A Great Reckoning Read online

  She hadn’t. Never did. It was a secret she kept even now.

  The girl had nothing else to offer and her break was up. She went back behind the counter and Amelia watched her running from customer to coffee machine to doughnut counter.

  Huifen pointed to her mouth and Amelia quickly picked up a thin napkin and wiped away some strawberry jam and icing sugar.

  They sat in the sun streaming through the window and looked at the parking lot of the Tim Hortons in Cowansville. Sun bounced and magnified off the ice and snow and the puddles where it had melted. Outside, the world was brilliant silver and gold and diamonds, and inside the doughnut joint it smelled of yeast and sugar and coffee and tasted of an as yet unmarred childhood.

  “What now?” Amelia asked.

  “Professor Charpentier said this was made by someone who knew how to do maps,” said Huifen.

  “A cartographer,” said Amelia. “I wonder who was mapping the area back then. Around 1900.”

  “I guess someone must’ve been,” said Huifen.

  The two young women looked at each other.

  Maps were just something they took for granted, never thinking someone had had to actually walk the land and survey every hill and river.

  “Is there a government office of cartography?” Huifen asked, picking up her iPhone once again, as did Amelia. It was her generation’s compass, how they navigated through life.

  They silently clicked away, in an unofficial race for the answer.

  “There’s the Geological Survey,” said Amelia. “They do maps.”

  “That’s federal,” said Huifen. “Go further.”

  Amelia did and looked up a minute later. “The Commission de toponymie du Québec?”

  Huifen nodded. “I think that should be our next stop. There’s a government building here in Cowansville.”

  “But it says here the toponymie department only started in the 1970s.”

  “Read further.”

  Amelia did. “Oh.”

  “Oh,” said Huifen. “Let’s go.”

  They folded up the map and left, waving to the young woman behind the counter, who was gracefully and rapidly moving from station to station.

  Huifen drove while Amelia punched the coordinates of the government office into the GPS, asking it to choose the quickest route.

  Their research, albeit superficial, had uncovered that while the Commission de toponymie had only existed since 1977, it had been the job of successive government employees to map Québec towns, villages, mountains, lakes and rivers and to give them their official names since 1912.

  * * *

  “You wanna know who owned a building in the early 1900s?” asked the town clerk in Saint-Rémy.

  The two young men nodded.

  “Why?”

  Nathaniel could see Jacques bristling at the question and jumped in.

  “A school project,” he said. “History of the area. They’re public record, aren’t they?”

  The clerk admitted they were. “But good luck finding the information.”

  “Why?”

  “Our property records go back two hundred years or more,” he said. “But they’re not all on computer.”

  “Then where are they?” asked Nathaniel.

  “On cards. In the basement.”

  “Of course they are,” said Jacques.

  The clerk opened the wooden door and turned on the light. A single dirty bulb hung by a suspiciously old cord from the ceiling, lighting the stairs down.

  “Keep your coats on,” he advised.

  “It’s cold?” asked Nathaniel.

  “Among other things. You might want gloves too.” He made a face and all but crossed himself as the two young men descended the wooden steps.

  They stood on the dirt floor, wiping real or imagined cobwebs from their faces. Rows of gunmetal gray filing cabinets lined the cinder-block walls, containing the records of ownership. Somewhere in there was a card telling them who’d owned the bistro when it had been a private home.

  And that would tell them who’d made the map, and sealed it in the wall.

  “Shit,” said Jacques, surveying the banks of records.

  * * *

  “You’ve got the wrong department,” said the receptionist.

  She was middle-aged and tired. The only members of the public who ever came into her office were there to complain. And seemed to blame her personally for their tax bills, the potholes in their roads, blackouts, and one mother screamed at her for twenty minutes because her child had measles.

  “We want to find out who made this map,” said Huifen, pushing it across the worn counter toward the weary woman.

  “And I want you to understand,” she said, slowly pushing it back. “I. Don’t. Care.”

  “But the Commission de toponymie has an office here, doesn’t it?” asked Amelia.

  The clerk looked at her with distaste, then turned back to the least objectionable of the two. The Chinese Girl.

  “The commission puts names on places,” she explained. “It doesn’t map them.”

  “But it used to, didn’t it?” asked Amelia, but now the receptionist refused to even look in her direction.

  “Can we speak to the person anyway?” asked Huifen, and beamed at the receptionist, who was impervious to good humor.

  “Fine.”

  “Yeah,” said Amelia. “I bet you are.”

  The clerk picked up the phone and jabbed her finger at a button.

  “Someone here to speak to you. No, I’m not kidding. Some Chinese Girl. Stop laughing, it’s true.”

  Hanging up, she waved at the waiting area, then turned back to her desk.

  “I’ve become the Invisible Woman,” said Amelia, as they took their seats.

  “That must be a new experience for you,” said Huifen, and Amelia smiled.

  After a few minutes of waiting, Huifen turned to Amelia. “Why did you apply to the academy? You don’t exactly fit in.”

  “And you do? Chinese Girl.”

  Huifen smiled. “Ahh, but Chinese Girl with Gun fits in everywhere.”

  Amelia laughed, and the receptionist looked over, disapproving.

  “I can’t actually remember why I applied,” said Amelia. “I must’ve been drunk or stoned.”

  The landlady, fat legs splayed, cigarette hanging loosely between her yellowed fingers. And on the TV, a smartly dressed woman, feminine and poised.

  Amelia saw her two futures, right there.

  “I didn’t think I’d be accepted,” she admitted. “And you’re right, I don’t fit in. Anywhere. Might as well not fit in there.”

  “With the academy, that’s not exactly a bad thing,” said Huifen. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “What? When? I am listening to you.”

  “I don’t mean now, I mean at that first party, in the Commander’s rooms. I told you to stay away from him.”

  “I didn’t know who you meant, the Commander or Leduc.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  Amelia nodded. She wished with all her heart she’d known then what she knew now.

  “Do you have any idea who killed him?” she asked Huifen.

  “The Duke? No.”

  “But you must’ve known him well.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “You seemed chummy.”

  “Chummy? With the Duke?” said Huifen. “No one was chummy with him. Like you, we did as we were told. Were you ever alone with him?”

  “No.”

  But the Goth Girl colored, and Huifen knew that was a lie. She hesitated, then touched Amelia’s hand. Lightly. As though a moth had landed, then taken off.

  Just then the receptionist stood up and looked over. Seeing the gesture, she shook her head. It was worse than she’d thought.

  “He’ll see you now. Down the hall, first door on the right.”

  * * *

  “Merde,” said Jacques.

  He leaned over the open drawer and looked down the long line of file cabinets marching into the darkness.

  “How’re we ever going to find the records on that property? These aren’t even in chronological order. They’re alphabetical. It’s fucking crazy.”

  Nathaniel didn’t disagree.

  To make matters worse, the township didn’t recognize the village of Three Pines as a separate entity. There were absolutely no references to it.

  And to make matters even worse, Jacques was getting antsy. Bored. Impatient. And Nathaniel knew what that meant. Once he stopped berating the filing system, Jacques would go looking for another target.

  “You’re right,” said Nathaniel. “Since they’re alphabetical, we could look up the names of the boys until we find one that fits.”

  Nathaniel brought out his iPhone and tapped it a few times until he came to the photographs he’d taken of the memorial window in the chapel and the names below it.

  “The stained-glass boy is probably one of them. If we look up the family names, we might find someone who lived in that building in 1914. Good idea.”

  Jacques nodded, either not realizing, or not admitting, that the idea hadn’t been his. He had, in fact, been thinking about how dark and cold it was. And wondering what was in the corners. And what was dangling overhead. And how to get out if there was a fire. Or an earthquake. Or a huge spider that had lived down here, undisturbed, for years …

  Something brushed against his face and he jerked away, flailing his arms and wiping wildly at his head. Putting his tuque and gloves back on, he grudgingly got to work.

  Down the wall, Nathaniel’s bare head was leaning over the files while his fingers worked nimbly, almost frantically, through the cards.

  * * *

  Monsieur Bergeron, the manager of toponymie for the region, was a balding, precise, desiccated man. His office was also bald and precise, with no personal items at all, except for a dusty Plexiglas plaque congratulating him on thirty years of service to Québec. The entire wall behind him was taken up by a detailed map of the area.

  The dry little man hooked his fingers on the edge of his desk like a little bird and sat forward.

  He gave an audible sigh, then looked from the map to the Chinese Girl and the Goth Girl.

  “A Turcotte.” He sighed again. “Where did you find this?”

  “In a wall, in Three Pines,” said Huifen.

  “Where?”

  “The village,” said Amelia.

  He looked momentarily lost, then dropped his eyes to the map.

  “Turcotte,” said Huifen. “Is that the person who made it?”

  “Oui, oui,” said Monsieur Bergeron dreamily.

  “How do you know?” asked Amelia.

  She was both amused and annoyed by the reaction of this man. He seemed to be not only absorbed in the map, but absorbed by it. As though he’d fallen between the thin topographical lines and gotten trapped there. Happily.

  “It’s unmistakable, isn’t it?” he said, with all the confidence of an expert who was surprised that everyone couldn’t see what was so obvious to him. “May I touch it?”

  The young women nodded, not mentioning that just a few minutes earlier a jelly doughnut had touched it.

  He reached out, letting his thin finger hover over the paper, as though it might bring the map to life, like Michelangelo’s Adam in the Sistine Chapel.

  When his finger did finally descend, it was an act so delicate, so intimate, Amelia felt she should look away.

  She was about to tell him it was just a photocopy, not the original, but decided not to. This man knew that perfectly well. And he was still smitten.

  “Turcotte was a mapmaker?” asked Huifen.

  “Not just a mapmaker. Antony Turcotte was the father of all of Québec’s modern maps. He created a department dedicated to mapping and naming the province. That was back in the early 1900s. He was a giant. He recognized the connection a people have to where they live. That it isn’t just land. Our history, our cuisine, our stories and songs spring from where we live. He wanted to capture that. He gave les habitants their patrimoine.”

  Monsieur Bergeron had used the old word, the slang word, for the inhabitants of Québec. Les habitants. Over the years it had become almost an insult, conjuring images of lumbering rustics.

  But this man, and Antony Turcotte before him, used the word correctly. Les habitants had tended the land. They’d cleared it, farmed it, built homes and businesses. They’d lived on it and loved it. They were born on it and buried in it.

  Without les habitants there would be no Québec.

  But he’d also used another word, a word charged with meaning for the Québécois. Their patrimoine. Their heritage. Their language, their culture, their inheritance. Their land.

  “He lived in Montréal but decided to move down here, to the Townships,” said Bergeron. “He set up cartography offices around the province, but chose to map this area himself. I think he must’ve fallen in love with the Townships and its history.”

  “Don’t you mean geography?” asked Amelia.

  “They’re the same thing.” The middle-aged bureaucrat looked across his desk at her. “Antony Turcotte knew that you can’t separate history and geography.”

  “I can,” muttered Amelia. “So could my teachers.”

  “Then they were fools.” The bald statement was made all the more forceful by its simplicity. “A place’s history is decided by its geography. Is the terrain mountainous? If so, it’s harder to invade. The people are more independent, but also isolated. Is it surrounded by water? If so, it’s probably more cosmopolitan—”

  “But easier to conquer, like Venice,” said Amelia, picking up on what he meant.

  “Oui,” said Monsieur Bergeron, turning an approving eye on the Goth Girl. “Venice gave up trying to defend herself and decided to open her doors to all comers. As a result, it became a hub of commerce, of knowledge and art and music. Because of its position, geographically, it became a gateway. Geography decides if you’re the invaded or the invader.”

  “Look at the Romans,” said Amelia. “And later the British.”

  “Oui, c’est ca,” said Monsieur Bergeron, looking slightly manic now. “Britain was invaded over and over, until it realized its weakness was also its strength. Britannia turned her efforts to ruling the waves and so, in turn, ruled the world. That wouldn’t have happened had it not been an island nation.”

  “Geography is history,” said Amelia, taken with the idea. She loved history, but had given absolutely no thought to geography.

  “But what does that mean for Québec?” Huifen asked.

  “Stuck between two powerful forces?” asked Monsieur Bergeron. “The Americans to the south and the British to the west and east? There was no defense militarily. But one way to defend the patrimoine was to map it and name it.”

  “And claim it,” said Huifen.

  “There’re earlier maps, of course. Most famously, Champlain’s maps of New France and David Thompson’s maps. Antony Turcotte is less well known, but more beloved, because he didn’t make maps for governments or conquest or commerce. He made them for the people.”

  He looked at the paper, as though the map was the man.

  “This”—his hand hovered over the map—“isn’t one of his official maps, of course. It looks like one he made for fun. It actually looks like an orienteering map.”

  “We think so too,” said Huifen. “You know about orienteering?”

  “Of course. But this is different from even those old maps.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, the snowman, for one thing.” Monsieur Bergeron smiled as he looked at it. “This looks like a sort of hybrid. A real map showing all the topography though without place names, and an orienteering map, showing the man-made structures like stone walls and mills. But then there’re those whimsical touches, like the three little pine trees that appear to be playing. It must have been a map made for his own amusement.”

  Monsieur Bergeron leaned in even closer, as though the paper might whisper to him.

  “Or maybe it was made for his son.” Huifen laid her iPhone on the desk. “We think this is him.”

  The stained-glass boy appeared to be walking into the map.

  Monsieur Bergeron shifted his gaze to the iPhone. “A remarkable expression. Where was this taken?”

  “It’s part of a stained-glass window, a memorial window, for those killed in the First World War,” said Amelia.

  Monsieur Bergeron grunted. “Poor boy.” Then he looked up. “What makes you think this is Turcotte’s son?”

  Huifen enlarged the image and Bergeron’s eyes widened when he saw the map just sticking out from the soldier’s knapsack.

  “Mais, c’est extraordinaire,” said Monsieur Bergeron, then he shook his head. “When you think of the lives lost for inches of soil.”

  He tsked three times, disapproving of war and the slaughter of youth.

  Amelia got up and walked to the huge map behind him. Her finger followed the roads and rivers, and stopped in a valley.

  She turned. “There’s no Three Pines.”

  “There must be,” said Huifen, going over. “I can see it being forgotten by the GPS and commercial maps, but this’s the official map, right?”

  Monsieur Bergeron got up and turned to face it. “If it’s not here, it doesn’t exist.”

  “But of course it does, we’re staying there,” said Huifen, staring. “This map is incorrect.”

  “Can’t be. Turcotte drew it himself,” said Bergeron. “His work was the foundation. We add new roads and towns, but it’s all built on Antony Turcotte’s original surveys. Maybe he just missed it. It must be pretty small. I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “But Turcotte lived there himself,” said Amelia. “Why would he leave his own village off the official map?”

  “Maybe we got it wrong and he didn’t live there,” said Huifen. “Maybe he made the orienteering map and gave it to someone else. Someone who did live there.”

  “Then how did it get into the stained-glass window in Three Pines?” asked Amelia. “Non. That map was made by someone who not only lived in the village, but loved it.”

  “So why did he disappear it?” asked Huifen. She turned to Bergeron. “What do you know about him?”

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