No Safe Anchorage

by Liz Macrae Shaw

  “You’d better explain,” he said eventually, looking from one to the other. He felt disgust as he looked at the girl. He had seen young Indian women like her skulking among the shacks down on the shore, but he was horrified to find one of them inside his own house. He remembered feeling sickened by the prostitutes, swarming cockroaches who spilled out from the shadows toward their ship when it arrived in port. They sullied everything they touched, scuttling away when an officer appeared but creeping back again, an unstoppable plague of vermin. How he hated the idea of Iain, this wholesome boy, this young David, being tainted by such a woman. Still, knowing the lad’s quick flares of anger, he forced himself to stay silent.

  “I went crazy on my own,” Iain said, sticking out his lower lip. “I had to get out of this valley, to see what was inland.” He shrugged, “A couple of weeks ago, I reached one of the old trading huts where the Indians used to bring in furs to sell. It looked empty and I turned back but then I heard voices from inside.”

  “A drinking den, no doubt.”

  Iain glowered. “They invited me in to the fire and gave me venison stew. The sweat had turned to ice in my hair and eyebrows. It was grand to thaw out and swallow that tasty food. I went back a few times, for the company. Then one day I found Spring Thaw. That’s her proper name, put into English.” He smiled at the girl, squeezing her brown twigs of fingers in his own pale, broad hands. “This time it was different. Two men had come in, strangers looking for a fight. I slipped out and was just strapping my snowshoes on when I heard a scuffle behind me. They were kicking Spring Thaw. She fell out of the door. Blood all over her face and dripping down into the snow. They went back in and slammed the door shut. She lay there as if she was dead.”

  Tom stared at the girl. She stared back and then opened her mouth. Tom was astonished to hear her speak English clearly, in a quiet but insistent voice.

  “I fainted and when I woke up Iain was wiping away the blood.” She gulped, and went on. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m not one of those women who sell their bodies to white men.”

  “Or let them force her,” Iain added. “She drew a knife on those two.”

  “Tell me who you are then.” For so long Tom had hunted for a mysterious girl who had scarcely seemed real. His gorge rose as he faced this flesh-and-blood woman who had appeared from nowhere. A completely different girl, a dark negative image of the one he had lost. Completely wrong.

  She kept looking at him. Tom shivered. It was as if she were reading his thoughts.

  “My people lived here when the white men first came. Like biting insects, forcing us back into the hills. I was born at the time of the thaw when we went down to the shore to fish. One year, when I was very young, men with dogs attacked us in the night. We fled but I couldn’t keep up and was captured.”

  Iain squeezed her hand but she took no notice, fixing her dark eyes on Tom’s face.

  “I was taken to an orphanage, not here but on another island.”

  “Prince Edward Island, I think,” Iain said.

  Her voice grew fierce. “They tried to beat the Indian out of me but once I was old enough I ran away. Came back here to find my family again.”

  “But she couldn’t. You’re safe here though.”

  “And how old are you now?” Tom asked.

  “About fifteen summers, I think.”

  “She doesn’t know exactly, just like me.” Iain nudged her, so that she giggled. “She can stay with us, can’t she?”

  “It’s not a matter for jesting. Is she here as a guest? A servant? Or another adopted child for me to raise? You’re not a full-grown man yet, but you’ve lain with this young woman. Am I right?”

  “She’s my friend.” Iain’s face was on fire.

  “A friend who shares your bed? I can understand why you rescued her, but I can’t have this kind of thing going on under my roof.”

  “Why not? Lots of men live with native women.”

  “Back in the old days unmarried men took a country wife. People frown on that now.”

  “You only care about what people think.”

  “Because I have to. I can’t draw attention to myself. You know that. What if she has a child?” Tom gestured at Spring Thaw, without looking at her.

  Iain seemed to shrink in on himself, but Spring Thaw let go of his hand and moved closer to Tom.

  “I can work hard. I learnt the ways of hunting from my people and the orphanage taught me white women’s work.”

  Tom forced himself to turn to her as she stood in front of him. Barefoot and wearing one of Iain’s shirts that billowed over her slight frame, she stood tall and looked him in the eye.

  “I’m sure you would. But it’s not so simple. Leave me while I think what to do.”

  Iain looked thunderous. They went away to put on outdoor clothes, leaving Tom to nurse his cup of tea. Whatever decision he made would create ripples of attention from their neighbors. If he told Iain that the girl would have to leave, Tom knew that the headstrong young man would likely go with her. He couldn’t manage the farm without him and besides, he was used to his presence. Forbidding them to share a bed wouldn’t work now that the boy had discovered the pleasures of her body. If he tired of her when she became pregnant, he might want to send her away, like a country wife in the old days. But this girl had no family to take her back. Tom knew he could never agree to her being discarded. He was no churchgoer, but he still held to Christian principles. He sighed in exasperation. Was he doomed to be forever battered by storms? Each time he battened down to ride the winds, another tempest would rear up. He used to chafe at the doldrums of life when he was at sea, but how he longed for some tedium now. Was there no safe harbor anywhere?

  Chapter 32

  Cape Breton Island, Spring 1863

  Tom downed his tea, wishing that he had some rum to add to it. Then he banged the cup down and stomped outside. No sign of the young people, thank goodness. He tramped over the fields, the reddish soil shrugging off its snow blanket. He saw that Iain had built a shed and stacked the tools inside. The sugar maple trees had been readied. Iain had bored holes in their trunks, secured the wooden spouts and hung the buckets from them to collect the precious sap. There would soon be so much work to do for the new season, and if he bought a horse they could do so much more, but who was the “we” to be?

  His first impulse had been to throw out the lad and his Indian whore. He didn’t believe for a moment Iain’s tale of her defending her honor. The boy was gullible. Tom shook his head to dislodge the black swarming torment in his mind. Why was it that he was so plagued by images of the two of them together? Images that erupted in his mind of the lad’s arched back and taut buttocks as he mounted that little slut. Clenching his eyes shut, Tom held his breath until his heart stopped thudding. He bent down at one of the maples to breathe in the sweet woody smell and remembered the terrified boy who had stowed away in the lifeboat. How many broken children there must be in the world, uprooted and tossed aside? Richard Williams had been one of those children, abandoned by his mother and then ill-treated by the man who took him in. Did he despair and kill himself because he was unloved? Spring Thaw too had suffered. But Tom sensed that she was supple like the birch bark he used to mend his canoe. She could bend without splitting.

  By the time he returned to the cabin an hour later, Tom had made up his mind.

  He told them to draw up their stools in front of the fire. There was a new one there too he noticed. Iain must have made it during the winter. Tom slid his hand over its planed surface.

  “I’ve decided you two will marry.” He held up a silencing hand as Iain opened his mouth. “You’re of an age to marry with my consent. You can cut down more trees and use the wood to build your own cabin. You’ll still be my apprentice in the studio and if you work hard I’ll pay you a man’s wages.”

  Spring Thaw’s eyes darted between them. Iain sat with his chin resting on his fist. Then he thrust out his arm. “I’ll shake your hand on that.”


  “Good. The first thing we must do is to arrange your wedding. We had best speak to the minister in Sydney and hope he’s not too fierce a Calvinist,” Tom said, with a thin smile. Iain nodded glumly.

  “And afterward we’ll go and buy a horse and cart, or buggy, I should say.” Tom laughed as Iain’s face lit up.

  “And we’ll need a sleigh for the winter. I could make it.”

  Dread hunched down in Tom’s stomach as they neared the manse in Sydney the next day. The last time he had visited a church had been at Richard’s funeral when he had vowed never to enter a place of worship again. He hated the thought of his friend being treated like a leper, banished outside the churchyard wall.

  Tom made sure that the young people were scrubbed and neat before they set out. Iain wore a new worsted jacket that strained across his shoulders and the girl was in a serviceable dark green dress although she refused to wear shoes.

  “I’ve never seen any of you in my church before,” said the Reverend Fraser as they sat opposite him on hard chairs. The air in his study was as cold as his voice. “Is the Indian with child?”

  Tom flashed a warning glance at Iain. “The young woman is not with child and if she were it would surely be to Iain’s credit that he intends to marry her.”

  The minister grunted, “It’s all very irregular.”

  Iain spoke up, “How is that, sir? I’m young but old enough to know my own mind. I remember an old elder from the church back home. He said, ‘God didn’t give sheep horns so that they could wound the lambs.’”

  A red mottling crept up the minister’s neck. After a silence, his lips unsealed themselves enough to squeeze out an agreement to marry the couple. Tom felt proud of Iain’s dignified courage. Heads turned, eyes swiveled and tongues clattered as the three of them walked into the church next Sunday to hear the banns read. Tom nodded to faces he recognized and ushered his charges into a pew near the back. How sturdy and open-faced Iain was. The soft contours of his face had melted away to reveal the prominent cheekbones and strong jaw beneath. The girl was modest and neat in her movements, showing no fear in what must be an ordeal for her.

  After a sermon that wallowed slack-sailed with no following wind of inspiration, the minister announced that he had banns to declare. Tom smiled encouragement at Iain, but to his amazement the names announced were those of Stephen Miller and Eliza MacKenzie. The minister’s voice boomed but then slurred when he came to Iain and Spring Thaw’s turn. Tom craned his neck to see Eliza’s fiancé, but too many Sunday hats blocked his view. Tom took no more notice of the words of the service. They were waves slapping and slurping against the hull of a boat. His companions sat rigid. At the end he motioned to them to stay seated while the congregation filed out. They had been gawped at; now it was their turn to gawp. Tom was overjoyed to see that Stephen Miller was short, stout and nearly twenty years older than his intended bride. He had round startled eyes, drooping moustaches, and no visible neck. Mrs. MacKenzie flashed her large yellow teeth and introduced her prospective son-in-law. Tom was politeness itself; only his sparkling eyes betrayed him. As he followed his charges through the churchyard, Tom could hear Mrs. MacKenzie talking loudly to another matron, “What a disgrace! Native or half-breed, would you say?”

  Tom kept marching, eyes forward until they reached the buggy. Once they were trotting through the countryside he flung his head back and laughed. “He looked like a sad walrus stuffed into a suit.” They all whooped until their sides ached. Maple, the new dappled pony, caught their mood and broke into a canter.

  Chapter 33

  Cape Breton Island, Summer 1863

  “You can’t go on your own,” Spring Thaw said, “You don’t know the land.”

  “Why not? I tramped through Scotland well enough.”

  Tom planned to travel to Lake Ainslee and the branches of the Margaree River as a traveling photographer. There were French and Irish settlers there as well as Scots, all with money to spend after netting the migratory salmon and gaspereau fish swimming upriver to their spawning grounds.

  In the month since the wedding, Spring Thaw had lost any pretense of being docile. She had first shown her stubborn nature over the wedding arrangements. Refusing to wear a proper wedding dress she had insisted on a doeskin tunic, leggings, and moccasins. True, the garments were finely crafted, more supple than any suede leather that Tom had ever seen. The tunic was fringed and decorated with beads and porcupine quills. Her heavy black hair, glossy with oil and entwined with more beads, hung in a single thick plait down to the embossed leather belt that encircled her narrow waist. Standing among their neighbors she was an exotic, migratory bird blown off course and roosting among farmyard hens. Certainly she and Iain made a handsome couple, walking up the aisle with a gravity beyond their years. Tom sensed that this mongrel marriage might succeed.

  After their wedding, they spent a few nights camping in the forests before returning and building a cabin for themselves. He saw how Spring Thaw could apply herself to any task, both women’s and men’s work. She could trap all sorts of game, bird, animal, and fish. She dragged heavy logs from a rope stretched taut across her forehead all day, barely pausing for a rest. Then he would find her in the evening, squatting cross-legged and sewing a shirt embellished with porcupine quills. It was only in farming matters that she was ignorant but she learned quickly. One evening while Tom watched her jabbing a sharpened bone needle through the sole of a moccasin he asked her, “Where did you learn these things?”

  She looked up, eyebrows raised in surprise. Tom didn’t usually speak to her directly. She took her time replying,

  “My mother wanted me to learn the old ways. She said that a true Mi’kmaq can live off the forest without having to beg from the traders.” Spring Thaw paused, her dark eyes unfocused, “Then just before the time for me to choose my woman’s name, I was dragged away to the orphanage where they tried to beat the savage out of me.” She spat the last words out.

  “And did you choose your name?”

  “I spent a day and a night in the woods waiting for an answer from my spirit creature. When I awoke I knew my name. The Spring Thaw is when I was born, a time of hunger but of hope, too. Anyway, I couldn’t be called ‘Dimpled Cheeks’ for the rest of my life, could I?”

  They both laughed.

  “What spirit creature did you choose?” asked Tom.

  “I won’t tell it to white faces who could use it against me, only Iain.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “But you are doubly white, in your skin and your hair. How can I trust you?”

  “Well, I would imagine that your spirit would be a bird.” It would seem that she doubted him as much as he doubted her.

  Now here she was speaking bluntly again. Was it disrespect or a native habit of speaking the naked truth, rather than swaddling it in layers of good manners?

  He decided to make light of it and said, “If I were a bird I could fly over to Prince Edward Island, too.”

  He laughed, but she frowned and said, “If you go to Abahquit you should take a proper sea canoe. Have you ever been in one?”

  “No, but I can handle any sort of boat, including a canoe. What does the name Abahquit mean?” The old itch of asking about place names still needed scratching.

  “It means ‘The island alongside the shore.’ My people went there for the summer fishing since the beginning of time.”

  “I only intend to travel along the rivers this time.”

  “But you don’t know the safe currents in the rivers, let alone the sea. You need a guide.”

  “Do you have someone in mind?”

  “I do. Will you meet him?”

  Curious despite himself, Tom agreed.

  Two days later, he was standing outside smoking his pipe in the early morning and enjoying the blueing of the sky when he felt a grip on his shoulder. He spun around to see a small, lean figure. The man grinned, strong white teeth gleaming in his sunburnt face. The tendons stood p
roud from his wiry arms as he folded them across his bare chest.

  “Who are you?”

  “Silent Owl. My sister told me to come.”

  Tom recognized the dark, deep-set eyes with their uncompromising gaze.

  “Well, you were silent creeping up on me. But I thought that Spring Thaw had lost all her family?”

  “She found us again when she came to the Split Lake with her man.”

  “Bras d’Or Lake? She never said anything about meeting you.”

  “There was no need to say anything until now. I’ve brought my canoe for us to try out.”

  “If you wish, but I can handle a canoe.”

  Silent Owl nodded and led the way, loping down to where the river flowed shallow but fast, toward the lake. He pointed to his canoe stretched out on the bank. It was bigger than the one Tom was used to, a slender snake with a crescent-shaped prow and stern curved like a ram’s horn. At the front, a delicate pattern of geometric diamonds was pricked out in porcupine quills dyed black and green. After handing Tom a paddle, he pushed the vessel into the water and leapt into it. Tom’s first task was to climb aboard the slithering vessel. Red with exasperation he floundered in the water. Finally, he flopped headfirst into the stern and started paddling. His fumbling efforts made the canoe spin and take in water. Silent Owl leant his body over to the other side and feathered the water with his own paddle to right them. Tom sat back on his heels and watched Silent Owl’s deft movements. As Tom copied them they sped along, the canoe skimming and darting like a swallow over the water. After several miles, Silent Owl swung the boat around and they returned upstream back up the river, Tom gritting his teeth against the throbbing in his arms and shoulders. He jumped out and hauled the canoe ashore when they reached their starting point. His breath was rasping while Silent Owl was unaffected, apart from a sheen of sweat on his back and chest.

  “Now we carry the canoe up to the cabin,” he told Tom. They ran up the slope holding it aloft. By the time they reached home, Tom’s legs were buckling. Spring Thaw stood waiting for them. Her brother spoke to her in their own language while Tom lowered the boat to the ground and tried to stop the tremor in his arms.