He was good at that. He always had been. “Joseph doesn’t see a wall,” their mother used to say, “only the ways to get around it.”
He drew the candle closer to inspect the change he’d made. “It will take time. We’ll need more timber.”
“William doesn’t seem to worry how much time you’ll take.”
“Just how much money it will cost him.” When he grinned, he did it with such ease she caught her breath.
She had forgotten what he looked like when he did that. She might have forgiven William many of his failings, for the part he’d played in helping Joseph heal. But she had not yet forgiven William altogether.
Word had reached them from New York that several of the merchants there had been indicted for their part in stirring up the riot in the streets against George Spencer. She’d been half afraid that William would be one of them, and then she had been angry with herself for hoping he was not, and then she’d been resigned to the reality that William, with his powerful connections and his gift of personality, knew how to dance around the rules of justice.
For her family’s sake, she hoped his luck held out. He and his friends might have shamed and frightened Mr. Spencer, and reportedly they’d even had him thrown in jail for debt, but as long as a reward purse stood to tempt would-be informers there were bound to be some who would take the risk.
She knew that Silas would.
“Be careful, William,” was the last thing she had told her brother when she’d left New York, because whatever else he was, he was her brother, and the thought of Silas living near him left her mind uneasy.
She was growing equally concerned about Mr. de Brassart. His burst of temper was behind him, but it seemed to her that, just as Joseph’s health and sociability improved each day, Mr. de Brassart’s worsened. He offered his apologies. “It is the cold, you understand. My home in France is in Bordeaux, a city in the south, where it is not so inhospitable. Your winters here for me are an affliction.”
It did not help that the first days of December were the coldest ones in recent memory.
Violet, coming from her milking, held her hands up to show Lydia how red they were from even that small time outdoors. “His Majesty,” she said, “should be rejoicing he’s not with that group of prisoners they’re taking back to Canada. They’re going to lose their hands and feet to frostbite.”
But Mr. de Brassart did not seem to find that any consolation. He was eating well enough—perhaps too well, as he began to thicken at his waist—but in between meals he no longer sat and read or joined their conversations, only kept within his chamber, often sleeping.
“I suspect,” Mr. Ramírez said one afternoon, “he is downhearted after being left behind. A man deprived of freedom may survive as long as he has hope, but when that hope is taken from him . . .” There he stopped, and glanced at Violet, who along with Lydia was salting up the pork.
It was a tedious but necessary task, since meat when fresh would spoil too soon were it not dried or salted, and they had a house of men to feed throughout the winter. First the pork was cut in pieces, cleaned, and washed in brine, then laid in rows and rubbed with salt and layered in a covered tub and left three days, then turned into a second tub and rubbed again with salt and left a week to sit. When that was done, they’d pack it into salt-lined casks and strain the brine through coarse cloth over it and store it in the cellar with the stone jars full of applesauce and pumpkin and the other fruits and vegetables they’d worked hard to preserve, but every step must be done carefully and with a mind to cleanliness to keep the meat from rotting at its core.
Violet didn’t lose the rhythm of her movements but she raised her head and told Mr. Ramírez, “When this war is ended he’ll be free. So there’s his hope. And there are plenty who’d trade places with him just to taste it. Even you, I think, if you tried stepping off this property.”
His smile was slight. “No, you are right. I cannot even take you to Cross Harbor, to your church, for fear I’d find myself in jail.”
Lydia said, “We would never let that happen.”
The weight of knowledge in his eyes seemed to indulge her innocence. “You’re very kind. But there have been men of my country, men of Spain, whose ships were carried here as prizes in the last war, and if there were any on those ships whose skin was dark, like mine, the English had them sold as slaves. It did not matter then if they were free, and had the papers that could prove it, or had friends—kind friends—to stand up at their sides and say that this was wrong. The laws could not protect them and the English sold them anyway. So thank you, no, I will stay here.” And then, as if he felt the mood had grown too sombre, he put in, “Although that is no hardship, I assure you. I am better fed here than I can remember. And I have a ship to build, to keep me busy.”
• • •
Mr. de Sabran, too, appeared to have no trouble finding tasks to occupy his time.
When work on the Bellewether slowed in December because of the storms and the ice, he helped her father take apart the cider press and store it in the shed. Together with her father and French Peter he cut timber in the woods and hauled it back to lie and season to be ready in the spring. He helped in butchering the hogs. He helped chop firewood.
It didn’t seem to bother Joseph, seeing Mr. de Sabran take up an axe and swing it with both hands.
But it was different on the day Mr. de Sabran asked her father for the hatchet.
She was standing at the kitchen window when he did it, and she saw him pass the large axe to her father by its handle; saw her father pause, and nod, and fetch another item from the shed. She didn’t see exactly what it was until Mr. de Sabran walked away, towards the woods. And then she saw it in his hand.
A hatchet had killed Moses. She had not been meant to know that. Mr. Fisher and her father had discussed the details privately, but they had left the parlour door ajar and she’d been in the kitchen and she’d heard enough of what was said to know what happened.
It was just a common tool, she told herself. She’d seen her father use one since, and never found it troubling. And it helped that Mr. de Sabran, while technically their enemy and French, was not a stranger. Not a man she feared would ever do her harm.
She stood a long time at the window, held there by the simple weight of that one truth: he’d never do her harm.
She was still there when he came back into the clearing, carrying a hickory sapling taller than himself, and straight. He laid it flat across an angle of the kitchen garden fence, not far away, and took the hatchet from where he had tucked it in his belt, and in a practised manner sheared the rough bark from the sapling, squared it off, and split it carefully and evenly along its length.
It took some time. He didn’t seem to notice she was watching him. But when he finished with whatever he was doing, took the two slim lengths of hickory wood in hand and headed for the shed, both he and she at nearly the same moment noticed Joseph, standing very still beside the barn.
Her father, too, stepped from the shed. Like her, he must have held his breath.
She did not know how much Mr. de Sabran knew about her brother and Oswego and the things he would have seen there, but clearly he knew something of it, because while he’d been about to put the hatchet back into his belt, he turned it neatly now within his hand and walking the last few steps to her father, held it out for him to take. And with the tall, straight pieces of the sapling he passed on into the shed, and Joseph, after a long moment, carried on towards the house.
He came in by the kitchen door and stamped his boots to shake the snow off, bringing in a freezing blast of winter air that made the fire dance. Lydia had moved to stir the panful of potatoes she had set to roast, relieved to find they hadn’t burnt to blackened crisps.
She turned, expecting she would have to cheer him, but he only sniffed the air and told her, “That smells good.” And went upstairs.
• • •
She doubted they would ever become friendly, Joseph an
d Mr. de Sabran. They were too watchful of each other, too on guard against each other’s movements. But at least they could share the same room without hostility. And Joseph was the first to guess what Mr. de Sabran was making.
“Snowshoes,” Joseph said. “It has to be. That’s why he asked for the hide, when we slaughtered the steer.”
They had wondered about that. Her father, refusing the offer of payment, had gifted the hide to him, not asking what he intended to do with it. Mr. de Sabran had scraped the hide, soaked it with ashes and taken the hair off and nailed it to dry on the wall of the shed, but he hadn’t done anything further to tan it. And then he had cut it in long narrow strips, which had baffled them all.
Now she followed his progress with interest. She’d seen snowshoes worn, but she’d never seen anyone make them.
He wound the hide strips tightly into a ball, left them outdoors to freeze in the snow, and then thawed them and wound them again, which she reasoned would make them less likely to stretch. With that done, he took both lengths of hickory wood, soaked them and steamed them and, one by one, bent them around into oval shapes, binding the back joints and adding a single crossbar for stability.
Finally, with patience and strength, he wove the leather strips by hand into an intricate, taut web that filled the inside of each frame, leaving a half-circle hole at the crossbar, the purpose of which became clear when, after January brought a snow that drifted to their knees, he showed them how the snowshoes worked. Her father tried first, with his feet loosely bound to the snowshoes by leather thongs so that the toes of his boots could dip down through the holes when he walked while the long shoes stayed virtually level.
Mr. de Sabran smiled encouragement. “Good. Very good.” He tapped the back part of the snowshoe. “This rests always down.” And then the front part. “This rests up. No falling.”
Violet did it easily, and earned another smile. Mr. Ramírez watched her proudly but declined to try himself. So next the shoes were passed to Lydia.
She found it an odd feeling to sink partway in the snow and yet be buoyed by it, and finding it exhilarating she forgot to mind her steps and did what he’d said not to do. The front part of the snowshoe dropped and caught the snow and as she stumbled, pitching forward, Mr. de Sabran reached out and took her hand to steady her. It had the opposite effect.
The feelings that had started in New York, instead of fading with the dull routine of every day, had deepened. She thought of him as often by his first name as his last, having heard it twice—the first time when his letters had been read out in the orchard, and more recently when he had introduced himself to Captain Bonneau at the home of the de Joncourts: Jean-Philippe. A nice name. She imagined herself saying it, and hearing him say “Lydia.” She watched his hands too much, and waited for his smile too often, and the feelings were uncomfortable and thrilling all at once; unwanted and—when he came close to her—confusing.
When the ice that bound the waters of the bay began to break, and February’s frozen days gave way to March, a time for breaking ground and digging stones and pruning back the dead wood from the apple trees, she couldn’t help but have the sense that something in herself was thawing also. Starting over. Starting new.
And then in mid-March suddenly the wind changed to the eastward, blowing in a violent snowstorm that was unexpected so late in the season. It lasted all day Sunday and continued into Monday and on Tuesday they had word from William.
Benjamin was home.
• • •
The snow had melted from the upper field but still the ground was soft and wet and she was forced to step with care to keep from sliding into puddles. The mare, some distance off, lifted her head and looked, but from some instinct seemed to know that Lydia, now walking up the path along the orchard wall, had not come here for her. She’d come for Benjamin.
He’d been too quiet after dinner. While she’d cleared the table he’d said he was going for some air, and when he hadn’t yet returned an hour later she had guessed where he would be. This was the place he’d always gone when seeking solitude, where he could stand and watch the ships.
His homecoming had been a festive time of food and talk. He’d brought them gifts—sugar and wine and molasses, and for Lydia and Violet, caps and sleeve ruffles of lace as finely fashioned as a spider’s web. “Captain del Rio insists Spanish lace is the best in the world, and I’ve learned not to argue with Captain del Rio.” The captain, having business to detain him in the islands, had sent them his apologies that he and El Montero’s crew had not delivered Benjamin themselves, instead arranging passage home for him aboard a New York privateer. “And we shall send Mr. Ramírez home, in our turn,” had been Benjamin’s assurance, “on the Bellewether, when she is fit to sail.”
Mr. Ramírez had thanked Benjamin, and no more had been said of it, but Lydia had thought he seemed dispirited.
And strangely, it had seemed to her that Benjamin as well had grown more thoughtful as the meal progressed. She didn’t know what troubled him, but they’d been too close growing up for her to leave him now without a confidante.
He turned, as had the mare, and watched her walk the last steps up to join him before smiling, very slightly, as he looked away again across the deep blue of the Sound, the sun above the farther shore exposing a dull patchwork of brown fields and greening meadows and the darker lines of trees, while in the foreground a brave scattering of billowed sails and tiny ships moved busily about.
She’d stood in nearly this same spot to watch him sailing out on El Montero. That had been barely six months ago, but he seemed older.
He’d always stood with confidence but now he held himself with true authority, head up and shoulders braced.
“You’ve changed,” she told him.
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
“I would suspect that’s part of growing up,” he said. The smile tightened briefly, and then faded. “Am I better now, or worse?”
“I’ve not decided. Either way, you’re still my brother.” She had come to stand directly at his side now. “How was William, when you left him?”
“He was well.” He paused. “He thinks you’re angry with him. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ll forgive him.”
“Possibly.” She saw no point in skirting round the obvious. “What did you think of Monte Christi?”
“I enjoyed it. There’s not much to see besides the harbour, but that’s always lively.” With his focus on the sails he told her, “William isn’t wrong, you know. About the British.”
“We are British.”
“Not to them, we’re not. To them, we’ll always be Colonials, and never equals. Their ships can sail freely where they wish, and carry what they wish, and trade at any port that strikes their fancy, but let one of our ships dare to try the same and we are suddenly a danger to their profits. No, the Flour Act is a hard and unfair law, and if we do not stand against it there’ll be harder laws to come.”
“You sound like William.”
He looked down at her. “I’ve seen things these past months that I could never have imagined.” For a moment he appeared to be considering the wisdom of describing what he’d seen, but in the end he simply told her, “I know what the British are, and what they’re capable of doing. And I know exactly what they think of us.”
The wind blew cold along the bluffs and chased a bank of clouds across the sun so that a shadow fell across the shoreline opposite—a long, dark line that settled on the forests and the fields like an impassable divide.
He told her, “William’s made me captain of the Bellewether.”
She knew how much it meant to him, and yet the word “congratulations” had a hollow feeling on her tongue.
“When she’s rebuilt and ready, we will find a crew and take her out. My first command.”
“Does Father know?”
“Not yet.”
“Where will you sail?”
“That
is for William to decide.”
The clouds were moving swiftly and the shadow on the farther shore had faded.
In a quiet voice, she said, “He promised me she’d never sail to Monte Christi.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And?”
“And you have my word as well. The Bellewether will never enter Monte Christi harbour.” He was looking in her eyes, and she could tell he meant it.
“Thank you.”
Reaching out he hugged her close against his side. “I’m not so changed,” he said, but in a low, abstracted tone that made her wonder whether he was trying to convince her, or himself.
Jean-Philippe
For years the spring had meant the start of the campaigning season. It should have left him at a loss, as April softened into May, to have no men to train, no orders, no objective, but he’d found new outlets for his restless energy.
There was the ship, of course, although the work on that progressed in stages broken by some new instruction from the elder brother in New York, whose interference at first frustrated Ramírez then amused him.
“He is doing it on purpose,” said the Spaniard to him one day as they worked to caulk the seams between the hull’s new planks, a tedious chore that involved driving strands of tarred hemp into place with a mallet and sharp-edged iron.
“Doing what?” asked Jean-Philippe.
“Delaying the repairs.” They were working side by side and speaking French but still Ramírez glanced behind to make sure Joseph Wilde was out of earshot. “He’s no fool, the brother. If he lets the ship be launched too soon, the English will impress her for their service, do you see? To carry troops up to their camp.”
The British had been mustering their troops for some weeks past, and Captain Wheelock was in Massachusetts now, apparently, attending to the business of recruiting there. He’d sent a letter from a town called Worcester, to explain what he had done in seeking justice for La Réjouie.