Chapter Two
The persistence of ice on the Churchill River means the Factory’s whaling sloop can be put to sea only seven or eight months of every year.
The rest of the time the captain and the eight-man crew must spend on land making repairs to the vessel, assisting the tradesmen and laborers with their work, or, as often as not, sitting about the stove in the men’s house smoking, drinking, and playing at drafts.
Most of them endure this expanse of winter idleness without much complaint—they are content most days to rise late, eat well, and fill the empty hours with games, bickering, and occasional drunkenness—but for Tom Hearn, the first mate, who is restless by nature, it quickly becomes a torment.
He looks about for extra work to do and, if none appears, occupies himself as best he can with reading and study.
Even so, marooned on the land, trapped within the Factory’s thick walls, without a purposeful occupation to fill his days and busy his hands, his mind turns inward and starts to brood upon old mysteries and matters unresolved.
If nothing new appears to distract him, he becomes nervous and agitated, prone to sharp bursts of temper or long dark bouts of sourness and despondency.
He is in just such a testy and melancholic frame of mind when he learns that Magnus Norton wishes to see him in the privacy of his apartments.
Hearn expects, once there, to be given some trivial instruction or reprimand, but instead, after offering him a chair and a goblet of wine, which he declines, Norton starts asking him what he knows about the Esquimaux.
“I spoke to Captain Purvis just this morning,” Norton says, “and he tells me that when the sloop goes north to Whale Cove and Marble Island, it is you more than anyone who does business with the natives. He says you have made a study of their language. That you have even made a book with their words. A kind of dictionary.”
“It’s not so grand as all that.”
“A compendium, then?”
“If you prefer.”
“If I prefer what?”
“I mean if that’s the name you wish to give it.”
John Shaw is standing off to the side like a spy, watching and listening.
“Why would you trouble yourself to make such a thing?” Norton says. “What’s the purpose?”
“To help build up trust between us and them. If relations are friendly, then the trade is generally easier. You must have found that yourself with the Indians.”
“You do it for the sake of the Company, then? To increase our profits?”
“For the Company, yes, but also for my own amusement.”
Norton looks intrigued.
“Amusement?” he says. “So you take some pleasure in conversing with the natives?”
“I find them to be honest and straightforward, which is more than can be said for some of my comrades.”
Shaw chuckles at this remark, and when Hearn turns to look at him, he smiles and winks.
“Captain Purvis tells me you have made few friends among the crew,” Norton says. “He says you prefer your own company.”
“Perhaps I do. Is that accounted a fault?”
“A fault? Lord, no, far from it. From what I’ve seen of the other sailors, I’d say it shows some rare discernment.”
He looks at Shaw and laughs, and Shaw in response grins and shakes his head. Hearn senses they are making light of him and immediately resents it.
“Has there been some complaint made against me?” he asks. “Is that why I’m here?”
“I’ve not heard any complaints against you. Have you heard any complaints, Mr. Shaw?”
“Not a one.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
Hearn knows he would be wise to moderate his tone and let Norton explain himself in his own good time, but the petulant winter mood is upon him, and sitting here amid the gaudiness, he is feeling anxious and out of place.
“I’ll explain all that in just a moment,” Norton answers lightly. “But first you must have a glass of this wine. If you’ve been drinking the Company rum all winter long, it’s no wonder you’re in such a poor temper.”
Hearn is about to refuse again, but Norton has already filled the goblet and is leaning across the desk to hand it to him.
“You have a taste of that,” he says, “and tell me what you think.”
Hearn sips the wine and feels the warmth and richness of it spreading on his tongue.
“Good?” Norton asks.
“Yes,” he says. “Very good. I thank you, sir.”
Norton sinks back into his armchair with a contented look, as if keeping Tom Hearn happy rather than commanding the Fort has become his chief purpose in life.
“You served in the navy during the recent wars with France,” Norton says. “Is that right?”
“For three years, and before that I was in the merchant service, mainly the Baltic trade.”
“And why did you come out to the Bay?”
“When the war ended, half the men in the navy were released all at once, so it was hard to find a berth. I met Bellew the carpenter, who had just signed his contract to come out to Hudson’s Bay, and he persuaded me to join him.”
“And are you contented here?” Shaw says. “Or do you regret your choice?”
“I prefer to keep myself busy with work, so these winter months are not much to my liking, but besides that, yes, I’m generally contented here.”
“You are accustomed to life at sea, out on a boundless ocean, with nothing but water and sky all around, so the Factory in wintertime must feel narrow and confining, I suppose.”
“Sometimes it does.”
Norton nods knowingly to himself as if pleased to have confirmed some long-held suspicion.
“Then I have an unusual proposal for you, Hearn,” he says. “Something which might help lift your mood and put a summer smile back on your face.”
Hearn swallows another strong mouthful from the goblet and feels the weight of dullness and irritation in his mind begin to lighten.
“You have a task for me?” he says.
“A task, that’s correct, and not one that can be quickly or easily accomplished either. If you take it on, you won’t be bored or impatient anymore, I can promise you that.”
“It’s not quite impatience that I feel…”
“Whatever it is, be assured that if you agree to my proposal, you won’t have the time or strength left over to worry much about it.”
“We are mounting an expedition to the far north, onto the Barren Grounds, and need another man to join us,” Shaw says. “We leave within the month.”
“An expedition for what purpose?”
Shaw, instead of answering the question, glances at Norton, who raises a forefinger from the desktop to signal silence, then looks back at Hearn with a smile.
“We have been given intelligence about certain mineral deposits,” Norton says. “The purpose of the expedition is to confirm their existence and, if possible, to begin to exploit them.”
“Deposits of what kind?”
“Of the kind that require strict secrecy from all involved, since if the news were spread abroad, the Company’s interests would certainly be damaged. Before I say any more, though, I need to be sure I can trust you.”
“If the task is so important, why choose me over all the others?”
“Because you’re an honest, hardworking man. This Fort is sadly full of tattletales and idlers, but I can see you’re of a different kind.”
“You flatter me.”
“I speak the simple truth.”
“That you can talk to the Esquimaux is most helpful also,” Shaw says. “There’s a native encampment near to where we are going, and we’ll need to win their trust if we’re to succeed.”
“So, you see, you have both the skills and the depth of character we’re looking for,” Norton adds, “but, as I say, we need to know we can trust you to keep quiet before we go any further.”
Norton falls silent but continues to stare at Hearn intently as though attempting by force of will alone to make him show some hitherto concealed weakness. Hearn, guessing his intent and made calmer by the wine, looks back imperious and unperturbed.
“I’m not one to gossip, but if you wish me to swear silence, then I will.”
“If you give us your word, that’s sufficient.”
“You have it gladly.”
“Very well.”
Norton, moving now with a sacramental slowness, slides open a drawer, takes out Patterson’s rock, puts it on the desk, and unwraps the hessian. He hands Hearn a magnifier and points to the thin yellow lines.
“You may see what it is for yourself,” he says.
Although Hearn is still young—only just past thirty—he has met with enough disappointments in his life already to be cautious when presented with any new claim on his enthusiasm.
So when he picks up the glass and looks down at the rock, he doesn’t expect nor does he wish to be amazed, yet, despite himself, he is.
He looks at it, leans back for a second with his lips an inch apart, then tilts forward and looks at it again more closely.
“You’re sure this is real?”
“We’re sure.”
“Who brought it here?”
“A pedlar who had it from an Indian. He told us it comes from a place called Ox Lake out on the Barrens two days north of the White River.”
“What if this pedlar was telling you a tale?”
“We questioned him long and hard, so we don’t believe he was lying, and with a prize so rare and precious, we judge it better to be bold and take our chances than to hesitate from an excess of doubt or caution.”
“Do the Company know?”
“William Lockey, the governor down at York, knows already, and the committee men in London will know too as soon as the next supply ship reaches them. So far as everyone else is concerned, you’ll be going north to look for copper ore.
If the truth ever got out, then this place would become ungovernable, so that is the story we must stick to. ”
Hearn rubs his thumb across the glistering yellow veins and has the urge, which he resists, to lick it clean.
“It has a queer beauty to it,” he says. “I’ve never seen the like before.”
“Indeed it does, and there’s plenty more just the same up north. That’s what the pedlar promised us.”
Norton pauses to let Hearn absorb these marvelous facts, then takes a sheet of paper from the top of a pile and hands it to him.
“This is for you to read through and sign,” he says.
“If you agree to join us, we’re offering a flat fee of twenty pounds in addition to your normal yearly wage.
Half paid now and the rest on your return. ”
Hearn reads the contract through once, then signs it.
He knows he could ask for more—thirty or even forty pounds, perhaps—and they would likely agree since now that the secret has been shared, he has them in a bind.
But he doesn’t try his luck because at that moment, the moment of decision and commitment, he isn’t thinking of the value of the prize so much as of the great adventure of searching for it.
The search is what matters much more than its object, he thinks, because the search, if carefully and cautiously conducted, will with any luck help him shake his current gloom and give these land-bound, static winter days the purpose and interest they so painfully lack.
He isn’t sure that Norton’s plan will succeed.
Even if the pedlar is telling the truth, on a journey so long and arduous, a hundred things might go wrong.
But whether it succeeds or not, he thinks, at least I will be moving toward something again, looking forward in hope and expectation, and not walking about in a circle as I have done for months, on the same aimless, deep-grooved path.
Poor though the bargain doubtless is, as he steps back out into the frigid, snow-caked yard, after the contract has been countersigned, sealed, and put away, Hearn is struck by the same dizzy, expectant feeling he used to get in the old days before each new voyage, as knots were shaken loose and the anchor weighed.
It is a feeling, so familiar then but almost forgotten now, of dissolution and slippage, of old certainties becoming new possibilities, of the deep, unknowable future surging up all around him, frothing and swirling, like a great green tide.