free, enviable life. But that was before Selkirk came.
“McClure!”
He looks around. Standing at the top of the bank, one of his brigade is looking down at him. “Aye?”
The man gestures with a thumb over his shoulder. “Chief trader wants to see you, and he’s the devil this morning.”
Alexander nods and waves to the man, who stares a moment and disappears. The summons is expected; the peltries Alexander had traded were mostly miserable summer affairs neatly wrapped with a few prime ones as disguise. The ruse lasted long enough to collect credit and get drunk. Now the reckoning has arrived — as it always did.
He craves a pipe, but can’t recall where he has stowed his gear. No doubt it followed his purse. “Piss on it,” he says.
The morning is becoming hot, although his thick clothes remain sodden. The feeling as he tugs them on is distasteful, reminding him of how skin slid off a corpse turned liquid by sun and flies. His boots squelch water as he climbs his halting way up the bank to the fort.
William Spencer, chief trader, is tall and lanky with a scrawny, loose neck with skin hanging off it like a turkey. His fingers are knobby and he stinks of the sour tallow with which he smears himself to ward off blackflies and mosquitoes. He has a habit of constantly digging his tongue at either corner of his mouth.
“There you are, McClure. It’s about time,” he says in his irritating whine, sounding as always as if something cold was squeezing his testicles. The chief trader’s office is in a flanker, a small triangle-shaped closet high above the central courtyard. Originally intended for cannon, but the guns never arrived from England, so the embrasure behind Spencer is pasted over with Company handbills.
“Aye,” Alexander replies, not bothering to remove his hat. “You wanted to see me?”
“I asked for you over an hour ago, McClure. You seem to think that Company time is yours to piss away as you see fit.”
“Get to the point, man.”
“The point is that you have been living beyond your means, living off the Company’s good graces, in fact.”
Alexander crosses his arms and says nothing. Spencer’s colour rises. Sucking in his breath, he twitches a ledger sheet across the desk.
“What do you say to that?”
Alexander doesn’t bother looking at the paper, but continues to stare at the chief trader.
“I’ll tell you what it says, you illiterate bugger,” Spencer shouts. “You delivered a bundle of made beaver, or so you told my ass of a clerk. But there were no more than a dozen pelts worthy of the name and the rest is flyblown shit.”
“Is that so?” Alexander says, cocking an eyebrow. “I could have sworn …”
“And you helped yourself to several pounds’ worth of trade liquor, bought on what is now shown to be almost worthless credit!”
Alexander shrugs. “I will pay with next season’s furs.”
“Not good enough, McClure. I have shown this to the factor, and he wants to talk to you.”
“Eh?”
Spencer leans back in his chair and smiles up at the trader in front of him. “Yes. You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Half-caste. When Himself is finished with you, your balls will be flying from the Company’s flagpole.
“You’re a prick, Spencer.” Alexander says. Furious that shooting the chief trader is not a recommendable option, he strides over and kicks the desk. It careens back, sending the man crashing against the wall.
“McClure!” The factor has entered the room. He is a large man, with florid cheeks and sunken eyes carrying heavy bags. Although a gentleman, he gives the impression of having spent a great deal of time brawling in taverns. His habitual cravat, neatly pressed frock coat, and tailored trousers seem incongruous at York Fort. He is the most powerful man on the frontier — more powerful than a governor — and accountable only to the board of the Company of Adventurers in London. “Get up, you fool,” he says to Spencer, still tangled in his chair and scrabbling on the floor. “McClure, you come with me.”
Without a word, Alexander follows the factor out of the flanker. It is warm on the ramparts and fat blue bottles gather, lifting and buzzing and settling again on the sharpened posts of the palisade wall. They swirl about each other as if driven by unseen cyclones. A hum fills the air.
They walk slowly, the factor pausing occasionally, looking out over the walls into the distance. Time and again, he looks southward toward the roadstead, to the Hayes River scalloped by wind. In all other directions, the landscape is scabby swamp brush, a featureless black-green stretching to hazy distance. To the far west, Hudson’s Bay is barely visible, a silver herring on the edge of sight.
There are no ships at anchor, but they are due. Every year they arrive with the season, to take back furs to England and deliver trade stuff, equipment, and supplies. It had been that way since he was a boy, and even wars, local and distant, did not stop the trade. At the first sight of masts, he and his friends used to run to the cannon to wait the salute; the factor’s secretary came from the fort, and when the ship at last dropped anchor, the gun was touched off and the children running away squealing. A long time ago.
“I don’t need these kinds of petty annoyances, McClure,” the factor says, startling Alexander out of his memory. He searches the young man’s face and turns away. “You look a lot like your father,” he says. “No, don’t thank me! You’re not even a shadow of him. That man was as strong as bull and yet as honest as the day. He was a great friend of mine.”
“He spoke often of you, sir.”
The factor grunts in reply and mops his forehead with a greasy kerchief. “But nothing stays the same. Not for him, not for me, not even for you. You aren’t your father, but you will have to do. Do you know what’s out there, McClure?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing less than the fate of the Company. The Nor’westers have us by the throat. There are three ships overdue and if they are lost, I fear the Company of Adventurers is bankrupt. But it’s more than that. Do you know what one of those ships is carrying?” McClure shakes his head. “Colonists. More of those goddamned colonists that we have had to deal with these last seasons. Starving, desperate, ignorant Highlanders shipped here by Lord Selkirk for his fucking colony. They should be transported to Van Diemen’s Land, but the Lords will not listen. And so they have become my problem.”
Alexander knows about the colonists. For the last two years, boatloads of desperate peasants fleeing the Highland Clearances had arrived unbidden on the shores of Hudson’s Bay. Last year’s lot had been mistakenly delivered to Fort Churchill, which could not possibly accommodate them, and they were forced to make a starvation trek south to York Fort. Their arrival was not cheered, and, as soon as possible, they were sent on their way to Selkirk’s new colony at Fort Douglas, deep in the heart of Indian, Métis, and Nor’wester territory.
Although unbidden and despised wherever they went, Alexander had to hand it to them: they were
