Bellewether

  When her father had not answered she had gone to him and placed her hand upon his shoulder, knowing that he’d needed it. “The captain is an honest man. He will look after Benjamin and keep him safe.”

  This morning in the cove, the captain had made her that very promise. “I will see he does not come to harm,” he’d told her privately. “With my own hands I will pass him very safely to your brother at the Mount.”

  Which must, she’d thought, be what the Spaniards called the town in their own language. She had said, “We call it Kingston.”

  For the barest blinking of an eye, Captain del Rio had appeared confused by that; but then he’d smiled and said, “Yes, Kingston. In Jamaica. Yes, of course.” And then he’d bent with gallantry to kiss her hand, and gone to join her brother to be rowed across to El Montero.

  It had all been worth it, she decided, to see Benjamin content and happy, full of life. He’d hugged her hard.

  “I’m in your debt,” he’d told her.

  “Yes, you are. And don’t forget it.” She had kissed him back. “Now go. And try to be a little careful.”

  He had grinned and winked and said, “I’m always careful.” Yet of course, when El Montero set its sails and turned them to the wind, he had been standing square upon the deck, already looking out towards the limitless horizon.

  And for a long time, on the hill above the meadow, she stood now beside her father while he did the same, until the tiny sails of El Montero could no longer be distinguished from the line of low clouds closing in a haze above the distant water.

  The wind blew cold. Her father turned.

  He was not one for sentiment. He only said, “It’s past time I got started on the cider.”

  And their footsteps sounded hollow on the hard earth of the hill as they began the walk back down.

  • • •

  Mr. Ramírez was a quiet man of careful habits. His arrival scarcely made a ripple in the running of the house. When he had tried arranging payment for his room and board, her father had replied whatever help he gave them with the ship would be enough, since he had only filled the bed that had been filled before by Benjamin, and ate no more than had her brother.

  Even Violet had remarked how little trouble he had given, and in truth he’d been a help to her, for in the mornings and the evenings when she did the milking he would walk with her and carry the filled pails to spare her shoulders. He would talk to her, and twice he’d made her laugh—a sound that Lydia had not heard often since the death of Violet’s mother, Phyllis.

  Phyllis hadn’t laughed much, either, but she’d been a force to reckon with, and she and Violet had made a small circle all their own within the larger family—closed to all but them, and filled with warmth and love so fierce Lydia wasn’t sure how Violet had stayed standing after Phyllis had been taken by the fever. But she had.

  She had her church meetings on Sundays and they seemed to give her strength, and she had all the family there for comfort—though of course while there was love there, too, they couldn’t fill the place of her true kinfolk, nor was Lydia convinced that they were properly her friends.

  “There is a line between us,” Phyllis had once told her, on a day now long ago when she had wanted Violet to come play with her, and Violet hadn’t felt inclined to.

  “Now, Miss Lydia, my Violet wasn’t put here for your plaything.” Phyllis, standing at the kitchen hearth, had not brooked any argument. “When we’ve done all our work the time beyond that is our own, and no one else has any right to it.” The poker in her hand, she’d drawn a line straight through the ashes of the hearthstone at her feet. “There is a line between us, just like this. You might not see it, might not feel it, but it’s there, and don’t forget it, ’cause there’s those of us that never get a chance to.”

  Looking down at that hard line across the stone between them, Lydia had felt a sudden sadness she could not express. “Can nothing get across it?”

  Phyllis seemed to weigh her answer, then she’d offered one word. “Freedom.”

  And the truth of that had been one of the hardest lessons Lydia had learned.

  She might think that Mr. Ramírez was too old for Violet, but she was still glad Violet was, for the moment, no longer alone.

  Mr. de Sabran appeared to have found a new ally as well in French Peter. With the harvest finished in the orchard they’d been working with her father making cider, and their conversations drifted now and then across the clearing while she did her chores outside. She did not understand a word they said, but it seemed to be friendly.

  And this morning while she’d harvested her beans for seed she’d glanced up from the garden and to her complete astonishment Mr. de Sabran had been smiling.

  Not at her—he had been saying something to French Peter, his attention focused mainly on the cider press. But still, he had been smiling. And that simple act had made his face a thing she barely recognized.

  His teeth were even. Very white and very straight although the smile itself was lopsided, so wide it carved deep lines in both his cheeks and made his eyes crease at their edges. He looked younger. He looked—

  Then, as if he’d known that she was staring, he had turned his head and for the briefest, stomach-dropping instant, he had turned that smile on her. Her hand had itched to hold a pencil that would let her somehow capture it, but with one polite, quick nod he had looked away, returning to his conversation and his work.

  Since that moment, she had found herself innumerable times now glancing up from her own work to see if she might catch him smiling in that way again. She hadn’t, but she noticed he looked more relaxed today than she had seen him; more at ease with both their company and his surroundings, as though he were there by choice and not by force of circumstance.

  Which made what happened next the more regrettable.

  It was, as always, Violet who first saw they had a visitor, and called out from the kitchen to tell Lydia, “That looks like Henry coming now.”

  It was. Her cousin, Henry Ryder, was her father’s sister’s son, and like his mother had bright copper hair that made him easy to identify. He was her brother William’s age and had a wife and children, but the similarity between them ended exactly there. Henry was “straight as an arrow,” as William once called him in tones that implied it was more a defect in his character than a true compliment.

  He kept an inn at Millbank and he ran the local post from there, which meant he always had the finest horses, like the dappled mare he rode today.

  “She’s beautiful,” was Lydia’s first greeting from the garden fence as Henry drew alongside and dismounted.

  “She is. And fast. I’m thinking I should let her run the Hampstead races in the spring.” He smiled and bent across to kiss her cheek. “But I was needing a fast horse to bring you the good news.”

  They sorely were in need of some. “What news is that?”

  “Quebec has fallen.”

  Lydia’s reaction was not what she had expected it would be. It was good news, she reasoned. Joyous news. A blow against their enemy, a victory in the name of all those men who like her brother and like Moses had paid dearly for it. Yet her own emotions at that moment were like waves that struck the sand in crossing patterns, overlaying one another in a swell and surge and backwash until all that she could feel was deep confusion.

  Henry held a newspaper towards her. “Here. It’s Monday’s Mercury. It came this morning by express.”

  She took the paper numbly from his hands, and read. The news had come, it said, via a letter from a gentleman in Louisbourg, to someone in New York. There was a time when she’d have read the words with satisfaction. Now some phrases seemed to rise towards her in a darker ink and snagged her thoughts uncomfortably: A most bloody Engagement . . . pursued them to their Sally-ports . . . ravaging and destroying the country.

  “A brilliant victory,” Henry called it, as he gave his mare’s grey neck a cheerful thump. “It is a shame that General Wolfe was killed, but
as the correspondent says a death like that is glorious and almost to be envied more than pitied, and he’s won us a great prize. I knew you would be pleased to hear of it. As will my uncle.”

  “Yes.” The word came flatly. “Let me take it to him.”

  She could not recall a stretch of grass that had seemed half as long as that she had to cross to take the newspaper to where her father stood positioning a barrel at the cider press, while Mr. de Sabran attended the great wooden screw mechanism and French Peter scooped a new measure of freshly cut apples into the machine.

  As she neared them they all stopped their work for a moment, and Mr. de Sabran gave one of his nods and surprised her by saying in accented English, “It’s nice how you’re wearing your hair today.”

  “Thank you,” she said, automatically.

  French Peter said something in his own language and Mr. de Sabran replied, and then smiled in the way she’d been waiting to see again.

  She looked away. “Father, Henry brought this.” Without more explanation, she passed him the newspaper.

  Wiping his hands on the rag he’d tucked into his belt, he frowned faintly and watching her face asked, “What is it?”

  “News.” Lydia turned. Then she thought better of it and turning back, looked to French Peter and asked, “Will you tell him, please, I’m very sorry to hear of it? Tell him I hope that his family is well.”

  Then she turned once again, so she’d not have to see that smile fade from the officer’s face.

  • • •

  It seemed strange and inhospitable to drink in celebration with the French lieutenants also standing with them in the parlour. Even though her father turned it to a toast including all, “That we may see a quick end to this war,” the wine felt cold and tasted oddly bitter.

  She was glad to set her cup down on the little table in the corner, and to take a seat.

  Mr. de Sabran also sat, continuing to read the letter Henry had delivered to him, sent from Captain Wheelock, written tidily in French. Uncertain which disturbed him more—that letter or Quebec’s surrender—she knew only that he had withdrawn into his attitude of deep reserve, reverting to his customary frown.

  Beside her, Henry, from politeness, had moved on to other news that might be counted less offensive to their involuntary houseguests. “You know they’ve issued warrants in New York for the arrest of James Depeyster and George Folliot?”

  Both men were well-respected merchants in the city, friends of William’s. “No,” she said, “I did not know.”

  “It’s all the talk. Their ship captain has fled or else he’ll face a charge of treason.”

  “For what action?”

  “Why, for trading with the enemy.” Her cousin’s mild expression seemed to think the answer obvious. “I’m told that our new admiral means to end the Monte Christi trade, and twice now Mr. Kennedy, who keeps the New York customhouse, has published advertisements for informants to come forward should they know of those engaged with it, so any merchants who persist in breaking laws,” he said, “must face the consequences.”

  Henry knew of many things that Lydia did not. He had been educated well, yet he was able to explain things in a way that did not make her feel ridiculously ignorant, so while with someone else she might have kept her lack of knowledge hidden, she dared to ask Henry, “And what is the Monte Christi trade?”

  He told her, “Monte Christi is a harbour on the Spanish side of Hispaniola. You recall that Hispaniola, though a single island, is divided—with the one side owned by France, the other owned by Spain? Well, let’s say I am Monte Christi harbour,” he proposed, “and this space here, between our chairs, marks out where Spanish territory ends, and France’s starts. Then you, my dear, can be the French harbour of Cap-François, for truly the two harbours are this close together on the map.” He hitched his chair a fraction closer. “In the Monte Christi trade, a ship might take out papers in New York to carry its provisions to another British port—to Kingston, say—but then it sails instead to Monte Christi harbour.”

  Lydia said, “But, since Spain is neutral, surely that is not illegal?”

  “To drop anchor there? Of course not. Nor to even trade in merchandise, providing it includes no banned provisions, such as flour,” he said. “But that is not what this ship in my harbour here intends. Because the truth is Monte Christi harbour is naught but an empty bay, constructed with one purpose: an illegal trade with France. And so the ships that anchor here offload their cargoes onto smaller ships, and send them round this bit of land to you.” He passed his cup of wine across the arms of both their chairs and placed it in her hand, to illustrate how it was done. “So now you have whatever I’ve brought down to sell to you—and trust me, it most often is provisions—and you send me back, by way of those same smaller ships, my payment and new cargoes of French sugar and molasses and whatever else we have arranged.” He held his hand out for his wine cup and she passed it back to him. “These will of course be certified as Spanish by false papers, and so legal to be brought back to be sold here in New York.” He drank. “You see?” he asked. “It’s simply done.”

  She frowned, and worked it through. “But these provisions that the Monte Christi traders sell the French, are those not sent to feed the armies fighting ours?”

  “Exactly,” Henry said. “That’s why the admiral means to put an end to it. Apparently he’s stepped up his patrols.”

  Her father added his approval, and said, “William is well out of that. With Daniel in Jamaica they can profit more supplying king and country than can those disloyal men who do their trading at the Mount.”

  She raised her head.

  Across the room, Mr. Ramírez briefly met her gaze before his own skipped sideways like a pebble striking on a stone. She heard again the parting promise of the Spanish captain: With my own hands I will pass him very safely to your brother at the Mount. And the flicker of confusion in Del Rio’s eyes, so quickly overcome, when afterwards she’d talked about Jamaica.

  Now, although she had a dreadful feeling she already knew the answer, she still asked her father in a tone she hoped was calm, “What is the Mount?”

  “Another name for Monte Christi,” he replied. “Monte is the Spanish word for ‘mountain,’ so our men call it the Mount.”

  “I see.” She saw more than she wanted to, but knew she could not share it with the others. Not with Henry, not with Joseph, and above all not her father. Not until she’d had a chance to ask her brother William—to his face, so she could watch his eyes and see the truth of what he answered—what he’d got them all involved in.

  “Henry,” she asked carefully, “may I please have more wine?”

  Jean-Philippe

  The week had started well enough.

  He had been glad to see the Spanish captain and his ship depart, and not entirely surprised to see it carry a new passenger, for he had marked the way the younger son looked always at the sea. Nor had he been surprised to see Ramírez left behind.

  He’d thought that it might happen when he’d seen Ramírez and Del Rio talking with each other very earnestly one evening, and from how the men had shaken hands it had seemed a farewell was in the offing.

  He got on well with Ramírez, who spoke decent French as well as Spanish and, from what Pierre had said, good English. He had always got on well with men who did their work without intruding needlessly upon his own.

  Ramírez evidently felt the same way about interference, for one evening when the Spaniard had been sitting at the parlour table looking over Joseph Wilde’s drawings for the ship repair, de Brassart had come close behind his shoulder, peering over, while Ramírez sighed and waited.

  “Have you built a ship before?” de Brassart had enquired, as though prepared to offer his advice.

  “Only a hundred. More or less,” Ramírez had replied, with a politeness that was somehow not polite, and had made Jean-Philippe feel kinship with the man.

  Pierre agreed he was an interesting character. br />
  “It is a shame,” Pierre had said to Jean-Philippe the next day as they’d worked together in the orchard, bringing in the last of the large harvest, “that Madame Wilde is not still alive to meet him, for she would have much enjoyed to see a free black man with such an education. She was not like others of her faith, you understand.”

  “What faith is that?” Though Jean-Philippe recalled de Brassart telling him that Madame Wilde had not shared the religion of her husband, he could not remember what she had been, other than a Protestant.

  “The Quakers, they are called. I don’t know why, I did not ask. She said above all they believe in peace, but I am not so sure because they cast her out for marrying a man who, while he was not of their church, was also peaceful, so I think they are not altogether good. She also said that, while they don’t believe in slavery, in their church the blacks are not allowed to sit with whites, they have to sit off separately, and this she could not reconcile. Madame Wilde,” he said, “believed we all are equal under God.”

  Which might explain, thought Jean-Philippe, why the girl Violet seemed to be respected in the household, and why Monsieur Wilde would let Ramírez share his room and treat him as though he were any other man despite the colour of his skin. “All right,” he said, and twisted one more apple from its stem, “but why then do they keep a slave?”

  “Who, Violet? She is not their slave.”

  He frowned. “Then she is free?”

  “No, you misunderstand me. She is not their slave,” Pierre explained. “She is the slave of Reuben Wilde, Monsieur Wilde’s older brother.” With a strong arm he pulled one branch down until it nearly cracked and added, “He is not a man, I think, who’ll ever see the gates of heaven. He will go the other way. He is as different from Monsieur Wilde as night is from day.”

  There were men who drew their pleasure—and their power—from the suffering of others. Jean-Philippe had met them on the field of battle and as frequently behind it, men who revelled in manipulating lives the way that others, in their idle hours, might set a starved and beaten dog upon an even weaker one for sport.