Lydia had felt ashamed a few days later, looking back, because she’d known her mother would have asked French Peter in and made him welcome, and not stood stone-faced within the door and watched him walk away, his heavy shoulders stooped. But what was done was done, and time, as she had learned these past few years, did not allow for second chances.
If she’d treated him with disrespect, he’d done the very opposite to her since then. Whenever their paths crossed at Mr. Fisher’s store or at the wharf or at the home of any of their neighbours who had hired him, French Peter always had a cheerful greeting for her, but as though aware there was a barrier between them he made no attempt to breach it.
She’d hoped she would be gone before he came today to see her father, but it was a warm day and her father took his time over the dinner pail. He had not finished with the chicken when she heard her brother Benjamin, behind her in the pasture, tell the sheep to move. They scattered in their lazy way and bleated as she turned to watch him weave his way between them with French Peter at his side—a slightly shorter man than Benjamin and doubtless twice his age, but with the solid build and browned skin of a man who earned his living by his labour. In the manner of his people he was dressed in woolen breeches and a sleeveless waistcoat over a plain shirt of weathered linen, with the same red knitted cap he wore no matter what the season, and the wooden shoes that, while they were unfashionable, served well in the fields and pastures without risking ruin from the mud.
Benjamin, as always full of energy, set both his hands atop the wall and vaulted it with ease. French Peter might have done the same, he had the strength. Instead he stayed securely on the pasture side and leaned his folded arms on the broad stones that capped the wall dividing him from Lydia, her brother, and her father. “You have a job for me, I hear?” He sounded pleased. “You need my help to dig the stones?”
Her father wiped his hand clean before offering it over the stone wall in greeting, and above their handshake answered, “Not exactly. I recall my wife said once that you could read. Is that right?”
The pleasure faded to regret. “Read? No, it is kind that she would say this, but I’m hardly speaking English very well yet, and to read it—”
“No, I meant in French. Can you read French?”
There was a brightening. “I can. My mother’s father had some school and knew to read and write, and he was teaching this to me when I was small. But why . . . ?”
“We have some guests,” her father said. “Perhaps you’ve heard?”
Of course he’d heard, thought Lydia. It was nearly a week now since her father had come back from Millbank with the captured officers, and news could not be well contained within a small community.
French Peter said, “The two lieutenants. Yes.”
Her father drew the letters from his pocket. “One of them has written these, and I would like to know what they contain before I post them on.”
“I see. So, not the stones?” French Peter cast another look towards the shovel and the other tools her father had leaned carefully against the tree behind him when he’d paused to eat his dinner. “Only this?”
“That’s right. I’ll pay you for the effort and your time, of course.”
French Peter waved the offer to the side with one big hand. “No, I will do this for you without payment, it’s not needed.” And he held that same hand out to take the letters.
“If I’m not mistaken,” said her father, “this first one is meant for Governor DeLancey.”
With a nod French Peter read the brief address. “Yes, it says just that: ‘To His Excellency the Governor of New York.’?” Unfolding it, he read a moment, forehead creased in concentration. “Ah. He is complaining to the governor. You want that I should tell you in my own words, or in his?”
“Your own will do.”
“Then he is saying to the governor it is not right the officers are separated from their men, that this is not what is agreed to in the documents signed at Niagara, and he is asking where his soldiers are now taken and if they are well, for he does not rest well until he knows this. He’s asking that the governor will tell him at the soonest time that is convenient, and he signs the letter with a great respect, and says that he is humble and obedient and all such things, and then his name: Jean-Philippe de Sabran de la Noye, lieutenant of the Marine, prisoner.”
Lydia hadn’t expected to feel any sort of reaction at all, hearing Mr. de Sabran’s words translated, and yet she could not help but feel a slight twinge of compassion that he might be worrying over his men, even if it surprised her that someone of his hardened nature would be like to worry.
“And so this one,” French Peter said, shuffling the letters around so the second was topmost, “he sends to a nun, Sister Athanase, near to Quebec, at the hospital general.”
That seemed to surprise even Benjamin, who raised his eyebrows. “A nun? Why on earth would he write to a nun?”
French Peter, having read through the first lines, gave a nod of comprehension. “Yes, I see. She is his sister. He is telling her that he is safe and that she should not fear for him, and he is hoping she is also safe and that the . . . I apologize, I do not know this word in English. For us, we say ‘siège’—it means when armies sit outside the walls and stop the help from coming and they wait to make the people fight or starve. You know this word?”
Her father cleared his throat. “It is the same in English, only differently pronounced. We would say ‘siege.’?”
French Peter thanked him. “So yes, he is hoping that the siege there will soon end and that it does not touch the hospital. He says that she should bring their mother also to the hospital so that if there is fighting they will both be safe. He says to do that right away, as soon as she will get this letter. And he says again that he is well and was not wounded, and is staying with good people, and he sends his great affection and he signs his name, but only that—he does not write ‘lieutenant’ after or say he is prisoner.”
There was silence for a moment in the orchard and the weight of it was tangible to Lydia. She frowned, and was the first to leave the wall and take a step across the shaded grass. She suddenly had need of room to breathe.
French Peter said, behind her, “Anyway, that’s what he writes.” The heavy paper rustled as he folded both the letters on their creases and returned them to her father. “You are sure there is no other work you’re needing me to do for you?”
Her father told him, “Thank you, no. There’s nothing at this moment.”
With a shrug, the other man looked past him to the almost-ripened pippins hanging heavily on all the trees. “Perhaps then when the harvest comes. Yours will be good, I think.”
Benjamin shared that opinion. “A pity we don’t have a cider press here. The nearest one, I think, is Mr. Brewster’s, and I’ll be carting these apples for days to him.”
French Peter brightened. “A cider press? But I know where one is, very big—broken in pieces, but it can be fixed, and the owner I think will want little in trade for it. If you would like, I can show you.”
“Well, I’d like,” said Benjamin, pushing away from the wall in his turn. “Father?”
“Yes, go and look. And here, when you’re done with that, take these on to Millbank, to your cousin. Have him seal them both and send them as enclosures in a letter to your brother in New York, with my instructions that he send the one directly to the governor, and use whatever means he can to send the other to Quebec.” And handing the two letters over to Benjamin, Lydia’s father thanked French Peter once more and bade him good day.
Benjamin hesitated. “I could carry these letters myself to New York.”
“I have need of you here,” said their father. “Your cousin will find somebody to carry them.”
Lydia saw the swift flame of impatience sweep over her brother’s face, but he did not argue, even if his “Yes, Father,” was more biting than cordial.