The Tenderness of Wolves

by Stef Penney

  Then, at some later point, he looks up and sees a face above him. It is a face he distantly remembers from Hanover House; the face of a drunk, impassive and empty, closed somehow, like the stone that blocks a burrow. It is not drunken now, but there is no curiosity or fear, nor even triumph, there. It is the face, he realises, of Laurent Jammet’s killer. The man whose footprints in the snow have drawn them all here. It is what he came for–to know him, and to find him. And now he has. And it is too late. Typical, thinks Donald, for him to be so slow on the uptake, just like his father always said. And with a rush of heat to his eyes he thinks, Oh, to hear my father’s voice chastising me now.

  Donald starts to think it would be a good idea to aim the rifle at the face, but by the time he’s thought it, the face has gone again, and his rifle has gone too. He is so tired. Tired and cold. Perhaps he will just lay his head back on the soft snow; rest a while.

  Outside the cabin, I can see no one, not even Stewart, who holds my left arm twisted so tight behind my back I can only take shallow breaths for fear my shoulder will come out of its socket. No sign, at least, of Parker lying wounded, or worse, in the snow. No sign of Half Man, if that is who it is. Stewart brandishes his rifle in front of me. I am his shield. There is some movement, but all behind the cabin; a sound–inconclusive. He inches me towards the end wall, to where the sun is starting to burn the horizon. Of course, I have no scarf to protect my eyes. And my hands are bare.

  ‘Careless,’ he says, as though reading my mind. ‘And your eyes too. He shouldn’t have brought you here.’ He sounds mildly disappointed.

  ‘He didn’t bring me,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘When you had Jammet killed, you brought me.’

  ‘Really? Well, well, I had no idea. I thought you and Parker …’

  It hurts to talk, but it pours out of me; I am molten with anger. ‘You have no idea how many people you have hurt. Not just the ones you killed, but …’

  ‘Shut up,’ he says calmly. He is listening. A crackle in the trees. From far to our left, there is a deafening crack–a rifle. It sounds different from before.

  ‘Parker!’

  I can’t help it. A split second later I could bite my tongue off; I don’t want him to think it is a cry for help and come running.

  ‘I’m all right!’ I shout with my next breath. ‘Please don’t shoot. He’ll do a deal. We’ll go away. Just let us go, please …’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Stewart puts a hand over my mouth, squeezing it so tight it feels as though his fingers will break my jaw. We move like some ungainly four-legged creature to the end of the cabin, but again there is no one in sight.

  Another shot splits the silence in two–to our left, beyond the cabin now. And after it, this time, a noise. A human moan.

  I gasp, the breath catching in my throat like tar.

  Stewart shouts in a strange language. A command? A question? If Half Man is listening he does not answer. Stewart shouts again, the pitch of his voice taut, his head whipping back and forth, unsure of himself. Now I have to act, I tell myself; now while he is uncertain. He lets go his grip on my mouth so that he can point the rifle one-handed. I grasp the knife in my pocket, working it round until the handle is snug in my palm. I start to pull it out, inch by inch.

  And then a voice comes from somewhere in the trees, but surely not the voice of Half Man. A young voice answers, in the same language. Stewart is disconcerted; he doesn’t know the voice. This is not part of his plan. I swing the knife across my body and into his side, as hard as I can. Although at the last moment he seems to realise what is happening and flinches away, the blade meets yielding resistance, and he howls with pain. I have a glimpse of his face, and his eyes catch mine–they are reproachful, bluer than sky; but he seems to have a half-smile on his face, even as he swings the rifle towards me.

  I run. Another rifle crack, deafening me, somewhere very close, but I feel nothing.

  Alec watches Donald run across the frozen lake, despite his shouts, and then his curses. He shouts to him to stop, but he does not stop. Alec feels an ugly fear clutch at his insides, is afraid he might vomit, and so turns away. Then he tells himself not to be a baby; he must do as his father would have done, and sets off after him.

  Alec is a hundred yards behind when the flash comes–he would later swear he heard nothing–and Donald falls. Alec throws himself down behind some reeds that poke through the ice. He holds George’s rifle cocked in front of him, grinding his teeth in his anger and his fear. They shouldn’t have shot Donald. Donald was kind to his mother. Donald told him about his beautiful, clever aunts who live on a huge lake like the sea. Donald hurt no one.

  His breath hisses through his teeth, too loud. He scans the trees–they have the advantage of cover–then gets up and runs, half crying, bent double; throws himself flat in the snow and crawls to the top of a hummock to look. He has reached the first of the trees, and it is possible they haven’t seen him. Up ahead, there is another rifle shot, and then silence. He couldn’t see the flash. It was not aimed at him. He darts from one tree trunk to the next, pausing, looking right and left, everywhere. His breathing sounds like sobbing; is so loud it must give him away. He thinks of the others–the white lady and the tall man–to give himself courage.

  This rifle is heavier than the one he is used to, the barrel longer. It is a good rifle, but he has had little practice. He knows he will have to get close to have a chance. He works his way closer to the source of the shot. To his right there is the hump of rock that interrupts the smooth flow of the lake, and ahead, among the trees, he glimpses a building of some sort. A little closer, and he sees two figures outside it–the man who killed his father hiding behind the white lady.

  ‘They don’t know I’m here,’ he tells himself, so he will be brave.

  Stewart’s voice, shouting out in Cree: ‘Half Man? What was that?’

  Silence.

  ‘Half Man? Answer me–if you can.’

  No answer. Alec moves forward from tree to tree, until he is fifty feet away, his body protected by the trunk of a spruce. He raises the rifle and sights it. He wishes he were closer, but doesn’t dare move. Stewart calls out, impatient, but Half Man does not answer him. And so Alec answers, from his hiding place, in his father’s tongue.

  ‘Your man is dead, murderer.’

  Stewart whips round, seeking him, and then something happens: the lady lunges at him and breaks away; Stewart emits a howl like a fox, and takes his rifle to the only target he can see–her. Alec holds his breath; he has one chance to save her, they are so close. He squeezes the trigger; there is an almighty kick and a cloud of smoke engulfs the barrel.

  One shot. One shot only.

  He steps forward, cautious in case Half Man is hiding somewhere, waiting. As the smoke disperses, the clearing in front of the cabin seems to be empty. He reloads the gun and waits, then darts to a nearer shelter.

  Stewart is lying in the clearing, spread-eagled, with one arm flung over his head as though reaching for something he wanted. One side of his face is gone. Alec drops to his knees and vomits. And that is where Parker and the woman find him.

  I am so relieved to see Parker behind the cabin that I throw my arms round him for a moment, without thinking or caring. There is the briefest answering pressure and, though his face doesn’t change, his voice is rough.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  I nod.

  ‘Stewart …’

  I glance behind me, and Parker goes to the corner and peers round. Then he steps out; no danger. I follow him, and see a body lying in the middle of the clearing. It is Stewart–I recognise the brown coat; there is nothing else to recognise. A few yards away, a young boy kneels in the snow like a statue. I think I am hallucinating, and then I recognise Elizabeth Bird’s eldest son.

  He looks up at us, and says one word: ‘Donald.’

  We find Moody alive, but fading. He has been shot in the stomach, and has bled too much. I tear off strips of skirt to s
taunch the wound, and make a pillow for his head, but there is not much we can do with the bullet still in him. I kneel beside him and rub his hands, which are freezing cold.

  ‘You’re going to be all right, Mr Moody. We got them. We know the truth. Stewart shot Nepapanees in the back and buried him in the woods.’

  ‘Mrs Ross …’

  ‘Shh. Don’t worry. We’ll look after you.’

  ‘So glad you are … all right.’

  He smiles weakly, trying, even now, to be polite.

  ‘Donald … you’re going to be all right.’ I’m trying to smile, but all I can think is, he is only a few years older than Francis, and I was never very nice to him. ‘Parker is making you some tea, and … we’ll take you back to the post; we’ll look after you. I’ll look after you …’

  ‘You’ve changed,’ he accuses me, which I suppose is hardly surprising, since my hair is loose and wild, my eyes weep without cease, and a large lump has risen on my forehead.

  Suddenly he grips my hand with surprising strength. ‘I want you to do something for me …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have discovered … something extraordinary.’

  His breath is getting horribly short. His eyes, without his spectacles, are grey and distant, wandering. I notice the spectacles on the ground near my foot and pick them up.

  ‘Here …’ I try to put them on for him, but he moves his head slightly, pushing them away. ‘Better … without.’

  ‘All right. You’ve discovered … what?’

  ‘Something extraordinary.’ He smiles slightly, happily.

  ‘What? You mean Stewart and the furs?’

  He frowns, surprised. His voice is fainter, as though it’s leaving him. ‘Not what I meant at all. I … love.’

  I lean nearer and nearer, until my ear is an inch from his mouth.

  The words fade away.

  Mrs Ross leaning over him sways like a reed in the wind. Donald can’t get over how she has changed–her face, even half-hidden by her hair, is softer, kinder; and her eyes shine, all dazzling colour like bright water, as though the pupils have contracted to nothing.

  He stops himself from saying the name ‘Maria’. Maybe, he thinks, it is better that she doesn’t know. That she doesn’t have that tug of loss, of regret, of possibility snuffed out, always nagging at the back of her mind.

  But now, in front of Donald a tunnel opens up, an immensely long tunnel, and it is like looking down the wrong end of a telescope, through which everything is very tiny, but very sharp.

  A tunnel of years.

  He looks on with astonishment: through the tunnel he sees the life he would have had with Maria: their marriage, their children, their quarrels, their petty disagreements. The arguments about his career. The moving to the city. The touch of her flesh.

  The way he would smooth out the little crease in her forehead with his thumb. Her taking him to task. Her smile.

  He smiles back at her, remembering how she took off her shawl to staunch his wound at the rugby match, the day they first met, all those years ago. His blood on her shawl, binding them.

  The life whirrs before him like a riffled deck of cards in the hands of a dealer, each picture glowing and complete in every detail. He can see himself when old, and Maria, also old, still full of energy. Arguing, writing, reading between the lines, having the last word.

  Having no regrets.

  It doesn’t look like a bad life.

  Maria Knox will never know the life she might have had, but Donald knows it. He knows, and he is glad.

  Mrs Ross is looking down at him, her face in a mist, dazzling and moist, beautiful. She is very near and very far away. She seems to be asking him something, but for some reason he can’t hear her any more.

  But everything is clear.

  And so Donald doesn’t say Maria’s name, or anything else at all.

  The worst thing of all was taking Alec to see the body of his father. He insisted we bring it back to Hanover House, as we will Donald, and bury them there. Stewart we decided to bury in the shallow grave he dug himself. That seems fair enough.

  Half Man was badly wounded by Parker’s bullet, but when we went back to the cabin, he had gone. His trail led off north, and Parker followed it for a while, then came back. He was shot in the neck and probably wouldn’t last long. To the north of the lake there is nothing except snow and ice.

  ‘Let the wolves take care of him,’ is what he said.

  We wrapped Donald and Nepapanees in furs–Alec found a deerskin for his father, which seemed important to him. Donald we wrapped in fox and marten; soft and warm. Parker made a bundle of the most valuable furs and loaded it onto the sled. Jammet had a son: they are for him, and for Elizabeth and her family. As for the rest, I suppose Parker will come back for them some day. I do not ask. He does not say.

  We did all this by noon of that day.

  And now we are walking back to Hanover House. The dogs pull the sled with the bodies on it. Alec walks beside it. Parker drives the dogs, and I walk behind him. We are following our own outward trail, and that of our pursuers, printed deep into the snow. I find that I have learnt, without realising it, to identify tracks. Every so often I see a print that I know is mine, and I step on it, to rub it out. This country is scored with such marks; slender traces of human desire. But these trails, like this bitter path, are fragile, winterworn, and when the snow falls again, or when it thaws in spring, all trace of our passing will vanish.

  Even so, three of these tracks have outlasted the men who made them.

  I find, when it occurs to me to look, that I have lost the bone tablet. It was still in my pocket when I left Hanover House, but now it has gone. I tell Parker this, and he shrugs. He says, if it is important, it will be found again. And in a way–although I feel sorry for poor Mr Sturrock, who seemed to hanker for it–I am glad not to have something that other people want so much. No good seems to come of such things.

  I have been thinking of course, and dreaming when I sleep, of Parker. And this much I know: he thinks of me. But we are a conundrum to which there is no answer. After so much horror, we cannot go on–if I am honest, never could have.

  And yet, whenever we stop, I cannot take my eyes from his face. The prospect of leaving him is like the prospect of losing my eyesight. I think of all the things he has been to me: stranger, fugitive, guide.

  Love. Lodestone. My true north. I turn always to him.

  He will take me back to Himmelvanger and then go on–back to wherever he came from. I do not know if he is married, I suppose he is. I never asked, and will not now. I know almost nothing about him. And he–he does not even know my first name.

  Some things could make you laugh, if you felt like laughing. A while after I think this, Parker turns to me. Alec is several paces ahead.

  ‘Mrs Ross?’

  I smile at him. As I have said, I cannot help myself. He smiles back in that way he has: a knife in my heart that I would not remove for all the world.

  ‘You have never told me your name.’

  It is lucky the wind is so cold, as it freezes the tears before they fall. I shake my head, and smile. ‘You have used it often enough.’

  He looks at me then, so hard that, for once, I drop my gaze first. His eyes do have a light in them after all.

  I force my mind to turn to Francis, and Dove River. Angus. The pieces I have to put back together.

  I force myself to feel the Sickness of Long Thinking.

  And then Parker turns back to the dogs and the sled, and keeps walking, and so do I.

  For what else can any of us do?

 

 

 
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