Elizabeth blushed again. She seemed to blush at everything these days, and the feeling of her face growing warm added even more to her embarrassment.
“Elizabeth the First was known as Bess when she was younger,” the Judge continued. “That’s what you look like to me — Bess. You don’t mind if I call you Bess, do you? You probably will be an Elizabeth in a few years, but right now you look like a Bess to me.”
Elizabeth found that she was strangely flattered by the Judge’s nickname for her. “No. I don’t mind,” she said.
“Well, if you’re going to be around here for a while we’ll probably be seeing a fair amount of each other. Bess is easier to say than Elizabeth.”
“I don’t mind,” Elizabeth repeated. She thought for a moment. “Bess seems sort of old fashioned, as if it goes with Barkerville and Wells and all the history that’s a part of this place. No. I don’t mind being called Bess.”
“Well then, Bess, you call me Judge if you like. And since we are going to be neighbours (I live in Wells too, you know), then let’s be friends.”
“All right, Judge.” Elizabeth smiled. “By the way, I enjoyed your performance.”
“Thanks,” the Judge replied. “I enjoy doing it. Judge Begbie was so much a part of the history of the gold rush that I feel honoured to portray him.”
They began walking towards the church door. “It made me feel a bit funny,” said Elizabeth. “Almost as if you were the real Judge Begbie and this really were Barkerville a century ago.”
The Judge opened the door for her. “A lot of people react that way, Bess. What do you think of Barkerville?”
“This was my first trip,” said Elizabeth. “I’m not really sure. There is too much to take in at once, and some of the exhibits — well, they almost seemed too real. I felt as if I were a ghost, snooping around people’s houses, and that the people themselves might come back at any minute and find me there. I halfway expected to see gunslingers in the main street when I first came through the gate.”
“Oh, no!” said the Judge, seriously. “Judge Begbie didn’t allow any gun-fighting in Barkerville. It may look like a western town in America, but it was very Canadian, even then. Absolutely no gun-slingers were permitted!”
He looked very stern, almost as if he had been personally responsible for establishing law and order in Barkerville. Then he relaxed. “But I do know what you mean. This town affects me the same way. You know, sometimes I get so involved with Judge Begbie — thinking about him, reading about him, researching stories to use in my monologue — that I feel almost as if I am the Judge and that Evan Ryerson is one of those ghosts you talk about. I feel as if I’m just hanging about and peeking in at the Judge’s life but that he is the real person, not me.”
He shook his head. “Fanciful thoughts, aren’t they? Listen, let me get rid of this costume and then I’ll buy you a Coke at the Wake-Up Jake Café. I could do with something cold to drink. Then we can sit and swap impressions of Barkerville in comfort.”
Chapter 3
August 24, 1980
Dear Dad,
If my writing seems a bit funny it’s because I’m writing this on my knees as I sit in the cemetery in Barkerville. I have a special place here, under a big old pine tree, out of the way, where the tourists don’t often come. There is one lonely grave in this spot, but I can’t read what the marker says (except for one big S or maybe one of those funny f’s that they used to make in the old days). The rest of the inscription is weathered and grown over with moss and I haven’t got the heart to scrape it away and see what it says.
I like this spot, and I am spending a lot of time here. It is quiet and peaceful. I bring my book and read (or write letters), and sometimes I snooze. Mom is really busy these days and still very tired when she’s finished work, so I don’t see much of her. She doesn’t mind my spending so much time here. It keeps me out of her hair! Somehow this spot isn’t spooky at all, in spite of it being in a graveyard. I don’t feel nearly as lonely here as I do sitting in the trailer in Wells, so almost every day I get out my bike early in the morning and ride up to Barkerville. Sometimes I go into the town itself, but most of my afternoons are spent right here, under my favourite tree, with a book from the Pacific 66.
I’ve even memorized some of the headstones. Do you know that there are people here who came from all over the world? It is fascinating to read the epitaphs and wonder what they were like and why they came to Barkerville. The graves are so old that some have full grown trees inside the picket fences that enclose them.
Barkerville is a great place! I think I told you about how it made me feel so peculiar the first day I came here. Well, it still gives me the shivers once in a while, but now that I know it better, that feeling has almost gone away. I spend hours looking at the exhibits and wondering what it would have been like to live here when the town was new.
My favourite display is the Bowron house, built in 1898 by William Bowron, the son of one of the Gold Commissioners. There is a beautiful old piano in the house with one of those mannequins playing it. I don’t like the mannequins very much. I’ve found out that they’re made of papier maché, not plaster as I thought at first, but I still don’t like them. The Judge says that six men brought the piano into Barkerville on their backs in the early 1860’s for use in one of the saloons!
Anyway, the Bowron house, like all the exhibits, is furnished with antique furniture that fits right in with the age of the town. It has a funny old sideboard with china plates and jugs on it, a clock on the wall that really works, music on the piano stand and an old book lying on a round table in the middle of the room. Then, when you go around to the back of the house, you can see the kitchen with the wood cook stove and the pots and pans and kitchen utensils just sitting there, as if they were waiting for someone to come in and start supper. I really enjoy Barkerville and, as you can see, I’m learning some history as well! I wish you and Brian could come up and visit. I know you’d love it, too.
Well, in case Mom hasn’t written to you yet, I guess I’d better tell you that she is sort of worried about me. But she doesn’t have to be. She’s complaining because I haven’t made any friends yet, and although she says that Barkerville is a good place for me to spend my time, I know she thinks that I could find better things to do than to come here every day. But Dad, there’s absolutely nothing to do in Wells! It’s not fair, actually. She’s the one who dragged me up here in the first place, and now she’s nagging at me for enjoying myself. So, if she does write to you, don’t worry. I have made some friends, good friends, but they are different from the type of friends I had in Vancouver.
I’ve told you about the Judge. He is a fantastic person, and knows a lot of the real history of Barkerville — the things you can’t find in books. He has a daughter who’s married and lives in Nova Scotia, and he brought her up himself after his wife died, which is one of the reasons, I guess, he understands me so well. He treats me as if I were an adult; he never talks down to me the way some teachers do. He’s a good listener too, and some days when I get really lonely he’ll let me talk for hours about you and Brian and Vancouver. I’m glad he’s here.
I’ve also met the members of the acting troupe of the Theatre Royal. They let me see the show for free if I sit down front and babysit all the little kids they put there.
The show is a lot of fun. It’s a melodrama with music played on an old piano, and the audience is supposed to boo the villain and cheer for the hero. They really get carried away sometimes. The whole theatre seems to shake with the noise. Linda, the girl who plays the heroine, is a friend of the Judge and she says that when I get older I can audition for a part in the play. She says that it’s hard work doing two performances a day all summer, but it’s a great experience and you really