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beach sand. But he is optimistic, even cheerful in the face of our difficulties, although his range of verbal expression is limited to bromides he picked up reading popular books of chivalry and romance. I shall never abandon you. All is not lost. The sun will come out tomorrow. Is that corner true, or do I need to scrape more sand off the centrecourt? His conversation reminds me of what he is not and, tangentially, why I fell in love with him.
    And I wonder about a country founded by such disparate heroes as Richard and the Sieur de Roberval, who, if combined, still might not amount to a real man. Poor Canada, destined always to be on the edge of things, inimical to books and writing, plagued by insects in the summer and ice in the winter, populated by the sons and daughters of ambitious, narrow, pious, impecunious Protestants and inarticulate but lusty Catholic tennis players, not to mention the rest of the riff-raff on the expedition, drawn, by the King’s order, from the prisons of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen and Dijon — thieves, abortionists, frauds, panders, whores, footpads, assassins, along with the destitute and the witless, every kind of rogue except heretics, traitors and counterfeiters who were deemed unsuitable to the dignity of our pious enterprise. (I watched the future citizens of Canada troop into Saint-Malo, manacled together and under guard. Among them walked a pale, terrified girl, about fifteen, innocent of any crime, who for love had herself chained to one of the felons, determined to share his fate. Her name was Guillemette Jansart. He used her abominably, but she would not abandon him. Her thin face haunts my dreams as if it were my own.)
    On the third day, I make a circuit of the island, which takes upwards of three hours at low tide, when I can tie my skirts up to my waist and scramble around the ring of barren rocks that surround the pine-choked interior. Everywhere I step, there are bird droppings. Thousands take flight every time I come suddenly around a rock. Though, having little experience of human beings, the birds quickly settle back to their perches. At night, their gabbling and shrieking does sound like a parliamentof demons. But as far as I can tell, there are no actual demons, monsters or mythical beings hereabouts, nor savages, friendly or otherwise, nor game (aside from the squirrels and mice which eat my books).
    I have practised in my head words of greeting and general conversation, gleaned from hastily scribbled word lists M. Cartier once gave me to copy, to prepare myself should we encounter an inhabitant. The native word for girl is agnyaquesta. For friend, aguyase. Pubic hair, aggonson. Look at me, quatgathoma. The moon, assomaha. Give me supper, quazahoa quatfream. Testicles, xista. My mother, adhanahoe. Let us go to bed, casigno agnydahoa. Many thanks, adgnyeusce. With no one about to correct me, I congratulate myself on my pronunciation and imagine becoming a considerable social success when contact is finally made with the indigenous peoples. I try to teach the others. I tell Richard he must speak to me in the savage tongue or not at all. All is not lost, he says. I will never abandon you.
    By the fifth evening, we keep a fire burning day and night. I discover that plastering my skin with mud discourages the insects (some of them). In firelight, we look like ghosts, our skin pale ochre from the dust. I make my bed on a mattress of pine needles and moss, which are lumpy for sleeping on though an improvement over bare rocks and fragrant to the senses. The three of us sleep in a huddle like a litter of pigs, Richard and Bastienne on either side of me. Over our heads, I have arranged some branches and a piece of sail. I make Richard take an after-noon from court construction to teach me the use of the arquebus. I mount the three weapons on rocks, ready to shoot in the general direction of the forest, from which I assume any attack will develop (and in case my command