“There are a number of things,” Peyton said, “which I had preconceptions about myself when all of this got started.”
He still had not taken his seat and he reached a hand across the table and held it there until Buchan reluctantly passed the journal back to him. He felt a tight corkscrew of disgust spiral through his stomach but couldn’t identify the exact source of it, his father or Buchan, Cassie. Himself. He felt the bow of the tiny craft crest a whitecap and come down hard, the force of the impact shuddering through the entire vessel like a spasm of nausea.
He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for and he laid the book sideways before the officer. He pulled the candle closer. “You didn’t know about the child,” he said. “Did you, Captain.”
Buchan looked up from Cassie’s words in the journal and Peyton could see reflected in the officer’s face a moment of sickening recognition, of bottomless panic. Dark sea pouring over the gunnels. Every seam leaking water.
Part 3
Bootzhawet sleep (verb?) K; … Isedoweet to sleep;
— from a vocabulary compiled in
Howley’s The Beothuks or Red Indians
The Losing of the Moon
1819–1820
losing vbl n Phrase losing of the moon: the period of waning.
— Dictionary of Newfoundland English
ONE
There had been an early fall of snow in St. John’s by the time Buchan returned from the Bay of Exploits. Near the chimneys of the governor’s house meltwater pooled and drained and dripped into strategically placed pots in the upstairs rooms throughout their meal.
Marie Buchan was feeling unwell before she arrived and was forced to retire to the parlour before the meal was completed, apologizing repeatedly in her formal English. The governor’s wife, Lady Hamilton, excused herself to attend to her. The two men finished their food and then moved into the living room where they sat with snifters of brandy. It was mid-September. Buchan had already presented his report to the governor and the Supreme Court. He swirled his glass of alcohol distractedly. His head ached. The persistent damp smell of the house made it seem older and colder than it actually was.
“I’ve read your report,” Hamilton said and then stopped. “You look peaked, old man. Are you coming down with something?”
“A little tired is the extent of it, I believe.”
“Quite unlike you,” Hamilton said. The governor’s head of thick, carefully kempt silver hair was the envy of many men in positions of authority. He looked at once serious and solicitous, benevolent but stern. “Perhaps,” he offered, “Marie has been overenthusiastic in her welcome?” Even his peculiarly adolescent sense of humour maintained something like an air of dignity in the shadow of his magnificent coiffure.
Buchan managed a smile, but couldn’t sustain it. “She has not been well enough to offer the … that kind of welcome.”
“Yes, well,” Hamilton said. “I see,” he said. “I’ve read your report, Captain Buchan.” He cleared his throat. “I must admit to feeling some relief.”
Buchan had lobbied Hamilton for weeks to be permitted to conduct the investigation the grand jury requested. Left to himself, the governor, as he suggested to Peyton, would simply have allowed the jury’s verdict to stand and the questions surrounding it to decay a little further each season, until they had disappeared altogether. Sending a naval magistrate to interrogate other members of Peyton’s party would likely be seen in some quarters as a provocation. And if convictions resulted — Hamilton shook his head. It all added up to the kind of political trouble he preferred to live without in his first year as governor.
Buchan won him over with his typical talk of justice and integrity, and in a calculated political move he made his impassioned speeches in the presence of the reformer, Lady Hamilton, whenever an opportunity presented itself. He shamed the governor into taking his side. “It’s what makes you so damned infuriating,” Hamilton told the officer. “And, I suppose I must add, so invaluable. Go, investigate.” He waved his hand towards the door. “Bring justice to the Indians or whatever it is you intend. Bring down the whole bloody Empire if you must.”
“History will remember you kindly for this,” Buchan had said.
It was that kind of fervour Hamilton associated with him: the belief that even in this unremarkable and casually overlooked corner of the Empire he was acting at the centre of the world’s events. The man he sat beside now was a different person, although the change was too subtle for him to place. Water dripped relentlessly into the containers laid out upstairs. For years there had been attempts to locate and fix the leaks in the slate roof, all without any significant degree of success. Buchan seemed to be struggling with the same kind of fundamental, insidiously irreparable damage.