Anne-Marie de Parthenay
New France
The journey to Lake Ontario was longer and more arduous than the first time. The waters of the St. Lawrence flowed fast enough to not freeze over, but the canoe was far heavier with six passengers on board. All the while, Ezekiel was the only one who could steer it, as the doctor was too old, and the girls too weak.
More than anything, perhaps, the canoe, like the consciences of its passengers, was burdened by the weight of what happened. None of them spoke a word the first few days, as the memory of the dead girl in the dungeon haunted their memories. Ezekiel’s family did not know what he had done, and the three who did would not dare tell them. It hung like a dark shadow over their heads, dampening the excitement of their escape and the hope for their future.
Of course, it troubled Anne-Marie greatly. Not only the act itself, but the way she felt about it. In a way, she was troubled because she wasn’t troubled, or at least, not to the extent she felt she should. It was a horrible thing, to take a life. It was more horrible, no doubt, to take a young life, one that had not yet been given the chance to mature into adulthood. And most would say it was worst of all to take the life of a girl. Boys were more expendable—men were sent off to war in every nation in the world, and dying was an intractable result of that. But a girl? A girl’s death was a far-reaching injustice. Women were expected to birth sons and daughters, and thus, a death of one was the death of their future children, something lamented more by society than the woman herself.
And yet, despite everything that should have weighed on her soul, all the elements that should have wracked her heart with guilt, Anne-Marie found hers sorely lacking. More than anything, she felt conflicted. There was no doubt in her mind that what Ezekiel did was wrong, that it would be something he’d have to atone for in the years to come. But there was also no doubt in her mind that Jeannine was an evil person. At first, she wasn’t sure—her honeyed words and seduction tainted her better judgment. Jeannine preyed on Anne-Marie’s naivete, and as soon as Anne-Marie became wiser, she dropped all pretenses. She coerced Anne-Marie to return to the talons of Le Vicomte, threatening to expose Ezekiel and his family to imprisonment or death. She no doubt had a hand in his subsequent arrest—how else would they have fingered him as a suspect? And then to learn that it was not enough for her, that she spent her days torturing the man in his cell. What other fate could befall her, then, but death? What other end did she deserve than by the hands of the man whose life she had ruined, whose body she had brutalized? Anne-Marie, then, could find no real remorse within her, no deep sorrow for the girl she once thought to love. What kind of person did that make her, to feel so little?
It was these thoughts that kept Anne-Marie from sleeping each night of their journey, tossing and turning in the cold January air. One night was worse than all the others. The chill seeped through her blanket straight to her bones, and the sight of Jeannine’s lifeless corpse on the stairs flashed in her mind every time she closed her eyes. After hours of trying and failing to drift to sleep, she gave up. She walked out of her small tent into the camp they had made for the evening. To her surprise, she found Ezekiel outside, too, nursing a small fire with a stick. She wrapped her blanket around herself and sat on the log next to him.
“Can’t sleep?” She asked him.
Ezekiel shrugged.
“Same as you, I suppose,” he said. His dark eyes flickered in the orange light of the fire. She tried to glean something from them, but they were as deep and unknowable as the bottom of the sea.
“Can I be honest with you?” She asked.
“You don’t need my permission to speak the truth,” he replied. It was as good of an affirmation as any, she supposed.
“I have not slept since it happened,” she began, cradling her legs in her arms. “I am overwhelmed with guilt. Not just for her fate, but for yours. It’s all my fault. I’ve ruined your life.”
“What do you hope to gain from saying these things?” He asked.
“W-what?”
“I mean, what is your goal? Why do you sit here and tell me how guilty you are, how awful you feel that you have ruined my life?”
“I… I don’t know. I didn’t think I had a goal. I was just saying how I felt.”
“But it was your intention not just to feel these things, but to tell me of them. By speaking them, you make them real. You invite me into your misery to partake and share in it. You hope I might feel the same, or at the very least can provide you some comfort. But I can’t. I could tell you that it isn’t your fault, but I will not tell a lie. Yes, it was the evil of the French men that arrested me and sentenced me to hanging. Yes, you would never wish such things to happen to me. But that doesn’t mean you had nothing to do with it. All the while, the fact still remains: had I acted on my better judgment, had I listened to my wife and refused to take you in, we would not be sitting here in the cold.”
All this time, and Anne-Marie had still not gotten used to the way Ezekiel spoke. It was so disarming, to have someone tell you of your intentions without knowing them yourself.
“I… I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to burden you further. Really. I… I’m very sorry.”
Ezekiel shrugged.
“I am sorry, too,” he said. “I wish I was kinder, that I could shoulder your burdens with you. But I have carried so many as of late, and I grow so tired.”
Anne-Marie looked at the fire, as if it would tell her what to say, how to feel. It crackled and spat tiny cinders, rejecting her as Ezekiel did. She had spent her whole life clutching the arm of another, never standing on her own two feet. Doted on by servants, pampered by her family. Now, everything was laid bare. They could never return to New France. Outlaws in the truest sense of the word, they existed now outside of the bounds of society, both from its laws and its protections. She would have to survive in this strange new world on her own merit, by her own self, even though she still didn’t have a grasp on what that “self” meant for her.
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“I never thanked you,” Ezekiel suddenly said. “For saving me.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” Anne-Marie replied. “I don’t deserve your thanks. I was the one who got you into all of this in the first place. It was the least I could do.”
“And yet still you saved me. You and the doctor both. You have given up your lives and futures to do so.”
Ezekiel reclined back a bit, his eyes searching the starry night sky above him for something.
“In the beginning, I didn’t know whether I should thank you,” he said. “Or whether I should be happy at all. I thought that maybe, if I died at their hands, it would all be over, at least. They would not then come for my family, or anyone else in the village. Before they took me, they would beat anyone who could get their hands on, my neighbors and cousins. When I was bound in chains, I was happy, at least, that the violence would end.”
“What do you think now?”
“I don’t know. The future has never been so unclear to me. Each night I lie awake, afraid of what will come tomorrow. But each morning, I wake to see my wife and daughters. I can be happy, then, that I am alive, even if it is a selfish thing.”
The next morning, Anne-Marie helped the doctor break down the tents as Ezekiel went hunting in the woods for food. She had not spoken to him since they left, and after her conversation with Ezekiel, had worked up the courage to do so.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For having a change of heart.”
The doctor shrugged.
“Don’t think it was my heart that changed,” he said. “I can tell right from wrong, godliness from injustice. My heart knew the right thing to do—it was my mind that stayed it. I thought about how hard it would be, what would happen if I was caught. What I’d be giving up, even if it worked. It was an irrational thing, to throw away all I had to save two souls I barely know. I am thankful, at least, to not be a slave to my reason.”
“Barely know? You’ve always spoken of Ezekiel as though you are friends.”
Gusteau shrugged.
“I helped his wife when she had caught a bad fever,” he said. “It’s what any doctor should do. I just happened to be the only one who agreed to it.”
“Because she’s Indian.”
The doctor sighed.
“Yes, because she’s Indian. As if that makes any difference.”
He stopped for a moment, catching his breath from the work. He sat down on the log from last night, rubbing his hands together to warm them.
“I am exhausted, I think,” he said. “Of people. All the stupid little rules they make up and pretend have always been there. You and Ezekiel—you think me so magnanimous. All I did was tend to two patients. It’s my job, dammit—it should be the expectation, not the exception. I am no great man just because the rest are wicked.”
“But that’s why you are a great man,” Anne-Marie told him. “Where everyone else has faltered, you have held onto your convictions, to what you know is right. That’s worth something.”
Gusteau just waved her off and shook his head. She sat across from him on the ground, staring into his eyes, trying to learn more about the man who saved her life. He was still an enigma to her—there was a lot hiding behind his kind, twinkling eyes.
“Can I ask you something?” She asked.
“I suppose you can.”
“Before, when you were tending to me, you told me I looked just like her. Who were you talking about?”
Gusteau froze, his mouth twisting into a grimace.
“I had forgotten I said that,” he grumbled. “Would you forget it, too?”
“If that’s what you want.”
The two sat there for a moment. The doctor tried to avoid her gaze, but she kept it trained on him. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, he clicked his tongue in annoyance at her staring.
“I am a lonely old man,” he said. “And yet I’ve always thought myself to be so strong, so discerning. All it takes is a look from a poor young girl to make me crumble. I’ve always been this way, ever since my daughter was born.”
“You have a daughter?”
“I did.” He mustered a sad smile.
A wave of guilt washed over Anne-Marie. All at once, she understood every part of the doctor that had been a mystery to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “It was I who brought it up. I think it was my subconscious speaking to me, telling me I’m still not over it. Forty-eight years. Forty-seven since my wife went with her, so she wouldn’t be alone up there. All my life I’ve worked to heal people, and even now I know so little. I’m no closer to curing the consumption as when it took my darling Beatrice. My colleagues, every doctor in the western world, all their predecessors. The brightest minds in the world, working tirelessly for centuries, and we still come up empty-handed. How pathetic is that?”
Anne-Marie could think of no reply. The doctor just stood, returning to his work. He said nothing the rest of the day.
Ezekiel brought six rabbits back from his hunt, one for each of them. He roasted them over the fire, and they ate quickly—they were still too close to Quebec to feel safe, and daylight only lasted a few precious hours in January.
The rabbit wasn’t much—enough for the girls, perhaps, but one was a paltry meal for a man as big as Ezekiel. Even then, he did not complain, eating his equal share in silence with everyone else.
Anne-Marie had a hard time eating hers. All she could think about was the story Ezekiel had told her, about his first hunt, about sparing that lone rabbit. Even after all this time, she didn’t really understand it—not fully. But some part of it haunted her, nagging at the back of her mind as she watched him skin the six he had caught today. In their conversation the night before, neither she nor Ezekiel ever brought up Jeannine. Perhaps that was for the best. There was some small part of her that lamented it all, that writhed in a black pool of guilt. A small voice crying out: things could have been different. Jeannine didn’t have to die. Then again, she remembered the rabbit.