Peyton refused to look at him.
“You’ll need to be finding another head man is what I’m telling you, John Peyton.” He tapped his palm three times against his thigh. He cast aimlessly around the room a moment and then settled on Peyton in his chair. “I’ll be off for home first thing,” he said. “You tell Mary that Annie and me were asking.”
At two minutes to midnight on Christmas Eve, Peyton stepped outside the doorway with a rifle. He raised the musket to his shoulder and counted calmly backwards from one hundred, firing into the night sky as if he was shooting at the stars and then stood waiting for the replies along the coast. Sharp pops followed by a softer chorus of echoes. He closed his eyes as if trying to discern a particular voice among a crowd of voices.
By Christmas morning the temperature had plummeted to twenty-five degrees below zero. Peyton woke to a beard of frost on the blankets near his mouth. The water in his wash basin, even the piss in the honey bucket under his bed, had frozen solid. He shook the stiffness out of his pants and shivered into a shirt and thick sweater. Downstairs a fire was already laid and spitting in the fireplace, a kettle of water on to boil above it. Peyton called to his father and then went to the windows to look for him.
John Senior was walking up from the animal shed, an axe in one hand, a goose held by its webbed feet hanging from the other. A steady spray of blood from the bird’s neck unspoolled like a thread being left to mark the path up to the house. Outside the door the old man placed the axe upright against the house and then knelt to pluck the down free of the warm carcass. He didn’t see his son at the window. His hands were bare and red with the cold.
Fifteen minutes later he came into the house with the naked goose. He blew snot into the palm of his hand and wiped it across his pantleg. “A week of this,” he said, “and we’ll be getting word from Ship Cove.”
Peyton could smell rum on his breath, a sharp sour twist in the cold air of the kitchen. He said, “You’ll have to stay behind to watch the animals when I go.”
The dead goose hung limply from John Senior’s hand. The last drops of blood from the neck spattered the wooden floor. He looked slowly about the kitchen, as if the thought of an extended period alone in this place had never occurred to him before. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.
The weather continued clear and very cold into the new year and near dusk on January 8 Corporal Rowsell arrived with two Blue Jackets to inform them the expedition would be departing from Ship Cove on or about the twelfth if all went well.
“How is Mary?” Peyton asked.
Rowsell was still standing near the doorway, his hands clasped at the small of his back. He shrugged. “Some days worse than others. She seemed fair to middling when last I spoke with Captain Buchan.”
John Senior said, “Let them in out of the door at least, John Peyton.”
“Of course, of course.” He ushered them closer to the fire and they removed gloves and hats and slapped the frost from the sleeves of their coats. John Senior had already moved off into the pantry for more glasses.
Rowsell said, “We would do well to get off early tomorrow if that’s convenient. In case of weather.”
“Of course,” Peyton said again.
The corporal nodded and looked around. “I would be happy to offer a report on Mary’s health to Miss Jure if she’s about.”
“She is no longer with us,” Peyton said as he passed a glass of rum.
They left before light the following morning. John Senior came outside to help them pack the single sledge and see them off. He shuffled around the tight circle of men without speaking.
“Well,” Peyton said when they were ready.
John Senior walked up close to his son. He fumbled off a glove and began rooting in the pocket of his greatcoat. “Give this to her,” he said, passing over the empty case of the watch they’d retrieved from the Indian camp on the lake.
Peyton looked at the gleam of silver in his hand, surprised. “To who?” he asked.
John Senior grimaced and turned his face away. He seemed in a foul mood altogether. “I got no more use for it,” he said.
TWO
It was well on the way to dark and Mary’s room was lit with candles when they arrived. The fire in the stove had been extinguished that afternoon so the chill would slow the process of putrefaction. The coffin was constructed of neat deal and covered in a handsome red cloth decorated with copper fittings and breastplate.
“She was taken with a kind of suffocation about 2 p.m. yesterday afternoon and I was called to see her,” Buchan said. “I sat with her while the surgeon attended. Within half an hour she had recovered to all appearances.”
Rowsell said, “Poor creature.”
“She was dead by the time I came to her the second time. According to the marine attending, she was asking for you before she expired.”