The Tenderness of Wolves

THE FIELDS OF HEAVEN

He has failed. He has lain in silence in this room for some days now, with barely the strength to move. His left leg throbs intermittently, waking him at night. From the narrow bed he has studied the whitewashed walls, the painted wooden chairs, the curtainless window that shows only sky. If he lifts himself up on his elbows he can see a small church spire, painted dull red. Mostly, the sky has been grey, or white. Or black.

The shaking has subsided. He knows now that he must have developed a fever after falling into the bog. He had crossed a still, peaty stream–the water so quiet it had oily rainbows on its surface–when on the far side he slipped and plunged into the quagmire. He was horrified by the speed with which he sank, grabbed at handfuls of reeds, spreading his upper body flat on the mud in an attempt to halt the slide. He could clearly see himself being sucked under the surface, the mud filling his mouth and nose, clotting his throat. He yelled out, more a statement of intent than a cry for help–there was no point in that, it was painfully clear. It took him what seemed like hours to haul himself out, and subsequently to crawl up the liver-coloured bank onto a patch of blueberry scrub. Blueberry was good, safe; its roots in firm and stony soil. He lay exhausted. Something bad had happened to his left leg; when he tried to stand it buckled under him and the pain in his knee made him retch, although nothing came up. He hadn’t eaten properly for three days–or was it more? He can’t remember. He doesn’t remember being found either, or brought here, wherever here is. He woke up in the white room and wondered whether this was what death looked like: a featureless white room where angels drifted to and fro, speaking in tongues.

Then his fever lessened and he realised the room was not featureless, and the angels were earthbound and quite ordinary, although he still could not understand them.

There are two women who tend to him, feeding him soup and doing things that he blushes to think about. Still, they must be his mother’s age, and he is being treated like one of their own children. They are brisk and no-nonsense: sponging him down, straightening sheets, stroking his hair. Yesterday–he thinks it was yesterday–a man came in, spoke with one of the women, and came to look down on him from what felt like a great height. The man was his father’s age; had a fair, full beard, very unfashionable, and prominent goaty eyes.

‘ Êtes-vous français?’ he asked in a peculiar accent. Francis was alarmed that the man knew his name before he recognised the French words. He wondered what to say. There is so much he doesn’t know. The man then turned to the woman and spoke in their guttural tongue for a moment.

‘Enk-lish?’

Francis stared at the man and decided then that he would say nothing at all. It was probably best.

The man and woman looked at each other. The man shrugged, and after a moment he folded his hands together and began to talk. After a minute Francis realised he was praying. The woman prayed too, but by listening to the man. Their clothing was very plain–rough materials in black and white and grey, like their sky.

Just recently–in the last hour or so–he has started to remember things: he remembers trudging mile after mile along the banks of the river as it cut through the forest, further than he had ever gone in his life, following the trail of the man. He hadn’t seen him again since that night at the cabin, and it had stretched his skills as a tracker to their limit to follow the signs. But the land had been kind to him. Every time he thought he must have gone wrong–after walking for hours, scanning and searching and finding nothing printed on the ground, just when he thought he must have missed the man’s turning–he would come across another signal: the blunt press of a moccasin in leaves, piss-melted frost in a hollow. He saw the man’s spoor and the scanty trace of his fires, hurriedly swept over. He did not know when he ate. He had never known anyone move so fast.

Francis had only dared light a fire once, and had failed to sleep afterwards, terrified the man was going to realise he was being followed, and find him. But nothing happened. He had taken care not to get too close, always looking ahead in case of a trap. In the end, his caution was his undoing. On the fourth day he lost the trail. It left the forest for higher ground and swung north-west into a desolate, treeless landscape–a scrubby, swampy plateau where bogs slowed him down and a north wind knifed through the wolfskin coat. He went slowly, grown used to the shelter of trees, nervous of being seen in the open. After several hours of this he had almost fallen into another, smaller river that carved itself a channel through oily mudbanks. The water was opaque and he could find no signs of passage. Then he floundered, trapped. This was where he became, for the first time, truly scared. He had been scared all along, of course, but now he realised that the country had him in its grip, and was going to let him die, never to be found. His bones would lie under the sky, bleached and scoured like the skeletons of deer that lay scattered around him. He struggled, waist-deep, until after dark. He even called out, in case the man was nearby–at least death at his hands would be swift. At least it would be human. But somehow, somehow, he had got himself out. This was where his strength failed him altogether.

In the end it was all the same: he had passed out by that river, exhausted, weak and frozen. He has failed.

He thinks it is afternoon: he ate some soup an hour ago, and then had to suffer the embarrassment of using a bedpan with one of the women, the dark-haired one. He turned his eyes from her, and she laughed as though she found him really amusing, and she seemed not embarrassed at all.

He cannot see his clothes anywhere, but is unsure whether to ask about them, and if so, how. He could ask the man if he came back. But somehow thinks he won’t, in either French or English. The prospect of not speaking is appealing. If he doesn’t speak, then maybe no one will ask him anything. He regrets his failure, but at a distance–he did what he could. His reasons for leaving now seem very far away, from a different world. A painful world, and not one he is anxious to go back to. Of more immediate concern is the whereabouts of the bone tablet.

When one of the women comes back later–the one with dry fair hair and the loud laugh–he tries out some mime. She reminds him of Ida’s mother–she has the same earthy practicality. As she busies herself around him, tucking in the blankets and feeling his forehead, he catches her eye and holds it, then sweeps both hands along his opposite arms and mimes the putting on of a jacket, lifting his hands in question. She understands, plucking at her own skirt in answer, and unleashing a torrent of angular words. He smiles, wanting someone on his side. Then he mimes scribbling on his palm, and draws the shape of the tablet in the air. She frowns at this, then seems to realise what he is referring to. She looks at him with disapproval, but leaves the room.

One evening, months ago, Laurent had taken the piece of bone out of his hiding place (he was drunk at the time) and showed it to Francis, and together they had studied the little stick figures and the angular marks that looked like writing. Laurent thought Francis might know what it was. Francis thought back to school and Egyptian hieroglyphics, ancient Greek, the pictures in his mother’s books, but could not remember anything that corresponded to these marks. The only way you could establish which way up they went was from the stick men who trooped round the edge. Laurent said he had got it from a trader in the States; said he had met a gentleman in Toronto who would pay a lot of money for it. They laughed at the folly of rich men. Then, later, he had said Francis could have it. Francis refused, nervous in part of something he could not understand. Who knew–maybe it was a curse? But Laurent had offered it to him, so when he took it, it wasn’t really stealing. As for the other things, he had to take them to survive. He would have taken the gun too, if he had seen it. Another part of him–the part that echoes the boys he endured through the long years at the village school–says, what would you have done with it if you had? You can’t even bring yourself to shoot a rabbit.

When he opens his eyes again, the bearded man is sitting by his bed. He puts down a book–he has been waiting for him to wake up. Francis sees the title of the book, but the words seem to be a weird jumble of consonants. The man smiles at him. His teeth are discoloured, which is all the more noticeable because of the redness of his lips. Francis stares back, but something in his face must have softened, because the man beams with pleasure and pats him on the shoulder. He speaks, and asks him again if he is French or English. It has occurred to Francis that the people who found him might have seen the man he was following. Who knows, perhaps he even came here? He could give up the idea of speech, but with it he would have to give up his hope. He finds, to his surprise, that he is not ready to give up yet.

He moistens his mouth, which feels rusty and foul. ‘English,’ he croaks.

‘English! Good.’ The man is overjoyed. ‘Do you know your name?’

Francis hesitates for a fraction of a second, and then it comes out without thinking. ‘Laurent.’

‘Laurent? Ah. Laurent. Yes. Good. I am Per.’ He turns his head and shouts, ‘Britta! Kom.’

The fair woman appears from somewhere nearby, and smiles at Francis. Per speaks to her in their language, explaining.

‘Laurent,’ she says. ‘Welcome.’

‘She doesn’t speak English a lot. Mine is best. Do you know where you are?’

Francis shakes his head.

‘You are at Himmelvanger. It means the Fields of Heaven. Good name, yes?’

Francis nods. He has never heard of it. ‘What river …?’ His voice still sounds strange and weak.

‘River? Ah, we found you … yes. Ahh, a river without a name. Jens was hunting … and saw you there. Very surprised!’ Per mimes the surprise of the man looking for hares but finding instead a bedraggled youth.

Francis smiles, as much as he can. His mouth finds it an effort. ‘Can I talk to Jens?’

Per looks surprised. ‘Yes, I am sure. But now … you are sick. Sleep and eat. Get better. Britta and Line care for you good, yes?’

Francis nods. He smiles at Britta, who giggles unexpectedly.

Per leans down and picks up Francis’s clothes. ‘All clean, yes? And this …’ He produces Laurent’s bag and Francis takes it.

‘Thank you, very much. And thank … Jens for finding me. I hope I can speak to him soon.’

The others smile and nod.

Britta speaks to Per, who scrapes the chair back as he stands up with a satisfied grunt.

‘Now you sleep, Britta tells me. Yes?’

Francis nods.

He allows himself to think of his parents at the homestead. He supposes they will be worried about him, although whether they will worry enough to come after him is another matter. People must have found Laurent by now. What will they think? Will they think he did it?

The thought almost makes him smile.

Line is outside with Torbin and Anna when Britta comes out to tell her that the youth has spoken. Line thinks it is odd that an English youth is called Laurent. She knew a Frenchman called Laurent in her previous life, when Janni was alive. Her English is better than anyone’s, even Per’s, so she is secretly pleased. She has felt protective of him ever since Jens brought him in, slung over the back of a pony, and now she feels justified–she can be the link between him and the others.

Torbin and Anna run up to her, amid a squawking of chickens, ears flapping.

‘Can we see him now?’ asks Torbin, his face flushed from cold.

‘No, not yet. He is very weak. You would exhaust him.’

‘We wouldn’t. We’d be like little mice. Tiny little mice.’ Anna makes little mice squeaking noises.

‘Soon,’ says Line. ‘When he can get up and walk about.’

‘Like Lazarus,’ prompts Anna, keen to fit the stranger into her Himmelvanger-shaped world view.

‘Not quite like Lazarus. He wasn’t dead.’

‘Nearly dead! Wasn’t he?’ Torbin is hopeful of more drama.

‘Yes, nearly dead. He was unconscious.’

‘Yeah, like this. Mama–look!’ Torbin throws himself down in the snow and feigns unconsciousness, which involves, in his interpretation, the tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. Line smiles. Torbin can always make her smile. He’s irrepressible, indestructible, like a dense rubber ball. He doesn’t remind her so much of Janni, whereas Anna is like Janni reincarnated–broad cheekbones, brown hair, fjord-deep blue eyes. A smile of terrible sweetness, that comes out only a few times a year, and is all the more devastating for its rarity.

The children climb out of the chicken run and head across the yard. Line is supposed to be feeding the chickens, and then helping Britta with quilt-making. She doesn’t have a lot of time to herself, but that’s not what she came for. She likes being in the chicken shelter, stoutly built against winter winds with a steeply raked roof to repel the snow. There is a pleasingly sturdy quality to all the buildings at Himmelvanger. Everything had to be built well, because it was being built for God: dove-tailed joints, double-walled construction, the sweeping lines of roofs, neatly shingled with cedar tiles, each one nearly heart-shaped. The spire on the small chapel, with its painted cross. For ten years it has withstood the worst wind and weather the Canadian winter could muster. God has protected them.

And the people here have accepted her with kindness and grace, even if it is mixed with advice. You should pray more, Line, you should put your trust in God, you should infuse your work with faith and that will give your life meaning. You should stop mourning for Janni, because he is with God now, so he is happy. She has tried to do those things, because she owes them her life. When Janni disappeared–she still finds it hard to say ‘died’, even to herself–she had two tiny children and no money. She was evicted from her lodgings and had nowhere to go. Had contemplated going back to Norway but could not raise the fares. Had contemplated throwing herself and her children into the St Lawrence. And then a friend had told her about Himmelvanger. The prospect of her going to live in a model religious community was so far-fetched as to be comical. But they were Norwegians, and they wanted hard workers. More importantly, they didn’t ask for money.

Ironically, she had set off in the same direction Janni had taken on his final journey. Or, if not his final journey, then the last time she had seen him. He was looking for work and had met another Norwegian who was going to work for the Hudson Bay Company. They were promised high wages for a season’s work, but it was a long way, up in the north-west, in Rupert’s Land. He would not see Line or the children for over a year, but then, he said, they would have enough money to buy a house. It would be a short-cut to the life they wanted: their own home and some land. Line would not have to wash and mend other people’s soiled clothes; he would not have to bite his tongue and work for fools.

She only got one letter after he left. Janni wasn’t much of a writer, so she hadn’t expected passionate love letters, but still, one letter in six months hurt her feelings a little. He had written that things were not quite as he had expected–he and his friend were billeted with a group of Norwegian convicts that the Company had imported. The men were rough and violent, and formed a clique that was left alone by the other employees. Janni felt uncomfortable being lumped in with these men, but the divisions of nationality were stronger than those of legality. But some of them were all right, he wrote, and he was looking forward to seeing Line and the children the following summer and choosing a site for their house. No messages of love; no endearments; it was a letter he could have written to an aunt. And after that, nothing.

When the next summer came she waited without patience, asking people for news. Toronto was hot and humid; the black flies tormented the children and their cramped, cheap lodgings reeked of sewage. At night she dreamt of wide open landscapes empty of people, covered in cold, pure white snow, only to wake up sweating and scratching at fresh insect bites. She became bad-tempered and peevish. Then, in July she received a letter addressed to ‘Family of Jan Fjelstad’. It had been sent to the wrong address, and had been opened and the envelope readdressed in childish handwriting. Its stiff phrases regretted to inform her that her husband was one of a party of Norwegians who had mutinied and deserted from the post the previous January, stealing valuable Company property. They had vanished into the wilderness, undoubtedly perishing in the blizzards that swept the country that month. However (the letter took care to note), if by some strange chance they hadn’t perished, they were fugitives from justice.

At first Line simply did not believe it. She kept waiting for her husband to turn up, thinking they must have mistaken him for someone else. The English found Norwegian names confusing, she told herself. She could not believe Janni would have stolen anything. It wasn’t in his nature.

She went to the Toronto office of the Company and demanded to see someone, and a sandy-haired English youth received her in his small office. He was polite and apologetic, but said there was no reason to doubt the letter. There had been a desertion, and although he personally had no knowledge of the people involved, he was sure it was accurate. Line shouted at the youth, who looked angry. He didn’t seem to appreciate that he was talking about the death of her husband and her hopes. She ran out of the office and went on waiting.

But weeks crawled past and he didn’t come back, and she ran out of money. In the end it didn’t really matter what she believed; whether it was true or not, she had to take a decision, so one morning in September she set off with the children on a three-week journey to the ridiculously named Himmelvanger, travelling almost as far as Janni had on his penultimate journey, to the equally ridiculously named Moose Factory.

That was three years ago, and she has become used to her new life. At first she was sure Janni would find her; before they left Toronto she told everyone where they were going. One day he would ride into the yard on a large horse, and call her name; and she would drop whatever she was doing and come running. At first, she thought about that every day. Then, gradually, she stopped indulging in that fantasy. She grew listless and depressed, until Sigi Jordal had urged her to confide in her. Line wept, for the only time since arriving, and confessed to Sigi that sometimes she wanted to die. This was a mistake. She was besieged by members of the community, each in turn coming to her to urge her to repent of the great sin of hopelessness, to accept the Lord into her heart and let him cast out despair. She quickly assured them that she had (suddenly) accepted God, and he was leading her out of the dark vale of sorrow. Somehow the pretence comforted her; occasionally she wondered if she didn’t half believe it. She would go and sit in church and stare at the sun coming in, following an individual mote of dust until her eyes ached. Her mind wandered pleasantly. She didn’t pray, exactly, but neither did she feel alone.

It was about then that Espen Moland had started paying her particular attention. He was a married man (the community was intended only for families) and his children played with Torbin and Anna, but his interest in her was more than purely spiritual. She was wary at first, knowing that this was utterly proscribed. But secretly she liked it. Espen made her feel beautiful again. He said she was the best-looking woman in Himmelvanger and that she was driving him crazy. Line tutted but privately agreed. Espen wasn’t exactly handsome, not like Janni, but he was quick and funny, and always had the last word in an argument or exchange. It was peculiarly sweet to hear words of passion from a man who never stopped joking, and it proved to be more than her flesh could stand. Eventually, some months ago, they had started to sin. That was how she thought of it, although she did not feel guilty. Just cautious and careful. She cannot afford another disaster.

Line hears him coming now, whistling one of his made-up tunes. Is he coming to the henhouse? Yes–the door opens.

‘Line! I haven’t seen you all day!’

‘I have work to do, you know that.’

‘Of course, but if I don’t see you, I am sad.’

‘Oh yeah, sure.’

‘I’ve come to mend the hole in the roof.’

He is wearing his tool belt–he is their carpenter–and Line glances upwards to scan the roof.

‘There is no hole.’

‘Well, there might be. It’s best to be on the safe side. We don’t want our eggs getting wet, do we?’

She giggles. Espen is always making her laugh, even when he says the stupidest things. He has slid his arm round her waist and presses himself against her, and she experiences the familiar melting sensation that overcomes her in his presence.

‘Britta’s waiting for me.’

‘So? She won’t notice a few minutes.’

How hard it is to behave properly, even in a strict religious community like this one. He is kissing her neck, his lips hot on her skin. If she doesn’t leave now, she is done for.

‘It’s not a good time.’ She wriggles out of his grasp, breathing heavily.

‘My God, you look beautiful today. I could …’

‘Stop!’

She loves the beseeching look in his eyes. It is nice to know she has it in her power to make someone so happy, just by touching them. But if she doesn’t walk out of the henhouse right now he might start using those words that send the blood rushing round her skull, obliterating her reason. Dirty, obscene words that she could never speak, but that have an extraordinary, almost magical power over her. It’s not something Janni would ever have done, but he wasn’t much of a talker. In fact the way she feels around Espen is not something she has ever experienced before; she seems to be changing in ways that sometimes alarm her, as though she is riding a flood tide in a paper-light canoe–buoyed up, exhilarated, but not at all sure she is in control.

She forces herself to back away, the inside of her body clamouring for him, and smiles, just at the last minute, so that he won’t think–God forbid!–that she has lost interest.

Outside the henhouse she wipes the smile off her face, trying to think about something else; something repellent, like the smell of pigs, not Espen and his sweet, dirty mouth. She will have to sit with Britta over the needlework, and she has been getting too many sharp and questioning looks from Britta lately. She can’t possibly know, but perhaps something about her has betrayed them. She makes herself think about the sick boy, to sober herself, but somehow that doesn’t have the desired effect now. Instead she imagines lifting up the sheets and looking at his naked body. She has seen what he has; his appealingly golden skin, felt its smoothness …

God! Espen has poisoned her whole mind. Perhaps she should slip into the church for a few minutes and pray; try to conjure up some suitably becoming shame.

It is freezing: the coldest of the five days they have been following the trail. A wind screams down from the Arctic and scours their faces with hail. It makes Donald’s eyes water, and the tears freeze on his cheeks, making them chapped and raw. Water from somewhere also freezes in his moustache, so he started wrapping his muffler across the lower part of his face, until it froze solid with the moisture from his breath, and he had to tear it painfully free before he suffocated. He is cold and exhausted even though Jacob has the lion’s share of the load, since Donald cannot keep up if he carries half.

After the second day, Donald found every movement brought a pain somewhere in his body. He had become accustomed, previously, to think of himself as a fairly strong, fit young man, but now he finds that he is just beginning to learn about endurance. Jacob tramps ahead of him, shoulders the heavy load, makes detours to scout the trail, and when they stop in the late afternoon it is Jacob who gathers wood, builds a fire and cuts branches for their sleeping shelter. At first Donald protested that he was going to do his share, but he was simply too tired and clumsy to be of any use, and their camp was set up much quicker if he left it all to Jacob. Jacob kindly but firmly told him to sit down and concentrate on boiling some water.

Early this morning they left the forest and began to cross a barren, hummocky plateau where nothing seems to stand between them and the wind blowing off the frozen Hudson Bay. Despite heavy clothing, it finds its way into his tender places with sharp, prying jabs. Very quickly it emerges that the plateau is one enormous bog. Pools of black water ooze from the ground, skimmed with ice. Reeds and ground willow catch the blowing snow and hold it in tangled skeins. It is impossible to find more than a couple of firm footholds in a row, and Jacob has given up trying to keep his feet dry, but plods from hummock to hollow with a grimly monotonous tread. No matter how determined he is to keep up, Donald has had to call out to him to slow down on three occasions, and now Jacob pauses every so often, waiting for him to catch up. He manages to do this without making Donald feel inadequate, but instead makes it seem as though he has stopped to update Donald on the state of the trail. It is clear that he is finding it harder to follow in this landscape, but Donald listens with mounting indifference; yesterday he found it hard to care whether they ever found the boy; today it has occurred to him that he might not even return from this journey. He is not sure he cares about that either.

Increasingly, they pass the corpses of animals. Now they plod past the skeleton of a deer, which must have been here some time, since it is picked clean but a dark yellowish brown. The skull faces them, within shouting distance of its scattered bones, watching Donald through empty eye sockets, silently reminding him of the futility of their endeavour.

Donald tries to turn his thoughts to Susannah, to shut a door between what his body is enduring and what he is feeling. Disappointingly he hears his father, instead, lecturing him: ‘Mind over matter, Donnie. Mind over matter. Rise above it! We all have to do things we don’t want to do.’ He feels the old irritation bubble to the surface like marsh gas. His father–an accountant in Bearsden–never had to march through an endless bog in the Canadian winter.

Tucked inside his shirt, close to his heart, lie three letters to Susannah. He is disappointed by his lack of eloquence, but it is, he consoles himself, hard to write witty prose while trying to get close enough to the fire to see without igniting one’s hair. He fears the letters are rather smudged and grimy, and probably smell of smoke, if not worse. Perhaps, if they ever find civilisation again, he can copy them out on clean paper, or even start all over again, in an improved literary style. That would probably be best.

At four in the afternoon, Jacob is confused. He makes Donald wait while he scouts around in a circle, then signals for Donald to join him. They retrace their steps for some time. Donald silently curses the wasted effort, but is too exhausted to ask questions. A thin snow is falling and visibility is poor. The air feels both wet and sharp. Jacob breathes out slowly, a habit with him when he is thinking hard.

‘I think they went different ways here.’

Donald peers at the ground but can see nothing to indicate that anyone has been here before, ever.

‘They both left the forest at the same place. The trail was clear until then, but I think the second man was getting slower. Now one goes off that way, because there is a footprint frozen into the mud pointing in that direction. But it’s some distance away and a trail is hard to follow in the bog. I think the second one lost him, and went on this way …’ He points to where the ground dips to form a shallow incline. ‘There are signs here that someone got stuck, and went on. I should have seen it earlier.’

Donald inwardly agrees. ‘And you think Ross was the second trail?’

‘The first trail is a fast traveller, used to going long distances. He knows where to go without having to stop and look. So yes, the second is the boy, and he is tired.’

‘But where the hell are they going? I mean the forest is one thing, but this … My God, look at it! No one can live here!’

As far as they can see, there is nothing, just scrub and these infernal pools of water. There are no elements of landscape that are generally felt to be attractive (rightly so, Donald feels)–no contrast of mountain and valley, no lakes, no forest. If this land has a character, it is sullen, indifferent, hostile.

‘I don’t know this place very well,’ Jacob is saying, ‘but there are posts in this part, further north.’

‘God. Pity the poor bastards who have to live in them.’

Jacob smiles. They have fallen into the roles of novice and tutor with some relief. It makes it easy to know what to say, for one thing. Easy to know how the other will react. Over the past few days, they have established a familiar routine.

‘People live everywhere. But they call this Starvation Country.’

Donald blasphemes. ‘Then we’d better find him as soon as possible.’ He doesn’t need to describe the alternative.

‘Perhaps the first man was going to one of the posts up there.’ Jacob points into the howling wind in a direction that looks as unpromising as all the others.

‘And the second?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he was lost.’

They resume the painful slow pursuit, picking their way over tussocks and hummocks of rock that suddenly breach the marsh vegetation. These rocks are sometimes startling colours–dark green, or purple, or dull orange. And sometimes the pools of black water are frozen hard, but at other times a foot will break through a crust of ice and sink into a vile darkness of icy water and mud. Donald feels awed at the thought of finding only a body, which must now be a strong possibility. How long could anyone survive in this, lost and alone? He tries to tell himself that they are not far behind him, but he is seized with the morbid thought that Jacob might leave him, inadvertently, behind, and then he, Donald, would be alone just like the boy. How long would he survive? He struggles after the dark figure up ahead, determined that he will not let that happen. By some ironic twist of physiology, the recently healed wound under his ribs has started throbbing again, reminding him of his frailty–or is it reminding him that Jacob, on whom he depends for his survival, recently stabbed him?

At length the two men come to a river that worms invisibly through the landscape. Black as oil between iced banks. Jacob stops him and points to a turmoil of mud, frozen into peaks and troughs.

‘There were people here. And a horse. I would say he joined them.’

Jacob smiles, and Donald tries to feel pleased. But mainly he feels he can’t go on much longer. He nurtures a growing hatred for this landscape that is quite unlike anything he has encountered before. People aren’t meant to be here. The thought of a man on a horse picking up the boy is potentially horrifying–God knows how much further they will have to walk now. He cannot understand why Jacob wouldn’t let them bring the horses; he entertains the possibility that the whole thing is an elaborate attempt to finish off what the knife wound failed to achieve.

Jacob leads them away from the river, and Donald struggles in his wake, his eyes doggedly fixed on the treacherous ground, numb to their progress.

Suddenly Jacob has stopped and Donald walks straight into the back of him, so dulled is he to his surroundings. Jacob takes his arm and laughs into his face.

‘Mr Moody, look! Look!’

He’s pointing into the snow and the dusk, which has crept up on them imperceptibly. And in the swirling grey-ness, Donald sees points of light. He grins hugely, and feels something warm run down his chin–his lip has split. But nothing can quench this ferocious joy. There will be houses, people, warmth … there will be fires, and even better, walls! Walls that will come between him and the elements. In a moment of fiery elation he relives the excitement of seeing the moon’s surface, he feels the undiluted pleasure of the fourteen-year-old boy, and he experiences such a pure happiness that all the past days’ toil, in fact, all the privations of the past year and a half, seem worth it. He claps Jacob clumsily on the shoulder, convinced he is the best, the finest fellow he has ever met in his life.

Forty minutes later they walk into a large courtyard surrounded by neat wooden buildings. There are barns with livestock penned, steaming, inside; a small church with a stubby spire, topped by a cross painted a dull red. Lights are on, spilling out of windows onto the icy yard, looking like the promised land. Donald chokes back tears of gratitude as they make for the largest of these buildings, and knock on the door.

I used to think, when I was a girl, and even later when I was in the asylum, that when people married they never felt alone again. At the time I doubted I ever would; I assumed I was destined to be an outcast from society, or worse, a spinster. I had friends in the asylum, even, in Dr Watson, a special kind of friend; but being the muse of a mad-doctor did not make me feel as though I belonged to the normal world, nor that I was safe. My husband gave me something I never expected: a feeling of legitimacy. And the feeling that here was someone I did not have to hide anything from. I didn’t have to pretend. I suppose what I’m saying is, I loved him. I know that he loved me, I’m just not sure when that stopped being true.

It is late, and I am sleepless again, thinking about my next meeting with the prisoner; Knox has agreed that I can go back, as long as I am very discreet. I think he was hurt by my using his wife’s tragedy against him, and it is to his credit that he agreed. He fears the Company man. He fears, too, being thought too soft. I lie beside my husband for a time, and Angus, in his sleep, turns and folds himself over me; something he has not done for a long time. I don’t dare move, wondering if he knows, or dreams of, what he is doing. After a while he grunts and turns over, his back to me again. And I don’t think, even in my darkest moments in the asylum after my father died, that I have ever felt so alone. If Olivia had lived, would things have been different? If Francis had never come to us?

Pointless questions. My favourite kind.

I despise this weakness in myself–this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action, and I wish at certain times (usually late at night), that I was more like Ann Pretty. Her surname may be unfortunate, but sometimes I think she is the perfect model of a backwoods pioneer, being an inveterate survivor, tough, unimaginative and unscrupulous. She would not lie awake at night wondering what her husband, or anyone else, was thinking of her. She would not lose her child to the wilderness.

I get out of bed and, for something to do, start to assemble a pack for the journey I maintain I am planning. Truth to tell, I don’t have much heart for it; I am very nearly face to face with my fear of the wilderness, my lack of courage. Who knows, perhaps Moody and the other man will be here tomorrow, with Francis. I don’t care if they have to arrest him, as long as they find him and he is all right. Then perhaps it will be him in the warehouse in Caulfield, shivering in the dim cavernous space, but safe. Telling myself this, I assemble my warmest clothes and a selection of hardy, indestructible foods. It is a bit like planning a winter picnic; if I think of it like that, it doesn’t seem so bad.

The softest of knocks on the door doesn’t surprise me as much as it might have: I’m thinking of Francis, so perhaps it seems inevitable that my longing should at last be answered. I pull the door open with a gasp of joy, words gathered to tumble out at him, along with tears, when the darkness yawns at me. I look around, whispering his name–it is strange that I whisper, as though I have a sort of premonition.

He is standing in the darkness–to alleviate the shock, I suppose, so that my eyes have to find him and only gradually realise who it is.

The prisoner holds up his hand in a placatory gesture. ‘Please, don’t scream.’

I stare at him. I wasn’t going to scream. I pride myself on not screaming, even under trying circumstances.

‘I’m sorry to startle you. Knox has released me. I am going to follow your son, because I think he saw the killer. But I need provisions, and my rifle is impounded. And I believe you have my dogs.’

I stare at him in total disbelief, barely understanding what he is saying.

‘Mrs Ross, I need your help, and you need mine.’

So that’s how it happens: mutual need is what makes people co-operate; nothing to do with trust or kindness or any such sentimental notion. I don’t really take in what he says about Knox and why he released him in this underhand way, but looking at his violated face I can believe that Mackinley has done it. Parker wants a rifle and food and his dogs, and I want a guide to follow Francis, and maybe he thinks Francis will talk more readily if I am there–Francis has something he wants too. And so while my husband sleeps upstairs we pack–and I prepare to go into the wilderness with a suspected killer. What’s worse, a man I haven’t been properly introduced to. I am too shocked to feel fear, too excited to care about the impropriety of it. I suppose if you have already lost what matters most, then little things like reputation and honour lose their lustre. (Besides, if the worst comes to the worst, I can remind myself that I have sold my honour far more cheaply than this. I can remind myself of that, if I have to.)

A light snow falls as we walk out of Dove River, the two dogs padding silently beside Parker. An hour past the Pretty place, he goes to a cache among some tree roots and swiftly builds a sled from the materials he finds there–a light, slender structure of willow boughs with a sort of seat made from stiffened hide. I am about to express gratitude for his thoughtfulness when he ties the bundles of food and blankets to the seat. The dogs are excited by the snow and the sled, letting out a couple of whining barks. Throughout this operation, which takes about half an hour, Parker does not look at me, nor say a word. Somehow I do not think he is very interested in separating me from my honour. He gives the harness a final tug and sets off again, northwards, along the course of the Dove, guided only by the sound of the river, and a dim, amorphous glow that seems to come from the snow itself.

I follow him, stumbling in the unfamiliar moccasins he insisted I wear, determined not to complain, ever, no matter what.

Although rare, it is not unheard-of for visitors to arrive at Himmelvanger out of the blue; usually Indians calling to trade goods and news. Per makes them welcome; they are neighbours, and one must live in peace with one’s neighbours. And they are God’s children too, even if they live in squalor and ignorance like so many pigs. Sometimes they come when their relatives are sick and their remedies have failed them. They come with sombre faces and desperate hopes, and watch while the Norwegians dole out tiny doses of laudanum or ipecac or camphor, or apply their own traditional remedies, which usually fail them also. Per hopes this is not going to be one of those times.

The white man extends a frozen hand. He wears spectacles whose metal frames are rimed with frost, giving him a startling appearance, like an owl.

‘Excuse the intrusion. We are from the Hudson Bay Company, and we are on business here.’

Per is even more surprised, wondering what on earth the Company could want with him. ‘Please, come in. You must be frozen. Your hand …’ The hand he shakes is livid with cold, with no strength in it, like a pork chop.

Per backs away from the door, allowing them into the warm haven. ‘Do you have animals?’

‘No. We are on foot.’

Per raises his eyebrows, and leads them into a small room near the kitchen, where he calls for Sigi and Hilde and contrives hot stew and bread and coffee to be brought for the men. Sigi’s eyes are round with curiosity at the sight of the two strangers.

‘Good Heavens, Per, the Lord is sending us all kinds of guests this winter!’

Per responds a little sharply–he doesn’t want gossip and rumour spreading, not until he understands what’s going on. Fortunately the men don’t seem to understand Norwegian. They smile the foolish grins of the hungry and weary, rubbing their hands and falling on the food with fervent cries of gratitude.

As warmth begins to creep back into his hands, Donald experiences sharp, tingling pains, and examining them in the firelight they look livid and puffy. A woman brings a bowl of snow and insists on rubbing his hands with it, gradually bringing them back to painful life. The woman smiles at him as she ministers to him, but doesn’t speak–Per explains that they are Norwegians, and not all of them speak English.

‘So what are two Company men doing here in November?’

‘It is not Company business, exactly.’ Donald is finding it hard to keep the smile off his face–he can’t believe their good fortune, not only at finding a habitation, but finding one of such civilisation, and a cultivated man like Per Olsen to talk to.

‘Are you on your way somewhere?’

His tone reflects the unlikelihood of this. Donald tries not to speak with his mouth full of almond cake. (Almonds! Truly they are blessed here.)

‘We are making this journey because we are following someone. We have followed his trail from Dove River on the Bay, up to the river that cuts through the plateau, and then the trail led here.’ He looks at Jacob for confirmation, but Jacob seems shy in the others’ presence, and merely inclines his head.

Per listens gravely, and then leaves the room for a while. Donald assumes he has gone off to consult with some of the others, because when he comes back, he is accompanied by another man, whom he introduces as Jens Andreassen.

‘Jens has something to tell you,’ he says.

Jens, a shy, slow-moving man with a tongue that seems too large for his mouth, recounts how he found the boy on the river bank, close to death. He brought him to Himmelvanger where they have been caring for him. He says this in Norwegian, and Per translates, slowly, making an effort to get the words right.

Donald can feel the protectiveness in Per; Francis is the lamb who was lost, whom God has shepherded into his care.

‘What do you suspect him of? What has happened?’

Donald doesn’t want to reveal all the facts. If Per has taken an interest in the boy, he doesn’t want to antagonise him. ‘Well, there was a serious attack.’

Per looks up, his pale eyes bulging; when he translates for Jens their eyes meet in shock.

‘It is not certain that Francis is guilty, of course; but we had to find him. The boy’s mother is extremely worried in any case.’

Per frowns. ‘Who is Francis?’

‘The boy. His name is Francis Ross.’

Per considers for a moment. ‘This boy says his name is Laurent.’

Donald and Jacob exchange looks. Donald feels a cold shiver of certainty travel down his spine.

‘Perhaps it is not the same one,’ Per suggests.

Donald raises his voice in his excitement. ‘The trail leads here. It’s quite unmistakable. He is an English youth with black hair. He doesn’t look English, more … French or Spanish.’ That is how Maria described him.

Per purses girlishly red lips. ‘It sounds like him.’

‘What else has he said?’

‘Just that … and that he was going to a new job, but his guide left him. He says he was going north-west with an Indian guide.’ Per’s eyes flicker towards Jacob for an instant.

Per turns to Jens and explains this to him. Jens speaks again, in answer to some question.

‘Jens says he thought it was strange to find him alone. This boy cannot … could not get here alone, in this weather.’

‘Why not?’

‘The boy was so exhausted, so … worn. He could not have got so far unless he was helped or … forced.’

Guilt is a strong spur, thinks Donald.

‘I did think,’ Per goes on, ‘it was strange. He said he needed the job for money, but he had quite a lot of money on him, over forty dollars. He had this too, and was very concerned to keep it with him.’

Per picks something off the floor that Donald hasn’t previously noticed; a skipertogan, a leather bag the Indians carry round their necks for tobacco and tinder. He opens it and shakes out a roll of paper money, and a slim, palm-sized tablet of bone or ivory, covered with scratched figures and dark little markings. It’s very dirty. Donald stares at it, his throat constricting, and holds out his hand.

‘This belonged to Laurent Jammet.’

‘Laurent Jammet?’

‘The victim of the attack.’

‘You say “belonged”.’ Per stares at him. ‘I see.’

Donald immediately understands Maria’s description of Francis when they are shown into the sickroom. A dark, pretty young woman stands up as the door opens, gives them a suspicious look and walks out, her skirt swishing insolently against his trouser legs. The boy watches them without speaking as they sit down, and Per introduces him. Against the white sheets his skin is sallow, almost Latin in appearance. His hair is black and rather long, his eyes a deep, striking blue. Maria also said that he was handsome; a handsome child. Donald has no idea whether Francis could be called handsome, but there is nothing childish about the hostility radiating from him. The blue eyes stare without blinking, making him feel ungainly and awkward. He takes out his notebook and then adjusts his chair, and the notebook slithers off his lap onto the floor. He curses inwardly and picks it up, trying to ignore the tide of warmth flooding his neck and face. He reminds himself who he is and what he is here to do. He meets those eyes again, which now slide away from his, and clears his throat.

‘This man is Mr Moody, of the Hudson Bay Company. He has come from Dove River. He says your mother and father are very worried about you.’ Per is trying to be reassuring.

‘Hello Francis.’

Francis nods slightly, as if Donald is mostly beneath his notice.

‘Do you know why I am here?’

Francis glares at him.

‘Your name is Francis Ross?’

Francis drops his eyes, which he takes for assent. Donald looks at Per, who is staring at the boy, wounded.

‘Um … In Dove River, did you know a man called Laurent Jammet?’

The boy swallows. His jaw muscles seem to tense, Donald notes, and then, to his surprise, he nods.

‘When did you last see him?’

There is a long pause, and Donald starts to wonder whether he is going to speak at all.

‘I saw him when he was dead. I saw the man who killed him, so I followed him north for four days, but then I lost him.’

His voice, when at last he speaks, is flat and quiet. Donald stares at the boy, excited and incredulous in equal measure. He has to remind himself to go carefully, take things one step at a time; to wait until one foothold is firm and steady before taking the next, like walking through the hellish bog. He settles the notebook more firmly on his lap.

‘What … Um, tell me what you saw, exactly … and when this happened.’

Francis sighs. ‘The night I left. It was … many days ago. I can’t remember.’

‘You have been here five days,’ prompts Per gently. Donald frowns at him. Per returns his look with one of blameless mildness.

‘So … five days before that, maybe? I was going to Laurent Jammet’s cabin. It was late, and I thought he wasn’t there. Then I saw a man come out and walk away. I went inside, and saw him.’

‘Saw who?’

‘Jammet.’

He swallows again, with apparent difficulty. Donald waits a long time for him to start again.

‘He’d just … died. He was warm, the blood was wet. That’s how I knew the other man was the killer.’

Donald scribbles down what Francis says. ‘This … other man–did you know him?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see what he looked like?’

‘Only that he was native, with long hair. I caught a glimpse of his face, but it was too dark. I couldn’t see much.’

Donald writes, keeping his face neutral. ‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’

This one takes a long time. ‘Perhaps.’

‘What about his clothes–what was he wearing?’

Francis shakes his head. ‘It was dark. Dark clothes.’

‘Was he dressed like me? Or like a trapper? You must have formed some impression.’

‘Like a trapper.’

‘Why were you going to Jammet’s cabin?’

‘We were friends.’

‘And what time was this?’

‘I don’t know. Eleven. Midnight maybe.’

Donald looks up, trying to watch the boy’s face at the same time as writing down what he says. ‘Wasn’t that rather late?’

Francis shrugs.

‘Did you often visit him at this hour?’

‘He didn’t go to bed early. He wasn’t a farmer.’

‘So … you saw the body. And then what did you do?’

‘I followed the man.’

‘Did you go home … pack?’

‘No. I took some of Jammet’s things.’

‘You didn’t think to tell your parents? Or ask anyone for help, someone better qualified to deal with such a thing?’

‘There wasn’t time. I didn’t want to lose him.’

‘Didn’t want to lose him. So what things did you take?’

‘Just what I needed. A coat … Food.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Why? What does it matter?’ Francis lifts his eyes to look at Donald again. ‘Do you think I killed him?’

Donald looks back, calm. ‘Did you?’

‘I just said–I saw the killer. He was my friend. Why would I kill him?’

‘I’m just trying to find out what happened.’

Per shifts, warningly. Donald wonders whether to push the youth further, or to accuse him outright. He is probing in the dark like a novice surgeon, not knowing where to find the vital organ of truth.

‘He is very tired.’ This from Per. The boy does look spent, his skin taut over his bones.

‘Just a moment longer, if you please. So you say that you went to this man’s–Mr Jammet’s–house at midnight, found him dead, and followed the man you thought was his killer, but you lost him.’

‘Yes.’ The boy closes his eyes.

‘What is the piece of bone?’

Francis opens his eyes again, in surprise, this time.

‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know what it is.’

‘You brought it with you. You must have had a reason.’

‘He gave it to me.’

‘He gave it to you? It’s valuable.’

‘Have you seen it? I don’t think it’s valuable.’

‘What about the money? Did he give you that, too?’

‘No. But I needed help to find the … man. I might have had to … pay someone.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Pay someone for what?’ Francis rolls his head away. ‘What did you have in mind?’

Per clears his throat and glares at Donald. He closes the notebook with a reluctant snap.

Outside, Per takes Donald by the arm. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to think of his health. He was close to death when Jens brought him in.’

‘That’s quite all right.’ This is not what Donald actually thinks, but he is here as a guest, after all. ‘But I hope you’ll understand that, under the circumstances, I have to place him under arrest. With the money in his possession, and so on.’

Per has a habit of leaning slightly towards whoever he is talking to, which Donald realises must be due to shortsightedness. Up close, with his prominent pale eyes, Per even seems to smell faintly of goat.

‘That is your decision, of course.’

‘Yes. It is. So … I would like to arrange to have a guard outside the room.’

‘What for? He can hardly leave Himmelvanger, even if he could walk.’

‘Right. Well …’ Donald feels foolish, suddenly aware of the snow falling outside the window. ‘As long as we can keep an eye on him.’

‘There are no secrets here,’ Per says gravely, with a coy glance at the ceiling.

Andrew Knox stares out of the window at the falling snow with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he is aware from a certain amount of sisterly teasing that Susannah has got herself involved with Donald Moody, and is therefore concerned in a fatherly sort of way about the young Company man out in the bush. On the other, he is relieved to think of the prisoner’s tracks disappearing under a blanket of snow. It is dry snow, the true winter snow that once set in will hide the ground until spring. Of course he bemoaned it with Mackinley and the rest, and helped organise volunteers into search parties to establish at least which direction the fugitive might have taken. After they set off, Knox took Adam into the study and gave him a long lecture on the seriousness of his error. Adam vehemently protested that he distinctly remembered chaining and locking the door, and Knox allowed that there might have been some other explanation for the escape, and for that reason Adam would not lose his position. Adam’s expression was a mixture of righteous protest and resentful gratitude; they both know he is in the right, but they also know there is a limit to how much you can argue with your employer. Life is unfair.

As if this business wasn’t complicated enough, an hour ago there came an extraordinary rumour from Dove River that Mrs Ross had vanished, and gossip is rife that she has been kidnapped by the fugitive. Knox is horrified by this turn of events, and puzzles over his part in it. Did he somehow cause this by allowing her to speak to the man? Or are the two disappearances purely coincidental? This, he has to concede, is unlikely. On balance he has to hope that she has been kidnapped, for if she is on her own, her chances of survival in this weather are bleak.

When he broke the news to his wife and daughters, he was careful to stress his certainty that the prisoner would be putting as much distance between himself and Caulfield as possible. They reacted to the news of Mrs Ross’s disappearance with predictable horror. It is the nightmare of every white woman in a savage country, although he reminds them that it is as yet only rumour. But in everyone’s minds, his escape, and the disappearance of a local woman, has sealed Parker’s guilt.

Mackinley took the news with a sort of grim-faced satisfaction, even as he swore at Adam’s stupidity and railed at Caulfield’s lack of proper facilities. He is now out with one of the search parties, scouting for possible tracks along the bay. After the encounter with Mackinley, when he told him about the empty warehouse, Knox had to shut himself in his study for a glass of brandy, where he succumbed to a fit of violent trembling. Fortunately it passed after a few moments, but he still cannot quite screw up the courage to go out and face the world.

‘Daddy?’ Maria has not called him that for as long as he can remember. ‘Are you all right?’ She comes up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders. ‘This is terrible.’

‘It could be worse. It could always be worse.’

Maria looks as if she has been crying–another childhood habit he assumed she had abandoned. He knows she is worried not for herself, but for his reputation.

‘I can’t bear what people will say.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions. We have all assumed that we know what happened, but it’s all guess. If you want to know what I think …’ He checks himself. ‘Most escaped prisoners don’t get very far. He’ll probably be behind bars again in the next day or two.’

‘I can’t bear to think about that poor woman.’

‘No one has spoken to her husband yet. I will go and talk to him. There may be nothing in it at all.’

‘Mackinley looked so angry I thought he was going to hit Adam.’

‘He’s disappointed. He thinks a conviction will earn him promotion.’

Maria makes a scornful noise in her throat. ‘I can’t believe we can ever go back to normal after this.’

‘Oh … in a few months time we will barely remember any of it.’

He glances out of the window and wonders if she finds this convincing. He has, once again, the vertiginous sensation of impending disaster. When he looks round (a few seconds later? a minute? He isn’t sure) Maria has gone. He had been mesmerised by the whiteness outside. The flakes settle like feathers and trap a layer of air on the ground, each snowflake touching the next only by the tips of its axes.

The perfect snow for covering tracks.

Susannah responds to the stresses of the day by trying on frocks in her room, flinging aside those that have become too demodé. This ritual takes place every few months, whenever Susannah feels the yoke of country life press too irksomely on her shoulders. Maria stands in the doorway watching her tug at the ribbons on a green moiré dress with determined scorn. She feels a flood of affection for her sister, for worrying about things like waistlines and sleeve widths at a time of crisis.

‘That dress would trim up perfectly well, Susannah. Don’t tear it.’

Susannah looks up. ‘Well I certainly can’t wear it with these stupid things, they look quite ridiculous.’ She sighs and throws the dress down, defeated. The offending ribbons were sewn on by Maria herself, with tiny, firm stitches.

Maria picks it up. ‘We could put on new sleeves, lace perhaps, take these off, and change the shape of the neckline, so, and then it would be quite fashionable.’

‘I suppose. And what could we do with this one?’ She holds up a sprigged cotton calico that has more than a hint of Marie Antoinette playing at milkmaids.

‘Um … dishrags.’

Susannah laughs–her private, at-home laugh, which is a substantial guffaw, as opposed to her simpering public laugh, which her mother tells her is more ladylike. ‘It is awful, isn’t it? I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

‘Matthew Fox, as far as I can remember.’

Susannah flings the dress at her. ‘All the more reason for it to become a dishrag.’

Maria sits on the bed, surrounded by the despised cast-offs. ‘Have you written to Donald Moody yet?’

Susannah avoids her eye. ‘How can I? There’s no way of delivering anything.’

‘I thought you promised?’

‘Well, so did he, but I haven’t received anything–and he knows where I am.’

‘Well there’s bound to be some news soon. I should imagine they’ll hear about the prisoner somehow, and realise they’re on a wild goose chase.’ She lies down among the empty dresses. ‘I thought you liked him.’

‘He’s all right.’ A blush rises in Susannah’s cheeks, to her annoyance. Maria grins at her.

‘Stop it! But what am I supposed to do?’

‘Oh, I thought you might have written some long passionate letters and tied them with a pink ribbon, kept next to your heart.’

Maria is pleased at Susannah’s blush. She has seen plenty of young men conceive a passionate fondness for her sister and feel they have awoken some answering spark, only for Susannah to lose interest after a week or so, her eye fixing on something more appealing just around the corner. The drawers of her dressing table are stuffed with tokens of unrequited love. Maria’s own dressing table is not so burdened, but this does not make her jealous of her sister; far from it. She sees how Susannah finds all the attention a great irritant, one which puts more pressure on her to behave like a young lady. All the men who find her face and figure so charming fail to realise a fundamental truth about Susannah–that she is a profoundly pragmatic girl who is fonder of swimming and fishing than elegant tea parties. She is bored by abstract talk and embarrassed by flowery professions of emotion. Because Maria knows this, she is not envious of the attention Susannah receives. And because Maria knew, when she became very fond of a young man who taught at the school last year, how sincerely Susannah hoped he would make her happy. It wasn’t Susannah’s fault that when Robert met her, he became confused about his feelings, and ended up stammering a confession of love to her, then slinking back to Sarnia on the next steamer, cowed by her horrified reaction. Susannah had not told Maria, but the rumour got around anyway, as everything does in Caulfield, sooner or later. Maria, after a period of silent agony, made a wax model of Robert Fisher and roasted it slowly over her bedroom fire. Strangely enough, it made her feel better.

Maria has more or less taken a vow of chastity since then, as she can’t imagine meeting a man who would measure up to her ideal of manhood–her father. In any case, she isn’t sure that marriage and domestic bliss is all it’s cracked up to be. In Caulfield and Dove River, women work their fingers to the bone and age with frightening speed, so that by the time the men are in what you might call their prime, still hale albeit a touch rugged, they appear to be married to their mothers. It is not a fate she likes to imagine for herself.

But Donald seems a decent and intelligent man. It has long been her habit, on meeting someone for the first time, to be provocative and prickly, in order to turn aside those who are too shallow to see through her façade. It is, she is well aware, a form of self-defence, reinforced after her unfortunate affair. Donald persevered, even if it was because of Susannah, and she respects him for it. And then, when they met in the street after he had met Sturrock, she had been impressed by what he said, even to the point of wondering whether everything she had been told about the Searcher were true.

‘What about this one?’ Susannah holds up a pale-blue woollen frock; a previous favourite. ‘I’d like to wear this again, if we could do something about the sleeves.’

She seems to have put all thoughts of Donald out of her mind. In a sense, as soon as he walked away from Caulfield, he ceased to exist in any meaningful way, and became an abstract, a thing in abeyance, to be returned to when he comes back, not before. Maria reflects that Susannah will probably never write to him first, if at all. She wonders, were it not for Donald’s infatuation with Susannah, which was obvious from their first meeting, whether she would have allowed herself to care for him. Foolish even to think about it, of course.

Knox takes the trap and drives himself to Dove River to visit Angus Ross. He has failed to locate the source of the rumour, and chastises himself for believing it so readily. Since it broke he has heard increasingly wild stories: that the Maclarens have been butchered in their beds; that a child has gone missing; even that the prisoner tied Knox himself up while he made his escape. So he has a reasonable hope of finding Mrs Ross at home.

He finds Ross mending fences in the fields beyond the house. Ross keeps working as Knox approaches, only straightening up and acknowledging him when he is a few paces away. The man is known for his taciturnity, as his wife is known for her disregard for convention, but he greets him cordially enough.

‘Angus.’

‘Andrew, I hope you’re well.’

‘Well enough.’ He is one of the few people in Dove River who have no apparent difficulty in using Knox’s Christian name. ‘I know why you’re here.’

Ross has pale eyes and hair and a stolid demeanour. He reminds Knox of weathered granite: a typical Pict. He and his wife share the same stubbornness, although she is rather elegant and English-looking, if flinty. Granite and flint. The sort of people it is impossible to imagine in intimate circumstances (Knox turns his mind from this with a mental shudder and guilty self-admonition.) And they are both so different from Francis that no one could ever mistake him for their natural child.

‘Yes. We’ve heard some wild rumours today. Everyone is in turmoil with the prisoner getting out. It is most unfortunate.’

‘Well, it’s true. She has gone, but she hasn’t gone against her will.’

Knox waits for a moment for more information. But Ross is not that forthcoming.

‘Do you know where?’

‘To look for Francis. She said she would. She couldn’t bear the worry.’

Knox is astonished at the man’s coolness, even if he’d expected as much.

‘I expect she’ll run into the Company men.’

‘She’s alone?’

Ross shrugs minutely, watching his eyes. ‘If you’re asking me whether the prisoner went with her, I can’t say. I can’t imagine why he would want to help her, can you?’

‘Aren’t you worried, man? Your wife, out there … at this time of year?’

Ross picks up his axe and mattock and heads towards the house. ‘Come and have a tea.’

Knox realises he has no choice.

What Ross shows Knox in his kitchen suggests that he need not worry unduly over the immediate welfare of Mrs Ross. She is, apparently, well equipped. He even reads the note she left, which is terse but expressive. The phrase ‘Pay no mind to what you will hear’ might allude to the prisoner’s escape, but it might not. Ross makes no comment on this. Knox wonders if Ross feels any jealousy, any concern of a husband whose wife might have run off with another man, however peculiar the circumstances. He can detect no sign of them.

As he sips the tea–unexpectedly subtle–he finds himself speculating on the state of the Rosses’ marriage. Maybe they can’t stand each other after all these years. Maybe he’s glad she’s gone. And the son.

‘Perhaps it would be best, at the moment, if you said nothing of this to anyone else. I will say that I have spoken to you and that there is no immediate cause for concern. We don’t want any more … hysteria.’

He envisages more and more men setting off on the journey north, and feels a bubble of wild laughter rising in his throat at the thought. An inappropriate reaction that is becoming more and more prevalent in him with increasing age. Perhaps it is the onrush of senility. He swallows it down–this is a serious business. But perhaps more men will not be necessary, since Donald Moody and Jacob are already, hopefully, on the spot–wherever that spot is.

Ross nods. ‘If you say so.’

‘Am I … right in thinking that you don’t intend to go after her yourself?’

A tiny pause. With most men, his question would be construed as a slight.

‘Where would I go? In this weather I can’t know for sure where she has gone. As I said, she will most likely run into the Company men.’

Is he now trying to justify himself? Knox feels a stab of antipathy. He is beginning to find this stoicism unnerving, not to say repellent.

‘Well …’ Knox stands up, giving in to the urge to leave. ‘Thank you for being so frank with me. I sincerely hope your family will both be restored to you very shortly.’

Ross nods and thanks him for coming, seemingly untroubled by either concern or enthusiasm.

Knox feels a certain relief on leaving Angus Ross. He has experienced similar feelings over some of his dealings with the natives, who don’t express their emotions in the same profusion as whites, and it is wearing to spend time in the company of those around whom a spontaneous smile feels like a childish weakness.

Sturrock, dressed in a borrowed winter coat, picks his way through the new snow, examining the ground for traces of flight. To his right a man called Edward Mackay is doing exactly the same. On his left, a youth with an alarming Adam’s apple pokes the ground with a long stick. It is, Sturrock is aware, a hopeless task. Everything was done wrongly from the start. When the warehouse holding the prisoner was found empty, the news leaked out like quicksilver, simultaneously in every house in Caulfield, and people rushed out to stare and theorise, obliterating any tracks immediately outside. The powdery snow had started to fall in the night, probably covering all traces in any case, but the numbers of people involved made gleaning any information from the scene impossible.

By the time Sturrock arrived, the ground around the warehouse was a sea of mud and slush, and no one had any idea where to look. So the able-bodied men were divided into bands and each took a different direction, scouring the ground in lines ten abreast. In this way they swept across the land around Caulfield, destroying any message the ground might have held for them. Sturrock protested mildly that this was the likely outcome, but since he was an outsider he was listened to politely and ignored. There have been several false alarms, as people shout that they have found a footprint or some sign of passage, but it always turns out to be a naturally occurring kink in the ground, or the trace of animals, or each other.

Sturrock’s mind wanders back to the Scott house, where he has papers stashed under the mattress (he first checked for pests that might breakfast on them). He is prepared to stay as long as it takes, confident in the belief that he can ask Knox for more money, waiting for the reappearance of Mrs Ross’s son and the bone tablet. No one here has, he is certain, any idea of what it might be. He himself does not know, and it is a rare mind, like his, that can conceive of something so extraordinary.

When Sturrock first met Laurent Jammet, it was a dull, gusty day in Toronto a year before. Sturrock had, as usual, allowed his obligations to outstrip his resources, and had been harangued at length by his landlady, Mrs Pratt. She was one of those people–sadly numerous–who did not recognise that Sturrock was a man meant for the finer things in life, and that he was favouring her by gracing her shabby premises. To recover from the galling experience, and think about how he was going to remedy the situation, he had entered one of the coffeehouses where he was still confident of squeezing some credit. He was spinning out his cup of coffee when he caught snatches of conversation from the men in the booth next to his.

One of them, French by his accent, was saying he had traded with a man from Thunder Bay and been given a peculiar and probably worthless object that he didn’t notice until much later. It was an ivory tablet with markings on it, ‘like something from the Egyptians,’ he said.

‘That’s not Egyptians, they’re pictures, like birds and such,’ said another, from the sound of him another of those worthless Yanks who had taken advantage of the long border to escape the war. They were clearly passing the thing round their table.

‘I don’t know what that is,’ said a third. ‘Perhaps it’s Greek.’

‘Could be valuable, then,’ said the Frenchman.

At this point Sturrock stood up and made himself known to the men in the next booth. It is his greatest skill, insinuating himself into all sorts of company from miners to earls, and he is one of the few white men to have earned the trust and liking of several Indian chiefs on both sides of the border. It was why he had made such a good searcher, and the Yank had heard of Sturrock, which helped in this instance.

He said he had made a study of archaeology, and could perhaps assist them. The Yank regaled him with requests for stories, which Sturrock gratified while examining the thing in his hand. He made a play of not holding it of much account, and in truth he could not make head or tail of it. From the little he knew of Greek and Egyptian culture–his studies were a slight exaggeration–it was neither. But he was intrigued by the tiny figures surrounding the angular marks that seemed to be writing. They reminded him in style of the naive figures on Indian histories he had seen embroidered onto belts. Finally he handed the piece of ivory back to the Frenchman, whose name was Jammet, and said he did not know it, but knew that it was neither Egyptian, Latin, nor Greek, and therefore not one of the great old civilisations.

One of the other men commiserated with Jammet, saying, ‘Maybe it’s ancient Indian then, that would be just your luck, eh?’

The men laughed loudly. Shortly after that they went their separate ways, and Sturrock stayed another hour, sipping the cup of coffee the Frenchman had stood him.

For the next couple of days the idea grew in his mind and would not be shaken out. Sturrock would be walking down the street (he could not afford to ride) when the sight of the tablet and its strange markings would swim up in front of his mind’s eye. Of course, everyone knew that the Indians had no written culture. Had never had.

And yet. And yet.

Sturrock went back to the coffeehouse and asked for the Frenchman, and found him again, as if by chance, outside a lodging house–in a better district than his own, he was careful to note. They chatted for a while and Sturrock said that he had spoken to a friend of his, a man who knew a lot of ancient languages, and would be interested in seeing the tablet. If he borrowed it for a day or two, to show him, perhaps he could help settle the matter of its value. Jammet revealed himself then as the hard-nosed trader he was and refused to part with it, except for a considerable sum of money. Sturrock, who thought he had been careful to mask his interest, was wounded by the lack of trust, but Jammet laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and said he would keep it for him, until he came up with the money. Sturrock pretended indifference, then hummed and hawed and begged a chance to copy the markings, just to be sure the object was of interest. Jammet produced it, amused, and he scribbled them down on a scrap of paper.

Since then he had taken the transcribed copy to museums in Toronto and Chicago, to university professors and to men known for their scholarship, and had found no one who could disprove his theory. He didn’t say what he thought it might be, just asked if it was one of the Indo-European languages. The scholars thought not. They eliminated, between them, all the languages of the Ancient World. It might have helped if he knew where it came from, but he was wary of alerting the trader to his interest. Somewhere in the intervening months, it ceased to be an interest. It became an obsession.

He fell into searching, as he told Moody, by chance. Sturrock had made a name for himself as a newspaperman, having previously tried his hand at the law, the theatre and the church. The last was the most successful of an unfortunate trio: his church developed a congregation of several hundred, drawn by his wit and eloquence, and he thrived–until his affair with the wife of a leading parishioner was exposed, and he was run out of town. Journalism suited his maverick tendencies better. It was varied, sociable, and allowed him to express his opinions in colourful language. But more than that, he discovered in himself a real campaigning spirit. Initially stirred by romantic ideas of noble savagery, he began to write about Indian affairs, and although he was quickly disabused of picturesque fancies, he was equally stirred by the reality he came to know. In particular he befriended a man called Joseph Lock, an octagenarian living in dire poverty near Ottawa, who told him stories of his tribe, the Pennacook, and how they had been forced off their land in Massachusetts. He was one of only a handful left, if not the very last remaining member of his tribe. Sturrock wrote brilliantly–he was often told, and he believed it–about Joseph’s plight, and he found himself becoming a sought-after guest in fashionable drawing rooms of Toronto and Ottawa. He felt he had found his niche.

However, as he had found with all his other endeavours, nothing was meant to endure. His fame led to introductions to more Indians, younger, angrier men than Joseph, and his articles, instead of vividly describing poverty and lamenting past injustices (there were only so many ways you could say it), became increasingly polemical. Suddenly Sturrock found that editors were reluctant to publish his work. They made vague excuses, or blamed the fickleness of readers’ interest. He argued that people should be made aware of native feelings. The editors mumbled about affairs in England being more important, and shrugged. Doors closed to him. The invitations dried to a trickle. He felt the injustice, and felt he had been treated as the Indians had been treated.

It was round about then that he was contacted by an American family who had lost their son in an Indian raid. Though this was south of the Lakes, in Michigan, the father had been told about Sturrock and was intelligent and desperate enough to believe he could help. Sturrock was now close to fifty, but he threw himself into the task with imagination and vigour. Partly, perhaps, because of his outsider status, the Indians welcomed him, trusted him. After several months he found the boy living with a band of Huron in Wisconsin. The boy agreed to go back to his family.

Once again, Thomas Sturrock became respected. After that first satisfactory outcome he took on several more cases of abducted children and was successful in two-thirds of them. Usually the problem lay not so much in locating the missing children, as in persuading them to return to their previous life. He was good at persuasion.

Then, after a couple of years, he received a letter from Charles Seton. The Seton case was different from most he had known, seeing as it was more than five years since the girls had vanished, and there was no evidence to say that they had been kidnapped by Indians in the first place. Still, his confidence boosted by success, Sturrock was unwilling to turn down what could, he felt, turn out to be the crowning glory of his career. He was making a living, but no one was going to get rich by finding the children of poor settlers.

He had not noticed when it first began to get out of hand. Charles Seton still, after five years, burned with grief. His wife had died of it, compounding his loss. He no longer worked, and dedicated his remaining resources to finding the girls. The search for his lost daughters had become the only thing he had left. Sturrock should have recognised the signs of a man for whom no explanation could suffice, no outcome recompense for all he had suffered. Sturrock’s hope that the girls would be found dwindled. Many believed that they must have perished instantly, their remains carried off by wild animals. After a year of searching, Sturrock himself began to lean towards this view, but Charles Seton would not hear of it. It was impossible even to mention such a thing in his hearing.

During this time, when Sturrock was travelling frequently between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, he met a young Indian called Kahon’wes, a militant journalist who was writing about the political plight of the natives. Kahon’wes was eager to meet Sturrock and gather newspaper contacts, and though Sturrock felt he could not help him much, having drifted out of those circles, they became good friends. Kahon’wes called him Sakota:tis, meaning Preacher, and Sturrock was flattered by the attention, and by the way the young man idealised him. They had long talks into the night about the wars south of the border, and about the politicians in Ottawa. They talked about culture, the perception of Indians as a Stone Age people, and the prejudice a written culture holds against an oral one. Kahon’wes told him of excavations on the Ohio river which uncovered giant earthworks and artefacts dating from before Christ. On finding such things, the white archaeologists refused to believe that Indians could be the same people as this civilisation of builders and carvers (and, therefore, the Indians could be ruthlessly supplanted by the whites, just as the Indians had, supposedly, supplanted these others).

It was these conversations, a decade on, that came back to Sturrock as he trod the streets of Toronto making his enquiries into the bone tablet. He started to imagine the monograph that he would write on the subject, and the shock wave that would sweep through North America on its reception. Publishing such a monograph could give incalculable help to the cause of his Indian friends, and, incidentally, would make him famous. Sadly he could no longer seek out Kahon’wes for his opinion, as the man had succumbed to drink and drifted across the border. Such a fate often befalls men who step off the path they are born onto.

So, as Sturrock plods through the snow, he ignores the stunning, sombre landscape, and his blundering fellow searchers (amateurs, all of them), his thoughts turning again to Kahon’wes, and his own, long unrealised ambition. For such a prize, any amount of waiting, any amount of inconvenience, will be worth it.

Other than with my husband, I have spent relatively little time alone with a man, so I find it hard to judge what’s normal and what isn’t. The third day out from Dove River I walk behind Parker and the sled and reflect that he’s spoken all of five sentences to me, and wonder if I’ve done something wrong. Of course I know that the circumstances are unusual, and I am a more than normally reticent person, but even so, I find his silence unnerving. For two days I have not had the inclination to ask questions, and have needed all my strength to keep up with the punishing pace, but today it seems a little easier; we hit a stretch of path that is relatively smooth, where the cedars shelter us from the wind. We move through a permanent twilight under the trees, the only sound the creak of footsteps and the hiss of willow runners on snow.

Parker follows a course along the river without a moment’s hesitation, and it occurs to me that he knows exactly where we are heading. When we stop for black tea and cornbread I ask, ‘So this is the way Francis came?’

He nods. He is, to say the least, a man of few words.

‘So … you saw this trail on your way to Dove River?’

‘Yes. Two men came this way, at around the same time.’

‘Two? You mean he was with someone?’

‘One was following the other.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘One trail is always behind the other.’

He seems to wait for a minute. I don’t say anything.

‘They made separate fires. If they were together, they would have one fire.’

I feel a little foolish, not to have noticed that. Parker radiates a subtle satisfaction. Or perhaps I’m imagining it. We are standing over our own tiny fire, and the mug warms my frozen hands through my mittens–a painful comfort. I hold the cup so that it bathes my face with hot, moist steam, knowing it will hurt all the more when it’s gone, but not enough of a winter veteran to forgo the fleeting pleasure.

One of the dogs barks. A gust of wind soughs through some snow-laden branches and a curtain of white flakes drifts to the ground. I don’t see how he will be able to follow the trail under the snow. As though reading my thoughts he says, ‘Four men leave a big trail.’

‘Four?’

‘The Company men, who followed your son. They are easy to follow.’

Am I imagining it, or do I see a ghost of a smile?

He tosses back the contents of his cup in one gulp and wanders off a few yards to relieve himself. He seems to have the facility I have noticed in other outdoorsmen, of swallowing boiling liquids without burning himself. His mouth must be made of leather. I turn away and watch the dogs, who have flopped down together in the snow for warmth. Strangely enough, one of them, the smaller, sandy-coloured one, is called Lucie, which he pronounces Lucee, in the French way. As a result I feel a sentimental affinity with her–she seems friendly and trusting, as dogs are supposed to be, unlike her wolf-like mate Sisco, with his unnerving blue eyes and menacing growl. It strikes me that there is a certain symmetry between the two dogs and the two humans on this trail. I wonder if this thought has occurred to Parker also, although of course I haven’t told him my first name, and he isn’t likely to ask.

In the icy air the tea cools so quickly that it is pleasant to drink within half a minute, and must then be swallowed quickly. A few moments later it is stone cold.

At night Parker makes camp and builds a small fire for me to sit next to, scorching my hands and face while my back freezes. Meanwhile he cuts a stack of pine branches with the axe. (I suppose Angus will be cursing its loss, but that is too bad; he should have thought of that before abandoning his son.) The largest of the branches he strips, and with these erects the skeleton of a shelter in the lee of a large trunk, or, if there is a suitable fallen tree, behind the plate of roots that have been torn out of the ground. He piles smaller leafy boughs on the ground, arranging them like the rays of the sun, leaves to the centre. The first time I see it, I think it looks like a place of sacrifice, and then have to quash that thought before it goes any further. He then covers the whole with the tarred canvas sheets I took from the cellar. The canvas is anchored to the ground with more branches and with snow scooped up with a bark trowel, until the walls are banked high and keep the warmth in. Inside he rigs a smaller piece of canvas from the branch that forms the tent’s spine, so that there is a sort of curtain dividing the space in half. This is his only gesture towards propriety, and I am grateful for it.

He builds this structure in the time it takes me to boil water and prepare a mash of oatmeal and pemmican, with a few shrivelled berries thrown in. I forgot to bring any salt, so it tastes disgusting, but it’s wonderful to eat something hot and solid and feel it burning its way down my throat. Then more tea, with sugar, to take away the taste of the hoosh, while I imagine the sparkling conversation I would be having if someone else were my guide–or is it my captor? Then, exhausted (in my case anyway), we crawl into the tent and the dogs worm their way in after us, before Parker seals the entrance with a rock.

The first night I crawled into the little dark tunnel with a hammering heart, curled up under my blankets, too scared to move, and awaited a fate worse than death. I held my breath, listening as Parker turned and shifted and breathed inches away from me. Lucie wriggled–or was pushed–under the curtain to curl up beside me, and I gratefully accommodated the small warm body next to mine. Then Parker seemed to stop moving, but some part of him, I realised with horror, was pressed up against the canvas curtain–and therefore against my back. I had no room to move away–my face was almost pressed against the snow-covered canvas where I lay. I kept waiting for something appalling to happen–sleep was, in any case, impossible–and then gradually, I felt a faint warmth emanating from him. My eyes were stretched sightlessly wide, my ears strained for the slightest sound, but nothing happened. I believe at some point I even dozed off. Finally, although I blush to think of it, I recognised the beauty of this system, which preserves a sort of privacy while allowing us to share the heat each of us generates.

The next morning I awoke to a faint light bleeding through the canvas. My cocoon was airless and stuffy, and reeked of dog. The tent was cold, but I was astonished, when I crawled backwards into the daylight, how warm it was compared to the air outside. I am sure that Parker was watching as I wriggled gracelessly out on elbows and knees, my hair loosened and straggling all over my face, but thankfully he didn’t smile or even stare much. He gravely handed me a mug of tea, and I stood up and tried to smooth my hair into a semblance of order, wishing I had brought along a pocket mirror. It is extraordinary how vanity clings to one in the least appropriate of circumstances. But then, I tell myself, vanity is one of the attributes that distinguish us from animals, so perhaps we should be proud of it.

This evening–our third–I am determined to make more of an effort with my silent companion. Over bowls of stew, I start to talk. I feel I have to prepare the ground, so to speak, and have been thinking about what to say for some hours.

‘I must say, Mr Parker, how grateful I am that you have taken me with you, and how I appreciate your efforts to make me comfortable.’

In the orange firelight, his face is an impenetrable mask of shadows, although the darkness does have the effect of leaching out the bruising on his cheek, and softening the harshness of his features.

‘I know that the circumstances are somewhat … unusual, but I hope that we can still be good companions.’ ‘Companions’ sounds the right note, I think; cordial without implying overmuch personal warmth.

He looks up at me, chewing on a stubborn piece of gristle. I think he’s going to go on not speaking, as though I don’t exist or am a creature of no account, like a dung beetle, but then he swallows and says, ‘Did you ever hear him play the fiddle?’

It takes me several moments to realise he is talking about Laurent Jammet.

And then I am outside the cabin by the river at home, hearing that strange sweet tune and seeing Francis burst out of the door, his face transformed by laughter–and I am paralysed by loss.

I haven’t cried much in my life, considering. Any life has its share of hardship–if one gets to the age I am now and has crossed an ocean and lost parents and child–but I feel it is uncontroversial to state that mine has held more than most. And yet I have always felt that crying was pointless, as though it implies you think someone might see you and take pity on you, which in turn assumes they can do something to help–and early on I found that no one could. I haven’t cried for Francis these last few days, because I was too busy lying and covering up and planning a way to help him, and it seemed like a waste of my scant powers. So I do not know what has changed now, to make tears spill down my cheeks, tracing warm paths on my skin. I close my eyes and turn my head away in embarrassment, hoping that perhaps Parker won’t notice. It’s not as though he can help, other than by guiding me through the forest as he is already doing. I am ashamed because it looks as though I am appealing to his humanity; throwing myself on his mercy, as it were, when for all I know he has none.

But all the while I weep I am aware of the sensuous pleasure of it; the tears stroking my face like warm fingers, offering comfort.

When I open my eyes again, Parker has made tea. He doesn’t ask for an explanation.

‘Please forgive me. My son liked his music.’

He hands me a tin mug. I sip it and am surprised. He has given me extra sugar, the panacea for all ills. If only we could sweeten all our sorrows so easily.

‘He used to play for us when we worked on a gang. The bosses allowed him to bring his fiddle with him on portages. They knew it was worth the extra weight.’

‘You worked with him? For the Company?’

I remember the photograph of Jammet with the group of voyageurs and examine it in my mind to see if Parker was one of them. I am sure I would have noticed a face like his, but I don’t recall it.

‘A long time ago.’

‘You don’t seem like a … Company man.’ I smile quickly, in case that sounds like an insult.

‘My grandfather was English. His name was William Parker too. He came from a place called Hereford.’

He is smoking a pipe now. One of my husband’s, since his own was confiscated.

‘Hereford? In England?’

‘You know it?’

‘No. I believe it has a very beautiful cathedral.’

He nods, as if the presence of the cathedral were self-evident.

‘Did you know him?’

‘No. Like most, he didn’t stay. He married my grandmother, who was a Cree, but he went back to England. They had a child, and that was my father. He worked for the Company all his life.’

‘And your mother?’

‘Huh …’ A spark of emotion animates his face. ‘He married a Mohawk woman from a French mission.’

‘Ah,’ I say, as if that explains something. And it does, the Iroquois being known for physical size and strength. And supposedly (although of course I don’t say so), their good looks. ‘You are Iroquois. That’s why you’re so tall.’

‘Mohawk, not Iroquois,’ he corrects me, but gently, without sounding annoyed.

‘I thought they were the same thing.’

‘Do you know what “Iroquois” means?’

I shake my head.

‘It means “rattlesnakes”. It was a name given by their enemies.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

His mouth twists in what I am beginning to recognise as a smile. ‘She was supposed to be a good mission-educated Catholic, but she was always a Mohawk first.’

There is warmth in his voice, humour. I smile across the flickering fire. It’s always comforting to know that a suspected murderer loves his mother.

My tea is nearly finished; stone cold, of course. I want to ask about Jammet’s death but I fear it will upset the delicate rapport between us. Instead I gesture towards him.

‘How is your face now?’

He touches it with two fingers. ‘Doesn’t hurt so much.’

‘Good. The swelling has gone down.’ I think of Mackinley. He didn’t seem like a man to give up easily. ‘I suppose someone will try and follow us.’

Parker grunts. ‘Even if they do, with this snow, they will lose the trail. And it will make them slow.’

‘But will you be able to find the trail?’

I have become increasingly concerned about this. As the snow has fallen–deceptively light, pleasant snow, dry and powdery–I have convinced myself that Francis has taken shelter at a village somewhere. I believe this because I must.

‘Yes.’

I remind myself that he is a trapper and used to following subtle, light-footed creatures through the snow. But his confidence seems to stem from more than that. Once again, I have the sense that he already knows where the trail is going to lead.

We sit in silence for a while, with me envying the rhythm and ritual that is smoking a pipe, which makes a man look busy and deep in thought even while he’s doing and thinking nothing. And yet I feel more at peace than I have done for some time. We are on our way. I am doing something to help Francis.

I am doing something to prove how much I love him, and that matters, because I’m afraid he has forgotten.

At some point Francis realises that he is under arrest. No one has actually told him so, but something in the way Per looks at him, and at Moody, made him assume that. Moody believes he is Laurent’s killer. He feels irritated by this, rather than frightened or angry. Possibly, if he were in Moody’s shoes, he would think the same.

‘I don’t understand,’ Moody is saying, pushing his spectacles up his nose for the hundredth time, ‘why you didn’t tell someone what you saw. You could have told your father. He is a respected man in your village.’

Francis bites his tongue on the obvious rejoinder. It seems a reasonable enough idea, now Moody suggests it. He wonders if Moody has met his father.

‘I thought he would get too far ahead. I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

That is an understatement. Donald has his head on one side, looks as though he is trying to understand the concept of unclear thinking. He looks as though he fails.

This time, sitting silently beside Moody is a young half-breed, who has been introduced to Francis as Jacob. Francis has never heard him speak, but he supposes he is here as some sort of witness from the Hudson Bay Company. He has heard–from Jammet, among others–that in Prince Rupert’s Land the Company will send out men to wield a rudimentary justice. If a murderer is known, Company officers quietly hunt him down and kill him. He wonders if Jacob is the designated executioner. His designated executioner. Mostly he sits with head cast down, but his eyes watch Francis intently. Maybe they think he is going to make a mistake and give himself away.

Moody turns and whispers something, and Jacob gets up and leaves the room. Moody pulls his chair closer to Francis and gives him a small smile, like a boy trying to make friends on his first day at school.

‘I want to show you something.’

Then he pulls up his shirt, tugging it out of his breeches until Francis sees the scar–tender shiny skin, red against white. ‘See that? The blade went in three inches. And the man who did that to me … was sitting right there.’

He looks Francis in the eye. Despite himself, Francis feels his eyes widen with astonishment.

‘Yet I don’t think there’s a man in this country who cares more for me than he does.’

Francis forgets himself enough to half smile. Donald grins, encouraged. ‘You’ll laugh when I tell you why. We were playing rugby, and I tackled him. Took the legs out from under him–classic sliding tackle. And he went for me on instinct. He’d never played rugby before. I didn’t even know he was carrying a knife.’

Donald laughs, and Francis feels a spark of warmth within him, responding. For a moment, it’s almost as though they are friends.

Donald tucks the shirt back into his waistband.

‘What I mean is, even with someone you are friends with, there can be a quarrel, and one man can lash out in a moment of anger. Without meaning anything. A moment later–and he would give his life not to have done it. Was that how it happened? You quarrelled–maybe he was drunk … you were drunk … he made you angry, and you lashed out without thinking …’

Francis is staring at the ceiling. ‘If you care so much about justice, why aren’t you following the other footprints, the ones the murderer left? You must have seen them. I could follow them. Even if you don’t believe me, you must have seen them.’

Something has given within him and the words keep on coming, rising in volume.

‘You could have followed the tracks just to make sure you got somewhere safely.’ Donald leans forward, as if he feels he’s getting somewhere at last.

‘If I were going to run away, I wouldn’t run here! I’d go to Toronto, or get on a boat …’ Francis rolls his eyes up to the ceiling with its familiar cracks and lines. Unreadable signs. ‘Where would I spend the money up here? It’s crazy to think that I killed him, can’t you see that? It’s crazy even to think it …’

‘Perhaps that’s why you came here, because it’s not obvious … You hide out up here and go where you want when things have died down–pretty smart, I’d say.’

Francis stares at him–what’s the point in talking to this idiot, who has already decided what happened? Is this the way it’s going to be? If so, then so be it. Now his throat is tight and the taste of sick is in his mouth. He wants to scream. If they knew the real truth, would they believe him then? If he told them what it was really like?

Instead, he opens his mouth and says, ‘Fuck you, fuck you! Fuck you all.’ Then he turns his face to the wall.

The moment he turns away, something comes to Donald’s mind. He has at last remembered what has been nagging at him for the last few days–the thing about Francis that reminds him of a fellow he knew at school but, like everyone else, avoided. So perhaps that was the motive. Hardly surprising, really.

Something extraordinary happens. As the weather continues utterly still and windless, and we carry on walking north through the forest, I realise I am enjoying myself. I am shocked and feel guilty, as I should be worrying about Francis, but I can’t deny it: as long as I am not actually thinking about him lying hurt and frozen, I am happier than I have been for a long time.

I never thought I could stray so far into the wilderness without fear. What I always hated about the forest, although I never told anyone this, is its sameness. There are so few varieties of trees, especially now, when the snow makes them all cloaked, sombre shapes and the forest a dim, twilit place. In our early years in Dove River I used to have a nightmare: I am in the middle of the forest, and turning round to look back the way I came, I find that every direction looks exactly alike. I panic, disoriented. I know that I am lost, that I will never get out.

Perhaps it is the extremity of my situation that makes it impossible–or just pointless–to be afraid. Nor am I afraid of my taciturn guide. Since he hasn’t murdered me yet, despite plenty of opportunity, I have started to trust him. I wondered briefly if I had refused to go with him, what would have happened–would he have forced me? Then I stopped wondering. Walking for eight hours through fresh snow is a good way to still the mind’s restlessness.

Angus’ rifle is strapped to the dogsled and is unloaded, so offers little protection in the instance of sudden attack. When I ask Parker if this is wise, he laughs. He says there are no bears in this part of the country. What about wolves? I want to know. He gives me a pitying look.

‘Wolves don’t attack people. They might be curious, but they won’t attack you.’

I tell him about those poor girls who were eaten by wolves. He listens without interruption, and then says, ‘I’ve heard of them. There was no sign that the girls were attacked by wolves.’

‘But there was no proof that they were kidnapped, and nothing was ever found.’

‘Wolves will not eat all of a corpse. If wolves had attacked them, there would have been traces–splinters of bone, and the stomach and intestines would be left.’

I don’t know quite what to say to this. I wonder if he knows these macabre details because he has seen them.

‘But,’ he goes on, ‘I have never known wolves to attack without being provoked. We have not been attacked, and there have been wolves watching us.’

‘Are you trying to frighten me, Mr Parker?’ I say, with a careless smile, even though he is ahead of me and cannot see my expression.

‘There is no reason to be afraid. The dogs react as if there are wolves about, in the evening especially. And we are still here.’

He tosses this over his shoulder as if it were a casual observation about the weather, but I keep glancing behind me, to see if anything is following us, and I am more anxious than before to stay close to the sled.

As the light fades I sense shadows moving and closing in around me. I wish I had not brought up the subject. I sit close to the fire, tiredness not overcoming my nerves, starting at every rustle of branches and flurry of snow. I collect snow from very near the fire and make supper with less attention than it deserves. While Parker is out of sight collecting branches, I strain after him with my eyes, and when the dogs start a round of excited barking, I nearly jump out of my skin.

Later, lying like a sausage in the tent, something wakes me. I can sense a faint greyness seeping through the canvas, so either it must be close to dawn, or there is a clear moon. Then, from right by me, making me start, comes Parker’s voice:

‘Mrs Ross. Are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ I whisper at last, my heart stuck in my throat, imagining all sorts of horrors beyond the canvas walls.

‘If you can, move your head to the opening and look out. Do not be alarmed. There is nothing to fear. It may interest you.’

It is easy to manoeuvre myself so as to look out, as after the first night I have slept with my head towards the opening. I find Parker has made a gap on my side of the curtain, and I peer out.

It is not yet dawn, but there is a cool, greyish light, perhaps from the unseen moon, that reflects off the snow and makes it possible to see, although among the trees it is dim and indistinct. In front of me is a black smudge that is the remnants of our fire, and beyond that, the two dogs are standing, bodies alert and tense, pointing away at something in the trees. One of them whines; perhaps it was this that woke me.

At first I can see nothing else, then after a minute or two I discern a flicker of movement in the shadows. With a sort of jolt I realise there is another dog-like shape, grey against the lighter grey of the snow. The third animal is watching the dogs, eyes and muzzle faintly darker than its fur. They are watching each other, intensely interested, not apparently aggressive, but none seems to want to turn its back. Another whine comes, perhaps from the wolf. It looks small, smaller than Sisco. It seems to be alone. I watch as it approaches a few feet, then backs off again, like a shy child who wants to join in a game but isn’t confident of a good reception.

For perhaps ten minutes I watch this almost silent communication between dogs and wolf, and in that time I forget to be afraid. I realise that Parker is right next to me watching them also. Although I do not turn my head towards him, he is so close that I can smell him. I become aware of this only gradually; normally the air is so cold it kills any scent. Something to be thankful for, I’ve always thought. But as I watch the animals, something smells of life–not the smell of dogs, or even of sweat, but something more like foliage, like the sharp, rich smell inside a greenhouse, damp and growing. I feel a sting like a nettle, and that is a memory: the memory of the greenhouse at the public asylum where we used to grow tomatoes, and how it smelt the same as Dr Watson when I pressed my face into his shirtfront or against his skin. I had not known a man could smell like that, rather than of tobacco and cologne, like my father, or more unpleasantly of bodily exertions and unwashed clothes, like most of the attendants.

The only thing that can smell like Watson and the greenhouse in this frozen forest is Parker himself.

At this point I cannot stop myself turning my head a little towards him and inhaling, to get a stronger fix on that memory, which is tantalising and not at all unpleasant. I try to do it imperceptibly, but I sense he notices, and have to raise my eyes to find out, and then I find him looking at me from a distance of a few inches. I start back, and then smile, to cover my embarrassment. I look back at the dogs, but the wolf has vanished like a grey ghost, and now I cannot say whether it has just gone, or whether it left some minutes ago.

‘That was a wolf,’ I say, with true brilliance.

‘And you are not afraid.’

I glance at him again, to see if he is teasing me, but he is withdrawing into his side of the tent.

‘Thank you,’ I say, and am then annoyed at myself. It is not as though he arranged the wolf’s visit especially for me, so it is a silly thing to have said. I look at the two dogs again. Sisco is still staring intently into the trees after the intruder, but Lucie is looking at me with her mouth open and her tongue hanging out, as though she is laughing at me.

The search parties found no trace of the prisoner’s flight, and the hysteria over Mrs Ross’s disappearance has been calmed by her husband’s stoicism. It is assumed she will meet up with Moody and her son. Mackinley has not appeared to associate the two things, and broods in his room for most of the day. Almost three days after the disappearance, Mackinley still haunts the Knoxes’ house like a vengeful spirit. He seethes with the impotent bitterness of a man who has had what he sought in his grasp only to lose it again.

The Knox family don’t mention him by name, as if pretending he doesn’t exist will make him go away. Knox suggests that he go back to Fort Edgar and await news from Moody. Mackinley refuses. He is determined to stay while messages are sent out with descriptions of the fugitive. He is obsessed with doing his duty, or that’s what he claims he is doing; Knox is no longer sure.

Tonight after dinner, Mackinley starts talking about luck. He returns to one of his favourite subjects, Company heroes, and is regaling Knox with the already familiar story of one James Stewart, who pushed his men through the snow in winter to deliver some supplies to a trading post, accomplishing an astonishing journey in terrible weather. Mackinley is drunk. There is a mean glitter to his eyes that alarms Knox. If he is drunk, it is not on Knox’s wine; he must be drinking in his room.

‘But do you know what?’ Mackinley is speaking to Knox, but his eyes are fixed on the soft, powdery snow outside, which he seems to take as a personal affront. His voice is soft too; he is trying not to shout, trying not to be a little man. Oddly, although Knox recognises that it is an affectation, the result is still chilling.

‘Do you know what they did to him–a fine man like that? And all because of a bit of bad luck? He was one of the best. A fine Company servant who gave everything he had. He should be running the whole outfit now, but they pushed him aside to some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere–no furs at all, a wasteland. All because of a bit of bad luck. And that’s not right. It’s not right, is it?’

‘I’m sure it isn’t.’ Nor is it right that he should have been landed with Mackinley for a house guest, but there’s no one he can complain to about that. If only Mackinley had gone after the Ross boy himself, and left Moody here. Susannah would have been happier too.

‘I won’t let them push me aside. They won’t do that to me.’

‘I’m sure that won’t happen. It’s not as though it was your fault.’

‘But how do I know they’ll see it like that? I’m responsible for law and order at my fort and its surroundings. Perhaps, if you were to write a letter … setting out the facts, and so on …’ Mackinley gazes at Knox with wide eyes as though this idea has only just occurred to him.

Knox stifles an in-breath of disbelief. He had wondered whether Mackinley might make such a request, but thought it too shameless even for him. He gives himself several moments to frame his answer.

‘If I were to write such a letter, Mr Mackinley, it would be only fair if I set out all the facts as I know them, so as to avoid confusion.’ He turns his gaze to Mackinley, keeping his face blank and calm.

‘Well of course …’ Mackinley begins and then stops, eyes bulging. ‘What do you mean? What did Adam say?’

‘Adam did not say anything. I saw with my own eyes how your idea of justice is achieved.’

Mackinley stares at him in fury, but doesn’t say any more. Knox feels a guilty satisfaction at silencing him.

When Knox finally leaves the house, the snow and the clouds combine to produce a peculiar light, a pallor in the dusk that makes it seem colder. Although the days are short and the sun low, there is a compensatory feeling in the air–perhaps it augurs a show of the aurora borealis–that puts a lightness in his step. Strange, when he is courting disgrace in this way, to feel so carefree.

Thomas Sturrock opens his door and releases a rich, smoky fug into the corridor. Clearly he is a man who believes fresh air should stay out of doors.

‘I think we will be undisturbed tonight. There has been some domestic strife, and my hosts are otherwise engaged.’

Knox is not sure how to respond to this. But he is not prepared to face John Scott when he has been drinking. Perhaps it is better that he takes his frustrations out on his wife and maintains the public face of a good citizen. He feels ashamed of this thought, and so pushes it out of his mind.

‘I got your note, and I am curious as to what you have to say.’ He reminds himself to be on his guard, even with Sturrock.

‘I was thinking about Jammet earlier, when we were searching the lakeshore.’ Sturrock pours two glasses of whisky and swirls the topaz liquid in his glass. ‘And I was thinking about a man I used to know, when I was a searcher. His name was Kahon’wes.’

Knox waits.

‘I wasn’t sure whether to bring this up … I asked myself, why would a trader like Jammet be killed–for what purpose? And I suspect, although I have no certainty of course–that it may have been because of the bone tablet.’

‘The bone tablet you spoke of before?’

‘Yes. I told you I needed it for some research that I am undertaking at the moment, and it has probably occurred to you that if I am prepared to put myself out to obtain such a thing, others may be prepared to go to some lengths also. However … oh, hell, I don’t even know if it is what I think it is.’ His face in the lamplight looks dry and old.

‘What do you think it is?’

Sturrock swallows the contents of his glass and grimaces as if it were medicine.

‘This will sound preposterous, but … well, I believe it may be evidence of an ancient written language of the Indians.’

Knox’s first desire is to laugh. It does sound preposterous–a boys’ adventure story. He has never heard anything so ridiculous.

‘What makes you believe that?’ He has never thought Sturrock a fool, despite his shortcomings. Perhaps he has been wrong, and that is the man’s flaw; the reason why, in his sixties, he wears an old-fashioned coat with frayed cuffs.

‘I can see that you think it is preposterous. I have reasons. I have looked into the matter for over a year.’

‘But everyone knows there is no such thing!’ Knox cannot stop himself. ‘There is not a scrap of evidence. If there had ever been such writing in existence, there would be traces … there would be some document or record, or anecdotal evidence … and yet there is nothing.’

Sturrock regards him gravely. Knox puts on a conciliatory tone. ‘I’m sorry if I sound dismissive, but it is … fantastic.’

‘Perhaps. But the fact remains that some people think it possible. Do you concede that?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course they may.’

‘And if I am looking for it, others might be looking for it also.’

‘That is also possible.’

‘Well, then, what I have been thinking is this: the man I mentioned, Kahon’wes, was a sort of journalist, a writer. An Indian, but a very gifted one. Educated, intelligent, able to weave a pretty phrase and so on. I always thought he might have some white blood in him, but I never asked. He was fanatically proud; obsessed with the notion of Indians having a great culture of their own, in every way equal to white culture. He was fervent in the way that some men of religion are. He thought me a sympathiser, and I was, up to a point … He was unstable, poor fellow–took to drink when he did not make the sort of splash he’d hoped for.’

‘What are you implying?’

‘That he, or someone like him, who believed passionately in an Indian nation and culture, would do almost anything to get a piece of evidence like that.’

‘And did this man know Jammet?’

Sturrock looks slightly surprised. ‘I really don’t know. But people get to hear of things, don’t they–you wouldn’t necessarily need to know someone to want what they had. I didn’t know Jammet myself until I heard him talking about the piece in a Toronto coffeehouse. He wasn’t close-mouthed.’

Knox shrugs. He’s wondering if Sturrock really pulled him out of his house to tell him this bizarre story. ‘And where does this Kahon’wes live now?’

‘That I can’t tell you. The last time I saw him was years ago. I knew him when he was travelling round the peninsula, writing articles. As I said, he took to drink and dropped out of sight. I heard he went over the border, but that’s all.’

‘And you are telling me this because you think he may be a suspect? Rather slim grounds, wouldn’t you say?’

Sturrock looks at his empty glass. Already, dust has fallen onto the trails of liquid, thickening them.

‘Kahon’wes talked to me once of an ancient written language. The possibility of one, I mean. I had never heard of such a thing.’ Sturrock smiles a wintry smile, tight at the corners of his mouth. ‘Of course, I thought he was crazy.’ He shrugs his shoulders in a gesture that Knox finds strangely pathetic.

‘Then I came across the tablet. And I remembered what he’d said. It may be that I tell you this at some personal cost, but I felt you should know all the facts. It may not be important, I am merely telling you what I know. I do not want a man’s death to go unpunished because I did not speak.’

Knox drops his eyes, feeling that familiar sense of the absurd sweeping over him. ‘It is a pity you did not confide this information sooner, before the prisoner escaped. Perhaps you would have been able to identify him.’

‘Really? You think …? Well, well.’

Knox does not for an instant believe the look of dawning realisation on Sturrock’s face. In fact he is beginning to doubt the whole story. Perhaps Sturrock has some other motive for turning attention back onto the half-breed, to deflect attention from his own presence. In fact, the more he thinks about it, the more ludicrous the story becomes. Knox wonders whether there ever was a bone tablet; no one apart from Sturrock has mentioned it.

‘Well, thank you for telling me, Mr Sturrock. That … may be useful. I will discuss it with Mr Mackinley.’

Sturrock spreads his hands. ‘I merely want to help bring the murderer to justice.’

‘Of course.’

‘There was one other thing …’

Ah, now we come to the true matter, thinks Knox.

‘I was wondering if you could possibly stand me a little more of the filthy lucre?’

On the short, cold walk back to his house, Knox suddenly remembers, with a hideous, piercing clarity, what he said to Mackinley earlier: ‘I saw with my own eyes how your idea of justice is achieved.’

He had told Mackinley (or at least allowed him to form the impression) that he had not been back to see the prisoner after Mackinley’s interrogation. He can only hope that Mackinley was too drunk or agitated to notice.

A forlorn hope, given the circumstances.

Over breakfast, Parker talks about the night-time visitor. The wolf we saw was a young female, probably about two years old and not yet fully mature. He thinks she had been following us for a couple of days, out of curiosity, staying out of sight. It is possible that she wanted to mate with Sisco, and may in fact have done so.

‘Would she have followed us without the dogs?’ I ask.

Parker shrugs. ‘Maybe.’

‘How did you know she’d be there last night?’

‘I didn’t know. It was possible.’

‘I’m glad you told me.’

‘A few years ago …’ Parker pauses, as though surprised at himself for volunteering anything. I wait.

‘A few years ago I found an abandoned wolf cub. I suppose its mother had been killed, or it may have been driven out of the pack. I tried to raise it like a dog. For a while it was happy. It was like a pet, you know … affectionate. It would lick my hand and roll over, wanting to play. But then it got older, and the playing stopped. It remembered it was a wolf, not a pet. It stared into the distance. Then one day it was gone. The Chippewa have a word for it–it means “the sickness of long thinking”. You cannot tame a wild animal, because it will always remember where it is from, and yearn to go back.’

Try as I may to imagine a younger Parker playing with a wolf cub, I cannot do it.

For four days the sky stays grey and low, the air wet as if we are walking through heavy cloud. We travel gradually but distinctly upwards, all the time moving through forest, although the trees change; they become shorter, there are more pines and willows, fewer cedars. But now the forest thins out, the trees dwindle to sparse scrub, and we come, unbelievably, to the edge; the end of the forest that seemed to have no end.

We emerge onto a vast plain just as the sun burns through the cloud and floods the world with light. We are standing on the edge of a white sea on which waves of snow march to the horizon to north, east and west. I haven’t seen such distances since standing on the shores of Georgian Bay, and it makes me dizzy. Behind us, the forest; ahead, another country: one I have never seen before, glittering, white and huge under the sun. The temperature has dropped several degrees; there is no wind, but the cold is like a hand that is laid with gentle but implacable force on the snow, telling it to stay.

I feel the mounting panic I felt when first confronted with the virgin forest of Dove River: this is too big, too empty for humans, and if we venture out onto that plain, we will be as vulnerable as ants on a dinner plate. There is truly, here, nowhere to hide. I try to stifle my desire to head back under the cover of the trees as I tread in Parker’s footsteps away from the familiar, friendly forest. I feel a sudden kinship with those animals who burrow into the snow in winter, to live underground, in tunnels.

Actually the plateau is not flat, but full of mounds and cones of snow that hide bushes and hillocks and rocks. The whole plateau is a bog, Parker tells me, and hell to cross before it freezes. He points to a churned-up hollow where he claims someone sank in: one of the men we are following. We, apparently, have it easy. Even so, the ground is so rough that after two hours I can barely move my feet another step. I grit my teeth and concentrate on lifting one foot after another, but I drop further and further behind. Parker stops and waits for me to catch up.

I’m angry. This is too difficult. My face and ears are frozen, but under my clothes I am sweating. I want shelter and rest. I am so thirsty my tongue feels like a dry sponge in my mouth.

‘I can’t!’ I shout from where I am.

Parker treads back towards me.

‘I can’t go on. I need to rest.’

‘We haven’t gone far enough to rest. This weather may change.’

‘I don’t care. I can’t move.’ I sink to my knees in the snow, as a protest. It feels so good to be off my feet I close my eyes in ecstasy.

‘Then you’ll have to stay there.’

Parker’s face and voice don’t change at all, but he turns and walks away. He can’t mean it, I think, as he reaches the sled and the dogs, who have been fidgeting and tangling themselves in their harness. He doesn’t even look back. He flicks the dogs on and they begin to move off.

I am outraged. He is prepared to walk away and leave me here. With tears of fury in my eyes, I struggle to my feet and begin forcing them painfully after the sled.

My anger drives me on for another hour, by which time I am so tired that I have no feelings at all. And then, at last, Parker stops. He makes tea and repacks the bags on the sled, then indicates that I should sit on it. He has arranged it so that the bags form a rough backrest. I am as touched now as I was angry before.

‘Can the dogs manage?’

‘We can manage,’ he says, but I don’t understand what he means until he attaches another line to the sled to help the dogs. He places the loop of hide around his forehead, and leans into the pulling, shouting at the dogs, until the sled is torn free from where it has frozen into the snow. He tugs and strains and then finds the same metronomic stride as before. I am ashamed at being part of his burden, at making more difficult something that is already close to the limits of what is endurable. He doesn’t complain. I have tried not to complain either, but I can’t say I’ve been all that successful.

Clinging on to the sled as it bucks and plunges over mounds of snow, I realise that the plain is beautiful. The brightness makes my eyes water, and I am dazzled, not just physically, but awed by this enormous, empty purity. We pass bushes whose branches contain cobwebs of spun snow, and nodules of ice that catch the sunlight and split it into rainbows. The sky is a burnished, metallic blue; there is not a breath of wind, and there is no noise at all, of any kind. The silence is crushing.

Unlike some people, I have never felt free in the wilderness. The emptiness suffocates me. I recognise the symptoms of incipient hysteria and try to fend them off. I make myself think of the dark night, and relief from this blinding visibility. I make myself think of how tiny and unimportant I am, how far beneath notice. I have always found it comforting rather than otherwise to contemplate my own insignificance, for if I am negligible, why should anyone persecute me?

I once knew a man who had been spoken to by God. Of course there were many such men and women in the asylums I lived in–to the extent that I used to imagine that if a stranger from another land arrived at our door, he would think he had stumbled on the place where all the most holy of our society were gathered together. Matthew Smart was tormented by the conversation. He was an engineer who had conceived the idea that the power of steam was so great that it could save the world from sin. He himself had been charged by God with the task of building such an engine, and had sunk considerable resources into starting this project. When he ran out of money, his scheme, and his insanity, were uncovered, but taking him away from his engine was the most unbearable torture for him, because he thought that due to his enforced idleness, we were all going to Hell. He knew how important he was in the scheme of things, and would seize each of us in the grounds and beg us to help him escape, so he could continue his vital work. Among those tortured souls, almost all of them bewailing some private anguish, his beseechings were the most heartbreaking I ever heard. Once or twice I was even tempted to stick my loaded needle into him, to put him out of his misery (but not unbearably tempted, of course). Such is the torment of knowing your own significance.

Parker shouts to the dogs and we come to a bumpy halt. We are still nowhere, only now the forest has long been out of sight and I’m not sure I could any longer point to it.

He comes back towards me. ‘I think I know where they went.’

I look around, to see nothing, of course. The plain stretches away in every direction. It is truly like being at sea. Without the sun, I would have no idea what direction we are travelling in.

‘Over there,’ he points in a direction away from the sun, now sinking to our left, ‘is a Company trading post called Hanover House. Several days away. Over this way the trail leads. There is a place called Himmelvanger–a religious village of some sort. Foreigners. Swedish, I think.’

I follow his pointing finger and peer into the dazzling distance to the west, thinking of the asylum and its turbulently pious inmates.

‘So, Francis …?’ I can hardly give voice to my hope, which is clutching me by the throat.

‘We should be there by nightfall.’

‘Oh …’

I can’t say anything more, in case I destroy this great gift of luck. In the sunlight I suddenly notice that Parker’s hair is not black after all, but has hints of dark brown and chestnut in it, and no trace of white.

He shouts to the dogs again, a wild yell that rings around the empty plain like the cry of an animal, and with it launches himself into the harness, and the sled jerks away from its standstill. The breath is jolted out of my body, but I don’t care.

I am giving thanks, in my own way.

Espen has decided that his wife, Merete, suspects something. He suggests they stop meeting for a while, until things are calmer. Furious, Line carries out her chores, kicking the chickens when they get under her feet, stabbing her needle into the quilts, pulling the thread too tight and rucking the seams. The only thing she enjoys is attending to the boy. Of course everyone knows that he is under arrest for a terrible crime. Today he looks pale and listless as she changes the sheets on his bed.

‘Aren’t you afraid of me now?’

Line is looking out of the window. He’s aware that she’s loitering. She smiles.

‘No, of course not. I don’t believe it for a moment. In fact, I think they are all fools.’

She says it with such vehemence that he looks shocked.

‘I said so to the Scottish one, but he thinks he is doing his duty. He thinks the money is all the proof he needs.’

‘I suppose they’ll take me back and there will be a trial. So it won’t be up to him.’

Line finishes turning down the sheets and he lies down again. She notices how thin his ankles and wrists are. Getting thinner. He seems so young and defenseless it makes her blood boil.

‘I would leave here if I could. Believe me, it’s a death of the soul to live in this place.’

‘I thought you were living good lives away from all temptation and sin.’

‘There’s no such thing.’

‘Would you go back to Toronto?’

‘I can’t. I have no money. That’s why I came in the first place. Life is hard for a woman alone with children.’

‘What if you had money? Would that make it possible?’

Line shrugs. ‘There’s no point thinking about it. Unless my husband suddenly comes back, with a fortune in gold. But he isn’t going to.’ She smiles bitterly.

‘Line …’ Francis takes her hand in his, which makes her stop smiling. He has a grave look about him, which makes her heart jump. When men get that look on their faces, it usually means only one thing.

‘Line, I want you to take this money. There’s nothing I can do with it. Per wouldn’t let them take it away, so if you take it now, you could hide it, and then get away some time–in the spring, maybe.’

Line is watching him as he speaks, amazed. ‘No, you don’t mean that. It’s … no, I couldn’t.’

‘I’m serious. Take it with you now. It’s wasted otherwise. It was Laurent’s–I know he would have wanted you to have it, rather than those men. Where would it end up then? In their pockets, most likely.’

Her heart beats thickly in her throat. What a chance!

‘You don’t know what you are saying.’

‘I know exactly what I’m saying. You’re not happy here. Use it to make yourself a new life. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you shouldn’t be stuck here with all these married men … You should be happy.’ Francis trails off, a little out of his depth. Line puts her other hand on his.

‘You think I’m beautiful?’

Francis smiles, a little embarrassed. ‘Of course. Everyone does.’

‘Do they?’

‘You can see by the way they look at you.’

She feels a flush of pleasure, and it is then that she bends down towards him and places her lips on his. His mouth is warm but immobile, and despite her closed eyes, she immediately knows she has made a terrible mistake. His mouth seems to recoil in disgust, as if it has been touched by a snail or an earthworm. She opens her eyes and pulls back a little, confused. He is looking away, an expression of appalled shock on his face. She tries to excuse herself.

‘I …’ She can’t understand what she has done wrong. ‘I thought you said I was beautiful.’

‘You are. But I didn’t mean … That’s not why I want to give you the money. That’s not what I meant.’

He seems to be trying to get as far away from her as the bedclothes will allow.

‘Oh … Ah Gott.’ Line feels hot and sick with shame. How could she have made things worse for herself? As though she had got up this morning and thought of all the really stupid things she could do today, and rejected shouting her feelings for Espen during morning prayers, and sticking her needle into Britta’s fat behind (both tempting) in favour of kissing a young boy who has been arrested for murder. She starts to laugh, and then, just as suddenly, she is crying.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what has come over me. I am not myself right now. I keep doing stupid things.’ She turns away from the bed.

‘Line, please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I like you, I really do. And I do think you are beautiful. But I’m not … it’s my fault. Don’t cry.’

Line wipes her eyes and nose on her sleeve, just like Anna would. One or two things have just become clear to her. She doesn’t turn round again, but only because she couldn’t bear it if he still looked disgusted.

‘It’s very kind of you. I’ll take the money, if you really mean it, because I don’t think I can stay here. In fact, I know I can’t.’

‘Good. Take it.’

And now she does turn round, and Francis is sitting up in the bed, holding the leather bag. She takes the roll of notes he holds out and resists the urge to count it, because that would look ungrateful. However it seems to be at least forty dollars (forty dollars! Yankee dollars at that), and she tucks them inside her blouse.

After all, it doesn’t matter if he sees this now.

Later she is in the kitchen, surreptitiously filling her mouth with cheese, when Jens bursts in, red with excitement.

‘Guess what? There are more visitors!’

Jens and Sigi run outside and Line follows sulkily to see the shapes of two figures and a dogsled. The Norwegians gather round and help the figure on the sled get to its feet. It staggers and has to be supported. Line catches a glimpse of a fierce dark face, and then fixes on the other person as she realises it is a white woman. It is so unusual to see a woman like that–she has, even through the layers of clothing, an air of refinement–and with this villainous-looking native, that no one knows what to say or do first. The woman is clearly so exhausted that Per turns to the native. Line does not catch the first words spoken, but then she hears, in English, ‘We are looking for Francis Ross. This woman is his mother.’

Line’s first, shameful, thought is that Francis will want the money back. She also feels a stab of jealousy. Even after the embarrassing events of this afternoon, she feels she has an exclusive bond with the boy; he is her friend and ally–the only one at Himmelvanger who does not patronise her. She doesn’t want to be displaced, even in the affections of a potential killer.

Line presses her hand to her bosom over the roll of money and holds it there.

No one, she swears silently, no one will take this away from her now.

Men and women with eager, excited faces pull me to my feet, and hold me upright when I stumble. I can’t understand why they are so pleased to see us, and then exhaustion hits me, and I am overcome with a peculiar trembling and singing in my ears. As the people clustered around nod and smile and chatter in answer to something Parker says, I don’t register anything beyond a confused buzz of noise and the fact that my eyes, though burning hot, remain completely dry. Perhaps I am dehydrated; perhaps I am ill. It is irrelevant; Francis is alive and we have found him, that is all that matters. I even find myself thanking God, in case long-rusted channels of communication are still open.

I think I succeed in controlling the upwelling of feeling in me when I see him. It has been over two weeks since he left home; he looks pale, his hair seems blacker than ever; and he is thin, a child’s body beneath the sheets. It is as though my heart swells to bursting point, and threatens to choke me. I cannot speak, but lean forward to hold him and feel his sharp bones just under the skin. His arms tighten around my shoulders, I can smell him, which is almost more than I can bear. Then I have to pull back as I can no longer see him, and I need to see him. I stroke his hair, his face. I clasp his hands in mine. I can’t stop touching him.

He looks at me, prepared for my presence, I have been led to believe, but still he seems surprised, and a ghost of a smile flits across his face.

‘Mama. You came. How did you do that?’

‘Francis, we have been so worried …’

I stroke his shoulders and arms, try to fight back the tears. I don’t want to embarrass him. Besides, I don’t need to cry any more; ever again.

‘You hate travelling.’

We both laugh, shakily. I allow myself to think, for a moment, of how when we get home we will start again; how there will be no more closed doors, no more brooding silences. After this, we will be happy.

‘Is Papa here too?’

‘Oh … he could not leave the farm. We thought it better if just one of us came.’

Francis’s gaze falls to the bedclothes. It sounds like the thin excuse it is. I wish I had thought of a more convincing lie, but his absence is more eloquent than any explanation of it. Francis does not draw his hands away from mine, but there is a slipping away, somehow. He is disappointed, in spite of everything.

‘He will be so happy to see you.’

‘He’ll be angry.’

‘No, don’t be silly.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘With a tracker called Mr Parker. He kindly offered to bring me, and …’

Of course, he has no knowledge of the happenings in Dove River since he left. Of who Parker is, or might be.

‘They think I killed Laurent Jammet. You know that, don’t you?’ His voice is flat.

‘My dear, it’s a mistake. I saw him … I know you didn’t do that. Mr Parker knew Monsieur Jammet. He has an idea …’

‘You saw him?’ He is looking at me, his eyes wide, with shock or sympathy, I can’t tell. Of course he is surprised. I have thought of the moment I stood at the door of Jammet’s cabin a thousand times a day, each day since, until the memory of that terrible sight has worn smooth. It no longer shocks me.

‘I found him.’

Francis narrows his eyes, as though a sudden burst of feeling seizes him. For a moment I think he is angry, though there is no reason why he should be.

‘ I found him.’

The emphasis is delicate but unmistakable. As though he has to insist on it.

‘I found him, and followed the man who did it, but then I lost him. Mr Moody doesn’t believe me.’

‘Francis, he will. We saw the footprints you were following. You must tell him everything you saw and he will understand.’

Francis sighs sharply–the contemptuous sigh he frequently uses at home when I betray my bottomless stupidity. ‘I have told him everything.’

‘If you … found him, why did you not tell us? Why follow the man alone? What if he had attacked you?’

Francis shrugs. ‘I thought if I waited, I would lose him.’

I don’t say–because he must be thinking it too–that he lost him anyway.

‘Does Papa think I did it?’

‘Francis … of course not. How can you say such a thing?’

He smiles again–a twisted, unhappy smile. He is too young to smile like that, and I know that it is my fault. I failed to make his childhood happy, and now that he is grown up I cannot protect him from the sorrows and difficulties of the world.

I reach out a hand and lay it against the side of his face. ‘I’m sorry.’

He doesn’t even ask what I am apologising for.

I make myself keep talking, about how I will speak to Mr Moody and make him understand that he is wrong. About the future, and how there is nothing to worry about. But his eyes stray away to the ceiling; he is not listening to me, and although I keep hold of his hands in mine, I know that I have lost him. I smile, forcing my face and demeanour to be cheerful, prattling on about this and that, because what else can any of us do?

The Bay has been quiet today. All of yesterday, in the snowstorm, the roar of water smashing on rocks made an angry murmur that permeated the town. Knox has thought previously that there must be a peculiar configuration of the rocky coast that produces, under certain weather conditions, this low but interminable growling. As far as you could see through the swirling veil of snow–which wasn’t very far–the Bay was grey and white, its surface violently ripped and slashed by the wind. At such times one can understand why the first settlers had chosen to build their homes in Dove River, away from this massive, unpredictable presence.

There are few people about now, as dusk falls. The undrifted snow is eighteen inches deep, but wet, and settling into itself. Trampled routes crisscross the street, the most travelled making deep, dirty furrows in the whiteness. The least used are faint sketches, tentative. They go from house to store, from house to house. You can see who in Caulfield is popular, and who rarely goes out. He follows one of the fainter ones now, his feet getting wetter and colder at every step. What on earth possessed him to come out without his galoshes? He tries to remember the minutes before he left the house, to discover what he had been thinking of, but can find nothing. A black hole in his mind. He has had a few of those lately. He does not find this unduly disconcerting.

At the house, all is very quiet. He walks into the drawing room wondering where the usually noisy Susannah is, and is surprised to find Scott and Mackinley seated together on the sofa. There is no sign of his family. He has the impression they have been waiting for him.

‘Gentlemen … Ah, John, I am sorry, we were not expecting company tonight.’

Scott drops his gaze and looks uncomfortable, pursing his small mouth.

Mackinley speaks. His voice is now firm and sober. ‘It is not as company that we are here tonight.’

Knox understands and shuts the door behind him. It occurs to him, briefly, to deny everything; to insist that Mackinley’s drunkenness led him to hear things that were not real, but even as the idea comes to his mind he rejects it.

‘A few days ago,’ Mackinley begins, ‘you said you had not been back to the warehouse, and that Adam and I were the last people to see the prisoner. Adam has been punished for leaving the lock unchained. Yet today, you told me that you had seen the prisoner with your own eyes after I had left him.’

He leans back in his seat, exuding the satisfaction of a hunter who has set a precisely engineered trap. Knox glances at Scott, who meets his eyes for an instant before his gaze shies away. Knox feels that treacherous desire to laugh welling up in him again. Perhaps it is true after all that he is losing his mind. He wonders whether, if he starts to tell the truth now, he will ever be able to stop.

‘What I actually said was that I had seen your idea of justice with my own eyes.’

‘You don’t deny it then?’

‘I saw it and it disgusted me. So I took steps to avoid a travesty of justice. That is what you would have made.’

Scott looks at him, as if he hadn’t believed it before but now finds the courage to confront him. ‘Are you saying that you … let the prisoner go?’ He sounds more indignant that anything.

Knox takes a deep breath. ‘Yes. I decided that was the best thing to do.’

‘Have you gone quite mad? You have no authority to do such a thing!’ This from Scott, who is looking rather ill, as though he has eaten some green potatoes.

‘I am still the magistrate here, I believe.’

Mackinley makes a small noise in his throat. ‘It is a Company matter. I am in charge of it. You have deliberately perverted the course of justice.’

‘It is not a Company matter. You sought to make it so. But if the Company did have anything to do with it, then the justice should be even more impartial. That was not going to happen while you had that man locked up.’

‘I am going to report you for this.’ Mackinley’s colour is heightened, his breathing deep and fast. Knox studies a split in his left thumbnail as he answers, ‘Well, you must do as you see fit. I am not going anywhere. You, on the other hand … I think it is time you found alternative lodging in this town. I am sure Mr Scott can help you with that matter, as with so many others. Good evening, gentlemen.’

Knox stands up and holds the door open. The two men rise and walk past him, Mackinley with his eyes set on a fixed point out in the hallway, Scott following with his eyes on the floor.

Knox sees the front door close behind them and listens to the creaking silence of the house. He is vaguely aware of the two men pausing outside and talking in low voices, before they move away. He feels no regret about what he has done, no fear. Standing in his unlit hallway, Andrew Knox is aware of three things at once: a sort of trembling looseness, as though a lifelong tether has been suddenly untied; a desire to see Thomas Sturrock, who at this moment seems the only man who could possibly understand him; and the fact that for the first time in weeks, the pain in his joints is entirely gone.

Snow falls for the next two days without cease, and each day is colder than the last. Jacob and Parker go out one morning and return with three birds and a hare. God knows how they managed to see them in this weather. It’s not much, but it is a good gesture, since the Norwegians have all these extra mouths to feed.

I spend the time sitting with Francis, although he sleeps a lot, or pretends to. I worry about him; and about the injury to his knee, which is swollen and obviously painful. Per, who claims to have some medical knowledge, says it is not broken, just badly sprained, and only needs time to heal. With patient questioning–Francis volunteers nothing–I manage to extract some sort of account of his journey, and I am amazed and moved that he managed to get so far. I wonder if Angus would be proud of him if he knew. Before I came, he was chiefly looked after by the woman whose name is Line, but now I have taken over these duties. She did not seem pleased when I arrived, and seems to avoid me, although I saw her talking with great intent to Parker in the barn opposite. I cannot imagine what they would have to say to each other. I have to confess that an uncharitable thought entered my mind: after all, she is the only woman here without a husband, albeit through no fault of her own. And she is, admittedly, rather good-looking in a dark, foreign way. When we were introduced she greeted me with a hostile look. I thanked her for taking such good care of Francis, and she demurred, in excellent English, but with a sullenness that I could not understand. Then I realised that by my arrival I had usurped her and sent her back to the common chores where, presumably by reason of her widowhood, she is ordered about by the married women. Francis says she has been very kind, and is fond of her.

Either Moody, or more usually Jacob, sits on watch outside the door, as though they are waiting for me to scream that Francis is attacking me, whereupon they will rush in and save my life. I have revised my first opinion of Mr Moody. In Dove River he seemed kind and diffident, an unwilling law enforcer. Now he has a peevish impatience about him. He has assumed the mantle of authority and wears it without grace. I have asked to speak to him in private. So far he has managed to avoid this, by claiming pressing work duties. But after two days of unrelenting snow everyone knows that there is nothing for him to do but wait, and I can see this in his eyes as he toys with the idea of trotting out another excuse.

‘Very well, Mrs Ross. Why don’t we go to … ah, my room.’

I follow him down the corridor, and the woman Line passes us, giving Moody a nasty look as she does so.

Moody’s room has the same monastic quality as mine, only his belongings are strewn wildly on the furniture and floor as though he has just been burgled. He sweeps his clothes off the chairs and throws them on the bed. As I sit down I see on the desk beside me an envelope addressed to Miss S. Knox. I find this interesting. I am sure he did not intend me to see that; and this is confirmed a moment later when he scoops all the papers on the desk into an untidy heap. He fusses over the mess for a few moments and I reflect that under different circumstances I could feel sorry for him. He is only a few years older than Francis, and has arrived in this country recently and alone.

He clears his throat a couple of times, before speaking.

‘Mrs Ross, I fully understand your concern for Francis. It is only natural, as his mother, that you should feel that.’

‘And it is only natural that you should want to find a perpetrator for this terrible crime.’ I say, pleasantly enough, I think, but his face changes to a look of harried irritation. ‘Francis too wants to find the man responsible, as he has told you.’

Moody composes his expression into one that suggests patience and tolerance under trying circumstances.

‘Mrs Ross, I cannot tell you all my reasons for holding your son as a suspect, but those reasons are very pressing. You have to believe me.’

‘I would have thought that, of all people, you should tell me what they are.’

‘It is a matter of justice, Mrs Ross. There are very good reasons for my actions. Murder is a very serious crime.’

‘The footprints,’ I say. ‘The other trail. What about that?’

He sighs. ‘A coincidence. A trail that the … that your son followed to find a place of safety.’

‘Or the murderer’s trail.’

‘I fully understand your wanting to believe your son is innocent. It is natural and right. But he fled Dove River after the murder with the dead man’s money, and then lied about it. The facts point to one conclusion. I would be neglecting my duty not to act on it.’

I hold my breath for a moment, trying not to show my surprise. Francis didn’t tell me about any stolen money.

‘It would surely be just as negligent not to pursue other possibilities. The trail may be the murderer’s … or it may not. How can you find out if you don’t follow it?’

Moody sighs through his nostrils, and then rubs the bridge of his nose where his spectacles wear two red dents. He has no desire to do anything at all about the other trail.

‘In the current conditions, my duty is to get the suspect to a secure place. Further investigation will have to wait until the weather permits it.’

He seems pleased at this speech, having put the onus on his duty, rather than on himself. He even allows himself a slight smile, as though he rather regrets having these matters taken out of his own hands. I smile too, since that is the way things are going, but I no longer feel inclined to spend any sympathy on him, lonely young man or not.

‘Mr Moody, that is no excuse at all. We must follow that trail, because when the weather permits, as you put it, there will be nothing left to follow, and your duty is to find the truth, and nothing else. You can leave Francis in the care of the people here, or if you don’t trust them, then leave your colleague to watch him. Parker will follow the trail, and you and I will see where it leads.’

Moody looks astonished and angry. ‘It is not for you, Mrs Ross, to tell me how to do my duty.’

‘It is for anyone to point out a dereliction of duty in a case as important as this.’

He stares at me, surprised at being spoken to like this. I can tell I am pressing on a nerve; perhaps he has already thought about the trail and it bothers him. I suspect him of having a tidy mind, and those footsteps leading off into the wilderness are a nagging loose end.

‘After all, if you are right …’ I can’t bring myself to say it. ‘If you are right, you will know that you have eliminated every possibility, and your conscience will be clear. Besides, if it comes to a court of law, the presence of the trail and the possibility that it gives rise to … well, it would throw your conclusions into question, at least, would it not?’

Moody stares hard at me, then his eyes go to the window. Even there he seems unable to find an answer.

When I ask Francis about the money, he simply refuses to talk. He sighs sharply, implying that the answer is obvious and I am a fool for not seeing it. I feel a surge of the old irritation with him.

‘I am trying to help you. But I can’t if you won’t tell me what happened. Moody is convinced you stole it.’

Francis looks at the ceiling; at the walls; anywhere but my eyes. ‘I did steal it.’

‘What? Why on earth?’

‘Because I needed money if I was going on a journey. I might need help to find the killer. I might have to pay for it.’

‘You had help at home. Money at home. Why didn’t you take that?’

‘I told you why I couldn’t come back.’

‘But … tracks don’t disappear that quickly.’

‘So you think it was me, too?’

He is smiling, that bitter, old smile.

‘No … of course I don’t. But–I wish you would tell me why you were there in the middle of the night.’

Francis stops smiling. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, long enough that I think I will just get up and walk away.

‘Laurent Jammet …’ he pauses ‘… was the only person I could talk to. Now there’s no one. I don’t care if I never go back.’

After some moments I realise I have stopped breathing. I tell myself that he is speaking without thinking, or that he wants to wound me. Francis has always been able to hurt me more than any one else.

‘I am sorry you lost a friend. And in such a way. I would give anything for you not to have seen that.’

His anger comes leaping out at me, childish anger on the verge of tears.

‘Is that all you can say? You wish I hadn’t seen it? What does that matter? Why does no one think about Laurent? He was the one who was killed. Why don’t you wish he hadn’t been killed?’

He flings himself back on the pillows, dry-eyed, and the anger is gone as suddenly as it appeared.

‘I’m sorry, my darling. I’m sorry. I do wish that, of course. No one should die like that. He was a nice man. He seemed to … love life.’

I am reminded that I hardly knew him, but this seems a safe enough bet. But if I think I am comforting Francis, or saying what he wants to hear, I am, as usual, wrong. His voice is a low murmur.

‘He wasn’t nice. He was callous. He would find your weakness and use it to make jokes. Anything to make people laugh, no matter what it was. He didn’t care.’

This sudden about-turn is more than I can follow. I have a sudden, dreadful fear that Francis is about to confess something to me. I stroke his forehead and say ‘shh’, as if he were still a child, but I do not know what to think. And so I talk nonsense, saying anything, just to keep Francis from opening his mouth and saying something I will regret.

Parker is in a barn with Jacob and one of the Norwegians. They seem to have cut themselves off from the drama going on across the courtyard, and are discussing ringworm, as far as I can tell. I feel awkward asking Parker to speak to me alone, now that we are back in a sort of civilisation. I catch a glimpse of the Norwegian looking at me, speculating, I am sure, about my marriage and my peculiar choice of companion. In the shadows of the barn I am reminded of the cold, dark warehouse. It seems a long time ago.

‘Mr Moody has no interest in following the other trail. We may have to go alone.’

‘It will be very hard. It would be better if you stayed here, with your son.’

‘But, there have to be … witnesses.’

I think I’ve put it carefully–without stating that I don’t trust him, but he is, in any case, not offended.

‘You don’t know that I would come back.’

‘Moody must be made to see … whatever we find. If only we could take Francis …’

Parker shrugs. ‘If your son was the killer, he would want to put the blame on someone else. Moody would not accept that.’

I know Parker is right. For the first time, I have a sense of hopelessness, of utter weariness. I have been struggling to climb a steep and slippery slope, but I have done it. Now the ground is starting to slide away beneath me, and I do not know what to do. I do not know that I can count on Parker to help me. I do not know why he should. Looking into his eyes I can see no trace of compassion–no trace of anything I recognise. Still, if pleading is the price to pay, I will do it. And a lot more besides.

‘You have to take me. I have to find proof that he is innocent. No one else cares whom they arrest as long as they have someone. I beg you.’

‘What if there is nothing to find? Have you thought of that?’

I have thought of that, but have no answer for it. I stare at his impassive face, at the eyes that seem to have no distinction between iris and pupil at all, but are all darkness, and feel a chill pass through me.

There is no intoxicating liquor of any kind in the Fields of Heaven. The elect have no need for artificial stimulants, or for a road to oblivion. They are at all times happy and serene. After being harangued by Mrs Ross, Donald speculates on just what he would give for a glass of the disgusting rum drunk in such quantities at Fort Edgar. Winter is drinking season; it smoothes the flow of endless nights when warmth is a distant memory. It makes endurable the terrible jokes your companions tell and retell. It makes the companions themselves endurable. Donald has half a flask of whisky that he swore to himself he would save for the journey back, but he is sorely tempted. He has a feeling that he will not be going back any time soon.

The snow has turned to rain. The temperature rises and the snowflakes are heavy with water, no longer floating, but falling to the ground. The nature of the lying snow changes too: from being light and feathery like a quilt, it has become sodden and unstable. Loaded with moisture, the snow has no strength; large masses break away and slide off the roof opposite Donald’s window, landing with a soft, heavy thump. The roofs are gradually revealed in their sombre colours–rust red, mineral blue. The snow itself is no longer white, but a translucent grey. Water drips continually from the eaves. The sound is inescapable; quiet but insistent, like conscience.

He sees the tall native, Parker, cross the yard. He seems to be packing up ready to leave. Donald knows in his bones that he will go with Parker and the woman. Just to make sure that there is nothing in this story. He wonders if this is bravery; the thought of setting out across that dreadful plain terrifies him. On the other hand, if he takes the boy back as his suspect and then turns out to have been wrong, he will be reprimanded, condemned, talked about in low voices in drinking rooms. Dereliction of duty will not be good for his career. When it comes to a choice between the wilderness and professional ignominy, he knows which frightens him most.

Parker told him the trading post is no more than six days’ march from here–weather conditions allowing. It is an opportunity to meet the factor there–perhaps a man who can help him advance. He tells Jacob that he must stay and guard the boy. The prisoner will be safe here for the time being.

Jacob looks very serious. ‘Excuse me, but it would be better if I go with them. It will be hard travelling. I know what to look for.’

There is nothing Donald would like more than to stay at Himmelvanger while Jacob trudges through the slush and ice to this godforsaken place, but it’s no good.

‘Thank you, Jacob, but I must go and decide what is to be done. And someone must stay here.’ He smiles at Jacob, who looks gravely back.

‘It would be better if I came with you. I can … look after you.’

Donald smiles, touched at his loyalty. Also at how Jacob seems to regard him, out there anyway, as a defenceless child.

‘There is no need. Parker has to come back here in any case, to bring Mrs Ross back. It will be interesting to see another Company post.’

He forces himself to sound more cheerful than he feels. There is apprehension, and more than a little dread, in the prospect of the cold wilderness ahead. Jacob looks thoughtful, as if struggling with himself.

‘But you see … I had a dream. You might think it stupid, but listen: I had a dream about you on your own. There was danger. I think I should go with you.’

Donald quells the lurch in his stomach, and raises his voice further, to chase out the superstitions in Jacob, and in himself. Native nonsense–he didn’t think Jacob was prey to such fancies.

‘I’m not surprised you’ve been dreaming with that bloody goat’s cheese they eat here: it’s enough to give anyone nightmares!’

Jacob doesn’t join him in laughter. He knows he has been reprimanded.

‘It is important to keep an eye on the boy. He may … say something important. You should try and gain his confidence.’

Jacob looks doubtful, but nods.

‘Would you go and tell Mr Parker that I will be accompanying them?’

When Jacob has gone, Donald has a sudden impulse to shout after him, to express his fervent gratitude for his concern, however misguided, and his friendship. Jacob is the only person here who cares in the slightest what happens to him. Then he stops himself; he is a grown man. He does not need a native servant to look after him, not even Jacob.

Donald reflects on the change that has taken place in their relationship. After the trip to Dove River and its grisly aftermath, there was a closeness between them that he must have treasured more than he knew, since now he regrets its absence. Donald attributes it to the fact that he is now the boss, whereas before, Mackinley treated them both with much the same sort of mild contempt, and they (or at least Donald) reflected that contempt back on him in a subtler form. Now he sees Mackinley in a different light, with more understanding of the complexities of command. Well, his father always told him that life was not a picnic, that is, not there to be enjoyed. As a child he used to find that an extraordinary, perverse idea, but now his father’s words make sense. To be an adult is to rise to uncertain and alarming challenges, to eschew friendship in favour of responsibility. Sometimes you must forgo being liked in order to be respected. And something else occurs to him: something that chimes with his thoughts of Susannah. For only by being respected can a man truly win love, since for a woman, love must contain an element of awe.

He looks at his letters: love letters, he supposes, although they contain nothing of a very sentimental nature. It is too early for that, though one day, who knows … There are four, neatly folded and addressed, and these he will give to Per to send to Dove River when the weather allows. He is pleased with the letters, which he has copied out in his room, embellishing them with tortuous philosophical digressions, the composition of which took up two long, alcohol-free evenings. He imagines Susannah reading them and keeping them in a pocket, or wrapped in a scented handkerchief (the one he gave her?) in a drawer.

With a rush of feeling, he tries to conjure the image of her face at the precise moment she smiled at him in the library, but finds, to his consternation, that he can’t quite fix her in his mind. He has a vague impression of her smile, the soft light brown hair, the pale, glowing skin and hazel eyes, but the parts keep shifting and fading, and refuse to coalesce into a recognisable human whole. For some reason he can remember the face of her sister Maria, and that of her father, in perfect, three-dimensional clarity, but Susannah’s likeness is just beyond his reach.

He sits down to write a short note to her, to tell her of his forthcoming journey. He is torn between wanting to make it sound dangerous and daring, and not wanting to worry her unduly if she receives it before his return. In the end he makes light of it, saying he will probably be back in Caulfield in about three weeks, and it will be a fine opportunity to represent the Company and meet another factor, while setting his mind at rest on the subject of Francis’s guilt. He assures her of his best wishes, and asks, in a coda that slightly surprises him, to send his warm regards to her sister. He stares at the page for a moment, wondering if it looks odd, but there is no time to copy out the whole letter, and so he seals it in an envelope and places it with the others.

It is ten o’clock on a Thursday evening, three weeks since Laurent Jammet’s body was found. Maria is staring out of the window of her father’s study, even though there is nothing to see. She can make out lances of rain drumming into the mud of what is supposed to be the garden, but at the moment resembles a cattle pen. Beyond that, only a seething darkness, where occasional veils of water are swathed this way and that by the wind, picking up light from who knows where.

Inside the house it’s not much better. After the events of the afternoon, Mrs Knox lies prostrate in her bedroom under the influence of something Dr Gray gave her an hour ago. She was less upset than Maria would have thought, but the doctor had been persuasive in talking of the dangers of delayed shock, so Maria had encouraged her mother to swallow the draught. Susannah was more overtly distressed, but that is Susannah’s way–a sudden storm followed by clear skies. As yet, still stormy, although from down here Maria can hear nothing. The house is deathly quiet.

After some debate–very much debate, as the town elders could not agree and it was all so unprecedented, her father was taken into custody on a charge of perverting the course of justice. Because he is, after all, the supposed magistrate of this community and not some scruffy half-breed stranger, he has not been consigned to the warehouse, but it was decided that he should be detained at John Scott’s leisure. This means that he is locked in the room next door to Mr Sturrock and has his meals brought up to him. The room is very similar to Mr Sturrock’s lodgings and the fare is the same, but Maria’s father does not have to pay for the privilege.

John Scott, together with Mr Mackinley and Archie Spence, came and knocked on the door at half past five this evening. Maria answered, and then led them to the drawing room while she fetched her father. They talked behind closed doors for twenty minutes before her father came out to explain that he was, in effect, in custody. There was a slight smile playing round his mouth, as though he was enjoying a private joke. While his wife remonstrated, dry-eyed and furious, and Susannah wept, Maria stood by and could not think of anything to say. Her mother marched into the drawing room and coruscated the men there. They sat open-mouthed and cowed as she withered them with her scorn. John Scott had clearly wavered in the plan to actually incarcerate her father in his house, but Mackinley stood firm, his eyes and mouth betraying his delight. Her father closed the argument by saying that he would be staying just along the road, only until the magistrate from St Pierre could be brought to officiate. He asked without a hint of irony whether they would be setting bail. Obviously the men had forgotten all about such a thing. John Scott opened his mouth but no sound came out. Mackinley cleared his throat, and said they would think on the matter overnight, and set a figure tomorrow. The trouble was, they really needed to ask her father what to do.

Eventually Knox had put an end to it by suggesting that they go; it was dinnertime, he said, and they were keeping the cooks waiting. Of course, he was referring to Mary in their kitchen, but it sounded rather as though he was chiding his arresters for making him late for his supper, and Mackinley had frowned, although her father did not seem to notice. There was a lightness about his demeanour, Maria thought: it was almost as though he was pleased to be arrested, as though they had fallen into some trap of his own making. The three women watched as their husband and father led the other men out of the house, having asked if they wanted to borrow umbrellas or galoshes. Mackinley and the others declined, although it was by now raining heavily, and there were several spares.

Sturrock listens to the sound of footsteps mounting the stairs. He has been resting on his bed, thinking about Mrs Ross and whether she has caught up with her son–who undoubtedly, to his mind, has taken the bone tablet with him. The shambolic events of the last few days make him think he should not stay here any longer. Now the snow is melting, maybe it is time to make his escape. But any place he goes can only be further from the object of his desire, and surely they must bring the boy back here when they have found him. He sighs; the whisky bottle that has been such good company for the past few days is nearly empty. It is the story of his life, to be so near and yet still so far from achieving anything of lasting worth, and to have run out of liquor.

At this point in his reflections he rouses himself to get up and find out what all the noise was about: a new neighbour, perhaps. He opens the door to see Mr Mackinley from the Company and John Scott, together with another man he does not know. Scott comes towards him, having closed the door to the room opposite.

‘Ah, Mr Sturrock. I was just coming to tell you …’

‘A new neighbour?’ Sturrock asks with a smile, the possibility of some good conversation the cause for optimism.

‘Not exactly.’ Sturrock notices the look of contempt Mackinley throws at the back of Scott’s head. ‘No, we find ourselves in the awkward situation of, em, having to detain the magistrate, Mr Knox … and since we cannot put him in the warehouse, ha ha, it seemed this house would be as good a place as any, for the time being.’

Scott pauses, a light sweat beading his forehead. The man looks under considerable strain, his face pinker than ever.

‘I hope it will not inconvenience you, Mr Sturrock.’ This from Mackinley.

‘You mean you’re locking Knox in that room there?’ Sturrock asks, almost gaily. ‘What the hell has he done?’

The men all glance at each other, as if wondering whether Sturrock is entitled to such information.

‘It turns out that the prisoner’s escape was no accident. Knox released him, thus halting the wheels of justice.’

Sturrock becomes aware that his eyebrows are trying to crawl up his forehead and join his hair. ‘Good God, is he mad?’

It suddenly occurs to him that Knox will be listening to every word–for he can hardly do otherwise. ‘I mean to say, what an extraordinary thing.’

‘Extraordinary, yes.’

Mackinley makes to turn away, and Sturrock feels a surge of dislike.

‘Well well …’

‘Quite.’

Scott says, in a conversational tone of voice: ‘Dinner will be ready shortly, Mr Sturrock.’

‘Ah, thank you. Thank you.’

At Mackinley’s signal the other men make to go downstairs, leaving Sturrock staring at the locked door. When the footsteps have died away he calls out in a low voice, ‘Mr Knox? Mr Knox?’

‘I hear you, Mr Sturrock.’

‘Is this true?’

‘Yes, it’s true.’

‘Well … are you all right?’

‘Quite comfortable, thank you. I think I will retire now.’

‘Well, good night. Give me a shout if you … well, if you want someone to talk to.’

There is no further reply. Sturrock wonders whether this means his source of income has run dry.

Sturrock is downstairs by the stove in Scott’s store, which becomes a bar after dark, when Maria Knox walks in. The rain has kept up its assault for several hours; the snow is entirely gone and the citizens of Caulfield are wading in mud up to their ankles. It is late–he can’t remember how late now, but presumably she has come to speak to her father. However, she comes straight towards him. He knows who she is although they have never spoken.

‘Mr Sturrock? I am Maria Knox.’

He inclines his head gravely out of deference to her situation. The gravity is heightened by the five or so glasses of whisky he has drunk, and the memories he has been immersed in for the past hour.

‘I know it is late, but I was hoping to speak to you.’

‘Speak to me?’ He inclines his head again–really, he must be quite drunk–though this time gallantly. ‘That would be an undeserved pleasure.’

‘There is no need for flattery. I wanted to talk to someone … well, you are not one of us, and the town seems to have gone quite mad.’

Her voice is low, although there is no one else within earshot. ‘You mean your father’s … predicament.’

She looks at him with a look that is both exasperated and calculating. ‘I don’t quite know what I am doing here. I think it is because Mr Moody, the Company man, spoke of you, and seemed to have formed a favourable impression, despite … everything. Heaven knows what I expected …’

He realises–the drink is making him slow-witted–that she is on the verge of tears, and her exasperation is with herself. ‘I don’t know who else I can talk to. I am very worried, very worried indeed. You are a man of experience, Mr Sturrock, what would you do in my circumstances?’

‘About your father? Is there anything you can do, other than wait? I believe they are sending for the magistrate from St Pierre in the morning, or when the roads are passable.’

‘You think they are not passable?’

‘Weather like this? I doubt it very much.’

‘I was thinking of going tonight, to be there first. There is no telling what they will say about him.’

‘My dear girl … you cannot mean it. To attempt the journey tonight, in this rain … it would be madness. Your father would be horrified. It would be the worst thing you could do to him.’

‘You think so? Perhaps you are right. In any case, the truth is I am too much of a coward to attempt such a journey on my own. Oh, God!’ She hides her head in her hands, though only for a second. She does not dissolve into tears. Sturrock feels an admiration for her, and orders another drink for himself, and one for her.

‘You knew Monsieur Jammet, did you not? What do you think happened to him?’

‘I didn’t know him all that well. But he was a man with many secrets, and men with secrets have, perhaps, more enemies than those without.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Erm, only that … well, I came to Caulfield–and am here still–because I wanted to buy an item that Jammet owned. He knew that. Only the item has vanished.’

‘Stolen?’

‘It seems likely. Perhaps by Francis Ross. So I wait for his return.’

‘Do you think Francis killed him then?’

‘I did not know him at all. So I cannot say.’

‘I did … I mean, I do.’

‘And what do you think?’

Maria pauses, staring into her glass–to her surprise already empty. ‘How can you know what people are capable of? I have thought I have judged people well in the past, only to be proved quite wrong.’

The morning the others are due to leave, Jacob walks in and stands by the bed. He speaks to Francis but looks at the wall.

‘I don’t suppose you’re going anywhere, but if you do, I’ll come after you and break the other leg. Do you understand?’

Francis nods, thinking of the knife scar Donald showed him.

‘So I don’t need to sit in here all day.’

Francis shakes his head.

So he is surprised when Jacob comes back. Jacob has found a piece of wood in the store; it is straight and strong–the trunk of a young birch, and will be just the right length. He strips off the bark and whittles away any irregularities, and rounds off the forked top into a smooth Y. Francis watches his hands with reluctant fascination; it is amazing how fast the tree takes on the qualities associated with a crutch. Jacob pads the top with strips of old blanket, which he winds round the wood like a bandage.

‘I should do this with leather, or it will get wet.’

‘During my escape, you mean.’

At first, when Francis said reckless or stupid things, not caring what he thought of him, Jacob didn’t seem sure whether Francis was joking or not; he would glance doubtfully at him, his face impassive. This time, though, he smiles. Francis thinks, he’s not much older than I am.

It will be a relief–to both of them, he thinks–to be free of the tense and anxious Moody. And a relief to himself, although he feels guilty for admitting it, to be free of his mother. Whenever she is in the room there is such a weight of unspoken words pressing on them both he can hardly breathe. It would take years to say them all, just to get them out of the way.

Just before leaving, his mother comes into his room and looks at Jacob, who gets up and leaves without a word. She sits by his bed and folds her hands together.

‘We are leaving. We will follow the trail you followed–Mr Parker knows where it goes. It’s a pity you can’t come, in case we see the man, but … at least we can look.’

Francis nods. His mother’s face is grim and determined, but she looks tired, and the lines round her eyes are more noticeable than usual. He feels a sudden surge of gratitude to her, for doing what he meant to do, when she is so afraid of the wilderness.

‘Thank you. You’re brave to do this.’

She twitches her shoulders, as if annoyed. But she isn’t; she’s pleased. She touches her hand to his face, running her fingers along his jaw. Someone else did a very similar thing, from time to time. Francis tries not to think about that.

‘Don’t be silly. I’ll be with Parker and Moody; there’s nothing brave about it.’

They share shy, wintry smiles. Francis fights an almost overwhelming urge to tell her the truth. It would be such a relief to tell someone, to put down the burden. But even in the second he allows himself to imagine such a luxury, he knows he will say nothing.

Then she says, to his surprise, ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

Francis is embarrassed. He nods, unable for some reason to meet her eyes.

‘Your father loves you too.’

No he doesn’t, Francis thinks. You have no idea how much he hates me. But he says nothing.

‘Is there nothing else you can tell me?’

Francis sighs. There are so many things she doesn’t know.

‘Mr Moody thinks the bone tablet may be important. If it is valuable, it might have been a … reason. Will you let me take it?’

Francis doesn’t want to give it up, but can’t think of a good reason not to, so he hands his mother the leather bag with the tablet in it. She takes it out and looks at it. She has read a lot, and knows a lot, but she stares at the tiny angular markings with a frown of incomprehension.

‘Be careful with it,’ he mumbles.

She gives him a look: she who is always careful with things.

The previous summer, before school broke up, which it did early to allow the boys to help short-handed fathers, something unprecedented had happened to him. Never having thought too much about such things, Francis, like every other boy within a ten-mile radius, fell in love with Susannah Knox.

She was a year above him at school and was without doubt the outstanding beauty of that year; slender, rounded, happy, with a sweet, exquisite face. He dreamt of Susannah by night, and by day imagined her and him together–in various vague but romantic scenarios, such as rowing a boat on the bay, or him showing her his secret hiding places in the woods. The sight of her walking past the classroom, or laughing with friends in the schoolyard, would send an exquisite, thrilling shock through his body; skin prickled, breath caught, head thrummed with blood. He would turn his head away, feigning disinterest, and since he had no close friends, his secret was well hidden. He was well aware that he was not alone in this passion, and that she could take her pick of older and more popular candidates, but she did not seem to bestow special favours on any of them. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had; it wasn’t as though he actually expected anything to happen. It was enough that he could annex her in his dreams.

There was an occasion–the annual summer picnic, which took place every year at the end of term, when the entire school trekked down to a slim stretch of sandy beach on the bay. Under the indolent eyes of two bored teachers they ate sandwiches, drank ginger beer and swam, shrieking and splashing, until it got dark. Francis, who generally hated such occasions of enforced jollity and had considered avoiding it, ended up going, because Susannah would be there, and as she was about to leave school, he did not know how he was going to catch the quick, sweet glimpses of her that fed his passion.

He found a spot not far from where Susannah and some of the other senior girls had sat down, only to be joined about a minute later by Ida Pretty. Ida was two years younger than Francis, and his next-door neighbour. He liked her, alone of her large family; she was sharp-tongued and funny, but she could be something of a pain. She liked Francis and was always pestering him; had been watching him as assiduously (but not as covertly) as he was watching Susannah.

Now she sat down with her basket and shaded her eyes, looking over the water.

‘I reckon it’s gonna rain later. Look at that cloud. They coulda chosen a better day for it, doncha think?’

She sounded hopeful. A malcontent and a loner like him, she shared his horror of events that were supposed to be both communal and fun.

‘I don’t know. I guess.’

Francis hoped that, if he didn’t speak to her too much, Ida would take the hint and wander off. He debated the question of whether it was less desirable to be seen sitting moodily alone, or with an annoying junior member of the school, but from Susannah’s intense whispered conversations with her girlfriends, it didn’t seem likely that she would notice whatever he did. And there were various senior boys circling, ostentatiously minding their own business, but doing so within eyeshot of the senior girls; larking about, whooping and competing to throw stones furthest into the water.

As the sun beat down, levels of activity declined: sandwiches were eaten, flies were swatted, clothes shed. Susannah’s group had split off into threesomes and twosomes, and she herself had gone for a walk with Marion Mackay. Francis lay back with his head against a slab of rock and pulled his hat over his eyes. The sun pierced the loose weave, dazzling him pleasantly. Ida had lapsed into a grumpy silence, and was pretending to read Puddenhead Wilson.

By turning his head minutely from side to side, he was making the sunlight flare into his eyes and disappear, when Ida said, ‘Whatcha think of Susannah Knox?’

‘Huh?’

He had of course been thinking of her. Guiltily he tried to banish her from his mind.

‘Susannah Knox. Whatcha think of her?’

‘She’s all right, I guess.’

‘Everyone in school seems to think she’s about the prettiest girl they’ve ever seen.’

‘Do they?’

‘Well, yeah.’

He couldn’t tell whether Ida was looking at him or not. His heart was thumping, but his voice sounded suitably bored.

‘She’s pretty enough.’

‘You think so?’

‘I guess.’

This was getting irritating. He pulled the hat from his face and squinted at her. She was sitting with her knees hunched up, shoulders round her ears. Her small face was scrunched up against the sun and she looked miserable and angry.

‘Why?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Does what matter? That she’s pretty?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know. Depends, I suppose.’

‘On what?’

‘On who you’re talking to. I guess it matters to her. Geez, Ida.’

He pulled the hat back over his eyes and a moment later heard her get up and walk huffily away. He must have fallen asleep, because he woke up when she sat down again, slightly startled and wondering where he was, and why he was so hot. The hat had slipped off his face and he was dazzled, red rockets bursting in front of his eyes. The skin of his face felt tight and tender. He was going to have a sunburn.

‘Do you mind if I sit here a minute?’

The voice was not Ida’s. Francis pulled himself up, to see Susannah Knox smiling down at him. Shock slid down his spine like ice water.

‘No. No, not at all.’

He looked round. The beach seemed much emptier than before, the group of girls she had been sitting with nowhere in sight.

‘Guess I was asleep.’

‘I’m sorry. I woke you up.’

‘It’s okay. A good thing. Think I’m going to have a sunburn.’

He touched his forehead gently. Susannah leant towards him, peering at him from what seemed a very close distance. He could see each curved, individual eyelash; the tiny blond hairs on her cheek.

‘Yeah, it looks a little red. It’s not too bad, though. You’re lucky, you’ve got that skin that, well it’s quite dark, you know what I mean? Me, I just get freckles and look like a beetroot.’

She smiled her enchanting smile. The sun was partially behind her and cast a radiant halo around her head, her light brown hair turned to strands of gold and platinum. Francis was finding it difficult to breathe. At least if he blushed now, she wouldn’t notice.

‘So, are you having a good time?’ he managed to say at last, having failed to think of anything cleverer.

‘What, here? I guess it’s okay. Some of those boys are being a pain. Emlyn Pretty pushed Matthew into the water with all his clothes on and laughed for about an hour. It was kind of mean.’

‘Yeah?’

Francis was secretly exultant. He had an unfortunate past with Emlyn. Lucky it wasn’t him pushed into the water.

Then, try as he might, he could not come up with anything else to say. He stared out at the water for a long time, praying for inspiration. Susannah didn’t seem to mind; she picked at the ends of her hair, apparently deep in thought.

‘Is Ida your girlfriend?’

This came so out of the blue that Francis could hardly speak for astonishment. Then he laughed. What an extraordinary idea. An extraordinary question.

‘No! I mean, she’s just a friend. She lives next door, you know. Just upriver. She’s two years younger than me,’ he added, for good measure.

‘Oh … You live next door to the Prettys, huh?’

She must have known, as everyone knew where everyone else lived. She busied herself even more with her hair. What she was doing to it, he couldn’t tell; obviously something fiddly that required immense concentration.

‘You know’–at last she tossed the piece of hair aside with a decisive movement, and shook it back from her face–‘we’re going to have a picnic next Saturday, just a few of us, up by the dipping pool. You can come, if you like. It’ll just be Maria, you know, my sister, and Marion and Emma, maybe Joe …’

She was looking at him, finally, her eyes unreadable. Francis saw her as a dark shape blocking the sun, her features misty and dazzled, like a Sunday School angel.

‘Saturday? Um …’ He couldn’t quite believe what was happening. But it appeared that Susannah–the one and only Susannah Knox–was inviting him to a picnic; an exclusive picnic, to which only her nearest friends were invited (and Joe Bell, but he was well known to go around with Emma Spence). Then suddenly it crossed his mind that maybe it was all a terrible joke. What if she had come to ask him to a picnic that didn’t exist? If he turned up next Saturday, there would be no one there, or, worse, hordes of seniors watching and laughing their heads off at his presumption. She didn’t look like she was joking, though. She was still looking at him, and then she let out a short, nervous laugh.

‘Geez. Keep a girl waiting, why don’t you!’

‘Sorry. Um … it’s just that, I’ll have to speak to my dad, to see if he wants me to work … first. Thanks, though. It sounds nice.’

His heart was hammering its consternation. Did he really just say that?

‘Well, okay. Let me know, if you can, huh?’ Uncertainly, she stood up.

‘Yeah, I will. Thanks.’

She looked more beautiful than usual at that moment, her face serious and lovely, smoothing down her hair. She gave a little smile and turned away. He thought she looked sad. He lay back and tipped the hat back over his eyes, so that he could secretly watch her wander back over to another part of the beach, where she rejoined some other seniors. Suddenly he felt a sense of wonder sweep over him. She had asked him to a picnic. She, who had never spoken more than ten words to him before, ever: she had asked him to a picnic!

Francis watched some younger boys hurtling a piece of driftwood into the shallow water, spinning it across the surface dangerously close to one another’s legs, skittering out of the way of the bright splashes. Their howls of laughter were strangely distant. He thought of the next Saturday. His father had long ago given up asking him to help out at weekends; he certainly wasn’t expecting him to. He thought of the picnic by the dipping pool on the river, where oaks and willows dappled the sun on water the colour of tea; and girls in light summer dresses would sit in pools of pale cotton.

And he knew he would not go.