Chapter One

 

Quebec, August 1670

André Lefebvre swung open the door to his agent's office and splattered wet moccasin prints across the room. He was nude—but for the flap of a breechcloth—and he took some measure of amusement at the sight of his agent’s displeased look as water sluiced down his legs onto the Turkish rug.

Philippe leaned back in the wooden chair. “I'm pleased you finally saw fit to grace me with your presence.”

“I’ve got good news, Philippe.”

“I’ve got news as well—”

“Mine has to do with business.”

“Is this what you call business?” Philippe looked André over from the wet clothes thrown across his shoulder to the moccasins on his feet. “Splashing at the river’s edge like a boy?”

“I convinced Tiny to sign on to our voyage.”

Philippe’s brow cocked higher. “That burly woods–runner from Montreal?”

“I challenged him to a canoe race across the St. Lawrence.”

“But he can’t be beaten!”

“I know. I lost.” André shrugged. “He was impressed enough that he agreed to sign on anyway. Think about that. The best steersman in all of Quebec, joining me on this crazed voyage of ours. Not a bad day's work, eh?”

André strode toward the window, not waiting for a reply. He banged open the shutters, flooding the room with July sunlight. Philippe's warehouse wedged up against the sheer rock face of the cliff of Quebec, gazing strategically over the strand where the boats unloaded goods from the French ships anchored in the St. Lawrence River. The crowd that had watched the race still lingered on the shore, a motley clutch of Ottawa Indians, bearded woods–runners, and a few Frenchmen pecking around like tamed peacocks set out in the wild.

André raked his fingers through his shaggy hair. His heart still pumped from the race. His arms ached, and the burn between his shoulder blades had only just begun to cool. Damn reckless fool he had been, daring Tiny to a race when Tiny was only a month back from a season in the woods—work–hardened and strong—while André had just returned from France, having done nothing more arduous than pace in the antechambers of courtrooms. The race had been from one side of the Saint Lawrence to the other—easy currents, open water, and he’d felt every inch of it. Three years away from Quebec had made him soft. He only had a few weeks to toughen up before the voyage began. For then, he would lead an expedition fifteen hundred miles into the interior—over mountainous portages, through the most ferocious of whitewater, into uncharted territory.

For three years he’d dreamed of nothing else.

“That’s an impressive addition to the crew,” Philippe said. “Congratulations. But I have some news for you, too. Over the last two days, I’ve sent four boys to fetch you, one after the other, so I could fill you in on the details.”

“I don’t need to know every detail in those papers on your desk, Philippe.” From the moment he and Philippe had become partners in this upcoming fur–trading voyage, André had made the division of responsibilities clear: Philippe would take care of paper and politics, and André would hire the men, outfit the canoes, and make the voyage.

“We could finish more quickly if you weren't gazing out the window like a schoolboy dreaming over his lessons.”

“But another ship is in.” In the midst of the St. Lawrence, a ship unfurled its limp, salt–stained sails like a portly priest undressing. “Shouldn't you be out there, getting the latest news?”

“These matters can’t wait any longer.”

A drawer squealed as Philippe pulled it open. André turned to see him thump a wrapped package onto the desk.

Damn, damn, damn.

André leaned back against the sill as Philippe peeled back the paper from the package and sliced off an end from a carrot of tobacco. Then, with all the stoic majesty of an Indian chief presiding over a circle of his warriors, Philippe tapped the tightly packed leaves into his pipe and lit them with a spark of flint against steel, hollowing his cheeks as he drew in the first smoke.

It was an old ritual, an Indian ritual, anachronistic in this low–raftered room with all its oiled and gleaming French furniture. It was a peek at the old Philippe, whom André remembered with fondness. But the sight made André edgy. The movement pulled the skin around the mottled scar that ran jagged from Philippe's temple, through the edge of his wax–tipped mustache, and faded into the tuft of blond beard in the center of his chin.

His old friend was bracing himself for something.

As Philippe extended the pipe in encouragement, André considered refusing it. He belonged on the shore right now, seeking out the fur traders just in from the west, plying them with good French brandy and asking about the lay of the western land, the fierceness of the rivers, the distribution of the Indian tribes. He hated walls, roofs, papers. Hadn't he had enough trouble wheedling his own inheritance from the courts in France? What fresh madness was Philippe bracing himself to tell?

André reluctantly swiped the pipe from his hand. “No brandy for me? Something tells me I’ll need it.”

“Brandy? In the middle of the day?” Philippe’s petticoat breeches rustled as he rose from his chair and opened a small cabinet in the corner. He clinked a bottle of amber liquid on the desk. “I'm a married man with three children,” he said, setting out two glasses. “A respected member of the community.”

André exhaled a blue stream of smoke. “And Marietta would have your head.”

Marietta was Philippe's hot–blooded Italian wife who, even five months gone with child, brooked no nonsense from the husband she'd only half tamed.

Philippe's grin turned rakish as he poured. “Oui, she probably will.” He handed one glass to André and raised his own. “To old friends.”

“Santé.”

The brandy lit his belly with warmth. André savored the hot taste. He would miss only two things when he finally left civilization—brandy and the scent of a willing Frenchwoman.

Philippe tugged a piece of parchment from under a pile and then laid it on the edge of the table. André looked at the thing, noticed the seal, and recognized it as one of the many bulletins pasted on the stone walls of the upper city.

“When I see petty ordinances,” André said, lifting the brandy to his lips, “I suddenly forget how to read.”

“It contains strict orders from the king's minister. If you’d taken a moment away from spending your inheritance, you'd have seen this notice and thus I’d have avoided this unpleasantness.”

“Unpleasantness.”

“It concerns restrictions placed upon men seeking fur trading licenses.”

“I had a bellyful of bureaucracy in France, old friend.” A breeze flooded the room, sending the crystal drops on the chandelier chiming. “Can’t you just take care of it?”

“It's not a matter of paperwork.”

“Then handle it with money.” Planting the brandy on the desk, he tugged his damp deerskin shirt off his shoulder and wrestled his arms into it. “Do whatever you have to do. Offer the king's minister a percentage of the furs if you must—”

“The king's minister will not be bribed.”

“Then bribe his administrators.”

“You know that’s the first thing I tried.” He raised the pipe to halt André's words. “I'm not one of the best agents in Quebec for nothing. But you see this is not a matter of money. It’s a matter of—” he swirled his pipe in circles in the air “—it’s a matter of philosophy.”

André’s throat tightened. He turned on a heel and crossed the width of the room in four wide strides. He didn’t want to hear Philippe speechify. André had already decided that he would have no more trouble with this voyage. In his mind he’d already traveled to the west a thousand times. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to be waist–deep in the rapids of the Ottawa River, portaging around a violent set of falls, or paddling across silvery Lake Nipissing, closer and closer to Georgian Bay. He was so close he could taste gritty Indian sagamité in the scent of wood–smoke.

“When you lived here last,” Philippe began, “the philosophy was to suck the lifeblood from this country—take the beaver pelts, search for minerals and whatever. And so, every autumn our strongest men flood into the woods, and every spring those men return as wild and disruptive as natives. But now the king wants to settle Quebec, as the English and the Dutch have so successfully settled their lands—with farmers, blacksmiths, tanners—”

“How does this affect the voyage?”

“You must fulfill the requirements of the ordinance to trade furs.” Philippe tugged on the edge of his lace cravat and took sudden interest in the brass edging of his inkwell. “The requirement is simple, really.”

“Yes?”

“You must”—he cleared his throat—“marry.”

André stared at Philippe as if his friend’s face was the only steady point on a suddenly rolling horizon.

“If this is a joke of yours, Philippe—”

“More king's girls are coming to Quebec.” Philippe raised a finger from the rim of the inkwell to point out the window. “I’d wager they’re on that ship just arriving. The ordinance requires all single men in the colony to marry within a fortnight of their arrival, or else they'll refuse you a hunting, fishing, or more relevantly, a fur trading license.”

“They can’t enforce that—”

“You’ve been gone three long years, my friend. I warned you that this place has changed.”

André curled his hands into fists, ignoring the cracking of his calloused skin. The monarchy was like a great, choking parasitic vine seeking its way across the Atlantic to strangle the New World.

No one could force a man to take a wife.

“They want money, as all greedy bureaucrats do. We can give that to them.” André speared the air westward, pointing toward someplace well beyond the walls. “There's a bay out there, a bay where a dozen Indian tribes travel to fish and trade each spring. You and I have both heard the talk. Nicholas Perrot was there. You know there's no better place to build a permanent fur trading post.”

“You don't have to convince me.” He shifted in his seat. “I've a hefty bag of gold invested in you.”

“Would those bureaucrats rather fill Quebec with abandoned wives and the forest with cuckolded husbands?” André planted his hands flat on the desk, on all those damn papers. “Find a way around this.”

Philippe met his gaze. Memory passed between them, like a cloud passing across the face of the sun, and his thoughts darkened, tumbling his mind back to what he didn’t want to remember.

He shook off the memory. He cast about for another solution—any solution—and it didn’t take long to come.

“By God,” Philippe murmured into the silence, “the last time I saw a look like that, you were facing two Iroquois warriors who took a liking to the color of your hair.”

“We are at peace with the Iroquois now.” André straightened, pacing. “I can trade furs with the English at Fort Orange. They'll give me twice the price that the French will, and they won't charge me tax.”

“That's smuggling.” Philippe's fingers stilled on the bowl of his pipe. “André, that's treason.”

“Aren’t you the same man who traded brandy with the Ottawa despite the threat of excommunication?”

“Treason can get you hanged.”

“Only if I'm caught.”

“Smuggling to the English the amount of furs you intended to collect is unreasonable—impossible. Think, André.” Philippe tapped the ash out of his pipe on the side of the desk, already pocked with dents. “What of the string of trading posts we planned? If you refuse this edict, that dream of yours will crumble before the foundation has even been set. By God, where are you going?”

“Find a way around this ordinance.” André slammed the door open. “I will not marry.”

He plunged out into the bright, muddy street.

No, no, no, he thought, he would not marry.

Never again.

***

Genevieve gripped the weathered railing as the ship sailed deeper into the channel of the St. Lawrence River. On the northern coast, a wall of rock heaved up from the shore, its surface pitted with spruce trees and tufts of grass. On the southern shore, blue–green forests bristled to the very edge of the horizon, seeping the fragrance of pine sap into the air.

Genevieve tightened her grip on her mantle as the September wind whistled through her bones. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a flap of a gray habit—one of the Ursulines who'd accompanied them across the sea. Lurking in the shadows and watching me, no doubt, she thought, suppressing a shiver. Eager to drag me down to that death–hold with the other girls, stuff noxious ointments in me, and make me cough my life into a dirty linen.

No, no. Not me. She pressed her belly against the railing for support. The river rocked differently than the open sea, but her legs had not yet learned the movement. That's why her head was swimming so much, that's why nausea made her weak. But she couldn't show one flicker of weakness now, not when the fulfillment of her dreams loomed just beyond the next curve. She’d faced the worst—she’d suffered the long, hard voyage, not succumbing to the shipboard fever that had claimed six girls' lives and lingered, even now, in the stinking ship's hold below.

She'd survived, yes, again she'd survived.

A hoarse giggle escaped her throat as a strange exhilaration rushed through her. The worst was over. With shaking fingers, she tore off her head scarf and let a gust lift it to the sky. The wind yanked at her hair, tugging it free to rise weightless in a cloud around her face. It was not Genevieve Lalande who perched here, watching the cold blue sky melt into an evening gold. The shadow called Genevieve had died at Le Havre. Now she was Marie Suzanne Duplessis, a woman who would have a roof above her head, a house to call her own, and fertile land in which to settle and live.

Her gaze drank in the whole of the country, the endless forests not yet tamed by plow or sickle, the deep silence broken only by the caws of the cliff swallows wheeling above the ship. She had dreamed it would be like this, but she never allowed herself to believe her fantasies. In Paris, even in Normandy, she had never seen so much uninhabited, uncultivated land. Uncivilized, the girls had called it, their heads full of grim bedtime stories. Savages ruled these woods, they told her, men of bronze skin and painted faces, men of unimagined cruelty. And the winters grew so cold, they said, that the trees exploded from it.

She felt the skin of her lips crack as she managed a smile. No place could be more uncivilized than the streets of Paris. Here, at least, a woman could change her name, her character, her past. Here, a woman could hide forever.

She’d made it to Quebec. Now nothing—nothing and no one—would ever thwart her dreams again.

Then she crumpled into a heap on the deck.