Murther and Walking Spirits Read online

  Roger calls her Little Nuisance, and Elizabeth is sharp with him about this, although in everything else she worships her daring, healthy, handsome brother.

  No doubt about it, Hannah will be a care.

  (17)

  WHAT I NEXT SEE in the formal, elegant parlour of the house on John Street appears so farcical that I wonder if the director of this film – whoever he may be – is having a joke with me. For I still accept it as a film. What else can I do?

  There is Anna, that woman of impeccable propriety of manner, kneeling on the chaise longue and in her hands she holds a wooden paddle with which she strikes to right and left at imaginary water.

  “No, madam, no! First the stroke, long and free, and at the end the J-shaped turn. But not too much! You will have us into the river bank if you do it like that! Let me show you again. See – like this – long and easy and not too fast, then the J just as you come to the end of your reach. Again. Better but not good yet. Again.”

  Roger is teaching his mother to paddle a canoe, and like many boys given authority over an adult, he is apt to be tyrannous. Anna is puffing from the unaccustomed effort, and her legs are growing numb from kneeling. But Roger assures her that she must kneel; there will be no sitting in the canoe; there must be hours, and hours, and hours of kneeling, and there is nothing for it but to accustom herself to the position, and the effort, and what she feels to be the indignity.

  Elizabeth, meanwhile, is lying face downward on a stool, which supports her stomach but leaves the rest of her body free. As if galvanized, she strikes out with arms and legs, like a frog.

  “Oh, Roger! Please! I can’t do any more!”

  “But you must, Miss.”

  “I shall swoon! I know I shall!”

  “If you swoon in the water, Lizzie, you will drown. And Hannah will drown. Now listen carefully; if the canoe oversets, you are to seize Hannah by the hair, kick off your shoes, and swim for shore. And be sure you keep Hannah’s head above the water.”

  “I don’t think I shall be able to keep my own head above the water.”

  “That doesn’t signify. The water won’t hurt your face, Miss Baby.”

  “But I shall get it into my mouth. And it will be dirty.”

  “Very likely. But you are a soldier’s daughter, as Mama tells you every day, and you must be brave, and resolute, and save Hannah.”

  “Oh Roger! Do you think we shall overturn?”

  “Nothing more likely. A canoe is a delicate craft.”

  “I shall never learn.”

  “It’s learn or drown, Lizzie. If the current is very swift you would be best to catch hold of the canoe, and I shall save you after I have saved Mama. And Hannah, of course. Though by the time I have managed that the canoe will have drifted far below us, so don’t expect a miracle.”

  “I shall drown!”

  “Not if you learn to swim. You must harden your muscles. A great strong girl like you! For shame, Miss!”

  Tears from Elizabeth. Remonstrances from Anna. But they are women of their time, and must submit to male tyranny in such matters as this. Every night the parlour becomes a gymnasium, with Roger as its implacable master. He is enjoying himself immensely, as a tyrant in an indisputably worthy cause.

  Roger does not have it all his own way. The Gage house has so far escaped looting by the ruffians who are despoiling Loyalist dwellings wherever they can. The Federal authorities are regretful, but their excuse is the familiar one: their watchmen are few and overworked and cannot be everywhere at once, and any question of setting a guard on John Street is absurd. Nor is the zeal for protecting the Tories as strong as perhaps it might be. This is where Anna asserts herself.

  The servants are sent out every week with parcels of silver, which they take to goldsmiths’ shops that are not too scrupulous and will buy valuables which they suspect have been looted without making enquiries. But the servants are not good hagglers, and so Anna, in clothes she has borrowed from the maids, and without powder in her hair, goes to shops as far as possible from John Street, and does most of her own selling. Paulus Vermuelen’s daughter discovers unexpected powers of rapacity in herself, and gets as much as she can. She speaks an English heavily salted with Dutch, and passes as a woman of the people – the sort of people who are looting – and she takes a miser’s delight in a good deal. She even laughs with the merchants, and says nasty things about the Loyalists, and is pleased with her duplicity. Anna has determined to survive, and not to survive empty-handed; if the canoe sinks, she will sink a wealthy woman.

  She works at a petticoat, made with many pockets, in which her guineas, her shillings, and even pence if need be, will be stowed away. She practises walking in this garment, which is of many pounds weight, distributed as evenly as she can arrange it. Anna, who has always been devout, knows well that Despair is a mortal sin, and now she knows that it is a luxury, as well. She has seen Loyalist friends, not so tough-minded as herself, set out on a journey to another land, weeping at their misfortunes, without ever having done anything of a practical nature to lessen those misfortunes. She will have nothing to do with Despair. She prays every night for a good deliverance from the journey that lies before her, but she knows that God helps those who help themselves, and she will not fail God in this duty to herself and her children. As she sees her handsome house grow barer with each sale of silver, damask hangings and anything else that will fetch money, she is not downcast. She is resolute. She wishes she could sell the furniture as well, but it cannot be got out of the house without attracting notice. The furniture – some of it very good of its kind – must be sacrificed. Only the picture of King George III, which has acquired a talismanic value, must go with her, even though it must be disframed, and rolled into a bundle of clothing.

  So, as Easter approaches, and the great day of escape comes near, she reduces everything she can take to British North America to bundles that weigh, in all, about one hundred and fifty pounds, which Roger assures her the canoe can carry.

  (18)

  THE CANOE. They see it on the morning of Easter Sunday, as the first light of dawn is breaking. Roger has seen it, of course. For weeks he has been searching, haggling, talking with fishermen and half-breeds who know about canoes, and he has bought what seems best, a cedar-sided canoe of about seventeen feet in length. He was not ridiculously overcharged. He would have preferred birchbark, as being more sporting and in keeping with his new-found character as an adventurer, but he has been warned that such craft are not for beginners and women, and that they demand constant skilled attention to their easily punctured skins. Roger thinks he has been crafty, pretending that he is looking for a canoe for a friend, but the men at Burling Slip, at the end of John Street, are not stupid, and they know that the Gages are making a run for it. The convinced Americans do not care; the fewer Loyalists in New York, the better for everybody; some of the men are friendly and give good advice.

  Indeed, two or three of these men are at the slip when the Gages approach, with James pushing their bundles in a wheelbarrow. They seem to emerge from the darkness, and silently help to stow the bundles in the canoe, as it is plain Roger has no idea how best to do it. All that remains now is to set out.

  James is in tears. Anna thinks he is weeping at losing her, and that is so, but not quite as she supposes. He is weeping for himself. Like many an old servant James has become virtually a child in his master’s house; his master is dead, and now he is losing his mother. What does the future hold for him? A hanger-on at a tavern, sprinkling the white sand over the floor? The night before the journey Anna gathered the servants in the now desolated drawing-room, to read prayers, ask for the prayers of Emmeline and Chloe, who promised them from full hearts, and gave out three little purses of twenty guineas each. They were overwhelmed, for the gift is munificent, but Anna was determined not to be mean. James now kisses Anna’s hand, which he has never done before in his life, and tries to help the plainly dressed woman, a most improbable boy – Elizabeth in br
eeches – and the child into the canoe.

  Anna, although she has toiled to learn to paddle in the drawing-room school, has never been in a canoe in her life, and she is very clumsy as she takes her place in the bow. Kneeling is not easy, for her fourth petticoat is heavy with money – perhaps twenty-five pounds weight in gold, for the original six hundred guineas is now nearer nine hundred – and the canoe rocks perilously. If the men had not steadied it, she would have been in the water. She rests her buttocks on the bow thwart. Now the timorous Hannah must somehow be put in the canoe. Hannah shrieks; Roger angrily tells her to hold her noise. Elizabeth must get aboard and, though she is lighter than her mother, she is not so courageous, and makes a sad mess of it, but she takes Hannah. Roger steps into the stern, lightly and expertly, for he has been practising for weeks, and the men hand paddles to him and to Anna. They are square-ended paddles – what are called voyageur paddles – and there is nothing to be done now but to venture out into the East River. The water seems perilously high on the gunwale. Roger gives the word and the men, who have not spoken until now, give a muted cheer, and the Gages set out for Canada.

  Must I be witness to their fearful misery for – who can say what journey? Their progress is pitifully clumsy, and if they manage to keep afloat for a hundred yards in the water it will be a miracle. But the film-maker, whoever he is, spares me that agony, and there is a film dissolve, and when next I see them they have reached the Hudson River, and are on their way. Anna is doing better than before, and Roger has acquired some skill as a steersman.

  So off they go, and I can only judge how long they are on the Hudson by the changing foliage of the trees and the increased strength of the sun, as they pass Pollock’s Wharf, and the Albany Basin, and Rhinelander’s Dock and creep along as close to the shore as they can, for the great river is a mile and a half in width, and the current is against them. They must ascend the Hudson for something like a hundred and fifty miles. But the canoe travels faster than might have been expected, and as Anna gains in skill, and Elizabeth and Hannah learn that they must not move – no, not an inch – their spirits lighten, and after a few days they are filled with a sense of adventure, though the women are still frightened. But when have adventure and a fear of danger been far apart?

  (19)

  IF I HAD BEEN asked to invent their progress during my lifetime, when I did a little romancing in hopes of becoming an author rather than a newspaper man, I would certainly have resorted to the usual cheap goods of the romantic novel. Elizabeth, wandering too far on land at one of their evening stops, would have encountered a group of ruffians who would have tormented her and threatened to rape her, thwarted at the last minute by the brave Roger, brandishing the Major’s pistols. There would undoubtedly have been an encounter with Indians, alarming figures with painted faces. Could I have omitted a few Quakers, speaking quaintly and being shrewd about changing a golden guinea? Certainly I should have included a meeting with a band of strolling players, who would have enlivened the evening around the campfire with choice passages from the popular plays of the period.

  My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills

  My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain,

  Whose constant cares were to increase his store,

  And keep his only son, myself, at home.

  Perhaps one of the actresses would have introduced the virgin Roger to the pleasures of sex; such a scene always goes down well with lecherous readers. Certainly Anna would have been despoiled of many, or all, of those golden guineas.

  The film shows me that it was not at all like that. Their adventures were of a less romantic order, but none the less exhausting. After a few attempts to stop the night at inns in the settlements along the river, they gave up all hope of that, for the inns were filthy, their food disgusting and their beds thick with bugs. Thereafter they asked leave of farmers to sleep under haystacks, and such leave was usually granted without much cordiality. Not bedbugs, but fleas came of the haystacks. An entire day was spent on land, the Gages stripped to the skin – Roger far apart, so that his eyes might not be blasted by the sight of naked female flesh – as they searched their clothes for the insects, and held them over a pot of burning brimstone, which they bought of a farmer’s wife, who also gave them bags of pennyroyal to wear, to check further infestation. They bought food of the farmers and though it was rough it was not nauseous. They met with little outright incivility, for most of the farmers did not greatly care if Tories left the new country, and some were Tory sympathizers who had no intention of leaving their homes, but would give a helping hand to those who were doing so. Money, as Anna had discovered, was the great emollient and would often moderate the fervour of a rancorous Yankee Doodle who was uncivil until he saw it, bit the coin and decided that it was good. They were not beggars, though they came very near to looking like beggars.

  None of them were used to unremitting physical work, and it was soon clear that they could not travel from dawn till dusk. They must rest at midday; food must be prepared, or bought. Anna was used to a certain amount of wine every day; she now had to put up with rum, and Roger insisted that he too must have rum, and had too much until his mother rationed him strictly, after he had come near to capsizing the canoe. They all washed as much as they could, but that was not enough, and they began to look like gypsies, sunburned and grubby. Because they were always in the open air, they did not smell very much. They itched and, to Anna’s dismay, they scratched.

  They attracted no unwelcome attention, for they were simply part of the river traffic. There were canoes of a bolder design than their own, ends out of the water in turn, as they seemed to bound over the waves. Skiffs and dories, and craft to which it would be hard to give a name, were everywhere. There were even a few small vessels under sail, towing lighters in their wake. When they came near a substantial settlement, scows were busy with cargo. Now and then a raft made stately progress down the strongest pull of the current, and on these were little tents where the raftsmen lounged when they were not busy with the sweeps that guided them; usually these had a small fire aboard, for rough cooking. The Hudson was the best and easiest path for traffic up and down the big state, and in the press of business a canoe was of no consequence, even when it was labouring under the guidance of two poorly skilled paddlers. But they made progress, and after their early misadventures with inns, they sought a creek each night, and found a quiet place for their encampment, if so important a word might be used for their overnight rest.

  They could not always avoid notice where they stopped, and once they had to lay up for five days, as Anna had been bitten by insects, or suffered some misadventure they could not identify, and her fever was too bad to allow her to travel. They had no medicine with them except what was needed for Hannah, and Anna refused to be dosed with laudanum, which Roger supposed was a cure-all. A woman, obviously mad, who said that her name was Tabitha Drinker, offered them the shelter of her cabin, but as it was too filthy to be endured, they had to extricate themselves from her hospitality as best they could, and endure her scoldings. Snotty Tories! Too good for a decent Christian, were they? But on the whole they went undisturbed.

  The further north they travelled, the less they suffered contempt for being Tories. Revolution is a city flower; it does not flourish in the country. Thus they travelled roughly, but free of molestation.

  Other unforeseen interventions of nature slowed them. Elizabeth, who was fourteen, underwent the onset of her menarche when they had been four weeks on the journey. She had no idea what was happening; neither her mother nor Emmeline had thought to inform her; it might have been supposed at that time that two years might pass before this event. But perhaps the swimming lessons in the parlour had given her a push forward, or it might have been some deep protest against wearing boy’s clothes; she was in a panic and wept uncontrollably. At last Anna found out what was wrong, and the party had to go ashore while the proper thing was done, with one of the napkins – clumsy affairs – that Anna
had brought for herself. Roger, who was of course excluded from this disturbance, fumed and was confirmed in his opinion, strong already, that women were great nuisances. Anna and her elder daughter, strongly feminine in the manner of their time, conspired to make Roger feel excluded from something important, and again in the manner of the time, Elizabeth, who was perfectly well, was treated as an invalid for several days, and could not be expected to bail the canoe, which Anna’s frequent sloppings made an hourly necessity.

  This event caused more trouble than might have been expected, for Anna and her daughter henceforward had to retire twice each month for secret washings of garments Roger was not supposed to know about, and the journey was delayed while the napkins dried, flung over bushes in the sun, when there was sun.

  Hannah, sensing that something was going on, from which she was excluded, became even more of a nuisance. She cried a great deal. Cried, not wept, for she was a howler, not a dropper of silent tears. Her teeth hurt, her ears hurt, the motion of the canoe nauseated her and she wanted the others to know that she was in misery, and was in this sense the most important person on the voyage. She possessed in high degree the self-assertiveness of the afflicted.

  So she had to be dosed frequently with laudanum, and as the laudanum had to be diluted, water had to be boiled. They drank from the Hudson without scruple, and by ordinary standards it was a clean, fast-flowing river. But the apothecary had decreed boiled water for the cup of laudanum, and thus it had to be; firing must be gathered and coaxed into flame, and a small pot – as small as possible – of water must be boiled to assuage Hannah’s pain.

  I recall that laudanum was the great specific for pain of all sorts, including heartbreak and desperation, for something like three centuries. It was simply tincture of opium, sometimes mixed with less powerful drugs, and the true laudanum-drinker could get through an astonishing amount of the stuff in a day – quantities that would have killed anyone not habituated to the drug. There was nothing to beat it for toothache, and Hannah was already well on her way to being a drug-taker or, as it was then called, “an opium-eater” for the rest of her life. But what was to be done? It was laudanum or agony, and so laudanum it was.