Chrétien and Anne-Marie de Parthenay

New France

Chrétien and Anne-Marie left the barracks behind. They hurried through the empty courtyard before breakfast was over and the soldiers filled out into the yard for their first drills. Out of the fort and across the way they went, to the small settlement at Cataraqui nearby, their breaths fogging from the cold. The settlement was too small to be called a town, but not quite a village, either. It was a strange eclectic mix of architecture, with french-style buildings interspersed with the small huts Anne-Marie had seen in the savage slums outside Quebéc.

“Most of the Indians here and back in the city are Wendat,” Chrétien told his sister. “The French call them Huron, but that’s not their real name. They were great allies to us, but the Iroquois destroyed their villages and conquered their territory, scattering them all over. They normally live in huge longhouses made of wood, but there aren’t any here, I don’t think.”

“Why do they live in huts like this now?”

“I’m not quite sure. I think they just don’t want to commit to anything. A longhouse is something permanent, immovable. I think they’re still afraid the Iroquois could attack at any moment, so they live in small huts that can be picked up and moved if they need to run.”

“That’s very sad.”

“Isn’t it? I imagine they also feel like they don’t want to build any permanent homes outside their old territory. It would be like accepting defeat, you know? Having to acknowledge that you’ll never be able to return to the home you grew up in.”

“Why do so many of them look empty?”

“Because we’re paranoid, stupidly so. Le Marquis was worried that some of them would run and tell the Iroquois he’s been hiding so many troops in the fort, and had a lot of them arrested and taken to Montreal as hostages, because he’s an idiot and can’t tell the different tribes apart. The Wendat are our allies, and have been for decades now, but Le Marquis is a neophyte here, in the grand scheme of things, and thinks of anyone with brown skin and moccasins to be an Iroquois enemy. He even turned his eyes to my company, but thankfully I talked him out of it. Honestly, I don’t know how he expected to navigate Iroquois territory without some Indian trackers among our numbers. I can’t believe he’s running the whole thing, but then again, Le Vicomte got appointed here, so I assume Louis doesn’t exactly send his best and brightest to this place.”

“I’m jealous. Here you are learning about all sorts of things and people while I’ve been confined to my chambers. You’ve even been learning their language, haven’t you? What was it you said to Ezekiel?”

“Oh, that. It’s just nyaweh. It’s probably the most important word in their language. It means ‘thank you’ literally, but it can mean all sorts of things in practice. Like, it also means hello, because when you greet someone, you’re actually expressing thanks to see them in good health and good spirits. Nyaweh skeno. And you also say Nyaweh if someone insults you. It’s meant to be like turning the other cheek—you thank the person who slanders you, and move past it. It shows you’re taking the high ground.”

Chrétien led his sister into the tavern, the largest building in the area. It was crowded, filled with the odors of traveling fur traders and vagabonds in this wild part of the woods. Many of them cast eager glances at Anne-Marie, and she ignored them as best she could.

“Their language is deeper and more complex than you could possibly imagine,” Chrétien said as he made his way up to the bar. He waved his hand at the barmaid to grab her attention. “Two bowls of soup with bread, and two mugs of wine. We’ll sit over there.” He pointed to an empty table, the two made their way there. “French is child’s play in comparison. I’ve been learning every day, and making some progress, but I’m nowhere near where I need to be to feel confident. Nouns and even adjectives are fine for the most part, but verbs? Verbs are like a whole other language, just on their own. They’re—”

Chrétien was cut off as another patron bumped into him, knocking him backwards. He was a frenchman, likely a fur trader, tall and wide, and a deep gut that protruded over his tightly-drawn belt.

“Watch where you’re going,” the man spat, backhanding Chrétien across the face and knocking him to the ground. Anne-Marie gasped, and rushed to his side, but the man caught her by the arm, reeling her back towards him.

“Hush now, ma petite jolie,” he said, his mouth twisting into a grin. He gripped both of Anne-Marie’s arms to keep her from moving. “You haven’t got a speck of dirt on that dress. That’s no good—there ain’t a girl around these parts who isn’t a little filthy.”

Anne-Marie tried to fight the man off, but he was strong, and his grip tightened on her arms like a vise. He sat back on his stool, pulling her onto his lap. Chrétien stood, finally recovered from his blow. He grabbed a wooden mug of wine from the table next to him, hurling it as hard as he could. It landed true in the bastard’s jaw, spilling wine all over his shirt. The blow was enough for him to loosen his grip for a moment, and Anne-Marie cut loose from him, running towards her brother who was standing now.

The man snarled at Chrétien, and pulled out a knife from his belt, charging forward with it bared. Chrétien pushed his sister to the side to get her out of the way, and lunged towards his assailant, staying close to avoid stabs from a distance. The man readied his knife, but Chrétien was on him in an instant, using his momentum and the man’s weight against him to pull the knife arm forward. He was taken off balance for a single second, which was all Chrétien needed to grab his wrist, forcing the knife from his grasp. He took the blade in his hand and dug it into the man’s gut, then sliced across it, cutting his stomach open like a fish. He dropped like a felled tree in the forest, and Chrétien kicked him over so he would fall backward rather than forward. In an instant, he turned and grabbed Anne-Marie, pulling her towards him.

“Look at him,” he said to her. She just stood there, paralyzed in shock and fear. He shoved her forwards. The man lay on his back, gurgling his death throes as blood spilled out from his belly.

“Look at him, Anne-Marie. You want to know the truth of things, the ugly and the good? You want me to tell you about dear old Daddy? Then look.”

“I—I can’t,” she stammered. “I can’t—”

“Then you don’t deserve to know the man our father was. Why do you think I took you out here? This is the world, Anne-Marie, the one you are so desperate to know. If you were here alone, he would have defiled you, and gutted you once he was finished, just like I gutted him. You’re so eager to be freed from your cage, only you have no idea what it’s kept you safe from. You’re right—you’re a grown woman now, and it’s high time you know what life really is. But do you truly want that, or do you want to go back to where you’re protected and coddled, where things are easy? The choice is yours, but if you want the truth, the real truth, you will look.”

He watched his sister tremble, and a pang of guilt rang in his ribs. As brutal as it was, it was the truth, and it was precisely why he had come to this seedy tavern with her. He needed to prove a point—she was foolish for coming here

To his surprise, though, she stopped trembling, and stood firm. She opened her eyes and looked down at the soon-to-be corpse, at the mix of spittle and blood that flowed in bubbling spurts from his lips, still locked in a sneer. He watched her gaze, making sure she saw it all—the way his body twitched, the entrails that peeked out from his wound. And he kept her there, watching all the while, until the last light left the man’s eyes. It was what no one should be made to witness, but it was an ugly truth, one everyone in this New World came to face with, sooner or later. Chrétien had seen it in his fight with Tadodaho, and now Anne-Marie had seen it, too.

Satisfied, Chrétien turned to the barmaid, who eyed the body with some disdain. She’s probably thinking how much of a pain he’ll be to clean up and haul out of here, he thought.

“Est-ce un problème?” He asked her.

“Non,” she replied, shrugging. “He was a pig, and so he dies like one.”

She turned, calling to someone in the back.

“Marcel,” she said. “Come clean this man up. Poor chap fell on his own dagger.”

“This table will need another mug of wine,” Chrétien told her. He turned, apologizing to the patron whose mug he had flung. The old man who was sitting there just laughed—clearly he was just glad to be part of the spectacle.

Chrétien led his sister to the table he had pointed to before, and the two sat down. A man with huge black sideburns walked out from the bar, and began to deal with the body. The barmaid pushed past the mess, putting down two plates with bread and bowls of meager soup.

Chrétien began to eat, and Anne-Marie just stared at him.

“How can you eat after that?” She said in horror. “I feel like I’m going to puke.”

“Eat,” Chrétien said, taking a bite of the bread. “I know you’re hungry. And if you feel it coming back up, wash it down with some wine.”

Anne-Marie ignored him, looking around the tavern.

“No one’s hardly batted an eye,” she said. “What’s wrong with people?”

“This is a tavern on the frontier,” Chrétien said matter-of-factly. “Half of the traders that come through these parts are scoundrels who have fled here to escape the Crown’s justice, and the other half are opportunists who would slice a man’s throat to make a quick coin. It’s kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. New France is not like the old—it’s just wild country, dotted with the occasional paltry fort. The marines are all clustered by the Iroquois front now, ready to launch Le Marquis’ campaign. Who is left, then, to police the rabble and the rogues, to arrest the wicked and protect the meek? No one, Anne-Marie. It’s everyone for themselves.”

Chrétien started on his soup. It was bland and mostly empty (not that he was expecting much from a place like this), but at least it was hot. He blew on it to cool, then sipped a few spoonfuls. He noticed Anne-Marie glaring at him.

“What?” He asked her.

“Are you going to tell me now?” She replied. “I did it. I looked at him, didn’t I? So tell me.”

Chrétien sighed.

“Fine,” he said, scowling. He hated thinking of the past, especially in relation to his father, but he would hold up his end of the bargain. “You know he fought in the Thirty Years’ War.”

“Yes.”

“Did you also know that he also fought in the war with the Spanish, another with the English, another with the Ottomans in Algiers, and the Ottomans in Crete, and the Ottomans in Hungary?”

“No…”

“Oh, yes. Our father was a prolific killer—one of Louis XIII’s favorite little errand boys. But despite all of his many forays to exotic vistas, he spent far more time killing his fellow Frenchmen in his own country. Have you heard of the Vaudois?”

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“The who?”

“The Vaudois. They’re a small clade of religious fanatics over in Savoy, near the Italian border. They’re not all that important, but they made the mistake of challenging the authority of the Catholic church. The Duke of Savoy, in turn, told them they could either leave their homes and flee the country, or convert to Catholicism. The Vaudois, obviously, chose neither, and started a rebellion which our father helped put down. Now, you might ask—why in the world would our father, Lord of Parthenay and a Gendarme in the King’s army, be doing all the way over in Savoy? Wouldn’t a small rebellion by a bunch of ascetics in the hills be handled by the Duke of Savoy and his own army? You might also ask: why in the world was a Huguenot putting down a protestant rebellion and killing people for the Catholic church? That’s because our beloved father was part of a special unit of the King’s army, and that was something he put above all other allegiances, even his faith. These specialized killers were deployed by the king himself for special tasks, and to assist with all sorts of different conflicts, especially internal ones. Their ilk had no shared name, no title, no formal group. They were all chosen because they obeyed orders, and because each of them had a certain specialty that made them desirable for these less savory tasks. Our father’s specialty was fear.”

Chrétien took a second, downing his mug of wine, which helped numb the pain of the memories he was dredging up.

“Do you remember that suit of armor in his study?” He asked.

“The one that used to give me nightmares?”

“Yes. It was designed that way. To inflict fear. Hell, the helmet’s got devil horns, for Christ’s sake. Did you know he used to wear it into battle?”

“But soldiers don’t use full suits of armor like that anymore, not for a hundred years.”

“But that doesn’t matter, you see. What does matter is that it’s terrifying to look at. The long black cloak, the visor that’s hooked and pointed like the beak of a bird of prey. We stopped using full armor because it’s too heavy, and doesn’t work well against musket fire. But our father, believe it or not, was strong as an ox in his youth, and the weight of the armor didn’t slow him down at all. Imagine sitting in a trench or waiting behind a corner, reloading your musket, only to see that armor barreling towards you with a mace. Yes, our father was known for fighting like a medieval knight on the battlefields of the modern day. It’s a miracle he survived all of them, but that was in part due to his ruthless cunning, and due to fear. He was brutal. He chose the mace because of the way it splits your head in two, how it makes a crack that anyone near the impact can hear quite well. It’s all part of the terror—he would smash someone’s head in, grab a knife from his belt with his free hand, gut the man, reach inside him and pull out his entrails to show his other enemies the fate they would all share soon.”

Chrétien noticed Anne-Marie was no longer looking at him. Her eyes were lost in the wood of the table, her mind elsewhere.

“I can stop now, if you’d like,” he told her.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want to hear all of it.”

“Fine. When he had the opportunity, there was a particular move he was fond of. You see, people’s noses are really quite fragile, as far as body parts go. If you’re strong enough, you can crush it with your thumbs while choking someone, and if you’re really strong, with a bit of effort, you can shove the nose bones back into someone’s brain, killing them almost instantly.”

“I don’t see why you need to harp on the gruesome details,” Anne-Marie cut in. “I don’t see where any of this is going.”

“I’m getting to my point. Our father was a demon in a man’s skin—every waking hour he did not spend killing, torturing, and terrorizing, he spent thinking up new methods to do so. Only, once he eventually retired, as you might expect, there was not a tremendous use for his well-honed talent. Now, though he was a sadist, he was not a complete cretin—he wasn’t going to do any of those things to his own people, mainly because he had not been given permission by the King. And so, with nothing else to do with his skillset, the best he could do is pass it on, like all fathers with their trades, to his son.

“Every weekday I would train with the swordmaster,” he continued. “For hours, until I could barely feel my arms and legs. After every lesson on the sword, my father gave me another in fear. He would describe to me his exploits in great detail, with great pride. He would explain how to really fight, how to injure not just a man’s body, but his mind. How to break an enemy battalion’s morale, make them flee, just so you can hunt them down and finish them off. Other things, too—how to walk without making a sound, how to make yourself a shadow, and the many methods in which you can kill a man quickly with your bare hands. Like many fathers, he saw me not as my own person, but as a vehicle to carry his legacy upon. And that was my life—all the time you saw me alone with Father in his study, while you were out playing in the courtyard. I was learning how to make my enemies afraid of me, how to kill them as efficiently and gruesomely as possible. Ever since I was seven years old.”

“I… I’m so sorry, Chrétien,” Anne-Marie said. “I had no idea about any of that. I understand why you wouldn’t—”

“Oh, I wasn’t done,” Chrétien said. He was angry now—partially at his sister. Though he knew he shouldn’t blame her for wanting to know about all the things their staff had worked so hard to hide from her, he could do nothing but blame her for bringing these things back up, things that he had kept locked inside him all his life. She had forced him to reconcile them, to make him think about things his younger self had blockaded away in his mind for his own protection. Not only that, his subconscious was still screaming at him, every part of him still raw from killing the man in the tavern, despite his best efforts feign a nonchalance about the whole ordeal from his sister. And so he continued—if she was going to know it, she was to know all of it—every last horrible little detail.

“That wasn’t the worst of it,” he said. “Not even close. You remember when he started to lose his mind, truly? I was about your age, maybe a little younger—actually, I know I was fifteen, because I turned fifteen two months after his first little incident. It was a slow decline—he lost a bit of himself year by year, as long as we could remember, didn’t he? But that was the year things started to go dark very quickly. You probably remember the way he was—aimless, rambling, wandering through the halls like he had no memory of them. He suddenly lost his memory of many things, including, rather tragically, of me.”

Chrétien swallowed. He realized his throat was dry—far too dry, and he was far too sober.

“Are you going to drink this?” He asked, pointing at Anne-Marie’s mug. Anne-Marie shook her head. He reached across the table to grab it, downing it quickly so his brain would soak up the wine sooner.

“At first he thought I was a stranger in the castle,” he explained. “Some visitor who was passing through, and would leave soon. Despite my frequent pleading with him to remember that I was his son, despite my hours of recalling the times we shared in my youth. None of it meant anything to him, and I think he probably forgot everything I told him as soon as he heard it. The staff tried, too. You remember Ricardo, the Spanish butler? He was a kind old soul—always worried about the two of us, always trying to make things right with Father.”

Chrétien stopped—he realized he was starting to choke up.

“More wine,” he called out to the barmaid.

“You don’t have to keep going,” Anne-Marie said. “If it’s too painful, you don’t have to talk about it.”

“No,” Chrétien said. “I do. You wanted to know, and so you’ll know all of it. You’ve opened Pandora’s box—don’t you dare try to shut it now.”

The barmaid filled the two mugs on the table, and Chrétien started on one, guzzling the wine like it would make him forget.

“Like I said, he thought me a stranger for that first year or two. After that, he declined even further, and began to believe that I was one of the Vaudois—an enemy. He would accost me constantly, try to lay hands on me. Poor Roberto—he started staying in my room each night, sleeping on a chair by the door in case Father came. Do you remember what happened to him?”

“He left, didn’t he? Returned to his family in Murcia.”

Chrétien smiled sadly.

“No. No, I’m sad to say, he did not. One night, Father burst into my chambers. Now, before this, he had only ever assaulted me. Might have killed me in his younger days, but his age had finally caught up to him, so I was usually just left with a bruise or two. That night, though, he drew his rapier, the one that used to hang above the mantle. It’s such a fascinating thing, to think of how he lost himself. He receded into the memories of his youth, but even then they were tainted by his madness, by the wrinkles of his own mind. He would never think to use a rapier, the small and quaint arm that it is, back in his heyday—he preferred the weapons that really made a mess of things. Still, he knew how to use it, clearly—he came at me with it in hand, striking at me. I was half-asleep, and fell off the bed trying to get away from him. Roberto came to my aid of course, trying to subdue Father. But of course, he was still the butler, and could not muster any force that would bring some real harm to Father. Roberto hesitated because of this, and Father, being the cunning veteran he is, saw the moment’s chance, and ran him through with the sword.”

“What? Father killed him? But… no, it can’t be.”

“It can. You have no idea how diligent our maids are—they cleaned up the whole affair that very night, and the room was spotless by the time you woke up. But the story doesn’t end there, dear sister. I saw Father run him through, you see, and I just lost it. I was very close to Roberto—closer than I was to Father, obviously. Everything happened in a blur—I ran at Father, and let loose on him. I knocked him away from the sword and Roberto, shoved him out of the room as I beat on him. You remember where my room was in the castle? Second floor, right next to the stairs.”

Anne-Marie gasped.

“You don’t mean…” she began.

Chrétien nodded. Their father had fallen down the stairs two weeks before he died.

“The doctor never told me if it was the fall that did it,” he said. “I think he just took pity on me. I think he knew. It’d be awfully convenient, though, if it was something else, don’t you think?”

The two sat in silence as Anne-Marie processed it all. Chrétien did too, even if he had known it all along. There was something about speaking that past into existence that rekindled something in him, a part of himself he had kept buried all these years since. He had never really been honest with himself about any of it, especially when it happened. It was too painful, too horrid to think about. But it was an incontestable truth, however ugly, that Tadodaho may not have been the first man Chrétien killed. And soon enough, he would kill many more, just like his dearly departed father before him.

“The doctor who cared for me after my fall,” Anne-Marie suddenly said. “His name’s Gusteau. He’s started doing the same thing as Roberto. He stays with me every night, to protect me from La Madame.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Chrétien replied. He realized he had not given his own sister’s plights enough credence, so preoccupied with his own. Perhaps that’s what he had always done. He had thought that all this time he had kept his sister oblivious to protect her innocence, but perhaps it had also served to protect himself. “It’s good you left when you did, then. But you’ll have to return eventually. Even having to endure those two is better than trying to make it alone in this place, especially as a girl.”

“I know that. I just… I don't know, Chrétien. I’m scared. I really do think she might try to kill me.”

Chrétien took his sister’s hand. Instead of holding it to comfort her, however, he shaped it into the shape of a hard palm, the kind one used to strike. He brought her hand to his face, placing the butt of her palm up against the underside of his nostrils, flush against the base of his nose.

“Right here,” he said. “Hard as you can. Right into the brain.”

Anne-Marie’s eyes widened in horror as she realized what he was saying, but she nodded.

Chrétien stood, finishing the last mug of wine. His legs wobbled a bit from the alcohol, which was perfect—he was finally at the level of inebriation needed to deal with all of this.

“Well, that’s it,” Chrétien said. “You know the whole story now, more or less. I suggest we get out of this horrible place, and spend our precious few days together on happier matters.”

Anne-Marie nodded, and stood. The two headed out of the tavern—Anne-Marie took her brother by the shoulder, keeping him steady as he hobbled drunkenly towards the bar. Chrétien loosened his purse from his belt, and dropped it onto the countertop.

“For our tab,” he told the barmaid. “And for the trouble.”

“Your whole purse?” Anne-Marie whispered to him.

Chrétien shrugged. “We grow our own food at the fort, and I won’t have any use for coin where I’m headed, anyway.”

The two stepped out, and started to walk down the dirt road back to the fort. Suddenly, Chrétien stopped in his tracks. In front of him, falling slowly to the ground, was a single snowflake. It landed in the mud in front of them, dissolving instantly. He looked up to the sky, at the foreboding gray clouds overhead. Another snowflake came, floating gently onto the tip of his nose.

“Merde,” Chrétien muttered under his breath. He stood there, watching the rest of the first snowfall, the wine not enough to allay the rising dread in his gut. He felt Anne-Marie rest her head on his shoulder, and wrap her arm around him, the way he used to do with her when she would cry as a little girl. The dread receded, and Chrétien thought about how foolish it was to be afraid of a little snow. Sure, in a few days, he and his Deer comrades would be sent into Iroquois territory, to fight and die for a country across the sea, for a King who had no idea they even existed. But today, at least, he could stand in the snow with his sister, and fill the emptiness inside him with wine.