Widow Walk

by Gar LaSalle

  Knowing that Winfield had angry, vengeful designs that likely would thwart any chance for a trade, she asked him to take Sarah back to Whidbey and plan on joining her in a few weeks. She reassured him she would find assistance from the Brits and meet him in Esquimalt with Jacob.

  Sarah protested vigorously and pleaded with Emmy to allow her to accompany her on the recovery of her brother.

  But Emmy knew the real danger of this quest. She told Sarah that their best chance to find Jacob was if she went prepared to travel beyond Fort Simpson, quickly moving upriver for the winter encampment, if necessary.

  Sarah did not seem convinced and sobbed angrily for a while, then suddenly quieted down and spoke no more of the matter.

  The ship moved out on the next early morning tide and, despite a strong headwind and tumultuous high seas, reached Fort Simpson three days later, on the evening of January 4th.

  Confined to her cabin, Emmy had tried to write in a journal, but mostly slept when she was not sick. She hated sailing, and this short trip brought back the horrid memories of sailing around the Horn, so terrible a journey that she vowed never to return to Boston unless she could go by land.

  She thought of Pickett and wondered how he would fare in the future, sensed that his confidence diminished in her presence, and wondered whether he was like that with all women.

  By his calm handling of the brief confrontation between him and Winfield, she knew that the killer in Pickett could dispatch most men easily. But she wondered about his deference to women, realized his chivalry was genuine, and that it made him exceptionally vulnerable.

  She thought of Isaac.

  As painful as it was to bring his memory forward, she forced herself to do so. He always had been so willful—predictably running down foolish paths so often but with a fervor that usually won him allies, outworking most and out-wishing everyone else.

  In the last few years, she had hated seeing that part of him broken down, the stubbornness persisting so that it was read by others as a weak and brainless perpetuation of his vision. She knew he had never been a prudent man and that his proclivity to put himself directly in the path of danger — usually for the excuse of enterprise, but more likely just because it justified itself — probably had caused his death, as well as contributed to her miscarriage and Jacob’s kidnapping.

  He had left without saying good-bye and without asking for her help. She was finishing his business again at great expense, and it made her angry.

  It was snowing hard now, covering the decks with an inch of frozen blanket, and once the ship had been secured in the inner harbor, it settled quietly into its anchorage, sleeping finally after a long journey.

  Emmy looked out from her cabin window onto a moonlit scene that resembled a Christmas painting of a seaside village, much like the ones she had seen in an art exhibit as a child in Boston.

  She would be ferried ashore the next morning, and she fretted for the wait she had to endure. Perhaps Jacob had been sighted. Perhaps the British authorities had news or already had even intervened in some way.

  She had heard that such a thing had happened before, across the strait on the Haida Queen Charlotte Islands two years before, when a British surveying expedition had made an exchange with one of the Haida clans for two Vancouver children who had been snatched earlier in the year.

  Perhaps Jacob was in Fort Simpson already!

  She looked at the small town and said a prayer to St. Jude, whom she was told the Catholics considered the patron saint of the impossible.

  Two hours later, she was awakened by a loud knock at her door. It was the first mate.

  “Come. Captain has something belongs to you.”

  Emmy followed the mate up to the snow-covered main deck and then aft to the captain’s quarters.

  Varienko, dull-eyed, obviously awakened from a drunken sleep, and wearing a filthy smock coat and shoeless, was slouched against the doorway of his cabin, waiting for her.

  As she came closer, he leered at her, eyeing her up and down in a way that made her reach up and pull her robe tightly across her neck. Then he pushed open his door.

  Sarah, covered with soot, pale and anxious, was sitting next to his cabin stove, shivering.

  Varienko belched.

  “Eet appear da lyetel gyurl want to companyou, Meezus Hyevers.”

  With a terse apology and an offer to reimburse him for the extra passenger, Emmy turned to take Sarah back to her cabin, and as she did so, she noticed Varienko followed both of them with a strange, sly, perusal.

  Emmy was furious. She pulled Sarah across the deck and down to her cabin in the aft hold.

  “How could you do something like this after I told you how dangerous this could be? How could you?”

  Sarah, shivering and exhausted, stared numbly ahead.

  Emmy stopped talking, poured water into the small basin on her bed, and proceeded to vigorously start scrubbing Sarah’s face of the soot from the coal bin in which she had hidden.

  But if embarrassment and anger had overcome Emmy, her fury with Sarah’s actions was short lived. In her cabin an hour later, while grooming Sarah’s hair from the knots and grime, she heard another knock at her door.

  It was Varienko.

  He held a bottle and two pewter goblets, and his britches and underpants were off, fully exposing him. He pushed his way into the room.

  “Meezus nyeets a dryenk with captain.” Then he grabbed both Sarah’s and Emmy’s wrists and fell forward onto Emmy.

  In the screaming, angry struggle that ensued, Sarah wrested herself away. Without a pause, she quickly picked up the flagon he had dropped and struck him with it squarely across his right temple with such force that the bottle broke into several pieces.

  He collapsed to the side of Emmy and did not get back up.

  Stunned, Emmy pushed herself up and looked at Varienko. Had Sarah killed him?

  When Varienko groaned a half-minute later, she sighed in relief, then recovered her wits.

  She and Sarah dragged Varienko out to the deck, bolted their door, pulled out the pepperbox, and held each other closely all night, listening to the commotion outside an hour later as the crew discovered their inebriated, bloodied, and snow-covered captain on the deck.

  The next morning, the first mate ferried them across the harbor and deposited them with their belongings onto the wharf. He did not make eye contact with either of them during the entire passage and left them without a word.

  Emmy did not register a complaint, fearing retribution. The Pietrevos, with its cargo loaded hastily by a crew on double time, was gone by the evening’s tide.

  Emmy learned quickly that the only lodging available was at a small tavern-inn, the Red Pelican, on the west wall of the fort. She had sent word to the fort’s commander to query assistance but was told that he and most of his staff were south in Victoria participating in an official reception for Douglas, the territorial governor.

  Undeterred, she presented herself to Captain Simon Whitefall, the acting commander, who received her after making her wait for a full day.

  Entering his sparse office, she noted that unlike the other soldiers she saw in the fort, he wore neither jacket nor wig. He hadn’t bothered to shave for a few days she saw, and, sitting across the table from him, thought she smelled alcohol on his breath. A faded print of Queen Victoria’s image was pinned to the wall behind him. She handed him the letter she had received from the Fort’s commander, Colonel Pardeen, and repeated the questions she had conveyed upon her arrival at the fort.

  “Well, I’m very sorry to disappoint you Madame,” Whitefall said, as he inspected the letter.

  “In answer to your first question...no, no captives, adult or children have been reported in the past month.”

  Whitefall showing no sympathy at Emmy’s disappointment, continued. “In response to your second que
stion...yes, we know about the Tsimshian Potlatch scheduled up the Skeena River beginning in a few weeks...Kisee Amawaal, the tyee up there, is a well-known neutral, an enterprising fellow, who conducts such events...and this Potlatch is reported to be a significant given that it is a celebration for his son’s marriage to a Bella Bella. Might actually reduce tensions a bit in the area for awhile,” he smiled wearily.

  “And yes, it is likely there will be many slaves bought and sold up there.”

  Seeing Emmy’s interest increase with this response, Whitefall went on. “In response to what you haven’t asked yet…the answer is a resounding no...we don’t send troops to accompany citizens, especially those that are not subjects of her majesty, into the wilds on ‘recovery expeditions,’ as you referred to it.”

  Undeterred, Emmy leaned forward, “Captain, I can compensate the crown quite well for its efforts and expense.”

  Whitefall handed his commanding officer’s letter back to Emmy.

  “Madame, I am so sorry you were misguided by my commanding officer’s ambiguous response to your recent query. Unfortunately, he is not here now... detained with all of the senior officers in Esquimalt.”

  He smiled to himself at some secret.

  “Confidential business I cannot discuss, I’m afraid. I have only one company to keep the peace up here, in any case.”

  Emmy persisted, trying another tack. “Captain, I have been told that the Northerners likely will be trading slaves at this potlatch.”

  The mention of the Northerners turned Whitefall, but he recovered, countering, “If the Northerners truly were to be sighted up here, of course it would be our obligation to make every effort to bring them to justice, Madame. But I do not have the authority to put my troops or the good people depending on this fort at risk based on rumors.”

  He stood, walked past her, and opened the door.

  “I’m sorry for your losses and the disappointment my response provokes, Madame. But that’s life, is it not? You can wait for Colonel Pardeen to return, if you like. But I doubt he will countermand this decision.”

  He smiled confidently, certain he had made his point. “Please make your passage way back home safely.”

  Emmy stood, embarrassed by his dismissal.

  She addressed Whitefall’s mention of “confidential matters.”

  “Captain, the rumors betray your government’s intentions to occupy San Juan Island, which is American territory. You may meet your match, knowing the resolve of your counterpart, Captain Pickett.”

  She looked at the image of Victoria on the wall.

  “That said, I say to you as I said to him, and with all due respect to you … and to your queen, I will find a way to get to the Tsimshian potlatch. With or without the military’s help. Thank you in advance for not interfering with what I intend to accomplish. It’s my son, not yours.”

  Emmy turned and departed, leaving the Brit captain with the same stunned expression she provoked from Pickett.

  Returning to the inn, she re-read Pickett’s letter of introduction to a potential guide, a native named MaNuita’sta. As hesitant as she was to invoke the help of an unknown aborigine, she gave the letter to the innkeeper to be forwarded.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  The Red Pelican was a simple establishment, with rudimentary accommodations on the landing above the dining area.

  The tavern filled with a rowdy lot by the early evening, and the noise from the customers usually continued well into the night. Emmy and Sarah took most of their meals in their tiny quarters, awaiting the return of the commander in the following week.

  Emmy had asked the innkeeper, Edward Edween, a mousy, nosey, but proper enough cockney Brit, to query locals for any news of Northerner raiding parties and captives.

  The next day she told Edween to spread the word that a reward would be given for good information leading to Jacob’s return. She also conveyed an interest in hiring able men should she need assistance to travel to the Tsimshian winter camp upriver.

  On the fourth evening, Edween notified Emmy he had heard some rumors that might be of interest. He suggested she speak directly with the source, a trapper named Rene Marté, who occasionally passed through the region and had come into town to meet the Pietrevos with some trading items.

  Initially encouraged, Emmy noticed that Edween seemed hesitant.

  “You have concerns, Mr. Edween?”

  The innkeeper nodded, “Yes, ma’am, I do. These are rough men, and there are stories that Marté hangs with all sorts. And doesn’t confine his trade to furs. No, ma’am. That’s all I know for sure, but I believe it.”

  He said that Marté had heard about Emmy’s quest and sent word that he would visit the Pelican that evening.

  Emmy and Sarah took dinner in the tavern main room that night and, as the pub filled with village locals—a filthy, surly lot—waited for the appearance of Marté.

  She noted that Sarah was fascinated with the characters and struck up a conversation with a black robe named Tomas DeSetre, S.J., who had just come from working with the Haida on the Queen Charlottes.

  The priest, a Frenchman from Nance with a soft voice and sad, weary eyes, spoke of the great skill and elegant craftsmanship of the Haida people and did not believe any of the aborigines with whom he had lived could ever be responsible for heinous crimes.

  “Still, they can be childlike and, as such, quite vengeful in perceived wrongs,” he noted.

  He gave Emmy and Sarah a blessing and told them he believed that God would watch over them, even in the most extreme of circumstances.

  “And may God and the Virgin keep you free from sin, especially near the moment of your death,” he said.

  Emmy was not pleased with this.

  “Father DeSetre, I don’t need blessings for which I haven’t asked.”

  Embarrassed, DeSetre apologized quietly and turned back to his meal.

  Sarah also introduced herself to a man at another table, a ragtag also dressed in a black robe, who introduced himself as Marano Levi, a converted Jew preaching for the Jesus he had found in his world travels.

  He told her he had lived in the region for three years and was convinced that the Haida were one of the lost tribes of Israel. He said he had found several passages in a well-worked Spanish Bible to recite as proof.

  He seemed simple and harmless enough to Emmy.

  She observed DeSetre watching Levi.

  She wondered if the disdain she saw on the Jesuit’s face was from frustration at the imitation he perceived, or pity for the man’s soul, given that, irrespective of his baptism, he was not Catholic and therefore was likely to spend a good portion of eternity in purgatory.

  Levi paid no attention to the priest and ate his small meal with the fervor of a starving man, picking and eating crumbs of bread from his beard. Then he departed immediately into the darkness of the cold night.

  She wondered where he slept.

  Marté, a small ferret of a man with pock-marked cheeks and a sharp nose that seemed fit for cutting, finally arrived, accompanied by a very tall, cachectic Negro cyclops who called himself Cull.

  Marté spoke quickly to Edween, watching the door and stairway during the conversation as if expecting an unpleasant interruption.

  Cull, however, immediately picked out Emmy and Sarah from the crowd and kept his one eye fixed on them from a perch he found by the serving bar.

  After the quick exchange, Marté made his way over to Emmy and Sarah and sat down without an introduction, his back to the wall, watching the door and stairway, swinging his gaze between each entry point and then back to them.

  He looked over both of them as if they were prizes.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Sensing a predator, Sarah moved closer to her mother as Marté spoke, yet she was fascinated at the same time with Cull, wondering how he had
lost his left eye.

  The large rubbery scars that ran across his left brow and into his cheek had to be related to the empty socket, she surmised. She wondered if the meanness on that deformed face had preceded the painful injury, and if so, whether the anguish she perceived in him could ever be relieved.

  She wondered if the man had sinned to deserve the injury.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Marté addressed Emmy with darting glances while looking at Sarah.

  “Madame is interested in a lost boy? Perhaps one that has been taken from her soon ago? She is interested in le eschange? So I am told by Edween over there.”

  Emmy flushed but did not respond. She leaned forward as he spoke.

  Sarah, losing interest in Cull, leaned forward also.

  By their attention, Marté immediately knew he had the advantage.

  “It is possible to help the bereaved mother. She will barter, should a possibility exist? Yes?”

  He quickly looked at the few wayfarers who still were in the tavern and then again at the door, then at Cull and back to Emmy.

  “And . . . where is the father?”

  He read their faces. Smiled again.

  “Condolences. I lost my family in the same way when I was small like this one,” he said, pointing with his chin at Sarah.

  Sarah reached for her mother’s hand on the table.

  Marté saw this and changed his expression, softening for a moment.

  “I see this is still very painful subject. You will need some time, yes?”

  Then he looked over Emmy and her daughter again and smiled, showing his canines as he did so.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Emmy wondered what he envisioned for them, and observing the way he looked them over, saw a smile that could not hide the anger in his eyes. She sensed something painful in this little man’s past, some horrible unknown thing that made him perceive himself as a victim, rationalize taking perverted pleasures at the expense of others. An opportunistic predator.