Barkskins by Annie Proulx Page A

bending and creeping along close to the walls as he had done in childhood. Relentless hunger and chilblains had been his childhood lot. Of his father he remembered beatings and curses, and at the last, a pair of receding legs.
    His eyes burned from the smoke of greasy street fires and he thought of the clear rivers of Kébec, of the forest air, and with these cleansing memories he regained himself. Yet he was mortified that his clothes and person announced him as a country bumpkin in French streets.
    In New France he and the Trépagny brothers had been skillful with war hatchets but he saw no hatchets on the streets of La Rochelle. He went to the armorers and purchased a Walloon sword, ambidextrous, flexible. He saw many of these on the street. It was a gentleman’s sword. One day, he swore silently, he would order fine garments and a full, rich wig.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    In the area between rue des Petits-Bacs and rue Admyrauld, where the merchants congregated daily, he talked with a sallow wool merchant whose greasy hands trembled; when Duquet casually mentioned China, the merchant said his cousin had been a sailor pressed into three years’ service on a Dutch voyage from Hoorn to Guangzhou, that the English called Canton.
    â€œHe said it was a very long journey to a horrible place,” and the merchant passed back Duquet’s brandy bottle. “Very strong stink. Food? Affreux! Foreigners not allowed in the city, but penned up in a horrible foreigners’ quarter. He prayed to return home. And they despised the ship’s cargo, which was horses, the captain having heard the Chinese longed for them horribly. But in Canton the go-between merchant said China now had secured its own horses from the north. So the trip was for nothing. And on the return journey the captain was so angry he pushed all those horrible worthless horses into the sea. They could see them swimming after the ship for a long time.”
    â€œOh, horrible,” said Duquet, at once planning to make his way to Amsterdam or Hoorn. How many times had Forgeron told him the men of the Low Countries had a talent for business?
    â€œStay away from the East India Company ships. They are bound by hard rules and the captains take blood oaths to uphold them. It is a horrible, grasping company that allowed no competition for many years. Only East India ships were allowed to traverse the horrible Strait of Magellan. Now the Cape Horn route has been discovered their grasp is broken, but the old animosities linger. You must choose a captain with care.”

11
Dutch sea captain
    W ithout exception every ship captain he approached was exceedingly suspicious, for trade routes and overseas contacts were under constant threat by spies, and Duquet was immediately and repeatedly identified as a French spy. Only after detailed descriptions of the forests of Kébec and the rigors of the fur trade—as well as a flash of the marten skin he had begun to carry as proof of his identity—could he prove his disinterested innocence in matters of trade route secrets.
    In the Rock and Shoal, a sailors’ tavern on the waterfront, he noticed a group of convivial men who seemed all to be captain mariners. They spoke in a mixture of languages, mostly German, French, Portuguese, Flemish and Dutch, and seemed to be placing bets. One, whom he heard called Captain Verdwijnen, a fair-faced man with a large nose and scarred cheek, wheaten wisps of unshorn hair sticking out from the edges of his ill-seated wig, particularly caught his eye because of his ceaseless motions and apparent sanguine temperament. Duquet edged closer to the group until he was nearly among them, grasping at half-understood words in the Babel of discourse. After a long time Verdwijnen made his excuses to the company and said he had to get back to his ship. Duquet followed him out into the dark street. The captain suddenly spun around and flashed a dagger at