Free Barkskins by Annie Proulx

were returning to France and that some of the Mi’kmaq would come with them. No one wished to go, but the Wenuj smiled disarmingly, and then without warning, hairy sailors seized seven of the people, Mari among them, and rushed them to the ship. The anchor was hoisted and the ship away before the people onshore realized. They ran along the coastline gesticulating and shrieking at the ship. The ship sailed on.
    â€œMany days, many days sick us. Then in France come us.”
    â€œFrance? You went to France?”
    â€œYes. In Palis, ride in wagon, big noise. Weeping all us. Bad food, in box sleep. Long time. Brother sick. Cough, choke he. Wenuj away him take. Die. Maman die. Sick me. Hot, big sore on me make. All die. Only me, one baby. Ship take us. Père Pillow say home go. Long time. Ocean angry. Bébé die. Then our good land. Mi’kmaw people run. Laugh.”
    But the joy at returning didn’t last. Nearly the entire tribe died in the next few months.
    â€œ Wenuj sickness. Die Mi’kmaq.
    â€œSick same bad my face make.” She pointed at the smallpox scars on her cheeks, then continued. Dozens of the tribe were ravaged by the rotting face disease and the tiny village became a sinkhole of suffering.
    He understood that she and other Mi’kmaw had been forced onto a French ship and against their will brought to Paris, where most of them died. Mari fell ill with smallpox but survived and endured the long trip back across the ocean to the homeland. But she had brought sickness with her, and most of her people died.
    It was then, she said, Père Pillow brought her to Kébec. She married Lolan, a good Mi’kmaw man, at the mission. Elphège and Theotiste were his children. And Jean-Baptiste.
    â€œBig man but die him. One my baby die. But Elphège, Theotiste, Jean-Baptiste then not die they. Me to Wobik with Père Pillow. That mission know you.”
    And at the mission Trépagny had found her and hired her as his housekeeper but within days forced himself on her. It was the way things went in New France.
    â€œNo him child. No- bébé medicine know me. Lené, you me good bébés. But now Elphège I say, ‘Back come, Elphège, back come!’ ”
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    It was as though he had heard her. The snow was melting away, a hollow circle forming around the base of every tree, a ceaseless piddle of meltwater running over the sopping ground into rills and streams when a man limped into the clearing.
    She knew at once. “Elphège!” She ran to him and helped him to the house. The boy was emaciated, covered with the scabs of old cuts and a pattern of bruises. His right ankle was a swollen purple lump. He would not speak. They half-carried him into the house and put him on the pallet. Mari began to stir up the fire and make a sleep potion, to heat a nourishing moose broth. While she took white cedar cones from her storeroom and pounded them to dust, worked them into pounded fern root and leaf for a sprain poultice, René stood gazing at the half-conscious boy.
    â€œWhere is the seigneur ? Where is Monsieur Trépagny?” he asked gently, but Elphège could not answer, not then.
    By asking questions to which Elphège would nod or shake his head, Mari learned that Monsieur Trépagny was dead, but when and in what manner he would not say. He lay quiet and half asleep for nine days, then seemed to recover his strength in a great flush. Within a month he joined René in the woods, chopping. He was silent and rarely smiled, his eyes habitually cast down as though the world was too painful to regard.
    Chama no longer worked with them. He had gone to Kébec with Madame Trépagny and the Spanish maid, for the bride was again intending France. The Spanish maid was particularly disenchanted with Trépagny’s mansion, for she had pried up the front doorstep stone, taken the metal box hidden there. It opened