“A world ago, sir,” Reilly said to the officer. He looked across the fire and caught Peyton’s eye. “In the old country. And not something I’m fond of recounting. It involved a family of blacksmiths and a daughter of theirs, and to say more than that would be hurtful of the girl’s honour and to the esteem in which I would hope you now hold me.”
Richmond swore and kicked at a junk of wood at the base of the fire, sending up a small shower of flankers that settled and winked out in the snow. “How much could it hurt the honour of an Irishwoman?” he said. “Hey, Tom Taylor? Or the esteem in which an Irishman is held?”
Taylor gave a non-committal shrug, but did nothing more to discourage him.
“Carry on with your tale of woe, Paddy,” Richmond continued. “You’ve got nothing to lose as far as we can see.”
Peyton looked across at Reilly and Buchan. The lieutenant was smiling and had placed a hand on Reilly’s forearm to keep him from responding. “I trust,” Buchan said, and he spoke with as thick a brogue as he could muster, “you dinna think so poorly of all the Celtic peoples.”
“In no way, sir,” Richmond told him. “But this one in particular is bothersome, given as his loyalties are so clearly divided.”
“Richmond,” Reilly said, “shut your goddamn mouth.”
The furrier ignored him. “As Mr. Mick Mac here is married to an Indian, it seems to me the height of folly to expect him to choose the life of Protestant Englishmen over one of his own.”
Peyton was on his feet before Richmond finished speaking and he knelt to face him and Taylor, whispering for a few moments. Richmond said, “Out of respect for your father,” and nodded at the fire with a look of furious exasperation. Peyton stood and addressed Reilly. “Richard would like to apologize, Joseph. We all know Annie is a good Christian woman. It was meant in fun and not to offend you or Annie.”
Reilly stood up as well then. “I appreciate that, John Peyton,” he said. “Although it would mean more to me had it come from the mouth of that one behind you.” He turned to Buchan. “Good night, sir,” he said.
Buchan nodded.
Peyton circled the fire and sat in the spot vacated by Reilly and the four men stayed there longer than anyone would have liked, until Richmond finally cursed under his breath and went to his blankets and Taylor followed him, more sheepishly, nodding to Peyton and Buchan as he went.
“Your man Richmond,” Buchan said, shaking his head.
“The devilskin, he is, sir. But a long chafe up the river such as this is where you see the worth of him. If I go through the ice hauling a sledge, I’d like to have him somewhere handy.”
Buchan nodded slowly and stared across at the younger man. Peyton’s face was boyish, he thought, remarkably unscarred. He had a full head of dirty-blond hair, a ready look of astonishment that made him seem younger than his years.
“What is it, sir?” Peyton asked.
Buchan pointed directly at him. “I’m looking for your father there,” he said. “And I can’t see him.”
“John Senior’s quite a face, it’s true.” Peyton stared into the fire. “Perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to keep clear of it.”
Early on the twenty-second, they came upon another stretch of caribou fences and after travelling two miles found a large circular storehouse constructed of spruce wood and caribou skin near a slaughtering yard that Cull said was not present when he’d come by this way eighteen months ago. Two mooring poles were stuck in the ice near the shoreline and the carcasses of several caribou lay butchered and strewn outside the store.
They stood for a few moments inside the building while their eyes adjusted to the light and the row of haunches and torsos hanging from the rafters came out of the shadows. Near the storage shelves at the back of the room they found a marten trap and Tom Taylor used his walking stick to press the bed. They found four other traps set around the store to keep scavengers from the meat. The name Peyton was inscribed in the beds of the traps. Richmond said they’d been stolen from his tilt in the fall.
Most of the frozen meat was stored in square boxes of spruce rind, large fatty blocks of flesh off the bone packed with a heart and kidney or a liver at the centre of the container. They found a number of lids from copper kettles that Cull said might have belonged to the Indian woman he had taken to St. John’s. There were also a few furs hung about the room, beaver and marten and caribou, and Buchan ordered that these be taken along with two packs of meat. He and the ship’s boy went to one of the sledges and came back with a pair of swan-skin trousers, a pair of yarn stockings, three cotton handkerchiefs, three clasped knives, two hatchets and some thread and twine, which they stacked neatly in the centre of the store in trade.