On the Head of a Pin (3 page)

Renwell had disappeared that night and not a whisper had been heard of him since. What had transpired between them that would have caused him to choke the life out of his beautiful wife, Lewis's only daughter? For who else could it have been but Francis Renwell? If Lewis had not been a man of God, he would have cursed the name.

Betsy was stirring, trying to rise. “Tea?” he asked again. “It won't take long.”

He always tried to adopt a cheerful tone when Betsy was down. It struck a false note, he knew, but he wasn't sure what else to do, and at least then one of them sounded cheerful. Sometimes she didn't answer him at all when he made these simple inquiries, but this time she leaned up on one elbow, groaning as her weight shifted onto inflamed joints.

“I'll get it.”

“No, no, I'm fine. You stay where you are. I'm on my way again tomorrow and you'll have to get your own tea then.”

It would take him four weeks to ride the entire circuit, he figured — four weeks of meetings, of preaching, of calling on the sick and dying, and welcoming the newborn. Four weeks when Betsy would be more or less on her own, for he would seldom be close enough to return home at day's end. He must speak to the boys again and urge them to help their mother more while he was gone. The problem was, he thought, that some days she was fine, and you wouldn't know anything had ever been the matter, but then that was the intermittent nature of the fever that plagued her. The boys, in the way of the young, assumed that one good day was equivalent to full recovery, and forgot that their mother had been deathly ill and still needed looking after.

“There were some men here looking for you,” Betsy said as she hobbled over to the stool beside the stove.

“What did they want?”

“All the veterans are being called out to patrol the borders in case Mackenzie attacks with the Americans. You're to go to Kingston and report.”

“What, all us old men? That's ridiculous.”

“They said there are armies massed all along the border. You're not going, are you?”

“No. I'm an ordained minister now. They can't make me fight again.”

“The men were quite nasty. They seemed to think you should have gone already.” She looked a little frightened, but whether it was the thought of Americans attacking or just the notion that he might be in danger, he wasn't sure. It certainly wasn't the thought of being left alone. She'd be left alone whether he reported to Kingston or not, and after all these years as the wife of a saddlebag preacher, she was surely used to it.

“They can think what they like. I'll ride to Kingston and get a deferment, but not until I've made at least one complete round of the circuit. I've only just been appointed here. All the good Methodist Society members would think it most remiss if I left them on their own so soon.”

She nodded, mollified, and turned her attention to Martha, who had gummed down her crust of bread and was fussing again.

Poor little motherless mite,
he thought.

III

E
verywhere he went, people were talking about the firing of
The Caroline
, the prospect that the Americans would shortly be invading, and the viciousness with which anyone associated with the rebellion was being persecuted. Any man who had openly expressed support for the Reformers was being arrested. Even those who had commented for Reform in the most innocuous way were being relieved of any sort of government post and denied even the smallest amount of government business. As far as Governor Arthur was concerned, the mildest of criticism was proof of treason, and he was bringing the full force of government authority to bear against it.

“The British could scarcely have picked a worse man to settle the colony down,” one farmer said to him, and privately Lewis had to agree, although he was careful to keep this opinion to himself. Arthur had previously served as lieutenant-governor of the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, and it was said that he had hanged nearly everyone there. Now he seemed determined to send as many Upper Canadians as he could to that dreadful place.

“They say there are strange unnatural animals everywhere and the natives will eat you if they can catch you,” the man went on, “and even if you manage to dodge all that, you're starved or worked to death and the governor can swoop in and decide to hang you at the drop of a hat.”

The farmer seemed to think that there was little to choose between being hanged and being transported across the oceans, for life in the strange far-off land was, by all accounts, brutal, with little hope of survival and none of return. It was no wonder most people had closed their mouths and shuttered their windows, and Lewis advised the farmer to do the same.

He was on the road to the village of Milford when he caught up with a brightly coloured peddler's wagon, the deep reds and bright blues advertising its purpose even to those who could not read its sign. When he drew even with it, he realized the driver was Isaac Simms, the peddler he had met at Varney's store, for Simm
s
& Son
s
was painted in black lettering on the side of the cab.

He was surprised to see Simms here. Generally peddlers were creatures of the clearings, riding as far and as often and as alone as any itinerant preacher. They made their way from settlement to settlement and from cabin to cabin selling an assortment of useful items that were hard to come by in the remote areas: needles, pins, awls, pots and pans. They also carried more discretionary wares that the luxury-starved settlers could never resist on those few occasions when they had extra pennies in their fists: yard goods, crockery, and seed for flower gardens. The women bought these last items when they could, for it was the women who bore the brunt of any deficiencies on the farm, and as far as the men were concerned, the need for new stock or a tool always took precedence over extravagances such as dresses and decoration. The bulk of a peddler's business was done on back stoops or in dooryards.

“The trails are too soft right now,” Simms grumbled as they jogged along. “That warm spell we had last week has made them a boggy mess. I'll have to wait for either a hard frost or a rainless week before I head north again, though truth to tell, I sometimes wonder why I bother. Nobody has any money, or even much to barter with.”

Simms had apparently established a round in the more settled areas as a hedge against those times when the forest trails were impassable, topping up storekeepers' stocks with the small items they ran out of over the winter.

“If the ground would freeze solid I could put the sled runners on the wagon and get into the backcountry, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen for a while.” With runners he could skim over the mud holes and fallen brush that so often blocked the way at other times of the year. “Sometimes I leave the wagon and most of the goods at one of the shops, and take a pack and horse into the further reaches, but right now I can't get there even on horseback. Looks like I'm stuck at the front in the meantime.”

If the ruts on the road to Milford were any indication, Simms would be at the front for some time to come, for even here on a travelled route, the going was hard, and frequently Lewis was forced to ride along the shoulder in order to avoid the large mud puddles that had collected in the middle. It made for a very disjointed conversation, but the peddler appeared not to notice, and continued talking even when Lewis had wandered away.

“So, are you the Simms or the son?” Lewis asked him, as he rejoined the wagon after the fifth detour.

“Both. I inherited the business. My father had a half-baked idea of establishing some sort of commercial empire someday. He wanted to be man of means, to be one of the important men in the colony, but it appears he was a little over-optimistic, since all he ever really had was a peddler's cart and a little stock.” Simms shook his head. “He kept us all well enough, I guess, but he certainly never grew rich. When he died, all that was left was his cart and the responsibility for the upkeep of an aging mother and three unmarried sisters, none of whom show any prospect of finding a husband in the near future. Never mind. With all the new lands being opened up for settlement, maybe business will pick up. I tell you something, though, just between you and me and the doorpost. A lot of the merchants are in trouble. Everybody's been running on credit and now they're being squeezed by their suppliers, and those bastards, pardon my language, Parson, want cash to settle up.”

Few finished goods were produced locally. Instead they came from other places, shipped down the St. Lawrence River, the trade controlled by Montreal businessmen who added a substantial surcharge to anything they sent and refused to fairly share the monies generated by customs and duties at the port of entry. Upper Canadian goods, timber and wheat for the most part, were shipped back, but nearly everything within the colony itself ran on a barter basis. Cash was hard to come by at the best of times, but according to Simms, now credit was being choked off as well.

“It's the States,” Simms said. “They were determined to build as many roads and canals as they could, and they issued too many bonds and notes. The people who invested have discovered there's nothing backing them up. Fortunes have been lost, a lot of them in Britain, and now they're scared skinny and pinching pennies.”

“So people are being squeezed all the way along the line, top to bottom?”

Simms nodded. “Yes, that's the crux of the matter, all right — including yours truly. If I could get the girls off my hands it would help a lot.” He sighed. “You don't happen to know of anyone who's looking for a wife, do you? Mind you, none of the three knows how to do anything except sing a little and do fancy needlework, so don't be offering up anyone who's looking for cooking or cleaning or anything useful.”

“What you need is a half-pay officer or someone with a government appointment, then. Their wives are mostly ornamental, or so I'm told. Not the circle I travel in, I'm afraid.”

The colony was awash in ex-British officers who had been granted huge swaths of land in lieu of their pensions — acreages that would have made them rich had they been in settled England. Upon arrival they had been astounded to discover that there was no servant class in Canada and that they were expected to hew their own wood and carry their own water. They were not, as a rule, very successful as settlers.

“Unfortunately,” said Simms, “only one of my sisters could be described as decorative in any way. Mother would love it if she landed some Britisher of the gentleman class, but they all seem to arrive with families in tow, and besides, they'll have nothing to do with the likes of us, no matter how hard mother tries to pretend that she's one of them. Apparently it's a disgrace to work at earning a living.”

Many of these failed settlers clamoured for government appointments to rescue them from hard labour in the backwoods. The government was only too happy to oblige; after all, they were of good British stock and nearly all Anglicans, and The Family Compact had entrenched itself by pandering to them. This elitist group wanted an aristocracy — with themselves at the head of it, of course — and anyone with any ambition was wise to act in a way that befitted the station he aspired to. Unfortunately, this was an attitude that was mirrored by ordinary citizens, as well, for no one wanted to admit that they were on the low end of the class ladder.

“Sometimes I wonder if Mackenzie didn't have it right,” Simms said. “This whole colony runs on a pack of nonsense. We're all on the road to ruin, if you ask me, but it's beyond me what to do about it.”

He was still grumbling as they parted company on Milford's main street. The peddler would transact whatever business he could find and set off for his next destination. He had no need to stay. When night fell, he would simply pull the wagon over to the side of whichever road he was on, climb into the back, and go to sleep.

To Lewis's eye, Milford appeared to be every bit as busy as Demorestville. Surely Simms was being pessimistic about the state of economic affairs, for he saw cartloads of grain being hauled to the mill, huge timbers being drawn to the ship-building yard, prosperous-looking matrons carrying baskets of goods. Crops had been poor in the last few seasons, particularly this last year, but Milford appeared not to have noticed, and if ever the rewards of industry and hard work were evident, it had to be in this village.

It also turned out to be another of the places where he could be sure of a warm welcome. The mill owner was a confirmed Methodist. His father had been one of the subscribers who had built the first Canadian Methodist meeting house in Hay Bay, just across the water on the mainland, and the man had carried his convictions to the place where he ultimately decided to settle. The son had donated land for the building of a small meeting house, and there were several class meetings scheduled here for both men and women in addition to a regular service open to all. It would be necessary to spend the night in order to accommodate such a number of gatherings, but his board was easily arranged — in fact, there was a rivalry to claim the honour of having the preacher stay.

He was offered an excellent supper at the home of a local carpenter. Here, too, the talk was of Mackenzie and
The Caroline
, and what would happen if the Americans invaded. Lewis repeated whatever news he knew was fact and left out any of the rampant speculation that had reached his ears. Just as Simms had reported, two of the rebels who had the misfortune to be caught, Matthews and Lount, had been hanged at Toronto Gaol. Governor Arthur had been quick to brand them leaders of the uprising, and had exacted the ultimate penalty. The execution, by all accounts, was a grisly affair. Instead of hauling them up on a rope, as was usual, they had been dropped through a trap door. A miscalculation as to the depth of the drop needed had apparently resulted in Lount's head parting from his body in a bloody and spectacular manner.