by Ann Birch
“Syllabub, eh, Eliza m’dear? I’ll have it.” And he proceeds to grab the bowl and empty its contents into the tankard Miss Russell has just set upon the table. “How are ye today, White?” He doesn’t want an answer, he’s too engrossed in quaffing back the syllabub. He rubs some whipped cream off his chin with the back of his hand and asks, “Where’s little Mary? You’re far too easy with the girl, Eliza. She should be here in the kitchen doing a woman’s work.”
White watches as Miss Russell turns away to set the empty bowl in the dry sink. He senses from the heave of her shoulders that she is crying. From a room upstairs comes the sound of coughing.
“Leave it, Willcocks,” he says in a whisper, “the girl is dying.”
“Balderdash and bunkum. Nothing like a good day’s work to set one right.”
White cannot say more without upsetting everyone. He rises, gathers up his coat, says goodbye, and heads out into the brisk March breezes.
He’s half-way to his own house when he meets Peter Russell coming up the path from the quay. “Just managed to catch the packet at York, the first one of the spring season,” his friend says. “I have a few days now to spend with my sister and that damned cousin who’s dumped himself on us for I don’t know how long.”
“Why is he here, anyway?”
“Only because he hopes I’ll be successful in getting him some new land grants from the Governor. I got him hundreds of acres free not so long ago, contingent on his getting settlers to come over. But he buggered everything up by trying to sell the lands, and Simcoe is so angry with him that he’s taken all the grants away from him. So now we have him on our hands. All he’s ever done for me was to give me head lice when we had to room together years ago at school in Cork.”
“Well, I’ve just come from your house, and your sister appears to be bearing up.” Not going to mention the bastard’s callous remarks about poor little Mary. Russell’s got enough to worry about at the moment.
“Good. The more you can keep an eye on things in my absence, the better.”
White notices that Russell’s usual broad girth looks considerably shrunken. “How are things in York?” he asks, having heard rumours about the winter famine.
“It’s been a terrible winter. I had to persuade the Governor to get food supplies from the garrison here at Niagara. Otherwise we would have starved. And now that Dorchester son-of-a-bitch has chewed him out for not getting official sanction for this most merciful action. He’s blasted Simcoe for every good thing he’s done in this benighted world. But I hear Dorchester’s being recalled to England, and I hope we get a decent man to replace him.”
Russell’s eyes are red and watery and his jowls sag. That winter in York took its toll.
“What are you staring at, White? Better look at your own affairs. Are you coming over soon to see about getting a house ready for yourself? You do remember the Governor’s deadline of June first?”
“I do. But I’m not going to rush. Didn’t you say that there is no jail in the place, no court of justice, no house for the meeting of the legislature, no roads?”
“I’ll do what I can, now that I’m to be in charge of things if Simcoe goes back to England. I can see getting those Queen’s Rangers of his working on building and road-making. Now that we’re not having to fight with the Yanks, they might as well be doing something productive. Trouble is, there’s not a skilled carpenter among them, and scarcely a decent carpenter in the whole place. Someone told me a day ago that all the good carpenters are on the British ships.”
“I’ll go over to York with you when you leave again. Just give me a couple of days’ warning.” Time to find an excuse for not going anywhere. I’m totally with Miss Russell on that one.
They part, and White heads home. Having lost The Battle of the Syllabub, he’s anxious to knock back some of Yvette’s dandelion wine. It’s a poor substitute, but there’ll be plenty of it.
Back at his cabin, he finds David Smith ensconced in a chair by the hearth. Yvette has already provided him with a glass of her wine, and when the man sees White, he hastily holds his quizzing glass to his left eye and picks up Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which he has evidently dropped onto the floor beside him.
“Careful, man. That’s one of my favourite books. Haven’t you finished the assignment I gave you?” White asks, annoyed to see ashes sprinkled on the cover.
“It’s a hard nut to crack. And I can’t see that it has that much to do with the practice of law,” Smith replies. “And since you’ve already certified me as an attorney, I am really disinclined to read more.”
“If you want to be a good lawyer, you’ll read and digest it. That’s an order.”
“Perhaps you should have been a general in the army instead of an attorney-general in the legal kingdom, White. To answer your question, no, I haven’t finished the assignment, but I will, even though my dear wife complains that she has not found me in her bed for lo, these many nights.”
“Shut up,” White says, gesturing towards Yvette whose back is to them, making toast in the hearth. Why these men feel they can make remarks in front of Indians that they would never make in front of white women is beyond me.
“Gladly. Now can’t we forget Kant”—he laughs at his own joke—”while I bring you tidings of our new capital?”
“I was surprised to hear you’d been over to York, given your antipathy to the place.”
“I won’t move an inch until necessary, man, but meantime I like to know how the world marches. But I can tell you one thing: there isn’t a place in York that matches anything here. In the last couple of years, we’ve built a decent town, and I’ve got the best place in it. And the best location—right by the Freemasons’ Lodge—where I can keep an eye on all the comings-and-goings in this place. Far better, need I say it, than this hut of yours in the woods. It grieves me to have to leave the best of Georgian architecture for a hovel in a godforsaken bush.” He gets out of his chair and moves to the table where a half-filled bottle of wine rests. He refills his glass and sits down again.
By God, even in my own house I can’t get a glass of wine. White yanks off his coat and throws it on the woodpile by the hearth. “Well, what’s up these days in York?” he asks Smith, finding himself able to stifle his anger when he sees Yvette move to the table with a fresh bottle and a glass which she fills and hands to him.
“Small has bought a little log house for fifty Yankee dollars,” Smith tells him, “and he has stipulated that the present owner must repair the roof for the price. A cruder place you never saw—it was a fishing hut in its infancy—but fancy, he is calling it Berkeley House in honour of his friend Colonel Berkeley of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire!”
The image of Betsy Small swanning about in a fishing hut called Berkeley House is so amusing that White finds himself laughing out loud.
Smith has now launched into an anecdote about Peter Russell. “He’s adding two windows and dormers to his little dwelling,” he reports, “and he’s chewed over the expenses so thoroughly his builder calls him ‘an old miser.’ Fancy, Russell himself repeated this phrase to me. He seems proud of it.”
“Are expenses great in the new capital?”
“Appalling. And what will you, sir, the pre-eminent lawyer in Upper Canada, do without a court house, or a jail for that matter?”
White feels his head begin to pound. “I’m tired, Smith. Let’s forget the lesson today. No charge, of course. We can resume tomorrow.” He stands up and takes Smith’s coat from the row of hooks on the wall.
Smith laughs. “Here’s your coat. What’s your hurry? Very well, I’m on my way. I know you don’t like to hear bad news. But I’ve got one good piece of news to impart. There isn’t a legislative building in the place, either, as you know. But it’s not going to matter. You’re not going to get re-elected for the Kingston riding anyway. I hear the merchants are too angry with you about your support of the anti-slave bill. But then, what do you do anyway to get thei
r vote? I’m out in my district every few months talking myself up and buying beef and spruce beer for the peasants. That’s what it’s all about: booze and beef.”
Yvette, as always, has picked up unspoken messages. She goes to the kitchen door and holds it open for Smith to pass through. When he’s left, she removes the toast from the hearth, spreads a good layer of butter on it and puts it in front of White. “And here’s a pot of honey for you, sir,” she adds, setting a large spoon into its contents.
It’s all good, though he would have been happy with some of Miss Russell’s syllabub to top it off. What a pig that Willcocks is. But remembering the syllabub reminds him of something else.
“Yvette,” he says, “I wonder if your brother could carve something for me?”
She doesn’t know what a whisk is, but when he draws one for her and makes whipping motions, she understands. “Brother do a good one,” she says, “maybe not like this”—pointing to the drawing—“but a good one.”
White is pleased. Anything will be an improvement on that wretched bundle of twigs poor Miss Russell contends with.
Chapter Twenty-Five
August 1796
White has finished a hasty letter to his brother-in-law and is just putting his seal upon it when the doorknocker bangs. It’s Captain Shank from the Queen’s Rangers. He’s leaving for England in the morning and has agreed to take White’s letter with him.
“I’ll deliver it myself to the Inns of Court,” he tells White, putting the letter into his satchel.
“Thanks for that, Captain. And good luck with your new posting in London.”
“Glad to be rid of this place, sir, to tell the truth, though it’s turned into quite a smart little town since I first came here. But I want to be off on the express before I have to watch those wretched Yankees take over the fort. Better to be with Colonel Simcoe in the land that . . .” Shank salutes and heads down the path to the wharf.
White watches him until the woods hide him from sight. What had the man intended to say? The land that God made? Does this new land not qualify as the work of the Almighty? Or does every Englishman think of it as the place to which God banished Cain after he murdered his brother?
He sighs and climbs the ladder to his bedchamber in the loft. He is always so tired these days. It’s because he knows the fragile peace he has enjoyed these past few months will soon be at an end. He’ll take an hour’s rest and then he’ll hire someone to paddle him across the river. As Attorney-General, it’s surely his duty to see the British hand-over of the fort goes smoothly and without rancour. Who else is left here with any authority?
He no longer has the Gov at his right hand here at Navy Hall, or even over the lake in York. In June, Simcoe prorogued the last parliament in Newark, ordered everyone to head for the new capital, and then took off to Kingston with Mrs. Simcoe and their two small children for the first stage of their departure for England.
White had stood on the wharf with the Russells and members of the Queen’s Rangers to say goodbye. Mrs. Simcoe cried. The little boy Francis hugged the deerskin-clad legs of an Indian chief and would not let go until the man reached into his beaded pouch and withdrew a pair of tiny moccasins which he gave to the child. Oh I remember how I too cried when I saw little Francis cling to that Indian. It was the way dear Ellen clung to me when I said goodbye to her at our house on the Embankment.
Finally the Gov and the lady got into their canoe, the children and their attendants followed in batteaux, and to a volley of cannon from the Queen’s Rangers and musket fire from the Mohawks, they disappeared from view for ever. Only Jarvis and his wife had not been in the crowd on that day.
There had followed several pleasant weeks of nothing-much, and then at the Russells’ grand house on the commons last night, over some excellent pork chops and a good bread pudding, White’s friend delivered the ultimatum.
“You’ve got to move.”
“That’s an order?”
“Take it as such. Now that I’m to administer the government of Upper Canada in the Governor’s absence, I’ve got to start laying down the law.”
“I don’t have any money. My salary from England is late as usual.”
“I’ll do what I can for you in a letter. Meantime, write to that brother-in-law of yours and see what he can do. You told me in March you’d come over to York, and you haven’t done one thing to follow up on that promise.”
“Please, brother,” Miss Russell said at this point. “Leave Mr. White to enjoy his bread pudding.” She placed a silver bowl of syllabub in front of him. “And this be for you, sir, whopped up special with that wooden whooper you gave me.” Then she picked up the large three-pronged forklike creation Yvette’s brother carved from an oak branch and gave the contents of the bowl an expert twirl or two.
“And since Mr. Willcocks is no longer with us,” she continued, “drink the whole pitcher.”
“Back to my main point now,” Russell said. “If I may . . .”
White let him expound at length, blah, blah, blah, while the soothing sweetness of the syllabub spread through his body and caressed the pain in his head.
* * *
Today, after his rest, he hires an Indian paddler to take him across the river for what will undoubtedly be his last close-up look at Fort Niagara. Under Jay’s Treaty it was to be delivered into Yankee hands in June, after a thirteen-year delay, but somehow it’s all been postponed again until now.
The canoe pulls up at the dock below the fort just before sunset. For a few minutes, White simply stands on the flats, looking up at the imposing stone structure far above. It commands the mouth of the river below it and the expanse of Lake Ontario beyond.
He remembers his first time at a ball at the fort in those days when he and Osgoode lived in the canvas tents with the Simcoes. How impressed he had been with the Mess, sometimes called The Castle: its polished wood floors, spacious dimensions, and high ceilings. The Brits were able to conjure an impressive orchestra from the ranks of the Queen’s Rangers. The food and drink had been plentiful, and it had been grand to have the freedom to move about without the constant supervision of the Simcoes and their retinue.
Then, one night, as he recalls, he stumbled down a dark staircase to look for a privy or a pisspot somewhere. Without warning he found himself in a dungeon, a black hole with no aperture for light or air, with a dank stench of blood and death. In one corner there had been a pile of filthy apparatus. Coming close to it to see better, he had stretched out his hand to look at a greasy square pillow when suddenly from behind him came a friendly east-London voice. “Want to look at it, mate? Jolly good if you wants to suffocate a Frenchie. Or a damned Yankee.”
Turning round, White had confronted a British private who told him he’d been assigned dungeon duty for the evening. Then the young man—he couldn’t have been more than twenty—had picked up the instruments from the pile, one by one, and put names to them. “This here’s an iron collar, and this one a head cage.” And so he’d run through the grisly lot, piece by piece, explaining with seeming delight the heinous punishments that each could inflict. The private had ended by inviting White to “piss on the lot of ‘em,” an invitation which he had no difficulty in refusing even though his bladder was full. He had finally extricated himself to return to the upper world, feeling a bit like Dante making his way from the pit of the Inferno “to look once more upon the stars.” He’d taken his piss in the soldiers’ vegetable garden.
As he thinks now of the horrors of that dungeon, he climbs up the steep path to the fort, reflecting that perhaps the Gov had done the right thing in establishing a new capital in York. Yankees and Brits may be buddies now, at least on the surface, but in another decade, who knows?
The transfer this day is remarkably civil. White watches as the new Yankee commander shakes hands with the Captain of the Fifth Regiment, Roger Hale Sheaffe. A weak and ineffectual man, in White’s opinion, whose pride in his musical snuffbox seems to be his sole mark of distin
ction. Perhaps the Gov chose him for that very reason: he will cause no trouble.
“We are grateful for the vegetables you’ve left in those gardens behind the fort,” the Yankee is saying now, as he takes a pinch of snuff from Sheaffe’s proffered snuffbox. “And for the sixty barrels of pork in the storehouse.”
“Allow me to show you around the works, sir,” Sheaffe says to the relieving officer, and off they go while White sits beneath a tree looking over the lake towards York. What will it be like there? And how soon will it be before I have Marianne on my hands again? He turns his back on the lake and looks towards his familiar home across the river. But the sun is setting and he closes his eyes against its glare.
He’s jolted awake by the cheers of the Yankees as the major and Sheaffe shake hands. In another minute, the fifty men of the Fifth Regiment descend the steep path to the flats where their guns and ammunition have already been loaded into a flotilla of batteaux.
Back in the canoe with his Indian paddler, White gets a front-row view of the Brits’ progress across the river to the Niagara side where the Gov has built a new blockhouse to receive them. Before he left for Kingston, he’d named it Fort George. It’s built on the high ground behind Navy Hall, looking directly across to Fort Niagara. There’s something definitely confrontational about the position of this new British garrison, White reflects. But if there’s ever a war with the Yankees, at least I won’t be here to see it.
What’s left to do now is to face the fact that the move to York can no longer be avoided. He has only a few more weeks to procrastinate.
Chapter Twenty-Six
September 1796
Eliza has just taken a bread pudding from the hearth and set it upon the table. It is a special treat for Mary’s homecoming. The girl has been gone near eight weeks to stay with a captain’s widow who lives on high ground above Queenston. From what Eliza has heard from the widow, Mary has been the better for the fresh air and sunshine. Now she’s coming home, thank the Lord for that. Eliza has missed her so much. Peter never sees the funny side of anything, while she and Mary can always share a laugh or two.