“They have been my friends.”
“They have been friends to many, as have we. But this land shall see great change soon enough, and the Indian will not benefit much.”
“I am sorry to hear you say so.”
Blake stopped and turned to her. “Nevertheless, I cannot debate this matter with you. I am a man with prospects and I am an English person like yourself. I have proposed marriage to you because I want to have a wife and because I believe you might make a fair one. I say on my own part only that I would make a faithful husband.”
“I don’t doubt it, John.”
“I have no patience with London fripperies, or any fripperies. I do not deny myself to be a hard man, but it is a hard land and I am suited to it.”
“It is a hard land, John, but full of promise, is it not?”
“Charlotte, will you marry me or no? If no, I am most sorry to have encumbered you with my poor plain speeches.”
“Would you really have me as you wife, John Blake? And Elizabeth as your daughter? You hardly know us.”
“I would.”
Charlotte did not know quite where her answer came from, but she found herself saying, “Then I shall be your wife.” They had walked on again in silence.
SHE FINGERS the eagle feather nervously while she tells the men and women who’d sheltered her these many months that she is to be married to John Blake. They are not in the least surprised as an unmarried white woman is a rarity—even when that woman is Charlotte Taylor. She has an ache in her throat when she begins her goodbye.
“I hope the smoke from the sweetgrass will give me the courage and goodness I have felt in this camp. Your stories of the beginnings—the creation, the land, the ways of the people both Mi’kmaq and Acadian, will be carried forever in my heart. It is my hope that we will meet again. Thank you from my mijuajijuit, Elizabeth, and from me, your nedap.”
There is much nodding in approval. Tea is passed around the circle. Now it is Marie’s turn to ask for the eagle feather. She tells Charlotte she has un petit cadeau for her soeur and gives her a pair of moccasins stitched across the toe and foot in minute puckers. They are violet in colour, the skins dyed with the juice of blueberries, the sides ornamented with the exquisite quillwork of the People.
“I made them from moose calf,” Marie tells her.
Then Wioche stands, takes the eagle feather from Marie and hands Charlotte a blanket with a slit in the middle, made from the long soft hairs of the young moose. When Charlotte slips it over Elizabeth’s head, it falls in folds around her and envelops her with the warmth of a people.
Later that night Charlotte writes in her diary:
I will leave this camp soon, but I hope its lessons will stay with me forever. Here, there is a season and a meaning to everything. They hunt when the moon is full. Pick berries when they slip easily from their branches after a summer storm. Peel the birch bark from the trees in the early morning damp of the day. And oil the skins of the moose when the hot sun is overhead. They find their way by the constellations and know the seasons by the moon. Heavy banks of snow mean the wigwams will have less wind and be warmer. The higher the hornets build their nest, the sooner winter will come. They can mimic the owl, the loon, the wire-winged crackle, the mink, the deer and the moose. Each sound is employed to attract a meal, to issue a warning, to respond to an omen. They listen to the messages that come from the animals as well as the heavens. I am the richer for my time in this place.
It’s a fine morning, cool and clear when she rises at dawn on her wedding day. The trunk that has become a table of sorts is empty now, her clothes packed for the voyage to the Miramichi. She decides to leave the well-travelled chest with Marie, as there’s no room for it in the canoe. But the cradle and the sleigh must come. John Blake had grumbled about that the day before when he loaded Charlotte’s worldly goods into the canoe. “I can as well build these once we’re at the river.” But Charlotte had insisted, so he’d strapped the cumbersome contraptions onto the canoe and paddled away to Alston Point.
When Elizabeth is fed, Charlotte dresses the baby in the soft animal skins that are her only wardrobe and walks out of the hut that has been her home for nearly ten months. André steps toward her and presses a packet into her hand, “Pomme de terre pour planter,” he says. She tucks his gift into her pocket and turns away from the camp. Wioche and Marie walk with her, all three with much to say and a short time to share their thoughts.
It’s Wioche who bids the final farewell. “You give Gluskap a fine story to tell. May it be continued on the Milamichi.”
Charlotte wonders if she will ever see them again. She wishes the ache in her chest would go away. She wonders as well what the morrow will bring. With baby Elizabeth strapped to her back and a braid of sweetgrass dangling from the bunting bag, Charlotte walks into the lodge to be married, for better or for worse.
THEY ARE MARRIED on the twelfth day of June 1776 by George Walker in his capacity as Justice of the Peace for the County of Halifax, settlement of Alston Point, Nepisiguit, His Majesty’s colony of Nova Scotia. They stand in the main hall of Walker’s house and face the wooden cross that hangs on the east wall. In the absence of a soaring nave, a rose window, an altar and a chalice, this cross is God’s sole emblem during the prayer services Walker occasionally conducts. Charlotte had dared to suggest that they might conduct the ceremony in the clearing overlooking the bay, but the men would have none of it. She would have liked, too, to have Marie and Anne at her side, but in light of her betrothed’s sensibilities, this drew only frowns. No matter: she had made her choice and now must follow it.
Jack Primm is present, and Dan Crocker and Bob Simpson and half a dozen others of Walker’s men.
“I require and charge ye both—” George Walker speaks the words with care, his Scots burr rippling the cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, which he holds somewhat awkwardly at arm’s length. “As ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of ye know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their matrimony lawful.”
He pauses here, clears his throat and appears to be reading ahead in preparation for the next lines. Well, thought Charlotte, there is no impediment on account of marriage, and there’s a blessing, I suppose.
“John Blake, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will.”
Charlotte casts a sideways glance at Blake, where he kneels beside her on a rough wooden stool Walker had covered in a beaver pelt. He is a handsome man indeed, but she’s still taking the measure of him. He has the face of a man who can’t be surprised. His wary eyes tell her trust doesn’t come easily. He’s older than she is—a lot older, she thinks, but younger than the commodore. His eyes are as brown as the earth, but his ruddy, sun-darkened face, weathered by years at sea, and his brown hair flecked with grey, give the impression of grave intent.
“Charlotte Taylor, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will.”
His low voice now rumbles out his vow. “I, John Blake, take thee, Charlotte Taylor, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Blake releases her hand and she
takes his and says her own vows in response.
Charlotte had not sought Walker’s counsel on Blake’s suit because she strongly believed the match to be of his design. Since it was clear to all that she would not be returning to England in the near future, and since she could not be expected to remain with the Mi’kmaq indefinitely, a husband was the only solution and this husband the best husband available.
Blake takes from his pocket a simple, heavy gold ring.
“Place it on the Book,” Walker instructs in a quiet voice. Then he picks up the ring and returns it to Blake’s hand and Blake slides it on the fourth finger of Charlotte’s left hand. He holds it there.
“With this ring,” he says, and his usually dark-toned voice falters a little. He starts again. “With this ring, I thee wed, with my body I thee honour, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
At this moment, Elizabeth, who had been nestled asleep in her cradle in a corner of the room, sends up a strenuous howl. She shushes when Charlotte picks her up, but howls again when she tries to set her down, so finally her mother carries her to where Blake still kneels, bringing the baby into the circle of their vows.
George Walker says, “Let us pray,” and recites the Lord’s Prayer, with all the assembled joining in. And when that is done, he joins the couple’s right hands.
“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” he says. He closes the book, having determined in his own mind that God would not expect more. The small congregation stands for a moment in awkward silence. Then John Blake reaches over and takes Elizabeth into his own arms and rocks her.
So now I have a husband, Charlotte thinks.
“If this ain’t occasion for a tot of rum, I don’t know what would be,” calls out Dan Crocker. Loud hurrahs are sent up from around the room. George Walker beams and by common consent everyone adjourns to the clearing, where a table had been laid for a good noontime meal, if not precisely a wedding banquet.
JOHN BLAKE is a man of few enough words. But his men had seen to it that his new wife was told of his reputation, told of his youth in the British navy, told how he had retired, like Walker, to captain cargo across the Atlantic—lumber and fish from Nova Scotia to England and Spain, European guns and tools to the West Indies, then molasses, sugar, spices and rum back to Nova Scotia. But, oh, they boasted, there was a fierceness in the man that would not be contained. He had volunteered to fight under Amherst and Wolfe at the siege of Louisbourg. He’d almost lost a hand there to a French musket ball—you could see the scar to this day—then fought on, covered in his own blood. When Wolfe was promoted to general and struck against the French in Nova Scotia, Blake served under Murray on the Miramichi and witnessed the destruction of Eskinwobudich and the dispersal of disloyal elements—Acadian and Mi’kmaq—from the area. When the soldiers were stood down for a fortnight, his men knew for a fact that he’d paddled alone up the river and liked what he saw there: the fish, the empty land. Murray had granted him permanent leave and he’d begun to clear the forest he had chosen beside a dark brook he named for himself. He’d worked alone, they said, until he could hire a crew. Yet within a year, news came that Wolfe would move on Quebec and, such was the intrepidity of their man, he’d volunteered again. On the night of September 12, 1759, he—though a navy man—had managed to be among the eighteen hundred redcoats who’d left the warships and climbed the cliffs to take control of the Plains of Abraham. The next day they were joined by three thousand more and forever broke the back of the French empire in North America. And they swore it to be true that he’d served on the pilot boat Gremlin when it guided the Royal William down the St. Lawrence as it carried Wolfe’s embalmed body home. Several fellows maintained absolutely that Blake was recommended for dramatic promotion. But within a few months, he was piloting ships on the Miramichi and cutting trees again on Blake Brook.
Whatever his history, Blake the groom is the centre of attention at Charlotte’s wedding. When pressed to tell his story, he declines, but leaves no doubt that acquiring and clearing more land on the Miramichi is now his aim.
“A man might earn a fair living as a captain,” he says. “The commodore here will tell you that. A man may have a proper business, own his merchandise and determine his own affairs and do well enough.”
“We’d like to do as well as you, John Blake,” says Dan Crocker.
“Nay. Nay. You but think it so.” Blake tears off a piece of bread. “To be sure, I may continue on the Miramichi as a pilot. But you cannot find a proper life at sea, lads, not for a lifetime, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be as some old captains are, who are lost on the very land men were meant to walk on. It’s the land, lads, clearing it, owning it, that’s what will see a man through.”
“Would I be one of those old captains, John?” Walker asks, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“No, damn you.” Blake laughs. “You’re too canny a Scot for such a fate, George Walker. You’re well set here, and in the old country, wa hai ye’re bred.”
Walker’s smile fades.
“Indeed, John, but we cannot be certain, not any more. The American rebellion is an earthquake that now shakes us all.”
“They may shake us, damn them, but they will not shake us out!” Blake’s dark brow furrows and his hand clenches in a fist. “His Majesty will not permit Nova Scotia to fall to those rogues. No, he will not—the comfortable swine at headquarters in Halifax are safe enough. But who, I ask you, protects us now on the Miramichi or here at Nepisiguit? Who will defend us from the treachery of the savages? Already they are guiding the damned rebels up and down the river. My own house might be burning at this moment. From here to Pennsylvania and far past, we’ve sacrificed good British lads to keep our promises to the savages. And how do they repay us? By joining with the rebels in New England and massing against our women and children. By creeping toward us in the woods, even today as we sit here talking among ourselves.”
“Aye, aye,” grumble several others.
“Mark me, sirs,” says Blake, his voice a rumble. “It is not until every savage has his scalp cut from his skull that we may rest here. Scalp them and leave them to die, as they would us. That must be British policy. It is my policy certainly.”
There is quiet for a moment.
In the weeks she had known him, Charlotte had never heard him so vehement.
“Are not some of the Indians our allies, John?”
Her new husband looks at her sternly, and Charlotte holds his gaze. “Do we not have our friends among them?” she asks.
Blake’s eyes drop to the table. “How shall we tell who among these Indians our friends might be? It’s too late when they tie you at a stake and roast you like you were a damned pig. It’s too late then to be asking them!”
“We are well advised, John,” Walker interjects softly, “to cultivate friends among the tribes. Your warnings are well given. I myself have but recently lost a fishing station across the bay at Restigouche to the rebels. Yet we must know what our enemy is thinking and the American generals are unlikely to tell us. It’s for this reason—not just for trade—that I maintain my relations with Indians such as those here at Nepisiguit.”
Blake shifts a piece of venison with the point of his knife.
“Be remembered,” he says, “that they hear what you say just as you hear what they say.”
A longer and more uncomfortable silence descends on the table. Then Jack Primm rises from his chair. “I believe it is time,” he says—and he gives his head a small waggle to suggest a merriment that did not come easily to him—“to remind us all that we are witnesses to a day of joy and promise. May I propose we drink to Mr. and Mrs. John Blake.”
Bob Simpson, a reticent man on most occasions, also rises and says, “To the most beautiful woman who ever set foot in this place.”
“To the only damned woman who ever did!” growls Dan Crocker, who also stands, as does
every other man.
THE MEN BEGIN TO LOAD that very afternoon so they can make an early start the following morning. The six men who came here with Blake in three canoes laden with oats, flour, salt pork and a new bride and her baby would require two days to reach Blake Brook on the Miramichi. The post is filled with the busyness of saws and hammers, the huff of the forge, the babble of working men’s voices, the neighing of horses, bawls from the three new calves and occasional instructive moos from their mothers. About noon, men from the Salmon camp arrive at the post. Their trappers were just in off the distant lines with pelts of beaver, fox, lynx, bear and the long-haired hide of a young moose. Their fishermen roll down a barrel of fresh cod and trading starts in earnest, with Jack Primm calling for the molasses, rum, beads, jewellery, iron pots and knives. Six dozen fox pelts are traded for arms at a rate of one dozen pelts a musket.
“He may pay a dear price for those skins,” John Blake mutters.
Charlotte sees Henri, a friend from the camp among them. She looks down to the water’s edge where Blake and his men are working.
“Kwé, Henri,” she greets him.
He smiles shyly. “Kwé, Charlotte.”
“Mé talwléin?”
He laughs and replies, “We’re all well. Is it true you are leaving us?”
“I have no desire to leave, Henri. But my new husband’s home is elsewhere.”
“The People will remember you, Charlotte.”
“I shall never forget the People. But, Henri, perhaps we shall meet again.”
He smiles at her and lifts a bale of furs to his shoulder.
“Charlotte, it is a wide country and you will be on the Milamichi.”
“My husband calls it the Miramichi.”
“That is the English name.”
“Have you seen Marie?”
The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Page 15