The Tenderness of Wolves

by Stef Penney

  When they heard the urgent cries, they ran up the river-bank, and saw the boys staring down into the water. They were laughing, which jarred with the alarm in their initial yells. One boy turned, addressing David, ‘Come’n see! You ain’t seen nothing like this!’

  They stepped up to the bank, smiles already forming on their faces in anticipation, and then they saw what was in the water.

  Maria put her hands to her face in shock.

  The river was playing a joke on them. The hands rotated slowly, reaching up out of the brown depths. They were bleached and slightly bloated. Then she saw the head below, now facing towards them, now turning away. The face is as clear in her memory now as it was then, and yet she could not describe it if she tried–whether the eyes were open or shut, or how the mouth was set. There was a peculiar horror in the lazy motion of the body caught in the eddy; by some freak chance it was twirling upright in one spot, hands above its head as if it were dancing a reel, and she could not stop watching any more than the others could. She knew the man was dead, but did not recognise him. Even afterwards, when told that it was Doctor Wade, she could not reconcile the face in the water with what she remembered of the elderly Scotsman.

  Even now, all these years later, she has to force herself to peer into the depths of the dark pool. Just to be sure that it’s empty.

  When they left the river, David held her hand on the way home. He was silent, unusually for him, and before they came out of the woods, he pulled her behind a tree trunk and kissed her. There was a desperate look in his eyes that scared her; she didn’t know what it meant. Frozen, unable to respond and somehow repelled, she pulled away and walked home ahead of him. Their friendship was never quite as easy as it had been after that, and the following summer his family moved back east. He was the only boy who ever wanted to kiss her, until Robert Fisher.

  *

  After nearly an hour she comes to Jammet’s cabin and dismounts. She walks through the crust of rotten snow round to the front door. The unwarmed roof still has snow on it, and the cabin looks small and dejected. Maybe a murder will be enough to put off prospective buyers, where a drowning was not.

  There are various footprints circling the cabin, mostly of children playing dare. But in front of the door the ground is smooth–no one has been inside recently. Maria marches firmly across it. A wire on the door holds it shut. She takes this off, tearing the skin on her thumb. She has never been inside; Jammet was not thought a suitable acquaintance for girls of good family. She finds herself murmuring an apology to his spirit, or something like it, for the intrusion. What she is doing, she tells herself, is just checking to make sure that the bone tablet was not overlooked in a corner. A little thing like a bone tablet could easily have been missed. She is also forcing herself to do something she is afraid of, although exactly what she fears, she is not sure.

  Only a weak light seeps through the buckskin window-panes, and the whole place has the queer feeling of being under a shroud. It is very quiet. There is nothing inside, other than a couple of tea chests and the stove, waiting for new hands to bring it back to life. And dust, like a thin layer of snowflakes on the floor. Her feet print a trail in it.

  Even an empty house, it turns out, has plenty to offer when you start to look: old kitchen implements, pieces of newspaper, a handful of nails, wadded dark hair (she shudders), a bootlace … All the things that people don’t bother to remove, because they’re not worth anything; because no one would want such things, even the person who lived there.

  We leave so little.

  There is no way of knowing what Laurent Jammet was like now, not for her. Upstairs, where she ventures at length, there are a couple of half-empty wooden boxes. Nothing like a bone tablet in either, but she unearths something else, something tucked into the gap between the doorframe and the wall (and what made her look there?).

  A piece of brown paper, such as you might find wrapping a purchase from Scott’s store, has been used as a makeshift artist’s pad, on which someone has drawn a pencil sketch of Laurent Jammet. Maria’s cheeks burn: in the drawing, Jammet lies on the bed, apparently asleep, naked. It must have been summer, for a sheet is tangled round his feet, as though he has kicked it off in the night. The artist was unskilled, but there is grace, and a palpable sense of intimacy. Maria feels not only a searing embarrassment at seeing this representation of a naked man, but also shame, as though she has blundered into the most private, most hidden recesses of someone’s mind. Because the artist, whoever she was, loved him; of that she is sure. Then she sees a signature of sorts, scrawled into the scribbled lines that make up the sheet. It looks like François. No ‘e’, she is sure. Not Françoise.

  And instantly she thinks of Francis Ross.

  She stands there holding the piece of paper, barely aware that it is almost dusk. She sees to her horror that a smear of her blood has stained it. Her first coherent thought is that she must burn it, in case anyone else should ever see it and reach the same conclusion. Then she realises, with a guilty lurch of the heart, that she will have to give the drawing to Francis, because if it were hers (if only her cheeks would stop burning), she would want it back. She feels strangely, intimately disturbed by it, and folds the paper carefully, the drawing to the inside, before putting it in her pocket. Then she removes it from her pocket, picturing, for some reason, her sister plunging a hand in and finding it. Instead she tucks it into her bodice, where no one but she will go. There, next to her heart, it burns like a hot coal, causing a warm flush to climb over her throat. In the end she tucks it impatiently down the side of her boot, but even from there it sends filaments of heat stealing up her leg as she rides back to Caulfield through the falling dark.

  Line busies herself building a fire. After that one rifle crack, there was nothing. They wait, at first chattering, excited, cheerful, then silent, huddling a little closer to the fire. The light starts to fail too soon; darkness comes stealing out of its daytime lairs in root hollows and rotten stumps. Line boils water and adds sugar, and makes them all drink it while it’s scalding, so that it burns their mouths. She makes a stew of oatmeal, berries and dried pork, which they eat silently, waiting for the sound of footsteps and a body pushing through the branches. Espen’s share bakes hard in the kettle. Still he doesn’t come.

  Line fends off the children’s questions and sends them to gather more wood to bank up the fire, so that it will be bright and he will be able to see it from a long way off. Then she rigs a shelter for them to sleep. Then they stop asking questions.

  But, after Anna has curled in a warm comma round Line’s right thigh, Torbin, on her other side, speaks in a whisper. He has been quiet these last couple of days, since they lost the compass. Not at all his usual unquenchable self.

  ‘Mamma, I’m sorry,’ he whispers, his voice tremulous. She strokes his hair with her mittened hand.

  ‘Shh. Go to sleep.’

  ‘I’m sorry I tried to run away. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be lost, would we? And Espen wouldn’t have gone off like that.

  And now he’s lost too …’ He cries quietly. ‘It’s all my fault.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Line speaks without looking at him. ‘That’s just the way it is. Go to sleep.’

  But her lips press themselves in an unbecoming line: the truth is, it is his fault they lost the compass. It is his fault they are lost in the cold forest; his fault that, once again, she has lost her man. Her hand strokes mechanically, and she does not notice that Torbin has gone rigid; does not notice that she is hurting him, but that he does not dare ask her to stop.

  She cannot sleep, so she sits in the mouth of their shelter with the children curled round her back and legs, staring into the fire. She tries so hard not to think. It’s easy when Torbin and Anna are awake and she has to reassure them, but alone, like this, with no one but her fears for company, it’s hard to keep them from overwhelming her. Despite being lost, freezing, deep in the forest, surrounded by snowdrifts and God knows what else, her
greatest fear is that Espen has left her. When she sat in the stable at Himmelvanger, she knew she could force him to do what she wanted, however unwilling. Now it occurs to her that he seized on the rifle shot as an excuse; that he has run off, not intending to return; and this time she does not know where to find him.

  Nearby, the two horses stand nose to tail, heads down. At some point, when she is very cold, one of them starts, spooked at something in the trees. It flattens its ears along its skull, weaving its head from side to side as if it detects a threat but does not know exactly where it is. The other horse–the sick one–barely moves. Line, after the initial, heart-wrenching shock, strains into the darkness, hoping to hear Espen, but knowing that Jutta would not react that way if it were him. She hears nothing. Eventually, she can wait, nor fend off sleep, no more, and curls up beside her children, wrapping her shawl over her face.

  She dreams, almost instantly, of Janni. Janni is in trouble and seems to be calling for her. He is somewhere dark and far away, and cold. He says he is sorry for his foolishness, for thinking he could make money this way, by theft and mutiny. Now he is paying with his life. She can see him from an immense distance, and he seems to be lying in the snow, a tiny dark speck in a vast field of white, and he cannot move. She yearns with all her being to go to him, but she cannot. Then it all changes and he is right there with her, so close she can feel his warm, moist breath on her face. In the dream she closes her eyes and smiles. His breath smells rank, but it is warm and it is his. She doesn’t dream of Espen at all.

  She wakes before it is fully light. The fire is out, a sodden charred mess; the air is wet and smells of thaw. She looks around. She cannot see the horses; they must have moved off behind the shelter, foraging for food. No sign of Espen–but then, she didn’t really think there would be. She pushes herself onto her elbows, her eyes becoming used to the grey-ness. And then she sees the trampled and stained snow only twenty yards away.

  At first she refuses to accept that the dark-red stains are blood, then detail piles on vile detail: a spray of red arcs across the snow there; here a smear of red, and a staccato of hoof prints, stabbed into a deep drift. She makes no sound at all. The children must not see this, or they will panic … Then she looks down.

  Between her elbows, pressed into the only untouched patch of snow that remains outside the shelter, is a paw print. Just one. It is at least four inches across, with the prick-holes of claws ranged in front of it. A dark-red stain colours two of the prick-holes.

  With a sick jolt, she is reminded of what Espen called her: a vargamor–a woman who consorts with wolves. She tastes bile, remembering the warm stinking breath from her dream, and how she revelled in it. The wolf must have stood right over her, leaning into the shelter, panting into her face as she slept.

  Line gets up as quietly as she can. She kicks snow over the worst of the traces, scattering clods of snow over the parabola of blood. She can see the trail as Bengi tried to get away, followed by the wolves–there must have been more than one. Fortunately it leads back in the direction they came from; they will not have to see where, or with what, it ends.

  She sees another trail, and stares at it; a boot print crisply outlined near the bole of a cedar. It takes her a long moment to realise that this is Espen’s boot print, from yesterday. He was heading almost due west, whereas their path lies south. No more snow has fallen since he left, nothing to cover his traces. He could have followed his own trail back to them, but for some reason did not.

  Line jumps, heart pumping painfully, as Jutta ambles through the trees towards her, and then sighs with trembling relief as the horse sticks her nose in Line’s armpit. The relief seems to be mutual.

  ‘We’re all right,’ Line tells the horse fiercely. ‘We’re all right. We’re all right.’

  She holds onto the horse’s mane until she stops trembling, then goes to rouse the children, to tell them they must go on.

  Donald watches Parker and Mrs Ross leave the post. They walk out of the gate and head into the north-west without a backward glance. Nesbit and Stewart wish them a good journey and go back to their offices. Nesbit manages to give Donald an unpleasant, meaningful look as he does so, defaming both Mrs Ross and Parker, and somehow Donald himself, in the process. Donald bears it, but it riles him. He thought Parker a fool when he had explained his reasoning, and worse when he said Mrs Ross was going with him, although it seemed to be Mrs Ross’s wish also. He pulled her aside and told her his opinion. Was it his imagination, or was she amused by him? Both Parker and she impressed upon him the importance of watching Stewart’s movements, and though he thinks there is little point, he supposes he will do it.

  He watches Stewart walk over to the village to enquire after Elizabeth. Despite her sullen hostility, Stewart does not cease to take an interest in her. As for himself, he cannot restrain the urge to visit her again. He has developed an overpowering curiosity about her since conceiving the notion that she is one of the Seton girls, albeit based as it is, somewhat tenuously, on the name of her daughter. No, not just that; on her features, which are undoubtedly white, and which to his mind bear a faint but discernible resemblance to those of Mrs Knox. He finds himself outside her hut after Stewart has gone back to his office, waiting for a signal to go in.

  The fire stings his eyes, and he breathes through his mouth to acclimatise himself to the smoke and smell of unwashed bodies. Elizabeth squats by the hearth, wiping the face of the little girl, who has been crying. She flings Donald a brief, dismissive glance, and then picks up the squalling child and hands her to him.

  ‘Take her. She’s giving me the devil of a time.’

  Elizabeth walks behind the partition that divides the room from the sleeping quarters, leaving Donald with the girl, who squirms and wriggles in his arms. Nervously, he jiggles her up and down, and she stares at him, affronted.

  ‘Amy, don’t cry. There, there.’

  Were it not for his experiences with Jacob’s children, this would be the first time he had ever held a small child. He holds her as if she were an unpredictable small animal with sharp teeth. However, by some miracle she stops crying.

  When Elizabeth comes back, Amy has discovered Donald’s tie and, enchanted by its strangeness, is playing with it. Elizabeth watches for a moment.

  ‘What made you think of the Setons?’ she asks suddenly. ‘Was it just the name?’

  Donald looks up, caught off guard. He had been about to ask her about Stewart.

  ‘I suppose so. But the story was in my mind, you see, because recently I was told it by someone who was very close to it.’

  ‘Oh.’ If she has a more than passing interest, she hides it well.

  ‘I recently made the acquaintance of the family of Andrew Knox. His wife was, well, she is …’ he is watching her now, while the child gives his tie a sharp tug, almost throttling him ‘… she is the sister of Mrs Seton, the girls’ mother.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says again.

  ‘She is a delightful, kind person. One can tell that even after so many years, she finds the memory of the disappearance deeply distressing.’

  There is a long silence in the hut, punctuated by noises from the fire.

  ‘What did she say about it?’

  ‘Well, that it … it broke the parents’ hearts. That they never got over it.’

  Donald tries to read her face, but she looks angry more than anything.

  ‘They–the Setons–are both dead now.’

  She nods briefly. Donald finds he has been holding his breath, and exhales.

  ‘Tell me about Aunt Alice.’ She says it very quietly, with a sort of sigh. Donald feels a great leap inside him. He tries not to show it, or to look at her too hard. She stares at her daughter, avoiding his eye.

  ‘Well, they live in Caulfield, on Georgian Bay. Mr Knox is the magistrate there, a very fine man, and they have two daughters, Susannah and Maria.’ Emboldened he adds, ‘Do you remember them?’

  ‘Of course. I was eleven years old, no
t a baby’

  Donald struggles to keep the excitement out of his voice, but it makes him squeeze the child more tightly. She pushes her fist into his spectacles in retaliation.

  ‘Susannah … I can’t remember which was which. The last time we saw them, one was only a baby. The other was no more than two or three.’

  ‘Maria would have been about two,’ he says, with a warm feeling at saying her name.

  She stares into the shadows, and he has no idea what she is thinking. He removes the child’s surprisingly strong fingers from his mouth.

  ‘They are all well, and … they are a charming family. All of them. They have been very kind to me. I wish you could meet them. They would be so happy to see you … you cannot imagine!’

  She smiles queerly. ‘I suppose you will tell them about me.’

  ‘Only if you wish it.’

  She turns her face away, but when she speaks her voice is unchanged. ‘I have to think of my children.’

  ‘Of course. Think about it. I know they would not force you into anything you did not want.’

  ‘I have to think of my children,’ she says again. ‘Now, without a father …’

  Donald manages with difficulty to extract his handkerchief from under the child’s body. But when Elizabeth turns back, her eyes are dry.

  ‘Did they tell you my father found me?’

  ‘What? They said you were never found!’

  Her face flickers with something–pain? disbelief? ‘He said that?’

  Donald doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘I refused to go back with him. I was not long married. He kept asking about Amy. He seemed to blame me for her not being there too.’

  Donald can’t keep the shock from his face.

  ‘Can’t you understand that? They lost their daughters, but I lost everything! My family, my home, my past … I had to learn to speak again! I couldn’t break from everything I knew … again.’