This afternoon he’d found their single-minded actions calming, and he’d slowed his steps as he’d gone past the little clearing with the graves.
He’d found that clearing on his first walk, weeks ago. The little group of stones, so unexpected in this setting and so neatly kept, were calming to him, too. He liked to stand a moment there within the shelter of the circle of the trees, beneath the ever-changing sky, and think that while all men must die, even the smallest life—as witnessed by those three white stones that bore the same name and the sad brief dates—might be remembered.
And while pausing there he often said a prayer for those he’d lost himself, and being far from any church where he could light a candle to their memory he would count that prayer enough, and carry on his way content.
This afternoon he had not paused. He’d carried on so deep in thought he had not known that she was walking on the path in front of him until he’d overtaken her.
It had caught him uncomfortably off guard to realize he’d let his thoughts dull his awareness of what lay around him so carelessly. Soldiers died, as well he knew, for failing to be vigilant, and anyone who met him in these woods would view him first and always as their hated enemy.
She did. He saw it daily in her eyes. And yet, this afternoon she had been standing there upon the path as if she’d been expecting him. As if she had been waiting for him.
When she’d spoken first, although her tone had seemed more brave than friendly, he had seized the chance to try improving on his earlier attempts at conversation.
It had not gone well.
In fairness, when he saw a stain of that shade and intensity on someone’s skin, he naturally assumed they had been wounded and were bleeding. It was clear she now considered him the next thing to a madman, grabbing hold of her as he had done and making such a fuss about a stain that, on close viewing, was apparently the product of some vegetable or fruit—perhaps the berries of the sorbiers he’d watched her harvest with her brother yesterday.
He grimly added “rowan” to his growing list of English words.
That list, for the time he had spent here, was shamefully small. In half the time, when he had been a boy, he’d learned enough words in the language of the Seneca to try to join their conversations, so he now had no excuse to not attempt the same. In fact, if he were honest with himself, he now had even more incentive.
He could start, he decided, by showing her father a leaf from a sorbier and asking if, in their language, they called it a “rowan.”
The trees stood by the barn. It was a simple thing to snap a twig with leaves from one branch as he passed, but when he reached the shed he found that Monsieur Wilde was not alone.
With him, where the wide doors of the shed had been propped open, was a man of middle age—another farmer, from the look of his tanned features and his sturdy build. His clothes, though, were distinctively un-English, from his heavy wooden shoes to the red knitted cap he held and twisted in his hands while he was speaking. Both men looked so serious that Jean-Philippe, not wanting to intrude, cast the small twig aside and started past them to resume his work upon the cider press.
Monsieur Wilde called to him, and motioned him to come back to the shed, and then said something to the man with the red cap, who turned his head and said in French, “He says to leave that for today. He has another job to do.”
His French did not possess the careful elegance of Captain Wheelock’s. It was oddly rustic, but it also was, without a doubt, his native tongue.
To Jean-Philippe this twist was unexpected, and he might have answered with a question of his own, had not the other man continued, “He must build a coffin for my son.”
The stranger’s voice broke slightly on that final word, and there was no reply for Jean-Philippe to make then but the human one.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
Monsieur Wilde was introducing them to one another, struggling a little with the names.
“Pierre Boudreau,” said the stranger, above the brief clasp of their handshake. And then his gaze angled past Jean-Philippe’s shoulder, and with a few final words to Monsieur Wilde he took his leave and walked away to the fields, with his shoulders bent heavily.
Jean-Philippe also glanced over his shoulder, to see what the stranger had seen.
And saw Lydia Wilde, who had newly stepped out of the woods, and was watching him back.
? ? ?
“He is not French.” De Brassart seemed to find the thought amusing. “He’s Acadian. Have you not ever seen one?”
“No.” Jean-Philippe stood just within the kitchen doorway, looking out towards the shed. Pierre Boudreau was back this morning, deep in conversation with Monsieur Wilde.
At the kitchen table with his tea, de Brassart ventured, “That surprises me, for when I came across three years ago and landed at Quebec there were some there who’d just arrived as refugees. It made a stir. You must have seen them.”
Jean-Philippe, unmoving, said, “It has been longer than three years since I was at Quebec.”
“I thought you said your home was there.”
“I said my family home is near the city.”
“And you’ve not been back for more than three years?”
It would now be more than ten years, but he had his reasons that he did not wish to share. He only shrugged and said, “There is a war.”
A cough reminded them the black girl—Violet was her name—was with them in the kitchen, and did not approve of them conversing overlong in French.
“She thinks we’re plotting our escape,” de Brassart said, and switched to English with an ease that only emphasized to Jean-Philippe his own deficiencies.
He frowned. And when he caught with his side vision the bright movement of a yellow gown as she entered the kitchen, he went out, and slowly walked across the crisp cool grass to join the other men outside the shed.
In English, very carefully, he said, “Good morning, Mr. Wilde.”
He’d missed the older man at breakfast. Monsieur Wilde had risen even earlier than usual to work upon the coffin. He looked weary, but he smiled and returned the greeting pleasantly as Jean-Philippe dropped into French to nod a brief “bonjour” to the Acadian.
He knew it was a tragedy, what happened to those people. He’d heard tales of how the English had accomplished their removal from the villages and farms that had been theirs for generations—how the churches had been burned, and how the women on their knees had prayed for mercy and been herded with their children onto ships at point of bayonet, the men cast off in separate vessels, all of them condemned to starve and sicken in their exile for the “fault” of being neutral. And now tragedy had struck Boudreau again.
The coffin was completed. Made of palest pine and sanded smooth, it sat upon the bench where Monsieur Wilde did his work.
It was so small.
A tightness rose in Jean-Philippe’s throat—he who had seen men cut down in battle with such frequency he’d thought himself immune by now to death.
He asked Boudreau, his voice quiet, “How old was your son?”
“He was four years old.”
“His name?”
“René.”
He marked this with a nod. “I’ll say a prayer for him.”
“Thank you.” Boudreau, looking down, had his gaze fixed on Jean-Philippe’s footwear. “You are the marine.”
That surprised him. “Yes.”
“Then maybe your sister the nun will say prayers for my son also. She being closer to God, He might hear her more clearly.”
“I’ll ask her.”
Boudreau explained, “I read your letters. He”—nodding to Monsieur Wilde—“wanted to know what they said, before sending them.”
Fair enough, Jean-Philippe thought. But he wanted to know something. “How did he send them?” The one letter, he now knew, had reached the governor. But as for the one to his sister . . .
“He sent them both to his son in New York, who is very important and owns many ships. He says, ‘Take the one letter direct to the governor, and see the other one reaches Quebec by whatever means possible.’?” Nodding again to their host, Boudreau added for emphasis, “He’s a good man.”