Mary's Poisonous Cornmeal Pudding

Mary’s poisoned cornmeal pudding transforms a familiar dish into a concealed weapon and a failed farewell to Monsieur Trépagny. Made with water-hemlock seeds gathered by the streamside, it is prepared for the wedding feast, withheld until the moment seems right, and ultimately burned before the intended victim can eat it. Its fatal potential nevertheless becomes visible when a gray jay samples the remains and dies.

Ingredients and Preparation

At Monsieur Trépagny’s wedding, Mary moves between the main cooking trench and a smaller fire, preparing vegetables and herbs alongside the feast’s venison and sturgeon. In one pot she simmers cornmeal with maple syrup and dried apples, a pudding so beloved by Monsieur Trépagny that he eats it to excess. As it bubbles, she sifts in seeds gathered beside the stream: the familiar recipe has become poisoned without losing its inviting appearance.

The pudding is kept apart from the feast under a dish towel, a small domestic object concealing the danger in plain sight. Mary waits for the right moment to present it. Its role as a farewell dish makes the wedding celebration carry a private, lethal intention within its public abundance.

The Missed Opportunity

After the ceremony, the wedding turns into a noisy feast of wine and spirits, fiddle music, singing, and dancing around a bonfire. Monsieur Trépagny dances with conspicuous energy, while the pudding waits beneath its covering. The intended moment does not come during the celebration. By dawn, the remaining voyageurs are still awake around the fire, and the dish has not been served.

When Monsieur Trépagny rushes away to pursue Duquet, Mary offers him the cold pot. René notices the seigneur glare at her as he hurries into the house, but Monsieur Trépagny leaves without taking the pudding. His departure interrupts the attempted poisoning: the dish reaches him only when it is cold, and he does not eat it.

Destruction and Consequences

Mary turns the pudding into the embers. It first gives off a savory smell, then the unpleasant odor of burning grain and sugar. The change from appetizing food to scorched refuse marks the collapse of the plan, while the pot’s contents remain dangerous even after their intended use has ended.

A gray jay watches the scene and returns after a day, when the ashes have cooled, to peck at the burned lump. A few days later, Chama finds the bird’s carcass, its legs twisted into a sailor’s knot. The pudding’s poison has therefore produced a death, but not the one Mary had prepared it to cause. The dish makes lethal intent legible through consequence: the danger survives its apparent destruction and passes from the household’s table into the surrounding world.

Narrative Significance

The pudding binds a public wedding to a private act of resistance. Its ingredients come from the streamside, while its base is a sweet, familiar food associated with Monsieur Trépagny’s appetite; the poisoned mixture turns domestic care and hospitality into instruments of threat. Yet the attempt is neither completed nor simply erased. The intended victim escapes the dish, and its poison kills an animal instead, leaving a disturbing trace of the violence embedded in an apparently ordinary object.