A Dark and Promised Land (13 page)

At the sound of a distant howl, Rose wakes with a start. The fire is quiet embers. Shadowed humps and nasally whistles are the only evidence of the brigade. The moon is low, the night already old.

The wolf howls again, more distant this time.
Travelling on the wind
, Rose thinks, and shivers at the thought of that gloriously wild creature gliding through the forest, crying aloud its yearnings.

Her father is rolled in his blanket beside her, snoring gently. Her leg aches and she stretches, feeling the lovely tingle and heat as blood courses down her limbs.

At the memory of the departed day, her heart quickens. Sitting in front of Alexander, she had been palpably aware of his presence: the smoke from his pipe, the occasional shouts to the men. Whenever he is occupied, she steals furtive looks at him, admiring the expanse of his shoulders, and strong arc of his back as he pulls on a hawser. Her gaze had slipped lower before she realized what she was doing, and with red face quickly turned away. Her father had given her a quizzical look.

Since their meeting on the log beside the river, thoughts of him had occupied her; she wonders what it would be like to run her hands through that long, yellow hair, what that beard would feel like brushing her chin.

They had flirted with each other in the subtlest ways possible: a brief glance, a smile was all it took to convey enormous meaning. But with the people so close — and especially her father, who would be outraged if he knew — it felt even more delicious.

The Highlander Declan had chosen to approach her formally, through her father, and Lachlan seemed intrigued by this. She had no opinion of the man one way or another, happy to play her game of old, even though the stakes and chance of being found out are much higher. The idea of her with the Half-breed would set all Rupert's Land aflame.

But for all Declan's peasant pretence to social formality, it is Alexander's rough wildness that calls to her, his ability to absolutely experience the moment, almost like an animal, his mind not burdened by rules and convention. Her desire had always been so.

Tearing her mind from him, Rose follows time's back trail, breadcrumbs of memory leading to her careless youth in the Orkneys, to her young friends Isobel and Agnes. Like Rose, they refused the attentions of the local boys, waiting instead for one of the men from the ships that berthed at Stromness to take a fancy to them, and remove them from what they saw as a dull and provincial backwater of the kingdom.

Lachlan had been appalled by their intransigence. “Life is not literature, my dears,” he preached from around his cigar, standing in their tiny drawing room with his hands in his waistcoat pockets and watching Rose and her friends with a mixture of annoyance at their ridiculousness and admiration for their optimistic stubbornness.

But Rose saw little around her that she thought worthy of her time or consideration; the men of her station she considered spoiled, effeminate, and filled with an unwarranted pomposity. There were a few crofter's sons she briefly considered and though her father's disapproval was enough to make her give these lads a second look, there was only so far she was willing to challenge him.

If truth be told, there was really not much to any of them, either. So she waited. And as her father's concern for her increased, her own melted away, and she entered womanhood carrying on her secret games in the town, loving lightly and without concern. Although the thought disturbed many of Lachlan's nights, the idea never occurred to her that she was well on her way to spinsterhood.

Yet now, for the first time in a long while she finds herself truly drawn to a man and wonders what to do about it. She looks at the face of her father, a widower for most of her life. His concern is deep and true, and yet what did he have to teach her about the ways of love? His own is as dry and mummified as a dead bird carcass long trapped inside a chimney.

The obvious occurs to her with a sudden shock. But dare she? What is the limit to her courage? She had long ago decided to follow her own path, despite all the world against her. For many weeks she had been subservient and dependent, but at the thought of rebellion her old spirit rouses to flame.

Carefully, she lifts the blanket away from her body; she shivers again as the night air finds her skin. She wishes she could keep the blanket about her, but it is entangled with her father's.

Wrapping her arms about her, she steps away from the cocoon of warmth. Her bare toes sink into the cold, damp sand. Alexander usually slept upriver from the brigade; he had a small tent that he pitched against the night, a luxury that raised the ire of many of his followers. She hurries toward this dark shape.

As she approaches, she stumbles on an unseen branch and it breaks with a sharp crack, cutting her. She freezes, listening with pounding heart, expecting the whole camp to be wakened. The tent is very quiet.

Rose has no idea what to do next; she realizes that she had no plan from the start, and wonders what ridiculous notion has drawn her into this position. The man she had tried to approach in the dark is heavily armed and knows nothing of her intent or identity; her people may have been frightened by the sounds of furtive steps.

“Mr. McClure,” she says, scarcely audible over the pounding of her heart. There is no response.

“Mr. McClure,” she says again, a little louder, agonized. “Alexander.”

“Miss Cromarty?” whispers an incredulous voice from the tent.

“Yes, it is I. May I come in?” The tent flap opens, and she can see little inside, but the highlight of a rifle barrel is unmistakable.

“Come inside, and be quick.”

Needing little encouragement, she pushes past him. She does not know what to say, and they sit together in embarrassed darkness. Soon his hand runs up the side of her arm, and she takes it to her mouth and kisses between his fingers. Without a word, they come together, and explore each other in the dark, their bodies moving it seems of their own volition, without thought or knowledge.

Before the wraith of dawn shows the horizon, she wraps herself in her blanket beside her father. Lachlan at once awakens and pulls himself to her and folds her in his arms, his brow furrowing at the unfamiliar, wild scent clinging to his daughter.

The next morning, he is particularly attentive to her, aware of something new and yet familiar about her, something he is not privy to. For a brief moment, he is terrified that she might have caught some kind of flux, but the way laughter bubbles out of her puts that fear to rest. Her spirits are obviously high, and when he catches her humming something lovely to herself and asks her to name the melody, she cannot — or will not — humour him.

Rose shivers as she sits beside Lachlan in the boat. Mistaking this, he reaches below the thwart and pulls out a blanket that he wraps around her shoulders. She takes it with a small smile. Her shiver had not been from the cold. She had been surreptitiously watching Alexander, her eyes following the lovely curve of his hand as it grasped his scull, edging the boat here and there with skilled movements.

That same hand had caressed her in the darkness of the tent, anguished desire in its wake. She could see the red welt on his forearm, the place she had bitten him when he had stifled her cry, the warm salt taste of his blood on her lips. The memory had caused her body to betray itself to her father.

Each stroke of the oarsmen moves them across the river in a gentle rhythm, their bodies rocking as hips moved before heads. The motion feels soothing and safe, and she suddenly realizes that Alexander had moved on top of her with the same slow cadence. After all his years on the river, the motion has become one with the man, an ineffable part of his nature. It is in how he walks, how he swings his gun, how he makes love. Perhaps it echoes his very heartbeat.

“A lovely morning,” Lachlan informs her.

“Indeed,” she replies. “It is warmer than it has been for a long while.”

“Yes, the sun is low as befits the season, but the weather is uncommonly civil. Perhaps it is a harbinger? I shall speak to Mr. McClure about it when we stop for our breakfast.”

“I imagine he if anyone would know all about heat and premonitions, Father. I too would like to know what he believes the future holds in this regard. There has been too little of it, and I wonder at its sudden, unforeseen arrival. Should I trust it or will it quickly flit away on the heels of storm?”

“You are poetic this morning, I see. Or perhaps the more correct word is philosophical?”

She smiles at him again. “I do feel passionate. I have had unusual dreams of late, dark phantasms that make my tongue waggle nonsense.”

“Passion is it? Well, I think we could all use a little passion. And it is not to wonder that your dreams are disturbed; there has been much gloomy talk and murmuring among the brigade; a good dose of passion might set everyone to rights.”

Rose does not respond, but looks up again at Alexander. For a moment, their eyes touch. That fleeting contact carries much, and she feels a surge of delightful fear, thinking that others must see and be aware of their thoughts and emotions. But she must have a care. Her play with her father is one thing, but it is harder for the eye to deceive. Words may hang a man, but it is the glance, the gaze, that truly condemns. She has a sense of recklessness, like riding a horse too hard and fast, on the edge of being thrown.

“Mr. McClure?” she calls, pleased to see him jump.

“Yes, Miss?”

“Do you think that passion arises at night? In dreams?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is night the wellspring of men's dreams and desires?”

“Now, Rose, don't go bothering Mr. McClure with your rubbish,” her father says. Alexander turns away and coughs.

Rose opens her mouth to rejoin him, considers the wisdom in this, and then dismisses them both from her thoughts. The thwart board digs into her and she squirms, doing her best to smooth her muddy skirts. She thinks of her Bible and hurriedly puts that also out of her mind; with a sigh, the ever-present boredom blankets her yet again.

The deep wilderness and dark river have long lost their novelty and each day seems much like the interminable last, with neither the landscape nor anything else changing. The rhythm of the oars, the taciturn quiet of her companions, the slap of water repeat themselves endlessly, and she has a feeling of traversing a long dark tunnel.

The shock of the accident at the rapids has worn off and she catches herself almost wishing for more mishap, anything to interrupt the tedium of staring at a changeless nothing.

When her father first told her about his plans, Rose had been quite excited about the prospect: wild lands, fierce Aboriginals, iron men. Perhaps here she would find the dash that was missing from her life. But as she watched, the dark trees lining the riverbank move slowly past, she feels quite dissatisfied with the experience so far.

The trees seem like a wall to her, behind which lay unknown secrets and half-imagined threats. She feels no more a part of this land now than when they first saw the shores of Hudson's Bay.

It occurs to her that the water on which they travel flows into that great Bay, which itself communes with the North Atlantic, that frigid sea bearing her beloved Orkney. In a sense, they had not really left; not until they abandon the river will they really know the land they had come to claim as their own.

The thought frightens her. The journey so far has been far more brutal than she could ever have imagined, weighted with unimaginable suffering and squalor. The few books that had been published by men who had adventured in Rupert's Land talk about courage and adventure, not about death and filth and fear and this deep, gnawing hunger.

Alexander shouts to the leading boat, and like a naughty child her mind returns to the forbidden. He had at first been very gentle with her, like she was a flower he was fearful of treading upon, like she was made of delicate petals needing to be opened with the most delicate of touches. She soon learned him that this orchid was a snapdragon, her teeth leaving marks on his shoulders and neck, nails furrowing his back like a lash. She sees how artfully he has covered his throat with a red sash and smiles again, squeezing her hands.