A Dark and Promised Land

by Nathaniel Poole

  “A fine solution, no doubt, Mr. Lynch, but one cannot hang every rebel in the west. Did not the English attempt as much in the American colonies? For myself, I have not seen a a rope cure any ill, much less one so sticky as this. A corpse may be satisfying but what a martyr carries in his heart is rarely dispensed with so easily.”

  You are a shit, Lynch, Alexander thinks, clearing his throat and spitting into the river. And a fucking pompous bore, in the bargain. If that scrub Selkirk had made his intentions plain and not sent that lunatic Miles Macdonell as his thug, things need not have taken this deadly turn.

  All the Half-breeds desire is to live their lives as did their fathers, trapping, growing a few crops, running the buffalo. Sing and dance and fuck and drink and fight. A wonderful, free life all in all, and one much to be envied. All they ask is to be let alone. They have peace with the Indians and the Nor’westers, living at the Forks as they have for generations. One would think the land great enough for all, but Selkirk and his miserable band of trespassers mean to toss the Half-breeds from their lands and trample them underfoot, like weeds. As if the disease and liquor the king’s traders have brought with them aren’t enough, now there is undeclared war on the peoples of the land. But this time they have misjudged, by God; this time they do not know the anger they have roused, the heat that burns in the hearts of all who live and journey between the Athabasca and Fort William.

  These interloper colonists, these Orkneymen and women, these Scots, have been tempted to disaster like a wolf to a poisoned carcass. Oh, my poor darling Rose, what misfortunes await you at Red River?

  “And what about these people, Mr. Lynch?” he cries, the alcohol beginning to take him. “They have been carted halfway across the earth, carried into a strange and lonely country, only to be burned out and perhaps abandoned, perhaps shipped back. It is criminal, I say.”

  “So you go on,” replies the factor in offended tones. “But I have never seen a Half-breed that did not love a fight and quarrel, and it is beyond the pale to suggest that the Company, the lawful and only possessor of these lands, should negotiate for that which is already its right and has so been for more than a century. Does the landlord negotiate with the thief that breaks in and steals his silver? A knock on the head is what they deserve, by God.”

  Choking back his anger, Alexander stands up, tapping his dudheen out on his boot. A sudden flash of sparks falls to the ground. He hears the rustle of branches and freezes.

  “Mr. McClure …” Turr begins.

  “Hush,” he says. Crouching, he slinks into the darkness. A sudden scuffle and crackle of twigs.

  “Hold, damn you. Hold I say! God damn your eyes!” Rose has bitten his arm, hard. A blow and a cry.

  “Devil take it! What is afoot?” Turr shouts.

  “Bring a light! I have caught a footpad.”

  Lynch hurries off and returns with a torch and several men.

  “Miss Cromarty!” Turr says, aghast.

  “Rose!” Alexander drops her onto the stone. Her eyes glare up at him. He looks down at her, confused, his head spinning. Dark blood runs down his arm. “Why come you there?”

  Rose scurries to her feet, and shoots a piercing glance at them before running into the darkness.

  Later that night he hears the sound of moccasins on deep moss, and the flap of his tent is lifted.

  “I did not think you would ever come again.”

  “I told you earlier of my intent,” says Rose.

  “Indeed, but constancy has not been your strongest suit this little while.”

  “My father is dead, Alexander.”

  “I know this …”

  “And yet you question why my mind has been elsewhere?”

  “Pray lower your voice or you will be found out. Or is that your wish?”

  “My wish? I will tell you what I wish, Alexander. I wish we had never left my country. I wish that my father would yet be alive. I wish that we could turn around this very moment and leave this accursed land. I wish that that monstrous Savage had never laid upon my father with his wicked shank. But all wishing is in vain, is it not? It seems all my wishing is to end in bitterness.”

  “I cannot help but note my absence from your list of impossible wishes.” She does not respond. “Answer me!”

  “I have not heard a question.”

  “Why have you neglected me for so many weeks and days? Why are you so cold?”

  “I do not know what you are talking about.”

  But she did know. Her anger at the Indian who killed her father had wrapped itself around her heart, squeezing the warmth from it. All that she had seen since arriving at the Bay told her that the wild people of the land were hardly better than animals — worse, in that animals do not turn upon those of their own kind, do not kill those with whom they mate. Only the lowliest, most basest of creatures, like spiders and the mantis did so.

  She has come to hate everything about the country, the land the air, the water, the people. By simple association, her feelings for Alexander had drained away with her father’s blood, along the fuller of the Savage’s knife. She may have loved him once upon a time, but believes she cannot do so any more than she can love the land itself. As far as she can tell, they are one of a kind.

  “So now you are reduced to a lie. Has it really come to this?” Alexander says.

  “Pray, do not speak to me of lies! What I have overheard this evening confirms my worst fears. Why did you never speak to me of this?”

  “I did not know. You must believe this; events have moved faster than the brigade and what was once a suspicion has been shown to be fact. You cannot hold me accountable for Selkirk’s mischief.”

  “You all seem in league against my people. But it ends now. I will reveal what I know to the party. Choices must be made.”

  “Just so, and I imagine the heroic Declan has a cruel part to play in these choices?”

  “Now it is you who must lower their voice. Declan has nothing to say in this.”

  “Perhaps not, but he will answer yet, by God!”

  She places a hand on Alexander’s arm, willing it to be warm. “This has little to do with Declan; pray do not lash out at an innocent as succour for our own foolishness. You and I are of different kind, Alexander, we serve a different purpose in life.”

  “You crossed an ocean to meet with this land. How can you say I am out of reach?”

  “The gap between us is greater than any sea, my love, and it has only lengthened with time and circumstance. We knew it must be so from the beginning, else we would not have been so circumspect.”

  “My love, my love, what noise you make, like the nattering of an owl.”

  “I must go.”

  “I love you; do not leave.”

  “I have already gone, as you well know. Good night, Alexander.”

  It is very late — near dawn, or at least whatever dawn can pierce the heavy sky. Alexander helps himself to a keg of trade liquor and disdaining the comfort of a closed door, borrows an unwatched canoe and pushes himself into the water.

  He is carried back downriver a fair distance until caught in an eddy, where he is drawn to the bank, swirls against a boulder, and then swings out into the stream where he again is turned and drifts back toward shore. Around and around he swings, in a slowly looping ellipse. Lying in the bottom of the canoe, he is mindful of the fragile material between himself and the icy river, and can feel the cold of the water seep through the robe. He stares at the unseen sky, taking frequent gulps from his keg. Soon large flakes of snow begin to fall, and he can feel their cold wet bite against his upturned face.

  If anyone were to pass by, an Indian on a hunt perhaps, they would think they have spotted a bier floating a corpse over the grey water. But despite the hours he spends pondering, he is no nearer to a decision, and the liquor does little to calm the torment of his heart.

  Since that night in his tent so long ago, she had not returned to him, nor did he expect her; the thought of her wa
rming the Highlander’s bed compelled him to damn them both, although this fire left behind the ashes of a loneliness of the like he had never known before. It was if the two that he loved beyond all others had climbed into a boat and pushed off, abandoning him to the little island where they had all three lived together for a long while.

  He would lie awake at night listening for footsteps that never approached. Often he would get up and pace about the camp, shooting suspicious glances at the place where he suspected she slept with Declan. He paced to and fro, reminding himself of the woman who had feasted on human flesh and was doomed to stalk the nights in the Home Guard’s camp.

  It is true that he hungers for a sweet flesh. He was utterly inexperienced before Rose, and, having feasted upon her, cannot not imagine sustaining himself without her. He thinks he will surely go mad. He returns to Jack River House later in the morning, slipping and stumbling on the skiff of wet snow frosting the stone shore.

  Turr approaches him with a frown. “What the devil is wrong with you, eh?” he says, grabbing him by the arm.

  “It is nothing.”

  “Nothing? I dare say it is something. See here, sir, you are like a man possessed, provoking the factor like that.”

  “Piss off!”

  “Upon my word, I never!” Alexander reaches for his knife and the thin man scurries away.

  Seeing this, Declan walks over. “There seems to be a great palsy upon you, my friend. What is it? What evil has taken you?”

  Alexander laughs at this, a high, shrill laugh. “A palsy is it? Indeed, I suppose it is, one of love and friendship and cruelty and shit, all baked in the foulest pudding. Such are my dinners of late, and my blood is poor and black on account of it.”

  “I am concerned to hear of it,” Declan replies, surprised.

  “But enough of me, how is the arm, old friend?”

  “It troubles me naught.”

  “Good, good, I am glad to hear of it. We must then challenge your shooting skills.”

  Declan’s brow furrows and he drags a hand across his beard. “If you think it best. What have you in mind?”

  “A target, a challenging target — I have it!” He picks up a small, round piece of driftwood lying on the rocks. “I shall stand against a tree and you shall, you shall shoot the piece from atop my head.”

  By now several people have heard Alexander’s raised voice, and many faces turn toward them.

  “What is this? You mock me, my friend,” says Declan in a wounded tone.

  “I do not. Raise your weapon.”

  Rose hurries up. “Please, Alexander, do not do this,” she says in a quiet voice, placing her hand on his arm. “The people …”

  “Unhand me, woman, and stand aside.” He backs against a spruce, unsuccessfully attempting to balance the wood on his head.

  “There, I am ready. I beg you to shoot.”

  Declan does not move.

  “Are you deaf, my friend, or merely simple? I am ready, I tell you. Shoot! Damn your eyes, why do you look at me thus? All of you, why do you stare?” he begins shouting. “Asses and fools. Staring like besotted sheep, ripe for the slaughter, still stupidly trusting in the shepherd. Bah, you waste my time.” He points a shaking finger at Declan. “I shall cut you a willow bow and arrow and with that, that you shall practise your marksmanship.” He turns to walk away, and strikes his head on a low branch, collapsing to the ground.

  The booming of a great horned owl drifts from the spruce behind Jack River House as Alexander slips out of the cabin. He throws his pack over his shoulder and straightens his octopus bag, reassured by its weight. Checking the prime of his Baker carbine by pipe glow, he heads toward the river, the snow glowing pale in the dark and crunching beneath his moccasins. A dark-stained bandage wraps his head, and his uncovered pate is chilled by the caress of a frosty early dawn.

  Reaching the shoreline, he follows the sound of water lapping on birchbark, and soon comes upon a canoe waiting under a bluff of naked cottonwoods. He grunts at the dark form of a man seated in the stern, throwing his gear behind the empty place in the bow. He pushes the canoe from shore, icy water flowing into his moccasins. Heaving himself aboard, he grabs a paddle. There is a swirl in the dark, and the canoe turns into the current.

  Smoke drifts from the post, tugging at him, but he turns his back on the past, and, digging the blade into the water, moves himself into the broad face of the river. In a few moments, he disappears into the gloaming, leaving behind the sound of cold water lapping against grey stone.

  Book Two

  Chapter Thirteen

  After so many countless days following the confining river, Missinipi appears like a vast ocean to the colonists. Wind carries without abatement along its choppy surface, often threatening to swamp the low boats. Their sailing rigs are primitive and can only be hoisted when the wind is aft; a head wind means beating into the waves by rowing, drastically slowing their progress and soaking the passengers. They travel south, close to the eastern shore, but outside of musket range, following the distant grey buzz of naked cottonwoods.

  When Rose first saw the lake, she thought for a moment that they had somehow become turned around and had arrived back at Hudson’s Bay. She could not imagine a body of water so vast that was not an ocean. Only after tasting it did she believe it was, after all, a lake. As the days passed and still the lake carried on, she dipped her finger again and again to reassure a doubting mind the absence of salt.

  But aside from the welcome novelty of a grand vista to accompany the ongoing dirge of sweeps and heavy breathing, of stand-sit-row, stand-sit-row, life continues on as much as it had. The decline of the days quickens as they pursue the sun in its daily retreat southward. Lack of surrounding forest means the wind blows freely over them, bringing with it the smell of ice. They unpack extra blankets, and all those not rowing pass the days swaddled against the cold breath of the lake.

  After the affair with Ikmukdeza, their loads are much lighter now, although their pace is hardly improved. The York boat was designed for tons of gear, not speed, but a greater effect is the spirit of the group; they had seen what became of their Orkney precursors. Long had they abandoned their hope for a new and bright beginning, but now even survival seemed in doubt. Lost in a land vaster than any comprehension, they could only move forward, but all dreaded their destination.

  They pull the boats ashore as they have every night, but the sense of exposure is unsettling to all. In the forest, what was unseen had caused anxiety, now their own visibility creates unease among them. Like most comfortable people, Rose had never fully appreciated the role of a wall in the human sense of well-being, but now is convinced that humanity cannot survive without it. Without shelter, man must surely perish, through fear if not exposure. They keep their fire small and assign a formal watch, with armed men assigned responsibility for their collective safety.

  If the news of the rout at Fort Douglas was received with an apparent stoicism by the colonists, the Bay men see themselves as employees of the Company and warring is not why they hired on. Their protests were loud, and a few insisted they return to the Bay — a demand wholeheartedly supported by the colonists — but Turr had forestalled them, telling them that any man who returned now would be thrown out of the Company, and the Orkney folk could swim back to Scotland.

  During the long, cold days when all she could do was sit and think while the oarsmen laboured, Rose raised her father from the dead, imagining him beside her on the thwart, and not Declan’s great bulk. As the boats descended the addled water of the lake, she recalled her old life in Orkney with an additional sense of loss and loneliness. Almost as much as her father, she missed the women with whom she had once read, painted, and discussed her deepest dreams and fears. Over the passing years, this cohort had diminished, as one by one they married and disappeared over the Atlantic or into their husband’s houses. At society functions, she would sometimes catch up with them, but the marital bed had changed them for the worst in her o
pinion, their discussions now limited to the failings of servants and the paucity of adequate wet nurses. They had turned into feminine proxies for Lachlan as they chided her lack of husband, making her feel like a cabbage that had been left too long in the garden and was beginning to rot on the stem.

  There was no role for her other than someone’s companion and bedmate. Painting watercolours, reading (within reason), entertaining, philosophical discussion, and perhaps a little writing was all that was permitted of a highbred woman. Little of it she found appealing, and had spent much of her time alone, riding her quiet mare through the green meads and rocky valleys of Orkney or reading in her father’s library. This constraint also motivated her secret forays. But she now saw this as a lack of wisdom and adaptability, and ultimately responsible for the fact that she was now alone.

  The end of the Great Lake appears as a wide fen of stunted willows and extensive tracks of cattails where the mouths of the Red River flow into the lake. As the brigade noses into one of those mouths, they are cut off from the surrounded landscape by tall rushes as thoroughly as in the deepest northern forest. They cannot see more than a few dozen yards ahead in the meandering channel. After the expansive vistas of the lake, the way feels claustrophobic, and their tension rises as several Baymen check the prime of their guns.

  Rose sits on her familiar thwart, Mary Isbister’s arm over her shoulders. After the loss of her father’s protection, the women in the brigade had surrounded Rose like defensive wagons, but rape had remained a constant threat. She looks up at the hissing and rattling cattails on their tall stems, their brown knobs waving in a breeze that cannot be felt down on the water. A redwinged blackbird perches on one, staring down at her and swaying to and fro on its narrow stalk. The rest of its kin have long ago departed for the Gulf of Mexico, but, like Rose, it is in the wrong place at the wrong time. It burbles forth a lovely descending melody as if welcoming Rose to her new land. The sweep’s creak and the men’s raspy breathing suddenly becomes loud in the narrowing channel, and the dark bird lets go of its perch and swoops over them with flashing red epaulets, vanishing into the rushes. Rose wishes it well over the deadly winter to come.