“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 understanding 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.
She’d noticed that he was not as fastidious as his companion when it came to clothing, and his shirt cuffs and cravat were of plain linen, while Mr. de Brassart’s were of lace—yet there was nothing in Mr. de Sabran’s bearing or appearance to suggest that he was any less an officer. In fact to Lydia, of the two men, he looked the more commanding.
But perhaps that lay in how he had been raised, and trained. She thought of what her brother Joseph had said of the men of the Canadian marines, and how their officers were sent as children to live with the Indians and learn their ways. “They have a reputation, justly earned,” he’d said, “for ruthlessness.”
She could believe that from the hard, unyielding set of Mr. de Sabran’s jaw as he bent above his letter. He wrote steadily and in what looked to be a plain, bold hand. And while he wrote, he frowned.
? ? ?
The problem with the letters was deciding what to do with them.
Had Joseph had his way, he would have thrown them on the fire. “They might say anything,” he’d argued when he’d learned of them. “You don’t know what intelligence he’s passing to his friends.”
Which had made Benjamin reply, “I doubt the French would care how many sheep are in our field. There’s little else of interest or excitement he could find here to report.”
The humour had been lost on Joseph. “It’s a long walk down from Fort Niagara, and he’s been through several of our camps. Who knows what he’s seen there to catch his interest?”
Lydia had been too tired to step between them, but the next day, Monday, when she carried out the dinner pail to where her father was at work still digging stones and mending wall between the apple orchard and the pasture, she could see that he was carrying the folded letters in the pocket of his coat.
She said, “You cannot send them, surely?”
“Circumstance,” he said, “and inequalities.”
“I do not understand.”
The day was fair but very windy and she set her back against the chest-high drystone wall, letting it provide some shelter while she faced her father. He had been a fair-haired man when he was younger and whenever he worked hard enough to raise a sweat his face flushed red, as it was now, and yet his barrel-chested strength meant he was rarely out of breath. His voice was strong.
“If it was Joseph taken captive,” he explained, “would you not want him shown the courtesy of having letters sent where he would send them?” He read the answer in her face and quoted very gently, to remind her, “?‘All things whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.’?”
“I know.” The wind had caught her apron and she held it down, her hand clenched in its folds. “I know, but it is very hard.”
“If it were easy,” said her father, “then no minister would ever have had need to write a sermon to persuade us we should do it.”
With a small nod she acknowledged that, and looked away along the long uneven line of fence that subtly changed its course each year as every frost and thaw thrust up new stones from deep within the earth. New obstacles. “What are you going to do with them?”
“The letters? I will send them where he asks, but Joseph’s right. We ought to first make sure they’ll do no harm.”
He used the dampened cloth she’d brought for him to wipe his hands and brow and took the dinner pail, investigating what it held. “Did Violet make this bread?”
She smiled because she knew why he was asking. “Yes, you needn’t worry, it’s not burnt.”
“Your mother always said that oven had a temper.”
She would not blame the oven. She would never be a baker and she knew it, but she would not let the conversation stray. “How do you propose to learn what’s in the letters? You could never trust Mr. de Brassart to translate them.”
“No.” He’d found the seasoned chicken leg beneath the bread. “That’s why I’ve sent Benjamin to hire French Peter.”
French Peter lived not far from them and had a wife and children who, with other neutral French, had been resettled here from Nova Scotia by the orders of the king three years ago.
Her mother had considered that a travesty. “They are a peaceful people, the French neutrals of Acadia,” she’d said. “They’ve done no harm.” And when her husband in his more pragmatic way had answered that the British were most likely only trying to make certain that continued, she’d replied, “And how is justice served, I ask, by punishing a people for a crime they have not done, and might yet never do?” If there’d been any argument to make to that, her mother had refused to hear it, and when word had come French Peter and his family had been sent to settle near them, she had treated them with charity—so much so that, the day after her mother’s death, French Peter had appeared upon their doorstep.
With her father deep in grief, it had been Lydia who had received French Peter’s brief condolences. It had not been a comfortable encounter. She did not have her mother’s gift for seeing past a person’s nationality, and neutral French or no, he was still French.
“If ever there is anything I can be doing for you,” he had said, his accent even thicker from emotion, “I will do it with a glad heart.”
She’d replied that there was nothing they would need from him, and with a silent nod he had accepted that. And as he’d turned away he’d paused, and turned again, and said more thickly, “She was good to us.” As though it needed saying.