April 1794
Spring has finally come to Niagara, and as John White looks out his back door one morning, he sees violets in bloom in his yard. Interspersed among them in patches are the three-petalled white flowers with yellow centres that the settlers call trilliums and the Indians call wakerobins. White prefers the Indian name. There’s a fat robin among them now yanking a worm from the earth.
“Come,” he calls to Yvette who is stirring something on the hearth, “it’s time for the burial.”
No more words are necessary. She goes down into the root cellar while he takes the shovel that is propped up against the back wall of the house. He selects a spot in the midst of the violets and starts his digging. Yvette emerges from the root cellar and sits on the ground near him holding the small casket. The smell he feared is scarcely discernible. The lid of the box has kept that terror inside.
For a few minutes, the only sounds are birdsong, Yvette’s soft crying, and the thump of the earth he tosses on the ground. Soon he’s achieved a small, deep hole. He takes the box from her, sets it carefully into the pit, and throws the pile of earth back on top.
“Is there something you would like to say, Yvette?” he asks, pointing to the new grave.
She shakes her head. They stand in silence looking down at the piled-up earth. Then, without a word, she starts to sing. It’s one of Isaac Watts’s most famous hymns, “Joy to the World,” and for a minute White wonders where she learned it. Perhaps from one of the itinerant Methodist preachers who travel about the countryside?
Yvette’s voice quavers and breaks, but White knows all the words and starts to sing with her. They are just starting the third verse—”No more let sin and sorrow grow”—when out of the woods just beyond a patch of wakerobins, Eliza Russell appears. Her scrawny form is covered in a faded brown dress, and she’s carrying a bucket that is filled with spring flowers.
She spends only an instant observing the burial scene, then she sets the pail down and moves to Yvette’s side, so that Yvette is now between her and White. She takes Yvette’s hand and joins in their singing.
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness
And wonders of his love
And wonders of his love
And wonders and wonders of his love.
“I am mighty happy to be part of your ceremony,” Eliza says in her gentle voice when they have finished the last verse. “I was in the woods collecting some flowers that I intend to press, and I heard your singing. I shall go now and leave you to your sorrow.” She picks up her pail and starts down the garden path. Then she turns and says, “‘The wonders of God’s love,’ I need sometimes to be reminded of those wonders. Thank you.”
White and Yvette watch Eliza disappear behind the trees. “Madame?” Yvette says, pointing towards the woods and looking worried.
“Miss Russell is a good woman,” White replies, “you do not need to fear her. She knows how to keep a secret.”
He’s still humming Watts’s words as he sets off for Navy Hall to finish up some work that the Gov has sent to him by the first packet boat from York. He remembers singing another hymn with Pastor Rippon in another life, another world. Would he have been happier staying in England? All things considered, perhaps not.
He passes Gilbert Field’s tavern on the old Indian trail which is now a substantial path called River Road. There are several taverns in the settlement. He’s heard Field often takes advantage of his inebriated customers by seizing their land grants in payment of their bar bills. Now the man is building a large brick house. A country bumpkin who runs an ale house is a rich man while I, Attorney-General of Upper Canada, must subsist on the loans my brother-in-law doles out. Is this one of the wonders of God’s love?
There are some of the local farmers and military men sitting outside the tavern. “Good day,” he says, nodding to them. Their response is baffling: a combination of laughter, loud applause, and scratching of their crotches. What’s going on? Four spruce beers too many is his conclusion. He tramps onwards.
In the centre of the village, he sees some of the local bumpkins gathered around a large white sheet affixed to a fencepost. When they see his approach, they disband, sniggering as they scatter down the road.
Something’s up. He moves closer so that he can read the sheet:
Alas, Mr. Small has a very small prick
And Mr. White’s, though large, is a dirty wick.
Mr. Tickell, ‘tis true, likes to tickle his pickle,
While the bold Mrs. Small just loves being fickle.
These vile words are written in a fine hand, one he recognizes immediately. William Jarvis’s. So Jarvis is behind this? Unlikely. The man, incompetent and frustrated though he is, is not by nature vindictive. He’s been put up to this by someone. His wife no doubt. He remembers how she found him and Mrs. Small in flagrante delicto that day after lunch when the woman (he no longer thinks of her as Betsy) popped out of her dress for the costume ball.
What to do? Should he go to Jarvis’s house and confront the two of them? Would that make things worse? He’s trying to make up his mind when he sees Richard Tickell approaching. The man is swinging his stick as if he’s a schoolmaster about to beat up a miscreant, and his face is red, right to the top of his bald head. He’s obviously read the screed.
“You bastard,” he yells at White. “You connived with Jarvis over this, didn’t you? Just because I fucked that Indian squaw who cooks for you?”
White feels his own face redden. He thinks of Yvette’s despair on the day he discovered her dead baby, of her sorrow today as they stood over that tiny grave in his back garden. But he must not show his anger. Who knows what vengeance Tickell might enact on the girl. Or on him, for that matter. Denial, let’s see if that works.
“I do not care for the way you talk of my cook, Tickell. Her name is Yvette LaCroix. I know nothing about her private life. And even if I did, I would do nothing to hurt her. Or you either, for that matter.” He points to the sheet of paper. “I have no idea what this slander is all about. All I recognize is the handwriting.”
“That bugger Jarvis’s. So what in hell are we going to do about it?”
“That’s the conundrum. Perhaps just leave it alone and hope it fizzles out. You know what things are like in this place. Everyone’s focus is gossip. Gossip is the succubus that stirs the dead air and sets emotions on fire. If we don’t let ourselves get upset, there’ll be some new distraction in the next few days.”
“It damn well better fizzle out, but meantime I’m going to see that bugger Jarvis and have it out with him. He’s not going to get away with this rot.” He turns and heads in the direction of Jarvis’s house.
White’s head aches and his nose begins to bleed. Best to get back home and lie down. He’ll have to take another route back, though. No way he can endure the ribald comments from the drunks at Field’s Tavern.
He clamps his handkerchief over the top of his nose, presses it hard, and starts home. Well, the news is out, thanks to Jarvis’s termagant wife. But why was Tickell’s name on that sheet? Something besides pain gnaws at his head. A random thought that’s lodged there . . .
That’s it . . . Betsy Small’s distress when she heard about Tickell and Yvette. I wondered at the time why she cared. Why would I think that I was the only lover in her life? What a fool I’ve been.