After Rowsell and the other marines had come to the winter house for Mary in November, Cassie was overcome with an uncharacteristic winter enervation, as if she was suffering the onset of a serious illness. But nothing more came of it. She sat listlessly at the kitchen window, looking down across the banks of snow rolling to the expanse of sea ice or watching dark rags of cloud skirr the air, the blue that emerged beneath them so bright and clear it made her eyes ache to stare at it. She managed to keep a fire running, but she ignored the chores that normally occupied her days. She couldn’t even bring herself to read. When she ate her meals, she ran the flat of her hand across the surface of the table where Mary had drawn her map in Buchan’s journal, insisting she didn’t want to return to the lake except to retrieve her child. Cassie was still perplexed by that and puzzled over it for hours at a time.
Her second day alone in the house she began packing books into the trunk, without stating clearly to herself what she was about. She had a detailed list in her head of her entire library and checked each item as it was put away. When she’d finished setting all her books inside she stood a few moments with her hands on her hips, then went up to Peyton’s room and rummaged through his few belongings until she found the hand-copied plays of Shakespeare. She carried them downstairs to the table and leafed slowly through the pages. It had been a mistake to give the plays to John Peyton, to expect the boy to fall in love with them and not with her.
On the back of the title page of The Tempest she began making a list of the words Mary had taught her: the stars, the wind, thunder, islands. More than that she had largely forgotten. She sketched her own rough map of the Bay of Exploits: a scattered jigsaw of islands, hummocks of stone like obstacles strewn against the approach of the outside world. The crooked finger of salt water pushing inland to the mouth of the River Exploits. She drew a tiny box at Salmon Arm, the winter house snugged at the edge of the woods. At Charles Brook she used a series of strokes to indicate the hayfields above Reilly’s tilt, the green grass she had cut and stooked to dry to straw. Another larger square on Burnt Island, a squiggle running to the shoreline where the freshwater brook rilled into the cove.
She stared at the map. Her refuge, is how she used to think of the place. Shelter. She had bunkered in on the northeast shore all these years, turning her back on anyone she thought might make a claim to her, deflecting, misdirecting, fighting to keep herself free and clear. And in the end she had failed.
She sketched in a stick figure beside the summer house on the map, as Mary had done in her own drawing. And just as Mary had, she placed a tiny figure at the level of her waist.
“A baby, Mary?”
“Yes, yes. Baby.”
Messiliget-hook.
The child Cassie drew at her own waist was smaller than Mary’s, a smudge on the paper that anyone else would have mistaken for an accident, a slip of the pen. Unseen shame. Crest wounding, private scar. She bowed her head until her face was resting on the table. Each time she thought she’d lost everything that mattered in her life, she discovered there was always a little more to lose.
The next morning she dressed again in John Senior’s old clothing, starting out towards Charles Brook with a following wind that threatened to tumble her face-first onto the ice when it gusted up. At Reilly’s tilt, Isaac, their oldest boy, was outside chopping wood. He stood and shaded his eyes as she came up the riverbank towards him, then turned to run inside for Annie Boss.
She spent two nights with them. The house was a cauldron of heat and activity and the clamour of the four children. Reilly was away on his trapline. Annie was pregnant again but hardly showing. The two women spoke little to one another during the days, Cassie settling into the morass of feeding and cleaning and comforting as if she had been hired on as a maid. In the evenings after the children had fallen asleep they sat together with cups of sharp spruce tea.
Cassie smiled across at Annie. “It’s good to be here,” she said.
Annie said, “You welcome to stay. Stay as long as you like.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to follow Mary to the lake.”
Annie Boss nodded. “Going to take some talk. Men not going to want to take a woman up the river.”
“I’ll go on through the woods to your old place. Wait for them there. They’ll have no choice.”
Annie gave her a troubled look and brushed her hands along the length of her thighs. “Hard chafe to the river,” she said.
Cassie said, “I know the way.” Then she said, “Someone will need to look in on the animals at Salmon Arm.”
“Joe Jep go over when he come in. No worries.” She nodded emphatically then and placed both hands to her belly. She said, “We going to miss you up here, Missa Jure.”
Cassie looked beyond the two men to the river. Her face was grim, expectant. “I’d almost given up on you,” she said.
Peyton said, “Mary’s gone, Cassie.”
She nodded.
“Captain Buchan did everything in his power that could be done for her,” Rowsell said.
She nodded again. “Thank you, Mr. Rowsell.” She turned and went inside, leaving the door open behind her.
Cassie had repaired the roof sufficiently to keep out the snow and boarded up the broken window and rehinged the door. An improvised crane served for boiling water and cooking in the fireplace. The floor was carefully swept, the bedding was tattered and insufficient to the weather but neatly made up. The wood outside she had cut and split herself. She had no candles or any oil to burn a wick of cloth and with the door closed the only light came from the fire. Her eyes, the hollows of her cheeks, were deepened and blackened by shadow.