by Ann Birch
Anna sighed. “Perhaps you did not hear me. I asked what is your opinion of Sam Jarvis?”
“I have no opinion. Outsiders like myself who seek promotion in this small town can have no opinion. I agree with everyone; especially with those whom I may be speaking to at the moment.”
“But you allow the man into our house. We go to his place for dinner. You must like him.”
“The Tories are in the ascendancy now, my dear Anna. Therefore, at the moment, I am one of them. And if they approve of Sam Jarvis, I am with them.”
She left him pouring the leftover wine from the decanter into his glass and went to her room. She was too tired to say one more word.
TWELVE
Anna looked at the case clock in her drawing room. Just after one o’clock. In an hour, Colonel Fitzgibbon would arrive to take her out on the lake in his cariole. But first she had to prepare herself.
“Everything be on the bed ready, ma’am,” Mrs. Hawkins told her, coming into the room. “Hawkins has given you his wool socks, gloves and comfies. For certain, you be warm enough.”
“I shall see, Mrs. Hawkins. Please thank your husband for his contributions.” Whatever “comfies” were.
She soon found out. Across the width of her bed was a red flannel one-piece undergarment with long sleeves and a trap door at the back. When she considered the position of that trap door, she burst into laughter.
“Very convenient, but I fear of little use. At least in my circumstances.”
Mrs. Hawkins giggled. Then she said, making stitching motions with her right hand, “Invented them myself and sewed them too, so I did.”
Anna took off her outer layers and pulled on the invention over her wool knickers and corset. Hawkins was a short man, so the “comfies” were just the right length. The sleeves, however, were too long, but her housekeeper rolled them back to the right length and tacked them in place with her needle and thread. Next came two pairs of heavy lisle stockings, two plain petticoats, and a new skirt and bodice of heavy serge. She tugged on fur-trimmed boots. Then she pulled Hawkins’s socks on over her boots.
By the time Mrs. Hawkins helped her into a flannel overcoat with a double cape collar for warmth, she was ready. So she thought.
“Not yet, ma’am, you must put on this linen cap under your bonnet for extra warmth. And don’t you forget them extra gloves. Pull them on over your own.”
The gloves were large, but Anna slipped her hands into them and felt the warmth of sheepskin. “Oh, Mrs. Hawkins, these are lovely. Be sure to thank your husband. What would I do without these additions from his wardrobe?”
Her world had certainly changed in the space of a month. In Britain or Europe, her literary coterie would gather for tea in the afternoon. The talk might be of her actress friend, Fanny Kemble, and her new role as Juliet. Or perhaps Anna would give Thomas Carlyle her views on Michelangelo’s Virgin, which she had seen in the Tribune gallery. “Harsh and unfeminine with muscular, masculine arms, my idea of a washerwoman!” she might say, and Carlyle would laugh. “Oh, Mrs. Jameson, how noble of the artist to immortalize the working classes! And think of it, over two centuries before the French Revolution!” Then he might belch or spit into his handkerchief—he had a nasty ulcer—and no one would care. There would not be a Mrs. Powell in the whole group to criticize his social gaffes.
In this new world, she had Colonel Fitzgibbon, a hero of the War of 1812 against the Americans, a man with a superflu de vie. “Everyone seems to like him,” Robert said when she told him about the afternoon excursion.
“You, too, I gather. Amazing. No ‘in the opinion of the Tories, in the opinion of the Whigs, in the opinion of the Radicals’?”
“I have no idea what you’re babbling about, Anna.”
Colonel Fitzgibbon arrived with military promptness. He had on a strange rough grey fur hat from which dangled a striped tail. She had seen these hats in the town before, but could not identify the animal that supplied the raw material.
“A varmint hat, we call it, Mrs. Jameson. It’s made from a raccoon. They are about the size of a small dog, and you can find them any evening behind the taverns licking up the...” He blushed and continued. “Step right up here, if you please. Allow me to help you.”
His sleigh, he told her, was properly called a cariole. It was like a phaeton mounted on high runners. His horse, Brigadier, was a large, spirited steed with a shiny brown coat and four white stockings. It stayed perfectly still while Fitzgibbon helped Anna up into the passenger seat and covered her with bearskins.
Most of the military men used bearskins in their sleighs. She had, at first, been disconcerted by the faces of these beasts looking down at her, their ears, snouts and snarling teeth carefully preserved by the taxidermist, but now she scarcely noticed them.
Once the Colonel took the reins, his steed plunged at top speed straight down Bear Street towards the lake. The upper part of the cariole swayed in an alarming way. “It seems unstable,” Anna said, trying not to whimper.
“Indeed, ma’am, it takes considerable skill to drive it, and we overturn at least once every quarter of an hour, but that is part of the fun. Be assured that once we get out on the lake, the snowdrifts will cushion us against accident.”
Anna struggled to keep her mind off the disaster that seemed inevitable. Surely all those layers would protect her. But what about her head? That, after all, would have to be her stock in trade if Robert did not come through with the allowance she hoped eventually to extract from him. “Are there truly bears in the middle of town, Colonel?”
“Well, ma’am, Lawyer Boulton, who tells a good story, especially when he has taken a bottle of claret all to himself, says that once upon a time, his sleigh with his two fine steeds, Wellington and Napoleon, encountered a huge bear—undoubtedly a grizzly—at the foot of this street. They—the horses, that is— reared up on their hind legs, neighed in what he calls ‘a fearsome way’, and chased that bear right down to the edge of the lake where it disappeared into the frozen swamp...”
“Never to be seen again? And everyone lived happily, bear-free, for ever after?”
“Aye, ma’am. You have met Mr. Boulton.”
“Indeed, sir. A wonderful storyteller, as you say.” They both laughed, and Anna felt calmer.
By this time they were out on the snow-covered lake. Several officers from the garrison in handsome carioles were chasing each other across the expanse in a madcap way. Anna saw one especially beautiful sleigh done up in red and gold paint, with a fine black stallion in front. Bundled in bearskins were a man and a boy. She did not immediately recognize them, but she noticed that the Colonel’s cheeks had grown pinker and pinker, from the cold or excitement, she didn’t know.
“It’s the Governor and his son, Henry,” he told her. “They’re so full of themselves with that horse and cariole. By god, I’m going to show them what old Brigadier can do. Giddap, boy.” And he touched his whip to Brigadier’s flank. “Hang on, ma’am!”
In a moment they had overtaken the Governor’s cariole. “Race you to where that tree is stuck into the snow!” the Colonel yelled, pointing at an evergreen branch farther out on the lake. Sir Francis responded by whipping up his horse. In a moment the two sleighs were careening across the lake. Anna could feel her breath sucked out of her by the wind and cold. The Governor’s horse was nose to nose with Brigadier. Fitzgibbon touched his whip to the horse’s flank again. Brigadier responded. Sir Francis’s steed dropped behind a half length.
Then, a sudden unexpected rise of snow, and Anna flew through the air like one of St. Nicholas’s reindeer, landing with a scarcely perceptible thump in a snowdrift.
It was not at all like what she had feared. The snow enveloped her, keeping her spine and head safe from the icy surface of the lake. She had had no time to prepare herself for the fall, and her limbs were completely relaxed. She lay on her back, laughing.
She could hear whinnying, shouts, muffled thuds. Then two faces looked down at her: on
e, pink, aquiline-nosed, blue-eyed; the other—well, all she noticed were the brown teeth, the legacy of too many cigars. The Colonel and the Governor, of course.
“Mrs. Jameson! You are—”
“Perfectly well, I thank you. What a lark!”
Then they all laughed, and she caught a whiff of Sir Francis’s brown breath. The Colonel pulled her upright. She shook the snow from her clothes, and they all climbed back up into their sleighs. And off they went again. Sometimes they confronted more hills of snow where the wind had whipped it into drifts. Anna began to anticipate the sudden lurch of the rise, the drop on the other side. She began to admire the dexterity of the Colonel’s gloved hands on the rein, the gentle way he guided Brigadier this way and that, the horse’s keen response to every tug and touch of rein and whip. She forgot about Robert, silent behind his newspaper, about the snow-lined boredom of her days, about her narrow, lonely bed.
And then the race was over. The Colonel and Brigadier had won “by a nose”, as the Colonel said to her as he stepped down from the cariole to shake the Governor’s hand.
“I suppose we must congratulate you, Fitzgibbon.” Sir Francis looked positively pouty, like a small child whose favourite spinning top had been taken from him. His son Henry seemed ready to burst into tears.
“Not at all, sir. If you had not kindly stopped when I upset Mrs. Jameson, you might have been back at Government House by now enjoying a cup of hot rum punch. And speaking of which,” the Colonel pulled out a silver flask from somewhere in the recesses of his greatcoat, “have a nip of this. It will warm you up.” Ever the old campaign soldier, ready for anything, he took out from another pocket of his capacious garment three tiny silver cups and poured whiskey for Sir Francis, Henry and Anna herself, while he drank from the flask.
Anna enjoyed the fiery drink. It went straight down and warmed her. She squinted into the sun. From the west, three figures on snowshoes approached. One carried a shovel. Fitzgibbon recognized them first and waved. “Jarvis, come over here,” he called.
They waited while the three men came closer. Besides Mr. Jarvis, Anna could see a fair-haired boy, the eldest son, and a tall brown-skinned man whose face was smeared with black paint. Jacob Snake.
“So Jarvis has one of the savages with him, has he?” the Governor said. “I made a good decision when I appointed him to the Indian post. He seems to know what goes on in their minds, at least as far as a white man can understand these people.”
Mr. Jarvis bowed to her and made the introductions to the Colonel and Sir Francis. “My son, Sam, and my friend, Jacob Snake. Jacob has given us this.” He pulled from his pack a piece of polished wood about two feet in length and three-quarters of an inch thick. It was flat on one side and curved on the other with a rounded end that resembed the head of a snake, complete with eyes incised into it and a crosscut to mark the mouth.
“It’s a snowsnake. We have cleared some snow away where the drifts are light, and we intend to have a small, informal competition to see who can shoot it the farthest down the ice. But I fear Jacob will win. He always does.”
“I teach Nehkik some new...” Jacob paused, searched for the right word, and tried again. “I teach Nehkik some new... manoeuvres.”
“So, as you see, we have a heavy afternoon of education ahead of us. And you undoubtedly wish to get back to a warm fire.” Mr. Jarvis shook hands with the Governor and the Colonel and shouldered the shovel again. “I am glad to see you, Mrs. Jameson. It is not often that the women of our town break loose from their domestic cares to enjoy a wild ride. And I see you are decked out for the realities of our climate. Good for you.” He bowed.
As they were about to move off, Anna said, “Please, Jacob, will you teach me the manoeuvres as well? That is, if my driver will be kind enough to let me join in for a few minutes?” She looked up at the Colonel.
“By all means, ma’am. And I think I’ll have a go myself.”
Sir Francis and his son climbed back into their cariole, saluted to the Colonel and Anna, and drove off. The Colonel helped Anna back into the sleigh, then took Brigadier’s reins and led him forward with the rest of the party for several hundred yards until they came to a long, narrow strip of ice which had been cleared with Mr. Jarvis’s shovel. In the snow alongside the ice, there was a series of branches to mark distances.
Jacob demonstrated. He held the tapered end lightly with the thumb and forefinger of one hand while he balanced the stick with his other hand. Then he made a short run of several feet, bending and flipping the snake onto the ice in one smooth motion as he ran. It raced down the long strip of ice and came to a stop at the most distant branch.
“Remember, run fast, bend and flip while you run. I go down to the end of the track and slide the snake back to you. Then you try.”
It seemed simple enough.
“Got to get rid of some of these layers,” Anna said. She took off Hawkins’s heavy socks so that her fur-lined boots would have some traction. Next came the fleece-lined gloves. Mr. Jarvis helped her out of the cumbersome flannel overcoat. But there were still the “comfies”, the petticoats, the stockings, and the skirt and bodice. Modesty forbade their removal.
Perhaps it was the Colonel’s whiskey. Or the cold air. At any rate, Anna ran as she had not run since she was ten years old. She even managed to launch the snowsnake down the ice before tumbling backwards into a snowbank. The snowsnake also tumbled into a snowbank, and it was several minutes before Jacob uncovered it and sent it shooting back down the ice to their starting point.
“Let me confer with Jacob, ma’am, and come up with a new manoeuvre that may work better,” Mr. Jarvis said. After a brief conversation with his friend, he had some good advice. “Try this. With your left hand, hold up your skirts as you run. Keep only your right hand on the snake. When you feel the moment is right, bend over and shoot the snake, whoosh, down the ice. One hand will do it.”
It worked. There was a round of applause from her companions.
They all had a turn, and another, and another. Jacob was, of course, the only one who managed to shoot the snake to the end of the raceway, but the rest of them got better and better with the practice. Only when the sun sank low in the sky did they stop.
Anna retrieved her surplus clothing, which she had piled into the sleigh. As Mr. Jarvis helped her back into her overcoat, she felt his cold fingers on the back of her neck. They sent a frisson down her spine. “You are shivering, Mrs. Jameson,” he said. “Time for the Colonel to get you back to a warm hearth.”
“I find it difficult to believe that Mr. Jarvis is a murderer,” Anna said to the Colonel as he turned the sleigh towards town. “He is so affectionate with his son and so companionable with us all.”
“You must not always believe what you hear in this town, ma’am. Especially when it comes from the mouths of the Ridout family. Oh, I saw Percy Ridout at your levee and have no doubt that he spread the venom of his poison.”
“What he said is not true then?”
“Sam Jarvis shot the Ridout boy in a duel many years ago, it is true, but the jury declared it was a fair combat between two gentlemen.”
“If two gentlemen agree to kill each other, it is, I suppose, lawful? Even desirable?”
The Colonel reached over and patted her shoulder. “It is always difficult to understand these things. As I see it, Samuel Peters Jarvis is one of the town’s best men. I knew him first during the War of 1812 against the Yankee scoundrels. He was only twenty years old at the time, a lieutenant in the Third Regiment of York Militia, and he was the chosen one.”
“The chosen one?”
“Aye. When our brave general, Sir Isaac Brock, fell mortally wounded at Queenston, a bullet in his heart, it was Lieutenant Jarvis who carried General Brock’s battle plan to General Sheaffe. He rode through hell—and only those who have been in battle can understand hell—and he delivered that paper. It enabled us to take over nine hundred Yankee prisoners and a magnificent arsenal of arms. It was a mome
nt of glory I will not soon forget.”
“You sound almost—angry, Colonel Fitzgibbon. I have upset you.”
“No, ma’am, it is not you. It is the notion—perpetrated by the likes of Percy Ridout—that Samuel Jarvis is nothing more than a murderer.”
They were at that moment nearing a rough patch of snow and ice by the pier, and the Colonel turned his entire attention to his driving.
That evening at dinner, Anna spent the first and second courses diverting Robert with the story of carioling on the lake, her fun with the snowsnake, and Hawkins’s thoughtful additions to her wardrobe.
“I am glad you had an enjoyable day, my dear,” her husband said as Mrs. Hawkins removed the cloth and left them alone for their dessert of pound cake and coffee. He sounded almost as if he meant it. Then he added, “Your nose is very red. The glare from the snow can be quite devastating to the complexion.”
“Excuse me, Robert. If you have nothing further to tell me, I shall leave you to enjoy your cigar and port.”
She looked in the mirror above her bureau. Yes, her nose was red. She applied some of Mrs. Hawkins’s ointment. It was a concoction of buds from an elder bush, simmered on the hearth— so her housekeeper told her—with a few “dollops” of butter. As she rubbed it into her skin, it cooled and soothed her. It was better by far than any of the concoctions on sale in London’s fine shops. She would have Mrs. Hawkins write out her recipe and take it with her when she returned to Europe.
It had been a fine day—in spite of Robert’s remark about her nose. Never again would she have more fun than she had had this day with the snowsnake. And Colonel Fitzgibbon had been kind. He had also given her a most interesting opinion of Mr. Jarvis.
Could a murderer be a good person? Perhaps...
She pulled the goosedown duvet up to her chin. The last sound she heard was her housekeeper’s soft tread as she went into the dining room and drawing room to snuff out the flickering candles.