by Ann Birch
“Unaccompanied, ma’am?” McMurray said. “Oh, you and Charlotte have much in common. She is Chippewa, you know, and thinks nothing of paddling a canoe miles along the Ste. Marie’s River on a summer’s day to bring home a fine catch of whitefish. We eat whitefish morning, noon and night.”
“You are from Sault Ste. Marie? It’s my last stop before I head to Manitoulin Island for Mr. Jarvis’s Indian ceremonies.”
“Then you must stay with us,” Mrs. MacMurray said. “Many Indians from Mac’s congregation are going to the Island, and we thought we’d go ourselves in a bateau. You could look around the Sault for a day or two, then we could certainly find room aboard for you.”
“Wonderful!”
“Well, there will be the mosquitoes, Mrs. Jameson. You will not find them wonderful, I assure you. In fact, this country has the biggest, most bloodthirsty mosquitoes in the whole world. But we Chippewas have remedies, and I shall be only too happy to cover your fine white complexion with goldenrod ointment. It’s messy, perhaps a bit smelly, too, I warn you. But effective.” Mrs. MacMurray seemed positively gleeful as she imparted this information.
For a moment, Anna looked stricken. “I had no idea about these...these...mosquitoes.”
Everyone laughed. “There’s still time to change your mind,” Sam said. “If you haven’t heard about mosquitoes, I fear you are ill-prepared for this journey.”
“Yes,” Fitz said. “Bad roads, bad inns you will undoubtedly encounter—if, in fact, there are roads or inns at all. Not to mention the human riffraff—black, brown, and white—that you will come upon at every bend in your path. But there will be nothing as bad as the mosquito, believe it.”
“I believe you are trying to frighten me,” Anna said. “So I shall change the subject. You are from Toronto then, Mr. McMurray? That is how you know Mr. Jarvis?”
“I lived here for several years. I shall not forget Jarvis’s attention to my family at the time of my dear father’s death. It was in 1832, the time of the great cholera epidemic.”
“Your father was one of its victims?”
“He was taken ill with the cholera in the early morning and died the afternoon of the same day. Funerals were hasty events in those days, badly attended, everyone in the town terrified to be out and about. But the good Reverend Strachan did the honours with great dignity. There were five mourners, and one of them was Sam Jarvis.” McMurray put his hand on Sam’s arm. “I appreciated that.”
“Mr. Jarvis was a close friend of your father, was he?”
“Not at all. My father was a shopkeeper. You must know by now, Mrs. Jameson, that Toronto is filled with toffee-nosed gentry who look down on shopkeepers, though they depend on them for all the things that make them gentrified. So that’s one of the reasons I remember Sam Jarvis’s presence at my father’s last rites. And I remember his kind words to my mother.”
“I must set the record straight,” Sam said. “McMurray’s father was a decent man. He did not make my own father’s last days a misery by plaguing him about his unpaid bills. Attendance at the funeral was a small gift of respect to such a man.”
“I say, Jarvis, why don’t you pay us a visit, too, when you’re in the neighbourhood? Sault Ste. Marie is not far from Manitoulin. Three days there, three days back, and you’d meet some fine Indians who’d give you an earful about their problems. Now that you’ve got this new posting, you need to inform yourself.”
“Listen, Mac. The only information I’m likely to get on my journey north is from the Governor. He’ll keep me in a straight line for Manitoulin, and he’ll talk at me all the way. Not a chance of a diversion, I’m afraid, much as I’d like it.”
The steamboat’s bell summoned the travellers. “Since we’ll have four hours together, Mrs. Jameson,” Mac said, “we shall have a good opportunity to know you better.”
Anna was already taking out her notebook. “If I ask too many questions, just push me overboard.”
Handshakes all around, and Sam and Mary and Fitzgibbon trailed behind the McMurrays and Anna as they moved towards the steamboat. She stopped for an instant at the log hut, where she kissed her housekeeper goodbye and shook hands with the seamstress. Then as she stepped up to the ramp, the buzz of voices gave Sam his opportunity.
“Your marriage, Anna?”
“Finished.”
“What were you and Anna whispering about?” Mary asked as John drove them back to Hazelburn.
“I don’t remember, really. Nothing of import.”
“Did you notice how she latched on to Mrs. McMurray, practically inviting herself to camp on their doorstep?”
“Probably wants to get some tidbits on the Indians, from a female viewpoint. She’ll never meet another Chippewa woman who speaks such perfect English.”
“I’ve been glad to be Anna’s friend, goodness knows. But really, sometimes she is too forward. It’s so...so—”
“Unfeminine. Isn’t that your favourite word for a woman you can’t understand?”
“You think I’m being critical. But have you ever thought about what she might get herself up to when she’s at Manitoulin—far from the restraints of white society?”
Sam did not answer immediately. What could he say? That, yes, he had thought long and hard about Anna alone—or practically alone—with him on Manitoulin?
“Sir Francis will be there, my dear, plus the Indian agent— Major Anderson—and the McMurrays. Not to mention five hundred braves with tomahawks. No doubt we can gang up to restrain her if the need arises.”
Mary laughed.
THIRTY
It had been nine hours since Anna had eaten. She had had a good dinner at the last wayside hostelry: slices of dried venison, broiled; hot cakes of Indian corn, eggs, butter and a bowl of milk. Her companions at table had been two backwoodsmen, tall and strong, bronzed and brawny, shaggy and unshaven. “Two bears set on their hind legs” was how she’d described them in her notebook. Unlike bears, they had at least been civil.
Right now, in her rented wagon, she concentrated on staying alive. There was an iron bar in front of her, and her hands were swollen and blistered by continually grasping it with all her strength to prevent herself from being flung out. She could never have imagined such roads. Everybody had told her that the roads of Talbot country were better than elsewhere. Perhaps it was true, but only in the sense that Beelzebub was a better fallen angel than Lucifer.
Her driver was a young lad of fifteen or sixteen whom she’d hired at the hostelry. From Glasgow, he told her, and his mother and baby sister had died of the cholera on the way over.
“They threw Mama into the sea. And then Lizzie, only nine months old, died, because there was nobody to take care of her. Me and Father tried our best, but we couldn’t do nothing. So they threw Lizzie into the sea—poor wee thing.”
The lad wiped his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. “There was a man called Martin on board. He had fought in Spain with the Duke of Wellington and sold his pension to come out here. And he had a wife and nine children with him, see. Well, first his wife died, and they threw her into the sea; and then he died, and they threw him into the sea, and then the rest of ’em, one after t’other, till only a girl, twelve year old, was left.”
“And she survived?” Surely there would be one morsel of happiness in this tragic tale.
“She had nursed ’em all, one after another, and seen ’em all die. And then...” He took a hand from the reins again, and again wiped his cheeks with his sleeve. “Well, she died, and then there was nobody left. Nobody out of eleven of ’em.
“Nothing but splash splash splash all day long—first one, then t’other, then another.” There was a long silence. “Splash splash splash,” he repeated.
On this note, they struggled onwards, over a road—a mud slough really, with trunks of trees laid across its worst abysses— taking so many bends, and sweeps and windings that the journey stretched out into eternity. If only there were someone seated beside her on this leather
strap, someone who might cry with her or even smile at the reductio ad absurdum of that pathetic refrain, “splash splash splash”.
The shadows from the trees and underbrush fell deeper, and soon she could not see a yard in any direction. Once or twice a deer bounded across the path, its antlers defined against the moonlight. An owl sent forth a prolonged shriek.
The boy called to a man who was trudging along with an axe on his shoulder. “How far to Colonel Talbot’s?”
“About three miles and a half, straight afore you!”
Darkness fell more deeply. Clouds covered the moon. They jolted onwards.
A whistle in the darkness signalled another traveller. “How far to Colonel Talbot’s?” the boy called again in the direction of the sound.
“About seven miles. You’ll never get there tonight, boy. Sleep by the wayside and start fresh in the morning.” The disembodied voice was that of a gentleman. Anna decided to place her faith in the woodsman’s estimate.
The lad evidently shared her thoughts. “There’s an inn hereabouts, ma’am. But it’s not for the likes of you. If you’ve comed across the sea to visit Colonel Talbot, best we keep moving.”
“I’m grateful for your resolve.” She had already lain awake in too many flea-infested beds, listening to drunken laughter from the bar.
More jolting. Her teeth ground together and her head ached. They went slower and slower, fearful of overturning in one of the unseen ruts in the path.
Finally, when she thought her fingers would never again open, nor her brains ever settle, they ran almost headfirst into a cantering horse. There was a wild whinnying and snorting, and the cart lurched to a stop. “Watch where you’re going, you bastard!” its rider yelled. “Or I’ll have you before the old bashaw on charges.”
“Colonel Talbot, do you mean?” Anna asked, rising from behind the slender form of her driver. “How far are we from his house?”
“Why, who have you got there, boy?” cried the man in surprise, poking his head forward to look.
“A lady that’s comed a long way to visit the Colonel.”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am.” The man brought his horse to the side of the cart to peer at her in the gloom. “You must be the lady that the Colonel has been expecting this week past. Shall I ride back and tell him you’re here?”
“No, I thank you. My driver here will take me onwards.”
“Straight ahead then, you bast...boy. Follow your nose.” The man slapped his horse on its neck, and they plunged into the darkness.
She knew that Colonel Talbot had built his house high on a cliff overhanging the lake called Erie. Another hour, straight uphill, and they came at last to a group of low buildings. She could see little but the whale-oil lamps that burned in the windows, and as the cart pulled up to a door, a man emerged. In the darkness, Anna could just make out a smiling face and a small, neat figure. “My dear Mrs. Jameson,” the man said, “It is delightful to meet you. I have looked forward to this visit.” He bowed and took her arm to help her down from the wagon while over his shoulder he gave instructions to a manservant. “Take the boy to the kitchen, Jennings, give him a good supper with beer and put him to bed.”
With Anna’s hand still on his arm, the Colonel led her into a vestibule where a stink of animal hides and grain assailed her. He steered her past sacks of wheat and piles of sheepskins. “A mite different from the old home in Ireland,” he said, and Anna had a moment’s memory of the gilt tables, marble floors, and family portraits she had once seen in the front hall of his ancestral castle in Ireland.
She had gone there, long ago, with her father to see a woman— the Colonel’s mother? aunt?—who had wanted a miniature painted of a dead baby. The lady had taken them into a small nursery where the baby lay in a tiny wooden box. She remembered the pinched, grey face of the infant against the white ruffles of the pillow, the swish of her father’s pencil on sketch-paper, and dust motes floating in the sun’s rays through a window. The butler had served them stale cakes while they sat beside the corpse.
“Sit here, madam,” Anna’s host said, as they came into a simple room with a huge chimney and hearth and a long wooden table, flanked by two chairs obviously made from the forest she had passed through.
He poured her a glass of wine, and the servant put in front of her a huge steak and cornbread. “Do tell me how you liked my new roads. I take great pride in those roads. Think, there was nothing here a generation ago but the forest paths made by the savages.”
“Truly, sir, I longed for one of those quiet paths leading to a wigwam, a piece of maple sugar and a soft bed of balsam boughs.” She looked down at her plate, took a bite of the cornbread and thought of the effort required to saw through that piece of ox flesh. She set down her fork. “I fear I can neither speak nor eat, sir. I have been hours on the road, and though it was no doubt an excellent road, I am now so weary that I ache in every bone and nerve.” She was also cold: she had felt the wind whistle across the hilltop as she climbed out of the cart.
In a minute the man Jennings ushered her to the open door of a comfortable bedroom. A cheery fire blazed, and in front of it, a large-bosomed woman poured hot water into a ceramic pitcher. She helped Anna strip off her clothes, sponged her aching back and pulled the quilted wool coverlet over her when she’d climbed into the sleigh bed, obviously made by a local craftsman. “Such comfort, thank you,” she managed to say before she passed into oblivion.
A hum of voices and smell of tobacco wakened her in the morning. She opened her eyes to find a white-headed chubby little child staring at her, perhaps the son of the angel who had assisted her the night before. The clock on the shelf above the hearth said it was almost noon. The child was gone before she could say, “Off with you,” and she hastily dressed herself and went out into the hall. Along the rough log walls, five ragged, bearded men lounged. Four of them were smoking clay pipes, and the fifth was pushing a wood splint through the spaces between his teeth.
“Good morning,” she said to the man with the splint. “May I ask why you are here?”
“To see Himself.” The man pointed towards the open door of a room, where Anna could see her host seated behind a desk. “No need to sit,” the Colonel was saying in a loud voice to a man in riding clothes who stood on the other side of the desk, “I take no fine gentlemen in my settlement. I want no dandy here who stays by the fire while hired labourers do his work for him. I need men prepared to fell and plant, to sow and reap, to build roads. I give no one a land grant until he has cleared the land and thrown up a cabin with his own hands. Such a man only will appreciate what I myself have accomplished in the thirty-five years I have been in this wilderness.”
“In other words, sir, you want inferiors and dependents. You are the Great Poobah. You have your own kingdom here, and you people it with serfs.”
“Get out. You waste my time.”
Anna thought she recognized the voice. It was the gentleman she and her lad had met the night before, the one who had so greatly exaggerated the distance to the Colonel’s house. His face was flushed and his stock dishevelled. One brass button hung loose on his coat.
She moved quickly past the waiting men and found her way to the dining room. The capable woman who had assisted her the night before was there, pulling a handwoven cloth over the long table. “Sit you down, ma’am,” she said. “I will bring victuals directly.”
It was the best room Anna had seen so far in the Colonel’s chateau. Here the logs had been plastered over and the walls papered. There was an elegant maple sideboard with a bowl of roses upon it and a mahogany box for the silverware. The Windsor chairs were plain but comfortable, and in a very few minutes, the woman appeared again with cheese, cornbread and hot milk in a pitcher.
“You are Mrs. Jennings?”
“Yes, ma’am, the only woman master will allow in his house, and that only because my man wanted a wife and a child and took me, the woman nearest at hand, though master swore at him for a fool.” Anna l
ooked at her blotchy complexion and crooked teeth, and thought yes, no doubt he chose her for her proximity, certainly not for her physical attractions.
She had just put some butter on her cornbread when the Colonel burst into the room. “Look here, woman, keep your brat from my audience chamber, if you please—” He broke off, seeing Anna at the table. “Excuse me, Mrs. Jameson,” then continued to rail, “How can I deal with those land-pirates if he keeps climbing on my knee? It completely destroys my stature with the lower orders.” He shut the door with a bang.
“He is an old bear,” Mrs. Jennings said, “but my man has worked for him for a quarter century and will hear no evil of him.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Jennings, the Colonel gave me a kind welcome last night, though we arrived at midnight, as you know.”
“Oh, he is a nice old bear. Sometimes.”
Anna wandered into a covered porch littered with shovels, mortars and pestles, bed slats, axes, a copper-lined bathtub and a hundred other objects. She looked upwards and gave a scream. Suspended from the rafters was the pelt of an enormous cougar. Its face leered down at her, ghastly and horrible. “Master killed it when it attacked the pullets,” Mrs. Jennings said.
“I’m going outside to get away from the thing.”
“Look over there, ma’am, you’ll see the log hut which master built when he first came to these parts four-and-thirty years ago.” It was a crude structure, but she noticed that the chinks between the logs had been carefully filled.
There were, in fact, a dozen or more outbuildings of all shapes and sizes, scattered here and there without the slightest regard to order or symmetry. Near one of them, obviously used to shelter geese and poultry, Jennings had just whacked the head off a hen. The pièce de résistance of dinner, undoubtedly. With cornbread, undoubtedly.
Beyond these buildings were the cliffs overlooking the wide blue expanse of Lake Erie. She counted six schooners with white sails. Then she wandered through acres of orchards and on her way back to the house came upon a rose garden.