“That,” her father said, “will be for William to decide.”
They could but wait for William’s answer and instructions. After Benjamin had ridden to Cross Harbor and so passed the word, arriving home again midafternoon, they’d seen the sails of Mr. Fisher’s small sloop heading out along the far shore of the bay into the Sound, away towards her brother’s dock in New York harbour so he could deliver him the news.
“Till then,” her father said, “we have our own concerns. And I am glad to hear you find French Peter helpful,” he told Benjamin, “because he will be helping in the orchard with our harvest.”
Benjamin rose halfway on one elbow, more awake. “Beginning when?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
It was after sunset and that left her only candlelight to view her father’s features by, but still she saw their firm and stubborn lines.
She looked at Benjamin, and he at her, and neither of them dared to ask the question that was uppermost in both their minds, and yet their father heard it notwithstanding, for he told them both, “Your brother has done well enough these weeks with the French officers.”
Lydia said, “But we had no choice, with them. And with French Peter—”
“He has lost a child.” Her father’s tone reminded both of them he knew the pain of that. “He wants to pay me for the coffin, but he has no money of his own, for as a refugee he has been forced to live on charity. So if he seeks to pay me with his labour I cannot deny him that. Sometimes,” he said, “you must allow a man to be a man.”
He said no more, but Lydia thought long about those final words.
She turned them over in her mind while she lay in her bed that night. And she was thinking of them still when, early the next morning, she watched Mr. de Sabran fit the final pieces to the cider press, his dark head bent in concentration.
Maybe, she thought, that was what he sought to do when he threw all his focus into work, as he was doing, as though idleness were something he did not know how to manage. Maybe he was seeking to remind himself—remind them all—that while he was a prisoner at the mercy of his keepers, far from home and from his purpose, he had not yet ceased to be a man.
? ? ?
The wind had changed.
It held the black-hulled El Montero captive at its anchor in the bay, although the Spanish captain did not seem concerned. “No, no,” Del Rio said, “it’s not a problem. We are flying now the colours of the—” Breaking off, he looked up at the green-and-white-striped flag that flew above his mast, and asked Mr. Ramírez, “What are these ones?”
And Ramírez answered in a clear deep voice, surprising them by speaking English, “These ones, capitán, would be the colours of a merchant who is Portuguese.”
“You see then,” Del Rio returned, “we are Portuguese, just at these times. And the English and Portuguese, they are good friends, yes? So we will be fine.”
He was—as seemed to be his habit—right. They had attracted some attention, with their sleek black hull and Spanish bottom, sheathed in lead to guard against the worms that could destroy a ship in warmer waters. But while a couple of their neighbours had rowed up from Millbank or over from Cross Harbor for a closer look at El Montero, it was the sad Bellewether that truly held their interest, and her father having called across to one of them a version of how she had been so damaged, word was passed along and heads were shaken at the loss of men, and lively curses called down on the English pirate who had brought the ship to ruin.
And then William had arrived. Not by the sea, but by the forest road, on horseback.
Violet, coming from the milking, saw him first. And entering the kitchen said to Lydia, “Your brother’s here,” in tones that didn’t hide the fact she’d never had much time for William. She was like her mother, Phyllis, who had many times remarked that, for a man who liked to stand and talk as much as William did, he never truly stood for anything. Which wasn’t wholly accurate. He stood for many things, but in a shifting way. He was the perfect model of a man of business, showing to all men the face they wanted most to see. With men of learning, he would mirror their own interests, speak of books and of philosophy, and yet with men who worked along his docks he could as easily share stories that would curl a barmaid’s hair, and leave both groups convinced that here, indeed, was someone they could trust and like. A man like them.
It was a gift he’d had since birth, so Lydia believed. Everyone saw what they wanted in William, their parents included. Like many a firstborn, he had a strong look of their father which gained as he grew—the wide chest and broad shoulders and height that allowed him to walk with authority. That likeness had saved him from trouble a number of times, so their mother had said. “I’d look down at his little face,” she’d once told Lydia, “and it was just like your father was looking back up at me, and goodness knows that I’ve never been able to stay angry long with your father.”
Their father, who’d been sitting there at the table, had smiled and replied that he’d never himself known a boy who could argue his way out of hidings with more ready eloquence. “Made me feel all but ashamed of myself that I’d so much as thought about discipline. And that, my dear,” he had said to his wife, “comes entirely out of your nature, not mine.”
And in truth, had the Fates schemed to take all her mother’s intuitive features and twist them to turning a profit, the end result would have been William.
Lydia never knew whether the William she saw and knew well was the same William anyone else saw, but neither did she let it bother her. He was still her brother, as he’d always been, and as he reined his horse beside the barn and looked round to see her approaching, his smile was warm and familiar, and as he dismounted he gathered her into the same brief, rib-bruising embrace that had marked all their greetings since she had been small, and it lifted her feet from the ground.
“I’m too big,” she protested.
“Never.” His grin showed off fine, even teeth for a man who in but a few years would be forty. His clothes were fine also, though not ostentatiously so—tailored neatly, expensively, of dark grey wool lined with silk that was doubtless from one of his shipments.
“You look well,” she told him.
“And you.” Looking down, he made a show of brushing one obstructing strand of fair hair from his eyes to clear his vision as he added, “Every time I see you, you get prettier.”
Rolling her eyes, she assured him, “I’m too big for that, too.”
“What, compliments?”
“Flattery.” Glancing away she took note of his horse and her brows drew together in puzzlement. “Isn’t this Henry’s new gelding?”
“It is.” Henry Ryder, their cousin, lived down with his wife and two children at Millbank, and kept the post office there. “My own horse,” William said, “cast a shoe as I came into Millbank last night, so I stopped at Henry’s and supped and slept there, and he gave me the loan of this beautiful lad for the day, while the blacksmith attends to my mare.” Leaving the horse at the rail of the fence he stood straighter and stretched out his shoulders and asked, “Where is Father?”
“In the orchard, with the others.”
“Others?”
“Benjamin, and Joseph, and French Peter, and”—she hesitated, only for the smallest moment—“one of our French officers.”
“Oh yes.” His features sobered. “I’m sorry indeed that you’ve been so imposed upon. I tried my best to intervene when Silas told me what was going on, but Uncle Reuben has his own channels of influence, I fear, and there was nothing I could do.” With cautious eyes he asked her, “How is Joseph?”
“He is managing.”