The Brideship Wife

by Leslie Howard

  * * *

  The next day, I took my horse out riding to see where might be appropriate spots for my new plans. As I rode back, it struck me that it was a day like this that I dreamt of during my childhood, when I had imagined Hari and I growing up and living together on a farm in the country. I pulled my horse up to stand for a few moments, drinking in the vista that lay before me. From the ridge, I could see the better part of my homestead and Harriet House, a large, two-storey log house with three gables, a hand-carved double front door, and a veranda wrapping around the entire structure.

  I eased my horse straight down the slope and let her find her own way to the barn. My stable manager, Garret, was there to take the reins and help me to the ground. I blessed the fact that I could simply hand my horse off to him and then head straight into the house to wash up for dinner. He would see to it that the groom rubbed her down, fed her, and put her in her stall. Harriet had made it all possible, and I would never take it for granted.

  Stamping the worst of the mud and dirt off my boots, I entered the house through the kitchen door. My housekeeper Cora’s head was bent over a steaming pot on the stove and snapped up the moment I entered.

  “It’s good you’re here,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “There’s a minister here to see you—wouldn’t state his business. Probably come to preach gospel or some such and then he’ll be expecting a fine dinner in return.”

  “The minister from town? Reverend MacDonald?”

  “Nay, not from town, not Reverend MacDonald. Claims he come all the way from England. Sarah told him he’d find you here. He gave me his card, he did.” She fished in her apron pocket. “Reverend John Crossman.”

  I stood perfectly still for a moment, unsure I had heard correctly. “John Crossman—from England, that John Crossman?” I felt warm and dizzy as I gripped the back of a kitchen chair with both hands. I looked up at Cora. Her frown had deepened.

  “He’s in the drawing room. Should I be sending him on his way?”

  “No, no, best set another place for dinner.”

  I heard her slap a pan down on the woodstove as I left the kitchen. Pausing in the front hall just outside the drawing room, I took a deep breath. I could hardly accept the turn of events. After all this time, John was here. Would he be the same John, the man I had fallen in love with, or someone else? I caught sight of the framed photograph on the wall in front of me, the one taken with Sarah and Florence in Barkerville before the fire. What would John think of me and my altered appearance? I hesitated, afraid to see him—to let him see me. I stepped forward.

  I had forgotten how big he was. He sat in a shadow, but he stood as I entered and his presence filled the room.

  “Just as beautiful as I remembered,” he said. “It’s good to see you, Charlotte. It’s been a long time—much longer than I hoped.”

  I moved haltingly towards him, aware of my limp, but he kept his eyes on mine. We looked into each other’s faces, discovering the ravages that our injuries had wrought. His eyes traced the outline of the burn mark on my cheek, but they didn’t linger there.

  His elegant Roman nose had been flattened somewhat, but most noticeable was the loss of his mass of dark locks and his facial hair and a long scar that ran from the tip of one ear all the way to the crown of his head. But the absence of his hair and whiskers only served to make his cobalt-blue eyes all the more vivid and his smile more charming.

  We stood awkwardly, silently looking at each other. I wasn’t sure what to say or how to greet him, so I took his hand formally and shook it.

  “I sent a letter to your brother to ask how you were and wish you well. I hope you saw it.”

  “I wasn’t able to see anything properly for months, but Andrew read it to me. It helped to know you asked after me, but then we got word of the fire and I worried about you. I asked Andrew to write and see how you made out, but the letter was returned unopened.”

  “I didn’t get it,” I assured him. “The fire—there was no post office.”

  “That’s what I figured, so as soon as I felt up to it, I came to check on you myself.” He beamed at me. “So let’s hear what you’ve been doing since I last saw you.”

  We sat down, and he listened intently as I told of the recent harrowing events, expressing shock, concern, and eventually relief. When it was his turn to tell me of his injuries and recovery, he sidestepped my questions and spoke only of the opposition to his work.

  “The group that opposes my views about the Natives’ rights are trying to ruin my reputation and shut me up. Their movement is fed by companies with a stake in the game. They want to just grab the land and take what’s there. Every day there seemed to be some new damning rumour about me. I was so happy to leave England.” He paused and took a deep breath, exhaling sharply. “Though I can’t help but feel that it’s been for naught. So much damage has been done.”

  I told him about my plan for the clinic and the church. “The worst of the smallpox outbreak is over,” I said, “but there is still a need, especially in the north. And there’s a want for local medical care and a sense of community.”

  “Charlotte, that’s wonderful,” he said, his eyes lighting up, and I was instantly brought back to those happy days on the boat.

  I reached for his hand. “I have something to show you.”

  I felt like I was presenting my newborn baby for the first time, such was my pride and joy as I took John around the property. After touring the barn, the horse stables, and other outbuildings, we climbed a hill to where I had placed a bench carved from a single piece of a tree trunk. We sat together, finally at ease with each other, drinking in the scene before us. From this vantage point, we could see my herd of cattle as they contentedly wandered the valley floor foraging for grass and snoozing on the cool, muddy shore of the lazy, meandering stream. Dusk descended and the crickets began their lonely, nightly lament for a mate.

  “I love this place,” I said.

  “I can see why. Nothing in England could rival it. The perfect place to make a home.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do.”

  He withdrew his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his vest, carefully unfolding it. “My brother found these in my pocket after the beating,” he said. “It was months before I was well enough to see them properly, but I was confounded when I did.”

  He opened his hand to reveal two gold rings: a plain gold band and an engagement ring with three small diamonds. They looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. I looked up at him questioningly.

  “I hadn’t the faintest idea where they came from. No memory. I didn’t buy them. I would’ve had a record of it. My memory came back in bits and pieces, a flash here, an image there. Some of it very painful.” He paused for a moment. “It took a long time, but I finally put it all together. Hortense Wiggins gave them to me.”

  “Wiggles?” I asked. “Were they her mother’s?”

  “They’re from your cousin, Edward. He had asked Hortense to send them with her next correspondence to you. Seems he’d found an old trunk in the attic full of your mother’s things. The rings were in it—they were your grandmother’s.”

  I gasped and pulled his hand towards me to have a better look. Picking up the rings, I turned them over in my fingers, thrilling at their touch. They were my only link to my past, to my family.

  “They’re for me?”

  “I wasn’t planning on wearing them. They don’t fit, for starters.” John chuckled. “I knew Hortense had encouraged you to make the journey, so I paid her a visit to tell her how you were getting on. We had a nice chat, and she asked me to pass the rings on to you—when I told her how I feel about you.”

  I held my breath. “And what did you tell her?”

  “That I’ve thought of you every single day since we parted—that I was guilty of making the worst mess of a proposal that any man has ever made, that I was going to try again, because I love you. I believe we share something that
few others do, and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my days with anyone else.”

  He took my hands, and, looking deep into my eyes, said, “Charlotte, will you marry me?”

  I thought of the day I stepped aboard the Tynemouth, a bundle of nerves and full of trepidation over the upcoming adventure, an innocent in so many ways—naive and impulsive, a young woman with much to learn about the world, as well as herself. But I was a much different person now. I had come into my own, and I was very comfortable with myself and my place in the world. I had no need to marry if I didn’t want to.

  “Yes,” I said, slipping the rings on. They fit instantly. “No sense in taking them off.”

  “Keep just the engagement ring for now. The wedding band has to wait for the actual ceremony.”

  I handed him back the gold band.

  “It’ll be a proper church wedding in town as soon as I can arrange it, and then back here to live in paradise.”

  I pulled him to me until my mouth found his. A tingling warmth flared throughout my body as he held me close and his soft lips closed over mine in a long, full kiss. My mind drifted to images of our future together. I imagined us spending our days in easy companionship, riding the range and sharing long evenings with fine meals by the fire. I saw myself waking in the night and feeling the warm comfort of his body beside mine.

  I got up from the bench and looped my arm in his. “Let’s go in for dinner.”

  When we set foot on the wood-planked floor of the veranda where Cora had set out dinner, we heard the strains of a fiddle striking up. Garret regularly entertained the cowboys with renditions of popular tunes, and tonight I recognized the haunting melody of a song that the Americans had brought north with them, “Weeping Sad and Lonely.” From their Civil War, the deeply moving song captured the current prevailing sentiment of our generation.

  We were a cohort of men and women who had left home seeking better lives—impoverished women who travelled halfway around the world for new opportunities, soldiers who chased glory in wars that others had started, and prospectors who searched for untold wealth in the sandbars of raging rivers. Some returned; many did not. A few of us found what we were seeking. But now, we yearned for something different—a home and someone to share it with.

  John and I stood for a moment, gently swaying, then, as Garret picked up the tempo, John put his great arms around me and I had a clear vision of our shared future together. Leaning on each other for support, we whirled about the veranda, our steps easy and unhalting.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Simon & Schuster Canada for understanding that the story of the brideship women is an important and relatively unknown chapter of Canadian history that needed to be told. I would particularly like to thank my editors, Sarah St. Pierre and Laurie Grassi, for taking a chance with a new author. Sarah St. Pierre showed great patience and offered endless encouragement while we painstakingly worked through the editing process.

  Thank you to my first agent, David Haviland, formerly with the Andrew Lownie Agency, who thrilled me by picking my manuscript out of the slush pile, and to my current agent, Andrew Lownie, for taking me on.

  Heartfelt thanks to Jesse Thistle, teacher, historian, and bestselling author of From the Ashes. Jesse helped me develop a greater understanding of the harsh reality of life for Indigenous people in 1860s British Columbia, and I’m grateful for his insights into the role of Métis women.

  I wish to acknowledge the Humber College graduate program in creative writing, where I received encouragement and guidance.

  A special thanks to the founding members of my writing group, Jessica Chan, Petra Mach, Frances Fee, and Felicity Schweizer, and to my reader and editor Rowena Rae. Thank you to Allyson Latta for her structural editing advice on the first draft.

  Thank you to my family: my husband, Austin; my daughter, Katherine; her partner, Colin; my son, Tom; his wife, Kat; and, of course, little Ellie.

  And finally thank you to my chocolate Lab, August, who, as a puppy, chewed on my toes while I wrote the first draft and now sleeps curled up under my desk, keeping me focused and those same toes warm.

  The Women of the Tynemouth

  Abington, Catherine A.

  Adington, Emily B.

  Barnett, Hariett

  Baylis, Sarah

  Berry, Emily

  Butten, Mary

  Chase, Mary L.

  Coates, Matilda E.

  Cooper, Emily H.

  Crawle, Margaret

  Curtes, Isabel

  Devilly, Mary

  Duren, S. Maria

  Egginton, Amelia

  Evans, Eliza Jane

  Evans, Mary

  Faussett, Margaret

  Fisher, Jane

  Gilan, Minnie

  Growing, Sophia

  Hack, Mary Ann

  Hales, Mary

  Hirsch, Theresa

  Hodges, Mary

  Holmes, Georgina J.

  Holmes, Helen

  Hurst, Julia L.

  Jones, Mary Ann

  Joyce, Ann

  King, Florence

  King, Mary

  Knapp, Ann

  Lane, Fancy

  Lovegrove, Sarah

  Macdonald, Georgina

  Macdonald, Jane

  Macdonald, Janet

  Macdonald, Mary

  McGowen, Ella

  McGowen, Kate

  Morris, Emily A.

  Ogilvie, Jane E.

  Passmore, Florenece

  Passmore, Welhelmina

  Picken, Sophia

  Pickles, Mary Ann

  Quinn, Emma

  Rendich, Catherine A.

  Renea, Mary

  Reynolds, Eliza

  Robb, Jane

  Saunders, Jane Ann

  Sentzenich, Jane

  Shaw, Sophia

  Simpson, Elizabeth

  Townsend, Charlotte

  Townsend, Louisa

  Tummage, Emma Helen

  Wilson, Bertha R.

  Wilson, Florence M. B.

  Thank you to Tracy McMenemy for finding this manifest, reproduced here with its original spelling, in the British Columbia Archives and kindly sharing it with me. Tracy’s art installation The Girls Are Coming! was featured at the Vancouver Maritime Museum in 2019.

  Author’s Note

  When I was ten my parents took me for a summer vacation to Barkerville, which has been restored to its former gold rush glory by the British Columbia government in an effort to preserve its history. Touring the heritage buildings set in an isolated northern location and interacting with the actors portraying characters of the time was an experience I have obviously never forgotten.

  After a white-knuckle drive through Fraser Canyon we arrived in time for supper at the Wake Up Jake Restaurant followed by a performance at the Theatre Royal, which advertised the famous Hurdy-Gurdy dancers. As we settled into our seats we heard the howl of the wind and rain outside, and the electricity went out. We sat in darkness while the oil lanterns that skirted the stage were lit and a single upright piano was wheeled out of the wings to replace the prerecorded music. Once the show began we were transported back to the earliest days of Barkerville, as though we had slipped back in time to the gold rush and life as it was then.

  A few years later I developed a friendship with a girl named Judy, whose father spent weekends visiting ghost towns in the British Columbia interior, and I was occasionally invited to accompany them on their adventures. Judy and I dug through abandoned buildings and old garbage dumps looking for antique bottles, jars, and anything else we could find. That’s where I first saw the tiny blue-green glass fingerlings that had once held opium, the same vials that I describe in these very pages.

  These memories stayed with me and became quite useful when I decided to write my novel and began to research in earnest. I made my way to various museums to gather information on the voyage of the Tynemouth and the gold rush. While visiting the Royal BC Museum in Vi
ctoria, I took in an excellent presentation on gold and its history in British Columbia. With extra time to kill, I wandered upstairs until I found myself in an exhibit that took my breath away, but not in a good way. It was the story of the smallpox epidemic and how it had decimated the Indigenous peoples in the region. I had been ignorant of this terrible chapter in the history of my province and learning of it had a profound effect on me. I knew I couldn’t write a novel about the 1800s without including this part of the story.

  The smallpox epidemic was just part of the story, I later learned. With colonization came coal mines to feed burgeoning industry and pollution that destroyed salmon spawning grounds in a shockingly short period of time. The Indigenous peoples, left with decimated communities, turned to paid jobs where they were taken advantage of and forced to work in terrible conditions that fostered the spread of disease. Because of all these factors many women had no choice but to turn to prostitution in order to survive.

  I visited other museums, including ones in Yale and Lillooet, looking for pictures and information that would help me paint vivid scenes for my readers. In one restored home, circa 1860, I climbed narrow wooden attic stairs to a third-floor bedroom, and that’s when it struck me that the room was a fire trap. From my research I had learned how common and devastating fires were back then. This was the genesis for the scene where Charlotte is trapped by fire in her attic room.

  And then, a couple of years ago, I attended a kitchen party in New Brunswick, where I learned all about the warm and lively Acadian culture, and so I couldn’t resist giving Louis, the stagecoach driver, an Acadian heritage.

  The Vancouver Maritime Museum featured an art installation in 2019 called The Girls Are Coming! It was a wonderfully evocative artistic interpretation of the story of the brideships—of which the Tynemouth was just one of three ships—and the women involved. Most of the news articles about the exhibit emphasized how little the story is widely known.