March 1796
White has had a quiet winter in Niagara. He calls the settlement by its original Indian name openly now, free of the Gov’s insistence on “Newark.” The Simcoes are far away in York, and from all he hears, set to fly like the passenger pigeons—back to England as soon as the Gov gets his request for leave of absence granted. They’ll have to come back to Niagara for their goodbyes, but undoubtedly for a few days only.
Peter Russell, ever the faithful servant of the administration, has moved to York temporarily where he has bought a house that he is now in the process of enlarging. But Miss Russell reminds everyone that she is “not a-going anywhere,” as she puts it, until the house is ready. So White has had her companionship all winter. She’s a sympathetic listener, always willing to hear his complaints about William Jarvis who has become even more lazy and sulky in past months.
“I don’t know which of them—the man or his wife—I loathe most,” he tells Miss Russell now, sitting at her broad oak kitchen table and watching her whip up a bowl of syllabub. She pours the cream and whites of eggs into the bowl with wine and sugar. Then she gets to work with a whisk that she’s made out of birch twigs. It’s a hard task whipping it all into a heavy foam, and it takes her at least a quarter of an hour, but they talk as she works.
“That wife of his put him up to challenging me to a duel, I know, and I’m never going to forgive her for that.”
“She’s an uppity soul,” Miss Russell says, “but it’s all been settled for many months. Perhaps it be . . .” She pauses and shakes the whipped mixture from her whisk.
“I know what you’re going to say, ma’am. Let bygones be bygones. And your brother did the right thing in bringing Jarvis to court and settling the matter there. When I get the legal system righted in this country, I’ll see that the courts are an avenue for redress for these stupid quarrels. My brother-in-law tells me that since 1790 in England, men have begun to use the courts instead of the pistol for settling these crazy manifestations of male ‘honour.’”
More swooping motions with the whisk of twigs and finally, judging by the decisive way she whacks the whisk against the bowl, the syllabub is ready. If he were a dog, he’d be drooling. She moves towards the mantel above the hearth and takes down a large tankard.
“Perhaps you could come to my house one of these days and teach Yvette how to make it. I’m not complaining about her dandelion wine, mind, but syllabub would be a delicious addition to her repertoire.”
“I’d be mighty pleased.” Then, sotto voce, she adds. “If I can escape from Cousin Willcocks for an afternoon. He gets up late—he be still abed now at this late hour—and then he expects a full meal put in front of him.”
Job, the Russells’ faithful servant, has evidently heard her words. From the corner of the room, where he’s stirring a pot of soup on the open hearth, he heaves a large sigh.
The words and the sigh serve to herald the appearance of the man himself: William Willcocks, dressed in a banyan and slippers, as if it were eight o’clock in the morning rather than three in the afternoon. He is a fat man, probably sixty years of age, with bushy eyebrows, a mess of uncombed white hair, and a broad red nose.
“Syllabub, eh, Eliza m’dear? I’ll have it.” And he proceeds to grab the bowl and empty its contents into the tankard Miss Russell has just set upon the table. “How are ye today, White?” He doesn’t want an answer, he’s too engrossed in quaffing back the syllabub. He rubs some whipped cream off his chin with the back of his hand and asks, “Where’s little Mary? You’re far too easy with the girl, Eliza. She should be here in the kitchen doing a woman’s work.”
White watches as Miss Russell turns away to set the empty bowl in the dry sink. He senses from the heave of her shoulders that she is crying. From a room upstairs comes the sound of coughing.
“Leave it, Willcocks,” he says in a whisper, “the girl is dying.”
“Balderdash and bunkum. Nothing like a good day’s work to set one right.”
White cannot say more without upsetting everyone. He rises, gathers up his coat, says goodbye, and heads out into the brisk March breezes.
He’s half-way to his own house when he meets Peter Russell coming up the path from the quay. “Just managed to catch the packet at York, the first one of the spring season,” his friend says. “I have a few days now to spend with my sister and that damned cousin who’s dumped himself on us for I don’t know how long.”
“Why is he here, anyway?”
“Only because he hopes I’ll be successful in getting him some new land grants from the Governor. I got him hundreds of acres free not so long ago, contingent on his getting settlers to come over. But he buggered everything up by trying to sell the lands, and Simcoe is so angry with him that he’s taken all the grants away from him. So now we have him on our hands. All he’s ever done for me was to give me head lice when we had to room together years ago at school in Cork.”
“Well, I’ve just come from your house, and your sister appears to be bearing up.” Not going to mention the bastard’s callous remarks about poor little Mary. Russell’s got enough to worry about at the moment.
“Good. The more you can keep an eye on things in my absence, the better.”
White notices that Russell’s usual broad girth looks considerably shrunken. “How are things in York?” he asks, having heard rumours about the winter famine.
“It’s been a terrible winter. I had to persuade the Governor to get food supplies from the garrison here at Niagara. Otherwise we would have starved. And now that Dorchester son-of-a-bitch has chewed him out for not getting official sanction for this most merciful action. He’s blasted Simcoe for every good thing he’s done in this benighted world. But I hear Dorchester’s being recalled to England, and I hope we get a decent man to replace him.”
Russell’s eyes are red and watery and his jowls sag. That winter in York took its toll.
“What are you staring at, White? Better look at your own affairs. Are you coming over soon to see about getting a house ready for yourself? You do remember the Governor’s deadline of June first?”
“I do. But I’m not going to rush. Didn’t you say that there is no jail in the place, no court of justice, no house for the meeting of the legislature, no roads?”
“I’ll do what I can, now that I’m to be in charge of things if Simcoe goes back to England. I can see getting those Queen’s Rangers of his working on building and road-making. Now that we’re not having to fight with the Yanks, they might as well be doing something productive. Trouble is, there’s not a skilled carpenter among them, and scarcely a decent carpenter in the whole place. Someone told me a day ago that all the good carpenters are on the British ships.”
“I’ll go over to York with you when you leave again. Just give me a couple of days’ warning.” Time to find an excuse for not going anywhere. I’m totally with Miss Russell on that one.
They part, and White heads home. Having lost The Battle of the Syllabub, he’s anxious to knock back some of Yvette’s dandelion wine. It’s a poor substitute, but there’ll be plenty of it.
Back at his cabin, he finds David Smith ensconced in a chair by the hearth. Yvette has already provided him with a glass of her wine, and when the man sees White, he hastily holds his quizzing glass to his left eye and picks up Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which he has evidently dropped onto the floor beside him.
“Careful, man. That’s one of my favourite books. Haven’t you finished the assignment I gave you?” White asks, annoyed to see ashes sprinkled on the cover.
“It’s a hard nut to crack. And I can’t see that it has that much to do with the practice of law,” Smith replies. “And since you’ve already certified me as an attorney, I am really disinclined to read more.”
“If you want to be a good lawyer, you’ll read and digest it. That’s an order.”
“Perhaps you should have been a general in the army instead of an attorney-general in the legal kingdom, White. To answer your question, no, I haven’t finished the assignment, but I will, even though my dear wife complains that she has not found me in her bed for lo, these many nights.”
“Shut up,” White says, gesturing towards Yvette whose back is to them, making toast in the hearth. Why these men feel they can make remarks in front of Indians that they would never make in front of white women is beyond me.
“Gladly. Now can’t we forget Kant”—he laughs at his own joke—”while I bring you tidings of our new capital?”
“I was surprised to hear you’d been over to York, given your antipathy to the place.”
“I won’t move an inch until necessary, man, but meantime I like to know how the world marches. But I can tell you one thing: there isn’t a place in York that matches anything here. In the last couple of years, we’ve built a decent town, and I’ve got the best place in it. And the best location—right by the Freemasons’ Lodge—where I can keep an eye on all the comings-and-goings in this place. Far better, need I say it, than this hut of yours in the woods. It grieves me to have to leave the best of Georgian architecture for a hovel in a godforsaken bush.” He gets out of his chair and moves to the table where a half-filled bottle of wine rests. He refills his glass and sits down again.
By God, even in my own house I can’t get a glass of wine. White yanks off his coat and throws it on the woodpile by the hearth. “Well, what’s up these days in York?” he asks Smith, finding himself able to stifle his anger when he sees Yvette move to the table with a fresh bottle and a glass which she fills and hands to him.
“Small has bought a little log house for fifty Yankee dollars,” Smith tells him, “and he has stipulated that the present owner must repair the roof for the price. A cruder place you never saw—it was a fishing hut in its infancy—but fancy, he is calling it Berkeley House in honour of his friend Colonel Berkeley of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire!”
The image of Betsy Small swanning about in a fishing hut called Berkeley House is so amusing that White finds himself laughing out loud.
Smith has now launched into an anecdote about Peter Russell. “He’s adding two windows and dormers to his little dwelling,” he reports, “and he’s chewed over the expenses so thoroughly his builder calls him ‘an old miser.’ Fancy, Russell himself repeated this phrase to me. He seems proud of it.”
“Are expenses great in the new capital?”
“Appalling. And what will you, sir, the pre-eminent lawyer in Upper Canada, do without a court house, or a jail for that matter?”
White feels his head begin to pound. “I’m tired, Smith. Let’s forget the lesson today. No charge, of course. We can resume tomorrow.” He stands up and takes Smith’s coat from the row of hooks on the wall.
Smith laughs. “Here’s your coat. What’s your hurry? Very well, I’m on my way. I know you don’t like to hear bad news. But I’ve got one good piece of news to impart. There isn’t a legislative building in the place, either, as you know. But it’s not going to matter. You’re not going to get re-elected for the Kingston riding anyway. I hear the merchants are too angry with you about your support of the anti-slave bill. But then, what do you do anyway to get their vote? I’m out in my district every few months talking myself up and buying beef and spruce beer for the peasants. That’s what it’s all about: booze and beef.”
Yvette, as always, has picked up unspoken messages. She goes to the kitchen door and holds it open for Smith to pass through. When he’s left, she removes the toast from the hearth, spreads a good layer of butter on it and puts it in front of White. “And here’s a pot of honey for you, sir,” she adds, setting a large spoon into its contents.
It’s all good, though he would have been happy with some of Miss Russell’s syllabub to top it off. What a pig that Willcocks is. But remembering the syllabub reminds him of something else.
“Yvette,” he says, “I wonder if your brother could carve something for me?”
She doesn’t know what a whisk is, but when he draws one for her and makes whipping motions, she understands. “Brother do a good one,” she says, “maybe not like this”—pointing to the drawing—“but a good one.”
White is pleased. Anything will be an improvement on that wretched bundle of twigs poor Miss Russell contends with.