The Tenderness of Wolves (8 page)

He waved the flattened leg of a weasel-like animal at Donald. The head was still attached to it–a small, pointed face with its eyes squeezed shut, as though it couldn’t bear to remember what had happened to it.

He laid the marten down and plunged his hand back into the skins, offering them to Donald in quick succession, like a magician. ‘These are the least valuable; beaver, wolf, and bear, though they are useful enough–good wrappings for the other furs. Feel how coarse it is …’

The glossy pelts rippled under his hands, vestigial legs folding under them. Donald took the pelts as he was handed them and was surprised at their touch. He had felt rather disgusted at this vast warehouse of death, but as he pushed his hands into the cool, silky luxuriance, he experienced an
urge to put the soft fur to his lips. He resisted, of course, but understood how a woman could want such a thing draped round her neck, where she could, with just a small tilt of the head, brush the fur against her cheek.

Bell was still talking, almost to himself. ‘But the most valuable … ah, this is silver fox–this is worth more than its weight in gold.’ His eyes shone in the dirty light.

Donald reached out a hand to touch, and Bell almost flinched. The fur was grey and white and black, blended together into a silvery sheen, thick and soft, with a heavy, watery flow. He withdrew his hand, as Bell seemed unable to let go of it.

‘The only one more valuable is black fox–that comes from the far north too, but you hardly see one from one year’s end to the next. That would cost you a hundred guineas in London.’

Donald shook his head in wonder. As Bell started to press the furs into a wooden packing mould, tenderly laying the silver fox in the middle, Donald felt uncomfortable, as if, despite Bell’s best efforts to hide it, he was in the presence of some secretive act of pleasure.

Donald wrenches his mind back to the present. He wants to think about his conversation with Jacob, to balance the facts until he comes up with a brilliant solution that makes everything come out right, but there aren’t enough facts. A man is dead but no one knows why, let alone who did it. If they could trace Jammet’s life back from its end point, if they could know everything about him, would it lead to the truth? It is, he feels, an idle thought; he cannot imagine the Company committing the men and the time to find out. Not for a free trader.

His mind turns again towards Susannah. He had sat with her in the parlour for several minutes without any awkward silences, and she seemed to find him interesting; she wanted
to tell him things, and to hear what he had to say. He was too anxious to feel delight, but there was something like happiness there, unfurling like buds after a Canadian winter. He folds his spectacles and puts them, for want of a bedside table, on the floor beside him, where, he hopes, he won’t stand on them in the morning.

After the initial shock, I realise I am not in imminent danger. The man in the doorway is at least sixty years old, his bearing is bookish, and, most importantly, he isn’t armed. He looks distinguished more than anything, with smooth white hair brushed off a high forehead, a thin face and aquiline nose. His expression strikes me as kind. In fact, for a man of his age, he is (the word surprises me but it is right) beautiful.

I have got into the reprehensible habit, common here where accent is no longer a reliable guide, of checking off a list of items in a stranger. Whenever I encounter someone new I glance at cuffs, shoes, fingernails and so on, to establish station in life and financial security. This man is dressed in a flamboyant coat that is well cut but has seen better days, and though he is neat and clean-shaven, his shoes are disgracefully worn. In the moment it takes to reach these conclusions, I notice he has been taking much the same sort of inventory of me, and so presumably has concluded that I am the wife of a reasonably prosperous farmer. Whether he goes any further and decides that I am a faded and probably bitter former beauty, I really could not say.

‘Excuse me …’ His voice is pleasant, with a Yankee twang. My heart slows its frantic hammering.

‘You gave me a shock,’ I say severely, aware that there is flour on my dress and probably in my hair. ‘Are you looking for Mr Jammet?’

‘No. I heard …’ He gestures towards the bed and bloody blankets. ‘A terrible thing … a terrible waste. Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t know your name.’

He smiles gravely and I find myself warming to him. I do appreciate nice manners, especially when someone is questioning my presence at a scene of crime.

‘I am Mrs Ross. His neighbour. I came to sort out his things.’ I smile regretfully, indicating the unpleasantness of the task. Is it my imagination, or has he quickened at the mention of Jammet’s things?

‘Ah, Mrs Ross, I apologise for disturbing you. My name is Thomas Sturrock, from Toronto. Lawyer.’

He extends his hand, and I take it. He bows his head.

‘You are here to see to his estate?’ Lawyers, in my experience, don’t turn up on their own, snooping around after dark, getting their hands dirty. Nor do they tend to have frayed cuffs and holes in their shoes.

‘No, I’m not here on business.’

Honest. Not a typical lawyer at all.

‘It is a personal matter. I’m not sure who I should apply to in this, but, you see, the fact is, Monsieur Jammet had an object which is of some importance to my research. He was going to send it to me.’

He pauses, assessing my reaction, which is one of bemusement. Having searched the cabin from top to bottom I can think of nothing that could be of any interest to anyone, especially a man like this. If Jammet had had such a thing, I assume he would have sold it.

‘It’s not something of value,’ he adds, ‘just of academic interest.’

I continue to say nothing.

‘I suppose I must place myself in your hands,’ he says with a diffident smile. ‘You can have no way of knowing whether what I say is true, so I will tell you everything. Monsieur Jammet had acquired a piece of bone or ivory,
about so big …’ He indicates the palm of his hand. ‘With markings on it. It may be that this object is of archaeological significance.’

‘You said you were a lawyer …?’

‘A lawyer by profession. An archaeologist by inclination.’

He spreads his hands wide. I’m puzzled, but he seems sincere. ‘I must admit, I did not know him particularly well, though I am sorry for his death. I believe that it was … sudden.’

I suppose sudden is one way of putting it.

‘It must seem rather grasping of me to come for this object so soon after his death, but I really think it could be important. It is nothing to look at, and it would be a terrible pity if it were thrown away out of ignorance. So there you are–that is why I am here.’

He has a way of looking at me that I find disarming–open and rather unsure of himself. Even if he is lying, I can’t think what harm he could mean.

‘Well Mr Sturrock,’ I begin, ‘I haven’t …’

I break off suddenly, for I hear something else–a rattle of pebbles on the path behind the cabin. Instantly I seize the lantern from the stove.

‘Mr Sturrock, I will help you, if you will help me and do as I say. Go outside and hide yourself in the bushes by the river. Say nothing. If you do this, and are not discovered, I will tell you what I know.’

His mouth opens in amazement, but he moves with impressive speed for a man his age: he is out the door the second I finish speaking. I blow out the lantern and pull the door to, giving the wire a twist to hold it closed before slipping into the bushes of Jammet’s overgrown garden. I silently thank Jammet for his lack of horticultural pride; the place could hide a dozen of us.

I try to melt into the bushes, aware that one of my feet is sinking into something soft and wet. The footsteps come
closer, and a lantern light, swinging in the hand of a dark figure.

To my eternal shock, it is my husband.

He holds up the lantern, opens the door and goes inside. I wait for an appreciable time, getting colder by the moment, my shoe soaking up water, wondering when Sturrock is going to get fed up and reappear to talk to the newcomer instead of the insane woman. Then Angus comes out again, fixing the door behind him. He barely looks around before disappearing up the path, and soon even his light is hidden from view.

It is now quite dark. I stand up stiffly, my joints cracking, and pull my foot out of the soft muck. The stocking is soaked. I find matches and manage with difficulty to relight the lamp.

‘Mr Sturrock,’ I call, and a few moments later he comes into the circle of my lantern, brushing leaves off his shabby coat.

‘Well, that was rather an adventure.’ He smiles at me. ‘Who was the gentleman from whom we had to hide?’

‘I don’t know. It was too dark to see. Mr Sturrock, I apologise for my behaviour, you must think me very peculiar. I am going to be frank, as you have been with me, and perhaps we can help each other.’

I unfasten the door as I speak, and the smell hits me afresh. If Sturrock notices, he does a good job of hiding it.

Most men, when their wives disappear at twilight and come back after dark with a male stranger, would not be as gracious as Angus is. It is one of the reasons I married him. In the beginning it was because he trusted me: now, I don’t know, perhaps he no longer believes me capable of arousing impure feelings, or simply no longer cares. Total strangers are rare in Dove River; usually they are cause for celebration,
but Angus just looks up and nods calmly. Then again, perhaps he saw him at the cabin.

Sturrock talks little about himself, but as we eat I form a picture. A picture of a man with holes in his shoes and a taste for fine tobacco. A man who eats pork and potatoes as if he hadn’t seen a decent meal in a week. A man of delicacy and intelligence, and disappointment, perhaps. And something else–ambition. For he wants that little piece of bone, whatever it is, very much.

We tell him about Francis. Children do get lost in the bush. It has been known. We discuss, inevitably, the Seton girls. Like everyone else above the Border, he knows of them. Sturrock points out the differences between the Seton girls and Francis, and I agree that Francis is not a defenceless young girl, but I have to say it’s not exactly reassuring.

Sometimes, you find yourself looking at the forest in a different way. Sometimes it’s no more than the trees that provide houses and warmth, and hide the earth’s nakedness, and you’re glad of it. And then sometimes, like tonight, it is a vast dark presence that you can never see the end of; it might, for all you know, have not just length and breadth to lose yourself in, but also an immeasurable depth, or something else altogether.

And sometimes, you find yourself looking at your husband and wondering: is he the straightforward man you think you know–provider, friend, teller of poor jokes that nonetheless make you smile–or does he too have depths that you have never seen? What might he not be capable of?

During the night, the temperature plummets. A light dusting of snow greets Donald when he rubs frost off the inside of his window and looks outside. He wonders if Jacob spent the night in the stables. Jacob is used to the cold. Last winter–Donald’s first in the country–was relatively mild, but still a shock to him. This bone-aching morning is just a foretaste.

Knox has arranged for a local man to accompany Mackinley on his pursuit of the Frenchman. Someone sufficiently lowly that Mackinley will not have to share the glory with him … Then Donald dismisses the thought as uncharitable. More and more of his thoughts seem to be uncharitable nowadays. This is not what he had expected before he left Scotland–the great lone land had seemed like a promise of purity, where the harsh climate and simple life would hone a man’s courage and scour off petty faults. But it isn’t like that at all–or perhaps it is he who is at fault, and isn’t up to the scouring. Perhaps he didn’t have enough moral fibre in the first place.

After Mackinley has gone, terse and prickly to the last, Donald lingers over his coffee in the hope of seeing Susannah. Of course it is also a pleasure to sit at a table covered with white linen and look at the paintings on the wall, to be served by a white woman–albeit a rough Irish one–and to stare pensively into the fire without crude jokes being aimed in his direction. Finally his patience is rewarded, and both girls come in and take their seats.

‘Well Mr Moody,’ Maria says, ‘so you are guarding our safety while the others pursue the suspects.’

It is extraordinary how in one sentence Maria can make him feel like a coward. He tries not to sound defensive. ‘We are waiting for Francis Ross. If he doesn’t return today then we will go after him.’

‘You don’t think he could have done it?’ Susannah frowns at him charmingly.

‘I know nothing about him. What do you think?’

‘I think he’s a seventeen-year-old boy. A rather good-looking one.’ With this, Maria looks slyly at him.

‘He’s sweet,’ Susannah says, looking at the table. ‘Shy. He doesn’t have many friends.’

Maria snorts sarcastically. Donald thinks that it would be hard for any youth to appear other than shy and awkward in the face of Maria’s acidity and Susannah’s beauty.

Maria adds, ‘We don’t know him that well. I don’t know who does. It’s just that he always seems rather a sissy. He doesn’t hunt or do the things most of the boys do.’

‘What do the other boys do?’ Donald tries to assume a great distance between now and his seventeen-year-old self, when he did not hunt and would undoubtedly have been called a sissy by these young women.

‘Oh, you know, they go round together, play practical jokes, get drunk … Stupid things like that.’

‘You think someone who doesn’t do those things couldn’t commit murder?’

‘No …’ Maria looks reflective for a moment. ‘He always seems moody and … well, as though there are things going on under the surface.’

‘There was once, I remember, at school,’ Susannah says, her face brightening. ‘He was about fourteen, I think, and another boy, was it George Pretty …? No, no, it was Matthew Fox. Or …’ She trails off, frowning. Her sister gives her a look.

‘Well Matthew, or whoever, tried to crib his task, and was showing off about it, you know, making sure his friends saw … and suddenly Francis realised and went into the most frightful rage. I’d never seen anyone’s face go white with anger before, but he did–he went paper-white, and his skin is normally sort of golden, you know …? Um, anyway, he started hitting Matthew as if he wanted to kill him. He was in a sort of frenzy; he had to be dragged off by Mr Clarke and another boy. It was quite frightening.’