Read Winter Shadows for Free Online

dream
.
    One day, a girl with large red carbuncles on her chin asked questions about my distant home with seemingly casual interest. I told her about my parish in Rupert’s Land and about my family. The girl, whose father is an archbishop in York, glanced slyly at her friends. “See? I told you so. Beatrice is country born
, à la façon du pays,
as my papa calls it. That’s French, not Indian.” She sniffed with such disdain, it was a wonder to me her nose didn’t turn inside out. I suppressed a smile, which only inflamed her. She snapped, “Your father’s mother is a savage, Beatrice. Which makes him one as well – and you!”
    “What does ‘country born’ mean?” asked an English girl, whose parents were recent immigrants to the Red River settlement some twenty miles from St. Cuthbert’s
.
    “Don’t be such a simpleton, Penelope. It means Beatrice is a half-breed. Her grandparents weren’t married in a Christian church! They lived in sin – breeding like animals.” The carbuncle girl looked as if she were sucking on a mouthful of chokecherries
.
    I didn’t say a word, though my heart was pounding, but I looked long and steadily at her. She blushed an ugly purple and turned away, calling to her friends
.
    As a number of other daughters of Hudson’s Bay officials were at the school, we soon split into two groups. To be fair, a few of the English girls were kind, if not openly friendly. For this I was grateful, yet I found myself suspicious of their motives. Only Penelope kept trying to be friends, and, as time went on, our interests in music and literature bound us in quiet companionship. But there was still much reserve between us
.
    When I think about it now, of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the archbishop’s daughter’s nasty comments. I had always felt quite distanced from local gossip, but the scandal concerning the Company’s chief officer’s country-born wife and a young English captain only a few years ago had torn the Red River settlement apart. The rumors of this so-called affair, having been started by vicious tittle-tattle from people like our bishop’s wife and her friends at the Upper Fort, soon grew in strength and ugliness. The rumors were so ferocious and widespread that even I, tucked away in Old Maples, heard them. Although a court case proved the young woman innocent, the gossips considered the results a travesty of justice. The young wife’s friends thought them
fair and true. But societal pressure caused many of her friends to move quietly away from her and her now-depressed and devastated young husband. Either way, it changed the settlement for good. The new English residents became very cautious about befriending anyone with Indian blood
.
    Papa told me recently that many mixed-blood people like himself, who were educated in good Scottish public schools and who held high positions in the Company or in the settlement’s new political establishment, were denying their Indian blood. I realize now that the archbishop’s daughter was simply giving me a taste of more ugly things to come
.
    When I was called home by Papa, Penelope promised to write and has been true to her word. Since she was also summoned back to the settlement not long ago to look after her sick mother, we exchange letters regularly, usually about books or the weather. But never anything of a private nature. She has not invited me to her home and has refused all invitations I have sent to her. I must try not to read too much into this. But it is hard
.
    Her father opened a provisions store for the droves of new English arriving in the Upper Fort area. Last week, Penelope sent me a jar of marmalade from a Scottish shipment. I felt, ungratefully, that she might be showing off a little. As oranges are almost unknown in our parish, the golden jelly, thick with orange peel, was a special treat for Papa, who had enjoyed it many times in Scotland. It is a rare event for him to smile with such pleasure.