A Dark and Promised Land

by Nathaniel Poole

  A rider gallops ahead to let the camp know the hunt is finished; the long and arduous job of preserving the tons of meat — the skinning, butchering and cutting into strips for drying and eventual grinding into pemmican — now passes to the women and children and elderly.

  The wounded also need tending. Jacque walks into camp with Alexander clinging, barely conscious, in front him. He stops in front of a tent, and Alexander slides off the horse and falls into the mud where he lies unmoving. Overhead, the clouds break apart and rays of welcome sunshine light the camp. Thunder mutters in the distance, answered by the warble of a meadowlark. Jacque turns his face toward the sun, closing his eyes for a moment. He takes a deep breath.

  A woman emerges from the tent. “Take care of this son of a bitch, will you Isidore?” Jacque asks. “It would be a poor thing if he was to die today.”

  At the sound of drumming, the old carpenter drops his adze and stands up. He places his hands on the small of his back, and stretches, the vertebrae popping and snapping like a squirrel breaking nuts. Taking his pipe out of his mouth, he spits, brown saliva running down his beard. He wears no shirt in the scorching heat and, scratching his belly, he walks languidly over to the gates.

  HBC fort Brandon House is almost empty in late spring, the courtyard silent but for the soft bark of the carpenter’s adze squaring timbers. Looking across the Assiniboine River to the hated Nor’wester post, the carpenter can see that all there is quiet. The drumming is coming from an unseen source to the left.

  “Cor, what the bleeding ’ell is that?” asks the butcher, walking up and wiping his hands on a bloody apron. He had been carving buffalo meat all morning, and his hands are covered in blood.

  The carpenter does not reply, just takes his pipe from his mouth and points with the stem as a contingent of fifty or more Métis, Indians, and Nor’westers ride into view. They are on horseback and ride in formation, a drummer in their midst pounding a beat to a song that carries across the plain. A strange red-and-black flag snaps from a standard carried at their head.

  They follow along the shore of the river, the two men watching from the fort gates. When the formation reaches a point directly opposite, they suddenly turn their horses and pound their way towards them. The butcher flees, but the carpenter remains standing at the gate, his eyes widening as the contingent approaches. He removes his pipe and spits.

  At the last moment, he stands aside as the attackers pound into the fort, followed by a cloud of dust. Shots are fired into the air, and yells echo from the palisade. Men leap from their horses and charge the buildings. Doors are kicked in. Women shriek and pray as the few trader families in the fort scramble for the gates. In a few moments, all inside the fort at the time of the attack — HBC servant, fur trader, or their women and children — are running pell-mell across the prairie.

  Within an hour, Brandon House is sacked. Ammunition and trade supplies and a great quantity of liquor are looted; the victors start a fire and celebration in the courtyard. Those from the fort across the river join them; a fire is lit and they drink, sing and dance at this great victory of all the Freemen of the west against the hated usurper from England.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I have found one,” Declan says, lifting a rat-gnawed leather bridle from a heap of tack. “It is nae very good, but will do in a pinch. Much better than nothing.”

  Rose nods to her husband. She is competent on a horse, but with full saddle and tack only, and is unfamiliar with the Indian style of riding. At least the bridle will help keep the beast in check. The animal she is thinking of for their ride is the shaggy Indian pony standing beside her. The smell of fresh, March snow is in its nostrils, and it is restive and fiery, capering about and snorting clouds of breath over her shoulder.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asks Declan over the back of his own horse, a piebald mare he had bought from an intoxicated Half-breed for a small keg of diluted liquor. When Declan had informed Rose of his intent to hunt partridge the following day, she had surprised him by asking if she could attend.

  “It is beastly dull here,” she had told him. “Boredom and stupefying conversation all around. I must get away, if only for a day.”

  As they prepare to depart, the thought occurs to him. “Will I teach you to shoot?” he asks, his eyes crinkling as he checks the load in his fowling piece.

  “If you would do so,” Rose replies, “I would much appreciate the skill, but do not wish to be a bore. Only if it will give you pleasure.”

  “It is in the natural way of things that the student shall one day become the teacher,” he says, and they both become awkward at the reference to Alexander. His horse lifts her tail and drops a load of steaming clods.

  Rose wishes she could mount and ride off alone into the morning sun, but without stirrups and burdened by her long skirts, all she can do is grip the horse’s mane and stand waiting, her nose buried in its aromatic coat.

  Declan hesitates and then walks over, offering her his cupped hands. She steps into them and he heaves her onto the horse’s back. Without waiting, she pulls the reins across the animal’s neck, and they bolt from the stable, chickens scattering.

  “Ho!” Declan shouts, but she is gone.

  He catches up with her, waiting about a mile from the fort gates. Her face is frost-cold and red when she turns towards him, but lit by a broad smile.

  “It is delightful,” she says as he walks his horse alongside. “It is far brighter outside the fort, the air so clear and cold that sound carries many miles; listen, is that the river?” Indeed, the voice of the Assiniboine groaning under the weight of ice and new snow, carries like distant thunder.

  Declan nods. “I dinna like the manner of your leaving. What a fool I look to be chasing after my wife. You will please wait for me next time. However, yes, it is indeed peaceful and empty. Hardly a track to be seen.” He stares after the coal-black motes of crows as they lift from the naked branches of a distant cottonwood.

  Rose looks down at the furrowed snow by her horse’s hooves. “It seems a shame to disturb the peace with our hunt,” she says.

  He approaches her and pulling off his glove, awkwardly reaches out to caress her cheek. “Thou are in the bloom of health. So lovely you seem to me, and such a tender spirit to not wish to disturb newly fallen snow.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Rose replies, looking intently at Declan, her grey-blue eyes startling him, as they always did. He suppresses a shiver and audibly sighs.

  “Well, the hunt can wait if it must, but I would prefer to return with meat if I can. I promised Jack something for the pot.”

  “Thou art a true Nimrod, sir. Very well, show me your sport.”

  For sport it was. Declan had never before hunted the wily birds, and they proved elusive and flighty, made nervous by the previous night’s storm. All living things felt it, from Indian to coyote to colonist shivering under their blankets; the night’s wind had a voice that suppressed all warm-blooded speech, and all things had hunkered down as best they may, waiting for nothing but its passing.

  But as in all games of chance and skill, eventually chance prevails: Declan takes down a grouse in a puff of white feathers. They had ridden many miles along the shrouded valley of the Assiniboine, and, after collecting the bird, they unpack the lunch that Rose had prepared the night before.

  “It is only a bit of buffalo sausage and bread,” she says, almost apologetically.

  “It is enough,” Declan grunts. “Shall I make us a fire to warm ourselves?”

  “As you wish.”

  He wanders through the woods, breaking off branches, often releasing billows of snow that sigh down upon his head. When he returns with his bundle fairly covered in snow, Rose suppresses the laughter that spills from her lips.

  Declan glares at her. “Titter, titter, what is this? I am glad I so amuse you. Sure, there has been little enough mirth from you of late.”

  That clapped down her humour as if he had struck her. There ha
d been doubts about her and Alexander, suspicions without accusations, he refusing to bring the issue to a defining head that would force him into irrevocable action. So he spent many a dark hour wondering and musing, the heat within him building until it became a wall that separated them more effectively than many miles of empty prairie. He sought and found fault in her — her dress, her meals, her elevated manner of speech among the people: who was she to hold herself so high? He told her many times that it is not who you are, but what you do that matters in Rupert’s Land.

  As he struggles with the fire, his own speeches on competency return to goad him, and he feels a rising wrath toward his wife. He is certain she is watching him with cold, amused judgment, but no matter how he tries, he cannot get the flint to light the frosty tinder. Despite his belief to the contrary, fire is not his nature.

  “It is time to leave,” he finally says to her, taking control of the situation as best he may. He drags a cold hand down his frosted beard. “We have farther to go this day, and I would rather show my face at the fort empty-handed than with one shitty bird.”

  They wander up and down ridges, and in and out of snowy folds without sighting any other game. At times, the drifts are so deep it is as if the horses are swimming in clotted cream. The sun becomes haloed, as if ringed in tears, and is dimmed by the lateness of the day.

  “Do you not think we should return now, Declan?” Rose asks in a quiet voice.

  He looks up at the sky, frowning. “You are tired, I suppose? I knew I should have gone alone. Damn my eyes, I hoped for more than this. Still, we may come upon more on our way back. We will return through the valley, among the willows where there may be more game.”

  At that, they descend into the valley of the Assiniboine until arriving at the banks of the river itself. Turning left, they wander among the willows and cattails, Declan’s hand impatiently twitching around the gun in his hand.

  But the snow is even deeper here; the going difficult for Rose’s slight horse. At times, it reaches to the animal’s breast and it churns along in the bigger horses wake, breathing hard.

  “This is too much for the horse,” Rose says at last, feeling irritated that she has to be the one to state the obvious.

  Declan shoots an angry look at her. “I suppose you are right, my love.” He says at last. “We are still far from the fort. We must climb out of here … what is that?”

  They have come upon a trail, as the way suddenly becomes much easier. The snow is packed by hooves, many horses’ hooves that had passed sometime since the night. They move forward on the trail until they come to a place where the river ice has been chopped open; they walk up to let their grateful animals have a long drink.

  “Who made this trail?” Rose asks, looking around her.

  Declan shrugs. “Savages, most likely.”

  The sun has turned into a brilliant fireball watching them over the far bank of the river. The willow and birch surrounding them, grey in the full light of day, now glow scarlet, as if the woods are lit with fire. Long, blue shadows lean from every bole, undulating over the thick folds of snow.

  But an approaching cloud bank, unseen from the bottom of the valley, now swallows the sun, and grey shadows drop among them. From across the river, a fox yips twice and falls silent.

  “We must go,” Declan says and pulls his horse around. They climb quickly out to the open prairie where they can clearly see the massing clouds piling up behind them. Wind stirs their coats. Declan reserves his thought that it will be a near thing to arrive at the fort before the weather strikes; he does not at all like the notion of spending the night outside.

  At least the way is clear to them. The river valley is a trail they cannot miss. If they go too far they will arrive at the junction of the Red River, and have but to turn north a few miles to arrive at Fort Douglas. He feels grateful for this accident of geography, for he would not want to trust his skill as a woodsman to find their way home. Indeed, he has not even a compass with him, in his foolishness thinking of the many hunts in which he participated on his beloved Highlands. If he becomes disoriented, there will be no peasant to remind him of his way.

  A few flakes begin to appear, drifting lazily about them, but before long the air fills with falling and wind-blown snow. The wind increases at their back. As the final light begins failing them, Rose glimpses something on the trail ahead.

  “Did you see that?” Rose asks, pulling up her mount.

  “See what?”

  “Ahead — there is something there! I saw it through the snow.”

  “What was it, an animal, a buffalo perhaps?” His heart pounds at the thought of the glory such a prize would be.

  “I do not know; I only saw it a moment. It is that way I believe, if any clear way can be defined in such weather. I cannot see past the nose of my horse.”

  Declan checks his fowling piece again, wondering if such a light weapon could indeed overcome one of the mighty beasts. He hopes so. Perhaps, it was only a deer. Without a word, he nudges his horse and pushes past Rose, looking from side to side, searching for tracks. The snow swirls as a shape appears in front of them, shaggy and black. Declan’s heart jumps. He lifts the gun and fires. Snow falls from the beast as it slides to the ground.

  With a cry, Declan urges his horse forward, hastily reloading the gun; he cannot believe his luck. Rose follows behind, her mind dark with doubt; she had not seen any buffalo for many months and it seems to her unlikely to find a solitary animal out here in the storm.

  Jumping off of his horse, Declan approaches the beast; the shaggy black fur blows in the wind as Declan prods it with the barrel.

  “Something is wrong.” Rose says, sitting beside him on her horse. Her hair loosens from her cap and twists about her. Declan looks up at her; surrounded by blowing snow; in the gloom she looks like a wraith, grey and shrouded, her face masked by winding hair. The wind whistles in his ears.

  Something wrong. He prods the shape again, and there is a moan. A human moan. He bends down and pulls away the buffalo hide to find a woman, a Savage woman, badly wounded by his shot. Her shoulder is ragged and running with blood, her neck and the side of her face peppered red.

  “Oh, dear Jesus,” Declan says, dropping the cloak.

  “What is it?” Rose asks.

  Declan considers lying to her; it would be so easy to jump on his horse and both of them ride off.

  “It-it’s a woman. A Savage. Wrapped in a buffalo hide,” he adds defensively. Rose drops off her horse and hurries beside him. “A woman? And you just drop her into the snow?”

  “Rose, I don’t know …”

  She pushes the robe aside and sees the woman’s wounds. She is young, about twenty, unconscious. The robe is filling with blood. Rose pulls at the hem of her skirts and tears away pieces of it.

  “Come here, help me bind these wounds. Do you have a knife?” Declan hands it her and she cuts the strips into lengths.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” He asks her, surprised.

  “Of course I don’t, but we have to try something — there’s so much, so much blood. Here, hold this while I try and wrap this around her shoulder.” He kneels and presses a pad against the wound, feeling the hot blood well through it. Rose wraps the strips around the woman’s arm and shoulder as best she can.

  “That’s all we can do until we get her to the fort.”

  “Get her to the fort?”

  “Of course, we cannot leave her out here.” She is surprised to hear how much her last words sound like a question. She looks down at the blood on her hands and wipes them into the snow.

  Declan looks out at the surrounding storm. “What the hell is she doing out here anyway? She would have died there like that. She has no gear, nothing.”

  Rose looks up at him, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “We must take her,” she repeats.

  “Get on your horse, Rose.” Declan is certain that he has seen the girl before, in the company of local Cree with whom he has worked har
d at developing a trading relationship. The Company and the Nor’westers might be at each other’s throats, but their distraction had provided robust opportunities for an independent trader to exploit. He had only just begun entertaining visions of a trading empire of his own, and now this. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t his fault. The damned girl.

  Rose stands up, facing him. “Declan …”

  “Now, Rose!”

  “And if I refuse?”

  He looms over her. “Listen to me. You are my wife and will do as I say. You will tell no one about this. She’s just a fucking Savage.”

  “I will tell everyone.”

  Declan’s face is split with scorn. “Will you, now? And I wonder what they will think about your bedding the Half-caste? Do not deny it! Tainted and foul you are, and they will run you out to live with the Savages that you carry such a passion for.”

  Rose knows that he speaks the truth; all it would take would be an accusation, proof would not be needed. She fights back her tears. “Why are you doing this?” she asks. “I am your wife. This poor girl.”

  “My wife? Yes, you are indeed my wife: I bear the shame and grief of that truth every day. I will hear no more of it. Get on your horse, or I will leave you here as well, I swear.”

  Rose at last sees the jealous hate that has consumed him these many months and knows that he will do as he says; she doubts she can find her own way back to the fort. It all comes clear to her now: the dark moods, the strange, probing glances. She had tried to be a loyal, dutiful wife to him, but knew in her heart that she did not share his love. It was this unhappy truth that she had blamed for his cold reserve, never suspecting he might know anything of her time with Alexander.

  She has looked for love in many strange places to no avail, and it seems to her the bitterest grief that her marriage too should be so barren. Against all her being, all herself that demanded autonomy, she has tried to make her heart succumb to him. But despite all the coaxing, it remains as cold and dead as the partridge now stuffed in his pannier. It feels to her the final insult of her dead father: to condemn her to such a life.