The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (32 page)

She folds the letter and tucks it into the vest she will wear to Frederick Town.

A
T SUPPERTIME,
she breaks the news of the journey. This will be the first time she has been separated from any of them since they were born, and as she explains why she has to leave them for a few days, Robert climbs right into her lap.

“This is our home, the only home three of you have ever known,” she says. “Your father would want me to do everything I can to secure our place here. We can’t expect others to look out for our interests. It’s up to me to take care of us now. You’ll be all right with Jimmy while I’m gone, and if something bad happens”—her voice quakes a little—“you will run straight to the Murdochs.” It’s been quiet on the river these winter months. Surely they’ll be safe.

After the children are asleep, she herself can’t settle down to a proper rest, though she drifts and dozes for a few hours in the chair by the fire. Then she rouses herself to pack dried fish and berries, bannock, some sugar and tea into the pack she’ll tie to her back, along with a couple of vessels in which to melt water for tea along the way. She layers clothing to conserve heat, finds John’s beaver pelt hat to wear over her plaited hair and straps on her mooseskin boots. She’s ready when a sliver of sun comes through the trees over the river, bringing Wioche sliding along on the ice with two pairs of snowshoes strung across his back. He pulls a toboggan laden with supplies.

She leans over the sleepy pile of children in the big bed to give last-minute instructions and admonishments. She makes sure to kiss each one of them and even Jimmy goodbye. “Be good,” she says as she shuts the door.

Glancing toward John Blake’s snowy tomb, she fervently hopes there won’t be a thaw while she’s away. At the river edge, she looks back to see her little family huddled together outside
the cabin in their nightshirts, waving, their breaths pluming above their heads. Then she slips over the bank onto the byway of ice.

The early-morning sun ascends at their backs, casting a bronze glow on the river as they slide in unison along a trail that’s been broken on the frozen waterway. They make good time to the forks and follow the left bank onto the southwest Miramichi. When Wioche suggests they stop to rest, she reckons by the sun overhead that it’s been five hours since they left the cabin. She unwraps a piece of fish and a chunk of bannock while Wioche cuts pieces of ice to melt for tea. They sit on the bank of the river, grateful for the food, the sun and each other’s company. After a short half-hour, they set off again.

They’ve put some miles behind them when the frost in the late-afternoon air starts to penetrate her clothes. Her legs are stiffening now as much from the cold as the exercise. They push ahead until the sun falls behind the trees, leaving them with only enough light to find a place to camp and gather boughs for shelter and the wood they need. Charlotte gets the fire started while Wioche deftly makes the lean-to in a semicircle around it. She melts ice, makes tea and cooks fish and bannock for dinner. After they’ve eaten, they sit warming themselves by the flames, wrapped in their furs, and Wioche tells her another tale of Gluskap, this one about a porcupine and a sparrow lost in the forest. Between the porcupine’s defensive quills and the sparrow’s ability to fly and Gluskap’s intervention in the form of a talking oak tree, the pair find their way out of their predicament.

She’s enchanted with these fables, which animate shells and give language to birds and invariably have nymphlike spirits conveying magic and mirth. After he wends his way to the moral of
the story, in which the sparrow and the porcupine find out that both creatures are necessary parts of creation, they prepare the fire for the long night ahead, piling it high with wood, moving their pallets of boughs closer to its edge and wrapping themselves in the extra furs and skins from the toboggan. She tucks her face inside the furry blanket and falls fast asleep before they even say goodnight.

It’s still dark when she wakens. She’s unbearably cold, and a heap of embers barely burns in the firepit. She thinks she may freeze to death if she can’t get it blazing again. Bracing herself for the blast of even colder air as she crawls out of her fur nest, she moves as quietly as she can to the woodpile, but still wakes Wioche. He’s on his feet in an instant. He teases her about being too soft for the weather, but helps her to build the fire up, shooing her under her blanket while he works. As soon as it’s blazing, he crawls back under the wraps and seems to fall to sleep immediately. Still cold, Charlotte allows herself to edge nearer to him, and soon her toes and fingers warm up again and her eyes close.

For four more days, they slide along the river, bushwhack through the forest and sleep under the stars. By day and by night the threads of their two lives are woven into an unfinished tapestry of ragged edges and tangled patterns.

It’s late morning on the fifth day when they see the chimneys of Frederick Town in the distance. Hauling the toboggan behind them, they slip and slide their way into the centre of the bustling town. Houses, some of them two storeys, some made of stone, line streets that seem to Charlotte to be absolutely teeming with people and horse-drawn carts. She finds herself coming to a dead stop in the road, staring around her like a person who has never seen a horse let alone the city of London; she kicks herself because in her obsession with making her
claim, she hadn’t thought about what she could barter here, or carry back for the children.

Wioche has remained a couple of steps behind her as they walked into town, but now he discreetly gets her attention.

“There is no place in town where we both can stay the night, Charlotte. Go to the governor and make your claim. If you get the deed, we can camp again in the woods tonight and be on our way back to your children.”

It doesn’t take long for them to find the governor’s residence, an impressive building of imperial presence and vast fenced grounds with sentries at the gate. Wioche fades into the background as she asks one of the sentries whether the governor is in Frederick Town. When he nods, she tells him she has business to conduct and he motions her inside the grounds, pointing to the broads steps that lead to a front door flanked by columns. As she walks toward the entrance, she somewhat wryly realizes that this is the first truly imposing structure she’s seen since she left England. On the doorstep, Charlotte sheds her bearskin and tidies her hair, hoping there is still a modicum of English politesse left in her comportment to aid her in her purpose. She doesn’t know whether she should knock or just barge in. She tries the door, which swings open easily onto a large foyer.

A nervous-looking functionary is immediately upon her, asking her the nature of her business in this house.

“I’m seeking an audience with the governor,” she tells him, putting a maximum of her old haughtiness into her tone.

She’s not certain whether it’s curiosity about the appearance of a woman on the threshold or luck that gets her into the antechamber. The governor is not available, but his aide, Mr. Wiltshire, will see her directly.

After a time of impatient waiting, she is ushered into the presence of a darting man with pointed features, who literally twirls his moustache when he sees her.

“The Widow Blake, sir,” the functionary announces.

Eyeing her once up and down, Wiltshire immediately turns to the window, beckoning Charlotte to sit down. His patrician manner irritates her before she even begins.

“I’ve come for the deed to my land,” she tells him abruptly. Reaching inside her pocket she produces her proof, laying it on the man’s table. “This Lot Eight licence for the Miramichi, granted to John Blake in 1777, needs to be transferred to a proper deed in the province of New Brunswick.”

He turns now to look at her and then her paper as she presses on.

“The land on Lot Ten has been partially cleared and crops have been planted there by John Blake and myself. It is the two—Lots Eight and Ten—I want deeds for.”

“The deeds to all the lots along the river are being prepared,” Wiltshire says as though to wave her off. His accent is upper crust, and he’s of the age of one of the marriage prospects her mother had in mind for her. He is exactly the style of man that made running away with Pad such an appealing course of action.

“How long must I wait?”

“It is a matter that will take several months, at least, madam,” he replies.

“Mr. Wiltshire, I have left my children in the care of a young boy and walked through the woods for five days to secure title to my land and I will not leave this office until I have assurance from your pen that the land is mine.”

She sits very straight in the plain wooden chair and waits for his reply.

He looks at her for a long moment, taking in her patched skirts, her fur coat and mooseskin, the strands of fierce red hair that resisted her efforts to smooth it, the work-roughened hands and short nails and the intensity burning in the large blue eyes. Then he shrugs as though the matter is of no moment to him.

“I will write a memorial that I shall send to you stating that in due course you will be named the lawful owner of the land.”

She continues to sit, making clear with every fibre of her being that if he wants this bedraggled settler gone, he’ll have to give her the letter this instant or call the guards.

Finally, languidly, he dips his quill into the inkwell and inscribes the facts she needs on a piece of paper with the waxed seal of the governor at the top. Then he signs it himself and hands it to her. Before he can turn away again to the window, she takes her own letter from her pocket and lays it on the table. “This memorial to General Howe Taylor needs to be dispatched to England with haste. I trust you to see it goes with the first spring sailing to Bristol.”

“What is General Howe Taylor to you, Widow Blake?”

“The general is my father.”

He shows no surprise, but does reach for her letter. “Is your business in this office finished now?” he inquires.

As she rises from her chair, she curtsies slightly, one mooseskin-clad foot behind her as she bends a knee, and smiles, and for a moment the supercilious Mr. Wiltshire sees the young gentlewoman Charlotte Taylor once was.

S
HE AND
W
IOCHE
are well across the river and into the woods when they stop to make camp for the night, the letter folded carefully in her pocket. It isn’t everything she hoped to achieve, but it is enough.

A light snow is falling. It’ll be worrisome if it worsens, Charlotte thinks, but at the moment it feels like an insulator from the perishing cold. They cut extra boughs, build a lean-to and settle down together by the fire while a fat fish sizzles on the embers. Charlotte’s mouth waters. Wioche also produces a large slab of cheese he has found in Frederick Town. It feels like a celebration, and she suddenly feels so overwhelming grateful to this man it brings tears to her eyes.

He nudges his shoulder into her, and a vibration dances around her chest. From the moment she laid eyes on him at the Mi’kmaq camp on the hill over Alston Point, she was bewitched by his gentle strength, his clear pride in his people, the way his kindness to her lit the dark intensity of his eyes. That was almost ten years ago, but the attraction that is making her heart race on this wintry night has never faded.

They eat hungrily, every morsel of the fish, slathering their bannock with the greasy juices that drip from its carcass, their chins shiny—Wioche laughing as Charlotte even picks the crispy bits of skin from the wooden spit. They sink their teeth into the sharp-tasting cheese, a luxury that seems impossible here in the bush. It’s snowing harder now, and they each wear a mantle of white. But the fire is warm and they’re utterly alone.

Wioche bumps against her playfully again, and this time she leans her head on his shoulder. At last he slips his long fingers around her chin and tilts her face to his. Then with exquisite delicacy, he covers her mouth with his lips. It’s as though the fire has crawled from the pit in front of them to her groin. Her toes curl reflexively. She pulls away briefly, then buries her face in his neck. His lips graze her cheek, and she lifts her face to him. He kisses her eyelids, her nose—and this time she’s the one who seeks his lips. He breaks away, only to lift her onto the bed of
boughs. There’s no more hesitation, no shy overtures. When he slides into her, she arches her back to bring him closer.

They lie together afterward in the ruins of their shelter like a pair of saplings intertwined. They sleepily realize they should prop up their lean-to and rebuild the fire. The wind has picked up and snow tickles their faces. But they move not at all.

A timeless interval later they waken to night and a fire that is only embers. Charlotte nurses it into blazing life again as Wioche reassembles their shelter. Then they return to the nest they’d made of furs and skins and find more warmth in each other’s arms.

The trek back to Blake Brook is an unforgettable journey marked by long conversations and silent reveries as they snow-shoe through the sunlit woods, and passion spent and spent again beneath spruce boughs under the stars. A decade of longing is fulfilled; the future is unspoken.