by Sarah Maine
She looked up to see the canoes approaching the landing, James paddling in the stern of the leading one. Her father and Mr Larsen were still trailing their lines on either side, and she heard the low murmur of voices.
It was much later that she came to understand the message that her father had intended to convey to his household that day. James Douglas, the feral poacher’s boy, was now a member of that household and was trusted with the master’s most precious charge— But she also came to realise that although James would never lead her into danger, there was in him a sort of joyous defiance at breaking the rules which confined him.
And, like any other boy, he had liked an audience.
The canoes drew closer. He had been little more than a boy then, younger than she was now. But it was a man who paddled towards her now as darkness crept across the lake, and a very different James, broader and harder, his features more sharply angled, unsmiling as he went about his tasks.
And the looks he gave her father set her heart thudding with fear.
‘Evelyn, are you alright down there?’ Clementina called to her. ‘Come up again. Mr Skinner is making us some tea.’
Tea.
‘I’m coming.’ She climbed back up to the plateau of the campsite and accepted a tin mug and drank a thick brown tea, and thanked Mr Skinner for all the trouble that he had taken. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the trees, the tops of the trees were backlit with a golden brilliance.
‘This is what we came for! Look!’ She and Clementina had gone down to the strip of stony beach to meet the canoes, and George held up his trophy for them to admire. ‘What a beauty, eh? Must be sixteen inches, and the girth is easily eight. Who has the scales?’
‘I hooked a much larger one, but it got away,’ Rupert told them as he dismantled his rod.
‘Fibber,’ said Clementina.
‘It’s true.’ He laughed. ‘Ask George.’
‘We’ll eat ’em tonight, if you want,’ said Skinner.
The trout tasted good, cooked in some sort of skillet and served with bannock, washed down with another brew of strong tea, and eaten by the light of lanterns hung in the trees. Evelyn felt better, now that the men had returned, and the firelight strengthened her spirits. Somehow she would get James on his own.
She watched him as he took his food and went to eat with the natives in the shadow of the two wigwams. Mr Skinner and Louis, however, remained with the guests, and between mouthfuls, they described the river upstream, and the places where good fishing was to be had.
‘Wet or dry flies?’ asked George, and Mr Skinner chuckled.
‘They’ll all be wet, mister, soon as they touch white water. But there’re quiet pools higher up if you’re looking for something fancier.’
James sat with his back to the party, just a dark form. Earlier she had seen that he was wearing the same patched shirt he had worn the day before, the same red scarf knotted at his throat, sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Where did he live when he was not on the river? she wondered.
‘You can use bait too, minnows or cock-a-doosh. Ol’ broad-tail don’t care a bit. But you’d as like to hook a pike—’
‘Pike!’ said her father. ‘Not worth the powder.’
It was another measure of the strangeness of it all that James sat apart. At home he would have been at the centre of things, always with something to say and with views of his own. He had been a favourite with the maids, and she would hear them discussing him, eyes aglow, and watch as they waylaid him in the stable courtyard, and if she learned that he was showing a preference for one or another she found herself filled with an unfamiliar, unreasoning fury— Sometimes she would find him in the kitchen when he brought vegetables in from the walled garden and watch him teasing food from the cooks, and he would slip her a biscuit, and then laugh when he was caught. A favourite with them all, except, of course, the keepers.
She had asked Alice, the little housemaid, why they still showed him such hostility, and Alice had paused in her tidying. ‘They say that they got the old dog locked up but the whelp’s been made the master’s pet.’
At the time it had seemed quite normal that Papa had chosen James to assist with her riding lessons, and to escort her daily rides. It was only later that she realised that he had been singled out for this task. And her father would sometimes take James down to the river when he went fishing, and sometimes she went too, leaving Miss Carstairs behind, and she had watched him teach James to tie flies the way he liked them, using the feathers from a long dead macaw. ‘My talisman,’ he used to say. ‘Never fails me.’ A picture of the bird hung in the study and it had lived for years, he told them, producing a steady supply of blue-black tail feathers. When it died he had had it plucked, and he had apologised gravely when she had expressed her horror at this, and James had laughed.
Those were the best of days. But some nights she used to lie abed and worry in case Jacko returned and whistled for James, as he said he used to do. Would he go if he did? Once she had overheard talk that Jacko had been released again after another spell in prison, and on their ride next morning she could not resist asking James if he knew.
‘’Course, I know.’
She had digested that, and another question had bubbled up. ‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘Nosey little thing, aren’t you?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Alright. I saw him.’
Her heart lurched. ‘You did? Where?’
‘You wouldn’t know the place.’
‘Did he want you to go off poaching with him again?’ He had given her a scornful look. ‘Would you go, if he’d asked?’ He urged the horses on to where the path narrowed and dropped behind her. ‘Did he ask you?’ she had persisted over her shoulder. ‘You must refuse if he does, you know— Did you refuse?’
But the question was never answered.
From the corner of her eye she watched him now as he went with the others back down to the canoes, a dark silhouette against the silver water, and she saw them heave the boats onto the land, away from the shore, then turn them onto their sides. James took his pack over to one, unrolling a blanket under the shelter of its upturned hull. Would he sleep there? Surely not—
‘It’ll be a fine night,’ Louis said, regarding her with a fixed expression.
‘But cold, surely?’
‘We warm each other,’ he said softly, and gave a wolfish smile which seemed intended to discomfort her, and she looked away again, annoyed that it had.
Clementina got to her feet. ‘I don’t know about you, Evelyn,’ she said, stifling a yawn, ‘but I shall turn in for the night. Come too and give me courage?’
‘Good night, my dear,’ said her father as she passed him.
Chapter 14
‘Sports fishermen like yerselves just keep on coming! More every year—’ Skinner smacked a mosquito which had settled on his arm, then wiped his hand on his knee. ‘’Specially after some magazine wrote that the Nipigon was the finest brook trout stream in the world; there’s bin no stoppin’ ’em.’ He sat back, released a satisfying belch, then remembered his company and excused himself. Out on the lake, Larsen watched a laden canoe appear like a ghost through the light morning mist, heading silently downstream. He raised a hand in response to their greeting. ‘Most folks are packin’ up for the season now, though,’ Skinner added, nodding towards them. ‘So you’ll have the place to yerselves.’
‘I used to fish in the Adirondacks twenty years ago,’ Larsen remarked as the canoe disappeared round a bend in the river, taken quickly by the current. ‘But then the hotels came, and then the resorts and the cabins—’ He drained his coffee and set down the mug. ‘It seems we crave the wilderness, and then in finding it, we destroy it.’ He had noted with consternation the number of boats they had seen on Lake Helen the day they left, even this late in the season, and they had seen the glow of one or two other campfires. Twenty years ago
there would have been none.
How many more trips would he be able to make here? he wondered; the years were beginning to hang heavy. But soon he would have more time to take his pleasures, and to savour them, knowing that the bank he had built up from nothing would be in safe hands. He could think of no more worthy successor than Charles Ballantyre, nor a man of greater integrity.
He glanced across at him now. Last night out on the lake his friend had seemed at last able to shed his worries and focus on the matter at hand, the glint of battle alight in his eye as he played his line. He still looked relaxed and was giving courteous attention to another of Skinner’s rambling anecdotes, but perhaps only a part of his attention, as Larsen saw that he was also listening to a conversation between Dalston and Louis.
‘Bears, black and brown, moose, of course,’ Louis was saying. ‘Hunters have their own preference. But this is Indian land and—’
‘What about big cats? Cougar? Lynx or—?’
‘We’ve come to fish, Rupert.’ Melton yawned beside him. ‘Keep your shots for the poor buffalo.’ And then Dalston seemed to become aware of Ballantyre’s bland scrutiny and took refuge in his hip flask.
‘And what is it the Indians themselves are hunting now?’ asked Ballantyre, taking advantage of a gap in Skinner’s story and offering his own flask to Louis.
‘Anything to get them through the winter,’ he replied, taking a swig. ‘That is very good, sir,’ he said, licking his lips and taking another. ‘And they need food for their dogs too.’
‘So this chief Achak,’ Ballantyre continued, ‘what will he be hunting for?’
Louis seemed to pause, then took a third swig before returning the flask. ‘Same things. Moose, deer—’
‘And they can be found anywhere?’ Louis nodded. ‘No favourite hunting grounds or fishing places?’ Ballantyre was like a dog with a bone, Larsen thought, he simply could not let the matter go.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘But your friends might?’ Ballantyre lit a cigar, gesturing in the direction of the guides down by the water’s edge.
‘Perhaps.’
‘If it’s Indians you want to find, mister,’ offered Skinner, ‘we’ll likely meet up with some of them camping higher up the river. There ain’t much to see, though, just more shelters like those over there, and a bunch of dogs, women, children. Families mostly—’
‘But they might know where Achak was camping?’ Ballantyre looked across at Larsen and raised his eyebrows just a shade. Persistence had ever been his friend’s driving force – if the man was out there Ballantyre would find him!
‘Maybe.’ Louis shrugged, then a moment later got to his feet and strolled over to where Marcel was chopping wood, and he stood there pouring away the rest of his coffee as they talked.
James too had been listening to the conversation while he fixed a fault with Larsen’s reel, and had watched Louis go over to Marcel. He had seen Marcel nod and lay down his axe, so he was more or less prepared for what came next.
‘Hey,’ Louis called over to him. ‘Let’s put that big canoe back in water, shall we? Either that same seam’s leaking, or it’s another one. Marcel and I’ll paddle while you—’
‘Leaking?’ Skinner hollered. ‘You told me—’
Louis went past him with barely a glance. ‘Don’t want problems later.’
James put aside the reel and followed them down to the shore, while Skinner continued to rant. It was inevitable, he supposed, given Ballantyre’s persistent questions, and he had been watching Louis’s face, seen him trying to work it all out, looking for connections, and struggling to make sense of it all.
God knows he had been doing the same himself.
They paddled swiftly away from the camp, cutting across the current with big powerful strokes until they reached the far side of a rocky headland, then turned towards the shore. They were hidden there, out of sight of the camp, where questions could be asked. He had recognised the expression on Louis’s face as they lifted the canoe onto the water, having encountered it first when Louis had his foot on his throat in the freezing warehouse in Montreal. And he had seen it subsequently, usually as a prelude to a fight.
He felt a fierce stab of resentment, but not at Louis—
The bow scraped on a patch of shingle, and Marcel leapt into the shallows and pulled the canoe higher up the shore. Then Louis climbed out and stood looking down at him.
‘No leaks,’ said James, returning the look evenly.
‘No.’
Louis gestured with his head for James to get out, and so he did, keeping the canoe between them. He had been thinking hard, still undecided as to how much he should tell them. Not quite everything, he resolved. The arrival of Dalston on the scene had altered things, and Dalston he would handle alone.
Louis went and sat on an old log long stripped of its bark, bleached bone-white by the sun, and pulled out his pipe. ‘You are anxious, my friend,’ he said, squinting up at James as he stretched out his legs. ‘These guests, they’re not strangers to you.’ Marcel went and slouched against a nearby tree.
James came slowly up the beach, and then no farther. ‘Not all of them.’
‘Yet you pretend, you and this Ballantyre. His daughter too. Why is this?’
‘There’re reasons.’
‘Bien sûr. What reasons?’
‘I knew them, back in Scotland.’ James’s resentment blazed to anger. Damn Ballantyre, sowing these seeds of mistrust – and damn Louis too, with his interrogation. ‘It’s an old story.’
Louis gave James a wide smile which failed to reach his eyes. ‘We like stories. So, tell!’
James glanced from one to the other, then went over to a boulder worn smooth by ice and water and sat, staring down for a moment at a wiry plant which had struggled up through the shingle to find the sun. Then he ran his hands through his hair. What the hell!
And so he told them. Briefly. Just the bare facts, omitting any reference to Dalston. Or Evelyn. When he had finished Louis looked puzzled.
‘But you didn’t kill these men?’
‘No.’
‘And he knows that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why the pretence?’
‘Sir George Melton is a justice, a law man, and I’m still wanted for murder.’
‘So why doesn’t Ballantyre just tell him the truth?’
Why indeed.
‘He talks of clearing my name, now he has found me, but that Melton is a risk—’ It sounded weak, even to his own ears, and he watched Louis and Marcel exchange glances, perhaps guessing that they had been told half a story. But how far would they push him?
‘And the girl?’ Marcel had taken out his knife and was whittling the bark from a sapling. ‘Her eyes follow you.’
‘And her friend asks her what is wrong. Why so quiet? Are you quite well?’ Louis mimicked Lady Melton’s well-bred voice but his eyes stayed hard.
James got to his feet. He’d had enough. ‘She was only a child when it happened. So just forget her, eh?’
But Louis leant back on his elbow, still watching him, and pulled on his pipe. ‘And your Mr Ballantyre is so keen to find Achak. Why is that, do you think?’
‘Maybe he heard something—’
‘Maybe he did.’
Silence. And from Louis, a steady stare.
‘Not from me.’ James spoke through clenched teeth.
So quickly was trust lost! That much he knew.
‘What have you told him about Achak?’
‘Christ, Louis!’ They would be watching him now, suspicious of his every move, his every glance. And this too went on Ballantyre’s account. ‘I’ve told him nothing. Why would I?’
Louis continued to look at him, long and hard, then muttered something in French to Marcel and got to his feet. Marcel straightened and went back down to the water’s edge.
‘You have friends, mon ami. Partners. Remember?’ He pushed the canoe back into the shallows, signalling James to ge
t in. ‘And we are here, beside you.’ Watching you— The words were unspoken, and yet they hung there, though James sensed that, for now, the crisis was passing. ‘And in the meantime we’ll be dumb mules and know nothing of Achak’s whereabouts. Yes? And we won’t notice that you watch the man like an angry wolverine, or that his daughter’s eyes never leave you.’
Next morning Evelyn woke to find that dawn was lightening the walls of the tent, and she lay there, watching the shadows cast by pine branches as they stirred with the breeze, feeling the chill morning air on her face.
She had not expected to sleep, but she had, and it had been a deep and unbroken sleep. Last night Clementina had declared that she would not dare to close her eyes for fear of bears, but her breathing had soon deepened and she slept still, only the very top of her head visible. The furs did smell, a strong animal aroma, strange though not unpleasant, but they had kept her warm through the night. She snuggled back down beneath them and lay there, watching as the light grew stronger. How had James fared, she wondered, rolled up in a blanket under the canoes. Had he slept? Or had he lain there, watching the stars, and seen the moonlight across the river?
And she remembered how she had once plagued him to explain how to find the Pole star, and he had done his best, using a stick to draw the stars in the dust. Then, on the next clear night, he had come and thrown gravel up at her bedroom window and she had risen and peered down at him, pushing up the sash in response to his gesture. And he had pointed up into the sky, and she had seen the plough, just as he had drawn it, and he had directed her to the dim flicker of the Pole star. That he had remembered her question and come to show her had delighted her beyond reason.
She sniffed, smelling woodsmoke and something cooking which must be breakfast. Low voices grew louder and more distinct, and she could hear Mr Skinner giving instructions and then the metallic sound of water being poured into a tin kettle. He had said that he would wake them early, as something called the Long Portage lay ahead. Beside her Clementina stirred. She heard Mr Larsen’s voice too, then her father’s just outside knocking on the canvas asking how they had slept. She sat up and reached for her clothes as Clementina opened her eyes.