The Last Crossing (44 page)

Back in the house, I race up the stairs two at a time, the whirlwind music blowing me upward. I come to a brief halt in the passage, gulp air into my lungs after my rush up the staircase. A splinter of illumination shows under Addington’s door. I give no warning, lift the latch, and enter his room.

My brother is sitting on the bed. A small table is drawn to the edge of the straw-tick mattress, and on the table stands a lantern. Addington looks up at me without surprise, as if he has been waiting for me to arrive.

I can scarcely credit my eyes. The flame of the lantern completely burnishes his torso and arms with an armorial, chivalric, silvery brightness. He looks as if he has donned a chain-mail shirt. The sight of him drives whatever admonitions I had prepared straight out of my consciousness. Stunned, I drop down on a chair.

Addington says nothing, simply reaches for a vial on the table, shake a few gleaming drops into his hand, and smears it on his face. Then he grimaces; his countenance streaked with what appears to be melting tin.

“Addington -” I say. My brother shrugs his shoulders impatiently, holds up a hand to stay any conversation. So I simply sit and watch him paint his face with meticulous care. His task completed, he turns on me a blank silver mask out of which gape two dead-blue eyes, a red, leering mouth.

“Addington,” I say, “what is this? Explain yourself.”

In a voice as empty of emotion as are his eyes, he states, “It creeps up on a fellow when he isn’t active. I neglected to remember that. But keep on the move and it can’t overtake you. So tomorrow, maybe the day after, I shall be in the saddle again. That’s the elixir I require.”

“You are talking nonsense. I can’t grasp what you are trying to tell me.”

My brother follows some line of argument evident only to himself. “In the meantime, a fellow has to rely on stopgaps. A defensive posture, hold the line until counterattack is possible.” He lifts the bottle, shakes it at me. “Mercury. I’ve been slothful, no one to blame but myself. Gave it a chance to bore away in me. Lightning pains in the joints, quite terrific. Sleepless nights, etc. But once I get on the go I’ll be able to dispense with the quicksilver. As a remedy it isn’t all it’s claimed to be. Collects in the brain, settles there, muddles a fellow’s thoughts. What’s more, it drains down into the legs, turns them heavy as lead.” Addington looks down at his limbs, pats them sadly. “It’s why I didn’t dance tonight. Could hardly lift my legs. Everyone would have enjoyed to see me dance, but what does a chap do when he can hardly stir his legs?” His coat of silver shoots reflected light at me. In
the silence that follows I can hear him breathing. “I might have sung them a song – one I wrote – but I didn’t think of it at the time. I find my thoughts rather scattered these days. I’ll give you a treat though, let you hear my composition, Charles.”

And to the tune of the “Roast Beef of Old England,” Addington begins to sing in an uninflected, monotonous voice.

After one verse, he gives up serenading me. “A song to good health,” he comments. “I didn’t realize my talent for music. The melody just came into my head and then the words were there too. I’m a man of mysterious parts, even to myself.”

He shivers. His head hangs for a few moments, regarding the legs too heavy to dance. He lifts the silver mask to me again and says in a childish, earnest voice, “Now, Charles, you’re the scholar in the family. I have a question for you. Is it true that syphilis got its name from a character in a poem, a shepherd boy or some such thing. Is that true?”

I clear my throat and say as evenly as I can, “I do not know.”

“Well, if it’s true it must be a very bad poem to give its name to this thing.” My brother snorts laughter. The effect is repellent, a sudden contortion of the muscles of his face which twists the mask queasily.

I lean forward. “Addington, you are ill.”

“Ill for the time being, but I shall recover once I am in the open air again.”

“No, Addington, do not think that. You must return to England immediately and seek treatment.”

“England is not the place for me. England is an indolent place. There is no room for activity there. It loves indolence, my affliction. One must burn it out, you see. Burn it out of the system with a thrill, a touch of danger. That’s the ticket.” He looks at me closely, to see if I have understood. “The thing is for a man to find himself a place where he fits, Charles,” he continues with assurance. “I never fit in England. Too small a parish, no scope. But here – a different story.” His head bobs up and down, confirming his own statement as he wipes his fingers restlessly on the counterpane of the bed. “What we must do is go south. At once.”

“No,” I say, “we must not. You must return to England. You are unwell.”

Addington does not hear me. His brain has made another sudden, erratic dart. “You didn’t know the chap – Sergeant Carlyle – but he swore by all the gods that the surest remedy for a blood disease was congress with a virgin. A fresh young girl drew the poison right out of your system. Now what do you think of that? There’s a prescription a fellow ought to follow. I tried it once, but several dosings might be necessary.”

“That’s old soldiers’ talk – ignorance and superstition. You must put yourself in the hands of a doctor, a specialist in England. It is your only hope.”

All at once, his voice trembles. “You must assist and support me, Charles.”

I breathe a little easier. “Naturally, I shall do whatever I can.”

But he means something else. “I want Father to build me a fort. Not some piddling place like this,” he says with a dismissive wave, “but an immense fortification in the south to control the whisky trade, drive competitors from the field. A great fort with granite towers – you could sketch them for him. But, no,” he continues, careering off excitedly, “first you must write and explain the soundness of it as an investment. The return on capital which can be had. Pounds and shillings and pence. You must do so immediately.” Addington snatches up a piece of paper from the table and thrusts it into my hand. “Tell Father that we leave tomorrow to scout the lie of
the land, to select a dominating location for my fort. Explain to him how important it is to overawe the natives with towers.”

I place the paper back on the table. “I go nowhere tomorrow, Addington, unless it is to take you back to England.”

He stiffens. “You are obliged to do as I say. Father put me in charge.”

In this crisis, the evident must be stated. I struggle to contain my tears, to speak softly to Addington. “We must accept that Simon is dead. We must go back to England.”

“If you refuse to follow orders, I shall make a report to Father of your immoral relations with that woman. I have suspected for some time that your behaviour was responsible for undermining the men’s respect for me, that it has sowed dissension and insubordination. Your conduct brought dishonour to the family name, and made it impossible for me to lead.”

My brother’s impenetrable glittering shield has deflected everything I have said. As gently as I can, I make another attempt to reach him. “Please consider your condition. You are presently as unsound in your mind as in your body. If you refuse to heed good advice, I have no alternative but to remove Mrs. Stoveall from your company, take her back to Fort Benton. Your actions this evening have made it clear that no woman is safe with you. I shall request Mr. Potts to accompany us.”

“You cannot have Potts! Potts is mine!” he cries petulantly. “I have promised him five hundred dollars if he finds me a grizzly, and he will stick by me until he has it. Besides, Potts and I are on the best of terms. Do you not see how he preens since I adopted Mr. Ayto’s sobriquet for him, call him Mr. Moses? Potts is a bit of a spaniel. I shall pet him up and have my way with him.”

I get to my feet. “I implore you to clear these phantoms from your mind and accept my offer to see you safely back to England. We shall speak again tomorrow morning when you are rested, and better able to think.”

My hand is on the door when Addington querulously cries out to me. “I place a respectable woman under my protection and you ruin her! That is despicable! Your infamy shall not be forgiven, Charles!”

I stand for several moments with my hand resting on the latch. Finally, I turn back. Addington is vigorously running a finger around inside his mouth. He takes it out and wipes it on his trousers. “My mouth is full of sores,” he declares, sounding puzzled. “Do you think I got them from kissing Mrs. Stoveall?”

J
erry Potts would stay with Captain Gaunt. Charles Gaunt and the woman would be well enough off in Fort Edmonton until they could hitch up with some party heading down from the North Saskatchewan to Montana. The Captain’s route was more dangerous, he and his men would have to cross several hundred miles of Blackfoot territory to reach Fort Whoop-Up, but once there, Potts reasoned he could wash his hands of him. Whenever the Captain decided to return to Fort Benton, he could travel in safety with one of the bull trains that hauled trade goods between the Upper Missouri and the junction of the St. Mary and Belly rivers. But above all else, Potts had a hankering to spend time among his mother’s people, to feast and smoke in their lodges.

On the long trip south to Fort Whoop-Up, the Captain’s behaviour had been unpredictable. When he played cards at night, he confused the men with sudden changes of the rules, abruptly turning a game of poker into a game of rummy every few hands. He sang the same song over and over all day long in a loud, tuneless voice.

Now that they have arrived at Fort Whoop-Up, the Captain has grown even more excitable. He vexes strangers with his nonsense about building a big stone fort to steal the liquor trade from the Americans. When he’s not describing his fort, he talks continually of killing a grizzly with his bow. Grunewald and Barker do their best to keep clear of the Englishman. Even Ayto, who has always boasted
of his friendship with the Captain, seems to avoid him. But each night the Captain demands Ayto copy down his strange thoughts, thoughts that fly about here and there like birds, and are as difficult to catch. Potts can see in Ayto’s eyes how he has become afraid of the Captain.

Potts is weary of loud, swaggering men like Addington Gaunt, but in Fort Whoop-Up they are present everywhere, fifty or more of them within the walls, strutting, making empty threats, boasting of the hard things they have done or will do. This is not a restful place. He spends most of his time in the quarters of the McKay brothers – half-breed hunters Johnny Healy has hired to supply meat for his traders – or in the lodges of the Blackfoot camped just outside the fort.

For the moment, he is giving his eyes and ears respite from braggarts. He sits with his back to the log wall of the fort’s stable, basking in the last, soothing rays of the September sun, considering whether to find the grizzly the Captain wheedles for like a small child begging for a bright bauble.

At Fort Edmonton, Potts had seen plenty of grizzly sign. One day he had even spotted a big sow feeding on the carcass of a buffalo calf that had drowned and washed up on the banks of the river. But he had told the Captain nothing of this, and when the Captain had pleaded with him to find him a bear, Potts had said there were no grizzlies about. He lied to the Englishman because he was sure the Captain only wanted to kill a grizzly for the sake of the book Ayto is writing about him.

The Englishman is very sick. When he walks he totters like an old man, and pisses like one too. Potts has seen him standing behind a wagon, pulling and coaxing his pizzle to let him make water. There was more sweat and tears on the Englishman’s face than there was piss on the ground.

Potts wonders if Gaunt’s desire to kill a grizzly is in truth a desire for something very different. Maybe he is asking Potts to help him find an honourable way to rid himself of his own feeble body. The Captain is not a man to accept death on a sickbed. It may be he wants to enter the World of Skeletons like a man, with courage.

Potts cannot decide what to do about this matter. So he sits in the early-autumn sun and watches all the Fort Whoop-Up men walk about as if they own the place. He was here long before any of them, at the very beginning of the fort, hunting game for the thirty men constructing the post. He had not listened to Mary when she asked him not to work for Johnny Healy; he had taken the job and, because of that, had lost her and Mitchell forever. Potts asks himself why he was so stubborn. The money he earned working for Healy was spent a long time ago, and empty pockets are all he has to show for displeasing his wife.

Potts thinks of the man who had directed the raising of the fort, a carpenter Healy had lured away from the Hudson Bay Company. Having been north to Edmonton, Potts can see the hand of the Bay Man everywhere in Fort Whoop-Up, see it in the solid timber stockade, in the shops and warehouses, in the big oak gates, everything on the pattern of the company forts, right down to the two brass cannon mounted kitty-corner on the palisades. The only thing not the same is the flag flying above the palisades, the striped star flag.