Mari’s attempt to poison Claude Trépagny

Mari’s attempt to poison Claude Trépagny is a carefully prepared but interrupted act of resistance, centered on a dish made for the man who has constrained her life. She gathers water hemlock seeds, folds them into a cornmeal pudding Trépagny loves, and waits to offer it at his wedding celebration. His abrupt departure to pursue Charles Duquet prevents the serving; Mari later burns the pudding, and a grey jay that pecks at the ashes dies. The danger passes without a confrontation, but the episode exposes the violence beneath the wedding’s display of plenty and leaves Mari’s intention unspoken.

Preparation and concealed intent

On the way back to Trépagny’s clearing, Mari gathers wild onions, mushrooms, and green potherbs, but one search is more deliberate: she spends a long time looking beside the river for tall, feathery-leaved plants. When she finds them, she strips off their seed heads and keeps them apart in a small bag. At the clearing, the brothers have butchered six does, while Chama scoops roe from a sturgeon into a bucket. Mari does not address the men. She goes into the old house and begins moving pots and kettles to the wedding house, takes dried berries and nuts from a cupboard, and revives the neglected sourdough starter with flour and water. She carries these provisions to the cart and puts the riverbank seeds on the cupboard’s top shelf.

The practical preparations conceal an intention that Mari communicates only in a low voice to Trépagny. She tells him that bread will be baked and everything cooked the next day, before the party goes to the mission. The preparations are therefore both household labor for the wedding and the means by which she can make and present the poisoned dish without announcing what the seeds are. Her silence toward the others protects the plan; her discreet words to Trépagny frame the coming meal as ordinary work.

The wedding dish

At the wedding house, the feast is organized on a scale that makes Mari’s cooking central to the celebration. Elphège builds a long trench fire for the venison haunches, which roast on green sapling spits, and for the great sturgeon, pegged to a cedar plank. Mari moves between this fire and a smaller one, preparing vegetables and herbs. In a pot she simmers cornmeal pudding with maple syrup and dried apples, a favorite so beloved by Trépagny that he eats it to excess. As it bubbles, she sifts in the seeds collected by the stream.

The guests arrive from Wobik, drink Renardette’s beer, and admire Trépagny’s house, including its imported tapestries and milkweed-down pillows. After the ceremony, the feast gives way to a loud celebration: voyageurs rush at the table, guests drink wine and spirits, fiddles play, and dancers stamp in the firelight. The bride dances, and Trépagny himself becomes a brilliant, energetic presence in the revelry. Beneath a bush, covered with a dish towel, waits the cornmeal pudding with its potent water hemlock seeds. The ordinary appearance of the dish, and its place among the food prepared for the party, conceal the lethal purpose Mari has given it. She waits for the right moment to present it.

Interruption and aftermath

The opportunity never arrives as planned. By daylight, the last dancers have fallen asleep under the spruce, while the voyageurs remain awake around the fire. René asks them about Duquet. They describe Duquet as strong, enduring, well connected in the fur company, and willing to profit from side deals and coercive whiskey trading. Trépagny, who has been listening from across the fire, recognizes the runaway as the man who had contracted to work for him for three years. When Fernand confirms that this is the same Duquet who called Trépagny cruel, Trépagny’s anger escalates into a vow to pursue him and make him serve out his contract.

As Trépagny hurries into the house, Mari holds out the cold pot and asks whether he wants his pudding. René notices Trépagny glare at her as he rushes past. The gesture places the poisoned dish at the threshold of discovery, but Trépagny is occupied by his pursuit. He leaves for Wobik, where he finds that Toussaint and Fernand have already paddled away with Duquet; the abandoned canoe bears a marten pelt as Duquet’s mocking signature. Trépagny swears out a warrant, but the immediate consequence for Mari is that the intended meal remains unserved.

Mari takes the pudding to the embers. It first gives off a savory smell, then the unpleasant odor of burning grain and sugar. The grey jay that has watched the events below waits until the ashes are cold before pecking at the burned lump. A few days later, Chama finds the bird dead, its legs twisted into a sailor’s knot. The bird’s death makes the poison’s danger materially visible, although the account does not say that anyone identifies the cause or discovers Mari’s plan.

Confinement and the unspoken plan

Trépagny returns to the forest and broods for weeks while preparing an expedition to capture Duquet. He delays setting out, increasingly leaves his new wife alone, and spends much of his time in the old house with Mari. He has forbidden her to return to the mission. Under his direction, she cooks handsome meals; each evening he dresses finely and carries them to Madame Trépagny, then returns to Mari after dinner. The cornmeal pudding is absent. The episode thus ends not with an open accusation or a change in Mari’s circumstances, but with her plan abandoned and Trépagny resuming the arrangement that confines her.

Mari and her children continue to talk and laugh together in low voices, a pleasure that irritates Trépagny, who demands silence. René does not initially understand their long, animated exchanges. Months later, he understands that Mari has been telling the children old Mi’kmaw stories and weaving into them jokes and language games that give her people pleasure. The failed poisoning belongs to a wider pattern of enforced silence and hidden communication: Mari’s lethal intention is never voiced publicly, while the stories she shares with her children preserve a language and inheritance beyond Trépagny’s control.