Читать книгу Settlement - Ann Birch - Страница 16

NINE

Please, sir...” Sam looked up from his newspaper to see Cook standing in the doorway of the breakfast room. Her arms were covered in flour, and her face was flushed, probably from the heat of the bake oven.

“What is it?”

“There be a savage come to the kitchen door, sir. He wants to see you. He says he won’t wait outside and now he be seated on a chair by my fire warming hisself. What am I to do, sir?”

“Go back belowstairs. I will be there directly.”

Sometimes the Indians did not follow white man’s rules. Sam remembered John Beverley Robinson’s story of a native man who had come into his wife’s bedchamber after she had delivered one of their sons. He looked at the babe in its rocking cradle beside the bed, stroked its head and departed through the imposing front door. Had the man perhaps remembered a wigwam on the site of the Robinson mansion?

Sam descended the narrow staircase. The kitchen was dark, lit only by the open hearth, and he squinted into the gloom at the tall, thin man seated by the fire, who rose to greet him.

“Nehkik,” a familiar voice said. “May you walk well in the New Year. I bring gifts to lighten your journey.” Jacob pointed to a deerskin sling on the floor by a chair.

“Jacob!” Sam rushed forward. He hugged the Indian and threw his arms around his tri-coloured blanket coat, while trying to avoid stepping on his heavy moccasins. “What are you doing here, friend?”

And right away, as his arms touched Jacob’s bony frame, he knew something was wrong. He stepped back. Jacob’s eyes glittered and his cheekbones and chin protruded from the sunken skin of his face. There were black smudges on his cheeks.

“Are you ill?”

“Hungry, Nehkik. I am in Toronto with my father, Chief Snake, and my friend, Elijah White Deer. We come by snowshoe across the lake and south to town. It has been a long journey. We go today to speak to the Governor, to ask for blankets and food. We camp for three nights with Mississauga friends by the big lake. Then we go north again.”

“Bring bread and butter, cheese, ham and tea,” Sam said to Cook, who watched them from behind the broad oak table. “And be quick about it.” And turning to Jacob, he added, “You will stay, please, Jacob. Here you will have a warm bed and plenty of food, and you can rest and grow strong again.” It was hard to keep his voice steady as he stared at the emaciated figure of his friend.

“No, I thank you, Nehkik. I must go back to my family soon. They are hungry.”

Cook set a plateful of food in front of Jacob. “Sit here close to the fire,” Sam said, “and say no more until you have eaten.”

“First, I give gifts.” Jacob opened his sling and brought out the objects, each wrapped in deerskin. “This for your lady,” he said, uncovering a pretty fan of dyed fishskin. Next came four pairs of beaded moccasins for the boys, four cornhusk dolls for the little girls, and last, a piece of polished, weighted wood, which Sam viewed with delight.

“A snowsnake! Oh, that will be fun. I’ll take my sons out on the ice one of these fine days. But where are your father and your friend?”

“They find a fox carcass back there.” He gestured in the direction of the henhouse. “They scrape it clean now and take it home when we go.”

Then Jacob reached out and pulled the plate of food in front of him. From a beaded pouch around his neck, he took out a small bone-handled knife and a lead fork and set them beside the plate. Though he probably had not eaten for some time, he cut his ham carefully, slipped slices of cheese between the bread, and chewed each morsel slowly. The lines on his face smoothed out. At last, he set down his empty cup.

“Now, Jacob, you must have a pipe with me and tell me your story. I want to know why you have been hungry in this land of deer and moose.” Sam took two pipes from the rack near the cupboards and passed a pouch of tobacco to his friend. He filled his own pipe, tamped down the tobacco, lit it and puffed. Jacob did the same.

Cook pushed open the small window beside the hearth. A blast of icy air blew in. Sam turned to her, “Close the window, damn it. If you don’t like the pipe smoke, go sit in the scullery.” And out she went, banging the kitchen door behind her.

“Now, Jacob...”

“I tell you once before about the Governor. Not this new Governor, but the one who comes before...” He paused and took another puff on his pipe.

“Governor Colborne. Yes, I remember.” Colborne had ordered three Indian bands from different islands in Lake Simcoe to move north to the Narrows and live together. There, so Colborne reasoned, he could monitor the Indians’ movements more closely. But then he grew frightened of the “threat”, as he called it, of all those “savages” in one place. Some of the Indians had moved back to Lake Simcoe, with Colborne’s blessing.

“All that moving back and forth, it is disaster, Nehkik. When we move to the Narrows, we leave behind crops on the land. But we do not worry, there are many moose at the Narrows, so we have plenty to eat. But when we go back home again to Snake Island, we find nothing but weeds. Nothing to eat there but mushrooms and berries.”

“But there is game, is there not? Do you not have moose there, too?”

“Many white men settle on the lake, shoot deer, shoot moose, shoot partridge. A moon ago, old white man points a rifle at me when he sees me stalk deer. ‘Go away, savage,’ he says, ‘this is my land and my deer’.”

“Like Windigo,” Sam said, remembering the story Jacob had told him on one of their hunting trips. Windigo was the cannibal hunter with a heart of ice, tall as a towering white pine, who ate every living creature that walked upon the earth. “Himself only for himself,” was Windigo’s cry.

“Yes, like Windigo.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Jacob was a quiet man, and he and Sam had often sat by their campfire in the wilderness for hours, each deep in his own thoughts. Now, glancing at his friend as he smoked, Sam noticed the black marks on his face. They were not the dirt that came from a long trek across country, but something quite different.

“The black paint on your cheeks, Jacob—you are in mourning? Who has died?”

“My wife.”

And now in his voice there was such sorrow mixed with anger that Sam was at first afraid to question him further. He got up and poked at the fire. He wound up the clock jack and set the roast of beef turning once more in the hastener.

“And your children, friend?” he said finally, as he remembered that Jacob had once mentioned two small girls, perhaps four and five years of age, and two boys of nine and twelve.

“With the grandmother. But she is old and sick, too. She is a good woman, does what she can...” Jacob tapped the contents of his pipe onto the empty plate and stood up. “But children need a mother.” He looked at Sam, one man to another. “And I need a wife.”

“You and I have had good times together, Jacob. I will go with you this day and talk to our new Governor. I will tell him of the plight of your people and ask what can be done. Do not despair.”

Jacob smiled. It deepened the lines in his sunken face, yet his eyes shone in the gloom. “I tell my father, Chief Snake. I say to him, ‘Maybe Nehkik can help’.” Jacob took Sam’s hand in his long bony fingers. “May the Great Spirit who rules our world guard and protect you.”

As Jacob moved towards the kitchen door, Sam suddenly remembered Mrs. Jameson’s request. “Jacob,” he said, “I have a friend who is writing a book on Upper Canada. She wants to let Europeans know about the life of the country’s original inhabitants. Would you, your father, and your friend consider spending an hour with her now? She would offer some food, if I asked her, and we should still have plenty of time to see the Governor.”

“Yes, Nehkik.”

Sam got into his coat and the moccasins which Jacob had given him months ago. He and his friend put on their snowshoes and moved into the pine trees behind the house. As they went forward, their tracks disappeared in the swirling snow.