Annie Proulx - Barkskins

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Within eighteen months he had fathered a daughter and a premature stillborn son. Duquet thought constantly of that lost son, and it seemed everywhere he turned he saw rugged boys. Men his age were accompanied by stout half-grown youths shaped to their fathers’ wills and callings. Particularly was he irked by the example of William Wentworth, a growing power in New Hampshire whose wife produced sons as a shingle maker rived the shakes from a bolt of cedar. With nine sons what could Wentworth not do? He, Duquet, needed sons badly, and said so to Captain Verdwijnen one evening.

“You are in a hurry with sons as in all else,” said the captain. “If you cannot wait until God grants your wish you might get some ready-made sons from the Weeshuis, that place of orphans, as many as King Priam should you wish. Indeed, I believe Cornelia is on the committee that operates the Weeshuis. You might speak of it to her.” He lit his pipe and looked at Duquet. “And let her choose the boys. Her affection will then be greater. She can see to their schooling, and you can have them trained in business matters or for the sea.”

Duquet was excited by this idea of adopting ready-made sons, and though he did not much wish to leave the choice to Cornelia, he recognized the value of Captain Verdwijnen’s diplomatic suggestion.

Cornelia, who was on a committee that oversaw the operation of a home for aged women, not the Weeshuis, warmed to the idea of doing orphans a good turn. She said she would be pleased to choose several boys for Duquet’s inspection and final decision. And so in 1713 Jan and Nicolaus, both nine years old, became Duquet’s sons and immediately began their schooling and a course in manners and correct behavior that Cornelia wished might rub off on Duquet. He had prepared a speech before he saw the children.

“Many boys would give their right hands for the opportunities that are being given to you. You have a chance to help build one of the great fortunes of the world, a chance to remove yourselves from the street mire. I, too, was a boy of the slums, not even so fortunate as to be taken into an orphanage, and you see I have removed myself from the mud.”

As sometimes happens after children are adopted, late that year Cornelia gave birth to a healthy, fat boy, little Outger, named for his godfather, Outger Verdwijnen. Duquet was as satisfied as he had ever been but could no longer put off his return to Boston and New France. Then, on the way to La Rochelle, a lightning bolt of an idea came to him: why stop at three sons? In La Rochelle could he not choose a poor but promising boy from the streets, a ragged boy as he himself had been, wild to escape poverty and a dismal future? He would find this boy himself and take him to New France that he might learn something of the forests of the New World.

He wrote to Cornelia and Piet Roos and told them of his find, a clever boy of eleven, Bernard, who was now with him in New France. He would bring him to Amsterdam when next he traveled there — likely in the coming autumn — that he might know his mother, his brothers and sister and be properly schooled.

“You see,” said Captain Verdwijnen to Piet Roos. “Perhaps he is developing a kind heart.” Piet Roos kept silent.

Back in New France, which people more and more called Canada after the old Iroquois word kanata, Duquet was everywhere, examining, prying, measuring, observing and calculating. He had sent Bernard, the boy he found in La Rochelle, to Cornelia for education and manners. Limbs and low-quality hardwood waste became high-quality firewood and every autumn he packed twenty wagons full for the Kébec market and for Paris when he could charter available ships with the promise of a good return cargo of tea or coffee or textiles, spices or china, but without the sure promise of a rich return cargo, let the Parisians freeze for all he cared. Leasing Piet Roos’s ships was well enough, but he needed ships of his own. What fortune if only he could find a competent shipyard in New France. He had heard of some Kébec entrepreneurs’ discussion with the French government but it had come to nothing.

“You know,” he said to Dred-Peacock at one of their Boston meetings, “it is so without hope I fear I must start my own shipyard.”

Dred-Peacock mentioned other possibilities — Boston or Portsmouth on the Piscataqua or even the growing coastal ports in Maine. “You will get a good ship made with local timber at a low price in one of those ports. And do you not know that the colonists build ships especially designed to carry the great pine masts to London? Well, then.”

And yet he delayed. The conversation veered from owning his own ships to the business of selling timber to shipyards. Duquet insisted he wanted English customers.

Dred-Peacock shrugged and connected him to an English shipbuilder and a new but promising yard on the river Clyde in Scotland, now joined to England by the Act of Union in ’07.

“Regard the map, sir,” he said, impatient with Duquet’s hesitation. “It’s the closest point to the colonies — the briefest sailing time. There are signs of success on the Clyde but they need good timbers. They will pay for them. It is an opportunity that cannot be neglected.”

Duquet took the plunge and Dred-Peacock took a goodly share of the profits, which increased year by year. There were good precedents in New France for trading with the enemy — Brûlé, Radisson, des Groseilliers had set the pattern — but arrangements with the English and Scots were at first secret, complex, expensive, even dangerous. It took fifty acres of oak to build one seventy-four-gun warship and in the hardwood stands along the rivers of New France the forests began to fall to Duquet’s ambitions. But he felt hampered by Kébec’s distance from the money pots of the world.

Never did Dred-Peacock present his ill-formed face to Duquet in Kébec; always Duquet made the trip to Boston. As they sat over their papers and receipts in the Sign of the Red Bottle near the wharves, the inn they favored, Dred-Peacock had some advice.

“Duquet, it is past time for you to consider shifting your business operations to Boston, to the colonies.” He signaled to the waiter for another plate of oysters.

“Oh, I think on it,” said Duquet, swirling the ale in his tankard until it slopped over the rim as if that settled the question. “I think on it often. I am half of a mind to do so, sir.” He had observed more hardwoods grew in the south, that great meadows and clearings made both settlement and transportation easier. Massachusetts Bay bustled with shipping. It was the better place for a man of business. And yet.

Dred-Peacock looked at the spilled ale with distaste. Duquet was an ill-bred boor, quite unable to even discern the picturesque, much less appreciate it. It was only his fantastic ability to make money that interested Dred-Peacock. “Damme, sir, it is quite time you acted. Finish with thinking and act. Every day poxy whoresons of millmen push into the forests and gain control over the land. In Maine there are countless white pine mast trees. You know there is a damned great market for these if you can get them on a ship bound for Scotland, England, or even Spain or Portugal.” The dish came, three great succulent oysters gleaming wetly, each as large as a man’s hand.

Duquet nodded but his face was sour. Dred-Peacock went on, his voice vibrating. “Where there is a market and money, the businessman must act. And all this will be immeasurably easier if you operate from Boston rather than bloody Kweebeck. And with my help these affairs can be managed.” He took up the first oyster.

Still Duquet hesitated. He had valuable connections in New France and a lifetime dislike of the English language. Dred-Peacock babbled on.