CHAPTER 4

1535 ~ 1534 ~ 1535–36

A BREEZE CAME UP, RIPPLING THE RIVER. ON THE AIR with the rise of the sun also rose the migrant birds—ducks and snow-white geese and black-backed geese larger than any fowl these strangers had seen. Cantankerous calls as cacophonous as a ship’s cannons. The rhythmic swoosh of wings louder than the flogging sails of an entire fleet. To look up, gaze upon the long-necked birds in flight, the astonishing breadth of their V-formations, row upon row southbound beyond the horizon, overtook the sensibilities of these sailors as a dread, an awe, not previously experienced.

They sensed their trespass in an unknown realm.

Felt their lives become infinitesimal.

Jacques Cartier ruminated on the significance of the migration as he watched the birds embark in a noisy rush and ascend. “They fly to a destination.” Indians claimed that the great birds departed for the winter and, come spring, returned, which indicated that they travelled far enough south to reach a different climate. How great, he pondered, could this land be?

How vast?

He rarely awoke among the first. Cartier had remained ignorant of a ritual that had developed among his sailors. Strewn along the deck, the men greeted first light. They demonstrated no interest in chores, and instead observed the waterfowl, listened to the racket, felt the warmth of the sun on their necks and hands, and in the naked hour breathed, rapt. About to shout a command, the captain let the impulse pass. Standing above his men on the high aft deck, he felt oddly joined with them in the astonishment of this land’s mystery. He shared in their privilege.

A cascade of colours across the hills vibrated in the breeze. Wind snatched leaves from their branches, crimson and oranges, a myriad of yellows sashayed down to the riverbank to float among the dabbling waterfowl. Upon this threshold he would cast his fate. Meeting a newer, more powerful band of Indians, he could not foresee how events would unfold. Still, he would endeavour to execute his plan, to perform a feat of magic, to extract a gift from the chief for his king so beguiling that future journeys would be well financed. To do so would require his cunning while meeting a people who no doubt possessed great cunning of their own.

Like a gopher’s, Donnacona’s head poked up through the fo’c’sle. The Iroquois chief from the village downstream, known as Stadacona, inhaled great breaths of fresh air, a relief from the calamity of rancid pale-skins’ stink and other wretched emanations from the crew’s quarters. Men shat in a bucket overnight and breathed the fetid reek through their sleep. They dozed above and below one another, as entangled as nesting squirrels, oozing sweat, their raucous gasps whistling and mournful, the air humid with the pong of fusty breath.

The chief was dismayed by his experience with the pale-skins, by their rituals and giant canoe. To sleep aboard such a vessel had been humiliating. Previously, he had slipped away from his berth and, under the stars, slept on deck as the Émérillon slowly plied the river waters. How such a fortress floated on its belly without sinking remained incomprehensible to him. How it rode so high above the waves without toppling perplexed him. As it rolled from side to side, death was surely imminent.

Donnacona had sighted the ship the previous year as, ghostlike, it plodded north off the Gaspé coast within the horizon’s broad rim. He had brought his people to fish and draw mussels from the ocean’s shores, and the men and women had stood in wonderment. Stymied by fear. They looked to the sky as though this weird creation had dropped through a rip there, and finally they sat upon the beach in silence. Donnacona felt the claws of a crow dig into his back. He was being lifted into the sky, in pain—it felt that way. A few women wept. The youngest children danced and occasionally threw stones in the direction of the giant canoe. The lips of an older man trembled, yet soon, everyone’s capacity to be surprised or frightened was eclipsed by a true and profound apprehension. They saw the world, the whole of the universe, as different. Who were these sea beings? From what other place had they descended?

As chief, Donnacona accepted the responsibility to act, lest the people squat upon the shore forever. He called upon the tribe to gather old wood from the beach and forest, and by twilight he had ignited a huge fire that stopped the boat’s progress and lured the sea beings ashore. As the leader clambered out of his longboat, the chief walked down alone to the rocky waterline to meet Cartier for the first time.

In the firelight of the traveller’s torches, he gazed into the eyes of the sea being and conceded that he resembled a man. A stinking man, with a ghost’s skin and frightful black fur upon his face. A strange creature in ridiculous clothing, yet this man-like creature possessed a giant canoe, which carried smaller canoes with giant paddles that brought more man-like beings ashore. Ghosts, these men, white-fleshed, whose odd clothing had not been cut from animal pelts. This pale-skinned man indicated that he had come from a land across the sea. An incomprehensible story. Cartier had been shocked to learn that Donnacona and his people had also come to this shore from far away.

The women kept looking for women among the pale-skins, but there were none. Such a strange people. How did they fornicate? With whom? But what women could fornicate with men who stank so foully? Someone deduced, “It’s a war party. That’s why no women go with them.”

Donnacona needed to comprehend the idea that more people lived upon the earth than lived upon the earth. More land rose up from the waters than rose up from the waters. What were the people to understand about these terrible truths?

Cartier had carried on, to explore the shores and islands further north, and when he departed for his land across the waters before the return of winter, he took with him not only Donnacona’s gifts but also the man’s two sons, Domagaya and Taignoagny. They would fare well across the sea, and in the following year they returned home with wild stories of villages as large as forests, and of a house as huge as a mountain, made primarily of gold, in which the white chief dwelled. They spoke of other wonders so astounding that the chief had threatened to punish his sons if they did not stop uttering such terrible lies. In the land of the pale-skins, massive four-legged creatures taller than moose pulled land canoes in which they carried a man’s belongings, the man himself, and his wife and children. These giant beasts obeyed the white man’s words and allowed the white man to ride upon their backs.

“I will drown you!” Donnacona had cried out.

In the land of the snow-skins, the women sang like birds in the morning.

“I will slice open your bellies and feed you to the crows!”

In the land of the limestone-skins, trees gave beautiful, sweet-tasting berries the size of a man’s fists to eat.

Perhaps they were gods, these cloud-skinned, black-furred strangers.

That other world had changed his boys. They had adapted to the vessel and to the white man’s oily seal-stink and now laughed at their father’s dismay. As a matter of honour, then, Donnacona had had to demonstrate a modicum of courage, yet he chose to wait until the ship merely bobbed at anchor before sleeping below. Throughout the long night, the chief fretted that he’d go mad from the stench. He slept little and under duress, yet endured until dawn without fleeing to the mercy of an open deck and the rebuke of his sons. Life inside a whale, Donnacona believed, might be more pleasant.

He observed sailors in their rapt state. They looked as though they had never seen geese as they watched the flight patterns overhead, all of them curiously silent under the belligerent honking. Had they never seen forests so charged with colour? His sons were right about one thing: the pale-skins were fascinating—their canoe was pushed and pulled by the wind, no man paddled!—they possessed magic, but they behaved in curious ways and seemed to possess little useful knowledge.

Donnacona climbed higher and stood on deck. Sailors gazed upon him now as attentively as they had stared at the ducks. He wore different clothing today—a deerskin laced by coloured caribou thread and decorated by beads—for he had stripped off the contaminated skins in which he’d slept and applied a ceremonial paint. He was expecting to meet his own people soon, another tribe, and was dressed for the occasion. Looking back across the deck at him, Cartier determined to take his cue, to don ceremonial dress himself. Better to look as though he expected to be welcomed than to wear the garb of a soldier gearing for a fight. He called over his cabin boy, Petit Gilles, and commanded that he prepare his formal attire. If he was going to meet the Indians of Hochelaga, these men and women who held the key to the riches of this land, he would do so properly.

Domagaya, fresh, eager, and his younger brother, Taignoagny, generally taciturn, heaved themselves up onto the deck as well, and were also surprised by the silent, stiff stillness of the sailors. They were in a strange mood. The men only began to stir when Gastineau, the king’s man, rumbled up the main companionway. His presence broke a spell.

“Jacques! Good morning to you!” Even ducks peaceably paddling near the Émérillon took flight, quacking madly, in response to his loud greeting.

“Gastineau,” Cartier replied, sighing. Secretly, the men loved the way their captain put him in his place.

“Today’s the day!”

“Enh? What day is that, Gastineau?”

“Hochelaga!”

Cartier shook his head. “If you can row that far that fast, you’re a better man than me.” Cartier habitually kept Gastineau in the dark about the details of any excursion. “We shall embark by longboat. We will not complete our journey before nightfall.”

“But the fires—I saw them last night!” the king’s man protested.

“You thought they were campfires?” Cartier asked as he headed to the lower deck before re-entering his aft cabin. “They were large fires at a great distance. Wind and current are against us. Look for yourself: the channel narrows. Time to row, and row hard. Two days yet. Unless you can fly with the birds.”

Gastineau fumed. Cartier could have explained all this to him last night. He would not have looked like such a fool. “When do we embark?” he demanded.

“Is your belly full? When it is, we’ll go. I’ve never seen you in such a rush. Finally, an adventure that appeals to you.”

“Our adventure,” Gastineau called back, “will cost us our lives if we freeze here for the winter. We have to be on our way soon, Jacques.”

“I’ve decided to winter over,” Cartier announced.

“What!” Gastineau was outraged, and speechless.

“At Stadacona.”

The captain of the Émérillon disappeared while the king’s man, and the crew, absorbed this shock. Winter over? Experienced sailors knew how cold the weather had turned the previous autumn, and the Indian lads had told stories of frigid temperatures and great mountains of snow. The men had seen for themselves how a multitude of waterfowl eagerly fled this climate as the cold season advanced. Yet, a few sailors breathed easier and proffered a different thought. Spending the winter in the New World meant not having to brave the north Atlantic in the late season. Tomorrow was the first day of October. Even if they set sail immediately, they would not make France before the beginning of the new year, which meant a frightful time at sea in nasty weather. Holing up for the winter seemed a lesser ordeal.

Gastineau was bounding across the deck to pursue Cartier into his cabin when Petit Gilles blocked the path. “The captain is changing his attire, sir,” the lad proclaimed. The king’s man promptly seized him by an arm and hauled him aside for a private word.

“You didn’t warn me about this!” Gastineau hissed under his breath. He partially bent the boy over the ship’s gunwales.

“Pardon me, sir?” the boy asked, frightful. “About what, sir?”

“We may spend the winter here!”

“The captain never mentioned it, sir! Not to me!”

“Then find these things out using your own devices! Remember, Petit Gilles, you work for your king. That means you work for me!”

“I cannot see into the captain’s mind, sir!” protested the boy.

“Take my advice! Learn how!” The king’s man gave him a rough push, and the tall, skinny boy caught himself as he grasped a ratline.

Some men commenced loading longboats while others went below for the morning meal and to prepare themselves for a tedious row. Donnacona strolled forward to the bow, where his sons joined him. The three gazed across the waters. Observing them, Gastineau wondered what they might be plotting. For his liking, the Indians were too close to Cartier.

Belowdecks, the captain was fitting himself into a frilly shirt with a multi-layered stiff gorget, similar to a beehive’s comb, that ran higher than his ears, and an embroidered vest and jacket with lengthy tails. He tried on his wide-brimmed hat with its elegant, flowing plume, and asked himself if he did not strike a dashing figure. While seeing to such preparations, and like the king’s man, he was also wondering what was going through the mind of Donnacona.

The previous summer, on his sail up the Atlantic coast, Cartier had encountered Micmacs. They did not know what to make of one another. Sailing farther north along the Baie de Chaleur, the Émérillon intersected a second band. They called themselves Iroquois and had come from a place far inland, travelling to the sea by a great river. That interested Cartier, for as a sailor he was not inclined to explore dry land. When the Frenchman erected a thirty-foot cross overlooking the bay and claimed the continent in the name of France, Donnacona took an interest, demanding to know the meaning of the structure. Cartier fibbed. He conveyed that the cross was a navigational aid, to assist him upon his return to the region.

After that encounter, they considered the grave issue of Donnacona’s sons returning with Cartier to France. The pair could provide convincing stories for the king. As well, the time in France would allow Cartier to learn a portion of their language, and the boys themselves could learn French. A difficult discussion. Cartier had visited Donnacona in the evening and sat across a fire. He vowed to find the great river and return the boys to Stadacona the following year. He might never have convinced the father were it not for the boys’ intervention, for they sat by the fire also, the flames flickering in the darkness of their pupils. Their minds were burning. Their souls were in flames. They wanted to climb aboard the giant canoe and travel across the great waters to another world. They could become great chiefs one day, they argued, with knowledge learned across the water. In the end it was the youthful conviction of Domagaya and Taignoagny that allowed the transfer to happen.

Although he lied about the meaning attached to the cross, and although the outcome was precarious, the captain managed to keep this one promise, returning the young men to Stadacona. Les sauvages, a term that meant “people who live in the woods,” made a profound impression in court and particularly upon the king. Making use of the king’s affection for the lads, Cartier persuaded Francis I to finance his next voyage to assure the safe return of the two boys.

Now they were home, and their own father did not know them.

The land they called France assaulted the young men with such an array of wonders that neither Domagaya nor Taignoagny was certain he’d survive. One more chateau’s garden, one more trip in a golden carriage behind beasts called horses, one more long-table with seats for an entire village and food for a month’s festivity, one more king’s ball, one more blue- or green- or brown-eyed glance from a blonde- or red- or brown-haired lovely young woman, her body heaving out of a cinched dress, and both young men might collapse and cease to walk again. They felt immortal. They could not die because they were already dead, for they’d entered a new state of being where they no longer existed in the world as they had experienced it, for the world they’d known was forever gone.

At the feasts for the king, his court and his friends, so many beasts would be placed upon the table that they didn’t know which one to eat. Often they sampled a bite of each. Cartier sat next to Domagaya one night. On the voyage to France, during fair days upon the sea, Cartier had learned to speak a smattering of Iroquois from him, as he seemed less shy than his brother, while both young men had learned French in the company of the cabin boy, Petit Gilles. Domagaya commented to Cartier at the long-table, where ninety men and ladies of the court were nibbling, that the hunt must have been a good one.

“Sorry?” Cartier asked him back. “What hunt?”

“Many animals.” Domagaya indicated the array of dead beasts.

Cartier promised to take the two young men on a French hunt.

The boys didn’t believe what their eyes were seeing. In small enclosures and in tall houses, the white men kept beasts, animals and fowl that Cartier called cows, pigs, goats and chickens, and when they wanted to eat one they did not go away on a hunt. Instead, they walked from their house across to the animals’ tall house and selected a beast to be slaughtered. They raised their animals like the Hochelaga Iroquois back home raised corn! Other animals, similar to wolves and foxes, were not for eating, but ran with the men in the woods and walked beside them across the grassland and lived with the men in their homes, curled up by the fire. Sometimes they misbehaved, and a man would swat what he called his dog and the dog, which had big teeth and could snarl and bark frightening sounds, whimpered like a child. At first, they were frightened when they came across a beast in the house, but Taignoagny learned to play with one of the smaller dogs, and the beast would lick Taignoagny’s face until the young man laughed like a pale-skinned girl while Domagaya ran from the room to the pissing room clutching his belly in terror.

Taignoagny was helped onto the back of a beast the Frenchmen called a horse, and the horse went walking around its enclosure as Domagaya fell to his knees, not knowing if his brother was still a brother or a four-legged, two-headed wild beast with a penis the size of a small pine. Domagaya was usually the more daring of the two, but the sight of his brother attached to an animal caused his teeth to chatter uncontrollably. A servant was summoned to carry him back to bed.

More wonders. In pails, the French collected milk from the teats of beasts called cows and goats—and drank it! And gave it to their children! Taignoagny, who was always thinking, said, “That is why! The white milk of cows. That is why they have white skins!”

“That is why,” Domagaya agreed. “They are raised on the milk of cows and goats. They are not half-gods. They are half-animals!”

Hens gave eggs for the nourishment of the pale-skins, and young women gathered the eggs every morning and brought them to the table, and the Indian men ate the eggs and marvelled at this food freely provided by the animals. They had such wonderful animals in France! They were not like the irritable bears or the shy and sprightly deer. They were nothing like moose. The birds of this place called France were not like the seabirds who deposited their eggs in the walls of cliffs that, if a young Indian boy wanted to fetch one, he had to risk his life. These birds were much more generous. The pale-skins had birds who refused to fly! Domagaya was determined that, when he got back to his land, he would make the animals behave. He would put the deer in enclosures and tell them not to jump over the fence, to wait there until he was ready to come and kill them. And he would put the bears in big bear houses and tell them to be still, to go out only when they were willing to fish for him in the stream. And he would tell the ducks not to fly away from him, just as the chickens did not fly away from the men and women of France. He would milk the moose and become a half-animal, too. All he had to do was to learn this language, this animal language that the beasts understood and obeyed.

So Domagaya studied French in great earnest.

One day, they did go on a real hunt, for quail. The men of the court took les sauvages along with them, and the boys talked about the experience between themselves that night into the following morning. A man would aim a long spear at a bird, and with one finger pull a small tooth. Fire and noise burst from the arrow, so fiercely that both Taignoagny and Domagaya landed on their bottoms with the first blast. Out of the sky, after the spears had barked, birds fell down. These were the birds not willing to listen to the language. But the dogs did! The dogs raced away to find the fallen quail, and when they did, they brought them back in their teeth to their men. Oh, how Taignoagny wanted to have beasts like these when he went home to his land, while Domagaya wanted an invisible arrow that talked with a voice of fire and made plump, tasty, flying birds land on their backs.

On a cool, misty morning, the Indian men were taken to hunt deer on the king’s land. They were astonished to finally find a familiar animal: deer! In France! Domagaya was invited to slaughter one, so walked toward the animal, silently and quickly at times, and the Frenchmen watched from a low hill, fascinated by his movement. He stole through the bushes, although this was a forest unlike any he had known, as it suffered from an absence of trees and underbrush and, from time to time, sprouts of water rose into the air out of circular stones on the ground. Domagaya moved towards the deer, creeping forward now. The deer studied him. The Indian man crept forward. The deer stared into his eyes. Domagaya’s heart sank. He had been spotted. He had been smelled. The deer continued to sniff and stare. Then resumed a calm graze. Domagaya walked up to the deer and slit its throat.

Across the lawn, where the courtiers were watching, men and women collectively gasped. Then suddenly burst into cheering. That night, the conversation around the king’s table was all about the sauvage who had used a knife—a knife!—to kill the deer they were eating.

Taignoagny and Domagaya discussed why a deer in France would let him do that. “She saw you,” Taignoagny repeated. “She smelled you.”

“She does not know how an Iroquois smells.”

“This is true.”

“It’s like with pigs? They wait until the king wants to eat one, then they die.”

“Deer are not pigs,” Taignoagny pointed out. “Pigs are fat … pigs are slow. Pigs make strange noises.”

“The hoof of a deer and the hoof of a pig are alike.”

“The mind of a deer and the mind of a pig are unalike.”

“The deer knew I had come to kill her, Taig. I looked into her eyes. I saw her thinking. She thought to herself, I am on the king’s land. This red man has come to kill me so that he can eat me. I will let him do that, because I love the king.”

“Is that what she was thinking, Dom?”

“I saw in her eyes what she was thinking.”

If Domagaya could comprehend the thoughts of the pale-skins’ deer, then Taignoagny considered that he might be able to comprehend the thoughts of their women. They stared into his eyes so often, virtually compelling him to interpret their thoughts. They’d lift their startling, half-bare chests, and giggle, and twirl their dresses, then scurry away laughing. How would it ever be possible to understand them? And yet, he believed that he had begun to discern patterns in this strange world. The gardens demonstrated that the trees, plants and flowers of France were willing to live according to the pleasure of their keepers’ vision, just as animals lived and died according to the whims of their keepers’ hunger. The chickens laid their eggs purely for the sake of the pale-skins’ morning diet. Taignoagny had begun to suspect that the women of the king’s court might similarly be in favour of offering themselves for the sake of their men, although whether they would do so for one they called a sauvage, he was not sure. From the way they looked at him, he was beginning to wonder, so for reasons quite different than his brother’s, Taignoagny also vigorously applied himself to the study of French.

That winter, while the brothers were being initiated into court life at Fontainebleau, the seafarer Jacques Cartier took a Mediterranean trip to Sicily. Aboard an Italian vessel as a passenger, he spent long, uneventful days preparing his supply list, for the king had consented to provide three vessels for his next voyage, the largest undertaking of his career, which made an obsessive review of his requirements necessary. In the back of his mind he was already musing about the possibility of wintering in the New World. Of this notion, he would not whisper a word in case it slipped back to the king’s ears, yet he had vividly imagined the triumph of his return a year later than expected. He’d be assumed dead, together with the ship’s company. To commemorate the drama of his arrival home, and to be properly forgiven for the delay, he’d need a significant gift to appease the king. A renowned patron of the arts and a Renaissance man, King Francis I had sponsored Raphael and Titian. His favourite, Leonardo Da Vinci, had died in his arms. That passion for the arts eclipsed any fervour he might have nurtured for transoceanic escapades. The king gave only the lowest priority to New World exploration.

Cartier needed to find a way to startle him, to fire his imagination as did the artists. His voyage to Sicily, then, was intended to guarantee that a proper present from the New World be found. To locate it, he would rummage around the old.

Often windless, the voyage was quiet. Time dragged as slowly as the rising sun and setting moon for the ambitious captain. He longed to be in command of his own vessel again, and regretted in his darkest hours that he had not chosen a land to explore that offered a more forgiving climate, one that might allow him to stay abroad longer. He missed the wildness of those distant shores, the daily challenge to navigate and survive, the exhilaration of unravelling an uncharted coastline. The journey across the Mediterranean bored him.

Given that he had much to prepare, many were surprised that he’d chosen to indulge in the sojourn. Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici de Monreale was an old friend of Cartier’s, but surely the cardinal could afford to travel to him, or the journey could wait. The captain insisted that he needed to speak to his spiritual counsellor before he could properly embark, and explained himself no further. Cloaked in mystery, he bided his time on the small ship sailing east, and endlessly prepared his lists.

To Taignoagny’s eyes, the new woman who had arrived at court, the elegant, haughty and superior Francine Tousignant de Tocqueville, seemed so staggeringly beautiful that, in her company, all contact with the language of the French he’d learned vanished from his lips. She flagrantly burst from her dress, for, unlike the other women, she was neither a flimsy twig of a girl nor a sapling, but a fine stout maple of a woman, with large hips and robust arms—a woman who looked as though she could carry water up from a shore with a child on her hip, or pull a sled in winter—and yet, similar to other French girls in court, she possessed a smile as chaotic as a gale, her black hair heaped above her head in twists and twirls, while her wide eyes, if somewhat unfocused, were as green as a summer forest. He was saying all this to her in Iroquois, and she was twittering into her hands and exchanging quick asides with her gathered friends.

Domagaya could not believe the audacity of his brother, to be telling this girl that she was as beautiful as a sunset and that her eyes were the colour of a mountain lake and that her cheeks were as brightly speckled as the trout they caught there! He had never heard him be so gregarious, and it took a while before he realized that the woman understood not a word of what was being said.

Promptly, he joined the act as well. He told the ladies present that he’d cut off their dresses and plunge his fingers between their legs and kiss their breasts until they hollered. He’d bring them the shank of a king’s stag to munch upon, the balls from one of the king’s bull-cows to admire.

Taignoagny was furious at his brother’s rude incursion and told him so, raising his voice, but his brother carried on as the women giggled, becoming more daring and explicit with every line. He wanted to press the women against the wall of his bedroom at Fontainebleau, and told them so. He wanted to wrestle them on the floor of the pigs’ barn, and splash with them in the fountain where the water flowed upward towards the sky in defiance of nature before it spilled back down to earth, and he wanted to press their bodies to him while they rode in the back of a carriage through the streets of Paris.

Incensed, Taignoagny warned his brother to mind his tongue or he would cut it out. Domagaya reiterated that the women did not understand a word. They could speak as they pleased as long as the language remained Iroquois.

Taignoagny took the initiative to speak French, the language understood by animals, and perhaps, as he’d recently thought, the language understood by women in need of a man. His gentle words escaped his lips in a halting, tentative style the women found endearing. He asked the girl with the flashing green eyes and the great bundles of black hair if she would come with him back to his room.

This time, Domagaya’s eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. He seemed to stop breathing. He sat down in the chair behind him, and trembled.

The young women continued giggling, their faces pale as they furiously fanned themselves and looked at one another, wondering whether they ought to break into hysterics or run. The large woman who was new to court, Francine Tousignant de Tocqueville, did not take her eyes off Taignoagny’s. When the giggling around them had ceased, everyone present—with the exception of the still-quaking Domagaya—remained motionless, and the woman said, “Monsieur le Sauvage, comme te veut.”

The two went off alone to Taignoagny’s chambers, and Domagaya, gripping himself in a fierce hug, fell upon the floor, quivering. The other women mopped his brow with silk handkerchiefs and called for wine and warmed him with their hands and soothing words. They counselled the servants to take him to his room while they traipsed along behind, all atwitter.

At the port of Palermo, Cartier was greeted by three odd-looking, black-robed monks dispatched by the cardinal to escort him to the nearby village of Monreale. One short, another tall. One smiled, another frowned. Two bowed often, one did not—he of average height and moderate disposition. The four men travelled in a pair of open carts pulled along by donkeys, the dusty journey drawing them through a cool day into a sweeping valley before they ascended, by late afternoon, towards Santa Maria Nuova and the immense cathedral of Monreale. The donkey carts came to a halt before the extraordinary Romanesque bronze doors, with their inlaid carving that depicted Biblical scenes across its forty-two panels. Cartier nodded approval, hoping that this sudden stop marked the limit of his sightseeing for the day. The monks jumped down from the carts and to his dismay led their visitor through the imposing doors.

The Frenchman was guided to a central spot in the nave from which he could properly view the cathedral’s mosaics, created in an extravagant, grandiose sprawl across the vast walls of the interior. The monks stepped back. Two bowed slightly, while the third turned and walked out, probably to water the donkeys. The distinguished captain was left alone to experience the artwork in the fullness of its glory.

Jacques Cartier understood that his appreciation was being solicited. Disconcerted by this tangent after the lengthy journey, he nevertheless accepted that he remained at the mercy of his hosts and shook off the road grit. He turned in circles—at first fairly quickly, glancing around at random, then slowly, as he gazed upon the walls’ murals and those on the heights above. The mosaics were brilliantly coloured, exquisitely detailed. As he relaxed, they instilled in him a sense of tranquility, even of solemnity, and he felt the comforting motion of being on a ship at sea. Virtually the complete surface of the walls was covered by the artwork, from two metres above ground to the ceiling vault, each one set upon a background of gold tiles. The full length of the interior ran a hundred metres. Gazing out upon the astonishing glitter of storied mosaics from above the chancel was the Christ Pantocrator, a portrait of Jesus more than forty metres wide and thirteen metres high, stunning in its impact. The seafarer, who had impatiently entered the church suffering from the undesired delay, now stood still, transfixed.

Eventually, the monks came for him and, in silence, guided him away.

Their travels continued.

He assumed his destination to be the Castellaccio, atop Mount Caputo, about five kilometres farther north, but really was too exhausted to care. Accustomed to command, the captain did not ask questions of lowly monks. The donkey carts headed off in the direction of the fortress castle, yet when they took a circling trail around it, Cartier was not dismayed. Finally, he understood their objective. His friend had chosen to meet him within the safety and privacy of San Martino delle Scale, the Benedictine monastery a few kilometres along.

Night had fallen before they arrived. Weary, disgruntled, Cartier was greeted with surprising warmth by the monks there, shown to his quarters and advised that a meal would presently be served.

After a modest feast, he was led into a small chamber lit by a torch on each of the four walls. He sat before an olivewood table on a monk’s long bench, and waited only a few minutes before his friend, Cardinal Medici, entered alone. Cartier knelt before him, kissed the honoured ring, then was pulled to his feet and the two men kissed each other’s cheeks. They cordially held one another’s elbows to express their pleasure at the reunion. The diminutive but muscular cardinal, who possessed the body of a peasant, barrel-chested and thick-necked, took a seat on the bench opposite Cartier. A monk stepped into the room with port, a bottle and two glasses, served a portion for each man and quietly departed.

The cardinal smiled a moment before his expression turned sombre. He reached under his robes and removed a small leather pouch. Upon the table he spilled out the contents: a half-dozen diamonds and twenty small nuggets of gold.

“As requested,” the cardinal intoned.

“As agreed,” Cartier acknowledged. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

Although he was not an expert with respect to gems, Cartier picked up each of the small pieces and nodded appreciatively.

“You understand …” the cardinal commenced.

“I do,” Cartier assured him.

“My family is large and famous.”

“The name Medici is renowned throughout time and Christendom. I understand the situation.”

“My name, of itself—”

“I understand,” Cartier repeated.

“—might misconstrue—”

“I do understand.”

Medici knit his hands together. “Did you enjoy the cathedral today, Jacques?”

“I have not seen its equal.”

“Sofia, so they say, in Constantinople. Honestly, it’s difficult for me to imagine the possibility, although each in its way, I’m sure, offers its magnificence to God.”

“Magnificence,” Cartier remarked, curious about the conversation’s direction.

“One feels a sense of history, Jacques, here, and in the cathedral. A sense of awe, as though we find ourselves in the presence of our Lord’s majesty. In your explorations, you are privileged to create a history, are you not? Surely you must feel the presence of God’s glory in the New World.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Tell me once more about this island.”

Cartier nodded. The terms of the transaction were yet again being negotiated.

“Hochelaga, the name the Iroquois give to their village, is set upon an island in the middle of a most magnificent river, Your Grace, truly the most immense river yet discovered by man. It has no equal. No corresponding Sofia. The river is navigable into the heart of the continent, until it reaches an island—”

“An island with a mountain!” the cardinal burst out with rare enthusiasm.

“A mountain, such as this one here, at Monreale, yes! There, rivers meet, and the riches of a continent are guarded by this mountain island.”

“Yet you have not yet been there yourself. You have not yet found this river.”

“Savages speak only truths. They have no purpose to lie. The mountain on an island in the middle of the greatest river in the world lies in wait of my voyage. This time I will find it.”

“The mountain island awaits its destiny.”

As the cardinal shifted on his bench, the wood squeaked. Torches flared in a draft, and the shadows cast by the two men’s bodies shook upon the walls of this cool, damp chamber.

“I’ve had a vision,” the cardinal revealed in a soft voice, as if even within these stone walls he might be overheard.

“Your Grace?”

“A great city shall rise upon this island.”

“I understand.”

“A city of churches. I have seen this with my own eyes.”

“Perhaps, one day, a cathedral as magnificent—”

The cardinal held up a hand to caution Cartier before he overstepped a bound. To imagine outdoing the cathedral at Monreale would be impudent, even sacrilegious, which might cause an ill wind to blow across a ship’s course.

“Therefore, the name given to the city will be vital,” the cardinal stressed.

“A name honoured by God, I should say,” Cartier attested.

“In your circumstances, under the stress of your position … other persons of influence … of influence greater than that of my humble station—”

The seafarer, this time, was the one to raise a hand of caution. “I understand explicitly, Your Grace. These matters are to be accomplished with discretion, with care. The power is now in my hands, thanks to you and to the grace of Our Lord.”

“Not without risk, Jacques,” Cardinal Medici de Monreale noted.

“I understand, Your Grace. May God be with us in this affair.”

The cardinal nodded. Then grunted. “Jacques, adieu! And Godspeed.”

The mariner carefully picked up the diamonds and gold nuggets and gave the stones another examination, as though committing their facets to memory, then returned them to the pouch. He placed the pouch in the inner pocket of his vest, and rose, only to kneel as the cardinal came around the table. He bowed, and kissed the ring of his host. As he stood again, the two friends embraced and departed for the night. Cartier was led away by a monk holding a torch, then was released to the moonlit darkness of his chamber, and to the light of his dreams.

By mid-morning, Jacques Cartier was on a different ship, returning to France, his mission completed to his fullest expectation.

Upon entering Domagaya’s rooms at Fontainebleau, Cartier was surprised to find a bevy of young women scurrying into flight. They were fully clothed, so he could not categorically pronounce their activities illicit, but the savage was wearing very little while seated upon his bed, and apparently had been showing his muscles to the young ladies of France.

“White-skinned women like Domagaya,” the lad said in Iroquois.

“Domagaya likes white women,” Cartier candidly observed. The Indians had been brought over specifically to create a stir, to arouse widespread interest in his explorations so that the king might feel obliged to finance his trips. If that attention included winning the affections, or merely the idle curiosity, of women at court, then so be it. “I need to speak with you,” Cartier told him, switching to French.

“You go long time away, Jacques.”

“Far, yes. To another tribe in the white man’s world.”

“Someday Domagaya go with you.”

“First, I need you to do something for me.”

“For you, I do what you want Domagaya do.”

“Most important, never speak of this matter we discuss today to another man or woman—not here, in France, nor to any white man or white woman, here or in your land. This will be an accord between me and you.”

Domagaya looked curiously at him, for he did not understand the French word accord. This required a time spent working through both languages, trying to find a word that would be understood in the bargain being struck. Eventually, after a lengthy pantomime, the two men shook hands, pressed them to their chests to imply the swearing of oaths and settled on the word treaty. Each spoke the word in the other’s language.

Then Cartier broached the issue that concerned him. From the hidden depths of his garments he brought out the dagger that Domagaya and Taignoagny’s father had given him on the Gaspé shore the summer past.

“Knife, my father,” Domagaya said, curious.

Cartier removed a small sack from under his coat. From it dropped stones that sparkled like starlight on a wave and more stones that seemed to reflect sunlight. “Diamonds, gold,” Cartier said in a hushed tone. He’d taught Domagaya the words before, but now they gazed upon their meaning.

Domagaya remained still, quiet, watching.

“I want you, Domagaya, to attach these stones to your father’s knife, and speak of this to no one. Use only the materials of your world, and only the tools of your world. Deer hide, beaver skin, the thread from a moose tail, and your own knives. We have the materials with us from our last voyage. Your father told me with great pride when he gave me this knife, that it was made for him by his first son, Domagaya. Now I want you to make it a very special knife that will have great magic. Will you do this for me?”

Domagaya looked from the weapon to the captain’s eyes, back to the dagger, and asked, “Why?”

“Domagaya, never ask this question.”

The Indian thought of the women who had recently departed his room, of the marble halls and the golden ceilings of Fontainebleau, of the gardens where the waters danced in peculiar ways and the plants grew in strange designs, and he thought of the animals who lived to die on the white man’s plate and others who lived to pull the white man’s possessions, including his children and his wife, and he considered the many wonders he had seen. “Domagaya make knife, great magic, to give his friend Jacques,” he said. “I will not talk of this.”

Cartier leaned in closer, to whisper. “I have enemies. They must not know that I hold a magic dagger. With this knife I will protect the Iroquois of your world in strong friendship with the Great White King. But I have enemies. Every man of daring does. So you must never speak of this, not even to the young women who share your pillow at night. I know you love your pillow.”

“Domagaya love a pillow.”

“We must remember to take it with you, to Stadacona. Imagine how the women there will want to sleep in the bed of a man with such a pillow.”

The two men smiled. Then a worry crept across Domagaya’s visage.

“What is it?”

“Why,” the Indian began, then paused a moment, “does my brother have wings? Is he to become a bird in the white man’s world?”

“Taignoagny has wings?”

“The man they call Italian man makes the soul of Taignoagny on wall. Soft wall. It moves when he carry it in his hands.”

“A painting. A canvas.”

“On this wall that moves, my brother has wings.”

Cartier smiled again. “You speak of Michelangelo. It is an honour to be drawn by the great artist. Don’t worry, Domagaya. Your brother has wings because Michelangelo can see with his great vision that Taignoagny is loved by God. Someday, when he dies, he will fly to the heaven of our God.”

“Domagaya like wings, too.”

Cartier understood. “I’ll see what I can do. But no word of our treaty. Do a good job on the knife and Michelangelo will draw wings on your back, too.”

A final chore. Now he’d have to haggle with a pesky artist. C’est la vie. At times, there seemed to be no end to his negotiations, and once again he looked forward to being at sea.

Jacques Cartier stood upon his aft deck to survey the final preparations. The provisioning had gone well, although delays were inevitable, and the cause of the latest fiasco had been exasperating. Monsieur Claude Gastineau, the king’s man, had insisted on toting along half his boudoir, as if he expected to be attending an autumnal ball among the Iroquois. He had cases and crates and boxes and attendants—who were not coming. Cartier had exercised his authority on them, much to the relief of the servants. The man was even transporting sheaves of paper and charcoal, for drawing, which could prove a useful contribution on such an enterprise, were it not that he freely admitted to being inept at the craft. Rather, he was bringing the materials to occupy his time. “What else will I do,” he inquired, “in a land that has nothing but trees and heathens?” A pair of the crates wedged into place belowdecks displaced two equivalent cases of raw vegetables, which Cartier had then seen lashed to the deck. One good storm and they’d be gone, if not consumed first by the night watch.

He signalled Petit Gilles to his side. Not yet fourteen, the lad had already crossed the Atlantic. A gangly youth, on even the stormiest nights he was sure to take a turn in the rigging, an able-bodied seaman despite his sparse years.

“Yes, sir?”

“Gastineau is settled below?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Has he spoken, as yet, of certain matters to you?”

“Spoken? He told me where to put his belongings, sir.”

“He will address other issues shortly.”

“Sir?”

Cartier brought the lad nearer to him and spoke into the breeze, that their voices might go unheard.

“You are close to me, Petit Gilles. For this reason, he will want you as his spy.”

“Sir! I would never do that, sir!”

“And betray your king? How could you not spy on me?”

“Sir!”

They were standing side by side, and Cartier pulled him nearer still. “Spy on me, Petit Gilles. I have nothing to hide. If I do, it will encourage his confidence should some indiscreet matter be conveyed to him. Do so with my blessing. The day may come, lad, when I shall involve you in a separate action.”

“An action, sir?”

“I know not what. When that day is upon us, I shall indicate to you that the king’s man does not merit your private counsel. This will afford you the opportunity, Petit Gilles, to demonstrate your loyalty to your captain. In all other matters, trust in yourself, be loyal to your king and forthcoming with his emissary. Do you understand me, good lad?”

“Yes, sir.” He was perplexed as well.

“Fail to comply and you shall fail to see St. Malo again.”

“Out of loyalty to you, Captain, not through any threat!”

“You speak well. I count on you, Petit Gilles. You may now shout the order.”

“The order, sir?” He was bright-eyed, too astonished to hope that he might be granted such an honour. Below them, the town awaited their departure, loved ones still waving to the men upon the ship, knowing they might never return. The boy’s own mother, tears on her cheeks, stood upon the dock. Bobbing on the quiet waters, longboats manned by hefty men awaited the moment they’d pull three ships free of their docking spaces and haul them through the harbour to open water, to raise sail. Up and down the dock, men in the elegance of fine clothing, women brightly adorned in shawls against the chill, and their exuberant children sallied about, fear and excitement commingling, a tangible sense of adventure stirred by a distinct measure of dread.

Cartier smiled. He had no doubt that Petit Gilles would make a fine ship’s captain one day. “Give the order, lad, to cast us off upon the sea.”

Upon stones covered by a thick fall of coloured leaves, Cartier stepped ashore. Set back from the river’s edge amid the trees, Iroquois were observing him, and the crew in the longboats watched also as he tucked his plumed hat under one arm and knelt and kissed the soil. He lifted his head, a smudge of dirt upon his lips. The island had dwelled in his imagination as the door to a magic kingdom. Now that that portal had been attained, his gratitude to God and his appreciation of good fortune had pulled his emotions to the ground. With the aid of his cabin boy he stood again, then waited while his crew hauled the other boats—and themselves—ashore.

First to come down to greet him were Donnacona and his two sons, sent on ahead two hours earlier to alert the people of Hochelaga to the new arrivals, to assure them of the white man’s peaceful intent. They had also to prepare the Iroquois for what might soon transpire. Men who dwelled over the ocean beyond the clouds, with black beards and skins the colour of beluga whales, had returned, and this time they were arriving down the river. The world they knew, Donnacona explained, was no longer the world they knew. In giving counsel to his friend, the chief of the Hochelaga people, he advised Kamanesawayga that the cloud-skins were strange creatures who had great powers. He told him also that, for the white-skins, the Iroquois were equally strange and also had great powers.

“Since my sons come back from the land of the pale-skins,” Donnacona explained, “they tell many lies, but they know also the white-skins’ magic. My son speaks to their animals, and they obey him.”

The old chief nodded. “My son,” he said, “calls to the ducks.”

“Your son calls to the ducks,” Donnacona explained, “by quacking like a duck. My son speaks to the white man’s animals by speaking like a pale-skinned man, and the animals of the pale-skinned man obey him.”

“This troubles me,” Kamanesawayga informed him.

“My son will bring to you a French animal,” Donnacona said. “Prepare yourself and your people, for you will be afraid.”

Taignoagny returned down the trail to the place where he had left an animal fastened to a tree. The white man’s beast had been quietly sleeping after another day of hard travel in a longboat, thankful to be on dry land again. It jumped up at the sound of its master and wagged its tail, and the animal and the Indian youth returned to the Iroquois village. As they arrived at the clearing, Indians gasped, the women hid, and a few young men reached for their spears and bows and arrows.

“A wolf!” Kamanesawayga cried out, leaping to his feet.

“Not a wolf,” Donnacona scoffed. “A wolf can eat this beast in the morning and still be hungry. It is a white man’s wolf, and that’s not much of a wolf.”

Taignoagny came towards the circle of men, and the wolf-like animal at his feet scarcely noticed the others, wholly intent on looking up at his master’s eyes. “Watch this!” Donnacona announced, forgetting entirely that when he had first witnessed the demonstration he had been terrified to the bone and had believed that he no longer understood his own name or the difference between the sky and the sweet earth. “My son will talk the talk of the pale faces. The animal will listen.”

The Iroquois looked on, amazed, as the youth removed a string made of stone—a stone string!—from the collar around the animal’s neck, and the lowly wolf, freed, scampered around the feet of the youth. Taignoagny spoke to the beast in a strange tongue, and the beast lay down on its side and went to sleep. The Iroquois murmured amongst themselves, and a few believed that this would be a good time to slay the wolf-like beast. Taignoagny spoke again, and the animal woke up. The young man spoke and the animal rolled over and over and over, and when it was done it stood up like a man on its two hind legs and placed its front paws on the young man’s chest. The foolish young man rubbed his face on the animal’s face and on its neck. The animal had big teeth, but it did not bite him. Then Taignoagny bent down and put his hand on Kamanesawayga’s moccasin.

“Now you will see what you have not seen before,” Donnacona announced.

“Today I see what I have never seen before. A wolf who is not a wolf, who listens to the words of a man and goes to sleep when he is told. Today I have seen a man kiss a wolf and the wolf lick his face. Do they fornicate together?”

“Now you shall see something you will not believe.”

“This troubles me,” Kamanesawayga confessed. “Your son has his hand upon my foot.”

“He wants your moccasin.”

“He has his own!”

“Let him have it, Kamanesawayga, if you are a brave chief.”

Challenged, the chief allowed Taignoagny to remove his moccasin. The shoe had been decorated with multicoloured beading and caribou hair, a moccasin worthy of a chief’s foot. The young man presented the moccasin to the nose of the animal to sniff, then flung it as far as he could into the woods. He spoke sternly in that strange tongue to the animal.

“My moccasin!” Kamanesawayga called out. “How will I walk?”

Donnacona laughed. “Do you want your moccasin back?” he asked.

“Tell your boy to find my moccasin or I will cut off his feet!”

Donnacona kept on laughing. “The beast will find it for you,” he said.

The animal had not moved, but stared into the woods where the moccasin had been thrown. Taignoagny held out a finger above him. When he spoke again, the animal ran into the woods as fast as a jackrabbit—as fast as a real wolf—and men and women scattered from his route.

The poor excuse for a wolf rummaged around in the woods, and they could hear the fallen leaves flying about and the branches of bushes snapping when suddenly the animal raced out of the woods again with the moccasin between its teeth, and a great excitement rose up among the Iroquois who had witnessed this magic. The animal ran straight up to Taignoagny.

The young man pointed to the chief of the Hochelaga tribe, and spoke in a quiet voice to the animal in the language called French, saying also the name of Kamanesawayga. The white man’s animal turned then and walked towards the chief. Although standing, the chief pulled his shoulders back and turned his head away, afraid to look into the face of the four-legged beast. The animal looked back at Taignoagny, who encouraged him with the white man’s words. The lowly wolf put the moccasin down at the feet of Kamanesawayga, then sat on its haunches, staring up at him, panting.

The old chief looked down at his moccasin. Then he stared into the eyes of the panting wolf-like beast and knew that everything he had ever perceived about the land of the living had changed today, even before the white man had appeared. He put his foot into the shoe. The slobber of the poor-wolf was on the moccasin as he stuck his foot into it, but the animal with the big teeth did not bite him.

“Rub his fur … his head … his neck—he likes that!” Donnacona called out, which caused his two sons to chortle. They knew that their father had himself refused to do so, out of fright.

Kamanesawayga was less reticent than the chief of the Stadacona Iroquois, and slowly, he lowered a hand. Looking into the eyes of the lesser wolf, he touched its head. The fur was long and soft and warm. The eyes of the lowly wolf were moist and friendly, like the eyes of a contented woman. He stared for a long time as the lowly wolf panted, its big tongue lolling out. Then the chief straightened. “This troubles me,” he said.

“In the land of the pale skins,” Domagaya stated, “animals live in the village. They wait for someone to be hungry, to come and kill them. They wait to die.”

Kamanesawayga grunted in a strange way. These stories were difficult.

Donnacona, passing on the knowledge brought to him by his sons, repeated what he knew to be great lies. “In the white man’s land, big animals carry the white man on their backs, and go wherever the white man wants to go.”

Kamanesawayga glared at him, his eyes full of fear and fury, then looked at Donnacona’s sons. “Why do the big animals do this?”

“To make the men with the pale skins happy,” Taignoagny said.

“So the white man will not be tired when he goes a long way,” added his brother.

“If my sons tell lies, I will drown them in the river!” Donnacona vowed. He did not believe his sons, but he also did not believe that Kamanesawayga would ever to go the land of the pale skins to learn whether they had lied or not.

Taignoagny called his dog to his side and the animal obeyed, standing still even as the youth fastened the stone string to its collar. The chief returned to the perimeter of the fire and squatted down opposite Donnacona again.

“I will tell you something about the white man’s animals you will not believe. Do not believe me, Kamanesawayga, for if you do, your dreams will be troubled.”

Kamanesawayga was not a man to be tempted this way. “Tell me,” he said, “so that I will not believe you.”

“The white man has animals like the moose, but smaller. The female small moose gives milk, like a mother gives milk to her children. In the white man’s land, they drink the milk of this moose. That is why the white man has white skin.”

The chief of the Hochelaga Iroquois lowered his head to think about such strange matters. When he raised his head again, he said, “Men who drink from the milk of animals cannot be men. They talk to animals, they drink animal milk—these men cannot be men. They must be half-men, half-animals.”

Those who heard him speak nodded sagely.

“The animals across the sea live in animal lodges—”

“—like the beaver,” Kamanesawayga said, approving of this.

“Like the beaver,” Domagaya agreed. “Only the white man builds the lodges for the animals, and these lodges are bigger than any longhouse we make for our own people. Some animals live in the white man’s longhouse.”

The news passed through the gathering like a breeze through falling leaves, creating a rustle and a stir. Kamanesawayga shook his head.

“Do these white men have white women, or do they fornicate with animals the way they suckle at an animal’s teat?” the chief inquired.

“Their women live in longhouses as large as mountains with walls of gold and smooth, white stone,” Domagaya explained. “These women wear special clothes for fornicating.”

Kamanesawayga nodded, as though he had expected such audacious news.

“I have a gift for you,” Taignoagny said. He secured his stone string to the lowly wolf again.

“You give to me the listening wolf?” Kamanesawayga inquired, aghast, yet oddly enchanted by the prospect. He remained affected by the soft eyes of the beast.

“I cannot. When an animal is given to a man as a young beast, it belongs to that man. It cannot belong to another man. If it is given away, men may accept this, but the animal will never accept this. The animal was given to me by the Great White Chief of France, King Francis the First. The full name of the beast, he told me, is King Francis the Second.” Taignoagny then laughed, and added, “But you must always laugh when you say that. No beast understands a name so long, so I must call the animal King. He answers to that name. I cannot give you King, but to honour the great chief of the Hochelaga Iroquois, I give you this.”

Taignoagny handed him the stone string.

Kamanesawayga held it in his hands and examined it, then gazed at the young man’s father thoughtfully. “What great powers do we have,” he asked, “in the white man’s eyes?”

His friend knew how to reply, for he had heard the white men speak of it often. He nodded before he spoke, for this was a vital mystery that he had chosen to impart. “They believe it is a great magic,” he said, “that we live here.”

Nodding, the chief consented to meet the salt-skinned men who had come down the river, in peace and in curiosity.

Donnacona, greeting Cartier on the banks of the river, declared, “Kamanesawayga waits to meet the great man with skin the colour of sea foam who comes from the clouds across the sea.”

Cartier nodded. He was excited, too. The Iroquois village at Stadacona was small, having fewer than two hundred souls. He imagined from his first view from the river that Hochelaga was home to more than two thousand souls, and he had already marvelled that these people had cleared the land and were growing food, which had not been true at Donnacona’s village. He believed that he was meeting a man of greater stature than his guide. Together, the Iroquois family and Cartier, along with the king’s man, his first mate, his cabin boy and a handful of trusted and adept seamen armed with harquebusiers, knives and spears, commenced the upward journey from the riverbank to the community that dwelled on the side of the mountain.

Iroquois watched from the trees.

The king’s man walked alongside Cartier. “You are here now, Jacques. Will you name this place?”

“The village is called Hochelaga by the Iroquois,” the captain asserted.

“The village,” Gastineau pointed out to him in a harsh tone, for he knew that the captain understood what he meant, “but not the island. Nor the mountain.”

“We shall see,” Cartier demurred.

“You have not named the river. I know why, Jacques. You must name this island properly. You must name the mountain. It is outrageous if you do not do so! We cannot have every important landmark named Cartier!”

Cartier stopped along the trail. “My dear Gastineau. Of course I shall name the island. I shall name the mountain. Yet it is only fitting that you allow me to experience the place awhile, the better to deduce its potential and meaning. For example, if an Iroquois were to cut off your head this afternoon, I’d name the mountain Gastineau’s Head. On the other hand, should we all survive, I might imagine something more in keeping with this auspicious encounter.”

“You try my patience, Jacques.”

“Look,” said Cartier, bothering no more with the man’s preoccupations, “the chief.”

And so the two divergent peoples met, through the determined and visionary sea captain and the elderly, experienced and thoughtful chief. The Iroquois spoke first. He said, “Welcome.”

And Cartier, understanding him, said back in the man’s own language, “Thank you. I am glad to meet you here this day. I bring to you the best wishes of the Great White King of France, Francis the First, and of the people of France, the land that dwells beyond the ocean and the clouds.”

“I welcome you in the name of the people of the land,” Kamanesawayga stated, “who have dwelled in the world from the beginning, who came here to this place from the stars before the stars had light, to live in the forests with the bear and the deer and the wolves and the moose, to live as men and women under the sky and under the sun as long as the sun has light.”

Donnacona listened to the speech and wished that he had said all that when he first met Cartier on the Gaspé beach. Instead, he had said only, “You do not wear the fur of animals.”

Cartier was affected by the speech also, and wished that he had initially been more eloquent. He now felt himself at a disadvantage, even while he confirmed to himself that his intuition had been correct. Kamanesawayga was a great chief. Donnacona, by comparison, merely a courtier.

“I thank you for your great welcome,” Cartier said.

Kamanesawayga, grunting softly, sniffed the foul air. He took a step back. “I have no moose to give you milk,” he said. “I have no listening wolves who will chase your moccasins or your ducks. I have no homes of bright stones filled with our young women. Why have you come here from beyond the sea and the clouds to the land of the forest?”

The man spoke quickly, and Cartier, comprehending only a portion, waited for Taignoagny to conclude a stilted translation.

“I have heard of the great island in the middle of the great river,” Cartier stated, “for it is a river more great than any revealed to the white man, and I have heard of the great Iroquois nation that lives upon the island and guards the way to the land of gold and diamonds. I have heard these things, and I desired to meet the great chief of the Hochelaga Iroquois.”

Domagaya had to explain what gold and diamonds were to the satisfaction of the chief, who nodded.

“You want stones?” the chief asked him.

Cartier concurred. “Stones that shine brightly,” he qualified.

Kamanesawayga nodded, and let out a grunt. “I understand,” he said. “I enjoy stones that shine as the sun. I have heard stories of your magic. Show me your magic, so I will know for myself if the sons of Donnacona speak truth or lie like the babbling children of a man who is only a fool and farts often.”

“I will drown my sons,” Donnacona insisted, “if they lie to you.”

Domagaya said, “They have magic spears that make the birds fall down.”

Cartier removed his plumed cap and placed it under his elbow. “Jean-Marc,” he instructed a seaman, who was a crack shot, “fire at will.”

To shoot a flying bird with a musket was a tall order, yet Jean-Marc tamped down the gunpowder and prepared to light it with a spark. The spark ignited and the wick caught fire and the two thousand men and women present on the hillside, those in the clearing with the visitors and those who remained amid the trees, responded with sounds of fright and amazement as the wick frizzled and Jean-Marc took aim at a crow stationary in a leafless tree. The bird cawed and stared back at the gathering. The frizzy fire suddenly made a big noise, and the crowd fell back a foot and gazed at the seaman to see if he remained yet alive. Then someone shouted, and everyone looked as the crow fell down through the bare tree limbs.

When the bird hit the ground, Taignoagny gave a command and his animal ran into the woods to fetch the crow. King came back with the crow between his teeth, and this was a magic greater than the death of the crow: the willingness of an animal to help a man.

Kamanesawayga observed this magic and was troubled and impressed. “We will eat,” he said to Cartier. “I have venison and corn.”

“Corn?” Cartier asked Taignoagny, not understanding the Iroquois word.

“Indian food,” Domagaya explained.

“It is the plant that grows in the fields,” Donnacona revealed.

“We shall eat,” Cartier confirmed. “You shall show me your island. I have many gifts to give to the great chief of the Hochelaga Iroquois.”

Kamanesawayga wondered what gift he might receive from the white men who possessed such strange magic. He wondered also what gift he might impart that would not humble him, nor disgrace his people. Perhaps he would offer the white man many raccoon hides and beaver pelts to help him with his bad stink. Perhaps that would make for a worthy gift.

After the visitors were fed, having consumed with great delight the Iroquois corn and venison, and despite the French sniffing themselves—for they had begun to fart incessantly, although in general their farts were congenial—Kamanesawayga took Cartier on the long hike to the top of the mountain. He gazed out across a great plateau to the rolling hills, an unimaginable, improbable distance. Only Cartier’s cabin boy walked alongside him to the final lookout, and Kamanesawayga, taking note of this choice, brought along only a grandson of similar age. The larger entourages for both men were bidden to stand back.

The wind was bitter late in the day, winter approaching.

“I thank you for the animal furs, Kamanesawayga,” Cartier said, “for the pelts of ermine and fox, the beaver and the raccoon. The Great White King of France will be honoured to receive them.”

“They give a man a good smell,” the chief said. “I thank you for the smelling waters and the cutting tool, for the blankets and the coat.”

The scissors had been a last-minute inspiration on Cartier’s part. They were small, but when the Iroquois saw how neatly they trimmed fingernails, the men were amazed and the women abuzz as they took turns cutting each other’s hair. The perfume, on the other hand, confused the Indians, and Cartier had to be very stern in making sure that nobody drank it. Taignoagny spoke for a long time about perfume, and often the Indians had laughed as he told them that they could wear it to help them bear the stench of the pale-skins, but Cartier was never clear on what was meant.

He and Kamanesawayga had been getting along, and they had learned to speak Iroquois very slowly to one another, so that each grasped the other’s meaning. Before them, beyond the river island, beyond the rapids, stretching west to the setting sun, the magic kingdom awaited Cartier’s exploration.

“I have one more gift to ask of you,” Cartier noted. “I seek one more trade between us.”

Kamanesawayga concurred with a grunt. “I also want one more trade.”

“I will give you my dagger with the blade of steel, forged in a hot fire, which cuts well. You will give me yours made of stone.”

Kamanesawayga agreed to the trade, which seemed like a good one to him, and the two men exchanged knives. Cartier looked at the Indian’s knife, and smiled, and handed it to Petit Gilles for his safekeeping. Kamanesawayga then made a request of his own: “You will give me your hat with the long feather.”

Cartier gave away his plumed hat. In exchange, he requested and received the chief’s beaded “small-coat”—his vest. He gazed longingly at the distant kingdom one last time, then commenced the trek downward through the trees as the sun was setting.

When finally they were at the bottom, in the near dark, Gastineau reminded the captain of his obligations. “I still have my head.”

“I have seen the mountain,” Cartier replied. “I will name this mountain after our great king.”

“Mount Francis,” Gastineau said. “Good.”

“No. This is a great and royal mountain. I will name this mountain Mount Royal, to commemorate the royal house of France.”

This was not what Gastineau had expected, yet he could not refute the name, as it sufficiently adhered to the king’s interests. “The island?” he asked.

“Montreal,” Cartier stipulated. Gastineau detected no difference to the word, and only when he saw it written upon a chart did he note the discrepancy in the spelling. He did not grasp that the island had been named after the Sicilian royal mountain, Monreale, and more specifically after Cartier’s private benefactor, Cardinal de’ Medici de Monreale. The island could not be called Medici, as that would honour more famous members of the cardinal’s family. So the French spelling of the Italian word was struck by Cartier: Montréal. Neither Gastineau nor King Francis I himself would know that the island’s name intended no homage to the king, but to a poor Medici cousin, a cardinal of trivial import.

“Look what I have received in trade,” Cartier stated to the king’s man, and motioned for Petit Gilles to produce the dagger. The cabin boy did not pull from his clothing the one that Kamanesawayga had recently traded. Instead, he pulled out the knife that had once belonged to Donnacona and had been improved upon by his son in France. Gastineau studied the wondrous weapon. Embedded in the handle, knotted tightly by moose hair and deer hide and fitted with a soft and supple beaver skin, were diamonds and gold nuggets. “Look what else I have received today,” Cartier said. From the pocket of the decorative vest he’d obtained from Kamanesawayga in exchange for his hat, he showed the king’s man the remaining gold nuggets given to him by Cardinal de’ Medici. Gastineau studied the items by the light of a torch, enchanted.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked, excited.

“Diamonds, gold,” Cartier whispered. “This is the land of diamonds and gold.”

Deftly, he took the knife back from Gastineau, and the nuggets. “I will give this dagger to our king,” he vowed. “He will see the true promise of this land. He spends more on his precious painters than he does on these voyages to New France. This must change.”

Gastineau could now see the promise as well. If mere farmers of corn, and eaters of wild venison and squirrel, carried with them knives made of gold and diamonds, and had gold nuggets in their pockets they freely gave away, then all that Cartier had promised, and more, would surely hold true. This was indeed the magic kingdom, and he would recommend to King Francis I that treasure ought to be invested to support future expeditions.

Inwardly, Cartier felt aglow, transported somehow. The island and the mountain had been named. Whatever difficulty Gastineau might have had with either choice, whatever disappointment the king might yet express, such doubts amounted to nothing weighed against the promise of riches forecast by the knife.

Both men briefly separated along the trail, taking time for multiple farts and to sniff themselves, catching the enriched scents of venison and corn on the air.

An early winter that year. By November, the wooden ships were captured in ice. The Émérillon was shoved onto its beam ends at a twenty-five-degree angle, so that in his cabin Cartier slept against a wall sheeted in ice rather than risk sliding out of his bunk. The warmth of his body created a perfect shape in the ice for his comfort. Food was rationed, and scurvy broke out among the crew. Lives were being lost.

After the first deaths, Cartier ordered the ship’s barber and surgeon to perform the first autopsy in the New World. As the sailor was cut open, great amounts of poisoned blood flowed from his heart, then the barber and the ship’s captain gazed upon the body of Phillipe Rougemont rent asunder.

“The heart,” the barber said.

The organ was white, evidently rotten, awash in a sink of water, more than a quart.

“The lungs,” Cartier muttered. Black. Mortified. “Now let us bury him properly. We shall give our friend back to God. Do not show him to the others, Pierre. Record the evidence in your diary, but never speak of this to our crew or they shall lose the last of their precious hope.”

“Pray mercy,” the barber added, “for our own souls.”

Twenty-five died that winter.

When the scouting party had first returned to Stadacona from the adventure at Hochelaga, Cartier had been distraught to discover that, in his absence, relations between the French he’d left behind there and the Iroquois had not remained amicable. The Indians had grown nettlesome, and as the winter seized the visitors, they withheld a potion that would have saved the dying men. Cartier wept the morning he carried out the body of his cabin boy, Petit Gilles, onto the river’s ice. So apparent was his grieving that an Iroquois hunting party on shore noticed him and spoke of his travail to Donnacona, who then sent a group of women to the icebound ships with a cedar extract they called anedda.

They were surprised, the women, to discover that ice had formed inside the hulls of the ships, that the French were living inside a giant house of ice. The white men were shivering through their long nights, and during the day were ill and in despair. The appearance of the Iroquois women, while distrusted initially, proved a blessing. Those struck down by scurvy recovered, and for the new arrivals, anedda—which in their delirium, and unaccustomed to the native tongue, they pronounced as canada—became their salvation.

In the spring, the ice broke with such great roaring cracks in the night that the men believed their ships would be destroyed. The ships’ timbers cried out as though snapping. The holds flooded with the melt of interior ice. Cartier did not need to be persuaded by Gastineau, who raged and fumed, adamant that they return to France. Gazing upon his crews, he knew that the trip to the magic kingdom beyond the rapids of Montreal would have to be postponed. His men were depleted. Many of those alive were walking skeletons.

One ship had been severely damaged by ice, so Cartier departed with only two, taking with him—against their will—ten Indians, including Donnacona, his two sons and a young girl.

“You will see the Great White King, tell him your stories,” he told the Iroquois chief when they were first at sea. “You will see animals who talk to the white men. You will drink the milk of cows, and see a village as large as a forest.”

“I want to go home,” Donnacona insisted.

“Why did you take so long to give us the canada tea?”

“Why did you take our women?”

“I did not know about that. I did not approve when I learned these stories.”

“Better I not give to you anedda. Now I know.”

Sailing back to France, the situation remained dire, but all was not lost. In his possession he carried what the crew called the Cartier Dagger. They were excited by it. The handle’s gold and diamonds would impress the king. What pleased Cartier as much, the island of Montreal had been properly named, in keeping his promise to the cardinal.

Only in one circumstance did Cartier find himself thwarted. Gastineau saw to it that the river was anointed the St. Lawrence. The ship’s captain would not have his name inscribed upon the great river he had sailed, and because he had held out for this one substantial tribute to himself, he had neglected to attach his own name to any lesser landmark. Gastineau was pleased by this. The captain, a man of irritable habits and peculiar mind, who had placed him in mortal peril by staying over a winter, had successfully kept the name of King Francis I off the charts, nor had he thought to name any promontory after Gastineau. At least the name Cartier itself would also remain invisible in the new land.

As he sailed into St. Malo, Jacques Cartier felt distinctly proud. Crowds formed to cheer his triumphant return. The Indians stood on deck alongside him, marvelling at the activity of a seaport, with so many ships and big buildings and animals that lived among the people. Donnacona nodded. His sons were not liars. He believed now that it was a good thing that he had arrived in the land of the pale-skins. He stood on the deck and observed their ships, and the smoke from their lodges, and the beasts like moose, called horses, and the beasts like wolves, called dogs, and he was glad he had come to the land beyond the clouds because now he could say to his people when he returned home, “More people live upon the land than live upon the land. More land stands up from the sea than has ever stood up from the sea in this world. We are a people who lived in the old time, when only the people and the animals walked in the forest, and no man was a half-animal. Our children will live in the new time, when other creatures walk in the woods among them.” He had learned from Kamanesawayga to speak with great eloquence. Unlike Kamanesawayga, and unlike his fathers before him, he had met the people beyond the clouds, the men who did not, and could not, exist. He was seeing what his fathers had not seen, and therefore he was a great chief, and the people of his time were blessed.

“Show me,” he said to the captain of the Émérillon, “a room which is only for shitting. My sons have seen this thing. I think they lie.”

Cartier clutched the splendid knife in his belt and dropped a hand upon Donnacona’s shoulder. He accepted the cheers of the crowd, even as he searched among the well-wishers for the mother of Petit Gilles. He did not know that meeting her would be the first of many sad moments that year, for of the Indians, only the young girl aboard the ship would survive, and she would not return across the sea because she had not enjoyed the voyage, choosing instead to live out her life in France. Donnacona, Domagaya and Taignoagny, along with the others who had been captured and brought across the sea to the land on the other side of the clouds, would remain forever beyond the clouds.

In his final moments, through parched lips, Taignoagny, the man who had been drawn by Michelangelo as a model for the flying angel at the top of The Last Judgment, begged Cartier for anedda, but there was nothing the sea captain could bring to him, and nowhere he could take him in the winter of that year.