Settlement. Ann Birch
Sam, surely she did not smoke—”
“No, but she took in the whole scene and stored it away in that head of hers. I wish you could have seen those blue eyes studying everyone around that table. There’s bound to be a chapter about this evening in one of her books.”
“Imagine bringing up the subject of newspapers at a dinner table. So unfeminine, I thought. But let’s forget about her. Let’s think about our future.”
The next morning, the maidservant brought a cup of chamomile tea to Sam’s bedchamber. He drank it as he dressed, and his stomach felt better. It was that godawful port which the Governor served, perhaps in an effort to cut the costs of Government House.
As he passed the door of his daughters’ room, on his way to breakfast, he could hear Emily’s sobs and Miss Siddons’ calm, well-modulated voice. He stopped outside the closed door to listen. “There, there, child, dry your tears and let us plan something happy for this day. Shall we go along King Street and see what the merchants have in their windows for Christmas? Then we can compare prices and draw up a list of best buys for your Mama.”
The woman understood the need for diversion. Really, she was worth every penny of her wages. But still he could hear Emily’s sobs. What childish tragedy could have so rent his little girl’s heart?
He knocked on the door. Miss Siddons answered. Over her head, he could see Emily sitting on the bed. Her face was flushed and her eyes red.
“Papa, oh Papa, my lovely hens are...” More sobs.
“Emily’s pets have died, sir. A fox got into the chicken coop and killed them all. We found out from Cook when we went down for breakfast. The c-a-d-a-v-e-r-s are still in the henhouse, she said.”
Oh dear. Emily and her sisters went out every morning to collect eggs and to feed the hens. He sat down on the bed beside Emily and put his arms around her. “Let us go out to the coop and give them a decent burial. You may pick some of those pretty purple chrysanthemums from the conservatory to put on their graves. Or any of the other flowers there. Whatever you want, dear.”
“And perhaps we could read something appropriate for the occasion,” Miss Siddons said. She picked up a Bible from the top of the bureau. “Ellen and Charlotte and I will come along for the service. Let us all get our coats and mittens on.”
Sam went downstairs to get his coat and boots from the front hall. “We’re having a funeral service for the hens,” he called out to Mary, who was in the breakfast room. “Complete with passages from King James. Come along.”
She came into the hall. “Oh really, Sam. Do you not think it absurd—perhaps even sacrilegious—to read scripture over the carcass of a hen?”
“I don’t give a damn about sacrilege at the moment. Come or don’t come.”
He looked up the staircase as his daughters clattered down. Emily had stopped crying, and Ellen was smiling. Miss Siddons followed close behind, holding tight to Charlotte’s hand. As Mary saw the funeral procession advance, she sighed and pulled her heavy coat off the hall tree.
In the conservatory, Emily selected some pink coneflowers, and they set off for the hencoop. It was beyond the stables, where Sam stopped to enlist the help of John, the coachman, who took down two spades from hooks on the wall. Then Sam emptied the contents of a pine toolbox onto the ground and put the box under his arm. On they went, over the bridge across the burn, past the now leafless hazelnut woods, and beyond the smoke shed. Finally, just as Charlotte was begging Sam to carry her, they reached the large brick henhouse.
They could see the fox’s bloody tracks in the fresh-fallen snow, and when they opened the door, they saw grey and white feathers and blood everywhere. Emily started to cry again as she looked at the carcasses. The few frightened pullets that had survived the massacre squawked on the roost.
“Pick out your favourite hens, darling,” Sam said, “and we shall put them into this box for separate burial.”
Emily walked about, looked at each dead hen, then picked up two bedraggled grey and white bodies. They were not much mutilated. Perhaps they had died of fright.
“Here they are, Papa. Happy and Merry.” She held them out to him, and he placed them gently, side by side, in the toolbox.
“I remember now. We got them last Christmas, did we not? And their names were Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. But how did you recognize them among the others, dear?”
“By their faces, of course, Papa.”
“Of course. I should have known that.”
Then Miss Siddons read from Psalm 84. “Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and Happy and Merry a nest where they may lay their eggs, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” Sam began to wish that his wife had stayed in the breakfast room.
“Amen,” they all chorused. Except for Mary.
John and Sam dug a trench in the floor of the henhouse. The ground had not frozen and they made short work of their task. Emily laid the toolbox in the grave, and the other two girls gathered up the remaining corpses and put them to rest in the earth. Miss Siddons gave the words of committal: “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.”
Sam filled in the trench, and Emily placed the coneflowers in a pickle jar on the fresh grave.
It was altogether a happier group of little girls that began the march back to the house, stopping from time to time to throw snowballs. Miss Siddons joined in the game, while Sam and Mary and the coachman trudged ahead.
“Resurrection for a bunch of squawking hens? Really, Sam, that was a bit too much.”
“More likely for them, I’d say, than for some of the people I’ve seen buried recently.”
He was glad to hear her laugh.
At the stable door, Sam waved goodbye to his family and Miss Siddons. “Got some business to clean up here,” he said. When they were out of earshot, he turned to the coachman. “Get me one of the rifles.”
He set off back to the henhouse and beyond it into the wild bush. The snow was not deep, and the trail was easy to follow, even though some of the blood had washed off in the snow. When the footprints disappeared into the hollow of a huge, dying oak tree, he stopped and lay down on the ground to wait.
It was a long wait. His fingers grew numb, and the snow melting under him made his whole chest and the front of his legs wet. How long was it? An hour? Two hours? He dared not move to pull out his pocket watch.
Then a black snout appeared and disappeared. Then a hiatus of a minute or two or three. Then the whole head and forelegs. Sam pulled the trigger. A blast of shot, and the creature lay dead.
He pulled the fox from its lair and laid the carcass on the snow. It was a large vixen with a beautiful tail, which he cut off. Perhaps the skin could be treated and a fur collar made for Emily. He left the rest of the bloody mess beside its lair—the Indians who sometimes came through the property from the lake would probably pick up the pelt—and began the trek home.
As he trudged on through the snow, he made up his mind to buy more chickens at the market on Saturday. Emily could come with him and pick out the ones she liked. She would then have new pets to care for, and he would have fresh eggs for his breakfast.
It was only as he sighted the rear entrance to his house that he considered what he had done. There were surely cubs in that hole in the old oak tree. Without their mother, they would die.
The vixen had tried in the only way she knew to feed her family. To care for their young: that was the lot of all creatures on God’s earth, man or beast. It was his own biggest responsibility. Perhaps it was something the fine Mrs. Jameson would not understand, playing the role of fine lady to her fine husband.