The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor

by Sally Armstrong

  “Away with ye,” William scoffs.

  “It is one thing for the Widow Blake to claim ownership of the land but quite another for a married woman to carry on as though she has the same rights as men,” Marston intones.

  Charlotte is steaming, and resentful that Marston is talking about her in the third person, too cowardly to address her directly. “According to you, I am expected to give up my land, my ambitions and my rights, indeed anything that I own to my present husband,” she bristles. “I have secured my lots in my own stead for my children. Mr. Wishart has no issue with this. He knows as well as I how difficult and uncertain the future can be.”

  “But, Mrs. Wishart, as a married woman, you have no economic or legal power. Your husband is your representative and voice in public,” he pronounces.

  “So,” she says, trying to suppress a grin, “William, my husband of only a few months, is responsible for my behaviour. Even John Blake was not responsible for my behaviour. It is ten years since that assignment has been in any person’s hands but my own.”

  Marston says flatly, to some nodding of other male heads, “Land belongs to men, and proper women don’t meddle in men’s holdings.”

  Charlotte knows the laws of this new province, perhaps better than this newcomer does, and she is incensed by the suggestion that she should bow out of her holdings to please the sensibilities of the men in these meetings.

  In the dory on the way home, she’s still angry. “That I am to be satisfied to hand the land I cleared with my callused hands to another is an injustice I despised in England.”

  “Ach, Charlotte, pay no attention to the man.”

  But she can’t help but feel threatened, and she swears that there is no way she will cede her status as a landowner and an independent woman to a male interloper of the likes of Marston.

  When they are at home that night, and the children asleep, William tells her of the commentary Marston wrote after he was appointed sheriff, on top of being the new surveyor general. His derogatory opinion of his new charges had travelled the river faster than the wind: “Most of the people are illiterate and ignorant and much given to drunkenness. They want two things: law, to keep them in order, and gospel, to give them some better information than they seem to have and to civilize their manners, which attendance at public worship would tend to promote.” Charlotte’s ill opinion of their new masters is confirmed, and she is all the more determined that she and her kin will have their way.

  The lots along the river are measured, altered, bought and sold. Charlotte tends her crops, and reads and rereads her letter with the governor’s seal, wishing she could spit in the eye of Marston, who hunkered down safely in Harvard University, neither fighting in the colonial revolution nor enduring the hardships she and the original settlers have faced. The trail she followed to Frederick Town with Wioche is soon trampled into a thoroughfare with all the petitions moving back and forth between new and old settlers and the governor’s quarters. The chaos of the times hinders William and Charlotte from registering their marriage.

  The chaos in her own life prevents her from realizing she is pregnant again.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Miramichi

  1785

  With four children to feed and another expected in the New Year, William Wishart decides he cannot depend on curing salmon to support this family. It’s no secret that William Davidson is amassing a fortune up at the forks with his trade in tall timbers for ship masts. The white pines preferred for such masts flourish all over the lot he and Charlotte live on, and all through the summer he brings them down, strips their bark and loads as many as his boat will carry for sale in Liverpool. He can’t resist bringing home a few things for his new family, though his nature is to salt the proceeds securely away. A cauldron for cooking, a highly prized salamander—the long-handled pan with feet that can sit right over the fire. Cloth and skeins of wool, even shoes for the children and a pair of ladies’ boots for Charlotte that lace halfway up her calf. The first European footwear she’s owned for a decade.

  She’d bargained a cow from the Murdochs, as well as a pregnant sow, both now grazing on the partially cleared lot to the west. William has built a proper shed for the goat—rather, goats. Charlotte has also procured a mate for the loyal little milk producer. They are sharing space with chickens and laying hens as well as with Jimmy, who increasingly wants to go with William to the woods and down the river to do what he calls “man’s work.” On the still-disputed marshlands, she has staked a piece that is producing a bountiful crop of hay that she cuts and carries in the dory for the animals.

  Evenings are spent patching and sewing their clothes. This night, she takes stock of the family around her while she snips and stitches, patches and darns. The children have been spared the worst of the diseases that have swept down the river, and Charlotte likes to think it is because of the herbal remedies she learned during her first winter in the Indian camp at the bay. Not to mention her obsession with scrubbing the utensils as well as the children with soap and hot water. They’ve had their share of croup and influenza; measles swept through the family one winter. But for the most part, she counts her blessings for the sturdy health of her children.

  She keeps Elizabeth by her side when she prepares meals, teaching her how to season the food with the precious spices John Blake brought from the West Indies, to be frugal, how to set the fire for baking, boiling or frying. When Elizabeth asks what the salamander is for, Charlotte decides to teach her how to make a favourite dish from her own childhood.

  “When I was a girl your age, Cook used to make a wonderful Welsh rabbit for the family on a Sunday using just such a pan as this.” Charlotte sees from the amazed look on her daughter’s face that the idea of “Cook” is as mythical as the idea of angels and fairy dust. “Come, I’ll show you—it has nothing whatsoever to do with rabbits. It won’t be the same as Cook’s. But we can make do.”

  She instructs Elizabeth to carry the salamander to the fire and nestle its legs right into the coals. “It needs to be red hot to make a good rabbit: the feet keep the pan high enough just to clear the flames.” Elizabeth’s next job is to cut the cheese in fine, even pieces so it will melt nicely as Charlotte toasts square-cut chunks of bread over the fire. “It’s a tedious task, but it has to be done right. You must hold it at enough distance from the fire so that it will dry all the way through before turning slightly brown.”

  They mix the cheese slivers with egg, some beer from John Blake’s cask and spices. “It cannot be too runny—it must stick to the toast,” Charlotte instructs.

  When the toast is ready, they slather the mixture over each piece and slide them onto the salamander. She tells Elizabeth to hold the end of the long handle so that she’ll be a comfortable distance away from the heat. “That’s the good of a salamander,” she says. “You don’t have to have your head over the fire.” Charlotte has tender pride for this nine-year-old child whose temperament is so pleasing. Her curly black hair frames her face and her tawny-coloured skin lights up her big brown eyes as she holds the handle, concentrating intently on her job.

  When the Welsh rabbit is ready, the family gathers and Charlotte makes a speech about the chef. “This fine dinner, from an old recipe straight from Cook’s kitchen, was prepared in New Brunswick by the prettiest girl on the Miramichi for the pleasure of William, John, Polly, Robert and Jimmy.”

  When the apples are ripe, she promises her daughter, she will show her how to make a dessert that will make her the most famous cook on the river, and Elizabeth blushes. There’s high spirits that night in this house full of children, all of whom are expected to learn, to survive, and take care of one another.

  BY SEPTEMBER, Charlotte is distinctly showing, and Janet Murdoch teases her, “Maybe you’ll have two babies this time.” She suffers not the least nausea, the skin on her face is glowing and her hair is thick and shiny. Instead of plaiting it, as most of the women do, she leaves it loose, though sometimes it become
s so tangled and windblown she needs to rub grease through the locks to untie the knots. Her life has taken on a pattern that suits her, not withstanding the land battles she is engaged in with Marston and his crowd.

  The birds begin flocking early, and she comments to William that they should expect an early winter. This prospect doesn’t bother her as much as it would have even a year ago. The one benefit of the influx of settlers is that they are less isolated. There is now a store by the shoal that intends to stay open with a stock of winter essentials. Survival is a test she feels better equipped to take.

  Then one day the sound of screaming carries on the river, sending all of them rushing to rescue a family whose house has burst into flames. The outcome is devastating. An infant child dead, an entire family burned out.

  That night Charlotte takes time to write in her diary:

  Tragedy has struck a family who only arrived a few weeks ago. They must have been looking for a new life, instead they lost one. Theirs is the real story of this river. Babies are born, fathers drown, children succumb to the pox, new settlers arrive. The coming and going is like the tide, tenacious, relentless, merciless, sorrowfully predictable in a manner that can wizen your heart.

  William says they were likely in some sort of trouble and came here to escape it. Who hasn’t come to this place to escape where they were? I fear for the woman, Rose. Her blurting out the truth like that—that her husband was hiding gunpowder in the cabin—will do her no good with her man. He steered her away from me so quickly, I’m certain he didn’t want her to say anything more. I see her yet, sitting so straight in the boat, the keening sound coming from her was heartbreaking. I wish we could have been able to help them, authors of their own tragedy or not. But there’s no place to gather or to shelter a family in need. We need so much here—a doctor, a school, a church. Rose’s words—“Get me away from this evil place”—still sting, though it was her grief speaking.

  This place is hard, yes, but it is spiritual at the same time, surrounded as we are by what was here before we came. The birds find the river every spring, the trees guard the banks winter or summer. The stars light the night sky and the flowers bloom despite the late frost and the driving rain. There is a rhythm of reaping and sowing to this life, a struggle to survive—but taught by the seasons and mindful of the animals that stalk the forest around us, there is abundance here as well as sorrow.

  THE NEXT DAY, Charlotte takes Elizabeth with her to visit the Indian camp. They bring what they can—medicines to treat white man’s diseases, knitted mitts and stockings her family can spare. They’re greeted warmly, particularly by the woman who’d given birth to the upside-down baby. Her name is Booktawit, which means ladybird, and she had called her baby Mimegech-k, which means butterfly. Charlotte is about to tell Elizabeth that the name “Wioche” means pouch of skin, the sign of the courier who brings news and medicines, but scruples suddenly about mentioning his name. If she firmly doesn’t think of him, she misses him less.

  While the settlers quarrel among themselves and mostly prosper, the People suffer increasing poverty and discontent. They have no immunity to fight the diseases the settlers bring and are dying off in frightful numbers.

  Booktawit asks her if it is true that the Indians are going to be corralled into one part of the province, forced to leave the land they have been roaming for thousands of years. She has not heard this rumour, she says, but in her heart she knows it very well might be true. Looking around at the crowded, disorderly camp, she feels a pang of guilt about scheming to get the land for herself and arguing about how white women should have the vote when an entire nation of people are losing all they have known.

  The women invite her and her daughter to drink tea by the fire, and for a time they trade stories about children and gossip along the river. The women don’t complain, though it’s clear that many of their men now are more interested in rum than in hunting, alcohol being even more noxious an influence here than in the settlers’ tilts and cabins along the river. “Children go hungry and women cower when the men get crazed with the rum,” Charlotte says, but none of the women do more than nod.

  They invite her to examine the pregnant women. She tries to protest but then decides that given the fact there is no one else to help, there is maybe some knowledge she can share. For a time, the ever-attentive Elizabeth takes it all in, her round-bellied mother in intense consultation with a succession of other women in the same condition, then finds girls her age to play with.

  On the way home, she asks her mother why the Indians live off by themselves. It’s a question Charlotte doesn’t have a ready answer for.

  When they get back to the cabin, William tells her that Robert Reid, the owner of the store by the shoals, has been appointed coroner. “It’s a start,” she says, wondering if a newly named coroner will ask the tough questions about the fatal fire and the matter of the gunpowder.

  A FEW DAYS before Christmas, Charlotte is kneading the flour for bread when her water breaks, running down her legs and forming a puddle on the floor. The last two days it felt like the baby had turned to press hard on her spine, and now for a bleak minute she remembers Robert’s difficult birth.

  She calls for William, as she stoops to wipe up the floor. “It’s time,” she says and a look of panic fleetingly crosses his features. “By my calculations I’m early,” she says. “I’m hoping our baby is strong enough.” She sends him to fetch Janet Murdoch and asks Elizabeth to help her gather the things she will need—clean linens, a bowl, a knife that she lays in the fire so it will be sterilized and ready to cut the cord. She hides a stash of rum in the bedclothes.

  Elizabeth feels like a frightened little girl and a grown-up all at the same time as she tends her mother at Janet’s side. Thankfully the birth is quick and relatively easy. The children and William are still at the supper table when the infant slides into the world. He’s a tiny little morsel with a thatch of black hair and the quizzical look of the newborn. Janet summons the three other children, and William, who stands at his wife’s bedside, slightly in awe, not knowing whether to reach for the child or simply gaze from a distance. “A fine laddie,” he pronounces,

  “at least from what I can see.” Charlotte laughs and hands him the swaddled bundle. “William, meet William,” she says.

  On Christmas Day, Charlotte leads the family in their annual rendition of “Adeste Fideles” and, holding her new baby in her arms, tells her rapt children the Christmas story. A week later, she marks 1786 on the wall just beneath her inscription of William Wishart’s birth. She allows herself to spare a thought for Wioche—their trip to Frederick Town and back seems as if it exists in a whole other lifetime—and briefly wonders if his voyages this winter will bring him by the cabin. A tiny wail comes from the cradle by her bedside, young William demanding to be fed. And she is once again swept up into all-consuming motherhood, the children playing noisily around her rocking chair.

  JIMMY USED TO BE her right-hand man, and he still helps with chores and is like an older brother to the children, but most days now he’s back in the bush, helping William or the other men with the logging. Elizabeth has become the de facto chatelaine of this small house. On a brisk winter afternoon, with all the pomp and flourish a ten-year-old can muster, she announces the arrival of Mr. William Davidson and offers up his new title: “Northumberland County Representative to the General Assembly of New Brunswick.”

  Davidson has stopped by to talk to Charlotte and William about his plans for the Miramichi. But first he catches them up on news from his enterprise up past the forks. His land grant had been cut from 100,000 acres to a mere 14,450 acres in June the year before. Davidson says losing it was a blessing. Since establishing lasting ownership is predicated on clearing the land, planting a crop and settling people on it, Davidson says he’s actually relieved to be free of such extensive acreage. He can now concentrate on delivering white pines for ship masts to very eager buyers from England, and work on behalf of the future of th
e whole region, which needs much effort if all their livelihoods are to be secure.

  “The Miramichi is the most forgotten piece of land in the entire new province,” he says. “The hardest life is right here on the river. And we have none of the help that has been given to the other settlements, because we’re out of sight and out of mind. I mean to change that.” The postwar prosperity on the river has attracted drunks, cheats and unscrupulous opportunists as well as hard-working settlers; this is not news, as Davidson well knows. Charlotte and William often sit by their fire at night, lamenting the future. Charlotte still mulls the gunpowder fire, aware that vagabonds are contributing to a new lawlessness despite there being a sheriff and a new coroner. With so many men looking to fill their pockets with profits, even the fishery is in danger of collapse. “They net out the river for fish so some are cut off entirely,” Davidson exclaims. “And they take such a quantity there soon will be no fish at all.”

  Charlotte has always had time for Davidson, even when the others were critical of him, and in return he has always liked Charlotte’s spunk. He grins as she rants about everything from the perfidies of Loyalists to the lobbying to strip women of voting rights in future elections. “The Acadians, the Micmac and I are to be left out of the vote,” she complains. “I swear I will be back on that trail to Frederick Town to quarrel about this, even if I have to carry my new baby on my back.”

  “You have my vote, Mrs. Wishart,” Davidson says, smiling at her so that his cheeks furrow in tributaries of wrinkles. “But one situation that concerns us all has eased, I am glad to report. The quarrel over who can use the marshland near the forks has been settled for the time being. The lands will be shared among the old settlers.”

  William and Charlotte are happily surprised. “I’ve been wondering if these petitions we send have any persuasive power at all,” Charlotte says. “The ones I sign are not acted on. I refused to sign the one about the marshlands, fed up as I am with waiting. And now you tell me the meadow plot I took for myself is mine in law.”