The Piano Maker (21 page)

After they left the dead moose that day, travel became more difficult. In places there was no snow at all, just hard ground. They passed more rock piles, some of them ten feet high with flat sides like pyramids, with dirt and sand blown into the cracks. They wore their masks and glasses because an ice-cold wind had come up and sometimes it gusted so hard it stopped all progress. For long stretches she walked the dogs to lighten the load, now that there was more rock than snow under the runners. The sky was still clear, but to the west the cloud banks had loosened and horsetail clouds were blowing in from the north.

“Over there!” shouted Prosper at one point. “See it?” He pointed at something that she could not make out. They
continued over level ground for a while longer, and eventually Prosper stopped and pointed again. “See it now?”

“I bet it’s under there,” said Nathan. “That sandy hill. I think that’s where he found it and then covered it up again. Am I right? Is that why we brought shovels and brushes?”

While the men were at work digging, she fed the dogs and on a solid-fuel burner melted some of the snow she’d packed on the sled for drinking water. The dogs lapped it noisily out of the enamel wash basin. When they were done she stored the basin back on the sled and then sat and watched the men at work.

When the skull lay exposed it came up to her shoulder. It was absolutely astonishing. An ancient bone structure, white in places, with most of its teeth still in place: a row of them, each longer than a chef’s knife.

She reached out and tapped the skull, and it sounded hollow. Sand ran inside the bone. There were large holes for the eyes and ears and for the nostrils. Strands of cheek muscles still clung to bone inside their caves, and great patches of scaly skin clung to the skull, brown and dried like old leather, half an inch thick. From the base of the skull the spine curled away, with the large bones fused in places or held together by some ancient and altered substance, as though cartilage had turned to glue and then to stone.

“What do you think?” said Prosper to her. “He didn’t find any oil, but he found this.”

Lifting the skull and vertebrae onto the sled took planning and then a concerted effort in stages. Even so, the
skull was surprisingly light for its size. They didn’t cover it for fear of rubbing off precious skin, but they tied it down with ropes, carefully, through openings and over patches of bare bone only.

Whenever she paused in her narrative, there was a great silence in the market hall, all these people staring at her. She saw Mr. Quormby like an island of safety not far away. She saw Mildred and David Chandler in the crowd, and she held on to them for support. Flashbulbs still popped once in a while and the bright camera light was off to the side a bit. A piece of cardboard had been raised on a pole to keep the light off the judge’s desk, but it was still on her and still an annoyance.

“And then what, Mrs. Giroux?” said the assistant Crown. “Would you please move more quickly and get to the moment when you murdered Mr. Nathan Homewood.”

Mr. Quormby stood up and objected, and the judge looked at the assistant Crown and said, “Now, Mrs. Tancock. You know better than that.” He turned to the jury and instructed them to ignore that comment because it was prejudicial.

He turned to her. “Please continue, Mrs. Giroux.”

“Yes, Your Honour. The sled was a basic platform, and the skull sat in front and the vertebrae were laid out behind it. We tied it all down and then Nathan reviewed
his notes and drawings with the guide. The guide made a few comments but on the whole he approved. He said to watch out for the weather. Then we paid him the rest of the money, which was three thousand dollars. We fed the dogs and we all ate something and rested for half an hour, and then we turned around. The guide said he’d be travelling east, but he helped us push the sled clear of sand and rock. Once we were back on snow, we parted. We could see him and his team for another hour or so over our left shoulders, and then we lost sight of him.”

With the added weight the runners cut more deeply into the snow and the dogs had to work harder. But they were a strong team, and for the rest of that first day it was relatively easy. They simply backtracked the way they’d come, she driving the dogs and Nathan with his notes and compass riding on the sled, and that night they were able to camp at the site where they’d stayed the night before. It was nearly dark when they arrived, and they pitched the tent around the same tree and made a fire.

She fed and watered the dogs, and then they cooked their own dinner. They ate moose meat grilled on the fire. They heated frozen peas and carrots, and they ate coconut cream pie from the Long Trail portion packages it came in.

They joked about things, about how normal people might be spending the evening. They got along so very
well by then, like friends who’d been through a lot together; dependable companions on this so-unusual trip.

In the firelight the skull looked all the more strange: those long teeth, the molars as big as an infant’s head, the vertebrae enormous and complicated in their structure. Shadows dancing in the eye caves and dancing on ancient flesh in the cheek pockets.

“I took
The Origin of Species
out of the library again,” she told him. “Just before we left. Mostly because of his unthinkable time spans. Have you read him?”

“Not recently.”

“Well, he says that most likely one day some catastrophic event like a planetary collision wiped out most life on earth and set it back to single-cell forms. And ever so slowly evolution began all over again. It took another seventy or so million years, but this time, among countless branches, one accidental offshoot just happened to have opposable thumbs
and
large brains. Which resulted in the use of tools. And here we are.”

Nathan chewed and swallowed and nodded at that.

They mused about their dinosaur being alive, hunting its food, this enormous thing pounding over the land. Those deadly incisors. Surely not just a vegetarian. Maybe an omnivore, if not an outright carnivore. How high off the ground might it have been? How big its feet? Its toenails? How something this big and complicated could evolve from primal mud to dominate life on earth for more than a hundred million years. And then disappear again. Gone.

They heard wolves again that night, and she knelt by the tent flaps and looked out at the dogs standing stiff-hackled, howling back. She loved all this. It was such a privilege, so utterly different from her other life.

Later that night it began to snow. Not very much at first, but by morning when she was harnessing the dogs, snow came down no longer in flakes but in small, dense crystals. They were underway by seven o’clock in a grey, dim light, the kind of light it would be all day. There was snow on their trail now, and at first the dogs could still find their own tracks but by noon they could no longer.

They carried on using Nathan’s trail notes and the compass, and they identified landmarks ahead, as far as they could see, which was never very far. From then on they stopped the sled every half hour and decided the new direction.

“Not to worry,” said Nathan. “We’ll just take our time. So what if it takes a bit longer to get back?”

They travelled like this for seven days.

It was snowing all the time, and they no longer recognized the landscape from his drawings. His dead reckoning notes had become useless as well, because their speed of travel was so much slower than on the way out. But they still had the compass, and guided by it they headed southeast in the knowledge that the general direction was correct.

The snow was dense but high on the ground. The dogs had the large paws of their breed with webbing between the toes, but even so they were sinking in deeply. Often
she and Nathan put on snowshoes and helped push the sled for hours.

They did not talk about the fact that they would soon be running out of food, theirs and the dogs’. But they both knew it. And they hadn’t seen a moose or any other kind of animal in days.

She paused and asked if she might have a glass of water. The clerk brought water, and she drank and handed the glass back to him.

“Your Honour,” said the assistant Crown, “can we not go straight to the situation in question? This is a murder trial, not a travel report.”

The judge looked at the Crown and then at her. He frowned and looked back at the Crown. “Are you in a hurry, Mrs. Tancock? I think we want to establish the circumstances that led up to the situation in question, as you put it. After all, it’s an unusual situation. So let the accused continue. But wait …” The judge looked at his watch and said, “Recess. This court will resume at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.” He hammered his gavel. “Matron, the accused may be taken back into house arrest. She is not to receive any visitors other than her legal counsel.”

Mr. Quormby stood up and said, “May I approach, Your Honour?” Then he leaned over the desk and murmured to the judge. The Honourable Sir James F. Whitmore reached
up and with one finger moved the stiff locks of his white wig back from his ear. He listened.

“Matron,” he said then, “the accused may be brought her meals by someone other than her counsel.”

She and Mr. Quormby were in the apartment when Mildred came up the stairs with a tray. “Meatloaf,” she said. “I’ll put it in the kitchen. And there’s red cabbage with apples and honey, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Food to stick to your ribs, Helen. You’ll be needing it.”

“Mrs. Yamoussouke,” called Mr. Quormby from the living room. “Can you tell me? What is the feeling among the people in the gallery?”

Mildred stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Behind the rope, Mr. Quormby?”

“Yes. Behind the rope.”

“I wasn’t there all the time, but from what I’ve seen I’d say it’s very good. People are listening. I think they’re sympathetic. The clerk should give her an elbow chair like the jury, not that uncomfortable straight-back to sit on, why don’t you tell them that?”

“Because it’s courtroom protocol. Other than that?”

“Fine, Mr. Quormby. I think she’s doing very well, don’t you?”