The Witchin' Canoe Read online

  McGauran gives him a direct and frank look. “Yeah, they were. And the Metis have every right to fight for their land. I was all for the uprising. But they didn’t stand a chance. The government sent thousands of soldiers to squash that rebellion. Sent soldiers on those very tracks the CP built. Paid for by who?” He sighs. “All I know is, it sure wasn’t a fair fight.”

  Relieved that they seem to share the same point of view, Honoré closes the large volume and sets it down by the bottle. “I feel the same way,” he says, picking up their glasses. He pours the last of the champagne in both. “When they hung Riel, something was ripped out of this nation’s soul. Premier McDonald was wrong to hang him. Now my uncle says that Mercier and his liberal party are going to win the election and things are going to change for the French Canadians. Maybe for the Irish, too. That hanging really opened up old wounds, I suppose.”

  “My people have bled right along yours.” McGauran raises his glass and drains it. “We have a lot in common.”

  Happy to have bridged a gap with McGauran, Honoré takes a deep gulp of his bubbly drink and swallows. “You know your history,” he whispers. “It’s true.”

  “I read some books. I’m the curious type, I guess. Now I’m gonna save up and go out west. Maybe I’ll find some gold nuggets.” He laughs a little. “Buy myself a small parcel of land and work it. That’s real freedom. To know how to feed yourself and clothe yourself. That’s what our ancestors did. The Americans, too.”

  Contrasting feelings of admiration and eminent loss assail Honoré. “When would you leave?” he asks, already feeling dejected at the idea of losing McGauran before he’s had a real chance to know him.

  “By next spring, if God allows it,” McGauran says, setting his glass down on the side table.

  “I—I should get us some bread and cheese,” Honoré blurts out, half rising, hoping to hide his true emotions.

  But McGauran stops him, gently pressing his shoulder. “I’m not hungry.”

  Honoré sits back. The heat in his chest burns hotter and hotter.

  “Do you have a fiancée?” McGauran is watching him with dark, sultry eyes.

  The champagne has loosened their tongues. Honoré feels the danger in the air. “No…”

  “But your uncle will find someone for you.”

  “I’ll refuse.” He tips his head back defiantly. “I have already.”

  McGauran’s stare drifts to the window. “I guess you have that right. I don’t think I’ll be so lucky.”

  Honoré immediately understands. “How long before you have to propose to the girl?”

  A slight surprise registers in McGauran’s eyes and he leans back against the seat with a sigh. “My mother dreams of having the engagement party on New Year’s Eve. The girl is my friend’s sister. Liza’s been waiting for me to court her for a year now.”

  “Is that why you’ve signed up for the logging camp?” Finally, a man he can relate to. “To escape your destiny?”

  “No. To follow it. I have to leave before they find out…what I am.”

  The truth hangs between them like a swinging sword, and Honoré is willing to be the first to bleed. To sacrifice his dignity. If McGauran rejects him, then he’ll lock himself up in his room and never leave it again. “All my life,” he says in a trembling voice, “my uncle has kept me sheltered, saying that I was better than the rest of the world, but now I know it’s only because he rejects my true nature. He fears it. He thinks I’ll damn my soul if I give in to it. He’s hoping I’ll forget who I am with time.”

  “Forget? Or change?” McGauran watches him so fiercely, it thrills him. There’s no disdain in his stare, only desire. “So then he keeps you imprisoned in the house? But didn’t you go to school?”

  “Yes, as a boy, I went to the Saint-Denis Academy, but I missed too many classes and they asked me to leave.” At last, he can reveal himself and the honesty feels so magnificent and liberating. “Then I had tutors. Teachers came to my house. Most of them were my uncle’s friends. I tried to go to the Collège de Montréal two years ago…but I failed nearly every class.” Should he say more? Has he ruined the moment?

  “Go on…” McGauran briefly presses his hand.

  The touch nearly unravels him. “I get nervous,” he sputters. “Nauseous. I can’t concentrate. I’m weak. Unlike you.”

  “Hm, you’d be surprised what a man is capable of doing when he has no choice.” McGauran frowns. “Don’t you have any friends then?”

  “Not exactly. Well, I do have Fredeline and Bernard.”

  “Fredeline?” There’s a trace of suspicion or jealousy in McGauran’s face. “Who’s she?”

  “She’s our cook, well, governess, I suppose.”

  “Oh.” McGauran smiles. Then he frowns again. “Wait. that’s not right, Honoré. Not right at all. You have no one else to—”

  “You could be my friend, couldn’t you?”

  McGauran hesitates. “You’d want that?”

  “Yes,” he breathes.

  “But what would people think of you spending time with a jobber like me?”

  “I don’t know. But what would they think of you spending time with a dandy little poet like me?”

  “Hey, no,” McGauran says with a stern expression. “Don’t call yourself that.” Then staring down, he takes Honoré’s hand inside his, enclosing it with strong fingers.

  McGauran’s palm is calloused and feels rough, yet fantastic on Honoré’s skin, and for a moment, Honoré thinks he’ll defy the laws of man and God and seduce McGauran. But how can he? He’s not quite sure how. He’s never shared intimacy with anyone before. He stares at his hand inside McGauran’s fingers, the blood racing through his veins. “You have powerful hands,” he sputters, not knowing what to say, how to act.

  “Your hands are perfect.” McGauran won’t look up at him. He too, stares at their joined fingers. His voice is thick. “Powerful, too, I guess. Because they make music.”

  He tries to swallow. To draw air.

  McGauran gently skims his thumb along his index finger. “I bet you never got these hands dirty in your life.”

  “I do so. All the time, in the garden.” His body is vibrating like the chords under the hood of his piano. When he looks up, he finds McGauran staring at his face with such vivid, yearning eyes, it sets his heart racing yet a little faster. “My nails get black.” But he doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore.

  “Oh, Lord, help me.” McGauran leans in closer to him, his breath warming Honoré’s ear. “I can’t resist you. I just can’t.” He inhales sharply. “And why do you smell so good?”

  “It’s a perfume,” he hears himself answer against the sound of his own pounding heart. “From Paris. Fougère Royale.”

  McGauran presses his nose to his high collar. “Honoré, I’m gonna lose control…”

  “Yes, please.” Feeling faint, Honoré leans his head back, offering McGauran his neck. Damnation. Hell. He doesn’t care.

  “Monsieur Latendresse,” Maggie calls out from the open door. “Should I bring tea?”

  McGauran quickly releases his hand and leans back. Annoyed, Honoré gives Maggie a sharp look over the couch’s back. “I asked not to be disturbed, Maggie.” His voice is not quite right.

  But she’s saved them.

  Maggie’s eyes are wide and fixed on McGauran. She blushes darkly and takes a step back. “I’m sorry,” she mutters, fleeing into the hallway.

  McGauran sits up a little and rubs his face. Clearly, he’s trying to master himself. He shakes his head and looks at the empty doorway. “Just my luck. I know that girl.”

  “You know Maggie?”

  “Yes, she’s from my neighborhood. We grew up around each other. Her father put her out on the street last year. She works here?”

  “We hired her last month.”

  “Great. Do you think she saw anything?”

  Shame creeps into him and Honoré bites his bottom lip. Will McGauran leave and never return?


  But then slowly, McGauran leans in close to him again. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, tugging his coat. “I’ll take the gossip. I’ll take the mockery, the exclusion, the rejection. I’ll take anything. Just let me have one ki—”

  “Wait. Wait!” Honoré thinks he heard the front door open. When he hears his uncle’s big booming voice down the hall, he jerks back. “Oh, no, my uncle is here.”

  “Really?” McGauran immediately jumps to his feet. “Should I go out through the side door?”

  “There’s no time for that.” Panicked, Honoré thinks fast, but there isn’t anywhere for McGauran do flee. “We’ll say that you’d forgotten your—”

  “Ah, there you are,” Gédéon says, appearing in the doorway. The instant he sees McGauran, his eyes turn cold. “What are you doing here, O’Dowd?”

  Honoré stands and assumes an air of nonchalance. His heart is still beating inside his ears. “I thought you were having dinner at Ethier’s.”

  Gédéon’s stark blue eyes move over McGauran with disdain and then come to rest on Honoré. “Does Bertrand know what you’re up to?”

  Honoré tries to be brave.

  “O’Dowd, if you still want a job, you better get out now.”

  McGauran is blushing. Without a look at anyone, he hurries away.

  But in the door, Gédéon doesn’t let him by. “Don’t come back here or you can forget about the camp, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.” McGauran locks eyes with Gédéon. “Now, please, can I get by?”

  Gédéon stares him down for a moment and then finally, allows him to pass.

  Moments later, the front door slams shut and Honoré walks right up to Gédéon. “You had no right to treat him so badly.” There’s the sound of glass bursting behind him.

  “Damn lights.” Gédéon checks over Honoré’s shoulder and then gives him a steely look. “You’re not to see O’Dowd anymore, and that’s final.”

  “Why? He’s cultivated and much more of a gentleman than any of the men you’ve brought to the house.”

  “Oh, please, Honoré! You have no idea what disaster awaits you if you give in to your vileness.”

  “Vileness?” The word stings his cheeks like a slap. Is that what he is? Vile?

  Gédéon’s features soften. “Listen to me, I’ve dedicated the last twenty years of my life to keeping you safe. Don’t gamble with your soul now.”

  Honoré stands firm, though inside, he trembles. “My soul is my own to waste. I have liberty over it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re too young to understand what’s at stake.” Gédéon takes his face inside his hands. “Don’t defy me.”

  “Or what?” Honoré moves out of his uncle’s possessive hands and pushes his way into the hall. “You’ll send me to Saint-Jean de Dieu, the asylum?”

  Gédéon shakes his head. “I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “Well, you do that, Uncle.” Honoré walks away, but his knees are weak. He cherishes his uncle’s respect. Has he lost it today? “And I’ll do what I must,” he adds anyway, without glancing back.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gédéon says, under his breath. “You’re just like your father.”

  Chapter 8: Resonance

  Worn out from his day, McGauran stops at the street pump to splash his gritty face with water. Taking a moment to look around, he slicks his hair back and puts his cap back on. At the end of the street, the sun is setting, and in this golden pink light, the neighborhood almost looks washed anew. But when he looks up at all those factory chimneys spitting black smoke into the dusky sky, he’s quickly reminded of why he needs to escape these streets. This goddamn canal. He won’t be another man’s cheap labor. Won’t end up coughing blood in some drinking hole. Or dying alone in a shabby house on Sebastopol Row.

  Alone.

  Yes, he’d thought himself doomed to a life of loneliness. He’d held on to the idea of escaping to the west, of living an almost savage existence, estranged from mankind, because deep down inside, he’d always believed men such as himself couldn’t aspire to anything else. Especially not love.

  Has he the right to dream of another future? One that would include companionship? One that would include…Honoré Latendresse.

  He shuts his eyes and says a prayer.

  Lord, I know I’m beneath him, but please, oh, please, make him see the man I could be. Make him want me.

  “Hey, Mac,” Linus pops his head out of the second-story window of their shared building. “Coming home from the docks?”

  Startled out of his prayers, McGauran looks up and waves. “Yeah.” The dollar in his pocket is all he can show for his sweaty undershirt and sore muscles.

  “Up for a pint?” Linus leans back and disappears for a moment, and then sticks his head out again. “Why don’t you come up here for a minute and have some of my sister’s stew. Plenty to share tonight.”

  It’s been nearly a week since he left the Latendresse home in a hurry that Sunday afternoon. Every single minute of the day, he’s thinking of Honoré. Of how close he was to kissing him, and how much Honoré seemed to want him to. Every night, bone-tired from his long days at the basin, he lies on that thin cot in Widow Leary’s home, daydreaming of the little time they’ve had together and how much more of it he needs. He spends his nights making plans to see Honoré again. But how? When?

  Linus laughs. “What are you waiting for?”

  The front door opens and Liza stands on the narrow staircase leading to the Brogan home. “Hello, Mac,” she says, her nervous voice betraying her calm manner. “My brother’s right about the stew. It’s not much, but you’re welcome to a good ladle of it, if you like.”

  How can he go up there and eat her food, the food she prepared for her many brothers and sisters, pretending to be someone he isn’t?

  Before he can answer, Liza’s smile is gone. She watches him for a moment and raises her head proudly. “Some other time, maybe,” she says, slowly shutting the door. “Good night then.” Saint-Anne’s Academy sure taught her some stiff manners.

  He knows not to speak. Not to make another excuse. If only she knew…

  Upstairs, he finds the household in its usual evening uproar. The Leary boys are running around in their breeches, there are five or six women seated around the table, mending clothes and kneading dough, and in the back room, Mary is reading her bible out loud, her delicate voice rising above the noise. She doesn’t stop reciting the psalms, but grins at him and reaches out to squeeze his arm. His mother has been happy these days, feeling better.

  But he can’t stay here. He needs a moment of peace. Some quiet. Some space. His head is ringing from the chaos of the day. His body aches everywhere.

  He puts on a clean shirt collar, changes his waistcoat, and then digs into his trousers for today’s pay. He offers it to his mother and without a word, leaves the room.

  When he exits the house, no one minds him. The women are probably glad to be rid of him, he supposes. He’s brought home some money. Served his manly purpose.

  The night is cool, but pleasant, and without a doubt about his destination, he heads east to McGill Street and soon crosses Victoria Square, and then strolls up to Sherbrooke Boulevard, where those rich Brits and Scots have their mansions. For almost an hour, he walks with his head in the clouds, through horse cars, trams, and the general evening traffic. This feeling inside him, this uplifting hope carrying him, is better than any Jamaican rum he could ever get drunk on. Better than anything he’s ever felt.

  Soon he arrives at the Saint-Louis Square where the Latendresse home looms against the light of the moon, more grandiose than he remembered it. Like a beacon to a lost ship, it calls to him.

  * * * *

  “Honoré, have some more duck.” Gédéon signals to Fredeline. “The boy needs it. Look at him. He’s too pale. Too thin, too.”

  Seated at the large dining table, Honoré stares at the play of light in the crystal decanter. He can’t eat
yet. His stomach is still too tight and upset from the pill, that everlasting pill, they forced down his throat the day before last. He purged and purged, and was in bed for forty-eight hours, too weak to raise his head. Doctor Beaufort says the pill helps to get rid of the excessive moods his body holds.

  But they’re wrong. They’re all wrong. Only McGauran holds the cure to his ailment.

  “Have Bernard bring a glass of sherry to his bedroom later, at least.” Gédéon dismisses Fredeline with a hand gesture. “Give us a moment before you clear the table.”

  Fredeline presses Honoré’s shoulder and exits the dining room, maneuvering elegantly between the massive sideboard and his chair.

  “You haven’t spoken a word and I’m at my wit’s end.”

  Honoré glances up at his uncle’s stern face and shrugs.

  “We had to summon Doctor Beaufort. You gave me no choice.” Gédéon dabs his lips and mustache with the fine linen napkin. “Babbling about a headless lady and snow in the house. Hallucinating, Honoré. Do you understand what that means?”

  He’d been trying to compose that night, yes, he’d been consumed by a new idea for a poem and thinking of McGauran. Then, breathless, he’d opened his window to look out at the carré…

  That dog. That beast had been watching him from across the street, its eyes following his silhouette in the window. It had seemed to know him. To be waiting for him to come out. He’d been mesmerized by the glow of its eyes, going into a dream-like state. There had been a noise. A voice. And he’d gone out of his bedroom. That was when he’d seen his mother in the hall. She’d turned to look at him and descended the stairs.

  All he recalls after that, is struggling under Doctor Beaufort. The doctor’s silent aide was there, too, in the room. His uncle in the doorway, watching. He couldn’t scream. Something was in his mouth. They wanted to drag him to the bath, but Bernard, yes, Bernard interceded. He was angry, shouting at them to stop. To stop!