The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (39 page)

She smiles when she says, “I feel they are the same today as they were a hundred years ago. They still sing and tell stories and help one another. There’s a lot to learn from the Acadians. They made dykes to hold back the tidal waters and protect their farms and dug ditches to drain the marshlands. Maybe those two men we met can teach us how to do that with the saltwater marshlands here.”

Back at the cabin on the Miramichi a few days later, after the children are all in bed, Charlotte reaches for her diary:

P
HILIP AND
C
HARLOTTE
set a time for the move: the fifteenth of September 1798, after the harvest is in. The planning and factoring, the rejigging and packing for the move to The Point turn into a logistical nightmare. Two critical decisions have to be made: who will go to The Point come fall and who will stay back to guard Lots Eight, Nine and Ten. Also, how are they going to move the livestock?

Lot Five was officially granted to Elizabeth and Duncan on May 4. The pair and their children will travel with them and take a lot in Tabisintack, but need to return to the Miramichi before winter and stay there until their lot can be sold. The prospect of this separation from her mother, possibly for all of the long winter, sends Elizabeth into heart-rending tears. Charlotte is amazed by what a sentimental woman her first-born has become.

John Blake will stay behind to protect the ownership of the three family lots on the Miramichi but will take a lot at The Point as well and begin clearing it that fall in order to claim ownership. Polly and Duncan McCraw will also take a lot, but they too must stay behind on Lot Seven until it is sold.

That leaves seven children, only two of them over the age of ten, and Charlotte and Philip as the first occupants of the house at The Point for the winter, but the entire clan will make the trip to settle them in.

The next item to calculate is the livestock. David Savoy is turning out to be a veritable font of information. He has suggested that moving the animals is not wise as the loss of animals en route—a very distinct possibility, given their means of transport—would be grave. He suggests that they leave the livestock with John, who can slaughter them just before freeze-up and transport the carcasses to The Point. Come spring they can get all the livestock they need. “Laying hens and goats for milking can be had for the winter and the trail from Negowack is well tramped for pulling a wagon,” Savoy says. Although prejudice toward the French hangs on among many settlers, Charlotte accepts David’s advice with alacrity.

They’ve decided that they will have to travel overland, a daunting prospect. But none of the clan owns horses or a wagon. Then Chief John Julian comes to the rescue—she suspects Wioche has had something to do with it. She’d always known that Francis Julian’s brother was chief of the Mi’kmaq hereabouts, and that he lived in a well-appointed camp by the forks, but she has never laid eyes on him in all the years she has lived at Blake Brook. He arrives to see her one fine late-August morning, and for a moment Charlotte thinks it is Francis Julian come all the way from the bay.

Chief John is the image of his brother—as dignified and as tall, his bronzed and angular face wrinkled with age, as she assumes Francis Julian’s would now be. Even though his power in this region is greatly diminished, he is the owner of a sturdy wagon and a team of horses. And he has an offer for the Englishwoman who takes the time to visit the women at one of his camps. In exchange for half of the hay she will harvest from her share of the local marshland, he will loan her a driver, his horses and wagon for the move. Since they will only need enough hay to feed the livestock until November, she tells him he’s welcome to half and whatever else is left after her eldest son slaughters their animals.

On the morning of September 15, dories assemble at the landing on Blake Brook to ferry their household goods to the north side of the river where they will be packed on the wagon. The loading is a sight to behold. Tables, chairs, beds and quilts; moosehide sacks of clothing, bear skins and pelts of every sort. Hearth utensils clatter along beside earthen pots that in turn bump against the prized salamander and Philip’s beer barrels. Perched on the top of the heap is Charlotte’s spinning wheel, which William Wishart had promised to procure and Philip has finally delivered.

By the time the wagon is loaded, Philip is both impatient and worried. “The horses will be dead before they can haul that cargo to The Point or we’ll be dead from waiting for them.”

Before the wagon pulls away to begin its two-day trek over the barely broken trail to Tabisintack, Chief Julian has a last word of advice for John and Robert, who are going to share the driving chores. Then he beckons to Charlotte. “Go safely to Taboosimgeg,” he says. “The Great Spirit will watch over you.” She thanks him for his kindness, and he slaps the hip of the
horse and says, “Siawasi.” The wagon, with the better part of their worldly goods, lurches away into the trees.

As Charlotte climbs into the dory to row back across the river, Philip wryly comments, “Well, Mrs. Hierlihy, we have the French fixing the livestock at one end and the Indians fixing the wagon at the other. It’s a fine pair of breeds you choose.”

She replies tartly, “We would be nowhere without such friends, as you know, and others around these parts are ignorant on this subject.” Then she turns her head toward the far shore, leaving her husband chuckling at her feistiness. When they land, Charlotte takes up the task of organizing the loading of the two dories and two canoes that will ferry the family to its new home.

She carries her own most precious items tied in a cotton scarf: the pins and combs, the sketch of the garden at home rolled carefully into a tube, the braid of sweetgrass now as dry as tinder and her diary and her precious books.

The departure is noisy, chaotic, joyful—fourteen of them, children, husbands and wives, crammed into four boats, paddle down the Miramichi bound for the new land. It takes six hours by water before the Blakes, Wisharts and Hierlihys are relocated at The Point. The Robertsons and McCraws are also part of the convoy that brilliant fall day. They arrive in the late afternoon and together begin the mission that has been Charlotte and Philip’s dream—to settle Tabisintack.

It’s two more nights and days before the wagon arrives like some great ship, its mast askew, sailing out of the woods and mooring its awkward, top-heavy load at The Point. All hands are employed in the off-loading. Even the little girls—Honnor now five and Charlotte Mary only three—carry parcels into the house. The bedchambers are readied, the dry cellar is stocked, the hearth is lit, and by suppertime, the family has gathered
around the old table enjoying a homecoming feast. There are boiled lobsters (pulled out of the ocean right in front of their dock) and baked salmon, potatoes and string beans. And three apple-crumble pies that Elizabeth has baked. Philip opens a keg of beer for the men, Charlotte is so happy she fills a flagon for herself and her two grown daughters. After supper they all spill out to walking through the ripening garden, across the meadow to the saltwater marsh and down to the river’s edge to watch the sun set over their new lives.

Before going to sleep that night, Charlotte takes the oil lamp to the wall beside the hearth and carves
Home, 1798
into the log wall. Then she goes to her bedchamber, the first room she and Philip have slept in without a child beside them. As she falls asleep, she thinks, now that we’ve truly settled this place it is finally time to pen our petition to the governor for title to our land.

T
HEY ALL MUST HURRY
to the rhythm of autumn as it ticks down to winter. Before he heads back to the river, John treks with Robert to Negowack to fetch the laying hens and a pair of milking goats. Charlotte directs her small army to bring in the harvest. The cellar is filling with the fruits of the summer’s labour. She kneels in the potato patch, gathering the potatoes she has spaded out of the dark damp earth, keeping an eye on the direction David and Jacques came from, wanting their report about Will; vexed by the notion that there is a message she may have missed.

Philip fishes mere yards off the shore, hauling in vast quantities of salmon and cod for drying, salting and storing. When it rains, they find the leaks in the roof and chink the holes again. The wind is something they all have to get used to. It seems to
blow constantly, sometimes like a whisper, close to the land. Other times it roars out of the northeast or the northwest with such force, she tells the men to examine the beams of the house to make sure it’s sturdy enough to withstand these powerful blows. They’ll be much harder indeed when they are pushing a blizzard’s worth of snow.

At the first opportunity, she rows across the river to the Indian camp and asks after Wioche. He is travelling the district, the women tell her. She knows he moves from camp to camp all the way from the Baie de Chaleur to the southern tip of Mi’kmaq territory at Kouchibouguac, but she decides this is as good a time as any to make proper acquaintance with the women at the camp. They already know her name and, seemingly, every aspect of the family’s arrival at The Point. She’s invited to consult on the health of the pregnant women here—clearly Wioche is not the only one to have heralded her arrival. She feels like a bit of a sham as a midwife, but she knows her advice on hygiene—a sterilized knife for cutting the cord, and boiled linens for stanching the woman’s bleeding—is sound. She also has great sympathy for any woman who has survived a difficult labour, knowing how close every woman comes to death as she brings new life into the world.

In return, the women offer her advice about the climate here, which is especially harsh in winter, with punishing storms blowing straight off the Atlantic. She also asks the women to explain to her the origins of the name Taboosimgeg. The eldest among them, Akkie, says, “You must sit awhile to hear this story, Miss Charlotte.” And the other women laugh. Charlotte laughs too, expectantly. Akkie’s full name, it turns out, is Aktapaak, which means midnight, and it is obvious that she has seen many moons. Her back is bent, she has only a single prominent front
tooth left and her hands are so gnarled they look like tree roots. Akkie settles a blanket around her shoulders and tucks her moccasined feet under her deerskin skirts. Then she pats the ground beside her, motioning for Charlotte to sit, and begins her tale.

“There are two stories about the origins of the name Taboosimgeg,” she says. “One from a legend, and the other from a mistake. The legend says that two chiefs fought to the death on this river—right over there by that rock that pokes above the tide.” Akkie points. “Before the Europeans came, the Iroquois Chief Gwetej attacked the Mi’kmaq chief.” As she describes the mortal combat, she gestures up the river in the direction the Iroquois came, mimics their war whoops and swings an imaginary axe, to the delight of her audience. “The head of the Iroquois chief was split in half and the rock is the spirit where he died.”

Akkie, exhausted, gestures to a younger woman to tell Charlotte the other, much less gruesome story. “When you paddle here from the ocean, you think you see two rivers,” she says. “One is only a cove, but at first you are fooled. So we call it ‘taboosimgeg’ because two are there.”

After cups and cups of tea and stories about the children, she bids them farewell and promises to visit again. “The water between us is narrow and easy to cross—in both directions,” she tells them, making it clear that she too expects visitors. But it turns out that this is the last contact they’ll have before spring.

W
INTER CATCHES THEM
completely by surprise. It isn’t even All Saints’ Day, the settlers’ usual measure of the end of fall, when the temperature plummets, the ground freezes and fierce cold grips The Point. It comes so fast John hasn’t arrived with the slaughtered meat from the Miramichi. It begins with a nor’easter.

At the outset, she knows it will be a three-day storm, nor’easters always are. But the intensity of this one, the sound of the rising wind and the groaning in the trees is frightful. Hours pass uneasily as they huddle close to the hearth, watching the smoke draft backward from the chimney, feeling the house shudder in the fury of the storm.

At last, the wind dies away as if whining about the demise of its strength. Philip and the boys struggle through drifts to the shore and find that the boats are destroyed, bits of slats strewn over the slabs of ice already lining the beach. What’s more, the rising tides, swelled by the northeast wind, have ripped chunks of the shoreline clean away. The embankment is gashed with gaping wounds; shredded pine trees have been cleaved from their lacerated roots and seagrass-covered hunks of earth and rocks as big as a child have been tossed along the frozen beach.