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Canongate Books - Elphinstone Margaret

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229 pages

English

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In the early 1800s, Rachel Greenhow, a young Quaker, goes missing in the Canadian wilderness. Unable to accept the disappearance, her brother Mark leaves his farm in England, determined to bring his sister home. What follows is a gripping account of Mark's odyssey and his travels with the voyageurs - the men who canoe Canada's fur-trade route. As adventure and discovery propel the plot forward, Elphinstone takes the reader back in time and intertwines the story with enduring themes of love, war and family ties.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	26 novembre 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781847677587
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0440€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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For Henry
Contents
Title Page Dedication Editor’s Preface Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Editor’s Afterword Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Margaret Elphinstone: Copyright
E DITOR’S PREFACE

WHEN I FOUND THE MANUSCRIPT, I LITTLE THOUGHT that it would contain such an extraordinary adventure. It had no title page. When I opened the foolscap notebook – which I did carefully, for the leather binding was quite brittle – I only saw closely-written lines of faded brown ink. The script was neat and plain, thank God, though the letters were curiously unformed, as if the writer had been unused to working with a pen. A Lakeland farmer, I supposed – and so indeed it proved – but this was no country tale of life in a quiet backwater, under the shadow of Blencathra. I began to read, and forgot what I was doing, and why I was up there in the dusty attic. I read on, and the words led me over the sea, across a continent, into a wild adventure way beyond anything I’ve experienced, or that anyone these days is likely to experience, anywhere at all. I took the book back down the ladder with me, and did no more work that day. I finished the tale, but the writer continued to haunt me. What if he’d decided otherwise? He doesn’t admit how near to it he came, but reading between the lines, I saw how close we came to a very different ending. And what could possibly have happened then?
I should explain that we bought Highside at the end of last year, from a farmer called Mark Greenhow. He’d lost his hefted flock to foot and mouth disease – only now do I even begin to understand what that might mean to a man like him – and a year ago he put the farm up for sale. When we came to take measurements, after the sale was complete, Greenhow was taciturn but not obstructive. The place suits us perfectly. There are direct trains from Penrith to London, an airport at Carlisle, and who wants to raise children in London these days? The builders arrived after we moved in, which was not according to plan, but if it hadn’t worked out that way I might never have been prowling in the attic on that wet Sunday morning, thinking about my big study that was to run the length of the house, lit by new rooflights, with my work surface directly underneath, and bookshelves all along the back wall. There was no floor yet, just a few loose planks laid over the joists, but in one corner there were thick oak planks nailed down. The end one was loose, and in a moment of idle curiosity I prised it up, and found a little dry box-like space underneath, built in under the eaves. And in it, wrapped in a thin linen sheet, I discovered the manuscript.
I’ve been busy enough the past few months, but I found time to look into things a little. The records office in the castle at Carlisle was helpful, and so were the local Quakers: there’s still a Meeting at Mosedale, and I’ve got quite interested in it. After I’d talked to one or two people I decided there was no reason why I shouldn’t publish the book myself. By this time the first Mark Greenhow had me hooked. Finally I took my courage in my hands and wrote to the present Greenhow. He was cannier than I expected, but with the publisher’s help we eventually managed to make a deal.
I’ve done a reasonable amount of editing. I’ve modernised the spelling, and made a few obvious corrections. Greenhow evidently never learned the gentle art of punctuation – except for the copious use of dashes – so I’ve put that in for him. Luckily his writing was seldom illegible. I’ve modifed his vocabulary on the rare occasions when it might be offensive to modern ears. On the whole he exhibits a remarkable tolerance for his time, but obviously he could not know the meaning of political correctness. He has attempted to transcribe phrases in French and Ojibwa as he heard them, and sometimes I had to puzzle out a meaning before I could render them coherent. I never heard anyone speak Ojibwa in my life, but my email correspondents were remarkably helpful.
Mark’s ‘footnotes’, in which he took such pride, are actually loose sheets of paper interleaved between the bound pages. I think he’d be pleased with the way I’ve laid them out on the page. His big foolscap notebook I discovered to be identical to those in which the Caldbeck Monthly Meeting Minutes are written, so he must have bought it from the same supplier.
Otherwise I haven’t altered the content. I’ve cut a good deal of the religious discourse, particularly in the women’s letters (these were altogether the hardest parts to edit). Obviously it mattered to the writers at the time; I can’t see that it would have any significance for the modern reader. I’ve added nothing – how could I? – though I must admit there were times when I grew frustrated with Mark. If it had only been Rachel, now … But history deals us what it will, and that is that.
There are other questions I can’t answer. Why did Mark write the story at all? Did any of his family ever read it? It would have been dynamite if they did. There is a notion among Quakers even now (for I have been doing my homework) concerning the need to speak the truth plainly. Perhaps he felt that he had to tell his story – that he had failed to tell the truth for twenty-seven years – and because he couldn’t say it, he wrote it down instead. But this is mere speculation.
Who hid the manuscript in the attic? My guess is it lay there for over a hundred years, for its condition was remarkably pristine, all things considered. Perhaps one of the boys put it there, thinking it shameful, but too important to destroy. Or his wife? Would she do that? Maybe Mark put it there himself. But, again, why? Surely a writer wishes to be read? Perhaps he wrote with a reader in mind – his wife, or one of his sons, perhaps – and when it came to handing it over, he found it couldn’t be done. He wouldn’t be the first, if that’s the way it was.
But I should move out of the way, and let him speak for himself.
M.N.E.
Highside,
January 2003.
C HAPTER 1

Sixth Month, 1839
WHERE TO BEGIN? WHEN I LOOK AT THAT FIRST LETTER now, the paper is soft with much folding, and the ink is beginning to turn brown. Aunt Judith has crossed her lines, and her script betrays signs of the moiderment under which she laboured. It is no matter; I have her words by heart, almost, and it is the work of a few moments to transcribe them:

From the house of Thomas Nolan
Ste Marie du Sault
Upper Canada
12 th day of Ninth Month, 1809

To my sister Susan at Highside, Mungrisdale, in Cumberland,

This follows within a week of my last letter to thee, my dear sister, and if God wills it the ill news will overtake the good. Little did I think, when I described to thee our voyage from Niagara to York, and thence by the far-flung Quaker Meetings of Upper Canada to the Lake called Huron, where we visited several Indian villages upon the islands, and thence to this far outpost at the rapids of St Mary’s, that I should have such terrible news to communicate to thee .
I told thee in my last how the lad got off the sloop, and how when Rachel saved him the Scotchman stopped the fight and got her safe away to the house of a man called Ermatinger until the hue and cry died down, and how he saw us safe back across the river. Would that that were all the story! Oh, my dear sister, what am I to say to thee? She has been so tender a companion, she seemed so clear in the Light, so zealous in our ministry .
Susan, I did not know she was meeting him. He came to our third meeting, and I thought the Truth had reached him. I knew nothing of the gatherings at the Johnston house. I knew there was dancing and singing, for we heard it even at the Nolans’ when we lay in our beds at night, but I knew not that our very own ewe lamb was led astray into the wilderness, beguiled by that wolf in sheep’s clothing .
What can I say to thee? She left me a note, with her direction. They have gone south into the Michigan Territory, which is a part of the United States, in name anyway, for it is far beyond the settled frontier, peopled only by military outposts, trading stations and savage Indian tribes. The direction she gives is: La Maison de Madame Framboise, Mackinac Island, the Michigan Territory. She says she will be married before a priest at Mackinac. She says it is not possible that we should understand. I do not feel called upon to follow her .

In Peace and with much sorrow,
Thy loving sister, Judith Scott
It was I that fetched this letter from the receiving office in Keswick, and brought it home to my mother. My heart leapt when the clerk passed me the letter, for we had heard nothing of our travellers for almost a year. (The letter Judith mentions had never reached us, and we had no notion what she meant by the lad from the sloop, and it was the first we had heard of the Scotchman altogether.) My mother was chopping rhubarb at the kitchen table when I came in, and I remember how she slit the wafer open with the sticky knife, not even pausing to wipe it. Her hands were trembling. A year is a long time, and one cannot help but fear for those called upon to minister in the wilderness.
When our first grief was spent, I wrote to Rachel more than once, but there was never any reply. She was indeed lost to us. About three months after Judith’s first letter came, she sent another, enclosing a copy of the Minute that recorded my sister’s disownment from our Religious Society. Judith says,

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