Winter Shadows (5 page)

I
cannot sleep. I am sitting in bed, writing by candlelight. The fire is crackling in the hearth, but I also indulged in a few wedges of pine in the corner Canon stove. Grandmother woke in the middle of the night with deep-chest coughing. I gave her some of the snakeroot mixture Mrs. McBride had stopped by with. It calmed her enough that she was finally able to sleep. I sigh. Soon it will be time to get up again
.

Yesterday morning, after leaving Papa and Ivy arguing in the kitchen, I walked outside to find the snow no longer falling. The pink haze drifting across the horizon promised more to come. A path had been cleared to our barn across the cart track. When I pulled the barn door open, our pair of oxen snorted and lowed in their stalls. I was pleased to see Tupper already hitched to the little sleigh inside the dark odorous space. I am always thankful for this invention of Papa’s, with its strong runners and buffalo skin stretched like stiff yellow parchment over the wooden frame. With moccasins, fur hat, mittens, and a thick buffalo robe, I can tolerate the coldest weather
.

Minty Comper, Ivy’s stepson and our stable hand, moved from the shadows and opened the side door, followed by Papa’s mongrel hounds, Brutus and Caesar. Ivy no longer allows them in the house. She claims they will knock Papa off his sticks, but it’s really because she hates dogs. Minty is a slender boy of fourteen, with the dark skin, sooty hair, and black eyes of his Cree mother. He wore his usual thick coat, moccasins, and round buffalo hat
.

I climbed into the sled. “Thank you for getting Tupper ready, Minty.”

“Not me.” He smiled shyly, then looked away, opening the door wider
.

Tupper stepped forward, and the sleigh scraped across manure and hay to the snow trail outside. Duncan Kilgour appeared around the corner, carrying a shovel. I nodded my thanks. He raised a hand. I made a promise to keep my eyes and ears open on Minty’s behalf – just in case Kilgour or his mother decide to take advantage of the boy. While he eats supper with us now and again, I see no affection between Ivy and Minty, although she’s known him since he was a child
.

Tupper pulled the carriole over the crisp whiteness toward the river track, his hooves tossing up clumps of snow, his mane and tail whipped by the wind. Soft puffs hit my face, decorating my bonnet with snow flour. Soon he found his rhythm along the tamped-down road. Our neighbors are always busy on the track, hauling wood or keeping river holes open for water and fishing
.

I sucked in a deep breath of sharp air, and the remains of my early shadows fluttered away
. For now,
a small voice
inside me warned
, only for now.
I wouldn’t listen to it. I would be brave today. And, if not happy, then resolute
.

Farmyards flashed by, with their small whitewashed houses of squared logs. Their barns crouched nearby, piles of new manure steaming into the icy air. I waved at James MacDonald as he came out of his barn. He and his wife, Amelia, had lost their new baby to croup last week. There are now six tiny crosses in a row in the church graveyard marked
B
ABY
M
ACDONALD
.
Not one of their children has survived. James walks with a stooped shuffle, although he is still a young man. Many children are buried alongside their mothers in that graveyard, but this poor couple lives in a state of unending grief
.

The St. Cuthbert’s church steeple appeared just over the rise. Our long-term bishop, Mr. Gaskell, is retiring to England this week. Whether the new minister, Robert Dalhousie, and his sister, Henrietta, will bring some life to the parish remains to be seen. Miss Dalhousie, a sickly young woman, automatically became the new headmistress of the parish school. I can’t help but wonder how she copes with farm children every day with only two young girls as helpers. Or how long it will be before she begs off her duties
.

I would like to have taught in the parish school upon my return, but the only work I was offered came from Miss Cameron’s School for Girls. I was grateful to take it
.

Until Bishop Gaskell and his domineering wife take their leave, the Gaskells and the Dalhousies are living together in the vicarage across from the church. I was asked by Reverend Dalhousie to become the new choir mistress, one of Mrs. Gaskell’s
former duties, taken over by determined force and ruled by an iron fist for many years. Even so, Mrs. Gaskell is quite incapable of holding a single note in pitch. I can at least carry a tune and play the piano quite well, so I can surely do no worse than her
.

As I drove past the church, I wondered if this new duty would help dispel some of my shadows
. Ah,
the voice whispered
, you know they will never leave you.

Something heavy dropped inside me. I pulled on the reins and Tupper stopped, looking back at me, puzzled. The sky above his head was a sweep of blue-gray; the rising sun a brilliant arc. I knew I should be feeling joy at such splendor. This small village along the banks of the Red River is my home – and yet, I see it so differently now, with altered, more critical eyes. Like those that had so recently judged me in Upper Canada
.

It was Papa’s idea to send me for advanced schooling at Miss Peacock’s Ladies Academy, far away in Upper Canada. He wanted me to find stimulation and new interests in a more sophisticated society and secretly hoped, I think, that I would find a husband to offer me a better life
.

My childhood had been a lonely one. Miss Cameron’s school had not yet been built, and Papa didn’t want me taught my lessons by Mrs. Gaskell, so he tutored me at home. When I turned fifteen, social visits were arranged with a handful of the daughters and nieces of retired factors in the parishes of St. Cuthbert’s and St. John’s, but not one had the same interests as me. Now these daughters of retired officers are focused on their own husbands and children or
planning visits to members of their family in the settlement, in order to enjoy a more exciting social life. Finding a husband is a matter of great importance to them
.

I don’t want a husband. I agreed to go to Upper Canada because Miss Peacock’s academy offered lessons on teaching children, but more importantly, it stressed the reading and comprehension of literature, music, and art. I hoped these would help with my writing, so that, one day, I might become a published author like Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë or Mrs. Gaskell – no relation to our bishop! While at the school, I read Charles Dickens’s
Oliver Twist
and
David Copperfield,
and I knew the author had based them on his knowledge of London. I was shocked by the plight of the downtrodden in his stories. Before that, I had received
Jane Eyre
from one of my mother’s sisters in England and had read it over and over, until its pages curled
.

At the academy, I soon learned that my dream of intellectual freedom had been just that – a dream
.

One day, a girl with large red carbuncles on her chin asked questions about my distant home with seemingly casual interest. I told her about my parish in Rupert’s Land and about my family. The girl, whose father is an archbishop in York, glanced slyly at her friends. “See? I told you so. Beatrice is country born
, à la façon du pays,
as my papa calls it. That’s French, not Indian.” She sniffed with such disdain, it was a wonder to me her nose didn’t turn inside out. I suppressed a smile, which only inflamed her. She snapped, “Your father’s mother is a savage, Beatrice. Which makes him one as well – and you!”

“What does ‘country born’ mean?” asked an English girl, whose parents were recent immigrants to the Red River settlement some twenty miles from St. Cuthbert’s
.

“Don’t be such a simpleton, Penelope. It means Beatrice is a half-breed. Her grandparents weren’t married in a Christian church! They lived in sin – breeding like animals.” The carbuncle girl looked as if she were sucking on a mouthful of chokecherries
.

I didn’t say a word, though my heart was pounding, but I looked long and steadily at her. She blushed an ugly purple and turned away, calling to her friends
.

As a number of other daughters of Hudson’s Bay officials were at the school, we soon split into two groups. To be fair, a few of the English girls were kind, if not openly friendly. For this I was grateful, yet I found myself suspicious of their motives. Only Penelope kept trying to be friends, and, as time went on, our interests in music and literature bound us in quiet companionship. But there was still much reserve between us
.

When I think about it now, of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the archbishop’s daughter’s nasty comments. I had always felt quite distanced from local gossip, but the scandal concerning the Company’s chief officer’s country-born wife and a young English captain only a few years ago had torn the Red River settlement apart. The rumors of this so-called affair, having been started by vicious tittle-tattle from people like our bishop’s wife and her friends at the Upper Fort, soon grew in strength and ugliness. The rumors were so ferocious and widespread that even I, tucked away in Old Maples, heard them. Although a court case proved the young woman innocent, the gossips considered the results a travesty of justice. The young wife’s friends thought them
fair and true. But societal pressure caused many of her friends to move quietly away from her and her now-depressed and devastated young husband. Either way, it changed the settlement for good. The new English residents became very cautious about befriending anyone with Indian blood
.

Papa told me recently that many mixed-blood people like himself, who were educated in good Scottish public schools and who held high positions in the Company or in the settlement’s new political establishment, were denying their Indian blood. I realize now that the archbishop’s daughter was simply giving me a taste of more ugly things to come
.

When I was called home by Papa, Penelope promised to write and has been true to her word. Since she was also summoned back to the settlement not long ago to look after her sick mother, we exchange letters regularly, usually about books or the weather. But never anything of a private nature. She has not invited me to her home and has refused all invitations I have sent to her. I must try not to read too much into this. But it is hard
.

Her father opened a provisions store for the droves of new English arriving in the Upper Fort area. Last week, Penelope sent me a jar of marmalade from a Scottish shipment. I felt, ungratefully, that she might be showing off a little. As oranges are almost unknown in our parish, the golden jelly, thick with orange peel, was a special treat for Papa, who had enjoyed it many times in Scotland. It is a rare event for him to smile with such pleasure. Afterward, I was weighed down by its brief sweetness
.

I stared across the white expanse of the Red River. Tupper whinnied, but I held fast. Did that horrible girl in the academy succeed in making me ashamed of my family? Of Aggathas, my beloved grandmother? Of my papa? No. It couldn’t be true
.

Are you telling the truth, Beatrice?
the voice asked
. Are you?

To Tupper’s startled ears, I cried, “I won’t be ashamed of those I love! Or ashamed of myself for being their child. I won’t!” The shadows once again slid around me with the swish of ravens’ wings
.

Why does it feel at times as if my mind and body will suddenly shatter into thousands of pieces and never join into me again? Sometimes, when I look into the future, I see only a terrifying black nothingness. I have to keep these thoughts a secret from everyone – especially Ivy and her ox of a son. Papa is battling his own shadows; I can’t ask him to suffer mine as well. And I cannot burden my sick grandmother
.

I am alone.

Everything inside me changed during my stay at that faraway school. Even my faith. Now, after only a few weeks of teaching, my once-steadfast beliefs in the missionary and its so-called good work throughout the parish are being tested. Perhaps Dickens’s books and those of the Brontës have awaked something in me, for I’ve become convinced that the church’s purpose here is not just to preach the word of God to us “half-breed savages.” It’s to break the tie between the English mixed bloods and their Indian families; to make the Company servants into English farmers and citizens; and to turn the young daughters of Company officers – who will
run the homes of the men their fathers choose for them – into perfect little English ladies. A passage in
Jane Eyre
says: