Bright-Face: Chapter 2

Chapter II


Antonin Dimitri Chrysafe, meanwhile, applied himself to his remaining work, thinking all the while of the dreadful secret he concealed. His conceit, as all the conceits of youth, lay chiefly in his keeping the news to himself—thus, too, was it doomed to failure. The shadows slanted broader through the little shop, and he began to put away the instruments of his labor—the little brushes and inks, placed safely in their boxes, the precious maps folded carefully, tucked in their shelves.

As he closed the shop, he considered to himself whether he had been wholly wise in his determination. An instant of uncertainty crossed his mobile features, passed through his mind with fluid rapidity, and then was gone. Come what may, the thing was done. His concern, now, was with his own faithfulness—for he had been on the very verge of communicating all with Béatrice; and had she remained five minutes more in the shop, he knew well that he should have been obliged to tell her all.

A footfall was heard from the tiny winding stairs above—seconds later, the cartographer himself appeared, slim and light-eyed and dark-haired, and as detached as Antonin was restive, as nondescript as Antonin was dazzling. Together, the two men closed the office. Usually, they parted outside with scarcely a word, for M. Hébert was not the talkative sort, but on this evening, he seemed to wish to speak. “All well, Antonin?”

“Very well, Maitre Hébert.”

“I thought I heard a voice downstairs…”

“Yes, that was Mlle. Durandel, returned from Montréal.”

“Ah.” M. Hébert paused a moment, thoughtfully. “Your mother, is she in good health?”

The thought of Mme. Chrysafe was not one that Antonin wished to dwell upon; he made an impatient, restless motion with his beautiful head and replied, “As well as might be, Maitre Hébert.”

“Good. Good.” The cartographer paused in looking up at the closed door to his establishment, adjusted his tricorn hat, and regarded Antonin candidly through his weak blue eyes. “I fear I may have to seek an audience with His Majesty the king, in Quebec, before my request for charter is granted.”

“Oh, the king—he is a little boy from what I have heard—“ interjected Antonin with pretty arrogance.

“But he is our sovereign. He has suffered terribly at the hands of the unfaithful French—he was wise, perhaps, to come to us. We may be mixed, rough, and some are too proud of their freedoms, but we are loyal—we are the true French people. And most especially, you should be loyal, for was it is his benevolence that permits your family to remain subjects of New France, though you sought asylum from the Ottomans under the meddling English. Now. Will you accompany me?”

“But surely, no grant is needed. We are self-sufficient here in New France. We take matters into our own hands.”

M. Hébert raised his brows, but uttered nothing directly concerning the near-treason Antonin had spoken, only whispering stringently, “Do not be rash.”

“Very well. Thank you,” the young man added as a guilty afterthought. “I will be glad to accompany you to Montréal, M. Hébert.”

“If I cannot attain this grant, I will retire, and strike out on my own, as you say, or else sell all my books and pens,” declared the other man in his dry, taciturn manner. He had removed to Saint-Pélerin in order that he might soon embark upon his life’s ambition—namely, that of mapping New France’s unexplored western coast—and to be thus prohibited by lack of a royal grant, given that the king had been in New France only a year, was surely galling. Nevertheless, he bade Antonin farewell with customary calm, and hurried away to his boarding-house quarters, slight figure blending with the shadows.

Antonin took longer to leave the area of the cartographer’s office; he mulled over his conundrum in his mind. “And yet, perhaps I needn’t tell her, after all,” he said to himself as he walked slowly home. It was unclear, even in his mind, which “she” he referred to—whether his mother, or Béatrice. “If I am to leave for the king’s city, then maybe I may avoid it.”

The streets of Saint-Pélerin dimmed. Antonin skirted the rough white buildings, past the centre square where, not so long ago, though not in his memory, Guy Fawkes effigies had been burned. The day had been long, but Antonin saw no reason to hurry home; all the more, indeed, had he, to linger. The evening, such as it was, with its morose purple hues and silent streets, was his. Most law-abiding citizens of the king’s domains had retired, and the only people out were habitual drunkards, and a few youths carousing. These last staggered form ale-house to street, and back again—Antonin watched them with disgust, for he had, tonight, an abhorrence for such untidiness, such futility, and though he was as fond of liquor as the next young man, and though he would gladly have stopped in to see Josepha, the brewer’s daughter, tonight, the thought of it reviled.

As he passed the shining window of the tavern, however, he could not resist ducking down to glance, once more, at his reflection in the horse trough—to reassure himself—the gold-and-planed glory of it looked back.

There was nothing, after all, so terrible a fate that could befall him—it had not, the first time, a month ago, when he had first dared—and did not now. “Prophecy,” he snorted to himself. “They were likely afraid I would get a swollen head or some such nonsense; fall in love with myself—such fools! Nothing of the sort will happen.”

Whistling softly to himself, he made his way home, to the bramble of warmth of fireplace and family.

In another part of the city, Béatrice sat at the nuns’ supper. The bent heads of the Sisters all around was comforting, the silence and reverence of their every motion. She thought, warm-cheeked, of Antonin—how she had missed him, during her long absence at school! How he was just as she had imagined, just as she had hoped, just as she remembered him. She had loved him from her infancy, as one child loves another—and now, she loved him more than ever before, as a girl to a boy. Hers was a faithful heart, and during her long years away, what fantasies she had concocted, what vivid imaginings, such as one reads in novels, to bind her affections more surely to their unknowing object! The difficulty of her long journey, and the relief of being home now rendered her sleepy, and it was in a sort of daze that she said compline with the nuns, and retired.

Mother Superior, a droll little Irishwoman presiding over a conclave of French and Métis sisters, had welcomed the return of their ugly duckling with dignified delight, and straightaway set Béatrice to the empty attic, for the present serving as a medicinal closet. Three iron bedsteads stood unused, prepared to receive other such foundlings, amidst the makings of a warehouse-infirmary—rolls of gauze bandages, dried herbs, and sacks of grain.

To these wholesome items, Béatrice thoughtfully added her own small store of possessions: three dresses, three sets of linen, two pairs of woolen stockings, and one of silk, her slate-blue traveling coat, and a parcel of books. She was well-provided-for by her stern aunt and uncle, it was true, though they disapproved of her life at such a remote station; still, it must be allowed that it had been her late parents’ wish to see her thus established. Mme and M. Durandel had been among the first to take up the royal call to move westward, and though they had perished shortly after Béatrice’s birth, it was assumed that she must be allowed to remain in Saint-Pélerin until time for her schooling.

One round window at each end of the attic looked out to the quiet street below, and on the other side, the nuns’ new garden; Béatrice went to the street-side, and looked out. The square was empty, devoid even of Montréal’s watchman. The silence was all-enfolding.

“I shall have to re-accustom myself to it, that is all,” the girl thought, weary-lidded, and doused the single candle that the sisters had given her with which to say her prayers. For she preferred the dark.
Béatrice began dutifully, kneeling by the bed as she ought, in the sheltering darkness—“Ave Maria, gratia plena—“ but after “Mulieribus,” halted, opened wide her eyes and looked about her. A huge raven, such as are unknown to Europe, but flourish on the Western coast, seemed to be pounding at one of the windows—she watched, frightened, as it knocked its onyx beak against the round glass pane, and stared in with its round black eyes.

Rising slowly, Béatrice went to the window, and made several shooing motions, hoping to drive the bird away. The raven, far from complying, tilted its glossy head and barked at her once, twice—alarmed by the sound, and afraid of the great bird’s making an irreparable hole in the precious glass, she hastily unfastened the latch—the raven, squawking in indignation, prized it open, and flew past her to settle on a cross-beam in the room. Gingerly, the girl opened the window wholly, that it might leave if it so chose (and this was her hope) during the night and, skipping across the cool floorboards, returned to her prayers.

But the words had flown from her head with the raven’s disturbance; as she tried to regain her place in the familiar prayer, a different set of words drifted into her head, gently, as a song played on wind-reeds: “…And let me go into the sun-world’s houses, before the making of the time-that-is-to-come…” She rather fancied that a melody went with it—she could almost, whispering the words under her breath, recall it—a lilting, swaying tune perhaps heard in the street—“Amen,” she finished, and, overcome with the day’s greetings and travel, fell into bead and into sleep, curled against the cold.

In another part of Saint-Pélerin, M. Hébert slumbered in his narrow boarding-house bed, dreaming of his luggages. Piles of blank paper, inks, pencils, were stored within, as well as three blank requests for grant of charter, one addressed to the king, a second to a Lord Wilmore, and the third to himself. One should serve him, even if the others were refused.

In his warm bed in a corner of the upper floor of the Chrysafe residence, Antonin dreamed. He fancied that the moon took flight above his roof, smiling, but however he ran, he could not catch it, until a great dark bird detached itself from the night sky, swept down upon him, swallowed him up. Tossing and turning, he half-awakened from the nightmare; he fell again into slumber, dreaming now of the comely Josepha.

In his murky hut, a gnarled old man, tucked in his covers, dreamt of his horde of copper coins, now nearly completed. His dreaming self moved among the carefully arranged piles, caressed the structure he had labored for so long to build—a house, of pennies, constructed in the shape of the king’s palace in Montréal. All at once, an earthquake shook the place; his keep crumbled, and he was dashed to the ground. A long fissure formed through the cellar floor, and he cried aloud, hoping to catch the pennies that slipped through his grasp into the abyss.

In Montréal, in a wide empty chamber filled with costly velvets and silks, tapestries and the finest crystal ornaments, in a four-poster bed that swallowed him in its vastness, Louis XVII, king of New France, dreamt of torment. Leering faces bearing flagons of strong-smelling liquor loomed above him, dark, damp corners, detached windows far overhead—he writhed, trying to escape the misery of his dreams. The king was eleven years of age, ruddy-haired, and rosy-cheeked, and as he struggled with his nighttime wraiths, unconsciously, he covered his mouth with one white hand, lest his cries alert his attendants.

In another part of Montréal, in the box-like embrace of a bleak wooden boarding-house room, a schoolteacher dreamt. He was long-limbed, and his dark coloring, high cheekbones, and dark hair revealed his native ancestry. He seemed to pull unto himself a stillness all-contained; each sleeping breath was softly uttered, as if carefully considered and thoughtfully executed.
He dreamt of his grandmother, who stood at the edge of a clearing of endless, towering trees, and demanded of him when he was returning home.

“Not yet,” he told her with some reluctance. “Not yet.” The tiny old woman scowled her wrinkled, nut-brown face at him; she reproached him with un-dream-like detail. The schoolmaster listened, quietly, but at one charge spoke: “I have not turned my back upon my people,” he said. “My future, and ours, is here.”

But it was of no use. Among the trees behind her, stood a tiny bark cottage, admirably suited to her diminutive stature. It was not decorated with broad strokes of crimson and blue and white, for she preferred it plain, waiting, she said. A single plume of smoke spiraled from it; he had to bite back a surge of homesickness. He tried to close his eyes, in the dream, against the scene, but she forced them open, lecturing on and on until at last he fell into a dreamless sleep.

In an estate outside Montréal, in a fine chateau that had used to belong to the French governor, a lord slept. His amber eyes were shut, but he did not dream. His thin lips curved in a satisfied smile.


© 2009 I.M. S.

All characters, events, and representations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.