The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (19 page)

The next morning, he approaches her at the big fire.

“Are you well?” he asks.

“Yes. And you?”

“I am very well.” Perhaps for the first time since their afternoon in the sand shelter on the shore, she sees his broad smile.

“Today they begin the syrup,” he says.

“What is that?”

“The syrup from the maples.”

She makes a puzzled smile.

“Hasn’t Marie told you?”

“Of syrup?”

“It was her surprise, perhaps. Come with me.”

She is anxious that he should see her skill with the snow-shoes. She ties Elizabeth into her bunting and they set off.

“I’m as quick as you!” she cries.

“No!” he calls. “Much quicker!”

They pass swiftly along trails already well worn through the remains of winter drifts. The trees, the ones whose leaves turned scarlet as though signalling their final splendour before dying in
the fall, are now running with something called sap. The gnarled old trunks stand silently giving forth an opaque viscous offering to the survivors of winter. They find Marie and the others collecting the sticky drippings into a vessel and setting it over the coals of a fire. It steams and bubbles and after a long while turns into a pale amber liquid as thick as treacle. “Taste,” says Wioche, offering her a stick he has swirled through the syrup. She blows on it so she won’t burn her mouth and declares after the first taste, “It’s like candy.”

The maple syrup is also sustenance for the overwintered camp. Every tree in the maple bush is fitted with a funnel and vessel to catch the dripping sap. They boil the bounty and pour it over everything, meat, bannock, dried mouldy berries and even plop it into their tea. The sugar brings energy, so does the change of season.

W
IOCHE CUTS WOOD
and stacks it by her house. He repairs the roof again and stops the places at the base of the walls where meltwater would enter as the season progressed. But at night, as she lies in her bearskins, the snores of the Landrys around her, she hears angry voices from across the camp and knows Wioche’s is among them.

On a soft evening in early April, with the sky still bright in the west, he speaks to her.

“I have fixed your house and cut your wood and a fire is set in your hearth. You can come home now.”

As they cross the ground together, they pass old Militaw, who smiles to see them.

T
HEY EAT A LITTLE
while the baby sleeps in the furs on the cot.

“I must leave here again, Charlotte.”

“When?”

“In the morning.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I do not know.”

Without another word, he leaves her.

T
HERE’S AN AIR
of anticipation for the coming spring during the last cold days and freezing nights of winter. One day in April, the river ice that has been creaking and groaning as it grinds and bucks in the rising and falling temperatures begins to buckle, the broken pieces colliding in sucking and cracking explosions. Now loosened from the binding shores, the chunks move, slowly at first and then suddenly in a roaring whoosh, they are flushed out of the rivers to the bay.

The blessed season of rebirth begins. The land is bursting with buds; the sea brings an easy harvest. Birds are laying their eggs. Lobsters trapped on the flats are scooped up during the low tide. And the rivers are once again byways for travellers. The commodore and his men move from their winter lodge back to Alston Point in a convoy of dories, canoes and a new sailing ship they had constructed through the winter.

It’s early in June when Commodore Walker invites Charlotte to dinner to meet his shipping colleague, a man who has come by canoe from the Miramichi.

She fusses as best as she can with her frock and her hair and wraps Elizabeth into her bunting bag for the walk to the lodge at Alston Point. Clad in a blanket shawl and knee-high mooseskin boots, she sets out on the familiar path with some apprehension.

She’s still dusting the dirt from her boots when Walker strolls out to greet her. As she turns her head to bid him good
afternoon, she realizes his guest is beside him. Before she can collect her thoughts, the commodore says, “I wish to introduce you to a trusted colleague and a most eminent gentleman, Captain John Blake, one of the finest masters in His Majesty’s merchant marine and a veteran of life in this New World.” Turning to the handsome-looking man beside him, he continues, “May I introduce Miss Charlotte Taylor, a charming woman, recently from England and her wee bairn, Elizabeth Willisams.”

Blake steps forward. He is a tall man with a strong nose and chin. His expression is determined, his bearing erect. “Madam,” he says, “your fame has gone before you.” She extends her free hand and he bows to kiss it.

C
harlotte’s head is spinning from the bewildering speed of events when she stands at the fire in the centre of the camp and asks Chief Julian for the eagle feather.

She’d seen John Blake often, sailing the newly built ship around the bay to test its seaworthiness and at dinner with Walker and his men at Alston Point. Last night he’d suggested they walk together on the beach after supper. It was a mild night, the moon was nearly full and the water’s edge shimmered beneath it. Her feet sank into the wet sand while they walked in silence, Elizabeth asleep in the bunting bag on her back.

Blake spoke first. His voice held something that made her turn her head to him.

“I must go to the river inside the week,” he said.

“Oh yes? To your home on the Miramichi?”

“You may, if you choose, come with me as my wife.”

He had not looked at her as he said this, staring instead at
the incoming tide. The bluntness of the proposal left her speechless. They walked on.

“You will not then?” Blake finally asked.

“I am most deeply affected, sir, that you should make such a proposal. I confess I am not prepared for it.”

“It is unfortunately the case, Miss Taylor, that here in this new land we have seldom the luxury of long meditation. I have heard you speak to George Walker of settling here and heard you inquire about land. In truth, Charlotte, a woman alone cannot survive here long without a man. This is to simply state the truth. Nor will your faith in these Indians reward you at length.”

“They have been my friends.”

“They have been friends to many, as have we. But this land shall see great change soon enough, and the Indian will not benefit much.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so.”

Blake stopped and turned to her. “Nevertheless, I cannot debate this matter with you. I am a man with prospects and I am an English person like yourself. I have proposed marriage to you because I want to have a wife and because I believe you might make a fair one. I say on my own part only that I would make a faithful husband.”

“I don’t doubt it, John.”

“I have no patience with London fripperies, or any fripperies. I do not deny myself to be a hard man, but it is a hard land and I am suited to it.”

“It
is
a hard land, John, but full of promise, is it not?”

“Charlotte, will you marry me or no? If no, I am most sorry to have encumbered you with my poor plain speeches.”

“Would you really have me as you wife, John Blake? And Elizabeth as your daughter? You hardly know us.”

“I would.”

Charlotte did not know quite where her answer came from, but she found herself saying, “Then I shall be your wife.” They had walked on again in silence.

S
HE FINGERS
the eagle feather nervously while she tells the men and women who’d sheltered her these many months that she is to be married to John Blake. They are not in the least surprised as an unmarried white woman is a rarity—even when that woman is Charlotte Taylor. She has an ache in her throat when she begins her goodbye.

“I hope the smoke from the sweetgrass will give me the courage and goodness I have felt in this camp. Your stories of the beginnings—the creation, the land, the ways of the people both Mi’kmaq and Acadian, will be carried forever in my heart. It is my hope that we will meet again. Thank you from my mijuajijuit, Elizabeth, and from me, your nedap.”

There is much nodding in approval. Tea is passed around the circle. Now it is Marie’s turn to ask for the eagle feather. She tells Charlotte she has un petit cadeau for her soeur and gives her a pair of moccasins stitched across the toe and foot in minute puckers. They are violet in colour, the skins dyed with the juice of blueberries, the sides ornamented with the exquisite quillwork of the People.

“I made them from moose calf,” Marie tells her.

Then Wioche stands, takes the eagle feather from Marie and hands Charlotte a blanket with a slit in the middle, made from the long soft hairs of the young moose. When Charlotte slips it over Elizabeth’s head, it falls in folds around her and envelops her with the warmth of a people.

Later that night Charlotte writes in her diary:

It’s a fine morning, cool and clear when she rises at dawn on her wedding day. The trunk that has become a table of sorts is empty now, her clothes packed for the voyage to the Miramichi. She decides to leave the well-travelled chest with Marie, as there’s no room for it in the canoe. But the cradle and the sleigh must come. John Blake had grumbled about that the day before when he loaded Charlotte’s worldly goods into the canoe. “I can as well build these once we’re at the river.” But Charlotte had insisted, so he’d strapped the cumbersome contraptions onto the canoe and paddled away to Alston Point.

When Elizabeth is fed, Charlotte dresses the baby in the soft animal skins that are her only wardrobe and walks out of the hut that has been her home for nearly ten months. André steps toward her and presses a packet into her hand, “Pomme de terre
pour planter,” he says. She tucks his gift into her pocket and turns away from the camp. Wioche and Marie walk with her, all three with much to say and a short time to share their thoughts.

It’s Wioche who bids the final farewell. “You give Gluskap a fine story to tell. May it be continued on the Milamichi.”

Charlotte wonders if she will ever see them again. She wishes the ache in her chest would go away. She wonders as well what the morrow will bring. With baby Elizabeth strapped to her back and a braid of sweetgrass dangling from the bunting bag, Charlotte walks into the lodge to be married, for better or for worse.

T
HEY ARE MARRIED
on the twelfth day of June 1776 by George Walker in his capacity as Justice of the Peace for the County of Halifax, settlement of Alston Point, Nepisiguit, His Majesty’s colony of Nova Scotia. They stand in the main hall of Walker’s house and face the wooden cross that hangs on the east wall. In the absence of a soaring nave, a rose window, an altar and a chalice, this cross is God’s sole emblem during the prayer services Walker occasionally conducts. Charlotte had dared to suggest that they might conduct the ceremony in the clearing overlooking the bay, but the men would have none of it. She would have liked, too, to have Marie and Anne at her side, but in light of her betrothed’s sensibilities, this drew only frowns. No matter: she had made her choice and now must follow it.

Jack Primm is present, and Dan Crocker and Bob Simpson and half a dozen others of Walker’s men.

“I require and charge ye both—” George Walker speaks the words with care, his Scots burr rippling the cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, which he holds somewhat awkwardly
at arm’s length. “As ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of ye know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their matrimony lawful.”

He pauses here, clears his throat and appears to be reading ahead in preparation for the next lines. Well, thought Charlotte, there is no impediment on account of marriage, and there’s a blessing, I suppose.

“John Blake, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will.”

Charlotte casts a sideways glance at Blake, where he kneels beside her on a rough wooden stool Walker had covered in a beaver pelt. He is a handsome man indeed, but she’s still taking the measure of him. He has the face of a man who can’t be surprised. His wary eyes tell her trust doesn’t come easily. He’s older than she is—a lot older, she thinks, but younger than the commodore. His eyes are as brown as the earth, but his ruddy, sun-darkened face, weathered by years at sea, and his brown hair flecked with grey, give the impression of grave intent.

“Charlotte Taylor, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”