Voyageurs

by Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘I found Tomas and Hugh right away, and my other brother Sim arrived a couple of days after my brigade got in – I hadn't seen him for ten years and we made quite a night of it. So that was me: in my own place at last, no longer a lad waiting to grow up, but who and where I wished to be more than anything else on earth. I was happy as a king – if kings are happy, which I doubt. But that's the fact of the matter: since I joined the North West Company I've never wished for one moment to be anywhere than where I was – that includes the tough times too – and that's the honest truth. Hugh asked the Council if he could have me for clerk, so when the rendezvous was over I said farewell to my brothers for another year, and went with Hugh up to Athabasca.

  ‘As soon as I got to le pays d'en haut, I knew this was where I wanted to be. I remember when I used to look west across the sea to the Cuillin, right on the edge of the world, with only the sun setting into the sea beyond them. I never got there, and I've not got to the edge of the world either. But when I was in Athabasca I knew I was there – I can't explain it to you – whatever it was that lay west beyond the Cuillin, when I used to look at it from Craig – the place that I wanted to be. The first winter was terrible – far worse than this. I used to go by sled – out there where the sky is so huge you can't imagine it – so much sky, and the empty space around you. I used to look around me at all the great white barrenness of it, and think to myself, “This is it." And it was, for me. The North will kill you if you stop paying attention to it for one moment – it's like a white bear stalking you, always after you, and waiting for your blood, and if it doesn't kill you dead it gets you another way. Even if I went back to Lochalsh now – and I never will – I'd be homesick all my life. You think my leg bothers me because of the pain, don't you? I couldn't give a damn about that – not now – it's what it might do to me that worries me. I never wanted to be sent down here. I wanted my promotion – oh, yes, I wanted that – but only so as I could get back there, and be my own agent. That's what I want – a partner's share in the North West, and a post up north. But not if I'm crippled – not then . . .’

  ‘You won't be crippled,’ said Loic. ‘Your leg gets better each day. You will limp a little, perhaps. But, because of Mark, you will walk – and run, I think – quite well.’

  ‘It's true that the setting worked,’ I said. ‘If I'd known thee was feart for that, I could have told thee weeks ago.’

  Alan looked at me, half-embarrassed, half-suspicious. ‘You'd swear to that, brother Mark?’

  ‘No. But thee has my word for it.’ I hesitated; there were more reasons than one for changing the subject. ‘Thee had an Indian wife, I think, in Athabasca?’

  ‘Ah. Hugh told you that?’

  ‘Ay.’

  Alan glanced my way again. ‘I did her no harm, brother Mark. I have never – wittingly, at least – done any woman harm.’

  I said to him, as I never could have done a year ago, ‘I believe thee.’ I did not bother to add my thoughts about harm done unwittingly, and whether a man should be held guilty of a sin that is entirely invisible to his own conscience. Indeed, I know not what I could have said, for in my own mind the question is not resolved to this very day.

  In the weeks that followed, Alan, now that his tongue was loosed, told us many more stories about the far north, and the Chippewyan people among whom he had lived, and the many things they had taught him about their barren northern land. But he never mentioned his domestic life again, and I never asked him. He believed what I said about his leg – and indeed I'd spoken with more confidence than I felt in my heart. But it seemed to do the trick; a weight of anxiety was lifted from him, and from that day he mended fast, until he was walking almost as well as ever. His melancholy, though, seemed to have transferred itself to me, as if I had taken on the burden of it. We had failed to find Rachel. Clearly Alan, as soon as he was free of this war, would go back to le pays d'en haut, and find himself a wife among the people of the country he had chosen, a woman who would serve him better in the life he loved than my sister would ever have been able to do. I should never have interfered in his life. I had helped him not at all; on the contrary, I'd come near to destroying him. And my sister Rachel, as I should have known, was lost forever.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE DAY THE WARRIORS CAME BACK, WE'D JUST brought the canoe up to our wigwam so we could start repairing it for spring. They took no notice at all of Alan or Loic. They were armed as before, but their muskets were slung harmlessly across their shoulders. The one who'd addressed me before came right up to me, and said again, ‘Nigigwetagad.‘

  ‘Ay?’

  He spoke too fast, and the Ottawa tongue was beyond me anyway, so I held up my hand. ‘Will thee let my friend translate?’

  Loic watched the man warily as he interpreted. ‘He says, “So you have lived another winter.”’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘He says, “You have lived so long, what will you do with all this life that is given to you?"’

  ‘Tell him I seek my sister Rachel.’

  It was clear that the answer concerned Alan. Alan didn't flinch when he was pointed out, but stood stolidly, leaning on his crutch.

  ‘He says, you say what he knows already. He says, “Why do you travel among the Ottawa with this man?"’

  ‘This man is the husband of my sister who is lost.’

  ‘He says, “This man has come to make trouble among my people. This man incites us to an alliance with the British.” He says, “We have heard what he has to say many times before. For generations his people have made use of us. They drag us into their wars and persuade us to fight for them. We know what happens. Sometimes white people come as enemies, and make war on us. Sometimes they say they are allies, and they bring worse evil than our enemies. If it were not for you, Nigigwetagad, I would have killed this man. It would be better for us if there were none like him. It would be better if there were no white people in our country at all, if you had stayed in your own place, and not come to our lands in order to rob and murder and steal, and entice us with promises that do not last.”’

  ‘Say to him, “He is my brother, my sister's husband, and he is a good man. I love him well.”’ I kept my eyes away from Alan as I said that, and waited for the reply.

  ‘He says, “What is that to me? I came to speak to you, Nigigwetagad. You killed a bear in my hunting ground this winter.”’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘"And because you did that, you lived.”’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘"Did you give thanks for the life that was given that you might live? Did you make the proper offerings?"’ Loic went on speaking rapidly, then turned to me again. ‘I told him that I showed you, and you did everything that you ought.’

  The man was speaking again, and Loic translated, ‘He says, “There is no reason why I, or any of my people, should help you, Nigigwetagad. You have no right to hunt on my lands, and yet you came, and you took what you wanted, and now it is spring, and you have lived. You owe me something, and I owe you nothing. Yet I do as I will. Your sister is not far away. Do you wish to take her?"’

  I felt Alan's startled movement as if it were my own. I think our thoughts were never so close as in that moment, and yet I could not look at him. ‘Ay,’ I said quietly. ‘Tell him that is what I wish.’

  ‘He says, “Then come.”’

  Dazed as I was, I had to think. ‘Ask him, “Is it far?"’

  ‘He says, “One day, two days, maybe. He will lend you a guide.”’

  ‘Just me?’

  The answer was a single word. ‘Yes, just you,’ interpreted Loic.

  ‘Tell him I'm ready.’

  But it was Loic who delayed us for a moment. He said something I couldn't follow, and disappeared into the wigwam. While he was gone, Alan said suddenly, ‘You'd better take the musket, brother Mark.’

  There was that in his voice I'd never heard before – bitterness, perhaps, or shame – an emotion I'd never seen in him, for all we'd lived so close f
or the best part of a year. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thee and Loic will need it. Besides, if I were not Nigigwetagad, I wouldn't be going. So that: is who I will be.’ I touched him awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘I'll do my best, Alan.’

  He took my hand – he was not as reticent as I – and gripped it. He didn't look at me. I was still too much amazed to be jubilant, and I supposed he felt the same. Only later did I realise how much I must have shamed him. At the time I thought his flippancy unseemly, so little did I understand him even yet. ‘I know that, brother Mark. And we will wait, like docile wives, for your return. I have naught to do but thank thee, I suppose.’

  I went into the wigwam, and emptied my journal and other small items out of my knapsack. My purse, unopened for half a year, lay at the bottom. After a moment's hesitation I left it in, and stuffed the knapsack with such trade goods as we had left – cloth and beads, mostly. Loic was beside me. He took down the string of bear claws, which he'd hung under the skull. He followed me outside and put it in my hands. ‘Take them, Mark. Hang them round your neck, as I told you.’

  ‘No, that I can't do!’

  ‘Mark, I tell you to do this. If it means nothing to you, how can it hurt you?’

  There was no time to explain to him. I took the string and hung it about my neck. My hunting knife was already at my belt. I turned to the warriors who stood watching. ‘I'm ready.’

  To my surprise, my guide was not one of the warriors, nor, indeed, any man at all. We'd gone less than a mile when we came to a little glade among the cedars, where the snow had melted in patches. The exposed grass was brown as if it had been scorched. There was a fallen tree trunk at the far end, and when we came close I saw that a woman was sitting curled up in the crook of it. Her deerskin dress was the same colour as the cedar bark, and I could have walked right by without noticing her. She jumped down as we approached, and took up a deerskin bag which she swung on to her shoulder. She was taller than Waase'aaban, but she had some of Waase'aaban's easy grace. She glanced at me, then listened to what the leader of the band said to her. They both turned to me. He gestured towards her, and held up a hand to me, as if in farewell.

  ‘Is she to be my guide?’

  Of course they didn't understand. I watched them vanish into the shadow of the trees. When I looked round my companion was looking at me seriously, but without any fear, apparently, of being thus left alone with a stranger, and a white man at that.

  ‘So what now?’ I asked her, not so much expecting a reply, as feeling that I must speak.

  She beckoned, and I followed.

  For two days she led me ever further into the forest of Michigan. At first we walked on thick snow, but that grew less, until the patches of dirty snow alternated with a soft carpet of wet pine needles and rotted leaves. There was a path all the way, but without my guide I'd have lost sight of it time and again, for it was faint, and the snow patches were untrodden. Yet we seldom had to push our way through saplings or undergrowth, or duck our heads under overhanging branches. We walked under winter birches, where the lichen hung down in curtains from the bare branches, and the twigs were just taking on the purple sheen of new buds. The trees echoed with birdsong. Bright-coloured birds darted to and fro, some familiar chaffinches, tits and sparrows, and some – and these the least plain, it seemed – quite unknown to me. There were more tracks in the snowy patches than I was used to at the lake shore. The deer tracks were larger, too; several times we saw little bands of does which bounded off into the thickets when they heard us. We crossed swamps where our footsteps crackled through ice and freezing water. We skirted a big lake where the ice had melted at the edges, so we were forced to follow the shore, my companion walking easily, while I slipped and slid on the icy rocks in my moccasined feet.

  Once we stopped at a creek high with meltwater, and squatted side by side to drink. Before she stood up again I pointed to my own chest, and said. ‘Mark. Nin Mark. Aaniin ezhinikaazoyan?‘

  Her smile lit up her face. ‘Waubagone,’ she told me, and added a sentence I couldn't follow.

  ’Daga ikidon, miinawaa,’ I said, as Loic had taught me.

  She obligingly repeated what she'd said. After that we managed to converse a little sometimes, though I was never entirely sure if I were making sense.

  Just as dusk was falling on the first day she halted at the foot of a giant fir tree, led me round the side of it and vanished. For a moment I thought myself bewitched, led by a will o’ the wisp that was swallowed up into its own element with the coming of dark, leaving me eternally benighted – for I could never have found my own way out. Then I heard her call, and saw the split in the huge trunk. I could barely squeeze my way through but, once inside, the hollow of the tree was dry and snug, as wide across as our own wigwam. Others had bivouacked here before us, for there were cedar boughs already spread across the floor. They were hardly needed: the ground was soft as a sponge with ancient bark and wood dust.

  I sat down, and leaned against the trunk. The light was thickening fast. Waubagone brought out dried meat with berries in it, which could have tasted worse. I offered her water from my flask, but she shook her head, and went away. Presently she came back with fresh water in a birchbark container, so we weren't short, though I never did discover the source of it.

  By the time we'd eaten it was almost too dark to see. ’Nibaan!‘ Waubagone suited the action to the word, and curled up on the cedar boughs on the far side of our shelter, with her back to me.

  Obediently I lay down in my corner, said a brief prayer, and composed myself to sleep.

  I was cold in the night, and when I did sleep at last I woke late, thinking I was back in the wigwam with Alan and Loic, but then I remembered, and sat up and looked about me. Waubagone had gone. I was a little anxious, but before long she returned with more water. We shared that, and more of the meat. Waubagone stood up. ‘Bi-wiijiiwishin!‘

  We walked as silently as on the day before. Presently the path grew wider. We came to a place where four roads met, and after that we were following a veritable track between stands of birch and maple. I'd never seen such maples; when I stretched my arms around a trunk I could barely reach halfway. I could feel the heat of the sun on my back, and the air was full of the smell of new growth. Somewhere on my right a thrush began to sing, the same mellow, liquid tune we hear from the thrushes that nest in the blackthorn by the gate at Highside. My heart quickened at the sound, and I stopped to listen.

  ‘A throssel,’ I said.

  Waubagone looked at me and smiled. ‘Opitchi,‘ she told me, and I smiled back.

  It was not long after that that I caught the sweet whiff of woodsmoke. ‘Are we nearly there?’

  She said something I couldn't follow, and then repeated one word several times, slowly. ‘Sisibakwat, Sisibakwat.‘

  We were among tall maples. The sweetish smell grew stronger. Then I saw trees with wooden troughs fixed against their trunks, and realised where I must be. ‘This is a maple syrup village?’

  Waubagone beckoned me over to the trees, and I saw how little spouts of cedar wood were driven into the trees, so that watery sap dripped out into the troughs. She signed for me to put my finger under the flow and taste. It was like the sugar-water people use to wean infants.

  I followed her onwards, until we reached a clearing where there was a single great lodge, with walls of rushes and a birchbark roof. Racks of freshly caught fish were drying in the sun. Smoke rose from the lodge, and with it I breathed in a rich toffee smell that made me think of nothing so much as my mother's baking days when I was a little lad at Highside, when I used to be allowed to scrape the bowls and lick the wooden spoon. I could hear dogs barking and children shouting, and then someone calling us from under the trees. A girl came running to meet Waubagone. Three or four women came to the door of the lodge. Suddenly Waubagone, whom I'd thought of as so silent, was laughing and talking, no doubt describing our journey to them. An older woman came over and interrupted her, and in a loud, firm voice she ask
ed a single question. A sudden silence fell. Waubagone turned to me. ‘Bi-wiijiiwishin!‘

  The door of the lodge was wide, and the curtain of matting was tied back. I could see the glow of a long fire inside, through a thick mist of steam and smoke, and the rush of heat from within brought with it the rich smell of boiling sugar. I wasn't invited in: the woman indicated a cedar log bench at the door, and I obediently sat down. The others went back into the lodge, but Waubagone and the older woman walked away into the maple grove. I knew I should have had tobacco to give, but we'd had none left, so I'd come empty-handed. I was torn between anticipation and wild hope about Rachel, and awareness of my own empty belly. I'd had nothing but a few strips of dried meat for two active days, and I couldn't stop thinking about toffee.

  ’Nigigwetagad!‘ I looked up. One of the girls had come outside again, and was holding out a wooden bowl.

  I took it gratefully. ‘G'miigwechiwìgìn, mviijikiwenh,‘ I said.

  She laughed, and clapped her hands together in appreciation of my linguistic skill, which was more than kind of her, I thought, for I was angry with myself for being so ill-prepared when it was vital to communicate. The food was fresh trout cooked with corn, and very good. The ice must have melted hereabouts, I thought, for the men to be doing so much fishing. When I'd scraped the bowl there was nothing to do but wait.