The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘I am glad that you are …’ But for the moment Isabella could think of nothing to say. Had she meant to say happy? Or to agree that he was fortunate? Neither would do, and yet it seemed that Bunyan would find either acceptable.

  It occurred to her then that although Bunyan knew he would die, he was experiencing the stars and the clouds, the woods, the lakes and the sea as they were told of to him by Duncan, and that her son already knew more than she had learned in a lifetime. Somewhere in the last bitter years she had thrown away hard-won knowledge and a spirit of adventure, vamping up her manner with toughness and a quick and cynical tongue.

  The woman wanted to possess this young man, as if what he knew could change her; owning him, she might extract what he knew.

  ‘I am excited by what I will find,’ said Bunyan.

  ‘What if there is nothing?’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.

  He smiled. ‘Well, at least I shall know.’

  ‘What does your father say?’

  But he was tired again and turned his head away, his eyelids drooping.

  Behind her stood Mary, whom she had not seen in a long time. She was surprised to register that she was looking better and calmer than she had for some years, though noted the slight oddness of her appearance, with a headscarf knotted under her chin like the women of old when they appeared in church.

  ‘You’re managing, then?’ she said, when they had withdrawn to the room next door.

  Mary nodded. ‘But I must. Who else will, if I don’t?’

  ‘You’ve changed, Mary.’

  ‘Have I? Oh, I don’t know about that. Perhaps I am just more myself.’

  She is still strange, thought Isabella, and remembered the times when Mary had been alone over the years. For it was in those times, when McLeod had ridden into the wilderness to preach his word, or the happy year when he had gone to New York State to be ordained so that he could marry people and legally represent himself to the Governor in Halifax as a minister, that Mary had had small brief summers of her own, seeming to keep well and strong and manage her children as she never did when her husband was home.

  It was only when he was there that she withdrew into herself, going out little and not appearing in church where, on occasion, McLeod had berated even her for immodest ways.

  Looking at her now, Isabella guessed that at present she felt as if she was alone and was the stronger for it. Still, she was unable to resist asking her a further question.

  ‘Does Norman comfort Bunyan?’ she said. For although it felt improper, she experienced a vague, uneasy excitement, as if a new dimension on McLeod might be revealed.

  Mary blinked, seeming not quite to have heard. ‘Thank you for the conserves, Isabella. You are always so kind to us.’

  Behind them, Peggy and Annie ran down the passageway, chanting a spelling rhyme.

  ‘Should I keep Annie home?’ said Isabella.

  ‘Oh she is no trouble, no trouble at all‚’ said Mary. She clutched Isabella’s hand as if possessed of a quick thought and as if they had had no discussion at all about McLeod. ‘I have to tell you, Isabella, I cannot help but wonder if Bunyan’s view of the eternal differs from that of his father.’

  Bunyan did not die until the spring and it seemed to those who watched like the longest winter since the world began.

  On the day that he was buried all the men of St Ann’s gathered at Black Cove. Of late, some who dared had stayed away from the services, tired of the absolute power that was McLeod and querulous with anxiety about the corruption which they saw but dared not name amongst his sons.

  Now, out of a tender regard that they believed they had forgotten, they came back to him.

  Isabella watched Duncan Cave, pale as milk and dressed in black, set off limping on his game foot across the fields to where the burial would take place. The death of Bunyan felt like a blow beneath her heart.

  ‘What of Bunyan?’ she had asked Duncan Cave the night before. ‘How was he at the last? Was he at peace with himself? Did his father give him comfort when he needed it?’

  But Duncan Cave had been either too removed from her in his grief to be reached, or he did not know. It was all the same; he did not answer her.

  Behind Duncan Cave, Fraser and Black Hector had followed. ‘Who does he think he is, setting off without us,’ Fraser said to her as he did up his collar stud.

  ‘It was his friend, understand he wants to be alone,’ said Isabella, for once placatory.

  ‘Hmph. McLeod’s an older friend of mine. Those two boys did not know each other as long as I have known McLeod.’

  ‘But it is the boy who is dead,’ said Isabella patiently.

  At last she was alone, for Annie would spend the day with Kate MacKenzie where grief was not so thick on the ground as here. Isabella knew that Annie secretly would have preferred to stay with her, and that she had been unkind to send her away. She is a child, she said to herself, children do not understand the meaning of grief in the same way that we adults do.

  She knew that she was cruel.

  She leaned and stroked her cat, of which she was more than a little fond. She called him Noah, though quietly, for fear that some, overhearing her, might be offended. She did not know where he had come from. One day he had simply appeared at her door, sleek and rather overfed. Yet nobody had laid claim to him, and so he had come to live with her. He had wide eyes like a slice of the moon, and his coat was long and black and fluffy. Under his chin there was a bib of white which gave him a slightly petulant air, as if his lip was drooping. He loved Isabella with a passion which she might have found embarrassing had he been human.

  But today, there being nobody around, she stretched herself in the sun, revitalised as if in forgiveness for the winter and the death of Bunyan, even though neither were anything to do with her or anything that she had done. She felt her body steal back to life. As warmth soaked through her, she felt that she could do anything, walk on water if she must, and at first such a strange and hectic notion, so apparently frivolous in regard to the Scriptures, frightened her. But then she thought, why should I not have confidence in myself, why do I have to believe that I am subservient to the will of others. And even if I am not brazen enough to confront them with such confidence, I can nurture it in private, and what harm does it do anyone, especially if it will make me feel so much better?

  So she stretched there, letting her skin soak up the heat of the spring sun, and the cat leapt up beside her, nuzzling under her armpits, driven wild by the accumulated sweat in the matted cloth of her winter garments. He nibbled fiercely as if he were having a meal, then folded his body down the length of hers, purring a loud noisy dribbling purr until he slept so deeply that they both entered a long period of stillness. She was anchored to this spot, fearing to disturb him, and an hour or more passed this way with his body curled along hers.

  It grew cooler as the sun dropped away from midday, and Noah stirred, stretching out to his full length before he gathered himself tidily together and minced down the path, looking for a bird.

  Then, confused by the sun and guilty for such indolence on a day committed to sorrow, Isabella sank back, her lethargy overtaking her again, until Noah redirected his attention towards her.

  In the garden she heard his high piping miaow, a kind of nya, nya, nya in the back of his throat as he flung himself at her. He landed on her back, digging in all his claws, seemingly determined to injure her yet loving her as well as he kneaded his paws backwards and forwards in her flesh, only a stray claw reminding her that he was not to be trusted.

  So this is what I have come to then, she thought, communing with a half-wild animal that has sprung from nowhere and taken over my life.

  No wonder her daughter was in the habit of eyeing him with positive dislike.

  It was shortly after the death of Bunyan that Isabella began attending the revival meetings that were taking place in various parts of Cape Breton, giving rise to the notion that she was truly out of
her mind or else truly wilful and without concern for the consequences of her actions. But it had begun more accidentally than the people of St Ann’s believed.

  On a summer day she was sitting at the front door with Noah in her lap, with the house behind her so quiet that she believed it to be empty. As she was about to stretch in the sun there was a footstep behind her. She knew without looking that it was Duncan Cave, for it was a different footstep from that of anyone she knew and there was no way he had ever been able to disguise it from her, landing with a thump on his left foot even when he danced.

  Only today he was not dancing, and his face was gaunt.

  ‘I thought you had gone out,’ she said.

  ‘There’s nowhere to go.’

  ‘You can’t stay in that room forever.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You have to do something.’

  ‘Why? What do you do?’

  She regarded him and he looked back at her, an unblinking mirror of her own face. They never quarrelled, and yet there was a trace of accusation in his tone.

  After a while, she offered, ‘There were things that Bunyan said.’

  ‘Mother, I know what Bunyan said.’

  ‘Did he tell you to stay moping indoors for him all through the summer?’

  He was silent.

  ‘I know you heard what Bunyan said, but I heard only some of it. Now I see ghosts.’

  ‘You do, mother?’

  ‘And creatures in the woods. They come at me in dreams, I don’t know who they are, Duncan. Sometimes I think they are real, and then I’m frightened, but other times I’m not sure if it is just a craziness that I have. We came out of the woods, you and me, Duncan Cave.’

  He shivered.

  She sat, reflecting. She recalled how once, in a cave, McLeod had come to her. It must have been McLeod, she was sure, for who else could it have been — a tall man on a misty afternoon, a man wearing a cloak, taking her away from a place where she was calm and happy. He had led her away on a horse, saying that she must put all that had befallen her behind her. She could not remember what he meant though, for the past was like a dream. In that cave there was lightness, and whiteness, and whatever it was that frightened her had disappeared. But now, at the edge of her consciousness, there was fear again.

  And she wondered, but could not explain to Duncan Cave, whether it would all have been different if McLeod had been Bunyan, if Bunyan was not McLeod reborn as he might have been. Only now Bunyan was dead, and she would never find out.

  ‘I think I should go back into the woods,’ she said. She took his hand absently in hers. Beside her he lifted his face to the wind, as if the answers might be on the breeze, as if something was stirring far back in his mind.

  Next time she saw him come out of his room it was Sunday, when the house was empty of the rest of the family again. This time he held a sketching pad in his hand. Waiting until he was out of sight she walked slowly across the field to where Fraser’s second horse was standing and saddled him up.

  It was a long time since she had ridden, but the horse seemed pleased of the outing and the forest felt friendly. There was a clean scent of pine needles and the tang of spruce in the air. Deeper in amongst the trees snow was banked up comfortably against the trunks like fluffy white pillows, even though it was almost midsummer, and there were creatures wilder than Noah wherever she looked. They stood stock still when she appeared, before scampering into the trees — squirrels, muskrats, and an occasional fox.

  She was glad to be on horseback, for although she was no longer afraid of bears as she once had been, she preferred not to meet them on foot.

  Soon she was aware of other stirrings amongst the trees and realised she was far beyond the perimeters of St Ann’s. She had lost all track of time and distance and found that she was caught up amongst a large group of people converging on the one spot. At first she was afraid, for it reminded her of the way people had congregated around the hanging at Pictou, even though to remember that was in itself a relief. That is why I am here, she thought, confronting what has lain buried for so long.

  Encouraged, she turned to a stranger by her side, a stocky woman with her bonnet pushed back from her head, laughing amongst a group of people.

  ‘Where are we going, then?’ asked Isabella.

  The woman looked at her as if she was simple, but seeing that she really did not know, she said, ‘To Peter McLean’s communion service.’

  ‘A real communion service?’

  For McLeod did not administer communion, considering that none were worthy of receiving the sacraments, in the same way that even now the only children he baptised were his own.

  By the time Isabella arrived at the meeting by the sea there were perhaps two hundred boats anchored in a bay and at least five hundred horses tethered in the woods. The service had already begun. At the front stood a weatherbeaten man wrapped in a buffalo cloak preaching in a way that was passionate and full of emotion. Isabella took this to be the Reverend McLean and settled herself on the grass to listen.

  ‘My friends,’ the man cried, and there was a ripple of pleasure around the congregation, ‘we do not all have to suffer eternal damnation, whatever we have done on earth. There is a possibility of pardon. And of divine grace.’

  When the people stood up to sing Isabella found that she was crying. She stayed a long time amongst the crowd, mesmerised by its ardour and by the intensity of it all. And when it was time, she took the cup.

  She couldn’t be sure of anything, of course. One never could. But as Mclean had said, there were possibilities.

  She went again on other days, travelling further overnight by Little Narrows to Whycocomagh, and from there to Lake Ainslie and Mira, arranging in her absences for Annie to stay with Kate MacKenzie. The second time she was away she collected stone root and indigo, and other plants and herbs that she remembered from long ago, and made potions that relieved the illnesses of her women friends. When she had been for the third time she saw Annie look strangely at her and guessed straight away that she understood her defection. Her daughter’s friends, who had never made a great practice of coming near, now stayed away altogether. Annie seemed to be almost entirely enfolded into the McLeod family, so that it became necessary for Isabella to make other arrangements on her behalf.

  ‘Do you really go to the meetings, mother?’ she asked her one morning as she prepared to leave for school, as if hoping that there was a final chance that she might not have to believe it.

  ‘Yes, it is true.’

  Isabella saw the bleakness in Annie’s face.

  ‘Does father know?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t care, do you?’

  ‘He wouldn’t stop me.’

  ‘You mean he couldn’t. You do what you like.’

  ‘Should I not? Do you think?’

  ‘He is afraid of you.’

  ‘Oh come. Who has been putting such ideas into your head?’ But she laughed, and could not hide a glimmer of satisfaction in her voice.

  Still, she looked at Annie, and wondered what would happen next between them.

  She wrote in her journal: ‘I am saddened that in order to find some peace of my own, we may be more or less finished with each other, especially as I doubt that I will attend many more of these meetings, the thoughts being in my head now, rather than any benefit to be derived from hearing their constant reiteration which, in the end, is the way of all churchmongering. But then, Annie has never felt as if she was truly mine. She finds more favour with her father these days. Yet she is my child, and my daughter at that, and I would that there were some part of her that I could hold onto, some way not to lose all of her.’

  In the church at St Ann’s, Annie sat between her father and Black Hector and listened to McLeod. Although when she visited his house no reproaches were ever laid on her, now she felt that he spoke directly to her about her mother.

  His voice rolled over the church and up into the high
arches.

  ‘There are people who go to the revivalist meetings and are wildly extravagant in their be-hav-iour, and immoral, with illicit procreation and sexual intercourse going on on all fronts. The women screech and scream, they screak and shriek, falling down prostrate, springing monkey-like from place to place, roll around and rave. Oh, I have seen rabid females in the United States in such transports. It is a terrible thing, some of them even believing that they possess the word of God in their own mouths, and are followed in their hysterical ways by others. That is what the Church of Scotland and its emissaries are doing to the state of religion he-ere! Still, what comes with the wind goes with the rain. These matters are but a specious flutter of the wing, and will all pass. Our modest ways at St Ann’s will prevail …’

  There were rumours about that Isabella McIssac had taken a black-and-white cat for a lover, and wore the milk teeth of her children banded round her neck, beneath the collar of her dress.

  thirteen

  One season passed into another, chasing each other, as golden rod faded, snow fell, banked and melted away and sweet spring skies unfolded, followed by another high summer and the ripening blueberries, an unfaltering procession of the years.

  Hector McIssac was fifteen. His face wore a dark fuzz of beard in the mornings which made him proud and embarrassed at the same time. McLeod decreed that beards not be worn in St Ann’s and so by the time he left for school he was clean-shaven. But he knew he had dark hair on other secret parts of him, growing in fine strands still, straight along his body. His private dream was of when it would curl along his back and shoulders as it did on his father.

  At school, which young men often attended until they were eighteen or even more if they chose — for the Man set great store by a good education — he often glanced sideways at Miss Martha MacKenzie, the sister of his best friend Lewis. He wondered if she could see how old he looked.