A Dark and Promised Land (22 page)

Alexander turns and looks at the body of Irving as it is dragged into the boat, then at the two prostrate Indians. “Accident,” he says in Stony language with a shrug. “We will leave now, no more shooting.”

The young Indian takes a deep breath and lowers his weapon. One by one, the rest of his companions do the same.

“I want to kill those fucking bastards,” Ramsey hisses into Alexander's ear.

Alexander nods and answers, “The women, Mr. Ramsey. If we are ready let us get the hell out of here.”

He turns to step into his boat and almost collides with Rose, who has not moved since the shooting. She is staring wide-eyed at the dead Indians leaking blood into the sand.

“Miss Cromarty, quickly now.” Taking her by the arm, Alexander eases her aboard. The sweeps are put out, and the boats back away from the beach with the sound of creaking oars; Alexander turns them into the stream of the river. His back to the shore, he says in a low voice: “What are they doing, Mr. Ramsey?”

Ramsey looks up from where he is sitting with his head in his hands. His cheek is wet with tears. “The buggers ain't doing naught, sir, just staring.”

“If any Indian raises his musket, kill him; if any Indian makes for a canoe, kill him. Any man aboard with an empty gun, reload, now!” Raising his voice, he hails the other boat. “Mr. Hollar, make for the further shore; we must travel as many pipes as possible before nightfall.”

As the brigade approaches, there is little to see but a jumble of low cabins scattered amongst grey rocks and wizened spruce, shadowed by a particularly squalid encampment of Home Guard. The smoke from the chimneys does not rise and dissipate in the cold air, but sinks and clings to the immediate environs so that the place seems wreathed in fog. An unseen dog barks as the brigade drifts toward shore.

“It is a — a simple affair is it not?” says Rose with a cocked eyebrow, regarding the crude peeled-poplar buildings and discarded refuse littering the site. Several Indians are sprawled on the ground, succumbed to disease or liquor.

“Shabby or no, it will be a blessed relief to warm my toes before a proper fire, by God,” says Turr, looking for evidence of the governor. Several York boats are stowed in the shadows of the spruce, but none belong to the rest of the brigade; they have missed them yet again.

Their boats touch the shore at the same instance, the foremost rowers jumping overboard and pulling them onto the rocks. With muted relief, the colonists tumble out, clustering together and whispering amongst each other and staring at the unfamiliar surroundings. Grabbing his carbine, Alexander leads the way to the trading house.

At this time of year, the house would normally be almost empty except for a few permanent laborers and Company staff. But, as they walk, Alexander notices many people about, including a line of very wretched individuals sitting outside the trading house. Obviously Europeans, they stare at the ground or off into space, eyes empty and lifeless. A few women rest their heads on the shoulders of their men, who lean against the rough wall with their feet pulled up and knees bent, red hands resting on the dirt. Their frock coats, bonnets, and dresses are torn, dirty, and threadbare. A fly wanders across the face of one of the women and she makes no attempt to brush it off. As they pass, none of them speak or acknowledge the newcomers.

They push inside the trading house where a clerk, engrossed in his ledger, looks up and scowls.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, not another lot! God in heaven, we shall be sunk.”

From behind a boulder, Rose shadows the figures on the beach. She hates sneaking about this way, becoming the mute shadow that most men want and expect of women, but she needs to know and suspects them of hiding the truth from her and the other colonists. Things had not come to pass as expected — that part was clear to everyone in the brigade. But she is certain that anything revealed to them would be altered for her presumed benefit. And she would rot before she allowed that. Her father had always been straightforward with her, but she knows she cannot expect that from any other man. She is on her own and needs information — she needs the truth.

Holding her breath, Rose moves closer, her bare feet chilled by the smooth, cold rock beneath her. She sidles up to a knot of cottonwoods and a few leaves rustle beneath her, then skitter away in a gust. The bark is rough against her hands, like stubble on an old man's cheek. The men's voices are small but clear against the chilly night. She feels power in her secrecy, and blesses the darkness.

Utterly dark it truly is, the moon discouraged to a pale wash by thin cloud. Duck wings whistle overhead and out on the water a loon laments the cold. The night carries the smell of burning tobacco and wood smoke. From the Home Guard camp carries the sound of a crying child. The three men sit on the granite of the water's edge, wrapped in buffalo hides and smoking their dudheens. The water laps at their feet.

Although instinctively seated close to each other against the cold, they are invisible except when someone draws on his pipe and the outlines of his face are for a moment defined by the dim, orange glow.

Alexander stares up at the faint stars overhead, not seeing any particular pattern or mythology, just a scattering of improbable motes that give shape and often guidance in the pathless night. The veiled moon is nearly full, low on the horizon, and barely revealing a sawtooth line of treetops.

Turr pulls his cloak tighter, staring into the darkness and shivering.

“Well, well, well,” he mutters, for probably the tenth time. “So your rumours have proven correct, Mr. McClure. The settlement has been put to the torch and the colonists scattered. An act of war if ever there was one, methinks.”

“War, indeed,” replies the factor, Samuel Lynch. “And none too soon. No more border skirmishes, no more insufferable diplomatic rows with the damned Nor'westers. The Company will now be forced to raise the issue of her monopoly at Whitehall. Lord Selkirk's damned enterprise has set a stoat loose in the hen coop and now that the gamekeeper is aware, its hide shall soon hang from his gibbet.”

“I wonder if the foreign secretary will see it that way,” muses Turr. “I've long appealed for a military wing of the Company to protect our interest from Canadian and American invaders. But after three major wars in thirty years and preoccupied with Bonaparte's rampages in Europe, Parliament has been unwilling to consider further military intervention in North America, especially by a private force of arms beyond their control.”

In the distance, a wolf howls, followed by an orchestra of answering calls. The wind picks up, searching for weakness in the men's wrappings. Unconsciously they move closer to each other, the tempo of their puffing increasing. The river before them murmurs.

Lynch rubs his hands together as if in anticipation. Or perhaps simply to warm them. “Recent events will force them to reconsider,” he replies. “The colonists were driven north and east in July, although many that arrived here have since returned with a Mr. Colin Robertson. I understand he is to be the new governor of Assiniboia as Macdonell has been seized and taken away in disgrace to Montreal by the Nor'westers. The rest of the settlers await transport back home, but I daresay they will wait long. I do not foresee any such opportunity until the brigades pass in the spring; that is if any of the wretches are still alive by then. Damn and blast, it shall be a hard winter with so many beggars to feed. The pox on them.”

Samuel Lynch is small and mean, with a despotic disposition and ill patience for those who disagree with his opinions. The bastard son of an Anglican priest, he had not been many years at the post, but since arriving had made for himself a reputation that went far and wide through Rupert's Land, one far surpassing the relative size and importance of Jack River House. A harsh and unforgiving master, meting out punishments exceeding his authority and more in line with what is considered the norm in a taut Royal Navy man-of-war.

Although he reserves flogging for the Indians, banishment and withholding of pay and provision is common punishment for Europeans. He even had a crude pillory built, which provided great sport for the Home Guard, although many thought it barbaric, not least because they were most likely to find themselves locked within its embrace. A visiting Company official passing inland had been horrified by the spectacle of a White trader taunted and stoned by Savage children, and had ordered the pillory dismantled. But after word arrived that this man had drowned in a rapid, it was quickly resurrected.

Even if such violence is rare in the Company, in the surrounding wilderness, murder is weighed only in the cost of corresponding shot and weight of powder, and such trifles as a miscreant being sent without food or stoned in a pillory passes without much comment among the brigades. While Lynch is proud of his reputation, which runs from Pembina to Great Slave Lake, he would be disappointed to learn that it is not his Christian discipline that gives him fame, but a Ferdinand Hoffman grand piano imported from Vienna to London and then to York Factory at incredible Company expense — recorded in company records under
trade bayonets, ten gross
. An entire York boat and crew was dedicated to smuggling it inland where it now stands in the factor's personal residence, the only Hoffman in the continent, and the only grand piano west of Montreal.

He had a passion for the concerti of Brahms and Hayden, and it was not unusual in the evenings to hear the sweet voice of the piano offering a melodic counterpoint to the dirges of wolves and loons. But his playing is the only evidence of a sensitive nature to be found in the factor, and he rages against this unwelcome burden placed upon him by events far beyond his power, foreseeing greater troubles ahead.

“Too long has this damned rabble run free and loose,” he says in a rising voice. “Usurping trade and assaulting the king's subjects and servants. The Free Half-breeds of Red River they call themselves; they even have raised their own filthy flag. But now they have crossed the line in the sand and with God's good grace, their freedom shall be brief and their necks destined for a rope.”

A wall of darkness rises from the northern horizon, and soon the pallid moon is fully veiled. The wind dies as the silence of the forest deepens. Even the river seems hushed. Alexander pulls a pewter flask from beneath his buffalo hide and takes a deep pull. The smell of rum swirls about them. He hawks and spits into the darkness.

“A fine solution, no doubt, Mr. Lynch, but one cannot hang every rebel in the west. Did not the English attempt as much in the American colonies? For myself, I have not seen a a rope cure any ill, much less one so sticky as this. A corpse may be satisfying but what a martyr carries in his heart is rarely dispensed with so easily.”

You are a shit, Lynch
, Alexander thinks, clearing his throat and spitting into the river.
And a fucking pompous bore, in the bargain. If that scrub Selkirk had made his intentions plain and not sent that lunatic Miles Macdonell as his thug, things need not have taken this deadly turn.

All the Half-breeds desire is to live their lives as did their fathers, trapping, growing a few crops, running the buffalo. Sing and dance and fuck and drink and fight. A wonderful, free life all in all, and one much to be envied. All they ask is to be let alone. They have peace with the Indians and the Nor'westers, living at the Forks as they have for generations. One would think the land great enough for all, but Selkirk and his miserable band of trespassers mean to toss the Half-breeds from their lands and trample them underfoot, like weeds. As if the disease and liquor the king's traders have brought with them aren't enough, now there is undeclared war on the peoples of the land. But this time they have misjudged, by God; this time they do not know the anger they have roused, the heat that burns in the hearts of all who live and journey between the Athabasca and Fort William.

These interloper colonists, these Orkneymen and women, these Scots, have been tempted to disaster like a wolf to a poisoned carcass. Oh, my poor darling Rose, what misfortunes await you at Red River?

“And what about these people, Mr. Lynch?” he cries, the alcohol beginning to take him. “They have been carted halfway across the earth, carried into a strange and lonely country, only to be burned out and perhaps abandoned, perhaps shipped back. It is criminal, I say.”

“So you go on,” replies the factor in offended tones. “But I have never seen a Half-breed that did not love a fight and quarrel, and it is beyond the pale to suggest that the Company, the lawful and only possessor of these lands, should negotiate for that which is already its right and has so been for more than a century. Does the landlord negotiate with the thief that breaks in and steals his silver? A knock on the head is what they deserve, by God.”

Choking back his anger, Alexander stands up, tapping his dudheen out on his boot. A sudden flash of sparks falls to the ground. He hears the rustle of branches and freezes.

“Mr. McClure …” Turr begins.

“Hush,” he says. Crouching, he slinks into the darkness. A sudden scuffle and crackle of twigs.

“Hold, damn you. Hold I say! God damn your eyes!” Rose has bitten his arm, hard. A blow and a cry.

“Devil take it! What is afoot?” Turr shouts.

“Bring a light! I have caught a footpad.”

Lynch hurries off and returns with a torch and several men.

“Miss Cromarty!” Turr says, aghast.

“Rose!” Alexander drops her onto the stone. Her eyes glare up at him. He looks down at her, confused, his head spinning. Dark blood runs down his arm. “Why come you there?”

Rose scurries to her feet, and shoots a piercing glance at them before running into the darkness.