A Dark and Promised Land (9 page)

As they leave the coastal lowlands behind, emaciated spruce, cottonwoods, and the occasional jack pine begin crowding the river's edge. They had heard so much about the Northern forests that their first few days of wizened scrub and flat, monotonous muskeg had been a disappointment.

The bank is cut deeper now, and the trees along the upper edge have tumbled into the water. The effect is rather claustrophobic with the high walls and narrowing of the river. Down inside this small arterial cut the breeze is stifled, biting flies and mosquitoes tormenting them. Men's arms run with sweat, and the women dip their scarves in the river.

As the shadows lengthen, they scour the shore for a landing in that great wall of alluvial silt. After a long search, they find a promising beach and pull wearily ashore. The cooking fire is started and tea made, but this time there is no fresh meat. Rose declines the offer of pemmican; she is not that hungry, at least not yet. Supper is quick and subdued. Tobacco smoke swirls as everyone settles in to await the coming of night.

Rose feels a need to stretch her legs. Lachlan insists that he accompany her, and, with a shrug, she turns away and climbs the bank, the eyes of all the brigade upon her. It is a stiff climb, and her legs welcome the chance for movement. Once she has crested the bank, she does not wait for her father — who is grumbling something about precocious sin in daughters — and walks away from the wall of riparian trees onto the open tundra. She faces the westering sun, and yet the greater part of her traces her shadow to the east, back to her homeland.

More water than earth, it is as if the ground itself burns, reflecting the sky's fire in an endless succession of pools and marshes and fens that weave through the spongy muskeg. Every step sinks into the mossy ground. Here and there the odd island of spruce, blasted by wind and frost, struggles for life in the frozen peat. To her the land seems to continue forever, without rise or feature, just carrying on into infinity of green and red and gold and reflecting water.

The sun slips under the night-covers of horizon, and the glowing tundra wraps itself in the diminished shades of twilight. In the nearest pool, she sees the faint stars of Pegasus and looks up to see the Great Square swinging above her. There is no twilight song of birds, no ringing of bells as the cattle return to the barns, hooves clattering on cobbles. It is if the land is drained of all sound, all life.

As when she stood on the shores of Hudson's Bay, she feels again the flood of loneliness. A land so empty and dreary, yet brazen in its bold displays of fierce colour. As if in a fury against its own emptiness.

She hears the squish of his shoes long before he stands beside her. He puts his arm over her shoulders; almost imperceptibly, she shrinks from him.

The two figures stand at the edge of the great barrens, small and alone, like shipwrecked survivors staring in vain for a rescue that never comes, with long shadows reaching into a distant and almost irrelevant past.

Lachlan removes his sweaty cap and waves it at the cloud of mosquitoes enveloping him. He takes a deep breath and looks around. Never had he seen such a country like this, never read a description that could prepare him for it — vaster and more impossible than he could ever imagined. He swings his arm in a futile and empty attempt to encompass it; as he does, he realizes his folly and his arm drops, words dying on his lips.

“It's so empty — a wasteland,” Rose suggests in a quiet voice.

“It is not all like this,” Lachlan says. “We are on the Northern wilderness. The place called the Forks is different.” At that, his mind's eye fills with thoughts of rolling hills with grass knee deep, of broad rivers, and soil black and deep. A land green and warm and rich that puts the very best of Orkney to shame. Good land is the foundation of civilization; poor land the wounded heart of poverty. “I look to dear Orkney and see how many struggle to draw a living from our miserly soils, the want so great because the land is niggardly. Rich land creates a rich people, and we shall be there to see the new beginnings of a wealth scarce known before, and a new civilization. When we arrive you shall see, my daughter; you will behold a light in the heart of a dark country. The thought stirs me so.”

“You speak of a lot of new, Father, and yet so far all I have seen is the banality of men, the violence, fear, and toil.”

“Ah, but we are not there yet.”

“Indeed, but the farther we go, the darker it becomes. I cannot see this light of which you speak. I saw a shadow at the Bay, and the light grows dimmer the farther west we travel. When will we arrive at this dark and promised land, and how shall we see without light when we arrive?”

“Soon, my love, soon, and we shall put our faith in God to provide the light we need. It has always been so, has it not? But let us speak no more of it. I am being consumed alive by these little demons, and I have no wish to be carried away by wolves. Let us return to the fire.”

The next morning the air is cold and damp, the valley filled with mist. The men return the boats to the endless river. The sweeps take up their dirge, sounding even louder in the cold air.

Soon they pass the confluence of another waterway, seen only as a dark gap in the fog; Alexander identifies it as the mouth of the God's River. Keeping to the nearer shore, they continue up the Hayes, which becomes narrower and shallower. The rhythm of the sweeps increases, the creaking louder, the rasping of breath harsher. Blisters erupt on dripping, knotted palms. But still their progress declines.

After a few hours, the fog burns away, and the river turns fast and stony; the brigade lands. Breakfast is the only break in the day's work. They bring supplies ashore and start a fire. Rose takes her ration of dried buffalo tongue, biscuit, and a mug of weak tea, and, as her father converses with Cecile Turr, she sneaks away to breakfast alone, ignoring Alexander's warnings and Lachlan's order to stay within view of the camp.

As when bedridden, Rose chafes under the constant gaze of others. Not all of the looks given her are respectable or even remotely polite. Many are overtly lustful, and a few of the burly Baymen have even made crude advances when her father's attention was elsewhere.

Through secrecy and deception, she had once made a game of observing others, but now she is the naked one, the object of strangers' desires. She can feel their eyes on her, especially at night, reflected in the evening fire. Ordinarily she would have chosen one — yes, even one of these beasts — to satisfy a curiosity. But that required her to be in charge, to be able to appear and vanish at will. But now she is powerless, dependent, and even worse, vulnerable. Not that she is completely helpless. Rose knows men and what they are capable of, knows that they always show intent long before they act, and so she keeps a dirk under the waist of her shift. More than once she has pulled it out and waved it under shocked eyes.

But this is no bedroom above a tavern or hall, with civilization and all its constraints ready to be summoned at will; here the pillory and gallows do not rule.

Seeing the lack of civilization in those dark eyes, she knows that only a ragged hierarchy and authority protects her from their gnarled hands and ghastly breath. How slim is the veil separating her from them, and she feels it weakening. The farther from York Fort they travel, the more the wilderness creeps aboard the boats while the fear of God and master fades from their hearts. She sees it slipping already: commands are more forceful, responses slower and more reluctant. Wry looks common. How thin must the barrier be by the time they reach the Forks?

She sits on a rock and watches the wild river sliding from the hidden continent to the sea. Although she is utterly weary of the river, from shore it still reflects a wild, secret beauty. She wonders what mysteries it carries; what it has seen. As she dips her feet, she is certain that murder has occurred along its length, and it whispers to her of dire deeds and secrets and fear. It is wild and furious, rumbling and roaring in cataracts and boiling spume. A cold breath rises from the river and mist fills the air, rainbowing in the morning sun.

She wonders how they are going to continue; it seems obvious that further navigation upriver is impossible. Bending, she dips her tin cup into the river; it feels like a religious rite to taste the water, to taste the lifeblood of the secret land that she is destined to make her own.

She senses a presence behind her and whirls, dropping the cup with a clatter on the rocks.

Declan Cormack stands leaning against a tree, watching her, arms crossed against his chest. Like a secret or something precious hides there. His curly dark hair rests on his shoulders and his mouth twists in a grin. His body radiates a conscious attempt at arrogance.

“You startled me,” Rose says. She had forgotten about the Highlander who had accompanied them from the Indians' camp. She notes that his peasant clothes have been replaced with Savage leggings and a stained deer-hide shirt. His legs are too short for the barrel girth of the rest of him; whatever else he might be, he is no runner.

“I beg your pardon,” Declan replies with his strong, Highland burr in a tone on the edge of rudeness. He moves toward her. “But it be dangerous for anyone to be on their own, much less a lass. If the Savages don't carry you off, fierce beasts surely will.”

“I thank you for your concern, Mr. Cormack, but I am sure I will be fine.” She moves slowly away from the water, her hand going to her waist.

“I am not sure of that at all, Miss, nor is your father.”

“I wish to be alone and think for a while.”

“‘Tis a crowded life, is it not? I can't remember the last time I spent a few hours alone with my thoughts. There's always someone poking and prying about; it is enough to make a man lose his wits.” He crouches down and looks out at the river. “Very pretty, is it not?”

She looks over the water. “Yes. We have nothing so wild where I come from.”

“There are many such rivers in the Highlands. The difference is a man knows where it comes from and where it goes. This,” — he waves a hand at the river — “is a mystery to me.”

He stares in silence for a while, Rose watching him. Everything she sees speaks of peasant: the fingers sausage-thick, the rough clothing, the broad, stumpy body. A man who laboured all day, slept on a straw bed, woke to labour some more. A purposeless existence, she had always thought when viewing peasant life from afar. But watching those blue eyes staring over the river, she sees something new: a fierce yearning and pride rather than the flat gaze of despair and acceptance apparent in the other colonists. As he squats there, it as if she is seeing a part of the earth itself, as if he is made from stone. He appears immutable to her, and she wonders what force could possibly have shifted him from his native lands?

Shaking his head, Declan looks down and spies the lichen on the rock at his feet; he lifts it up to show her.
“Tripe de roche,”
he says. “Our Savage friends have told me that this is eaten in times of hunger. It will keep starvation at bay, for a little while.”

“Do you think we shall ever be in need of such food, Mr. Cormack?”

“Who can know what waits for us?”

“God knows. But what do you hope for?”

Declan looks up the river. “An opportunity for a man to make something of himself,” he says.

“So you have the same dream as my father, that farming in the new land will be the start of something unique?”

“Nay. I will not farm.”

“Was that not the purpose in coming here? I beg your pardon, but I thought everyone destined for the Forks had been engage to farm the lands.”

Declan shakes his head and turns away from her. “I'll not farm,” he says. “Digging in the soil with bare hands for what? The lairds throw you aside like a trespassing animal, never mind that your family has crofted that bit of Highland soil since long before this laird were whelped. Your love and sweat goes into the land and even in the best years, it gives back barely enough to pay your rent and feed the bairns and plant for next year. There is more a man can do; there are more things for a man willing to see further. Let small men dig for roots and husband cattle.” He turns to her with a smile. “I have other plans.”

“I see. And what might they be, my good sir?”

Declan gives her a thoughtful look. “We shall have to see won't we, Miss Cromarty? Yes, we shall see. But it best we headed back, these rogues don't take kindly to stragglers.”

“I think you are somewhat of a rogue yourself, sir,”

“Lies, spread by my enemies,” Declan says, looking pleased.

Rose hesitates, and accepts the proffered arm. She feels its girth beneath its wrap and knows the man possesses a tremendous strength. “Thank you. On the contrary, one might mistake you for a gentleman, Mr. Cormack,” says Rose in a mocking tone.

“There be no call for insulting me,” he replies.

As they enter the camp, several people are lounging, smoking their pipes and taking whatever pleasure presents itself before the next leg of the journey. Some stare, including her father and Alexander. A few pointed snickers.