A Discovery of Strangers (25 page)

Is that what she heard? Facts like accumulating snow, just falling, lying there until they are thick enough to walk upon. Is that all she will discover? The grotesque facts of desire and revenge that all of them, alive or dead, will have to hold in their empty hands? Woman … woman, will you be restolen that way?

Her name remains She Who Delights. There must be a spirit guiding, a world explicating itself out of its bits of knowledge and faith and consciousness. This story shaped to the sharp point of a lance — a story of guidance, under what loosened rock on this otherwise invisible trail has her father placed the telltale shavings, so that when she steps on it, bends and lifts it, she will find them and be truly guided? Which was the rock? Where is it? Her foot has already touched it, it is loose, it moves, but it seems she cannot lift it. Perhaps because she does not want to? But she does, yes she does, and if it is there she must do that; quickly out of this continuing darkness.

For she has determined this: her name
is
She Who Delights.

Her People rest about her in silence; even the small, unsleeping children do not move. Only the smallest look at her, lift their shining heads and great, round eyes. But she knows everyone is listening: for the approaching rush of snowshoes outside, the knife-points stabbed through the lodgeskins beside their heads, ripping down, their home bursting open, the scream of attack crushing them aside. Scream the warning! It is already too late, yes, but scream!

There are no screams. Greenstockings explodes out of depths into the darkness of air and her crushed agonizing mouth, knees like stone kneeling on her legs, of hoarse, heavy breathing above her, which she cannot see, though her eyes are staring open, it is the blackness itself that heaves her up out of her furs, away from Hood’s curl and hand, not Broadface returned nor Bigfoot daring at last to take her, it is an enemy of unbelievable force like a great rock falling, smash! and arms and legs from everywhere drag her up as if she were already wrapped in ropes in her thoughtless sleep and the story had exploded against this silent, panting violence — where are the shrieks she needs, where are the knives and muscles and clubs and bursting warrior rage?

For a second she gains her balance and instantly drives her knee into the brute’s crotch — enough arms do not exist to control all her limbs! — when the low shadow of the fire shifts aside from his bulk and she sees her father. Who until now has always protected her. He is not moving, not opening his mouth. Lying there, wide awake, watching.

She would shriek if she could — HELP ME! — but everything explodes at once: the brute’s stagger as she crushes his balls, his fist that hammers her so hard the darkness shatters in her head, the words Keskarrah has repeated over and over about Hood spraying like stars through her pain: “Why doesn’t he take you to his place, isn’t he a man, doesn’t he know what to do for a woman?”

Greywing screams, the sound slicing her head and body open as this enormous unrecognizable force with forty arms and fists and chests batters her and she tries to curl in tight, get inside tight against him and fumbling at him — his knife, his
knife, isn’t he wearing a — and Hood jerks erect at her feet, pale as upthrust bone, and crashes over instantly, his head kicked away.…

Cold beyond cold awakens Greenstockings, with the driven intensity of needles. And a shoulder jolting her stomach, she knows she is hung bent double over it, is being run across snow, her head against a powerful rump, not covered with leather, cloth, towards the log houses of the Whitemuds, cold flaying her naked body, except her stockings, except where the heat of enormous hands is clawed into her like hooks, the bars of arms — not the officers’ house, not one of them — if he has no knife she can hold herself limp, as if unconscious when he rapes her, so she can rip his neck out with her teeth, or find a knife, she will find a knife, there are always knives, lurking in sheaths, on strings down leggings, copper and steel and broken stone — it is the Halfmud house, he is jerking the door open, the shoulder and hands are those of the black Mohawk from far away. Michel has stolen her.

Will the Halfmuds help him keep her when Broadface returns? Michel will certainly slit Hood’s throat before the sun rises. If she cannot kill him herself, she must accept whatever he does and wait for Broadface. Or whoever else dares confront him. Or Keskarrah’s knowledge — if it’s strong enough for someone from many rivers away — if he wants to use it. For the first time in her brief life she is uncertain of her father, always powerful enough for what he wants but — she is surrounded by the warm stench sleeping in the log house, snoring everywhere in the stinking Halfmud darkness of all of those enormous paddle-slaves asleep.

And her rage explodes her into a mistake. Michel heaves her off, down into an angle of logs, and she feels herself turning over, falling, thrown down like a pack at the end of a portage or folded slab of meat to be hacked at by whoever wants to chew bits of it, here, grab a handful and stuff your mouth, here, anybody! and she forgets the possible lethal trap of her teeth and screams at anyone alive in this house, breaks her voice, hammers it against the logs as she grabs for his leg, it is there, yes! and drives her fist up into his crotch again, screaming and screaming.

But in the darkness she does not hit him exactly where it hurts most, he grunts like some bull rutting and rams one arm between her naked thighs and still clutching her neck and hair smashes her body length against the wall, not letting go of her hair, and as her bare buttocks scrape down, hit the ground, he slams her head again and then again against the logs until her screams snap, seep out between the frozen cracks, as the crash of her head pounding bursts louder, louder … the frozen mud … dead trees … mud is not berries.…

Her father’s voice cradles her. Into ferocious pain, as if two rocks were grinding her head away between them, his steady smell and sound and arms hold her, she is rubbed over warm, not naked. She is being held tenderly, in agony and warmth. His querulous, mocking tone in which he conceals his deepest rage from those who do not know him:

“…I have lived long enough to know human beings.…” She feels his muscles clench hard, to control himself, her erupting head squeezed so good against his stomach seeping soft, smoky hide, sweat, days and nights of sleep around the centre fire and
spruce breathing warmth, gentleness. “…My daughter has always cared for me, I do not need to act like a stupid young man.”

Twospeaker chirps English — she cannot open her eyes, something cold lies across them and in a wave her body vanishes, there are thick — a man’s — fingers, but gentle in her hair, then short spurts of fire, oh-h-h-h-h! Her father continues without waiting politely for anyone,

“Your young man comes with papers every day, and sometimes he finds a line on them and he keeps that, and he plays with my daughter and sleeps, and then goes away again. Do you think that because you cannot say a word, no one has eyes? When you take a woman, does no one know?

“If you want to know only what you already know, why do you come here?”

It is Richard Sun, his fingers along her broken head, the sharp touches of pain. He murmurs, almost singing under his breath as salve — cold, it smells different, how many salves does he keep in his yellow bag — touches her. Twospeaker speaks, but not enough to say everything her father has said.

“When you come to our land,” Keskarrah’s words refuse to stop, “you cannot continue to be what you’ve always been. We have lived here for a very long time, much too long for that.”

Greenstockings gets an eye open. Through red mist, past her father’s eagle nose, a circle of heads. Hood? Hood? … where is she? Thick English, his mouth moving, his lumpy moon face. Beside Hep Burn. And a shadow of — voyageurs? — shifting behind them. She cannot see.

Lieutenant Franklin gestures for St. Germain not to translate, then asks as if seeking only basic information, as if he knows nothing, “What is this about Hood?”

Hepburn responds, very quickly, “It’s our voyageur Michel, sir, the Mohawk stole the girl right from beside her pa, but I guess she wouldn’t come quiet, he smashed her one an’ I woke at her screaming, he brings her —”

“Hepburn,” Lieutenant Franklin has heard enough and breaks in with his steady commander voice, “I am not asking for native behaviour, either Yellowknife or Mohawk. Doctor Richardson, I ask you about Midshipman Hood.”

The doctor glances up; this is official, since servants are listening. His hand pauses over Greenstockings’ head, gestures in the small candlelight, salve and blood glistening on his fingers.

“Sir,” he says, as formally. “Midshipman Hood has given me assurances that he has every intention to marry this girl.”

“Marry!”

“Yes, sir.”

Greenstockings recognizes Thick English go suddenly silent; whatever it is that Richard Sun has said about her lies between them. It may be he has been told something he never wanted to know. There is a long pause before Thick English speaks again, and she closes her eyes against pain.

“How does he consider he … might marry her?”

Richardson hesitates. “I believe he was … about to speak to you about that, sir.”

“In the meantime, he was living, as the traders say, ‘in the fashion of the country’.”

“To an extent … yes.”

“To the obvious ‘extent’. And you knew of it.”

“Sir, I thought you also knew —”

“You understand, Doctor Richardson, that the pleasure of female companionship has no necessary connection to marriage.”

“Sir … it continued … some time.…”

“Several weeks?”

“Yes.”

Lieutenant Franklin sighs briefly. “Thankfully, Mr. Back’s journey has spared us other complications here.”

Hepburn blurts out, “Sir, it wasn’t for want of trying, he —”

“Thank you, Hepburn, I’m sure Doctor Richardson has already told me all that’s necessary. If you know anything further, you may inform me later, and I will decide whether they are matters you need to report to me.”

“Sir, I thought —” Richardson begins, but stops at his commander’s frown.

“Doctor Richardson,” the Lieutenant says, still formally imperial, “I will expect your clarification in that regard as well, but later. You know as well as I no English midshipman ‘marries’, never while on duty; nor could I ever explain such an extraordinary … connection … in these northern wilds to the Reverend Doctor Hood, his father, regarding a young man whose national and moral duties I pledged to promote and guide as I would those of my own son.”

“That is understood, sir. Of course.”

“Good. At the moment, I am considering this,” the commander gestures at Greenstockings and Keskarrah — who wonders for whose benefit these two speak to each other in such wooden tones, for St. Germain who alone understands them? — “this ‘attempted theft’, as one might call it, of a person, a native woman by one of our hired voyageurs, and its very serious possible effect on our Expedition. You know the services of both the voyageurs as well as the natives are essential to our proper progress; both must be treated with firm kindness and
controlled. They cannot be allowed to disrupt our intentions.”

“Yes, sir. The girl is badly hurt, but with care she will survive.”

“Good, then she must be treated with such care. These women, I believe, are accustomed to being beaten. Perhaps her family should be given presents and sent away, with the others, to one of the farther lakes.”

“They are hard to send — Keskarrah comes to me daily for salve for his ulcerated wife, and now this.…”

“Bigfoot could perhaps take them somewhere?”

Richardson says, carefully, “I believe, sir, it is Bigfoot who asks Keskarrah for advice about where to go. Yes?” He looks to St. Germain.

“Yes,” the translator says. “They think, this my land, I go where I want.”

“I do not think it well to move the girl far, for some time.”

“Very well, take her back, both of them,” Lieutenant Franklin gestures, and turns, “to their lodging. This barracks is no place to care for them.”

Greenstockings feels her father tense, and hears the words rising from him: “Twospeaker. I have something to say to Thick English.”

Twospeaker hesitates. “He says you should both return to your own place.”

Keskarrah declares: “I have never spoken to him, but I will speak now.”

Lieutenant Franklin asks, “What does he say?”

“He say it, to you.”

“The middle of the night, in a barracks … is not the time nor place for a council. Tell him, tomorrow.”

“No council, just say now.”

“Very well” — wearily. “What?”

Keskarrah declares: “No one has died since you Whitemuds came, not yet. That is different from what we know happens in the south, so we know Richard Sun has good medicine. Now tell them: if they travel to the Everlasting Ice when the long light comes, we will not see them again.”

Lieutenant Franklin nods thoughtfully to St. Germain’s translation. “What does he mean?” he asks in his ponderous way. “If we go to the Polar Sea, who will die, they or we?”

Keskarrah eases Greenstockings aside; with Richard Sun’s assistance in holding her, he gets slowly to his feet. He says, standing,

“The land teaches us how to live, not how to kill ourselves. We know the names of every place you will meet. And we have seen this: your journey will end at the double rapids on the River of Copperwoman.”

St. Germain translates the first two sentences fast, as usual, then stops, a frown deepening over his cold- and wind-burned face. Keskarrah will not look at him, but looks steadily into the plain future of the darkness before him. So very slowly St. Germain renders the last sentence as flat and direct as he can:

“He see double rapids, Copperwoman River, finish, there land kill you.”

And Lieutenant Franklin’s excellent English manners cannot prevent him from smiling slightly. Which smile Keskarrah sees, and understands its arrogance perfectly.

“Tell him,” Franklin says, turning to go, while his big, well-fed men stand staring, lean in their underwear about the logs that will continue to protect them enough to live through the rest of the winter, so they can sleep and wait for the light to return,
and finally move on into what they have not yet seen and cannot anticipate, for reasons most of them will never comprehend, “tell him, in the name of my Expedition, I thank him for telling me this. Tell him also that I am sure, their land being so very large as we already know, that with his warning we will thankfully be able to avoid, wherever they may be, those fatal double rapids.”