by William Bell
“Stop fidgeting — I’m almost done. Between 1831 and 1871, the black population remained steady, but by 1900 they were all gone.”
“And nobody knows why they left.”
“Exactly.”
“How did you find all this out in such a short time?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson. I get books. I read.”
She tapped a photocopy of a map. “This shows the survey of the township. The shaded areas are the lots granted to blacks.” She picked up her notes and aligned the sheets. I looked at the map.
The Penetanguishene Road, now Highway 93, was clearly marked, and so was Wilberforce Street to the east of it, named after the Brit whose law emancipated slaves in British territory. It was the first concession settled by blacks.
“Hmm.”
“What?” Raphaella asked.
“Look. The lots along the Penetanguishene Road are twice as big as the ones on Wilberforce Street. Old Peregrine was sympathetic toward the ex-slaves but only to a point. Seems he was against slavery but not for equality. Anyway, now we know why there’s an African Methodist church in Oro,” I said.
“Right. Although the first generation or two of African slaves apparently hung on to their old beliefs, eventually they adopted the religion of their masters.”
“Christianity.”
“Yup. Baptist, Methodist and so on. Mostly Protestant. They’d have been Christian for at least a generation before they came here.”
“Well,” I said, standing and stretching, “all this has been very informative, but it doesn’t explain the voices.”
“True.”
“So, tomorrow we’ll go to the township offices and search the title to the land around the church and Silverwood. We need to find out who used to live there.” I had a thought. “Hey! Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”
I dashed into the workshop and over to the box of books I had temporarily stored in a corner by the door. I picked up Elizabeth Maitland’s diary and took it back to the office.
Placing it in the middle of the desk, I explained to Raphaella what it was.
“Great,” she said.
The stained and flaky brown leather cover was intact at the front and along the spine, but the back cover had been torn off. The pages were rippled in places, indicating that the diary had gotten wet at some point. It gave off a dry, musty odor.
I opened it at random and flipped a couple of pages. The paper had a yellow tinge and the ink was a sepia color. The handwriting was spidery and difficult to read. On some pages Elizabeth had made line drawings of wild flowers and other plants. Raphaella, to my surprise, recognized all of them.
“She really knew her stuff,” she said.
“Maybe this thing will tell us something,” I suggested.
“Yeah. It’s going to be heavy reading, though.”
“I’ll start on it tomorrow. Tonight I wait in the bush to see what I can see.”
“You mean, we wait. I don’t want to miss this —”
“Are you sure? The woman doesn’t come until midnight. Your mother will kill you.”
“I’ll deal with my mother later.”
chapter
We were ready by eleven-thirty, about fifty feet off the trail I had checked out before, the one I was pretty sure the woman was using. It was a mild night, with a touch of breeze. The sky above the treetops was dusted with stars.
Anybody who lives outside the city knows that, at night, the forest is anything but quiet. Added to the faint whisper of the wind in the treetops is the rustle of small animals in the undergrowth, the birdlike chirp of frogs, sometimes an owl’s whoo-whoo — all of it amplified by the dark and, at least in my case, the imagination.
Raphaella and I didn’t speak. We sat down and leaned against a thick maple tree, facing in opposite directions so we covered the trail both ways. I felt foolish — what if she turned out to be a real live woman? — and uneasy at the same time. The bush at night is eerie, and I knew that if I wasn’t careful, I’d let the creeps get hold of me. I may have been in techno-mode the day before, but not now.
I jumped when I felt Raphaella’s fingers enclose my wrist. Leaves rustled quietly as she got to her knees. I felt her breath in my ear when she spoke.
“She’s coming. From your direction.”
I peered south along the trail. “I can’t see anything, or hear.”
“She’s approaching. I can sense her.”
In the distance, a faint moaning floated out of the dark. Gradually, the sound grew nearer, fuller, rounder, recognizable — the heart-wrenching weeping that was, by now, so familiar to me.
In the darkness, I detected a faint movement. The sharp pressure on my wrist told me Raphaella had seen it, too. I knew in an instant that the woman who slowly came into view was not of this world. I saw her, clearly and distinctly, but at the same time I saw through her. She possessed shape and form but no substance.
She was wearing a kerchief, a loose coat open at the front — a man’s coat — a long dress under an apron and ankle boots that, like the coat, seemed too big for her. As she walked, a pendant hanging from a cord around her neck bobbed in and out of sight. She was a black woman, with a broad nose and full lips in a face that, if it hadn’t been twisted in grief, might have been kindly. She came on steadily downhill toward us, one hand at her chest as if she was holding a bunch of flowers, but her fist was empty. And with her came the cold.
The full weight of her grief fell upon us like a heavy cloak, and her sadness crept into the marrow of my bones, an aching sense of loss so powerful I had the urge to cry with her. Beside me, Raphaella knelt on the dry leaves, her shoulders shaking.
The woman stopped. She stood straight and still, and silent. Slowly, her head turned and she stared at us. I could feel my blood stop in my veins. We’re in for it now, I thought.
But, tentatively, she moved off the path. Her footsteps raised no sound as she skirted our position, glancing our way repeatedly, until, once past us, she rejoined the path. The moans rose up again as she continued north through the trees and out of sight.
Without hesitation, Raphaella and I followed her at a distance. I could guess where she was going. We crossed the creek on the fallen log and, after a while, came to the edge of the trees.
The churchyard was brushed with a faint silver light from the moon. I scanned the open area but didn’t see the woman. Raphaella tapped my arm and pointed to the right along the broken-down rail fence that bordered the graveyard. The woman was kneeling on all fours, crying harder now, her hands splayed on the ground.
“Jubal,” she crooned. “How could you leave me?”
Her voice was strong and rich despite her grief, with an accent I had never heard before.
“I can’t take any more,” Raphaella whispered, choking back her sobs. “Let’s leave her alone.”
“Okay.”
I led her along the rail fence to the gravel road. The air was noticeably warmer. Somehow, the road was comforting, offering security, normality. I put my arm around Raphaella’s shoulders. She was trembling. So was I.
“Come on,” I said, and we walked along the road to Silverwood.
2
To my surprise, Raphaella was more upset than I was. As we had walked, the oppressive burden of the woman’s mourning had lessened, but in the trailer, at the little dining table, Raphaella was pale and shaken.
I made some tea and we sat at the table, hands cupped around our mugs.
“I wonder who she is,” Raphaella said finally. Then, “Were you scared, Garnet?”
“It’s strange. I was really scared, until I saw her and when she stopped and stared at us. Then I was more …”
“Unbearably sad.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how you’ve put up with this, night after night.”
“It was spooky, but somehow not real. Until now.”
“The men weren’t there tonight.”
“Thank goodness.” I took a sip
of my tea. “One time when I was in grade ten our class went to the science fair in the city. We were supposed to meet at the bus after lunch in the cafeteria there. It was a nice day so I went outside to sit in the sun and watch the city people go by. There was a bench just near the bus.
“I took off my leather jacket — a birthday present — and closed my eyes. When I opened them I was surrounded by about a dozen guys, a gang. They pressed close to me and I stood up, clutching my jacket. They pushed closer, started swearing, throwing insults, and one of them demanded that I give him the jacket.”
“A swarming.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you, it was scary. They pressed me so close I could hardly breathe. Those men from my dream, their voices, remind me of that, and it’s worse each time.”
Raphaella shook her head. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
I tried to lighten the mood. “Look at the bright side.”
“Which is?”
“I didn’t give up my jacket.”
3
I got Raphaella back home by 2 A.M. I stopped the van about a block from her place, under an ancient willow, and shut off the motor.
“There’s one chance,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. A long shot. Mom knows I was at the library, studying. Sometimes she goes to bed early, nine or so. If she’s asleep, I might be able to get in the back door and up to my room without her noticing. It’s worth a try.”
“Okay. How will I know if you got in all right?”
“If you hear a blast like a nuclear explosion, you’ll know she woke up and nabbed me. If not, I’ll flick my bedroom light on once. It’s the room at the front, second floor.”
I watched her run down the quiet street, up her driveway and around to the back of the house. A few minutes later, the upstairs window lit up for a split second, then went dark again.
I started the van and drove back to the trailer.
chapter
The first thing we did next day was stop at the African Methodist Church.
“Wait, let me get my notebook,” Raphaella said as we got out of the van.
We approached the monument. It was a dull day, muggy and warm, with an overcast sky. The grass was green and damp, and the heavy odor of lilacs hung in the air.
“Read me the names,” Raphaella said, clicking her pen. “Hurry. I don’t like it here.”
Under the inscription “Names of those who worshipped and are buried here,” I read out, Banks, Barber, all the way down to Washington.
“Interesting,” Raphaella murmured as she jotted the last surname.
“Yup. All Anglo-sounding names except one.”
“Duvalier.”
At the trailer we sat out on the patio, swatting the occasional mosquito. The green woods were inviting — in daylight.
Raphaella flipped through her notebook. “Here we are,” she said. “Some of the names are here. Most of them have ‘unknown’ noted as the place of birth. Three are from Ohio, one from Guinea, and yes! Duvalier — from Haiti.”
“Which explains the French name,” I said. “Most slaves lost their African names and were named after their owners. Haiti had a lot of French landowners.”
Raphaella’s eyebrows arched. “Very impressive,” she commented.
“I ain’t stupid, you know. I’ve been doing a little reading myself. Let’s finish our drinks and get down to the township offices.”
2
We spent all afternoon at the land office, standing in lines, talking with bureaucrats — they were suspicious of us until we explained we were doing a project for school — paying for photocopies, poring over survey maps. Eventually we found out what we wanted to know.
Shortly after the untouched wilderness between Barrie and Penetanguishene was surveyed, Nevil Maitland, a relative of the governor, occupied his land grant on the fourth concession line, just south of present-day Edgar — although the town wasn’t there yet and the concession line was just that, a line on a map, not a road. Maitland brought his wife, Elizabeth. They had been living in York.
A few years later, thanks to the governor’s interest in helping blacks settle, Jubal and Hannah Duvalier located on the third concession line. Silverwood was on what was once the Duvalier grant. Other blocks of land had been surveyed but not yet claimed. The church was built on land granted by the governor in 1849, which we already knew.
We were also aware, from Raphaella’s research, that by the 1830s, grants were made to indigents, families without money or privilege or military service, and even as these European-born settlers were moving in, the blacks were trickling away.
By 1900, the Maitlands had bought up all the land between the third and fourth concessions for more than a mile south of Edgar — including the Duvalier farm — except for the little piece where the church stood. Then their luck seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Piece after piece of land was sold off, including the area where Silverwood stood.
“So the woman we saw is probably Hannah Duvalier,” I said as we drove back to Orillia.
“You mean, was.”
“Yeah, although I sort of think of her as still, well, not alive exactly, but —”
“I know what you mean. She’s probably walking from her cabin to Jubal’s grave.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“But there’s something we still don’t know. Why does she walk? Why isn’t she at rest?”
“And another thing,” I said. “Did you notice where Jubal’s grave is? It’s outside the churchyard, on the other side of the fence.”
“Right.”
“Seems strange.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet there’s a story there.”
“Something has always nagged at me. How come there are no headstones? Jubal’s grave doesn’t have one, either.”
“Oh, that’s elementary, Watson. There are old photos in that little book that has the names listed. The old grave markers were made of wood.”
“So they just rotted away over time, like the bodies buried under them.”
“Don’t be ghoulish.”
“You want to know what else I’ve been wondering all day?”
“Shoot.”
“Are the men I hear every night in the bush on that list of names from the monument?”
3
I dropped Raphaella off downtown near her mother’s store and picked up a medium pizza, double cheese, pepperoni and mushrooms. Dad was in the showroom, talking with a customer who was eyeing a Boston rocker as if she wanted to eat it. I waved to him and got to work.
Clearing a space on my workbench, I put down the pizza, retrieved a pad and pen from the office, and opened Elizabeth Maitland’s diary. Taking care not to drip gobs of pizza sauce onto the valuable object, I turned to the first page and began to read. Before long, the pizza, forgotten, grew cold.
It has long been my purpose to commence a diary, and, having removed to this our new home, I am presented with the perfect opportunity to put into effect this long deferred project.
I record, then, the year, 1825; the place, the Maitland Farm (if, indeed, this place may, without much exaggeration, be so deemed), in the township of Oro, on concession road number four, which is, at present, merely a track; approximately eighty miles north of York. I am compelled by honesty to describe our surroundings as unsettled wilderness, until recently the abode only of savages.
Our rough, log home being recently completed five years after Nevil located his land grant, and our outbuildings, of similar construction (and, it must be owned, appearance) also established; our five acres cleared, we are indeed a homestead. It would be the grossest exaggeration to describe the land as pleasing to the eye, littered as it is with the stumps of laboriously cleared trees, among which the crops are sown, so that the fields resemble a devastated landscape rather than the tidy patchwork of the Old Country; but Nevil has pronounced the soil fertile and the drainage excellent.
I freely admit, dear Diary, that I
was held in the grip of not a little fear at the prospect of leaving York and taking up what can only be described as a rough life in the wilderness between Kempenfeldt and Penetanguishene; but Nevil is set on establishing a dynasty in the new world, and has made it abundantly plain that, short of falling upon a cache of gold, the only course of action is to build a life from the ground up, literally. That we are embarked upon an enterprise which may bear fruit only generations hence is a thought constantly on my mind, but I shall not fail to bring to the task all that is in my power.
Elizabeth Maitland didn’t say anything in five words if she could use ten, but it was hard to get mad at her. I guess that was the way educated people wrote in those days. Her personality gradually came off the page. She was a brave, hardworking woman who put up with a husband who seemed, at least the way she talked about him, to be narrow-minded, demanding and, more than anything else, ambitious.
The diary might have been interesting to a history prof, or maybe my dad, but not to me. Forcing myself to concentrate, I began to scan the pages more quickly, on the alert for key words. Many pages had been ruined by water that smeared and blurred the ink. Some had fallen out or been ripped out.
Years passed; it was 1827.
Yesterday morning, as I was working in the kitchen garden, there emerged from the trees on the edge of the west field a figure whose uncommon appearance startled me more than I care to admit, for her structure was tall and straight and her skin coal black. She wore homespun, with a bandana of white on her head and stout, if rather the worse for wear, boots on her bare feet.
She greeted me politely, her words conveyed with a lilt and flow not at all familiar to my ears, and said that she and her husband Jubal Duvalier had located on the third line to the west of us.
Her name was Hannah, she said, and she was looking for work, and, as I had now two babies to care for …
The Maitlands hired Hannah to help in the house one day a week. She was an experienced domestic. She and Jubal had been brought to York by a businessman who had bought them in Haiti years before, moved to the U.S. and ended up in Upper Canada. When their owner died of influenza, they were freed according to his will. Stuck in a foreign country with no money and no means of support, Jubal and Hannah had taken advantage of the land grants open to former slaves and freedmen.
