by Stef Penney
Later, when my husband decided that my habit was a barrier to real intimacy, I gave it up. Or rather, he took my supply of laudanum and threw it away, leaving me no choice but to do without. He was the only person who thought this a trouble worth taking. It was like being sober again after a prolonged period of drunkenness, and that sobriety seemed wonderful for a while. But sobriety makes you remember things you had forgotten–for example, why you felt the need to take the drug in the first place. When, in years since, times have been hard, I know exactly why I became habituated, and in the past few days I have thought about laudanum almost as much as I have thought about Francis. I know that I could go to the store and buy some. I know that every minute of the day and half the night. The only thing that stops me is that I am the one person in the world Francis can rely on for help. And so far I am not being any help at all.
It is five days since Francis left, and I am walking down the path to Jammet’s cabin when I hear a noise up ahead. A dog runs across my path and whines: a dog I don’t know, large, shaggy and wild-looking–a sled dog. I pause: there is someone at the cabin.
On the rise behind the building, I creep behind a bush with the stealth of practice and wait. A disgruntled insect sinks its jaws into my wrist. Eventually a man comes out of the cabin and whistles. Two dogs run up to him, including the one that was on the path earlier. In my hiding place I hold my breath, and as his face turns towards me I feel a cold tremor down my spine. He is tall for an Indian, strongly built and dressed in blue capote and skin trousers. But it is his face that makes me think of the story of the artificial man. He has a low, broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a nose and mouth that turn downwards like a raptor’s beak and give a powerful impression of wildness and cruelty. Deep lines are incised in the copper skin on either side of the mouth. His hair is black and tangled. I have never seen anyone quite so ugly in my life–a face that could have been hacked out of wood with a blunt axe. If Miss Shelley had needed a pattern for her terrifying monster, this man would have been perfect inspiration.
I wait, hardly daring to breathe until he has gone back inside the cabin, then I ease backwards out of my hiding place. I debate for a moment the best course of action–find Angus on the farm and tell him, or ride straight down to Caulfield and tell Knox? Today I decide not to confront the man myself, because, I reason, he is clearly dangerous. Despite myself, I find it hard to believe that anyone could have a face like that and not have a fierce and cruel disposition. In the end I go and find Angus. He listens to me in silence, then takes his rifle and walks down the path.
I found out later that he walked up to the cabin and went straight in. The stranger was surprised while searching the room upstairs. Angus called to him, and told him, very politely I’m sure, that he would have to escort him down to Caulfield, since this was the scene of a crime and he had no right to be there. The man hesitated but put up no resistance. He picked up his rifle and walked ahead of him the three miles down to the Bay. Angus marched him up to the Knoxes’ back door. While they waited, the stranger stared at the bay with a proud, distant look, as though he didn’t care what anyone might do to him. By the time Angus left to come home, the stranger had been arrested and imprisoned. Angus took pity on the two dogs, which Knox refused to let into his yard, and brought them home, claiming they would be no bother. I thought he must have found something to like in the stranger, to go to the trouble.
Andrew Knox sits across from Mackinley and smokes his pipe. The firelight turns their faces a warm shade of orange–even the whey-faced Mackinley loses his sallowness. Knox cannot share the other’s blatant satisfaction. They questioned the man for over an hour and had discovered nothing concrete other than his name, William Parker, and that he was a trapper who had traded with Jammet before. He claimed he had not known Jammet was dead, but had called on him in passing and found the cabin empty. He had searched the house to find some clue as to what had happened.
‘You say a murderer wouldn’t come back to the scene of his crime,’ Mackinley breaks the silence. ‘But if he had wanted the guns and so on, and didn’t find them the first time, he could have waited until things died down, and come back to search again.’
Knox acknowledges the truth of this.
‘Or perhaps he thought he had left something behind and came back to retrieve it.’
‘We didn’t find anything that didn’t belong there.’
‘Perhaps we missed it.’
Knox fixes his teeth in the groove worn in the pipe-stem; it is a pleasurable feeling–teeth and stem fit together perfectly after long use. Mackinley is too hasty to condemn the trapper, allowing his desire for a solution to shape the facts rather than the other way round. Knox wants to point this out but without offending his pride–after all, Mackinley is officially in charge.
‘It is possible that he is simply what he says, a trapper who has traded with him in the past, who did not know he was dead.’
‘And who goes snooping through an empty house?’
‘That is not a crime–or even unusual.’
‘It isn’t a crime but it is suspicious. We have to infer what is most likely from what we have.’
‘We don’t have anything. I’m not sure we have any grounds for holding him at all.’
Knox has insisted that the man is not a prisoner and must be treated well. He has had Adam take a tray of food to the warehouse where he is being kept, and light a fire. He hated having to ask Scott for another favour, but he could not countenance keeping the man in a room, even a locked room, in the same house as his daughters and wife. Despite his words there is something about the stranger’s face that evokes dark and terrifying thoughts. It reminds him of faces in engravings of the Indian wars: painted faces, twisted in fury, blasphemous, alien.
They unlock the door of the warehouse for the second time, and hold up their lanterns, to see the prisoner sitting immobile near the fire. He does not turn his head as the door opens.
‘Mr Parker,’ calls Knox. ‘We would like to talk some more.’
They sit on chairs brought earlier for this purpose. Parker does not speak or turn to face them. Only his breath, condensing in pale clouds by his face, indicates a living man.
‘How did you come by the name Parker?’ asks Mackinley. His tone is insulting, as if he’s accusing the man of lying about his identity.
‘My father was an English native. Samuel Parker. His father came from England.’
‘Was your father a Company man?’
‘He worked for the Company all his life.’
‘But you don’t.’
‘No.’
Mackinley is leaning forward, mention of the Company drawing him like a magnet. ‘You used to work for them?’
‘I served an apprenticeship. I am a trapper now.’
‘And you traded with Jammet?’
‘Yes.’
‘For how long?’
‘Many years.’
‘Why did you leave the Company?’
‘To be beholden to no one.’
‘Did you know that Laurent Jammet was a member of the North America Company?’
The man looks at him, half-amused. Knox casts a glance at Mackinley–did he find this out from the other Frenchman?
‘I didn’t trade with a company, I traded with him.’
‘Are you a member of the North America Company?’
Now Parker laughs harshly. ‘I am a member of no company. I trap furs and sell them, that’s all.’
‘But you have no furs at the moment.’
‘It is fall.’
Knox puts a warning hand on Mackinley’s arm. He tries to make his tone friendly and reasonable. ‘You understand why we have to ask these questions–Mr Jammet died a brutal death. We need to find out what we can about him, so that we can bring the perpetrator to justice.’
‘He was my friend.’
Knox sighs. Before he can say anything else, Mackinley speaks again:
‘Where were you on the day and ni
ght of November fourteenth–six days ago?’
‘I told you, I was travelling south from Sydney House.’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘I travel alone.’
‘When did you leave Sydney House?’
The man hesitates, for the first time. ‘I wasn’t at Sydney House itself, just in that direction.’
‘But you said you were coming from Sydney House.’
‘I said Sydney House so you would know where I was. That was the direction I came from. I was in the bush.’
‘And what were you doing there?’
‘Hunting.’
‘But you said it isn’t the season for furs.’
‘Hunting for meat.’
Mackinley looks at Knox and raises his eyebrows. ‘Is that normal for this time of year?’
Parker shrugs. ‘It is normal any time of year.’
Knox clears his throat. ‘Thank you, Mr Parker. Well … that will be all for now.’
He is embarrassed by his voice, which sounds like that of an old man, fussy and womanish. They get up to go, then Mackinley turns back to the man by the fire. He picks up his mug of water from the tray and pours it on the fire, extinguishing it.
‘Give me your firebag.’
Parker looks at Mackinley, who holds his eye. Parker’s eyes are opaque in the lamplight. He looks as if he wants to kill Mackinley right there. Slowly he takes the leather bag from around his neck, and hands it to Mackinley. Mackinley takes it but Parker does not let go.
‘How do I know I’ll get it back?’
Knox steps closer, anxious to defuse the tension in the air. ‘You’ll get it back. I’ll see to it myself.’
Parker lets go and the two men walk out, taking the only lanterns and leaving the prisoner in darkness and cold. Knox peers back in as he pulls the door closed, seeing–or does he only imagine it?–the half-breed as a concentration of darkness in the dark space.
‘Why did you do that?’ Knox asks as they return through the quiet town.
‘You want him to set fire to the place and escape? I know these people. They have no scruples. Did you see the way he looked at me? Like he wanted to take my scalp then and there.’
He holds the bag up in front of the lantern–a leather pouch, beautifully decorated with embroidery. Inside is the man’s equipment for survival–flints, tinder, tobacco, and some dried and unappetising strips of nameless meat. Without it, in the wilderness, he would probably die.
Mackinley is jubilant. ‘Well, how did you like that? He changed his story so that we can’t prove he was where he said he was. He could have been in Dove River a week ago and no one any the wiser.’
Knox can think of nothing to say to this. He too had felt a tremor of doubt as Parker hesitated–a gap opened in the man’s confident demeanour, he had not known quite what to say.
‘It’s not proof,’ he says at last.
‘It is circumstantial. Would you rather believe the boy did it?’
Knox sighs, feeling very tired, but not yet tired enough to rise to it. ‘What is all this about the North America Company? I’ve never heard of it.’
‘It’s not an official company, but it might become one. André told me Jammet was involved. He is too. French Canadian traders have been talking about setting up a company in opposition to us. They have backing from the States, and there is interest even among some of the British here.’
Mackinley’s jaw is taut. He is a man of simple loyalties; the thought of any Canadian of British extraction siding against the Company is hurtful to him. To Knox it is less surprising. The Company has always been run by wealthy men in London, sending their representatives (they refer to them as servants) out to the colony to extract its riches. To those who were born here, it is a foreign power, stripping their land of its wealth, scattering crumbs in return.
He chooses his words carefully. ‘So Jammet could have been seen as an enemy of the Hudson Bay Company?’
‘If you are implying that a Company man would have done that to him … I assure you, that is quite unthinkable.’
‘I’m not implying anything. But if it is a fact, then we cannot ignore it. How great was his involvement with this North America Company?’
‘The man didn’t know. Just that Jammet had mentioned it in the past.’
‘And it is certain that André was in the Sault when Jammet died?’
‘Lying in a corner of a bar, insensible, according to the landlord. It would not have been possible for him to be killing Jammet in Dove River at the same time.’
Knox feels a wave of irritation at the events of this evening. At Mackinley’s officiousness and certainty, at the prisoner’s raw and powerful presence, even at the unfortunate Jammet and his messy death. In its short life Caulfield has always been a peaceful community that has no gaol and never needed one. Now, for the last few days, wherever he looks there is violence and bitterness.
His wife is still awake when he goes upstairs. Even when the man Parker is out of sight, he is in everyone’s mind. There may be a murderer in their town, separated from them by thin wooden walls. There is something about the man that makes it easy to believe in his guilt. A man cannot help his face, of course, and should not be judged by it. Is that what he is doing?
‘Some people don’t make it easy for you to like them,’ he observes as he undresses.
‘Are you talking about the prisoner, or Mr Mackinley?’
Knox allows himself a suppressed smile. He looks at her face and thinks she looks tired. ‘Are you all right?’
He loves the way her hair waves when she lets it down, just as lustrously brown as when they married. She is proud of it and brushes it for five minutes every night until it crackles and clings to the hairbrush.
‘I was going to ask you the same question.’
‘Quite all right. I’m looking forward to all this being over. I prefer Caulfield when it is quiet and dull.’
She shifts over as he climbs between the sheets. ‘Have you heard the other news?’
He can tell by her voice that it is not good. ‘Other news? What is it?’
She sighs. ‘Sturrock is here.’
‘Sturrock the Searcher? In Caulfield?’
‘Yes. Mr Moody has met him. He knew Jammet, apparently.’
‘Good God.’ He never ceases to be amazed by what his wife can pick up on the rumour circuit. ‘Good God,’ he repeats quietly. He lies down, doubts crowding into his mind. Who would have thought Jammet had so many unseen connections? Some peculiar power extends from the empty cabin, drawing the unlikely and the undesirable to Caulfield, in pursuit of who knows what. He has not seen Thomas Sturrock for ten years, not since shortly before Charles died. He has tried to forget that meeting. Now try as he may, he cannot think of an innocent reason for Sturrock’s presence.
‘Do you think he did it?’
‘Who?’ For a moment he can’t remember what it is she is talking about.
‘Who! The prisoner, of course. Do you think he did it?’
‘Go to sleep,’ says Knox, and kisses her.
The day before they left, Donald spent valuable time combing Scott’s store for a present for Susannah. He considered buying her a fountain pen; although it would be an apt present on parting, she might find it too heavy-handed a reminder of her promise to write to him. There was a limited choice of items, and in the end he settled for an embroidered handkerchief, ignoring the potential implication that he might be expecting her to cry in his absence–she probably wouldn’t think of that.
That afternoon Susannah loitered for hours in the library of their house, waiting for Donald to find her by chance, leafing through a book. She had the opportunity to read one right through by the time he finally realised what was going on, but had not; the novels in the library were mostly dull, having been chosen by her father when young, or by Maria, who had strange tastes. Donald heard her cough, and timidly opened the door holding one hand behind his back.
‘We are leaving tomorrow.
Before dawn, so we won’t see you.’
She hastily put down the treatise on fishing and glanced at Donald with her irresistible sideways look. ‘It will be very dull without you.’
Donald smiled, his heart rioting inside his ribcage. ‘I hope you don’t think it a liberty, but I bought you this. I wanted to give you something before I left.’
He held out the little parcel, wrapped in the store’s brown paper and tied with a piece of ribbon. Susannah smiled and opened it, unfolding the handkerchief.
‘Oh, it’s so pretty! You are too kind, Mr Moody.’
‘Please, call me Donald.’
‘Oh … Donald. Thank you so much. I will keep it with me always.’
‘I can think of no greater honour.’
He wavered on the brink of saying how he envied the handkerchief, but lost confidence, perhaps fortunately. He was not to know that Susannah had another just like it, bought from the same store and presented to her less than a year ago by a smitten local youth. But now Susannah was blushing; the faint wash of colour in her cheeks made her seem to glow from within.
‘Now I am embarrassed I have nothing to give you in return.’
‘I don’t want anything in return.’ Again, he hovered on the brink of daring to ask for a kiss, but again his courage failed him. ‘Only that you will write to me now and again, if you are not too busy.’
‘Oh yes, I will write to you. And perhaps, if you are not too busy, you may write to me occasionally.’
‘Every day!’ he said recklessly.
‘Oh, I think you will be too occupied to do that. I do hope it won’t be … dangerous.’