October skies

CHAPTER 33

23 October, 1856

I have slept poorly, worrying about Sam and Emily’s mother. I can understand, for certain types of people, their faith is everything. Hers has been shaken. I have no idea what Preston’s story is… whether he genuinely believes he is on a mission for God. I suppose that’s irrelevant. What matters is what Mrs Dreyton believes.

Or should I say, believed. Past tense.

What worries me more is whether she will sow seeds of doubt amongst the others. Whilst I am no fan of peculiar and strict religious sects like Preston’s, it is their faith in him that seems to hold them together. And thus far… I have myself found Preston to be a rational and reasonable man.

I am troubled by this situation.

Ben put down his pen and rubbed his hands vigorously together. Even with a woollen scarf wrapped tightly around his writing hand, it was stiff with the cold.

The usually sullen grey sky was broken today, allowing the heartening sight of scant patches of blue — a dash of colour to their monochrome world that he much missed. A weak ray of sunlight speared down from the scudding clouds, dappling the clearing momentarily before racing away across the trees.

His gaze fell upon the pitiful sight of their dead oxen. Under Keats’s supervision, the first few of the dead oxen had been towed a short distance away from the others and butchered for meat. The well-trodden snow around their carved-up carcasses was pink and, amongst the exposed ribcages, a pile of inedible purple and grey organs was steadily growing. Ben wondered how long it would be before that offal was no longer considered inedible.

For the while, food was not going to be a problem. But the collective mouths of over a hundred and twenty people made short work of each carcass as it became available. The mathematics of the situation was inescapably obvious to him already. There weren’t enough oxen to keep them all going through the winter and into spring. At some point, they were going to have to find other food to subsist on to supplement the oxen. Or perhaps reduce their numbers.

It occurred to him that he might not be the only person already making that kind of calculation.

He blew on his hands, cursing the aching stiffness of unrelenting cold. Around the campfire and tucked up in his shelter at night, with the flap sealed tight and the shared body heat of Keats and Broken Wing building up a fug of warmth inside, it was tolerable. But outside, away from any cooking fire, the bitter chill, compounded by the occasional icy gust, was a miserable experience. Ben vowed to travel to warmer climes come the spring and the end of this unfortunate ordeal, and to never again stray from a temperate latitude.

He gazed at the small world of their clearing, like an island amidst a dark, forbidding ocean. There were a few people stirring. Several meagre fires were heating water for a morning bowl of stewed oats. Most families still had barrels of cornmeal and oats previously used as packing insulation for fragile family possessions, but now gratefully being consumed each day for breakfast.

Giles Weyland was offering to share with him a special treat this morning; the last of his coffee beans. There was enough, he said, for a canteen of it. Enough for him and Ben and his girl. They would savour it together, then fill their tummies with stewed oats. Weyland had only himself and his Negro girl to feed and had many boxes of fragile china stuffed with cornmeal packing to get through.

Ben put away his writing things, slipping them back inside his travel trunk in the shelter. He wrapped his poncho around himself and squeezed out again into the scudding sunlight, enjoying a fleeting moment’s warmth on his shoulders and back as a sunbeam raced over him, then up through the trees, towards the craggy peaks above them.

Making his way towards Weyland’s shelter, he noticed that the Negro girl was up already building their campfire, whilst Weyland was spreading out the last of his coffee beans to be roasted and cornmeal to be stewed.

The question had yet to be asked by anyone, and Ben was surprised that no one yet had the answer… Is this girl your property?

It was something Ben felt he should have already asked on principle, but had yet to find the right moment and the right way. Whilst he admired Weyland’s southern charm and his unflappable manner, Ben doubted he could, in all good conscience, sit down and eat with a man who believed in the institution of slavery.

As he crossed the ground between shelters to join Weyland for breakfast, and was working out the wording for this delicate question, he caught sight of Emily and Sam on the far side of the clearing.

Both were being led by Mrs Dreyton up into the tree line. By the look of the small canvas sack slung over Sam’s shoulder, they were off to gather firewood together. But there was something about their manner that caught his eye. It seemed to be a furtive departure, Mrs Dreyton and Sam looking back over their shoulders. A terrible thought occurred to him.

They’re not leaving, are they?

They’d die out there, for certain. He stopped in his tracks, and half turned to race across the clearing to them, to plead with Mrs Dreyton to stop this craziness, when he realised neither she, nor Emily were carrying anything and Sam had just the small sack and his gun slung over one shoulder.

Mrs Dreyton might have been quite mad enough to head out into the woods with nothing but the clothes on her body and the shawl around her head, but Sam was quite sensible. At the very least, Sam would have called over to talk to Ben first.

Relax… they’re after some firewood, that’s all.

He watched them as they climbed up the slope into the trees. Just before they were lost from sight behind the dense firs, he saw Sam look anxiously back towards the camp. Ben wondered what Sam was glancing at when he noticed Preston and Vander standing side by side just outside their church, silently watching the Dreytons go.

It was an odd tableau that had Ben puzzling over it as he arrived beside Weyland, squatting over a foil-lined wooden box in which nestled no more than a fistful of dark coffee beans. The rich aroma of the box wafted across to him seductively and his mouth moistened in anticipation. Savouring it with a deep breath, the odd scene was for the moment pushed far from his mind.

‘Morning, Mr Weyland.’

‘Ah, Mr Lambert,’ said Weyland, looking up. ‘A promise is a promise. Take a seat and I shall roast us these beans.’ He turned to the Negro girl, ‘Violet, bring me the skillet will you, my dear?’

Violet was busy nursing the first flames of their cooking fire. She shook her head. ‘Giles, get it yo’self, you lazy man. Cain’t you see I got my han’s busy tendin’ to this?’

Giles turned to Ben and shrugged with a world-weary flicker of his eyebrows. ‘Pfft, women, eh?’

Ben smiled with relief, glad that he could sit down and join them with a clear conscience. Violet was no slave; that much was for sure.