Bellewether

  Your sergeant’s case was brought before a Regimental Court Martial, and I regret to say the charges were dismissed against the private soldier and the corporal who attacked him, but I’ve written General Amherst, giving my opinion that the charges, as a capital offence, are great and serious enough to warrant civil jurisdiction, and I hope to see the case tried in another court. Meantime, I did succeed in seeing all your other men included in the late exchange of prisoners and assure you Captain Bonneau, who went with them, gave his word he’d see them safely up to Montreal.

  With luck, they would be rested and re-armed by now and ready to retake the city of Quebec.

  It would be half a month or more before the British could assemble all their regiments at Albany, equip them, send them north, and see them properly encamped. If William Wilde preferred to keep this ship from being used to aid that effort, Jean-Philippe was not about to argue.

  He set another twisted strand of caulking in the seam that he was working on and with his mallet drove it home. Ramírez did the same, except his caulking iron stuck between the planks and as he wrenched it out he lost his balance. In a reflex action Jean-Philippe reached out and grabbed Ramírez by his shirt, and though he felt the fabric tear within his grasp the older man was saved from falling.

  “Thank you.” Straightening, Ramírez set his clothes to rights and, noticing the torn seam at his shoulder, drew his waistcoat up to cover it, but not before the shirt had gaped enough that Jean-Philippe could see the scar.

  No, not a scar. A brand made by a heated iron, for although it was slashed across, the letter R was still as clear to read as if it had been printed. He could feel Ramírez watching him, and he knew why.

  He met the Spaniard’s eyes. “If you are worried that I’ll tell, I won’t.”

  Ramírez looked behind them once again, and this time Jean-Philippe knew he was looking to see who might be a witness, and because he also knew no man who bore a brand like that had cause to trust another’s promise, he showed his own trust by turning back to his work.

  “The year my father’s mother died,” he said, “my grandfather brought home a slave, a girl he bought from a ship’s captain who had come from the West Indies. He had other slaves already. Panis. You know what this is? Pani?”

  The Spaniard nodded. “Indians.”

  “Yes. He had Pani slaves to work his farm, but none to keep his house. So he bought Angélique.” He could not say her name without emotion, but he knew that she deserved the honour of him saying it aloud. “Like you, she had the brand of her first owner on her shoulder. She was close to Violet’s age, then. I was six years old. She told me stories. Sang to me. I loved her very much.” He held the iron to the hemp and struck it hard and deep into the seam. “My grandfather, he always told her, when he died, she’d have her freedom. We all heard him say this, many times. He made my father promise.” It was harder than he’d thought it would be, telling this, but he had started now and felt the need to finish. “I was fifteen when he died. I was already a cadet, and on campaign. I came home three months afterwards. And Angélique was gone. My father sold her.” He could feel the force of that betrayal even now, and swung the mallet to give vent to it. “He sold her to a man who one week later beat her. Killed her. Said it was an accident. The judge believed him.” With a shrug that couldn’t quite contain his anger, he said, “That was the last time I’ve seen my home. I don’t like slavery. And I keep my word.” He faced Ramírez, and repeated, “I won’t tell.”

  The Spaniard studied him a minute longer, gave a silent nod, and took his own tools up and they went on with what they had been doing, side by side, and nothing more was said.

  • • •

  When work stalled upon the ship, there was the farm. May was the time of ploughing, planting, mending fences, carting dung and spreading it and setting fire to the dead leaves and the briars. In the field, a calf was born. A pair of wild doves built their nest beside the barn, their bright eyes always watching him to see he did not step too near the soft brown fledglings hidden on the ground, nearly invisible. And then the fledglings took to flight and at the month’s end all the apple orchard came in bloom, a mass of white and pink that filled the air with fragrance.

  He’d forgotten, having lived so long with fighting and with death, how life looked when it was beginning over. Beautiful.

  Pierre was philosophical. “You see, Marine,” he said, “it’s how life is. One thing will end, another will begin.” His wife had lately had another child, a little girl, and while it could not have removed the pain of his lost son, he seemed happier.

  Today he’d come to help them wash the sheep. The weather, after days of rain, was finally warm enough and promised to hold clear, and the broad creek at the pasture’s edge was running full and fast. It was a job that took four men and needed doing several days before the shearing, so the sheep could dry in sunlight. Benjamin and Monsieur Wilde were working as a team to scrub the sheep with soft, brown soap before they passed them to Pierre and Jean-Philippe, who stood thigh-deep in the cold water, making sure each sheep was well-rinsed in the current that would carry all the dirt and oil away.

  “Sheep,” Pierre remarked, “are stubborn animals.” He set the one he held upon the shore and watched it scamper up the bank. “They seldom walk in a straight path. Like us, they always try to look behind.”

  Jean-Philippe set his sheep down and squeezed the water from its thick fleece with his forearms before straightening to stretch his shoulders. His sheep wandered two steps up the bank then stood, feet planted, bleating loudly.

  Pierre grinned. “You see? In this, too, they’re like us.” He waded out and took the sheep and turned it so its head was pointed to the others in the pasture, and the sheep stopped bleating and began to walk. “The trick in life,” Pierre told Jean-Philippe, “is not to look behind so long you miss where you are being led.”

  • • •

  That evening after supper, Monsieur Wilde brought out the cider and the cribbage board.

  It had become their habit through the winter months, begun when Jean-Philippe had seen the narrow wooden gaming board set on the corner bookshelf and in studying the holes and pegs had drawn his host’s attention. It was not a game he’d played before, but given it used cards it did not take him long to learn it, and he’d come to find it an agreeable diversion.

  In honesty, had he not liked the game he would have played it for no other reason than his host enjoyed it, and he’d come to like the company of Monsieur Wilde.

  The parlour, with its blue walls, was a cool and peaceful place this evening. Other than the two of them—the cribbage board set on the little table in between their high-backed chairs before the unlit hearth—there was only Ramírez at the writing desk, and Lydia ensconced within her corner by the window, with the small board on her lap to hold her drawing paper. Joseph, after working on the ship all day, had gone upstairs. Violet had gone out to do the milking. And de Brassart, having spent another week in bed with some vague illness, was now up and out of doors and standing underneath the rowan tree engaged in what appeared to be some new debate with Benjamin.

  As Jean-Philippe was dealt his cards he briefly watched the two men through the window, not because he cared what they were arguing about, but because doing so allowed him an excuse to turn his head in that direction and observe her without seeming to observe her.

  She was drawing him. In profile, it would seem, because her pencil stilled the minute he began to turn, then moved again as he looked back towards the game. He hid his smile, and tried to look appropriately dignified.

  He viewed his cards and sorted them. The great frustration of this game was that its play relied on simple chance as much as strategy.

  The value of a hand relied not only on what cards you kept, but which ones you selected to discard, and all would turn upon the one card, yet unseen, that would be turned at random from the waiting deck. He frowned, sorting his cards again, considering.

 
Monsieur Wilde made a comment Jean-Philippe did not completely catch, and then Ramírez answered and both men were smiling when Ramírez translated: “He said he would have thought a soldier would be more decisive, so I said you’re not a soldier, you’re an officer.”

  Jean-Philippe smiled, too, before remembering that it would spoil his profile for her drawing. He selected his two cards and set them down, and when the older man spoke next the words were easier to understand.

  “If you ask me,” Monsieur Wilde told him, “you were born to be a farmer.”

  He wasn’t often taken by surprise. The comment was a simple one and offered with sincerity and so he answered, “Thank you.” But the impact that he felt was unexpected.

  It was the phrasing of the words, in perfect counterpoint to those his uncle once spoke with such confidence. This one will never settle . . . He was born to be a soldier. And yet what if that had, after all, been nothing more than chance—one card selected, and another left unplayed?

  What if his uncle had not been a soldier, but a merchant, or a miller? It was interesting to think what course his own life might have taken then; how each card dealt a man could change the outcome of the game.

  The turn was his. He played his four, and wished he’d kept his ace, and somehow scored six points in spite of it. He dealt the next hand in his turn, and moved his pegs around the board, and drank his cider, liking the companionship. When Violet came back from the barn, Ramírez went to help her, leaving only him and Monsieur Wilde and Lydia within the quiet parlour, and he liked that even better. Liked the comfort and contentedness of sitting with them in that room, with evening coming on.

  The words he’d built his life upon seemed small and distant in his mind: This one will never settle.

  And he wondered, for the first time, if his uncle had been wrong.

  • • •

  The best way to deal with a man like de Brassart, he knew, was to give him no time to come up with a lie.

  So that night as he sat on the edge of his bed he asked, straight out, “What did you arrange with him?”

  All innocence. “What do you mean?”

  “With Benjamin.” He didn’t offer details of his own, because to watch de Brassart thinking back to what might have been seen or overheard was more revealing.

  He could see the choices being weighed—mislead, deny, or tell the truth. De Brassart’s mouth thinned to a line of resignation. So, the truth.

  “His brother has provided him a flag and papers giving him authority to carry a French prisoner to be exchanged.” As wary as a miser being asked to share his wealth, he said, “One prisoner. Not two.”

  “I see.”

  A man with more discretion might have left the matter there. De Brassart said, “Now that the English soldiers have gone to their camp, and there’s less danger that the ship will be impressed, they will be working hard to get it finished, and his orders are to sail the ship, as soon as it is ready, to the port of Cap-François, at Saint-Domingue.”

  “I see.”

  “My brother lives at Saint-Domingue. I should imagine that’s why they decided I should be the one to go.”

  Jean-Philippe privately thought it more likely that William Wilde, after they’d met in New York, would have known well enough what reply he would make to an offer that skirted the bounds of legality. William might be driven by his own self-interest and ambition, but he was intelligent. It came as no surprise to learn his trade was like his nature—neither good nor bad but falling in the grey and shifting space between. Remembering what Captain Wheelock had told the de Joncourt boy about how people here bought flags of truce for their illicit trade with France in the West Indies, Jean-Philippe could not help wondering just how much Lydia knew of her brothers’ business ventures.

  From the way she had behaved towards her brother in New York, he guessed she knew as much as he did, maybe more. And she did not approve.

  He lay back on his bed and laced his hands behind his head. “Does Captain Wheelock know?”

  “I don’t need his permission. By the terms of our parole, to leave this place I only need permission from a governor, and I’m assured a governor has signed my papers. Anyway, I don’t recall your thinking that the captain was owed any information other than what was required.”

  There was logic to that reasoning.

  De Brassart said, “I promised nothing else except that I would neither serve against the English king nor any of his allies until after I have been exchanged.” He said that with defiance and then waited, as if expecting Jean-Philippe to argue. “Well?”

  He shrugged. “I wish you luck.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly that. I’ve met the brother in New York. I’ll lay you odds the papers and the flag of truce were purchased and not given. And I promise you the English are aware of this, so if you think they’ll let the ship sail unmolested into a French port, then you’re delusional.”

  That seemed to wound de Brassart’s pride. “At least I’m doing what I can to get back in this war.”

  “Yes, you’ll be right on the front lines, in Saint-Domingue.”

  Rolling, he turned his back, feeling the daggers that filled the long silence.

  De Brassart lay down. “I will be on French soil. Not forgetting my place, or what country I serve.” Seeking to drive the blade home, he went on, “Not pretending that people who hate me could ever accept me as anything else but their enemy.”

  Over their heads the old beams of the house sighed and settled and Jean-Philippe tried not to think of how close and how far he was, just at that moment, from all that he might have been.

  He heard the creak of a mattress and knew that de Brassart had turned his back also, dismissively. And in the darkness, the cultured French voice held a frozen disdain. “I don’t think I’m the one who’s delusional.”

  Charley

  “It’s not your fault,” said Sharon, in a tone that meant the opposite. “You’re not from here. But anyone who’s local could have told you it’s impossible.”

  She didn’t come right out and call me “idiot,” although it was implied, and from the coughs and shifting looks around the table I could tell this was a hill I wouldn’t want to die on. But I took it one more step and asked her, “Why?”

  “Because Millbank’s main business is weddings. Every venue here is booked up months, and sometimes years, ahead of time. There simply isn’t anywhere to hold a dance.”

  I looked across the table. “Harvey? What about the Privateer Club?”

  “Sorry, but we’re taking bookings now for next November, and if anybody cancels, there’s a waiting list, so I can’t help. I wish I could.” He said that like he meant it, and from Sharon’s tightened mouth I knew she still hadn’t forgiven him for switching sides. She wasn’t a forgiving sort of woman.

  Diplomatically, Malaika said, “It’s not a bad idea, but—”

  Don interrupted. “What about the barn?”

  But Eve reminded him the barn roof leaked. “And we don’t have the budget to replace it. Even if we did, it would just cancel out whatever profit we’d be making in return. So there’s no point.”

  There was a momentary silence in our meeting room.

  “I’d rather rip my liver out,” Frank told me, “than agree with Sharon, but she’s right. There’s no way we can have a dance this year.”

  • • •

  “It was a good idea, though,” I said to Sam and Willie as I watched them working in my favourite room of the old house—the big upstairs bedchamber I could walk into like Narnia, from my own office.

  Willie had been called away last month to do emergency repairs on an old church upstate, but he was back today and picking up where he’d left off. His usual assistant was home sick, so Lara’s eldest son was helping. Just like Sam, the big Scotsman seemed to enjoy teaching others the tricks of his trade. With the boy’s help he had opened up the fireplace and they’d both had their heads up the ol
d flue, inspecting the parged lining. Now he turned and said, “I’d dance with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mind you, I can’t dance like I used to. Not with my old mason’s back.” When Sam glanced at him sideways, Willie told him, “It’s a true affliction, mason’s back. The price we pay for spending all those hours crouched in people’s cellars. Ruins the lower muscles.”

  Lara’s son asked, “So how do you make it better?”

  “Drink a lot.” He grinned, and then appearing to remember that the boy was barely in his teens, he said, “And swimming. Swimming’s best.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well,” I said, “it looks like neither of us will be dancing for a while.”

  “A shame. I do a decent tango.”

  Lara, coming through the doorway from my office, lightly said, “I’d pay to see that.”

  Willie’s smile grew broader as it always did when she was near. “You, my love, could have the show for free.”

  She said, “I might just take you up on that. But right now, it’s your big strong arms I need. I have a box of books, a big one, in my trunk. A gift from Dave for Charley.”

  Sam tapped one last nail into the piece of trim he’d been refitting on the panelled wall, and set his hammer down. “I’ll go,” he said, to Willie. “Save your back.” And taking Lara’s keys, he headed down the front stairs.

  Lara smoothed her son’s hair. “You’re all scruffy.”

  “He’s a mason in the making, this lad,” Willie told her. “Watch this. Tell your mum what you’ve just learned, now. How big should a flue be, compared to the fireplace opening?”

  “Seven to ten percent.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because if it’s too small, then the smoke comes back into the room.”

  “Right. And if it’s too big? What then?”

  “You get a lazy fire.”