Spring arrived in a late flurry during May and Tom was in a buoyant mood as he rode on a hired beast toward the farm after several weeks away. He would buy his own horse. Better still, get Iain to choose the animal. It would be a reward for the lad after the long winter months that had been every bit as severe as Mrs. MacKenzie had warned him. Everything here was on a grander scale than in the Highlands, the cold more bone numbing and the storms more brutal but it was the marauding sea ice that most surprised him. After Christmas, the thickening slush had grown into great ice pans along the shores before breaking free and then melding together into platforms. Sea currents pushed these out but they returned in frozen billows that ground against the shore. Tom found himself whistling, a sea shanty of all things, but who was to hear him? Everything looked in good order as he passed through the curtain of woodland around the farm. The house itself appeared sound although the elements had turned the wood dark gray. It’s my own landlocked vessel, he thought, glowing with the pleasure of ownership. The last of the snow was swept away from the door and smoke was curling up from the chimney. He shouted out a greeting as he loosened the latch and stepped inside. There was no answer but then he was half expecting Iain to be busy outside. No, he could hear running footsteps and there was the boy himself, tucking his shirt into his trousers, his fair skin reddening and his dark hair sticking up in stooks. He seemed dazed and surly, like a bear roused early from his winter den.
“It’s good to be back. I’d forgotten how beautiful it’s out here in the woods. I’ve spent too much time indoors, taking endless portraits.”
“I’ll make us tea.” Iain stumbled toward the fireplace and unhooked the pot from its chain.
What was the matter with the boy? He was usually so neat in his movements. Tom wondered as he took off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door. Of course he was growing fast and that made a lad clumsy. As Tom lowered himself onto a stool he heard the sound, a sneeze, a stifled one but definitely a sneeze. He froze as he tried to locate it. It was coming from behind the partition that separated the kitchen from the sleeping quarters. Iain stiffened and banged the pot down on the earth floor. He turned to Tom with a strange expression on his face, a mixture of guilt, defiance, and triumph. He darted behind the partition and re-emerged, followed by a slender young girl. Tom nearly fell off his stool as he stared open-mouthed at a sculpted brown face with a strong nose and dark eyes, framed by black ropes of plaited hair. All three figures stood motionless as if in a tableau. Tom recovered first and cleared his throat.
“Are you going to introduce me to your friend?” he croaked, aware of how ridiculous he sounded.
“They called her Effie but she’s got a Mi’kmaq name, too.”
The girl stood impassive beside him. Iain shuffled sideways and pulled her close. Here was this youth, this urchin he had adopted, turned into a man. Tom clenched his fists so hard that his nails bit into his palms.
“You’d better explain,” he said eventually, looking from one to the other. He felt disgust as he looked at the girl. He had seen young Indian women like her skulking among the shacks down on the shore, but he was horrified to find one of them inside his own house. He remembered feeling sickened by the prostitutes, swarming cockroaches who spilled out from the shadows toward their ship when it arrived in port. They sullied everything they touched, scuttling away when an officer appeared but creeping back again, an unstoppable plague of vermin. How he hated the idea of Iain, this wholesome boy, this young David, being tainted by such a woman. Still, knowing the lad’s quick flares of anger, he forced himself to stay silent.
“I went crazy on my own,” Iain said, sticking out his lower lip. “I had to get out of this valley, to see what was inland.” He shrugged, “A couple of weeks ago, I reached one of the old trading huts where the Indians used to bring in furs to sell. It looked empty and I turned back but then I heard voices from inside.”
“A drinking den, no doubt.”
Iain glowered. “They invited me in to the fire and gave me venison stew. The sweat had turned to ice in my hair and eyebrows. It was grand to thaw out and swallow that tasty food. I went back a few times, for the company. Then one day I found Spring Thaw. That’s her proper name, put into English.” He smiled at the girl, squeezing her brown twigs of fingers in his own pale, broad hands. “This time it was different. Two men had come in, strangers looking for a fight. I slipped out and was just strapping my snowshoes on when I heard a scuffle behind me. They were kicking Spring Thaw. She fell out of the door. Blood all over her face and dripping down into the snow. They went back in and slammed the door shut. She lay there as if she was dead.”
Tom stared at the girl. She stared back and then opened her mouth. Tom was astonished to hear her speak English clearly, in a quiet but insistent voice.
“I fainted and when I woke up Iain was wiping away the blood.” She gulped, and went on. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m not one of those women who sell their bodies to white men.”
“Or let them force her,” Iain added. “She drew a knife on those two.”
“Tell me who you are then.” For so long Tom had hunted for a mysterious girl who had scarcely seemed real. His gorge rose as he faced this flesh-and-blood woman who had appeared from nowhere. A completely different girl, a dark negative image of the one he had lost. Completely wrong.
She kept looking at him. Tom shivered. It was as if she were reading his thoughts.
“My people lived here when the white men first came. Like biting insects, forcing us back into the hills. I was born at the time of the thaw when we went down to the shore to fish. One year, when I was very young, men with dogs attacked us in the night. We fled but I couldn’t keep up and was captured.”
Iain squeezed her hand but she took no notice, fixing her dark eyes on Tom’s face.
“I was taken to an orphanage, not here but on another island.”
“Prince Edward Island, I think,” Iain said.
Her voice grew fierce. “They tried to beat the Indian out of me but once I was old enough I ran away. Came back here to find my family again.”
“But she couldn’t. You’re safe here though.”
“And how old are you now?” Tom asked.
“About fifteen summers, I think.”
“She doesn’t know exactly, just like me.” Iain nudged her, so that she giggled. “She can stay with us, can’t she?”
“It’s not a matter for jesting. Is she here as a guest? A servant? Or another adopted child for me to raise? You’re not a full-grown man yet, but you’ve lain with this young woman. Am I right?”
“She’s my friend.” Iain’s face was on fire.
“A friend who shares your bed? I can understand why you rescued her, but I can’t have this kind of thing going on under my roof.”
“Why not? Lots of men live with native women.”
“Back in the old days unmarried men took a country wife. People frown on that now.”
“You only care about what people think.”
“Because I have to. I can’t draw attention to myself. You know that. What if she has a child?” Tom gestured at Spring Thaw, without looking at her.
Iain seemed to shrink in on himself, but Spring Thaw let go of his hand and moved closer to Tom.
“I can work hard. I learnt the ways of hunting from my people and the orphanage taught me white women’s work.”
Tom forced himself to turn to her as she stood in front of him. Barefoot and wearing one of Iain’s shirts that billowed over her slight frame, she stood tall and looked him in the eye.
“I’m sure you would. But it’s not so simple. Leave me while I think what to do.”
Iain looked thunderous. They went away to put on outdoor clothes, leaving Tom to nurse his cup of tea. Whatever decision he made would create ripples of attention from their neighbors. If he told Iain that the girl would have to leave, Tom knew that the headstrong young man would likely go with her. He couldn’t manage the farm without him and besides, he was used to his presence. Forbidding them to share a bed wouldn’t work now that the boy had discovered the pleasures of her body. If he tired of her when she became pregnant, he might want to send her away, like a country wife in the old days. But this girl had no family to take her back. Tom knew he could never agree to her being discarded. He was no churchgoer, but he still held to Christian principles. He sighed in exasperation. Was he doomed to be forever battered by storms? Each time he battened down to ride the winds, another tempest would rear up. He used to chafe at the doldrums of life when he was at sea, but how he longed for some tedium now. Was there no safe harbor anywhere?