Duelling in a New World Read online

  Laughter from the kitchen reminds him of his children. The three of them have been in the warmth of the hearth putting a puzzle together. Charles and William now call him ‘Papa’ and seem to be quite at home in York. Though he has not always been a good husband, he has been more successful in his resolutions to be a good father, and he now remembers the commitment he has made to his children’s education. He looks at the decanter of wine. He has drunk most of it, yet he feels coherent enough for the task of helping them with their studies.

  He calls to them, and they come into the withdrawing room, laughing and flushed from the heat of the kitchen fire.

  “Look, Papa,” Ellen says, showing him a large wooden puzzle of Europe which they have put together. Ellen is now thirteen years of age, a slight, pretty child with her mother’s fair complexion. White is happy she seems to enjoy Miss Russell who has been teaching her to crochet. William, who was a baby when he left England, is now a chubby six-year-old. Charles is eight, a quiet lad who has said very little in the weeks he has been in York. But White has watched him observe things, his large brown eyes fixed on his mother and father during their quarrels. What has our acrimony done to him?

  He seats them at the dining-room table and reads them Goody Two Shoes, an old book of Mary’s which Miss Russell has given him. The boys never tire of the tale, but he sees Ellen fiddling with the ribbons on her dress and senses she is bored. When he finishes the story, he sets Charles, who knows his alphabet, to making words that match familiar ones from the story they have just heard. He doesn’t know what to do with William, except to take him on his knee and get him to write WWWWW with a quill, spattering ink all over his new buff breeches in the process. As for Ellen, Miss Russell, bless her, has given him an idea.

  “You like puzzles, my dear?”

  “Oh yes, Papa, but we have already conquered that one.” She points to the map of Europe.

  “Try this.” He shows her a square piece of paper with twelve holes drawn onto it. “Miss Russell has drawn these,” he tells her. “Now see if you can cut the paper into four pieces of the same shape. The catch is that each piece of paper must have three holes in it.”

  With the children occupied, he has time to reflect. This slapdash approach to education, while better than nothing, has few positive merits. Perhaps he can scrape together enough money to enrol the lads in William Cooper’s school in George Street. The man provides instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and English grammar with, as he says in an advertisement in The Upper Canada Gazette, “great attention paid to virtue and morals.” That would be a godsend. They get no training from his wife.

  His head aches from the argument with Marianne and from the burden of his children. And now Ellen is crying. “I can’t get it right, Papa. You’ll have to help me.”

  He takes up the puzzle and tries to remember what his friend showed him. But the wine has dulled his intellect. “I can’t get it straight myself,” he says. “We’ll have to ask Miss Russell. Why don’t you go over to her house tomorrow morning and ask her?”

  Ellen mops her eyes with the back of her hand and starts to laugh. “Oh, Papa, I feel so much better knowing you can’t figure it out either.”

  He laughs with her, feeling a spurt of happiness to have his daughter with him again. She is so much like Mary, spirited and funny. “Why don’t you read me Goody Two Shoes?” he asks. “Your voice will be so much better than mine for the orphan girl.”

  Ellen reads. That English nanny of Sam’s was a godsend in spite of what Marianne claims.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  March 1798

  With the departure of the slattern for the green pastures of Markham, the Whites’ domestic life has improved. They have a new cook now, a thin woman with a lined face, her wavy blonde hair pulled back in a thick braid. She applied for a position at the Russells’ house, but they, having four servants already, did not need her. Miss Russell, however, recommended her to the Whites.

  White has had the German immigrant William Berczy build a small log cabin for his new servant and her family in the back of the property. It gives him and Marianne privacy. White has no wish to have an outsider know too much about the state of their marriage.

  Mrs. Page, as she calls herself, has small twin daughters who tag about after her. Marianne thought they would be an impediment, but they are happy, unobtrusive children and Charles and William enjoy playing with them.

  Right now, his wife is setting out the scones which Mrs. Page has left on the hearth for their breakfast. He has looked forward to enjoying them with butter and baked apples, but he can tell by the way Marianne is banging the plates about that something is sticking in her craw.

  “Is it right, husband, that our sons should associate with Cook’s children?”

  “Why not? It is an advantage for you, is it not? She will keep an eye on them, and you will have more free time. Eventually I shall enrol them in school and they will be off your hands during the day. You might, however, give more of your attention to Ellen. She should not be running loose through the town the way she seems to be.”

  “Where have Cook’s children come from? Where is the woman’s husband? I have tried to get answers, but she says nothing.”

  “You wanted a good cook and household helper. Let us enjoy her. She makes good bread, does not hold her nose when she empties the chamber pots, or offend our ears with her complaints. Servants of her calibre are impossible to come by in this world. Have I not told you the story of William Jarvis’s outburst to his father-in-law? He showed me the letter one day which he wrote during the hours he was supposed to be helping me with the land grants. He pushed it right under my nose, and I read what he said to the old man. ‘For God’s sake, try and bring out a servant or two with you; the whole country cannot produce one fit to put in Hell’s Kitchen.’”

  “You never answer my questions, do you? She may well be a good servant, but I want to know something about her background.”

  “She dropped down from Heaven into our kitchen. Let us be thankful for her and forget about everything else.”

  His breakfast ruined by their marital discourse, White retreats to the coat hooks in the hallway where he dons his heavy knee-length woollen coat to face the swirling snow which he saw earlier through the window of their bedchamber.

  He slams the front door on Marianne’s mutterings. She has become more strident in the years she was without him in England. Her laudanum habit appears to have dissipated, and he almost regrets that. It kept her quiet and more passive. At the moment, though, he regrets most mentioning William Jarvis. The very name stirs his anger. The man is still dithering about in Niagara, loath to make the move across the water. White now writes out most of the land grants himself, but receives only fifty per cent of the money raised in the process. If I had the lazy fool here, I’d break his head open.

  He heads for the foot of Berkeley Street where Peter Russell—the direct opposite of Jarvis—has fulfilled his promise of a court house. He has succeeded in putting the idle Queen’s Rangers to work in the completion of Government House. Though none of them ever constructed a building before, the results are tolerable. The south wing is now fitted up for a temporary meeting-place for the Court of King’s Bench, and the north wing is to receive the next sitting of Parliament in June. Russell is still hoping to fill in the centre of the structure with a residence to house the Lieutenant-Governor.

  “It will be ready for his Excellency when he returns from his leave of absence,” Russell has said to him time after time. “I’m sorry that, for the present, the cost is too prohibitive to carry out the instructions he gave me before he left for England.”

  “Face it, man, the Gov will not be returning,” White has said over and over. “When the Brits recognize the fact, what can they do but appoint you as our next Governor? You have been a whirlwind in the establishment of this new capital, and your reward must surely be to take the governance of the province.”

  But as he say
s this, he cannot help but remember how he, the first Attorney-General of Upper Canada, was passed over for promotion in favour of John Elmsley, whom he and Russell both hate.

  Though the court house is ready, British justice in this godforsaken backwater is largely unchanged from his time in Niagara. As he passes through the front door, he sees one of the court louts heating the branding iron in the great wood stove in the corner of the room. Daily he listens to the screams of some poor wretch forced to stretch out his hand and have burned thereon the first letter of his offence.

  “Good day, your Honour,” the man says to him, his face red from the heat of the fire.

  “And who is your victim today?”

  “One Hiram Jones. Forged a signature for nine shillings, the bugger. But he’s not getting off with the branding. Thirty-nine lashes he’ll have on his fat back—which I am happy to administer.” He points to the whipping frame in another corner of the room where transgressors are tied in place to receive floggings. “People can come to see that one. Should be a merry old time.”

  “Can you put it off until today’s trial is over?”

  “Glad to oblige, Your Honour. It will be even a better spectacle for folk later in the day, when their work is over. But right now, I’ll get to the branding.”

  White retreats to the small room off the main courtroom. He stuffs his ears with pieces of beeswax that he cut from the candles on the sideboard, melted, and shaped into ear stoppers which he keeps in his desk here at the court house. The screams of Hiram Jones sear his brain nevertheless. And we are to believe that Odysseus’s crew shut out the Sirens’ songs with wax?

  When the torture is over, he goes back into the courtroom to wind up the case he is now prosecuting. He has been forced in this new place, in spite of his resolutions, to resume cases involving people from First Nations’ bands. A man called McKewen, a member of the Queen’s Rangers, has brutally murdered a Mississauga chief who went to the assistance of his sister whom the scoundrel was trying to rape. White has proceeded quickly with the prosecution, and hopes for satisfaction for his Indian chief.

  John Elmsley has recently moved to York after quarrelling with Russell for months over the relocation of the courts. Now he sits resplendent on his wooden throne, throwing a spate of Latin at the Grand Jury who, farmers all, understand not a word. Finally, seeing their incomprehension, Elmsley sighs and says, “I await the Grand Jury’s verdict.”

  The foreman gives it. “No bill. The Attorney-General has produced no conclusive proof that the Mississauga chief is dead.”

  Oh my god, at every turn in my struggles to find justice for the natives, I am thwarted. Why did I hope for anything better?

  * * *

  The one bright moment in White’s day is the platter of salmon which Mrs. Page has roasted on the hearth and set before them for supper. Marianne seems pleased with it, too, and the bottle of good French wine supplied on account by the King Street merchant rounds out the meal. For a half-hour, all is well.

  “You bartered for this excellent treat from an Indian, did you, Mrs. Page?” he asks, as the woman comes in with more mashed potatoes.

  “No, sir.” She looks embarrassed and retreats to the kitchen, saying nothing more.

  “Where did it come from, then?” He feels a twinge of heartburn as he wonders if Marianne has been running up more bills with the merchant.

  Silence. Then Ellen says. “I got it.”

  “You, child? Where?”

  His daughter swallows, and then proceeds in a loud voice. “I went out on the bay with Jacob, an Indian boy I know. He hacked out a large hole in the ice with his axe. Then we both leaned over the side and looked down into the water.” She pauses, a smile lighting her face, and says, “It was exciting, Papa. There were so many fish wriggling and darting about. I held a lighted torch while my friend plunged his spear into a big one.”

  “You were out alone on the ice with a native?” White tries to remain calm, but he can hear his voice swelling in anger.

  “No, no, Papa. There were several Indian women and Jacob’s brothers were there, too. They were all fishing. They get a dollar, Jacob said, for six big salmon. But he gave me this one free for holding the—”

  “Stop, stop! I will hear no more!” He bangs his fist on the table. Ellen screams, her mother begins to whimper, and Charles and William add their cries to the cacophony.

  The sobs and screams smite him. He takes deep breaths and tries to pull himself together. “Go, Ellen,” he says to her, his voice softening, “go and get Cook to make you a cup of tea.”

  She runs off, holding a handkerchief to her eyes. He turns to Marianne. “You, wife, you are responsible for all this. It is your fault the girl runs wild about the town. Did I not caution you about her conduct this very morning?”

  But as he says this, he recognizes that Ellen is not to blame. And perhaps Marianne is not at fault either. He’s sorry he has upset their fine meal. He has often complained about the scarcity of food and its expense in this desolate wilderness, and now that he reflects, he realizes Ellen probably thought he would welcome the gift. Undoubtedly she saw no reason to ask her mother’s permission to go on the lake. If she hadn’t been completely innocent of wrong doing, she would not have been so open about her actions.

  The day has been an utter ruin. How is he to survive?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  September 1798

  Though Eliza Russell and her brother Peter now have four servants to carry out all the chores in their fine new house in York, Eliza misses the tasks she used to do with Mary: the making of butter in the “up and down” churn, whopping up cream for the syllabub Mr. White used to like so much, picking the spring wildflowers which they tucked into the family Bible. Those flowers are now framed and placed on the walls in the hallway, and she should be mighty pleased, but she cannot bear to look at them.

  For certain, it’s not the tasks she pines for, but the company of the girl.

  This morning Peter said to her as he put salt on his poached eggs, “Sister, I am happy that you have your poultry yard here. It must please you to collect these eggs each day. And I think your health has improved. You get out and about looking after all those hens, and that is good.”

  Yes, for certain she gets out and about, but it’s not work in the poultry yard that has put a blush back in her cheeks. It’s the hours she spends to-ing and fro-ing in the sunshine along the bay, looking across the water and wishing for Mary.

  Today has been wretched. She went out with Job to pick up the windfall apples and a flock of passenger pigeons flew overhead, their wings beating with such a mighty flap that she could scarce hear what her servant was saying to her. Then, when he picked up an apple and flung it at the birds, knocking one to the ground, she was quite undone, and had to go into the house where she has been for the last hour, sobbing in her bedchamber. Mary, Mary, my girl, come back.

  Their fine iron doorknocker sounds. Eliza mops at her eyes and waits. Peggy is to answer the door, but she considers herself too uppity for the task. There’s another bang of the knocker, and Eliza knows that she must move down the stairs into the hallway to answer.

  A small girl in a dimity frock and apron stands there, a basket in her hands.

  Mary, Mary, you’ve come back, thank the Lord. But then she sees the dirty dress and the hair that needs a good brush. “Come in, Ellen, the sun in my eyes has made me quite blind for a moment.”

  The girl comes into the hallway and hands the basket to her. “Mama says she and Papa will come over this night to hear the reading. Mama is quite chuffed about it. She sends these gingerbread cookies to help out.” Ellen pulls back the cloth to show her mother’s offering and adds, laughing, “Don’t be afraid, Miss Russell. They’re real tasty. Mrs. Page made them, not Mama.”

  “Thank you. And thank your mother. And Mrs. Page.”

  When Ellen leaves, Eliza takes the basket to the kitchen and unpacks it. She slides the gingerbread onto a platter. Yes,
it looks good. The Whites’ cook has put some raisins into it. Only the good Lord knows where she procured raisins. Must have cost a pretty penny.

  “Let us ready ourselves,” she says to Job, the one servant she can abide in this fine new house. “Guests are a-coming this evening to hear your master read.”

  Reading aloud has become a common pastime in this place they call York. Dear Peter has a beautiful, sonorous voice, and the reading of the new book which her friend Lizzie has sent from Harwich makes a good evening of entertainment without much to-do on her part. With the gingerbread and some good cheese from their farm to the north, there will be little to make a fuss over.

  She has had to pull together many suppers and tea parties since Peter has become Administrator of Upper Canada. Mighty happy she is, though, about her brother’s fate. He is for certain the most important person in this new world of York. No matter that the Jarvises hate him. What was he to do when those new German immigrants couldn’t get their land grants? Things have firmed up now Mr. White does most of Mr. Jarvis’s work. And since Mrs. Jarvis no longer wants to visit, she no longer has to listen to the woman’s blather.

  Sixty-three years of age her brother be, and yet in the brief time he has ruled this new capital, he has accomplished so much. God be her witness, she will do what she must do to help him.

  * * *

  Her dear brother arrives home at seven o’clock. He seems tired, the pouches under his eyes swollen and grey-looking. “Remind me, sister,” he says, throwing his wig onto the back of a chair in the kitchen. Though they have the finest house in York, they still prefer to talk in the kitchen by the warmth of the hearth.

  “Remind you, Peter?”

  “Whom have we invited for this evening?”

  “The Elmsleys—” She finds herself cut off by a loud groan.