Chapter 21

REMEMBERING ROSANNAH

December 24/25, 1884

It was time for Leonard Babington to put the death of Rosannah Leppard and the hanging of Cook Teets behind him. The day before Christmas, he walked into the woods behind Vandeleur Hall, selected a suitable pine tree and severed a dozen limbs, each with a single careful swipe of his hatchet. His mother had always decorated the house with pine boughs at Christmas and he intended to do the same. Their fragrance would remind him of happier days.

While Leonard was collecting pine cuttings others went about their preparations for Christmas. James Leppard beheaded a goose. John Brodie, the cheesemaker, wrapped cloth around new rounds of cheddar cheese. There was a heavy call at James Henderson’s store for raisins and holiday candies. When Leonard went there on Christmas Eve he felt warmed by the smiles of shoppers who crowded around the Chrusrtmas delacies set out on the store’s counters. Children laughed as they played tag between barrels of pickles and molasses. Their games reminded Leonard of the happy Christmases he’d enjoyed as a child. He was thinking of those days when he felt a touch on his arm. It was Amanda Brodie, the cheesemaker’s wife. Leonard knew her from his schoolteaching days. She was shopping for Christmas dinner.

“Come and join us, Mr. Babington,” she said. “No need to spend Christmas on your lonesome. The children would love to see you.”

Amanda Brodie had grown into a handsome young woman and her husband was known to serve a tolerably good home brew. Leonard didn’t even mind the children. Why not get a good meal into himself, on Christmas of all days?

It was dark when Leonard reached the Brodie house just after four o’clock on Christmas Day. The house gave off a cheerful glow from coal oil lamps at each of its two front windows. Inside, Amanda Brodie hurried from the kitchen to welcome him. The house was filled with the smells of Christmas. Leonard absorbed the pungent scent of spiced gravy and the aroma of a cooked bird and mincemeat pie. He was glad he had come.

Leonard brought with him a gift for each of the children – paper cutouts and a doll – and Amanda placed them beside the stockings set out at the hearth. They contained the remnants of treats which had been excitedly extracted early Christmas Day. Small candles burned on the mantle of the hearth and pine boughs had been set out in windows, over doors, and on the stairway. In a moment John came clattering down the stairs, a bottle of whisky in hand.

“Just in time for a nip afore supper,” he chortled. “Nothing better to raise up an appetite.”

The conversation during the meal was about the joys of Christmas, the weather, and the likelihood of trouble with the Indians in the North West. Nothing was said of the Cook Teets trial. John Brodie refilled Leonard’s glass several times and then brought a tankard of ale from the kitchen. The room grew warmer as the meal proceeded, and Leonard felt himself sweating. He was finding it difficult to grasp what his host was telling him. Long after Mrs. Brodie had shooed the children from the table, John rose, staggered, and clumped away down the hall.

“He’s gone for the night,” Amanda Brodie told Leonard. “Let’s sit in the parlour. We can have a visit and all.”

It didn’t surprise Leonard that Brodie had gotten himself so drunk that he had to go to bed. Strong drink in large amounts was common among the people with whom Leonard had grown up. He wondered what Amanda meant by her invitation to move into the parlour.

“If you’re feeling warm you can take off your jacket and loosen your collar,” Amanda told him. She helped him shuck his coat and when he put his hands up to free his collar, she pulled them to her breast. Her breath was hot and inviting. Feeling a little dizzy, Leonard kissed her and let his hands explore her breasts. She offered no resistance. Leonard worried that Brodie might reappear at any moment, and silently cursed his host for getting him into a condition where he was losing control of himself.

“Don’t worry, he’s gone for the night,” Amanda whispered. She reached into Leonard’s pants and caressed him. Then he was inside her and all thought of restraint was now far from his mind.

After, he clung to this woman he hardly knew. Amanda was kissing his neck and ears and Leonard wanted her caresses to go on forever. His mind moved to thoughts of Rosannah, and he felt guilty for the pleasure he was taking from this embrace. The guilt told him it was time to leave. Besides, it was always possible Brodie might wake up and find them still together.

“You’re wonderful, Mrs. Brodie, but I think I had better go.”

“Must you?” she asked. “It’ll be hours before he wakes up.”

Later, outside with the snow drifting down in large, soft flakes, Leonard had to concentrate on finding his way home. He knew of people who had passed out on the roadside, to be found later frozen to death. That mustn’t happen to him. When he reached the crossing at the Beaver Valley Road he knew he was nearly at Vandeleur Hall.

Relieved, and now mostly sober, Leonard thought of all that had happened: his loss of Rosannah, his time at the Globe, Rosannah’s death, the inquest, the trial, the petitions, and the hanging of Cook Teets. His memories leapt from one incident to another in a confused jumble of haphazard recollections.

He never knew what he was getting in for, when he’d first met Rosannah. That’s not so strange. No one can tell what the future might reveal. Except those who live such narrow lives they can safely predict how the sameness of one day will be followed by another. He’d seen enough of that. Nothing ever new in their lives, no chances taken, no rewards sought or attained. What did he want from life then? His insides squirmed with remembrance of all the stupid things he’d done and said. He seemed to be forever starting over. And lonely – he was always lonely. What had he learned from where life had taken him? Perhaps he needed to write it all down.

At home, his wet clothes shed at the front door, Leonard wrapped himself in a robe and stocked the fireplace with fresh wood. It was long past midnight. He went to his father’s stand-up desk, lifted the lid, and took out paper and a pen. I need to write it in a book, he thought. Put everything about Rosannah and Cook down on paper, so everybody can understand what happened to them, and what I had to do with it. But where to begin? With Rosannah as the beautiful young girl she was? With Cook Teets and his blindness? Or with the inquest, or the trial? Standing at the desk, and writing in a fluid and clerkly hand, Leonard began Rosannah’s Story:

There was no sweeter girl in the entire Queen’s Bush than Rosannah Leppard. Her affectionate personality and warm, inviting eyes foretold an enduring friendship for those she invited into her life. It was these qualities, by unhappy circumstance, that would lead her into difficulty. Perhaps it is true she was not sufficiently discriminating in her choices. The better elements of the Beaver Valley, where Rosannah lived with her parents and her twelve brothers and sisters, were unforgiving in their criticism.

Rosannah’s short life brought her more of both the pain and pleasure than is our usual allotment. She grew up in a family that was desperately poor. She had seen enough of the outside world to know there was a better life than the one bestowed on her. The choices she made were made in hopes of attaining that better life.

I remember Rosannah for her bright eyes and dark hair, in which she often wore a white daisy. Also for her joyful teasing, which sometimes amused and other times exasperated me. I never saw her more aglow than the time she danced at a village social in the Vandeleur school. She wore a calico dress and a necklace of shells that she said came from the shore of Georgian Bay. There was a fine band that night of Negro musicians from Priceville, the little community started by fugitive slaves. Two fiddles, a banjo and an accordion. How they played! Rosannah, just sixteen, kicked off her shoes to dance. Her favourite tune that night was Going to the East, Going to the West, a song brought from the slave plantations of the South. I think she liked it because one of the steps called for a kiss. I was lucky enough to twirl her in my arms at that point in the dance.

Rosannah loved her children. This I know, although I saw her rarely after Lorena was born and not at all after the birth of her second, Elizabeth. Rosannah’s disposition would not allow her to be anything but kind and caring. I remember how she nursed a thrush with a broken wing, and the care she took with the kittens that were born behind her barn.

Rosannah was always helpful to her mother, although her failure as an obedient Catholic gave rise to much disagreement and distress. I remember the two of them making wild plum preserves, and apple pies from the sack of Mackintoshes that Rosannah’s father had brought home from a carpentering job at Meaford. The preserves were served with roast goose and pie that Christmas. People in the Beaver Valley may have been poor, but between what they could grow on their stony acres and what they could capture in the woods or streams, they were seldom hungry.

Leonard slept late the day after Christmas. Toward evening, with a fire burning in the parlour he stood, again wrapped in a robe, at his father’s desk. He returned to the desk many times in the weeks that followed. One Sunday afternoon, Leonard stared at his watch that lay beside his writing paper. His glance shifted to the stack of notes he had collected. He’d gone over them time and again, recalling every detail of what had happened. He had studied the depositions Cook and others had given at the inquest and he read and re-read the report of Dr. Sproule’s autopsy. He looked again at his watch.

It was then it came to him. The trial had heard that the amount of strychnine found in Rosannah’s body was insufficient to prove the cause of death. Dr. Ellis, the public analyst who had examined Rosannah’s organs, admitted he’d only been surmising, based on the symptoms she’d shown, as to the composition of the fatal dose. Why, he’d even swallowed a bit of strychnine right there in the courtroom, without suffering any harm. Leonard had it all in his notes; he now saw it was even possible she’d died from another cause. It was too late to save Cook or bring back Rosannah, but not too late to find the truth. If he was ever going to redeem himself – in his own mind at least – for the mistakes he’d made, he’d have to produce evidence – new evidence – that would exonerate Cook. He needed time to think about this.

Leonard put out the Chronicle every week, recording the small happenings of Vandeleur. Winter gave way to a sudden spring that greened the fields of the Beaver Valley, and finally summer settled on the land. Writing sessions at his father’s desk became a rare thing. He could go no further, Leonard decided, until he was more certain about the cause of Rosannah’s death. He’d have to learn the secrets of strychnine – how the poison worked, what it could do to a person, and exactly how long it took to do it. There was only one place he could find that out: at the School of Medicine in Toronto.