As an inveterate urbanite, such things were beyond his experience. Saunas were something he avoided in gyms. He couldn’t imagine going outside in mid-winter to build up a fire so that you could roast yourself in an airless room, then go back out and roll in the snow.
“It would be too dangerous with the fire inside,” she explained. “You could turn the room into a raging inferno; or it would suck the air out of your lungs; or create a bone-shattering draft from under the door. Or you’d scald yourself trying to cool the flames.”
She seemed to be mocking herself, reciting her litany of possible disasters as if the full range had never before crossed her mind.
“Burn, bake, or broil,” she went on. “Steam cook, dry preserve, or boil — everything but fricassee or southern fried! It gets hot as Hell in there; it’s an oven, after all.”
He glanced at the bottom edge of the door. It looked to be a pretty tight seal.
Morgan sniffed the air like a cat trying to determine whether it is the predator or the prey. Shelagh Hubbard leaned against a workbench and watched him, apparently fascinated by his ambivalence.
His mind shifted and, leaning against the bench beside her, he relaxed. He was not used to the sensuous impress of a country place. He could separate the sweet odour of a smoky fire from the dry smells of ancient boards and musty walls that were stuffed with horsehair and dust, and the organic smells of linoleum ground through with dirt from the fields and the barn, smells of leather cracked with age, of horse collars and harnesses hanging from pegs against the stone wall. The visual scene was as rich. A couple of bicycles leaned at the end of the bench in casual clutter, an older one supporting the weight of a sporty all-terrain model. By the outer wall, between the shed door and the sauna, a derelict sideboard — with layers of original paint showing through in a medley of blues and greens — held a motley array of old bottles, canisters, and arcane culinary instruments, including a potato peeler and a small glass butter churn. Dusted off and placed on display in a shop on Avenue Road, all this would be worth a small fortune. On the floor was a hooked rug in such disrepair as to be of indeterminate design, yet strangely enough it was clean. There were several pairs of rubber boots and workboots in various stages of decomposition beside a new pair of cross-country Solomon ski boots. In the corner, by the door he had come in, a twenty-two calibre single-shot rifle leaned casually against the wall.
“There’s no bolt in it,” she said.
“What?”
“The gun. I keep the bolt with the cutlery and the bullets by my bed.”
“Why?”
“Strategic disarray — it’s a psychological prop. I would not enjoy shooting someone.”
“Really?”
“Too abrupt. With a bang, everything changes. There’s no time to consider the consequences. Guns are for stupid people, present company excepted. Are you carrying a gun?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Do you hunt?”
“It’s only a twenty-two. For varmints, really.”
“Varmints?”
“Rats, I suppose, but I’ve never even seen a rat — the barn’s been abandoned for years. Come on, let’s get something warm into you. We may be in for some weather tonight so I’ve cooked dinner. I figured we’d eat here.”
Morgan was astonished by the work in progress. The kitchen had been completely done over to create an ambiance that honoured the past while acknowledging the present. Major appliances were new, sheathed in stainless steel, and a pantry wall was staffed with all sorts of food processors and culinary paraphernalia. But the walls were antiqued plaster and the woodwork had been lovingly restored. Wood and plaster were painted in deep colours of the early Victorian era, before garish hues and wallpaper came into vogue. Beyond the kitchen, the central front hall was in a state of suspended endeavour, with a stepladder still in place and tools on the floor.
“Now you see why I admired the handiwork at your Hogg’s Hollow crime scene,” she said, gesturing with a sweep of her arm. “I’m doing this myself. It’s slow-going, but it’s coming along. Looks pretty good, eh?”
He felt a chill as he surveyed her work. Was she taunting him? Why would a person capable of devising horrors with pathological precision now run the risk of exposure, simply to show off her talent in a far more conventional context? Unless that was the point; unless she felt certain she would not be caught, and got a thrill from being under suspicion. A dangerous game, he thought.
Despite her protestations that dinner would be made up from a few odd things lying around, as she hadn’t had the opportunity to get into Meaford to shop, the meal was sumptuous. She had fresh romaine in the fridge and made up a delicate dressing of olive oil, mint, garlic vinegar, a dash of maple syrup, salt, and a grinding of pepper. While she fired up the electric grill and got the vegetables on, she sent Morgan out to retrieve a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino from the sideboard in the summer kitchen, which, while she was in residence, remained above freezing but a little too cold for Brunello, he thought. She asked him to bring in a package of lamb chops from the large chest-freezer in the drive shed. The freezer, Morgan observed, had been recently defrosted and immaculately cleaned. It was almost empty.
During dinner they chatted amiably. He told her about Easter Island and she talked about her project in the nearby Midland area, where she intended to dig in the coming summer if her grant came through. Digging up saints, she explained.
“Seriously, I’m on the trail of the bones of the Jesuit martyrs.”
“I thought they were burned at the stake.”
“Cooked; then the flesh was stripped from their bones. But their bones, Morgan, their bones were strong medicine. The Black Robes died with extreme valour, and so their bones were venerable artifacts for the Hurons who killed them — my theory is that they were treated like holy relics in the Middle Ages. At first I thought bits and pieces might be found among medicine bundles. Now I suspect their bones were gathered together at some point and buried in a sacred place.”
“What an astonishing irony,” said Morgan. “Like King Henry sanctioning Becket’s sainthood after commanding his execution.”
His allusion seemed of no interest. He shrugged as they got up and moved closer to the fire. He had grave doubts about this strange woman, which she seemed to cultivate, and her project sounded far-fetched. Research proposals were peer reviewed, of course, although perhaps her peers were equally delusional.
“So, how do you get permission to dig up a sacred aboriginal site and/or the grave of a saint?”
“You have the good fortune of being able to trace the bones to unsanctified ground on the edge of a farmer’s field.”
“You’ve done that?” he asked, a little incredulous.
“No,” she said, as she tilted a decanter of port and poured them each a good portion. “Not exactly. I have been shown a place where there is a stone cairn and what might be a burial mound, on land that may once have been a Huron settlement. The native residents have long since disappeared, pushed out by successive waves of Iroquois, French, and then settler invaders, none of whom were interested in a hallowed sight of the vanquished. I’m playing on more than a hunch, though. By reading Jesuit texts, reading the lay of the land — it would have been a perfect setting for one of the Huron people’s moveable villages, a pocket of good earth for agriculture, the stonework appears to be Huron — everything led me to think the farmer who owned it, who called me out of the blue, was on to something. He knew about the mound all his life but waited until he got old before risking anything that might interfere with working the land. Unfortunately for him, he waited too long. He died. But the new absentee owners from Toronto don’t mind me prowling about. In fact, they’re quite pleased, and they don’t even know what I suspect is interred in the mound, only that they are, as we say, stewards of our archaeological heritage.”
Shelagh Hubbard was an odd anomaly. As she leaned toward him over the table, gesticulating with her wine glass, the candle flames caught in her eyes and flickered. Morgan was drawn to her and repelled, and she seemed amused by his ambivalence.
“This is my sanctuary, Morgan. My sanctum sanctorum, where anything seems possible and all is forgiven.”
Planes of firelight gleamed on the walls, the fire burned bright and clean, the air shimmered with a timeless
