Shadowbrook Part 12

She stared at him, then nodded. The look in his eyes was remarkable. It was almost ... triumph. The way men looked when they won a battle, or did some remarkably dangerous thing and survived. Papa and the other military men she had known since childhood, they had looked like that sometimes. She s.h.i.+vered, then got up to go.

Quent clenched his hands into fists. In a few weeks, a month perhaps, they would be in the woods again. But this time there would be just the two of them. Corm had staked no claim and she had given no promise.

Lorene Hale watched Nicole walk back to the house, then dropped the curtain. Quentin, she noted, had remained where he was, staring after the girl. "I think Quent is quite smitten with that young mademoiselle, Ephraim. Have you seen her? She is very beautiful. And she has exquisite manners."

She turned to her husband. These days, even in the summer heat, he was always cold, and his mind was not what it had been. The newspapers he had delivered each month when the mail packet reached Albany, the Weekly Post-Boy from Boston and the Gazette from New York City, were stacked on the table by the window, untouched unless Quent or John read them. Ephraim did not ask about the progress of the crops or the reports from the trading station at Do Good as avidly as he once had. Her husband was receding from her and from this world while he prepared for the next. He was sitting up in a chair today, but he had two blankets piled on his knees and clutched a woolen shawl around his shoulders. "Are you still chilled, Ephraim? I can get-"

"She's white, is she?"

"Who, Mademoiselle Nicole? Of course she's white. Her mother was French and her father English. An officer."

"Never thought Quentin would be interested in a white woman, not after-"

"Shoshanaya's dead, Ephraim. Quentin is here and there's a young woman with him and she is eminently suitable for ..."

"What? Finish what you were going to say. Suitable to be mistress of Shadowbrook. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

Lorene nodded.

"John' the elder."

"Quent noticed that the wheat in the sugarhouse fields is thick with weeds. He told John about it at breakfast this morning. I think John forgot all about those fields."

Hale was seized by a coughing fit so severe it left cold sweat running down his face. When he'd taken a few sips of ale and could breathe, he said, "John's the elder. And Quent has a taste for red women."

"So had you once." She drew her breath in sharply, surprised at the words she hadn't planned to say.

"And you," her husband said softly. "And you."

Lorene turned away. "In the past, Ephraim, all of it." It wasn't like her to call up those memories like this. "It's Shadowbrook that concerns me, that must concern us both." She'd been sixteen years old when she married him and he brought her here from New York City. She was fifty now. She'd spent the better part of her life on the Patent. "You're doing the wrong thing," she said. "Quentin will look after the land and everyone on it. You must-"

"I'm tired," Hale interrupted. "Go. And send someone to put me to bed."

"Ephraim-"

"Go, I said!" Then, before she was out the door: "Later, after I've had my dinner maybe, bring that Mademoiselle whoever up here. Let me get a look at her."

SUNDAY, JULY 26, 1754.

QUeBEC, NEW FRANCE.

There were plenty of mean streets in the lower part of the city of Quebec where Pere Antoine spent most of his time, but nothing to compare with the bleakness of the little settlement of St. Pierre on the Ile d'Orleans. The church where he was celebrating Holy Ma.s.s in honor of Ste. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, was the finest structure in the settlement, and it was little more than a rough shack, devoid of ornament and hot and airless though the front door was open.

"Introibo ad altare Dei," the priest said softly. I will go unto the altar of G.o.d.

"Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam." The boy who was acting as server reminded him that G.o.d gave joy to youth.

Antoine sweat profusely under his heavy green satin chasuble, the top garment that since medieval times a priest must wear when offering the sacrifice. Beneath it he had on a long white garment called an alb and the rope tie known as a girdle, a green maniple draped over his left arm, and a green satin stole around his neck. And underneath all of that his brown habit. Dear Lord, this Canada was a place of penance. Most of the year it was frozen solid, but for a few days in summer it baked as if the fires of h.e.l.l had broken through the earth. "Gaudeamos omnes in Domino." Rejoice we all in the Lord.

Pere Antoine's back was to his congregation, but he knew who was there. He had confessed each of them before Ma.s.s began. There were twenty people in all: nine Catholic Hurons-five squaws and four braves-and five French farmers with their wives, plus three Frenchwomen whose husbands were either dead or confirmed in sin and unwilling to be shriven. All the white women had come from France years before as part of a program said to have been devised by Louis XV himself to increase the population: Single women without dowries, who couldn't expect to find a husband in their homeland, were sent as brides to New France.

Only le bon Dieu knew how hard the white women of St. Pierre had tried to satisfy His Majesty's hopes for this northern part of New France. These eight had probably had forty or fifty children between them and it was the same everywhere else. Some seventy-thousand white people, good Catholics of French descent, called this place home. Fewer than fifteen thousand lived in the three cities on the St. Lawrence-Quebec, Trois Rivieres, and Montral; the rest eoccupied farms in little villages and missions and seigneuries, trying their best to do what the king-and indeed, Almighty G.o.d-asked of them: increase and multiply. But the land was so vast, and most of it so inhospitable, that no matter how many were born and how many the mothers managed to nurse to survival, much of the territory remained a frozen wilderness empty of any but heathen savages.

Holy Ma.s.s continued until finally the Franciscan bent low over the altar, fixing his concentration on the flat wheaten wafers and goblet of thin, sour wine. "Sacrificiis praesentibus quaesumus, Domine, placatus intende: ut per intercessionem beatae Annae ..." Look favorably, Lord, upon these dedicated offerings, so that by the intercession of blessed Anne ... For some obscure historical reason it was called the Secret Prayer and not spoken aloud. Not that it mattered; all the words of the Ma.s.s were a secret to this congregation. Not one could understand the Latin, and probably none could have read a translation in their own language if such existed.

No matter, Pere Antoine felt their devotion, and never more intently than when he intoned, "Hoc est enim corpus meum," and lifted the sacred host above his head. A few seconds later he had, by the awesome power of Almighty G.o.d, turned the wine into the Blood of Jesus Christ. "Hic est enim calix sanguinis met." Blood shed to save. Lord, look favorably upon my desire to give You glory. Let it all happen as I have planned.

He moved along the altar rail, distributing the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The men opening their mouths to receive the Sacred Host, red and white alike, were past warrior age. The Franciscan had come seeking warriors, but he didn't expect to find them in St. Pierre.

At length the service ended. The villagers left the church and Pere Antoine soon followed them. His way back to the river and the boat waiting to return him to Quebec led through the woods, silent except for the occasional burst of birdsong and the noise his sandals made as he walked. He was grateful to at last be wearing only his threadbare brown habit. And for the deep forest shade.

The priest slowed as he approached a large rock with a flat, tablelike top. An Indian appeared in front of him as if he'd been conjured from the air. A Huron, but not one of those who had been at Ma.s.s. This one had a musket over his shoulder and a tomahawk in his hand. The Franciscan nodded toward the tomahawk. "You can put that away. I'm the man you are expecting."

The Huron didn't acknowledge the words, just used the tomahawk to point to a small, half-hidden path that cut off the main one the priest had been on. "Very well. I will follow you." It was exactly what he had arranged. And prayed for.

A few minutes later he was sitting on the ground across from the renegade Lantak. The Huron said nothing, waiting for the priest to speak. "I am glad you could meet me here," Pere Antoine began. "It is good to see you again, Lantak. Have you thought about what we discussed last time we spoke?"

"Your words are like the snow, priest. When it falls it seems heavy, but as soon as the sun comes it melts and disappears."

"Jesus Christ does not disappear, my son. He is with His followers always. Here." The priest touched his heart. "In the Ma.s.s He gives us His Body and Blood to eat, food that will never fail."

"Two winters past, in the mission of Ste. Charite, twenty-seven Huron died of disease and starvation. The black robes who lived with them died as well."

"Ah, but Lantak thinks in terms of this life only. Our time on earth is short. It is important only because it is a test, an opportunity to give ourselves to the love of Jesus Christ. When it ends we rejoice with Him in heaven. If ..."-the priest paused for effect-"... we have not failed the test."

Lantak spat on the ground. "Your words make an ugly taste in my mouth. Perhaps I should wash it away in your blood."

Pere Antoine felt a pleasurable trembling deep in his belly, the same unbidden ecstasy that sometimes came to him at night when he was sleeping and could not control ... No, no. He could not expect this. It was too easy. To be martyred here and now, on the feast of the mother of the Blessed Virgin, shortly after offering Holy Ma.s.s. To go straight to heaven this very day. Thank you, Lord, but I do not yet ask for such an honor. I still have much to do for Your Church. "I do not think that is what you want, my son. I am useful to you, am I not?"

Pere Antoine took a pouch of coins from a pocket in his habit and put it on the ground between them. Would it count as martyrdom to be murdered for money? And blood money at that. But the answer need not concern him. Lantak was smart enough to understand that once you wrung the neck of the gander, there could be no more golden eggs. "Two hundred now," the priest said. "Two hundred more when the deed is done." He had made an offering of a third of Hamish Stewart's original six hundred lives to the upkeep of the Poor Clares. Their prayers might keep the Scot from eternal h.e.l.lfire.

For a few heartbeats Lantak did not answer. The priest watched him and waited. It was said that though Lantak had been born in the Longhouse, he had a white father. If it were true, it did not show on his face. His bronze skin was stretched over prominent cheekbones, and his nose was beaked in that manner peculiar to many of the Huron. His straight black hair fell almost to his shoulders, and he wore a single white feather pointing down toward his right shoulder. The feather and his tattoos contrasted with the rest of his appearance. He had on neither the breechclout of the Longhouse nor the linen smock and loose trousers of the Jesuit missions. Lantak wore the buckskins of a coureur de bois. Probably stolen from one of the many people he had murdered. A long gun lay on the ground a short distance from his hand. Doubtless he'd gotten that the same way.

Finally the Indian spoke. "Sometimes, yes, you are useful." Pere Antoine knew he would not be a martyr this day. "Why did you want to see me?"

"Shadowbrook," the priest said quietly. "I wish to speak to you about a place many leagues south of here called Shadowbrook." Then Jesus said, "I come to cast fire upon the earth and what will I but that it be enkindled?" Blood shed to save.

The way to the sugarhouse was through a dense and deeply shadowed wood. Mostly mixed oaks and elms and maples, Quent explained, with some conifers, pine and blue spruce. They were great trees; Nicole could not wrap her arms around them. It had been the same in the Ohio Country. "In the Old World," she murmured as they walked the narrow path, Monsieur Quent ahead of her as always, showing the way, "I have never seen trees of such girth."

"That's because white folks have been cutting down the trees in the Old World a lot longer. The Indians never do such a thing, and we whites haven't been here long enough to spoil the New. My guess is we will soon enough. Mind how you go here," he added. "The path narrows."

One moccasin wide, he'd explained, was how red men made a forest path. It was all they needed, so they chose not to disturb the woods more than necessary. She too wore moccasins, white ones made from the hide of a white bear, but still it seemed to Nicole as if there were no path at all. Only Monsieur Hale who ... No, not monsieur. He wanted her to call him Quent, and he was a man accustomed to getting his way.

The size of him blotted out much else. How many times now had she walked behind that broad back? More than she could count, but she remembered each one. Or thought she did.

"Moccasins still comfortable?" he asked.

"They are wonderful." It was true. Quent-it was easy to think of him by that familiar name, but not so easy to speak it aloud-had waited until they were out of sight of the house before giving them to her. "Take off your boots," he'd said, indicating a log she could sit on, "and your stockings as well. You need to be barefoot for moccasins to grip properly. I've been thinking of giving this pair to you for some time. I figure they're about the right size."

He was gentleman enough to turn away while she removed her boots and hose. As if he hadn't already seen her ankles and even her legs many times. "I am ready," she said finally. "Please, give them to me."

He turned back to face her and knelt beside the log. "Let me do it. They have to go on just so, with the drawstring adjusted to make the fit perfect."

She was embarra.s.sed by his touch, and by a feeling to which she'd chosen to give no name. It was somehow more intimate than all the many times he'd carried her through the forest. His big hands had cradled her feet as he slipped on first one moccasin, then the other, and tightened the lacings and molded them to her instep. His hands were remarkably gentle. She had wanted to ask if the moccasins had belonged to his wife, but he'd given her no opportunity, just tied the laces of the boots together and put them around his neck "I'll carry these for you. You'll need them later."

"Later" had apparently arrived. "We're almost there. You'd better put the boots back on." Quent swung them off his shoulders and gave them to her, and Nicole again sat on a log and changed her footwear. This time he didn't help, just turned his back to once more give her a bit of privacy. For the hundredth time she wondered if he'd ever peeked while she was bathing naked in the forest streams. A tiny corner of her mind told her that she wished he had, and her cheeks reddened and her breath came fast. Nicole laced the boots so tight they hurt, to remind herself of who she was and where she was going. "Very well. I am ready."

He turned back. "You want me to take those?" He nodded toward the moccasins she held in her hands.

"I can put them in my pockets."

"Fine. They're yours now. You can do as you like. We'd best get going." He started walking again, leaving her to follow.

"The moccasins," she blurted out, "were they Shoshanaya's?"

He stopped walking for just a moment-a half step lost, then quickly regained-and he didn't turn around. "What do you know about Shoshanaya?"

"Only that she was an Ottawa princess, and your wife, and that she died. I offer my sympathies for your loss," she added. It was difficult to walk in the hard-soled boots now that she had become used to the way the moccasins glided over the woodland path. Besides, she'd made the laces so tight they were truly painful. She slipped and slid as she struggled to keep up. "I heard that Shoshanaya was very beautiful."

"She was." He slowed and Nicole wasn't sure if it was because he sensed her difficulty or if it was the heaviness of his thoughts that checked his pace. "Did my mother tell you about Shoshanaya?"

"No, Madame Hale has not mentioned her. It was Torayana, the Shawnee squaw, the night of the drums."

"Seems like there was a lot that got itself done or told about that night."

"I am sorry if I have offended you, Mons-Quent. I only wanted to know."

"The moccasins are Potawatomi, not Ottawa. You can tell by the way they're made, and the feet that there is no beading. They're white bearhide. That's unusual. They belonged to Pohantis, Corm's mother. She had a liking for white skins, and she knew how to get them. Pohantis died a long time ago. She's buried up by Squirrel Oaks, the Shadowbrook burying place, but some of her things are still around. All Shoshanaya's things were sent back to her people, after she was gone. To honor her."

Nicole wanted to ask why, if that was the way Indians honored their dead, the same had not been done for Pohantis, but she had become adept at reading his back. Now it cautioned her to silence.

"Almost there," he said after a little time. "You'll see the road just as soon as we get past that stand of oak up ahead."

The light was changing, the shade brightening. Soon suns.h.i.+ne burst upon them and they were on one of the wide roads he'd pointed out the day they first walked onto the Patent. The heat of the road was devastating after the woodland cool. Fortunately they did not have far to go. "There's the sugarhouse." Quent pointed to a large building made of logs, with a steeply pitched roof and one enormous brick chimney. "And there's Deliciousness May, waiting for us."

The black woman had white hair and her face was deeply lined. She was older even than Kitchen Hannah, Nicole decided, but Quent was every bit as fond of her. He picked her up and swung her around in greeting and Deliciousness May giggled like a young girl. "'Bout time you got yerself home, Master Quent. And how come it took you better 'n a whole week to come see Deliciousness? Never you mind, I got a pair of hares all sweetened up with a bit o' syrup from last winter, the way you likes, and two peach pies ready to go in the oven. Lilac! You hear me, girl? You waitin' there like I told you?" All the while she was speaking the black woman was eyeing Nicole up and down, never once letting on that she was doing it. Grace aDieu, the moccasins were in her pocket, not on her feet.

A little girl jumped out from behind a large elm. Perhaps four, Nicole thought, with black curly hair that was parted in the middle and tightly gathered over each ear, and surprisingly light skin. "This be one half o' what my Runsabout popped out year before you went away. You remember that, Master Quent?"

"I surely do, Deliciousness. The other one's a boy, isn't he? Willie?"

"Sugar Willie he be now," the woman said with some pride. "Moves the sugar faster than any mule ever been seen around here." Deliciousness May nodded toward the sugarhouse at the same time that she gave Lilac a shove in the opposite direction. "You go on home, girl, tell Mistress Sarah that Master Quent and his visitor be here. Go on! And you help Mistress put them peach pies in the oven. The heat be just about perfect now."

Quent showed Nicole the inside of the sugarhouse before they went on. It was a huge open s.p.a.ce with an elaborate still in one corner. The smell was sickly sweet, almost overpowering. Nicole felt ill, but Quent didn't seem to notice. "The sugar comes from the islands, in the s.h.i.+ps that take back our flour and vegetables," he said, "and-"

"I didn't know Runsabout had a husband and children."

"No husband. Just the twins."

"But they are here at the sugarhouse and she is-"

"Everyone goes where their work is needed. Besides, Deliciousness May is Runsabout's mother, and Lilac and Willie's grandmother. Her husband, their grandfather, is Big Jacob. He lives here at the sugarhouse most of the time, too. His main job's to look after the young horses. The paddock's not far from here."

"That day ... when you stopped the whipping, Big Jacob's the one you called to untie-"

"That's right." He hated that the abomination in the Frolic Ground had been the first thing she saw of Shadowbrook. "The Frankels, the people who run the gristmill and the sugarhouse, treat the slaves fairly. You'll see."

Nicole nodded. "I already see," she said. "This place, your Shadowbrook, it is a great enterprise."

"It is. In the sugarhouse, for instance, we make rum not just for ourselves, but to trade with the Indians. I'll take you up to Do Good sometime. You can meet-"

"I must go north, Quent. To Quebec. You promised."

"Do Good's north. Three hours distant by wagon. Road's somewhat roundabout because it skirts the hills. If you don't mind a bit of climbing you can walk. It's a shorter distance. Either way, don't worry, I won't forget my promise."

All the time they'd been on the trail he had been so reserved. Now ... The look he was giving her was more than she could bear. It hurt her heart. Two people, a man and a woman, kissing in the sunlight, a unit so tightly forged, so at one, that even their own child could not know its depths. Nicole dismissed the memory. "You were explaining about the sugar."

"Yes, we get it up here from the river in those carts."

He indicated three large, open wooden chests, each with a pair of wooden wheels, and short traces that finished in a harness. "By mule?" she asked.

"Sometimes." He looked uncomfortable. For a moment she didn't understand, then she realized that the boy they called Sugar Willie had that name because his job was to be harnessed to the heavy wooden cart and pull it fully laden from the river to the sugarhouse. How far was that? A league at least.

They went outside. Deliciousness May was gone, and Quent led Nicole on a path through the woods to the house where a white woman was waiting for them. Tall and thin, with hunched shoulders and an unfortunately long nose, her narrow features all seemed crowded in the center of her face. "This is Sarah Frankel," Quent said, "she and her husband are in charge of the sugarhouse."

Sarah's wide smile turned her homely face into something almost attractive. She was less effusive than Deliciousness May had been, but she seemed every bit as glad to see Quent, and as curious about the young woman with him. Nicole was glad that the dark taffeta dress she'd chosen for this excursion didn't show any dirt from the shortcut through the woods, and that the moccasins were in her pockets and not on her feet.

They were nine at the dinner table. As well as Quent and Nicole there were Sarah and her husband, Moses, a large red-faced man with the shortest, pudgiest fingers Nicole had ever seen. They looked out of place on his big hands, as if they belonged to someone else. Tim, the son of the house, was quiet and withdrawn and appeared to have no wife.

"Ellie and Tim and I pretty much grew up of a piece. We used to have lessons together at the big house," Quent said, clearly trying to make her feel part of this group who had known each other so well for so long.

"And Monsieur Shea?" she asked. "He had lessons with you as well?"

"Corm, too." Quent looked at her only briefly, but his blue eyes were dark, and for a moment fierce.

If a man delights you, ma pet.i.te, it is always wise to keep him the tiniest bit jealous. Maman had said such things before she knew Nicole was to be a nun. It was sinful to think of them now. Worse to actually put the advice into practice. She would say two entire rosaries in penance. All fifteen decades each time.

And she would distract herself from wicked thoughts by paying attention to the others, not to Quent. Ellie-she had been introduced as Mistress Bleecker-did not have the puckered prune face of her mother, or the spare, narrow form. She was a big blowsy woman and her children, two girls and a boy, looked set to take after her. They sat silent at the foot of the table and pushed food into their mouths as if they had never eaten before, despite being repeatedly told by their mother and grandmother to mind their manners. There was no father to make them behave.

"My husband went logging last winter." Ellie's voice was so emotionless, she might have been asking for another hot biscuit. "Lost his footing and got crushed in the white water."