than a downpour.
He was presently trotting up Yonge Street, which was surfaced with crushed stone on the Macadam system and cambered to shed the water. North of Yorkville, progress was slower because he had not yet made inquiries at the numerous inns and taverns. Nor, of course, had anyone else.
Harris now had the tracing to show, though he began to doubt its utility when a market gardener at Gallows Hill said he definitely knew the subject—a Negress in her sixties, was she not? Then a Thornhill ostler thought he had seen the lady a week ago. She had been dressed in bright green and riding north, but not on a black palfrey with one white hind foot. Harris turned east and galloped on.
On joining the river, he began asking at mills, which at first were nearly as frequent as the inns on Yonge Street. Sawmills predominated, though the white pine had mostly been logged out. Forward-looking owners were also having their wheels grind corn or card wool. Shrubs and trees of no commercial value still lined the riverbanks, but this was far from wilderness. One surmised that Crane’s opposition to Theresa’s visits was based on the lengthy absences they entailed rather than on anything sinister or threatening about the valley.
Towards eleven a.m., Harris reached a place in the fourth concession of Scarboro Township where the stream flowed east, sharply south, then sharply west again. Over this peninsula, the homey smell of damp sawdust lay thick as porridge. Picking his way between piles of fresh lumber, he dismounted at the open end of a long frame shed. Inside, the rising and falling blade was tearing through a log so clamorously that—rather than speak—he simply touched the elbow of the older of the two men at the machinery and with an interrogative hoist of his eyebrows gestured to the doorway.
The bearded miller nodded and followed agreeably enough, but once outside responded to every question with a noncommittal grunt. An unproductive morning had its disheartening cap.
But wait—what if the man could not hear, if his saw had ruined his ears? Harris unfolded the portrait.
“Mrs. Crane,” said the miller with surprising force. “She used to ride here often. In the concession road and down the valley or up the valley and out the concession.”
“Last Sunday?” Harris bellowed.
“She had a black mare, skittish, but a treat to look at. I tried to buy it for my daughter.”
“Was Mrs. Crane here last Sunday?”
“Um.”
Harris found a stub of pencil in his jacket and wrote the question on a corner of the tissue paper.
“No, like I said. In the spring, she and another lady, but not since May or April.” The miller gave the coins in his pocket a wistful, indiscreet rattle of which he was doubtless unaware. “I would have paid sterling too,” he said, “no paper money.”
Continuing the interview would have been awkward enough even if the man had been willing to acknowledge his deafness. Harris approached the helper.
A young immigrant working to bring his betrothed out from Cork, he became cooperation itself on learning that Mrs. Crane’s parents had come from that very county. Of her mount’s markings he gave a detailed description. It fit Spat exactly. In declining the miller’s offers, Theresa had reportedly said the animal was too old and nervous to change stables. The other lady was remembered as dark and fine-featured. The Irishman had not caught her name, nor had he understood anything the horsewomen said to each other. They seemed not to be speaking English. Not Gaelic either. Neither had been seen for weeks.
Harris accepted a slice of pork pie and a glass of cider for his lunch before pursuing an old settlers’ road down the east brink of the river. Thirty-foot cliffs shut out any glimpse of the wheat fields and orchards he knew lay to either side and above him. On occasion he would clamber out of the valley to ask well-rehearsed questions at farm houses. Then he would rejoin the Rouge none the wiser. What kept him going was that no one south of the fourth concession could swear that Theresa had not ridden this way last Sunday.
Afternoon passed into evening. He had just left the last mill on the river when the rain began again, tentative and caressing at first. By the time he thought of his cape, his clothes were soaked through.
The valley grew swampy and desolate in its final mile. Enormous steps carved at one point into the cliffs from top to bottom constituted the only sign of human passage. These Harris recognized as the terraced graves of a long-abandoned Seneca Indian village. They were not a comforting omen. Nearer Lake Ontario, the aggrieved shrieks of gulls began to drown out the patter of raindrops on willow leaves.
Then Harris turned the last bend and found himself facing a wall of earth, a great hand pressed over the river’s mouth. This must be the embankment of the Grand Trunk Railway. In fact, a narrow outlet spanned by a trestle had been left for the Rouge water to escape to the lake, but the flow was too great and the river had backed up into a lagoon. Its waters had drowned a frame factory building labelled, “COWAN’S SHIPYARD: 2 & 3 masted schooners built to order.”
So, another blind alley. Wet and saddle-sore, Harris concluded that the best place for him now was in front of his own fire with a glass of something warming at his side. First, though, he stopped to mop the water from his face and pull his hat brim lower. Standing a moment in the stirrups, he stretched his legs and redistributed his weight. Before his inattentive eyes, two gulls picked and tore at a long white fish that lay on a patch of sand at the foot of the railway trestle. The G.T.R. wasn’t yet accepting passengers or freight west of Brockville, but this section of the line seemed to be complete.
Harris settled back in the saddle, preparing to move on. Which end of that fish, he wondered, was the head and which the tail? No, the head must be missing. That end was ragged and torn.
Wearily he tried again to make sense of what he was seeing. It was long and pale, but it was not a fish. Where the tail fins should have been were fingers.
The inside of his stomach began to twitch. Harris was daring enough in a physical sense and not too squeamish to clean and dress the game he killed, but that was a sportsman’s courage—not a soldier’s—and he had no practice in dealing with severed human limbs.
Only by ignoring this twitching was he able to urge Banshee forward into the water and across the lagoon’s sandy bottom. The scolding gulls hoisted themselves into the air and spiralled tightly over their interrupted meal.
Harris could bear to look at it only in glances. Bone seemed to be exposed below the elbow as well as at the shoulder. His first thought was to stop further pillage by burying the remains, but perhaps the topography should be disturbed as little as possible until seen by official eyes. At the water’s edge he dismounted and unrolled his oilskin. As he covered the arm, he glimpsed clinging to it green shreds of cloth and circling the wrist a bracelet of silver medallions. The edges of the cape he weighted down with stones.
He did not believe it was Theresa’s arm. There were thousands of miles of green cloth in the world. The bracelet . . .
Remounting a little queasily, he picked his way up the valley in the fading light. If he could only get away from this place, he should be able to think. The place went with him, however. The barest whiff of something rancid and waxy seemed to have rooted in the back of his throat and to be growing there. His nausea made even Banshee’s gentlest gait insupportable.
He got down and vomited. The waxy taste was still there, but he felt steadier—steady enough, at least, to realize that he had no idea where to report his discovery.
The
