by Stef Penney
By late morning the storm has almost blown itself out. When I wake again it is light, and more snow has drifted into the corners of the shelter and into the spaces between us. Struggling out of the tent I emerge into a day still gusty and grey, but seeming glorious after the night we have spent there. Our tent is half hidden in a drift three feet deep and the whole place looks entirely different under its blanket of snow; better somehow, less foreboding. It takes me a few minutes to realise that, despite Parker’s assurances, a section of the wall did blow down in the night, though without endangering us. I try not to think about what would have happened if we had made our shelter twenty feet to the east. We did not, and that is the main thing.
Initially I am afraid the dogs are gone, buried for good; as I look round there is no sign of them, whereas usually they are barking their heads off demanding food. Then Parker reappears from somewhere with a long stick of wood which he plunges into the drifts, calling to his dogs with the strange sharp cries he uses to communicate with them. Suddenly there is a sort of explosion by him, and Sisco erupts from a deep drift, followed by Lucie. They jump up at him, barking furiously and wagging their whole bodies, and Parker pets them briefly. He must be relieved to see them; normally he does not touch them at all, and yet now he is smiling, looking genuinely delighted. I have never seen him smile at me like that. Or anyone else, of course.
I go over to where Moody is clumsily packing up the tent material. ‘Let me do that.’
‘Oh, would you, Mrs Ross? Thank you. You put me to shame. How are you this morning?’
‘Relieved, thank you for asking.’
‘I also. That was an interesting night, was it not?’
He smiles, looking almost mischievous. He too seems in high spirits this morning. Perhaps we were all more frightened last night than we cared to admit.
And later, when we are walking north-east once more, even struggling as we are through a foot of driven snow, we walk closely together, Parker regulating his stride to ours, as though we are three people who find solace in each other’s company.
Espen’s voice is urgent.
‘Line. I must talk to you.’
Line tries to still the wild lurching of her heart at hearing him speak her name. They have not exchanged a word for several days.
‘What? I thought your wife was too suspicious.’
The look of pleading in his eyes almost makes her want to weep with joy.
‘I can’t stand it. You haven’t even looked at me for days. Do you care for me so little? Have you thought of me at all?’
Line gives in and smiles, and he embraces her, folding her into himself, pressing her body against his, kissing her face, her mouth, her neck. Then he pulls her with him, opens a door–which leads to a store cupboard–and closes it after them.
Wrestling with their clothing in the absolute dark of the cupboard, pressed against stacks of soap and something that feels like a broom, Line has a jolting, incoherent vision. It is as though the lack of light exonerates them. She cannot even tell who is in here with her. It must be the same for him–they could be any man and woman, anywhere. Toronto, for example. And then she knows what she will do.
Line prises her mouth from his skin long enough to say, ‘I cannot stay here. I am going to leave. As soon as I can.’
Espen pulls back. She can hear his breathing, but cannot see his face in this darkness.
‘No, Line, I can’t stand to be without you. We can be careful. No one will know.’
Line feels the roll of money in her pocket, and is filled with its power. ‘I have money.’
‘What do you mean, you have money?’
Espen has never had money in his life, has always lived hand to mouth, until he came to build Himmelvanger, and stayed. Line smiles in secret.
‘I have forty dollars. Yankee dollars.’
‘What?’
‘No one knows about it except you.’
‘How did you come by that?’
‘It’s a secret!’
Espen’s face breaks into an incredulous smile. Somehow she knows this. She can feel him tremble with laughter under her hands.
‘We can take two of the horses. It’ll only take us three days to get to Caulfield, we can wear all our clothes and take the children behind us. Then we can get a steamer to Toronto … or Chicago. Anywhere. I’ve got enough money to get a house while we look for work.’
Espen sounds faintly alarmed. ‘But Line, it’s the middle of winter. Wouldn’t it be better if we waited till spring–what with the children?’
Line feels a flicker of impatience. ‘It’s not even snowing–it’s practically warm! What do you want to wait for?’
Espen sighs. ‘Besides, when you say “the children,” you mean Torbin and Anna, don’t you?’
Line has been waiting for this. It’s all Merete’s fault really. If only she were dead. She’s good for nothing and no one likes her, not even Per, who’s supposed to like everybody.
‘I know it’s hard, my darling, but we can’t take all the children away with us. Maybe later, when we’ve got a house, you can come and get them, huh?’
Privately she thinks this unlikely. She can’t imagine Merete, or Per for that matter, letting Espen take the children away to live with his floozy. But Espen adores his three children.
‘We can all be together again soon. But now … I have to go now. I can’t stay.’
‘Why all this hurry?’
It is her trump card, and Line plays it carefully. ‘Well, I am almost sure … no, I am sure, that I am in the family way.’
There is a total silence in the cupboard. For heaven’s sake, Line thinks to herself, it’s not as if he doesn’t know how these things happen.
‘How can that be? We were so careful!’
‘Well … we weren’t always careful.’ He not at all–it could have happened much sooner, she thinks, if he had had his way. ‘You’re not angry, are you, Espen?’
‘No, I love you. It’s just rather …’
‘I know. But that’s why I can’t stay until spring. Soon the others will begin to notice. Here …’ She takes his hand and slips it under her waistband.
‘Oh, Line …’
‘So we should go then, shouldn’t we, before the snow comes to stay? Otherwise …’
Otherwise, the alternative is unthinkable.
Late that afternoon Line goes to the boy’s room. She waits until she sees Jacob walk out and disappear into the stables, then she goes in. The key is left in the outside of the door–now that Moody has gone, no one takes the locking of the door very seriously.
Francis looks up in surprise when she comes in. She hasn’t been there, alone with him, since before his mother came; the day she tried to kiss him, and he gave her the money. It still brings blood to her cheeks to think about it. Francis is dressed in his own clothes and sitting in a chair by the window. He has a piece of wood and a knife in his hands –he is whittling something. Line is taken aback–she had pictured him still in bed, weak and pale.
‘Oh,’ she says, before she can stop herself. ‘You’re up.’
‘Yes, I’m much better. Jacob even trusts me with his knife.’ He gestures with it, and smiles at her. ‘You’re quite safe.’
‘Can you walk now?’
‘I can get about all right, with the crutch.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Are you all right? Are things all right, I mean, beyond that door?’ He sounds concerned.
‘Yes … that is, no, not really. I came to ask you something–I need your help. About your journey from Caulfield … Will you promise not to say anything? Not even to Jacob?’
He stares in surprise. ‘Yes, all right.’
‘I’m going to leave. I have to go now, before the snow comes again. We’re going to take horses and go south. I need you to tell me the way.’
Francis looks astonished. ‘The way to Caulfield?’
She nods.
‘But what if it snows when you�
�re on the way?’
‘Your mother did it. In the snow. On horseback it can’t be so hard.’
‘You mean you and your children?’
‘Yes.’ She holds her head up, feeling the blush spread up her neck and into her hair. Francis turns aside, looking for somewhere to put the wood and knife. And now I’ve embarrassed you again, she thinks, taking out the pencil and paper she has brought with her. Oh well, some things can’t be helped. It’s not as though you’ll be jealous.
The magistrate from St Pierre sits opposite Knox in his bedroom-cum-prison and sighs. He is an elderly man, squat, at least seventy, with milky eyes caught behind pebble glasses that look too heavy for his frail nose.
‘If I am to understand you correctly,’ he glances at his notes, ‘you said that you “could not agree with Mackinley’s brutal attempts to force a confession out of William Parker,” so you let him go.’
‘We had no grounds to hold him.’
‘But Mr Mackinley says he could not account for his whereabouts over the period in question.’
‘He accounted for them. There was no one to back them up, but that is hardly surprising in a trapper.’
‘Furthermore, Mr Mackinley said that the prisoner attacked him. Any damage suffered by the prisoner was done in self-defence.’
‘There wasn’t a scratch on Mackinley, and if he had been attacked, he would have told everyone. I saw the prisoner. It was a vicious attack. I knew he was telling the truth.’
‘Hmm. I am familiar with one William Parker. Perhaps you are aware that this same William Parker has something of a record for assaulting servants of the Hudson Bay Company?’
Knox thinks, Oh, no.
‘It was some time ago, but he was suspected of a fairly serious attack. You see, if you had only waited a little longer, this could all have been brought to light.’
‘I still don’t believe he is the murderer we seek. Just because a man has done one wrong thing–some time ago–does not mean that he has done another.’
‘True. But if it is in a man’s nature to be violent, it is likely that this tendency will erupt again and again. The same man is not violent and then peaceable.’
‘I’m not sure I can agree with you there. Especially if the violence is committed in youth.’
‘No. Well. And there is another suspect still at large?’
‘I don’t know that I’d put it quite like that. I sent two men after a local youth who went missing around that time. They haven’t returned yet.’
And where the hell are they? he asks himself. It’s been nearly two weeks.
‘And, I believe, the boy’s mother is also missing?’
‘She has gone looking for her son.’
‘Quite so.’ He unhooks the spectacles, which have made shiny red dents in the bridge of his nose, and rubs the spot with finger and thumb. His look to Knox clearly says, ‘What an unholy mess you have made of this town.’
‘What do you intend to do with me?’
The magistrate from St Pierre shakes his head. ‘It really is most irregular.’ His head goes on wagging gently as though, once started, the motion is self-perpetuating. ‘Most irregular. I am hard-pressed to know what to think, Mr Knox. But I suppose, in the meantime, we can trust you to go home. As long as you don’t–ha ha–leave the country!’
‘Ha ha. No. I don’t suppose I will attempt that.’ Knox stands up, refusing to return the man’s mirthless smile. He finds that he towers over the other magistrate by at least a foot.
Free to go, Knox finds himself strangely reluctant to return home immediately. He pauses on the landing and on impulse, knocks on the door of Sturrock’s room. After a second the door opens.
‘Mr Knox! I am happy to see you at liberty again–I assume, or have you escaped?’
‘No. I am at liberty, for the time being, at least. I feel like a new man.’
Despite his smile and attempted jocular tone, he is not sure that Sturrock realises he is joking. He never had much success with jokes, even as a youth–something to do with the severity of his features, he suspects. As a young lawyer he became aware that the emotion he most often inspired in people was alarm and a sort of pre-emptive guilt. It has had its uses.
‘Come in.’ Sturrock ushers him inside as though Knox is the person he most wanted to see in the world. Knox allows himself to be flattered by this, and accepts a glass of whisky.
‘Well, slainthé!’
‘Slainthé! I am sorry it is not a malt, but there we are … Now tell me, how did you like your night behind bars?’
‘Oh, well …’
‘I wish I could say that I have never experienced the pleasure, but sadly that is not the case. A long time ago, in Illinois. But since most everyone is a criminal down there, I was in some very good company …’
They talk for some time, at ease with one another. The level in the bottle falls as the window darkens. Knox looks at the sky, and what he can see of it above the rooftops is dark and heavy, auguring more bad weather. Down below, a small figure hurries diagonally across the street into the store below. He can’t tell who it is. He thinks it is probably going to snow again.
‘You are staying here then, waiting for the boy’s return?’
‘I suppose I am, yes.’
There is a long pause; the whisky is finished. They are both thinking the same thing.
‘You must set great store by this … bone.’
Sturrock looks at him sideways, a calculating look. ‘I suppose I must.’
They have first sight of their destination on the evening of the sixth day. Donald lags behind–even Mrs Ross can walk faster than he can with his lacerated feet. Impossible to abandon the purgatorial boots altogether, but even with his feet entirely bandaged, each step is agony. Also, and this he has kept secret from the others, his scar has begun hurting. Yesterday he became convinced it had opened again, and under the pretext of a private stop he unbuttoned his shirt to look. The scar was intact, but slightly swollen and weeping a little clear fluid. He touched it anxiously, to see where the fluid was coming from. Probably just the exhausting journey wearing him down; when they stopped, it would recover.
And so the sight, in the distance, of the trading post–whose very existence he has come in moments of stress to doubt–is cause for jubilation. At this moment, Donald can think of nothing more glorious than lying down on a bed for a very long time. Clearly the secret of happiness, he reflects quite cheerfully, is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.
Hanover House stands on a rise of land surrounded on three sides by a river. There are some trees huddled behind it, the first trees they have seen for days–bent, stunted birches and tamaracks, hardly higher than a man, granted, but still trees. The river is flat and slow but has not frozen–it’s not quite cold enough for that yet–and is black against its snowy banks. When they are quite close and there is still no sign that anyone has seen them, Donald experiences a nagging fear that there is no one there at all.
The post is built along the same lines as Fort Edgar, but is clearly much older. The palisade leans; the buildings themselves are grey and woolly with the repeated assaults of weather. Overall, it has a frayed air–although attempts have been made to restore it, its appearance speaks of neglect. Donald is vaguely aware of the reason for this. By now they are deep in the Shield country south of Hudson Bay. Once this area was a rich source of furs for the Company, but that was long ago. Hanover House is a relic of former glories, a vestigial limb. But outside the fence and pointing out over the plain is a circle of small guns, and someone has taken the trouble–since the snowstorm–to come outside and clear the snow off them. The squat black shapes, stark against the snow, are the only sign of human activity.
The gate in the palisade stands ajar, and there are human tracks here and there. And though the three of them and the dogsled must have been visible against the snow for at least an hour, no one comes to greet them.
&nb
sp; ‘It looks deserted,’ Donald begins, looking at Parker for confirmation. Parker doesn’t respond, but pushes the gate, the weight of drifted snow behind it making it jam after a few inches. The courtyard inside is unswept–a heinous crime at Fort Edgar.
‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ Donald says, and then finds that he is quite unable to stop himself sinking down on the ground and tearing off first one boot and then the other. He cannot bear the pain a single moment longer.
‘Yes,’ Parker says.
‘Perhaps it’s been abandoned.’ Donald looks around at the desolate yard.
‘No, not abandoned.’ Parker looks over at a thin coil of smoke rising from behind a low warehouse. The smoke is the same colour as the sky. Donald heaves himself to his feet–superhuman effort–and staggers a few yards.
Then a man walks round the corner of a building and stops dead: a tall, dark-skinned man with powerful shoulders and long, wild hair. Despite the icy wind he wears only a loose flannel undershirt open to the waist. He stares at them with open-mouthed and sullen incomprehension, his large body slack and apparently numb to the cold. Mrs Ross is staring back at him as if she’s seen a ghost. Parker starts to tell him that they have come a long way, that Donald is a Company man, but before he can finish the man turns and walks back the way he came, leaving Parker in mid-sentence. Parker looks at Mrs Ross and shrugs. Donald hears her whisper to him, ‘I think that man is drunk,’ and smiles grimly to himself. Clearly she has little experience of winter pastimes at a quiet trading post.
‘Are we supposed to follow him?’ Mrs Ross is asking. As usual, she addresses Parker, but Donald hobbles over to them, his feet frozen but blessedly free of pain. This is a Company post, therefore, he feels, he should be taking the lead now.
‘I am sure someone will be out in a minute. You know, Mrs Ross, at a post in winter, especially one as isolated as this, the men are prone to taking what solace they can to pass the time.’
The dogs, left outside the gate in their harness, are barking and working themselves into a frenzy. They seem incapable of standing still without breaking out into fights. Now, for instance, they seem to be trying to kill each other. Parker goes over to them and yells at them, lashing out with a stick; a tactic that is unpleasant to watch but effective. After another couple of minutes there are steps in the snow and another man comes round the corner. This, to Donald’s relief, is a white man, possibly a little older than Donald, with a pale, worried face and chaotic reddish hair. He looks harassed but sober.
