The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Read online

  “Your leaving is sad for Marie, Charlotte.”

  “I said goodbye.”

  “She is sad still.”

  Charlotte looks down to the water and feels a creeping remorse. She was leaving the kindest women she had ever known, and yet had only made the most awkward of goodbyes so reluctant was she to even think she might not see her again.

  “Is she in the camp at this moment, Henri?”

  “Yes she is, Charlotte.”

  CHARLOTTE WALKS QUICKLY away from the post, without looking back, afraid she might hear her name called at any moment. Elizabeth in her bunting bag seems as light as down and when Charlotte is over the log bridge that crosses the bog and has begun to climb toward the camp, she is near to running. Marie is outside her wigwam as though she had been waiting. When she sees Charlotte she beams that beautiful smile of hers. A moment later they are hugging fiercely. Charlotte can’t tell whether the small woman is a mother she clings to or a sister she holds.

  Other women gather around and Charlotte embraces each in turn. They all walk together to Marie’s wigwam, where they sit in a circle in the spring sunlight and wait for water to boil for tea. Elizabeth is dandled and cooed at, as is Jeanne-Marie, the infant daughter of Antoinette, and Bertrand, the six-month-old son of Marie-Louise Kagigconiac. They marvel at the gleam of Charlotte’s wedding ring and bounce it in their hands to feel its weight.

  As they finish their tea, Charlotte speaks quietly to Marie. From her pocket, she withdraws a handkerchief and opens it to reveal a single strand of silver from the bracelet Pad had worn.

  “This is for you,” she says, holding it out to Marie. “It once belonged to someone I loved.” She thought to herself that it was fitting that Pad’s memory should rest with this lovely and loving woman.

  Then Chief Francis Julian approaches and Charlotte stands.

  “I am happy to see you now,” he says, “though it is only to bid you adieu.”

  “I am happy to see you, too, sir.”

  “Charlotte, your child was born here by the Baie and the Great Spirit will watch over her wherever she goes.”

  All of them then walk with her to the end of the clearing at the top of the hill. She again embraces Marie and the other women.

  “This nation of the People stay on the Milamichi too,” Chief Julian says. “Never live in fear. You will always be near to the People.”

  “I’m glad of that,” says Charlotte.

  With great reluctance she starts down the hill with Elizabeth.

  “Charlotte,” the chief calls after her.

  She stops to look back at him.

  “From here the Nepisiguit will carry you all day until dusk,” he says. “John Blake will then enter the stream from the south that the English call Nepisiguit Brook. He will make his camp at the point of portage. The mosquitoes are bad at the portage, bad for a baby. But before you enter the Nepisiguit Brook, where it meets the Nepisiguit River, keep watch. There is a soft meadow there by the tallest pines on the right hand. That is a place where your party can make good beds of spruce boughs in long grass. The water in the stream is good to drink and the mosquitoes are few. The next day you will paddle up Nepisiguit Brook to your portage, then paddle down to the Milamichi to your new home.”

  BLAKE IS WAITING for her in the company of three other men, who melt away at Charlotte’s approach. His expression is fixed, impenetrable.

  “Sir?”

  “Madam, I would have you follow me, if you please.”

  He turns and walks quickly ahead of her to the Walker house. Inside, he leads the way to a back room, a storage area filled with sacks, tools and assorted lumber. He shuts the door.

  “Set the child down, please. Set her here. It is clean and dry.”

  “Why is this, sir?”

  “Will you set down the child, woman?”

  “If you will press me to do so.”

  She lifts the bunting bag from her shoulders and lies Elizabeth on the low heap of sacking. She touches her daughter’s face and the child stirs in her sleep. Blake crosses the room to the window and looks out a moment, then turns.

  “It seems we are not well begun.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “How so? We are married but three hours when I must learn that, while I am engaged in business, you have fled to the savages on the hill, and perhaps to one savage especially. Am I well informed, madam?”

  Charlotte steps back involuntarily, her whole being suddenly chilled.

  “You are not, John. You are not well informed.”

  “Am I not? On which particular am I not well informed?”

  “On all.”

  “You have not been to the camp of the savages here at Nepisiguit?”

  “Why do you call them so?”

  “Tell me simply, madam, and do not run me about. Have you not gone to their camp?”

  She sees his fury is barely contained. “Yes. I have gone there. It has been my home.”

  “Has it, indeed? And is it still your home?”

  “I have no home now, John Blake, except that you provide me with one.”

  “And will you bring my enemies into my home?”

  He is speaking loudly now and Charlotte is ashamed to think that others might hear what is befalling her on her wedding day.

  “Why do you speak to me so?”

  “Answer me, woman, or by God, I shall see you make answer in future!”

  “Answer you?” Tears of fury begin coursing down her cheeks and she brushes at them as though they were not tears but mosquitoes that annoy her. “How can I answer you about your enemies? I know no enemies of yours, sir. Why would you importune me about enemies?”

  Blake turns suddenly from her and walks across the room, stops, looks at her again.

  “Where were your ears at table today, but hours ago? Would you have me believe that you heard nothing I had to say?”

  “I heard all, John. I attended carefully to all.”

  “And did you not then go straight to their camp and there, for aught I know, remind them that their enemy is alert to their schemes?”

  Charlotte stares at him in amazement.

  “You … you would accuse your wife, who has given herself to you on so little evidence of your own intentions, who has placed herself in your power, you would accuse her of treachery? Is that so, John?”

  “I ask only the truth.”

  “You would condemn me for treachery because I wished only to bid farewell to the kindest women who have ever entered my life?”

  “I don’t speak of women.”

  “You speak to a woman, John! You speak to your own wife and call her something foul.”

  “By God, I do not!”

  “What do you do then?”

  He is silent, his breathing hard, his brown eyes wide, staring at her from under dark brows.

  “You spoke nothing of my affairs then?” he finally says.

  “I did not.”

  “I am monstrous glad of it.”

  “I am monstrous glad, sir, that you have some faith in your new wife.”

  She sees some confusion in him now and her own fury begins to abate.

  “And this Indian who was said to court you. Did you have conversation with him?”

  “Who has told you of courting, John?”

  “Some here, at this post.”

  “Give me their names.”

  He blinks without speaking.

  “John, I accept that you will not. But just this morning I pledged my love and obedience to you for all my life, and I find it hard that any of these rough gentlemen should carry the day against me.”

  At these words, Blake looks down at the floor. It is for only a moment, but Charlotte at last knows that the hell that had suddenly opened up before her has closed.

  “John.” She speaks quietly now, controlling and calming herself. “John, these jealousies and discontents that are urged on you by others have no grounds in me and never shall. I am your loyal wife.”r />
  He nods slowly.

  “Charlotte,” he says, “I’ve not been much in the company of women. I have judged them to be inclined to faithless conduct and this—I confess it, Charlotte—this I fear more than any fate. If I’ve been quick to anger, I repent it. It’s a fault in me and in truth, you’ve given no cause. I’m not schooled in the ways of a gentlewoman, and you can tell by my speech that I know little enough of your society. But, Charlotte, I entreat your understanding. This land rewards the strong and I intend to thrive in it. I’m accustomed to command and I require obedience in the execution of my plans. Will you give me that obedience?”

  “I have pledged it before God.”

  “For if you will not, Charlotte, it shall be a hard life for you with me.”

  “Indeed, John, but you have my pledge already.”

  Elizabeth chooses that moment to stir and cry. Blake goes to her and picks her up.

  “This child is ours,” he says quietly and passes the baby to her.

  THE COMMODORE has offered them his own wide bed for their wedding night and has a piglet roasted for their wedding feast—a rare spring treat. Charlotte makes her excuses while the men’s plates are still heaped up and retires with Elizabeth to the bedroom. She places the cradle beside her. The sky is still light and the voices of the men in the dining room grow more raucous as they sink further into their rum.

  Sometime after dark, perhaps after midnight, she wakens. She had dreamed, she thought, of voices—of fires and alarms. She lies still. Then she hears real voices, some low and steady, others tinged with excitement, fear perhaps. Her candle still burns on the shelf and she looks to Elizabeth, who stirs a little and then sleeps. Charlotte gathers her nightdress around her and dons a coat. The house is empty, the candles still burning on the table. She opens the front door and sees immediately that the men are together in the clearing. They are staring out at a most astonishing sight in the vast bay beyond them.

  “Come, Charlotte!” She hears the voice of George Walker. “Come and behold a spectacle all speak of but very few ever see. Come!”

  On the distant horizon, a fire casts its ghastly reflection on the clouds above it. Charlotte draws near to Blake.

  “What is it?” she whispers. “Is it the Indians?”

  “Not this time,” Blake answers. “This is no ordinary fire.”

  “It’s the burning ship,” Walker says from where he stands at some distance, three or four men at his side. “Strange we should see it now, when no storm has passed.”

  “No.” One of his men turns his face to Charlotte. “But they say it comes sometimes before a storm.”

  “Or when there’s no storm at all,” says Jack Primm.

  “Aye.” Walker studies it through his glass. “It seems a whaling ship this time.” He looks at length. “But I have seen it once before, when it was a three master and all its sails ablaze.”

  Charlotte stares across the water and thrills with the horror of the thing. “Can we not save the poor souls aboard by anything we do?”

  There was a scattering of humourless chuckles.

  “There are no souls to save on that ship,” Blake says. “No souls I would care to meet.”

  Walker takes the glass from his eye and clears its eyepiece carefully with his handkerchief. “It’s been seen from Restigouche, from Paspébiac, from Miscou and many places beside.”

  “But what is it?” Charlotte repeats.

  “A ghost,” says Dan Crocker.

  “An omen,” says another man.

  “We do not at present know its true nature,” Walker says. “In time, its mysteries may be revealed to men through study and reason. For now”—he passes the glass to Blake—“for now it’s the phantom ship.”

  “It’s fading,” Blake mutters, “as they say it does.”

  “The Salmon People will tell you of it,” Walker says. “They’ll tell you it’s been burning in the bay since their grandmothers’ time, indeed, since their grandmothers’ grandmothers camped on these shores.”

  “Gluskap,” adds Jack Primm. “It’s all Gluskap—or else the Great Spirit.”

  Several of the men laugh at that.

  “Aye. But their Great Spirit is but God,” says Walker. “It might become us on occasion to be humbled by his works, whatever they be and whatever He may be called. We’re a proud lot, we men. A day may come when we shall be glad of mysteries.”

  “It’s a sign, for certain,” laughs one of his men, “of something.”

  “Sign you’ve drunk too much to be clever, Harry Gough,” says another, “but not enough to be wise.”

  “I still wish I knew its nature,” says Gough as the ghost ship fades to black. He wags his head in grave contemplation and steps unsteadily toward the house.

  “Aye.” Walker, too, laughs as he turns back to the house. “But mynd ye, Harry, need ye or the warld ken awthing?”

  “Oh, commodore, don’t baffle me now with your Scots,” says Harry. “I’m just an Englishman, I am, tryin’ to make my way in this here Scots country.”

  Charlotte heads back to the house and climbs the stair to her room, but her new husband does not follow her.

  THE MOON’S COOL LIGHT filters through the narrow window of the bedroom and falls upon the bed where Charlotte lies asleep. Blake enters with a candle, and she wakens but makes no response. She lies on her side, her face to the wall, feels his weight on the bed behind her and hears him blow out the candle. He is still for a long time and she thinks him asleep. Then she feels his hand on the calf of her leg—warm and rough, like the bark of a tree in sunlight. She lies perfectly still. The night is filled with the high, piping, joyful calls of the spring peepers in the nearby marshes. These frog lovers are gentlemen indeed, she thinks. They perch and sing in countertenor and their ladies come to them when they are disposed to do so. Men could learn much from such creatures. Blake moves his hand along the curvature of her hip, her ribs, her shoulder. She can feel the sinews of his arm along her body and then the bulk of his thigh as his right knee works its way carefully between her thighs, lifting her right leg and opening her body to him. She had not intended to allow love making until such time as she determined her heart to be open too, but her body offers little co-operation with this strategy. The heart has its own ideas and insists on beating eagerly, the limbs surrendering resistance with only a token show, the belly revelled in heated sensations that ripple downward and inundate every former intention. She arches her back to receive him and when he has established his rhythm, she meets it with her own. He spends himself silently, holding her in a fierce embrace and keeping her there long afterward.

  Charlotte listens to Blake’s slow, heavy breathing. This great blunt creature has much to learn of love, she thinks. But I shall teach him.

  IT RAINS BEFORE BREAKFAST and Blake hesitates to set off with Charlotte and the baby in the open canoe.

  “Why should we delay on my account?” she asks. “I cannot see any assurance that we shall have no rain on this journey.”

  “You’re prepared to endure it then?”

  “I am prepared to endure far more than that, Captain Blake.”

  “Indeed, Charlotte, you’re a woman of rare courage, if I may believe George Walker. You must be so, to have married me.”

  At that moment the shower passes and the sun comes out and touches Charlotte’s face and splashes across a lock of red hair than had fallen across her forehead. Blake brushes it carefully aside and smiles, the truest smile she had yet seen from him.

  The fog burns off the bay and the sky turns a misty blue. Blake stows the last of her possessions by size and weight in their own canoe, with Harry Gough in the bow. When the farewells are said and Charlotte turns to the canoe with Elizabeth in her arms, Walker comes to her side.

  “This then is but temporary, Charlotte,” he says. “We shall meet again soon enough.”

  “That we should not would be insupportable, George.”

  “I’ve made every provision for
you in my power.”

  “I know you have.”

  “And you are in strong hands.”

  She laughs and surprises herself with tears. “As strong as my own, George.”

  Walker lays his hand on her shoulder. “When you have need,” he says, “you have only to send word.”

  She bites her lip and her throat swells with a loneliness that seems for a moment unbearable. “Thank you, George,” she says, regretting the insufficiency of her words.

  THEY ROUND ALSTON POINT and head across the harbour and southeast to the mouth of the river. There is little by way of wind and the strong strokes of the paddles carry them forward as gracefully as swans and swifter. Charlotte looks up toward the Salmon camp on the hill, conscious of Blake’s eyes upon her. Then they paddle away from the wooded shore, falling for a few moments under the dark spell of the tall firs. Charlotte holds Elizabeth closely and a bird calls from the forest.

  “Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill.”

  Her breath catches and her body seems to freeze where she sits. The canoes glide forward out of the pellucid water toward the mouth of the Nepisiguit. She searches the shadows for his face.

  “Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill.”

  Now she turns and looks back to her husband. His face is calm. He smiles at her and she returns the smile.

  “Whippoorwill.”

  No bird had the power to distract John Blake from his thoughts of the work that lay ahead.

  THE RIVER BECOMES A TUNNEL of giant spruce. Only the far shore catches the morning sun, where the roots of cedars cling to the plunging bank. The water is clear but as dark as obsidian with an occasional reflection of red earthy tones coming from the muddy bottom. Now and then fish, some of them four feet long, breach the surface to hang in the air a moment, catch the light and splash back into the water.

  At first, the men call from canoe to canoe, but with the passing hours they fall silent and the stillness of the river envelops them. They put in at noon where the bank is low and a grassy verge offers a place for Charlotte to wash and change the baby. They eat bread and salt pork and drink beer, but the blackflies gather in the still air and they push off into the river soon enough.