The elder brother was the opposite, his discipline so deeply self-imposed he did not waver from a task once he’d begun it. Like his father, he seemed fairly skilled at carpentry. So far he had worked only at the smaller jobs, the fence rails mostly and the posts, but it was clear he had a builder’s eye. There’d been a telling moment when he’d set a rail in place and not been satisfied, and taking up his axe again he’d shaved a little here, a little there, and squared the end to near perfection, sighting down the rail so he could set it true and level. It had only been a moment, yet his features had transformed from concentration and a craftsman’s care, enough that Jean-Philippe with narrowed eyes had looked at him more closely and believed he’d glimpsed the man that this American had been before whatever in his life had left him silent and withdrawn.
That this withdrawal was a relatively recent thing was evident from how the others dealt with it—the younger brother trying to provoke with arguments, much as a small boy with a stick might try to prod a half-dead creature back to life; the father trying gentler means.
The Friday before last, Monsieur Wilde had gone out in the morning with his team of oxen and a full cartload of hay, and returned with the cart filled instead with what looked to be some great machine made of wood, all in pieces. He’d needed the help of both sons to offload the big beam and the jumble of odd parts and pile them next to the shed near the barn, and afterwards the elder son had stood and looked a moment at that pile, and from the way his father had been watching him, so hopefully, it had been plain to Jean-Philippe that Monsieur Wilde had set that wooden puzzle in the shed by way of an enticement, like a hunter laying bait along a trail to draw his quarry out.
It hadn’t worked. At least, not yet.
But it had made Jean-Philippe warm even more to Monsieur Wilde, who lately, when the midday meal was done, would rise and go outside and walk the little distance to the shed and, tying on his leather apron, take his tools in hand and set to work with the patient resolve of that Seneca man who’d sat years ago mending a break in a snowshoe or fletching new arrows until Jean-Philippe, curiosity burning, had asked the first question he’d learned in that language: “Can I help?”
There’d been a few times this past week when Jean-Philippe had felt that small boy stirring restlessly inside him, tempting him to ask Monsieur Wilde the same thing.
Instead, he’d asked de Brassart if he knew what the machine was.
“It’s a cider press, apparently.” De Brassart had been sitting in the room the family chiefly used on Sundays, leafing idly through the pages of a book and looking bored. “Our host has spoken much about it these past days at dinner. They have an apple orchard here, and harvest is approaching, so they found themselves a cider press.”
Jean Philippe had not wanted to sit. He had seen, through the half-open door to the kitchen, the black girl watching them suspiciously, so he’d crossed the few paces and opened the door fully to let her view them more easily, trying to calm any thoughts she might have that de Brassart and he were conspiring to do any harm.
Then he’d said to de Brassart, “If they want it ready for the harvest, they still have much work to do.”
“And they are welcome to it.” Stretching out his legs, the other officer had flipped another page. “Though our confinement here is tedious, at least the terms of the accord between our countries spare us being forced to serve as labourers.”
Jean-Philippe hadn’t found any comfort in that—both because he would rather have laboured at anything than be condemned to do nothing, and also because he was darkly aware that the English did not always keep their agreements.
He hadn’t had word of his men.
More than two weeks had passed since he’d written the governor, and there had been no reply. Monsieur Wilde had assured him, by means of de Brassart’s translation, that both of the letters were sent, but for Jean-Philippe having to always rely on de Brassart to translate was also a source of frustration.
Often somebody would speak at length, and then de Brassart would summarize that in a sentence or two, making Jean-Philippe fully aware he was missing at least half or more of what people were actually saying, and since he would never have trusted de Brassart with anything else, he was little inclined to now trust him with turning his words into English, so he had begun to do what he had done as a boy with the Seneca: he’d set himself to learn by observation.
When they spoke to one another, he’d tried fitting sounds to common interactions. He had learned the words for “thank you” and the way to say “you’re welcome,” and the greetings for the evening and the morning.
And he’d learned her name.
It had not been an easy thing to learn, for those around her rarely called to her. But then, it seemed that there was little need to. She was always there.
Each morning when he came back from his walk she was already at the kitchen hearth. She served him breakfast—something he had never regularly eaten. He was used to dining at eleven in the morning or at midday, and having his main meal, his grand repas, at six o’clock in the evening; but here that evening meal was light and late, the more substantial dinner was not served till early afternoon, and taking breakfast had become a matter of necessity.
He also had been trying to acquire a taste for tea. At home it was used mainly to treat illness of the stomach, and was boiled black as tar. The tea she brewed for him was weaker and, with milk, was not entirely unpleasant. Even if it had been, he would have accepted it without complaint, since from what he’d observed she had enough to manage. Her brothers and her father never seemed to raise their voices to her, nor treat her with disrespect, but neither did they pay her the small courtesy of noticing how hard she worked to ease their days and smooth their interactions with each other. When the younger brother argued with the elder she would calm the one and cheer the other, keeping them apart by means that seemed completely natural, and all the while directing the attention of their father elsewhere so he would not notice.
Jean-Philippe found it surprising that a man like Monsieur Wilde, who seemed to understand his sons so well, should fail to see the strain that it was causing his own daughter to be always taking care of them: part servant and part diplomat. It had to be exhausting.
But it had been from her father that he’d finally learned her name. One morning she’d been working in the garden and her father had called: “Lydia!” And she had turned.
And Jean-Philippe had marked the word. He’d stored the sounds within his memory: Lydia. And all that day he’d watched with care, and listened, and at dinnertime his patience was rewarded when her younger brother asked her to pass something down the table, and to capture her attention had begun by saying: “Lydia?” Again she’d turned. Her gaze had brushed past Jean-Philippe’s and he had quickly lowered his to hide his satisfaction.
He had always liked to put a name to what he wanted.
It was not a name with which he was familiar. In fact he would have missed the times they’d spoken it before because it would have sounded as if they were saying l’idéal, a thought that made him smile faintly. Physically, at least, she was his own ideal. And even her dislike of him provided a distraction from his darker thoughts and troubles.
As did watching Monsieur Wilde at work upon the broken cider press.
Even if de Brassart had not told him what it was, Jean-Philippe would have been able to identify it for himself three days ago, when Monsieur Wilde had gone into the woods and felled a log and brought it back and had begun to fashion it into a massive screw, a part that had been missing altogether. The shape and function of the big machine became apparent to him then. They had one very like it at his father’s manor farm.