twenty miles by cutting straight across a huge bay called Michipicoten. As usual, the crew teased Charbonneau about his dire predictions. Beloît wet his finger and tested the breeze. “Can this be the curse of Huron fallen upon us, Charbonneau?” he asked. Everyone laughed.

  Thirty minutes later no one was joking. Huge white-caps rolled out of the west. The bow slid like the nose of a great sea beast down the backside of each wave and rose high on the oncoming crest. Sometimes a wave washed over the prow, and other times a big breaker dropped the bark hull onto the water with a shuddering crack. Pierre feared the canoe would break apart.

  His hands burned from the biting cold. At t
imes the wind gusted so hard that the crew had to pull with all their strength to stay dead in the water. Raindrops popped into the hull like flung pebbles. To forget his aching, Pierre thought of home. He tried to recall happy times, such as the spring day when he and Camille and Celeste had sailed little hand-carved boats on the creek behind their house, and a wagon trip he and his family had taken to Montreal on Bastille Day when he was ten, but his mind kept drawing back to a single dark image from just a summer ago.

  That afternoon Pierre was swimming with his friends down at the company landing. He was surfacing near the pier when an older boy pushed him under as a joke. At first Pierre thought nothing of it. Even when the boy put his feet on Pierre’s back and pressed him down to the bottom, he expected him to let go. Then, as Pierre listened to the muffled laughter from above, he was suddenly afraid. The boy wouldn’t get off. He tried to lift him, but the dim laughter continued. Pierre’s head pounded. Waves of red and black swept through his brain. Just before he was ready to swallow a huge gulp of water, he dug his fingernails into the boy’s ankle, and the pressure was released. When he broke the surface and spit out a mouthful of brown river water, his friends pointed and laughed.

  Pierre played along with the joke. He smiled as he clutched the dock post and caught his breath. But even after his pulse returned to normal, he was still trembling inside.

  As Pierre dug his paddle into the waves, he wondered how many minutes he could last in the icy waters of Superior if they swamped. If it was true what they said about the big lakes not giving up their dead, how long would it take for his body to sink twelve hundred feet?

  Pierre was picturing the cold lips of a fish picking at his eyeballs when a shout from the front of the canoe shocked him back to the present. It was Beloît. “Hold on,” the bowman yelled.