Madame Jane

By Marilyn Leys

Just after the end of the War of 1812, when this country's frontier was the Mississippi River, 14-year-old Jane Fisher married the most powerful, most ruthless fur trader in Prairie du Chien, the western outpost of the American Fur Company. To Joseph Rolette's employees and the others who gossiped about her, she was Madame Joseph.

Jane and the people who knew her were witnesses to the changes the fur trade brought to the lives of the settlers and the original inhabitants. The novel combines evidence from actual 19th century letters and court records with speculation about whether Jane Fisher Rolette, the first woman in Wisconsin Territory to file for a divorce, was truly the independent woman that Hercules Dousman, Joseph's business partner, rechristened Madame Jane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491844755

Marilyn Leys

A pair of visits to a Wisconsin State Historical Site, ten years apart, presented Marilyn Leys with two different stories about the parents of the young man who commissioned Villa Louis. The second docent was the one who talked about Jane Fisher's previously unmentioned first husband, who had been the most powerful fur trader in the frontier town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in the period just after the War of 1812. Another fact learned late was that Jane Fisher Rolette was the first woman in Wisconsin Territory to file a petition for divorce. Leys had been looking for a project to pursue in order to qualify for a sabbatical leave from Milwaukee Public Schools. Working toward a JBA from the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had taught her how to speed-read through paper documents and interview the best experts about their areas of expertise. Teaching writing -- both journalism and creative writing -- and editing her students' work had taught her how to critique her own. She had already published freelance stories in the Milwaukee Journal. Research for the novel involved visiting sites, sorting through more than 15 boxes of family papers stored in Madison and St. Louis, and reading other papers from southwest Wisconsin courthouses. Interviews included a priest/history professor at Marquette University and the most knowledgeable local historian in Prairie du Chien. There were books too, since the two husbands were central figures and the first husband was so important that the second in command to John Jacob Astor was the godfather of the Rolette children. After the first draft of the novel was complete, Leys and her husband moved from Milwaukee to a farm in northeast Crawford County. After 20 years there, they moved to the only city in the county, Prairie du Chien, where the author has learned firsthand what it's like to live beside -- and keep an eye on -- the Mississippi River.

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Madame Jane

MARILYN LEYS

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AuthorHouse™ LLC

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©

2014 Marilyn Leys. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/19/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4474-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4476-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4475-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922827

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

1814-1815

1816-1818

1818

1819

1820

1823

1826

1827

1828

1829

1830

1832

1834

1836

1837-1838

1839

1842

1843-1844

Source Notes

In memory of

Meagan Anna Margerum-Leys, mother of Marie

Why read when you can write?

1814-1815

S ilence was all there was. And huge flakes of snow that glanced off her father’s capote and hid the River with its grumbling blocks of ice and smaller islands. Marie was warm in the red cloak her mother had made from an old point blanket. And being her father’s, it reached almost to the tops of her shoes. But even if she pushed back the hood, she couldn’t see the house where Jane would be waiting for her. Then, as she drew closer to the River, the snow hid the frozen marais at the east edge of the island, and her home on the mainland near that swamp, and the pale tan bluffs at the far eastern edge of the Prairie du Chien.

As Marie walked, she puzzled over yesterday’s conversation. She’d made her almost-daily trip across the frozen swamp to the house where Jane was staying with her aunt and her uncle and her cousins. They’d had a few moments to giggle together, to gossip, starting out, as one or the other always did, There’s a tale I thought you should hear. Jane was doing the chores her aunt had burdened her with, and Marie—she couldn’t have said how it happened—was helping.

I have definitely decided, Marie said, picking up a conversation they’d had a day or two before. I am going to marry somebody who plays a fiddle.

Jane gave her a long look. And what else? she asked.

Well, I would have to love him, of course. She giggled briefly. But then an annoyed look bloomed on Jane’s face, so Marie asked, It’s important to be married to someone who’s the center of attention, don’t you think? I mean, if my husband plays the fiddle, people will always need him for their dance parties.

Maybe, Jane answered after a while.

Her friend’s lack of understanding confused Marie, for a fiddle was how they’d met. Her own father was a voyageur who used to paddle the canoes and portage the heavy packs belonging to men like Henry Monroe Fisher. Jane’s father was a cousin to James Monroe, whoever he might be. Marie supposed that James Monroe was someone important, for Jane often mentioned him to her.

If it hadn’t been for the Sunday horse fairs on her side of the marais, she and Jane might never have met. But it wasn’t the horses that drew the important rich men who lived on this island. Even Marie could tell that her people’s horses were worthless, no matter how vigorously their owners brushed their coats and fluffed their tails. The important men only crossed to the mainland on those Sundays when there was fiddle music to listen to. And sometimes their children came too. And sometimes, if there was no one else to talk to, their children talked to the children of the voyageurs.

Mostly Marie was glad that she and Jane had met, though there were times when she did find herself wondering. Things Jane had a habit of saying, things that were hers. For instance, Marie thought, glancing down where her mostly flat chest hid. Though she did have curls in her hair, which Jane did not, and Jane said she envied her for them. And she had a mother who was here, not dead. And a father who stayed here until the war would end and the fur trade would need him once again. Jane’s own father had taken off for somewhere until the war was over because he was American trader. American was a dangerous thing to be in this country where everyone was Indian or French or métis. Where everyone hoped the British would win this war.

Jane’s stepmother and Jane’s baby half-sister had gone with the father to Mackinac Island. The father went on business, of course. The others went to visit with their family. That was two years ago, but the war reached Mackinac then and stepped in between their visit and their return to the Prairie du Chien. Jane was staying here with her aunt and uncle, abandoned, as she often put it. Although the way Marie remembered it, remaining here was the choice her friend had made before the war.

Marie was the youngest of her family. So far. And Jane was the oldest of the five children now in her uncle Michel Brisbois’ house. And as the oldest, she was expected to take care of her four cousins and do other chores as well. This did not sit well with Jane, but Marie knew she was the only one her friend had told. Jane told her a lot, and often. Then sealed the most secret things with their secret gesture: two fingers to the lips, then touch the heart.

The sight of the Brisbois house interrupted Marie’s memories. The door was open, she saw, just wide enough to show a face. But the face was not Jane’s. When the door opened wider, Jane’s Aunt Domitille was staring at her. Yes? the aunt asked, as if Marie were just a stranger.

The coldness froze the girl. Jane… . she mumbled, but before she could explain further, the aunt said, Gone, and then she said, With you, and then she said, Or so she told me, and slammed the door.

Annoyance kept Jane warm for a little while as she broke a footpath in the snow. Four times this afternoon Aunt Domitille had talked about the oxen. Four times—a record. Aunt was far too fond of saying how they would have something to eat now if Uncle Michel had only not let Monsieur Rolette force him into giving up those oxen. Would the oxen be gone if it were the Americans who had kept the fort, not the British who had won it? Who could blame Jane for running out on such a conversation?

Suddenly a particularly strong gust of wind reminded her that the wet, cold snow was starting to eat through her woolen dress as well as Aunt’s third best shawl that she’d snatched off a peg as she escaped. The wind knows me personally and hates me, Jane thought. And the snow hates me too.

She turned and began to trudge south, past the house her father had built and then abandoned, back toward her uncle’s cabin and the chores that undoubtedly awaited her unless Marie arrived to lend a hand. But then she noticed the smoke snaking from the chimney at Monsieur Rolette’s. If not for the war, he would be gone this time of year, off trading in the wilderness as if he were merely one of his own winterers. But here he was, at home. Monsieur Rolette’s place, if the chimney smoke were to be believed, would be far warmer than this miserable snow.

Silently, except for the crunching beneath her shoes, Jane trudged up to that house. The single mullioned window in the front wall was not too high to peer through anymore. The snow had finally stopped, but now rays of pink sunlight, reflected in the window’s bumpy glass, were making it impossible to see inside. Indian-fashion, she pulled the shawl over her head and touched her forehead to the window.

Now she could see that there was, indeed, a sizeable fire inside this place. Monsieur Rolette stood between that fire and his counter, and two men between the counter and her window. Whatever the men were saying, whatever their gestures meant, Monsieur Rolette was having none of it. He was keeping his face as stolid as the stone bluffs at the far edge of the prairie.

How forceful Monsieur Rolette was when he spoke at last, stabbing the counter as if he were drawing on a map, pointing to the window where he clearly could not see her. And how few empty spaces there were on his shelves. It occurred to Jane that if these visitors left and passed her here, they might think she was spying. Aunt was fond of saying that Monsieur Rolette—who might be Uncle’s friend but was certainly not hers—was not only the most powerful trader on the Prairie, but a dangerous man as well.

Thinking it best that she not be suspected of anything in case, this once, Aunt was correct, Jane walked carefully around the corner of the store house. She heard a door open and a voice cry out, Goodbye, Louis! Good luck, Antoine, my brother!

Jane listened until the crunching footsteps of the two men died away before she returned, drifting very slowly past the window. Monsieur Rolette amazed her by hailing her by name from the inside of his place. Shivering shook her, though she tried her best to stop it. As no other choice occurred to her, she opened the door and walked inside and found Monsieur Rolette still standing behind the counter looking, perhaps, so sad. She saw him rouse himself from his reverie. Why are you sent, my little one? he asked, in a voice that sounded less dangerous than mildly amused.

The snow had frosted her thick, straight black hair, but now, in the warmth of the room, the frost was turning into wetness, and running down her heavy braids, and turning the loose ends to dripping pennants. And then the water was finding its way down her dress, whose hem was already sodden. And her shoes were wet as well. If she were anywhere but here, she would have wrung the ends of her braids dry, and attended to the hem of her skirt in the same way, but remembering Aunt’s assessment, she thought it best not to risk the creation of a puddle. I was just walking by, she responded to his question as she drew as close to his fire as the counter would allow her, hoping that the wetness would evaporate before it drizzled onto his floor. Jane concentrated on her cold, red hands. When she was somewhat warmer, she feared she had been impolite, and so she raised her eyes.

Monsieur Rolette did not accept her explanation. It was written on his face. But with his eyes on her, she could think of nothing else to tell him. His eyes were searching her body up and down. Have you no better clothes than those? he asked.

After my father left me, I went back to our house and took a few of my mother’s things, but even they… . She waved a hand toward the bodice of her dress. Aunt is fond of saying, ‘Despite the war, you grow.’ But I can’t think what else to do. She registered his smile, but then her mind shifted and she began to think about the ham that must recently have been on the counter; she could see the grease mark and smell the residue of wood smoke. Her almost constant hunger made her so much more aware of food. Thinking of the ham, Jane’s mouth began to water, and she licked her lips.

Are you thirsty?

She shook her head.

Again, Monsieur Rolette searched her with his eyes. Hungry?

She stared at him and tried to shake her head again, but instead it nodded.

And why would that be?

She thought what she should answer. Everyone was hungry at the Brisbois house. Uncle’s paunch had shrunk and his clothes hung loosely on him. Hunger was everywhere. But Jane found that just now she could not care about everywhere. Because she had heard it too often, she blurted, Aunt says my uncle gives you too many things to feed the British. Like the two fat oxen he gave you this fall.

Immediately she worried that this might offend Monsieur Rolette, but instead he laughed. "Your uncle never gives me things. He sells them. And at a good price too. It is what grown men do—sell what they have to each other for a price they like. And your aunt’s imagination fattens those oxen better than any grain."

It feels like he gave you too many things, she said shyly, in my stomach.

He came around the counter and lifted her and set her on top of it. At once his hands jumped away from her and he retreated, putting the counter between them again. Then he made work of rummaging on his side beneath where she sat, muttering, So. Let us find you some food just for yourself. And as for your family, well… . Jane lost his words until, emerging, he said, "I promise this—you will never starve, my little Jane."

All she could think of was the ham he was now putting on the counter not ten inches from her hand and that she had grown so much since she’d last stood near him that she was not so very little anymore.

There once were happier times and better stories, he sighed. Is that not so? You are what, now? Ten?

Eleven, she answered. Almost. She wriggled around until she was half-facing him across the counter.

Well, when, like me, you have thirty-four years, there will always be happier memories to choose from. He smiled mournfully at her. Probably you are so sad because you lack the thick cushion of the years. Take myself. In times like these, it would be so simple for me to cry. He inverted his lips into an exaggerated, downturned U that pulled the outside corners of his deep-set eyes down with it.

The expression and the idea that anything could touch such a strong person and sadden him were so ridiculous that Jane, despite her hunger, found herself giggling.

I could whine, ‘Ah, those rascally British! Why must they always be harping on this contract I have made to get them their supplies?’ If I were alone here, finding them food would be so much simpler. But that other, that damned Dickson! How do they expect me to control Dickson? He’s raping the countryside for food to give his Indians when they could damned well do for themselves if he would stop it. They are not children, after all! Monsieur Rolette had started off in a matter of fact way, but the longer he spoke, the more indignant he became, and the louder and faster and less precisely his words flew. He seemed so entirely possessed by anger now, and yet, at first, it had almost been as if he were pretending to be angry.

He must have seen the confusion on her face, for suddenly his voice grew softer, yet sorrow had crept back in. "I was told there were Sioux across the River who had some food, the Gens de la Feuille Tiré, but they insisted they would only trade what they had for gunpowder so they could hunt more food to replace what they gave me. Ah, yes, the Redcoats at the fort they warned me, and Dickson warned me. The other Sioux don’t trust the Fire-Leaf. They are said to be the Americans’ Indians, and the British Indians say it’s not deer my powder will be used against. But nothing gets done when you waste your time worrying about what others think. Being afraid of things that probably won’t happen. He paused to shrug. That’s what I told the two youngsters I just sent off to find the Fire Leaf. If you had looked in my window five minutes ago, you would have seen them."

Jane made a great effort to keep an innocent face.

We are talking here about my wife’s best brother. At this he let out a sigh that was almost a groan, and hung his head.

His emotion seemed so genuine, his mood so bleak, that Jane did not know what she could say to cheer him. But when he picked up his head again, he was smiling. He patted the ham and fumbled again beneath the counter for his knife. But as I said before, my happy memories help cushion me against the sadness. And so experience tells me that if I wait, there will be better times again.

Monsieur Rolette was still behind the counter when I came in, Jane thought. He didn’t have to follow his men outside. He knew that they would go wherever he sent them and do whatever it was he told them to get done. And thinking that, she nodded her approval.

Joseph Rolette had been in the fur trade so long that its tricks had become second nature to him; it had been tempting to withhold what the child so clearly wanted, to see what more he could gain in the exchange. But she had been so grateful for the warmth, so grateful for the sliver of ham he gave her. So wide-eyed at the sight of the goods standing shoulder to shoulder on his shelves, so unaware that they were now but one line deep. So wise to ask for water and soap to wash away the odor before she returned to her uncle’s house. The trade he’d made was this: he had been able to try out how his tale of the Fire Leaf and the tone of his tale might strike another person. Because he suspected that he would be repeating this tale again.

One thing he was sure of: it softened a man to think too often about the good things that were past, no matter what he had recommended to the child. Nevertheless, there came to him now the memory of a spring night three years before. The British and the war were still hundreds of miles from the Prairie, so the child’s American father had not yet taken fright and run away. Everyone was gathered at the Fisher house, the finest house in town. The furnishings had been pushed away and there was dancing. Joseph watched it from the doorway, the center of a crowd of men who were beholden to him, or wished to be.

There was a fiddler in the center of the room, of course, and little Jane Fisher whirling away in a far corner. It was not an easy thing to isolate one person, particularly a small person, except through the whirl of thick black hair, long and loose over narrow shoulders, swirling in time to the fiddler’s song. Her dark brown eyes, her high-cheeked, heart-shaped face, were alight with joy, her arms flung up above her head, her small feet tracing steps on the wooden floor, toe and heel, cross and back, and prance. But no one save himself seemed to be noticing. From a core of innocent serenity had come this unpremeditated joy such as Joseph had never felt, or even seen. He wished to join it, to join with her, but hesitated to destroy her moment. Presently, though, the fiddler ended and, within a beat, the child ended too. And looked around her as if she had come awake in some foreign land.

That spring night there had been tales. As always, his own was the best and garnered the heartiest laughter. In his tale, a trader’s man, an engagé, returned to his clerk’s camp one freezing day in January with an Indian girl, to ask the clerk to marry them. The clerk took half a look, and advised him, Throw her back and catch yourself one a little bigger.

As the sky became black beyond the little window, Joseph thought about the way his hands had encircled the child just now, and leapt away. The girl was nine, the girl in that long-ago tale. Jane Fisher had been seven the evening Joseph watched her dance.

He thought, it is dangerous to dwell on the good times that have passed, because it can fool you into believing that you can’t make them come again.

The stool was hard; it hurt Joseph’s back to sit so long without support; it was a trial in itself to pretend the pain was absent. And all of their eyes were on him, all of the army court assembled here to try him for treason. Surely the Redcoats had deliberately chosen the stool for maximum discomfort.

And there was Robert Dickson watching, satisfaction on his old face, because the British were believing his accusation.

The army men only wanted to know about their contract. They kept asking if it weren’t true that Joseph’s bond would be forfeit when he had to break the contract, if that was not the real reason for his sadness.

So he told them the story he had rehearsed on the child, subtracting what he told her about Dickson, adding the part he hadn’t known before because it hadn’t happened yet. It was the tenth of December when Antoine Du Bois was found crawling into town, shot through the bowel and dying. Here, Joseph inserted a stifled sob. I cannot imagine how Antoine got that far, six miles back to the River and then across and the ice not even very firm yet. The desire for revenge, I guess, can make you strong enough to keep on living.

It happened during the young men’s very first night on the way, in Giard’s Coulee. They fell asleep by their fire, their weapons loaded, ready for the enemies Joseph had warned them against. Yet during the night, a Sioux crept in, of one of the bands that opposed the Fire-Leaf. Put Antoine’s gun to the head of Louis Champignier and pulled the trigger. The noise roused Antoine, but when he stood, the Sioux picked up Louis’ weapon and fired and ran. And Antoine ran. He had to get to the village, Antoine, to tell, you see, Joseph continued, taking care to mangle his words as if it were Antoine’s fatal injury that was making him suffer. But first he took all of the gunpowder and made a full black circle in the snow five feet from… poor Louis. Just in time he’d stopped himself from saying corpse.

Rolette examined the faces that surrounded him, then continued, A careful circle Antoine made, just as wide everywhere, and exactly round. Can you imagine? Another sob intruded, genuine this time. "He took the time though he must have known that he was dying—we’ve all seen what happens to men shot through the gut. I waited here the three days till Antoine died, and got him to his father’s camp before I went with some others to fetch poor Louis. I knew we could wait, because of what Antoine had told us about the gunpowder. I knew that poor Louis would be exactly where Antoine left him. He would be there, frozen, but still whole. For as long as I live, I will see that black circle on the snow. And outside that black circle, in the crust of the snow, I’ll see the many, many wolf tracks that we found."

His tale done, Joseph dropped his head. And wondered. Had he managed to keep his voice free of his real feelings? His contempt for such a wasteful, romantic fool?

Two days after the court decided that Joseph Rolette was innocent of treason, it had to meet again in order to decide the fate of the man the Sioux presented as the murderer. Le Corbeau François, a well-known showman, arrived in town that morning. His right hand held a leash attached to a rope that was wrapped around the wrists of a downcast young Sioux named Chunksah. Le Corbeau’s left hand was extended straight out in front of him; it held three or four red ribbons from which dangled silver American medals. This was the custom, the medals acting as a shield and a token of surrender, a way of proving his allegiance to the British. A parade of relatives trailed the two of them. Here is the dog that bit you! Le Corbeau called out at the wall of the fort. Do with him as you please; he deserves to die.

Joseph watched the parade from the door of his store house. What happened next was just what he’d expected. The court assembled inside the fort, called on him briefly to testify once again to what he’d found in Giard’s Coulee. Then he watched and listened as the British asked Le Corbeau if Chunksah was guilty of the murders and he answered through their translator, He truly is the man. Le Corbeau turned to Chunksah, who hadn’t said a word in his own defense, and muttered too quickly for the translator to catch, "Why did you deny the bad act you have done? You ought to speak the truth. The Master of Life will take pity on you. There can be no pardon for you—prepare for death." There wasn’t much the British could do but announce Chunksah’s guilt.

After it was over, the prisoner asked to see two of his relatives who’d been sitting in the courtroom. And Joseph heard him say to them, I thought one of you would have consented to die with me. For those who did not know the Sioux, this would have seemed a strange thing to say. But Joseph knew the Sioux and understood their language. There had been two deaths, but only one replacement was hauled in. The Sioux would be afraid that if they did not match murderer for murdered, the Redcoats would come after them and wipe out all their band. It was only what they always did themselves.

But after it was over, Joseph found himself wondering if there wasn’t, after all, a second murderer still free somewhere. It was an unexpected thought, an unwelcome thought, and so he quickly pushed it to the very back of his mind.

Here on this island, anything could happen, for time was ruled by the smaller rivers, the Fox and the Wisconsin. Anything could happen. People you expected last week finally arrived today. People you never expected at all came poling up the Mississippi sloughs from the Wisconsin and here they were! Once in a while, before the war at least, a new family would arrive to stay. Once in a while, though far less often, that family would bring a daughter. It would be nice to have someone besides Marie, who had been short with her since that day Jane had deserted her, as the other put it. There were the Brisbois cousins, certainly; there were always the Brisbois cousins. But they were all babies, and always, it seemed, she was forced to be responsible for them. Besides, the closest to her in age was a boy, and you couldn’t talk to boys. Jane had overheard the grownups talking about St. Louis, a place where you might have dozens of friends to choose from. Dozens? Was that possible? She hardly thought so. But living as they did here on the island, with surprises around every bend—that was more exciting.

That had to be more exciting.

Winter set in in earnest, alternating snow with numbing cold. Any news that came arrived over the Mississippi ice. Jane learned from one of the few visitors that her father was at an old trading post far north along the Red River, with her brothers and the British. How can he want to be with the British? she asked Marie.

My father says… .

Jane thought impatiently that all of Marie’s knowledge was filtered through her father. But thinking this, she missed the second half of the sentence.

Days, weeks poured over her. She fell to listening even more closely at the edges of grownup conversations, for Aunt and Uncle never shared such conversations with the children, and they counted her a child just like their own. Some of their visitors said that the war