Chuck's Books

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The Marin Family Chronicles--Volume 2-Book 2

The Wanderers by Charles O. Goulet

Chapter One -- Annapolis Royal, 1714

    Jean stared at the two naked bodies before him.  The rustle of the dry hay grated against his ears as they gyrated oblivious to his observation.  The heavy breathing kept time to the rhythmic movements of the two forms, their white, sweat-sheened skin gleaming, even in the subdued light of the dimly lit haymow.
    He watched silently, fascinated, as the two figures' movements increased, and he knew that the climax was near.  The young woman lay on her back, eyes closed, her head moving from side to side in co-ordination with her swivelling hips.  His eyes focused on the droplets of water that accumulated on her smooth white brow and slowly rolled in tiny rivulets along her temples.  Tendrils of her blond hair darkened as the moisture from her exertions seeped through them.  Her arms clung to the man's sweat-covered back, and her fingers massaged, gripped, and raked it with her short, close fingernails.    She sighed ecstatically as the oscillation of their bodies increased.
    Anger welled up within Jean.  Heat rose from his breast along his neck, diffusing  to his cheeks.
    The man lifted his upper body onto his outstretched arms; his right hand searched for the white mound of the woman's smooth satiny breast.  His thumb and forefinger found the upright nipple, and he rolled it between them as he continued his rhythmic motion.
    A slow moan, deep and full, issued from the woman's lips, and she tensed, and her whole gleaming body shivered.  The moan rolled on and on as the young man increased his pace.
    Jean felt like an intruder to a very private matter, but he could not turn away.  He stood rigid, fixed to the spot, unable even to make a sound.  Only his heartbeat increased as his eyes bore into the man's back.  A dark mole below his left shoulder blade attracted Jean's attention, holding his eyes as it moved back and forth, up and down.  His senses quivered, taking in the entire scene--the rustling hay, the musky smell of the barn and sweating bodies, the gleaming sheen of moist skin, the sighing passion of young love.
    A smile of delight diffused over the young woman's face, and her body once more joined the rhythm of the man's body.  Her head moved from side to side more quickly as she caught the emotion and the fervour of the man's passion.
    The young man's buttocks rolled over the young woman's crotch.  Suddenly his whole body stiffened, and a groan of pleasure burst from his lips.  At the same time the young woman's eyes fluttered, her face reddened, and a deep sigh issued from her open mouth exposing the gleam of her white teeth and her moist lips.
    Jean clenched his fists.
    The heavy breathing of the two lovers seemed to fill the cloying air of the small barn, muffling the snuffle of the moving hay.  Their movements slowed and stopped as they clung to each other.  The man's dark head lowered to her blond one, and his lips nuzzled her moist cheeks, wetly.  He rolled slowly to one side, and his right hand caressed her wet, rosy flesh.
    Jean stared at his daughter's young body, gleaming before him.  It was the body of a young woman, mature and fully developed.  Her breasts, tipped with rosy, hard, upthrusting nipples, stood firm and fully-developed from her torso.  Her skin was white and silk smooth, and as she moved, the fine muscles glided beneath it like ripples on a quiet pond.  Her hands found the young man's head and closed over it, drawing it to her lips.  She sighed deeply, and her body shuddered passionately.
    The man's long slender fingers closed over the mounded breast and slid over it along her midriff to her navel.  His index finger traced the rim of the crevice, delicately, caressingly, and the young body, now half beneath him, shivered as his hand slid lower to the light fuzz of pubic hair.
    Jean could contain himself no longer.  His voice erupted from his mouth, snarling and rasping.  He knew it did not sound like his voice, nor were the words his.  "What is this?"
    The words sounded like an explosion.  They reverberated through the confines of the small, wooden barn, echoing like the vibrations of a struck drum.
    The two bodies flew apart, onto their backs.  Eyes opened wide staring up at him.  His daughter's face blanched, her mouth opened, but no sound issued forth; her blue eyes rounded in surprise and fear.  Her hands tried to hide her nakedness, fluttering first to her breasts, then to her groin, and back to her breasts.
    The young man leaned back on his right elbow, his body twisted slightly to one side, his right leg drawn up to hide his naked groin.  Jean stared at him, fiercely.  His mind full of questions, and then blank.  Then the questions returned.
    His voice surprised him.  It was cold and piercing.  "What's going on here?"  The question seemed void and superfluous.  Here was his fifteen year old daughter making love to a young man.
    He glared at the man.  He was young, not much older than Marguerite.  A shock of wavy brown hair hung over his smooth, moist brow.  Brunette eyebrows capped large dark eyes.  In the dim light, Jean could not fathom their colour.  He was a handsome youth with tanned cheeks and full lips.  He lay rigid, his eyes staring up at Jean, wide and fear-filled.
    Who was this young man?  He was a stranger to Jean who thought he knew all the young men in the settlement.
    The youth, his eyes fixed on Jean, reached behind his back, his hand searching.  He dragged a pair of dark breeches across his body and struggled into them.  Then he rose to a sitting position, his eyes never leaving Jean's face.
    Jean glanced to his daughter.  She retrieved her coarse gown of hand-loomed linen and raised it over her head.  She shrugged through the voluminous skirt hurrying to cover her nudity.  Her head came through the neck opening, and she drew the skirt down over her bosom, over her torso, her flat stomach, and the dim recesses of her lower body.  She pushed herself to her knees, and smoothed the dress over her shoulders, over her breasts, drawing it down over her hips and buttocks.  Her eyes were lowered, intent on dressing, avoiding Jean's eyes.
    He glared at her.  His mind tried to pierce her consciousness, tried to fathom her thinking.  Why had she done this to him?  Why had she desecrated her body, her reputation, her innocence?  Why had she sinned like this?
    Then he turned toward the man who was drawing on a scarlet coat, its brass buttons catching the faint light in the dim loft.  It was a soldier's coat--an English soldier's tunic.
    He was the enemy.  He was not a Frenchman, an Acadian--he was the foe.  He profaned his daughter; he prostituted her; he befouled her.  Jean took a step toward him, his fists clenched.
    "Papa, I..."  Her voice was low and contrite.
    Jean swung toward her.  "Do not speak to me!"  His voice rasped through his clenched teeth.  A muscle along his cheek quivered.
    She lifted her eyes to his face, searching for understanding, but there was none there.  She tried again.  "Papa..."
    "You will not speak to me!"
    The young man rose slowly to his feet, buttoning the front of his tunic as he did so.
    Jean recognized the uniform of the English marines garrisoned at the fort--the fort now know as Annapolis Royal.
    Since the fall of Port Royal, since the peace negotiated by the Treat of Utrecht, Jean felt little emotion toward the English conquerors.
    For the most part, they allowed Jean and the other inhabitants of Port Royal to continue as before.  Shortly after the capitulation several incidents occured, but since the peace, all was quiet.  The French settlers ignored their conquerors and went about the business of cultivating their marshland farms, tending their livestock, and fishing in the Dauphin River, which the English now called the Annapolis River.
    Some inconveniences were endured: the English threatened to expel them, insisted that they take an oath of allegiance to the English crown, encouraged some of them to leave their farms and homes, but generally they ignored the Acadians as the Acadians ignored them.
    Jean did not like the English, and believed that one day soon, the French army would come and expel them from the fort across the river, yet he was not greatly unhappy about the present situation.  In fact, in some ways it was better than when the French were in charge.  Their surpluses were in demand by the garrison, and it was easier to get the manufactured products they needed from the New England colonies, particularly Boston.
    But this was different.  It was fine for the soldiers to live in the fort and keep to themselves; it was not right for them to seduce their women.
    Jean reached out and grabbed the young man's jacket front.  He jerked him upright.  The Englishman was several inches taller than he, but lean and gangly.  Jean saw that he outweighed the young soldier by several pounds.  He pulled down on the tunic drawing the young man's face to his.  "You pig," he snarled.
    The soldier's eyes opened in understanding.
    "You sneak into my barn.  You rape my daughter.  I should kill you."
    The youth stared into Jean's eyes, his cheeks pale, his lips quivering.
    "Papa, he does not speak French."
    Jean shook him like a dog worrying a gopher or rat that it captured.  He twisted the cloth at the man's neck, strangling him.  The soldier's face turned from pasty white to a rosy red as his breath was cut off.  Yet he did not struggle.  His arms hung limply at his side.
    Marguerite rushed to her father.  She caught his right arm and pulled, trying to free his vice-like grip.
    "Papa, you will kill him.  Don't do that."
    Jean sputtered, "He deserves to die.  He has dirtied my daughter."
    "Papa, it was not his fault."
    Jean shook the man again.  His head jerked back and forth erratically.  He gasped for breath.
    "Papa, please..."
    Jean's right hand released its grip and pushed the struggling woman away.  She stumbled back a step.
    Her voice shrilled.  "Papa, I love this man!  He came because I wanted him to."
    Jean froze.  His eyes bored toward his daughter.  He could not believe his ears.  How could she love an Englishman?  He was the enemy, a heretic.  He was the devil incarnate.  "No!"
    "Yes, Papa, I love James.  I want to marry him."
    "No, you cannot, you will not love this man.  He isn't worthy of you.  He comes--like all soldiers--to seduce, to desecrate, to prostitute our women.  That's what all soldiers do.  He does not love you.  He does not want to marry you.  He wants only to make love to you.  To have you, to satisfy his lust, while he is away from his home and his women."
    "Papa, he loves me, and I love him."
    Jean stepped toward her.  "Go to the house!  I'll deal with this rake."
    "No, Papa!"
    The smack of Jean's hand resounded through the air like the boom of a cannon.

    Jean twisted in the bed and lifted himself onto his right elbow.  In the dim twilight of the May evening he could just make out the outline of her face.
    "Anne, I've been thinking."
    Anne turned toward him, noticing the seriousness of his voice.  "Yes?"  She tried to keep the concern from her voice.  She could tell that in the past two days something was bothering him.  She waited in the growing darkness for him to speak.  She stared up at him, but she could not see his face.
    "I've been thinking.  Yes, it's time."
    Anne half raised herself to her elbow.  "What's it time for?"
    Jean sighed, but said nothing.
    "What's troubling you, my husband?"
    "Have you noticed Marguerite these days?"  He hurried on.  "She's a woman!"
    Anne laughed deep, but softly.  "Have you just noticed that, Jean?  Marguerite has been a woman for the past two years."  She laughed again.  "You've been too busy worrying about the English...and your farm.  You haven't noticed."
    Her indifference annoyed Jean.  His voice rose,  "I don't mean that way.  I mean it's time to think of a husband for her."
    "Jean, she's only fifteen years old.  There's lots of time to think of that.  She hasn't even mention any young man.  I don't think she's thought of marriage yet."
    Jean squirmed.  He could still see his daughter in the arms of the English trooper, and he squeezed his eyes to control his rage.  He clenched his fists, and his whole body tensed as he remembered the scene in the hayloft.
    Anne felt his tension.  "What's the matter?"
    Jean had not told Anne of the incident in the barn.  She did not know that her beautiful daughter was no longer an innocent virgin.  She did not know that her daughter knew a man--a hated Englishman, the enemy.  He could not bring himself to tell her.  She would be hurt, and her relationship with Marguerite would be destroyed.  He knew it.  He was sure of it.
    Slowly he relaxed.  "Anne, several have approached me about Marguerite.  She'll make a good wife for an Acadian."
    "Jean, there's plenty of time.  When Marguerite is ready to marry, she'll let us know.  Then we can consider suitors."
    "No, Anne.  Now's the time.  We can't leave such an important decision to the girl.  We must make the best arrangement possible."
    Anne straightened on her elbow.  "Jean, are you serious?  What has got into you?  Why are you so eager to have Marguerite married?"
    Jean remembered Marguerite's words, "Papa, I love him.  I want to marry him."  She was in love with an English soldier.  She wanted to marry an enemy.  He could never let that happen.  In his mind, he saw all English soldiers as the tall gangly youth who had seduced his daughter.  Rage filled him, and his fingers flexed as he imagined them entwined about the enemy's throat.
    Two days before, he stood rigid and impotent as he watched the young man hurry down the ladder from the loft and disappear.  For several minutes he stood unmoving, trying to believe that what he had seen was a dream, but slowly he realized that it had really happened.
    He shook his head to convince himself that he was awake, standing in the centre of his hayloft, staring at the nested indentation in the mound of hay where only moments before his beautiful daughter cavorted with a young man.
    "Anne, it's time for her to marry.  Before she gets into trouble.  She's a women now.  With a woman's desires."
    "Jean."  Her voice grew tense.  "What are you talking about?"
    His voice filled with annoyance.  "I'm talking about finding a good husband for Marguerite.  Before it's too late."
    "But she's only fifteen years old.  There's plenty of time.  She doesn't need a husband yet.  I need her here to help me."
    "You have Madeleine.  She's twelve years old.  Almost as big as Marguerite.  We must find a good husband for Marguerite."
    "Jean, I don't understand you.  Suddenly you think that it's time for Marguerite to be married.  What if she doesn't want to get married now?"
    Jean's voice rose in anger.  "She has nothing to say about it.  We'll decide who she'll marry.  We know what's best for her."
    Anne shook her head in the darkness.  "But she must love her husband.  You know that, Jean."
    Jean squirmed.  He recalled the feelings he had when he first met his wife.  He remembered his frustration when he learned that she was promised to Albert Doucet Jr.  He hated the fact that Anne's mother made the match.  But that was different.
    He saw his daughter lying under the English boy, and his anger returned and confused his thinking.  She might be pregnant.  He had to be sure that she never saw that soldier again.  He had to find a decent, God-fearing, Catholic Acadian farmer for her.  He had to do it immediately, before his wife learned of Marguerite's indiscretion, before there was a scandal, before he became the laughing stock of the community.
    "Anne, there are other considerations before love.  She'll learn to love the man we choose for her.  We'll choose a man who's decent and respected...a man who's well-established, with a future, not some callow youth who has nothing...and never will."  His voice grated, and his breathing rasped through his throat.
    Anne noticed his emotion and soothed, "Jean, it's not that serious.  Certainly we must think of Marguerite's future, but it doesn't have to be tonight."
    "Yes, Anne, we must come to a decision tonight.  Tomorrow I plan to see a few of the men here and at Les Mines and Beaubassin.  My daughter must have a husband before the summer is over."
    Anne shook her head in astonishment.  She never saw Jean so intense about his daughter's future before.  She dropped to the pillow and sighed.  She whispered to herself, "Tomorrow he will forget about this."
    But the next morning, Jean did not forget about it.  He left the house immediately after he finished the chores, and it was late that night before he returned.
    Throughout the morning, as Anne worked about the house, she studied Marguerite.  The girl was subdued and quiet.  Anne noticed that she went about her duties quietly, not speaking unless she spoken to.  Several times she hectored her younger sister sharply.  At other times she was lost in her thoughts, doing her tasks mechanically.
    Anne mused to herself, "Maybe Jean is right.  Maybe it is time that we thought of a husband for her."
    She observed the young woman.  Her body was mature and womanly, but was her mind ready for the responsibilities of a wife and mother?  Anne knew that she could handle the work in a farm household: she could cook; she could sew; she could wash and clean; she could even help with the farm chores: milking cows, feeding chickens, sowing and weeding the garden.  She had all the skills needed to be a helpmate to any farmer.  But was she ready to marry?
    In the afternoon, Anne decided that she would talk to Marguerite.  She assigned Madeleine the task of making pies while she and Marguerite worked in the garden, weeding the corn and turnips--a ruse to get Marguerite alone.
    As they crouched beside a row of peas which was covered with white flowers, Anne looked up to her oldest daughter who tugged at a coarse pigweed.  "Marguerite, have you thought of marriage?"
    Marguerite looked up, startled.  She gazed at her mother for several moments.  "Yes, Maman, I have."
    "Do you have someone in mind?"
    "Yes, Maman, I'm in love."
    Anne straightened up and wiped her hands on her large apron.  "When did this happen?  Who is it?"
    Marguerite rolled forward to her knees.  She looked down at her hands soiled with the earth and juices of the weeds she had pulled.  "I've been seeing an English soldier from the fort."
    Anne's eyes opened wide in astonishment.  She stare intently at her daughter.  When had she seen this English soldier?  When had she met him?  Where had she met him?  How had she managed such a liaison?
    "Yes, Maman, I've been seeing an English soldier.  He's an ensign.  His name is James Campbell."
    Shock held Anne speechless.
    Anne continued, "He's a very nice man, Maman.  I'm in love with him."
    "When did you meet him?"  Her voice quivered with annoyance.
    "He helped me with my canoe when I went to see Monsieur Belleisle for Papa.  He was very gallant."
    "Was that the only time you saw him?"
    Marguerite laughed nervously.  "No, Maman.  Of course not.  I've seen him many times since."
    Anne's face blanched.  And she did not know about it.  Marguerite's deception jolted her.  How had she managed that without Jean or she knowing about it?  When had these rendezvous taken place?
    "Does your father know about this?"  Her voice trembled.
    A long pause ensued.  "Yes."
    Now Anne understood why Jean wanted his daughter married.  He did not want his daughter to marry an enemy, a heretic, an alien.  It all fell into place now.  "When did your father find out?  When did he know?" But Anne knew already.  She knew that the discovery was recent, within the past two days.
    "Last Sunday afternoon."

    Jean studied the young priest who sat across from the four people who came to visit him.  He was about thirty-five years old, Jean guessed, and already his black hair had thinned to a meagre wisp above his high forehead.  The dark fringe around his head gave him a tonsured monklike look.  His round, ruddy face glowed from the heat of the sunny June afternoon.  He smiled and his eyes swept the group, then came to rest on Marguerite.  "We've come to arrange the marriage of this young lady?  And this young man?"
    His eyes moved to the man who sat across from Marguerite.  Then they shifted to Jean.  "The marriage contract has been arranged?"
    Jean nodded.
    "We are ready to decide the date?"
    "Yes, Father.  We would like the wedding as soon as possible."
    "Is there any reason for this hurry, Jean?"
    Jean stared grimly at the rotund priest.  "Yes.  We are eager for Marguerite to marry, and she would like to be married as soon as possible."
    "There are no impediments to this union?"
    Jean thought the priest asked the question suspiciously.  He shook his head.
    The priest, Father Felix Pain, recently assigned by the bishop of New France as a missionary to Acadia, turned to the would-be husband.  "You are prepared to take this woman, Marguerite Marin, as your wife?"  The man nodded.
    The priest turned to Marguerite.  "You are willing to become the wife of this man?"
    A long silence filled the small room.  Sunlight streamed through the open door of the room that was the kitchen and the office of the missionary priest of Port Royal.  The buzz of a fly was the only sound that broke the silence.
    Anne stared at her daughter, her eyes piercing the mask of her daughter's face.
    Jean spoke.  "Yes, she has agreed to wed this man."
    The priest nodded his head to Marguerite, urging her to speak or give an indication of her assent.
    Marguerite lifted her eyes to her mother, pleading, but Anne looked past her to Jean.  Then Marguerite looked at her father.  His face was rigid and inscrutable.  His eyes were hard and unwavering.  Then she looked at the man who was to become her husband.  She whispered, "Yes."
    The priest nodded his head and smiled.

    Tuesday, July 10, 1714 was a hot, humid day.  The heavy overcast seemed to reach to the ground and bath everything in mist, felt but unseen.
    All the windows and door of the small church were open to allow any breeze in to move the heavy, moist air.  Jean wiped his brow with the back of his hand to remove the clammy, stickiness there.  He glanced down at Marguerite who stood beside him, her head downcast, her eyes staring at the floor.  They waited for the priest to enter to start the marriage service.
    A small group of friends occupied some of the pews in the small church.  Jean surveyed them.  There was Albert Doucet Jr. and behind him were the Leblancs.  Jacques Breton and his mother occupied a pew to the right of the centre aisle.  Several older women of the settlement were behind them.
    The rotund priest entered from a side door and made his way to the altar.  A young boy dress in a white surplice over a dark cassock preceded the priest who was dressed in green vestments--a chasuble with an embroidered cross back and front, a matching stole and maniple, and a black biretta atop his head.  He moved to the foot of the altar bowed toward it and mounted the single step to place the covered chalice on it.  Then he turned to the people.  "We are here today to join in holy Matrimony these two people.  If anyone knows of any reason why they should not be joined, let him come forward and make his objections known."
    A shuffle of noise as several looked around filled the church.  The noise subsided and the priest descended the step, turned his back to the congregation and intoned in Latin the entrance rite of the nuptial Mass.  The altar boy mumbled the responses.
    Jean felt no joy as he listened to the familiar Latin prayers.  He thought he should, but he did not.  This ceremony was not as he imagined it would be.  He dreamed that it would be a joyful occasion, with brightness and laughter, but it was not.  The dull overcast with its suffocating humidity gave the day a heavy, sinking feeling.
    He looked a Marguerite again.  Her eyes were downcast, her face unsmiling.  She looked beautiful in her simple dress of red linen which draped over her slim figure.  The high simple neck was smooth over her upper chest rising gently over her young breasts.  Around her waist a simple woven belt of white was tied in a large bow at her left side.  The full skirt draped in flowing folds over her smooth hips.  On her feet she wore a pair of low pumps with dainty thin heels, shoes that Jean had obtained from Boston.
    Jean's eyes darted to Anne who stood on the other side of Marguerite.  She stared intently toward the altar engrossed in the Mass, or at least, she seemed to be.  She looked intense and stiff.  She, like him, did not feel the joy and happiness that such a day should bring.
    Jean wondered, Am I doing the right thing?  Is this marriage right for Marguerite?
    He looked down at his daughter again.  His movement caught her eye, and she looked up at him.  Their eyes met.  He smiled, but she did not return his smile.  She turned away quickly, her eyes fixed on the altar.
    The priest turned to the people.  They shuffled as they sat down.  He waited for a few moments, his eyes roving the seated group.  Then he said, "Brethren in Christ, today we come together to join two people in Holy Matrimony.  The Bible gives men and women good advice about marriage."  He looked at Marguerite.  "The most important advice comes from St. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians.  He tells us: Wives should be submissive to their husbands as though to the Lord."
    Jean glanced at Anne.  But she did not look at him.  Her eyes were riveted on the short priest.  Those words were true.  Anne had always submitted to him.  And they had a good marriage.  He was the head of the family.  He made the final decision.  He was sure he made the right decision about Marguerite's marriage.
    He looked down the pew, at Marguerite, next to him, at Anne, and then Madeleine and young Francois.  They were a happy family, but today they did not appear happy.  This was not the way he had idealized daughter's wedding, but that was her fault, not his.  She was the one who had deceived him, who had fraternized with the English, who had encouraged the young soldier.  She had forced him to act.
    The priest's words interrupted his reverie.  "...each one of you should love his wife just as he loves himself; and the wife should revere her husband."
    That made sense to Jean.  If a wife submitted to and revered her husband, the marriage would be successful.
    The priest raised his hands, signalling all to stand.  Then he motioned Jean and Marguerite forward.  Jean glanced at Marguerite as he stepped into the centre aisle.  He heard a rustle in the benches across from him, and he knew that Marguerite's husband-to-be was moving toward the altar accompanied by his father.  Slowly Marguerite moved out of the pew.  He held out his arm for her, and she grasped it.
    Jean thought he felt her hand quiver, but he was not sure.  He moved to the altar, placed Marguerite on his right, and stood rigid, staring at the priest, who cleared his throat noisily.
    Jean glanced quickly at the bridegroom who stood at Marguerite's right side.  Jean was pleased with what he saw. The bridegroom stood solid, his hands clasped together in front of him.  He wore a white shirt with ruffles at the neck and the cuffs.  His dark blue breeches fit snugly to the knees where they were fastened with light blue ribbon ties.  White linen stockings covered his sturdy legs, and heavy shoes with square toes and low heels with a large shiny buckle over the instep completed his costume.  He looked prosperous and well-to-do.
    Jean smiled to himself, satisfied.  Joseph Bergeron, at thirty-five years old, was the perfect husband for his daughter.  He was well-established habitant from Les Mines.  Jean would no longer have worry about Marguerite and her English lover.

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