Bellewether Page 9

  She’d noticed that he was not as fastidious as his companion when it came to clothing, and his shirt cuffs and cravat were of plain linen, while Mr. de Brassart’s were of lace—yet there was nothing in Mr. de Sabran’s bearing or appearance to suggest that he was any less an officer. In fact to Lydia, of the two men, he looked the more commanding.

  But perhaps that lay in how he had been raised, and trained. She thought of what her brother Joseph had said of the men of the Canadian marines, and how their officers were sent as children to live with the Indians and learn their ways. “They have a reputation, justly earned,” he’d said, “for ruthlessness.”

  She could believe that from the hard, unyielding set of Mr. de Sabran’s jaw as he bent above his letter. He wrote steadily and in what looked to be a plain, bold hand. And while he wrote, he frowned.

  • • •

  The problem with the letters was deciding what to do with them.

  Had Joseph had his way, he would have thrown them on the fire. “They might say anything,” he’d argued when he’d learned of them. “You don’t know what intelligence he’s passing to his friends.”

  Which had made Benjamin reply, “I doubt the French would care how many sheep are in our field. There’s little else of interest or excitement he could find here to report.”

  The humour had been lost on Joseph. “It’s a long walk down from Fort Niagara, and he’s been through several of our camps. Who knows what he’s seen there to catch his interest?”

  Lydia had been too tired to step between them, but the next day, Monday, when she carried out the dinner pail to where her father was at work still digging stones and mending wall between the apple orchard and the pasture, she could see that he was carrying the folded letters in the pocket of his coat.

  She said, “You cannot send them, surely?”

  “Circumstance,” he said, “and inequalities.”

  “I do not understand.”

  The day was fair but very windy and she set her back against the chest-high drystone wall, letting it provide some shelter while she faced her father. He had been a fair-haired man when he was younger and whenever he worked hard enough to raise a sweat his face flushed red, as it was now, and yet his barrel-chested strength meant he was rarely out of breath. His voice was strong.

  “If it was Joseph taken captive,” he explained, “would you not want him shown the courtesy of having letters sent where he would send them?” He read the answer in her face and quoted very gently, to remind her, “ ‘All things whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.’ ”

  “I know.” The wind had caught her apron and she held it down, her hand clenched in its folds. “I know, but it is very hard.”

  “If it were easy,” said her father, “then no minister would ever have had need to write a sermon to persuade us we should do it.”

  With a small nod she acknowledged that, and looked away along the long uneven line of fence that subtly changed its course each year as every frost and thaw thrust up new stones from deep within the earth. New obstacles. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “The letters? I will send them where he asks, but Joseph’s right. We ought to first make sure they’ll do no harm.”

  He used the dampened cloth she’d brought for him to wipe his hands and brow and took the dinner pail, investigating what it held. “Did Violet make this bread?”

  She smiled because she knew why he was asking. “Yes, you needn’t worry, it’s not burnt.”

  “Your mother always said that oven had a temper.”

  She would not blame the oven. She would never be a baker and she knew it, but she would not let the conversation stray. “How do you propose to learn what’s in the letters? You could never trust Mr. de Brassart to translate them.”

  “No.” He’d found the seasoned chicken leg beneath the bread. “That’s why I’ve sent Benjamin to hire French Peter.”

  French Peter lived not far from them and had a wife and children who, with other neutral French, had been resettled here from Nova Scotia by the orders of the king three years ago.

  Her mother had considered that a travesty. “They are a peaceful people, the French neutrals of Acadia,” she’d said. “They’ve done no harm.” And when her husband in his more pragmatic way had answered that the British were most likely only trying to make certain that continued, she’d replied, “And how is justice served, I ask, by punishing a people for a crime they have not done, and might yet never do?” If there’d been any argument to make to that, her mother had refused to hear it, and when word had come French Peter and his family had been sent to settle near them, she had treated them with charity—so much so that, the day after her mother’s death, French Peter had appeared upon their doorstep.

  With her father deep in grief, it had been Lydia who had received French Peter’s brief condolences. It had not been a comfortable encounter. She did not have her mother’s gift for seeing past a person’s nationality, and neutral French or no, he was still French.

  “If ever there is anything I can be doing for you,” he had said, his accent even thicker from emotion, “I will do it with a glad heart.”

  She’d replied that there was nothing they would need from him, and with a silent nod he had accepted that. And as he’d turned away he’d paused, and turned again, and said more thickly, “She was good to us.” As though it needed saying.

  Lydia had felt ashamed a few days later, looking back, because she’d known her mother would have asked French Peter in and made him welcome, and not stood stone-faced within the door and watched him walk away, his heavy shoulders stooped. But what was done was done, and time, as she had learned these past few years, did not allow for second chances.

  If she’d treated him with disrespect, he’d done the very opposite to her since then. Whenever their paths crossed at Mr. Fisher’s store or at the wharf or at the home of any of their neighbours who had hired him, French Peter always had a cheerful greeting for her, but as though aware there was a barrier between them he made no attempt to breach it.

  She’d hoped she would be gone before he came today to see her father, but it was a warm day and her father took his time over the dinner pail. He had not finished with the chicken when she heard her brother Benjamin, behind her in the pasture, tell the sheep to move. They scattered in their lazy way and bleated as she turned to watch him weave his way between them with French Peter at his side—a slightly shorter man than Benjamin and doubtless twice his age, but with the solid build and browned skin of a man who earned his living by his labour. In the manner of his people he was dressed in woolen breeches and a sleeveless waistcoat over a plain shirt of weathered linen, with the same red knitted cap he wore no matter what the season, and the wooden shoes that, while they were unfashionable, served well in the fields and pastures without risking ruin from the mud.

  Benjamin, as always full of energy, set both his hands atop the wall and vaulted it with ease. French Peter might have done the same, he had the strength. Instead he stayed securely on the pasture side and leaned his folded arms on the broad stones that capped the wall dividing him from Lydia, her brother, and her father. “You have a job for me, I hear?” He sounded pleased. “You need my help to dig the stones?”

  Her father wiped his hand clean before offering it over the stone wall in greeting, and above their handshake answered, “Not exactly. I recall my wife said once that you could read. Is that right?”

  The pleasure faded to regret. “Read? No, it is kind that she would say this, but I’m hardly speaking English very well yet, and to read it—”

  “No, I meant in French. Can you read French?”

  There was a brightening. “I can. My mother’s father had some school and knew to read and write, and he was teaching this to me when I was small. But why . . . ?”

  “We have some guests,” her father said. “Perhaps you’ve heard?”

  Of course he’d heard, thought Lydia. It was nea
rly a week now since her father had come back from Millbank with the captured officers, and news could not be well contained within a small community.

  French Peter said, “The two lieutenants. Yes.”

  Her father drew the letters from his pocket. “One of them has written these, and I would like to know what they contain before I post them on.”

  “I see. So, not the stones?” French Peter cast another look towards the shovel and the other tools her father had leaned carefully against the tree behind him when he’d paused to eat his dinner. “Only this?”

  “That’s right. I’ll pay you for the effort and your time, of course.”

  French Peter waved the offer to the side with one big hand. “No, I will do this for you without payment, it’s not needed.” And he held that same hand out to take the letters.

  “If I’m not mistaken,” said her father, “this first one is meant for Governor DeLancey.”

  With a nod French Peter read the brief address. “Yes, it says just that: ‘To His Excellency the Governor of New York.’ ” Unfolding it, he read a moment, forehead creased in concentration. “Ah. He is complaining to the governor. You want that I should tell you in my own words, or in his?”

  “Your own will do.”

  “Then he is saying to the governor it is not right the officers are separated from their men, that this is not what is agreed to in the documents signed at Niagara, and he is asking where his soldiers are now taken and if they are well, for he does not rest well until he knows this. He’s asking that the governor will tell him at the soonest time that is convenient, and he signs the letter with a great respect, and says that he is humble and obedient and all such things, and then his name: Jean-Philippe de Sabran de la Noye, lieutenant of the Marine, prisoner.”

  Lydia hadn’t expected to feel any sort of reaction at all, hearing Mr. de Sabran’s words translated, and yet she could not help but feel a slight twinge of compassion that he might be worrying over his men, even if it surprised her that someone of his hardened nature would be like to worry.

  “And so this one,” French Peter said, shuffling the letters around so the second was topmost, “he sends to a nun, Sister Athanase, near to Quebec, at the hospital general.”

  That seemed to surprise even Benjamin, who raised his eyebrows. “A nun? Why on earth would he write to a nun?”

  French Peter, having read through the first lines, gave a nod of comprehension. “Yes, I see. She is his sister. He is telling her that he is safe and that she should not fear for him, and he is hoping she is also safe and that the . . . I apologize, I do not know this word in English. For us, we say ‘siège’—it means when armies sit outside the walls and stop the help from coming and they wait to make the people fight or starve. You know this word?”

  Her father cleared his throat. “It is the same in English, only differently pronounced. We would say ‘siege.’ ”

  French Peter thanked him. “So yes, he is hoping that the siege there will soon end and that it does not touch the hospital. He says that she should bring their mother also to the hospital so that if there is fighting they will both be safe. He says to do that right away, as soon as she will get this letter. And he says again that he is well and was not wounded, and is staying with good people, and he sends his great affection and he signs his name, but only that—he does not write ‘lieutenant’ after or say he is prisoner.”

  There was silence for a moment in the orchard and the weight of it was tangible to Lydia. She frowned, and was the first to leave the wall and take a step across the shaded grass. She suddenly had need of room to breathe.

  French Peter said, behind her, “Anyway, that’s what he writes.” The heavy paper rustled as he folded both the letters on their creases and returned them to her father. “You are sure there is no other work you’re needing me to do for you?”

  Her father told him, “Thank you, no. There’s nothing at this moment.”

  With a shrug, the other man looked past him to the almost-ripened pippins hanging heavily on all the trees. “Perhaps then when the harvest comes. Yours will be good, I think.”

  Benjamin shared that opinion. “A pity we don’t have a cider press here. The nearest one, I think, is Mr. Brewster’s, and I’ll be carting these apples for days to him.”

  French Peter brightened. “A cider press? But I know where one is, very big—broken in pieces, but it can be fixed, and the owner I think will want little in trade for it. If you would like, I can show you.”

  “Well, I’d like,” said Benjamin, pushing away from the wall in his turn. “Father?”

  “Yes, go and look. And here, when you’re done with that, take these on to Millbank, to your cousin. Have him seal them both and send them as enclosures in a letter to your brother in New York, with my instructions that he send the one directly to the governor, and use whatever means he can to send the other to Quebec.” And handing the two letters over to Benjamin, Lydia’s father thanked French Peter once more and bade him good day.

  Benjamin hesitated. “I could carry these letters myself to New York.”

  “I have need of you here,” said their father. “Your cousin will find somebody to carry them.”

  Lydia saw the swift flame of impatience sweep over her brother’s face, but he did not argue, even if his “Yes, Father,” was more biting than cordial.

  Watching French Peter and Benjamin walking away again over the pasture, Lydia said gently to her father, “That was less than kind. You know he loves New York.”

  “I know. And if I thought he’d stay there I would send him there tomorrow and let William set him up in business. But a father knows the nature of his sons.” His eyes were wise. “When Joseph was but small I knew he’d follow me into my trade and be a carpenter. Like me, he finds his happiness in building things. William now, and Daniel, they were merchants from the cradle. What they crave are profits and the power that those profits bring. But Benjamin—” He looked across, as Lydia was looking, to where Benjamin was striding through the pasture, once more scattering the sheep. “What he wants is adventure. And his spirit and his recklessness will carry him to places far beyond New York, I fear, and far more dangerous.” He seemed to stop himself from saying more. Crossing to his tools he took the shovel in his hands, preparing to get back to work.

  She followed his example, picking up the empty dinner pail. She wondered if he knew her nature also, but she did not ask. Instead she asked him, “Father?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think General Wolfe will take Quebec?”

  He dug the shovel hard into the ground and metal scraped on stone. “I hope he does, for I am ready to be done with all this fighting.”

  She was minded to agree. Except an hour ago Quebec, to her, had been another distant city full of faceless enemies, and now when she imagined it, instead of walls and guns she saw two women seeking safety in the hospital—a young nun and her mother.

  Wars lay easier upon the conscience, Lydia decided, when you could not see the faces of the people you were fighting. And it was vastly easier to hate a man when you’d not learned his Christian name, or pried into his private thoughts and learned that he was human.

  Jean-Philippe

  It was difficult, he thought, to not admire the man.

  Whatever might be broken in this family, Monsieur Wilde appeared unbowed by it. He was a large man, broad through chest and shoulders, and might easily have ruled his home by discipline and force, yet even a stranger could see that his children respected him not out of fear, but affection.

  Jean-Philippe was not surprised. He’d watched the family closely since the day of his arrival and the more he’d seen of Monsieur Wilde these past few weeks, the more he’d found to like.

  The two of them were very often up at the same hour, both rising earlier than others in the house, and every morning Jean-Philippe observed the older man would wash his hands and face and neck and do a thing that proved that, while he did not seem to go to churc
h on Sundays, he was still a man of faith. He prayed.

  “Amen” was the same word in any language. Monsieur Wilde said it quietly to end whatever brief and private lines he spoke before he faced the day. And then he worked.

  In finer weather he’d be out the best part of the day and take his dinner in the field, but when it rained or blustered, Monsieur Wilde worked at carpentry. It was his trade, apparently, and he was skilled.

  He’d built two shelves into the walls of the chamber that Jean-Philippe and de Brassart shared, so they would have more room to place their things, and he’d set pegs into the wall so they could better hang their clothes, and after that he’d made them narrow wooden chests to slide beneath their beds, with hinged lids that could lock, so their possessions could be stored with more security than simply in their haversacks and packs.

  When Jean-Philippe had tried to pay him for this with some of the money they’d been given for that purpose, Monsieur Wilde had smiled and waved it to the side and not accepted it, but Jean-Philippe had stubbornly refused to take the charity. At last he’d cut a piece from his tobacco and held that out to the older man, who’d smiled again and taken it and clapped him on the shoulder with a friendly hand before he’d walked away.

  An easy man to like.

  Some part of that, Jean-Philippe knew, was nostalgia, for there was a quality about Monsieur Wilde that reminded him of other days, when he was but a boy of ten. Then, too, he had been far from home and hadn’t known the language of the people who surrounded him.

  That had been seventeen years ago, and the narrow-shouldered boy in his first uniform, who hadn’t yet killed anything more deadly than a rabbit, seemed a very long way distant from the man he had become, yet he remembered his first summer’s voyage westward from Quebec—the wideness of the water where the river met the lake; the deep green pathways of the endless forest, and the men who moved within it.