“We never had a name for her as such, Lieutenant.”
“Did anyone manage to speak to her while she was in your care?”
“Not in so many words, sir, no. It was all a dumb show and grunts and such we managed with. There was no sense to be got out of her mouth as far as anyone could tell.”
Buchan had refilled and lit his pipe and puffed quietly for a few minutes. “There are some that suggest the Red Indians are of Norwegian extraction and that their language is likewise related,” he said.
Cull nodded, a quizzical expression on his face. “Is that right?” he said.
“Private Butler,” Buchan went on, pointing out a marine with the end of his pipe, “is fluent in Norwegian and conversant in most of the dialects known to the north of Europe. I’m hoping he can assist us when we reach the lake.”
Tom Taylor was incredulous. “Now how did such a young pup manage a feat the likes of that?” he asked.
Butler sat up straight and hugged his knees. “My mother is Norwegian.”
“Go on then,” Taylor said to the marine. “Give us a listen.”
Bouthland prodded the young man in the back. “Get up, laddie,” he said.
“Sir?” Butler asked, looking across at Buchan.
“By all means. Perhaps the gentlemen who have heard the Red Indians’ language will recognize a similarity.”
The marine stood up from his place as if he was about to give a speech or recital. He held his arms ramrod straight at his sides and stared off into the woods as he spoke. He had straight blond hair braided down the length of his back, and an earnestness that made him seem childlike. When he finished his speech or recitation, his shipmates began applauding and slapped his back.
“Well?” Buchan asked.
Cull snuffled his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat. “It’s nigh on ten year, as I said, sir. But it’s like to be the same gibberish I heard then, as near as I can tell.”
Peyton lay awake a long time that night. The girl was in his mind for the first time in years, stood up on her tabletop in Poole. An impatient crowd of Englishmen pushed towards the front of the high-ceilinged room. They had all paid their two pence expecting to see a savage child, some mooncalf of the isle, something rich and strange. Not this pale, silent girl in an English dress with strips of white paint or lime daubed on her cheeks. There were shouts, a scatter of boos. The discontent of the crowd frightened her, as if she knew she had disappointed them in a way she was helpless to correct. The English audience pressing in on her must have seemed like the half-wild and savage creatures they had come hoping to see.
It was Richmond who had taken the girl captive, though no one in the party had mentioned this in the company of Lieutenant Buchan for fear of the questions it would raise. Peyton thought of Richmond picking through an Indian grave, holding shanks up to his leg as if he was checking the length of a garment. It was a heartless thing and cold, to Peyton’s mind, disturbing a grave that way. Something he wished he could say he ’d had no part in himself.
There were Red Indian burial sites all over the Bay of Exploits, though none of those Peyton had seen appeared to be recent. During his first summer on the shore, John Senior had taken him on a tour of the salmon rivers in the bay to meet the men he employed and to show him the country he would some day own a good portion of. They were crossing an open run of water in a scull with sixteen foot of keel. She had a single eight-foot mast and a square sail taking a full sheet of wind. John Senior was in the stern, leaning on the tiller. Peyton was dozing in the bow, lulled by the heavy swell that the boat was riding easily. He was almost asleep when he saw his father lift his head. John Senior stood then, one hand still on the tiller, looking across the bay in the direction of the wind.
“Get the oars in the water,” he said. He turned to lash the tiller steady. “John Peyton,” he shouted.
Peyton sat up and looked to the horizon where a low bank of dark cloud was blotting light from the water’s surface, scudding fast. He was just on his feet when the first knuckle of wind tore in, the boat tilting sideways in the air and slamming back, knocking him onto his backside. John Senior scrambled to the mast and hauled in the strain of the sail as the seas came up around them. “The oars, goddamn it,” he shouted. But Peyton couldn’t manage to get to his feet at all, and John Senior let the sail flap loose when it came down, crawling to the tawt and setting out the oars.