"A crape-hanger."
"Yes," Mike said.
But I couldn't keep it up, not even for Mike. My baby was going to die—and I wanted it so much. I turned away from Mike and cried for the little Mike, the woman's words repeating themselves in my mind.
Mike took my hands away from my face and kissed them. "Listen, Kathy. This idea of bringing you down here wasn't so good. But it was because I didn't know anything about the woman—just that she was a trained nurse. That impressed me. I wanted you to have a trained nurse. I want you to have the best. And, by Heaven, you're going to get it."
I tried not to smile. "Another idea, Mike?"
"And this time it's good, kitten. I'm going to telegraph Mrs. Carpentier to come up from Grouard and look after you."
"Mrs. Carpentier, who's she?"
Mike smiled. "Mrs. Carpentier is a good witch, a fairy godmother. You'll love her, Kathy."
"But who is she?"
"Well, she's Cree, full blood, married to Louis Carpentier, a 'breed trapper. Wonderful person. Been midwife to every woman within a hundred-mile radius."
Anything was better than Mrs. Mathers. I couldn't have stood her handling me. "Could she be here in time?" I asked. "She'll have to be."
Two nights later my pains began in earnest. Mrs. Carpentier was somewhere on the trail. Mrs. Mathers sulked in the next room, and it was Mike who sat with me. The pain ripped and tore me. I'd hold onto his hands and scream. He tied a sheet to the bedpost. I'd pull on it and pull until it stopped. Then I'd lie panting, gathering my strength to meet it again. Mike would wipe the sweat from my face. Sometimes I remember a cool cloth on me.
It was one of these times when I lay exhausted, gasping for breath, that she came. I didn't notice that the door had opened. She was just standing there, looking down at me. Sarah, I thought, it's Sarah, from the Bible. I sighed and closed my eyes. I felt peace. The fear had gone.
It began again, seizing, grabbing, tearing. Then she spoke to me. "Sarah ..." I tried to say, but only wild screams came.
Her voice went on, like an undertone of river water, slow, strong, and clear. I clung to the sound. I held to it. The pain swept me into a black gulf that was wet, that was sticky, that was blood, that was sweat. But I knew that in the voice and behind it was the world. If I held on, I could get back to it, into it, through to it.
The pain let go of me then, suddenly and completely. I didn't open my eyes. When you're as tired as this, you've got to be dead. And a weak tear rolled out because I didn't want to be dead.
Something fragrant, slightly pungent, was in front of my nose. It smelled of the woods. I opened my eyes to see. Sarah was holding a glass for me. I drank. It was bitter and yet sweet.
The pause had been shorter this time. It grabbed me faster. The words stayed with me, they were telling me, "Grow in the moist soil. . . running streams." Swirling pain, rising pain, but it could not pull me down into the darkness.
"Yellow flowers," she said, "small, bloom in June." I was being broken, split into two pieces.
"Mike, stop them!"
"From root come medicine. Make nice baby come fast. Make mother strong. Grind the root, crush ..." Crush! That's what they were doing to me, crushing.
"Mix with water. Name is squaw root. Squaw root for help squaw with baby." That was all. I lost the words, everything. Then Mike was kissing me, stroking me, putting the wet cloth on my face again.
"Darling, it's all over. We have a girl."
I smiled at him. I could hear Sarah moving. After a long time I was able to turn my head and watch her. She was rubbing oil on a tiny mite of a baby. They put her beside me, tucked her in my arms.
"A lovely girl baby," Sarah said.
I looked at Sarah. She was big, big as a man. Six feet tall and strong. There was a grace and dignity in her, and a kindness and a knowing that sixty years had brought. I thought of what Mike had called her, the good witch.
The little thing in my arms stirred. The movement gave me a happiness and a joy I had never known. I smiled at Mike, I smiled at Sarah.
"Tell me about squaw root," I said.
"It have seed like big pea, can make much good drink. . . like coffee."
The little mouth opened against my breast.
"What else can it do?" I asked.
"Squaw root beside make well the squaw, make well the hands-swell-dropping sickness, the shaking sickness, the laugh-and-cry-without-reason sickness, and the pain-in-joints sickness that is called rheumatism."
I touched the baby and touched Mike. My family, I thought. I was so happy. I didn't want to spoil the enchantment this good witch had brought, so I asked her, "Tell me more about squaw root."
But instead she told me about my baby. Moss, she said, was softer than cloth. And she diapered it in moss, held in place with
little pants. Talcum powder you couldn't get up here, but she knew something better, pounded tea leaves.
''You must have had a lot of children," I said.
"Seventeen of my own. Many others, maybe hundreds, I brought into the world."
"So many?" I asked her.
She nodded. "I brought my sister into the world when I was ten years old. And always after that, more children, and more, I never lose mother, and I never lose child, except once ... in this house."
"In this house?" I held my own baby tighter.
"Yes," she said, "fie was dead baby I take from Mrs. Mathers."
Mike's hand tightened over mine.
Thirteen
We called the baby Mary Aroon, after my grandmother, Bridget Aroon. Mary is the sweetest, most beautiful name there is, and I was always grateful to my own mother for squeezing it into my name.
Sarah left for Grouard two days after Mary Aroon was born. It was the day she went that I showed her the name Sarah in my Bible. I told her how Sarah had been the mother of a race. I told her that in my delirium, when I saw her standing in front of me, I had felt she was Sarah. Her hands had been strong, her voice gentle, and for me she had been that ancient mother of Israel.
"Mrs. Carpentier," I said, "I want to call you Sarah. May I?"
She ran her finger over the name in the book.
"It is the name between us," she said.
In a week I was strong enough to make the trip. Mike bought a cart and padded it with blankets. I lay in it and bounced the long way to Grouard. Many times I told Mike I'd rather be riding the horse, but he would smile and tell me I had a fine view of the sky.
I had never before looked forward with such eagerness to a place as I did to my new home, Grouard. When I had come in to Peace River Crossing, my only desire had been to lie down and hide. Now all my fears were turned inside out, a new life opened before me, and I knew that when I came to Grouard I'd start living it.
Sarah had told me how I would come to the village: "First up over Black Bear Hill, and down below, way on the ground, is piece of shining rock like stone for arrowhead, only rough around the edges. It is far, far away, and when the wind blows you see it is not a rock, but Lesser Slave Lake. The Crees, they call it Slave Lake because the Blackfeet, that once lived here, made slaves of captured people. And tears of slaves make this great lake. When you see it, you will soon be in Grouard, and your friends will be there, Mrs. Mike."
And so it was. The hill, the lake, and new friends to welcome us. Two men came riding up the trail to meet us. Constable Cameron had seen the smoke of our last campfire. The Indians, as usual, had known all about it even before he did. They told him it was Sergeant Mike, Mrs. Mike, and Mike's girl-child. So as we came over the top of Black Bear Hill, Ned Cameron came galloping up the other side, pulled in his horse, and saluted.
"Constable Cameron, sir. And this"—pointing to the slim youngster who rode behind him—"is Timmy Beauclaire, and I think, Mrs. Flannigan, he has a present for you."
"A puppy," the boy said. He pulled it out of his jacket. "Like it?"
"Very much," and befo
re I knew what I was doing, I showed him the baby, bundled in her fur bag. "Like it?"
He nodded, and we both laughed.
Mike and Ned Cameron walked their horses and exchanged news. Timmy leaned from the saddle and handed me the puppy.
Timmy Beauclaire was about thirteen then, very thin and eager, with curly brown hair and sharp eyes of the color people call hazel, but really twinkling blue, brown, and green. I was his friend from the first minute and mothered him in a way that was laughable when I remembered I was only a few years older. Truly I felt that I had lived a hundred years and could give advice to my own mother now.
Timmy asked me what I would call the pup.
"Juno," I said.
"That's a funny name."
"It's Irish. All my dogs were called Juno, and it's brought me pretty good luck, and so this one is going to be Juno too."
"Don't you want to see whether it's a him or her first?"
Well, I did, but not with him around, so I said, "Makes no difference. He's still Juno."
"You mean she's still Juno," Timmy grinned, and Mike came up and we drove off for Grouard.
The part of Grouard I saw first was the little white cemetery on the hill, and it was so bright and sparkling it hardly dampened my spirits. The crosses were whitewashed and salted against the rains; this I knew from Sarah. The tall gray stone cross was Black Eagle's, the first important chief converted to Christianity; this Timmy told me. I thought the cemetery quaint and pretty, and only for a moment did a shadow of the future fall over me. There was the tiny distant figure of a woman walking through the graveyard gate, and for a second I thought it was me. Then we turned a corner, and the cemetery was gone. Cabins began to appear, and Ned Cameron shouted to me, "Grouard!"
We passed the boat landing in the cove, the Hudson's Bay Company store, and the trail turned into a hard-packed dirt road.
"There's a friend of yours, Mike." Cameron laughed as we came upon a most curious building. It was a gigantic cage made of saplings stuck in a circle in the ground and bent in on themselves. In one corner was a little shed or lean-to, and next to it a heavy gate. A man stood in front of the shed, grinning and waving at us. It was Baldy Red.
"Our jail, Mrs. Flannigan," Cameron said.
"What's he done now?" I asked.
"Baldy? Oh, he's back to his old trick of letting cows follow him. Other people's cows."
Baldy had come to the edge of his cage. "Welcome to Grouard, Mrs. Mike; and you, Sergeant, I'm counting on you to get me out of this thing."
"See you in the morning," Mike shouted back. We were past the jail, past the barracks, and driving up to a little cabin in a hollow. There were half a dozen people standing in front, waiting for us. There were tall trees bending over the house. And there was a garden of the strangest, most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. This was home.
Sarah was the first to greet me and help me out of the cart. She took the baby from my arms and led me into the house.
"You sit down, rest first," she said. "I have soup ready and tea. Plenty of time meet everybody. Madeleine take care of baby." Sarah handed Mary Aroon to a dark plain girl of fourteen or fifteen.
I sank back into a chair, but I wasn't tired, just taking everything in—my new home, my new friends . . . and the flowers. I could see them through the window, row upon row of colors, soft and bright. And not one of them could I recognize. Who, I thought, had been caring for my garden? Who had planted and cultivated these lovely flowers months before I came? I wanted to ask Sarah, but she was too busy feeding me and introducing my guests.
"This is Timmy's mother, Mrs. Beauclaire. Mrs. Constance Beauclaire and Mr. Georges Beauclaire, her husband, and Madeleine and Barbette are her daughters, and the baby—of course the baby is yours," Sarah concluded gravely.
Georges Beauclaire twitched his mustache, grunted something, shook my hand and left, clearly relieved at the chance to join the men outside. He was a heavy, broad-shouldered man, rough and awkward in his movements, yet with a certain good-natured big-bear grumpiness about him that almost made me laugh. Beside him Constance Beauclaire seemed delicate, shadowlike, and almost as young as their daughters. There was a foreign grace about the way she stood and walked, and her soft eyes had a veiled, preoccupied air that you find in people who live in the past. When her husband left, she drew up a chair and silently took my hand. The light fell more fully on her face, and I saw the strength and character I had missed. I saw a small, proud mouth, a slender straight nose, as rare in the north as a princess's coronet, and deep, brooding eyes of an unearthly blue. It was the lavender-blue that lights a lake for a moment after the sun has set. This was no trapper's wife.
"Katherine Mary," she repeated my name softly, and it sounded unusual and elegant in her liquid French speech. "I would have wished to know you ten, twenty years ago. You will never understand, I hope, what it is to be one white woman, the one white woman." Constance smiled. It was more the remembrance of a smile than a smile itself. "You must tell me about Winnipeg and Montreal and Boston. Not much, what you can remember. They are not the cities I remember, but they will do."
"My mother lives in Boston," I said. "You are very much like her."
Sarah was bending over me, another bowl of soup in her lean hands. "Nice party?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said. "The best there ever was."
The sun was low, and its rays spread across the room, twinkling in the dust of many feet. Almost in a dream I spoke to Constance, and Sarah, and Sarah's husband, shy silent Louis Carpentier, and the McTavish brothers, and Old Irish Bill, with his long hair and elfin eyes ("the finest mathematician in Canada," Constance said), and Madeleine cradling my baby and scolding Barbette, who wanted to play with her too, and Mike standing behind my chair, smiling at them all. When they had gone I went to the window and looked at my enchanted garden with its rows of flowers that never grew in a garden before.
"It's been lovely," I whispered to Mike. "They were all so sweet, even poor Baldy in his cage. And I'll never finish thanking the one who planted this garden. Mike, who was it?"
Mike seemed uncomfortable. "They say it was Mrs. Marlin. She wasn't here tonight. She's not very—she's not very well." Then abruptly he said, "Look, Kathy, don't get upset about those flowers," and he started to explain something. I never heard it. I'd fallen asleep in his arms.
It had been an evening of magic, but the morning was quite down to earth. The baby woke me, squalling; the puppy, Juno, got into a sack of flour; and a bear off with a bucket of milk I'd hung outside the window. I walked out into my garden—and they were all dead, every single flower, lying dead and withered on the ground. The enchantment was gone, the fairy wand broken. I ran into the house and shook Mike awake.
"Mike, my flowers!"
"I know, Kathy." He dressed quickly and drew me out to the garden. "Look." He pulled up one of the poor faded things. It came right up out of the ground. No roots, no stalk, no leaves. It was just a blossom, cut and stuck in the earth.
"She's not right in the head, this Mrs. Marlin," Mike said unhappily. "She thought it would be a pretty welcome, Kathy," he said. "They're mostly wild flowers. They grow in the woods, in swamps, in very difficult places. She must have spent all day finding them, and then she put them in the ground to make you a garden."
I pressed his hand tightly. Suddenly I knew the enchantment hadn't gone. I thought of these people. None of them knew me. Yet Timmy brought me a puppy, and Sarah saved my life, and Old Irish Bill sang old Irish songs for me, and crazy Mrs. Marlin spent a day in the swamps so that I might have a pretty garden for an hour. I kissed Mike hard and walked back into the house. I picked up the baby, and she stopped crying. I dusted the puppy off and gave it a piece of dried fish. And as for the bear, if he liked my bucket of milk, he could have it!
Fourteen
Constance Beauclaire had come to borrow liniment for her husband's sprained foot. The baby woke up and began to cry. Constance be
nt over the crib and lifted her into the air. Mary Aroon laughed, and Constance laughed back. I had never seen her laugh freely before. Constance lowered the baby to her shoulder and patted her. Her hands were beautiful, so slender and fragile. It seemed strange to me that such a creature should live in this wild country.
She smiled across the room at me, and again her smile made me sad. "She is very like my Suzanne."
"Suzanne?" I said. I knew she had another son besides Timmy, and then of course the two girls, Madeleine and Barbette, but I hadn't heard of Suzanne.
"Another daughter?" I asked.
"A baby like this. It was a long time ago." She laid little Mary gently in the crib. "My first family."
I didn't understand. "Your first family?"
She looked at me with those great lavender eyes. "Katherine Mary, you are so young."
That was no kind of an answer. "I'm almost eighteen," I said.
"Almost eighteen," she repeated, and she smiled that smile full of pain and tenderness. "I was almost eighteen when I came from my country, from France."
France, yes—that's where she belonged, rare perfumes, and full swishing skirts, a box at the opera, a carriage with plumed horses.
"We came over on a small boat, my father and mother and five sisters and brothers. It was strange how it happened. The sailors blamed the captain, and the captain blamed my father, and he—well, he was dead by then, and so were the others."
"They died on the boat, your family?"
"Yes."
"All of them, the five sisters and brothers?"
"All of them. You see, my family had been well-to-do. We lived in Paris. I went to convent school on the Riviera. Later I had a governess, English."
This woman of faded beauty sitting before me in heavy mackinaws and a man's shirt, worn and mended, had known things of another world, another life. I hadn't dreamed them up, the opera and the horses with plumes; they had existed.
"My father speculated and lost everything. Of course, I didn't know that then, I just knew we were going to America. I thought of it as a holiday, and so did the others. I didn't even look back at the house because, you see, I was almost eighteen, and looking forward. When we came to the ship—it was a large sailing vessel— the captain was pacing the deck, and when he saw my father he began cursing. My father was very angry and ordered us below so we should not hear the captain's words. Later, when my father came down, he said the captain was an unreasonable ruffian. And that was all we could get out of him. But my brother, Rene, who wished to become a sailor, and who was always bothering the crew, said the captain's temper was due to my father's arriving three hours late. To my father time was of no concern, he was master of it as he was of everything else. But the crew was surly. The maledictions called down on my father's head would bring bad luck.