The Tenderness of Wolves

THE WINTER PARTNERS

Dr Watson was the go-ahead kind of asylum superintendent. He wanted to make a name for himself, to write monographs and be invited to give lectures, where he would be surrounded by admiring young women. In the meantime however, the only young women in the vicinity were to a greater or lesser degree insane, and of them he picked me to while away the time until he was famous enough to leave.

I had been in the public asylum a few months when he arrived and all that time the place buzzed with rumours of a new director. Life in an asylum is on the whole tremendously boring, and any change of circumstance is the subject of furious debate, such as a change of porridge oats at breakfast, or moving the sewing hour from three to four in the p.m. So a new superintendent was a major occurrence: fuel for weeks of gossip and speculation. And when he arrived, he wasn’t a disappointment. Young and handsome, he had a sunny, kindly face and a pleasant baritone voice. Every woman in the place fell in love overnight. I won’t say I was completely indifferent, but it was amusing to see some of the women decorate themselves with ribbons and flowers to try and snare his attention. Watson was always gallant and charming, taking their hands and paying compliments, causing them to giggle and blush. That summer, the nights in the female dormitory were full of sighs.

Since I had held back from the general idol-worship, I was surprised to get a summons to Watson’s office and wondered what I had done wrong. I found him hovering around a vast contraption set up in the middle of the room. I immediately assumed it was a machine along the lines of the douche, designed to deliver to the insane some alarming sensation or other, but I couldn’t work out what it was, and felt rather nervous.

‘Ah, good morning Miss Hay.’ Watson looked up and smiled. He seemed very pleased with himself. I was more stunned, actually, by the change in the room, which under the previous incumbent had been dark and depressing, as well as smelling slightly off. It was a beautiful room (the whole asylum was impressive in a neo-classical way); high-ceilinged, with a wide bow window that looked out over the grounds. Watson had done away with the heavy curtains from the windows and it was full of southern light. The walls had been painted primrose, there were flowers on the table, and a picturesque arrangement of rocks and ferns stood against one wall.

‘Good morning,’ I said, unable to stop smiling.

‘You like my office?’

‘Yes, very much.’

‘Good. Your tastes are like my own. I think it is important to make one’s surroundings attractive. If one is surrounded by ugliness, how can one be happy?’

I thought he was not entirely serious, and muttered something meaningless in reply, thinking he was fortunate to have the power to change his surroundings to suit himself.

‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘the room is even more attractive with you in it.’

Despite knowing his ways, I felt a hint of a blush then, but tried to hide it by looking out of the window at some of the inmates, who were at that moment strolling or being led around the gardens.

We talked idly for some time, and I guessed he was trying to form an idea of my mental frailties and whether I was prone to violent outbursts. What I said seemed to please him, because he then began to explain the machine. It was in essence a box for making pictures, and he wanted, he said, to make studies of the inmates. He thought this might advance the understanding of madness and the treatment of it, although I was never very clear about how this was supposed to happen. In particular, it seemed, he wanted to make pictures of me.

‘You have a very suitable face for the camera, clear and expressive, and that is exactly what is needed.’

I was flattered at the thought that he had noticed me and singled me out for attention, and it presented a welcome diversion from the daily routine. As I said, life in the asylum, apart from the odd convulsion or attempted suicide, was tedious in the extreme.

‘What I was thinking of,’ he explained, his eyes dropping to his desk, ‘is a series of studies of, well … you, say, in poses that are typical of certain mental conditions. Um, for example … there is something we call the Ophelia complex, named after an afflicted character in a famous play …’ He looked at me here to see if I showed any recognition.

‘I know it,’ I said.

‘Ah, excellent. Well … so, you see, an illustration of that would be a … a lovelorn pose, with a crown of flowers and so on. You see what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘It will be a great help to me with a monograph I am writing. The pictures will illustrate my thesis, particularly for people who have never been inside an asylum and find one difficult to imagine.’

I nodded politely, and when he didn’t elaborate, asked, ‘What is your thesis?’

He looked a little startled. ‘Oh. My thesis is, well … that there are certain patterns to madness; certain physical attitudes and movements that are common to different patients, indicative of their inner states. That, although every patient has an individual history, they fall into groups which share certain traits and attitudes. And also that …’ he paused, apparently deep in thought ‘… by a repeated and concentrated study of these attitudes, we can discover more about ways to cure those poor unfortunates.’

‘Ah,’ I said, brightly, wondering what attitudes I, as one of those unfortunates, tended to strike. Several unsuitable pictures presented themselves.

‘And,’ he went on, ‘perhaps you could join me for lunch on those days when you are so kind as to give me your time?’

My mouth watered at the thought. The food in the asylum was wholesome enough but bland, stodgy and monotonous. I think there was a theory (maybe even a thesis) that certain tastes were dangerously stimulating, and too much meat, say, or anything overly rich or spicy would inflame already delicate sensibilities and cause a riot. I was already pleased at the prospect of being a model, but the promise of proper, interesting food would alone have persuaded me.

‘Well,’ he smiled, and I realised that he was actually nervous, ‘does that sound … agreeable to you?’

I was intrigued that he was nervous–of me? Of the possibility that I would say no?–and nodded. I couldn’t for the life of me see how staring at pictures of women covered in flowers would produce a cure for madness, but who was I to say so?

Besides, he was a handsome, kind, youngish man, and I was an orphan in a mental asylum with no one to sponsor me and little prospect of leaving. However unusual the events that came my way, they were unlikely to change my life for the worse.

And so it began. To start with I would go to his office perhaps once or twice a month. Watson would have gathered a number of costumes and props to create the scenario. The first one was to be called, apparently, Melancholia, which I felt more than qualified to portray. He had arranged a chair by a window, at which I was to sit, in a sombre dress, holding a book and gazing longingly out, as though, as he put it, I was dreaming of my lost love. I could have told him that there are worse troubles in life than an errant suitor, but I held my tongue and stared out of the window, dreaming instead of braised venison with port sauce, curried chicken, and trifle with nutmeg.

The lunch, when it arrived, was every bit as good as the ones my imagination had come up with. I am afraid I ate with all the grace of a farmhand, and he watched me, smiling, as I had second and third helpings of a pear and cinnamon tart. I stuffed myself, not because I was so enormously hungry, but because I had been starved of tastes; of piquancy and subtlety. To taste spices and blue cheese and wine for the first time in four or five years (with the odd exception at Christmas) was heaven. I think I said as much, and he laughed, and seemed tremendously pleased. As he walked with me to the door of his study, he held my hand in both of his, and thanked me, looking deep into my eyes.

As I expected, I was summoned to the study with increasing frequency, and as we became more accustomed to each other, the poses became less formal. By which I mean I gradually wore less and less, ending up reclining against the fernery partially tangled in a diaphanous sheet of muslin. I think that fairly early on any pretence at contributing to the forward march of medical science was abandoned. Watson, or Paul, as I came to call him, made the studies it pleased him to make, sometimes guiltily, blinking and avoiding my gaze as though he were embarrassed at asking me to do such things.

He was kind and thoughtful, and was interested in my opinions, which many men who have known me outside the asylum have not been. I liked him, and was happy when he put his hand on mine, trembling, one day at the end of the meal. He was sweet, desperate, terrified at doing wrong, and apologised every time we met for taking advantage of me, and giving in to his base nature. I never minded. For me it was a thrilling secret, a sweet craving, although he was always nervous and jumpy when we consummated, swiftly, after another spectacular lunch, behind the locked study door.

And he smelt of the greenhouses, of tomato leaves and damp earth, sharp and satisfying. Even now, I cannot remember that smell without also thinking of fruit pies with cream or steak in brandy. Even the other night, years later, in a frozen tent in the forest, when I smelt that scent from Parker, it brought water to my mouth, and the recollection of a bitter chocolate tart.

What happened, I don’t suppose I will ever now find out. Somehow Watson was disgraced. Not through me, as far as I know, and certainly nothing was ever said, but one morning it was announced by the head attendant that Dr Watson had to leave suddenly, and that within days another superintendent would be taking his place. One day he was there, the next not. He must have taken the apparatus, and the pictures we made together. Some of them were beautiful; dark, silvery shadings on glass that shimmered as you tilted them to the light. I wonder if they still exist. When I feel melancholy, and that is quite often nowadays, I remind myself that he trembled when he touched me; that I was once someone’s muse.

We have been walking across the plain for three days with no end or change in sight. The rain that brought the thaw persisted for two days and made progress very difficult. We waded ankle-deep in mud, and if that does not sound very much, I can only insist that it is bad enough. Each foot was weighted with a couple of pounds of clinging slime, and my skirt dragged, heavy with water. Parker and Moody, not burdened with skirts, trudged on ahead with the sled.

Late on the second day the rain stopped, and I was just thanking whatever gods are still sparing me a thought, when a wind got up that has been blowing ever since. It has dried the ground and made walking easier, but it comes from the north-east and is so cold that I experience the phenomenon, previously only heard of, of tears freezing in the corners of my eyes. After an hour my eyes are red raw.

Now Parker and the dogs wait for us to catch up. He stands on a slight rise, and when we finally stagger up to him, I see why he has waited: a few hundred yards away is a complex of buildings–the first man-created thing we have seen since leaving Himmelvanger.

‘We are on the right road,’ says Parker, although road is hardly the word I would have chosen.

‘What is that place?’ Moody is peering through his spectacles. His eyes are bad, made worse by the dim grey light which is all that struggles through the clouds.

‘It was once a trading post.’

I can see from here that there is something wrong with it; it has the sinister quality of a building in a nightmare.

‘We should go and look. In case he has been there.’

Closer to, I realise what has happened. The post has been burnt to a skeleton; rafters stand gauntly against the sky, broken beams jut out at wrong, upsetting angles. Where walls remain they are charred black, and sag. But the strangest thing of all is that it was recently covered with snow, which melted by day then froze by night, layer on layer of meltwater congealing so that the bare bones are swollen and glazed with ice. It is an extraordinary sight: black, bulbous, glittering, the ice engulfing the buildings as though they have been swallowed by some amorphous creature. It inspires me, and Moody as well, I think, with a sort of horror.

I want, more than anything, to get away from here. Parker walks in between the walls, studying the ground.

‘Someone has left clothes.’ He indicates a shapeless bundle on the ground in one corner. I don’t ask him why anyone would do something like that. I have a hunch I don’t want to know.

‘This is Elbow Ridge. Have you heard of it?’

I shake my head, fairly sure this is something else I would be better off not knowing.

‘It was built by the XY Company. The Hudson Bay Company didn’t like the fact that they tried to set up a post here, so they burnt it down.’

‘How can you know that?’

Parker shrugs. ‘Everyone knows. Things like that happened.’ I glance over towards Moody, thirty yards away through a vanished door, poking about by a jumble of wood that might once, a long time ago, have been a piano.

I look back at Parker to see if he intended any malice, but his face is blank. He has picked up the stiff, frozen cloth and stretches it out–the ice creaks and splinters in protest–to reveal a shirt that was probably once blue but is now so dirty it is hard to be sure. It has been soaked and stained and left here to rot. I suddenly, belatedly, realise the import of this.

‘Is that blood?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

He pokes around some more, and lets out an exclamation of satisfaction. This time even I understand why–there are traces of a fire, black and sooty, close by a wall.

‘Recent?’

‘About a week old. So our man came through here, and stayed the night. We could do worse than copy him.’

‘Stay here? But it’s early. We should go on, surely?’

‘Look at the sky.’

I look up; the clouds, sliced into quadrilaterals by the black beams, are low and dark. Storm-coloured.

Moody, when told of the plan, is bullish. ‘But what is it–another two days to Hanover House? I think we should keep going.’

Parker replies calmly, ‘There is going to be a storm. We will be glad of shelter.’

I can see Moody’s brain whirring, deciding whether or not it is worth arguing, whether Parker will yield to his authority. But the wind is getting up, and he loses his nerve; the sky has become ugly and oppressive. Despite the brooding strangeness of the abandoned post, it is a good deal better than nothing.

Accordingly, we pitch camp within the ruins. Parker constructs a large lean-to against one of the remaining walls, and reinforces it with blackened timbers. I am alarmed when I see how much sturdier this shelter is than any I have seen him build before, but I follow his instructions and unpack the sled. Over the past few days I have become much more adept at the tasks necessary for comfort and survival; I stack the food inside (does he really think we will be trapped for days?), while Moody collects wood–at least there is plenty of that around–and chips ice off the walls for water. We work quickly, infected with a dread of the darkening day and rapidly increasing wind.

By the time we finish our preparations, snow is whipping about us, stinging our faces like a swarm of bees. We crawl into the shelter; Parker lights a fire and boils water. Moody and I sit facing the entrance, which has been secured with large beams, but which has begun to twitch and heave as though desperate men are trying to get in. Over the next hour the wind rises in force and volume until we can hardly hear ourselves speak. It makes an eerie screeching noise, together with the sharp snapping of canvas and a horrible creaking of wall timbers. I wonder if they are going to withstand it, or will collapse under the force and the weight of ice on top of us. Parker seems unconcerned, though I would wager that Moody shares my fears; his eyes are wide behind his spectacles, and he jumps at any variation in the noises around us.

‘Will the dogs be all right out there?’ he asks.

‘Yes. They will lie down together and keep each other warm.’

‘Ah. Good idea.’ Moody laughs shortly, glancing at me, then drops his eyes when I don’t summon up a laugh to keep him company.

Moody swallows his tea and takes off his boots and socks, revealing feet covered in dried blood. I have watched him tend to his feet on previous evenings, but tonight I offer to do it for him. Perhaps it is the thought of Francis, that the age difference between them is not so great; perhaps it is the storm outside, and the thought that I need all the friends I can get. He leans back and stretches out one foot at a time for me to clean and bandage with strips of linen, which is all we have. I am not gentle but he makes no sound as I clean the wounds with rubbing alcohol and bind them tightly. He has his eyes shut. From the corner of my eye Parker seems to be watching us, although what with the smoke from the fire and from his pipe, visibility in the tent is practically nil and I could be mistaken. When I have finished bandaging his feet, Moody digs out a hip flask and offers it to me. It is the first time I have seen it. I accept, gratefully; it is whisky, not particularly good, but bright and fiery as it burns down my throat, making my eyes water. He offers the flask to Parker too, but he merely shakes his head. Come to think of it, I have never seen him touch liquor. Moody replaces the blood-soaked socks and boots–it is too cold to keep them off.

‘Mrs Ross, you must be a tough backwoods-woman indeed if you can keep this up without blisters.’

‘I have moccasins,’ I point out. ‘They don’t chafe the feet in the same way. You should try to acquire some when we get to Hanover House.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ He turns to Parker, ‘And when will that be, do you think, Mr Parker? Will this storm blow itself out tonight?’

Parker shrugs. ‘It may. But even so, the snow will make the going harder. It may take more than two days.’

‘You’ve been there before?’

‘Not for a long time.’

‘You seem to know the route well enough.’

‘Yes.’

There is a short, hostile pause. I’m not sure where the hostility came from, but it is there.

‘Do you know the factor there?’

‘His name is Stewart.’

I notice that this doesn’t exactly answer the question.

‘Stewart … Know his first name?’

‘James Stewart.’

‘Ah, I wonder if that is the same one … I heard a story recently about a James Stewart, who was famous for making a long winter journey in terrible conditions. Quite a feat, I believe.’

Parker’s face is, as usual, unreadable. ‘I can’t say for certain.’

‘Ah, well …’ Moody sounds tremendously pleased. I suppose that if you know no one in a country, having heard of someone before meeting them is tantamount to having an old friend.

‘So you do know him, then?’ I ask Parker.

He gives me a look. ‘I met him when I worked for the Company. Years ago.’

Somehow his tone warns me against making any further pleasantries. Moody, of course, doesn’t notice.

‘Well well, won’t that be splendid … A reunion.’

I smile. There is really something rather endearing about Moody, crashing about like a bull in a china shop … Then I remember what he is trying to do, and the smile fades.

The snow does not stop, nor does the shrieking wind. By unspoken consensus, the canvas is not rigged into a curtain to give me privacy. I lie down between the two men, rolled in layers of blankets, feeling the heat from the embers scorching my face but not wanting to move. Then Moody lies down beside me, and finally Parker smothers the ashes and lies down, so close I can feel him and smell the scent of greenhouses that he carries with him. It is pitch dark, but I do not think that I will close my eyes all night; what with the howling of the wind and the battering the tent is getting; it billows and trembles like a live thing. I am terrified that we will be buried in the snow, or that the walls will collapse and trap us underneath; I imagine all sorts of awful fates as I lie with racing heart and wide stretched eyes. But I must have slept, because I dream, although I do not think I have dreamt in weeks.

Suddenly I awake to find–as I think–the tent has gone. The wind is screaming like a thousand banshees and the air is full of snow, blinding me. I cry out, I think, but the sound goes unheard in the maelstrom. Parker and Moody are both kneeling, fighting to close the mouth of the tent where it has been torn free. They eventually manage to secure it again, but snow has gathered in drifts inside the tent. There is snow on our clothes and in our hair. Moody lights the lamp; he is shaken. Even Parker looks slightly less composed than normal.

‘Well.’ Moody shakes his head and brushes the snow off his legs. We are all wide awake and extremely cold. ‘I don’t know about you but I need something to drink.’

He pulls out the hip flask and drinks from it before handing it to me. I give it to Parker, who hesitates and then accepts. Moody smiles as though this is some sort of personal triumph. Parker lights the fire for tea, and we are all grateful, huddling round it with scorching fingers. I am trembling, whether through cold or shock I do not know, and do not stop until I have drunk a mug of sweet tea. I watch the men smoking their pipes with envy; it is another warm and soothing thing and that would be welcome, as would a rosewood stem to clench between my chattering teeth.

‘It looked deep out there,’ Moody says when the whisky is finished.

Parker nods. ‘The deeper it gets, the warmer it will be in here.’

‘Well that is a nice thought,’ I say. ‘We will be warm and comfortable while we are smothered to death.’

Parker smiles. ‘We can easily dig ourselves out.’

I smile back at Parker, surprised to see him so amused, and then some little thing recalls to me the dream I was having when I awoke, and I bury my face in my cup. It is not that I remember what I was dreaming exactly; it is more that the feeling around it washes over me with a sudden, peculiar warmth and causes me to turn away, feigning a fit of coughing, so that the men cannot see my cheeks colour in the darkness.

By late morning the storm has almost blown itself out. When I wake again it is light, and more snow has drifted into the corners of the shelter and into the spaces between us. Struggling out of the tent I emerge into a day still gusty and grey, but seeming glorious after the night we have spent there. Our tent is half hidden in a drift three feet deep and the whole place looks entirely different under its blanket of snow; better somehow, less foreboding. It takes me a few minutes to realise that, despite Parker’s assurances, a section of the wall did blow down in the night, though without endangering us. I try not to think about what would have happened if we had made our shelter twenty feet to the east. We did not, and that is the main thing.

Initially I am afraid the dogs are gone, buried for good; as I look round there is no sign of them, whereas usually they are barking their heads off demanding food. Then Parker reappears from somewhere with a long stick of wood which he plunges into the drifts, calling to his dogs with the strange sharp cries he uses to communicate with them. Suddenly there is a sort of explosion by him, and Sisco erupts from a deep drift, followed by Lucie. They jump up at him, barking furiously and wagging their whole bodies, and Parker pets them briefly. He must be relieved to see them; normally he does not touch them at all, and yet now he is smiling, looking genuinely delighted. I have never seen him smile at me like that. Or anyone else, of course.

I go over to where Moody is clumsily packing up the tent material. ‘Let me do that.’

‘Oh, would you, Mrs Ross? Thank you. You put me to shame. How are you this morning?’

‘Relieved, thank you for asking.’

‘I also. That was an interesting night, was it not?’

He smiles, looking almost mischievous. He too seems in high spirits this morning. Perhaps we were all more frightened last night than we cared to admit.

And later, when we are walking north-east once more, even struggling as we are through a foot of driven snow, we walk closely together, Parker regulating his stride to ours, as though we are three people who find solace in each other’s company.

Espen’s voice is urgent.

‘Line. I must talk to you.’

Line tries to still the wild lurching of her heart at hearing him speak her name. They have not exchanged a word for several days.

‘What? I thought your wife was too suspicious.’

The look of pleading in his eyes almost makes her want to weep with joy.

‘I can’t stand it. You haven’t even looked at me for days. Do you care for me so little? Have you thought of me at all?’

Line gives in and smiles, and he embraces her, folding her into himself, pressing her body against his, kissing her face, her mouth, her neck. Then he pulls her with him, opens a door–which leads to a store cupboard–and closes it after them.

Wrestling with their clothing in the absolute dark of the cupboard, pressed against stacks of soap and something that feels like a broom, Line has a jolting, incoherent vision. It is as though the lack of light exonerates them. She cannot even tell who is in here with her. It must be the same for him–they could be any man and woman, anywhere. Toronto, for example. And then she knows what she will do.

Line prises her mouth from his skin long enough to say, ‘I cannot stay here. I am going to leave. As soon as I can.’

Espen pulls back. She can hear his breathing, but cannot see his face in this darkness.

‘No, Line, I can’t stand to be without you. We can be careful. No one will know.’

Line feels the roll of money in her pocket, and is filled with its power. ‘I have money.’

‘What do you mean, you have money?’

Espen has never had money in his life, has always lived hand to mouth, until he came to build Himmelvanger, and stayed. Line smiles in secret.

‘I have forty dollars. Yankee dollars.’

‘What?’

‘No one knows about it except you.’

‘How did you come by that?’

‘It’s a secret!’

Espen’s face breaks into an incredulous smile. Somehow she knows this. She can feel him tremble with laughter under her hands.

‘We can take two of the horses. It’ll only take us three days to get to Caulfield, we can wear all our clothes and take the children behind us. Then we can get a steamer to Toronto … or Chicago. Anywhere. I’ve got enough money to get a house while we look for work.’

Espen sounds faintly alarmed. ‘But Line, it’s the middle of winter. Wouldn’t it be better if we waited till spring–what with the children?’

Line feels a flicker of impatience. ‘It’s not even snowing–it’s practically warm! What do you want to wait for?’

Espen sighs. ‘Besides, when you say “the children,” you mean Torbin and Anna, don’t you?’

Line has been waiting for this. It’s all Merete’s fault really. If only she were dead. She’s good for nothing and no one likes her, not even Per, who’s supposed to like everybody.

‘I know it’s hard, my darling, but we can’t take all the children away with us. Maybe later, when we’ve got a house, you can come and get them, huh?’

Privately she thinks this unlikely. She can’t imagine Merete, or Per for that matter, letting Espen take the children away to live with his floozy. But Espen adores his three children.

‘We can all be together again soon. But now … I have to go now. I can’t stay.’

‘Why all this hurry?’

It is her trump card, and Line plays it carefully. ‘Well, I am almost sure … no, I am sure, that I am in the family way.’

There is a total silence in the cupboard. For heaven’s sake, Line thinks to herself, it’s not as if he doesn’t know how these things happen.

‘How can that be? We were so careful!’

‘Well … we weren’t always careful.’ He not at all–it could have happened much sooner, she thinks, if he had had his way. ‘You’re not angry, are you, Espen?’

‘No, I love you. It’s just rather …’

‘I know. But that’s why I can’t stay until spring. Soon the others will begin to notice. Here …’ She takes his hand and slips it under her waistband.

‘Oh, Line …’

‘So we should go then, shouldn’t we, before the snow comes to stay? Otherwise …’

Otherwise, the alternative is unthinkable.

Late that afternoon Line goes to the boy’s room. She waits until she sees Jacob walk out and disappear into the stables, then she goes in. The key is left in the outside of the door–now that Moody has gone, no one takes the locking of the door very seriously.

Francis looks up in surprise when she comes in. She hasn’t been there, alone with him, since before his mother came; the day she tried to kiss him, and he gave her the money. It still brings blood to her cheeks to think about it. Francis is dressed in his own clothes and sitting in a chair by the window. He has a piece of wood and a knife in his hands –he is whittling something. Line is taken aback–she had pictured him still in bed, weak and pale.

‘Oh,’ she says, before she can stop herself. ‘You’re up.’

‘Yes, I’m much better. Jacob even trusts me with his knife.’ He gestures with it, and smiles at her. ‘You’re quite safe.’

‘Can you walk now?’

‘I can get about all right, with the crutch.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Are you all right? Are things all right, I mean, beyond that door?’ He sounds concerned.

‘Yes … that is, no, not really. I came to ask you something–I need your help. About your journey from Caulfield … Will you promise not to say anything? Not even to Jacob?’

He stares in surprise. ‘Yes, all right.’

‘I’m going to leave. I have to go now, before the snow comes again. We’re going to take horses and go south. I need you to tell me the way.’

Francis looks astonished. ‘The way to Caulfield?’

She nods.

‘But what if it snows when you’re on the way?’

‘Your mother did it. In the snow. On horseback it can’t be so hard.’

‘You mean you and your children?’

‘Yes.’ She holds her head up, feeling the blush spread up her neck and into her hair. Francis turns aside, looking for somewhere to put the wood and knife. And now I’ve embarrassed you again, she thinks, taking out the pencil and paper she has brought with her. Oh well, some things can’t be helped. It’s not as though you’ll be jealous.

The magistrate from St Pierre sits opposite Knox in his bedroom-cum-prison and sighs. He is an elderly man, squat, at least seventy, with milky eyes caught behind pebble glasses that look too heavy for his frail nose.

‘If I am to understand you correctly,’ he glances at his notes, ‘you said that you “could not agree with Mackinley’s brutal attempts to force a confession out of William Parker,” so you let him go.’

‘We had no grounds to hold him.’

‘But Mr Mackinley says he could not account for his whereabouts over the period in question.’

‘He accounted for them. There was no one to back them up, but that is hardly surprising in a trapper.’

‘Furthermore, Mr Mackinley said that the prisoner attacked him. Any damage suffered by the prisoner was done in self-defence.’

‘There wasn’t a scratch on Mackinley, and if he had been attacked, he would have told everyone. I saw the prisoner. It was a vicious attack. I knew he was telling the truth.’

‘Hmm. I am familiar with one William Parker. Perhaps you are aware that this same William Parker has something of a record for assaulting servants of the Hudson Bay Company?’

Knox thinks, Oh, no.

‘It was some time ago, but he was suspected of a fairly serious attack. You see, if you had only waited a little longer, this could all have been brought to light.’

‘I still don’t believe he is the murderer we seek. Just because a man has done one wrong thing–some time ago–does not mean that he has done another.’

‘True. But if it is in a man’s nature to be violent, it is likely that this tendency will erupt again and again. The same man is not violent and then peaceable.’

‘I’m not sure I can agree with you there. Especially if the violence is committed in youth.’

‘No. Well. And there is another suspect still at large?’

‘I don’t know that I’d put it quite like that. I sent two men after a local youth who went missing around that time. They haven’t returned yet.’

And where the hell are they? he asks himself. It’s been nearly two weeks.

‘And, I believe, the boy’s mother is also missing?’

‘She has gone looking for her son.’

‘Quite so.’ He unhooks the spectacles, which have made shiny red dents in the bridge of his nose, and rubs the spot with finger and thumb. His look to Knox clearly says, ‘What an unholy mess you have made of this town.’

‘What do you intend to do with me?’

The magistrate from St Pierre shakes his head. ‘It really is most irregular.’ His head goes on wagging gently as though, once started, the motion is self-perpetuating. ‘Most irregular. I am hard-pressed to know what to think, Mr Knox. But I suppose, in the meantime, we can trust you to go home. As long as you don’t–ha ha–leave the country!’

‘Ha ha. No. I don’t suppose I will attempt that.’ Knox stands up, refusing to return the man’s mirthless smile. He finds that he towers over the other magistrate by at least a foot.

Free to go, Knox finds himself strangely reluctant to return home immediately. He pauses on the landing and on impulse, knocks on the door of Sturrock’s room. After a second the door opens.

‘Mr Knox! I am happy to see you at liberty again–I assume, or have you escaped?’

‘No. I am at liberty, for the time being, at least. I feel like a new man.’

Despite his smile and attempted jocular tone, he is not sure that Sturrock realises he is joking. He never had much success with jokes, even as a youth–something to do with the severity of his features, he suspects. As a young lawyer he became aware that the emotion he most often inspired in people was alarm and a sort of pre-emptive guilt. It has had its uses.

‘Come in.’ Sturrock ushers him inside as though Knox is the person he most wanted to see in the world. Knox allows himself to be flattered by this, and accepts a glass of whisky.

‘Well, slainthé!’

‘Slainthé! I am sorry it is not a malt, but there we are … Now tell me, how did you like your night behind bars?’

‘Oh, well …’

‘I wish I could say that I have never experienced the pleasure, but sadly that is not the case. A long time ago, in Illinois. But since most everyone is a criminal down there, I was in some very good company …’

They talk for some time, at ease with one another. The level in the bottle falls as the window darkens. Knox looks at the sky, and what he can see of it above the rooftops is dark and heavy, auguring more bad weather. Down below, a small figure hurries diagonally across the street into the store below. He can’t tell who it is. He thinks it is probably going to snow again.

‘You are staying here then, waiting for the boy’s return?’

‘I suppose I am, yes.’

There is a long pause; the whisky is finished. They are both thinking the same thing.

‘You must set great store by this … bone.’

Sturrock looks at him sideways, a calculating look. ‘I suppose I must.’

They have first sight of their destination on the evening of the sixth day. Donald lags behind–even Mrs Ross can walk faster than he can with his lacerated feet. Impossible to abandon the purgatorial boots altogether, but even with his feet entirely bandaged, each step is agony. Also, and this he has kept secret from the others, his scar has begun hurting. Yesterday he became convinced it had opened again, and under the pretext of a private stop he unbuttoned his shirt to look. The scar was intact, but slightly swollen and weeping a little clear fluid. He touched it anxiously, to see where the fluid was coming from. Probably just the exhausting journey wearing him down; when they stopped, it would recover.

And so the sight, in the distance, of the trading post–whose very existence he has come in moments of stress to doubt–is cause for jubilation. At this moment, Donald can think of nothing more glorious than lying down on a bed for a very long time. Clearly the secret of happiness, he reflects quite cheerfully, is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

Hanover House stands on a rise of land surrounded on three sides by a river. There are some trees huddled behind it, the first trees they have seen for days–bent, stunted birches and tamaracks, hardly higher than a man, granted, but still trees. The river is flat and slow but has not frozen–it’s not quite cold enough for that yet–and is black against its snowy banks. When they are quite close and there is still no sign that anyone has seen them, Donald experiences a nagging fear that there is no one there at all.

The post is built along the same lines as Fort Edgar, but is clearly much older. The palisade leans; the buildings themselves are grey and woolly with the repeated assaults of weather. Overall, it has a frayed air–although attempts have been made to restore it, its appearance speaks of neglect. Donald is vaguely aware of the reason for this. By now they are deep in the Shield country south of Hudson Bay. Once this area was a rich source of furs for the Company, but that was long ago. Hanover House is a relic of former glories, a vestigial limb. But outside the fence and pointing out over the plain is a circle of small guns, and someone has taken the trouble–since the snowstorm–to come outside and clear the snow off them. The squat black shapes, stark against the snow, are the only sign of human activity.

The gate in the palisade stands ajar, and there are human tracks here and there. And though the three of them and the dogsled must have been visible against the snow for at least an hour, no one comes to greet them.

‘It looks deserted,’ Donald begins, looking at Parker for confirmation. Parker doesn’t respond, but pushes the gate, the weight of drifted snow behind it making it jam after a few inches. The courtyard inside is unswept–a heinous crime at Fort Edgar.

‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ Donald says, and then finds that he is quite unable to stop himself sinking down on the ground and tearing off first one boot and then the other. He cannot bear the pain a single moment longer.

‘Yes,’ Parker says.

‘Perhaps it’s been abandoned.’ Donald looks around at the desolate yard.

‘No, not abandoned.’ Parker looks over at a thin coil of smoke rising from behind a low warehouse. The smoke is the same colour as the sky. Donald heaves himself to his feet–superhuman effort–and staggers a few yards.

Then a man walks round the corner of a building and stops dead: a tall, dark-skinned man with powerful shoulders and long, wild hair. Despite the icy wind he wears only a loose flannel undershirt open to the waist. He stares at them with open-mouthed and sullen incomprehension, his large body slack and apparently numb to the cold. Mrs Ross is staring back at him as if she’s seen a ghost. Parker starts to tell him that they have come a long way, that Donald is a Company man, but before he can finish the man turns and walks back the way he came, leaving Parker in mid-sentence. Parker looks at Mrs Ross and shrugs. Donald hears her whisper to him, ‘I think that man is drunk,’ and smiles grimly to himself. Clearly she has little experience of winter pastimes at a quiet trading post.

‘Are we supposed to follow him?’ Mrs Ross is asking. As usual, she addresses Parker, but Donald hobbles over to them, his feet frozen but blessedly free of pain. This is a Company post, therefore, he feels, he should be taking the lead now.

‘I am sure someone will be out in a minute. You know, Mrs Ross, at a post in winter, especially one as isolated as this, the men are prone to taking what solace they can to pass the time.’

The dogs, left outside the gate in their harness, are barking and working themselves into a frenzy. They seem incapable of standing still without breaking out into fights. Now, for instance, they seem to be trying to kill each other. Parker goes over to them and yells at them, lashing out with a stick; a tactic that is unpleasant to watch but effective. After another couple of minutes there are steps in the snow and another man comes round the corner. This, to Donald’s relief, is a white man, possibly a little older than Donald, with a pale, worried face and chaotic reddish hair. He looks harassed but sober.

‘Good Heavens,’ he says with obvious irritation. ‘So it’s true …’

‘Hello!’ Donald is even more cheered to hear a Scottish accent.

‘Well … welcome.’ The other man recovers a little. ‘Forgive me, it’s such a long time since we had visitors, and in winter … extraordinary. I have quite forgotten my manners …’

‘Donald Moody, Company accountant at Fort Edgar.’ Donald sticks out his hand, swaying.

‘Ah, Mr Moody. Er, Nesbit. Frank Nesbit, assistant factor.’

Donald is momentarily troubled by the phrase ‘assistant factor’, which is not a position he has ever heard of, but remembers himself enough to make a flourish towards Mrs Ross. ‘This is Mrs Ross, and that is …’ Parker reappears in the gateway, a menacing figure with a large stick ‘… er, Parker, who has guided us here.’

Nesbit shakes their hands, then gazes down at Donald’s feet with horror. ‘My God, your feet … have you no boots?’

‘Yes, but I have been in some discomfort, so I took them off, over there … it is nothing, though, really. Merely blisters, you know …’

Donald experiences a pleasantly light-headed sensation, and wonders if he is going to fall over. Nesbit shows no inclination to take them indoors, even though it is nearly dark and freezing hard. He seems nervous and jumpy, wondering out loud whether he can expect them to use the terribly neglected guest rooms, or whether he should turn himself out of his quarters … Eventually, after dithering for what seems to Donald like hours in which his feet, already cold, lose feeling altogether, he leads them round the corner and through a doorway. He leads them down an unlit corridor and opens the door of a large, unheated room.

‘Perhaps you would be so good as to wait here for a moment. I will fetch someone to light the fire and bring you something hot. Excuse me …’

Nesbit withdraws, banging the door behind him. Donald hobbles over to the empty fireplace and sinks down into a chair beside it.

Parker disappears, claiming he has to see to the dogs. Donald thinks of Fort Edgar, where visitors are always a cause for celebration and treated like royalty. Perhaps half the staff here have deserted; he notices the fireplace is extremely dirty, before succumbing as the exhaustion that has been waiting to claim him closes his eyes like a velvet hand.

‘Mr Moody!’

Her voice is sharp, causing him to open his eyes again.

‘Mm? Yes, Mrs Ross?’

‘Let us not say anything about why we are here, not tonight. Let us see how things are first. We do not want them to be on their guard.’

‘As you wish.’ He closes his eyes again. He cannot imagine holding a coherent conversation until he has had some sleep. Just to be out of the raw, cutting cold is bliss.

He shut his eyes for what felt like only a moment, but when he opens them again the fire is lit and Mrs Ross is nowhere in sight. The window has turned black and he has no idea of the time. But it is such a luxury to sit in this warmth that he cannot bring himself to move. Only if there were a bed; that would probably get him going. Then through his monumental tiredness he realises there is someone else in the room. He turns to see a half-breed woman who has brought in a bowl of water and some bandages. She nods to him and sits on the floor by his feet, where she begins to unwrap the blood-crusted linen.

‘Oh, thank you.’ Donald is somewhat embarrassed by this attention, and the disgusting state of the bandages. He tries and fails to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn. ‘My name is … Donald Moody, Company accountant at Fort Edgar. What is your name?’

‘Elizabeth Bird.’

She barely looks at him, but sets about cleaning the wounds on his feet. Donald allows his head to loll back against the chair, happy not to talk, or even think. His duties can wait until tomorrow. Before that, to the rhythm of the dark woman’s hands wiping his feet, he can sleep and sleep and sleep.

The courtyard is completely dark and I cannot hear dogs anywhere, which is odd. Normally, when dogs arrive at a place, there is a frenzied contest of barking and snarling, but when we came, there was silence. I call for Parker. A wind whips round me and a few flakes of snow sting my face. There is no reply, and I experience a lurch of dread; perhaps now that we have arrived, he has gone on to wherever his business takes him. Just when I feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes, someone opens a door to my left and spills a rectangle of light onto the snow. There is a hurried, urgent argument, and I hear Nesbit’s voice.

‘You’d better not say anything about him if you don’t want to feel my hand. In fact, it would be better if you just stayed out of the way altogether!’

The other voice is unclear–but it is a woman’s voice, remonstrating with him. Without thinking clearly, I have moved deeper into the shadow of overhanging eaves. But nothing else is audible, until Nesbit finishes the argument, if that is what it is, with a querulous, ‘Oh for God’s sake, do as you like then. Just wait till he comes back!’

The door bangs shut and Nesbit starts across the courtyard, scrubbing one hand through his hair, which doesn’t make it any tidier. I open and close the door behind me and step out into the courtyard to meet him, as though I had just that moment come outside.

‘Oh, Mr Nesbit, there you are …’

‘Ah, Mrs …’ He stops dead, his hand groping in the air.

‘Ross.’

‘Mrs Ross, of course. Forgive me. I was just …’ He gives a short laugh. ‘I apologise for abandoning you. Has no one lit the fire? You’ll have to forgive us at the moment. We’re a little short-staffed I’m afraid, and at this time of year …’

‘There is no need to apologise. We have imposed rather suddenly on you.’

‘No imposition. No imposition at all. The Company prides itself on its hospitality and all that … More than welcome, I assure you.’ He smiles at me, although it seems to be something of an effort. ‘You must join me for dinner … and Mr Moody and Mr Parker as well, of course.’

‘Mr Moody was asleep when I came out. I fear he has suffered a great deal with blisters.’

‘And you have not? I must say that is remarkable. Where did you say you have come from?’

‘Why don’t we go inside? It’s so cold …’

I’m not sure how to broach this one. I wanted to talk to Parker about it, but Parker is nowhere to be seen. I follow Nesbit down another corridor–there seem to be any number of doors leading off it–into a small warm room where a fire burns in the grate. A Sutherland table sits in the centre, with two chairs. Pinned to the walls are coloured pictures of racehorses and prizefighters, cut from magazines.

‘Please sit down, please. Yes. A bit warmer in here, eh? Nothing like a good fire in this God-awful place …’

He suddenly and without warning leaves the room, leaving me wondering what has just happened. I haven’t opened my mouth.

Among the fighters and the horses are a couple of good prints, and I see that the furniture is also good; brought over, not country-made. The table is mahogany, burnished with use and age; the chairs fruit-wood with lyre backs, possibly Italian. Above the fire is a small hunting scene in a rich gilded frame, dark and glowing with the red coats of the huntsmen. And there are glasses on the table of a heavy lead crystal, finely engraved with birds. There is a man here with taste and cultivation, and I suspect it isn’t Nesbit.

Nesbit bursts back into the room with another chair. ‘Normally, you see …’ he speaks as though he never left the room ‘… there are only the two of us–officers I mean, so we are very quiet. I have asked for some supper, so … Ah ha, of course!’ He springs up again, having just sat down. ‘You’d like a glass of brandy, I expect. We have some that is rather good. I brought it myself, from Kingston, summer before last.’

‘Just a small glass. I fear, any more, and I will fall asleep on the spot.’ This is the truth. The warmth is soaking into my limbs for the first time in days, making my eyes heavy.

He pours two glasses, taking considerable trouble to make sure the levels are the same in each, and hands me one of them.

‘Well, slainthé. And what brings you and your friends here–this unexpected but welcome pleasure?’

I put down my glass carefully. It’s annoying that we didn’t have time to discuss our story before arriving; or rather, not that we didn’t have time, since we had six days, but that somehow it never seemed the right time to bring it up. I run over my story one more time, testing it for weaknesses. I hope Moody doesn’t wake up for a long time.

‘We have come from Himmelvanger–do you know it?’

Nesbit stares at me with intense brown eyes. ‘No, no, I don’t believe I do.’

‘It is home to a group of Lutherans. Norwegians. They are endeavouring to build a community where they can live good lives in the sight of God.’

‘Admirable.’

The fingers of his right hand fidget ceaselessly with a stub of pencil, flicking it back and forth, twirling it round, drumming it faintly on the table; and something clicks into place. Laudanum, or perhaps strychnine. God knows what misfortune brought him all the way up here, far from druggists and doctors.

‘We undertook this journey because …’ I stop and sigh heavily. ‘This is painful to relate … my son ran away from home. He was last seen at Himmelvanger, and from there, there was a trail that led in this direction.’

Nesbit’s face, his eyes so intently on me it makes my skin crawl, relaxes a little. Perhaps he was waiting for something else after all.

‘A trail in this direction? All the way here?’

‘It seemed so, although after the snowstorm we could not be certain.’

‘No.’ He nods his head thoughtfully.

‘But Mr Parker thought this the most likely place. There are not many settlements in this part of the country, I believe–in fact, very few.’

‘No, we are quite isolated. Is he … very young, your son?’

‘Seventeen.’ I drop my eyes. ‘You can understand how worried I am.’

‘Yes, of course. And Mr Moody …?’

‘Mr Moody kindly offered to accompany us since we were coming to a Company post. I believe he is anxious to meet your factor.’

‘Ah, yes. I am sure … Well, Mr Stewart has gone on a short trip, but he should return in the next day or so.’

‘You have neighbours?’

‘No, he has gone hunting. It is a keen interest of his.’

Nesbit has already drained and refilled his glass. I sip mine slowly. ‘So … you have not seen or heard of any stranger?’

‘Alas, no. No one at all. But perhaps he may have met an Indian band, or some trappers … All sorts of people do come and go. You’d be surprised, even in winter, how people gad about.’

I sigh again, and look despondent, which is not difficult. He takes my glass and refills it.

The door opens, and a short, broad Indian woman of indeterminate age comes in with a tray.

‘The other man, he wants to sleep,’ she says, with a baleful look at Nesbit.

‘Yes, all right Norah. Well, put it down … thank you. Could you see if you could possibly locate the other visitor?’

There is a trace of sarcasm in his voice. The woman dumps the tray on the table with a crash.

With clumsy panache Nesbit uncovers the tray and serves me a plate of moose steak and corn hash. The plate itself is good, English, but the steak is old and gristly; not much better than the stuff we have been eating on our journey. I have to struggle to keep my eyes open and my wits about me. Nesbit eats little but drinks steadily, so fortunately his perceptions are not the sharpest. I feel an urgent need to get him to talk now, tonight, while he still has no reason to suspect.

‘So, who lives here? Are you a large company?’

‘Lord, no! We are very small. This is not exactly the heart of fur country. Not any more.’ He smiles bitterly, but not, I think, from any thwarted personal ambition. ‘There is Mr Stewart, the factor, and he is one of the finest men you could hope to meet. Then there is your humble servant, general dogsbody … !’ He sketches a sardonic bow. ‘And then there are several half-breed and native families around the place.’

‘So that woman who came in, Norah–she is the wife of one of your men?’

‘That’s right.’ Nesbit takes a swig of brandy.

‘And what do the voyageurs do in winter?’ I think of the half-dressed man in the courtyard. He could barely stand. Nesbit seems to read my thoughts.

‘Ah, well, when there is little to do, like now, I’m afraid they are … prey to temptations. The winters are very long.’

His eyes have lost their focus and look glassy and bloodshot, though whether from alcohol or something else, I don’t know.

‘But people travel around, even so …’

‘Oh yes, there is hunting and so on, for the men–and Mr Stewart … Not my cup of tea.’ He makes an elegant expression of distaste. ‘A little trapping, of course. We take what we can get.’

‘And has anyone from here come up from the south-west recently? I just wonder whether the trail we saw could be one of your men, and not my son. Then we would know to … look elsewhere.’ I try to keep my voice as neutral as possible, but tinged with sadness.

‘One of ours …?’ He assumes a look of extreme vagueness, his brow almost comically furrowed. But then, he is drunk. ‘I can’t think … no, not that I know of. I could ask …’

He smiles at me frankly. I think he’s lying, but I’m so tired it’s hard to be sure of anything. The longing to lie down and sleep has suddenly become as imperative as a physical pain. After another minute I can’t fight it any longer.

‘I am sorry, Mr Nesbit, but I … have to retire.’

Nesbit stands up and grips my arm, as though he thinks I am about to fall, or run away. Even the sudden chill in the corridor cannot rouse me.

Something wakes me. It is almost dark, and silent except for the wind. For an instant I think that there is someone else in the room, and I sit up with an exclamation I can’t control. As my eyes grow accustomed to the near-dark, I realise there is no one there. It is not yet dawn. But something woke me, and I am alert, heart hammering, ears sensitive to the slightest sound. I slip out of bed and pull on the few clothes I took off before succumbing. I pick up the lamp but somehow don’t want to light it. I tiptoe to the door. No one outside either.

Creaks and whines come from the roof timbers, the hum of wind slipping under shingles. And a strange crackling noise, very light and indistinct. I listen at each door for a long moment before turning the handle and peering inside. One is locked; most are empty, but through a window in one of the empty rooms I see a greenish shimmer outside, a flickering curtain of light in the north that perforates the darkness and gives me this dim sight.

I open one door and see Moody, his face young and vulnerable without his spectacles. I close it quickly. Parker, I think. I must find Parker. I need to talk to him. About what I am doing, and before I do something inconceivably stupid. But behind the next few doors I find nothing, then one gives me a shiver of shock. Nesbit is lying in a fathomless sleep, or stupor, and next to him lies the Indian woman who served dinner, one broad arm flung over his chest, dark against his milk-white skin. Their breathing is loud. I had formed the impression that she hated him, but here they are, and there is an innocence about their tainted sleep that is curiously touching. I look for longer than I mean to and then, not that they are going to wake all of a sudden, I close the door with especial care.

At last I find Parker, where I half expected: in the stables near the dogs. He is rolled into a blanket and sleeps facing the door. Suddenly at a loss, I light the lamp and sit down to wait. Although we have slept under the same few yards of canvas for many nights, under a wooden roof it seems improper that I should be watching him sleep, crouched in the straw beside him like this, like a thief.

After a few moments, the light wakes him.

‘Mr Parker, it is I, Mrs Ross.’

He seems to surface quickly, without experiencing the impenetrable fog that surrounds me on waking. His face is as unreadable as ever; apparently he is neither angry nor surprised to see me here.

‘Has something happened?’

I shake my head. ‘Something woke me, but I couldn’t find anything. Where did you go last night?’

‘I saw to the dogs.’

I wait for something else, but nothing comes.

‘I had dinner with Nesbit. He asked what we were doing. I said we were looking for my son, who has run away, and was last seen at Himmelvanger. I asked him if anyone here has recently returned from a trip, and he said he didn’t know. But I don’t think he was entirely frank.’

Parker leans against the stable wall and looks at me thoughtfully. ‘I spoke to a man and his wife. They said that no one had been away recently, but they were unhappy. When they spoke they looked into the distance, or over my shoulder.’

I don’t know what to make of this. Then, very faint but distinct, as though from a great distance, I hear something that sends a cold prickling up my spine. An ethereal howling, mournful yet indifferent. A symphony of howls. The dogs wake and a low growling comes from the corner of the stable. I glance at Parker, at his black eyes.

‘Wolves?’

‘Far away.’

I know that we are surrounded by strong walls, and that those walls are armed with cannon, but still the sound chills my blood. I experience a nostalgia for the cramped quarters of the tent. I felt safer there. It is even possible that I shiver, and move closer to Parker.

‘They are short of things here. The hunting is bad. There isn’t much food.’

‘How can that be? This is a Company post.’

He shakes his head. ‘There are posts that are badly run.’

I think of Nesbit in his narcotic cradle. If he is in charge of administrating the post and its supplies, that is hardly surprising.

‘Nesbit is an addict. Opium or something like that. And …’ I look at the straw. ‘He … has a liaison with one of the Indian women.’

I am certain that I am trying not to, but I find myself looking into Parker’s eyes for a second that lengthens and grows into a minute. Neither of us says anything; it’s as if we are mesmerised. I am suddenly aware that my breathing sounds very loud, and I am sure he can hear my heart beating. Even the wolves are silent, listening. I tear my eyes away at last, feeling light-headed.

‘I had better go back. I just thought I should find you to … discuss what we should do in the morning. I thought it wise to conceal our true reason for being here. I said as much to Mr Moody, though what he will want to do tomorrow I can’t say.’

‘I don’t think we will know more until Stewart comes back.’

‘What is it you know of him?’

After a pause, Parker shakes his head. ‘I won’t know until I see him.’

I wait for a moment, but I have run out of reasons to stay. As I make to stand up, my arm brushes against his leg in the straw. I didn’t know his leg was there, I swear it, or whether he moved it to brush against me. I leap to my feet as if scalded, and pick up the lamp. In the sway of light and shadow, I cannot tell what is on his face.

‘Well, goodnight then.’

I walk out into the yard quickly, aware and hurt that he did not reply. The cold instantly cools my skin, but can do nothing for my churning thoughts; chiefly an intense desire to go back into the stable and lie down in the straw next to him. To lose myself in his scent and his warmth. What is this –my fear and helplessness overtaking me? His body brushing against mine in the straw was a mistake. A mistake. A man has died; Francis needs my help; that is why I am here, no other reason.

The aurora shimmers in the north like a beautiful dream, and the wind has gone. The sky is vertiginously high and clear, and the deep cold is back; a taut, ringing cold that says there is nothing between me and the infinite depth of space. I crane skywards long after it sends me dizzy. I am aware that I am walking a precarious path, surrounded on all sides by uncertainty and the possibility of disaster. Nothing is within my control. The sky yawns above me like the abyss, and there is nothing at all to stop me from falling, nothing except the wild maze of stars.

Donald wakes to daylight outside the window. For several moments he cannot remember where he is, and then it comes back to him: the end of the trail of footprints. A respite from that hellish journey. Every inch of his body aches as if he has suffered a severe beating.

God … did he really just fall unconscious last night–out like a light? That woman who tended to his feet … he sticks a foot out from under the covers and sees that it is freshly dressed, so she was real and not a dream. Did she undress him as well? He remembers nothing but feels a prickling shame wash over him. He is, without a doubt, thoroughly undressed. His scar has even been salved and bandaged. He fumbles around the bed until he locates his spectacles. With them back on his nose he feels calmer, more in control. Inside: a small room, sparsely furnished like the guest quarters at Fort Edgar. Outside: bleak, not snowing, but soon will. And somewhere within the complex of buildings: Mrs Ross and Parker, asking questions without him. Heaven knows what they will say to Mr Stewart, left to their own devices. He struggles to get out of bed, and picks up his clothes, which have been laid neatly over a chair. He dresses, moving stiffly like an old man. Strange (and yet in a way fortunate) how much worse he feels now that they have finally arrived.

He shuffles out into the corridor and works his way round two sides of the inner courtyard without seeing a living soul. It is the strangest Company post; there is none of the bustle he is used to at Fort Edgar. He wonders where Stewart is, what sort of discipline he keeps. His watch has stopped, and he doesn’t know what time it is, whether early or late. Finally, a door flies open further down the corridor, and Nesbit emerges, slamming it behind him. He is unshaven and hollow-eyed, but dressed.

‘Ah, Mr Moody! I hope you are rested. How are your, ah, feet?’

‘Much better. The … Elizabeth dressed them for me, very kindly. I fear I was too tired to thank her.’

‘Come and have breakfast. They should have managed to light a fire and get something under way by now. God knows it’s hard enough to get the devils to do anything in winter. Do you have these problems at your place?’

‘Fort Edgar?’

‘Yes. Where is that?’

Donald is surprised that he doesn’t know. ‘On Georgian Bay.’

‘How civilised. I dream of being posted somewhere within shouting distance of … well, somewhere people live. You must find us very poor in comparison.’

Nesbit leads Donald into the room where they had been first brought, but now the fire is burning and a table and chairs have been brought from elsewhere; Donald can see drag marks in the dust on the floor. Housekeeping is clearly not the priority here. He is not sure what is.

‘Are Mrs Ross and Mr Parker about?’

As Nesbit goes to the door, Mrs Ross comes in. She has managed to do something to her clothes that makes them look halfway presentable, and her hair is neatly dressed. The slight thaw he detected after the snowstorm seems to have ended.

‘Mr Moody.’

‘Capital! You are here … And Mr Parker?’

‘I am not sure.’ She drops her eyes and Nesbit goes out, calling for the Indian woman. Mrs Ross comes swiftly over to Donald, her face tense.

‘We must talk before Nesbit comes back. Last night I told him we are here to look for my son who has run away, not to look for a murderer. We should not put them on their guard.’

Donald gapes in astonishment. ‘My dear lady, I wish you had consulted me before inventing an untruth …’

‘There was no time. Don’t say anything else or he will be suspicious. It is best for us if they suspect nothing, you must agree with that?’ Her jaw is tight and her eyes hard as stones.

‘And what if …?’ He breaks off his whisper as Nesbit comes back in, followed by Norah with a tray. They both smile at him and Donald feels it must be obvious that they were whispering furtively. With any luck Nesbit will assume their secret is of a romantic nature … he finds himself blushing at the thought. Perhaps he has a touch of fever. As he sits at the table he reminds himself, with a conscious effort of will, of Susannah. Strange that he has not thought of her in a while.

Parker arrives, and when they are all eating grilled steaks and corn bread–Donald as if he hadn’t eaten for days–Nesbit explains that Stewart is on a hunting trip with one of the men, and apologises for the poor hospitality. However he is very proud of one thing: he speaks sharply to Norah about the coffee she brought, and she silently takes it away and comes back with a pot of something entirely different. The smell precedes her into the room–the aroma of real coffee beans, such as none of them have smelt for weeks. And when Donald tastes it, he realises that perhaps he has never drunk anything like this before. Nesbit leans back in his chair and smiles broadly.

‘Beans from South America. I bought them in New York when I was on my way over. I only grind them for special occasions.’

‘How long have you been here, Mr Nesbit?’ This from Mrs Ross.

‘Four years and five months. You’re from Edinburgh, are you not?’

‘Originally.’ Somehow she makes one word sound like a reprimand.

‘And you’re from Perth, if I’m not mistaken?’ Donald smiles at him, anxious to make amends. Then he glares at Mrs Ross; if she does not want to arouse suspicions, she should be more gracious.

‘Kincardine.’

There is a silence. Mrs Ross returns Donald’s stare coolly.

‘I’m sorry we can’t help you with Mrs Ross’s errant son. That must be a worry.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ Donald nods, embarrassed; acting is not his forte. And angry with her for taking the initiative away from him, who should be leading in a matter to do with the Company. He feels at a loss to know how to proceed.

‘So, you think …’ Donald begins, but just then there is a rapid thudding in the corridor, and a shout from outside. Nesbit is suddenly alert, like an animal, senses straining, and he gets up with a jerky movement. He turns to them with a half smile, although it is more like a grimace.

‘I think, my dears–that may be Mr Stewart returning now.’

He almost runs from the room. Donald and the others are left looking at each other. Donald feels slighted–why did Nesbit not invite them, or at least him, outside? He is aware of a nagging sense of wrongness, which leaves him floundering, without rules. After a moment’s silence, Donald excuses himself with a murmur, and hesitantly follows Nesbit out into the courtyard.

Four or five men and women are gathered in a knot around a man with a sled and a tangle of dogs. More figures appear from different directions, some hanging back near the buildings, some going right up to the newcomer. Donald has time to wonder where they have all come from; most of them he has never seen before, although he recognises the tall woman who washed his feet last night. The newcomer, stout with furs, his face hidden under a fur hood, is talking to the group, and then a silence falls. Donald alone keeps walking towards them, and a couple of faces turn to him, staring as if he were something outlandish. He stops, confused, and then the tall woman, who has been in the first group all the time, lets out a long, high-pitched wail. She sinks down in a heap on the snow, making a high, thin, otherworldly noise that is neither scream nor sob. It goes on and on. No one attempts to comfort her.

One of the men appears to remonstrate with Stewart, who shrugs him off and walks towards the buildings. Nesbit speaks sharply to the man and follows his superior. When he sees Donald he glares at him, then recalls himself and beckons him to come back inside. His face is the same colour as the dirty snow.

‘What’s going on?’ Donald mutters when they are out of earshot of the men in the yard.

Nesbit’s mouth is pressed into a hard line. ‘Most unfortunate. Nepapanees has met with an accident. Fatal. His wife was outside there.’

He sounds more angry than anything else. As if he is thinking: what now?

‘You mean the woman on the ground … Elizabeth? Her husband is dead?’

Nesbit nods. ‘Sometimes I think we are cursed.’

It is muttered, half to himself. Then Nesbit abruptly turns round, effectively blocking the way down the corridor to Donald. However, he attempts to smile.

‘This is most unfortunate, but … why don’t you rejoin the others? Enjoy your breakfast … I need to speak to Mr Stewart now, under the circumstances. We will join you later.’

Donald feels he has no option but to nod, and watches Nesbit’s back disappear round a corner. He hovers in the corridor, puzzled and disturbed. There was something almost obscene about the way Nesbit, and Stewart himself, brushed aside the grief of the others, as though they wanted nothing to do with it.

Instead of going back to the breakfast room, he returns to the courtyard, where snow has started to fall in a concentrated silence, as if to say, this is winter now; this is no joke. Its flakes are tiny and quick, and seem to come at him from every direction, blurring visibility over a few yards. Only the bereaved woman is still outside where she sits, rocking back and forth. The others are nowhere to be seen. Donald is angry with them for leaving her alone. The woman is not even wearing outdoor clothes, for heaven’s sake; just her indoor dress, which leaves her arms bare below the elbow. He goes up to her.

She is half-kneeling, rocking, silent now, her eyes wide but fixed on nothing, tearing her hair. She does not look at him. He is horrified to see the bare flesh above her moccasin mottled against the snow.

‘Excuse me … Mrs Bird.’ He feels awkward, but can think of no other way to address her. ‘You will freeze out here. Please come inside.’

She gives no indication that she has heard him.

‘Elizabeth. You were kind to me last night … Please come in. I know you are stricken. Allow me to help you.’

He puts out a hand, hoping she will take it, but nothing happens. Snowflakes cling to her lashes and hair, melt on her arms. She does not brush them away. Donald is struck, looking at her, by her thin face, her fine, almost English features. But then some half-breeds are like that, more white than Indian.

‘Please …’ He puts a hand on her arm, and suddenly the thin keening wail rises again. He draws back in alarm; such a strange, ghostly noise, like an animal. He loses courage. After all, what does he know about her, or her dead husband? What can he say to alleviate her pain?

Donald looks round, for assistance, or witnesses. There is no sign of movement through the dizzying snow, although, at a window opposite, he sees an indistinct figure, who seems to be watching.

He stands up–he has been squatting–and decides to find someone else. Perhaps a woman friend can persuade her to come inside; he does not feel it is his place to force or carry her. He is sure Jacob would know what to do, but Jacob is not here. He brushes the snow off his trousers and walks away from the widow, though he cannot go without glancing back at her. She is a black shape half-hidden by the snow, like a demented figure in a Japanese print. He has a happy idea: he will bring some of that coffee out to her–it is the least Nesbit can do. He is sure she will not drink it, but perhaps she will be glad he did so.

Line lies awake, fully dressed, staring at the curtainless window. Torbin and Anna are asleep beside her. She has said nothing to them, not trusting them to keep such a secret. Shortly she will wake them and get them dressed, making it seem like an adventure. They know nothing of her plans. She won’t tell them until they are well away from Himmelvanger. She wishes they had made the rendezvous earlier–everyone has been asleep for over an hour. An hour of travel wasted. She is uncomfortably hot, as she has put on layers of petticoats under two skirts, and all her shirts, one on top of another, until her arms look like tightly packed sausages. Espen will be doing the same. A good thing it is winter. She glances at the clock again, turns the hands to suit herself; she can’t wait any longer. She leans over and wakes her children.

‘Listen, we are going on a holiday. But it’s very important to keep really, really quiet. All right?’

Anna blinks sullenly. ‘I want to sleep.’

‘You can sleep later. Now we are having an adventure. Come on, put these on, quick as you can.’

‘Where are we going?’ Torbin seems more excited. ‘It’s dark outside.’

‘It’s nearly dawn, look–five o’clock. You’ve been asleep for hours and hours. We have to start early if we’re going to get there today.’

She tugs Anna’s dress over her head.

‘I want to stay.’

‘Ach, Anna.’ Barely five years old; where did she get to be so stubborn? ‘Put this dress on on top of that one. It’s going to be cold. And this way, there will be less to carry.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘South. Where it’s warmer.’

‘Can Elke come?’ Elke is Torbin’s best friend and Britta’s daughter.

‘Maybe later. Maybe some other people will come too.’

‘I’m hungry.’ Anna is not happy and wants everyone to know it. Line gives her and Torbin a cookie each, stolen for just this occasion, to buy their silence.

At ten to, she swears them to silence and listens in the corridor for a whole minute before pulling them after her. She closes the door on the room that has been their home for the past three years. All is quiet. The heavy bag containing food and the few personal items she cannot bear to leave bumps against her back. They cross the courtyard to the stable. It is black dark without a moon and she stumbles, cursing. Torbin gasps at the word she uses, but there is no time to worry about that. Line feels a thousand eyes on her back, the fear making her grip their hands too tight, until Anna whimpers.

‘I’m sorry darling. Here we are, look.’ She opens the door to the stable. Even darker, but warmer, with the sounds of the horses stomping in their hay. She pauses, listening for him.

‘Espen?’

He’s not here yet, but they are a few minutes early. She hopes he does not cut it too fine. They could have been riding away from here for the past hour, getting further from Himmelvanger with every step. She sits the children down in an empty stall.

Only a few minutes more, and Espen will be here.

She owns no watch, but has a fair idea of time passing by the numbness of her fingers and toes, and her fingers are like ice. The children fidgeted for a while, but now Anna has curled up and gone to sleep, and Torbin leans against her in a half-waking doze. It must be at least an hour since they came, and no one has come into the stable. At first she told herself: he’s always late. He can’t help it. Then she began to think, maybe he thought it was two o’clock, maybe he made a mistake. Then, as the hour crawled past and still no one came, she imagined that Merete had not been able to sleep, and that, what with the baby or an illness or something, had made it impossible for him to leave. Maybe he was lying awake, cursing and worrying about her.

And then, maybe he never intended to come at all.

She contemplates this bleak possibility. No. He would not let her down like that. Would not. Will not.

She will give him another chance–or shame him in front of them all. She shakes the children awake, more roughly than is necessary.

‘Listen. There has been a delay. It turns out we cannot leave tonight after all. We will have to go tomorrow night. I’m sorry …’ She cuts off their predictable complaints. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.’

She remembers using that phrase when telling them their father was never going to come back and they had to go and live in the middle of nowhere. ‘There’s no point complaining. That’s just the way it is.’

She swears them to secrecy–if they tell anyone about this, they won’t be able to go on holiday at all, and she has painted a picture of the warm south that appeals to both of them. Hopefully one day they might even be able to go there.

As she stands up and starts to usher them back to their bedroom–at least it is still dark–there is a movement near the door. She freezes, and the children freeze too, infected by her sudden fear. Then a voice:

‘Is someone there?’

For a moment–the shortest fragment of a second–she believes it is Espen, and her heart leaps. Then she realises the voice was not his. They have been discovered.

The man walks towards them. Line is immobile with the shock. What can she possibly say? It takes her another second to realise that he spoke English, not Norwegian. It is the half-breed, Jacob. She isn’t lost; not yet. He lights a lamp, and holds it in the air between them.

‘Oh, Mrs …’ Then he realises that he doesn’t know, or can’t pronounce, her name. ‘Hello Torbin. Hello Anna.’

‘I’m sorry if we have disturbed you,’ Line says stiffly. What is he doing here? Does he sleep in the stable?

‘No, not at all.’

‘Well then. Goodnight.’ She smiles and walks past him, then, when the children are walking in front of her across the yard, she turns back.

‘Please, it is most important to say nothing of this, to anyone. Anyone at all. I beg you … or my life is not worth living, I cannot stress this too much. Can I trust you?’

Jacob has put out the lantern, as if appreciating the need for secrecy. ‘Yes,’ he says simply. He does not even sound curious. ‘You can trust me.’

Line helps the children undress and watches as they fall asleep. She is too agitated to sleep. She pushes the bag behind a chair. She cannot bear to unpack, it seems too much like an admission of failure. In the morning she will have to strew clothes around to disguise it; hopefully that will fool anyone who chooses to look in. Oh, to go somewhere where she has her own house, with doors you can lock. She detests this lack of privacy; it chafes like a bridle.

At breakfast she is wary, showing her bland and cheerful mask to the community. She does not even glance towards Espen until halfway through the meal, and then his head is bowed. He does not look in her direction. She tries to assess whether he or Merete looks particularly tired, but it is hard to tell. The baby is crying, so perhaps it has colic. She will have to bide her time.

It is afternoon when she gets her chance. He comes to her when she is feeding the chickens. One minute he is there, although she did not see him arrive. She waits for him to speak.

‘Line, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to tell you … Merete couldn’t sleep for hours and I didn’t know what to do.’ He is fidgeting, restless, his eyes everywhere but on her. Line sighs.

‘Well, it’s all right. I made up some story for the children. We will go tonight. One o’clock.’

He is silent for a moment.

‘Have you changed your mind?’

He sighs. She finds she is trembling.

‘Because if you have, I won’t go without you. I will stay, and I will tell everyone that I am carrying your child. I will shame you in front of everyone. In front of your wife and children. If Per turns me out, I don’t care. We might freeze to death. Your child will die and I will die. And you will be responsible. Are you prepared for that?’

Espen’s face goes pale. ‘Line, don’t say such things! That’s awful … I wasn’t going to say I wouldn’t come. It’s just hard, that’s all. What I have to leave behind … you don’t have to leave anything behind.’

‘Do you love her?’

‘Who? Merete? You know I don’t. I love you.’

‘Tonight at one, then. If Merete can’t sleep you will just have to think of an excuse.’

His face is resigned. It is going to be all right. It is just that he is a man who needs to be led, as many do.

Still, Line does not know how she gets through the remaining hours of the day. She cannot sit still, and observing her restless fidgeting as they sew their quilts, Britta says, ‘What’s the matter, girl? Ants in your pants?’ It is all Line can do to smile.

But finally, of course, finally it is one o’clock and they are on their way to the stables. As soon as they push the door closed, she can feel that Espen is there. His voice whispers her name in the dark.

‘It is us,’ she replies.

He lights a lamp and smiles at the children, who look at him with a doubtful, suspicious shyness.

‘Are you looking forward to your holiday?’

‘Why do we have to go in the middle of the night? Are we running away?’ This from sharp Torbin.

‘Of course not. We need to leave early, so that we can cover a good distance before it gets dark again. This is the way people travel in winter.’

‘Hurry up, no more chatter. You’ll see when we get there.’ Line is worried and her voice is sharp.

Espen straps their bags behind the saddles–he has already made the horses ready. Line feels a surge of fondness for the stout, slow-moving creatures; they do whatever is asked of them, without fuss or argument, even at one o’clock in the morning. They lead them outside, where the yard is so muddy their hooves make no noise. There are no lights in the whole of Himmelvanger, but they lead the horses to a copse of scrub birch, out of view of any windows, before Espen helps the children and Line onto the horses’ backs and then springs into the saddle behind Torbin. Line has a stolen compass in her hand.

‘We go south-east to start with.’ She looks up at the sky. ‘Look, there are stars. They will help us. We are going towards that one there, see?’

‘Aren’t you going to ask God to bless our journey?’ Torbin squirms round to look at his mother. He can be a pedantic boy at times, always wanting to be correct, and he has lived at Himmelvanger for three years, where you barely move without saying a quick prayer.

‘Of course. I was just about to.’

Espen reins in his mount, and drops his head. Mutters quickly, as though Per’s pious ears can pick up a prayer for miles around, ‘May the Lord God who is King of all there is in heaven and on earth, who sees and protects all, watch over us in our journey, guide us safe from dangers, and keep us on the right path. Amen.’

Line digs her heels into her horse’s sides. The dark mass of Himmelvanger grows smaller and smaller behind them. With the clear sky, it has got cold. Much colder than the night before. They have left just in time.

Ever since her father came home after his incarceration, he has seemed a different man. He sits alone in his study, not reading or writing letters or in other ways occupying himself, but staring out the window for long periods without moving. Maria knows this because she has peered in through the study keyhole, having been forbidden to disturb him. It is not like him to cut himself off from her, and she is worried.

Susannah is also worried, but for different reasons. Of course she is concerned for her father and his peculiar behaviour, but he still takes all his meals with the family, and is cheerful enough. It’s not as though, as she says to her sister, he can go on with his magisterial duties at the moment; so what else should he be doing? No, Susannah has decided to become passionately concerned for Donald. He and Jacob have been gone for three weeks, which is not particularly long, although they did expect to be back sooner. Maria and Susannah have speculated on the reason. The most obvious answer is that they have not found Francis Ross. If he were dead, they would have returned. Likewise if they had found him nearby.

‘But what if they found Francis, and he killed them to escape justice?’ Susannah asks with rounded eyes, on the verge of tears.

Maria is scornful. ‘Can you really see Francis Ross killing Mr Moody and Jacob, when they are both armed? Besides, he wouldn’t have the strength. He’s no taller than you. Really, that’s about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.’

‘Maria …’ her mother remonstrates from the chair where she does her sewing.

Susannah shrugs, irritated. ‘I just think they would have sent a message before now.’

‘If there are no people to carry messages, it’s impossible.’

‘Oh, it’s not as though they are in the middle of … Outer Mongolia.’

‘Actually, Mongolia is far more densely populated than Canada,’ Maria can’t stop herself from saying.

‘If that is supposed to reassure me, well … it doesn’t!’ Susannah gets up and walks out of the sitting room, slamming the door.

‘You could be kinder,’ says Mrs Knox, mildly. ‘She is worried.’

Maria bites back a rejoinder. She may be worried too, but as usual everyone is more concerned for Susannah’s emotional state than her own.

‘The fact is, it is worrying. One would have expected to get some sort of message by now. In a way I’m surprised the Company hasn’t sent someone to look for them.’

‘Well, in my experience …’ Mrs Knox bites off a thread with a snap ‘… bad news always travels fastest.’

The atmosphere in the house is stifling, what with her father sitting like a sphinx in his study, and Susannah’s tears, and her mother’s weird calm. Maria decides she needs to get away from them all. The truth is she was slightly disturbed by her own reaction to the discussion about Moody. She too has been wondering what has happened to them, and hoping that he is all right; just as you would be concerned about any friend you haven’t heard from in a while. It doesn’t mean anything. But she has been thinking about his face, surprised at the detail that has remained with her: the freckles high on his cheekbones, the way his spectacles slip down his nose, and the humorous smile whenever he is asked a question, as though he doubts his ability to answer it, but is prepared to have a go anyway.

She reaches the store with a few inches of icy mud clinging to her boots and skirt. Mrs Scott is behind the counter, and only lifts her head a fraction when Maria comes in. When she greets her, Maria catches sight of a swollen, yellowing bruise high on her left cheekbone, spoiling the perfect symmetry of her face. Mrs Scott–or Rachel Spence as she was once known–played the Virgin Mary in the school nativity. Older townspeople still remind her of it, but it is a long time since they enquired after one of the frequent accidents she seems to suffer nowadays.

Mr Sturrock is in his room. Maria waits by the stove downstairs, not certain that he will see her, but he comes down a minute later.

‘Miss Knox. To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘Mr Sturrock. Boredom, I’m afraid.’

He shrugs elegantly, taking it in the spirit in which it was meant. ‘I am glad of it, if it brings you here.’

There is something about his expression that makes her slightly self-conscious. If he were a younger man, she would suspect him of making love to her. Perhaps he is. She thinks it would be typical if the only male interest she elicits is from a man older than her father.

Sturrock calls for coffee and then says, ‘Would you think it very improper if I were to invite you up to my room? Only there is something I would very much like to show you.’

‘No, I would not think it improper.’ And, the strange thing is, despite her suspicions, she doesn’t.

His room is musty, but clean. He clears the table by the window of a pile of papers, and arranges the two chairs. Maria sits down, enjoying his attentions. He must have been a remarkably handsome man when young, and indeed is still so, with his thick silver hair and clear blue eyes. She smiles at herself for her foolishness.

The view from the window is of the street in front of the store; excellent for a watcher of human traffic. Everyone in Caulfield comes to the store sooner or later. Even her own house is partially visible in the distance, and obliquely beyond, the expanse of grey water brooding under low cloud.

‘Hardly palatial, but I find it serves.’

‘Are you working here?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ He sits down, and pushes a piece of paper towards her. ‘What do you think of that?’

Maria picks up the page, torn, not freshly, from a notebook. It has pencil marks on it, but at first she cannot decide which way up it is meant to go. There are small angular marks–mainly lines in various configurations: diagonals, parallels and so on. Around these marks are sketched a few small stick figures, but in no discernible pattern. She studies it carefully.

‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but I can make nothing of it. Is it complete?’

‘Yes–as far as I know. It is copied from a whole piece, but there may of course be others.’

‘Copied from what? It’s not Babylonian, is it, although in some ways it looks rather like cuneiform writing.’

‘That was my first thought also. But it isn’t Babylonian, or hieroglyphics, or Linear Greek. Nor is it Sanskrit, or Hebrew, or Aramaic, or Arabic’

Maria smiles; he is setting her a puzzle, and she likes puzzles. ‘Well, it isn’t Chinese or Japanese. I don’t know, I don’t recognise it–these figures … Is it an African language of some sort?’

He shakes his head. ‘I would be impressed if you could. This is something that I have taken to museums and universities and shown to many experts on languages, and none of them had any idea what it was.’

‘And something makes you think that it is more than a … an abstract pattern? I mean, these figures look quite childish.’

‘I fear that is more to do with my lack of skill at reproducing them. The originals have a definite presence. As you said, this is only part of it. But yes, I do think it is more than a few scratches.’

‘Scratches?’

‘The original is cut into a piece of bone, and coloured with some black pigment, possibly a soot mixture. It is very carefully done. There are these figures all around the outside, in a chain. I think the marks are a language and record an event of some sort, and the figures illustrate it.’

‘Really? You deduced all that? Where is the original?’

‘I wish I knew. It was promised to me by the man who owned it, but …’ He shrugs. Maria watches him closely.

‘This man … was it Jammet?’

‘Well done.’

She feels a thrill of satisfaction. ‘So then it will be with his effects, won’t it?’

‘It has gone.’

‘Gone? You mean, stolen?’

‘I cannot say. It was either stolen, or he sold it or gave it to someone else. But I think the last two are unlikely; he said he would keep it for me.’

‘So … are you waiting to see if Mr Moody brings it back?’

‘It may be a vain hope, but, yes.’

Maria looks at the paper again. ‘You know, it does remind me of something … or rather, the figures do. I’m not sure what, though. I can’t remember.’

‘I would be grateful if you would try.’

‘Please Mr Sturrock, put me out of my misery. What is it?’

‘I regret I cannot. I do not know.’

‘But you have an idea.’

‘Yes. This may sound fantastical, but … I have a–well, I suppose hope is the best word. I have a hope that it is an Indian language.’

‘You mean … American Indian? But there are no written Indian languages–everyone knows that.’

‘Perhaps there were once.’

Maria absorbs what he has said. He looks entirely serious.

‘How old is the original?’

‘Well–I would need to have it to find out.’

‘Do you know where it came from?’

‘No, and it will be hard to find out, now.’

‘So …’ She considers her words carefully, not wanting to offend him. ‘Of course, you have thought of the possibility that it could be a fake?’

‘I have. But fakes are generally only made where there is something to be gained by it. Where there is a market for such artefacts. Why would anyone go to the quite considerable trouble of making something that has no value?’

‘But it is the reason you are here, in Caulfield, isn’t it? So you must believe in it.’

‘I am not rich.’ He smiles, self-mocking. ‘But there is always the possibility–however slight–that it is genuine.’

Maria smiles again, unsure what she thinks. Her natural scepticism is a barrier put up to protect herself from ridicule, and it is her way to play devil’s advocate. But she is afraid that he is following a false trail.

‘Those figures … they do remind me of Indian drawings I have seen. Calendars, and so on, you know.’

‘You are not convinced.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps if I saw the original …’

‘Of course, you would need that. You are right, that is why I am here. It is an interest of mine, Indian affairs and history. I used to write articles. I was known for it, in a small way. I do believe …’ he pauses, glances out of the window ‘… I do believe that if the Indians had a written culture, their treatment at our hands would have been different.’

‘You may be right.’

‘I had a friend, an Indian friend, who used to talk of such a possibility. You see, it is not entirely unheard of.’

If Sturrock is disappointed by her response, he does not show it. Feeling as though she has been harsh, she reaches for it.

‘May I copy it? If you would allow–I could take it away and … try some things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Writing is a code, isn’t it? And any code may be broken.’ She shrugs, disclaiming any expertise in that area. Sturrock smiles and pushes it over to her.

‘Of course, you are more than welcome. I have tried myself, but with no success to speak of.’

Maria is very doubtful that she will be of any use, but it is, at the least, something to take her mind off the frustrations and concerns that surround her on every side.

He is of middle age and height, with striking blue eyes in a weathered face, and close-cut hair that is halfway in turning from fair to grey. Apart from the eyes his appearance is unremarkable, but the overall impression is modest, attractive, trustworthy. I can imagine him as a country lawyer or doctor, some sort of public servant who has channelled his intelligence to the greater good–except perhaps for those eyes, which are piercing, far-sighted, bright yet dreamy. The eyes of a prophet. I am surprised, even charmed. For some reason I was expecting a monster.

‘Mrs Ross. Delighted to meet you.’ Stewart takes my hand and bows slightly. I nod.

‘And you must be Moody. Delighted to make your acquaintance. Frank tells me you are based at Georgian Bay. A beautiful part of the country.’

‘Yes, it is,’ says Moody, smiling and shaking his hand. ‘And I am delighted to meet you, sir. I have heard much about you.’

‘Oh, well …’ Stewart shakes his head with a smile, seeming embarrassed. ‘Mr Parker. I believe thanks are in order for guiding these people on such a difficult journey.’

Parker hesitates for a fraction of a second and then shakes the proffered hand. There is not a trace of recognition on Stewart’s face as far as I can see.

‘Mr Stewart. I am pleased to meet you again.’

‘Again?’ Stewart has a look of slightly apologetic puzzlement. ‘I am sorry, I don’t recall …’

‘William Parker. Clear Lake. Fifteen years ago.’

‘Clear Lake? You’ll have to forgive me, Mr Parker, my memory isn’t what it used to be.’ His face is smiling pleasantly. Parker doesn’t smile.

‘Perhaps if you roll up your left sleeve, it will help.’

Stewart’s face changes and for a moment I can’t read it. Then he bursts out laughing, and claps Parker on the shoulder.

‘My God! How could I have forgotten? William! Yes, of course. Ah well, a long time ago, as you say.’ Then his face grows serious again. ‘I am sorry I couldn’t come to meet you as soon as I arrived. There has been a tragic accident, I am sure you heard.’

We nod, like children with their headmaster.

‘Nepapanees was one of my best men. We were hunting on a river not far from here.’ His voice tails off, and I think, although I’m not sure, that I see the gleam of tears in his eyes. ‘We were following some tracks and … I can still hardly believe what happened. Nepapanees was a very experienced tracker; a skilful hunter. No one knew more than he did about the bush. But as he was following a track that led out along the river, he stepped on a spot of weak ice and went through.’

He stops, his eyes focused on something not in the room. I notice that his face, which on first impression inspires such confidence, is also creased and tired. He could be forty. He could be fifteen years older. I can’t tell.

‘One minute he was there, the next he had gone. He went through, and though I crawled out as far as I could, I saw no sign of him. I even put my head under, but it was no good. I keep asking myself–perhaps I could have done more?’

He shakes his head. ‘You can do the same thing a thousand times, and think nothing of it. Like walking on ice. You get to know it, how thick it is, whether the current is strong or weak. And then the next time you set foot on it, after all those times when you knew it was safe, you make a mistake, and it does not bear your weight.’

Moody nods his head in sympathy. Parker is watching Stewart with minute attention, scrutinising him with the same look I saw on his face when he was studying the ground, looking for the trail. I don’t know what he finds so enigmatic; Stewart exhibits nothing but regret and sadness.

‘That was his wife out there?’ I ask.

‘Poor Elizabeth. Yes. They have four children too; four children without a father. A terrible business. I saw you went out to her.’ He speaks to Moody now. ‘Perhaps you thought us callous to leave her alone, but that is the way with these people. They believe that no one can say anything at such a time. They have to grieve in their own way’

‘But surely, they could tell her she was not alone? And in this weather …’

‘But in her particular grief, she is alone, is she not? He only had one wife, and she only one husband.’ He turns his startling blue eyes on me, and I cannot disagree. ‘It is particularly hard for her that I could not bring back his body. For Indians, you know, drowning is unlucky. They believe that the spirit cannot go free. At least she is baptised, so perhaps she will find some comfort. And the children too. That is a blessing.’

Despite the atmosphere of shock, Stewart insists on showing us around. The tour, something granted to all visitors as an act of courtesy, has a stilted and unreal quality, as if we are acting the parts of guests murmuring approval.

First he shows us the main building; the three-sided square. A single wooden storey with a corridor as its spine, and rooms on either side. As we walk, the difference between Hanover’s past and its present becomes increasingly apparent. One whole wing was meant for guests; at least a dozen of them. The rooms we have been given look outward, over the river and the plain. Now the view is all white and grey horizontals that blend imperceptibly into each other, bisected by the dirty brown of the palisade. But in summer it must be beautiful. Then there is the dining room, which without a long table seems empty and forlorn. In the old days, Stewart tells us, when Hanover was at the centre of rich fur country, it held a hundred men and their families, and celebrated fat profits with feasts that lasted all night. But all this was years ago, long before Stewart’s tenure. For the past twenty years or so, it has operated with a skeleton staff, maintaining the Company’s fragile hold over the wilderness, more in honour of the past than for any sound financial reason. The long central wing is largely empty; formerly the residence of officers, now it is home to spiders and mice. Instead of a dozen Company officials, there are now just Stewart and Nesbit. The only other member of staff who lives in this building is the chief interpreter, Olivier, a boy no older than Francis. Stewart calls him to meet us, and if he is grief-stricken he hides it well. He is a quick-witted youth who seems eager to please, and Stewart tells us proudly that he is proficient in four languages, having the natural advantage of one French-speaking parent and one English-speaking, each from a different native tribe.

‘Olivier will go far in the Company,’ Stewart says, and Olivier beams with shy pleasure. I wonder if that is true; how far can a brown-skinned boy go in a company owned by foreigners? But then, perhaps he is not so badly off. He has a job and a talent, and in Stewart, a mentor of some sort.

From the third wing, made up of offices, Stewart takes us to the storehouse where the goods are stocked. They have shipped out most of their furs over the summer, he explains, so stocks are low. Trappers spend the winter hunting, and it is in spring that they bring the results to the post to sell. Donald asks questions about outfits and yields, and Stewart answers him with interest, flattering him. I glance at Parker, to gauge his reaction, but he doesn’t return my look. I feel snubbed. Ignored by the others, something catches my eye. I lean down and pick up a square of paper. Written on it are some numbers and letters: 66HBPH, followed by the names of animals. It reminds me that I still have the scrap of paper that Jammet had, perhaps, so carefully hidden in his cabin.

‘What is this?’ I pass the paper to Stewart.

‘That is a pack marker. When we pack the furs …’ he is addressing me alone, the only one who doesn’t know Company practice ‘… a list of contents goes on top so we know if we lose anything. The code at the top refers to the outfit–here the year to May last, the company, of course, the district, which is Missinaibi, designated by the letter P, and the post–Hanover, H. So every pack is identified with where it came from and when.’

I nod. I can’t remember the letters on Jammet’s scrap, only that it was from some years ago; perhaps when he worked there last. As an explanation this leaves a lot to be desired.

Beyond the storehouses are the stables, empty except for the dogs and a couple of squat ponies. And beyond that, the seven or eight wooden huts where the voyageurs live with their families, and the chapel.

‘Normally I would take you to meet everyone, but today … It is a close community, especially now that we are not so many. There is much grieving. Please feel free,’ he turns, and again seems to address me more than the others, ‘to go into the chapel whenever you choose. It is always open.’

‘Mr Stewart, I know you have many things on your mind at the moment, but you know that we are here for a reason?’ I don’t care if it isn’t the right time to bring it up, I don’t want Moody getting there first.

‘Of course, yes. Frank mentioned something … You are looking for someone, is that right?’

‘My son. We have followed his trail. It led us here … or near here, at least. You haven’t seen any strangers recently? He is a youth of seventeen, black hair …’

‘No, I’m so sorry. We have had no one here, until you came. I’m afraid it had quite gone out of my mind, what with all this … I will ask the others. But no one has been here that I am aware.’

So that is it for the time being. Moody looks most unhappy with me, but that is the least of my problems.

Stewart leaves us to see to some Company business, and I turn to Parker and Moody. We have been left in Stewart’s sitting room, where a fire makes it relatively comfortable, and there is an oil painting above it, of angels.

‘Last night, just after we got here, I heard Nesbit threatening a woman. He said she would feel his hand if she didn’t keep quiet “about him”. That’s what he said–“about him”. She was arguing; she refused, I think. And then he said something would happen to her when “he” came back. That must have been Stewart.’

‘Who was this?’ asks Moody.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her, and she was speaking more quietly than him.’

I hesitate over whether to tell Moody about Nesbit and Norah. Something makes me think it was her; she looks the type to argue. But then the door opens and Olivier the young interpreter comes in. It seems that he has been sent to entertain us. But it feels to me as though someone wants us watched.

She once heard of a woman who was in trouble because her husband threatened to kill her. She went to the nearest Company post and stood outside the gate, with all her belongings in a heap in front of her. First she set fire to the belongings. Then she put the match to a bag hanging round her neck. It was full of gunpowder, and exploded, blinding her and burning her face and chest. Inexplicably alive, she took a rope and tried to hang herself from a tree branch. Still she lived, so then she took a long needle and stuck it into her right ear. Even with the needle all the way inside her head, she didn’t die. It wasn’t her time, and her spirit wouldn’t let her go. So she gave up and went off to make a new life somewhere else, where she prospered. Her name was Bird-that-flies-in-the-sun.

Strange that she remembers the story in such detail. The woman’s name; the right ear. The name perhaps because it is a little like her own: Bird. She knows nothing else about the woman, except that she too knows what it is to want to die. Were it not for her children she thinks she would try to hang herself. Alec would be all right; thirteen and clever and already working, apprenticed to Olivier as interpreter. Josiah and William are younger but with less imagination to scare and confuse them. But Amy is only little, and girls need more help in this world, so she will have to stay in it a while longer at least, until it is her time. But without her husband by her side it will always be winter.

Without being aware of looking out the window, she sees the visitors come and stand a few yards from the house, looking in her direction. She can feel them talking about her; he will be talking about her husband, spinning his tale of how he died. She doesn’t trust him any more; when he talks to you he makes you keep secrets. He made her husband keep secrets, which he didn’t like, although he shrugged them off; dropped them outside the house when he came back from their hunting trips.

That morning–she was expecting him to come back as soon as she woke up, and Amy asked if papa would be back today, and she said yes–she walked out to the western gate, hearing the distant dogs barking, smiling to herself. She could hear so well she was sure she could hear the hush of runners on snow. She still smiled when he came back from a trip, even though they had been married for such a long time. She heard the dogs and walked up to the bump from where you could see over the fence. And saw that there was only one man with the sled. She stayed there watching until he reached the palisade, then went down to the yard to hear what he had to say, although she already knew. Others, William and George and Kenowas and Mary, had seen that he was alone and came to find out, but he had spoken straight to her, laying his eyes on her like a blue spell, so that she could not speak. She did not remember anything else until the visitor, the moonias with the knife wound and the bad feet, came out and tried to talk to her, but his voice sounded like the humming of bees and she did not know what he said. Then a little while later he brought out a cup of coffee, and put it in the snow beside her. She didn’t remember asking for it, but maybe she had; it smelt good, better than any coffee she had ever drunk, and she watched tiny snowflakes land and vanish on its oily black surface. Land and melt, so they were gone for ever. And then all she could think of was the face of her husband trying to speak to her, but she couldn’t hear him because he was trapped under a thick layer of river ice, and he was drowning.

She picked up the cup of coffee and poured it onto the skin on the underside of her forearm. It was hot, but not hot enough. The skin went pink, that was all, and her arm smoked like meat in the cold air.

They brought her back to the house, and Mary stayed with her, stoking the fire and bringing food for the children. She stays now, as if she is afraid Elizabeth will throw herself on the fire if she leaves her alone. Alec came and put his arms round her, and told her not to cry, although she wasn’t crying. Her eyes are as dry as a stick of wood. Amy doesn’t cry either, but that is because she is too young to understand. The other boys cry until they fall asleep exhausted. Mary sits by her and doesn’t say anything; she knows better than that. George came in once and said he will pray for her husband’s soul: George is a Christian and very devout. Mary shooed him away; she and Elizabeth are both Christians, but Nepapanees was not. He was Chippewa, without a drop of white blood in his veins. He went to church and heard a preacher a couple of times, but said it wasn’t for him. Elizabeth nodded at George; she knew he meant to help. And maybe it will; who is to say Our Heavenly Father cannot intervene in her husband’s fate? Perhaps there is a reciprocal agreement.

‘Mary,’ says Elizabeth now, her voice rasping like a key in a rusty lock. ‘Tell me if it is snowing.’

Mary looks up. She is cradling Amy on her lap and for a moment Elizabeth has the fantasy that Mary is the mother, and Amy a child she doesn’t know.

‘No, it stopped an hour ago. But now it’s getting dark. It will have to be tomorrow.’

Elizabeth nods. The snow has stopped for one reason only and she knows what she will do in the morning. Would have done it earlier but for the snow, which fell to make them stop and think for a while. So that they would act with thoughtfulness. In the morning they will go back to the river and find him, and bring him back.

Amy wakes up and stares at her mother. She is hers, after all, with her grey-brown eyes and pale skin. They’d wanted another girl. Nepapanees joked that he wanted a girl who was like him, instead of like her.

There will not be another girl now. Her spirit, if what Nepapanees believed is true, will have to wait to be born in another place, at another time.

The trouble is, she doesn’t believe in anything any more.

Donald retires after dinner to write to Susannah. More snow fell as they ate; if Stewart is right, this storm could last days, and there will be no chance of travelling before it is over. But he has more than one reason to be grateful for this. He is alarmingly tired. His feet, even in moccasins, hurt like hell, and the wound on his stomach is red and weeping. He waited for a moment in the dining room when he could draw Stewart aside, and quietly mentioned that he might need some medical attention. Stewart nodded to him and promised to send someone with some expertise. Then he had, rather unexpectedly, winked.

Anyhow, he doesn’t feel too bad now, sitting at the rickety table that he requested, with his packet of paper and some defrosted ink. He tries, before he starts, to fix Susannah’s oval face in his mind’s eye, but once again finds it hard to grasp. Again, Maria’s face comes to him with absolute clarity, and he reflects that it would be interesting to write to her and discuss the complexities of their situation, which he feels sure would bore her sister. Not to mention the upsetting business with the widow. Somehow he thinks he would like to know what Maria would have to say about it all. Tomorrow, or the day after, there is no real hurry, he will have to make some proper enquiries, he supposes. But for now, he can put his duties out of his mind.

‘Dear Susannah,’ he writes, confidently enough. But after that, he pauses. Why should he not write to both sisters?

After all, he knows both of them. He taps the pen on the table a few times, then takes a fresh sheet of paper and writes ‘Dear Maria’.

After an hour or so there is a soft tap on the door. ‘Come in,’ he says, still writing away.

The door opens and a young Indian girl slips noiselessly inside. She was pointed out to him earlier; her name is Nancy Eagles, the wife of the youngest voyageur. She can be no more than twenty, has a face of arresting loveliness, and a voice so soft he has to strain to catch it.

‘Oh, Nancy, isn’t it? Thank you …’ he says, surprised and pleased.

‘Mr Stewart says you are hurt.’ Her voice is quiet and toneless, as though she is speaking to herself. She holds up a bowl of water and some strips of cloth–she has clearly come to tend to him. Without speaking again she indicates that he should take off his shirt, and sets the bowl on the floor. Donald covers the letter with some blotting paper and unbuttons his shirt, suddenly aware of his meagre white torso.

‘It’s nothing serious, but … here, you see, I received a wound two … three months ago, that has not healed properly.’ He peels off the dressing, pink and damp with fluid.

Nancy puts out a hand and pushes his chest lightly, making him sit down on the bed. ‘That was a knife.’ She states it flatly, not asking him.

‘Yes. But it was an accident …’ Donald laughs, and begins to tell her the long, rambling story of the rugby game.

Nancy kneels in front of him, uninterested in the wound’s origin. When she sponges the wound he takes a sharp breath in, and stops talking, his explanation of a diving tackle left unsaid. Nancy leans forward and sniffs the wound. Donald feels a heat in his cheeks and holds his breath, acutely aware that her head is almost in his lap. Her hair is blue-black, fine and silky, not coarse as he had assumed. Her skin is silky too, of a very pale, creamy brown; a silky girl, lithe and innocent of artifice. He wonders if she is aware of her beauty. He pictures her husband Peter–a tall, strongly built voyageur–walking in at this moment, and blanches at the thought. Nancy seems unperturbed. She makes a clean dressing and applies some smelly herbal paste before indicating that he should lift his arms, and binding it on so tightly Donald is afraid he might suffocate during the night.

‘Thank you. That is very kind …’ He wonders if there is something he can give her, and mentally ransacks the few belongings he brought with him. He cannot come up with anything suitable.

Nancy gives him the ghost of a smile, her fine black eyes for the first time looking into his own. He notices how her eyebrows have the elegant arch of a gull’s wing, and then, to his complete and total astonishment, she picks up his hand and presses it to her breast. Before he can utter a word or pull it away, she fastens her lips on his, and her other hand grasps the not indifferent organ between his legs. He gasps something out–he cannot be sure what–and after a moment in which his senses are so overloaded he doesn’t know what is going on, he pushes her firmly away. (Be honest, Moody–how long was that moment? Long enough.)

‘No! I … I’m sorry. Not that. No.’

His heart is thundering, the sound of his pulse crashing like waves against his eardrums. Nancy looks at him, her blunt, almond-coloured lips parted. It has never before occurred to him that native women could be as beautiful as white women, but he cannot imagine anything more beautiful than the girl in front of him. Donald shuts his eyes, to take away the sight of her. Her fingers are still on his arms where he holds them away from him, as though they are dance partners frozen in the midst of a step.

‘I can’t. You’re beautiful, but … no, I can’t.’

She glances down at his trousers, which seem to disagree with him.

‘Your husband …’

She shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘It matters to me. I’m sorry.’

He manages to turn away, half expecting her to launch another attack. But nothing comes. When he glances back at her, she is gathering up the bowl of dirty water, the cloths and the used dressing.

‘Thank you, Nancy. Please don’t be … offended.’

Nancy looks at him swiftly but says nothing. Donald sighs and she goes out as quietly as she came in. He looks at the closed door, cursing. Cursing himself and her and the whole ramshackle, godforsaken place. The letter on the table reproaches him. The cool, well-constructed sentences; the humorous asides … why is he writing to Maria anyway? He picks up the letter and crumples it into a ball, regretting it instantly. Then he picks up his spare shirt and flings it on the floor, just for the sake of throwing something (but something that won’t break). The floor is filthy. Why is he so angry when he did the right thing? (Regret, possibly? Because he is a milk-and-water, lily-livered coward who hasn’t the courage to take what he wants when it is offered to him?)

Damn, damn, damn.

Shortly after Moody makes his excuses and leaves the table, Parker also gets up and begs leave to retire. After he’s gone I wonder if they are both up to something, although Moody looks so exhausted it is possible that he really has gone to sleep. About Parker I’m less sure. I hope he is working some mysterious miracle of deduction, which as yet I cannot guess at. Stewart suggests Nesbit take me to the sitting room for a glass of something. He, he says, will join us in a few minutes–in such a way that I immediately wonder what he is doing. It is all very well having a suspicious cast of mind, but I can’t say it has so far led to any useful discoveries.

Nesbit pours two glasses of malt whisky and hands one to me. We clink glasses. He has been strained and edgy tonight; his eyes fervid, his hands twisting constantly or drumming on the table. He ate next to nothing. Then, before coffee, he excused himself. Stewart responded in some appropriate way, but his eyes were hard. He knows, I thought. Norah served us throughout, and though I watched her carefully, I could not discern any of the same tension in her. Now that Stewart is here she is far more docile, showing none of the sullenness of the first night. When Nesbit came back ten or fifteen minutes later, his demeanour had changed; his movements were languorous, his eyes sleepy. Parker and Moody gave no sign of noticing anything amiss.

I go to the window and part the curtains. It is not snowing, but it lies several inches deep.

‘Do you think there is more snow on the way, Mr Nesbit?’

‘I don’t claim to understand the weather here, but it seems likely, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I was only wondering when we might leave again. If we have to go on looking …’

‘Ah, of course. Not the best time of year for it.’ He seems unconcerned about the fate of my seventeen-year-old son out in the wilderness on his own. Or perhaps he is sharper than I give him credit for.

‘Frightful place, this. Perfect for convicts, I’ve always thought, instead of sending them to Tasmania, which as far as I can make out is jolly pleasant. Rather like the Lake District.’

‘But here is not so isolated. Or so far from home.’

‘Feels isolated enough. Do you know, a few years ago, a bunch of employees–foreigners, I think–tried to make a run for it from Moose Factory. In January! Of course, none of them were ever seen again. Froze to death in the middle of nowhere, poor bastards.’ He laughs softly, bitterly. ‘Excuse my language, Mrs Ross. It has been so long since I’ve been in the company of a lady I have forgotten how to talk.’

I demur; something along the lines of having heard worse.

He looks at me in a speculative way I don’t like. He’s not drunk tonight, but his pupils are very small, even in the dim light. His hands are calm and relaxed now; soothed. I know you, I think. I know how it feels.

‘Disappeared, you say? How awful.’

‘Yes. Don’t get too upset–as I said, they were foreigners. Krauts or something.’

‘You don’t like foreigners?’

‘Not particularly. Give me a Scot any day.’

‘Like Mr Stewart?’

‘Exactly. Like Mr Stewart.’

I drain my glass. Dutch courage, but better than none at all.

When Stewart comes in, my face is warm from the whisky, but my head is still clear. Nesbit pours a glass for Stewart and we talk easily for a few minutes. Then Stewart turns to me.

‘I was thinking about your Mr Parker. You know, I can’t believe I didn’t recall the name immediately, but then it was a long time ago. Tell me, how did you meet?’

‘We only met recently. He was in Caulfield and when we needed a guide, someone suggested him.’

‘So you do not know him well?’

‘Not particularly well. Why?’

Stewart smiles the smile of someone with interesting news to impart. ‘Oh … He is, or at least was, a rather colourful character. There were certain incidents at Clear Lake … Let’s say some of our voyageurs are rather wild, and … he was one such.’

‘How fascinating! Do go on.’ I smile, as though it is no more than so much gossip.

‘It is not really so fascinating. Some rather ugly incidents. William was prone to fighting when younger. We went on a journey together–I’m talking more than fifteen years ago, you understand–a journey in winter. There were other men there too, but … it was a hard journey and quarrels blew up. Over whether to go on, or turn back, that sort of thing. Food was running low and so on. Anyway, we came to blows.’

‘Blows! Good heavens!’ I lean forward in my chair, giving him an encouraging smile.

‘You may recall what he said, and indeed, he gave me something to remember him by.’ Stewart rolls up his left sleeve. Running down his forearm is a long white scar, a good quarter of an inch wide.

There is nothing feigned about my shock.

‘Sometimes these half-breeds, give them half a bottle of rum and they turn into a dervish. We had an argument and he went for me with a knife. In the middle of nowhere too; that was no joke, I can tell you.’

He rolls the sleeve down again. Right now I can’t think of anything to say.

‘I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have shown you. Some ladies find scars distressing.’

‘Oh, no …’ I shake my head. Nesbit refills my glass. It’s not the scar that disturbs me, but the last picture of Jammet I will ever have flashing up in my mind. And the first sight of Parker: the artificial man searching the cabin: a savage, alien, terrifying figure.

‘It is not the sight of your scar,’ says Nesbit happily, ‘more the thought that her guide is such a handy fellow with a knife!’

‘He has seemed nothing of the kind these past weeks. He is the model guide. Perhaps, as you say, his violence was the result of rum. He does not drink now.’

Stewart could be lying, I tell myself. I look into his eyes, trying to read his soul. But he looks only kind, sincere; a little wistful, thinking of old times.

‘It is good to hear that some men can learn from their mistakes, eh, Frank?’

‘Indeed so,’ I murmur. ‘If only more of us did.’

Later, in my room, I remain dressed and sit in the chair to prevent myself falling asleep. I would like nothing more than to lie down and succumb to oblivion. But I can’t, and I’m not sure oblivion would have me; I am troubled, it would be fair to say. I want to ask Parker about Stewart, about their past, but I am reluctant to go and wake him again. Reluctant, or afraid. The picture that came back to me earlier gave me a shock. I had forgotten how the sight of Parker had sent shivers down my spine; how brutal and alien he appeared. I had not forgotten his appearance, of course, but I had forgotten the effect it first had on me. Strange how that can happen, when you come to know someone.

But I do not know him. In his defence, he made no attempt to hide the fact that they had met before, but perhaps he was only pre-empting the inevitable; a double bluff.

My eyes are long accustomed to the dark, and the snow gives off its dull, directionless light, enough to make my way when I come out into the corridor again. I knock on his door very softly, and then let myself in, closing the door behind me. I think I have been very quiet, but he sits bolt upright in the bed with an exclamation.

‘My God … No! Go away!’ He sounds terrified and angry.

‘Mr Moody, it is I, Mrs Ross.’

‘What? What the devil?’ He fumbles with matches and lights the candle by his bed. When his face blooms out of the darkness, he is already wearing his spectacles, and his eyes are starting out of their sockets.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you.’

‘What the devil do you mean by coming in here in the middle of the night?’

I was expecting surprise and irritation, not white-knuckle fury. ‘I had to talk to someone. Please … it won’t take long.’

‘I thought you talked to Parker.’

There is something in his tone, but I’m not sure what it is. I sit on the single chair, squashing some of his clothes in the process.

‘I don’t know what to think, and we need to discuss it.’

‘It can’t wait until morning?’

‘They don’t want us to be alone all together. Didn’t you feel that?’

‘No.’

‘Well … I was telling you what I overheard Nesbit say, and then Olivier came in and we couldn’t talk about it further.’

‘So?’ His voice is still bright with anger, but he is less scared than when I came in. As though he had been afraid I was someone else.

‘Doesn’t that seem to indicate that there are things going on here they don’t want us to know? And since we are on the trail of a murderer, those things might be connected.’

He looks at me, disgruntled. But he doesn’t throw me out. ‘Stewart said no one strange had come to the fort recently.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t someone strange.’

‘You’re suggesting it is someone who lives here?’ He sounds shocked that I’m impugning a member of the Company.

‘It’s possible. Someone that Nesbit knows. Perhaps Stewart knows nothing about it.’

Moody stares into the corner behind my left ear. ‘I think the whole thing would have been much better dealt with on the straight. If we’d told them the truth about why we are here, not your absurd story.’

‘But someone already suspects us. I think merely the fact that we mentioned we were following a trail put them on their guard. Nesbit was threatening a woman–Norah, I think–not to talk about someone. Why would he do that?’

‘There could be any number of reasons. I thought you had no idea who it was.’

‘It’s true I didn’t see her, but Norah … Norah and Nesbit are having a … liaison.’

‘What? The serving woman?’ Moody looks startled. But more because it is the squat, unlovely Norah than because Nesbit is committing an impropriety. Such things go on all the time. He compresses his mouth; it is possible that he is thinking of filing a report. ‘How do you know?’

‘I saw them.’ I don’t want to say I saw them when I was sneaking around the fort at night, and luckily he doesn’t ask.

‘Well … she is a widow.’

‘Is she?’

‘One of the voyageurs here. Sad business.’

‘I didn’t know.’ I ponder that being a Company servant is a dangerous profession. ‘What I was going to say is, we will have to ask people questions … without them knowing.’

Even as I say this, I wonder how on earth we are going to manage it. Moody looks less than impressed. I have to admit it’s not a brilliant plan, but it’s the best I can do.

‘Well, if there’s nothing else …’ He shoots a meaningful glance at the door. I think of Stewart’s arm and telling Moody about it, but he doesn’t trust Parker as it is, and may well start asking questions about how Parker came to be in Dove River. Questions I don’t think I want to answer at the moment. ‘I really must get some sleep. If you don’t mind.’

‘Of course. Thank you.’ I stand up. He somehow looks smaller huddled beneath the bedclothes. Younger and more vulnerable. ‘You look exhausted. Have you got someone to look at your blisters? I am sure there is someone with medical knowledge here …’

Moody grips the covers and pulls them around his chin, as though I have advanced on him with an axe. ‘Yes. Please just go! All I need is some sleep, for heaven’s sake …’

As it turns out, plans to talk to the staff the next day are postponed, because by the time we get up, most of them have left. George Cummings, Peter Eagles, William Blackfeather and Kenowas–in other words, all the adult, non-white males who live and work at Hanover House, with the single exception of Olivier–have gone to search for Nepapanees’ body. They left before dawn, silently, on foot. Even the man we saw on that first afternoon, the cataleptically drunk Arnaud (who is, it turns out, the watchman), even he has been sobered by grief and joined the search party.

The widow and her thirteen-year-old son have gone with them.

A week after Francis rejected Susannah’s overtures, he went to Jammet’s cabin on an errand for his father. He still thought of Susannah Knox, but now school had closed for the summer and the day on the beach seemed like a hazy, unsteady memory. He had not gone to the picnic, nor had he sent any message. He had not known what to say. If he wondered at himself for spurning what he had for so long dreamed of, he did not do so often, or with any self-reproach. It was somehow that, having held her for so long an unattainable ideal, he could not imagine her being anything else.

That day, it was late in the afternoon and Laurent was inside brewing tea when Francis whistled outside the front door.

‘Salut, François,’ he called, and Francis pushed the door open. ‘You want some?’

Francis nodded. He liked the Frenchman’s cabin, which was shambolic and utterly unlike his parents’ house. Things were held together with string and nails; the teapot had no lid but was kept on because it still managed its job of holding tea; he kept his clothes in tea chests. When Francis had asked him why he didn’t build a chest of drawers, as he was perfectly capable of doing, he replied that one wooden box was as good as another, no?

They sat down on two chairs inside the door, which Laurent wedged open, and Francis smelt brandy on the Frenchman’s breath. Sometimes he drank during the day, although Francis had never seen him the worse for it. The cabin faced due west and the low sun struck them both in the face, forcing Francis to shut his eyes and tilt his head back. When he glanced at Laurent again, he found the older man looking at him, the sun mining golden lights in the depths of his eyes.

‘Quel visage,’ he murmured, as if to himself. Francis didn’t ask him what it meant, as he didn’t think it was for him.

There was a wonderful stillness in the air; the sound of crickets the loudest thing. Laurent produced the brandy bottle and tipped some, unasked, into Francis’s tea. Francis drank it, feeling agreeably reckless: his parents would yell at him if they found out, and he said so.

‘Ah well, we cannot please our parents all our lives.’

‘I don’t think I please them any of the time.’

‘You’re growing up. Soon you will leave, no? Get married, get your own place, all the rest.’

‘I don’t know.’ This seemed unlikely, dizzyingly distant from crickets and brandy and the low, blinking sun.

‘You got a sweetheart? That little dark girl–is she your sweetheart?’

‘Oh … Ida? No, she’s just a friend–we walk home from school some days.’ God! Did everyone in the county think Ida was his girlfriend? ‘No, I …’

For some reason, he found he wanted to talk to Laurent about it. ‘There was a girl I liked. Everyone likes her actually, she’s real pretty, and real nice, too … At the end of term she asked me to a picnic. She’d never really spoken to me before … and I was really flattered. But I didn’t go.’

There was the longest silence after that. Francis felt uncomfortable and began to wish he had not spoken of it.

‘Don’t know what’s the matter with me!’ He tried to laugh it off, not altogether successfully. Laurent put out a hand and patted him on the leg.

‘Nothing is the matter with you, mon ami. My God, nothing at all.’

Francis looked at Laurent then. The Frenchman’s face looked very serious, almost sad. Was it him? Did he make people sad? Maybe that was it. Ida always seemed to be sad around him lately. As for his parents, well … they were gloomy beyond belief. Francis tried smiling, to cheer him up. And then things changed. They got very slow–or was it very fast? He realised that Laurent’s hand was still on his leg, only not patting him now; now it was stroking his thigh with strong, rhythmic movements. He couldn’t stop looking into the golden-brown eyes. There was a smell of brandy and tobacco and sweat, and he seemed to be glued to the chair, his limbs heavy and immovable as if filled with a warm, viscous liquid. More than that, he was being drawn towards Laurent, and no power on earth could have stopped him.

At some point Laurent got up and went to the still open door to close it, then turned to Francis. ‘You know, you can go, if you want.’

Francis stared at him, breathless and suddenly horrified. He didn’t think he could speak, so he shook his head, just once, and Laurent kicked the door shut.

Afterwards, Francis realised he would, at some point, have to go home again. He even remembered the tool he had come for, although it seemed an inconceivable length of time ago. He was scared of leaving in case things went back to normal. What if the next time he saw Laurent he behaved as though nothing had happened? He seemed perfectly relaxed now, pulling his shirt on, with his pipe clenched between his teeth and clouds of smoke swirling round his head, as though this were a normal, everyday thing, as though the earth had not shifted on its axis. Francis was scared of going home, of having to look at his parents with these eyes, wondering, from now on, if they knew.

He stood in the doorway with the flaying tool, uncertain how to leave. Laurent came over to him, smiling his wicked smile.

‘S … so …’ Francis stuttered. He had never stuttered in his life. ‘Shall I come … tomorrow?’

Laurent put his hands on Francis’s face. Rough and tender, the thumbs traced his cheekbones. Their eyes were absolutely on a level. He kissed him, and his mouth felt like the centre of life itself.

‘If you like.’

Francis walked up the path towards home, in ecstasy and in terror. How ludicrous: the path, the trees, the crickets, the fading sky, the rising moon, everything looked just the same as before. As if it didn’t know, as if it didn’t matter. And he thought, as he walked, ‘Oh God, is this what I am?’

In ecstasy and in terror: ‘Is this what I am?’

Susannah was forgotten. School and the concerns of schoolboys faded into a distant past. That summer, for a few weeks, he was happy. He walked through the forest, strong, powerful, a man with secrets. He went with Laurent on hunting and fishing trips, although he neither hunted nor fished. When they met anyone in the forest, Francis would nod to them, grunt curtly, his eyes on the end of the fishing line, or scanning the trees for signs of movement, and Laurent would hint that he was becoming a tremendous shot, eagle-eyed and ruthless. But the best times were when they were alone at the end of the day, in the forest or at the cabin, and Laurent would become serious. Usually he was drunk as well, and he would take Francis’s face in his hands, looking and looking as if he couldn’t get enough.

Looking back, there weren’t so many times like that–Laurent insisted that he should not stay at the cabin too often, or people might suspect. He had to spend a reasonable amount of time at home too, with his parents. He found it difficult–ever since that first evening, when he had walked in to find them sitting down to dinner. He held up the tool.

‘Had to wait for him to come back.’

His father nodded briefly. His mother turned round. ‘You were so long. Your father wanted to get it done before dinner. What were you doing?’

‘Told you, I had to wait.’ He put the tool on the table and walked upstairs, ignoring his mother’s weary cries about dinner.

Trembling with shivery joy.

Since relations with his parents were rudimentary at the best of times, they did not seem to notice a difference if he was silent or distracted. He spent the time between visits to Laurent’s going for walks, lying on his bed, carrying out his chores with impatience and bad grace. Waiting. And then there would be another night at the cabin, or a trip to a fishing lake, when he could be truly himself. Seized moments, intense and sharply flavoured, when time could dawdle like Sunday afternoon, or rush like a speeding torrent. If he counted the number of nights he had ever spent at Laurent’s cabin, what would it come to?

Maybe twenty. Twenty-five.

Too few.

Francis is jolted from his past by Jacob walking into his room. He is grateful for the interruption. Jacob looks more agitated than he has ever seen him. Francis rubs his hand over his face as if he has been asleep, hoping Jacob will not see the tears.

‘What is it?’ Jacob has opened his mouth but nothing has yet come out.

‘A strange thing. The woman Line and her children, and the carpenter–they have left in the night. The carpenter’s wife is threatening to kill herself.’

Francis gapes. The carpenter, whom he has never met, has been spirited away by his nurse. (So why did she kiss him?)

Jacob paces. ‘It is going to snow. It is not a good time for travel, not with children. And I saw her, the night before last, in the stables. She asked me not to say anything. So I did not.’

Francis takes a deep breath. ‘They are adults. They can do what they like.’

‘But if they don’t know the country … they don’t know how to travel in winter …’

‘How long before it snows?’

‘What?’

‘How long before the snow? A day? A week?’

‘A day or two. Soon. Why?’

‘I think I know where they might have gone. She spoke to me; she asked about Caulfield.’

Jacob follows his thinking. ‘Well they might make it. If they are lucky.’

An hour ago they came to the first trees, small and sparse to be sure, but still trees, and Line felt a rush of joy. They really are going to get away. Here is the forest, and the forest goes all the way to the lakeshore. It is almost as though they are already there. Her piece of paper tells them to go southeast until they hit a small river, and then follow it downstream. Torbin is sitting on the saddle in front of her, and she has been telling him a story about a dog she used to have as a child in Norway. She makes him sound like the dog in the fairy story with the soldier, with eyes as big as dinner plates.

‘You can have a dog too, when we find somewhere to live. How would you like that, huh?’ It slips out before she can bite her tongue.

‘Somewhere to live?’ echoes Torbin. ‘You said we were going on holiday. We’re not, are we?’

Line sighs. ‘No, we’re going to go and live somewhere else, somewhere nicer, where it’s warm.’

Torbin squirms round in the saddle to look her in the eye, a dangerous look on his face, closed and taut. ‘Why did you lie?’

‘It wasn’t really a lie, darling. It was complicated and we couldn’t explain it all to you, not at Himmelvanger. It was important that no one there knew or they wouldn’t let us go.’

‘You lied to us.’ His eyes are hard and confused. Per and the red-roofed church have made him a pedantic little boy. ‘Lying is a sin.’

‘It wasn’t a sin in this case. Don’t argue, Torbin. There are some things you can’t understand, you’re too young. I’m sorry we had to do it this way but there it is.’

‘I am not too young!’ He is angry, his cheeks red with cold and excitement. He is wriggling around now.

‘Sit still, young man, or I’ll give you a smack. Believe me, this is not the time for arguments!’

But somehow in his wriggling he manages to stick his elbow hard into her stomach, causing her to gasp and feel a surge of anger. ‘Enough!’ She takes her hand off the reins and whacks him on the leg.

‘You’re a liar! Liar! I wouldn’t have come!’ he screams, and wriggles out from between her arms and slithers to the ground. His ankle buckles beneath him momentarily, then he picks himself up and starts to run off, back in the direction they have come.

‘Torbin! Torbin! Espen!’ Line shrieks, her voice a shrill cry, yanking on the reins to try and turn her horse round, which it doesn’t seem to understand. It stops still, then doesn’t move, like a train arrived at a station. Espen, up ahead with Anna, pulls his mount round, and sees Torbin darting between the trees.

‘Torbin!’ He jumps off, with Anna in his arms, and gives her to Line, who has dismounted, leaving her horse where it is.

‘Stay here, I’ll get him! Don’t move!’

He runs off after Torbin, dodging round trees and stumbling over fallen boughs. In a frighteningly short time, they are out of sight. Anna looks at Line with her solemn blue eyes, and starts to cry.

‘It’s all right, darling, your brother’s just being silly. They’ll be back in a moment.’ On impulse she bends down and puts her arms round her daughter, shuts her eyes against her cold, greasy hair.

It is probably no more than a few minutes before they reappear between the trees. Espen’s face is set hard and he drags a cowed Torbin by the hand. But by then Line has realised that something far worse has happened.

She and Anna have been searching, at first thinking, we’ll find it right away; a round, hard, steel object like a compass doesn’t belong here, it will stick out like a sore thumb. Line turns it into a game for Anna, with a reward for the one who finds it. The game soon palls: the ground here is particularly treacherous: humps of rock, ankle-twisting hollows, hidden rabbit holes and tangles of roots, crisscrossed with dead and rotting boughs. She can’t remember if she dropped it when Torbin hit her, or after, or when she was trying to pull the horse behind her. The tortured ground gives no sign of where they have been.

She tells Espen she can’t find it, and Torbin sees the fear in their faces and shuts up. He knows it is his fault. All four of them start to look, treading in stoop-backed circles around the indifferent horses, pulling aside lichen and rotten leaves, sticking their hands into dark, clammy holes. Every direction looks mockingly the same: scrub pines growing and dying where they grew, falling and leaning in each other’s arms, weaving around them a matted, deadwood trap.

Anna is the first to notice. ‘Mama, it’s snowing.’

Line straightens, her back aching. Snow. Silent, dry flakes float around her. Espen sees the look on her face.

‘We’ll keep looking for another half-hour, then we’ll go on. We can work out the direction pretty well anyway. It was more important to know the direction to reach the forest. This is the easy part.’

Once Torbin gives a cry and pounces, but it turns out to be a round grey stone. Line is secretly relieved when Espen calls a halt. She loves him for the way he takes command, gathering them together for a little talk, and picking the direction to go in. He points out that lichen gathers on the north sides of the tree trunks, so that is what they have to keep an eye on: where the lichen gathers. To Line the lichen looks evenly distributed, but she shuts this thought away, slams and locks the door. Espen will know; he is their protector. She is only a woman.

Espen takes Torbin on his horse, and they move off silently. The snow muffles everything, even the clink of bridles.

I go to the stables for no good reason, other than that I am thinking about talking to the women, but, to tell the truth, I am afraid of them. They look tough and alien and contemptuous, tempered by grief. Who am I to question them, I who have never been overburdened with charity and kindness, or even curiosity about my fellow men? The dogs at least are pleased to see me, crazy with the boredom of confinement. Lucie rushes up, tail wagging, her jaws stretched wide in that happy dog-smile. I feel an absurd rush of fondness for her, feeling her rough head under my hand, her tongue like hot sand. Then Parker is there. I wonder if he has been watching for me.

This is the first time he has come to find me. The first time, that is, since he knocked on my door in the middle of the night and we made our bargain. Yesterday I would have been pleased; today I’m not sure. My voice comes out shriller than I would have liked.

‘Have you got what you wanted?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why you came. It was nothing to do with Francis or Jammet. You wanted to see Stewart again. Because of something that happened fifteen years ago. Because of a stupid fight.’

Parker speaks without looking at me. Carefully. ‘That’s not so. Jammet was my friend. And your son … well, he loved Jammet. I think they loved each other, didn’t they?’

‘Really!’ I utter a strangled sort of laugh. ‘What a strange way of putting it. You make it sound …’

Parker says nothing. Lucie goes on licking my hand and I forget to move it away.

‘Really, I …’ Parker seems to have his hand on my arm, and although a part of me wants to fling it off, I don’t. ‘Really, I don’t …’

I can’t believe I didn’t know. ‘What are you saying?’ My voice crackles like dry leaves.

‘Jammet was … Well, he had been married, but sometimes he also had … friends. Young men, handsome, like your son.’

Somehow he has guided me away from the door, over to the dark corner stacked with bales of hay, and I am sitting on one of them.

‘The last time I saw him alive–it was in the spring–you know, he mentioned someone who lived nearby. He knew I didn’t judge him; not that he cared about that.’

There is a half smile on his face. He begins to light his pipe, unhurried. ‘He cared about him deeply.’

I smooth my hair into place. There are some loose strands that have slipped out of the knot, and I can see in the long light from the doorway that a couple of the hairs are white. I have to face facts. I am getting old, and my head is full of thoughts I cannot bear. I cannot bear the thought I did not realise what was happening. I cannot bear the thought that Angus hated him for it, for I realise now that he knew. I cannot bear the thought of Francis’s grief, which must have been–must be–extreme, secretive, unbearably lonely. And I cannot bear the thought that when I saw him, I did not comfort him nearly enough.

‘Oh God. I should have stayed with him.’

‘You are a brave woman.’

This almost makes me laugh. ‘I am a stupid one.’

‘You came all this way for your son. Hating it. He knows that.’

‘And it has done no good. We haven’t found the man who made the trail.’

Parker doesn’t jump in and deny this. He smokes for a minute in silence. ‘Stewart showed you the scar?’

I nod. ‘He says you did it in a fight while you were on a journey.’

‘Not on the journey. After it. I’ll tell you a couple of things he probably didn’t say, and then you can make up your own mind. Stewart was promising. Everyone said he would go far. He was the right sort. One winter at Clear Lake he made a group of us go on a journey to another post. Three hundred miles. The snow was three feet deep before the drifts. The weather was terrible. You don’t travel in the middle of winter unless you have to. He did it to prove that he could.’

‘Was this the famous journey Mr Moody spoke of?’

‘It was famous, but not for the reasons he gave. There were five of us, to start with. Stewart, another Company man called Rae, Rae’s nephew, who was seventeen. The boy didn’t work for the Company; he was visiting the country. Then there was myself and another guide, Laurent Jammet.

‘As I said, the weather was bad; deep snow and storms. Then it got worse. There was a blizzard, and by some luck we found a cabin, a hundred miles from anywhere. The blizzard went on and on. We kept waiting for it to blow itself out, but it was one of those January storms that go on for weeks. We ran low on food. The only thing we had plenty of was liquor. Jammet and I decided to go and get help. It seemed like the only chance. We told the other three we would come back as soon as possible, left all the food there was, and set out. We were lucky. After two days we found an Indian village, then the weather got worse, and we couldn’t go back for another three days.

‘When we did eventually get back, something had happened. We found Stewart and Rae in a drunken stupor. The boy was dead, lying on the floor, suffocated on his own vomit. They never made much sense, but what I think had happened was this: Stewart had talked of what he called, “going out in a blaze of glory”. He joked about it. I think, when we didn’t come back right away, he gave up. He decided they should drink themselves to death. Rae and he didn’t make it, but the boy died.’

‘How do you know it was his idea?’ I am shuddering inside at the thought. The boy was the same age as Francis.

‘That was the way he thought.’ His voice is flat with disgust.

‘And then what? Didn’t they sack him?’

‘How could they prove it? It was just a tragedy. A mis-judgement. That’s bad enough. Rae went back to Scotland, Stewart moved on, and the boy’s under the ground. I left the Company. I haven’t seen him since.’

‘And the scar?’

‘I heard him criticising the boy. Saying he was weak and scared, and wanted to die. I drank then.’ He shrugs, without regret.

There is a pause for the longest time. All the same, I know that he hasn’t finished.

‘The other thing?’

‘Yeah. Five or six years ago the Company was short of men, so they brought men over from Norway. Convicts. Stewart was chief at Moose Factory, and they had a group of these men. Norwegians joined up in Canada too. The widow at Himmelvanger, the one who looked after your son–her husband was one of them.’

I think of the widow–young, pretty, with an impatience and a hunger in her. Perhaps that explained it.

‘I wasn’t there, so this is hearsay. Some Norwegians mutinied and took off. Somehow they managed to take a lot of valuable furs. They set off across country, blizzards came up, they vanished. Stewart got into trouble that time, both for the mutiny and for losing so much valuable stock. Someone in the stores must have been in on it.’

‘Stewart?’

‘I don’t know. People exaggerated, of course, saying there was a fortune in furs to be had for the man who found them. Dozens of silver and black fox.’

‘That doesn’t sound as though it was worth so much trouble.’

‘You know how much a silver fox pelt is worth?’

I shake my head.

‘In London, more than its weight in gold.’

I am shocked. And I feel sorry for the animals. I may not be good for much, but at least I’m worth more alive than dead.

‘Stewart was sent out here. There are no furs here now. Nothing but hares. Worth nothing. I’m not sure why they bother to keep Hanover going. For an ambitious man, it was an insult. You don’t get promoted from a place like this. It was punishment for what he might have done.’

‘What has this to do with Jammet?’ I am impatient to get to the end of this.

‘Uh. Last year …’ He pauses here to fiddle with the tobacco in his pipe–deliberately, it seems to me. ‘Last winter … I found the furs.’

‘The silver and black fox?’

‘Yes.’ There is a hint of amusement in his voice, or perhaps it is defensiveness.

‘And were they worth a fortune?’ I feel–I apologise to Francis for it–a thrill of excitement. Treasure comes in many forms, however gruesome, and it always makes a shallow heart like mine beat faster.

Parker makes a sort of grimace. ‘Not as much as people said, but … enough.’

‘And … the Norwegians?’

‘I didn’t find them. But any traces would be long gone. They were out in the open.’

‘You mean wolves?’ I can’t stop myself asking.

‘Maybe.’

‘But I thought you said they would … leave parts.’

‘Over the years, all sort of creatures would come; birds, foxes … Maybe they had gone on. All I’m saying is, I didn’t see anything. The furs were cached as though they intended to come back. But they never did.

‘So, I told Laurent. He was going to arrange buyers in the States. But he could never keep his mouth shut when he’d been drinking. He boasted. Word must have got out, and got back to Stewart here. That’s why he died.’

‘What makes you think it was Stewart?’

‘Stewart wanted those furs more than anyone. Because he lost them. If he got them back, he would be a hero. The Company would take him back.’

‘Or he could make himself rich.’

Parker shakes his head. ‘I don’t think the money matters. With him it’s pride.’

‘It could have been someone else–anyone–who had heard Jammet talk and wanted the money.’

He turns his eyes on me. ‘But the trail led here.’

I think about this for a moment. It’s true. It’s true but it’s not enough.

‘It led us here but now it’s gone. And if we can’t find the man …’

Suddenly I think of something, and go hot with excitement.

‘Here, I found this at Jammet’s …’ I pull the scrap of paper out of my pocket and hand it to Parker. He peers at it, slanted towards the door, dim even so.

‘Sixty-one, that’s the outfit, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes it is. You found this?’

‘In his flour bin.’

Parker smiles. I feel flushed with pride–for a second, and then it fades. It doesn’t prove anything, other than that Jammet was interested in the furs in some way. It doesn’t help.

‘I gave that to him, with a silver fox pelt. It made him laugh, so he kept it. Sold the pelt, of course.’

‘Keep it,’ I say. ‘Perhaps you will think of some use for it.’ I don’t even ask myself what I mean by that. Parker doesn’t ask either, but the paper has disappeared. I still don’t know what to do. Of course it is Moody who needs to be convinced.

‘Will you tell Moody all this? Perhaps then he will see it.’

‘It’s not proof, like you say. Moody likes Stewart; Stewart was always good at making men like him. Besides, Stewart didn’t go to Dove River. There is someone else.’

‘Why would anyone kill for someone else?’

‘Lots of reasons. Money. Fear. When we know who it is, we’ll know why’

‘It could be one of the men here. Perhaps it was Nepapanees, and then he … he threatened to talk, and Stewart killed him.’

‘I was thinking, I wonder if they’ll ever find his body.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning, they went in the direction Stewart told them to go. The snow will have covered the tracks. They’ve only got his word for how it happened.’

The silence is so intense that even the dogs’ whining cannot break it.

They come to the place Stewart told them about towards evening. The light has seeped out of the sky, and everything is grey: pearlescent grey clouds, pale grey snow. The smoothness of snow on river ice gives it away; a wide road curving through the plain six or seven feet below ground level. The river has worn its way deeper into the earth’s rind ever since it began to flow.

There are signs of someone having been here recently, veiled by the new snow. A roughened, much trodden place where the ground slopes down onto a sort of beach. From above, the skin of ice on the river is a flat and even white, except for a patch, further up, where it is darker, shadowy, meaning it was broken and new ice has formed, thinner and only lightly dusted with snow. That must be the place.

Alec has been walking beside his mother, sometimes putting his hand in hers, sometimes not. It is hard for him; Elizabeth wondered whether to let him come at all, but there was a look in his eye that reminded her of Nepapanees. He was resolute and serious. Only yesterday he was still a boy with a father to test himself against. Now he has to be a man.

The men leave the sleds up on the bank, and go down to the river. Elizabeth takes Alec by the hand. It will not be his place to pull his father’s body from the water. The men walk out cautiously, jabbing the ice with long poles, testing its strength. When it breaks, near the shadow, the water beneath is black. One man exclaims–the water is shallower than they thought. They study the current, discussing how to go about it. From their higher point on the bank, Elizabeth looks downstream, at the white curving road. Somewhere down there, Nepapanees is waiting.

‘Stay here,’ she tells Alec, knowing he will obey. She strides off downstream without looking back. The men watch her nervously.

What she has seen: an interruption in the white smoothness of the river; a rough place where branches have snagged on a sunken bar and held, forming a weir. Anything carried downstream with the current would come to rest here for the winter until the spring floods washed it all away.

Elizabeth slides and scrambles down the bank above the weir. Part of her mind wonders why Stewart didn’t think to look here, but the snow is virgin. The ice is strong beneath her feet. She kneels down and scrapes the snow away with her mittens, throwing it aside, revealing the ice beneath. Glare ice, clear as glass. The river’s darkness leers up at her, brown-black and full of rotted matter under its icy shield. She claws at the ice with her hands, breaking the edges where it is pierced and spoilt by the branches, punching and cracking it, until …

There … there deep down, caught in the morass, she can see something, something both light and dark, something large and wrong and trapped in the watery darkness.

There are shouts, and some of the men scramble down the bank behind her, but she is not aware of them, nor of her breath coming in great hissing gasps between her teeth, nor of her hands, bare now, bleeding and blue with cold, scrabbling at the jagged ice edge. Then they are beside her with their sticks and axes, smashing at the ice, chopping it into great foaming chunks. Hands try to pull her away from the hole but she takes them by surprise, lunges forward, diving in head first, her hands reaching out to take hold of her husband’s body and drag him free. In the sudden shock of dead cold, even with her eyes open she sees nothing but blackness in the depths, and green-grey light above; until the something breaks free of its bonds and comes to her outstretched arms like a nightmare lover.

The carcass of a deer is swimming towards her, its rotting eyes wide and empty, black lips eaten back from grinning teeth, skull gleaming coy and white through sodden fur. The skin floats round it like a tattered shroud.

When they pull her out again they think for a moment she is dead. Her eyes are shut and water runs out of her mouth. Peter Eagles strikes her chest and she coughs, vomiting river. Her eyes open. They are already carrying her up the bank, pulling off her wet skins, chafing her flesh. Someone has made a fire. Someone else brings a blanket. Alec is crying. He isn’t ready to lose another parent.

Elizabeth tastes the river in her mouth, the taste trapped behind her teeth, cold and dead.

‘He isn’t there,’ she says, when her teeth have stopped chattering.

George Cummings is rubbing her hands with a piece of blanket.

‘There’s a long stretch to look in; we will smash every piece of ice until we find him.’

She shakes her head, still seeing the pale dead deer face smiling in triumph at her. ‘He isn’t there.’

Later they sit round the fire eating pemmican and drinking tea. Normally they would fish, but no one wants to fish in this river; no one even suggests it. Alec sits up against Elizabeth, so that she can feel the warmth of his side and thigh.

They have made their camp on another beach, out of sight of the destruction they caused, protected by high banks from the wind. But it is surprisingly still and the smoke from their fire rises straight up in the air until it disappears.

William Blackfeather speaks in a low voice, to no one in particular. ‘Tomorrow, at first light, we’ll look, upriver as well as down. Between us we can cover a lot of ground.’

Nodding. Then Peter: ‘Strange how shallow the water is. You would have thought it would be hard to get swept away. The current isn’t so fast.’

George nods towards Elizabeth, warningly. She, however, doesn’t seem to be listening. Kenowas drops his voice when he speaks.

‘There was new ice, where it was broken. What was there before wasn’t thick, half as thick as the new ice.’

There is silence, in which they all think their own thoughts. Kenowas speaks his out loud.

‘I wouldn’t have gone onto that ice, no matter what I was following.’

‘What are you saying?’ Arnaud is gruff and belligerent, even when sober. Kenowas turns to him. There is a longstanding dislike between them.

‘I can’t see Nepapanees going out on it either. Even an idiot like you would think twice.’

No one laughs, even though it’s meant as a joke. There is truth in what he says, and Nepapanees was the keenest tracker, the most experienced among them.

What no one says, although most of them think it, is that the guiding spirit of Nepapanees was a deer. He was not baptised, so instead of a baby looking after him, he had the deer-spirit. A strong, fast, brave spirit that knew the woods and plains. Better than a baby for him, he said. How could a human baby, born long ago in a hot, sandy country, know how to survive in the cold wilderness? What could it teach him? Then Elizabeth, baptised with a special saint for company and with white blood in her veins, shook her head and tutted if she was angry, or teased him and pulled his hair if she was not. When she became a convert in adulthood, she had liked the thought of St Francis, with his kindness and his way of communing with the birds and other creatures. He was almost like a Chippewa in this, and for this reason was very popular–four children and two adults in their village alone had chosen him for confirmation.

Now St Francis seems far away and irrelevant, a stranger who could not possibly understand this death, her icy grief. Elizabeth cannot shake the sight of the deer’s head from her mind. In the river she had felt strongly that her husband was not there at all, was nowhere near, but perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps her husband’s faith has been the right one all along, and what she saw was his spirit, come back to taunt her for her unbelief.

She feels distant, frozen by more than cold, utterly apart from the men and the food and the fire. Even from the snow and the silence and the bottomlessly hollow sky. The only thing that connects her to this world at all is the gentle pressure of her son’s body; a thin thread of human warmth, easily broken.

The temperature continues to drop. In this cold, the air feels as though it is being tightened in a vice. It takes your breath away, sucks moisture from your skin, burns like fire. There is a deep, almost conscious silence in the yard, in which feet crunch the snow with startling loudness.

That’s what wakes Donald: the press and squeak of new snow underfoot.

He has stayed in bed all day, pleading a slight fever, and slept into the late afternoon, a chair wedged under the door handle, dozing pleasantly as the light faded. There is nothing unusual about the footsteps–there are still people around to make them–only they have a peculiar, uneven pattern which jolts him out of his comfortable daze. Unwillingly he finds himself listening as the person walks, stops, then walks a little further. Then stops again. He waits–dammit!–for their next move. At length he is forced to push himself up on his elbows and peer out into the darkening courtyard. A couple of squares of light spill from rooms further along; the offices, perhaps. At first he doesn’t see the person, but that is because he is keeping to the shadows; presumably he assumes that Donald’s room, because dark, is empty. Then he sees him: a man dressed in furs, with long dark hair. Donald wonders if the search party has returned. He does not recognise this man, and after a few moments realises that he is not from any search party. He is furtive, looking around him with exaggerated care, and moving in a sort of pantomime of stealth. He is colossally drunk. Donald watches with mounting amusement as the man stumbles over something in the darkness, and swears. Then, when there is no response to the noise, he moves off towards the stores, and out of sight. Someone too drunk to be any use in searching. Donald sinks back into his cocoon, pulling the blankets round his chin.

There are men at Fort Edgar who spend months inebriated, who are good for nothing all winter. It is sad when they get to that stage, and means their working life will be short. Drunkenness is a progressive disease, and Donald was initially shocked that the Company elders took no steps to counteract it, allowing the voyageurs unlimited access to their poor-quality liquor. When he tentatively pressed Jacob on the subject, Jacob hung his head; it had been alcohol that caused him to stick a knife in Donald’s belly. As far as Donald knew, Jacob had not touched a drop since. Only once had Donald brought up the subject with Mackinley, to have Mackinley turn his pale eyes on him with amusement, if not downright scorn. ‘This is the way the world works,’ was what Mackinley’s argument boiled down to. All the traders lure trappers and staff with liquor; if the Company didn’t provide it, it would lose out to rival outfits with fewer scruples and less regard for the welfare of those who work for them. To act any other way would be naive. Donald felt there was something amiss with this argument, but did not dare say so.

After a while he gets to thinking about what Mrs Ross told him last night. Nesbit is a young man like him, fairly recently arrived from Scotland. A man of education and some breeding. A junior clerk, but with the intelligence to advance in the Company. The similarities alarm Donald; or rather, once those similarities are taken into account, the differences begin to alarm him. Nesbit’s nervous tics, his bitter laugh, the flagrant hatred for his life. He has been in the country more than twice as long as Donald, and though he is clearly miserable, he seems to assume that he will never leave. A slight shudder runs through Donald as he contemplates the prospect of Norah, with her wide, mistrustful face and insolent speech, in whose broad arms Nesbit has apparently found comfort. In the past he has been aware of mixed liaisons–even at Fort Edgar they were common–but Donald held himself aloof from the idea that this would ever happen to him. He felt he was destined to marry (somehow; the details were obscure) a nice, white English-speaking girl–a girl like Susannah, in fact, only he had never dared dream of someone as pretty. In his first eighteen months at Fort Edgar, such a prospect began to seem increasingly remote. But looking at the native women who abounded at the Fort, he still drew back, even when the men teased him about this or that girl who had giggled in his presence. But he has never seen a native woman as beautiful as Nancy Eagles. He can still feel the warmth of her soft flesh, the thrilling boldness of her hand–that is, if he allows himself to think about it. Which he won’t. Hard to imagine Norah having the same galvanising effect on Nesbit, somehow. Still.

The letter to Maria is on the desk. Last night, after his private outburst, he picked up the balled paper, smoothed it out and pressed it as well as he could under some spare sheets, weighted down with his boots, but he fears it will not be enough. Perhaps it was unwise of him to write to her anyway. Perhaps crumpling it up into a ball was a blessing in disguise. It is Susannah he should be thinking of, and he does, trying to grasp her elusive image, to hear her light, silvery voice in his head.

As the last of the light drains from the sky, Donald dresses. He is hungry, which he seizes on as a sign of returning vigour, and wanders out into the deserted corridors. He finds Nesbit in his office–the beacon of light he saw from across the courtyard. There is no sign of Stewart, Mrs Ross, or anyone else.

Nesbit leans back from his desk with a grimace, unkinking the hunch in his back. He yawns hugely, revealing blackened molars. ‘Fucking accounts. Bane of my life. Well, one of them. Used to have an accountant here once–Archie Murray. Funny little chap–mousy sort of fellow. But since he went I’ve had to do it myself, and it’s not my forte, I don’t mind telling you. Not my forte at all.’

Donald toys with the idea of offering his help, but decides he isn’t feeling that vigorous.

‘Not that we’ve got such a huge turnover to deal with. More outgoing than incoming, if you know what I mean. How’s tricks at your place?’

‘Fairly good, I suppose. But then we are more of a way-station than a source. I suppose once–years ago, before there were so many men–the whole country was full of furs.’

‘I’m not sure that there was ever much of anything round here.’ Nesbit looks gloomy. ‘Do you know what the natives call this neck of the woods? Starvation Country. Even the bloody foxes can’t find anything to eat–and they’re all red, of course. Time for a drink.’

From his slumped sitting position, Nesbit lurches past Donald and pulls a bottle of malt whisky from behind some ledgers. ‘Come on.’

Donald follows Nesbit into his sitting room–the small, bare room next to his office that contains a couple of overstuffed armchairs and some pictorial relief of a questionable nature.

‘Where is Mr Stewart this evening?’ Donald asks, as he accepts a large glass of malt. Fortunately it is of a better quality than the rum at Fort Edgar. Donald wonders fleetingly how it is that–at the back of beyond, when decent food and housekeeping seem beyond them–the inhabitants of Hanover House drink like kings.

‘Oh, round and about,’ Nesbit says vaguely. ‘Round and about. You know …’ he leans forward in his chair, staring at Donald with disconcerting intensity, ‘that man … That man is a saint. An absolute saint.’

‘Mm,’ says Donald, carefully.

‘Running this place is a thankless task, believe me, but he never complains. You never hear him grumble about it, unlike yours truly. And he’s a man who could have done anything; the highest calibre. The very highest.’

‘Yes, he seems very able,’ Donald says, a little stiffly.

Nesbit gives him a calculating look. ‘I dare say you may think that anyone who gets sent out to a hellhole like this must be second-rate, and it may be true in my case, but not in his.’

Donald inclines–and then shakes–his head politely, hoping his agreement and disagreement will be attributed to the right things.

‘The natives love him. They don’t think much of yours truly, and it’s mutual so that’s fair enough, but him … they treat him as a sort of minor deity. He’s out there now, talking to them. For a moment, when he came back with the news about Nepapanees, I thought things might turn ugly, but he went out there and had them eating out of his hand in two shakes.’

‘Ah. Mm. Admirable,’ murmurs Donald, wondering whether Jacob would ever eat out of anyone’s hand. It seems unlikely. He also pictures–vividly–the widow left in the snow as Stewart and Nesbit walked inside. But strangely enough, although Donald prides himself on having the independence of mind to take such a eulogy with a pinch of salt, it is only too easy to believe that Stewart inspires devotion. He finds himself drawn to Stewart almost as much as he is repelled by Nesbit.

‘I know I am second-rate. I may not know much, but I know that.’ Nesbit stares into the amber lights in his glass. Donald wonders if he is a little unhinged; for a moment he has a horrible suspicion that Nesbit is about to cry. But then he smiles instead, the bitter, cynical expression that has become familiar. ‘How about you, Moody, where do you fit into the scheme of things?’

‘I’m not sure that I understand you.’

‘I mean, are you second-rate? Or are you first-rate?’

Donald laughs uneasily.

‘Or perhaps you don’t know yet.’

‘I er … I’m not sure that I agree that it is a helpful distinction.’

‘I didn’t say that it was helpful. But it is self-evident. That is, if you have the courage to see it.’

‘I don’t think so. You may claim that it is courageous to accept your assessment of yourself, but I could suggest that to do so is a way of abdicating the responsibilities of life. Such cynicism gives you a licence to give up and make no effort. All failures are excused in advance.’

Nesbit smiles unpleasantly. Donald could enjoy this sort of half-serious discussion, which he has come across before–usually at the back end of a long winter evening–but his wound is starting to throb.

‘You think I am a failure?’

Donald has a sudden, disturbing image of Nesbit clamped in Norah’s mahogany embrace, and feels guilty at his knowledge of the other man. Almost at the same moment, Susannah’s face crystallises in his mind in sharp and wonderful clarity; after all this time grasping at fog, each element slots into place and there she is: whole, precise, lovely. And at the same instant, he realises with a shock of detachment that his feelings for her are finite, and comprise mainly admiration and awe. He experiences a strong urge to rush back to his room and finish the letter to Maria. Subtle, unpredictable Maria. How strange. How strange and yet freeing, this realisation. How wonderful! He suppresses a smile at the thought.

‘I said, do you?’

Donald has to make a momentary intense effort to remember what the question was.

‘No, not at all. But I can imagine the frustrations of a place like this. I am sure I would feel the same. A man needs company, and variety. I know how long the winters become, and I have only experienced one so far. One companion is not enough, however first-rate.’

‘Bravo. I say, did you hear something?’ Nesbit drains his glass and pauses in the act of refilling it, head cocked to one side. Donald listens, assuming it was footsteps in the corridor, but as usual, there is no one there. Nesbit shakes his head and sloshes more whisky into Donald’s glass, although he has not yet finished.

‘You are a capital fellow, Moody. I wish we had you here. You might even be able to unravel the accounts that I have been scrambling into a knot of Gordian proportions for the last two years.’ Nesbit smiles broadly, his bitterness mysteriously vanished.

‘I saw one of your fellows outside earlier,’ Donald says, apropos of not much. ‘He clearly hasn’t gone with the search party, but then he seemed so inebriated I dare say he would have been more hindrance than help.’

‘Ah.’ A faraway look overcomes Nesbit. ‘Yes. That is a problem we have in winter, as I am sure you know only too well.’

‘Is he a voyageur?’ Donald wants to ask right out who it is, but feels that would be too blunt.

‘I’ve no idea to whom you’re referring, old chap. As far as I know all the men, except Olivier, have gone upriver. Maybe it was him you saw.’

‘No, no, it was definitely an older man. Heavier, you know. And long-haired.’

‘This dim light can play tricks on you. Why, I once looked out of the window–it was last winter and I was sitting at my desk next door–and nearly had a heart attack. There was a moose standing right outside–seven feet tall if it was an inch–staring at me. I gave a frightful bellow and ran out of the door, but when I got to the yard, there was no sign of it. And no footprints. Of course there was no way it could have got in over the palisade, but I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that it was there. Imagine that!’

You were probably drunk, Donald thinks sourly. Donald knows perfectly well that the man in the courtyard wasn’t Olivier, and is increasingly aware–really, it is as though his brain has been asleep for the last couple of days–that an unidentified man should be of some interest to them.

So much so that he makes an excuse to slip out when he can, some time later, to investigate the snow outside his window. Which is when he finds that for some reason standards of housekeeping have suddenly been raised, and the yard has been swept clear of snow.

Sault St Marie is a very different kettle of fish from Caulfield. It is a place of many meetings–the confluence of two lakes; one crowding into the other between stubborn rocks; the joining of roads from north-west and east; and the border of two countries. Boat routes congregate here from the north, from the east, and from deep in the States, from Chicago and Milwaukee, places more foreign and depraved than the wildest outpost. But the ostensible reason for coming here is the Grand Western Opera House, which the Knoxes visited last night to see a much talked-about production of The Marriage of Figaro. The chief draw was that the part of Cherubino was sung by Delilah Hammer, and the concept of a Mohawk woman singing Mozart had been exercising certain newspaper columnists for several months. To see her was the done thing. And so Mrs Knox bought steamer tickets and they braved the winter waters to do so.

To Maria, who has no ear for music, the singer seemed charming and rather fey, especially in her boy’s costume, with her hair bound up under a floppy cap. She had a gamine face with huge dark eyes accentuated by make-up, and a large mouth with very white teeth. She was rather more striking than the other female singers, who tended to corpulence, and Maria wondered whether Miss Hammer would have preferred to sing one of the feminine roles. The audience–a mixture of opera lovers who had dressed up for the occasion and solitary types who were simply looking for diversion–roared its appreciation, which in a place like this, probably wasn’t very hard to come by. Her father grumbled about the singer’s unsuitability for the role (by which he meant her voice rather than her race) and he and her mother had an argument about the conducting. For a while, he was like his old self.

Mrs Knox has been worried about her husband. Bad enough that he should be disgraced–or forcibly retired; no one is quite sure–but worse that he should sit hour after hour in his study doing, apparently, nothing; his fine mind idling, and, she is sure, silting up, atrophying. When they argued, she felt a small loosening of tension. All in all, the visit appeared to be worth the trouble.

By morning, however, he has relapsed into uncommunicative detachment. And Maria has found her mind wandering back to the code.

After her visit to Sturrock, Maria shut herself in her room with her copy of the markings, and managed to forget the state of her family while she puzzled over its contents. First she tried breaking down the lines into groups as they seemed to arrange themselves–though this assumed Sturrock had copied them down accurately in the first place. From an article in the Edinburgh Review, and from her own sense, she was from the beginning aware that each mark or group of marks might not stand for a letter in the Roman alphabet, but might represent a word, or a sound. After she had arranged and rearranged the clusters and substituted numbers of sounds and letters, all of which produced meaningless jumbles of sounds (da-ya-no-ji-te! ba-lo-re-ya-no?) she put it aside with rather less hope than she had started with. There were no grounds at all for expecting Maria Knox to be able to solve their riddles; an uneducated country girl with a few journal subscriptions and just one article on deciphering the Rosetta stone as a starting point. But the little angular marks swirled round her head, invaded her dreams, taunting her with a meaning which they dangled just out of her reach. She had an unhealthy desire to see the original tablet, and her mind turned to the north, where Francis, possibly, and Mr Moody as well, held the key.

She pushes the remains of her breakfast around the plate. Congealed egg and the juices of a steak make a bilious abstract on the willow pattern.

‘If you don’t mind …’ she scrapes her chair getting up ‘… I’d like to take a bit of a walk.’

Mrs Knox frowns at her eldest daughter. ‘All right. Be careful, won’t you?’

‘Yes Mother.’ Maria is already halfway to the door. It is really quite comical how her mother thinks that anywhere outside Caulfield is a den of iniquity, crawling with white slavers. She’ll have to get used to the idea if Maria is to move to Toronto, which she is definitely going to do, she has decided, next summer.

Outside the hotel, Maria takes a right, towards the waterfront. Straggled along the shore of the lake is a sprawl of wharves and warehouses, gathering points for goods from all over the north. It’s exciting, the thrum of commerce, of business; dirty and loud and somehow real in a way that Caulfield and John Scott’s store are not. She has been warned away from just this part of town, which is part of its attraction. Men walk past her, keeping urgent appointments with steamer arrivals, stock prices, labour meetings. To a sheltered country girl it feels like being in the heart of things.

There are some hotels and boarding houses in this end of town too; less salubrious than the Victoria and Albert, further removed from the opera house. She sees a man and woman come out of one and watches them idly for a moment before realising, with a sudden quiver of shock, that the man is Angus Ross, the farmer from Dove River. Francis’s father. When he turns his head she gets a clear sight of his face; the blunt profile, the sandy hair. The shock is because the woman he is with is not Mrs Ross. Mrs Ross has not been seen for weeks. Maria feels herself flush with a shame that is not hers. There is something not quite right, even though Mr Ross and the woman are only walking across the street. He has not seen her, and she instinctively shrinks back and turns to study the window of the shop nearest her. It displays nothing but a list of things that make no sense in her confusion.

She waits until the pair are safely out of sight. She has never seen an impropriety before, but she is somehow sure that is what it was. And where, after all, is Mrs Ross? They have only her husband’s word that she set off after her son. It suddenly occurs to Maria, who has read some lurid novels along with the improving ones, that perhaps Mr Ross has done away with his wife. And what about Francis? Mr Moody and his friend went haring off after him, but perhaps never found him. Perhaps that is why they have not returned. Perhaps Mr Ross killed Mr Jammet as well …

Maria reins herself in here, telling herself that she is not prey to wild fancies. But still, she feels shaken. Perhaps she should have finished her breakfast after all. Perhaps–she looks round, to see if anyone is watching her–perhaps, due to exceptional circumstances, she will go and have A Drink.

Buoyed up with daring, Maria chooses a quiet-looking bar set back from the waterfront and goes inside. She takes a deep breath, but there is no one here other than the barkeep and a man sitting at one of the tables, eating, with his back to the door.

She orders a glass of sherry and a piece of salmonberry pie, and sits at a table near the back, just in case anyone she knows should happen by. Like Mr Ross. Her heart beats faster at the thought. She has never had a reason to either especially like or dislike Mrs Ross before–the woman is rather distant–but now she feels sorry for her. It occurs to her that of all people, she and Mrs Ross might have things in common.

Her order arrives and, to give her eyes something to do, she takes out the papers with her attempts to break the code. She is aware that the other customer has noticed her, and worries that he might try and join her. She sees what she did not notice before: that he is an Indian of rather disreputable appearance, and resolves not to look in his direction again. Soon she has taken out a pencil and begun annotating her efforts, which consist of a long line of nonsense words and syllables. She becomes so absorbed that she does not notice the barkeep standing beside her until he clears his throat.

‘Excuse me, ma’am. Would you like another?’ He holds the sherry bottle in his hand.

‘Oh. Thank you, yes. The pie was very good.’ To her surprise, it had been.

‘Thank you. Are you doing a puzzle?’

‘In a way.’ He has nice eyes, the barkeep, and very long, drooping brown whiskers. He has an unexpected air of intelligence. ‘I am trying to understand a code. But it is hopeless, I think, as I do not know which language it is written in.’

‘You mean like French, or Italian?’

‘Yes … although I think it is an Indian language, and there are so many.’

‘Ah. Then you need some help.’

‘Yes. From someone who is fluent in all of them.’ She shrugs and smiles, as this is unlikely.

‘Ma’am, if I may make a suggestion? You see the gentleman sitting over there? He knows many Indian languages. If you like, I could introduce you.’

He sees her doubtful glance at the hunched shoulder and greasy hair curling over the collar. ‘He is perfectly … pleasant.’ He smiles, as though he hasn’t managed quite the right word, but decides it will have to do. Maria feels a blush threatening. This is what comes of walking into disreputable establishments; she is impaled on the sword of her own daring. She looks at her papers and feels like a silly schoolgirl.

‘Of course, you would rather not. Forget I said it. It was impertinent.’

Maria draws herself upright. If she is to be a scholar, a thinker, she cannot shirk from the path of knowledge because of a greasy collar.

‘No, that would be very … nice. Thank you. If he doesn’t mind the bother, that is.’

The barkeep goes over to the other table and speaks to the man. Maria catches a glimpse of bloodshot eyes and has second and third thoughts about her decision. But he gets up and comes over to her table, carrying his glass. She smiles at him briefly; professionally, she hopes.

‘Hello. I’m Miss Knox. You are Mr …?’

He sits down. ‘Joe.’

‘Ah. Yes. Thank you for …’

‘Fredo says you want someone who knows Indian tongues.’

‘Yes, I have here part of a code, and, um, a friend of mine thinks it might be for an Indian language. I have been trying to decipher it, but since I don’t know what language it represents …’

She smiles too much, giving a slight shrug, even more scared now they are face to face. The man is older than she first thought, with streaks of grey in his hair. The skin below his eyes is pouchy, the cheeks slack. There are red threads in the whites of his eyes. He smells of rum.

But still, a keen face, or was once.

‘There are no written native languages, so why would your friend think that?’

‘I know, but, well … he has researched it. And these little figures–you see, this is just a copy, but they are like Indian drawings I have seen.’

For some reason she is pushing her copy towards him, repellent though he is. She wants him at least to take her seriously.

He studies the paper for a long time but says nothing. Maria wishes she were back at the hotel.

‘What is it a copy of?’

‘A bone tablet.’

He picks up her other papers, the ones with her tentative workings out. ‘What are these names?’

‘Oh, they’re not names; they’re what I got from trying out certain letters and sounds, you know, substituting for the marks here …’

He studies the sheets, holding them up in the light to focus better. His finger stabs the paper. ‘Deganawida. Ochinaway. You think this is what it says?’

His manner has become more aggressive. Maria lifts her chin defiantly. There is nothing wrong with her method. She learnt it from the Edinburgh Review.

‘Well, I was guessing. You have to make certain assumptions about which sounds the marks might mean, and try them out. I tried many, many things. This is what came out with one … one combination of …’

The man leans back in his seat and smiles at her; a sneering, hostile grimace. ‘Lady, is this some kind of joke? Who told you I was here?’

‘No, of course not. I had no idea … I don’t know who you are!’ She looks round, nervously, for Fredo, but he is serving some newcomers.

‘Who was it? Was it that fat bastard McGee? Huh? Or Andy Jensen? Was it Andy?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re implying, this is quite uncalled for!’

Now Fredo has heard the tone in her voice; he glances towards her … he is coming over, at last.

‘What’s your friend’s name, lady?’ insists Joe.

‘Ma’am, I’m so sorry. Joe, you’ll have to leave.’

‘I just want to know his name.’

‘Mr … Joe seems to think I am playing some sort of trick on him.’

‘Joe, apologise to the lady. Come on now.’

Joe shuts his eyes and bows his head; an oddly ethereal mannerism that restores to his ruined face a delicacy that has been blurred by time and alcohol.

‘I’m sorry. I’d just like to know the name of your friend who has this … whatever you called it.’

Maria feels braver with Fredo standing over her. And something in the man’s face when he closed his eyes, something endlessly long-suffering and pained, sad even, makes her want to answer.

‘Well, his name is Mr Sturrock, since you ask. And it is no trick. I do not play tricks.’

‘Sturrock?’ Joe looks serious. His whole demeanour sharpens, as though his connecting threads have been pulled together, transforming him. ‘Tom Sturrock. The searcher?’

‘Yes … he was. Do you know him?’

‘Did once. Well, I wish you luck, lady, and tell your friend Kahon’wes said hello.’

Maria frowns, struggling with the word. ‘Ga-hoo’ ways?’

The man, whatever his name is, gets up and walks out of the bar. Maria looks at Fredo for an explanation. But he is as surprised as she is.

‘I am so sorry, ma’am, I didn’t know he would be like that. Normally he is so quiet, he just comes in and drinks, but is perfectly pleasant. Let me get you another sherry, or a piece of …’

‘No, thank you. I really must be going. My father will be waiting. How much do I …?’

‘No, no, I cannot let you pay.’

After some minutes’ insisting on both sides, Maria prevails, feeling it would not be a good precedent to become obliged to a stranger. She leaves with a flurry of papers and thank-yous, and keeps her gaze rigidly fixed ahead as she hurries away from the waterfront.

The morning has been more of an adventure than she bargained for, the path of knowledge a rocky and alarming one. But at the very least she will have something to tell Mr Sturrock, and perhaps something to rouse her father from his lethargy as well. With a sense of relief at having left the docks behind, Maria slows down to compose her story and, as she rearranges her adventure into a suspense-laden narrative with an intrepid heroine, almost manages to convince herself that she was not afraid at all.

The light is dim under the trees, and it goes early, so they stop, because the children are whining so badly. Espen tries to hide his fear, but he has no real idea how to build a snow shelter, nor how to light a fire when the snow is this deep. He clears a bare patch on the forest floor, manages after some time to light a fire with damp wood, but before their water has boiled the surrounding snow banks have melted and doused the flames. The children look on through tears of disappointment and cold. Line keeps talking and encouraging, her throat dry with thirst, lips cracked with cold. She has never talked so much in her life; she is determined not to give in, not to look scared, not to cry.

When Torbin and Anna have finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, she says, ‘We’re bound to hit the river tomorrow. The snow has slowed us down, but we’ll get there.’

Espen does not speak for a while. She has never seen him look this unhappy. ‘You didn’t see it, did you?’

‘See what? What are you talking about?’ Her imagination peoples the forest with bears, axe-waving Indians, lamp-eyed wolves. Espen looks at her sourly.

‘Our trail. This morning we came on our own trail. I saw it, and turned away. We had gone in a circle.’

Line stares back at him, wondering for a moment what this means.

‘Line, we have been going round in circles. I can’t tell what direction we’re going in. Without the compass, or seeing the sun, I have no idea.’

‘Wait. We went wrong.’ She needs to take him in hand, steady him, let him know that she is still in charge of things. ‘So we went wrong once. It probably wasn’t a big circle. We are not going round in circles. The forest has been changing. The trees are changing, getting taller, so we must be getting further south. I have noticed that, very particularly. We just need to keep going. I am sure that tomorrow we will find the river.’

He doesn’t look as though he believes her. He looks down, like a mutinous child who doesn’t want to give in, but has nowhere else to go. She takes his face in her mittened hands–it is too cold to attempt greater intimacy.

‘Espen … my darling. Don’t give up now. We’re so close. When we get to Caulfield, and we can get some rooms, we’ll be sitting in front of a roaring fire and we’ll laugh about this. Such an adventure to start our life together!’

‘And if we don’t get to Caulfield? My horse is ill. They haven’t got nearly enough to eat–or drink either. It’s been eating bark and I’m sure they’re not supposed to.’

‘We’ll get there. We’ll get somewhere. It’s only three days to cross the forest. Tomorrow we might come to the lake! Then you’ll feel foolish.’

She kisses him. This makes him laugh.

‘You are a vargamor. Unbelievable. No wonder you always get what you want.’

‘Ha.’ Line smiles, but thinks this unfair, as well as wrong. Did she want Janni to disappear into the wilderness? Did she want to go and live in Himmelvanger? Still, at least he is more cheerful, and that is the main thing. If she can keep him going, keep them all going, then they’ll be all right.

As they lie together under their pitiful shelter, clasping the children between them, Line hears things through her tiredness: the pistol crack of freezing sap, the sough of snow slipping off the branches. And once, very far away, she thinks she hears wolves, howling into the empty night, and her skin prickles with sweat, despite the cold.

In the morning Espen’s horse refuses to move. It has been eating bark and a thin diarrhoea drips down its haunches and stains the snow. It stands in a posture of abject misery. Espen tries to feed it a mixture of warm water and oatmeal, but it turns away. Eventually, when they set off, Espen leads it, and both children sit in front of Line on her horse. It is harder work leading–or rather dragging–the horse than simply walking, and after an hour Espen calls Line over.

‘This is crazy. It would be faster to leave him behind. But that would be terrible. What if we are nearly at the river?’

‘Let’s go on a bit longer. He might improve. The snow’s stopped and it’s a little warmer.’

It is true: the snow has lessened to nothing and it is possible to say–in certain places at least–that it seems less deep.

‘It gets harder and harder. He just wants to stand still. I think he might lie down soon. It’s exhausting me.’

‘Do you want me to lead him for a while? You can sit up with Torbin and Anna until you are rested.’

‘Don’t be silly. You can’t do this. Not … You can’t do it.’

The horse–Bengi, although Line has schooled herself not to think of him by name–flattens his ears at them. His back seems more sunken than yesterday, his eyes dull.

‘What if we left him? We could always come back to find him later.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Line sighs. She had imagined many things, but not a sick horse throwing obstacles in her path. A few yards away, the children have dismounted and, under orders to move around to keep warm, are playing some rather dispirited game.

‘Poor old Bengi.’ Line pats his neck. The horse flicks his eyes to her in warning. She makes up her mind. ‘We leave him. If he can’t keep up, we’ll have to leave him. We’ll tell the children we’ll come back and get him, or something.’

Espen nods heavily. In a different place, another Line would weep for the horse being abandoned to its fate. But not this one.

They walk back to the children. Just then, as Line opens her mouth to explain, a loud crack resounds among the trees. It’s so loud Anna flinches and nearly falls over. They all stare at each other.

‘A hunter!’ Espen exclaims in excitement.

‘Are you sure it wasn’t just sap freezing?’ Line asks, because someone should.

‘It was too loud, and it’s different. It’s a rifle. Someone is hunting round here.’

He sounds so sure. The children whoop with such delight and relief that Line is won over. Human beings are here. Civilisation is suddenly within reach.

‘I’ll see if I can find him … Just to check we’re on the right path,’ Espen adds hastily.

‘How will you get back?’ Line says sharply.

‘Light a fire. I won’t be long. He must be very near.’ Espen starts to shout in English. ‘Hello! Hey. Who’s there? Hello!’

Without waiting for a reply he turns back to them. ‘I think it came from over there. I won’t be long. If I don’t find him, I’ll come straight back, I promise.’

Espen gives them all a big, confident grin, and walks off between the trees. His footsteps vanish into the silence. The other horse, Jutta, emits a long equine sigh.

It is interesting to note the ebb and flow of personnel at the post. The way people divide up, or are drawn together. Just from my own observation, it is evident that Olivier is not popular with the other employees. He sticks close to Stewart, runs errands for him, even apes some of his mannerisms. From the others, there is a sense of distance between white and non-white, and it is as though Olivier is a turncoat who has gone over to the other side. Initially I thought they respected Stewart, and were even fond of him. Now I’m not so sure. There is respect, but it is of a wary sort, the kind with which you might regard a potentially dangerous animal. Norah hates him, and while she presumably cares for Nesbit, she is equally rude to both. She treats Stewart with such insolence it makes me wonder if she holds some sort of power–otherwise I cannot imagine how she is allowed to get away with it. And a few times I have seen the pretty one–Nancy–in the corridor here. Since she does not appear to clean or serve, I wonder what she has been doing. Cooking, perhaps.

I am waiting for something to happen. Two hours have passed since the search party returned. I have been hovering between my room, the kitchen and the dining room–I keep finding petty things that need to be addressed, a lack of kindling (because I have thrown it outside), or spilt coffee. I am very unpopular with Norah as a result, but just after six o’clock I am rewarded by the sound of shouting from Stewart’s office. The raised voice belongs to Nesbit; it has a hysterical note.

‘For God’s sake, I keep telling you I don’t know! But it’s gone, there’s no doubt about it.’

Low murmuring from Stewart.

‘Christ, I don’t care. You promised! You’ve got to help me!’

Some more muttering–something about ‘carelessness’.

I am in the corridor, tiptoeing closer, praying to the god of creaking floorboards.

‘It has to be one of them. Who else would do that? And there’s something else … Half Man–you’ve got to keep better control of him.’

The murmuring gets even lower. For some reason, this chills me more than anything. I don’t dare go closer. What does Nesbit mean by ‘half a man’? Is he insulting Stewart? Or someone else?

Heavy footsteps approach the door. I scuttle past, and make the dining room door safely before anyone comes out. From his chair by the fire, Moody looks up as I come in.

‘Mrs Ross. There is something I would like to discuss with you …’

‘Just a moment …’ I put the coffeepot down. Outside, all seems to be quiet. ‘I’m sorry Mr Moody, I seem to have forgotten something. Excuse me a moment.’

His face droops in the narrowing rectangle as I close the door.

I walk back down the empty corridor. Stewart’s door is shut. I knock on it.

‘What is it?’ Nesbit’s voice. Very bad-tempered.

‘Oh, it is I, Mrs Ross. May I come in?’

‘I am rather busy right now.’

I open the door anyway. Nesbit looks up from the desk–I have the impression that he had just been sprawled forward over it; his face is sweaty and pale, his hair more dishevelled than ever. I feel a stirring of sympathy. I remember what it is like.

‘I said …’

‘I know, I am sorry. It is just that I feel terrible. I have broken the milk jug, I am so very sorry.’

Nesbit looks at me with a frown of mixed incomprehension and irritation. ‘For goodness sake, it really doesn’t matter. If you don’t mind …’

I take another step inside the room and close the door behind me. Nesbit flinches. There is a murderous look in his eye; a cornered animal.

‘Have you lost something? I know how vexing that can be. Perhaps I can help you?’

‘You? What are you talking about?’

But almost as soon as I closed the door, he got the idea. I have his full attention now.

‘Why would you assume I had lost anything?’

‘He keeps it for you, doesn’t he? He makes you beg.’

It is as though I have torn away a mask; his face is so white it is almost blue. His fists clench; he wants to strike me but he dares not.

‘Where is it? What have you done with it? Give it to me.’

‘I will give it back, if you tell me something.’

He frowns, but it gives him hope. He stands up and takes a step towards me, but doesn’t come too close.

‘Tell me who needs to be controlled. Who must not be spoken of?’

‘What?’

‘The first night, I heard you telling a woman not to speak of him. Who were you talking about? Just now, you told Stewart to keep better control of him. You said he was half a man. Who? Tell me who it is, and I will give it back.’

He deflates. His head turns this way and that. He half smiles. Something in him seems relieved.

‘Oh. We didn’t want Moody to find out. If it gets back to the Company … One of our men has gone mad. It’s Nepapanees. Stewart is trying to protect him, because of his family …’

‘Nepapanees? You mean he isn’t dead?’

Nesbit shakes his head.

‘He lives on his own, like a wild man. He was all right until a few weeks ago, but now he’s quite crazy. Maybe dangerous. It would mean terrible shame for his family. Stewart thought it better if they believed him dead.’ He shakes his head. ‘That’s all. Ha …! I mean, it’s terrible.’

‘And he’s been away … hasn’t he, recently?’

‘He comes and goes.’

‘Three weeks ago …’

‘I don’t know where he goes. He returned about ten days ago.’

I don’t know what else to say. Or ask. He looks furtively at me. ‘Can I have it?’

For I moment I consider smashing the bottle on the floor, because something has gone wrong and I can’t put my finger on it.

‘Please.’ He takes another step towards me.

I pull it out of my pocket and hold it out: the bottle I took from beneath his mattress yesterday while he was with Moody. He grabs it, checks it to see if I’ve stolen any–a reflex, momentary action–then turns away and drinks from it. A remnant of dignity wanting to preserve some privacy. It takes a while for it to work that way, but perhaps he has no other. He remains in that position, staring at the curtains.

‘And where is he now?’

‘I don’t know. Far from here, I hope.’

‘Is this true?’

‘Yes.’

I can just see the bottle in his hand. What would I not give to take it from him, and drink?

He doesn’t look at me again. His voice is low, already composed again. It brings me back to myself. I leave him standing by the desk, his back to me, but with shoulders squared and defiant.

I walk back to the dining room. Nepapanees a madman. Nepapanees Jammet’s insane killer? This is, it seems, what I wanted to find. But I feel no triumph. No satisfaction. I don’t know what to think, but I can’t keep from my mind the picture of Elizabeth Bird, sitting in the snow, deliberately scalding her flesh out of grief.

Stewart comes to her house when they get back. He looks concerned, like a father with a wayward child; ready to be indulgent, but only up to a point.

‘Elizabeth, I am so sorry.’

She nods. It is easier than speaking.

‘I have been trying to think what might have happened. You found the place?’

She nods again.

‘I am sure his spirit will be at peace, wherever he is.’

Now she doesn’t nod. Murdered men do not lie in peace.

‘If you were worried … Of course you can stay here. You need not worry about your future. You will always have a home here, as long as you want.’

She is aware, without looking straight at him, of his horrid blue eyes, like the glinting bodies of flies that feed on carrion. He is looking intently at her, trying to sap her strength, trying to bend her to his will. Well she won’t look at him, she won’t make it easy. She makes a sideways movement of her head, hoping he will go away.

‘I’ll leave you. If you want anything at all, please come and ask.’

She nods for the third time.

She thinks: in Hell.

Outside, she hears English voices: Stewart telling the moonias: ‘I’d leave her if I were you. She is still in shock.’

The voices start to move away. Elizabeth jumps up, from sheer contrariness, and goes outside.

‘Mr Moody … Please come in, if you wish.’

The two men turn, startled. Moody’s face is a question. Elizabeth, unsure why she rushed out like that, feels foolish.

Moody insists on sitting on the floor, like her, although his movements are a little stiff.

‘Are you all right? Is it better?’ Her gaze goes to his midriff, where she bandaged his wound four nights ago. A lifetime ago, when she was still a man’s wife. ‘It was a bad wound. Did someone try to kill you?’

‘No.’ He laughs. ‘Or, well, it was a moment of passion, deeply regretted. A long story. And I came to see how you were. If there is anything I can do to help …’

‘Thank you. You were kind, the other day.’

‘No …’

Elizabeth pours tea into enamel mugs. She tastes again the river water, bitter with treachery. Perhaps the deer was a sign: I am killed. And you have to find me.

If only she could pray for guidance, but she cannot go to the wooden church. That is Stewart’s church and she has an aversion to it. She never thought about her faith much, before. She assumed it was there under the surface, carrying on without conscious effort, the way her lungs breathed. Perhaps she neglected it too much. Now that she needs it, it seems to have withered away.

‘Do you pray?’

Moody looks at her in surprise. He considers his answer. He doesn’t just say what he thinks he should, but really seems to give it thought. She likes that, along with the way he doesn’t rush to fill every little silence.

‘Yes, I do. Not as often as I should. Not nearly.’

Just then, her little girl stumbles in through the front door. She has only just learnt to walk.

‘Amy, go back to Mary. I’m talking.’

The child gazes at Donald before toddling back outside.

‘I suppose we only …’ His voice trails off. ‘I mean to say, we turn to God only when in trouble or need, and I have never been in great trouble or need. Not yet, thank God.’

He smiles. He looks troubled now, puzzled. His words slower, as if he’s having difficulty ordering them. Something has happened.

‘I cannot.’

He looks at her, questioning.

‘Pray.’

‘Were you born a Christian?’

She smiles. ‘I was baptised by the missionaries when I was twenty.’

‘So you knew … other gods. Do you pray to them?’

‘I don’t know. I never really prayed, before. You are right. I never had the need.’

Moody puts his tea down, and folds his long wrists across his knees. ‘When I was a young boy, I became terribly lost, in the hills near my home. I was lost for a day and a night. I was afraid I was going to wander in the hills until I starved. I prayed then. I prayed that God would show me the way home.’

‘And?’

‘My father found me.’

‘So your prayers were answered.’

‘Yes. I suppose there are some prayers that cannot be answered.’

‘I would not pray for my husband to be brought back to life. I would only pray for justice.’

‘Justice?’ His eyes widen, fixed on her, as though she has a smut on her face. He seems fascinated, as if she’s suddenly said something of intense and vital interest.

Elizabeth puts down her cup. Neither of them speaks for a long minute, staring into the fire, which pops and hisses.

‘Amy. That’s a pretty name.’

‘She doesn’t understand why her father isn’t here.’

Moody sighs sharply, then smiles. ‘I am sorry. You must think me impertinent. I have just had the most amazing thought. Please tell me if I am wrong, but, I cannot keep it in.’ He laughs awkwardly, without taking his eyes off her. ‘I know the time is not right. But I can’t help thinking … Your daughter’s name. And your … I don’t know how to say this … Were you ever … were you once a Seton?’

Elizabeth stares into the flames, and a loud singing in her ears drowns the next thing he says. A surge of something like laughter threatens to choke her.

His mouth is moving; he is apologising, she thinks from a distance. Things she thought long forgotten are suddenly clear as glass. A father. A sister. A mother. No, not her sister. She never forgot her sister.

Slowly his voice becomes audible again. ‘Are you Amy Seton?’ Moody leans forward, flushed with excitement, with the thrill of an imminent and momentous discovery. ‘I won’t tell anyone, if you don’t want me to. I promise on my honour to keep it a secret. You have your life here, your children … I would just like to know.’

She doesn’t want to give him this pleasure. It is not his to take. She is not a bounty to be found and claimed.

‘Mr Moody, I don’t know what you mean. My name is Elizabeth Bird. My husband was deliberately killed. What am I to do? What are you going to do?’

‘Deliberately? What makes you say that?’

She sees him lurch, with difficulty, from one sort of excitement to another. It disagrees with him; he cannot take it. She seems to watch from a great distance as he gasps and clutches at his stomach, his face knotted up in anguish. His face is red. He should not have asked such a personal question. At length he recovers himself, panting like a dog.

‘What are you saying? That … Stewart killed your husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why would he?’

‘I don’t know why.’

She stares at him. He must know something; she can see him calculating behind his eyes. Then he opens his mouth.

‘Excuse me for asking … Was your husband mad?’

Elizabeth stares, and feels very small and weak. She is crumbling, dissolving.

‘Did he say that?’ Tears are running down her face, whether from anger or grief, she doesn’t know, but suddenly her face is wet. ‘He was not mad. That is a lie. Ask anyone here. Half Man is the only mad one.’

‘Half Man? Who is Half Man?’

‘The one he doesn’t want us to talk about!’ Elizabeth gets up. It’s too much, all at once. She walks in circles round and round the fire. ‘If you’re so clever, if you can see so much, why don’t you open your eyes?’

‘If the weather allows, tomorrow I will leave.’

I stare at Parker with my mouth open. There is an immediate strong pressure around my chest, as when you suffer from croup; an unpleasant stricture that makes it impossible to draw a breath. My breathing has been short since he knocked on the door of my room and I let him in, wondering what he wanted.

‘You can’t! It isn’t finished.’

He stares back at me for an instant, challenged but not surprised. He must know me better than that now.

‘I think it is the only way to finish it.’

I did not know what I meant when I spoke, but now I do. We have all been relying on Parker to show us the way, from when we first met in Dove River until now. Moody too, however much he dislikes the fact.

‘How can you finish it?’

Parker pauses. His face seems different now: softer, less composed, or perhaps it is just the faintness of the lamplight.

‘In the morning I will somehow show Stewart the marker you gave me. Then he will know, if he did not already, that I was in with Jammet. I will tell him I am leaving, and if I am right …’ Here he pauses. ‘And if he is the man I think he is, he will not be able to resist following, in case I lead him to the furs.’

‘But if he had Jammet killed … he may kill you too.’

‘I will be ready.’

‘It’s too dangerous. You cannot go alone. He will not be alone–he will have this … Half Man with him.’

Parker shrugs. ‘You think I should take Moody?’ He smiles at the unlikelihood of this. ‘He needs to stay. He needs to see that Stewart follows me. Then he will know.’

‘But, but you are …’

I am trying to reorder the facts again. Proof … what proof could there be, other than Stewart confessing?

‘You can’t go alone. I will come with you. I can be another pair of eyes. I can … You need a witness. A witness who can corroborate what you say. You should not go alone!’

My cheeks are burning. Parker smiles again, but gently. His hand reaches out, almost to my face, but stops short of touching it. I can feel tears in my eyes, threatening to wash away my composure, my dignity; everything.

‘You should stay here. Moody needs you. He is lost.’

And what about me? I think. The words seem so loud I am not sure I did not speak them, but Parker shows no sign of having heard. I try to keep my voice steady.

‘I don’t know what proof you think Stewart will provide, other than by killing you. That would probably be conclusive. And … and what if he sends someone else to kill you instead–how then could we link it to him? If you go on your own, and do not return, I do not think that will satisfy Mr Moody. That will not prove anything.’

‘Well’–Parker looks down, a hint of impatience coming into his voice–‘we will see tomorrow morning. Perhaps Stewart will tell us everything. Goodnight, Mrs Ross.’

I bite my tongue, hurt and angry. Parker may be unaware of it, but there are two people in this room who do not give up on a thing until it is finished.

‘Goodnight, Mr Parker.’

He goes, closing the door silently after him. For several minutes I remain rooted to the spot, wondering, among all the things I could or should be wondering, whether he knows my first name.

That night, I dream.

I dream, in a way that is vague yet disturbing, of Angus. I turn my head from side to side, wanting to turn away from my husband. He does not reproach me. He cannot.

I wake up in the depths of the night, in a silence so heavy I feel I could not get out of the bed if I tried. There are tears drying on my face, cold, making my skin itch.

I wondered for so long why he had become so distant from me. I assumed it was something I had done. And then, when Parker told me about Jammet, I thought it was because of Francis, because he knew and hated it.

In truth, it had begun a long time before that.

I bury my face in the pillow that smells of must and damp. Its cotton slip is as cold as marble. It is only here, alone and in the dark, that I can allow those thoughts some rein. Thoughts that come from nowhere, from dreams, taking me delirious hostage. I long for sleep again, because only in sleep can I slip the bonds of what is possible and right.

But as I have found so often in life, what you truly long for eludes you.

Donald presses a hand to the windowpane. It melts the frost that has formed on the inside overnight, leaving a clear print: the cold is getting stronger. The season moves on; they must leave soon, or become snowed in at Hanover House.

Yesterday he finished the letter to Maria. This morning he reads it over; he thinks it strikes the right note–it says nothing overly affectionate, but after laying out his thoughts–such a relief to be able to say what he thinks–he expresses the warm wish to see her and resume their interesting conversations. He folds it into an envelope, but leaves it blank. He has a horror of other people reading his letters. He is sure Mrs Ross, on one of her nosy and importunate visits to his room, noticed an earlier one to Susannah.

Susannah. Well … not having been in this situation before, Donald is unsure how to proceed. He has an idea that she will not be heartbroken–after all, he tells himself, nothing was said, not really. Nothing that was a promise. He feels uncomfortable, because on the face of it it is not admirable behaviour, and Donald does so want to be admirable. But he sees, more clearly from a distance than he did in Caulfield, that Susannah is a robust creature. Even as he knows this, he chastises himself for taking solace in it. Perhaps he will not allow his letters to her to be delivered. Perhaps he should rewrite them yet again, to rinse them clean of any redundant yearning.

At this juncture, with Donald still sitting at the table surrounded by missives to the Knox sisters, there is a knock at the door. It is Parker.

Stewart is in his office, a pot of coffee on his desk, the fire lit but losing the battle with the metallic cold which advances from window, door and even through the walls.

Donald, feeling it is his place to lead, and having said as much to Parker and Mrs Ross, clears his throat rather aggressively.

‘Mr Stewart, please forgive the early hour. We need to have a talk with you.’

Stewart hears the grave tone in his voice, but he still smiles as he invites them in. He orders more cups–this time it is Nancy who answers the bell and goes to fetch them. Donald keeps his eyes on the floor while she is in the room, hoping the warmth in his face is invisible. No one looks at him anyway.

Donald begins, ‘I think you should know the real reason for our being here.’ He ignores Mrs Ross’s look. He cannot see Parker’s expression, as he sits beside Stewart in front of the window, and is thrown thereby into shadow. ‘We followed a trail. It led north from Dove River, and we have good reason to believe it led here.’

‘You mean it was not Mrs Ross’s son?’

‘No. At least, not this far. And there are men here whose presence has been kept from us.’

Stewart nods, his face serious, his eyes downcast. ‘I believe some things have been said that misled you. I apologise for it. Let me tell you what I know; perhaps you can then fill in some of the gaps. What I said was true–Nepapanees was one of my best men. A good worker, a skilled steersman, a great tracker. But over a year ago, something happened to him. It’s usually drink, as I’m sure you must have seen …’ He glances at Donald, but somehow includes them all. ‘But not in his case. At least not at first. I don’t know what it was, but his mind became deranged. He did not know his wife. He did not know his own children. This spring he walked out of the fort and it seemed he was living wild. Occasionally he came back, but it was better when he stayed away. He was away for a long time some weeks ago. I had a feeling he had done something. I had that feeling more strongly when you came. But by then …’ He shrugs, letting his shoulders fall.

‘I did not want to bring any more disgrace on his wife and family. I wanted to spare them that. Nesbit and I agreed to … cover it up. To pretend that he was dead. It was foolish, I know.’ He lifts his eyes, and they seem to be shining with tears. ‘In a way, I wish he were. He is a poor wretch who has caused much suffering to those who loved him.’

‘But how could you tell his wife he was dead? How could you makes her suffer so?’ Mrs Ross is leaning forward, her eyes boring into Stewart’s, her face pale and taut, some emotion, anger probably, radiating from her like a magnetic force.

‘Believe me, Mrs Ross, I thought about that a great deal. I decided that his death would bring less pain to her and the children than he ultimately would, alive.’

‘But how did you think you could keep his presence from her? He was seen here two days ago!’

Stewart goes very still for a moment, before he looks up, revealing his awkwardness. ‘It was foolhardy. I allowed myself to … Sometimes, over the past few years, in winter especially, I have felt that I am losing my judgement. But if you had seen him with his children … staring at them as they ran up to him, screaming the foulest abuse, full of hatred and fear … God knows what demons he thought they were. It was terrible to see their faces.’

Stewart’s eyes are haunted, as though he can see them still. Donald feels a surge of sympathy. God knows, he can imagine the strain of one endless winter after another.

Mrs Ross looks at Parker, and then back at Stewart. Almost as though Donald is not there.

‘Who is Half Man?’

Stewart smiles a pained smile. ‘Ah. There you see …’ He looks up, this time directly at Mrs Ross. ‘Half Man is another unfortunate. A regular drunk. He is Norah’s husband, so we give him food now and again. He is a trapper, but not a very useful one.’

There is a nakedness about his face that make Donald uncomfortable. What right have they to force this man to reveal his troubles?

‘I must apologise again for deceiving you. One wants to be thought–especially in a Company like this …’ He glances at Donald again, which makes Donald drop his eyes in embarrassment. ‘One wants to be thought of as a good leader, a father, in some ways, to those under one’s responsibility. I have not been a good father to these people. It has been difficult, but that is no excuse.’

Mrs Ross is leaning back in her chair, a confused, distant look on her face. Parker’s is obscure, in his own shadow. Donald breaks in.

‘It happens everywhere. There is drunkenness, and there is madness. It does not reflect on your leadership that some men go astray.’

Stewart bows his head. ‘You are kind to say that, but it is not so. Anyway, what concerns you now is the man you followed … I assume because of something he did. Some … crime?’

Donald nods. ‘We will need to find him and question him, no matter what state he is in.’

‘I don’t know exactly where he is, but we could probably find him. But if you are looking for a criminal, you will not find one. He does not know what he does.’

While Stewart is speaking, Parker takes pipe and tobacco out of his pocket. As he does so, a scrap of paper falls onto the floor between his chair and Stewart’s. Parker does not notice, teasing strands of tobacco out of the pouch and firming them into the bowl. Stewart sees it and bends down to pick it up. He pauses fractionally with his hand on the floor, then hands it back to Parker, all without looking at his face.

‘I will arrange for a couple of the men to search for him. They should be able to follow his tracks.’

Parker puts the fragment of paper back in his pocket with barely a break in the ritual of filling the bowl. The whole incident has taken perhaps three seconds. The two men have sat side by side during the whole conversation without exchanging so much as a glance.

Near the end of the corridor, Parker turns to me. ‘I am going to get ready.’

‘You are going?’

I assumed his questions were answered. Foolish of me; of course he would not believe anything Stewart said.

‘He never said he did not send Nepapanees to Dove River.’

His certainty irritates me, so I do not reply. He is looking at me with that peculiar blank intensity of his, which speaks of great concentration while giving no clue as to its subject, or even its tenor. But it is only the habitual lines of his face that make you assume anger and violence are behind it; now I know that it is not so. Or perhaps I have lulled myself into a false sense of security.

‘You still have the shirt from Elbow Ridge?’

‘Of course I have. It is rolled at the bottom of my bag, underneath my fur-lined coat.’

‘Fetch it.’

Halfway across the open ground behind the stores, the sun breaks through a gap in the cloud. A shaft of light, solid as a staircase, strikes the plain beyond the palisade, illuminating a stand of scrub willow, skeined with snow and glittering with icicles. Its brightness is piercing; its whiteness hurts the eyes. As suddenly as a smile, the sun causes beauty to break out on this sullen plain. Beyond a range of a hundred yards, all imperfections are hidden. Beyond the palisade lies a perfect landscape like a sculpture carved in salt, crystalline and pure. Meanwhile we trudge through roiled slush and dirt, trampled and stained with the effluent of dogs.

The widow is in her hut with one of her sons, a solemn-looking boy of about eight. She is boiling meat over the fire, squatting beside it. She looks, to my eye, thinner and more ragged than when I last saw her, and somehow more native, although with her fine features she is, of all of them, the most clearly a half-breed.

She looks up without expression as Parker enters without knocking and says something I don’t catch. She replies in another language. My reaction to this–a sudden and violent jealousy–takes my breath away.

‘Sit down,’ she says listlessly.

We do so, on the blankets round the fire. The boy stares at me steadily–winter petticoats do not make sitting on the floor an elegant task, but I do my best. Parker starts in a roundabout way, asking about the children and giving his condolences, to which I murmur agreement. Eventually he gets to the point.

‘Did your husband ever talk about the Norwegians’ furs?’

Elizabeth looks at him, then at me. It seems to raise no recognition in her.

‘No. He did not tell me everything.’

‘And the last trip he made–what was the purpose of it?’

‘Stewart wanted to hunt. He usually took my husband with him, because he was the best tracker.’ There is a quiet pride in her voice.

‘Mrs Bird, I am sorry to ask you this, but was your husband ill?’

‘Ill?’ She looks up sharply. ‘My husband was never ill. He was as strong as a horse. Who is saying that? Is that what Stewart says, huh? Is that why he walked on ice he would never have walked on?’

‘He says he was sick and did not know his own children.’ Parker keeps his voice low, not wanting to include the boy. Elizabeth’s face literally contorts with feeling–disgust, or contempt, or rage or all of them–and she leans forward, her face a livid orange from the fire.

‘That is a wicked lie! He was always the best of fathers.’ There is something frightening about her; hard and implacable but also, it seems to me, true.

‘When was the last time you saw your husband?’

‘Nine days ago, when he left with Stewart.’

‘And when was the last time he had been away before that?’

‘The summer. The last voyage they made was to Cedar Lake at the end of the season.’

‘He was here October, the beginning of November?’

‘Yes. All the time. Why are you asking this?’

I look at Parker. There is just one more thing left to do.

‘Mrs Bird, I apologise for asking this, but have you one of your husband’s shirts? We would like to look at it.’

She glares at Parker as if this is insurmountable insolence. Nevertheless, she gets up with a jerky movement and goes to the back of the hut, behind a curtain.

She comes back with a blue shirt folded in her hand. Parker takes it and unfolds it, spreading it out on the floor. I take out the dirty roll, wrapped in calico; I spread it out, stiff and fouled, the dark stains giving off a rank odour. The boy watches us solemnly. Elizabeth stands with her arms folded, looking down on us with hard, angry eyes.

Instantly I see that the clean shirt is smaller than the other. It seems incontrovertible to say that they could not belong to the same man.

‘Thank you Mrs Bird.’ Parker hands her back her husband’s shirt.

‘It’s no good to me. There is no one to wear it now.’ She keeps her arms folded. ‘You wanted it, you keep it.’

There is an unpleasant twist to her mouth. Parker is disconcerted. It’s a novel and refreshing experience for me–seeing him not know what to do.

I speak for the first time. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bird. I’m sorry we had to ask you, but you have helped greatly. You have proved that what Stewart says is a lie.’

‘What do I care? I don’t give a shit for helping you! Is it going to bring my husband back?’

I stand and pick up the soiled shirt. Parker is still holding the other.

‘I’m so sorry.’ On a level with her, only two feet away, I look into her eyes, which are a clear grey-brown, set in a mask of fury and despair. I feel withered by it. ‘I really am. We are going to …’

I wait for Parker to break in and explain what we are going to do. Any time now would be fine. He is on his feet too, but seems happy to let me do the talking.

‘We are going to find justice.’

‘Justice!’ She laughs, but it’s more like a snarl. ‘What about my husband? Stewart killed my husband. What about him?’

‘For him too.’ I am backing towards the door, more anxious to leave than to stay and find out why she is so convinced of this.

Elizabeth Bird grimaces–a rictus that looks like a smile, but isn’t. It emphasises the skull beneath the skin, and gives her the appearance of a death’s-head, animated but not alive; wan, bloodless, radiant with hate.

Walking back to the main building, Parker gives me the clean shirt, as if he doesn’t want the taint of holding it any more. He feels guilty for upsetting her.

‘We’ll show Moody these,’ I say. ‘Then he will see.’

Parker shakes his head slightly. ‘It’s not enough. That shirt could have been there a few months.’

‘You don’t believe it was! And you believe her too–about her husband’s death, don’t you?’

Parker glances at me briefly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re going, then.’

Parker assents without speaking. I feel that familiar crushing weight on my chest, and my breath seems stuck in my throat, although we have walked only a few dozen yards.

‘If he killed his guide it would be madness for you to go alone. I will borrow a rifle. If you don’t take me with you, I will follow your trail, and that’s all there is to it.’

Parker does not speak for a moment, then looks at me again, a little ironically, I think.

‘Don’t you think that people will talk if they see us leave together?’

There is a great leap in my chest as the weight takes wing. Suddenly even the compound looks beautiful to me, the sun painting the dirty drifts by the fence a glowing white-blue. Momentarily I am sure that no matter the danger, armed with right, we cannot do other than prevail.

The feeling lasts almost until I reach my bedroom door.

Laurent was often away on business. Francis knew as much, and therefore as little, as anyone else about his mysterious absences. In summer the wolves disappeared from the forest thereabouts, so this was when Laurent carried on his trading. That summer he seemed particularly busy–or perhaps it was just the first time that Francis had cared whether he was there or not–and made trips to Toronto and the Sault. When Francis asked him about his time away, Laurent was casual or downright evasive. He made jokes about lying drunk in bars, or visiting prostitutes. Or perhaps they weren’t jokes. The first time he mentioned a whorehouse, Francis stared at him with dumbstruck horror, feeling an intense and dreadful pain around his heart. Laurent took his shoulders and laughed, shaking him roughly until Francis lost his temper and shouted; hurtful things he couldn’t later remember. Laurent laughed at him, and then, suddenly, lost his temper too. They hurled insults at each other, until there was a sudden hiatus in the shouting and they stared at each other, mesmerised and reeling. Francis was hurt and hurtful; Laurent had a cutting, cruel way of putting him down, but when, afterwards, he apologised, he was so serious and sweet and beseeching–that first time he went down on his knees until Francis had to laugh and enthusiastically forgive him. It made Francis feel old–even older than Laurent.

Then there were the men who came to see Laurent at home. Sometimes when Francis went down and whistled outside the cabin, there would be no reply. That meant Laurent had someone with him, and often they would stay the night before shouldering their packs and trudging off, dogs at their heels. Francis discovered in himself a deep and terrible capacity for jealousy. On more than one occasion he would come back early in the morning and conceal himself in the bushes behind the cabin, waiting until the men left, studying their faces for clues, finding nothing. Most of the men were French or Indian; long-distance, disreputable-looking men more used to sleeping under the sky than a roof. They brought Laurent furs, tobacco and ammunition, and left the way they had come. Sometimes they didn’t seem to bring or leave with anything. Once, after a particularly hysterical argument, Laurent told him that men came to him because they were setting up something, a trading company, and it had to be a secret because they would bring down the wrath of the Hudson Bay Company if anyone found out, and that was something well worth avoiding. Francis was delirious with relief, and made up for it with an excess of high spirits, whereupon Laurent picked up his fiddle and played it, chasing him round the cabin until Francis burst out of the front door, gasping with laughter. There was a figure on the path, quite far away, and he bolted back inside. He only saw it for a moment, but he thought it was his mother. After that he lived in a terror of uncertainty for days, but nothing changed at home. If she had seen anything, she could not have thought anything of it.

Autumn came, and with it school, and then winter. He could not see Laurent so often, but occasionally he would creep down the path after his parents had gone to bed, and whistle. And sometimes he would hear an answering whistle, and sometimes he would not. As time went on it seemed to him that the frequency with which his whistle was answered grew less and less.

Sometime in spring, after Laurent had been away, again, to some unspecified destination, he started dropping hints that something big was going to happen. That he was going to make his fortune. Francis was confused and disturbed by these vague, usually drunken allusions. Was Laurent going to leave Dove River? What would happen to him, Francis? If he tried to lead him (cleverly he thought) into clarifying his plans, Laurent would tease him, and his teasing could be blunt and cruel. He frequently alluded to Francis’s future wife and family, or to whoring, or living south of the border.

There was one occasion, the first of many; they had both been drinking. It was early summer, and the evenings were getting just warm enough to sit outside. The first bees had emerged from wherever they had spent the cold months and buzzed around the apple blossom. Only seven months ago.

‘Of course, by then,’ Laurent was alluding to his unspecified future riches again, ‘you’ll be married on some little farm somewhere, with a handful of kids, and you’ll have forgotten all about me.’

‘I expect so.’ Francis had learnt to play along with these dreary little scenarios. If he protested, it just tended to egg Laurent on.

‘I guess when you leave school you’re not going to stay here, huh? Nothing much for you here, is there?’

‘Nah …’ Spect I’ll go to Toronto. Maybe I’ll come and visit you in your bath chair once in a while.’

Laurent grunted and drained his glass. It occurred to Francis that he was drinking more than he used to. Then he sighed. ‘I’m serious, p’tit ami. You shouldn’t stay here. It’s a nothing place. You should get out as soon as you can. I’m just an old country fool.’

‘You? You’re going to be rich, remember? You can go anywhere you want. You could move to Toronto …’

‘Oh shut up! You shouldn’t be here! You certainly shouldn’t be here with me. It’s no good. I am no good.’

‘What do you mean?’ Francis tried to still the tremor in his voice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re drunk, that’s all.’

Laurent turned to him, forming the words with alarming clarity. ‘I’m a fucking idiot. You’re a fucking idiot. And you should just fuck off back to your mama and papa.’ His face was mean, his eyes narrow with drink. ‘Go on! What are you waiting for? Fuck off!’

Francis stood up, in agony. He didn’t want Laurent to see him cry. But he couldn’t just walk away either, not like this.

‘You don’t mean that,’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘I know you don’t. And you don’t mean it either when you talk about going to whorehouses and having kids all over the place, and … all that. I see how you look at me …’

Ah, mon Dieu! Who wouldn’t look at you like that? You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But you’re a fucking stupid kid. I’m bored with you. And I’m married.’

Francis stood in stunned disbelief, unable to reply to this. ‘You’re lying,’ he said at last. Laurent looked up at him, wearily, as if telling him had relieved something.

‘No, it’s true, mon ami.’

Francis felt as though his chest was being ripped apart. He wondered why he did not fall, or faint, since the pain was so dreadful. He turned and walked away from the cabin, and kept walking through one of his father’s fields and into the forest. He began to run, his breath so ragged it disguised the sobs tearing through him. After a time he stopped running and went down on his knees in front of a huge pine, and rammed his head into the tree’s bark. He didn’t know how long he was there; perhaps he had dazed himself, glad of the pain that crowded out the other, more terrible, torment.

Laurent found him just before dark. He tracked him down like one of his stricken wolves, following his erratic progress through the bush. He bent down and cradled him in his arms, his fingers discovering the wound on his forehead, tears gleaming on his cheek, whispering that he was sorry.

Briefly, Francis thought that after that night, he had won. So what if Laurent had been married, so what if he had a son; that was all in the past: it didn’t matter now, to them. But still Laurent resisted his attempts to pin him down, to find things out. The truth was, he didn’t want Francis to change anything about his life, didn’t want Francis as anything other than an occasional diversion. Francis, his voice uneven and thick, accused Laurent of not caring about him. Laurent, brutally, agreed.

And on, and on. The same conversation repeated with slight, pointless variations over many summer nights. Francis wondered how much longer he could stand this exquisite torture, but could not stop submitting himself to it. He tried to be casual and light-hearted in Laurent’s presence, but hadn’t had much practice. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that sooner or later Laurent would push him away altogether. But like a moth drawn to a candle flame, he could not stop himself from going down to the cabin, although Laurent was increasingly absent. He didn’t understand how Laurent’s feelings could have changed so much, when his had intensified.

And then, somehow, his father found out.

It wasn’t a cataclysmic event. It was more as though his father had been putting together pieces of a puzzle, patiently watching and accumulating the fragments, until finally the picture had come clear. There were the times when Francis had not returned until after his parents had got up, and he had muttered unconvincing comments about early-morning walks. Then there was the time that his father had arrived at Laurent’s cabin and Francis was there, and he pretended to be taking a wood-carving lesson. Perhaps that was when he knew, although he gave no outward sign of it. Or there was another time, ill-advised, when he claimed he had stayed the night at Ida’s. His father had raised his eyebrow very slightly, but said nothing. Then Francis, panicking, had to find an excuse to rush over to the Prettys’ house and find Ida. He wasn’t sure what to say to her either, but concocted a story about having gotten drunk in Caulfield and having to hide it from his parents. Her face was stony and set, and though she nodded agreement, she looked at him with wounded eyes and he felt ashamed.

However it had happened, his father, who for some time had found it hard to talk to Francis–and they were never that close–became intolerable. He never said anything directly, but would not look him in the eye when speaking to him, and only did so to order him to carry out some chore or mend his behaviour. He seemed to regard his son with a cold, withering contempt; it felt as though he could hardly bear to be in the house with him. Sometimes Francis, sitting at the table in the frigid zone between his mother and father, felt a nausea welling up in his throat that threatened to overwhelm him. Once, while speaking to his mother about something, he caught his father’s eye on him, unguarded, and saw in it nothing but cold, implacable rage.

One thing that surprised him was that he must have kept it from his mother. She clearly felt the coldness between father and son, and it saddened her, but she did not regard him any differently; that is, she was the same impatient, unhappy woman she had been for as long as he could remember.

It was the end of October. Francis had vowed to himself many times not to go back to Laurent’s, a vow he found impossible to keep. This particular evening he found him in, and after a while they began a long, bitter argument, saying the same things they had said before, over and over again. Francis hated himself at such moments, but was quite unable to stop. Occasionally, when alone, he could picture himself walking away with dignity, head high, but when he was standing in Laurent’s kitchen, facing the man himself–shambolic, unshaven, crude–then he was seized with a mad desire to throw himself at his feet, to beg him in tears; to kill himself; anything to end this torture. To kill Laurent.

‘I didn’t come to you, remember?’ Francis shouted hoarsely, as he had done many times before. ‘I didn’t ask for this! You made me like this … You!’

‘And I wish I’d never set eyes on you. Christ, you make me sick!’ And then Laurent said, ‘Anyway it doesn’t matter. I’m going away. For a long time. I don’t know when I will come back.’

Francis stared at him, not believing it for a moment.

‘Fine. Say what you like.’

‘I leave next week.’

The anger had drained out of Laurent’s face, and Francis had a cold, sick feeling that it was true. Laurent turned away, busying himself with something.

‘Maybe then you’ll get over it, huh? Find a nice girl.’

Francis felt tears threaten. His whole body felt weak, as if he was coming down with a fever. Laurent was leaving. It was over. He did not understand how it was possible to feel such pain and go on living.

‘Hey, it’s not so bad. You’re a good kid really.’ Laurent had seen his face, and was trying to be kind. This was worse than any obscenities or cutting remarks.

‘Please …’ Francis did not know what he was going to say. ‘Please, don’t say that now. Just go, some time, but don’t say that now. Let’s go on, until …’

Maybe Laurent too was tired of fighting, and that’s why he shrugged and smiled. Francis went to him, and put his arms round him. Laurent patted him on the back, more like a father than anything else. Francis clung to him, wishing he could walk away; wishing more that it was the summer of the previous year, gone for good.

My love, who is sick to death of me.

He stayed that night but lay awake throughout it, listening to Laurent breathe beside him. He managed to rise and dress without waking him, although before he left, he leant over and kissed him softly on the cheek. Laurent didn’t wake, or chose not to.

And then, two weeks later, he was standing in the dark cabin, looking at the warm empty shell that lay on the bed.

And God help him if the second thought he had was not: Oh, oh my love, you cannot leave me now.