Chapter Thirty-Five
When Magnus Norton hears the news from John Easty the clerk that the copper mine party has returned at long last, he jumps up from behind his desk, drops his quill onto the blotter, and, still in his quilted gown and felt slippers, rushes out into the icy courtyard to bid them welcome and find out what they’ve brought back.
He sees Tom Hearn standing there on his own looking gaunt and shaggy-haired with his filth-caked deerskins falling off him and his two tiny eyes, black and sunken into his ravaged face like two old currants in a stale, moldy bun.
But when he looks about for the other six adventurers, he sees no sign of them at all.
“Have you come on ahead, lad?” he says to Hearn. “By yourself, I mean? Are the others following on? Will they be here soon?”
He looks at him eagerly, but Hearn only shakes his head. When Norton asks the question again, he replies in a low, quavering voice that there’s been some tragedy up on the Barrens and the others are dead.
“They can’t all be dead,” Norton says calmly, as though correcting some simple error. “One or two, perhaps, but not all.”
“It’s all of them. All of them are dead except me and the Indian girl.”
“John Shaw and Abel Walker too?”
“John Shaw drowned, and Abel was murdered by the Esquimaux.”
The few others, assorted laborers and tradesmen, who are standing around listening when they hear this astonishing news, give up a gasp and a groan, then start muttering among themselves and shouting out questions.
Magnus Norton, although his own mouth is hanging open and his mind is still spinning, is sufficiently alert to notice that if he isn’t quick and careful, Hearn might well reveal some fact about the journey’s true purposes that would be much better kept hid.
So he quickly puts his arm about the wretched fellow’s bony shoulders and announces to everyone that the proper time for such inquiries is later on.
“What this poor man needs now,” he says, “is brandy, food, and a good hot bath. After all the torments he’s been through, he can’t be expected to stand here chattering. You men get back to your work. You’ll be told about all that’s gone on once I’ve had the chance to speak to Mr. Hearn in private.”
Back inside the apartments, Norton seats Hearn down in an armchair by the fire, pours him a full glass of the best brandy, and calls for Nantouche, the Indian maid, to bring a loaf of bread and a bowl of barley soup.
The smell coming off Hearn is fierce and foul, and seen close up he looks even worse than he did in the courtyard.
Several of his fingertips are black from frostbite, and he isn’t wearing boots or moccasins but has his feet crudely wrapped in scraps of deer hide and birch bark.
Although Norton’s mind is racing and he is desperate to learn more, he keeps patient nonetheless and gives Hearn a chance to drain the glass of brandy and swallow down the bowl of soup before he speaks again.
“What went wrong up there, Tom?” he says. “Tell me all that happened. Tell me honestly and plainly now.”
Hearn stares into the fire for a while, then asks for more brandy, drinks it, coughs violently, and rubs his face with both hands as though trying to erase some invisible stain.
“Is it too horrible to speak of now?” Norton asks him. “Do you wish to sleep first and tell me in the morning?”
“I’ll tell you now. The bare facts of it at least, if you wish to know them. It won’t take long.”
“I do, of course. I wish to know everything. But start with John Shaw. You told me outside that he drowned?”
“We were wading across a river about two weeks ago and he slipped in the middle, in the deepest part, and was washed away. We knew the crossing was a risk, but we had to try it. We both agreed. I tried my best to save him when he fell, but I couldn’t manage it.
I suppose he was badly weakened by walking so far with so little food. ”
“And Abel, my nephew?”
“Killed earlier by the Ox Lake Esquimaux. Stabbed in the belly with a spear. There was bad blood between them and the Northern Indians, a vicious rivalry from the very first, and we all got caught up in it.”
“Both men dead,” Norton says with a sigh. “I knew there was some danger attached to such a long and arduous journey, but I never imagined…I can’t hardly believe it.”
The Indian maid comes back in and offers Hearn more soup. The log fire spits and crackles. Amid the eccentric splendors of the room, the polished brass and ormolu, the harpsichord, the tapestries, Tom Hearn looks like a savage woodland creature transported from a different world.
“You say the girl survived as well?”
“She did, but before Shaw drowned, she ran away, back to her own people. The other three Indians all perished up on the Barrens.”
Norton, with a trembling hand, pours a glass of the brandy for himself and takes a cautious sip.
“I have to ask you,” he says. “Not that it matters so much in comparison, but you understand I have to ask it anyway.”
“Of course.”
“You reached Ox Lake and then you looked about?”
“We searched all around, every inch, and there was nothing there.”
“You searched all around the lake? Every part? Looked as hard as you could?”
“Every inch of it. John Shaw made certain, as you can imagine.”
“So that pedlar was telling us lies?”
“He must have been, because we looked long and hard and didn’t find even a jot or a hint of any gold.”
Norton tilts his brandy glass, chews his lip, and scowls.
“Nothing, you say? Not a glimpse?”
“Not a speck.”
“Then I suppose I should have guessed that he was a foul pretender. I should have seen in his eyes that he was making it all up, but he was clever. He tricked us both, John Shaw as well as me, and John was always a fearsome judge of character.” Norton scowls again and shakes his head.
“You’re quite sure there was nothing there? ”
“Nothing at all.”
“Two good men dead, then, two fine, brave men, for no reason or reward.”
“Two Company men, that’s true, and three of the Indians also.”
“And all for naught.”
“At least you know for certain now that there’s nothing there. Nothing there at all, and no reason ever to return.”
Norton groans.
“It’s a poor reward for such a sacrifice, I swear. To know there’s nothing there. What kind of prize is that?”
“We did all we could. We followed the plan.”
“I’m not making any accusations, Tom. Don’t think I am. I’m grateful for what you did and glad that you lived to tell the sorry tale. If you hadn’t lived, God knows what I might have imagined.”
Hearn, after briefly nodding his assent, holds a blistered hand out to the flames for a minute, then, wincing, reaches slowly down to touch his raw and swollen feet.
“You’ve done your duty and you’ve suffered for it, suffered mightily, as anyone with eyes can see, but thank God you’re back home safe,” Norton says.
“I’ll have Edward Hutchins attend those injuries, and I’ll have a cot made up in the bedroom over there.
If you sleep here in the apartments with me until you’re fully mended, the other men aren’t likely to bother you too much. ”
“Don’t think I’ll spill our secret,” Hearn replies. “Don’t trouble yourself about that. I understand there’ll have to be some reckoning soon, some story for the men in London about why we were up there and what went wrong, but I’ll only say what you want me to. Nothing more or less.”
Norton nods, then steps forward and lays a grateful hand on Tom Hearn’s shoulder.
“I knew I could trust you, I never doubted it, but it’s good to hear you say the words yourself.
What has happened is a dreadful shock and disappointment.
I’ve lost two dear friends and seen my fondest hopes smashed all to pieces.
My old heart is aching and my soul is sore, but at least I have someone close by who shares that pain and knows its true cause.
You and I are bound together now, Tom Hearn, bound together by the sorrow and the sadness, and that’s the simple truth. ”
“I’ve seen a fair few things I never wished to see.”
“Of course you have, but I’ll make sure you’re paid in full for all you went through.”
“The remainder of the fee, you mean? The ten pounds?”
“The ten pounds just as we agreed, most certainly, and something extra for all your troubles. But we can talk more about that by and by. For now, you need to rest and get your strength back. You stay there, just as you are, and I’ll fetch the surgeon in to give you a tonic and bind up your wounds.”
Norton opens the door and instructs Amos Sewell the carpenter’s assistant, who is strolling past, to find Mr. Hutchins and tell him that his company is required immediately in the chief factor’s apartments.
While they are waiting for Hutchins to appear, Tom Hearn gradually falls asleep in his chair by the fireplace.
His head slumps down by degrees and his mouth drops open as his breathing slows and thickens.
Magnus Norton takes the empty soup bowl from Hearn’s lap and finds a blanket to cover his legs.
I had thought the Ox Lake gold would usher in a glorious swan song, he thinks as he gazes coolly at Hearn’s slumbering form.
That come September I would leave this Fort in John Shaw’s strong hands, with Abel as his deputy, and return to England to enjoy my riches.
But now my chosen successors are both dead, the gold has proved a mirage, and all I have instead, by way of recompense, like an orphaned child left on my doorstep, is queer Tom Hearn from the whaling sloop, a man until now famed mainly for his strangeness and his lack of charm.
Perhaps there is something more to him than appears at first glimpse, some cheerier or more delighting prospect, but even if there isn’t, since fate and circumstances have so pressed us together, it seems that I must make some compact with him anyway, some makeshift peace or comity.
In better times, Lord knows I would not choose him as a companion or a friend, but with all he understands of this sorry business, until I know I am safe again I surely cannot dare to have him as my enemy.