Bellewether Page 20

  Their father, who’d been sitting there at the table, had smiled and replied that he’d never himself known a boy who could argue his way out of hidings with more ready eloquence. “Made me feel all but ashamed of myself that I’d so much as thought about discipline. And that, my dear,” he had said to his wife, “comes entirely out of your nature, not mine.”

  And in truth, had the Fates schemed to take all her mother’s intuitive features and twist them to turning a profit, the end result would have been William.

  Lydia never knew whether the William she saw and knew well was the same William anyone else saw, but neither did she let it bother her. He was still her brother, as he’d always been, and as he reined his horse beside the barn and looked round to see her approaching, his smile was warm and familiar, and as he dismounted he gathered her into the same brief, rib-bruising embrace that had marked all their greetings since she had been small, and it lifted her feet from the ground.

  “I’m too big,” she protested.

  “Never.” His grin showed off fine, even teeth for a man who in but a few years would be forty. His clothes were fine also, though not ostentatiously so—tailored neatly, expensively, of dark grey wool lined with silk that was doubtless from one of his shipments.

  “You look well,” she told him.

  “And you.” Looking down, he made a show of brushing one obstructing strand of fair hair from his eyes to clear his vision as he added, “Every time I see you, you get prettier.”

  Rolling her eyes, she assured him, “I’m too big for that, too.”

  “What, compliments?”

  “Flattery.” Glancing away she took note of his horse and her brows drew together in puzzlement. “Isn’t this Henry’s new gelding?”

  “It is.” Henry Ryder, their cousin, lived down with his wife and two children at Millbank, and kept the post office there. “My own horse,” William said, “cast a shoe as I came into Millbank last night, so I stopped at Henry’s and supped and slept there, and he gave me the loan of this beautiful lad for the day, while the blacksmith attends to my mare.” Leaving the horse at the rail of the fence he stood straighter and stretched out his shoulders and asked, “Where is Father?”

  “In the orchard, with the others.”

  “Others?”

  “Benjamin, and Joseph, and French Peter, and”—she hesitated, only for the smallest moment—“one of our French officers.”

  “Oh yes.” His features sobered. “I’m sorry indeed that you’ve been so imposed upon. I tried my best to intervene when Silas told me what was going on, but Uncle Reuben has his own channels of influence, I fear, and there was nothing I could do.” With cautious eyes he asked her, “How is Joseph?”

  “He is managing.”

  If William had suspicions she was guarding Joseph’s privacy and honour by concealing the true state of things, he did not press the point but only asked, “And you? How are you bearing up? It cannot be so easy for you, either.”

  A part of her was longing to confide in him and lean again into his strong embrace and tell him no, it was not easy. But she was a woman now, and not a child, and so she only shrugged her shoulders and assured him, “I am managing, as well.” Her thoughts were turning to a different subject anyway. “When did you speak to Silas?”

  “What?”

  “You said that Silas told you,” she reminded him, “about his father sending us the officers. When did you see him?”

  “Silas,” said her brother dryly, “is a frequent visitor upon my doorstep these days, now he’s settled in New York.”

  “He’s not in Newtown any longer?”

  “No, since early this past spring he’s had his lodgings not three streets from us, and it’s the rare week when he doesn’t come around to see us once. Especially at mealtimes.” He could evidently read her thoughts without her saying anything, because he said, “I know. He’s not my first choice of associate. But he is family, Lyddie, and there would be talk were I to shun him.”

  “Let them talk,” she told him. “He’s a loathsome little toad.”

  Behind them, Violet, who had come out of the house and walked across the clearing, having nearly reached them, caught that final phrase and answered it with feeling: “If you’re speaking of His Majesty, he’s back there in the parlour. And if he wants more tea he’ll have to up and make it for himself, because I’m done with him this morning.” With a nod that was just clinging to the edges of politeness, she told William, “I’ll go up and let your father know you’re here.” And without breaking stride she walked on by and passed beneath the rowan tree and headed up the lane towards the orchard.

  William arched his eyebrows, looking down at Lydia. “The king is in our parlour?”

  She corrected him. “She means Mr. de Brassart. He is one of our French officers, and Violet cannot stand him.”

  “Well,” said William, “now you have me curious. A man she dislikes more than she does me? I have to see this creature, or I’ll not believe it.” With a grin, he took her arm in his and set their backs towards the barn. “But first, come show me what the devil’s happened to my ship.”

  • • •

  The tide was ebbing, giving the assembled party on the beach a broad expanse of drying sand to walk on as they made their circuit of the stranded Bellewether, her shattered hull careened with care. It seemed so wrong to see her hauled so far out of the water where she’d run so freely and so fast; to see her leaning here upon her side like some great racehorse that had faltered and collapsed and could no longer bear the struggle it would take to stand.

  The sight was sad, and Lydia was feeling it more deeply than she’d thought she would. To William, standing not far off, it must have been a devastation.

  In the span of time since she had brought him down here to the beach they had been joined by Benjamin and Joseph and their father, come directly from the orchard. And their father, in his turn, had hailed the Spanish captain and his mate, who’d rowed across obligingly, arriving onshore not ten minutes before Mr. Fisher, their neighbour—who having delivered their summons to William in New York had found himself stranded there due to the contrary winds, and been forced to return by the road, as had William—rowed over himself from Cross Harbor, with Sarah, his daughter, as passenger.

  Normally Lydia would have delighted in having a visit from Sarah. They were of an age, had played often in childhood, and grown into easy companions. But on this particular day, all of Sarah’s attention was given to Joseph, while Lydia’s focus stayed fixed upon William.

  He’d accepted in silence the news that the captain and crew he had hired for the Bellewether’s voyage were probably dead. Hard news for him, surely. The captain had been a close friend. But apart from his tightening jaw and a nod he had made no reaction.

  And now, as he surveyed the wreck of the ship that had once been his pride, everybody was watching, and holding their own words with quiet respect.

  William stood and looked a moment longer. “Well,” he finally said, “at least she did not lose her life without a fight.”

  “No hope of rebuilding her?” Benjamin’s tone angled upward to make it a question, though all of them well knew the answer.

  William, in fact, did not bother to voice it aloud, only gave a slight shake of his head in reply and said, “She’ll be a hard loss. Although it’s the loss of her cargo that will be the hardest, I think, for my partners.”

  Here Captain del Rio cut in with an elegant cough and the comment, “Your cargo, señor, is not lost.”

  William turned as though he had forgotten the Spaniard was there. Even Lydia, if she were honest, had only just realized how close to her Captain del Rio was standing, which might either be a tribute to his gentlemanly manners or his stealth. He smiled. “There was, as you have said, much fighting, and I cannot fight well with a ship so heavy, so the cargo it was transferred to my own ship, El Montero. It is there still, and I can assure you, very safe.” The look he cast on William now was plai
nly from one man of business to another. “But since I imagine it cannot be any use to you to have it now returning to New York, from where you sent it, I’d be glad to carry it again for you to the West Indies. It is not so good, of course, for me to sail into an English port at these times,” he admitted with a dry glance towards Joseph, “but our Spanish ports are neutral.”

  William met the captain’s gaze and seemed to think on this a moment, then replied, “A most kind offer, Captain, and one I’ll be happy to accept if we can come to terms agreeable to both our interests.”

  Lydia had braced herself for Joseph to express his own opinion of the Spanish and their “neutral” ports, the way he’d done before, but he said nothing. When she ventured to look round, she saw why. Joseph wasn’t listening.

  He’d stepped clear of the little group and was now standing close beside the Bellewether. She watched as he lifted one hand to the broken hull.

  William, who’d been talking to the Spanish captain, stopped mid-sentence.

  Lydia found she was holding her breath. She felt all of them there on the beach—except maybe the Spaniards—were doing the same thing, not daring to stir, in case somehow the moment would break and be lost.

  Joseph, still with his back to them, ran his hand slowly along one broad, sea-weathered board. Then he tilted his head in a way she remembered and sighted along it, not paying attention to anything else. In an easy and confident tone she had not heard him use in three years, he said, “It could be done, you know. She’s not past saving.”

  She was unprepared for the quick swell of tears in her eyes and she blinked hard to keep them back. Turned to her father, and found he was looking at William, and she could see clearly the strain of the silent emotion that touched both their faces—the unspoken question that was being asked and, as silently, answered.

  At last William, very casually, told Joseph, “You’d know best. How many weeks would it take, by your reckoning?”

  Joseph, with his hand still on the ship’s scarred hull, replied with a small careless shrug that was, again, a gesture none of them had seen in far too long. “That would depend how many men I had to work on her.”

  “But you could do it?” William asked, and once again they held their breaths and waited.

  Then, “With tools and time, yes,” Joseph told them.

  “Good. That’s good,” said William, and he looked away from Joseph as though something in the angle of the midday sunlight hurt his eyes. He sought their father’s gaze again and shared a glance that knew the weight and meaning of his words. “For tools and time, and even men, are but a small expense if, in the end, what we have lost can be restored.”

  Jean-Philippe

  “She’s pretty, is she not?” The big Acadian had come to stand beside his shoulder.

  Jean-Philippe, for one unsettled moment, thought he might have dropped his guard and so betrayed his thoughts, but when he swiftly turned from his appraisal of the figure in the yellow gown, he saw he need not worry.

  Boudreau’s focus was on something else entirely as he went on, “Despite all that, you can still see the lines of her, the beauty of her, yes? There was no faster ship in New York’s harbour.”

  It was coming on to dinnertime. They’d walked back from the orchard not along the lane but by the forest path, where it was shaded still and cool. And where the path had turned to follow close along the clifftop and the trees had thinned to give them a clear view down to the cove, they’d stopped and Jean-Philippe had studied the small group of people gathered now beside the broken ship.

  He could not count the times he’d stood like this, concealed on higher ground, and looked down on an adversary, measuring their strength before a battle. And their weaknesses.

  He watched for interactions, always. Sought to learn who truly held command, and in this instance it was clear that of the seven men upon the beach the one in charge was Monsieur Wilde, for even though he had stepped back behind the younger man in grey, the others there all looked to him while speaking, as though seeking his approval.

  The man in grey would be the eldest son, the one who’d come this morning, for in build and stance he was the younger image of his father. And his brothers had now fallen into their role as subordinates to him, although the youngest had not shaken off his restlessness and gazed, not at the ship before him, but towards the tall masts of the Spanish ship now riding to her anchor in the bay.

  The middle brother had, to Jean-Philippe’s surprise, a woman with him—young, fair-haired, and dressed in blue.

  At first he’d wondered if she was the eldest brother’s wife, but it was obvious her whole attention was upon the troubled one, and any man who held himself as proudly as Monsieur Wilde’s eldest son would never have stood by and let his wife show such great favour to another without trying to reclaim it for himself. And a few more minutes’ observation had left Jean-Philippe convinced the woman dressed in blue must be the daughter of the other older man who was now standing talking to the Spanish captain, who, in turn, was standing close to Lydia.

  Too close.

  “Yes, very pretty,” Jean-Philippe replied, in level tones. “But tell me, who are those two people there, the woman and the older man?”

  Boudreau said, “The Fishers. Mr. Fisher keeps the big store at Cross Harbor, with his children. That’s his eldest daughter, Sarah.”

  “And what is she to the middle son?”

  “She was—she is—his fiancée, though whether they will marry now is something God alone can know.”

  “Why?” Jean-Philippe looked down more closely at the young blond woman in the blue gown, with her feelings for the troubled son so obvious in how she held herself so close beside him; how she watched him. “Tell me, what was it that happened to him?”

  Boudreau hesitated, shifting where he stood as though uncomfortable, and Jean-Philippe looked back at him.

  “You told me I had much to learn about this family,” was his challenge. “Teach me, then.” He made a guess. “He has seen battle, that one, yes? And he did not cope well with it?”

  It was the right approach to take to make Boudreau begin to speak, his tone and stance defensive. “Joseph was not sent up to Chouaguen to fight. He was a peaceful man and not a soldier.” With a frown he added, “So I think there is no shame that he has struggled with it afterwards. Were you there?”

  “At Chouaguen? No.” That would be three years ago. That summer he’d been sent with a detachment of his men to the Ohio Valley. “No, I was not there.” He’d heard the stories, though. He always heard the stories.

  It had been a famous victory, the attack upon Chouaguen—“Oswego,” as the English called it. Since he was a boy that fort had stood upon the south shore of the lake—begun in wood and fortified in stone, an English blight upon their territory. It could not be allowed to stand, and his superiors, Monsieurs Coulon de Villiers and de Rigaud, deserved to bear the honour of attacking it, together with Montcalm. While he disliked Montcalm, he could not fault that victory. The campaign had been well planned, well executed, and a great success.

  But from his own experience he also knew that battles did not end with the surrender of a fort. For common soldiers and civilians, the most dangerous of times came in the aftermath of that capitulation, when storerooms were plundered and liquor was drunk and the victors and their native allies, who held to their own rules of war, took control.

  So it had been, according to the tales he’d heard, at Fort Chouaguen.

  He looked now at the middle Wilde son—Joseph—and asked quietly, “What was he, then, if not a soldier?”

  Boudreau paused again, as though he still did not feel comfortable with this discussion, but at length he said, “He was a shipbuilder.”

  This made good sense to Jean-Philippe and fit with what he had observed, although it went a step beyond his own suspicion that the young man had once been a carpenter. A shipbuilder had skills that were more specialized.

  Boudreau went on: “He w
orked at the same shipyard as the son of Mr. Fisher, and the two of them were friends, like this.” The big man held two fingers up, pressed close together. “This is what I’m told, you understand, by Madame Wilde, for I did not come here myself until just before Joseph went to Chouaguen. I saw him only two times before he and his friend, Moses Fisher, went north to that place.” He shrugged. “These were difficult times for this family. For the Fishers also, because they were intertwined—the Fisher girl, there, being Joseph’s fiancée, and Moses Fisher having asked Miss Lydia to marry him, it made their leaving very sad. And then of course, when Joseph came back as he did, that was more sad.”

  “And Moses Fisher?” Jean-Philippe imagined he already knew the answer but he asked the question anyway, aware his tone had hardened. He had not thought he could feel so deep a jealousy for someone he’d just heard of. But he did.

  Boudreau sighed heavily. “Well, he did not come back at all. And that was very terrible, because it was while Joseph was beside him that his friend was killed, and he was there to witness it, and that I think is what has left him broken most of all.”

  Jean-Philippe, his thoughtful gaze upon the straight back of the woman in the yellow gown who stood so still upon the beach below them, could not help but wonder whether Joseph was the only one who’d been left broken by the death of Moses Fisher.

  Joseph Wilde was moving. He had stepped away from Sarah Fisher and the others and was now approaching the careened ship.

  Jean-Philippe, observing this, asked, “What was he like, when you saw him those two times, before Chouaguen?”

  “Who, Joseph?” Boudreau shrugged again. “A quiet man, but happier. Then, he could laugh. They all could. But they had her then as well, you understand. Their mother,” he explained, when Jean-Philippe glanced briefly over, questioning. “May God be with her,” Boudreau said, and crossed himself with deep respect.