by Stef Penney
Most men, when their wives disappear at twilight and come back after dark with a male stranger, would not be as gracious as Angus is. It is one of the reasons I married him. In the beginning it was because he trusted me: now, I don’t know, perhaps he no longer believes me capable of arousing impure feelings, or simply no longer cares. Total strangers are rare in Dove River; usually they are cause for celebration, but Angus just looks up and nods calmly. Then again, perhaps he saw him at the cabin.
Sturrock talks little about himself, but as we eat I form a picture. A picture of a man with holes in his shoes and a taste for fine tobacco. A man who eats pork and potatoes as if he hadn’t seen a decent meal in a week. A man of delicacy and intelligence, and disappointment, perhaps. And something else–ambition. For he wants that little piece of bone, whatever it is, very much.
We tell him about Francis. Children do get lost in the bush. It has been known. We discuss, inevitably, the Seton girls. Like everyone else above the Border, he knows of them. Sturrock points out the differences between the Seton girls and Francis, and I agree that Francis is not a defenceless young girl, but I have to say it’s not exactly reassuring.
Sometimes, you find yourself looking at the forest in a different way. Sometimes it’s no more than the trees that provide houses and warmth, and hide the earth’s nakedness, and you’re glad of it. And then sometimes, like tonight, it is a vast dark presence that you can never see the end of; it might, for all you know, have not just length and breadth to lose yourself in, but also an immeasurable depth, or something else altogether.
And sometimes, you find yourself looking at your husband and wondering: is he the straightforward man you think you know–provider, friend, teller of poor jokes that nonetheless make you smile–or does he too have depths that you have never seen? What might he not be capable of?
During the night, the temperature plummets. A light dusting of snow greets Donald when he rubs frost off the inside of his window and looks outside. He wonders if Jacob spent the night in the stables. Jacob is used to the cold. Last winter–Donald’s first in the country–was relatively mild, but still a shock to him. This bone-aching morning is just a foretaste.
Knox has arranged for a local man to accompany Mackinley on his pursuit of the Frenchman. Someone sufficiently lowly that Mackinley will not have to share the glory with him … Then Donald dismisses the thought as uncharitable. More and more of his thoughts seem to be uncharitable nowadays. This is not what he had expected before he left Scotland–the great lone land had seemed like a promise of purity, where the harsh climate and simple life would hone a man’s courage and scour off petty faults. But it isn’t like that at all–or perhaps it is he who is at fault, and isn’t up to the scouring. Perhaps he didn’t have enough moral fibre in the first place.
After Mackinley has gone, terse and prickly to the last, Donald lingers over his coffee in the hope of seeing Susannah. Of course it is also a pleasure to sit at a table covered with white linen and look at the paintings on the wall, to be served by a white woman–albeit a rough Irish one–and to stare pensively into the fire without crude jokes being aimed in his direction. Finally his patience is rewarded, and both girls come in and take their seats.
‘Well Mr Moody,’ Maria says, ‘so you are guarding our safety while the others pursue the suspects.’
It is extraordinary how in one sentence Maria can make him feel like a coward. He tries not to sound defensive. ‘We are waiting for Francis Ross. If he doesn’t return today then we will go after him.’
‘You don’t think he could have done it?’ Susannah frowns at him charmingly.
‘I know nothing about him. What do you think?’
‘I think he’s a seventeen-year-old boy. A rather good-looking one.’ With this, Maria looks slyly at him.
‘He’s sweet,’ Susannah says, looking at the table. ‘Shy. He doesn’t have many friends.’
Maria snorts sarcastically. Donald thinks that it would be hard for any youth to appear other than shy and awkward in the face of Maria’s acidity and Susannah’s beauty.
Maria adds, ‘We don’t know him that well. I don’t know who does. It’s just that he always seems rather a sissy. He doesn’t hunt or do the things most of the boys do.’
‘What do the other boys do?’ Donald tries to assume a great distance between now and his seventeen-year-old self, when he did not hunt and would undoubtedly have been called a sissy by these young women.
‘Oh, you know, they go round together, play practical jokes, get drunk … Stupid things like that.’
‘You think someone who doesn’t do those things couldn’t commit murder?’
‘No …’ Maria looks reflective for a moment. ‘He always seems moody and … well, as though there are things going on under the surface.’
‘There was once, I remember, at school,’ Susannah says, her face brightening. ‘He was about fourteen, I think, and another boy, was it George Pretty …? No, no, it was Matthew Fox. Or …’ She trails off, frowning. Her sister gives her a look.
‘Well Matthew, or whoever, tried to crib his task, and was showing off about it, you know, making sure his friends saw … and suddenly Francis realised and went into the most frightful rage. I’d never seen anyone’s face go white with anger before, but he did–he went paper-white, and his skin is normally sort of golden, you know …? Um, anyway, he started hitting Matthew as if he wanted to kill him. He was in a sort of frenzy; he had to be dragged off by Mr Clarke and another boy. It was quite frightening.’
She looks at Donald, hazel eyes wide. ‘I hadn’t thought of that for ages. Do you suppose …?’
‘It wasn’t a frenzied attack, was it Mr Moody?’ Maria has remained calm while Susannah worked herself up into a state of excitement.
‘We can’t rule anything out.’
‘Mr Mackinley thinks it was the French trader, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s gone after him. Or perhaps he just wants it to be the French trader. You don’t like free traders do you, Mr Moody, in the Company?’
‘The Company tries to protect its interests, of course, but it is generally of benefit if trappers can get a fixed price for their skins; and the Company looks after a lot of people–the trappers know where to go and the situation is … stable. Where there is competition, prices go up or down, and the free traders don’t look after their families. It is the difference between … order and anarchy.’ Donald hears the patronising tone in his voice and winces inwardly.
‘But if a free trader offers a higher price for a fur than the Company, surely a trapper is entitled to take it? Then he can look after his family himself.’
‘Of course, he is free to do so. But then he must take the risk that that trader will not be there the next year–he cannot rely on him in the way he can rely on the Company.’
‘But isn’t it true,’ she persists, ‘that the Company encourages the Indians they trade with to become dependent on liquor, and makes sure that it is the only supplier of liquor, so that they always come back?’
Donald feels a warm flush rising above his collar. ‘The Company does not encourage anything of the sort. The trappers do what they want, they are not coerced into anything.’
He sounds quite angry. Susannah turns on her sister. ‘That is a horrible accusation. Besides, it is hardly Mr Moody’s fault if things like that go on.’
Maria shrugs, unconvinced.
Donald walks outside, letting the air cool his face. He will have to try and find Susannah alone later–it is impossible to have a conversation with the rebarbative Maria around. He lights his pipe to calm himself, and finds Jacob in the stables, talking to his horse in the nonsense language he uses with them.
‘Morning Mr Moody.’
‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’
Jacob looks puzzled, as he usually is by this question. He slept–what else is there to say? He also lay awake, thinking about the dead man and the warrior’s death he met at home, on his bed. He nods, though, to humour
Donald.
‘Jacob, do you like working for the Company?’
Another bizarre question. ‘Yes.’
‘You wouldn’t prefer to work for someone else–like a free trader?’
Jacob shrugs. ‘Not now–with my family. When I am away, I know they are safe and won’t starve. And Company goods are cheap–much cheaper than outside.’
‘So it’s good that you work for the Company?’
‘I guess so. Why, you want to leave?’
Donald laughs and shakes his head, and then wonders why this has never occurred to him. Because there is nowhere else for him to go? Perhaps there is nowhere for Jacob either–his father was a Company man, a voyageur, and Jacob started working when he was fourteen. His father died young. He wonders now if he was involved in an accident, but as with so many other aspects of Jacob’s life, he cannot think of an appropriate time to ask.
The reason Donald became so agitated was because Maria was right to say the Company jealously guards its monopoly–but it has good reason to fear competition. Tired of its centuries of supremacy in the wilderness, a number of independent fur traders–mainly French and Yankee–are attempting to break the Company’s hold on the fur trade. There have been rival outfits in the past, but the Company subsumed or quashed them all. But this new alliance, the one known as the North America Company, has the mandarins worried. There are deep pockets behind it, and a disregard for the rules (rules laid down by the Company, that is). Traders offer trappers high prices for furs and extract promises that they will avoid the Company in future. It is likely that bribery and threats are being used–more than probable in fact, since the Company uses them itself. Trade, and consequently profits, are suffering.
Mackinley has had several terse discussions with Donald on the devious nature of free traders, and the necessity of binding the natives to the Company with liquor, guns and food. That was what brought the blood to Donald’s cheeks–Maria’s accusation was quite accurate. But it is no worse than the Yankees do, for heaven’s sake. He should have told Maria about the Indian village that depends on the Fort for food and protection. He should have told her about Jacob’s wife and the two little girls with trusting eyes, but, as usual, he did not think of these things at the right moment.
It was during one of these conversations with Mackinley that something occurred to Donald: perhaps the problem of falling profits stemmed from a more fundamental source than Yankee greed. The trapping has gone on for over two hundred years, and it has taken its toll. When the Company set up the first trading posts, the animals were neighbourly and trusting, but the quest for profit thrust a murderous desire deep into the wilderness, driving the animals before it. Since that day in the depot with Bell, Donald has not seen another silver fox; has never seen a black fox. None have arrived there.
Donald spurs on his pony to catch up with Jacob. They are riding through a stretch of woodland where the last leaves have turned even brighter colours, with the rime of frost on the leaf-fall. If Susannah does not concern herself with the Company’s methods, why should he? After all, when it comes down to it, the fact remains that order is better than anarchy. That is what he has to remember.
They leave the ponies grazing on the riverbank as they walk up to the cabin. Donald is relieved to think that it is empty now. He managed not to embarrass himself when confronted with the body, but it was not an experience he is in a hurry to repeat. In the patch of weeds that surrounds the house Jacob stops and studies the ground. Even Donald can see the muddled footprints.
‘These are from last night. Look, someone hid here.’ Jacob indicates the ground under a bush.
‘Maybe village boys?’
There seem to be several different sets of footprints. Jacob points them out.
‘Look, here … a man’s boot, and under it, another, but a different shape–so there were two men. The man with the larger foot was here first. But the last person to leave the house was this one–smaller still, perhaps a boy … or a woman.’
‘A woman? Are you sure these aren’t the prints from yesterday? That could be the laying-out woman?’
Jacob shakes his head.
*
Donald is triumphant when he discovers the loose floorboard with the hollowed-out space underneath, but it is Jacob who finds the cache under some rocks. The mystery of Jammet’s missing wealth is solved–in a lead-lined case are three American rifles, some gold and a packet of dollars wrapped in oiled cotton. Jacob lets out a cry of astonishment when he sees them. Donald ponders what to do with it, and decides to rebury it until they can come back with a cart. They replace the stones and Jacob scatters fallen leaves on the smoothed earth to make the spot look undisturbed. Donald looks at Jacob as he gets out his pipe. A flicker of mistrust crosses his mind and he chides himself for thinking that Jacob might be tempted by what is in the case, which is more than he could earn in ten years. Donald is aware that he cannot read Jacob’s face as he believes he could another white man’s. He hopes that Jacob finds his own visage as opaque, and so does not see his lack of faith.
Ann Pretty is surprised to see me so soon after the loan of the coffee, and her expression becomes guarded, although for once I have not come to reclaim my possessions. Ida is sitting by the stove, sulkily turning sheets. She looks up with a pale, haunted face. She is fifteen and I find her interesting, perhaps because she is the age Olivia would have been now. Also because she fits into the Pretty family like a crow in a chicken run–she is skinny, dark and introverted, and rumoured to be clever. She has recently been crying.
‘Mrs Ross!’ Ann bellows from three feet away. ‘Have you had any news of your boy?’
‘Angus has gone to look for him.’
Now I’m here I’m not sure I can keep up the appearance of light-hearted unconcern. And if Angus won’t talk to me, who else can I turn to?
‘Ah, children are such a cross.’ She shoots a harsh glance at the silent Ida. Ida keeps her head bowed to the sheet, sewing with small, tight stitches.
‘He was in such a mood when he left, I didn’t ask where he was going. And when he comes back, he’ll be upset about Jammet. Whatever else you can say about him, he was a kind man. He was good to Francis.’
‘What a time. God knows what we’re all coming to.’
Ida lets out the smallest of sighs. Her head is bent so I cannot see her face, but she is weeping again. Ann sighs too, sharply.
‘My girl, I don’t know what you’re crying about. It’s not as though you knew him to speak of.’
Ida sniffs and says nothing. Ann turns to me, shaking her head.
‘It’s his mother I feel for. She’s got no one else, from what I hear. You know he was in Chicago only two months ago? What does a man like him go to Chicago for, I ask you?’
‘I wish they’d go to Chicago and stop bothering about Francis, it’s absurd to keep on after him.’
‘It is that.’
Ida makes another small noise–and now her shoulders are trembling.
‘Ida, will you give over? Go upstairs if you can’t sit there without snivelling. My Lord …’
Ida gets up and goes without a look at us.
‘She’ll drive me crazy, that one. You should be glad you don’t have girls …’ Just as it comes out of her mouth she remembers Olivia, and I believe it crosses her mind to apologise, before she banishes such a silly notion from her head. ‘But you’ve had your trials with that one.’
I acknowledge this to be true.
‘It’s the blood in them, coming out. You can’t help it. You never knew his parents, did you? Who’s to know they weren’t thieves and tinkers? That’s the Irish in him. They can’t be trusted. When I was in Kitchener, we had a crowd of Irish, steal the clothes off your back soon as look at you. Not that I’m saying that about your Francis, mind, but it’s in them. It’s in them and you’ve got to watch for it.’
Despite the insults, I know she is trying to be kind; she just has no other way of showing it.
‘What’s the matter with Ida, then? You shouldn’t be too hard on her, you remember what it’s like when you’re that age.’
Ann snorts. ‘I was never that age. I was keeping house from the age of ten, didn’t have the time to sit and moon about.’ She shoots me a look, the slyly humourous one that’s usually followed by a joke at my expense. ‘You know what I think? I think she’s sweet on your Francis. She won’t say so, but I reckon I know.’
I’m so surprised I nearly laugh out loud. ‘Ida?’ It’s hard to think of her as anything other than a skinny child. And I never thought any of the Pretty family had much time for Francis. There had been a disastrous camping trip that Angus and Jimmy had bullied the boys into, when Francis had gone off with George and Emlyn. They came back after two days and Francis never said a word about it. I gave up urging him to go and play with them after that.
‘They were tight at school, before he left.’
‘Let me go and talk to her. I know what I was like at that age. You know, I’ve always thought that she reminds me of myself when I was young.’ I smile at Ann, enjoying the thought that the prospect of her daughter turning out like me is probably her worst nightmare.
I follow the sound of sniffing to find Ida in her tiny bedroom, staring out of the window. At least, I’m sure she was staring out of the window, although she is bent over the sheet when I look in.
‘Your mother says you’re enjoying school at the moment.’
Ida looks up with reddened eyes and a mutinous mouth. ‘Enjoy it? Not hardly.’
‘Francis is always saying how clever you are.’
‘Really?’ Her face softens for a moment. So perhaps Ann was right.
‘Said you were quite the scholar. Maybe you could go on to the school at Coppermine–have you thought of that?’
‘Mm. Don’t know that Ma and Pa would let me.’
‘Well they’ve got enough boys to look after the place, haven’t they?’
