THE MAKING OF MONSIEUR LESCARBOT’S BALLAD
By William Holloway, Jr.
T was a stormy evening of March, 1611. All day snow had fallen in a white whirlwind on Port Royal, winning one by one its points of vantage, and submerging each in turn relentlessly, till now the tiny colony had almost vanished in the drifts.
Signs of outline there were none. The great stone gateway at the southeast, carven above with the fleur-de-lis, was dim and shapeless even to the sentry in the guard-room beside it; the bastion to the southwest, its four cannon quite buried, melted vaguely into the darkness. Snow lay everywhere. The gabled houses were turned into white misshapen monsters, and strange fantastic mounds stretched across the Square. Even the flag of France in the centre, beneath which the Seigneur of Port Royal stood each year to greet his vassals, had suffered with the rest, the wind having wrapped it tightly about its staff, and the interminable flakes blotted out its lilies.
It was ten by the clock, and the colonists long since abed, so that, save for the blink of the sentry’s candle, a stranger passing by the guard-room would have seen no sign of life. But that was only because a giant drift hid the great hall of the seigneurie from sight, for there a few of them were still awake and drinking deep, in honor of the coming to Acadie of the Duc de Montpelier, cousin of the king.
Within the long wainscoted room, Poutrincourt, Seigneur of Port Royal, sat musing before a huge log fire, with his thin white hands spread out to the mellow heat. His face, delicately contoured and crossed by many lines, gleamed with a ruddy hue while the flames roared up the high-arched chimney; when they sank low again, it had the likeness of an ashen mask against the blackness of his silken doublet. He was clad entirely in black, even to his ruffles. His head was sunken on his breast. And thus he sat gazing at the fire, his shadow on the wall behind keeping time grotesquely to the leaping flames.
To his left Marc Lescarbot, the poet of the colony, listened across a bowl of muscat to one of Imbert’s endless stories. He was tall and thin, with dreamy gray eyes; there were girlish dimples on his cheeks.
Just now, however, his face was flushed and his fingers played nervously about his girdle, for Imbert, after a fashion of his own, was emphasizing the narrative with reckless flourishings of his naked sword. But even then, with the point almost upon his breast, Monsieur Lescarbot by no means lost his urbanity, for his smile, albeit a trifle anxious, was still most wondrous sweet. As for Imbert, the story he was telling had excited him beyond control. It was as if his wild sea-roving days had returned. His black eyes flashed fiercely from out his red, scarred face; his rubicund lips were protruded; his massive left hand was twined in the coarse black hair that overhung his forehead. As the firelight danced athwart him he seemed to Lescarbot, always fanciful, much like the gods on the bowls of the Indian lobster-claw pipes, so broad was his short, squat body and so flaming red his face.
On the right at a small table the Seigneur’s son, Biencourt, and the Duc de Montpelier played at dice; the one eagerly, as if mindful of his growing pile of pistoles, the other in listless unconcern. And this difference the appearance of the two enhanced, for while Biencourt was tall, blue-eyed, and smooth and fresh of face, the duc was short and dark, with glittering black eyes and a pale, wearied countenance. And whereas Biencourt was bravely dressed in doublet and hose of soft blue satin, the duc wore a black velvet that harmonized sombrely with his paleness and his listlessness. He had but that day reached Acadie from France, yet the sight of the forest life about him, the fur-clad lackeys and strange Indian relics, seemed scarcely to stir his pulses. Instead he sat in silence by the table, carelessly toying with his white, ringed hands.
The round ended and Biencourt swept in his gains. “Doubles?” he cried.