Duelling in a New World

by Ann Birch

  They laugh together and drain the last dregs from the bottle of port.

  Chapter Fifteen

  November 1793

  White strolls through his new log house. It seems palatial when he compares it with his stuffy little corner in the Gov’s tent and the subsequent rented rooms in the cabin he shared for several months with Osgoode. This dwelling is a squared-log structure, so his builder has told him, and though he at first had no idea what the man was talking about when he jawed on about adzes and hewing hatchets, he can see now that it’s a vast improvement over the round-log cabin he lately occupied. For one thing, the walls have plaster, so he’ll be able to put up pictures.

  There’s also a big kitchen with a bake oven and open hearth, flanked by a small separate dining room, an alcove for his books and desk, and a loft for his bed and washstand.

  One of the best features is the well at the back door. His cynicism nearly lost him that asset. He remembers a wizened little Indian man sitting on his back stoop, holding a forked branch in his hand. He’d ignored the man for several hours—Indians often rest on settlers’ stoops during their treks back and forth on their forest trails—and then he’d asked him if he needed some food.

  “Not need food,” the man said. “You need water. I get water. You pay me.”

  Much palaver had followed, the gist of it being that the Indian was a “witcher” who could find him water with his forked hazel wood branch. Trickster, not witcher, had been White’s thought.

  The man had said, “Watch me.” Back and forth across White’s “back forty” the Indian had walked, holding the two ends of the fork in his hands with the butt of the branch pointing forward.

  Mumbo-jumbo. Then, while he was muttering to himself, the forked branch twisted in the Indian’s hand and the butt of the branch moved downwards as if an invisible force was yanking it from his hands.

  “Water right here,” the Indian said.

  “Dig me a well then,” White had replied. “I will pay you English coins if you find water.” Not bloody likely that you will . . .

  But two days later, the well was dug, a pump installed, and four English pounds put into the witcher’s outstretched hand. And sure enough, there was fresh water for every need. If Marianne had told me this story, I’d have accused her of an opium dream.

  He has purchased most of his furniture from local carpenters to save money, but several dozen hock glasses which he’d ordered from a Montreal merchant were stolen on the wharf here when the packet boat landed. These building and furnishing costs have left him deep in debt to his long-suffering friend and brother-in-law, Sam Shepherd.

  He knows, too, that Sam has borne most of the expenses of his family in London. Not one word has he heard from Marianne in the months since he left London, but Ellen, dear Ellen, has sent him a note giving him news of herself and her small brothers. She misses him, that is certain, but there is nothing in the content of her letter to show that William and Charles even remember him. Her writing style has improved, though. Sam’s governess has obviously been of benefit, but he is upset to learn Ellen has been in an altercation with his sister, Sam’s wife, over the purchase of ribbons. Marianne should surely keep the child from incurring extra expenses!

  Time is running out. I must soon resume my role as husband and father. But for now . . . carpe diem!

  He looks at his pocket watch. Yes, carpe diem. He is due for dinner at the Smalls’ house. There have been many dinings and suppings, embracings, and snugglings in the last few weeks. In his own house now, away from Osgoode and with the Simcoes far off in Toronto, it’s easy to arrange trysts. Even the deep woods, red and golden now in their autumn foliage, offer opportunities. What’s more, he can walk over to the Smalls from his new house. That’s a relief since his constant borrowing of Russell’s horse might have raised some suspicions.

  Yvette has come with him to his new abode, so he has not had to find another cook. She enters the kitchen now from the back door with a huge squash from the root cellar, enough for many meals, he fears. Roasted squash and whitefish are her major culinary accomplishments. Though the kitchen has a fine bake oven, she has not the faintest notion of how to make bread. White brought her a bottle of the milky white liquid which Miss Russell calls yeast, but the girl, not knowing what it was, threw it into the hearth. Dessert is inevitably Indian corn flour pudding, but flavoured with maple sugar, it is tasty enough.

  He looks again at his pocket-watch. Best to get going. “Goodbye, Yvette,” he says. Her back is to him. She’s cutting up the squash, and her reply is muffled. She’s a quiet, unobtrusive young woman, a pleasant change from the chatterers in his circle. She has seemed even more withdrawn lately, and he wonders fleetingly if there is some problem.

  * * *

  The Smalls’ dinner is capital: vichyssoise, lamb cutlet with mint sauce, and bread pudding. Good food is part of Betsy’s allure. As always, she and White bide their time, addressing each other formally, and waiting for the departure of the unwanted husband. Usually Small leaves for his work at Navy Hall soon after their dinners, but today he lingers, much to White’s annoyance. Perhaps he’s taking advantage of the knowledge that the Gov will not be around to record his absence.

  “Smith is newly arrived from York,” he says to White.

  “York? I was unaware he’d gone to England.” Then he remembers. The settlement at Toronto was renamed in August after the Duke of York’s military victory somewhere or other. A yawn escapes him, as he moves his foot under the table until it just touches Betsy’s. She takes her cue.

  “Is it time, husband, that you went to Navy Hall? You said you had some letters to copy.”

  “In a moment, my dear. I wanted to tell White the latest gossip. Smith has been making maps for the Governor of the harbour and the settlement there, and he thinks there’s something brewing. He suspects the Governor may be considering it as the new capital of Upper Canada.”

  “Bloody not!”

  “Language, language, dear Mr. White,” Betsy says.

  “No details, mind you. Just a rumour. York does seem to be a wiser choice for our capital than here where we are at the mercy of the barbarians at the gate. Dear Betsy and I will of course comply with whatever His Excellency decides.”

  Sanctimonious upstart. “But I’ve just laid out six hundred pounds for my house. And what about Russell? He’s just moved into his magnificent new house on the commons. And Smith himself is about to move. Why, this backwater is just starting to metamorphose into a decent settlement. Dammit, the Gov cannot be so insensitive to our needs.”

  “Drink up, dear sir,” Betsy says, pouring more claret into his glass. “Just a rumour, as my husband says. You know how Mr. Smith loves to tell tales.”

  That much is certainly true. Perhaps the Gov just made one of his random remarks and Smith happened to overhear it.

  “And that’s not all. Here’s something you’ll be specially interested in, White.” Small takes another pull on his cigar and exhales a fug of mint and tobacco. “Smith tells me that as he was coming in early this morning, he saw Richard Tickell and your half-breed cook in a carnal embrace a few yards from where the boat docked.”

  White opens his mouth to protest the phrase “half-breed” when Betsy shrieks, “Mr. Tickell with a squaw? I don’t believe it!”

  Why is she so concerned about Tickell’s amours? A mere clerk, subordinate even to Small, with unseemly ambitions to become a lawyer?

  “I wish Smith would shut up,” White says. “Yvette LaCroix is surely of more value to this world than Richard Tickell. Her affairs are her own business, and I hate to see them bruited in common gossip.”

  Betsy seems to have got over her outburst, but her face is red and she’s fanning herself.

  “Well, I am sorry to have caused upset,” Small says. “I am off to Navy Hall now, but I hope you’ll stay, White, and have another helping of pudding. My man will drive you home in the calash. I’m riding my horse.”

  White
and Betsy look out the window, waiting until Small is out of sight, then they turn to each other. Betsy seems calmer now. She rings for the cook, orders more pudding for him, then disappears to another part of the house.

  I wonder what she has in store for me today. It had better be good enough to take my mind off Smith’s disturbing gossip.

  He finishes his pudding and pours another glass of claret. He sips it slowly, hoping it won’t botch his “performance,” as he calls these interludes. Suddenly she’s there behind him. She puts her hands over his eyes and giggles.

  “Picture a hot day by the sea, a fishing-boat tethered by the wharf, a villa with Corinthian columns, a beautiful woman in a chiton dancing on the piazza, and you, dear John, drinking your wine and singing a madrigal.”

  What now? Wish she’d take her hands down and let us get on with whatever she’s planned . . .

  “Now, open your eyes and turn around. It’s my costume for the subscription ball next week at Wilson’s Tavern.”

  When he turns, he sees a face and figure that might reasonably have belonged to Helen of Troy. Her costume is one of those two-tiered things he’s seen in books of classical mythology—a chiton, is that what she said?—which clings to her beautiful breasts and shows off her narrow ankles and delicate feet. She carries a bow and arrow. Why?

  Evidently seeing his bewilderment, she says, “I’m an Amazon, of course.”

  “With two breasts?” he asks, trying to keep things light.

  “Silly John. So you really believe the Amazons could not fire off their arrows without two bosoms? Have a look, do.” She steps into the space beyond the dining table, strikes a pose, then pulls the bowstring taut. The top tier of her costume drops dramatically revealing that, yes, there are definitely two of them.

  That prelude leads quickly to the next act. He jumps from his chair, grabs her, and locks her into a hot embrace. Her “chiton” falls to her waist. He pulls off his wig, undoes the flap on his breeches, and then . . .

  There’s an urgent tapping at the door to the dining room.

  “Ma’am, ma’am,” says the voice of the maid, “Mrs. Jarvis is here.”

  In a swift movement, Betsy sets her dress aright. “For God’s sake,” she hisses at him, “fix your flap.” He does so, and has just retrieved his wig from the chair when Mrs. Jarvis sweeps in.

  He’s aware of his heavy breathing and red face and the ridiculous spectacle he presents. But Betsy is as cool as an early breeze off the Aegean.

  “Do be seated, Mrs. Jarvis. You’re just in time to admire my costume for the ball. Mr. Small likes it excessively, and I have tried it on for Mr. White who has kindly offered to drive us to the tavern tomorrow night.” Silly woman. Surely she should remember that Mrs. Jarvis knows I have no horse and carriage!

  With utter sangfroid, Betsy pulls the bell for the servant and orders tea.

  Mrs. Jarvis, of all people to detect them in this manner. Perhaps she suspects nothing, but if she does, she will certainly use the information against him. She’s no fan of his, especially since he’s had to take over the making of the land deeds for her incompetent husband.

  One thing he knows for certain. He’ll have to break off the affair. For no woman will I jeopardize my career.

  Chapter Sixteen

  January 1794

  White dons the snowshoes given him by the Indian called Big Canoe whose murder charge he allayed with the Writ of Attaint that scared the breeches off the white jurors. The man appeared on his doorstep one morning just after the first big snowfall of the winter. He had a load on his back, the weight distributed by what the Indians call a burden strap, a sort of tumpline secured along his forehead with a strip of knotted wool from which hung the strips of elm bark fabric that contained the load. He took from the burden strap a pair of snowshoes that he thrust at White, then gave a salute as if he were one of the Queen’s Rangers, and disappeared into the woods without a word.

  He’d never seen snowshoes until his first winter in Upper Canada. Then he’d looked with envy through the window at the Indians floating by on top of the snow. He himself had felt trapped by the drifts. Every time he put a foot into those piles of snow, he’d sunk to his knees. Winter that first year in Canada had been a trap that he could not get free of until the spring sunshine led him out of doors to walk and ride.

  Yvette has shown him how to tie the snowshoes to his moccasins with leather straps. At first the bent wood frames interlaced with all those rawhide strips seemed heavy and awkward, but after a day or two, he’d mastered the manoeuvres. Soon they seemed like a huge pair of shoes that flattened the snow around him, enabling him to pass along the embankment like a master of the universe.

  This morning’s sunlight is bright on the snow as he tramps towards Queenston. The Hamiltons will give him a good breakfast, and then he will ask Mrs. Hamilton if she has a remedy for Yvette who seems ill today. From his loft above the kitchen, he heard her crying during the night. He knows she went out somewhere into the snow at midnight, and he did not fall to sleep again until he heard the door shut quietly hours later.

  As he climbed down from his loft for breakfast, she slammed the lid on the chamberpot in the kitchen, but not before he saw the blood in it. He questioned her about it, but she did not answer. Women’s problems, some form of uterine bleeding. He has heard Mrs. Jarvis speak to Eliza Russell of the maidenhair fern as an efficacious remedy. Mrs. Hamilton can give him advice and possibly sell him the dried fern as well.

  He clumps briskly over the thick snow, the frozen river far below him on his left, and the Hamiltons’ stone residence a mere half-mile ahead. Someone has already made a trail through the woods. Possibly an Indian trapper, because there are trickles of blood on the white surface. The powder snow swallows noise, and he’s within a few feet of a timber wolf before the animal senses his presence and skulks into the forest. It leaves behind some fresh kill, a rabbit perhaps, though as he gets closer, he sees it’s not a rabbit. It’s a bloody bundle of something. He moves closer and looks down at it. No, no, surely not. . .

  But yes. It is . . . a tiny infant, probably newborn, wrapped in a knitted scarf. Which he recognizes. Yvette’s, the knitting project she’s been working on at the kitchen table for the past couple of months. The wolf has torn away part of the scarf and chewed at the infant’s belly. What is this all about?

  Suddenly the shadowy images at the back of his mind become clear: the gossip about Yvette and Tickell, the crying, the disappearance into the night; the blood in the chamber pot this morning. He stands looking down at the dead babe, trying to sort out what to do. One thing for certain, he’s got to get this bundle out of here. Before the wolves eat it. Before someone discovers it and traces it back to Yvette. Any woman who tries to conceal a birth in these parts is guilty of infanticide and sentenced to death by hanging.

  White looks around. The woods are very still. The wolf has disappeared. He has an empty leather satchel slung over his back. He takes off his snowshoes. Leans in close to look at the corpse. Besides the eaten-away belly, its head is badly mutilated, no discernible features, just the bloody mess the wolf left behind.

  Trying to ignore the pain that has risen from his chest into his throat, he picks up the bundle and stuffs it into his satchel. Gets the snowshoes on and turns back to his house.

  Why did I not notice that Yvette was with child? Too damn wrapped up in my own worries. And what now? What are we to do?

  When he comes through the back door of his house, his satchel bulging with the dead body, Yvette cowers in a chair, covering her head with her hands as if she expects him to strike her. “Non, non!” she cries over and over.

  “Listen to me,” White says, kneeling in front of her. “I don’t want to know what you’ve done. I just want to help you. Please.”

  “Bébé dead when born,” she says, “I not kill bébé.”

  Stillborn? Perhaps. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to figure something out.

  “Yvette, think of so
mewhere we can hide this baby. If it were spring, we could give it a decent burial in the garden somewhere. But for now, we must get it out of sight.”

  He soon realizes he will get no help from Yvette. The night’s horrors have killed everything that is rational in her. She’s still hiding her face and head as if she wants to block out him and that infant corpse. Never one to say much—perhaps because she speaks an Indian-French patois—she can now utter only “Non, non!”

  He sees the cut-up squash on the table and an idea comes to him. That’s it. The root cellar. But I’ll need a box. Yes, my book box. Up in the loft.

  Leaving the satchel beside the hearth, he climbs up the ladder. His box of books sits near the washstand. He upturns the box, the lid swings open on its hinges, and the books spill onto the floor. He descends the ladder, places the satchel inside the box, and snaps the lid down. It’s all done in an instant, and he’s careful not to let Yvette see the horror of her babe’s half-eaten body. It’s a neat little casket, and it will go into the root cellar until spring when he can dig a hole near his back stoop away from the marauding animals in the woods.

  He notices that Yvette is no longer moaning. Her face is wet with tears, but she’s sitting up now, watching.

  He takes her hand. “Let us stand together, Yvette, and pray.” He places their hands on the lid of the box. “Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.’” For a moment he reflects on his own children, grateful that they are alive and well. They will come unto him if he can only get a comfortable haven for them in this far-flung kingdom.

  He does not know whether Yvette fully understands the words of the prayer. But she says “Amen” with him. Then she sinks into the chair again.