The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (41 page)

The wind, always lowing at The Point, comes up at midday.

“It’s from the northwest,” Charlotte says. “Papa and the
boys, they’ll be fairly flying to the mouth of Miramichi. But then they’ll have to make the turn, put their shoulders to the oars and fight the wind.”

No sooner are the words out of her mouth than the strangest piece of weather she has ever seen swoops down on The Point. Purple clouds drop so close to the ground, she thinks she can reach up and touch them. The birds fall quiet, and the geese on the marsh take flight in great honking waves to the woods. The wind turns fierce, swirling their bedclothes into the air, and pushing Charlotte Mary halfway across the garden patch, her mother running to grab her up in her arms. The other children reach for the flying blankets and bearskins, chasing some pieces right down to the water’s edge.

Then, just as suddenly, the sun slides out from under the black mass overhead and the squall blows off The Point. Within minutes, the birds are back pecking at the overturned soil in the garden. As she sets her littlest girl down, Charlotte murmurs, “The earth got a good sweeping today.”

They don’t expect Philip back until the next day. So it is a surprise to see a dory just like William’s coming toward shore late in the afternoon. Philip runs down to the landing, shading his eyes to see what he can make out, then shouts back, “Look, Mama, they’re carrying something.” She can make out just three heads in the boat, and a bundle propped between them.

“What in the name of God is going on?” Charlotte drops the blanket she’s been folding and runs toward the shore.

She stops at the bottom of the landing, her feet refusing to move, her legs wobbling like seaweed. It’s John, Robert and a thoroughly battered William, and between them the body of Philip Hierlihy, blue with cold.

Her skirts get wet as she helps her sons carry her husband
from the boat and lay him on the shore. “Philip, run and get something to cover your father, please,” she says and sinks down to take his hand in her work-roughened clasp.

John looms above her, and she finds she can’t even pose the question. It’s clear Philip’s been drowned.

“We were at Oak Point,” he blurts out. “And a wicked blow came out of the northwest. We tried to turn the dory toward shore, but the wash from under the cliffs beat us back and then ice chunks from the melt smashed onto the dory, overturned us. The cold knocked the breath right out of us, but Robert and I managed to cling to the dory, got it turned upright again and crawled back in.”

She’s in no hurry to hear the end of the story, and shushes him briefly as Philip runs back with a coverlet that she spreads carefully over her husband. William sits down heavily beside her, and puts a clumsy arm over her shoulders. She briefly brushes his bruised cheek with a kiss, and his clothes are still soaking. She sends a questioning look in John’s direction.

“William was dashed into the cliffs and managed to scramble to shore, but Philip was in the water. When we got to him it was as if he was frozen by the sea—he wasn’t breathing, though I never saw his head go down. Then the squall stopped, but it lasted too long for Philip.”

All of them now sit down beside their mother and Philip Hierlihy as the sun begins to set over the clearing, casting long shadows from the forest. And finally Charlotte finds her voice. “John, get your brothers to help you carry him to the house. And go and build a coffin.”

She sits vigil beside him all night long as he rests on a bench in the main room, a candle flickering by his feet. She studies his face, traces the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and
smoothes his tangled and sandy-grey hair. At one point in the dark hours, Charlotte carries a lamp to the chest in their bedchamber to root in his trunk. Before dawn, while the family sleeps around her, she strips off each salt-stained article of clothing and washes him from head to toe, and then dresses him again in his old uniform, carefully folded away all the years of their marriage.

The next day, Charlotte Taylor Blake Hierlihy once again has to bury a husband. This time in the Catholic churchyard at Bartibog. “He began his life as a Catholic,” she says, “and he can be buried as one.”

On the boatride back from the graveyard, Charlotte pays scant attention to her surroundings, or even the deep knot of sadness lodged under her breastbone, or the faint sense of gratitude she feels that at least the sea gave back this husband for a proper burial. She’s lost in worry about how she’ll manage. Philip was forty-seven years old, the same age as Charlotte. Five of her ten children are under the age of fifteen. The lots they have settled on at The Point still have no deeds. For all his faults, she trusted him to look after the family business. If the plan they dreamed of is to be realized, she has her work cut out for her.

T
HE NEXT WINTER,
The Point at the mouth of the Tabisintack River is recognized as a settlement by the province and awarded its own court and officers of law. Among those who report for duty to the Court of Sessions in March 1803 are John Blake, now the commissioner and surveyor of roads, William Wishart, appointed constable, and Duncan Robertson, assessor and overseer of roads. On a visit to Philip’s grave at Bartibog, Charlotte actually finds herself addressing his marker
to tell him this news. “The boys have learned from you,” she whispers. “I’ll make sure that Philip and James also follow in your footsteps.”

O
NE DAY THAT
M
AY,
while Charlotte is weeding the first pea and bean shoots in her garden, she sees the sails of a ship out beyond the islands. A trading vessel, perhaps. But why has it turned in to this shore rather than sailing on to the port at Miramichi Bay? The ship drops anchor, a skiff is lowered and a lone man climbs down into it and rows himself toward shore. She can only see the back of him as he approaches, a stranger with curly fair hair poking out from under his hat. Then the boat swings around to her landing, and the stranger calls out to her where she stands leaning on her hoe. “Hey you, wi the reid heid.” To the astonished Charlotte, it’s like the past, the present and the future rolled into one.

“Will MacCulloch, I cannot believe my eyes,” she shouts as he approaches.

“Aye, lassie, you’re a bonnie sight for this lad as well. I’ve been searchin’ these shores for yer pretty face.”

“The years have not dimmed your blarney or your brogue,” she says, and before she knows it he is giving her an enormous hug, swirling her around in a circle so big her feet fly out from under her. She breaks free, then self-consciously tucks her straying red hair back into the untidy knot at the back of her neck. “Let me look at you, Will. I should have known you even with your back to the shore by those curly locks of yours.”

He has some age upon him, and his clothing bespeaks a man of substance, but the boyish grin is just the same. “I nae forgot you, bonnie Charlotte, and would ha’ stayed on these shores had I thought you’d be my ain woman.”

Settled at the table with a huge pot of tea in front of them, and biscuits made by young Eleanor, they catch up on their lives. He’s a captain now in the merchant marines and plies the waters of trading centres in Spain, Portugal and France. Life has been good to the rascal she knew. The only time the twinkle leaves his eye is when he tells her that, just as she’s had three husbands, he has had three wives. Two died in childbirth, and a third of tuberculosis. He has five sons, though he jokes that none of them is quite so handsome as the original. Presently he lives with the two boys still in short pants in a fine house in Bristol, where a housekeeper looks after them when he’s away at sea.

Charlotte waits until the first burst of reminiscence is over before letting him know just how much she’d been thinking of him these last five years. “When we first came to The Point to clear land for our house, I met two Acadians with family on the Baie. I understand you were back in these parts some years ago.”

He looks bemused. “Twasn’t me, Charlotte. I have not set foot on these shores since the last day I saw you—running off to the Indian camp.”

“But I heard word that a man named MacCulloch was asking for me,” she insists.

“Ay, lassie, I guess when you put it like that, it was me for sure. Near to ten years ago, I asked a marine who was sailing to Nepisiguit to seek information about ye. But his only news was that you’d moved away.”

He falls silent and looks once again a little troubled.

“Well, you’ve found me now, Will. Why were you bothering to look?”

“The lovely Charlotte,” he replies softly, though she has an inclination that what’s coming has nothing to do with her charms. “The shipping company I toil for has a renewed interest
in Nepisiguit, and seeing as how I had spent time here, asked me to return to take a good look about. Ye’ve been on my mind, Charlotte, so I decided to take the chance to find ye and know what has become of the girl who preferred this wild country to England.”

“Just for auld lang syne, is it? Did you ever meet my father, Will, when you went back? I believe you carried a letter to him from George Walker.”

“I did. Charlotte …” Will leans forward to take one of her hands as she leans back, out of reach. “In the end, I became quite a friend to your father. He was nay too happy with yer bolt from the family. Never accepted it, really. He wasn’t a bad man, you know. And in the end he was helpful to me. He just didn’t know what to do with a daughter who broke with all the conventions.”

“Do you know if he got the letter I sent him? It’s almost twenty years ago now, and I never received an answer.”

“Ay, Charlotte, he did. Your father was going to reply—he always said he was going to reply. I told him he should, but he did nae tell me that he’d done so. Did you nae receive one from him?”

“No, I never did—though I watched for it, hoped to receive it. All these many years I have wondered what my father was thinking; if he wished to see me, to know what became of his only daughter. He once said he would disown me if I disobeyed him. That I did. I have never wanted to go back. But I suppose over the years I began to hope there would be some contact.”

Will’s bright blue eyes soften. “Well, Charlotte, I’m here to tell you that it will never happen now. Your maither died, it must be ten years ago now. And your faither, well he had some business reversals. He loaned me money on some ventures when I
was first improving my station in life, Charlotte, and so when he got himself into difficulties, I was of some aid to him. He died two years ago, this fall.”

Before she can respond, Will pulls a packet from his pocket and hands it to her. She opens it to find fifty pounds in ten-pound notes and a smaller item wrapped in brown paper. “That’s yer maither’s wedding ring, I saved it for ye. Even thought some day I may give ye the token as my ain wife.”

She has to laugh. “Will, you are incorrigible. Listen to you and the way you talk. I tell you one thing for certain, I will never marry again. Three times a widow is enough for this woman, no matter how tough people think I may be.”

He is serious again. “Charlotte, your faither told me about your inheritance. I believe he was meaning to send it, just as he was meaning to write to you … but then his financial troubles destroyed his capital. This is all that was left for you. When he knew he was dying, he asked me to make sure you got it.” Will can’t quite meet her eye.

When she walks him back down to the landing, and watches him as he rows away from her toward his ship, she suddenly wonders whether Will’s gift really came from her father or out of his own pocket.

I
N 1810,
the surveyor Dugald Campbell finally files his last report, and the province announces The Great Tabisintack Land Grant. The Great Tabisintack Land Grab, Charlotte jokes, but at last the lots she and her children own on and around The Point are protected by law.

Relations among the settlers reach a new low, as land greed works on friends and even family like a horrible yeast. To qualify for the land grant, each settler has to make a set number of
improvements to his lot, knowing that his vigilant neighbours may challenge his claim if he fails, in their view, to meet the requirements. David Savoy tries to get title to a lot surveyed for his cousin Charles Breaux. Two of Charlotte’s sons sign Savoy’s petition and vouch for his claim that no improvements have been made on the lot in question. He isn’t successful, and relations are ruined with his friend. Charlotte is shocked by such behaviour, but scandalizes her neighbours when she makes a case for her ownership of the glebe, a lot the land grant has set aside for a church. She’s been growing hay for her animals on that lot, a claim better than any other as far as she is concerned. But she too loses.

The Point and surrounding area is also unsettled by rumours of a new war between America and England. The Americans make several sorties into both Upper and Lower Canada and, though they are thwarted, there’s talk that the Indians are helping the Yankees, and tensions between the settlers and the Mi’kmaq camps also rise.

And there are changes brewing in Charlotte’s house. Eleanor marries the disputatious David Savoy on November 11, 1810, and moves down shore. Then Charlotte Mary, only fourteen, marries Benjamin Stymiest Jr., and together they move to a lot farther up the Tabisintack River. They name the place Stymiest Millstream, and Benjamin starts a small sawmill. Charlotte’s two-storey house now feels empty, with only herself and Honnor rattling around in it. Unmarried, William, who lives in his own tiny cabin some hundreds of yards away from the main house, is there every night at the supper table.

O
N NIGHTS
when she finds herself lying sleepless and lonely in the pre-dawn hours, the one thing Charlotte has always been
able to find comfort in is her sense that she’s been a good mother, and grandmother too. She knows that her outspokenness has sometimes made it difficult for her children, her boys in particular, who have had to defend her to the point of fistfights in the taverns. And that others look askance at the amount of land her family has accumulated, and the fact that Charlotte is a woman who never scruples to fight for her property rights. But the fact that a state of peace mostly reigns in a clan with children from four fathers, and that many days more than one of her adult children come to call, she regards as the pinnacle achievement of her life.