Peyton thought she seemed immensely relieved to have settled keeping John Senior at home and to have the navy men out of the way. He studied her look of relief for a moment before going to the door. He called out and motioned them back up the path and volunteered to take John Senior’s place on the expedition. He told the lieutenant he would come down to the Adonis on the twelfth. Buchan shook his hand and thanked him and nodded another goodbye to Cassie who stood behind Peyton in the kitchen. “Miss Jure,” he said.
John Senior was as furious as his weakened state allowed. “It’s a goddamn fool’s errand,” he said.
“You were fool enough to sign on. And to send Taylor and Richmond and Reilly along.”
John Senior began to speak but fell into a fit of coughing that purpled his face. Peyton called for Cassie who came running from the kitchen and lifted the sick man forward and pounded his back with the open palm of her hand until he had coughed up a mouthful of green-and-black phlegm into a handkerchief.
“I had my reasons,” John Senior managed as she helped him back against the pillows. His lungs clawed at the air.
“Out,” Cassie said to Peyton. A lock of her hair had fallen out of the bun at the back of her head and she turned it behind her ear with a distracted motion that made Peyton’s stomach knot. “Go on now,” she said when he made no move to leave. “I mean it, John Peyton,” she said.
Cassie was already up and had lit the fire and boiled the kettle for tea by the time he made his way down to the kitchen. The dark play of light from the fireplace sent her shadow up the opposite wall like a vine. There was a single candle burning on the table where she’d put out a plate of brewis in pork fat for his breakfast.
“What way is he this morning?” Peyton asked after he sat down.
She set an earthenware mug in front of him. “Well enough to be contrary,” she said. “He’d be down here now if I hadn’t threatened to start the fire with his boots.” She pushed the sugar towards him and he ladled a teaspoonful into his mug. “Are you going to look in on him before you go?”
Peyton shook his head. “He’d just try to talk me out of it, I imagine.”
“He’s only watching out for you, John Peyton.” Cassie turned away from him to add wood to the fire.
“You think this trip is sensible?”
She shook her head. “I’m hardly a judge of what is or isn’t sensible now, am I?” She sat across from him and their faces hovered over the stunted light of the candle, an oily stem of smoke curling towards the ceiling. There were half-moons charcoaled beneath her eyes and Peyton knew there was more than just shadow working there. The day he’d come in off the traplines he’d found her scythed over in pain as she stood at the table. Her hands held the edge so fiercely that he had to pry them free to get her to the daybed.
“It’s just during my time,” she’d told him. “The rest of the month I’m not so bad.”
When she was nursing his father she gave no sign of discomfort at all and he could see how it exhausted her to disguise it. As he expected, nothing had been said about the whole affair since he brought her down from the river in November.
Cassie lifted the teapot to refill his mug. “John Senior says Lieutenant Buchan might try to talk you into setting aside the rifles before you come up to the Indians at the lake,” she told him. “He wanted me to warn you about that.”
Peyton slurped at the scalding tea. “What else did he want you to tell me?”
“He said to say shot is no good to get through those leather cassocks they wear. He said they double them up at the front and shot won’t be more than a bee sting through it.”
Peyton turned his head towards the window. Two inches of frost framed each pane of glass. The first grey of dawn was just taking root across the frozen bay. “Since we’re meant to be heading up there with friendly intentions,” he said, “it might not be such a bad thing the old man is down with that fever.”
“He just wants you back out of it alive is all.”
Peyton looked into his plate. He finished the last morsel of brewis and used his index finger to clean the pork fat from the plate, then he drank the last of his tea. He felt as if someone had dragged his insides through a field of nettles and at that moment he considered saying so. But all he said was, “I better get a move on if I’m to get across to Ship Cove today.”