Bellewether

  Lydia

  He’d lost a button from his uniform. She’d seen him pacing slowly on the shaded strip of grass beside the house, as though he knew exactly where the thing had fallen and, by force of will, could make it reappear. But the gap remained along the long bright line of buttons down the centre of his rich blue waistcoat.

  She guessed the loss would not improve his mood.

  In the few days they’d been here she’d noted some differences between the Frenchmen. The one who spoke English, Lieutenant de Brassart, at least seemed determined to try to be charming, as though he would have them think well of him, but the more silent Lieutenant de Sabran appeared to care nothing at all what they thought.

  He was not impolite. He had manners. But while he was the first to tell them “Thank you”—in his language, not in theirs—he never said it with Mr. de Brassart’s gallantry, as if it mattered less how one delivered such a sentiment than that the words were said.

  A strange sort of officer, surely. Like one of the stones that her father was digging this week from the orchard—unpolished, unyielding, and always unpleasant to find in your way.

  She had to grudgingly admit he had the height and form and face to be a very handsome man. His nose was straight, as were his brows; his jaw was strong, his gaze was steady. But each time she met his eyes they held a hard expression that fell halfway between anger and impatience.

  Had it not been a ridiculous notion, she might have thought she was annoying him.

  And yet it was ridiculous, because their paths but rarely crossed.

  He rose at dawn. She knew this because when she came downstairs each morning he was up and gone outside to walk, while yet his friend de Brassart lay abed. On their second day here he had asked, through translation, her father’s permission to walk in the woods and her father had granted it if he would promise to keep near the house, for the terms of the French officers’ paroles did not allow them to go farther than a mile from where they lodged without a magistrate’s approval.

  On those walks, Mr. de Sabran wore his sword. Joseph had raised a grumbling protest but their father had replied that by the terms of their surrender the French officers had been allowed to keep their arms. “Our officers, when captured by the French,” he’d said, “are granted the same honour.”

  “I’ve seen how the French treat their captives,” had been Joseph’s forceful reminder. “And honour did not enter into it.”

  But as in all things, their father prevailed and his word was respected, and Mr. de Sabran had worn his sword.

  He was wearing it now, as he paced at the side of the house with his head bent in search of that one errant button.

  Lydia, reaching to harvest the beans from their trellis, glanced over a third time and drew the attention of both of her brothers who, just for this morning, were working together to mend the rail fence that encircled the garden.

  Benjamin gave his quick grin. “Does he interest you?”

  Joseph had once been the slowest of them all to show his anger. Now it flashed with violence as he set a post with force into the ground and asked his younger brother, “Do you ever think before you speak? She has an even greater cause than I to hate the French.”

  “I spoke in jest,” said Benjamin. Already he was taking up the stubborn stance that meant he was preparing for a fight, or at the very least a war of words, and Lydia tried calming the unsettled moment as her mother might have done.

  She told them, “Surely the offense, if there is any to be taken, would be mine to take. And I take none, for Benjamin is right. I find that officer of interest.”

  Which instantly made both her brothers stop their quarrel.

  “Not for the reason you’re thinking,” she added, for it was an easy thing to read their shocked expressions. “But because he is so different from the other one.”

  Benjamin’s smile returned, teasing. “You’ve grown up with Father and William and Daniel and Joseph and me, and yet you can find it surprising all men aren’t alike?”

  Joseph, in a former time, might well have teased her also. Now he only aimed a short nod at the pacing French lieutenant. “He’s a Canadian, that’s why he’s different. The other’s from France.”

  “Really?” Benjamin looked, as well. “How can you tell that?”

  “The one with the red waistcoat and the white breeches and blue on his collar, his regiment came straight from France. The La Sarre. But that uniform,” he said, and nodded again at Lieutenant de Sabran, “is not from any regiment. It’s worn by those who serve in the Marine, as they are called. Their rank and file they mostly bring from France, but all their officers, or nearly all, are born and bred Canadian.”

  Lydia frowned. “The Marine? Do they serve in the navy, then?”

  “No. They are land troops. They travel by water sometimes, but they guard the forts of the frontier and have a reputation, justly earned, for ruthlessness. It’s said they send their officers as children to the Indians to learn their ways of fighting, and in truth to fight them is like fighting shadows in the trees.”

  She found this chilling, and yet curious. “Like Captain Rogers’s Rangers?”

  Joseph shrugged and did a thing he rarely did: he spat upon the ground. “If Captain Rogers was the devil, and the men he led were criminals.”

  He said no more, but drew back from the fence and went to fetch more rails.

  Into the silence that was left behind him, Benjamin said thoughtfully, “Well, that at least explains why they aren’t friendly with each other.”

  “Who?”

  “Our two reluctant guests. You’ve surely noticed?’

  She shook her head, hoisting the basket of beans on her hip.

  Benjamin leaned on the half-mended fence. “For men who speak a common language, they say little to each other. Now I know why. Like ourselves and the British, they’re two different species of men altogether. And I’d imagine the French from France look on their loyal Canadian colonists with the same brand of disdain as the British do us.”

  • • •

  On Sunday afternoon, Mr. de Brassart proved that point with perfect eloquence.

  In the parlour after dinner he arranged himself with practised grace in one of the two high-backed chairs set near the fireless hearth and looked around appreciatively. The ornaments within the room were spare, but of good quality: an eight-day clock that counted off the moments with authority, a candlestick of silver set beside the inlaid ink-chest on her father’s desk, and still more silver gleaming from the sconces on the plastered walls that had been painted, like the shutters and the wainscoting, a calming shade of blue.

  Lydia, sitting in her own chair by the window where the filtered sunlight cast few shadows, had just set a fresh, new page of paper on the boards she used for drawing, and was fitting a new black lead pencil in its holder when de Brassart sighed and said, “I have so missed the company of cultured men.”

  Lydia was clearly not included in that sentiment. She was the only woman in the room.

  The only woman in the house, in fact, since Violet, having Sundays off, had gone as she did every week to the Cross Harbor meeting-house.

  Lydia herself had been, like all the Wildes, baptized and raised within the faith her English forebears had brought with them to Long Island, though the nearest church of that Episcopalian faith was down in Hempstead, and her father did not think it necessary to make such a journey save at special times like Easter and Epiphany.

  But Violet’s mother, while she’d lived, had been devoutly Baptist, and now every Sunday Violet carried on that same devotion, rising early, putting on her best blue gown, and joining Joseph in the small boat for the trip across the bay.

  Joseph’s weekly visits to Cross Harbor had been going on for years as well, but for a different reason: he spent Sundays in the dining room and parlour over Mr. Fisher’s store, as he had done since he’d asked Sarah Fisher to marry him. She’d told him yes, and worn his ring of promise on her finger these
four years, and written weekly to him when he’d gone to build ships at Oswego, and though Joseph had returned wrapped in a silence that had smothered all their talk of wedding plans, Sarah seemed prepared to wait.

  That kind of patience was inspiring to Lydia, and totally beyond the reach of Benjamin, who even now was finding it impossible to sit still. He’d always disliked Sundays for their lack of entertainment, and he seemed to seize upon de Brassart’s comment as an opening for argument.

  “But surely French society,” said Benjamin, his light tone edged with mockery, “is far more cultured than our own.”

  His tone made Lieutenant de Sabran, who sat in a fair imitation of Benjamin’s boredom between the cold hearth and the door, shift his gaze very slightly, without too much interest, from where he’d had it focused for these several minutes past on the unchanging view of clearing, trees, and sky beyond the window. He glanced at Benjamin in such a way that Lydia felt certain he’d just taken the full measure of her brother.

  But de Brassart took the words at their apparent meaning, and replied: “Society in France, of course, but I have been away from France so long I have forgotten what it is to see a shelf of books, much less a man who reads them.”

  He was speaking of her father, who had settled as he liked to every Sunday with a well-worn, calf-bound volume of the works of the Most Reverend Dr. Tillotson, to read his favourite discourses and sermons.

  Her father looked up from the page with indulgence. “You flatter me, Mr. de Brassart, but I’m sure that there are many men in Canada who read.”

  Still mocking, Benjamin amended this. “Just not as well or widely as the French.”

  “Indeed. They are not men of thought,” de Brassart said. “They much prefer to run about the woods and fight what we would call la gare à la sauvage, you know this term? La petite guerre, the little war, that would attack as a defence and strike and run away, and never in the open. This is not how we fight our wars in France. It is not civilized.”

  Lydia’s intent had been to keep out of the conversation—not because she had nothing to say, for the truth was exactly the opposite, and in her family the women had always been given the same room as men to express their opinions—but because she didn’t wish to interact with the French officers beyond her basic duties as the mistress of the house. Still, she found it hard to let a lack of logic pass unchallenged. “War, Mr. de Brassart, by its nature is not civilized, no matter how it’s fought.”

  He disagreed. “It is of course a credit to your gentle nature that you think this, but this is why wars are left to men, for women always would be too kind in their hearts. And war has always been a necessary thing, madame, to guard our way of life.”

  She wondered what he would have thought if he had known just how unkind her heart was at that moment, but her father had already broken into their exchange.

  He said, “My late wife, who was raised a Quaker, would have set you straight on that point, sir, for she believed that war was anything but necessary.”

  De Brassart’s frown was faint. “Forgive me, I am not familiar with this term, ‘a Quaker.’ ”

  “It’s a faith, begun in England and quite common in these parts. A faith of fellowship, that holds that any conflict can be solved by peaceful means, and without violence.”

  “And your wife was of this faith?”

  “She was.”

  “But you are not?”

  “No.” Taking up his book again, her father went on reading and the room fell into momentary silence.

  The mention of her mother had made Lydia determined not to stir the waters further, but to calm them as her mother would have done, had she been here. The black lead pencil was secure now in its holder and she rested it upon the sheet of untouched paper, ready to begin, and broke the silence with, “What sermon are you reading, Father?”

  He much admired the reverend’s works and often shared the better lines by reading them aloud, which had, on many Sundays, been the start of very amiable discussions, as she hoped it would be now.

  He faintly smiled as though he were aware of her intent. “This one is titled ‘Of the rule of equity to be observed among men,’ and the scripture is from Matthew, chapter seven, verse twelve. Benjamin?” He drew his son into the conversation. “Can you tell me what that is?”

  Her brother shrugged. “I must defer, in all things biblical, to Lydia. She has the better memory.”

  It was true. She tipped her head a moment, thinking. “ ‘Therefore all things whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.’ ”

  “Yes, exactly.” Her father spread the pages of the book. “And very appropriate to our discussion, for it is the Reverend Tillotson’s opinion that, as all men in God’s view are equal, observation of this rule would bring peace to the world.”

  De Brassart said, “A pleasing thought, and yet God does not make men equal.”

  That brought Benjamin to life. He briefly rose and took another chair, from which he sent a pointed look towards Mr. de Sabran, who was gazing out the window once again and paying no attention. “You and he, you are both officers, and both of the same rank. You serve the same king. How is that not equal?”

  Lydia repressed a sigh. She’d started drawing Benjamin because he was the nearest to her, but since he would not sit still she had to start again and use her father as her model. He was easier to draw, in many ways. His features weren’t so changeable.

  De Brassart spoke as if he were explaining to a child. “He is Canadian.”

  “Colonial, you mean.”

  “Yes, if you like. It is a difference of our birth, you see. A difference of our nature. I have told you how they fight. Not with the sword, but with the hatchet and the knife.”

  “Yet even you must own that, in these colonies, their ways of waging war are more effective.” Benjamin leaned back. “A sword is fine when fighting in the open, but a tomahawk and knife are of more value in the forest.”

  Lydia, although she knew that Mr. de Sabran could not speak English and was unaware of what was being said, could not help glancing at him. And as though he sensed her movement his dark gaze left Benjamin and had begun to travel back towards her when she bent her head and fixed her concentration on her drawing.

  She could capture a fair likeness of a person, but she struggled drawing hands. She could not manage them. She would have liked to have possessed the skill to draw her father’s. They were capable and callused. They created things from nothing and could smooth a board or gentle the most skittish horse or rest upon her shoulder in a way that made her instantly feel safe.

  They did not carry tomahawks and knives within the woods.

  De Brassart said, “But it is not the weapons only. It is what a man has here, and here.” He gestured to his heart, his head. “One cannot make a buzzard into a hawk. The officers of Canada, their blood is that of habitants, of farmers, and whatever they achieve, that will not change. Their children always will have one foot in the fields. In France, our social rank and reputation is inherited, an honour we can pass on to our sons.”

  Lydia knew Benjamin would have had much to say to that, considering their father was a farmer, but it was their father who replied first with a sound that fell between a cough and a short laugh, surprising Lydia and leaving the French officer astonished.

  “I amuse you?” asked de Brassart.

  “Not at all. No, it is only that you speak of reputation and of honour at the moment I am reading those same words here on the page. The Reverend Tillotson is talking of the inequalities of men, as you are, only he believes that what makes men unequal is no more than circumstance and health, and since those things are neither fixed nor constant, fortunes often turn, and men change places. Here,” he offered, “let me read this passage to you, and you tell me if it does not perfectly apply: ‘A disease may ruin the most happy and excellent memory, and make a man forget his own name; a little knock on any side of the head may level the highest under
standing with the meanest; beauty, health, and strength, may be blasted by a disease, or a thousand other accidents.’ ” Her father’s voice grew faintly rougher there, as though with memory, but he went on reading from the sermon with the firm conviction of a man who knew the words he spoke were true. “ ‘Riches, and honour, and reputation, are the most slippery and brittle things that belong to us.’ ”

  Whether de Brassart agreed with that, or even understood the finer nuances of language in that sentiment, she could not tell. Like Benjamin, he might have had much more to say in argument, had not Mr. de Sabran asked a question of him then, in French.

  Mr. de Brassart shrugged and told her father, “Monsieur de Sabran asks for pen and paper, if you please, so he might write a letter.”

  The small request caught all of them off guard. There was a moment’s pause before her father gave his answer. “Certainly,” he said, and looked across the room at Lydia. “My dear, will you please see to that?”

  She traded looks with Benjamin, then rose and set her drawing down and organized the necessary items on her father’s desk. Mr. de Sabran rose as well and crossed to take his new seat, but when Lydia would have stepped back he stopped her with a quiet word and touched the sheet of paper she’d set ready for him, making a quick counting gesture with his fingers that appeared to indicate he wanted one sheet more.

  She drew the extra paper from its place within the desk and laid it neatly on the first before retreating to her chair again and taking up her drawing.

  He was too close for her liking, at the desk. She could look nowhere in the room now without having his blue waistcoat catch her vision. He’d replaced the missing button.

  She had seen him in the midst of that task yesterday, while she’d been helping Violet with the cutting up and pickling of the watermelon rinds, and being that the door to the small downstairs chamber had stood partly open, from the kitchen she’d been able to observe him sitting at his bed’s edge with his dark head bent in concentration, sorting through the contents of a small case made of metal that he’d taken from the cowhide pack he’d brought with him. The case appeared to hold the varied things he’d need for mending. He had found the size of button that was needed, bitten off a length of thread, and made the small repair with deft assurance before smoothing out the waistcoat and then brushing it.