by Paul Almond
PRAISE FOR Paul Almond’s The Deserter
“Can you talk about thrill-a-minute Canadian history? You can now. Paul Almond has worked for many years as a TV and film director, and his skill shows in the drama and pacing of this first-rate read.” Carole’s BookTalk
“I believe this one should be placed into the hands of every young student learning the history of Canada…. Paul Almond’s portrayal of the Mik’maq is very accurate, he embraces the true circumstances and includes the significant legends of the people.” Mrs. Q Book Addict
“Paul Almond…has created characters with great finesse. The readerswill find themselves rooting for this likable and inspiring hero.” The Gaspé Spec
“Readers will find this book an easy way to learn more about the English and French pioneers, and the Micmacs indigenous to the area, as they begin to create a new society incorporating all three.” Suite 101
Also by Paul Almond
The Deserter: BOOK ONE of the ALFORD SAGA
THE SURVIVOR
Paul Almond
McArthur & Company
Toronto
First published in 2011 by
McArthur & Company
322 King Street West, Suite 402
Toronto, Ontario M5V 1J2
www.mcarthur-co.com
Copyright © 2011 Paul Almond
All rights reserved.
The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the express written consent of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Almond, Paul, 1931-
The survivor / Paul Almond.
(The Alford saga bk. 2)
ISBN 978-1-55278-967-4 (pbk)
I. Title. II. Series: Almond, Paul, 1931- . Alford
saga ; bk. 2.
PS8601.L56S87 2011 — C813’.6 — C2011-901330-4
eISBN 978-1-77087-070-3
The publisher would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for our publishing activities. The publisher further wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the OMDC for our publishing program.
Design and composition by Szol Design
Map design by Szol Design
eBook development by Wild Element www.wildelement.ca
For Joan as always
Chapter One: 1813
Thomas Manning strode through the woods a couple of miles back from the bay, fighting a powerful despair swarming over him like the ever-present black flies. Baby son off with the tribe, well looked after but still, wife gone, and nothing, ever, could replace Little Birch. All spring, ever since he had left his Micmac encampment up the Port Daniel river, he’d fought this battle against melancholy. But now, something drove it from his mind. The smell of smoke.
Could it be a forest fire? No, probably some settler on the move. But who’d travel inland, so far from any settlement? More likely a couple of the local Natives, passing through. Yes, having lunch. He dismissed the thought. And then of course, relentlessly, the images haunting him for the last month took over: the first time he and Magwés, his wife, had revealed their love. He had been spending the winter back in the interior with her family, and she had called him out of their wigwam. He followed her on snowshoes to a nearby hill, and then she had said, “Thomas, look up.”
He had never seen such a display. The spectacular curtain of light wavered across the Northern sky, streamers of red and purple shimmering in a filmy curtain, surely hung by some impressive Micmac deity to dazzle them both.
They stood as one, watching the light — dancing, it seemed, only for them.
In that clear, icy night, he looked down into her dark eyes, alight with the pleasure and reflection of the lights. His heart hammered as he heard her breathing grow deeper, quicker, as though she had been running. Then, at the same moment, they leaned close.
Their lips met.
That rush of blood which flooded his lungs and his heart leapt in him again, as he walked the spring woods, and drove him to shake his head angrily, repelling the image. You’re just torturing yourself, he complained, over and over again.
He walked on, looking for the patch of blueberries in a burned area well back by the brook. He also wanted to find cranberries left over from winter, or shoots of squawberries, bearberries, or wintergreen, all of which he’d eaten with the Micmac. But most of all, he wanted to get Magwés out of his mind. Focus on your search, he told himself.
The smell of smoke intruded once again, and he stopped to test the air. Yes indeed, there, to his right, much too close, a stack of black smoke!
Nothing in his walks as a lad over the Derbyshire countryside had ever prepared him for this. Two summers ago, while working for the Robin’s Company in Paspébiac stogging a new hull with oakum, he had heard talk of these wildfires.
Ahead of him, an explosion of accumulated gas blasted the spike of a charred trunk that twisted into the air, fell, and more flames broke off to continue on the rampage.
A storm had passed in the night; the thunder had woken him in his cabin and lightning had illuminated the bare interior, but this morning, the earth outside was hardly damp. The woods did need rain; this spring had been unusually dry. Travelling over a tinder of dead leaves and pine needles since dawn, Thomas had begged the Lord Above to bring rain.
He whirled and headed for the Coast. Living among the Micmac had taught him how best to navigate these woods. But as he glanced back, he saw the fire was gaining on him; soon he’d be caught. He should never have lost himself in a welter of morbid recollections.
He looked up. Flames raced from treetop to treetop with the speed of a catastrophe; the roar reverberated through the vast woods. He’d be burned alive.
Get going! his brain yelled. But where? All at once it hit him — the brook. Yes, down in the Hollow. But where was it from here? How close? Head back, quick, to the valley’s lip. Dangerous. But how else to reach it?
Behind, the fire charged through the trees, pouring flames upwards. Smoke thickened and swirled, threatening to choke him. To his right, another spruce burst into flame. And another.
The land sloped up. Did that mean his direction was wrong? But beyond that, it might drop into the Hollow. He looked anxiously left and right — fire on both sides, galloping flames leaping from tree to tree, circling the trunks, savaging the tops, roaring as it tore at flammable needles and cones that swirled upward in buoyant plumes before falling to set other spot fires. Ahead, another tree caught fire. Surrounded.
Think, check your choices. The brook was the only alternative. He saw the tufts of trees surging with crimson fire, but below, yes — a way through. Should he risk it? Behind him, the blaze whipped up a whorl that flared into the sky. He’d stepped into an oven.
He dashed below the burning tops with flaming limbs dropping all around him. A branch struck him on his shoulder; he slapped the embers away. Ash in sudden updrafts scattered down to blind him. He blundered through scratchy branches, leapt deadfalls, got clear — and there, beyond, the woods dropped away.
Frantic, he tore over the brow and down. Too steep. He tripped and fell, over and over, somersaulting, until he struck a tree trunk. Stunned, he tried to rise, the bloodthirsty fire chasing him, but he slumped back, ankle throbbing, shoulder wrenched.
He lay still for a moment. Get up! he commanded himself. Unsteadily, he rose to his feet and set off downward. But his ankle, twisted in his tumble, gave way. He resorted to pulling himself past trunks, his shoulder hurting. Finally he reached the bottom, humped with dead tru
nks, fallen limbs, dead moss, dry ferns. A brook did run somewhere here, he knew that. But how far? Its gurgling would be drowned out by the raging firestorm. Downdrafts hauled smoke around him, making him cough. Even down here he could feel the heat intensify. His heart hammered and his mind swirled like the fire.
Behind, the blaze raced along the brow of the hill. Any second, it might drop down to cut off his progress. Find that brook fast.
Knots of tangled bushes blocked his way. How could they flourish under these Balm of Gilead, themselves survivors of another fire? Their heavy foliage topside was being devoured. He forced himself through more snarls of shrubbery to join a stampede of mice and voles, even a fox.
Where was that wretched brook? He plunged into a thicket, but he’d lost his sense of direction. Was he actually going in a circle? His coughing intensified, draining his energy and slowing his pace. The smoke was settling down around him, stifling his breath.
Above the flaming trees, thick clouds still darkened. Promise of rain? He prayed aloud for a cloudburst. Save me, he begged, scraping past barbed branches of spruce.
Trees exploded, limbs splintered and snapped — taking him straight back to the gun deck of the Bellerophon, with its roar of cannon and cracks of musketry as Naval Marines picked off sailors on their battleravaged decks. Once more he recalled exhorting his gun crew, fighting back the panic that immobilized lesser men. Keep cool, the unspoken motto of every sailor in His Majesty’s Navy. In the extremes of battle, think clearly, do your duty. He remembered Lord Nelson’s signal, fluttering from the distant Victory, translated by their Signal Middie astern: “England expects every man to do his duty.” How his gunnery mates had resented that! With the great Battle of Trafalgar approaching, what else would they do? What else had they been doing? Treat us like men, they clamoured under their breath, wheeling out their giant cannons in readiness: what else would we do but our duty?
So he made himself keep cool now, plunging toward the hoped-for brook. Still the explosions reminded him of the great 32s on his gun deck, as a pine beside him exploded. A gust of oxygen had struck another build up of gasses — and boom, the tree showered Thomas with flaming debris.
Race for the brook. But which way? He glanced upward as flames attacked more Balm of Gilead, and suddenly he found no surface for his feet.
Down he crashed, into the brook. At last. But too shallow. Shocked by the icy water, stunned from striking the brook stones, he tried to lift himself but fell back into the running water. He choked, then shook off his confusion, rose shakily onto all fours. No! First roll over and soak your clothes, and then your long hair.
Quickly, he struggled up. Find a deeper pool. He ran on, his feet slipping on mossy stones, and tripping. He pulled his shirt up over his head. The brook turned. Was it still too shallow? After another fall, he pulled himself out onto the bank and lurched forward. Among the crack of dry branches resembling musketry, he thought he heard shouts, as if from his men, exhorting him: “Go Thomas, save yourself, we’re with you.” His crew, his gunners...
And “go” he went, leaping branches, dodging more deadfalls with the fire chasing him. Then he saw a grizzled birch, aslant. Yes! he’d fished there — that was the pool.
A limb fell just in front of him. He stopped. It ignited a thicket of dead brush. He dove back toward the brook. Just keep your footing, he prayed, slipping and slithering up the stream-bed toward his pool.
A muskrat scuttled straight back into the fire. No, he shouted, wrong way! He stooped to save it. Panicked, it whirled and raced past. He straightened and kept going.
His back burned, his feet and ankles pained, but he dropped once again into the icy brook, dousing his sixfoot frame, lean from two years surviving in the New World, burying his long hair and beard which was already drying rapidly. The bushes around the brook caught fire. Now what? His flesh seared; he choked from the smoke: it tasted bitter and acrid. He dropped onto all fours, keeping close to the water. For some reason, the lower air let him breathe. His elbows and knees scraped on the rocky bottom.
A blackened trunk athwart the brook stopped him. He tried squeezing beneath it. Some bark came loose and he grabbed it, forced himself under and past the ring of fire, splashed the last ten feet and then collapsed into the pool.
On his back, completely submerged, he lifted his face to breathe. Too hot. He placed the bark over his face to shield him from the heat. But his fingers burned. Was the fire passing over? All at once, he couldn’t breathe. No oxygen. Suffocating.
He tried gulping air. Calm down, he told himself, slow that beating heart. But he couldn’t. He felt he was drowning. With a huge effort, he made himself resist the urge to leap up and gasp for air. Better suffocate in this icy water than die by burning. Torn by impossible choices, his mind flashed with visions of a Native woman. Magwés, Little Birch, his wife, dead and gone these last two months. She reached out her hand. Her touch calmed him as he felt himself fading. And then as her vision drifted away, the fire seemed to pass over.
A breath of air filled his lungs. The intense heat was lessening. Soon he lifted out his face, then his body. The fire had thundered on, passing over him in its wild rampage, and he heard the sound of thunder. More lightning? No, he reassured himself, just rain. Rain at last.
Chapter Two
A couple of days later, Thomas sat on the stoop of his cabin in the Hollow and marvelled at how the providential rain had rescued him as he lay freezing in the brook. Whittling a spoon, he now tried to sort out his dilemma. Freed for a while from his haunting despair, the fire had shocked him back into reality. Again he offered thanks to the Lord Above.
Now take stock of the situation! Decide whether to stay, or to leave to find a job. Two summers ago, he had worked with an old British master-caulker on a Robin’s Company barque, the workhorse sailing vessel that Robin’s often used. Being on the run from the Navy at the time, it had offered a convenient disguise, but hardly enough money to accumulate all the tools and a draft animal needed for the farm he hoped to start. He had not accepted M’sieur Huard’s offer of work last summer; instead, this spring he had brought Magwés back to his cabin and worked at clearing his land for their life ahead. He quickly put that darkening thought out of his mind. Perhaps he should travel east along the Coast to the tiny settlement of Pabos. That was probably a couple of days paddling, and so manageable. But he’d not heard of any employment there. About a hundred miles further on at the mouth of Chaleur Bay lay Douglastown, another English settlement. But that was out of the question. Too far away to paddle, expert though he had become.
He could stay here, plant a few potatoes and some maize, the Indian corn, or possibly cabbages, but he was sure that would not keep him alive through the winter ahead. He could fish through the ice, trap small game — he knew how, after that one winter with the Micmac. He could live alone, slowly clear his land, cut trees, saw them into lengths with the fine tools M’sieur Blanquart had given him, after Blanquart’s son Marc went back to France to look for Sorrel, the little sister.
He wondered how the old man was doing. He had enjoyed his son Marc’s companionship in the woods last winter among the French lumberjacks. Again he’d seen how you needed neighbours here in the New World. One man alone could not survive. You needed the interconnecting relationships of friends. His cabin was far from any such community, nor would any spring up soon, given that winters were severe and the land only brought forth bounty after back-breaking work, guaranteed to make even the stoutest of hearts quail.
So that, in a way, decided him. Working here with no friends, no companionship, and of course no possibility of finding a wife to share his life as Magwés had done, would not further his cause. During these last two years in the New World, crammed with life-threatening episodes and all the challenges of an uninhabited terrain, he had learned one thing — you made things happen yourself, or you lost out. So for better or worse, he had better get out, get to Paspébiac, and try his luck.
Having de
cided, he leapt up, and spent the rest of the day preparing his camp for the leaving thereof. He hid his few tools in a cache he’d dug a hundred yards upstream from his cabin. Then he climbed out of the Hollow and on out toward the bay, to look down on the site of his proposed farmhouse. Below this hill, flat land ran down to the red cliffs overlooking the sea.
Not much to show for all his work, with about twenty feet or so cleared. Giant trunks lay awry, limbed and gaunt, awaiting oxen to drag them to the walls he hoped to erect over foundation stones lugged up from the beach. Among the stumps he’d planted some potatoes and corn from the Micmac. Yes, it would look like any abandoned site of a would-be settler, and passersby were unlikely, anyway, his place being miles from Paspébiac. Travellers up and down the Coast used only the sea: no land transportation through thick, impassable forest and rivers to be forded. He and Magwés, Little Birch, had mapped out this place for their eventual farmhouse, chosen because this hill would cut the north wind, and the flat land would accept a farmhouse, a garden, and buildings for livestock. This is where they had intended to stay until the end of their days. And now, her days had already ended, so abruptly.
He paused, and bowed his head, trying to keep tears from starting into his eyes. But start they did. His son would be well looked after by the Micmac band, he knew that, much as he longed to have him with him. But, of course, quite impossible. He waited for a while, then cleared his throat, and got up and walked down to the brook, where he got himself a good long drink of water, and then returned to his cabin to prepare for his next foray into the unknown.
***
The next morning, Thomas Manning sat in the stern of his new Micmac canoe, paddling with strong, even strokes past the high, red, ragged cliffs strewn with birds. He marvelled at how these helldivers wrung a satisfactory living out of their sparse environment, when he could not yet make a go of it by his lush brook. The spring had produced for him some wild onion root, very young leaves of willow that were nice and tender, and of course the one week’s produce of fiddleheads. But he had no more molasses for energy, flour for bread, and most important, no salt for curing, nothing in fact of the many supplies on which life depended.