The Devil's Making

by Seán Haldane

  ‘Goodnight,’ I heard distantly.

  I kicked my horse in the sides and set off down the road to the nearest thing to a gallop it could manage, a sort of sporadic canter, so bumpy that I had to hold on frantically to avoid being thrown, wild thoughts racing through my head. My corrupt, savage mistress had turned out to be utterly clean and pure; my civilized ideal had turned out to be mysteriously corrupt. Aemilia had been detaining me, keeping me away from something I would find at the jail.

  25

  I arrived in Victoria after dark and returned my horse to the stable, putting down an extra dollar since she had been ridden hard and would need walking. I hurried down the street to the courthouse, but approached it cautiously along the side of the square. Two things Aemilia had said had stuck in my mind: ‘I’m not so innocent as I seem, and nor are you.’ And her remark about my getting the stone ornament from a squaw. So far as I knew the stone was unique, at least to the Tsimshian. Aemilia must know the Tsalak in some way, and I wondered if she was conspiring with them in an attempt to get Wiladzap out of jail when only the feckless Seeds would be on guard. It seemed an insane suspicion, but I was assuming the worst.

  As I approached the courthouse I could see no one about. Sunday nights were quiet in Victoria, and there was no street lighting, since there was no gas. The courthouse, like other large buildings, had its own lamp above the door. On the far side of the square it was totally dark. Anyone could be there. The door would be locked. Normally I would have sauntered up to it and stood digging in my pocket for the key. Now I took the key firmly in one hand still in my pocket, walked very briskly up to the door, unlocked it with a single movement, tugged it open, leapt in and slammed it behind me. As I did so there was a scurry and a movement in the shadows outside, lost immediately to me as I rammed the inside bolt into its socket. My ears were assaulted by the sound of singing from the jail wing. I walked cautiously across the dimly lit vestibule, bringing out my second key in case the jail gate was locked. I peeped round the corner.

  From my angle of vision I could see down the cell corridor through the barred gate, which was hanging slightly open, and at the same time across the corridor into Seeds’s quarters, a comfortable room where Seeds and I could play cards near the open door and at the same time keep an eye on the cell corridor. Now, in the larger part of the room, not visible from the cells, there was a scene like a theatrical tableau or a coarse painting by some ribald artist, such as Rowlandson, of the previous century. Seeds was sitting in his usual armchair beside his table on which was a whisky bottle and some empty glasses. On his knee was an Indian woman, naked except for her woven bark apron, under which Seeds was feeling with one hand while he nuzzled his big head into her breasts. She was playing with his member which she had brought out of his trousers.

  There was a sudden roar of noise interrupting the singing from the cells – an outburst of whistles and cheers.

  I dashed forward past Seeds’s door, pushed the gate open, and rushed down the corridor not sparing a glance for the cells although I was inundated by a racket of shouts and a smell of liquor. I reached Wiladzap’s cell. Lukswaas, crouching in front of the lock, was working through Seeds’s key ring. I struck it from her hand and it hit the floor with a clash. She jumped back in fright. I faced Wiladzap who was standing up against the cell door, holding two of the bars with his hands. Wiladzap’s teeth were bared in rage like those of an animal. I stood panting, looking into Wiladzap’s eyes which were blazing with the same rage and determination as his whole face, but suddenly they shifted to one side in a brief glance past me.

  I felt a sudden strange tingling sensation of alarm, and instantly froze. Wiladzap glanced to the side again and shouted a word I did not understand.

  I turned slowly, painfully, all my courage gone. Lukswaas was standing just behind me. In her right hand was a very long knife which she had drawn back, ready to plunge it forward into my back, at about the level of my kidneys.

  The uproar from the cells subsided. There was silence. The prisoners could see what was going on. But I could only look at Lukswaas. My life, or my death, was in her hand. In my mind’s eye I flung myself forward, grabbed her arm as the knife came to me, and pulled her down … But I did not move and nor did she. We looked at each other. Her eyes were dark with an intense expression of pain and grief.

  ‘Lukswaas.’ I could say no more, but I could feel my own anguish pass from my eyes to hers.

  She turned her hand so the knife handle was facing me, and held it out to me. I took it carefully, then pulled out my large linen handkerchief, wrapped it round the blade, and put it in my pocket.

  There was a grunt from Wiladzap just behind me, and an exhalation of breath, a sort of communal sigh, from the prisoners. Then I heard Wiladzap say: ‘She no kill you.’

  The cells broke into uproar again, with drunken cheers, and the smash of a breaking bottle. At the same time, Seeds came stumbling down the corridor with a revolver in his hand, his shirt open and his trousers almost falling down. Behind him was the half naked figure of the other Indian woman – Wan. There was a roar and a chorus of whistles and moans from the cells.

  ‘Shut up!’ I yelled sharply. ‘Seeds, put that damned thing away!’

  The hubbub subsided, and Seeds stopped in his tracks. ‘If you fellows don’t shut up I’ll put you on a chain gang for a month solid!’ I yelled. ‘Finish your booze if you want, but calm down! Seeds, for God’s sake go back to your office and get dressed. Nobody’s got loose. I’ll take care of this.’

  Seeds turned and reeled back along the corridor. Wan flattened herself against the wall as he went past. There was another mass sigh from the cells, and someone said wistfully, ‘There’s a girl.’

  ‘All right, boys,’ I said, finding it hard to blame them for their exuberance. ‘I know she’s pretty, but she’ll have to go. Wan!’ I told her in Chinook to go where the men could not see her, and wait. She looked at me questioningly. I heard Lukswaas’s voice just behind me talking quietly in Tsimshian. Wan nodded and walked away.

  I turned back to Lukswaas on the one hand, Wiladzap on the other. I glanced at Lukswaas then fixed my eyes on Wiladzap and said: ‘You speak English.’

  Wiladzap looked at me but said nothing. His face had returned to its usual impassivity. I thought of a way to break the silence, although it was based on the logic of association rather than any clear reasoning. I said very distinctly: ‘Aemilia.’

  Wiladzap gave a start. ‘Aemilia,’ he said, almost as distinctly as I had.

  ‘You know Aemilia.’

  ‘I speak little English,’ Wiladzap said slowly, but pronouncing the words clearly. He looked past me at Lukswaas, then back to me. ‘Why she no kill you?’ Then he began speaking to Lukswaas in his own language, urgently, but I raised my hand to cut this off:

  ‘Wake. Spose mesika wawa Lukswaas mesika wawa Chinook’. (‘No. If you speak Lukswaas, you speak Chinook’).

  I stepped closer to the bars so that I was only a few inches from Wiladzap and no one could hear us except of course Lukswaas.

  ‘You want me dead?’ I said to Wiladzap.

  ‘You my friend. I love – I like you. But you not make me out this place. I die. You not find man who kill McCrory.’

  I could hardly quarrel with this logic, although it did not please me. ‘You not help me. You speak English. Why you not tell me you speak English?’ I found I was speaking English to Wiladzap as if it were Chinook.

  Wiladzap looked at me for a while silently, then said: ‘I not want you know Aemilia know me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I not say. You talk Aemilia.’

  ‘When did you last see Aemilia?’

  ‘You talk Aemilia.’

  ‘All right. I’ll talk to Aemilia. But now you tell me one thing. McCrory. Dying. What did McCrory say to you when he was dying?’

  Wiladzap frowned. ‘King George Diaub. King George Diaub.’ He muttered. Then his face lit up slowly, his lips moved silently
as if he was trying to remember or rehearse something, and he said: ‘That Devil George! That Devil George!’

  He seemed quite excited, and had raised his voice.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘You remember my Tyee? Pemberton?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pemberton come tomorrow morning. You tell Pemberton: ‘That Devil George’. All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You know George?’

  ‘George? King George? You are King George.’

  ‘Yes. But a man named George. You know him?’

  ‘No.’ Wiladzap shook his head, as if even George as a personal name was unfamiliar to him.

  ‘All right.’

  Lukswaas was still standing quietly behind me. I turned and looked at her more calmly. She was wearing one of the atrocious grey HBC blankets. I asked her to tell Wan to ask the Indians waiting outside the jail to go home peacefully. How many men? I asked.

  ‘Waaks. Tsamti.’ Then she said at some length that the other Tsalak had left their camp and were waiting at another bay, nearer Victoria.

  Then Waaks and Tsamti and Wan must go back to Cormorant Point, the old camp, and wait, I said. After two or three days Wiladzap would come. I turned to Wiladzap and said in Chinook that I thought I knew who the killer of McCrory was. His name was George. I would go and find this George but it would take a day or two. I would go with Pemberton. But first it was important that Wiladzap tell Pemberton McCrory’s words. Wiladzap nodded. ‘All right,’ he said in his slow but uncannily precise English. ‘Lukswaas,’ he added. ‘Where she go?’

  ‘She go with me.’ Seeing suspicion instantly cloud Wiladzap’s face, I continued, hoping I could in fact do what I was saying: ‘I’ll take her to Pemberton’s house. Pemberton’s wife good woman. Take care of Lukswaas.’ I repeated this in Chinook for Lukswaas.

  ‘Good,’ said Wiladzap. Then, ‘Why she not kill you?’

  ‘You ask her,’ I said, playing Wiladzap’s game of earlier. ‘In Chinook please.’

  ‘Kahta mesika halo mamook wind Hops?’, Wiladzap asked abruptly. (Why you not make dead Hops?’)

  ‘Nika tikegh hyas kloshe.’ Literally, ‘I love great good.’

  I had not dared expect her to say this, but I should have known better: she is as naive as I am.

  Wiladzap was looking puzzled. He chewed his lips for a moment. Then he nodded and said, ‘All right. You take her Pembaton house.’

  I closed the door again and Lukswaas and I were alone in the huge vestibule lit by its single dim lamp. I reached for her and held her close to me for a while, feeling an intense relief at having found her again, and a desire to wipe out my experience with Aemilia by making love with Lukswaas at once. But I felt I could not do this: my mind was not yet clear, and I doubted hers was either. So I let go of her. I stood for a moment thinking of my impulsive and gentlemanly promise to take Lukswaas to Pemberton’s. Then I took her by the hand and led her to Seeds’s room. I could feel her shrinking slightly as we entered, and felt a pang of pain at what she must have planned with Wan. Seeds sat up and looked at us blankly.

  ‘Go and splash some cold water over your face.’ I said, giving orders again, ‘and then go and knock up Harding: you know his lodgings on Herald Street. Bring him back here and he can take over duty with you. I have to go out for a while with this young lady. I’ll see the Commissioner, and I’ll say something of this matter to him, but I’ll try and make sure it doesn’t reach the Superintendent. I imagine our friends in the cells will sleep off their party and be no worse for wear. But you’d better treat Wiladzap well: I’ll wager my last sovereign that he’ll be due for release shortly.’

  ‘All right.’ Seeds got up wearily. ‘I don’t know why I done it. Well, yes I do. You may say this one’s a lady, but that other one! And I ain’t had female company since Florence ran off with that Yankee bastard.’

  It suddenly struck me that it might be easier for Mrs Pemberton to agree to look after Lukswaas if she was dressed like a white woman rather than in a filthy HBC blanket. ‘Sam! Your Florence: did she leave any clothes behind?’

  ‘Course she did. She took off in such a hurry.’

  Was she a big woman?’

  She was tallish, but skinny. You’d never think sh…’

  ‘Where are the clothes?’

  ‘In the store room. Blue cabin trunk in the corner.’

  ‘Can I have them? I’ll pay for them.’

  ‘You crazy? Awright, awright. I’ll get Harding.’

  Seeds shuffled out to put on his coat, and I made sure the cage door to the cells was locked. I asked Seeds for the store-room key. Then I led Lukswaas, who had been waiting patiently, across the vestibule and down a kitchen passage. I unhooked the lamp from the wall beside the store-room, struck a match and lit it, then opened the door. The room was large, cold, dirty, and cluttered. I set the lamp on a box and opened the trunk. It was packed with neatly folded woman’s clothing. We stood looking at it.

  I began to explain to Lukswaas that it would be best if she wore white woman’s clothes, so that I could take her to Pemberton’s. But she interrupted me, saying that she had already understood. Then she said stubbornly that she would not go to Pemberton’s house that night. She would stay with me.

  ‘But … I reminded her of what I had said to Wiladzap.

  She interrupted again. She said she was not a belonging of Wiladzap’s. She would go to Pemberton’s in the morning and stay there until I found the murderer and Wiladzap was released from jail. She agreed it was a good idea since she would not be happy going back to the Tsalak camp. There would be much anger among the Tsalak. But now she wanted to be with me. It was too long since we had talked and held each other.

  I was excited by her fierce affection, as well as struck by her stubbornness. I told her I had only a small room and a small bed. I was not a rich man with a big house.

  Lukswaas tapped her forehead and then her heart, and said I was rich inside myself. Then she turned back to looking at the clothes, picking up carefully a black shawl which lay on top. I dusted the lid of the box, so that we could lay clothes on it. Then together we began to take out the clothes and sort them into piles. The dresses were the least problem. The prettiest, yet most discreet (some of the others were too frilly and vulgar) was one of yellow cotton – the sort of dress a young girl might wear about the house. I held it against Lukswaas and it looked the right size. There was a hooped petticoat, not so wide as a full scale crinoline, collapsed down like a round concertina. There were several shifts, like Aemilia’s, any of which would be suitable. Bloomers, which were out of fashion and not necessary. Cotton drawers – like mine, only finer and with a slit between the legs. Knee stockings with garters. Some miscellaneous ribbons which Lukswaas took all of. The main problem would be the stays. No young lady could not wear these ‘iron maidens.’ But perhaps Mrs Seeds had been somewhat loose in dress, as in behaviour. Her stays were of the minimal kind – from bosom to waist rather than to upper thigh. They were still formidable. I held one of them up with distaste and made a gesture of despair. Lukswaas merely shrugged and added it to the pile. I rummaged in the bottom of the trunk and found a pair of black, rather severe shoes. Lukswaas kicked off one moccasin and tried a shoe against her foot. It would be a little wide but its length was right. We gathered up the clothes Lukswaas would need, I blew out the lamp, and we left the lumber room. The jail was quiet. Before going to bed, I would usually visit the filthy water closet off the vestibule. I asked Lukswaas if she needed to make water. She nodded. With some words of apology I showed her to the closet. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. I realized it would be better to use the chamber pot in my room, and tried to explain to her. At any rate she followed me, up the half flight of stairs to my door. I took my own lamp, hanging outside, and lit it. Then I opened my door with my key, and showed her in.

  Although small the room at least had a window onto Bastion Street, which I opened, letting in the cool air. I set the lamp on my table where Lu
kswaas spread the clothes carefully on a chair. I showed her the chamber pot, then left the room again for a minute. When I came back she had put it on one side. I picked it up and brought it downstairs and emptied it, and my own bladder, in the water closet.

  When I came back to the room Lukswaas was sitting at the table, her chin on one hand like a student, looking carefully at one of my books she had taken from the wall shelf. It was The Voyage of the Beagle. I supposed she had been attracted to it because it was the most worn of my books, and was especially well bound – in red leather with gold engraving. She stroked the spine and smiled. She said she would like to learn to read. I said I would teach her. Then for some reason our eyes instinctively turned to my looking glass, on the wall to one side. There we were, a strange sight: Lukswaas sitting seriously at the table with the open book in her hands, me leaning around her. There was on the one hand a striking contrast between us: her face coppery, mine pink and of course bearded; her eyes almond shaped and black, mine round and green-grey; me wearing a dove grey frock coat and navy blue cravat, she wearing a grimy Hudson’s Bay blanket; me a white, she an Indian. Yet on the other hand there was a similarity: both were young, tall and upright, naively serious, with long faces and intense eyes. We looked well together.

  Without speaking or even smiling, we studied ourselves for a while. Then I took Lukswaas’s hand, and she turned to face me. With a sense of doing the right thing, but a certain dread of the consequences, I asked her if she would be my woman for always. She nodded her head and said yes. I fumbled to undo my collar stud and the buttons of my shirt, and drew out the strings with her stone and my signet ring. I unthreaded the ring and gave her a brief kiss on the lips. We drew apart. It was odd how we understood each other. I had an innate aversion to fussing, and Lukswaas apparently the same. We needed to say no more. But she took the stone from where I had set it on the table. Then she spat on it and rubbed it briskly with a corner of her blanket. She held it up at an angle, to catch the light from the lamp, and beckoned to me to look. I leaned forward and saw a dim but precisely detailed image of our two faces, close together and in miniature, on the shiny black surface. She stood up and put it over my head.