Posters, now turning soggy in the drizzle, had been nailed or pasted to a lot of the telegraph poles, FREE AT LAST FROM BRITISH TYRANNY, some of them said in French, and showed Quebec 's fleur-de-lis banner side by side with the Stars and Stripes. "I, for one, did not feel myself tyrannized," Lucien Galtier said-softly, for he was not alone on the road now. He leaned forward and asked his horse, "Did you feel yourself tyrannized?" The horse did not answer, which he took for agreement.
The poles that did not have the FREE AT LAST poster mostly bore another, this one printed in red and in both French and English: CURFEW: 8 P.M. TO 6 A.M. VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. "Ah, this is what freedom means," Galtier murmured. "I am so glad the Americans educate us in it."
A newsboy stood on a corner with a box of papers covered by a paint-smeared chunk of canvas tarpaulin. "Read Ce-Soir he called to Lucien." Hear of the great victories of the Americans over the Confederates and of Germany over Russia and the English."
"No, thank you," Galtier answered, and rode on toward the market. Ce-Soir had experienced a remarkable change in content since the Americans came to Riviere-du-Loup. Before then, it had trumpeted of Confederate, Russian, and French triumphs against the USA, Austria, and Germany.
It all depends on how you look at things, Galtier thought. To hear the newspaper talk now, you would never know that Germany had invaded France, or that the Englishmen there were defending their ally from the Boches. That wasn't bad propaganda, but it would have been better had the townsfolk not enjoyed the memories God gave to normal, intelligent human beings.
FREE AT LAST, another poster shouted. Several American soldiers, bayonets fixed on their Springfields, stood on a street corner keeping an eye on people. They were almost invisible in the mist till Lucien got right up close to them. Their green-gray was even better than khaki at blending into the background here.
But Lucien had known they were there long before he saw them. The harsh sounds of English filled his ears. He'd learned some of the language in the Army, but not used it much since: some fishermen who came into town from the Maritimes spoke it, but he had little to do with them beyond passing the time of day in a tavern. Now, like the Americans, it had invaded Riviere-du-Loup. And they spoke of freeing the area from British tyranny! English-speaking Canadians for the most part had had the courtesy to stay away.
The hens in the back of the wagon clucked. That drew the American soldiers' eyes to Lucien Galtier. "Hey, buddy!" one of them called. "You want to sell me one of them birds?"
"Hell with that, Pete," another soldier said. "Just take one-take a couple- from the damn Frenchy, and if he don't like it, give him some. 30 caliber persuading." The fellow laughed, showing bad teeth.
Galtier licked his lips. If they wanted to rob him, they could. What would he do afterwards? Complain to their officer? He did not think he would get far. He hadn't heard that the Americans were looting. Had he heard that, he would have stayed on his farm instead of venturing into town.
But the soldier who'd spoken first-Pete-shook his head. "Can't get away with that kind of stuff here in town- too many people watching. We'd wind up in Dutch, and I got some money in my pocket." He turned to Lucien. "How much for a chicken, hey? Combien?"
That he'd tried a word of French made Galtier dislike him a little less. He answered with a high price, as he would have in the marketplace, haggling with a housewife. "Fifty cent', monsieur." He knew how rusty his English was, and hoped the American soldier would understand.
To his amazement, the American, instead of offering half that or less, reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver coin, and tossed it to him. It was a half-dollar: a U.S. half-dollar, of course, with President Reed's plump profile on one side and the American eagle in front of crossed swords on the other. But fifty cents was fifty cents; Canada, the USA, and the CSA all coined to the same standard. Carefully keeping his face blank, Galtier stuck the coin in his own trouser pocket and pulled a chicken out of the latticework traveling coop for Pete.
"Obliged," the soldier said, holding the chicken by the feet with its head down toward the ground. He'd come off the farm, then, odds were.
"Here, lemme buy one, too," said the soldier who'd proposed robbing Lucien.
He sold five birds in the space of a couple of minutes, at half a dollar apiece. He was delighted. So were the soldiers. One of them said, "Pal, if you'd been eating hardtack and canned beast ever since the damn war started, you'd know how much we crave real grub for a change."
Was he supposed to sympathize with them? If they hadn't come over the border into his country, they could have been eating whatever they pleased back in New York. His only answer, though, was a shrug. He had his wife to think of, and his children. He could not take chances, not when he was one farmer with nothing more dangerous than a folding knife in his pocket and they soldiers with rifles and bayonets. He reminded himself of that, a couple of times.
When it became clear none of the rest of them wanted more chickens, he went on to the town market square, where he did not get nearly the price the Americans had given him for the birds. Another U.S. soldier walked by, but he was not interested in poultry. He had his arm around the waist of one of the girls who served drinks at the Loup-du-Nord, the best tavern in town- Angelique, her name was. The respectable wives of Riviere-du-Loup saw that, too, and clucked like the chickens Lucien was trying to sell.
And here came Father Pascal, almost as close to a heavyset American ma jor (Galtier knew what the gold oak leaves on the officer's shoulder boards meant) as Angelique was to her soldier. The major was speaking French- clear Parisian French, which stood out almost as much as English did from the Quebecois dialect. English-speaking Canadian soldiers said Quebecois French sounded like ducks making love, a claim always good for starting a fight when you were bored.
Galtier couldn't make out much of what the major was saying. Whatever it was, Father Pascal was listening hard. That worried the farmer a little. Father Pascal was a good man, but ambitious- witness his desire for Riviere-du-Loup's becoming a bishopric. If the Americans fed his ambitions, he was liable to go further with them than he should.
Well, one Lucien Galtier couldn't do much about that. Having sold his chickens- and made more for them than he'd expected, thanks to Americans too stupid to bargain- he got into his wagon and started for home. Boom! Boom! Boom! The American field guns south of town, which had fallen silent, opened up on another ship out in the St. Lawrence. Galtier looked back over his shoulder. Yes, there was a dim shape moving on the river.
And then, to his surprised delight, that dim shape answered with booms of its own, booms attenuated by traveling over some miles of water but plainly of much larger caliber than the three-inch popguns that had fired at them. Explosions followed almost instantly thereafter, in the place from which the field guns had been firing. Some of the housewives jumped up and crossed themselves. Galtier waited to hear if the field guns could reply to what had to be at least a cruiser out there. They remained silent. He drove home, a contented man.
IV
Paul Mantarakis wished he had a chaplain of his own faith with whom he could pray. He'd heard there were a few Orthodox priests in uniform, but he'd never seen one. Protestant ministers, yes. Catholic priests, yes. Rabbis, even- yes. But none of his own.
He fingered his amber worry beads and murmured, " Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison." Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
"Leave off your Latin and your rosary," declared Gordon McSweeney, a dour Scotsman in his platoon. "They are the road to hell."
"It's not Latin," Mantarakis said wearily, for about the hundredth time. McSweeney just glared at him with pale, angry eyes. If you prayed in a language that wasn't English, it was Latin to him. He even thought Jews prayed in Latin. Mantarakis would have liked to give him a good kick, but McSweeney made two of the little Greek, both of the two armored in cement-hard muscle.