The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (20 page)

“I will.”

His low voice now rumbles out his vow. “I, John Blake, take thee, Charlotte Taylor, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

Blake releases her hand and she takes his and says her own vows in response.

Charlotte had not sought Walker’s counsel on Blake’s suit because she strongly believed the match to be of his design. Since it was clear to all that she would not be returning to England in the near future, and since she could not be expected to remain with the Mi’kmaq indefinitely, a husband was the only solution and this husband the best husband available.

Blake takes from his pocket a simple, heavy gold ring.

“Place it on the Book,” Walker instructs in a quiet voice. Then he picks up the ring and returns it to Blake’s hand and Blake slides it on the fourth finger of Charlotte’s left hand. He holds it there.

“With this ring,” he says, and his usually dark-toned voice falters a little. He starts again. “With this ring, I thee wed, with my body I thee honour, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

At this moment, Elizabeth, who had been nestled asleep in her cradle in a corner of the room, sends up a strenuous howl. She shushes when Charlotte picks her up, but howls again when she tries to set her down, so finally her mother carries her to where Blake still kneels, bringing the baby into the circle of their vows.

George Walker says, “Let us pray,” and recites the Lord’s Prayer, with all the assembled joining in. And when that is done, he joins the couple’s right hands.

“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” he says. He closes the book, having determined in his own mind that God would not expect more. The small congregation stands for a moment in awkward silence. Then John Blake reaches over and takes Elizabeth into his own arms and rocks her.

So now I have a husband, Charlotte thinks.

“If this ain’t occasion for a tot of rum, I don’t know what would be,” calls out Dan Crocker. Loud hurrahs are sent up from around the room. George Walker beams and by common consent everyone adjourns to the clearing, where a table had been laid for a good noontime meal, if not precisely a wedding banquet.

J
OHN
B
LAKE
is a man of few enough words. But his men had seen to it that his new wife was told of his reputation, told of his youth in the British navy, told how he had retired, like Walker, to captain cargo across the Atlantic—lumber and fish from Nova Scotia to England and Spain, European guns and tools to the West Indies, then molasses, sugar, spices and rum back to Nova Scotia. But, oh, they boasted, there was a fierceness in the man that would not be contained. He had volunteered to fight under Amherst and Wolfe at the siege of Louisbourg. He’d almost lost a hand there to a French musket ball—you could see the scar to this day—then fought on, covered in his own blood. When Wolfe was promoted to general and struck against the French in Nova Scotia, Blake served under Murray on the Miramichi and witnessed the destruction of Eskinwobudich and the dispersal of disloyal elements—Acadian and Mi’kmaq—from the area.
When the soldiers were stood down for a fortnight, his men knew for a fact that he’d paddled alone up the river and liked what he saw there: the fish, the empty land. Murray had granted him permanent leave and he’d begun to clear the forest he had chosen beside a dark brook he named for himself. He’d worked alone, they said, until he could hire a crew. Yet within a year, news came that Wolfe would move on Quebec and, such was the intrepidity of their man, he’d volunteered again. On the night of September 12, 1759, he—though a navy man—had managed to be among the eighteen hundred redcoats who’d left the warships and climbed the cliffs to take control of the Plains of Abraham. The next day they were joined by three thousand more and forever broke the back of the French empire in North America. And they swore it to be true that he’d served on the pilot boat
Gremlin
when it guided the
Royal William
down the St. Lawrence as it carried Wolfe’s embalmed body home. Several fellows maintained absolutely that Blake was recommended for dramatic promotion. But within a few months, he was piloting ships on the Miramichi and cutting trees again on Blake Brook.

Whatever his history, Blake the groom is the centre of attention at Charlotte’s wedding. When pressed to tell his story, he declines, but leaves no doubt that acquiring and clearing more land on the Miramichi is now his aim.

“A man might earn a fair living as a captain,” he says. “The commodore here will tell you that. A man may have a proper business, own his merchandise and determine his own affairs and do well enough.”

“We’d like to do as well as you, John Blake,” says Dan Crocker.

“Nay. Nay. You but think it so.” Blake tears off a piece of bread. “To be sure, I may continue on the Miramichi as a pilot. But you cannot find a proper life at sea, lads, not for a lifetime,
and I’ll be damned if I’ll be as some old captains are, who are lost on the very land men were meant to walk on. It’s the land, lads, clearing it, owning it, that’s what will see a man through.”

“Would I be one of those old captains, John?” Walker asks, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“No, damn you.” Blake laughs. “You’re too canny a Scot for such a fate, George Walker. You’re well set here,
and
in the old country, wa hai ye’re bred.”

Walker’s smile fades.

“Indeed, John, but we cannot be certain, not any more. The American rebellion is an earthquake that now shakes us all.”

“They may shake us, damn them, but they will not shake us
out!”
Blake’s dark brow furrows and his hand clenches in a fist. “His Majesty will not permit Nova Scotia to fall to those rogues. No, he will not—the comfortable swine at headquarters in Halifax are safe enough. But who, I ask you, protects us now on the Miramichi or here at Nepisiguit? Who will defend us from the treachery of the savages? Already they are guiding the damned rebels up and down the river. My own house might be burning at this moment. From here to Pennsylvania and far past, we’ve sacrificed good British lads to keep our promises to the savages. And how do they repay us? By joining with the rebels in New England and massing against our women and children. By creeping toward us in the woods, even today as we sit here talking among ourselves.”

“Aye, aye,” grumble several others.

“Mark me, sirs,” says Blake, his voice a rumble. “It is not until every savage has his scalp cut from his skull that we may rest here. Scalp them and leave them to die, as they would us.
That
must be British policy. It is
my
policy certainly.”

There is quiet for a moment.

In the weeks she had known him, Charlotte had never heard him so vehement.

“Are not some of the Indians our allies, John?”

Her new husband looks at her sternly, and Charlotte holds his gaze. “Do we not have our friends among them?” she asks.

Blake’s eyes drop to the table. “How shall we tell who among these Indians our friends might be? It’s too late when they tie you at a stake and roast you like you were a damned pig. It’s too late then to be asking them!”

“We are well advised, John,” Walker interjects softly, “to cultivate friends among the tribes. Your warnings are well given. I myself have but recently lost a fishing station across the bay at Restigouche to the rebels. Yet we must know what our enemy is thinking and the American generals are unlikely to tell us. It’s for this reason—not just for trade—that I maintain my relations with Indians such as those here at Nepisiguit.”

Blake shifts a piece of venison with the point of his knife.

“Be remembered,” he says, “that they hear what
you
say just as you hear what
they
say.”

A longer and more uncomfortable silence descends on the table. Then Jack Primm rises from his chair. “I believe it is time,” he says—and he gives his head a small waggle to suggest a merriment that did not come easily to him—“to remind us all that we are witnesses to a day of joy and promise. May I propose we drink to Mr. and Mrs. John Blake.”

Bob Simpson, a reticent man on most occasions, also rises and says, “To the most beautiful woman who ever set foot in this place.”

“To the only damned woman who ever did!” growls Dan Crocker, who also stands, as does every other man.

T
HE MEN BEGIN TO LOAD
that very afternoon so they can make an early start the following morning. The six men who came here with Blake in three canoes laden with oats, flour, salt pork and a new bride and her baby would require two days to reach Blake Brook on the Miramichi. The post is filled with the busyness of saws and hammers, the huff of the forge, the babble of working men’s voices, the neighing of horses, bawls from the three new calves and occasional instructive moos from their mothers. About noon, men from the Salmon camp arrive at the post. Their trappers were just in off the distant lines with pelts of beaver, fox, lynx, bear and the long-haired hide of a young moose. Their fishermen roll down a barrel of fresh cod and trading starts in earnest, with Jack Primm calling for the molasses, rum, beads, jewellery, iron pots and knives. Six dozen fox pelts are traded for arms at a rate of one dozen pelts a musket.

“He may pay a dear price for those skins,” John Blake mutters.

Charlotte sees Henri, a friend from the camp among them. She looks down to the water’s edge where Blake and his men are working.

“Kwé, Henri,” she greets him.

He smiles shyly. “Kwé, Charlotte.”

“Mé talwléin?”

He laughs and replies, “We’re all well. Is it true you are leaving us?”

“I have no desire to leave, Henri. But my new husband’s home is elsewhere.”

“The People will remember you, Charlotte.”

“I shall never forget the People. But, Henri, perhaps we shall meet again.”

He smiles at her and lifts a bale of furs to his shoulder.

“Charlotte, it is a wide country and you will be on the Milamichi.”

“My husband calls it the Miramichi.”

“That is the English name.”

“Have you seen Marie?”

“Your leaving is sad for Marie, Charlotte.”

“I said goodbye.”

“She is sad still.”

Charlotte looks down to the water and feels a creeping remorse. She was leaving the kindest women she had ever known, and yet had only made the most awkward of goodbyes so reluctant was she to even think she might not see her again.

“Is she in the camp at this moment, Henri?”

“Yes she is, Charlotte.”

C
HARLOTTE WALKS QUICKLY
away from the post, without looking back, afraid she might hear her name called at any moment. Elizabeth in her bunting bag seems as light as down and when Charlotte is over the log bridge that crosses the bog and has begun to climb toward the camp, she is near to running. Marie is outside her wigwam as though she had been waiting. When she sees Charlotte she beams that beautiful smile of hers. A moment later they are hugging fiercely. Charlotte can’t tell whether the small woman is a mother she clings to or a sister she holds.

Other women gather around and Charlotte embraces each in turn. They all walk together to Marie’s wigwam, where they sit in a circle in the spring sunlight and wait for water to boil for tea. Elizabeth is dandled and cooed at, as is Jeanne-Marie, the infant daughter of Antoinette, and Bertrand, the six-month-old
son of Marie-Louise Kagigconiac. They marvel at the gleam of Charlotte’s wedding ring and bounce it in their hands to feel its weight.

As they finish their tea, Charlotte speaks quietly to Marie. From her pocket, she withdraws a handkerchief and opens it to reveal a single strand of silver from the bracelet Pad had worn.

“This is for you,” she says, holding it out to Marie. “It once belonged to someone I loved.” She thought to herself that it was fitting that Pad’s memory should rest with this lovely and loving woman.

Then Chief Francis Julian approaches and Charlotte stands.

“I am happy to see you now,” he says, “though it is only to bid you adieu.”

“I am happy to see you, too, sir.”

“Charlotte, your child was born here by the Baie and the Great Spirit will watch over her wherever she goes.”

All of them then walk with her to the end of the clearing at the top of the hill. She again embraces Marie and the other women.

“This nation of the People stay on the Milamichi too,” Chief Julian says. “Never live in fear. You will always be near to the People.”

“I’m glad of that,” says Charlotte.

With great reluctance she starts down the hill with Elizabeth.

“Charlotte,” the chief calls after her.

She stops to look back at him.

“From here the Nepisiguit will carry you all day until dusk,” he says. “John Blake will then enter the stream from the south that the English call Nepisiguit Brook. He will make his camp at the point of portage. The mosquitoes are bad at the portage,
bad for a baby. But before you enter the Nepisiguit Brook, where it meets the Nepisiguit River, keep watch. There is a soft meadow there by the tallest pines on the right hand. That is a place where your party can make good beds of spruce boughs in long grass. The water in the stream is good to drink and the mosquitoes are few. The next day you will paddle up Nepisiguit Brook to your portage, then paddle down to the Milamichi to your new home.”