Bellewether Read online

  He’d felt sure he’d never lose his fear of them or understand them, but his uncle had assured him that he would.

  His uncle had spent years among the Seneca himself—had been adopted by them when he had been cut off from his fellow soldiers on a raid and captured, and had passed three years among them. Rumour was he’d found a wife who’d borne his son before she and the infant both had died of smallpox, but his uncle never spoke of that. He did, though, hold the Seneca in high esteem, and when he’d taken Jean-Philippe into his care as a cadet within the service of the Troupes de la Marine, the first thing he had done was to present his nephew to those of his once-adopted family who roamed freely past the western limits of the maps along the wild frontier.

  “I have no son,” he’d said to Jean-Philippe, and something in his tone had made the boy believe perhaps the rumours had been true. “I have no son, but you are of my blood, my sister’s child, and if you treat these people with respect and have the wit to learn from them, then what regard they have for me may, by extension, pass to you.”

  And so it had. When those Seneca had travelled from their summer village to the one they used in winter, they had stopped first at the fort and, by arrangement with his uncle, taken Jean-Philippe along. He’d viewed it as a great adventure—but by spring he’d come to know it was in fact a privilege, and his childish prejudice had given way to steadfast admiration and to gratitude. In that single winter he’d learned many things, and most of those he’d learned from the young man who’d been his older “brother” in the family he had lived with. Broad through chest and shoulders, with a power tamped by patience and good humour, that young man had taught Jean-Philippe by simply doing things that drew the boy’s attention; drew him close enough so that the skill, once demonstrated, could be copied.

  It was the same technique, he’d noticed, that Monsieur Wilde used with both his sons—or tried to use, for neither son showed any interest.

  The younger of them had an energy that made him too impatient to observe and learn from anyone, nor did he have the nature of a farmer or a carpenter. The words that Jean-Philippe’s uncle had once said of him would fit this younger man as well: This one will never settle long enough to be a man of leisure. Although whether he, like Jean-Philippe, was born to be a soldier was unclear. He had the boldness, but a soldier needed discipline.

  The elder brother was the opposite, his discipline so deeply self-imposed he did not waver from a task once he’d begun it. Like his father, he seemed fairly skilled at carpentry. So far he had worked only at the smaller jobs, the fence rails mostly and the posts, but it was clear he had a builder’s eye. There’d been a telling moment when he’d set a rail in place and not been satisfied, and taking up his axe again he’d shaved a little here, a little there, and squared the end to near perfection, sighting down the rail so he could set it true and level. It had only been a moment, yet his features had transformed from concentration and a craftsman’s care, enough that Jean-Philippe with narrowed eyes had looked at him more closely and believed he’d glimpsed the man that this American had been before whatever in his life had left him silent and withdrawn.

  That this withdrawal was a relatively recent thing was evident from how the others dealt with it—the younger brother trying to provoke with arguments, much as a small boy with a stick might try to prod a half-dead creature back to life; the father trying gentler means.

  The Friday before last, Monsieur Wilde had gone out in the morning with his team of oxen and a full cartload of hay, and returned with the cart filled instead with what looked to be some great machine made of wood, all in pieces. He’d needed the help of both sons to offload the big beam and the jumble of odd parts and pile them next to the shed near the barn, and afterwards the elder son had stood and looked a moment at that pile, and from the way his father had been watching him, so hopefully, it had been plain to Jean-Philippe that Monsieur Wilde had set that wooden puzzle in the shed by way of an enticement, like a hunter laying bait along a trail to draw his quarry out.

  It hadn’t worked. At least, not yet.

  But it had made Jean-Philippe warm even more to Monsieur Wilde, who lately, when the midday meal was done, would rise and go outside and walk the little distance to the shed and, tying on his leather apron, take his tools in hand and set to work with the patient resolve of that Seneca man who’d sat years ago mending a break in a snowshoe or fletching new arrows until Jean-Philippe, curiosity burning, had asked the first question he’d learned in that language: “Can I help?”

  There’d been a few times this past week when Jean-Philippe had felt that small boy stirring restlessly inside him, tempting him to ask Monsieur Wilde the same thing.

  Instead, he’d asked de Brassart if he knew what the machine was.

  “It’s a cider press, apparently.” De Brassart had been sitting in the room the family chiefly used on Sundays, leafing idly through the pages of a book and looking bored. “Our host has spoken much about it these past days at dinner. They have an apple orchard here, and harvest is approaching, so they found themselves a cider press.”

  Jean Philippe had not wanted to sit. He had seen, through the half-open door to the kitchen, the black girl watching them suspiciously, so he’d crossed the few paces and opened the door fully to let her view them more easily, trying to calm any thoughts she might have that de Brassart and he were conspiring to do any harm.

  Then he’d said to de Brassart, “If they want it ready for the harvest, they still have much work to do.”

  “And they are welcome to it.” Stretching out his legs, the other officer had flipped another page. “Though our confinement here is tedious, at least the terms of the accord between our countries spare us being forced to serve as labourers.”

  Jean-Philippe hadn’t found any comfort in that—both because he would rather have laboured at anything than be condemned to do nothing, and also because he was darkly aware that the English did not always keep their agreements.

  He hadn’t had word of his men.

  More than two weeks had passed since he’d written the governor, and there had been no reply. Monsieur Wilde had assured him, by means of de Brassart’s translation, that both of the letters were sent, but for Jean-Philippe having to always rely on de Brassart to translate was also a source of frustration.

  Often somebody would speak at length, and then de Brassart would summarize that in a sentence or two, making Jean-Philippe fully aware he was missing at least half or more of what people were actually saying, and since he would never have trusted de Brassart with anything else, he was little inclined to now trust him with turning his words into English, so he had begun to do what he had done as a boy with the Seneca: he’d set himself to learn by observation.

  When they spoke to one another, he’d tried fitting sounds to common interactions. He had learned the words for “thank you” and the way to say “you’re welcome,” and the greetings for the evening and the morning.

  And he’d learned her name.

  It had not been an easy thing to learn, for those around her rarely called to her. But then, it seemed that there was little need to. She was always there.

  Each morning when he came back from his walk she was already at the kitchen hearth. She served him breakfast—something he had never regularly eaten. He was used to dining at eleven in the morning or at midday, and having his main meal, his grand repas, at six o’clock in the evening; but here that evening meal was light and late, the more substantial dinner was not served till early afternoon, and taking breakfast had become a matter of necessity.

  He also had been trying to acquire a taste for tea. At home it was used mainly to treat illness of the stomach, and was boiled black as tar. The tea she brewed for him was weaker and, with milk, was not entirely unpleasant. Even if it had been, he would have accepted it without complaint, since from what he’d observed she had enough to manage. Her brothers and her father never seemed to raise their voices to her, nor treat her with disrespect,
but neither did they pay her the small courtesy of noticing how hard she worked to ease their days and smooth their interactions with each other. When the younger brother argued with the elder she would calm the one and cheer the other, keeping them apart by means that seemed completely natural, and all the while directing the attention of their father elsewhere so he would not notice.

  Jean-Philippe found it surprising that a man like Monsieur Wilde, who seemed to understand his sons so well, should fail to see the strain that it was causing his own daughter to be always taking care of them: part servant and part diplomat. It had to be exhausting.

  But it had been from her father that he’d finally learned her name. One morning she’d been working in the garden and her father had called: “Lydia!” And she had turned.

  And Jean-Philippe had marked the word. He’d stored the sounds within his memory: Lydia. And all that day he’d watched with care, and listened, and at dinnertime his patience was rewarded when her younger brother asked her to pass something down the table, and to capture her attention had begun by saying: “Lydia?” Again she’d turned. Her gaze had brushed past Jean-Philippe’s and he had quickly lowered his to hide his satisfaction.

  He had always liked to put a name to what he wanted.

  It was not a name with which he was familiar. In fact he would have missed the times they’d spoken it before because it would have sounded as if they were saying l’idéal, a thought that made him smile faintly. Physically, at least, she was his own ideal. And even her dislike of him provided a distraction from his darker thoughts and troubles.

  As did watching Monsieur Wilde at work upon the broken cider press.

  Even if de Brassart had not told him what it was, Jean-Philippe would have been able to identify it for himself three days ago, when Monsieur Wilde had gone into the woods and felled a log and brought it back and had begun to fashion it into a massive screw, a part that had been missing altogether. The shape and function of the big machine became apparent to him then. They had one very like it at his father’s manor farm.

  This morning, Thursday morning, with the weather fair and fine for mid-September, Monsieur Wilde had set the shed doors open and was working just beside it, in full view of both his sons—the younger one restacking hay that had blown down the night before, the elder setting posts so he could fence around those haystacks.

  Jean-Philippe had thought at first that Monsieur Wilde was trying purposely to draw his sons’ attention once again, by pausing often, setting down his tools, and seeming to be puzzling over some piece of the cider press. But after half an hour it became apparent this was the first time the older man had seen a press of this particular design. By trial and error he had pegged the bottom platform into place, but now he could not figure out the way to fit the crossbars of the middle plate together to allow it to run smoothly up and down within the side posts’ inner grooves, and his mild temper was beginning to dissolve into frustration.

  Jean-Philippe stood in the deep shade of an oak tree at the forest’s edge and felt that half-forgotten voice stir deep within him. Can I help? This time he knew the answer: Yes, he could. He knew the way machines like this were put together; knew the way they worked.

  He glanced away and exhaled, hard, and fought that small voice with a stern reminder to himself that officers, when captured by the enemy, could do no labour. But he knew—before he’d even made the choice to leave the shadows and begin the walk across the sunlit clearing—it had never been a fight that he could win.

  Charley

  From where I stood, in the deep quiet shade at the edge of the trees, I commanded a view of the house and barn and the clearing between them, still caught in the long stretching shadows that spread from the woods on the opposite side where the golden pale edge of the brightening sky was beginning to show now above the tall tangle of branches and leaves. The barn was not original. Frank’s uncle Walt had built it where he’d figured that the old barn should have been, and time and weather had done what they could to make it look authentic. It was only when you got up close and saw all the twentieth-century details—the nails and the hardware and too-perfect timbers—that you realized it wasn’t as old as it seemed.

  Lots of things looked different when you got up close.

  This place where I was standing, for example, was the same place where the light I’d seen last night had seemed to pause, and yet this morning I could find no evidence that anyone had walked or stood here recently but me. And while I knew that I’d seen something, I was less convinced of what I’d seen, and more inclined to think it might have been a simple trick of light; perhaps a stray reflection of the headlights from some car across the bay.

  To prove I wasn’t going to be swayed by superstition, I’d turned my back to the trees and the path that wound through their green shadows, but even though I knew that ghosts weren’t real and there’d be nothing sneaking up behind me, I was still uncomfortably aware of every rustle in the undergrowth and leaves as birds and mice and squirrels went about their early-morning foraging. Deliberately, I kept my focus forward on the clearing.

  If I let loose my imagination, it was not too difficult to picture how this would have looked when Captain Wilde was growing up here with his parents and his brothers and his sister. In my mind I stripped away the whole Victorian addition, leaving only the Colonial house with its plain white-painted walls and rows of square-paned windows. From the inventory, we knew there had also been a shed beside the barn, so I imagined that as well, and being mindful of the season added haystacks and a garden. I would have begun to add the animals and people, too, but the crunch of tires on gravel interrupted as a big black truck pulled in across the parking lot, destroying the effect.

  I didn’t mind. That truck was what I had been waiting for.

  Sam was carrying his hardhat as he stepped down from the driver’s seat, looking relaxed in his work boots and jeans and a well-weathered sweatshirt. He wasn’t alone. He held the truck’s door open for a moment and a small, smooth-coated dog leapt down and danced a joyous circle around his legs before falling into step beside him.

  I would have thought that my dark-coloured clothes and the shade of the trees and the fact I was standing here off to the side would have made it unlikely that someone would notice me, but Sam walked directly towards me.

  “Good morning,” he called, and the dog, having seen me by then, too, tucked quickly behind Sam’s legs as though it wanted the added protection.

  I liked dogs. I crouched low to make myself appear less threatening, holding out my hand palm down and with my fingers curled to reassure Sam’s dog that it could sniff and get to know me without fear of being grabbed. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  Which in retrospect seemed a ridiculous thing to say to someone you’d just met three days ago and didn’t really know, but Sam didn’t comment other than to say, “His name is Bandit. Bandit, come meet Charley.”

  At his voice the little dog edged forward, nudged my fingers with its nose, then ducked its head and bumped my hand in a wordless invitation. I obliged, petting its brown floppy ears, soft as velvet, and running my hand further over the black-saddled back until the white-tipped tail was wagging. “He’s a beagle?”

  “Yep. And if you keep doing that he’ll stand there all day long.”

  I smiled and gave the dog a final scratch behind the ears and straightened. Most dogs, off the leash like this one, would have wandered away to explore, but Bandit went right back to standing next to Sam, who told me, “You’re here early.”

  “I’m a morning person.” True enough, if not the whole truth, so I added, “And I wanted to catch you before your guys started their work today.”

  “Is there a problem?” He looked to be one of those people who lived life on such an even keel their faces rarely registered surprise, but I thought I heard the tiniest suggestion of it in his tone, so I was quick with my reply.

  “No problem. I’d just like to ask a favour.”

&n
bsp; “Sure,” he said. “What do you need?”

  The antique metal button in my pocket pressed its shape against my fingers as I felt for it. “I’ll show you.”

  Sam and Bandit followed me across the dew-damp grass to where the excavated trench was taking shape, the workmen having taken care to shore the trench up so the old foundation walls would be supported on the one side and the soil on the other side would not cave in.

  I took my hand out of my pocket. Held it out to show him. “I found this last night, when I was locking up. I’m pretty sure it rolled out of that dirt pile. It’s a button,” I explained. “A really old one. Eighteenth century.”

  His nod held understanding. “And you think there might be more?”

  “Well, maybe not more buttons, but more artifacts, or pieces of them. Yes. So I know this wasn’t part of the original plan, but I’d love to set up a place where we could sift through the soil before putting it back. Is that possible?”

  Sam didn’t see why not. “How do you sift it?”

  “We usually use screens, about so big, with wooden frames.”

  His glance judged the distance between my two hands and he nodded again. “Do you want me to build you a couple of those?”

  “That would be great. Thank you. Just let me know what they cost, and I’ll—” I didn’t get to say what I would do. A sharp ping from my pocket distracted me. “Sorry.” I pulled out the cell phone and answered the text. “Just my niece checking up on me.” I’d been expecting it. Rachel had still been asleep when I’d left the house, and although I’d left a note for her she still liked knowing I was where I said I was. “She keeps me on a short leash.”

  I had meant that as a joke, but Sam accepted it as reasonable. “Hard on her to lose her dad. It seemed like they were close.”

  “They were.” I slid the button and my phone back in my pocket, processing what he’d just said. “You knew Niels?”