The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (22 page)

“Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill.”

Her breath catches and her body seems to freeze where she sits. The canoes glide forward out of the pellucid water toward the mouth of the Nepisiguit. She searches the shadows for his face.

“Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill.”

Now she turns and looks back to her husband. His face is calm. He smiles at her and she returns the smile.

“Whippoorwill.”

No bird had the power to distract John Blake from his thoughts of the work that lay ahead.

T
HE RIVER BECOMES A TUNNEL
of giant spruce. Only the far shore catches the morning sun, where the roots of cedars cling to the plunging bank. The water is clear but as dark as obsidian with an occasional reflection of red earthy tones coming from the muddy bottom. Now and then fish, some of them four feet long, breach the surface to hang in the air a moment, catch the light and splash back into the water.

At first, the men call from canoe to canoe, but with the passing hours they fall silent and the stillness of the river envelops them. They put in at noon where the bank is low and a grassy verge offers a place for Charlotte to wash and change the baby. They eat bread and salt pork and drink beer, but the blackflies gather in the still air and they push off into the river soon enough.

“What is that you put on her face?” Blake asks.

“A balm that keeps the flies from her,” Charlotte answers. She squeezes a little more of the yellow potion from its small pouch.

“Where have you come by this balm?” Blake asks.

Charlotte replaces the pouch in her basket.

“It was a gift from the friends who made it,” she says.

He falls silent. The quiet of the river is comforting. The rhythm of the paddling is soothing; the dipping and swinging of the paddle lulls Charlotte into a daze.

A
S THE SUN SINKS
before them on the Nepisiguit, where to make camp for the night becomes the question. Their usual site is on the far side of the portage, but there is general agreement that such a hike is not the thing to inflict on the mother and child at the end of a long day. They paddle in silence some minutes more.

“Decide as you will,” Harry Gough says from the front of the Blake canoe, “but my belly is speaking to me of empty feelings. Lonely and empty feelings.”

“Your belly speaks loud and often, Harry Gough,” says Blake. “You pay it too much mind.”

As Elizabeth begins to cry, Charlotte speaks. “Just ahead, where the Nepisiguit Brook meets the Nepisiguit River, there is a soft meadow by the tallest pines on the right. We can cut spruce boughs there for beds and stay until daylight. The water in the stream is good to drink and the mosquitoes are few.”

Elizabeth protests again and her mother strokes her brow, greasy from the ointment.

The deepest silence of the river that day could not compete with the silence that now befalls the party, but when they reach the spot, they head their canoes into the bank, and the place is just as the new Mrs. John Blake had described it, a meadow of soft grass stretching away from the banks of the Nepisiguit and a clear stream tumbling into the shadowed waters of the river.

The portage, which begins soon after dawn, is long and arduous. But the journey that follows on the river to the Miramichi is a wondrous panorama. The woods are alive with the season. A moose with a calf, on still-wobbly legs, is drinking at the water’s edge; a bear with three playful cubs cocks its head at the passing convoy. The melody of birdsong is everywhere, flowers are bursting with white, violet and red blooms and new
green leaves are filling every branch. The Miramichi comes into view late in the afternoon, drawing them out of the forest, pulling the canoe ever faster as though they are paddling downhill. “There she is,” Blake announces. “It’s just a short run to the brook now.”

The river surges like an artery, pulsing to the sea, walled with tall stands of timber and teeming with salmon. As he steers the canoe onto the Miramichi, Blake tips his head toward the smoke coming from stacks farther up the river to the west and says, “Up there is where William Davidson and John Cort have a fishery with as many as twenty men working.” They paddle east, the sun at their backs now, and Blake points to the north side of the river. “The Wishart brothers, Alexander and William, live there.” The names mean nothing to her, but she’s reassured that they are not alone. Her legs are cramped, Elizabeth is squirming, she can imagine the strain on John, but there’s an air of excitement as he plunges the paddle into the water like a rudder and turns them toward the brook, cutting through the current to the landing. The other canoes stay in the centre of the river and call their farewells with intentions to gather the following day at some point of land she’s never heard of. Closer now, the water in the brook is dark as ink—more Black Brook than Blake Brook, she thinks. The stream winds up into the woodland just above the cabin; she’s wondering how far his claim stretches when the canoe slides onto the shore and the Blake family is home.

A
s soon as the breakfast of fried fish, bread and cheese is consumed, Charlotte goes outside to take a measure of the place. The interior, she’d already discovered, is plain, damp as dew and untidy, but there are two rooms, a window and a hearth that takes up most of one wall. There are hand-hewn chairs and a table as well as a long board under the window for preparing food, a large bed and, thanks be to God, an oil lamp.

She walks along the brook to see what can be procured from the land. Strawberries colour the soil at the back of the cabin. Blueberry patches that spread all over the bank to the river promise a harvest later in the summer and a bramble of raspberry cane twisted onto the trees at the edge of the clearing will be ripe in August as well. The water in the brook is clear, sweet and plentiful.

The plot John told her about is a woeful heap of lumpy earth that might have posed as a garden, or at least the plan of
one. She goes at it like one possessed: whacking the brush out of it, tearing at the roots and turning the soil. She plants the seed potatoes André gave her first. There is evidence of onion roots that she carefully separates from the choking weeds and sets them in a row near the potatoes. Blake says there are turnips to be had from the Wisharts, and she resolves to get them and plant another row into the ground.

Ticking off her survival tally, she wanders along the edge of the woods looking for sarsaparilla as, courtesy of Maria, she knows it will serve a dozen purposes. She follows the property to where the Miramichi runs across the front of the land and finds herself on a sandy beach that rolls out of the wake of the river onto the shore—and in spitting distance of a big black bear. She wants to scream but catches her breath and backs away slowly, hoping Elizabeth, who is riding along on her back, will somehow understand the desperate need to be quiet. When she gets to the cabin, all she can utter is “Bear, bear.” Blake reaches for his musket and moves to the door in a single motion. The bear is gone but serves as a reminder to Charlotte to be wary.

Then she takes on the washing, insisting that Blake bide nearby. She hauls a tub outside, makes a dozen trips to the fire for hot water and slices off a chunk of what Blake calls river soap—strong lye mixed with tallow—and begins the task of scrubbing the filth from their clothes as though she is beating the past out of their lives. She pounds his trousers against a rock with such ferocity she is surprised they don’t fall to pieces. She pummels the shirts and skirts with her reddened hands, and flogs the socks, stockings and drawers with a stick. Blake, amused with his new wife’s tenacity, watches the frenzy with Elizabeth, who is learning to crawl now and inching her way around a piece of moose hide spread on the ground. Charlotte
drapes the clothes over boulders and bushes close to the cabin, then refills the tub and, demanding that Blake stand by with his back to her, strips off her clothes and immerses herself in the water. It’s so hot she can hardly sit still while she scrubs herself hard with soap until her skin tingles.

That done, she dons a clean frock and sits down to discuss the tasks that remain. “As far as I can make out there’s lots of black tea, pork fat and fish, John Blake.” By the look of the animal bones out back, he has also survived on game. She has a plan for more.

“You need to get a cow, some chickens, a sheep and maybe a goat,” she tells him.

“Is this the proper comportment of an Englishwoman—to strip off her clothes in the broad daylight and then give orders to her husband.”

She’s relieved to see he is smiling. “You’re not offended, are you, John?”

“To the contrary,” he says, sizing up her stamina. “You will need to spend a good portion of time alone while I’m away at sea or on the river. Your manner will serve you well.”

His smile fades when he starts to talk of the lay of the land.

“It’s more than bears you need to heed. The scoundrels from the colonies are nothing but pirates and marauders. You need be mindful of them. And hearken well, there are those who would aid them in the dastardly work they do.”

She assumes he means the Indians. There’s more.

“I cleared the bush from much of this tract and want to do more. Those Halifax governors know nothing of these parts. They ignore us here on the Miramichi. But signed deeds for this lot there must be. The land, Charlotte, it’s the land that will make a man prosper.”

The weeks that follow are consumed with the task. She works the garden while he splits downed trees for firewood and chinks the gaps in the cabin with moss. She suggests he use birch bark to cover the open spaces and shows him how to strip the bark in large sheets by rubbing the trunk with warm water. In the marshes between the brook and the river she finds sarsaparilla and gooseberries just like the ones at the Baie and, remembering Marie’s advice, plans to dry and store them for winter when they’ll need the nutritious plants to avoid scurvy. She saves ash from the fire to use as fertilizer in the garden. And again recalling Marie’s instructions, mixes the ash with water and animal fat, boils it and leaves it to harden to make soap that’s a little less harsh than the lye-based one he’s been using.

And she ferrets out the inside story on some of the settlers.

“Davidson and Cort have nearly one hundred thousand acres up at the forks of the river,” John says. “Had it for more than ten years, I reckon. Some of it worked by Acadians before we rid the land of them.”

Charlotte grimaces at the slight to André’s family but only asks, “What do they do with all that land?”

“It’s a salmon fishery they run up there and the shipbuilding they want. They’ve nary a care to clear the land.”

On the other side of the river and not far from their own place, the Wishart brothers have set up a business to cure salmon.

“They use a method of curing they brought with them from Scotland,” he says. “But it’s my belief they haven’t registered any of the lots they occupy.”

There’s another man called Alexander Henderson who arrived just weeks before they did. John doesn’t know him yet as he’s been away for more than a month, but means to find out what his business is here on the Miramichi.

By fall the revolution in the thirteen colonies to the south is truly creating havoc for settlers on the river who depend on the ships that come to the mouth of the Miramichi for supplies. Oil, flour, occasionally butter and fresh vegetables, cheese, sometimes fruit, and whatever manner of provisions that might be available—iron pots for cooking, kettles, even a few head of cattle can be had from traders who dock in the Miramichi Bay. Now the supply lines are often cut by the privateers.

“These thieves don’t even want the goods, they just don’t want any of us to have them,” her husband tells her when he returns in a rage without the cow she had hoped he could procure.

“Davidson and the Wisharts can’t export their goods for fear of attack on the river.” She hears brutal tales of burned houses and looted businesses from all around the region, especially along the coast. She also hears that the Indians are helping the privateers. Blake, who still pilots whatever ships dare to sail up and down the river, invariably comes back with accounts of violence and even murder.

He’s been toiling at a particularly feverish pitch the night they sit down to supper and he announces he must leave for the West Indies. A ship has been readied. They want him to captain it. He must go. He thinks it will take five or six weeks.

“We have no sooner settled and you leave,” she says. And he’s no sooner gone than she realizes from the telltale signs that she is once again with child.

H
ER TASKS,
as she sees them, are to keep Elizabeth out of harm’s way and to keep the squirrels and deer from consuming the ripening garden crop. She prattles away to her daughter while she tries and fails to win the nightly contest with the
animals. Then while walking by the shore she discovers a peat bog. “What do you think, my girl? Could this peat moss be good for burning and making a smoky shield for our potatoes?”