Four years after they arrived on the west coast, the Treaty of Versailles returned the entire French Shore to France, extending the territory south of Pointe Riche to Cape Ray. In the months that followed, the French drove English settlers from Sop’s Arm, Holm Point, Noddy Bay, Hawkes Bay, River of Ponds and Port Saunders. News of these expulsions reached all the English on the French Shore as fishermen abandoned their homes further up the coast.
Richmond’s grandfather had died of pneumonia their second winter in the harbour and they’d wrapped his body in a sheet of canvas and buried him in a tiny clearing among the trees above the cove. It was like planting a flag. The hired men left as soon as they could secure a berth to St. John’s, but Richmond’s father vowed not to surrender his home and Mr. Taylor promised to stand beside him.
That fall Richmond and his father dragged three cords of spruce logs out of the woods with their dog and had set to splitting and stacking the junks behind their tilt. “I was just a little bedlamer in them days,” Richmond said. The handle of the axe stood as high as his chin and he arced the heavy blade awkwardly overhead, coming off his feet to add his weight to each strike.
His father wiped the sweat from his face with a ratty handkerchief and looked away across the harbour. He stopped and stared, shading his eyes with his hand.
The vessel brought in its sails as it floated partway into the bay and anchored offshore. Three boats rowed up to the Richmond fishing room and the entire population of the harbour came down to greet the English marines. They stood at the edge of the wharf and shouted to the men in the boats and applauded. The Royal Navy had come to them. It was as unexpected and miraculous as a visitation of angels.
On the stagehead, a young officer with a face as sharp as a mole’s and a white powdered wig unscrolled a parchment to read a proclamation from John Campbell, governor of Newfoundland. He quoted King George’s promise to prevent his subjects from interrupting the French fishery by their competition and ended with the governor’s direct order to remove all fixed English settlements on the French Shore.
Richmond’s mother, pregnant with her eighth child and nearing her time, put a hand to her mouth and began crying silently. The officer escorted the men into the buildings and allowed them to gather any valuables that could be easily transported, then returned with them to the stagehead. He turned to the marines and nodded and they marched up to the shelters where they carried the split firewood inside the largest building and set it alight, then set fire to the tilt beside it and to the few outbuildings nearby. Everything of use was left inside and two armed soldiers prevented the families from attempting any rescue. The marines removed the settlers under guard to the vessel waiting in the harbour and then they burned the stage house and the wharf as well.
Richmond recounted these events impassively, as if he was reading them from a text, but Buchan could feel the weight behind the words, their intent. The noise of the fire beside them like an echo of that earlier fire passed down through the years. He stared at Richmond with the same counterfeit impassiveness, refusing to give him the satisfaction of any visible response. He set his feet flat on the packed earth floor. He said, “Where is your family now, Mr. Richmond?”
“My father is dead some years now. My mother, I believe, is in London.”
“Is that where her people are from?”
Richmond drank from his cup and winced at the scalding heat. He turned his head to spit fragments of tea leaf from his mouth. “My mother is Welsh.”
Buchan nodded into his mug. It smelled of salt pork.
“You’ll be wanting to talk about what happened at the lake, I s’pose,” Richmond said then, to indicate he was through gaming about.
“I have a few questions, yes.” Buchan pulled out his notebook and rummaged in a pocket until he located a lead. He said, “You were one of the shooters, Mr. Richmond?”
Richmond raised his eyes above the rim of his mug.
“You were one of the men who shot the Red Indian,” Buchan repeated.
“He had Master Peyton on the ice by the throat.”
“John Senior.”
Richmond nodded angrily. “Yes, John Senior. By the throat, as I said. And he would’ve strangled him unless some action got taken.”
“An unarmed Indian man approached a party of eight settlers brandishing rifles and, unprovoked, he accosted one of the party. Is that correct?”
“That is how I feature it, as far as I can remember. He come down off the shore carrying a sprig of white spruce. He walked straight up to the lot of us and started in to talking. He went on with his arms flicing about and no sense to be made of a single word. We just looked at one another. He kept pointing to the woman and striking his chest” — Richmond used his own fist to demonstrate — “and waving at the wigwams on the shore. Then he stepped in and shook John Peyton’s hand and the hands of several others. It seemed we might come out of it without bloodshed at that point.”
“But you did not.”
“He took the woman by the arm then as if to walk off with her, you see. And John Senior made it clear he would do no such thing.”