Bellewether

  Light footsteps, not heavy.

  I stood there half frozen and watched as a woman appeared in the bedchamber doorway. An elderly woman. And to my relief, not a ghost.

  “I am sorry,” she said, in a lovely, French-accented voice. “I did knock, but your front door was already open. I hope I don’t trouble you?”

  I found my voice and said, “No, not at all.”

  “I can see you’re not ready for visitors, but I have only this day left before I go home, and I hoped—” With a smile she paused, starting again as though wanting to place the words in a more logical order. “For me it’s a pilgrimage, you understand, every time I am here in America. I like to pay my respects. But the young lady tells me they no longer have it, they’ve loaned it to you. So I wonder, if it’s not a great inconvenience,” she asked, “may I please see the sword of Lieutenant de Sabran?”

  Lydia

  Her father was building a coffin.

  She watched him at work, his head bent, his hands sure. She’d watched him countless times like this, but now she saw the concentrated effort he was making to shave every piece of roughness from the wood, to keep it smooth. She knew the cost of such an effort.

  The dew-wet grass had bent where she had walked across it, and her feet had made so little sound he had not heard her, so she stood a moment longer in the open doorway of the shed, while he was unaware.

  Last night had aged him. He looked weary. And she did not want to cause him more distress, but in the end she cleared her throat and wished her father a good morning, and she told him. “Violet’s gone.”

  His hands stayed steady in their movements. “Is she?”

  “Yes. On the Bellewether, it seems, with Mr. Ramírez. She left a note.”

  “That’s thoughtful of her.”

  She looked more closely at his face. “You knew.”

  He raised one shoulder in what might have been a shrug, and her suspicion became certainty.

  “You knew Mr. Ramírez was her father.”

  “Not at first,” he told her. “Phyllis never would say who the father was, you understand, but for my part I reckoned it was one of Reuben’s Spanish Negroes. He had four, at one time, on his farm at Newtown. Bought off prize ships at New York, with the misfortune to first fall into my brother’s hands, and then be taken up in the conspiracy.”

  She’d been a baby in the year that madness gripped New York, but growing up she’d heard the tale in pieces—how a fire at Fort George had led to claims the black men in that city meant to start a riot, setting off a chain of baseless accusations, mass arrests and trials that were mockeries of justice. She had heard about the hangings, and the burnings at the stake.

  Her father did not tell those details now, but only called the memory of it to her mind.

  “It got so terrible,” he told her, “that the governor of Massachusetts wrote our own, and told him he must stop it, for he saw that it was taking on the tone of their own witch trials.”

  “But they didn’t stop it.”

  “No. Like many fires, it choked to death on its own ashes. But it was an evil time, and good men died unnecessary deaths because of it.”

  He shaved another careful curl of wood from one end of the coffin. “I had hoped,” he said, “that Violet’s father might be one of those who had survived. Two of my brother’s Spanish Negroes were not killed. One was deported. And the other disappeared. Took passage on a ship, most likely, for there were then sympathetic captains in the harbour, privateers, who for a price would take a Spanish Negro to a port at Hispaniola, where he might in time meet with the son of someone he’d once sailed with.” He was speaking in an offhand way, his focus on his work. “And later, if he chanced to trade with Daniel, he might learn the woman he’d once loved had come to live with us, here at the cove. And he might learn he had a daughter.”

  Lydia was quiet for a moment. “Did he know you knew?”

  “It was not something we discussed. But clearly it had been arranged with Benjamin, and he will see they get to El Montero.”

  He said nothing of what other things had been arranged with Benjamin. He did not mention William or his trade to the West Indies, or the flag of truce that Benjamin now carried on the Bellewether, and Lydia could not help wondering whether her father had long known the truth about her brothers’ business, also.

  Standing there, she only said, “I hope it will go well for Violet. I hope she’ll be free.” A darker thought intruded. “But,” she asked him, “what of Uncle Reuben?”

  “I have money. I can pay him.”

  But she knew, as he did, that it had never been about the money, with her uncle. “Will he hunt her?”

  “Even Reuben,” he informed her, “will not hunt a corpse.” He finished with the coffin lid and set it in its place, and then she understood.

  “You mean to tell him she is dead?”

  “I mean to tell all who will listen that she drowned early this morning, and I found her. If they want a pretty story, I will say that when Ramírez left, she lost the will to carry on. It is not so implausible, considering her mother threatened once to do the same.”

  She thought of this, and with a nod conceded it might work.

  “I’ll go and do the milking, then. Just let me put the tea on first, for you and Mr. de Sabran.”

  He straightened. “Lydia.”

  She had begun to turn away but now she stopped, and looked at him.

  He told her, “Violet’s not the only one who’s left us.”

  • • •

  She’d learned the way to deal with loss. She knew that, like a clinging vine, if given space it would wind over everything, blot out the colour and the light and leave her there in darkness. So she did not give it space. She filled each moment of her waking day with work—an easy thing, with Violet gone. And in the night she fell into a sleep too deep for dreams.

  The dreams still tried to come. They crept in quietly and pressed for entry, promising the quick flash of a smile, and warm oblivion. But she withstood them, and kept hold of her emotions.

  Till the day that Silas came.

  He came at midday, on the mare. The morning had been warm and he had used the mare so harshly she was foaming sweat, her eyes rolled partly white in indignation.

  Lydia came forward, took hold of the reins, and lost her temper. “What’s the matter with you? Off. Get off her now.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “And good day to you, too, cousin.” Dropping indolently from the saddle he watched Lydia begin to tend the mare. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you angry since our childhood. It becomes you.”

  She could tell that he was hoping for a heated answer, and she did not give him satisfaction. “I’ll fetch Father.”

  He’d been clearing out the well. His clothes were streaked with dirt and dust. He nodded. “Silas.” Not a greeting of affection.

  “Uncle Zeb.” He looked around expectantly. “Where’s Joseph? Is he well? We heard a most distressing story, although I was certain it could not be true. As I told everyone, my cousin could not kill a man.” He made it sound a failing, rather than a virtue.

  Lydia had walked the mare to soothe her and had taken off the saddle and now with a rag began to rub and raise the hair along the horse’s legs, where blood cooled faster.

  “Joseph’s fine,” her father said. “You’ve come for payment.”

  “Yes. My father has your letter and accepts the sum you’ve offered. With a penalty of course, for such an early and untimely loss of property.”

  She watched her father bite his tongue. He said, “I’ll get your money.”

  He was gone for a few minutes, in the house, and Silas broke the brittle silence. “I hear Benjamin’s made captain of the Bellewether.”

  It was a probing comment, not a question, and she did not choose to rise to it. “You seem to hear a lot of things.”

  “I do. I hear that a French officer came lately from this cove to take up lodgings at the house of the de Joncou
rt family.” He smiled faintly, seeing the effect of that remark. “But only one, though. So I wonder, since we sent you two French officers, what happened to the other?”

  She said nothing. She was grateful when her father reappeared, a calfskin purse of money in his hand.

  “Here. You don’t want to waste the daylight.”

  “You would send me back to Millbank now, on foot, and without dinner?” Silas raised his eyebrows higher. “This is hardly hospitality. Or do you worry I might learn the secret of whose body you have truly buried up there on the hill?”

  A weighted silence hung between them.

  “Fine.” Her father shattered it, decisively. “You wish to see who’s buried there? Come and see. I’ll get my shovel.”

  As he stormed towards the shed, he said, “Let’s hope you have the stomach for it, though, because a body drowned is not a pretty sight, and being buried rarely does improve it.”

  Silas made no move to follow, and her father stopped.

  “Well? Are you coming?”

  Silas, caught within the web of his own cowardice, said, “No.”

  Her father calmed, and walked back down to stand in front of Silas. “No.” He did not say it mockingly, but in full understanding of the limitations of her cousin’s nature. “Go home, boy. Tell my brother our account is settled. It is done. Go home.”

  She was not sure it was a wise thing, sending Silas off this way, but it felt good to watch him trudging down the road to Millbank, through the darkness of the trees.

  Her father seemed to stand a little straighter, having shaken off the yoke he’d carried on his shoulders for so many years. She asked him, “What would you have done, if he had gone to see the coffin opened?”

  “I’d have laid him in it,” said her father.

  And with that, he went to finish clearing out the well.

  • • •

  August was a month of storms. And Henry brought bad news.

  They sat together in the parlour—she and Henry, Joseph, Sarah, and her father—and the blue walls seemed to run with mournful shadows as the rain chased down the window glass. They drank a toast, respectfully, to Governor DeLancey. To his memory.

  “It’s an unexpected death,” said Henry, “though of course he was a good age.”

  Her father reminded them dryly, “He is—he was—younger than me.”

  “But the new acting governor’s older, so he may be much better able to deal with the merchants,” was Henry’s opinion. “They have been complaining of late that they cannot find crews for their ships, since the sailors are moving to other ports where they’re less likely to find themselves pressed into service in our Royal Navy. I’m told that not even the market-boats these days are safe from the press.”

  Her father was of the opinion that it would get worse before it would get better. They’d all seen the newspaper Henry had brought, with the list of the Flags of Truce, taken by Men of War and Privateers, and carried into Jamaica.

  The Bellewether, Lydia noticed, had not been among them.

  “But tell us some good news,” said Sarah. She sat with her arm slipped through Joseph’s, their wedding not many weeks off now, their house nearly finished. “It cannot be all sad and gloomy. There must be some good.”

  Henry thought for a moment, then ventured, “They say General Amherst will march soon against Montreal. And you know that Quebec is secure, of course, after the French tried and failed to retake it. So finally it looks as though all of the victories will be on our side.”

  She fell silent, and nobody noticed. Nor did they see how it affected her when Henry added, “In fact, there is a ship now in the harbour at New York that’s carried upwards of a hundred of our own men, several officers included, just released by their French captors and sent down to be exchanged, and surely having them back in the fight will be an asset.”

  “What rank?” she asked him.

  Henry turned. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What rank are the officers to be exchanged?”

  “I’ve no idea. All ranks, I’d imagine.” Henry smiled. “Is it important?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose it is.”

  But she could not stop thinking of that ship in New York harbour, waiting now to take French prisoners—French officers—back home in an exchange.

  She thought of when they’d first arrived. When he had first arrived. And she remembered how impatient she had been to have him gone.

  So now he would be going. Now, perhaps, he was already gone. And she could find no joy in it. No joy in it at all.

  • • •

  That evening, when she went to do the milking, she stood quietly alone and for a long time at the centre of the barn. There was no music. Nothing left to mark the place where they had danced.

  And yet she stood there and remembered how it felt when he had held her hands and missed the steps and laughed. When loyalties and uniforms and war had seemed like things of no significance, and they had been a woman and a man and nothing more.

  She heard the barn door creaking open and she went on standing there and did not move, because she suddenly became aware that she’d begun to cry. The tears slid hotly down her cheeks and would not stop, so she stayed still and held her head up and hoped whoever it was would go, and leave her with some dignity.

  A harness thudded on the wall as someone hung it on its peg. The door began to creak again, then stopped.

  French Peter said, “You think he left because he did not care.”

  She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She felt sure she would fall to pieces if she tried.

  He said, “He thought he could not offer you a future. Not a future that was good for you. He thought that you deserved a better man.”

  French Peter paused, and when he spoke again his voice held sympathy. “He did not leave because he did not care,” he said. “He left because he loved you.”

  Jean-Philippe

  “This is an infuriating game.” Captain Bonneau surveyed the cards he had been dealt, while Jeanne de Joncourt took her seat within the family’s parlour.

  “Then you’re well-suited to it,” she remarked. She looked at Jean-Philippe. “How is your sergeant?”

  “Sleeping.” Dying, was the truest answer. After all these years he knew the signs. But there was nothing to be gained by being truthful in this instance, and La Réjouie for his part seemed content to drift and doze without confronting the reality.

  He thought that Jeanne de Joncourt knew. At least, he thought it probable, because these past two days she had been watching Jean-Philippe with an expression of shared sympathy.

  Bonneau said, “Truly, too much of this game depends on changes in the play I can’t control.” He spoke with feeling that came more from life than the cards. He’d been here for two months already, having brought his prisoners to New York in the first days of July, only to have to wait a month for Captain Wheelock to arrive from Massachusetts to begin arranging the exchange, and that, in turn, had brought him more frustration.

  Still, Bonneau was an experienced negotiator—level-headed, flawlessly polite, and firm in his demands. And he’d decided he was bringing Jean-Philippe back with him, this time. He’d told Wheelock, “Monsieur le Marquis reminds you that to settle the mistake made in your last exchange, you still owe him a captain, twenty-two Canadians, and two lieutenants of the Troupes de la Marine. And there is one of them.” He’d pointed with his glass at Jean-Philippe.

  Wheelock had said, if it were up to him, he would allow it. “But the general is reluctant to exchange the Troupes de la Marine.”

  “Because he doesn’t trust them, yes? You are too highly capable,” Bonneau had said to Jean-Philippe. “You make the English nervous. But”—he’d turned again to Wheelock—“this is why it would be better to exchange this man, and get him off your soil.”

  To watch the back-and-forth between the two men could be entertaining.

  Jeanne de Joncourt often joined them, though
her own attention rarely strayed from Captain Wheelock. It was very obvious to Jean-Philippe the two of them were smitten with each other, and he envied them.

  He envied Captain Wheelock, too, for being able to come call upon the family of the woman he was courting, and be greeted as a friend.

  Today, the captain looked preoccupied when he arrived.

  Bonneau informed him, “As you see, I’m forced to play the very irritating game of cribbage, so if you must tear me from it, I will not complain.”

  But Captain Wheelock was first drawn aside by Jeanne de Joncourt, to a quiet corner of the parlour, where they bent their heads and talked in private.

  Bonneau glanced at them and smiled. “Such comfort,” he told Jean-Philippe, “is not allowed for you nor me. A shame, but there it is. Some men get wives while others get the battlefield.” He pointed to the cards and asked, “Now, which will you discard?”

  Wheelock came across and said to Jean-Philippe, “Lieutenant, may I see you for a moment? On your own.”

  The room he chose was plain, but private. Wheelock closed the door and took a seat and motioned Jean-Philippe to sit as well, and for a moment they sat looking at each other, as they had the first day they’d met, at the Wildes’ house on Long Island.

  “Last summer,” Wheelock said, “when I was first sent down here, one of my superiors suggested rather strongly I should try persuading prisoners to change sides, and come fight for us.” His tone of voice told how he’d felt about that order.

  Jean-Philippe asked, “And how did you answer your superior?”

  “I told him a worse instrument than myself could hardly be found for the purpose. Had any of the prisoners applied to me to change sides, I might then have helped, but I could hardly promise to be active in persuading people to do what I’d disapprove of in myself.” His mouth turned downwards at the corners. “That said, I find myself right now, Lieutenant, in a singular position.”

  Jean-Philippe had learned to wait for men to state their meaning clearly.

  Captain Wheelock took his time.

  “You are like myself, I think,” he said. “A man who values honour.” Rising from his chair, he moved to stand beside the window. “I have been led round the world for these twenty years past by a passion for doing what seems to me right. I’ve followed this passion to the detriment of my fortune and I believe to the hindrance of my promotion, yet it endures,” he explained, “and obliges me sometimes to go beyond prudence, and even politeness.”