A Discovery of Strangers (30 page)

“He’s right enough, sir. I heard plenty of sailor stories.”

“Of, what?”

“Oh,” Hepburn hesitates, “on that American privateer we were often in trouble for food. Then the strongest is the worst, real dangerous.”

“For what reason would that be?” Richardson is trying to leaf through his small Bible with gloved fingers; the stiff pages stick.

“The strongest, they can … kill you, first.”

“First?”

“When you’re too weak … to protect yourself.”

Richardson says steadily, “One would expect the strong, as good Christians, to aid the weak.”

“Aye sir, Christians, they expect lots.…”

“Americans, and war business, well … but I cannot think that of Englishmen, not even those of common station.”

“Hunger does bloody things, sir. I’ve seen it.”

“What have you —” Richardson stops abruptly, then continues as well as he can with his usual levelness. “So. Mr. Franklin was wise also in that, to send the strongest voyageurs ahead with Mr. Back for help. A leader must always … control … men, before they are uncontrollable. By force, yes, if necessary.”

Richardson looks at them both: in the spastic firelight Hepburn is clumsily sewing a tear over his knee, Hood is almost invisible under his robe against the high mound of the sleeping
Indian. Back — the smallest but strongest officer, with good French and certainly the quickest gun. And ruthless.

“The strong know that, and may therefore have reason to fear the desperation of the weak … but…” Richardson’s tone for an instant becomes the doctor’s again, analysing carefully, “such … flesh … would sustain nothing. Really, since it itself is starving. It would provide no nourishment. And if it suffered from scurvy.…” He shrugs. “Less than useless.”

“A starving man don’t think of much but eating, sir.”

“I understand. But we,” Richardson says, steady and careful, “are Christians … you are not like that, Hepburn.”

“No, no,” Hood echoes him.

Hepburn says nothing; he is certainly stronger than the other two. “I was born on a croft,” he once told these two officers at Fort Enterprise. “I knew enough hunger waiting at the next corner, and people starve in the Orkneys.” Though he has not mentioned any of that since they started to walk away from the ocean.

And now it may be that they are all three weeping. If Michel were awake and if he, after two years of working for them, had some understanding of what it was these strangers wanted so badly to find that it made them drag themselves so mercilessly over oceans and lands, a trek on which they expected every inhabitant they met to be similarly sacrificial and assist them for nothing more than what they had already decided was “proper compensation”, yes, to slave for them to the very point of death, perhaps then Michel too would be weeping. However, it is Hepburn who sobs aloud.

“After the doings of the land of Egypt,’ ” Richardson begins reading again, “wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the
doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do.… Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgements: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord your God.’”

And his hunger-gravelled voice declares further: “ ‘None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.… The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother; shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.… The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness shalt thou not uncover. The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness.…’ ”

Richardson’s cathedral solemnity begins to falter: “ ‘ … thy mother’s sister’s daughter or … thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s brother’s … brother’s naked.…’ ”

And stumbles to a stop. Hood is laughing.

The other two are suddenly aware of it but for a moment cannot understand what he is doing, his cavernous skull agape with such staggered jerks of his bony skeleton that Michel grunts and seems about to turn on him, flinging his bare arm — once so huge with muscles but now stretched into ropes — about the air before huddling down again, twisting the buffalo hide even farther over himself so that suddenly Hood’s bare leg and seal-skin feet lie exposed. A crossing of blotched blue sticks.

Richardson leans to him and tugs the hide back, tucks it under again.

“My f-f-father,” Hood stutters between the feeble hiccups left in his skeleton, “never read … that … vespers!”

“I have … lost the readings … I’m just following Leviticus, and this doesn’t seem appropri —” Richardson does not conclude. Hepburn is crawling past them.

“Maybe morning readings, sir.” He is almost outside. “The light, it’s coming up, I think.”

It may be, barely visible as Hepburn crawls out of sight, light like a line painted deeply south-east by south all along the tundra’s edge. Richardson lays the little Bible aside, fumbles with his calendar notebook.

“Then it must be Sunday. October 20,” he says at last. “Fourteen days since Mr. Franklin left us. Or is it Saturday?”

“One must … never … father instructed us,” Hood is still twitching a little, “travel on … Sundays!”

Though they have of necessity, so often. Is it the twentieth Sunday after Trinity? If it is Sunday. Hood sees this number with staggering clarity arise with the meagre dawn, and the ridiculous laughter that stretched him flat and gasping suddenly explodes again with his father reading that ponderous text so long after Trinity, they should be somewhere in the Prophets, always on Sunday; like the arrangement of their familial decorum into ritual goodness before they all trail after his black robes into St. Mary’s, first the comforting wife and mother, she of all true gentleness, and then the three upright downright sons, Richard Jr. and Robert-robin and Georgy-porgy the blessed king for ever, and then the virtuous girls, Catherine … a parade of Anglican clerical perfection. Robert Hood’s mind is sodden with texts, touch him and he floods, his doors wrenched open and the rivers of sacred English words dammed up in his memory stream out, all of them into this arctic dawn, visible and blaring out loud
surely there is a vein for silver and
a place for gold he setteth an end to darkness and searcheth out the stones of darkness and the shadow of death but where shall wisdom be found the depth saith it is not me the topaz of Canaan shall not and he looketh to the ends of the earth for I mourn for my love here’s a pretty dove he putteth forth his hand upon the rock he over-turneth them by their roots doest thou do well and also much cattle to be angry yea I do even unto death I do well that cannot discern my right hand from my left to be very angry and also much cattle yea I do

“Doctor Richardson?” Hood whispers; who knows how far Hepburn has managed to drag himself.

“What?” the doctor responds, as closely confidential.

“Is there, anything, about a daughter’s … nakedness, or a son’s?”

Richardson shudders. He has assumed that in their suffering together they have already spoken of everything necessary; for him at least starvation (and so he thought for them both) was their complete and mutual confessor. But never this; what childhood abomination has Leviticus led this poor boy’s dying memory back into? Truly there are more things in heaven and on earth — he cannot deny his friend anything, not now.

“Not here,” he says finally, searching to focus in chapter eighteen. “What is it…?”

“My daughter,” whispers Hood, “or it may be, my son. Will need washing, their nakedness, their soft: nak —”

“My dearest Robert!” Richardson interrupts before he can say more — but does not know how to continue. And Hood seems suspended on one elbow, staring at him as if he would drag assurance out of his very eyes. “Of course, of course the mother … washes.…”

“O yes,” Hood exclaims, “yes, she’ll wash, o Greenstockings is, very clean, she smells quick as firelight, moss, woodsmoke, that is, Doctor Richardson, the purest, and cleanest, when the child is born she’s absolutely clean…” — sitting up now, a structure of bruised bones shouting as if it still had the strength to walk wherever its eyes led, its still fingers shivered in anticipation of those delicately turned numbers spreading like columns of trees over pages, the shimmering paint and brushes were clenched between its teeth — “sand and smoke and ashes is the sweetest washing, I’ve seen her wash herself, and the girl, clean as my mother dreamed in the manse, when I take her, and my daughter back to England, or my son, she will show my mother her washing, there is always uncleanness, my father read that, it is there, you should read that, ‘If a woman have conceived seed, and borne a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days,’ that is what he preached, from the high pulpit, seven days! ‘But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean fourteen days, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days’! Greenstockings! Read it!”

Hood’s voice, ravaged by hunger, roars about the blotched tent and breaks off as he collapses against Michel, who stirs but refuses to awaken; he will never waken for a White scream. Richardson grasps a wrist, which is mere bone. Hepburn scrabbles at the door,

“What, sir? Sir!”

“No,” Richardson says quietly. “Not yet. He fainted. Leave him, just fainted. Unfortunately.”

“He said … a name?”

Richardson quietly covers his skeletal friend again. “He has
not said her name aloud for nine months” is all he says to Hepburn, weeping again. And he lifts his Bible, bends to it, knowing he read those words — how could Hood remember them so perfectly — as recently as yesterday perhaps, or last week: and finds them under the tip of his finger — Leviticus, chapter twelve:

“And the Lord spake unto Moses saying … Who shall offer it before the Lord, and make an atonement … if she be not able to bring a lamb … two young pigeons … and she shall be clean.”

A brace of ptarmigan then, will that suffice? And blood, of course; always sufficient blood.

Not spoken her name since that dreadful January night — nine months? certainly nine. Not even later, in July when they left the Indians on the Coppermine River, just before they came to the useless mountains that revealed no copper at all — it is all somewhere in his notes — in July that dangerous woman whose beauty caused all those fights vanished with the pretty-faced hunter. Or was it with that one from the huge lake they said was in the north-west, Great Bear Lake, with that other Yellowknife, The Hook? They had hung him with medals — it is all detailed in his notes, facts upon dangerous facts. And in his memory. In his report he will arrange and edit them properly, as always, so they will make proper and decent, acceptable sense.

A very short chapter of Bible. Eight priestly verses for Greenstockings.

Or should he burn his notes? Sacrifice must be made. Not necessarily blood, but burnt sacrifice most surely. If he cannot write his report properly, as Lieutenant Franklin advises him, the notes must be burned. When he is about to die, that must also be done. Things have taken place that would not be understood
properly, they may be there in memories, like ineradicable teeth, and whoever survives, whoever, must write the acceptable account of what can be properly reported; and crush, burn his memory.

Hepburn is studying Richardson as though reading his thoughts on the grey Sunday (Saturday?) morning light.

“He’s good,” the sailor says suddenly, “on my honour, sir. That’s all I know of Mr. Hood.”

Richardson looks at Hood’s flatness of bones; if he is no longer in a faint, he is sleeping. Who would want him to awaken in this horrid place? He has paid more than double for all his sins.

“Yes. As Englishmen,” Richardson softly includes Hepburn, “we hold for ever sacred the memory of our blessed, our glorious dead.”

But when Michel sits up, Hood is immediately conscious, one unawareness breaking the other. His mind still teems with inchoate phrases and he gropes for Richardson’s Bible, he will find the exact places, the exact words and every detail of punctuation as they go on and on beyond what he has or will ever read
unto the least jot and tittle
every iota frozen aloud into him that he is now condemned to recall here in this mocking inescapable land, they burst blazing as ice inside his head
but God prepared a worm I will when the morning rose the next day and they wander for lack of food knowest thou knowest thou bring forth Canaan the wrens so small who bore Cock Robin’s pall in his season canst thou kill I will guide Arcturus with his sons canst thou provide raven his food thou kill when his young ones cry unto God for food canst thou knowest kill thou kill kill
but he cannot see anything.

Raven could brush the snow from him and he would not be able to see a speck of his blackness. Hood feels icy paper against his nose and sees nothing; a possible dance of snowstorm. Is it? Soundlessly, without wind? He puts his hand to his face: yes, his eyes are open. It is the book.

He realizes he no longer has dimension. He is a sheet laid between frozen hides, become his own pencilled calculation so thin it cannot be seen, a hide ’twere better ’twere scrapped clean of hair and eaten, and therefore he must explain to Michel, yes, he must, he has Richardson’s Bible in his hands and sometimes he finds places where the words he can see for an instant collide with his memory. Richardson and Hepburn are somewhere nearby, scratching through snow for rocks again, and when Hood tilts up, the grey mist of his seeing gradually blurs into a gathering sharpness. He begins to see the thick words at the tops of pages, “Job”, “Romans”, “Daniel” — it is truly Bible but the small light rising towards noon reveals words he does not really need to see, dragging through his mind
if then God so clothe the grass which today kill will wander in the field provide yourselves with kill bags which wax not old and he shall surely kill come in the second watch or in the third
and what he must explain to Michel, Michel who squats in the tent doorway behind him, cleaning his long rifle so thoroughly for tomorrow, certainly tomorrow those two will start for Fort Enterprise, yes, but what he must explain to the Mohawk very carefully is that he will
not
show
him
how to use the compass!