No Safe Anchorage

by Liz Macrae Shaw

  They had to cross the Cabot Strait in a large sea canoe. Six others joined them as crew. At first, the newcomers stared at Tom when they thought he wasn’t looking and one of them reached out to touch his hair, wondering at the strange white cloud. After that they settled down to paddling. Once they made landfall the others headed off for the northern peninsula, a raised finger pointing toward the coast of Labrador. They would hunt for caribou in the mountains that Silent Owl had drawn. Meanwhile, Tom and Silent Owl would travel to the fishing villages of the eastern coast before heading north to join them.

  The landscape was different from Cape Breton. There was no imagining here that you could be in the Highlands. It was harsher, colder, more barren and bleached. The clammy skies sagged with sea fog and the winds still blew a winter breath in June.

  As before they were welcomed as a diversion in the remote villages. Children skipped after Tom as if he was the Pied Piper, full of questions and wanting to carry his camera. Their cries would bring out their mothers and one of the women would invite him to sit in front of the fire with a dish of tea. The man of the house would often saunter in and offer a dram. Tom always refused. “You don’t want a blurred photograph.”

  Meanwhile, his wife was trussing up the children in their Sunday clothes. Once Tom had been invited into one house, the neighbors would not want to be outdone and he could work his way down the whole row of houses. After the formal pictures were taken, he would suggest that they might want to be pictured with a savage, making sure that the children overheard.

  Afterward Tom liked to wander along the shore to take less formal studies of people in their work clothes. The men in their fishermen’s jerseys agreed but the women were reluctant to be photographed wearing rough aprons with their sleeves rolled up and their feet sturdily booted. They reminded him of the generous fisher lasses in Stornoway who had been so particular about their Sabbath dress.

  Tom and Silent Owl made their way along the eastern seaboard, letting their pack horse plod along at his own pace through villages perched like an afterthought on the ancient rocky surface. The wooden houses were all built in the same way, bunched together, mostly single storied with only the church standing taller. So when they approached the small settlement near Notre Dame Bay, Tom noticed at once the two-storied house, head and shoulders above the rest and separated from its neighbors by a stone wall. They must be richer than the others, he thought and decided to try there first. He walked up to the doorstep, camera case perched on his shoulder. While he waited for an answer, he peered into the lighted window. He was staring at the ornate lamp there when the door was opened. The figure in the doorway seized his arm and pulled him inside on tottering legs. The door into the front room was ajar and she pushed him inside.

  “Here’s a stranger come,” she announced before disappearing.

  “I’m a traveling photographer.” Tom’s voice cracked. They all turned to look at him, open-mouthed children, bearded men with ruddy faces and women with wary smiles. None of these he recognized, except the woman who sat, straight-backed and hawk-eyed in the midst of them. A queen surrounded by her court. He knew her face although the flesh of her skull was scraped back further to the bone.

  “I remember you from across the sea. You’ve changed occupations, I see.” Her voice was as strong as he remembered. “I heard about the terrible things that befell Captain Otter’s ship.”

  Tom wanted to flee but his feet were anchored to the floor. What did she know? Would she betray him?

  “We’ve all made a fresh start. Would you like me to photograph your family?”

  She surveyed him and then seemed to make up her mind. “Very well. Take them outside at the front of the house. Off you all go and make yourselves ready.” Tom Masters and Janet MacKenzie were left alone. “We still live by fishing. I had visions of us becoming farmers, but my son Murdo has saltwater in his veins. So I still light the lamp to guide him home safely.”

  Tom took a deep breath. “I’ve been given a second chance and I haven’t wasted it.” He held out his arm to help her as she rose to her feet, wincing a little. She nodded, her expression unreadable.

  Once he had shuffled everyone in place outside in the watery sunshine, Tom looked around, puzzled. “There’s someone missing? The lady who came to the door?”

  There were some indrawn breaths before Janet spoke. “Take your picture. She can join us later.”

  The auburn-haired woman appeared for the last picture. She joined the end of the line, chin up and face flushed. Tom had to tell Murdo to shunt along to give her room. Side by side they looked so alike although she was younger. Brother and sister surely? She reminded him of someone. So who was she?

  When he had finished Janet came up to him, holding out his payment. “Go to the kitchen for something to eat.”

  Tom didn’t know whether he felt affronted or amused. Traveling photographers must be a lower form of life than naval officers who stayed in the parlour for their refreshment.

  Chapter 37

  Newfoundland, 1864

  He sat down at the kitchen table, watching as she poured him out a cup of tea, this stranger who was so familiar to him. Her knuckles were clenched white and she kept her gaze averted.

  “Please sit down for a moment.” She edged herself into the chair opposite him. “I saw you in the doorway and thought for a moment that … but I was wrong.”

  “I know who you must be.”

  “Please tell me who you are. I could see at once that you’re one of the MacKenzies.”

  She laughed, a scratchy sound. “Not one they admit to. Poor Mistress MacKenzie, torn between her Christian duty and her sense of shame. I’m the dirty family secret, the bastard child.” Tom flinched. “Not hers of course. His, her husband’s. Not a moral man. A woman in every port.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Màiri.” Tom waited, but she said no more.

  “How did Mistress MacKenzie learn of your existence?”

  Again the grating laugh before she replied, “She didn’t for many years. He was away a lot and could keep his misdeeds secret. He did at least provide for my mother but that all ended when he was drowned.”

  “So how did you come to meet her?”

  “By chance, on the ship. I dropped my bag coming aboard and a man stopped to help me. My brother, Murdo. We looked at each other and he nearly dropped the bag again. Our father passed his features on to both of us. He was said to be a handsome man.” She looked hard at Tom. “I’m not speaking out of vanity. Beauty is a curse. Men pursue beauty. They only care about the face, not the woman herself.”

  Tom looked down, thinking how he was guilty of that obsession too.

  “I couldn’t endure staying on Skye any longer. I wanted a new life but I was too scared to fly far. I took Mistress MacKenzie’s offer to stay as their servant.”

  “And do they treat you well?”

  “Aye, except when strangers like you interfere.”

  She sat with her eyes closed while Tom drank his tea and willed himself to stay quiet. After what seemed an eternity her eyes snapped open and probed his face again,

  “I’ll tell you about what happened to your friend that day.”

  And she did as the wind swooped and the gulls wailed outside.

  “There isn’t a day when I don’t wake up with wet cheeks for that life lost, twice over,” she finished. “It’s God’s judgement on me.”

  “I’m in no position to judge.”

  “What will you do now?”

  He took out the creased drawing from the pocket of his jacket. “You must tell me what you know about her.”

  She avoided his gaze, her hands scrabbling together in her lap. “But you’ve found another love now.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, I have but I won’t give up hope of finding her.”

  He wanted to shake her but instead he sat rigid. Finally she whispered, “I can tell you who she is, but I’ve no idea where sh
e is.”

  She told him, the words wrenched from her throat. Tom stumbled to his feet and mumbled his farewells. He left her hunched over the table, her body heaving with unshed tears.

  “You look like a man who’s hunted all day and not caught anything to eat,” Silent Owl said, when they set off again.

  That night Tom lay sleepless, his thoughts writhing. While he sought her, he thought he was following a lighthouse beam, but all the time it was a wrecker’s lantern to lure him onto the rocks.

  He had a more urgent worry. He was convinced that Mistress MacKenzie knew about his desertion. She had given no sign that she would betray him, but she might change her mind. If she did he would have to escape before he was arrested. First though he must protect his family. Iain was still inexperienced. Many people disapproved of him taking a native wife and wouldn’t help him as they would one of their own. Even if Janet MacKenzie kept quiet, he might not be so lucky another time if someone else recognized him. He wished there was someone he could confide in. He had shunned making friends because he didn’t dare trust anyone. Maybe he could ask Emma’s advice? But did she understand his predicament? Her last letter suggested not. He remembered the gist of her words:

  I plucked up my courage and went to a meeting of a photographic society. When they recovered from their shock at the sight of me they didn’t know how to speak to me. They seemed amazed that I could carry a camera, let alone take any photographs. What was it Dr. Johnson said about hearing a woman preach and it being like seeing a dog balancing on its hind legs? It wasn’t done well but he was surprised it was done at all. Fred raises no objection to my hobby. He finds it mildly amusing but it’s hard to persevere when you feel patronized. I would love to be free to travel as you are and to be paid for my efforts.

  She couldn’t see beyond her comfortable world to understand the danger of exposure he lived with all the time. Well, she made her choice when she became a doctor’s wife. He could travel but he was as cursed as if he were aboard the Flying Dutchman. Never able to settle in port. Condemned to be always looking over his shoulder.

  Chapter 38

  Back to Cape Breton Island, 1864

  The next morning Tom made up his mind.

  “We must go home at once to make sure everything is safe there.”

  “What about the summer hunt?” Silent Owl asked.

  “That will have to wait until next year.”

  “You don’t believe in my map.”

  “It’s nothing to do with your damned map. It’s about the old lady deciding to report me and soldiers arriving on my doorstep.”

  “You’ll miss the caribou chase. We head the animals over the cliff face.”

  Tom grimaced.

  “We do it to eat. Not like you white men, killing for fun. We respect the spirits of the beasts and slit the throats of the wounded ones.”

  Tom shut his eyes to squeeze out the image of Richard with his slashed neck, gaping like a blood-filled smile.

  “You go. I’ll return on my own.”

  “You can’t manage the sea canoe on your own.”

  “I’ll get some help.”

  He turned away to load up the packhorse. Then he plodded eastward without a backward glance. How could he expect a native to understand why he was so worried?

  He was exhausted after three hours of trudging over hills, covered with rocks that poked out of the ground like petrified tree stumps. As he looked around for somewhere to rest, a feather of breath stroked his ear. There was Silent Owl behind him.

  “You can’t expect the wolf to eat leaves.”

  “Is that some sort of native riddle? It makes no sense.”

  “Every creature has its own nature and you can’t change it. You’re trying to run away from yours.”

  “Nonsense. I just need to get home. Are you coming?”

  Silent Owl nodded. They barely spoke while they journeyed, first on foot and then by sea. Tom recruited a scratch crew, mainly half-breeds. Silent Owl looked down his nose at them. Never much of a talker he seemed unperturbed by Tom’s silence. They parted once they had landed at Sydney. Silent Owl was heading down to Lake Ainslee to wait until the rest of his band returned from Newfoundland. Tom handed him a heavy bag of coins.

  “Here’s your share. Will I see you in the spring?”

  Silent Owl grinned and swung the bag above his head in a wide arc before tying it to his belt. “Before then. Spring Thaw will show you the way.”

  That promise anchored Tom during the next weeks although he yawed every time there was a knock on the door or reports of a stranger. He kept his concerns to himself. Iain and Spring Thaw knew any questions about his strange mood would meet with denials. So they didn’t press him. After Christmas he decided that the Widow MacKenzie must have kept his secret. Like a bedraggled dog hauling himself ashore he shook off the gloom that had clung to him.

  He asked Iain what gifts they should carry for Spring Thaw’s family.

  “They suffer in the winter when there’s so little game. But they don’t want charity.”

  “I remember how people wanted Silent Owl to be in a photograph with them. There’s a call for native portraits. If they agreed to be photographed, we could pay them.”

  So while thick snow still swaddled the earth, they set off with a sleigh weighed down with potatoes, dried fish, and oatmeal. Owlet was strapped to his mother’s back in a wooden frame and gurgled at the swaying motion. Where the trees were close packed, Iain and Tom put on snowshoes and led Maple along the narrow tracks, following the shoreline of the lake. They took care as the treacherous hummocks of snow smudged every feature. Land, frozen lake, every rise and hollow were all smothered. Silent Owl was right, Tom thought. An ordinary map was no use in this white blankness. Spring Thaw guided them as a pilot would steer a ship through unfamiliar shallows. There was no sight or sound of life until a clearing opened up before them to reveal a cluster of wigwams. Their birch bark sides with the poles bursting from their tops scarcely seemed like human habitations. More like a natural part of the forest, a squirrel’s dray or a raccoon’s den.

  Their hosts had heard their approach and were waiting outside the entrance flaps of their tents. Spring Thaw translated and made the introductions. There were about twenty people there, including children. Tom noticed the gaunt faces, sunken eyes, and hacking coughs while he struggled to follow Spring Thaw’s description of the relationships between them all.

  “And this is Silent Owl’s wife, Dark Otter.”

  The slender woman beside her nodded. She was holding a baby in her arms while a toddler clung, wide-eyed to her leggings. Tom stared, beyond speech or movement. Everyone else was busy unloading the sleigh or walking to the largest wigwam. Tom floated helpless as flotsam as eager children pulled at his hands. Inside the space smelt of wood smoke and resin from the pine branches spread across the floor. Hands pressed him down onto a soft sealskin mat near the fire. He bent his numb legs and sat, head down while excited voices whirred around him.

  “It’s not so different here from when I was a boy. Sitting on the earth fire and pickled by the smoke.” Iain spoke loudly, to cover up Tom’s silence.

  Steaming clay pots of meat arrived, waterfowl, squirrel, and venison. Everyone else blew on their bowls before pulling out chunks of tender meat. They smacked their lips and let the juices trickle down their chins. Tom, though, swirled a piece around his mouth, fearing to swallow it in case he choked.

  After the meal was over, they all lay back and a long pipe of carved wood was passed around. A cautious puff left Tom spluttering for breath. It was even more pungent than the tarry stuff the old sailors used to smoke. He kept coughing while the young men rose to dance. He had no intention of joining in. Iain, though, was up on his feet stamping and whooping outside. Tom was unaware of the small children who reached out to stroke his hair. Somehow he endured the eternity of time until everyone settled down to sleep and he could move into a smaller wigwam with the single men. The whole time he
had refused to look in Silent Owl’s direction.

  Early the next morning, Tom crept out to relieve himself. He turned back to find Silent Owl stalking him.

  “You knew I was married. You saw my canoe the first time we met.” Tom looked blank. “A man and wife always build a canoe together.”

  Tom scowled and walked away, but Silent Owl caught him by the shoulders. “How could I stay a barren twig? So many of us have died of white men’s diseases.”

  “You should have warned me.” Tom broke away.

  “I told him to ask you here,” a voice whispered behind him. It was Spring Thaw. “You can help us. One day soon white men will take this forest, rip out the trees and make the red earth bleed. They will drive us away. Iain told me how his tribe over the sea were pushed off their land. But they came here like wolves and took ours instead.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Show us how to buy this land.”

  “It won’t be cheap.” Tom turned to Silent Owl, “What about your share from our trip?”

  Silent Owl shuffled and looked away. His sister lunged to poke him in the chest. “You used it to buy firewater didn’t you?”

  “No, I’m keeping it safe.”

  “Liar!” she shouted, kicking him on the shin.

  Tom enjoyed Silent Owl’s shame for a moment before saying, “We must think about how you can make more money. Let’s all sit down again with that smelly old pipe. Again.” He punched Silent Owl on the arm.

  Chapter 39

  Cape Breton Island, 1865

  “We could sell pictures of your family. It’s the fashion back in England to take photographs of natives, Eskimos, South Sea Islanders, headhunters, and so forth. Meanwhile I’ll find out who owns the land.”

  Spring Thaw translated and they all nodded. They seemed to trust him. He recalled with a pang his old gift of winning over sailors and islanders. But what about Silent Owl? He seemed able to lead two parallel lives without a qualm. Tom could endure months of separation if he had to. Seafarers learnt how. But now that he knew Silent Owl returned to his wife’s embrace for half the year, Tom felt the rip and tug of jealousy. Was there a map for men like him? Men who led a double life? He remembered married masters at school who seemed to be impersonators, shrugging on family life like an ill-fitting overcoat. Silent Owl though felt no shame or jealousy in sliding between his two lives.