Bellewether Read online

  Mr. de Brassart, when asked by her father if he also had such shoes, had smiled with a trace of disdain and replied the Canadians of the Marine wore all sorts of strange clothing that was, in his view, unbecoming to white men. To which her brother Benjamin had pointed out such footwear gave a soldier an advantage, in that what the wearer lost in height and fashion he would gain in practicality. “He wouldn’t leave much of a trail behind, no heavy footprints to follow,” her brother had reasoned. “And they’d make so little sound, you could sneak up on your enemies and not be heard.”

  Mr. de Brassart had answered, as an officer and gentleman he had no wish to “sneak up” on his enemies. But with his words and tone he had implied Mr. de Sabran was no gentleman.

  On that count, Lydia agreed.

  That she heard him now behind her on the path, she guessed, was because he permitted it, and wasn’t taking pains to stay concealed.

  To test this, she stopped for a moment herself, and the rustlings—as she had expected—continued their sure pace towards her, and Mr. de Sabran advanced from the shadows and into plain view.

  He seemed to be preoccupied; had seemed that way, she’d noticed, since the visit of the English captain yesterday. And when he saw her, he offered a brief and surprisingly courtly nod, and would have carried on past her had she not surprised herself further by saying, “Good afternoon.”

  That made him stop.

  It was curious, Lydia thought, that she didn’t feel threatened when standing alone with him here in the dappled half-light of the forest, so far from the house. She disliked him. Distrusted him. Wanted him gone. But she could not, in honesty, say that she feared him.

  Not even when he turned his head and looked at her, his dark gaze level and direct.

  He said, “Bonjour,” which she had come to know meant “good day” in his language. Then he frowned all of a sudden and said something else she did not understand, and made a gesture to her arm, and took a swift step forward and, without her invitation or consent, reached out to take her hand within his own. She might have made a protest had the shock not held her motionless, and had his touch not been so unexpectedly impersonal.

  He held her wrist the way a doctor might, and turned it carefully, examining the spattering of red stains on her skin. She didn’t understand at first why he should be concerned, until it dawned on her he thought she had been bleeding. He was looking for the wound.

  He wouldn’t find one. All her true wounds were so deep within her nobody would ever see them, and the stains upon her wrist and inner arm had not been made by blood.

  Her voice, when she could find it, sounded harsher than it should have. “It’s the rowan berries,” she said. “I was only drying rowan.”

  She had spent two hours after dinner threading berries onto strings to be hung in the buttery to keep till they were needed. Messy work, it always was, and she had all but ruined her apron with the stainings of the juice, but then of course he would have had no way to know that. He’d been working with her father.

  She could feel the callused hardness of his hand, sunbrowned and strong beneath her smaller one. She pulled her own away and broke the touch, and said, “It’s nothing.”

  There was no need to step back for he was doing that already, his frown darkening his features as he nodded once again.

  Then in slightly cautious English he remarked, “Forgive me.” Cleared his throat and added, “I meant no offence.”

  And turning, carried on his way and left her standing in confusion.

  Jean-Philippe

  He hadn’t expected to meet her at all; he had thought she was still in the house, hadn’t noticed her leaving, but then his own thoughts had been elsewhere since yesterday. Learning his men were not only divided from him but most probably from one another, and scattered as prisoners over three provinces, had only stoked his dark sense of frustration, and most of today he’d been deep in that mood.

  This second walk within the woods had been his own attempt to blunt the edges of that mood and lift its blackness.

  Every forest had a different feel. The trees, the undergrowth, the fall of light between the leaves—these changed from place to place so that a man might know if he was in the north or south or west or east, and every forest had its own array of creatures, fierce and gentle, to contend with; but he always looked among them for the small familiar faces.

  Like the little birds, the grives des bois, with their homely brown feathers and spotted white breasts and their quick black eyes, rustling along through the thick mat of leaves on the ground as they searched for the food to prepare them for winter.

  This afternoon he’d found their single-minded actions calming, and he’d slowed his steps as he’d gone past the little clearing with the graves.

  He’d found that clearing on his first walk, weeks ago. The little group of stones, so unexpected in this setting and so neatly kept, were calming to him, too. He liked to stand a moment there within the shelter of the circle of the trees, beneath the ever-changing sky, and think that while all men must die, even the smallest life—as witnessed by those three white stones that bore the same name and the sad brief dates—might be remembered.

  And while pausing there he often said a prayer for those he’d lost himself, and being far from any church where he could light a candle to their memory he would count that prayer enough, and carry on his way content.

  This afternoon he had not paused. He’d carried on so deep in thought he had not known that she was walking on the path in front of him until he’d overtaken her.

  It had caught him uncomfortably off guard to realize he’d let his thoughts dull his awareness of what lay around him so carelessly. Soldiers died, as well he knew, for failing to be vigilant, and anyone who met him in these woods would view him first and always as their hated enemy.

  She did. He saw it daily in her eyes. And yet, this afternoon she had been standing there upon the path as if she’d been expecting him. As if she had been waiting for him.

  When she’d spoken first, although her tone had seemed more brave than friendly, he had seized the chance to try improving on his earlier attempts at conversation.

  It had not gone well.

  In fairness, when he saw a stain of that shade and intensity on someone’s skin, he naturally assumed they had been wounded and were bleeding. It was clear she now considered him the next thing to a madman, grabbing hold of her as he had done and making such a fuss about a stain that, on close viewing, was apparently the product of some vegetable or fruit—perhaps the berries of the sorbiers he’d watched her harvest with her brother yesterday.

  He grimly added “rowan” to his growing list of English words.

  That list, for the time he had spent here, was shamefully small. In half the time, when he had been a boy, he’d learned enough words in the language of the Seneca to try to join their conversations, so he now had no excuse to not attempt the same. In fact, if he were honest with himself, he now had even more incentive.

  He could start, he decided, by showing her father a leaf from a sorbier and asking if, in their language, they called it a “rowan.”

  The trees stood by the barn. It was a simple thing to snap a twig with leaves from one branch as he passed, but when he reached the shed he found that Monsieur Wilde was not alone.

  With him, where the wide doors of the shed had been propped open, was a man of middle age—another farmer, from the look of his tanned features and his sturdy build. His clothes, though, were distinctively un-English, from his heavy wooden shoes to the red knitted cap he held and twisted in his hands while he was speaking. Both men looked so serious that Jean-Philippe, not wanting to intrude, cast the small twig aside and started past them to resume his work upon the cider press.

  Monsieur Wilde called to him, and motioned him to come back to the shed, and then said something to the man with the red cap, who turned his head and said in French, “He says to leave that for today. He has another job to do.”

/>   His French did not possess the careful elegance of Captain Wheelock’s. It was oddly rustic, but it also was, without a doubt, his native tongue.

  To Jean-Philippe this twist was unexpected, and he might have answered with a question of his own, had not the other man continued, “He must build a coffin for my son.”

  The stranger’s voice broke slightly on that final word, and there was no reply for Jean-Philippe to make then but the human one.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  Monsieur Wilde was introducing them to one another, struggling a little with the names.

  “Pierre Boudreau,” said the stranger, above the brief clasp of their handshake. And then his gaze angled past Jean-Philippe’s shoulder, and with a few final words to Monsieur Wilde he took his leave and walked away to the fields, with his shoulders bent heavily.

  Jean-Philippe also glanced over his shoulder, to see what the stranger had seen.

  And saw Lydia Wilde, who had newly stepped out of the woods, and was watching him back.

  • • •

  “He is not French.” De Brassart seemed to find the thought amusing. “He’s Acadian. Have you not ever seen one?”

  “No.” Jean-Philippe stood just within the kitchen doorway, looking out towards the shed. Pierre Boudreau was back this morning, deep in conversation with Monsieur Wilde.

  At the kitchen table with his tea, de Brassart ventured, “That surprises me, for when I came across three years ago and landed at Quebec there were some there who’d just arrived as refugees. It made a stir. You must have seen them.”

  Jean-Philippe, unmoving, said, “It has been longer than three years since I was at Quebec.”

  “I thought you said your home was there.”

  “I said my family home is near the city.”

  “And you’ve not been back for more than three years?”

  It would now be more than ten years, but he had his reasons that he did not wish to share. He only shrugged and said, “There is a war.”

  A cough reminded them the black girl—Violet was her name—was with them in the kitchen, and did not approve of them conversing overlong in French.

  “She thinks we’re plotting our escape,” de Brassart said, and switched to English with an ease that only emphasized to Jean-Philippe his own deficiencies.

  He frowned. And when he caught with his side vision the bright movement of a yellow gown as she entered the kitchen, he went out, and slowly walked across the crisp cool grass to join the other men outside the shed.

  In English, very carefully, he said, “Good morning, Mr. Wilde.”

  He’d missed the older man at breakfast. Monsieur Wilde had risen even earlier than usual to work upon the coffin. He looked weary, but he smiled and returned the greeting pleasantly as Jean-Philippe dropped into French to nod a brief “bonjour” to the Acadian.

  He knew it was a tragedy, what happened to those people. He’d heard tales of how the English had accomplished their removal from the villages and farms that had been theirs for generations—how the churches had been burned, and how the women on their knees had prayed for mercy and been herded with their children onto ships at point of bayonet, the men cast off in separate vessels, all of them condemned to starve and sicken in their exile for the “fault” of being neutral. And now tragedy had struck Boudreau again.

  The coffin was completed. Made of palest pine and sanded smooth, it sat upon the bench where Monsieur Wilde did his work.

  It was so small.

  A tightness rose in Jean-Philippe’s throat—he who had seen men cut down in battle with such frequency he’d thought himself immune by now to death.

  He asked Boudreau, his voice quiet, “How old was your son?”

  “He was four years old.”

  “His name?”

  “René.”

  He marked this with a nod. “I’ll say a prayer for him.”

  “Thank you.” Boudreau, looking down, had his gaze fixed on Jean-Philippe’s footwear. “You are the marine.”

  That surprised him. “Yes.”

  “Then maybe your sister the nun will say prayers for my son also. She being closer to God, He might hear her more clearly.”

  “I’ll ask her.”

  Boudreau explained, “I read your letters. He”—nodding to Monsieur Wilde—“wanted to know what they said, before sending them.”

  Fair enough, Jean-Philippe thought. But he wanted to know something. “How did he send them?” The one letter, he now knew, had reached the governor. But as for the one to his sister . . .

  “He sent them both to his son in New York, who is very important and owns many ships. He says, ‘Take the one letter direct to the governor, and see the other one reaches Quebec by whatever means possible.’ ” Nodding again to their host, Boudreau added for emphasis, “He’s a good man.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  If Monsieur Wilde knew they were talking about him, he gave no discernible sign of it. Nor did he seem to be bothered at all they were speaking in French. He was looking towards the house, blinking as men did when they tried not to show emotion.

  For the second time Jean-Philippe turned to see Lydia, this time approaching them over the grass with a basket in hand.

  She spoke only a few words in passing it to the Acadian, but what she said made his eyes fill, too, as he said, “Thank you” in English.

  She said he was welcome—that much at least Jean-Philippe could understand—and not looking at anyone else she turned round, heading back to the house.

  Jean-Philippe didn’t want to betray his own interest by watching too long, so he glanced down instead at the basket in Boudreau’s hand. There were eggs in the basket, a wrapped block of sugar, a bottle of what looked like wine, and a small sack of something that might have been tea.

  “It’s for my wife,” the Acadian told him, his voice slightly roughened.

  Unable to help himself, Jean-Philippe looked back at Lydia, walking away from them. “She is good, also.”

  “Yes,” said the Acadian.

  “Yesterday, though, when you saw her, you left.”

  “That was out of respect. Because I did not wish to upset her.”

  “Why would you upset her?”

  Boudreau, bending down, took the pitiful coffin and set it upon his one shoulder, and looking at Jean-Philippe told him, “You have much to learn, Marine, about this family.”

  And saying no more to him, thanked Monsieur Wilde and was gone.

  Charley

  Willie McKinney, our stonemason, was hard at work in the trench that surrounded the Wilde House foundation when I came on site. He was flirting with Lara.

  I really liked Willie. A burly big Scot from the Isle of Arran, he had a great accent, a great russet beard, and a great sense of humour.

  “You’re finding more nails for my coffin then, are you?” he called up to Lara as she sorted through what remained on the sifting screen.

  “Only a couple,” she called back.

  “Well, don’t give up hope. Morning, boss,” was his greeting to me. “You look fancy.”

  “I dressed her,” said Lara.

  “Well, that would explain it.” And with a broad wink, Willie picked up his mallet and went back to sounding the walls, pounding on the foundation stones to see if he could detect any movement. He normally had an assistant at work with him—more an apprentice, I reasoned, who did all the side labour, fetching tools, moving thing, cleaning up afterwards. I didn’t see him today. “Sent him out for more sand,” Willie said, when I asked.

  Lara, still sifting, said, “Plenty of sand here.”

  “Not sharp sand. That stuff there’s too dead,” he replied. “It won’t support weight like sharp sand.”

  “If you say so.” Her tone was offhand but I realized, on seeing her smile, she was flirting back, and I’d have moved along out of their way if she hadn’t said, “Come look what I’ve found so far. Just don’t step in the dirt with those
shoes.”

  Which was easier said than done. I rarely wore high heels, and when I wore them I wasn’t entirely graceful. Keeping my balance, I stepped from the brick walkway onto the grass to examine her little collection of finds. There were three nails, including a lovely old forged one; two pennies, not old, and some pieces of porcelain that looked to be from the same plate.

  Lara poked the porcelain bits and asked me, “Those are old, right?”

  “I’m not sure. Dating porcelain can be kind of difficult, unless you know the pattern or you have a maker’s mark, or you can get someone to carbon-date it. But they’re not new, I don’t think.”

  “They’re pretty. I can clean them up and add them to the tray upstairs. You never know, we might find more.” She looked me up and down and said, “You really do look fancy.”

  From the trench beside us, Willie chimed in, “Told you.”

  Lara smiled. “It still needs something, though. I don’t know what. Just something.”

  “Work boots.” That was Sam’s voice, and I turned to see him coming up the path.

  “Of course,” said Lara dryly. “Just what every outfit needs.”

  “I’m serious.” He had his own on, with the T-shirt, jeans, and tool belt that made up his daily uniform. “We’re starting on the siding this week, and the roof is next, so if you want to stand around out here you’re going to need some work boots. And a hardhat.”

  Lara made a face. “But not today, right? It would ruin Charley’s hairdo.”

  Sam smiled faintly. “You look . . .”

  “Fancy,” Willie said a third time.

  “Nice,” was Sam’s choice. “This your lunch day?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, looking down. “The shoes are definitely fancy.”