Chapter Six

My office was on the second floor, directly above the bar, overlooking Front Street to the mud-flats, the boatcongested Yukon River, and the tent-dotted hills beyond. If I were the type of woman to pray, I would spend a good bit of every day praying that the floor held. It emitted long, ominous creaks under my steps, and in a few places the wooden planks sagged beneath my weight.

It would do nothing for my dignity, nor my reputation, if one day I fell through the floor of the office, to descend legs first into the saloon, skirt caught on a scrap of rotting wood.

It was morning, and I was doing the accounts. We’d had another good night. Summertime, and the days were long and the nights too bright for southern eyes. All those men who’d struggled up the Golden Staircase to the Chilkoot Pass and rafted down from Lake Bennett or spent the winter in a town on the verge of mass starvation simply had to spend their money.

Jake, our head croupier, told Ray and me that some fool had dropped a thousand dollars in the eight hours he’d spent at the roulette wheel. I’ve known gamblers in London, Toronto and now Dawson, and it never fails to amaze me how some people just can’t give up the game. In London, I’d even seen women standing in the shadows at the side of the clubs, handing money to men to take in and bet for them.

I’ve gambled myself, and it’s a thrill to be winning. But then I’ve never gambled with my own money; my escorts always allowed me to keep my winnings and kept paying out if I lost. I’ve worked too hard to get what I have to risk it on a spin of the wheel or toss of the dice. But perhaps I think that way because I know how much I’m taking in as the owner of the gambling hall. And I don’t make money when the punters are winning.

Graham Donohue’s head popped around the door, interrupting my thoughts. “Is it safe to come in?”

I put down my pen and rubbed my forehead. “I should say no, but I won’t. What on earth got into you yesterday, Graham?”

He tossed himself into the spare chair. A floorboard creaked and I winced. “When did that bastard Ireland get here?” he asked.

I gave him a well-practised look of feminine indignation. “Watch your language, Graham, or I’ll toss you out myself.”

He didn’t even apologize. “You don’t want that man hanging around, Fiona.”

“His money seems as good as anyone else’s. And he didn’t pick a fight, far as I know.”

“Jack Ireland and I go back a few years. I could tell you some stories.”

“I don’t want to hear them. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” I flashed my pen as evidence.

“Another time then. But here’s something you’d better hear, my dear.” He pulled a scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket.

“Graham, I don’t have time to listen to your copy. I haven’t yet been to the bank.”

He held up one hand. “This isn’t my copy, Fiona. Someone else sent it. Listen for a moment while I read you a few select sentences.”

I sighed and settled back into my chair. Easier to let him talk and get it over with, then I could get back to work. He was a good man, Graham Donohue, with a kind heart. For a newspaper reporter. And an American. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted, very much, to be more than my friend. But it was best to let things remain as they were. For now.

“Helen Saunderson. House of Ill Repute. Infamous Madam. Fee—spelt F-e-e—MacIntosh. White slavery. Seven starving children.”

“Let me see that.” I got to my feet, leaned across the desk, and snatched the paper out of his hands. The handwriting was indecipherable. I shoved it back at him and resumed my seat. “Gibberish. Nothing but gibberish.”

“Fiona, listen to me.” H leaned forward and placed his elbows on my desk. “Jack Ireland sent this story to San Francisco on the first steamboat out this morning. I’ll read it to you in its entirety if you want, but the gist is that Helen Saunderson, he mentions her by name, has been forced into prostitution by a whorehouse madam by the name of F-i-e MacIntosh. Who, in the only bit of truth in his whole story, he describes as a black-haired beauty with a voice and complexion fresh off an English country estate.”

I was so annoyed I didn’t even take time to savour the phrases “black-haired-beauty” and “fresh complexion”. “How the hell did you get this? Don’t tell me Ireland tossed his rough copy into the gutter, and you happened upon it?”

“Language, Fiona. My delicate ears.”

I almost said something stronger, but Graham held up one hand. “I’m telling you this in the strictest of confidence, of course.” When Graham flirted with me, his hazel eyes sparkled as if with traces of gold dust; now they were so dark and serious that I settled back into my chair.

“Go ahead.”

“I pay some of the men who hang around the docks a generous sum to let me know if they hear of anyone sending newspaper copy out, and still more if they open the envelope and copy the meat of the article.”

The regular mail leaves Dawson once every two weeks, most recently only the day before yesterday. Obviously, ambitious newspapermen aren’t prepared to wait two weeks to see their stories heading for print. Although if they want secrecy, perhaps they should.

“As I’m sure they’re paid to copy your notes, Graham. But I can’t see what harm this rubbish can do me. He didn’t even get my name right, although the description is good.” I picked up my pen once again. If the story spread further than San Francisco, so what? Everyone in Dawson knew that I wasn’t a madam, and if anyone from England was still looking for me, Fee MacIntosh isn’t even my name.

Graham’s expression was indecipherable. “He got Helen’s name correct, Fiona. It’s quite the slur on her reputation, don’t you think?”

I rolled my shoulders back to give them a welcome stretch. Graham must have been concerned indeed: he didn’t even glance as the fabric of my day-dress tightened across my bosom. “Really, Graham, I agree that it’s nasty of Mr. Ireland to be making up stories about us. And no doubt unethical. His facts are wrong, but this story paints Helen in a sympathetic light. Destitute widow struggling to support her starving children. That’s the sort of sentimental rubbish that sells newspapers.”

“I don’t think she’ll see it that way.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Outside my window, a horse screamed in terror. Men began shouting, and the wanderers gathered round, hoping for a show. “She’ll never hear about it. By the time this letter gets to San Francisco and the paper is printed, provided they accept Ireland’s rubbish, and a copy makes its way back here, which is also an unlikely prospect, half the town will have moved on, and no one will even know who he’s talking about.”

“Fiona, for such an intelligent woman, you can be amazingly dense when you’re blinded by your own vanity and self-obsession.”

I blinked. Men never insult me. At least not the ones who want to impress me. The outbreak of trouble on the street below didn’t materialize. A man spoke to the horse in soothing tones, and the crowd drifted away, looking for excitement elsewhere.

“She’ll find out all about it any minute now. My acquaintance who copied the letter came over the pass with Helen and Jim. He won’t sit on this. He’ll tell her.”

“Oh, dear. Maybe he, your…whatever, will have told the messenger to lose the letter when he saw that it’s untruthful.”

“It’s not the messenger’s responsibility to check the mail for accuracy. If Ireland wrote that the Czar of Russia had arrived in Dawson to grow potatoes in a wicked plot to make enough vodka to inebriate the entire adult population of the United States, he’d still carry it. As long as Ireland paid. Anyway, it’s too late. Boat has sailed. With the letter.”

I stood up. “Honest people are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth. Helen should be downstairs. I’ll go and see to her.”

“Yes, Fiona. You’d better.”

If one was to judge by the look of the group gathered in the saloon, we might have walked into a funeral. Helen’s eyes were open as wide as her mouth, and she looked like a horse panicked by the sound of a gunshot too close to her head. Ray held her arm, his features dark and troubled. My son, Angus, sat at the bar, a piece of toast in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. He turned at the sound of my footsteps, and his sweet face was filled with a look of such despair, I almost rushed over to gather him into my arms. But I held back, knowing that if I tried to hug him in public, in front of others, he’d push me aside.

A man I didn’t know stood beside them. He was dressed in a filthy flannel working man’s shirt under a jacket with one pocket hanging by a thread. His trousers were torn at both knees and badly mended. I had smelled him as I came down the stairs. He stared at me for a few seconds before shifting his attention back to the tableau in the saloon, twisting his dusty hat, missing half the brim, in his hands. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. But I thought you’d want to know what this scoundrel says about you, Helen.”

My partner let out a stream of words.

Everyone in the saloon looked at him. Ray’s accent was so strong that something very bad must be happening.

I translated. “Ray says that it’s better to hear foul news in the open from a friend than to have it whispered into your ears by your enemies. Or words to that effect. Let me see that.” I snatched the paper out of Angus’s hand. It was written in a strong, educated script.

How many copies of this blasted newspaper story were there? The man must have made yet another copy to show to Helen before handing the rough one over to Graham, perhaps thinking that she’d be more likely to believe him if she saw the words written down on paper.

I looked up. They were all watching me. I crumpled the paper in my hand. “Lies. All lies. Of no consequence. You, sir. Are you Mr. Donohue’s friend? Did you copy this from a letter being carried to the Outside?”

The man nodded and twisted his hat. It would be even more of a mess by the end of this. “Yes, ma’am. Mrs. MacGillivray, ma’am. Joe Hamilton is my name.”

“Mr. Hamilton. Where is this…missive…directed?”

“Ma’am?” He gaped at me.

“She means the letter, you fool,” Donohue said. “What was the address on the envelope?”

“San Francisco, Mrs. MacGillivray, ma’am. The San Francisco Standard. I believe that is a newspaper.” He stared at me, wide-eyed.

“I know what it is,” I snapped. The man’s face fell, causing him to look as if he’d missed a word in the final round of a spelling bee. Now I recognized him: he came in the occasional night and hung around the edges of the bar, dragging out a drink for as long as his few cents would stretch. Usually he spent most of his time watching me.

I threw him my best all-business smile. “Please forgive me, Mr. Hamilton. I shouldn’t have spoken to you in that manner, but I do find all of this so dreadfully distressing.”

Graham Donohue snorted. Ray poured a generous shot of whisky and handed it to Helen. “Here ye go, lass,” he said. “Drink this up. Do you a world o’ good.”

She lowered her nose to the edge of the glass, and her face crinkled at the smell.

“Swallow it down in one gulp,” Ray instructed. “Make you feel better, it will.”

It was probably the first free drink ever handed out in my bar, at least to someone who wasn’t expected to turn a handsome profit in exchange.

“I’m not feeling too well, Ma,” Angus said, his eyes fixed on the bottle in Ray’s hand.

I ignored him. “So this pack of insidious lies has been sent to some seditious rag in San Francisco.” I thrust the crumpled paper into Helen’s hand, the one not holding the now-empty glass. “Burn it and forget about it. If a copy of the paper gets to Dawson, which is highly unlikely, no one will recognize us. He doesn’t name the Savoy, he doesn’t get my name right, and everyone in town knows that I run a respectable business, so why do we care what this Ireland idiot says?”

Helen reached behind her and slammed the glass on the counter. “Mrs. MacGillivray, he’s insulted my good name. An’ the name of my Jim, God rest his soul, an’ my children. My Mary’ll be of marrying age soon enough. No decent man’ll want her after reading these lies.” Her eyes filled with tears. Ray patted her arm.

I thought that a moot point. Mary was twelve, the same age as Angus, and decent men were sparse on the ground in Dawson.

“Take the remainder of the day off, Helen,” I said. “Go home. Try to relax.”

The room erupted.

“But, Ma...” Angus shouted.

“Really, Mrs. MacGillivray,” Hamilton spluttered.

“Fiona, you can’t just brush this off. Poor Helen…” Graham said.

Helen burst into loud sobs.

“Shut up, all o’ ye!” Ray bellowed. “Fee’s right. Letter’s gone, right, Joe?”

Hamilton nodded furiously. “I saw the boat leave myself. Not more than an hour ago.”

“Nothin’ we can do about that then.”

Helen groaned and sagged against the bar. Donohue fetched a stool and eased her into it, and Ray poured another shot. Angus tossed me an imploring look.

My son believes that I can do anything. But flying off in pursuit of a steamship sailing up the Yukon River and catching it is beyond even me. I looked at him and shrugged.

“But,” Ray said, “we can watch out for the San Francisco Standard, now can’t we?” He looked at Graham. Graham opened his mouth, probably to protest that he could hardly confiscate every copy of the paper once it arrived.

Ray threw him a look. Wisely, Graham took the hint. “Of course we can. Look here, Helen, the moment that paper comes to town, I’ll buy up every copy and burn them myself.”

She looked up from her sodden handkerchief. Her eyes were red, her nose swollen with crying, and her cheeks had broken out in patches of a hideous colour. “Would you do that, Mr. Donohue? For me?”

I took her arm and helped her out of her chair. “Mr. Donohue has enormous influence in this town, Helen, as do I. We’ll ensure that Ireland’s lies aren’t spread about Dawson. And if you are besmirched in San Francisco, what does it matter? You must admit that Helen Saunderson could well be the name of a hundred, a thousand, other women, couldn’t it?”

She noisily blew her nose and smiled at me. Helen rarely smiled a full open-mouthed smile, so conscious was she of her missing teeth. And so little did she have to smile about. It subtracted ten years from her work- and worrylined face.

“You’re right, Mrs. Mac. If you can bear the insult to your good name, then I can too.”

Fortunately, no one bothered to remind Helen that my “good” name hadn’t even been mentioned.

“What’s this then?” A voice sounded from the door. “I thought you were closed at this time of day, Mrs. MacGillivray?” Constable Richard Sterling strode into the saloon.

I stifled a groan. Like all the dance hall owners in Dawson, I didn’t know whether to curse the efficiency of the NWMP for keeping us tightly under their law-enforcing thumb, or praise them for keeping the rest of the town, especially our customers, equally in line.

“You know it’s my business what hours I keep in my establishment, Constable. Apart from respecting the Lord’s Day, of course.”

“Of course.”

In my less, shall we say, self-controlled past, I would have found Richard Sterling to be an extremely attractive man. He was tall, well over six feet, with a fit to the scarlet tunic of his uniform that hinted at the bulk of the shoulders underneath. His brown eyes were thickly lashed and specked with yellow, along with intelligence and humour. Prominent cheekbones framed his face, and his mouth was so wide and his lips so full that they were almost, but not quite, feminine. I’d never seen him without his broad-brimmed NWMP hat, but once I’d caught the briefest glimpse of dark curls tumbling over themselves at the back of his neck. The next day he’d had a haircut, and all the lovely curls were gone. He spoke well, which indicated some education in his past. A quality that I am constantly trying to drum into my son.

“This is none of your concern, Constable,” Ray said.

Sterling lifted one eyebrow. “Mrs. Saunderson, are you in need of assistance?”

“Now see here.” Graham Donohue stepped forward. The hair on his head bristled, and I’m sure that if he had hair on his chest (a fact that I am not in the position to know—someday perhaps), it would have been standing up as well. “Mrs. Saunderson has received some bad news. The nature of which is none of your business.”

“Everything that happens in the public places, and some of the private ones, of Dawson is the business of Her Majesty’s North-West Mounted Police,” Sterling said.

His tone was so pompous that I choked back a laugh.

Angus applauded, almost falling off his chair in approval of his hero’s brief speech. “Well said, sir.”

Ray watched me, waiting for a clue. I nodded and looked towards Helen.

My partner lifted her arm. “Allow me to walk ye home, dear.”

“You take the rest of the day off, Helen,” I said.

“With full pay, o’ course,” Ray added. Graham and Sterling looked at me, waiting for a reaction. Hamilton clutched his hat to his chest and stared at me wide-eyed, looking as if he were ready to recommend me for sainthood. Angus watched Sterling.

“Thank you, Mrs. MacGillivray. That’s mighty thoughtful of you.” Helen opened her hand, and the scrap of paper fell to the floor. She permitted Ray to help her off her chair, and took his arm. “Haven’t I always said the Savoy is the best place to work in all of Dawson?”

I choked back an objection. Feeling generous, I’d been about to offer her half-pay for the day off. Instead, I forced out a smile and wiggled my fingers in farewell.

The door swung shut behind them. Sterling picked the letter off the floor. He made a big show of smoothing it out before reading it. “Nasty.”

“All lies.” “Don’t you think I’d know, Mrs. MacGillivray, if you were running a whorehouse in this town?”

Angus momentarily forgot that this man was his hero. He stepped off his stool and puffed up his chest. “Please, Constable. Control your language in the presence of my mother.”

Sterling and I exchanged a look, both of us stifling an inappropriate burst of laughter. I’d been on the verge of reprimanding the constable for saying “whorehouse” in my son’s hearing.

“That was most inappropriate. Please accept my apology, Angus.”

My son sat back down. A slice of toast with a thin scraping of butter and a single bite taken out of it lay on the table in front of him. He mumbled something and returned to his cold food, trying to hide his embarrassment.

We don’t have a kitchen per se in the Savoy—this most certainly isn’t a restaurant. But when punters on a losing streak feel the need to break for food, Helen, or one of the bartenders if she’s not here, can whip up something quick enough. Beside the wood stove in the pokey back room that doubles as a broom closet, we keep a kettle and a few cups and plates, a frying pan and toasting fork and supplies of potatoes, bacon, beans, jam, bread, tea and canned milk.

Helen pushes food on a not-at-all-resisting Angus whenever he shows up.

“I’d better get back to the docks,” Hamilton mumbled. “There might be something important requiring my attention.”

“Fiona.” Graham glared at me and tossed his head towards Hamilton, heading reluctantly towards the door.

“Mr. Hamilton,” I called, in my lightest, friendliest voice. “Thank you so much for bringing that unfortunate letter to my…our…attention.”

The man plopped his tortured hat onto his head and turned the full force of his smile onto me. His teeth were badly stained, and several were broken almost to the gum line. “My pleasure, Mrs. MacGillivray. My pleasure.” The smell of rotten teeth and the remains of breakfast wafted towards me.

“Offer him something,” Graham whispered.

I ignored him. I can be gracious without anyone’s help, thank you very much. “If you’ll drop by this evening, Mr. Hamilton, perhaps around nine, Mr. Walker and I will be happy to offer you the hospitality of the Savoy.”

He almost fainted, the poor man. Barely recovering his equilibrium, he backed out the door, bowing and scraping like a eunuch at the Sultan’s court.

Graham laughed and slapped my arm. If an officer of the law hadn’t been present, I would have slapped him back, right enough. “Now that I’ve done my good deed for the day, I’ll be off. See you later, Fiona, Constable.”

Sterling touched the brim of his hat. His eyes had far too much spark in them to be accounted for by the thin northern sunlight pouring in through the dirt-encrusted, narrow windows of my seedy bar. “Mrs. MacGillivray. Angus.” He followed Graham out.

“That was nice of you, Ma,” Angus said. “To invite Mr. Hamilton to stop by.”

I turned on him. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t—call—me—Ma.”

Angus tossed back the last piece of toast. “Everyone says that.”

“Well, you won’t. It’s…it’s…uncouth. Lower class. Even well-bred Canadians don’t talk like that. Do you hear me?”

He shrugged and bounced off his stool. I grabbed my son by the front of his shirt. “Do you hear me, Angus MacGillivray?”

For a slice of time he loomed over me, dark and threatening. I saw his father in his face, and I released the shirt and stepped back, my heart pounding with emotions spinning out of control. But my son’s eyes looked back at me, filled with a deep blue that, until I saw the open sea for the first time, I had only ever seen in my own father’s face. They shone without malice, without lust, loving and innocent. As my father’s eyes had always looked.

And still did, in my dreams. I buried my head in my hands. Angus touched my shoulder, lightly. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

I brushed away the tears, pushed aside the curtains of memory, and smiled at my son. “Perhaps you could drop by Mrs. Saunderson’s place later. See if she needs any help with the children.”

“Certainly, Mother.” He walked out the door, from the back looking exactly like a man, albeit a skinny one.

Out on the street, a wagon driver shouted at his horses to get themselves out of the mud, a woman yelled that she’d been cheated, and a couple of drunks called to my boy asking if this place was open. Most of the houses of entertainment in Dawson operate twenty-four hours a day, but when Ray and I first bought the business (my share coming from the last of the money from the sale of some stolen jewellery), I’d insisted on more civilized arrangements.

I like to keep an eye on my property and can’t do so all hours of the day and night. At the Savoy, the bar and the gambling rooms shut down when the dance hall closes at six in the morning, and they open again for business at ten.

We never seem to have trouble drawing the customers back, although I’d been warned that once out the door, they wouldn’t return.

I pulled my watch out of the folds of my dress. Ten o’clock, and no one here to serve bar.

“Mornin’, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Sam Collins walked through the doors. “Nice day out. Hope it don’t keep the customers away, eh?”

“Good morning. It seems that nothing keeps the customers from our door. Ray’s running an errand; he’ll be back soon. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

Angus chafed at my insistence that he speak properly at all times. Who in Dawson, other than the odd toff and women such as me, trying to keep themselves respectable, bothered with how anyone spoke? Some of the richest men in town could barely string an intelligible sentence together. And some of the educated ones, such as Joe Hamilton, judging by his speech and handwriting, couldn’t afford to have a rip in their coat pocket repaired or enough hot water for a bath.

In all of this wild, untamed town, dropped down just a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle, where the only thing that anyone cared about was the amount of gold in a man’s pocket, never mind how it got there, the way my son spoke mattered only to me. But no one knew better than I the importance of education and proper speech.

I climbed the stairs, sat at my desk, settled my skirts around me, picked up my pen, opened the big ledger, and began to do calculations.

I’d told Sam to let me know if Jack Ireland came in. Time, I thought, to have a quiet word with the newspaperman.