The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (31 page)

And as they walk, they both number on their fingers the likely candidates, as interested in Blake’s land, they’d guess, as in Charlotte’s fine person.

Charlotte wonders where William Wishart is but can’t quite bring herself to ask Jimmy if he has seen him. But still she’s surprised when after two weeks he hasn’t come by, as he’d always kept a watch on her when Blake was away at sea. As the days pass, Charlotte finds it becomes easier not to think much about their situation during daylight hours, when the chores of ordinary survival take all her energies. But when the children are asleep and the fires are banked, she continues to turn the problem of securing their lives over and over in her mind and allows herself to miss the often-silent companionship of her husband.

Many days it is so cold that they cannot go outside, and so she throws herself into the task of teaching the children their lessons. Elizabeth helps with the little ones, although reading from the books Charlotte carried with her from England—Shakespearean sonnets and the poems of John Donne, and even
Clarissa
—is not to Elizabeth’s liking. The lives the books describe are so foreign to her experience of the world. More weeks slip by, all of them feeling a little shipwrecked in their cabin, the woodpile depleting steadily, storms blowing around their ears for two days out of every seven.

It’s the first week of March before John Murdoch returns with news. The old settlers are gathering to meet at his cabin
and she needs to attend. Thirty Loyalists have been granted fifteen thousand acres of land along the river.

“Who have they been conniving with to scoop up the lots?” Charlotte asks.

“Who knows the exact truth of it,” Murdoch replies. “But it’s time for us to take action.”

The terrain has shifted so much in recent years, and the Loyalists have made such strides and such claims, that some people are calling the old settlers such as Charlotte and the Murdochs “pre-Loyalists.” This strikes the original settlers as insulting.

“It’s a worrying sign that the governor of New Brunswick has taken sides,” Murdoch says. “I’ve got Mr. Delesdernier to come hear us out and perhaps make our case. Charlotte, if you want to stay on at Blake Brook, you need to come put a word in for your claim.” Charlotte has met the land agent, who has acted in claims to secure titles for other settlers, in her husband’s company—John Mark Delesdernier, a Swiss who emigrated to the Miramichi shortly after she arrived. When weather permits, he does a constant circuit of the government offices in Frederick Town, Parr Town and Halifax, and he certainly understands the concerns of the settlers. He has been witness to their efforts to clear and claim the lots along the river and is known as a good land agent who frequently carries petitions to the governor. Charlotte especially likes the care the man has taken to learn the Mi’kmaq language, becoming knowledgeable about the native customs as well as their historical grievances. A rare attitude in a white man.

Jimmy wants to come with her, but she says no, she needs him to stay with the children in case she’s back late: she doesn’t want Elizabeth left alone to deal with keeping the fire going and
feeding the children. Lacing on her fur-lined boots and donning her old fur coat, Charlotte snowshoes with Murdoch back to his place, squinting against bright sun on snow.

Charlotte is behind him when he pushes open the door to a room packed with men. When they realize the Widow Blake is among them, there’s an uncomfortable silence. Then a few of them nod toward her and mutter condolences before looking to Murdoch to bring the meeting to order. Charlotte looks for Janet in the room and finds her sitting on a bench near the window. She makes her way over to sink down beside her where she won’t be the pitied object of everyone’s attention.

“There’s a land grab going on up and down the banks of the Miramichi,” Murdoch begins. “The land licences granted by the governor in Halifax are now subject to approval by Governor Carleton in Frederick Town.”

“We’re being done out of the land by the uppity Loyalists,” says a grumpy Alexander Henderson.

“Mr. Delesdernier can help us,” Murdoch says and gestures to the agent to address the crowd. “Let’s hear him out and decide what we must do.”

Delesdernier is stout and small, with round cheeks reddened by hard travel in freezing temperatures and a dark frock coat that has seen much patching. In order to better see them all as he speaks, he steps up on a wooden box.

“I have written a letter to Governor Carleton on your behalf,” he says. “It explains that all of you in this room are the only principal and old settlers on the Miramichi River who had licences for their land from the government in Halifax.”

Nods and shouts of “Too true!” greet him.

“I want to read to you the letter I have composed on your behalf,” he says, drawing a folded sheet from his inside pocket:

“‘In 1777, Captain Boyle of
HMS
Hunter
properly qualified us as owners of the lots we occupied. Each of us had been nominated to take up one half-mile of front and to keep and hold the same until further orders from the government. Now we petition the governor to enter each of our names in the land register of New Brunswick.’”

They need little discussion to approve this wording, and after Delesdernier places ink, quill and the letter on the table, they line up to sign it. Charlotte is last, but not least, scrawling
Widow Blake
after the men’s signatures.

Delesdernier promises to deliver the governor’s decision to register their lots as soon as it is made.

Charlotte stays on for supper after the men leave to visit a while with Janet. The moonlight is making long shadows of the spruce trees as she makes her way back to Blake Brook. With every step she takes, her resentment and suspicion grows: it seems to her that even to John Murdoch her presence at the meeting was an afterthought. Can she trust Delesdernier or any other man to present her claim, even if she’s masquerading in the name of her dead husband. The Widow Blake indeed.

When she pushes the door open she finds Jimmy sound asleep with the children. The way they loop around him reminds her suddenly of how the kittens curled into Tommy as he lay in the cattle stalls on the ship. She stokes the fire, adds another log and sits watching the flames awhile. She has to fight for her land for the sake of these children, who are her reason and her comfort. Each one brings her a different gift. Elizabeth is calm and gentle. She mothers the younger children with the sense of compassion she seems to have been born with. John Junior is something else. Like his sister Mary Ann, whose nickname, Polly, has now stuck, he’s in constant motion, cleverly
teasing his way into and out of trouble. She’s convinced that the two of them open their eyes every morning with an adventure already in mind, often designed to bedevil her. Robert, only three, is a quiet, even studious child, who spends hours mesmerized by the fire, by the devilish activity of John and Polly, by the little chores his mother sets him. He seems happiest when he’s snuggled on Charlotte’s lap. “We will manage,” she says out loud, as though to confirm her wavering belief.

A
T MID-MORNING
, the call of the whippoorwill drifts into the cabin. For weeks Charlotte has not allowed herself to wonder if word of her plight has reached the Indian camp, or whether Wioche has heard of Blake’s death. When she opens the door, she steadies herself against disappointment. But it really is Wioche standing at the edge of the brook, so covered by a huge furry cloak she might have mistaken him for a bear had it not been for the whistle. She’s rarely seen him to speak to him since she married John Blake, but he has never been far from her thoughts. The one benefit to being the Widow Blake is she is now free to invite him into her house. He is the one who hesitates for a moment, but shedding his cloak on the doorstep he finally follows her inside.

The children are at the table working at an arithmetic lesson Charlotte has set them. John Junior leaps up in alarm at the sight of an Indian in his father’s house, and Charlotte hastens to introduce them. She knows that when it comes to Indians, he is his father’s son.

“John, this is Wioche, whose people were so kind to me when I first came to the Baie. Remember the stories I’ve told you of the Indian camp?”

“Yes, Mum,” John Junior says, and though he still doesn’t
look too happy, he can’t help taking a careful inventory of the man, from the leggings he wears to the tunic belted at the waist with a broad sash embroidered with porcupine quills to the long, narrow blade strapped to his thigh.

Wioche, meanwhile, is smiling at Elizabeth, who hesitantly smiles back.

“Mijooajeech,” he greets her.

“That’s the word for
baby,”
Charlotte explains. “Wioche first met you when you were only a few hours old, Elizabeth. He is the man who made the bunting bag from rabbit fur, the one I wrapped all of you in as babies.” She looks sternly at her children, who one by one come up to greet their visitor properly, even John Junior. As she and Wioche seat themselves by the fire, all cluster around her chair to stare shyly at him.

He tells her that when the camp at the Baie moved—first just to Caron Point across the channel from Alston Point—he began to spend more time travelling the Mi’kmaq district, staying mostly at Taboosimgeg up the coast. He has been by her cabin from time to time and hears news of Charlotte’s family from the women she visits in the camp on the river. He doesn’t have to explain to her why he hasn’t stopped—Wioche was keenly aware of her husband’s views on Indians. After the battle on the Lafayette, Charlotte tried very hard to change Blake’s mind, but the best they could do was declare a truce on the subject. Blake never trusted the People.

Yet here Wioche sits, attempting to comfort Blake’s children with tales of the Great Spirit and the place where their father watches over them. He does a better job of it than she has ever done, Charlotte thinks ruefully, remembering the immense distances the People travel to bury their dead in sacred places. She hopes none of the children will mention John Blake’s temporary
burial spot, and changes the subject quickly, asking for news of her friends from the Baie.

As she prepares their lunch, Wioche tells her that many people have died in an outbreak of measles. Marie’s mother was one of them. Marie and André have settled in Miscou and have added two more children to their family. The Acadians are beginning to prosper again, he says, though their lives are not easy. The new English settlers treat them as though they don’t belong here.

“Some of the old ones do too,” Charlotte replies.

Soon the children get used to the visitor, and hours pass easily. Charlotte and Wioche talk of the new province, the struggles with the weather, the Loyalists, the migration route of the animals that has changed as more land is settled, the diminished prospects and problems of his people, who seem to be slowly giving up the fight against the settlers and the rum, accepting the inevitable, some would say, though Charlotte still admires the pride and self-sufficiency and ease with which the People once prospered here.

The afternoon slips by. Suppertime is approaching when she sends her children out to fetch the night’s supply of wood, and finally shares her deepest worry with this man, her oldest and most trusted friend in this place. That she should talk to him of owning land that once belonged to all might be strange, but she needs to say it aloud to someone she knows has her interests at heart. “If we are to stay on here, Wioche, I must secure the deed. I don’t think it is good enough to have the licence of land given to us by Nova Scotia. We are under a new province’s governance now, and I won’t feel safe until the deed is transferred. Women’s rights to the land are fragile. I don’t know of any woman settler who has secured a claim on her own. But I am
John Blake’s widow, and surely that must count for something. It was my labour as much as his that cleared this plot: he was often away weeks at a time.”

He considers her words, then says bluntly, “You must take your licence to the new governor. I’ve heard he’s in Frederick Town now.”

She’s flabbergasted. “Go to Frederick Town? I wouldn’t know how to find it. And if I did set off, the winter would stop me before I ever got off the river.”

Wioche looks at her steadily, as if testing her resolve. “I will show you the way. There and back—it will take us ten days by snowshoe.”

Since she arrived at Blake Brook, Charlotte hasn’t been farther afield than Napan Bay in one direction, where the Murdochs live and the Indian camp is situated, and the forks in the other. Jimmy can take care of the children, she decides. She knows the rest of the settlers will talk—a white woman setting out alone with an Indian guide—but let them. If I come back with the deeds in my hand, they’ll not use my name unkindly, she thinks.

By the time Wioche leaves in the waning light of the day, they have agreed that at dawn they will set out for Frederick Town. She will bring what provisions she can carry comfortably on her back. He will provide the snowshoes—Indian snowshoes are narrow and about as long as the distance from her waist to her feet and have mooseskin cording that makes it easier to drag the foot through the top snow rather than lifting it. “Better for long journey,” Wioche says. I hope so, she thinks to herself while waving goodbye. Then she looks at her children again and wonders what she is doing: If something happens to her, their situation will be dire. No, she won’t think about that. She must secure the deed.

She goes to the table, picks up her quill, opens the ink jar and begins the letter she has been thinking to write since she got up from her chair by the fire after John Blake died. She hesitates over the sheet, but only for a moment. Then her hand moves steadily.