A Dark and Promised Land

by Nathaniel Poole

  “You are baptized? You are Christian?” Rose asks, surprised. Isqe-sis nods.

  “How…”

  “There is camp of the Black Robes.” Isqe-sis waves her arm southward. “Port Nelson. My father had the water magic for me. In the name of Jesus they save my spirit.”

  Black Robes, Rose thinks. She must mean Jesuits. So she’s a Papist.

  “Are many of you are Christian?”

  “Not so many. Most Home Guard, yes, rest Cree, no.”

  “Home Guard, what is that?”

  Isqe-sis frowns. “We are poor people, needing White man’s trade.” She spits in the direction of the axe handle. “Live York Fort. Not now, not since White sickness come.”

  “White sickness? What is that?”

  Isqe-sis looks away. “Sickness come from Whites. Fever, then death. Sometimes sores on face, hands. Sometimes not. But always fever and death. This why we no longer live at York Fort.”

  Sitting in the slender vessel and clutching the gunwale, Rose is ill at ease. The boat is several feet long and constructed of woven bark. One man in the bow and another in the stern propel it with short, carved paddles. Her father sits in front and behind her, the big Highlander, Declan Cormack, looking thoughtful as he watches the Indians at their work. Behind him, the Company officer sits in the stern, scowling whenever Rose turns and looks at him.

  She feels the movement of the sea through the slight material of the craft and it seems as if they are perched on a feather. They glide up one wave and slide down another in a gentle, regular rhythm. She watches the man in the bow, the pumping of his thin, muscular arms. Red ochre covers the faces of these men, their heads shaved except for a single topknot wrapped in hide.

  Each stroke of the paddle is short and sharp; stroke following stroke. No words, no rest, no complaint, and Rose is reminded of an oxen tied to a mill wheel, doomed to forever circle the same spot.

  She thinks of the distance between her and her old life back in Stromness, in the Orkney Islands. Their house in Stromness was small and cold, with a solitary hearth inadequate for the job. Built of stone with dark, walnut doors and wainscotting and tiny windows painted closed to fend away the unhealthy night air.

  Rooms were usually closed tight to conserve heat in main living areas, and her father’s library (her favourite room) grew innumerable moulds. Many dismal afternoons had been spent engrossed in distant worlds, while against the window an ancient and gnarly crabapple tree tapped when the wind blew from the sea, scattering hard knobs across the courtyard in the autumn. The damp, musty smell of books had whispered freedom to her.

  At first Rose had found the written world to be preferable to the lived, in part due to the regime that her father imposed on the household, their lives neatly bookended by fears of God and personal anarchy. Simple foods and unpretentious clothing has been her lot, although they could afford far more.

  But as womanhood arrived and with it a sense of her own desire and will, she learned to explore ideas with others. The relationships people wove amongst themselves lit a candle in her imagination, and in a city like Stromness, with a busy port and entire populations passing from somewhere to another where, it was possible to explore the meaning of many an intriguing concept with any number of strangers.

  It was not excitement that she sought, but the young adult’s earnest need to decipher the paradox of what the world presented with a sly wink on one hand, while condemning it with the other. To her, moving anonymously through the city was like rolling over a large stone to uncover the secret, mysterious world inside an ant’s nest.

  Like one of her fictional heroines, she wrapped herself in stranger’s clothes and went down to the taverns along the waterfront and met life head-on. Power especially interested her — the various forms it took, the disguises it embraced. She saw it manifest as physical strength and as a dour uniform, as money and a flashing blade. What really surprised her was how often it rested in a look and a powdered décolletage.

  When not fascinated by the struggles of man against man, she often wandered the labyrinths of love. In her stuffy tomes, the poets and philosophers waxed at length on the meaning of that ineffable beast, and she refuted them both. The first was too wild-eyed earnest while the latter too removed from anything that pumped hot blood. As Leeuwenhoek glared down his glass and trumpeted on the unseen nature of things, she felt his ilk no closer to expounding on love’s mystery than the contents of a chamber pot.

  Sometimes these back-room truancies were hard and brutal, at other times they recalled the delicacy of a chrysalis.

  Things could become complicated. One time a Mr. Wells, post captain in the British Navy, was one with whom she had explored the more esoteric and violent forms of passion. He was short and fat, with bright, hard eyes and a face almost as scarlet as the Royal marines that guarded his quarterdeck. Upon receiving his admiralty packet commanding him to India, he informed Rose that he desired her company on the long voyage. Wells had not reached his station by deferring to another’s will, and her careful, coquettish demurrals moved him not a whit. He would not be put off by a mere girl, and once word reached her ear that he had commanded she be brought to his ship, in irons if need be, she refused to leave her home.

  Although a studious woman, Rose was no church-mouse and this sudden reluctance to go for air or visit her friends raised Lachlan’s concerns; he noticed an unhealthy pallor and soon called for a bleeding, a process she loathed as much as being trapped in their home.

  But of course, Wells was not aware of who Rose really was or where she lived, and the sailors and press gangs searched high and low for her to no effect. At last, in a great rage, he was forced to sea without his love’s interest to warm his bed. Rose felt relieved to see his sails on the horizon, and thought it a miracle that the city was not bombarded as a token of his thwarted passion.

  After the danger of Wells, Rose kept much closer to home. But the unrelieved routine of their life quickly grated on her spirit and the old ache, once masked by curiosity and excitement, soon returned. Her father’s concern remained high; her complexion did not improve and neither did her mood. She was short with the servants and himself, and a veritable parade of physicians marched through their home poking and prodding her, asking veiled questions regarding her woman’s functions.

  Rather than seek an explanation within her own soul, she blamed her ennui on the ritual of walking her father to the school each morning and the afternoon tea with her friends. There was the constant turning away of the boorish suitors that every mother in Stromness seemed to send to her door; the banality of the middle class was hers and she would not, could not take to it. It was not long before she found herself once again in unfamiliar alleys and hallways.

  Not all of her quests were lascivious in nature. Far from it. She had quickly learned that the bodily passions, while interesting in their own right, left little in their wake besides messy hair and possessive lovers. She was driven by something deeper, more innate. Curious and insatiable was how she described herself when musing on her odd and dangerous behaviour with her friends (some of whom thought her much like a goddess); life was short and living was truly made for the young, and best to just get on with it.

  The young man from Ronaldsay was the not her first aboard, but almost certainly the last. It was an impulse fired as much by risk as any real interest on her part; her father had been nearby and that was a true novelty for her as he knew nothing at all of her trysts. She rarely gave her companions much thought; they simply amused her. At best, her feelings went so far as a benign complacency, the way one might offer a stray dog an uncertain pat on the head.

  But though her need had not been sated in Stromness, she at least enjoyed the luxury of her unhappiness. Though occasionally placing herself in various compromising positions, she had always enjoyed the luxury of sneaking home for a bath in the small hours (and if by unhappy chance the servants encountered her in the hall or stairwell, they discreetly looked through her in a m
anner she found quite unnerving, as if she had become a ghost). Father and daughter had been toppled from a comfortable station in Orkney to break bread with the wild and the savage awaiting in Rupert’s Land, and she did not much like it: hers was a sensitive heart, one that should not have to endure such trials.

  After several hours of following the coast, the Indian in the bow pulls up his paddle and shouts, “Wapusk, wapusk!” They crane to look; there is something in the water, swimming parallel with them. A wedge-shaped head leaves a trailing wake.

  The Indians veer closer, Rose spotting a large, pale body, indistinct beneath the blue of the water. A black nose and small, dark eyes.

  “’Tis an Arctic bear,” Lachlan says in awe.

  The Indian in the bow nods. “Wapusk.” He brings out his trade musket or fuke and directs them alongside the swimming animal. They see the great paws swinging as it dog-paddles; it turns towards them, but the Indians veer away, maintaining a careful distance.

  “Sometime they jump at you,” the Indian says. “And then …” he makes a slashing gesture across his throat.

  They follow alongside for several minutes with Rose leaning over the gunwale, admiring the animal. The bear turns to them again, and the Indian in the bow raises his fuke again; a sharp report and water fountains beside the bear’s head. The animal thrashes about, throwing blood and spray. A pall of gun smoke drifts over the canoe.

  They paddle up to the bear, and the Indian pulls out a knife as long as his forearm from under his jacket. His grinning teeth white in his scarlet face, he leans over the gunwale and saws at the quivering white neck while the water blossoms red.

  The sudden violence shocks Rose. She turns toward her father. Lachlan offers her a damp handkerchief.

  “You have blood on your cheek,” he says. The Indians tie the floating carcass to the canoe and return to their former course.

  After a couple of hours of a rhythm under which it is difficult for the passengers to keep awake, they pass a long, flat point and the Europeans are surprised to find themselves in the mouth of a large river. As they nose into the current, they see that countless scores of waterfowl inhabit these marshes: the air is shrill with the whistling of duck wings, and massive flocks of geese rise at their approach and settle in the scrub behind them. Small shorebirds wheel and circle along the shore like a moving shadow.

  The bank deepens until they come upon a peeled-log wharf and a long gangway on piles leading from the high shore; the upper edge of a palisade and a tall flagstaff is just visible. The Indians turn toward shore, their keel sliding into the muddy bank.

  Rose steps out of the canoe and into the cold, peaty water of the river. She sinks into the mud, feeling it squelch beneath her hide-wrapped feet. Her ankles protest the cramped seating and once on firm shore she bends down and rubs them. Her leather leggings are dark with the river.

  Above them, a gull sails on the breeze, dipping and rising, but making no headway. The Highlander hurtles a rock and the gull drifts away, disappearing toward the distant, opposing bank.

  Their Indians pull the bear to shore. They squat in the mud beside it, the animal’s yellow-white hide now fouled by the slime of the riverbank. They mutter something in their tongue, as if praying; one of them brings out tobacco and offers it to the animal.

  “What is this?” Rose asks, pointing.

  The officer from the frigate barely glances at the Indians. He is tall and thin, with sparse red hair and a large nose covered with spidery veins. He stands with his hands thrust in his pockets, eyeing the distant palisade with a gloomy look. When he speaks, his Adam’s apple seems to struggle for release.

  “It is some manner of heathen ritual,” he says. “When a Savage kills an animal, he must ask it for forgiveness, or some such rot. Pay them no mind.”

  “I assume we are at York Fort, Mr. …?” Lachlan trails off.

  “Turr. Yes, it is York Fort, and the factor shall be in a hellfire rage at the manner of our arrival. We must get on.”

  They leave the Indians to their prayers and begin the ascent up the bank. After so many hours cramped aboard the canoe, it proves hard going for all of them but the Highlander, who scrabbles up like a rat on a mooring line. He reaches the top long before the rest and peers down at them with a grin.

  “I think there be three lasses following hard on me, nae one lass and two men.”

  “I say!” Turr replies as he scrambles over the bank, his face red. “You affront me undeservedly, sir. This is a wretched climb.”

  “Nae affront intended, Mr. Turr.”

  They follow the path from the gangway to the gates of the fort. After so many weeks at sea, the exercise is hard going for Rose and she breathes heavily, covering her mouth with her hand. They pass a pair of ancient and rusting field pieces overlooking the river. Turr pats one as he passes.

  “These would have been fired in honor of our arrival if fate had been kinder to us,” he says with a sigh.

  A line of clouds, heavy with the threat of rain, hurry from the west as they approach the fort. They quicken their steps. Heaps of garbage are scattered about the stockade and a skinned ox carcass has been dumped just outside the fort gate. Felled by some strange disease, not even the Home Guard has touched it. The smell of carrion and smoke fills the air. A pair of ravens flap away croaking as they approach.

  Several tipis squat outside the palisade. Rose points them out to Turr. “The Home Guard,” he says with hardly a glance.

  “I have heard the term before. What does it mean?”

  “It refers to a blackguardly band of thieves and miscreants who, when not thieving, murdering one another or lost in drink, provide the fort with meat, especially in the hungry winter months. I say, it is beginning to rain. We must hurry.”

  A high stockade of sharpened spruce sunk into the boggy ground surrounds the fort. The main building — known colloquially as “the octagon” — can only be entered through an archway that faces the main gate of the stockade. They approach on a path of rough boards, a bridge over the soft muskeg. A torpid stream runs beneath them, and bugs glide on its slow surface, their long legs dimpling the water. In some places the boards sink into the peat and brown water gurgles up around their feet. As they near the gate, an emaciated cur bolts at them. Turr gives it a resounding kick and it turns away with a yelp.

  The Company coat of arms has been painted on the archway of the octagon: Pro Pelle Cutem. Lachlan frowns. “‘Skin for skin.’ Is it not the words of Satan himself, questioning our Lord? ‘Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath, will he give for his life.’”

  “I doubt that is the correct interpretation. You are very well acquainted with the Bible, sir. A chaplain, perhaps?”

  “No more than all good Christians should be, Mr. Turr.”

  They follow Turr inside and Rose and Lachlan are surprised that “The Grand Central Station of the North” is such a shoddy affair: frost has shattered much the stone and brick foundation and the siding is falling off. The archway is warped and twisted, and many of the timbers are cracked. The smell of sewage and rotten garbage is thick inside the walls.

  “Like a bit of old Glasgow,” the Highlander says, beaming and clapping his hands to his breast. The sound of an organ carries through a wall.

  “They will all be in church, I’ll wager,” Turr says.

  Lachlan looks at him with surprise. “You mean it is Sunday?”

  “So it would seem. Well, no point in disturbing them. We can find ourselves something to eat. I doubt I have eaten in days.”

  They find a long, dark mess, with many tables, a stone hearth, and a massive, black iron stove. Turr lights an oil lamp with a coal from the hearth. He disappears for a few minutes and returns with a cut of fresh moose meat wrapped in a cloth. After banking the fire, he rolls pieces of the meat in flour and fries it in a black skillet.

  After they have eaten, they lean back in their chairs, listening to the foraging of mice in the ceiling, and feeling more satisfied than they
have in a long time. The Highlander leaves them on a quest for drink.

  “We best inform someone about those poor folk back on the beach,” Lachlan says.

  “It can wait,” Turr replies. “This is the first I have felt at peace for many days and I intend to enjoy it a little longer. There is time and plenty to send a boat for the others.” He settles deeper into his chair and closes his eyes.

  Lachlan is about to reply when the cook hurries into the mess and stops, staring at them in amazement.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Turr mutters to himself.

  Chapter Four

  “Damn it, Mr. Turr, this is the worst possible news; it is quite beyond the pale.”

  “Indeed, Governor.”

  Robert Semple gets up and begins pacing in his cramped quarters. “There is nothing remaining of the Intrepid?”

  “There was aught left but jetsam scattered on the beach. And many dead.”

  “Cigar?”

  “Why, yes, sir. My word, where did you come by them?”

  “I brought a box with me, in my personal baggage. Contraband or not, a gentleman must have a smoke with his port, and none of your damned trade twist.” Both of them know that because of the ever-present danger of fire, smoking in quarters is absolutely forbidden in the fort.

  Taking a deep drag of the cigar, Turr looks around. The room has barely enough space for a bed, a washstand, and a desk overflowing with Company Papers and correspondence. Daylight is visible through cracks in the siding where the chinking had fallen away. A black stovepipe passing through the room from below provides the only source of heat in fifty-below weather. He thinks it an exceedingly mean apartment for a man of the stature of a governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s territories in North America, even in the savage wilds of Rupert’s Land.

  “How many dead?”

  “I would expect about half, including most of the crew, oddly enough. I tried to save as many as possible, but in those terrible circumstances there was only so much I could do.”