by Ann Birch
THIRTEEN
On the infrequent occasions when Mary managed to badger Sam into going to church, he always tried to go through the doors of St. James early, before the congregation arrived, or late, just as they were singing the first hymn. This Sunday, he planned “early”, but one of the horses went lame, and by the time another was hitched up, his coachman managed to deliver Mary and him to the church just as the members of the congregation streamed through the front door.
He and Mary had passed through the outer door and were just about to enter the nave when he heard Mrs. Ridout’s clear voice from behind him. “Murderer. Damned murderer. May you suffer every torture Hell has prepared for scum like you.”
“Pay no attention, Sam. Keep moving.”
He walked on, as Mary asked, but he could scarcely breathe. Then he felt a sharp poke in his back. He turned around to confront the wizened crone who had been John Ridout’s mother. She came at him again, brandishing the metal-pointed parasol that served as cane and weapon.
“Back away, Mrs. Ridout, please.”
“Murderer. Vile, contemptible murderer.” Flecks of spittle spilled from her twisted mouth. The incoming congregation stopped in its tracks. And just inside the main door were Mr. and Mrs. Jameson. They had undoubtedly got an earful.
The crone gave him another poke, this time just below his heart. “I wish it were a bullet,” she said.
He took a deep breath, but he had to force the words out. “You have forgotten a few things, Mrs. Ridout. It was your son who stirred things up in the first place by insulting my poor father. On the duelling ground, I remembered his bad eyesight and shortened the distance between us. Then he fired on the count of ‘two’ instead of ‘three’, an unforgivable breach of the duelling code.” As Sam said these words, he glanced over the old woman’s shoulder and noticed Mrs. Jameson’s total attention.
“But you killed him in cold blood, knowing his pistol was empty. You are the Devil’s spawn, you are.”
“Mother, please.” It was George Ridout. He came from inside the church just in time. “Allow me to escort you to your pew, and let us leave Mr. Jarvis in peace to contemplate his sins.” He bowed to Mary, put his arm around his mother’s shoulder and led her through the door of the nave.
Sam and Mary climbed the wooden stairs at the back of the church to their pew, the one Mary’s family had kept after the death of Sam’s father-in-law. The Powell pew was in the gallery immediately over the central entrance below. Chief Justice Powell had considered it the finest pew in the church. “It reminds me of my elevated position in court,” he said once. “Below me are the barristers, attorneys, jurors, witnesses and common spectators.” It was also, unfortunately, the most public pew in the church.
It was a long, narrow space with a high screen at the back to keep off the cold air. The screen and the pew itself were lined with a dark green cloth. It always seemed to Sam like a coffin for a tall man, and when he walked into it, he sometimes imagined that someone from behind might push the screen forward over the pew to make a perfect place of entombment.
He sat and looked straight ahead, fearful of the stares of the congregation below. The organ squawked, then squawked again, as though it were summoning its strength. Then the chords settled into a steady wheeze. As Sam reached for the book to find the first hymn, his hands trembled so much he could not turn the pages. Mary took his right hand in hers and held it in a tight grip.
He got through Bishop Ken’s finest hymn, though it was one he would rather not have sung that particular morning:
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noon-day clear;
Think how all-seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.
It was at first a relief to kneel and bow his head for the General Confession, but those words, too, stabbed at him with more force than the old woman’s parasol. “We have done those things which we ought not to have done,” he intoned and thought, my god, why did I subject myself to this, I could have stayed in bed or walked through the oak woods behind the house or gone ice fishing on Grenadier Pond where no one, except the Indians, would have seen me. And they would not have judged me.
Then Archdeacon Strachan launched into one of his interminable sermons. The folk in the pews directly below the gallery fell asleep. Watching them, Sam remembered that night in Elmsley’s barn, the snores of Boulton beside him in the loft and of Ridout and Small, who slept below in one of the stalls.
At the end of the service, he and Mary went out of the church by the vestry door, and escaped a further encounter with the Ridout clan. But their coachman had not been able to find a spot for the sleigh in front of the church, so he had parked it on the far side of the churchyard, and Sam and Mary had to pass by the tombstones that lined the pathway. At the end of it, facing them, so that avoidance was impossible, stood John Ridout’s headstone.
“Look at it. Read those damned words.”
“Please, Sam, let us try to forget—”
“Forget? Who can forget?” He pointed at the bottom lines of the long inscription chiselled into Ridout’s stone: “‘A Blight came, and he was consigned to an early grave on the 12th of July, 1817, aged 18.’ I am that Blight, Mary, and I am immortalized on that stone. What a wonderful way for people to remember me! My children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, will know that I was a murderer and—”
But he was talking to the air. Mary had started to run. She was now several paces ahead. She signalled to John, who stepped down from his perch to help her into the sleigh. For a moment he thought she would tell the man to head home and leave him alone by the tombstone. He jumped up beside her.
“Dredge up that dreadful business again,” she said, as the servant touched the horses’ backs with his whip, “and your great-grandchildren— aye, and your great-great grandchildren—will know that I murdered you.”
Sam had to laugh. The idea of his wife with a smoking pistol in her hand was too ludicrous. “Mrs. Ridout would be happy. She’d probably even attend your hanging.”
On the sidewalk near the church were the Jamesons. Jameson bowed, and Mrs. Jameson waved and smiled.
And a moment later, as they moved along Palace Street, they passed the elegant sleigh carrying Sir Francis Bond Head and his aide-de-camp. Sir Francis lifted his beaver top hat in greeting.
“See,” Mary said, “the Governor doesn’t think of you as a Blight.”
“No, he likes me because I tore Mackenzie’s print shop apart. And that’s another story that will chase me through my life. I remember hearing at school about the old-fashioned torture favoured by Queen Elizabeth—”
“Torture, Sam? What are you going on about now?”
“A certain weight was placed on the chest of the criminal, and increased gradually every day till the life and the heart were crushed together. Going to church today was like that. Don’t ask me again to darken the doors of the place.”
But as they picked up speed and moved towards Hazelburn, he remembered Mrs. Jameson’s smile.
FOURTEEN
Since Anna’s arrival in Toronto, Mrs. Hawkins had gotten into the habit of providing Sunday tea. Robert took another piece of her excellent gingerbread, and Anna poured him a third cup of tea. “We have some good moments, do we not, my dear?” he said, spreading butter thickly over his cake.
She thought about that. Singing hymns together was one of the few pastimes they both enjoyed. What else was there? Aloud, she said, “I find myself in total agreement with you about that hideous window of painted glass.”
“It cost five hundred pounds, and the Archdeacon is very proud of it, so I am careful to keep my mouth shut when he goes on about it. But the bit of theatre with Mrs. Ridout and Sam Jarvis was rather good, I thought. One enjoys unusual moments like these from time to time.”
“I felt sorry for both of them.” The old woman’s grief over her dead son was pitiable, but she also remembered the stricken look on Mr.
Jarvis’s face as he tried to defend himself. And his poor wife, trembling and ashen-faced, trying not to cry.
“I have a proposition that may please you, Anna. Campbell, a clerk of the assize, must leave for Niagara tomorrow to see his wife, who has just been delivered of a fine babe, so he tells me. He is thoroughly reliable and I thought...” He paused to spoon more sugar into his tea. “I thought you and I might accompany him, visit my friends, the Almas, and—”
“Oh, Robert, how perfect. And we can see the falls. It is exactly what I long for.” And it would be an opportunity to spend time with Robert, to get him away from his newspapers and the daily grind. Perhaps they could still put things right.
At half past eight the next morning, Mr. Campbell banged the doorknocker. He was a smiling young man, as tall as Robert, with a long nose and eyes as dark as his bearskin cap. Even though he had tethered his horses to the hitching post, they nickered and pulled at their harness, as if anxious to be off. They were a nicely matched pair, dark grey in colour with shiny black manes.
“A very pretty sleigh,” Anna said, “and a pair of fine horses.”
“Thank you, ma’am. They’ll take us to Niagara in short order. Three days at most. I’m so anxious to see the wee bairn. Let’s get started,” he said, helping her and Robert up into the sleigh and piling their luggage behind them. “I see you have your sketchbook and pencils at the ready,” he added. “You’ll find plenty to draw.”
Three days. That meant two nights in inns along the route. Since rooms were scarce in these places, so she’d heard, and since Robert held the purse strings so tightly, they would have to share the same bedchamber for the first time since her arrival. That should prove interesting.
She wrapped her borrowed blanket round her. Mrs. Hawkins had woven it herself, and it was lambswool, dyed a rich red. Then Mr. Campbell heaped buffalo and bearskins about them, until they seemed absolutely buried in fur, every breath of cold air excluded.
They set off briskly. Mr. Campbell evidently knew the way, a good thing since the road was invisible. Anna could never in her wildest imaginings have conjured this Canadian winter. The sky was one white, whirling mass of starry flakes. The robes about them seemed covered in swansdown. She loved the silence, broken only by the tinkle of the sleighbells.
In an hour the snow had abated. Now she could just see the road, which seemed to run in a straight line with the dark pine forest on each side. Above them, a huge bald eagle soared on the wind currents. It followed them for miles before alighting on top of a pine, where it folded its great, wide wings and looked down upon them. She remembered Jupiter’s eagle, the symbol of apotheosis after death. Perhaps on this trip—she dared to hope— she and Robert could find some sort of renewal.
From time to time, clearings appeared, spotted with charred stumps and blasted trunks projecting from the snowdrifts. “What a battle these settlers wage with nature,” she said.
Mr. Campbell laughed. “It’s quite a fight, and the settlers seem to be winning. First they set fire to the trees. Then when they get enough space cleared for a cottage, they start the ringing process on the remaining trees.”
“Ringing?”
“They cut a deep gash through the bark round the bole of the tree. It prevents the circulation of the sap, and by degrees the tree droops and dies.”
Sometimes openings in the forest gave glimpses of Lake Ontario. Anna leaned forward again to talk to their driver. “Why is it not frozen?”
“Look at those dark waves, ma’am. Nothing can freeze up with that constant motion.”
Robert remained silent. At first Anna thought he had fallen asleep under his robes. Then she heard him say, “Wasn’t the silence wonderful when we first started out?” Not a question, nor yet a statement. Just one of his sneers.
Just when she was beginning to wish she had not had two cups of early morning coffee, Mr. Campbell pulled the sleigh to a stop at a settlement at the mouth of a little river. “Time for a break here,” he said, pointing to an inn. “This place is Oakville, and we can have lunch and a bit of a respite.”
The landlady showed Anna to a small room with a chamberpot and a table with ewer and basin. The water was cold, but there was soap and a clean towel. Refreshed, she joined her companions for strong, hot tea and slices of venison between thick wedges of fresh bread.
“Delicious,” she said to the landlady.
“Plenty of deer come from the woods,” the woman said. “The wolves drive them out, and we shoot them.” She raised her left arm, sighted down an imaginary barrel and pulled a trigger with a motion of her right hand.
Anna was pleased to see that Robert paid for their driver’s meal, and to judge by the landlady’s delight, left a sizable douceur as well. He had enjoyed his food, evidently a good omen, as Mrs. Powell had pointed out during her advice on handling husbands.
Back in the sleigh for a long afternoon, Anna whiled away the time making sketches of the passing scene. It was so warm under the animal skins that she was able to take off the warm gloves she’d borrowed from Hawkins. She actually found several minutes to make her rapid pencil drawings before the cold crept back into her fingers.
At a place called Stony Creek, Mr. Campbell stopped at a log hut which had a wooden sign proclaiming HOTEL. “Seems unlikely,” he said, “but I’ll give it a lookover. It’s time we stopped for the night.”
In a minute he was back at the reins. “Disgusting. Everything dirty and everyone drunk. Our next hotel will be ten miles farther on in Beamsville. We’ll have to keep moving.”
It grew dark, and the snow fell thickly. It was again impossible to distinguish the sleigh-track. “It happens often,” their driver reassured them. “I’m going to loosen the reins and leave the horses to their own instinct. It’s the safest way.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Robert said.
After this, Anna remembered nothing distinctly. Perhaps she nodded off, awakening when she felt the sleigh begin to weave and rock. One of the runners had slid off the path. She heard Mr. Campbell’s, “Damn!” and “Whoa!” But the horses plunged ahead. The sleigh rolled down an embankment, coming to rest against a tree trunk.
Something must have struck her head. For a moment she ceased to hear the ever-jangling sleigh bells. Then she gained consciousness to find the sleigh overturned and herself under it, half-smothered. She lay in the dark, as if in a coffin, and waited for Mr. Campbell or Robert to rescue her. But they did not come. She could hear them calling to her. They seemed to have no idea where she was. She grew panicky, knowing she might die if she did not take action.
She reached up and felt the wooden slab above her. Her first action must be to push the sleigh off herself. Her body seemed to be on a slant. She gave the wooden roof above her a mighty shove. Nothing happened. She tried again, pushing as hard as she could with her whole upper body. There was a creak and groan, and the sleigh rolled off her and down the embankment. As she emerged from under the snow, into the deep blackness of the forest, she looked up the hill and saw her two snow-covered companions floundering about, calling her name and trying to control the horses.
“Here I am.”
“Thank god,” Robert said, as the two men plunged down the embankment through the drifts. He pulled her towards him and wrapped her in a snowy embrace.
“We thought you had died in the upset.”
His companion wiped his hand across his eyes and repeated, “Thank god. Thank god.”
Anna looked up towards the top of the hill and pointed at a light in the distance.
“It’s the chimney of the blacksmith’s forge at Beamsville,” Mr. Campbell said as he fought to keep himself from being pulled over by the plunging horses. “Two of us must stay here with the horses, and one must go for help.”
“I’ll go,” Anna said, as one of the horses reared up, kicking with its front hoofs and pulling the second one along with it. “There’s no alternative. You have a job here for two strong men. The light will be
my beacon.”
Waiting no longer, she started her scramble up the hill. She had no idea how long it took her to reach the top, but once there, she could see the light from the forge straight ahead between the two rows of pine forest. So she was on the road, at least, but the snow was up to her knees, and each step required superhuman effort. Just when she thought she could not push her tired legs another inch, the path became easier. Animals—wolves perhaps— had come through the snow and laid a rough track. Not bears, thank goodness; someone had told her they hibernated, but what would she do if she encountered a wolf pack? And what were those shadows ahead of her on the trail? Best to make a noise. She began to sing, “If a body meet a body comin’ through the rye”, then the sheer idiocy of those words in this place made her laugh so hard, she braced herself for a moment against a tree as she caught her breath.
Much time passed, and she found herself at last at the forge, where the smith was hammering with might and main at a ploughshare. She stood at the door and called out to him, but the din was so great he heard nothing. She advanced into the red light of the fire, and finally he looked up, a great, hulking man with immense shoulders.
One sound only came from his broad toothless mouth. “AAARGH!”
“Help, please, I—”
“AAARGH!” He must have been deranged with shock at her sudden appearance, for he pointed his hammer at her as if she were some avenging angel come into his Inferno from above. She turned away in despair. No help to be had here. She thought of the men wrestling with the horses on the snowy embankment. No time to waste.
After some more scrabbling about in the darkness, she found herself in the village main street, where she saw a low log structure with a crude sign, Beamsville Inn. The pink-cheeked old woman who owned the place was the image of Anna’s long-ago nurse. She welcomed Anna in, dispatched her sons at once to lend assistance, and in a few minutes, laid the supper table, took the bellows to the fire in the hearth, and set the victuals to fry on the griddle. In a little room with a comfortable-looking bed, she made Anna strip off her wet clothes, replacing them with her daughter’s bodice, skirt and petticoats.