The Torrents of Hope

By Pierre Turgeon

The Torrents of Hope –Canada, 1837. During a skirmish with soldiers of the British Empire, Stéphane Talbot's father, an ardent Republican, is killed, leaving behind a distraught and penniless family – the family mill is ruined – and a son animated by a ferocious hatred towards the British and especially towards Henry Blake, the officer responsible for this destruction. So, Stéphane is not happy about the liaison between the Irish soldier Mervynn Parker and Catherine, his mother. Until the day Mervynn was sent to China with his regiment. Catherine is forced to work as a maid while Stéphane joins the steamships of the St. Lawrence. During a stopover in Montreal, he meets Gustave Hamelin, an engineer who has just been hired by Henry Blake, Stéphane's sworn enemy: he controls The Montreal Gas and Light. The two men come face to face… The Torrents of Hope is a superb historical saga, full of passion and exoticism, written by one of Quebec's best novelists, twice winner of the Governor General's Award, the local Pulitzer.

 

Reviews

"Pierre Turgeon has a passion for the past. Because he comes from Quebec City. Fasten your seatbelts, because you are going to travel. From the banks of the Jacques-Cartier River, in the prologue, through Grosse-Ile, Montreal and Dublin, from there to Crimea in China, Sudan, Egypt, all in less than 400 pages. An epic and fascinating story. " – Anne-Marie Voisard, Le Soleil.
"It is above all to history enthusiasts that Pierre Turgeon addresses in The Torrents of Hope. What's surprising, when you consider the obvious interest he has had in narrative with a historical content since his early days as a writer? Already, with Sweet Poison, he was already drawing on family annals. After dwelling on certain key events of the twentieth century – the rise of fascism in Hitler's Boat, then the political situation in Quebec in the 1970s in Insurrection!, Turgeon took a great plunge into the past this time around, at the time of the Patriots' rebellion. With its hectic rhythm and characters set in a harsh but captivating reality, Turgeon's work is sure to enthrall those who like to let themselves be carried away by the images of a good story." – Claude Dessurault, See Québec.

 

 

Excerpt - The Jacques-Cartier River bewitched the summers of my childhood. It originates in the mountains north of Quebec, meanders through a valley cluttered with erratic boulders then joins the Saint-Laurent at Donnacona.
Some time ago, I felt the need to find the river and the country house that my family had left forever.

After an absence of forty years, nothing seemed to have changed in the rocky landscape, bristling with tall pines from another age. But the vague memories of a six-year-old did little to help me locate a lost paradise that I didn't even know if it still existed.

Many times, at the bend of the road or from the top of a hill, I thought I recognized the vast house where I had been so happy. I only had one landmark: the dam my grandfather had built, and which was a five-minute walk from his property. I was certain that beneath this formidable concrete wall would still huddle the power station that once electrified Quebec City.

After hours of wandering, I finally came across a California-style villa had replaced the old mansion with dark shingles and narrow windows.

No one answered my calls. I ran down the lawn to the river. Having pulled up my jeans, I took off my espadrilles and walked into the cool water of the Jacques-Cartier. Through the murmur of the river, I thought I heard distant voices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cogito
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201845667

Book preview

Prologue

A river rose in the land of Eden and irrigated the garden.

Genesis 2:10.

The Jacques-Cartier River bewitched the summers of my childhood. It rises in the mountains north of Quebec City, winds through a boulder-strewn valley, carves fjords in the friable soils of Pont-Rouge, then joins the St. Lawrence at Donnacona, thirty kilometers upstream from Cap Diamant.

Some time ago, I felt the need to return to the river and the country house in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier that my family had left and never returned to. I had stopped believing that happiness required that we flee our past. After an absence of forty years, nothing seemed to have changed in the rocky landscape, bristling with tall fir trees from another age. But the vague memories of a six-year-old child did little to help me locate a lost paradise that I didn’t even know still existed.

Ten times, at the bend in the road or from the top of a hill, I thought I recognized the vast house where I had been so happy. I had only one landmark: the dam that my grandfather had built, which was a five-minute walk from his property. I was certain that beneath this formidable concrete wall still huddled the power station that once electrified Quebec City.

After hours of wandering, I finally came across a railway bridge where, as a child, I had often gone to play with my cousins. To the left of the bridge, a sign announced a property for sale or rent. I pushed the gate that defended the access to a gravel road and went down a steep hill.

I hoped for a miracle, but time had shattered the icons of my childhood. A Californian-style villa had replaced the old house with its dark shingles and narrow windows, and a vegetable garden was being cultivated where my grandfather had played croquet with ministers.

No one answered my calls. I walked down the lawn to the river. I pulled up my jeans, took off my running shoes and stepped into the cool water of the Jacques-Cartier. Through the murmur of the river, I thought I heard distant voices.

I remembered the curious visitor my grandfather had received in the autumn of 1940. A car had stopped at the bottom of the hill. It had the air force emblem and the Royal Canadian Air Force emblem on it. A driver was opening the door for a stranger in a tweed cape. I wanted to run over to the new guest, but my grandfather held me back by the sleeve so that I would wait with him by the pile of fallen leaves we had just collected. My grandmother came out to observe the scene and slammed the kitchen door. The stranger walked hesitantly forward. Under the brim of the hat, young blue eyes contrasted with the wrinkled face, as impassive as a mask. This old man frightened me, and I turned to my grandfather. But there was nothing reassuring about him either, at that moment. A restrained violence contracted his shoulders and forearms.

The two men greeted each other by name, but without shaking hands.

"Norman.

−Michael", my grandfather replied.

The two men walked onto the pontoon where a motorboat was moored. A heated argument ensued, with the breeze sometimes bringing me English words that I did not understand. The other would threaten, and my grandfather would retort in a harsh tone. Years later I would learn that this irascible old man controlled hundreds of banks, factories and mines, that he made and broke governments. He liked to surround himself with mystery. Almost nothing was known about him, but he was hated. When his death was announced at a baseball game in De Lorimier Park, the crowd cheered wildly.

Parker owned almost everything, but he wanted to exercise an absolute monopoly by enslaving all the rivers in Quebec, at least all those that could profitably run his turbines. He had almost achieved this ambition by the time he visited my grandfather. It was the source of his fabulous wealth: in a country without oil, gas or coal, we depended on the energy of the rivers for heating and lighting.

For nearly half a century, my grandfather, along with a few others, had been struggling with his empire. He had to give up the most lucrative markets, including Montreal. But around Quebec City, with power stations on the Jacques-Cartier and at the Montmorency Falls, and shareholders in Boston and New York, he had established a fortress that held out: Quebec Power.

Parker had learned to tolerate this foreign body, which served as an alibi whenever his opponents spoke of the enactment of anti-trust laws against him. But at the beginning of the war, when he was once again devoting himself to the salvation of the Empire, returning to service with the honorary rank of reserve general, the word of nationalization had begun to circulate again in Parliament. Parker had just discovered that my grandfather was no stranger to this agitation. Normand Talbot was no longer content to demonstrate that a French Canadian could run a hydroelectric company without the rivers spilling their course. He had been called before a commission of inquiry and dared to contradict the figures provided by Montreal Light Heat and Power: in his opinion, it produced its electricity at three times the cost it claimed to the government. But Parker’s rage really erupted when he came across a confidential document which suggested that Normand Talbot should be appointed president of the future national electricity company.

I knew nothing of these events, of course, as I climbed onto the running board to peer inside the car, where a huge black cat was sleeping in the back seat. I knew only one thing: my grandfather was a god. To raise his voice against him in this way would require a devil’s helper, if not Satan himself.

The discussion ended as abruptly as it had begun. My grandfather remained on the pontoon. When he reached me, Parker stopped, winded. He leaned over to me and whispered my name, holding out his hand. I obeyed the silent injunction, and my fingers found themselves trapped for a moment in a giant, rough palm. Parker smiled, and I saw in that withered face eyes that were strangely familiar. He asked me a question and then, when I didn’t understand, repeated it in French: Où est Pam? It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about my grandmother, whom no one called that, except sometimes her husband, with ironic tenderness. I showed him the house: a blind came down, like an eyelid closing. Parker shook his head sadly and walked away to the car.

I think I would have forgotten this visit if it were not indissolubly linked for me to the end of our summers on the Jacques-Cartier. That evening, my grandfather announced that we were returning to Quebec City. This decision was not in itself extraordinary, as we were moving into autumn. But when I looked back at our cottage the next morning, just before getting into the car, I saw it for the last time.

I turned my back on the Californian house and walked along the bank towards the dam. The cawing of the crows accompanied me, as if they had wanted to warn each other of the return of their old enemy: in the past I used to chase them with my slingshot. Soon I saw a huge steel pipe on my left: it was the pen stock that brought the water from the river to the turbines below. To get back to the power station, all I had to do was follow this metal snake. But when I came out of the forest, I found nothing but emptiness where the concrete and brick power once stood, shooting twenty-four thousand volts of lightning along its copper lines towards Quebec. The buildings had not simply been demolished, but carefully razed and then cleared of all materials.

−Is the car in front of my house yours?

I turned around with a start: at the edge of the wood, a wiry blond man was tapping the right leg of his jeans with a dead branch.

-Yes. I would like to rent the property. I used to come here at the time of the dam.

−That was a long time ago. Since it was demolished, the salmon have started to swim up the river again. Do you fish?

−No. I build dams. He made a face.

−Oh, but don’t worry. In Brazil, in India, far away from here.

He invited me to his house for coffee and introduced himself: Alexandre O’Donnell, an aeronautical engineer at the Valcartier base. The end of the Soviet threat had put an end to ballistic research, and he had found a new job in Phoenix. He was due to leave at the end of the month.

He only asked my name when signing the lease.

−Talbot? Are you related to the former owners?

−They were my grandparents.

−In that case, I have something to give you.

I accompanied him to the basement: there, on a workbench, were a dozen boxes overflowing with paperwork. While demolishing the old cottage two years earlier, the workmen had come across these documents hidden in the attic. A quick examination had enabled O’Donnell to see that they were archives, some dating back to the previous century: letters, diaries, official documents, newspaper cuttings.

−Eventually I realized that it belonged to the family who had built the house. But nobody in the county knew how to reach you. So. . .

He offered to leave the documents where they were: I could consult them when I arrived, at the end of the month. But I preferred to take them away immediately. I was so eager to examine them that instead of returning to Montreal, I rented a room in a nearby hotel.

I spent a week reading, leaving my room only at mealtimes. The pieces of the puzzle were there in front of me; it would take a lot of patience to put them together, but in the end, I would know why Parker had become the richest man in the country, how my grandfather had stood up to him for half a century, and why my father had died in the winter of 1941 flying his Spitfire low over the sands of the Libyan desert.

But it was the river that made me decide to tell this story. One evening, sitting in front of it, I had the feeling that it was telling me to forget everything, that the course of time is as irreversible as the current. I don’t know what kind of revolt seized me: I felt the need to stop, even if only for a few hours, this current that is irresistibly dragging us down. I decided to build a dam myself, not of bricks and concrete, but of words.

Part 1

1

When he was ten years old, Stéphane Talbot was afraid of the lightning that he believed was produced when Beelzebub struck Mount Rougemont with his pitchfork and sent out lightning bolts. As summers are particularly stormy in the Richelieu Valley, he frequently ran to hide in the cellar of the family mill. One day in August 1837, his father decided to cure him of these fears. He took him by the hand and went out under big black clouds. Turning their backs on the bucket wheel, they followed the mill channel to the rapids at the end of the slope. The ruins of a French fort, which had been used to block the Richelieu where it widened to form the Chambly Basin, were clearly visible on the other bank.

With his hair and beard bleached by flour, Pierre-Amédée Talbot looked older than his thirty-two years, but the wind, cleaning his face, made him look younger. Thunder rumbled in the distance, as if the sky were clearing its throat. The child took a step to the side to return, but his father held his hand. Far to the west, a flash of lightning drew a branch of fire. Pierre-Amédée began to count in a loud voice. At the count of five, a dry bang reached them.

−Well, lightning has struck in Montreal.

Intrigued, Stéphane asked his father how he could know.

-Because it took five seconds for the sound to reach us.

Look!

Another bolt of lightning had just flashed over the horizon to the east.

-You count!

The child had hardly uttered the number two when a dull roll tore through their eardrums, forcing Pierre-Amédée to scream:

-And where did it fall?

-In Saint-Charles?

-No. Closer. To Saint-Hilaire. And now?

As the bombardment continued, Stéphane took part in the game, forgetting his fear and the rain that was starting to pour. However, he could not hold back a scream at a nearby fireball. Blinded, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he found himself face to face with his father, crouching before him. Pierre-Amédée’s wet hair was falling on his forehead, his beard was dripping onto his canvas apron.

-If you see a flash of lightning, it is already over, as if it had broken out a thousand years ago. It can’t touch you. Do you understand?

Stéphane felt carried away by a strange intoxication: if he could put the distance of a few figures between the lightning and himself, the perils of the world would be irremediably delayed.

The storm was moving away towards the American border. The sun was shining through patches of light here and there in the still dark valley. During the new-found silence, the stubborn grinding of the millstone rose like a call to order.

-Let’s go home!" said the father.

They went up towards the mill, a squat rectangle of gray stone which, with its tireless water wheel, evoked for Stéphane those steamers which had just appeared on the Richelieu.

−The river works for us! But the good king has asked us for something in exchange for our lordship.

This good king, Stéphane knew, was not the one from the English who reigned over Canada, but the one before, who spoke the same language as them.

-We don’t just have to grind the people’s wheat, which is not very hard because the river takes care of it. We also must set an example of courage, and we have to do that ourselves.

Stéphane understood that his father, today, had tried to cure him of a cowardice that would have made him unworthy of the ancestral lordship. He had done it gently, without reproaching or humiliating him.

The child’s chest swelled with love. He hoped to prove that the lesson had paid off. During the next storm, Stephen went out for a walk in the rain. At his mother’s pleading, who feared for his life, he finally returned home, soaking wet. When Pierre-Amédée returned from the village and his wife told him about this madness, he merely smiled.

In the autumn of that year, Lieutenant General Colborne ordered various military maneuvers to calm the Republican dreams that risked costing the English Crown its last possessions in North America. Thus, at dawn on 20 November, two detachments of twenty-five men left the fort at Saint-Jean and set off northwards. Each of them would follow one bank of the Richelieu, and then meet in the evening at Chambly, where they would reinforce the garrison while awaiting new marching orders.

The first column followed the towpath of the future Chambly Canal. Since the work was abandoned in 1834 lacking funds, the waterway dreamed of by the authorities had become nothing more than an interminable muddy trench that had given rise to billions of mosquitoes, more than the Saint-Jean region. The second expedition had to cross the Richelieu on what was called the White Bridge. This seemingly simple operation was delayed for more than an hour because the detachment commander, Colonel William Antony Bowering, could not get along with Henry Blake, who had built the whitewashed wooden bridge to Iberville at his expense. By imposing a toll, Blake intended to keep the venture profitable, and he had no intention of giving the military authorities any discount.

Pressed for time, with his men trampling in the rain, Bowering had to accept the merchant’s exorbitant conditions, especially since the governor had not yet given the army special powers. But Blake refused the demand note offered to him, arguing that these days the papers of the government of Lower Canada served as a torch. The colonel thought furtively of burning his brains, but he ended up offering half the sum, four pounds and eleven shillings, from his pocket.

After a long struggle with his big black beard, curled like an Assyrian’s, Blake agreed to this discount, if he could take part in the expedition as a reserve NCO in the Royal Artillery. And he wanted to take his men and his cannon with him, to show those bastards how to use twelve pounders.

The previous week, patriots who had been denied passage across his bridge had seized the gun stationed near the gatehouse and pointed it at their opponents. The old howitzer had not been used on a battlefield since the War of 1812 against the Americans, but it was working perfectly: its blank charges served to warn the bridge’s patrons that the movable part of the span would soon be raised to allow the passage of a sailing ship. When Blake and his employees saw the blackened mouth ready to spit out the gravel with which the patriots had loaded it, they got out.

The shopkeeper was eager to avenge this humiliation. The colonel had no problem with this, if they did not fire without his order. The detachment could finally cross the Richelieu and advance on the muddy and slippery river road. A squadron of the Volunteer Cavalry led the way ahead of infantrymen from a regiment of Royals. At the rear, Blake’s corps of volunteer artillerymen −six in number, -dragged their cannon and boxes of ammunition under the protection of some of the Queen’s dragoons.

Slush was flying around and blurring the view. This shit is more insidious than Dublin drizzle, thought Second Lieutenant Mervynn Parker, as he felt the big flake that had burst on his neck between his brass helmet and the stiff collar of his red tunic with gold embroidery. His bony face, with gray eyes hidden under sharply defined eyebrows and a beaked nose, did not offer the finesse of beauty, but was attractive for the liveliness of spirit and generosity it expressed.

Parker cursed his posting to this lost corner of the Empire, as devoid of adventure as it was of exotic splendor, and which seemed to him to embody the height of bastardy: neither English nor French, neither rebellious nor submissive, Lower Canada could no more get its elected representatives to vote a budget than it could get out of the limbo of non-existence. And now the whole province was talking about a war that would not be a war, in which the soldiers who risked their lives would get neither glory nor money, but at most a stony wasteland to clear near the American border. Parker understood those of his men who deserted and fled to the United States. He consoled himself with the idea that he would, if he asked, be posted to India, or anywhere else.

−This is a country where you professional soldiers haven’t finished your work," said a reproachful Chief Gunner Blake, who was riding beside him and obviously trying to get to know him.

At Parker’s doubtful look, Blake added:

−Oh, you beat the French, but you left them their lands and their rivers, their churches and their schools, their bishops and their lords. Perhaps it would have been better if you had lost? When I left Manchester, my father told me that I would be landing in a conquered country. What a joke! Everything is still to be done, like in Ireland, if you know what I mean.

-Yes, it is.

Recognizing Mervyn’s accent, Blake frowned: had the Empire really come to rely on Irish soldiers to defend it? In any case, there would always be the genuine British volunteers of the Doric Club to fight to the death. He and his staff sacrificed part of their Sunday off-duty time walking a cannon through the countryside to learn all the secrets of modern artillery. And he, who was accused of purely mercenary aims, supplied his men with the black powder necessary for firing exercises free of charge. Some petty-minded people insinuated that this powder, intended for the canal works, would have been lost anyway, since the site had been closed for three years and did not seem likely to reopen. The contractor smiled at the idea that today he might have the pleasure of shooting those patriots in the Legislative Council who refused to vote a single pound sterling to the governor and his administration, and who was thus blocking the completion of the waterway which was to ensure his fortune.

Behind the two riders, the policeman Paul Leclerc seemed to be asleep, slumped in the back of his cabriolet, whose black bonnet protected him from the rain and prying eyes. Officially, he was in charge of this expedition which allowed him, if necessary, to use force to carry out the arrests decreed by the governor. In fact, he would simply point out the patriots of the region and, if necessary, act as interpreter. The soldiers would do the rest. To underline the insignificance of his role, Leclerc remained stubbornly silent and kept up the deep stupor in which he had been immersed since Saint-Jean’s departure with a shot of gin.

The men skidded on a carpet of dead leaves covered with frost. The tocsin stopped, coming from the nearby church of Saint-Damien. When they entered the village, they found it silent, deserted by its inhabitants. Leclerc, who had only a very loose grip on the reins of his carriage, could not stop any of the rebels. The punitive expedition became a Sunday drive, to the satisfaction of Colonel Bowering, who was rushing to reach the fort at Chambly. There, in addition to the protection of the walls, he would find calm veterans of the Empire.

The colonel regarded phlegm as one of the chief military virtues. If he had to fight the patriots, he wanted to do so with the smallest possible proportion of those hot-headed volunteers who made up half of his current force.

-So, you’re a Catholic," said the shopkeeper. Parker turned to his companion.

-Catholic?" he finally said. I don’t think so. Anglican, like all my family since Cromwell.

Blake concluded that the second lieutenant was descended from one of the Steels Helmets who had broken the Irish revolt in the 17th century. Confident, he became talkative. It was already midafternoon. The army had just passed, on its left, the island of St. Theresa, and was approaching the bubbling, stony rapids of Friar. "The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past," Parker hummed.

−To crush this revolt properly, said the chief gunner, it would be enough for a gunboat to bombard the banks. As the whole population is crowded together on the banks of two or three rivers, that would solve the problem.

−It’s a butcher’s solution, not a soldier’s," said Parker with a grimace of disgust.

Insulted, the other did not open his mouth again. And Mervynn Parker soon had the pleasure of having to gallop, at a sign from the colonel, away from his troublesome companion. Bowering showed him some riders who were following them at the edge of the forest.

−Bring me back some prisoners, Mr. Parker! When we get to the fort, we’ll do some questioning.

−But, Colonel, my men don’t know the area any more than I do, and we risk getting lost in these woods.

−Don’t worry you will have a guide.

Bowering waved his hand slightly and a rider broke away from the vanguard to join them. Dressed in a green cloth jacket and wearing a wide-brimmed black canoe, the young man of about twenty looked Mervynn straight in the eye, with that insolence peculiar to civilians, accentuated by that air of quiet defiance which almost all Iroquois scouts in the service of the British army wore.

−This man is recommended to us by the chief of Kahnawake," said the colonel.

Fresh from Britain, Parker was not keen on the idea of entrusting the fate of his platoon to a Redskin. Cruel and treacherous, that was how his schoolmasters described the Amerindians at the West Which Military Academy. The exception to this rule was the Iroquois, who had been loyal allies of the Crown ever since they exchanged the wampum of friendship with George V. Their support had remained unwavering, even during the English setbacks against the young American republic.

Unable to express his distrust directly, Mervynn resorted to a pretext.

−We are a bit far from his village. I doubt he knows this country well.

The scout answered himself, and in excellent English.

−Do you know what the French called the Richelieu? The river of the Iroquois. Because it was always through here that we arrived to wage war on them. And he remained silent, as if this explanation was enough to refute the other’s objections.

−What is your name?" asked Parker.

−John Baptist Tehostoseroton. But you English can’t pronounce that name. So, call me Big John, as the others do.

−Tehostoseroton?" said Mervynn with a smile and without missing a syllable. But why John the Baptist?

Parker could not hold back a smile.

−So, what should I call you?

−I have taken to knocking out those who refer to me as The Feather.

−Thank you for telling me! So, I’ve made my choice. I’ll call you Tehostoseroton, since I’m apparently the only Englishman who can pronounce it and Big John’s seems a bit too obvious.

The Amerindian smiled at this reference to his height, which was difficult to assess while he remained in the saddle, but which must have been gigantic: his moccasins, which he neglected to put through the stirrups, were almost touching the ground.

−So, Mr. Tehostoseroton, show us why this river was once named after your people.

Parker saluted the colonel and sent his squadron after those peasants who wanted to play soldiers. How many were there, in fact? It was hard to tell from this distance. At least thirty, twice as many as his detachment, but armed with muskets from the last century, pitchforks and rusty French infantry sabers. For the moment, these horsemen were trying to outrun Mervynn and his group by following the road along the bank, but it would be a waste of time with their heavy mounts, which were more suited to ploughing than galloping.

A rise in the ground obscured the French Canadians. Their pursuers passed a stone bridge that arched over a tributary of the Richelieu. When they reached the top of the knoll and looked back to the horizon, they found to their chagrin that the fleeing party had disappeared from the path, evidently into the forest to the right. With his riding crop, Mervynn Parker signaled to their guide to come closer.

−So, Mr. Tehostoseroton, we can now check whether you know these forests as well as the Canadians.

The Iroquois rode slowly, eyes downcast over the mown cornfields, looking for clues as to where exactly the patriots had turned into the thick forest. Red and yellow halos still lingered in the dark mass of bare trees. Mervynn ordered his men to dismount and give the horses a rest. He himself sat down on a mossy rock and removed his helmet, whose copper had cooled to the point of burning where it touched his skin, on the back of his neck.

It was then that he noticed the water mill they had passed earlier, after the bridge, without his having paid the slightest attention to it. The majestic water wheel was resting, just like them. It was already waiting for the spring, six months later, to give it the impetus of its pulsating waters by a wooden canal mounted on piles, which caused the small tributary of the Richelieu to drift towards it. The miller’s house, extending and exceeding the mill itself by one floor, had a thick stone façade with three rows of windows under a double slate roof.

The house seemed to have been there forever, as solid as the rest of the rocky landscape from which it barely stood out. But also, paradoxically, it seemed to move forward, driven from behind by its great wheel like a steamer, but moving through time rather than space. Whoever owned such a house did not have to know the anguish of the nomadic and ephemeral riders, whom the slightest setback of wind or fortune would dissipate forever from the face of the earth, like a morning mist. On the contrary, this indestructible vessel would allow the lord of the house and his descendants to cross the centuries, as their ancestors had done.

Without thinking about it, Mervynn took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and began to draw a quick and accurate, but not very artistic, sketch. The British Army encouraged its officers to produce drawings in this way, as they went on expeditions, which, together with the innumerable topographical surveys, enabled the staff in London to plan its overseas campaigns with excellent knowledge of the terrain.

Just as the second lieutenant was closing his notebook and about to give the order to remount, one of the lower windows lit up, and a woman appeared in it. Holding a lamp in her hand, she approached the glass, no doubt to look beyond her reflection to the point of origin of the shouts and neighs which had attracted her attention. Her breath fogged up one of the panes, and with each exhalation hid part of her face, as serene and beautiful as that of the medieval Madonna which Mervynn, brought up in the virile and biblical images of Protestantism, secretly envied the Catholics when he entered one of their churches in Dublin. He was never to forget that house, and especially the singular impression it made on him, with its unknown woman with long black hair. Perhaps it was possible, despite all he had believed up to that point, to escape the common, slack-jawed cavalcade of death.

−Everyone in the saddle!" he shouted after Tehostoseroton, with a grand gesture of the arm, had indicated where the rebel trail began across the fields.

2

Meanwhile, under the direction of Colonel Bowering, the infantrymen had continued on the road which led away from the Richelieu. Where it narrowed between two rocks, a huge cart full of boulders had been overturned. This obstacle blocked the path of the cannon and Leclerc’s cabriolet. Bowering left a few men behind to help Blake and the gunners clear the road, and he continued with the main body of troops.

By the time we had made our way, it was getting light, and we were still an hour away from Chambly. The mood of the troop and its senior officer, Blake, was foul. Soon a rider joined them. He stopped only for a moment to ask them where the colonel was. He announced that at Saint-Denis the rebels had killed an officer who was trying to escape. Then he set off again at full speed.

At this news, a strong emotion seized Blake. At first, he thought he was boiling with rage, but with weak knees and a dry mouth he had to admit to himself that he was trembling with fear. He blamed Bowering for depriving him of cavalry support, but especially that incompetent Leclerc, whose grotesque snoring in the back of the cabriolet would almost be enough to make them notice.

The little party set out to climb a hill, from the top of which the gunner hoped to catch a glimpse of the black, hexagonal mass of the fortress of Chambly on the other bank. But a single dwelling stood out, half a kilometer away, against the cloudy sky which the full moon paled. Its stone enclosure almost blocked the road, on the other side of a narrow bridge that spanned a ravine. No windows, but loopholes that would allow the small party to be shot at almost point-blank range when they were engaged over the abyss.

Blake feared that the patriots would set a trap. He signaled a halt, dismounted and climbed into the carriage, where he proceeded to shake Constable Leclerc unmercifully. The drunkard finally opened his eyes.

−Already at the Talbot! I have to go and arrest Pierre-Amédée.

Blake had these words translated and concluded that he was in front of one of the headquarters of the rebellion. The idea of returning to St. John’s came to mind, but he rejected it, not for fear of disobeying orders, but because he would have to walk all night. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to cross the bridge where he could already see himself falling, riddled with bullets.

For months, the gurgling of the water, the creaking of the wooden wheels, the grinding of the millstones had enveloped and lulled Stéphane Talbot. But all this tumult had come to an abrupt halt two weeks earlier, when his father had closed the sluice gates of the canal, as winter approached. The mill and its adjoining dwelling were no longer living like a ship on the high seas, but resting in dry dock in a gloomy late autumn where winter was now expected. For a few days, the din of the men who filled the house and spoke loudly as they sheathed their weapons had concealed the ambient silence which, that evening, was tightening its grip.

The fire hummed in the hearth, where the dry faggots crackled like firecrackers. At the kitchen table, the child was following his mother’s index finger under a sentence in the alphabet book in which he was learning to read, but all he could think of was his father, who had left at dawn with his hunting rifle after embracing his family with a solemn air. He had wanted to go and fight with him, but Pierre-Amédée had told him that he had to look after the house, Catherine and his younger brother, Marcel.

A thunderclap erupted, unusual for this time of year.

-Look, it’s raining again," said her mother.

The bang had woken Marcel, who was upstairs crying. His mother went upstairs to console the boy, and Stephen put on his coat and went out to watch the lightning.

Towards the north, a few clouds were moving quietly under the full moon. He moved away from the mill to get a better view of the sky. The horizon suddenly lit up, at the top of the hill. The phenomenon the child observed contravened the rules taught by his father, since the noise, deafening, had sounded at the same time as the lightning. From the woods behind the house, he suddenly heard the rustling of branches. All the terror that Stephen had managed to exorcise suddenly returned to him, more vivid than ever. But instead of running away, he began to run towards the small stone bridge, certain that he was going to meet Beelzebub himself. His father had lied to him, to reassure him. And indeed, a break in the clouds illuminated what looked like a group of demons gesticulating on the road to Iberville. They were dressed in red, with metal-plate shakos topped with a white feather. One of them held a torch, which he lowered towards a