On the Plains of Heaven

By William H. Kennedy

Madeleine Oakes, a Red River Colony Métis mother of four grown children, is astonished late one September day in 1869 when a woman she envisions as the Virgin Mary strides into her home and demands a cup of tea. Her astonishment quickly turns to disbelief when the true identity of her visitor is revealed. Suffering the woman's scathing defamation, Madeleine flees her home in turmoil. The retribution she exacts will have consequences beyond anything either of them could have imagined.

Madeleine's vision is Elizabeth Fraser, a young woman from Toronto's genteel society who has come west with the homestead's irascible patriarch, Murdoch McGillivray, under unexpected and inexplicable circumstances. Surviving the prairie winter that nearly takes her life, she will serve what she deems her "wild west" purgatory in the flat and endless landscape that is about to become the province of Manitoba and a magnet for the influx of settlers from Ontario.

Elizabeth's arrival coincides with the Hudson's Bay Company sale to Canada of its 1.5 million-square-mile Prince Rupert's Land fur-trade empire. When Canadian government surveyors arrive unannounced in the environs of Winnipeg and its adjacent HBC post of Fort Garry to begin their work on land where Métis families have lived for generations, they unknowingly light the fuse that will lead to armed resistance by a people determined to defend their rights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Nov 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228869016

William H. Kennedy

W. H. Kennedy was born in Montreal, lived in Germany with his air force father during his teenage years, and began his working life with the Ontario government in Toronto. From there, he moved on to a two-year stint reporting for a weekly newspaper. In his mid-twenties he embarked on a 27,000 km solo trip around North America behind the wheel of a nine-year-old pea-green Volkswagen Beetle that, fittingly, refused to start the day after his arrival back home. On his return from that memorable adventure, he began work in an engineering-related field that became his career.Kennedy has travelled extensively throughout Canada and has had a lifelong interest in its history. His children know this firsthand, having visited, sometimes grudgingly, innumerable historic sites from Charlottetown to Victoria to Yukon's Dawson City during summer camping trips. Canada is a work in progress and its history the foundation on which it rests. If it is to stand the test of time, Kennedy maintains, it is imperative we learn that history and cultivate in our children an interest in their heritage.Previous publications by Kennedy are "At the Call of King and Country," a book about the World War I contributions made by the men and women of Hastings County, Ontario, and "Putting the Outside Inside Kids." Based on a canoe trip he took with his daughter when she was five years old, the book explores the value of nature and the great outdoors in the lives of children.

Book preview

On the Plains

of Heaven

On the Plains of Heaven

Copyright © 2021 by William H. Kennedy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-6900-9 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-6899-6 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-6901-6 (eBook)

Contents

Preface

October 1869

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

August 1869

Nine

Ten

Eleven

November 1869

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Early September 1869

Eighteen

November 1869 to January 1870

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

April to August 1870

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Afterword

His utmost power with adverse power opposed

In dubious battle on the plains of Heav’n

John Milton, Paradise Lost

A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.

Sioux Proverb

for Bev

Preface

Once upon a time, a place called Prince Rupert’s Land stretched from eastern Canada’s Ungava Bay to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and from the 49th parallel into the Arctic. Within this land mass nearly half the size of Europe, one could enter the northern door of a geological wonder, the North American Great Plains, which flowed south to Mexico in an undulating sea of grasslands. Since the end of the ice age, these plains had been the home of semi-nomadic peoples, their survival through the centuries bound inextricably to the buffalo that roamed this vast territory in their tens of millions. These great herds were the Creator’s benevolence beyond measure, a gift that fed, clothed and housed the earth’s children from birth to death. The idea that this gift could end in a single breath of time would have been thought of as nothing more than the imaginary dreams of a storyteller.

The beginning of the end of that benevolence, one marker among the many that would play its part in the near extinction of the buffalo, might reasonably be given as May 2, 1670. On that day in the city of London by royal charter, King Charles II granted exclusive fur-trading rights for all of Rupert’s Land to the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay, a select consortium of wealthy English businessmen with Prince Rupert, the king’s cousin, as governor. Neither the king nor the prince knew much, if anything, about the 1.5 million square miles they had claimed or about the immense wealth the area would generate for the company’s investors over the next two hundred years under its commonly known name, the Hudson’s Bay Company.

During that latter half of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth, HBC’s working model required the Indigenous people to travel from their wilderness homelands around Hudson Bay to the company’s outposts on the bay’s coastline with beaver and other furs for trade. Initially, this proved successful. But as the decades rolled by, competition from the French and later from rival fur trade companies, like the North West Company and the XY Company, that took their trade goods to the fur suppliers, rather than the other way around, forced HBC to follow suit. HBC trading posts began springing up across the breadth of Rupert’s Land, the

pre-eminent one being Fort Garry at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.

This site had been attracting French- and English-speaking settlers since the eighteenth century, and they would come to know their new home as the colony of Red River, so named from the river’s muddy waters during periods of flooding. Its principal town, which would flourish in the shadow of Fort Garry, was Winnipeg. Many among the settlers would marry into the Indigenous population and their descendants would be called Métis.

Despite Fort Garry’s dominant role in the region, strong commercial ties between Red River and the city of St. Paul, five hundred miles to the south, had evolved over time, so much so that talk of the colony’s union with the United States had gained credence on both sides of the border. Métis trade caravans bound for St. Paul were a common sight, the cargoes frequently including buffalo hides in their thousands, which were in demand for a variety of leather-based commodities.

But the great herds were dwindling and the annual buffalo hunt, for generations an integral part of Métis culture, was ending. Change was on the wind, and in the summer of 1869, when government surveyors arrived unannounced in Red River from the newly minted confederation of provinces to the east called Canada to set their solar compasses and survey chains on land already claimed by families whose ancestors lay buried beneath the rich prairie topsoil, the fuse to a clash of cultures that echoes to the present day was lit.

It was on the heels of these surveyors that fifty-six-year-old Murdoch McGillivray returned to his Red River homestead and family following a month away on business in Montreal and Toronto. His travelling companion for the return trip was a young woman named Elizabeth Fraser.

October 1869

One

The sun rose from the flat horizon, Madeleine watching it through the frosted glass of the cabin window, a ball of fire big enough to make you think it could be your last day on earth. It was a wonder how it came up like that, so quiet, and how it didn’t burn the prairie all the way to the mountains.

In winters past, when she was a child, her grandfather Many Horses would sing each night for the sun’s rising on the morning, a soft, barely decipherable chant that led her gently into sleep, where he said she would be safe and where she could dream the return of her father from the other side of the world. On winter nights beneath the dancing ghost lights, lost spirits roamed the earth in search of souls, and when you slept snuggled beneath your robes it was difficult for them to find you. They had taken her mother and baby brother a long time ago, after her father had left and never returned, and long before she had moved into Murdoch McGillivray’s house, the house with its embracing walls and great stone fireplace, the house from which she now was exiled to this one-room place by the river, this cabin Murdoch had built when he came here as a young man from the east.

Her grandfather knew, of course, that the sun, the kîsikâwi-pîsim, would rise whether or not he sang, but the singing was something his father had done and his father’s father, and the old ways were in the blood. She pictured him smoking his pipe, smoking and singing, his rutted, pockmarked face a play of light and shadow before the buffalo chip fire. Her childhood memories infused with the smell of the chips and the sweet smell of tobacco. The smells and the eternal prayer for the sun.

The sun balanced on the crystal grass, resting for a moment at the edge of its prairie bed like an old man contemplating another day’s journey he must begin anew. Winter made it weary of its travels. Each day would see its climb diminished, its failing strength soon marked by windowpane ice along the edges of the slough down behind the tack shed and cutting winds from the everlasting barren grounds to the north.

As a child at play she would hum her grandfather’s song, and always at bedtime, but when she grew older and after she had met Murdoch and after she had chanced to see a painting of the Virgin Mary with her infant son, she began to feel uncomfortable with the old ways. Sometimes she would cross herself like the Catholics did, thinking that might help, and when alone would pray to the Father in Heaven to forgive her sins, asking Him to identify them so that she could repent. It would, she knew, take time for Him to find her among the multitudes, but as the days became weeks and the weeks turned into months, she had begun to wonder if she was a person of too little importance to be heard. And then toward the end of summer, in this very summer of her forty-third year, when the Virgin Mary named Elizabeth had arrived on her doorstep, she knew He had abandoned her altogether.

It had been the middle of an unusually hot late September day, and with Murdoch in tow carrying the luggage, she had marched into the house, a crown of golden hair under the flowing scarf, the womanly figure draped in a long pale blue dress with dark blue ribbon, her eyes liquid blue and her skin unblemished, silken, white. Astonished by the vision, Madeleine had stood mute as Murdoch put the bags on the floor and introduced her as Mrs. Elizabeth McGillivray.

Mrs. McGillivray? A relative? Why had he returned from Canada with a relative? When he left a month ago, he had said nothing of this. Why had he not told her? She had not made up the spare room. And supper. What would she serve for supper?

Finding her voice, Madeleine had smiled and said how nice it was to meet her, to which the woman had replied with a nod and said that she would like a cup of tea. No, in truth, it was more like a demand. She was unaccustomed to rudeness, something she never brooked in her children, and she chided Murdoch when his hot temper got the better of him. But because Mrs. McGillivray was family, she would strive to be friendly, as was becoming of a host. Perhaps the long journey had made the young woman irritable, perhaps she was not feeling well, perhaps it was nothing that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure. Luckily, there was fire in the stove, and with a bit of coal added, the water boiled quickly. She had served the tea from the large silver teapot she kept for special occasions, noting that Elizabeth’s finger fit easily through the arc of the china cup’s handle as she waved away the milk and sugar with the back of her hand. She didn’t touch the cookies Madeleine had arranged carefully on the engraved silver tray.

And so there they sat, Elizabeth elegant in the Louis XV wing chair Murdoch had bought for Adrie before Madeleine knew him, he slouched in his weathered captain’s chair, legs outstretched, twirling his thumbs over his stomach. Madeleine had scarcely heard him going out of his way to make conversation about the trip and about the poor quality of the food served aboard the trains on his way to Montreal and on their return to St. Paul, where they had boarded the stagecoach and later the riverboat for home. What she had heard were the inflections in the few words Elizabeth chose to speak, inflections like Murdoch’s that got her wondering whether she’d come here from Canada or all the way from Scotland. She had only a vague idea of where Scotland was, but Murdoch had come from there and her ear was long attuned to the sound of his speech.

We’ll be getting our own railway line west of Lake Superior, he’d said. There’s talk of it in Ottawa. Rumours for the moment, I expect. But it will come. We cannae depend on American transport forever.

Why on earth was this woman here? What relation could she possibly be to Murdoch? Had he told her, and she in her confusion not heard? She had never heard him speak of a brother or cousin. He was the only McGillivray she’d ever known, him and their four children. Not knowing what to say and ashamed by what must have been her shabby appearance in the eyes of this unexpected visitor, she had said nothing as Murdoch rattled on.

The sun, framed by the cabin window, lifted free to begin its ascent. Murdoch said that when it leaves the earth here it is already lighting the snow-capped mountain peaks many days’ travel to the west. She had never been to the mountains, never really been anywhere except here in Red River. This was her home. Murdoch and the children were her life. Any happiness that had come her way had come in their embrace. She would never have imagined it threatened by the appearance at her threshold of a lost spirit in the guise of the Virgin Mary.

The shimmering vision of Elizabeth’s presence had turned Madeleine’s thoughts to Him, turned to His son, arms wide, forgiving all the world as he bled and died for them on the cross. A terrible thing for a mother to witness. A trial she could not have borne. How had God allowed it? His son. He could have stopped it, could have never let it happen. His own son. God must not suffer, she thought. If He knew suffering, He would not have allowed it. If He could suffer and yet do nothing, then it was easier for her to understand why her prayers to Him had gone unanswered.

When finally, after what seemed like a reasonable time, after she had learned nothing by discreet inquiry and was, by way of diversion, pouring herself a second cup of tea, Madeleine had casually asked what relation Elizabeth was to Murdoch. Murdoch had looked at her in a strange way and repeated that she was Elizabeth McGillivray, but this time added my wife.

We were married in Montreal two weeks ago. Elizabeth is Robert Fraser’s niece.

The bright sun rising on her grandfather’s song, her world so dark. At this early time of day, you could look into its face without hurting your eyes. Its ruddy light caught the bubbled flaw in the cabin’s windowpane, changing the rays to blue and green. Once, when the boys were little, Murdoch had explained to them how the bending of light changed its colour. That was in the beginning, in the days when she thought life could scarcely be better, before Elizabeth had arrived to open the gates to hell.

We were married in Montreal two weeks ago. Elizabeth is Robert Fraser’s niece. She had not understood. Had something happened to her hearing? What did he mean, married? He was old enough to be her father. The woman couldn’t be much older than Clara, his own daughter. Confused by his poor attempt at a joke and recalling how he had always enjoyed telling tall tales to his children, she had laughed. Elizabeth never moved, her blue eyes riveted on Murdoch sitting there in rumpled clothes in his captain’s chair, looking out the window, at the ceiling, looking anywhere but in Elizabeth’s direction.

Thinking about it now, Madeleine could see the absurdity, and had her heart not been torn from her, it truly would be laughable. She had known Murdoch from the time his wife Adrie got her sickness and she had been recommended to him by the Phelpses as a housekeeper. In the first year, before Adrie became bedridden, Madeleine had helped out a couple of times a week, but as the woman grew increasingly ill, she had soon found herself on call most every day and eventually was asked to stay on at the house permanently and given her own room. It was not long after Adrie’s death that Murdoch began to pay her added attention, an attention she guiltily but readily responded to, for despite his hot temper she had come to know him as a good man. She stayed on as the housekeeper, became the surrogate mother to Murdoch’s children, Peter and Clara, and though they had never married, gave birth to their sons, James and Matthew, by the time she was twenty-seven. Their relationship was à la façon du pays, the way of the country, common in the Northwest and accepted scarcely without comment by their neighbours and acquaintances.

Stunned by the reality of Murdoch’s words, speechless, she concluded that he had been bewitched by some city insanity. Now that he was home, he would realize his mistake, see how ridiculous his infatuation was, and send her back. It was obvious that she was completely out of place here. This was not her world. What could he possibly have been thinking, if he had been thinking? And why had she married him, a weathered trader of fifty-six years? For his money? Absurd. He was a man of some means to be sure. His trading business of McGillivray and Sons had done well, but not that well. The measure of his success scarcely warranted this outcome. When he wasn’t on the homestead tending to his land, his buildings, the animals, the garden, he was carting goods across the prairie, selling or trading them for hides, pemmican, furs, horses or anything else he thought had value. He was not the husband for this whatever she was from the east.

Neither could she see this poisonous flower ever accepting the colony. Arriving in what she might have thought was the grand city of Winnipeg, the reality must have been a shock. Madeleine had heard about Toronto, seen photographs of it and Niagara Falls. Compared to those places, Winnipeg might as well be on the moon. A winter here and maybe a blistering, grasshopper-plagued, wind-scorched summer like the last one with Murdoch away on his rounds most of the time would settle it. She would want out and Murdoch, having learned his lesson and regained his senses, would ship her back to what undoubtedly was her privileged life.

And the country would not be the only thing a person like her would find insufferable. Its people were mostly buffalo hunters and hard-working farmers, people who got their hands dirty, not the kind of society suitable for so grand a person as herself. Many of them spoke French or a mixture of French and Cree and English. They wore homemade clothes. Hand-me-downs were the custom. Nobody wore silver-buckled shoes like hers. Compared to her silky white complexion, their skin, like Madeleine’s, was as dark as night. On that first day when Elizabeth had staked her claim to her new home, she had demanded that she move out. The two of them could not possibly live under the same roof. She would have to find some other place. From the bedroom above the kitchen where Murdoch had taken the luggage, she could hear everything. Voices were raised and the words that heathen harlot had swept down the stairs in searing condemnation.

Madeleine had left within the hour, ignoring Murdoch’s hushed pleas that there was no need to rush off, looking at him only once when he apologized, saying it had been impossible to get word to her before they’d arrived. And even had it been possible, it was not something he could have told her in a message. He could explain everything, it was not as she thought, she would understand. Don’t take Elizabeth’s words personally. Don’t take them personally? He had lost his mind.

In case she had been having a bad dream, she had asked him: Was he married to that woman, man and wife?

Yes, but—

Blindly, she’d grabbed things from the armoire, the dresser, a pair of shoes from under the bed, her shawl, stuffing them into a suitcase. The moment James had walked in the door, she had turned him around, and to his total confusion they had been away in the carriage.

She turned away from the window. Heat waves radiated above the cast iron Oberlin. Murdoch had bought the stove complete with its hot water reservoir in St. Paul when he’d built his house, then moved it here after his business had prospered, replacing it with a new and bigger wood and coal stove for Adrie. There was plenty of firewood. James had visited, stayed the night and split enough for the next few days before leaving on errands at Fort Garry and in town.

She’d been living here closing on a month now. She had adamantly refused Murdoch’s request to see her, telling James to tell his father they had nothing to talk about. Should she decide to remain at the cabin through the winter, the stove would keep her warm. She was tempted to stay, if for no other reason than to show Murdoch she could manage on her own. But this was a fiction, for in truth he would have to provide for her as she had no other means of support. She knew from Clara that he’d already arranged for her to stay in town with their friends Rose and Andrew Phelps, should she wish to return there. She had been living with them all those years ago when Murdoch took her on to help Adrie. They would be pleased, they said, to have her come and live with them again.

Poor James and Matthew, caught in the middle. And Peter and Clara. What did they think of their new mother? Peter was close to Elizabeth’s age and Clara but a few years younger. Madeleine could judge Murdoch as harshly as she liked but had no desire for any of the children to do the same. They should not confuse his bewildering behaviour with any lessening of his love for them, as irritable and rough-edged as it seemed at times. For her, the whole thing was too bizarre to even know what to think. What had Murdoch meant when he said he could explain everything? That it was not what it seemed. What could there possibly be to explain? He had married the woman. They were husband and wife. That was the beginning and end of it. No matter what the explanation, if there was one, it wouldn’t make a hair of difference.

She placed her hand against the windowpane, saw its imprint in the frost on the outer surface. Had she truly believed Murdoch would marry her after Adrie died? She didn’t know. But she could not deny it had been her hope. They had lived together a long time. Romantic love had come and gone, but the bond they shared of children and this country was deep. Over the years they had grown comfortable in each other’s company, their arguments about this or that nothing more than letting off steam. Just the thought of that blue-eyed Devil’s messenger destroying it at her leisure was infuriating. At the very, very least he should have told her before he left for Montreal. Surely, he knew what he was planning to do. How could he not? It couldn’t just have happened all of a sudden, a snap of the fingers! He had gone east for a month to see Fraser, his solicitor. It was a trip he made every two or three years to discuss potential contracts, his investments, future opportunities. It was unforgivable for him to have put her through the shame she felt, suffering that woman’s contempt. It seemed she was angrier with him for that more than the marriage. Again and again she saw herself bolting up the stairs to confront the cruel words she was meant to hear. Her failure to respond was a smouldering fire feeding her humiliation.

Two

James examined the cartwheel. On a trip to Pembina, the five-foot-diameter rim had cracked when a spoke loosened. He’d bound it with long strips of shaganappi as a temporary repair and it got them home, but the wheel was done. It had to be replaced. He needed to have it ready before Murdoch returned. The old man was a bear with a toothache when any part of the business was out of sorts.

The job would have been completed yesterday, but yesterday had been unusual. Three riders led by André Nault had pounded into the yard on lathered horses. Government surveyors were on the hay privilege of Nault’s cousin Édouard Marion, they’d said, on the other side of the river. The surveyors did not speak French and neither Nault nor the men with him knew English enough. James must go with them to interpret.

James had tried to wiggle out of it. The surveyors had been in the Red River Colony since the summer. It was true that no one was certain of their purpose, but Nault was overreacting. Nault had pleaded his case, it would not take long, and as the three were Red River men and neighbours, James relented. He’d saddled Jigs, and they’d no sooner crossed the bridge to the south side of the Assiniboine River than they ran into a dozen more riders on the same mission. One of them was Riel. He spoke English as well as James. James had turned to make for home but Riel asked him to stay. He could corroborate what was said.

They’d ridden into the field where the surveyors were conducting their work, the horses forming a semicircle around them. For a few moments no one had spoken. The only sounds in the cold air were the snorting and stamping of the horses and the creak of saddle leather. None of the riders carried firearms, but would have appeared threatening nevertheless. Riel had addressed them. By what authority were they doing this, he’d wanted to know. A man who identified himself as Major Webb said Colonel Dennis had sent them. James knew of Dennis. He worked for the Canadian government.

Riel had told them they weren’t in Canada, that Dennis had no jurisdiction here. He was assuming authority he didn’t have. The field was the property of a Red River citizen, had been in his family for decades, and he had not authorized its survey.

They were, the surveyors had replied, just carrying out their orders. They knew nothing about the land’s ownership. He should take up the matter with Colonel Dennis, who could be contacted at Fort Garry. James had said nothing. He recalled the growing look of concern in the surveyors’ eyes as angry words in French circulated among the riders when Riel translated. Riel had swung his leg forward over the saddle horn and dropped to the stubbled field. No one else dismounted. For just a moment, he had stood face to face with the Canadians as if deciding what to do about their trespassing, then went to the survey chain and put his moccasined foot on it.

You go no farther, he’d told them.

James placed large wooden blocks under the cart to within an inch of the axle, then tapped in a wedge until the wheel lifted a couple of inches and turned freely. The few times he’d run into Louis Riel during company business he’d found him affable, but Murdoch cautioned not to be misled by his civility. He was, he said, a troublemaker. When he asked what kind of trouble, he got no answer except to steer clear of him. The surveyor incident must have been the kind of thing his father meant.

There had been some heated discussion among the riders as they watched the surveyors gather up their equipment and depart. Just what the hell was going on, Nault had said. Where did Canada get the idea that it could just send out people who couldn’t even speak the language to trespass on the property of families who had lived here for generations. Who was the liaison between Red River and Ottawa? Was there a liaison? Nobody knew. Riel didn’t know. James had no idea. If it wouldn’t be too much of a goddamn problem, maybe the government could send somebody out to enlighten them about its plans. Was it a question of property rights? Was that the reason for the surveys? It best not be. There were thousands of people in this country, the majority of them Métis and Indian who had lived here a very long time. Ottawa was poking a stick in a hornet’s nest.

James spun the wheel, watched its spoked shadow revolve on the ground. In two days, they’d leave on their trip to the Fort Ellice Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, and this cart was one of the three going with them. It was too early to use the sleighs and Murdoch was not about to wait for snow. If it came to that on the trail, they could always exchange the cartwheels for runners. It was rigged so they could. Hopefully they’d make the round trip ahead of serious winter weather. The cold they could handle, but carts drawn on a long haul through heavy snow would exhaust the horses.

The height of the cart’s four sides had been extended using three-foot-long wooden posts at each corner, which were lashed together all around with horizontal rails to increase the cart’s load capacity. They would go to James’s great-grandfather’s camp on Pipestone Creek first, then carry on west to Fort Ellice, a total distance of about 250 miles, to pick up the cache of buffalo robes and mink pelts Murdoch had already made a down payment on. The summer buffalo hunt had been mediocre, but then reports of declining herds were becoming common. Among the elders a feeling prevailed that the bountiful days they had known all their lives were ending.

He rolled the broken wheel to the tack shed, scattering the chickens scratching in the dirt, and propped it against the wall. The good spokes could be reused. He brushed the dust and cobwebs from one of the spares inside and stood it upright. Murdoch had gone to Fort Garry yesterday with Matthew, two horses hauling the Stoughton wagon. If they had got an early start this morning, they’d be back any time now with the consignment of trade goods. He’d want things shipshape. Do it once and do it right. Keep the business shipshape and the rest will follow. This included not only the cart, but every last item that fell under the heading of inventory right down to providing separate containers for every length of nail and screw. James liked it when Murdoch was away. He always put in a full day, but the atmosphere around the place was lighter when the boss was on the road. In Murdoch’s vocabulary, the word relax hadn’t found a home.

James got the new wheel fitted and had moved on to mucking out a horse stall when Peter, breathing whisky fumes but seemingly still sober, found him.

He’s back, he said, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette. He’s looking for you.

What for?

Didn’t say. Peter grinned. He’s in a bit of a mood.

Damn. Is he in the house?

Unhitching the horses.

James set the shovel against the wall and went into the yard. Peter went with him. Despite the early morning frost, the day had warmed up. Murdoch was shunting the two wagon horses into the paddock.

Hello, Murdoch. Good trip?

Murdoch slapped the second horse on the rump and closed the gate after it, watched the pair of them go to the hay Matthew was pitchforking from the fenced-off hay rick. Before looking around he said, What the hell’s this I hear about you threatening government employees?

James threw a quick look at his brother. Peter gave him a wink. Murdoch turned and came toward them, the slight limp in his step telling James that his father’s sciatica had flared up again. He was a big man, bigger than his sons, muscled, hands as big as frying pans, broad shouldered, a bodily frame that had seen a lifetime of physical labour.

It’s the big news at Fort Garry this morning I can tell you. It was a bit of a shock to learn that McGillivray’s son had run off representatives of Her Majesty’s Dominion government. Tell me I’m mistaken.

Peter ground the heel of his boot into the dirt, hooked his thumbs over his belt. Go ahead, James thought, enjoy yourself. It was always amusing for the one not twisting on the point of their father’s criticism. Matthew fluffed the hay around, trying to look busy.

Nault asked me to interpret for him, James said. I didn’t want to go. He pretty much begged me to. The surveyors were staking Édouard Marion’s hay privilege. I couldn’t tell him no. We didn’t threaten anybody. I never opened my mouth.

The even bigger news, Murdoch said, was that you were side by side with Riel.

We met him on the way. When I saw he was going, I started for home, but he wanted me to stay. We weren’t side by side. There was a dozen of us or more that went.

"He wanted you to stay?" Murdoch clenched his hands. The scar down the side of his neck had turned its customary purple hue and there was a slight forward lean to his body, a thrust of the bearded jaw. James knew the posture.

So there’d be a second person on our side to back up whatever was said, that’s why. James could hear defiance rising in his voice. Nobody else spoke English enough.

"Our side? What in Christ’s name does that mean? We have sides now? And you’re telling me you’re Louis Riel’s backup?"

James felt his pulse quicken, felt the blood pumping in his ears. Did his father really believe what he was saying? He thought not. There was more to his ire than Riel, McGillivray and Sons’ government freighting contracts being an example.

I’m not his backup. I did exactly what you’d have done. A neighbour asked for help and I helped. How was I supposed to know Riel would be there?

Murdoch growled, took a long breath, expelled it.

The question, Murdoch said, quieter this time, is why we, McGillivray and Sons, are taking the Dominion’s money with one hand and threatening its employees with the other.

They weren’t threatened. They were simply told they had no authority to survey the field. That was all.

Those surveyors felt threatened. When you saw Riel was involved, that should have been warning enough. I told you to keep clear of him. You shouldn’t have got involved to begin with. Twenty-five years ago, his father was doing the same thing around here, getting everybody riled up.

James gritted his teeth. Riled up because the Hudson’s Bay Company was undervaluing the furs and buffalo robes the trappers and hunters sold to it. Like everyone else in Red River, he knew the story. Riel’s father had fought for fairer prices from the Company and won concessions. Sometimes he couldn’t help wondering whether Murdoch was serious or if he just enjoyed bloody arguing and would poke and prod until someone lost his temper. Damned if he’d apologize for offering to help a neighbour.

All right, tell me this, James countered. He turned and gestured toward the house and the barn, the outbuildings and the fields beyond. Supposing when you pulled in here today to your house and your property, you had to drive over a surveyor’s chain. What would you do?

Murdoch threw his hands wide. I’m not talking about surveys. I’m talking about our livelihood. Yours, Peter’s, the rest of the family. We may not be Canada yet, but it’s coming. Think about it. You don’t go cozying up to a rabble-rouser who makes it his personal crusade to harass potential clients and anybody else he cares to.

So our neighbours are rabble-rousers?

I don’t want us having this conversation again, James. Lecture, you mean. Hostile actions—

For God’s sake, Murdoch, we were not hostile. Nault and the others were upset but they weren’t hostile. Riel was the only one who said anything to them and all he said was they didn’t have the authority for the survey and they’d have to pack up. So they did. Was he right?

Do you think he knows what’ll be the outcome of his actions if he keeps up with this sort of thing? Murdoch could be irritatingly evasive, a practice he’d honed to a fine edge. I think not. But he’s prepared to take us all with him down that blind road nevertheless. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened with him. He should have gone straight to Dennis with his complaint. He sees himself as the saviour of Red River and the Northwest from here to the Rockies. What he really should have done was stay at that seminary, or wherever he was, in Montreal. He’ll be the ruin of the colony.

James didn’t believe for a minute that his father was insensitive to Nault’s alarm. His problem, despite the success of McGillivray and Sons’ trading and freighting business, was his never-ending concern about profit and loss, caused in part by his list of debtors. Adrie, and then Madeleine, had tried to get him to shorten it, but he wouldn’t turn away any man he knew he could trust to pay him back. He wondered if Elizabeth had said anything about it. She’d been here a month and even though she seemed to spend half her time sick in bed, he had the impression there was little she didn’t have an opinion about.

James shrugged. All he’s asking, him and Nault and the others, is respect for their rights. These people from Ottawa just show up and start surveying their land. And without even the courtesy to tell them what it’s about. You’ve got a lot of influence around here and you’re not even sure what’s going on.

What about the cart? Murdoch said, walking over to it.

James looked at Peter, shook his head. Peter grinned and gave him a quick thumbs-up. You really cornered him that time, he said, quiet, so Murdoch wouldn’t hear.

Cart’s done, James said, his response louder than intended.

Three

The kettle boiled on the stove. Madeleine opened the small iron door and stabbed at the flaming wood with the poker. A funnel of sparks crackled and spiralled up the metal chimney. She should have run up the stairs. That’s what she should have done. Run up the stairs and confronted her, challenged her, demanded she take back those horrible words, slapped her across the face, should not have submitted meekly to such an outrage. Those words. Knowing they were meant for her. They had fixed her to the spot. Stunned her.

The words spun round and round inside her head. She tried not to think them. Was this the sin of hatred she was feeling? It burned, a fire inside her. She had never hated anybody. Those three words, a raw wound that had exposed a window into herself she never knew existed. Madeleine felt ashamed that in that woman’s presence she’d thought of the Virgin Mary. Those words, if only she hadn’t heard those words. They had turned her misery to a bitterness that alarmed her. The Father in Heaven would judge her and she would go to a double hell because Murdoch’s wife would be there too. She wished she were snuggled under buffalo robes listening to her grandfather’s song and dreaming. She wished her father had come back. He had left when she was five or six years old. He told her he had to go away for a just a little while and he never came back. Murdoch’s wife had come instead.

She was not beautiful, Madeleine concluded. She had been wrong in thinking that. Despite the slim figure and blue eyes, the woman was not especially attractive—pretty perhaps, but not beautiful. Her hair was beautiful but she had a thin nose and thin lips and her blue eyes seemed somehow not right, maybe too far apart. She thought she remembered when they were having their tea that her ears stuck out a bit. Her fingers were long and slender with a plain gold band, not much use for work in Murdoch’s house except maybe for sewing and knitting. She probably couldn’t sew or knit. According to Clara, she did know how to cook. If she was in the mood, apparently she could make a good supper. Everybody cleaned up their plates. She was civil enough with her and her brothers, Clara said, but it was obvious she was not happy, something Madeleine was not displeased to hear. She and Murdoch didn’t appear to converse much beyond what was necessary, Clara said, and he slept in the room downstairs off the kitchen. He was tight-lipped about the relationship, made no overtures to talk about it, said only that everything would sort itself out in due course. Clara and her brothers could make no sense of it, except that Elizabeth did not seem all that well. A mystery. Madeleine had not told Clara what Elizabeth had called her. She would have liked to tell her, but speaking those words would have burned her tongue. It would serve no purpose except to upset the girl. If the two of them were getting along, then fine. As for the boys, Clara said, they weren’t in the house much anyway, what with working outside all day or away with Murdoch. Peter talked to her more than James or Matthew. He was closer to Elizabeth’s age.

In the first days at the cabin, Madeleine had no appetite and was sure she had lost weight. Her nights were restless, often not falling asleep until dawn, then not getting up till late in the morning to brew cups of tea and to try to think why this calamity had befallen her. What had she done to deserve this? She was a good mother to her sons and her stepchildren. She had helped Murdoch in his business and, along with Clara, had run his household for years, keeping everything shipshape, as he liked to say. She had never made any claim on him. As much as she dreamed of it, if they were to be husband and wife it would be his decision. But he had not proposed it. Perhaps this was a failing, her not being more expressive of her feelings in the matter. But he knew she loved him. After all these years, how could he not.

The steam from her cup clouded the window glass as she went to it, then returned to the warmth of the stove. It would take another month for winter with its long nights to settle in for good. She would miss the warmth of the McGillivray home with the comings and goings of the children. She would still see them, they would come to visit as often as they could, but all had changed and the dream was gone.

Peter had come by partway through the first month of her banishment. It wasn’t the same at home without her, he’d said. Everybody wished her back. Innocently, he’d said that once things settled down, Elizabeth would realize how wrong she’d been and Madeleine could return. Madeleine had not replied. This was impossible, and besides, she would burn in that hell the Catholics feared before she’d return to the house while Elizabeth was there. Murdoch’s last trip west until spring was planned for early October Peter told her, just days from now. He would take James and Matthew. They’d be back around mid-November. They would stop in to see her grandfather. If she had anything she wanted to send him or any messages, Murdoch would make sure they reached him. If there was anything she needed for herself, just let him know.

She had thanked Peter for his visit and assured him she was managing well enough. The cabin was comfortable, and if he would bring her sewing basket next time he came, she would have all she needed. It would keep her busy for part of the day. How could she explain her pain, in particular to him? In her company, he was always polite and accommodating, but underneath his seeming sincerity, she felt, or was it imagined, a hint of resentment she thought might be because she’d replaced his mother, something he had never been able to overcome. He got on well enough with James and Matthew, but the brotherly bond that she longed for she didn’t see. Maybe, probably, it was just the age difference. She wished he wouldn’t drink. She hated the smell of alcohol. Murdoch had given it up years ago.

It was a hell of a business, Peter had told her. In case she was wondering, he had no idea about Elizabeth. None of them did. None of them had known about any pending marriage. Something had happened back east. Elizabeth leaving home and the trip out here must have really rattled her. Half the time she didn’t get up before midday, and he wondered if she was suffering some kind of sickness. Clara was acting as nursemaid. Murdoch said he’d cancel his trip but Elizabeth wouldn’t hear of it, said she’d be fine. Just needed to rest. The trip had taken more out of her than she realized. It almost seemed she preferred not having him around.

Whatever was he thinking of, Madeleine had said. Peter couldn’t imagine. With Murdoch, Elizabeth was not a topic for discussion. When she was feeling better, he thought he might start calling her Mum. His comment had caught Madeleine off guard. She had burst out laughing in spite of herself. Peter laughed, the two of them laughing, the image irresistibly funny. At twenty-eight years of age, he couldn’t be more than two or three years her junior.

How long, she wondered, had the marriage been in the works? Had he been secretly planning it for a while? How did he have the nerve to walk in the door and say they were married? Could it really have been spontaneous? The more she thought about it, the odder the whole thing became. His work was his life. There was scarce room in it for much else, especially for something like Elizabeth. If he really did want to marry, why to such a dreadful person? Was love really that blind? Did he love her? She didn’t think so. Maybe love had nothing to do with it. It was something else. What spell had the woman cast, and more to the point, why? Madeleine’s thoughts went in circles, her questions never answered.

When Peter returned with her sewing basket a few days later, Madeleine said she had decided to move back with the Phelpses after all. She had no wish to be seen a martyr. What was the point of living here by herself like a hermit. What was she trying to prove. It was childish. Her being alone most of the time, especially through winter, would only be cause for her family to worry. Peter picked her up the following day and they made the blustery, cold ride in the buggy to Winnipeg and the Phelpses’ Victoria Street house. Rose Phelps, a short, plump woman with bright grey eyes and grey hair wound tight in a bun, welcomed her with a bear hug.

Come in, dear, come in out of the weather. She took Madeleine’s coat, handing it to Peter to hang on the coat stand, and led them into the curtained parlour with the arched fireplace that Madeleine had sat beside many a winter night. Andrew Phelps came in as they were sitting themselves, a bald, thin, wiry man about Madeleine’s height, his eyes magnified behind his gold-framed spectacles. He smiled and said hello and was clearly uncomfortable. Wanting to set them at ease straightaway about her changed status, Madeleine broke the ice on the subject by saying simply that as Murdoch had remarried in Montreal, she felt it best to leave and let his new bride establish her own household. Two cooks in the kitchen would never do. She thanked the Phelpses for taking her in again. They didn’t pry for details as she knew they wouldn’t.

My dear, you know our house is your house. You’re always welcome here.

The upstairs is all shined up and ready for you, Andrew added. I’ve installed new blinds. The old ones were getting pretty, well, pretty old.

Thank you, Andrew.

Madeleine felt suddenly overwhelmed by their kindness, fought to suppress her emotions. As a little girl, she’d spent time here with her father. Rose and Andrew had let her have the run of the house. She thought of them as her grandparents. Sometimes when her father had to go away somewhere, he would drop her off to board with the Phelpses for a week or two while her mother and baby brother stayed behind with Many Horses. Andrew would teach her reading and spelling and arithmetic. She was a very good pupil, he had told her, and when her brother was older, she could teach him. He had taught all of the McGillivray children at one time or another, as he had many other children in the area. People still called on him to tutor their sons and daughters. As a young man, he had come over from the old country to teach at a private school in Montreal. Somehow, he’d ended up in Winnipeg. He played the bagpipes. It made him a popular man at wedding parties and funerals, parading up and down or standing aloof in tartan kilt and forest green tunic. Through the years, she’d seen his playing bring tears to the eyes of many an old-world-born countryman who knew he would never see his birthplace again.

She remembered very little about her father, certain she wouldn’t know him if one day she passed him on the street. Most of what she did know had been provided by the Phelpses and that wasn’t very much. He was a quiet man, Andrew said, never one to talk much about himself. He had served a time with the British Army in Halifax and after his discharge decided to stay in Canada. He’d come west to see the country and maybe acquire some land to farm. Summer evenings he used to sit with Andrew on the back porch, sipping whisky and smoking and talking about whatever came to mind, talk which led Andrew to believe that he’d received a decent education. But he never got around to applying for a land grant, and one day simply departed, saying only that he had matters requiring his attention back home and thanking them for the hospitality they had shown him and Madeleine. He would leave her with her mother until his return. They never saw him again.

How are the children? Rose asked. Peter’s the first we’ve seen of any of them in ages.

They’re doing fine. James and Matthew have left on a trip with Murdoch.

It must be pretty quiet around home with the three of them gone, Andrew said, addressing Peter.

It’s always quieter when my father’s away, Peter said with a laugh. I can take a break whenever I feel like it.

So, Madeleine, has that Clara of ours found a suitor yet? Rose asked. She’s such a lovely girl, or I should say young woman. How old is she now?

Twenty-four. Suitors yes, but none to her liking, not yet anyway.

My land, how time goes by. Andrew’s been retired five years.

Almost six, Andrew said. "And it’s semi-retired."

Six! It scarcely seems possible. He’s still doing a bit of teaching. He’s thinking about offering bagpipe lessons, can you imagine! She slapped her knee and laughed at the thought of it. Our neighbours will thank him for that.

Andrew gave his wife a big smile and looked at Madeleine. No Gaelic spirit in the woman.

I’m English.

That’s your cross to bear, my dear.

"My own hieland laddie," she said.

Madeleine smiled. If ever a couple were made for each other, it was Rose and Andrew. They never changed. She didn’t remember a time when the banter between the two wasn’t a part of their home, and it endeared them to her, memories of happier days.

Is James keeping up with his reading? Andrew asked. "He