He turned, pushed open the door, and walked out, slamming the door behind him and storming past Sarah who stood outside in the hallway, leaving Emmy and Pickett in the room.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Emmy looked at Pickett, who seemed to be chagrinned, perhaps embarrassed for her as well as for himself. She maintained her composure, however.
“Captain, Winfield is highly educated and likes to show that off, but he also has always been a tempestuous man who seldom thinks before he speaks, although that was better than most of the exchanges I have witnessed over the years.”
She forced a small smile, cracking past a stern sadness. She paused, then continued, “This is no small request, I understand. My son is missing, and we believe we still may have the opportunity for rescue. We have been informed that this event was likely the work of a well-known renegade band of Haida. They winter up north, on the mainland across the strait from the Queen Charlotte Islands. I am told there are neutral trading camps up there too, with the Bella Bella and Tsimshian. We could send emissaries offering a bounty. I have a small amount of gold I have gathered that would likely be more than enough to establish a fair trade for my son. If it were possible to retrieve the rest of Isaac’s remains, his head, I would bring that back, too, so it could be put to rest . . . where it belongs. But Jacob—he is only six.”
She saw that Pickett listened to her carefully measured but passionate request. He sighed deeply, and a sadness seemed to come over him that told Emmy the answer. He stood and moved over to Emmy before he spoke.
“Mrs. Evers—Emmy—I am so very sorry. There is no way that I can help you at this moment. We are told by reliable sources that the British plan to send several companies of marines to fortify their claim on San Juan Island over an incident that recently occurred. I have to get there first and hold that ground. I have no choice in this matter. I cannot spare a single man.”
Emmy studied him for several moments and then stood. He was telling her the truth.
“Thank you, Captain. I am disappointed, but I understand.” After a pause, she said, “I shall book a passage and will go to Fort Simpson and to the Tsimpsian winter camps myself then. Without the help of this government. As you know, I am capable, and I negotiate quite well.”
Emmy turned, but as she started to leave, she saw Pickett’s stunned expression at the directness of her pronouncement.
“I am not afraid,” she said.
She found Sarah sitting outside the door, took her hand, and made her way to their quarters.
As she did so, Emmy shuddered, and an intense anger swept over her. She knew the captain was duty bound and had accepted that before she had even asked for his improbable assistance; still, she had had to make an attempt lest the dutiful but insane course she planned be criticized. She had rehearsed the request as well as the response upon being denied assistance.
She would not play upon Pickett’s emotions as she knew some might. She had wanted to say to him, “Jacob is my little boy,” but she prevented herself from making that final wrenching appeal. She knew she would keep that phrase to herself and she would be repeating it over and over again privately as she had for the past several weeks. It would guide her and drive her.
And now she had many things to do.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
That evening Pickett couldn’t sleep. He thought about Emmy making her way far northeast into the aborigine winter encampments and the grim likelihood of her finding nothing but suffering and disappointment at best and, at worst, savage and brutal treatment and a painful death. He had failed to extend anything that might bring her some hope or intervene to dissuade her from this madness.
He thought of himself making the same effort. Wondered if he would ever have the temerity to overcome the inertia of doing so, letting go of the security that even the rudimentary civilization of this region provided.
Could he, would he, ever take on such an arduous task for anyone he loved? Of course he could, he thought. But in his entire life, he could not think of one instance in which he had done so—put himself in harm’s way for someone he had loved. He had risked his life for glory, certainly, and for orders, but he had no recollection of tempestuous acts for the love of woman or child.
Did that make him bad, practical, or just selfish?
He wondered what it was about love that could compel someone to such actions. He had conceived a child, a boy, with Morning Mist. He was fond of the child but felt no pride or devotion to him. He wondered if that feeling would have been different had the boy not been a half-breed.
He thought about whether he had ever understood or accepted the weakness of his feelings, instead of containing them as dangerous out-of-control calamities waiting to uncoil themselves, snakes in a box with its latch broken. He had seen men withered and besot in a drunken, shrunken state in the aftermath of what they called love.
He had detested it when he let himself go like that, had fought and always defeated that weakness, and thus wondered whether he had ever really been truly in love in the way that seemed to drive so many. He had been in sadness, certainly.
He recalled that he had been head over heels enraptured by Morning Mist and had wept when she had died. But was that what they called love? Or was it rather an infatuation followed by the profound loneliness that comes with deprivation and self-pity?
Had he ever been so compelled by his feelings for her, or for his first wife, that he allowed himself to defy logic
