Cassie had Mary kneel up so she could scrub at her back and buttocks and thighs. She soaped a cloth and reached to wash between her legs but Mary grabbed her wrist and sat quickly back into the water. “All right Mary,” Cassie said, “all right.” She could feel the blood pulsing in her hand from the force of Mary’s grip. She took the cloth in her free hand and held it in front of the Indian woman, offering it with tiny motions, as if it were a morsel of food. When Mary took the cloth Cassie stood and went into her room off the kitchen. She collected a white dress from the back of her door and dug stockings from her trunk and after she felt she’d allowed Mary enough privacy, carried them into the kitchen. She laid the clothes on the daybed and knelt at the tub. She reached into the cloudy water and extracted one tiny foot after the other, scouring the thickly callused soles, the heels and ankles. Her knees were still bruised where she had fallen to the ice nearly a week beforehand.
After she was towelled dry and dressed, Cassie went back into her room and brought out a small hand mirror. At the sight of herself Mary screamed and turned away. She grabbed the glass from Cassie’s hands and held it at arm’s length in front of herself and screamed a second time, then fell into ringing peals of laughter that brought the men running in from outside.
“Everything all right?” John Senior said.
Cassie sat in a chair at the table, surprised to find herself tired. The skirt of her dress was sopping wet and cold against her skin.
“She looks like a proper lady in that getup,” Peyton said, and he nodded and smiled at Mary in a tired way, as if she needed to be encouraged, appeased.
Cassie looked at her then as if that was actually possible, in fact, just a matter of time. She had no idea if Mary was intended to stay with them or be sent to St. John’s or if she would live at the parson’s house in Twillingate, but she already had vague plans for teaching her to cook and sew, to speak English, perhaps even to read.
John Senior had said, “You can’t dress that kind up on the inside.”
Cassie saw that as the truth now, though not in the way the old man had intended. She watched Mary’s bare feet on the dirt path in front of her as they hauled the water up to the house, their steps in time to the sound of Mary’s singing. For the first time since she’d bathed her in front of the stove, Cassie wondered what her name might be.
Peyton and John Senior had risen early to hand-line for late-season cod and by early afternoon had pitched a decent day of fish up on the stagehead. They had a quick lunch and then went back down to the cutting room.
Shortly after they left, the two women sat together in the parlour with Buchan. Corporal Rowsell had been posted at the front door with instructions that they not be disturbed. There was an oval hook rug on the bare wood floor of the parlour and doilies on the polished side tables. Mary reached a hand to finger the intricate design of the one nearest her as Cassie fixed tea for herself and the officer. He was dressed in his red uniform coat.
“Now Mary,” he said.
Cassie watched her face, the customary expression of eager uncertainty. It was her first line of defence, this willingness to please, this fretting after some notion of what was wanted. Every day Mary retreated further and further behind their expectations of her to the point that it was impossible any more to know who she might have been before the Peytons carried her down the river.
Buchan sat in a rigid posture in his high-backed chair and his voice took on the tone of someone presiding at a trial. “We wish to speak to you about the incident at the lake of this past March.”
She looked quickly from Buchan to Cassie seated directly to her left. “John Peyton?”
“The Misters Peyton,” Buchan said, “are nowhere nearby. You have nothing to fear from them, I assure you.”
Mary regarded him with a mix of confusion and coolness, what Cassie thought might almost be contempt. “I don’t believe,” she said to Buchan, “that Mary is expressing fear.”
“John Peyton,” Mary said again.
“It’s all right,” Cassie said to her. “If there are things you have forgotten or are unsure of, we will ask John Peyton when he returns. Just tell us what you remember. All right?”
She nodded.
Cassie smiled across at the officer. “I think you may proceed.”
Buchan cleared his throat and flipped through the notebook on his thigh. “Yes,” he said, “very well then. Mary, according to John Peyton, you were taken by a party of Englishmen on March 6 of this year.”
She looked to Cassie and then stared blankly at the officer.
“Were you forced to come away with them?”
She still didn’t respond.
Cassie held her wrists together in front of herself. “Did they tie your hands, Mary?” she said. “Like this?”
She shook her head no. After a moment she sat forward in her chair and moved her hands behind her. She twisted so they could see the hands clasped at the small of her back.
“I see,” Buchan said. He scribbled notes in his book. “Behind the back,” he murmured and then raised his voice. “Did they strike you?”
She sat back in her chair, startled.
He raised his palms in apology and spoke more softly. “Did any of the Englishmen hit you?” He showed her his fist and brandished it over his head.
Mary shook her head, slowly at first, and then more forcibly, as she seemed to piece together what was being asked of her.
“Did they —” he said. He shifted in his chair. “Did anyone touch you?”
“Captain, please,” Cassie said.
“These are necessary questions, Miss Jure. I apologize if you feel they are an affront to your employers. Mary,” he said.