The Nor'Wester Read online

  THE NOR’WESTER

  OTHER BOOKS BY

  DAVID STARR

  Golden Goal (2017)

  From Bombs to Books (2011)

  The Nor’Wester

  David Starr

  RONSDALE PRESS

  THE NOR’WESTER

  Copyright © 2017 David Starr

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency).

  RONSDALE PRESS

  3350 West 21st Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6S 1G7

  www.ronsdalepress.com

  Typesetting: Julie Cochrane, in Minion 12 pt on 16

  Cover Design: Nancy de Brouwer, Massive Graphic Design

  Maps: Veronica Hatch and Julie Cochrane

  Paper: Ancient Forest Friendly “Silva” (FSC) — 100% post-consumer waste, totally chlorine-free and acid-free

  Ronsdale Press wishes to thank the following for their support of its publishing program: the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Book Publishing Tax Credit program.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Starr, David, author

  The Nor’wester / David Starr.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55380-493-2 (softcover)

  ISBN 978-1-55380-494-9 (ebook) / ISBN 978-1-55380-495-6 (pdf)

  1. North West Company--Juvenile fiction. 2. Fraser, Simon, 1776–1862 — Juvenile fiction. 3. Fraser River (B.C.) — Discovery and exploration — Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8637.T365N67 2017jC813’.6C2016-907436-6C2016-907437-4

  At Ronsdale Press we are committed to protecting the environment. To this end we are working with Canopy and printers to phase out our use of paper produced from ancient forests. This book is one step towards that goal.

  Printed in Canada by Marquis Printing, Quebec

  to the people of Fort St. James,

  the Nak’azdli, and to those

  who have lived on the banks of the

  river since time immemorial

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Ronald and Veronica Hatch and Ronsdale Press for your editing, guidance and belief in this project. I am deeply in your debt. Thank you also to my wife Sharon and my family for your support. In particular I would like to thank my father who believed in Duncan Scott for a long time before this book was published. Finally, I would like to thank Cal Mackay and the Charles Best Secondary School Social Studies Department.

  The British Isles

  Route of the Nor’Westers by Canoe and Portage

  Simon Fraser’s Route to the Sea

  Chapter 1

  GLASGOW, 1806

  I fear I will never see the Highlands again. No more scent of hay and heather rising sweet on the summer air alongside my father. No birdsong filling my ears as I till the stone-scrabbled land, planting barley and wheat. These simple things of my old life, gone forever, missed with a fondness I never felt at the time.

  Now? Naught but dust, the clatter of looms and the strands of cotton that rise above the mill floor, twisting like spiderwebs. There are no wildflowers, no songs in the mill, just the cursing of angry foremen as they hit us, urging us to work harder, to clean the jammed machinery, to weave faster, to make money for the laird.

  Fourteen hours a day we toil, my mother, father, sister and I. Fourteen hours of sweat and aching bones and back-breaking labour, on a machine as hungry for life and blood as it is for the cotton that comes on the ships from America.

  I haven’t lost any fingers yet. Or my life, unlike the lass who worked next to us. Her name was Emma. She was fifteen like me, from Aberdeen, a thin girl, tall, with green eyes and hair the colour of ripe summer corn.

  It jammed, the loom she worked with her family, and she was sent to clean it. She reached into the works with her slender arm and as she did, the machine sprang to life. Her hand caught in a cog and she was lifted into the air, dragged screaming and writhing into the wheel.

  She died in front of her family, crushed to death, begging for help that did not come. And when the foreman finally arrived? He pulled her wrecked, twisted body from the guts of the loom and fined her parents a day’s wages for disrupting production.

  A year has passed since I last saw the mist-shrouded flanks of the mountains that rise above the black waters of Loch Tay. A year since the men came with clubs and guns and letters of eviction. Our farm leased by my family for five generations, now too valuable for people, turned over to sheep.

  Our old cottage is gone. Burned to the ground. Our cows? Shot by those smirking men who said the same fate would greet us if we ever returned to the Highlands. Now? We live in Glasgow, all four of us in a wee dingy room in a soot-stained brick tenement on the south bank of the River Clyde.

  Our water comes from a well on Caledonia Road instead of the stream that ran clean and clear beside our cottage. Our toilets? Clay pots, their stinking contents thrown out into the street when they are full. This is how we live, that is until this cold April morning when, shivering and weak from a fever, I struggle to get ready for work.

  My father takes one look at me and shakes his head. “Nae. Stay home, lad. Ye’d do more harm than good, the state yer in. And yer sister will keep an eye on ye too; ye could both use the rest.”

  I mumble a farewell and go back to sleep, hardly feeling my father put an extra blanket on my body and my mother kiss me goodbye. I slumber until just past noon and would have slept longer still had my sister Libby not shaken me roughly awake.

  “Duncan, get up. Something’s happening, there’s a commotion outside.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask, shaking the cobwebs from my head.

  “A dinnae ken. Something terribly exciting by the sounds of things. Let’s go and see.”

  We slip down the narrow staircase to the street, and it’s then I see the smoke. “The mill! It’s burning to the ground!” yells a small boy. There are many cotton mills in Glasgow but the only one within a short distance of our house is Hamilton’s Cotton Mill. Our mill.

  I rush forward, a sense of dread rising in my stomach. I turn the corner and see the place engulfed in flames. Huge columns of thick, choking smoke fill the air, and handfuls of dazed, ash-covered workers who’d escaped the inferno gasp for breath on the street.

  In full panic I speed towards the main gates. “Mother! Father!” I cry frantically as I search the crowd, but my parents are nowhere to be seen. Panic threatens to overwhelm me until Libby catches sight of Angus Drummond, a Highlander who works in the mill and lives in the room next to us.

  “Angus! My parents?” I beg. “Where are they? Have ye seen them?”

  “In there.” The old man points a trembling finger towards the inferno. “A beam fell down across the door! They’re trapped, lad! I tried to help but there’s naught I could do.”

  “Nae!” I push my way through the crowd towards the fire, sheltering my face from the flames and the billowing black smoke. Libby catches up to me and holds tightly to my arm.

  “Duncan! Stop! It’s too dangerous!” I shake free of her grasp and stagger forward towards the gates, fighting the waves of heat that water my eyes and make me gag for every breath. More than twenty yards from the main gates I’m forced to stop, and then, with a realization that hits me like a fist, I know my parents will never escape the flames.

  I collapse, weeping. Libby sits beside me as we watch helpl
essly while the huge mill burns until nothing remains but a pile of ruined brick and charred timbers.

  “Out of my way!” I lift my head to see a rider on a fine black horse quickly approaching. The horse whinnies to a stop in front of me, and a fat, toad-like man, looking ready to burst through his expensive clothes, climbs down from the saddle.

  Cecil Hamilton, the rich English owner of what had once been the most profitable mill in Glasgow, waddles through the crowd, jowls bouncing, sweat glistening on his fat face as he swats at people with his ornate walking stick. “My mill!” he cries over and over in his strange English accent. “It’s gone!”

  I feel a sharp pain on my arm. Through tear-filled eyes I see Hamilton glaring angrily at me, his walking stick raised to strike again. “What the devil have you got to cry about?” he demands.

  “My family was in there, my laird,” I choke.

  “Your family was useless Highland trash! They probably started the fire in the first place. They deserved to die. Now get out of my way!”

  Before Libby can move, Hamilton strikes her hard across the back with his stick. My sister cries in pain and falls onto the blackened cobblestone street.

  In a flash, my grief is replaced with blinding rage. I grab the walking stick from his fat hands and with a hard clean whack strike Sir Cecil Hamilton squarely across his head.

  “Don’t ye touch my sister!” I scream, landing blow after blow on the Englishman. Hamilton stumbles and falls to the ground, screaming for mercy, but I can’t hear a word and stop only when the strong hand of Angus Drummond stays my arm.

  “Nae! Duncan! Stop fer guidness sakes!” Angus pleads. In shock I drop the stick and stare blankly at the crumpled form lying still on the ground. “Ye nearly murdered him, lad! Ye’ll hang fer this if ye’re caught. Flee! Flee fer yer life!”

  Chapter 2

  We run, the sympathetic crowd parting as we pass. Many have lost family in the fire and few bear any love for the English mill owner. We race towards home and stumble up the steps to our room.

  In the space of a few moments we’ve become both orphans and fugitives, and whether it’s my fever or the sudden realization that my parents are dead, I reel, vainly fighting the urge to throw up.

  From my knees I watch helplessly as Libby stuffs our few possessions into a small canvas sack. “Get up, Duncan. We need to leave now.” In the corner of the room is a loose floorboard under which Father concealed our meagre savings. We weren’t supposed to know about the money, but it’s impossible to keep secrets in such a small place. Libby reaches under the board, tucks the bag into her coat and walks towards the door, listening nervously for the sound of pursuers. Frozen, I remain on the floor shaking, my eyes now riveted on a picture of our cottage in the Highlands my mother had embroidered years before.

  “Take it,” she says gently, lifting it from the wall and giving it to me. “’Tis all we have left of them now.” Libby cautiously opens the door. There’s nobody about and so, without a backward glance, we hurry down the staircase.

  Remaining in Glasgow is now utterly impossible for me. People who steal a mere loaf of bread in Scotland are routinely jailed or transported overseas. To assault a man of Hamilton’s stature in front of hundreds of witnesses? I’ll be executed if I’m caught.

  My sister pulls my coat tightly around my shoulders, places a worn cap upon my head, and we step out onto the street, alive with talk of the fire and the attack on Hamilton.

  We walk swiftly and deliberately, keeping our faces down, hoping desperately we won’t be recognized. I panic when we pass a troop of soldiers questioning a familiar, soot-covered man. By the looks of the blood and bruises on Angus’s face, the troops have been rough on him.

  “Oi! Come on then,” says a soldier. “We know the boy’s a mate of yours. You’d better tell us where we can find ’im.” We turn our faces and walk quickly on, leaving Angus at the mercy of the soldiers. There’s nothing we can do except pray our friend stays silent long enough to let us escape.

  Numb with grief and still battling illness, I walk for hours beside Libby, hardly noticing when the bustle of Glasgow is replaced by the quiet of the Scottish countryside. The change is remarkable. Spring flowers bloom in the fields, songbirds chirp and flutter about the hedgerows, and for the first time in months, I smell the rich musty odour of freshly turned earth.

  Tears spring from my eyes but Libby forces me to push the painful thoughts from my mind. “There’ll be time enough for that when we’re safe, brother. One foot in front of the other until we’re far away from Glasgow. One foot in front of the other.”

  With as much speed as we can muster, we pass furtively through the rolling hills of the Scottish Lowlands, avoiding towns and people as much as possible. We sleep in barns and sheds when we can and under hedgerows or the open sky the rest of the time.

  What little food we eat comes from the fields: half-rotten seed potatoes, turnips and carrots left over from the last harvest, washed down with cold water from the countless small streams that run down from the hills. It isn’t much, but it keeps us alive.

  Four days after fleeing Glasgow I ask the question that has been consuming me since the fire. “Libby, do ye think Mother and Father would be alive if we’d gone to work? Could we have saved them?” My guilt at their death has been growing by the day.

  “Nae. We’d have died as well, I reckon,” she replies.

  “Do ye think Hamilton’s dead, too? Did I kill him?”

  “A dinnae ken fer sure, Duncan, but I doubt it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say flatly. “Dead or alive they won’t stop hunting until they find me.”

  The thought chills my sister and she quickens the pace. “Then we’d best keep moving as far and as fast as we can, even if that means going all the way to London.”

  On a cool rain-swept afternoon, a week after leaving Glasgow, we come across a tumbledown collection of old stones stretching far across the countryside. I’ve never seen these ruins before, but I know immediately what they are.

  “In ancient days, the Romans conquered England,” my father had told me one day back at Loch Tay as we gathered in hay. “They pushed north, vanquishing all who tried to resist them, and it wasn’t until they reached Scotland that they were finally stopped. The Romans built a barricade to protect themselves from us, and to this day Hadrian’s Wall still stands as a reminder of the strength of the Scottish people.”

  “Have ye ever seen the wall?” I’d asked, full of pride.

  “Nae lad, though I’d love one day fer us to go together.”

  I pause for a moment and put my hand reverently on one of the ancient stones, my grief overwhelming me. My father will never see this wall. He will never see anything again.

  “Hadrian’s Wall is everything ye said it was, Father. I just wish ye were here with me.”

  I step through the ruins, and as the tumbledown stone wall passes out of view behind me, I take a deep breath, compose myself and press into England — and the unknown.

  Chapter 3

  The aroma of cooked meat lures us off the path, towards a campfire burning cheerfully next to a large chestnut tree. Beside the fire is a cart full of pots and pans and other assorted metal goods. A horse is tethered nearby, nibbling contentedly on fresh green shoots of spring grass.

  A cauldron hangs over the fire. Something delicious bubbles in the pot, and my mouth waters at the smell. We haven’t eaten for a day now, not since we found an old cabbage left in a field, half rotten and full of worms.

  I look around everywhere but the cauldron’s owner is nowhere to be seen. “Libby, I’m starving! Let’s eat!” My eyes are fixed on a piece of meat floating on top of what seems to be a stew.

  My sister shakes her head forcefully. “Nae Duncan! How would ye feel if someone stole yer food?” Ignoring the rumbling in my stomach, I reluctantly turn away from the pot.

  “I’m impressed, boy,” says a strange, high-pitched voice. “By the look on your face I’d have
sworn you was gonna take me dinner.”

  Startled, I follow the voice to the base of the chestnut tree where, dressed in brown and almost perfectly camouflaged against the bark, sits the oddest man I’ve ever seen.

  The fellow is tiny, hardly taller than a child, but he must be sixty years at the very least judging by his long grey beard. “What are your names?” he asks.

  “Marie, Sir. My name is Marie Drummond and this is my brother Angus,” Libby says cautiously, and I pray that our old friend won’t mind the lie.

  The little man stands up. “Well then, Marie and Angus Drummond. Name’s Tinker. Now come and eat; you both look as if you’re about to faint.” The man dips a ladle into the cauldron and fills three metal bowls with its steaming contents. “Rabbit stew.” He passes me a bowl of the most delicious-smelling food I’ve ever had. “Eat your fill and then tell me what two young Highlanders are doing alone in England, so very far from home.”

  “We were living in Glasgow, Sir,” Libby says between mouthfuls. “There was a fire and our parents died. There was nothing left fer us in Scotland afterwards and so we left.” I look worriedly at my sister but she adds nothing else.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the old man replies sympathetically, “and before Glasgow? Neither one of you strike me as city folk.”

  “Aye, ’tis true. We lived in the Highlands,” my sister admits. As sad as it is, this part of our tale is safe enough to tell.

  “Many have been forced off the land and into one of them cursed factories on this side of the border, too,” Tinker says when Libby finishes the story. “So what are you going to do now? Walk aimlessly about England?”