He was letting down his guard, he knew, allowing the Acadian to witness where his interest—and his weakness—lay, but for some reason, standing in the sunshine with her watching him, he’d ceased to care.
And it appeared to aid his cause on this occasion, for Pierre said, “Fine, I’ll teach you.”
Waiting until Monsieur Wilde had gone for a new barrel and was out of earshot, Pierre told the English words to Jean-Philippe and made him speak them back again, correcting him. “Yes,” he said finally, “that’s good. That is right.”
Jean-Philippe repeated the phrase silently within his mind, in rhythm with his work, until he was distracted by the faintly distant hoofbeats of a fast-approaching rider. Then his instincts overrode all else.
His hand dropped for his sword before remembering it was not there. Since he’d left off his morning walks in favour of more useful work, he’d found it far too cumbersome to carry, and more commonly than not now left it lying in his chamber near the box that Monsieur Wilde had made him, underneath his bed.
With one glance he surveyed the clearing, taking note of where the members of the Wilde family were, and calculating just how quickly he could move to cover them and shield them from attack. But when he would have stepped between Monsieur Wilde and the angle of the clearing leading to the forest road, he heard a brief, untroubled call from Violet in the house, and from the way Lydia rose from working in the garden, turning without fear towards the woods, he knew the rider would be somebody she welcomed.
“That,” Pierre said, when he asked, “is Monsieur Ryder. He the son of Monsieur Wilde’s sister.”
So her cousin, then, thought Jean-Philippe as he watched Lydia lean forward and accept a kiss of greeting from the newcomer. The man would be ten years his senior, maybe. Nearing forty. He was ruddy faced with russet-coloured hair and rode a fine-legged mare of dappled grey. “He lives nearby?”
“At Millbank, yes.”
He’d brought her what appeared to be a newspaper, and evidently it had been intended for her father because she had folded it into her hands and was now coming over. As she neared the place where they were standing by the cider press a wayward breeze caught one soft strand of her dark hair and lifted it against the lace edge of her cap, reminding him what he had planned to say.
And when she greeted him, he said it. “It’s nice how you’re wearing your hair today.”
She thanked him, and Pierre in French said dryly, “So that you can speak to those you capture, was it?”
Jean-Philippe smiled and with equal good nature returned, “I am practising.”
Lydia had looked away from them both as she handed her father the newspaper, and after a brief exchange of words started to leave.
Then she paused. Turning back to Pierre, she said something in quiet tones and her expression was solemn and troubled. He caught the word “sorry” and then the word “family,” and then without meeting his eyes again she walked away.
Pierre translated.
And Jean-Philippe, with a weight closing in on his heart, stood as straight and as still as he could while Monsieur Wilde confirmed what he already knew must be so.
? ? ?
He did not drink the toast, but set his cup of wine untouched beside him on the parlour table as he took his seat again and went on reading Captain Wheelock’s letter.
It said nothing of the battle of Quebec, having been written by the captain some few days before the news had reached this province, but it dealt with something nearly as disquieting.
De Brassart, sitting in the armchair next to his, assumed the captain’s letter could be only on one subject: their exchange. “For surely in the fight we will have captured English officers who must now be returned. It is regrettable of course that we have lost Quebec, but let them try to hold it through the cold months that are coming—they will die from that as soon as from our guns—and in the spring we’ll strike them hard from Montreal and take the city back. And Montreal, you must admit, is a more lively and diverting place to pass the winter.”
Jean-Philippe, for his part, was not thinking of diversions. He was thinking of the men whose blood now stained the Heights of Abraham, for from the newspaper’s description of the battle that was where the armies must have met. Reportedly their own side suffered sixteen hundred casualties—three times those of the English—and both generals had been killed. He had not liked the Marquis de Montcalm, but death upon a battlefield was still a death deserving of respect, however little the man might have earned it living.
“What does Captain Wheelock say?” de Brassart asked.
“He does not write of an exchange.” That he would write at all was something Jean-Philippe had not expected. When the Wildes’ cousin, Monsieur Ryder—who, Pierre said, also kept the post in this vicinity—had asked for him by name and then produced this sealed and folded letter, tidily addressed in careful handwriting, it had seemed suspect. But as he had read, he’d understood, and had been grateful for the courtesy. “The captain’s in New Jersey. He has traced some number of my men, and writes to tell me where they are, and whether they are well.”
“I see.” De Brassart, vaguely disappointed, raised his drink. “That’s decent of him.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look pleased.”
“My sergeant is in hospital. In New York.”
“Ah.” De Brassart drank his wine as though digesting that small bit of news. “I shouldn’t worry. I am sure the English will look after him.”
“The English are the reason he is there. He was attacked.”
“Well, we were all attacked.”
Jean-Philippe did not waste breath explaining this attack had happened here, more recently. There was no point discussing things with someone like de Brassart, who stood always at the centre of the world in his own view and measured all events in terms of how they hindered or advanced his needs. The injuries of others would, to him, be of no consequence.
To such a man, Quebec was nothing but a cold place in a country not his own, and since de Brassart learned of its surrender he’d said nothing to suggest he’d even thought about the starving people now within its walls, who having struggled through the months of English siege were now held hostage in their own homes at the mercy of an occupying English army.
Jean-Philippe, whose childhood home was not far past Quebec along the St. Charles River, found that he could think of little else. He’d asked de Brassart earlier, when they’d been shown the newspaper account, “Does it say anything about the general hospital? The one outside the walls?” Of course it hadn’t. It had only listed names of the main officers who had been killed or wounded in the battle, nothing more.
There was no one who could tell him if his sister had received the letter he had written when he’d first arrived, or if she’d brought their mother down to join her in the general hospital, or if they had been overrun by the invading English. All he knew was that Quebec had fallen one full month ago exactly, and in all that time while he’d been unaware, his family had been in harm’s way and suffering he knew not what indignities, and he was here and powerless and able to do nothing that would help them.
Nothing.
So instead he gathered his frustration with a purpose and he focused on the one action he could take—the one person he could help.
He told de Brassart, “You will help me speak to Monsieur Wilde.”
Their host was understanding, if a little hesitant when asked the question. He replied, and with a shrug de Brassart translated, “He thinks there’s nothing in the terms of our parole that will prevent you going to New York, but if you are to go more than a mile from here the law says you must have somebody with you, and permission from the magistrate. Permission he can get for you, but he does not know who just at this moment can accompany you.”