Skin of the Wolf by Sam Cabot

Author:Sam Cabot
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

37

Thomas! Come in, come in.” The history department chair gestured from behind his desk. “Is there something you need?”

“A few moments of your time, Father, if that’s possible.”

“Of course.” The chubby and balding Monsignor Gerald Maxwell, wearing a clerical collar and a tweed jacket—badges of his dual professions, Thomas reflected—closed the manila folder he’d been reading and gave Thomas his attention as the younger man sat. “Is everything all right, Father Kelly? Are you enjoying your work here? I met with Andy Burns the other day and he couldn’t stop singing your praises. He said you found the organizing principle for the entire first section of his thesis.”

“I didn’t have to look very hard. He’s a gifted scholar.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he dedicates the book to you. Or names his firstborn ‘Thomas.’ How’s your own work coming?”

“It’s completely fascinating. I suppose you knew it would be, but besides the facts themselves, to me it’s so entirely different—like a whole new cuisine, I suppose. Or a new language. Different emphases, different rhythms. I’m enjoying learning so much.”

“I’m delighted. So, tell me what I can do for you.”

“I’ve come across a man I’d like to know more about, and I’ve been told you researched him once yourself. I thought perhaps you could point me in the right direction.”

“Who would that be?”

“Père Etienne Ravenelle.”

Maxwell twirled a heavy silver ring on his left hand, a habit when he was thinking. It bore a crest Thomas didn’t recognize, a cross on a full moon. Some society within their own order. More than once, Thomas had meditated on that curious inevitability of human endeavor, that nations break into states, cities into boroughs, faiths into orders and sects and societies. As though the totality of human experience were too much to encompass.

“Ravenelle?” said Maxwell. “He’s far afield for your work, isn’t he? He was here a full century after Kateri Tekakwitha. What brought you to him?”

“Just following my nose, I suppose. Kateri’s relationships with the Jesuits and with her own people were tangled, and Ravenelle seems to be the end of one of the threads.” When did I learn to do that? Thomas wondered. Give an answer that tells nothing, even borders on actually lying?

“He is that,” Maxwell agreed. “The end of a thread, I mean. Ravenelle came to New France in 1742. He’d read the biography Claude Chauchetière had written of Tekakwitha—I imagine you got that far?”

“I’ve read it, yes.” Not exactly the answer, but apparently the Monsignor, knowing the answer he expected, assumed he’d gotten it and went on.

“Ravenelle arrived certain of what it had taken Chauchetière years to come to believe—that there was value in the Native way of life, and that saving Native souls involved nothing more than introducing them to—revealing to them, really—the mystery of the Savior. They would, he thought, find their own way to Him.” Father Maxwell smiled. “A touch apostate, even now. You can imagine what his superiors thought two hundred and fifty years ago. But you understand, New France in the mid-eighteenth century was what we’d call today a difficult posting.

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