De Brassart showed no interest in continuing the argument. He coughed, and watched the mist of his breath briskly dance away. “I don’t know how you stand this weather.”
Jean-Philippe, who thought the day was fine, glanced upwards at the sun that had now broken through the clouds, but didn’t offer a reply. De Brassart was determined to be out of sorts today, having been “driven” from the house—as he described it—by the women making candles in the kitchen. While the pungent scent of tallow rendering took Jean-Philippe back to his childhood, it was clear de Brassart didn’t share that same nostalgia, leaving Jean-Philippe to wonder how and where he had been raised, that he had so little connection to the things of common life.
And if he didn’t like the smell of candle-making, he’d find even less to like about the smell of hogs.
The cart that carried them arrived just before midday. Joseph had gone down with Ramírez to the ship already and Pierre had stayed at home so it was left to Jean-Philippe and Monsieur Wilde to load the stubborn animals into their pen, while the young, round-faced man who’d brought them leaned against the top rail of the fence and offered his advice before remembering he’d brought them something else besides.
The conversation was too quick for Jean-Philippe to follow but he caught the words “from Henry” and he knew that Monsieur Wilde’s nephew Henry kept the post office at Millbank, so it was no surprise to see the letter and the newspaper.
He was surprised though when Monsieur Wilde handed him the letter, still unopened. “It’s for you.”
It was from Captain Wheelock, and enclosed a second letter in his sister’s careful handwriting. She was a careful woman. She’d have known her letter to him would be read by others, so she told him only that their mother had arrived before the battle and the two of them were safe, and that the hospital itself, although now occupied by English troops, was still allowed to tend the wounded officers and men of their own side. Their cattle and their wheat had all been seized, she wrote, so how long they’d be able to subsist she did not know, but she put everything in God’s hands and hoped he would do the same, and sent her love. Our mother will not tell you, she had written him in closing, but she lights a candle every day for Angélique, so if you find forgiveness in your heart, I pray it one day guides you home.
He read the letter quietly a second time and folded it deliberately before he turned again to Captain Wheelock’s. While the captain spoke in flawless French, it seemed he either could not write it or preferred to dictate, for this letter had been written not in Wheelock’s hand but one more flowing and without the same precision.
Sir, I have this day received from General Amherst letters carried from Quebec, and am enclosing one addressed to you. I also write to send you news . . .
It was a longer letter than the one from Athanase. He was still finishing it when de Brassart clapped him on the shoulder, interrupting.
“The best news!” De Brassart’s smile was broad. “Look, Monsieur Wilde just showed me here in this New York Gazette, the second page. It says that General Amherst gives his orders for those prisoners who are of your militia or your Troupes de la Marine to come immediately to New York to join those of our regiments preparing now to go to Albany to be exchanged. It’s a cartel!” He said the word in joyous tones. “And if they send our men, that means we’ll be exchanged as well, so finally—”
“No,” said Jean-Philippe. “We won’t.” He handed Wheelock’s letter over, as the proof. “We won’t be part of the exchange.”
De Brassart frowned down at the letter. “What’s this?”
“Cartels must exchange officer for officer, and rank for rank. They have room,” he explained, “for four lieutenants only. And those places have been filled.”
“No.” With a firm shake of his head, refusing to accept the truth, de Brassart said, “Impossible.” He turned away and took a step and then turned back and threw the letter to the ground, together with the newspaper, and stomped them with his foot. “It is an outrage! I will write the captain. I will protest!”
“You’ll control your temper,” Jean-Philippe advised him coldly, “before you upset Mademoiselle Wilde.”
He was well aware Monsieur Wilde and the neighbour stood just steps from them beside the hog pen, looking on with wariness, but right now he concerned himself with nobody but Lydia. She’d come out by the kitchen door as he’d been handing Wheelock’s letter to de Brassart, and he’d seen her start across the clearing, carrying a bucket.
But she’d stopped dead when de Brassart had begun to yell.
“Control yourself,” said Jean-Philippe, more low.
De Brassart was in no mood to be reasonable. “You’re not my superior. You’re not even my equal. Don’t you ever give me orders.” In contempt, he spat and headed for the house, marching past Lydia, who held her ground as he went by.
The newspaper and letter had been trampled into muddy soil. Before the wind could shake them loose and scatter them against the fence posts, Jean-Philippe bent silently and picked them up. He straightened, still in silence.
Then to Monsieur Wilde he said, slowly in English, “I am sorry. He is . . .” Words escaped him, although there were many he might wish to use in his own language.
Monsieur Wilde suggested one in English. “Angry.”
“Angry, yes.”
She’d reached them now, her bucket, full of kitchen peelings for the hogs, still gripped within her hands. She asked her father something and he answered her and although it was difficult for Jean-Philippe to follow what was said, he heard the word “exchanged” and realized that, not knowing French, she and her father would not know he and de Brassart were not part of this cartel.
It would be hard for them to learn the truth, he thought.
She looked at him, and he could see her eyes were guarded. “I am sorry,” he told her directly, “we are not exchanged.”
Her eyebrows drew together faintly. “Not exchanged?”
He was not sure if “yes” or “no” was proper in this instance, so he simply said it over. “Not exchanged.”
“Oh.”
As he watched, incredibly, her eyes grew slightly happier. He held that knowledge even when she’d looked away.
And in that moment, when the wind rose up and struck him sharply, it seemed only half as cold as it had seemed before.
Charley
I couldn’t feel my fingers. An hour ago the sun had been warm and my coat felt so stifling I’d taken it off, but the blue sky, criss-crossed with the thin trails of jet planes, was being overtaken by a solid bank of cloud that rolled in stealthily from the northwest. It raised a chilling wind that crept up on me, softly; wrapped around me. By the time I felt the cold it had already penetrated deeply and was hard to chase away again.
“Here.” Sam, coming up beside me, put a cup of take-out coffee in my hand, to match the one he carried.
“Thanks. You shouldn’t spend your money, though,” I told him, even as I wrapped my hands around the warmth. “We have a coffee-maker in the kitchen.”
“It makes something. But I wouldn’t call it coffee.” He’d been taking down the scaffolding. The roof and outside walls were finished, all the windows had been re-installed, and Willie had the chimney done down to the shingles, so starting on Monday the work would move indoors. He asked me, “How’s he doing?”