The Spaniard nodded. “Indians.”
“Yes. He had Pani slaves to work his farm, but none to keep his house. So he bought Angélique.” He could not say her name without emotion, but he knew that she deserved the honour of him saying it aloud. “Like you, she had the brand of her first owner on her shoulder. She was close to Violet’s age, then. I was six years old. She told me stories. Sang to me. I loved her very much.” He held the iron to the hemp and struck it hard and deep into the seam. “My grandfather, he always told her, when he died, she’d have her freedom. We all heard him say this, many times. He made my father promise.” It was harder than he’d thought it would be, telling this, but he had started now and felt the need to finish. “I was fifteen when he died. I was already a cadet, and on campaign. I came home three months afterwards. And Angélique was gone. My father sold her.” He could feel the force of that betrayal even now, and swung the mallet to give vent to it. “He sold her to a man who one week later beat her. Killed her. Said it was an accident. The judge believed him.” With a shrug that couldn’t quite contain his anger, he said, “That was the last time I’ve seen my home. I don’t like slavery. And I keep my word.” He faced Ramírez, and repeated, “I won’t tell.”
The Spaniard studied him a minute longer, gave a silent nod, and took his own tools up and they went on with what they had been doing, side by side, and nothing more was said.
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When work stalled upon the ship, there was the farm. May was the time of ploughing, planting, mending fences, carting dung and spreading it and setting fire to the dead leaves and the briars. In the field, a calf was born. A pair of wild doves built their nest beside the barn, their bright eyes always watching him to see he did not step too near the soft brown fledglings hidden on the ground, nearly invisible. And then the fledglings took to flight and at the month’s end all the apple orchard came in bloom, a mass of white and pink that filled the air with fragrance.
He’d forgotten, having lived so long with fighting and with death, how life looked when it was beginning over. Beautiful.
Pierre was philosophical. “You see, Marine,” he said, “it’s how life is. One thing will end, another will begin.” His wife had lately had another child, a little girl, and while it could not have removed the pain of his lost son, he seemed happier.
Today he’d come to help them wash the sheep. The weather, after days of rain, was finally warm enough and promised to hold clear, and the broad creek at the pasture’s edge was running full and fast. It was a job that took four men and needed doing several days before the shearing, so the sheep could dry in sunlight. Benjamin and Monsieur Wilde were working as a team to scrub the sheep with soft, brown soap before they passed them to Pierre and Jean-Philippe, who stood thigh-deep in the cold water, making sure each sheep was well-rinsed in the current that would carry all the dirt and oil away.
“Sheep,” Pierre remarked, “are stubborn animals.” He set the one he held upon the shore and watched it scamper up the bank. “They seldom walk in a straight path. Like us, they always try to look behind.”
Jean-Philippe set his sheep down and squeezed the water from its thick fleece with his forearms before straightening to stretch his shoulders. His sheep wandered two steps up the bank then stood, feet planted, bleating loudly.
Pierre grinned. “You see? In this, too, they’re like us.” He waded out and took the sheep and turned it so its head was pointed to the others in the pasture, and the sheep stopped bleating and began to walk. “The trick in life,” Pierre told Jean-Philippe, “is not to look behind so long you miss where you are being led.”
? ? ?
That evening after supper, Monsieur Wilde brought out the cider and the cribbage board.
It had become their habit through the winter months, begun when Jean-Philippe had seen the narrow wooden gaming board set on the corner bookshelf and in studying the holes and pegs had drawn his host’s attention. It was not a game he’d played before, but given it used cards it did not take him long to learn it, and he’d come to find it an agreeable diversion.
In honesty, had he not liked the game he would have played it for no other reason than his host enjoyed it, and he’d come to like the company of Monsieur Wilde.
The parlour, with its blue walls, was a cool and peaceful place this evening. Other than the two of them—the cribbage board set on the little table in between their high-backed chairs before the unlit hearth—there was only Ramírez at the writing desk, and Lydia ensconced within her corner by the window, with the small board on her lap to hold her drawing paper. Joseph, after working on the ship all day, had gone upstairs. Violet had gone out to do the milking. And de Brassart, having spent another week in bed with some vague illness, was now up and out of doors and standing underneath the rowan tree engaged in what appeared to be some new debate with Benjamin.
As Jean-Philippe was dealt his cards he briefly watched the two men through the window, not because he cared what they were arguing about, but because doing so allowed him an excuse to turn his head in that direction and observe her without seeming to observe her.
She was drawing him. In profile, it would seem, because her pencil stilled the minute he began to turn, then moved again as he looked back towards the game. He hid his smile, and tried to look appropriately dignified.
He viewed his cards and sorted them. The great frustration of this game was that its play relied on simple chance as much as strategy.
The value of a hand relied not only on what cards you kept, but which ones you selected to discard, and all would turn upon the one card, yet unseen, that would be turned at random from the waiting deck. He frowned, sorting his cards again, considering.
Monsieur Wilde made a comment Jean-Philippe did not completely catch, and then Ramírez answered and both men were smiling when Ramírez translated: “He said he would have thought a soldier would be more decisive, so I said you’re not a soldier, you’re an officer.”
Jean-Philippe smiled, too, before remembering that it would spoil his profile for her drawing. He selected his two cards and set them down, and when the older man spoke next the words were easier to understand.
“If you ask me,” Monsieur Wilde told him, “you were born to be a farmer.”
He wasn’t often taken by surprise. The comment was a simple one and offered with sincerity and so he answered, “Thank you.” But the impact that he felt was unexpected.
It was the phrasing of the words, in perfect counterpoint to those his uncle once spoke with such confidence. This one will never settle . . . He was born to be a soldier. And yet what if that had, after all, been nothing more than chance—one card selected, and another left unplayed?
What if his uncle had not been a soldier, but a merchant, or a miller? It was interesting to think what course his own life might have taken then; how each card dealt a man could change the outcome of the game.
The turn was his. He played his four, and wished he’d kept his ace, and somehow scored six points in spite of it. He dealt the next hand in his turn, and moved his pegs around the board, and drank his cider, liking the companionship. When Violet came back from the barn, Ramírez went to help her, leaving only him and Monsieur Wilde and Lydia within the quiet parlour, and he liked that even better. Liked the comfort and contentedness of sitting with them in that room, with evening coming on.
The words he’d built his life upon seemed small and distant in his mind: This one will never settle.
And he wondered, for the first time, if his uncle had been wrong.
? ? ?
The best way to deal with a man like de Brassart, he knew, was to give him no time to come up with a lie.