Aleksey and I had spent a pretty miserable rest of the night, if truth be told. My arm was hurting, as anyone who has ever been burnt will understand. It was bitterly cold up on our little hill, so neither of us had really slept much at all. Tiredness and pain, therefore, only added to the sense of unreality that morning as we piled some river stones as best we could over the bodies—this was a burial in name only, as the ground was frozen hard and we had nothing to dig with—and said our words.
The child was nowhere to be seen and neither was his mother, two absences I was grateful for.
After the funeral we sat around the breakfast table, making some plans and looking at the major’s maps. They weren’t very accurate, but they showed the coastline, the colony, the falls, and the approximate distance between these. We were on our third day. It was possible that we could reach the extent of our land in another three, and then it was one day to the falls.
We were about to pack up when Aleksey brought up the thing no one had wanted to address: why were the tent fastenings tied on the outside?
It was uncomfortable.
No one wanted to state the obvious, that the two men had been murdered, possibly because they had suffered the misfortune to sleep that night in our tent. The theory seemed to be that it had been a prank gone horribly wrong—that all that had been intended was the men would not be able to leave their quarters to relieve themselves, or when their turn for sentry came, they would have to call for assistance. The fact that it was supposed to be our shelter was somehow lost in this general speculation of a more innocent yet still tragic occurrence. Aleksey wasn’t satisfied, but I could see he just wanted to push on now, possibly so I would not raise once more the suggestion of him turning back with Faelan (who I was sure had been more a target of the foul creature than Aleksey or me), and also because he could see I was in pain, and riding would at least give me something else to think about.
We rode out in front as we had the previous days.
The good weather had broken now, and low cloud had come across the forest, making the day darken and seem colder than it had. Dampness hung in the air, and I could taste its promise of snow. I shivered inside my coat, tried not to think about my burn, and cursed the young man who had persuaded me to come on this journey. As he was riding alongside me, our thighs touching and his hand occasionally straying to pat my leg absentmindedly as if I were Faelan with a sore paw, these curses were mild for me.
Unexpectedly, two things happened that day that changed my mood entirely. The creature of the night had an accident, and a particular friend of mine from the Mik’mac appeared out of the forest’s gloom. I was in an excellent mood after both these occurrences—for a short time.
Fortunately neither Faelan, Aleksey, nor I were anywhere near the demon when it fell and apparently broke its poor little leg, or I think we’d have come under more suspicion than the tied fastenings of the tent did. He had been running in the woods with his bow and arrow (and where is a grizzly bear when you need one?) and fallen into a burrow that had opened up beneath one leg. His speed had apparently caused this limb to snap. Aleksey, being the sort of man he was, immediately reminded everyone that I was a doctor. Fortunately, as I’d been cursing him all morning anyway, I had some practice in what I then did more roundly (although still silently) as I approached the cart where the boy had been placed.
The irony of the situation did not escape either of us, I think, as I examined my patient. I will say this for the creature—he was stoic. He seemed more curious than anything. I felt around his leg and ankle, torn between various temptations. After a very thorough examination, I moved away from the cart and approached the father to explain that it was imperative I immobilize the leg—that given a few weeks’ rest, the boy’s young bones would be good as new. He nodded, not really understanding any of this but glad to have someone doing something.
The boy, however, refused to have me treat his leg further. He didn’t cry or scream. He informed me in a cold, flat little voice that I was not to touch him again. He even added that he did not like my kind of touching. I didn’t really care one way or the other, but I did murmur that he was clearly wise beyond his years, for now he would always have a good living—as the crippled freak in the marketplace begging for coins… that his one leg would always be half the length of his other, and he would waddle around with his head jiggling… that boys would make him their sport, and wasn’t it good, therefore, that he understood such cruelty so well and that he would not mind this treatment for the rest of his life.
Have I mentioned I am not a good man?
He relented. I did what needed to be done. I broke some boards off the cart and fixed these securely either side of the small limb, bound them around and around with strips of cloth (I used the burnt and bloodied sleeve of my shirt, which only added to the irony of the whole situation). The child did not look down once at his leg, but kept his empty eyes fastened upon my face. By the time I had finished, the improvised splint was possibly heavier than the child. I withdrew from the cart and turned to the mother, who had been hovering, silent but watchful, as I had worked. “He must not walk on it for at least a week and then only with his weight taken off with crutches.”
ALEKSEY,ASI said, is a very good man, but even he could not help confiding wryly as we rode away from the cart, which was now the boy’s enforced bed, “If wishes were horses… ah, look, horses….”
I chuckled. “Do not say that in company. Witchcraft is almost worse than papistry. Although I suspect there were twelve adults wishing for just the same thing.”
He was silent for a moment, then ventured cautiously, “Is it not averyodd coincidence that he put his foot into ahole? We could not give the soldiers a Christian burial in the ground… in ahole… yet almost immediately aholeopened up and—it is very rude to laugh like that! You can scoff all you like, but they are barely cold, and yet it appears they have taken their revenge on—”
“They have not taken very effective revenge, then.”
“I think that snapping the boy’s leg was quite….” He trailed off, studying my smug expression, and then exclaimed, clearly torn between horror and awe, “You did not! Nikolai!”
I could not help a grin as I shrugged. “I said he needed to rest his leg for a week… that it needed to be immobilized—it did, but just not forhisbenefit.” I glanced over. “He did have a very small sprain, sosomethinghad to be done!” He was trying not to laugh too; I could tell.
THEFIRSTflakes of snow began to fall that afternoon. We were making good time, and I did not fear it would settle much in the forest and impede our progress. God forbid I had to remain on this journey one day longer than necessary. I kept casting glances back at the cart, wondering if it was cold lying there immobile all day.
I hoped it was.
I was about to suggest to Aleksey that we go hunting to celebrate, when I sensed we were being watched. The feeling stayed with me. Casually, I told Aleksey to stay on the riverbank and then eased Xavier off into the darker forest. I had not gone far when a voice appeared to speak out of a large tree. “Bonjour, mon ami.” A figure dropped lightly to the ground, startling Xavier, who reared in alarm. I backed him away and calmed him, then slid off. After a moment the figure came forward, and we embraced warmly.
“Etienne. I did not expect to see you here.”
Etienne’s real name was Onekwenhtara Okwaho, but he preferred to call himself Etienne—the name he had been given in the mission. Etienne and I had enjoyed uncannily similar experiences of life in many ways—but in opposite directions. He had been born into the Mik’mac tribe but raised in a papist mission across the border by Jesuits. Upon becoming a man, he had traveled widely both to Europe and around the new colonies. He could read and write not only English and French but also Latin and Greek. He had returned to the New World and to his tribe a few years previous and was now to all intents and purposes a savage heathen once again. Thus his journey had been from savage to civilized man to savage. I had been civilized, savage, and was now civilized once more. I think we both knew only too well, therefore, that these ways of thinking were utterly ridiculous, and that savagery lay in the heart of all men, and civilization was merely a trick of the light: blink and it was gone.
So, this savage, beautiful man, dressed in his buckskin and fur with his painted face and long braids could argue me into a cocked hat in four languages and had seen a great deal more of the world than I. For all that, he seemed to enjoy my company, and had it not been for Aleksey and the unique pull he had upon me, I would have spent a great deal more time with Etienne than I did. I might well be wearing face paint and braiding my hair too.
Etienne’s horses were tethered farther away in the trees, and we walked together to retrieve them. I don’t know if Xavier recognized the yearling in the small herd as his son, but I did. I was delighted to see this beautiful young horse once more, and Etienne and I chatted quite happily for some time as we rode side by side a little way off the track and out of sight of the rest of my companions.
Etienne was naturally very curious about my being there with such a group, but being the man he was, with his Jesuit and native reserve rendering him subtle and patient, he did not ask outright or show any outward sign of his interest. He merely commented on the snow. I took this to mean that he was surprised I was traveling in such weather. Living as we did in the raw, as it were, in the great forests of the New World, there was always much to do this time of year to prepare for the winter ahead, and thus his surprise that I was not back at the cabin doing just that. I nodded at his wisdom but did not alleviate his curiosity, commenting in return that it had been fine for some days previous and that traveling was easy in such favorable conditions.
Thwarted, he rejoined that the season was not the only factor in determining the ease of travel and that many things that had not been foreseen could hinder a journey. I frowned and thought about this for a while, then asked outright, which was considered rude, I knew, “What have you seen?”
He dropped his inscrutable act and chuckled. “You’re no fun, Nikolai. I have all day with nothing to do and was looking forward to spinning you along for many hours.”
