They sat together in the parlour—she and Henry, Joseph, Sarah, and her father—and the blue walls seemed to run with mournful shadows as the rain chased down the window glass. They drank a toast, respectfully, to Governor DeLancey. To his memory.
“It’s an unexpected death,” said Henry, “though of course he was a good age.”
Her father reminded them dryly, “He is—he was—younger than me.”
“But the new acting governor’s older, so he may be much better able to deal with the merchants,” was Henry’s opinion. “They have been complaining of late that they cannot find crews for their ships, since the sailors are moving to other ports where they’re less likely to find themselves pressed into service in our Royal Navy. I’m told that not even the market-boats these days are safe from the press.”
Her father was of the opinion that it would get worse before it would get better. They’d all seen the newspaper Henry had brought, with the list of the Flags of Truce, taken by Men of War and Privateers, and carried into Jamaica.
The Bellewether, Lydia noticed, had not been among them.
“But tell us some good news,” said Sarah. She sat with her arm slipped through Joseph’s, their wedding not many weeks off now, their house nearly finished. “It cannot be all sad and gloomy. There must be some good.”
Henry thought for a moment, then ventured, “They say General Amherst will march soon against Montreal. And you know that Quebec is secure, of course, after the French tried and failed to retake it. So finally it looks as though all of the victories will be on our side.”
She fell silent, and nobody noticed. Nor did they see how it affected her when Henry added, “In fact, there is a ship now in the harbour at New York that’s carried upwards of a hundred of our own men, several officers included, just released by their French captors and sent down to be exchanged, and surely having them back in the fight will be an asset.”
“What rank?” she asked him.
Henry turned. “I beg your pardon?”
“What rank are the officers to be exchanged?”
“I’ve no idea. All ranks, I’d imagine.” Henry smiled. “Is it important?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t suppose it is.”
But she could not stop thinking of that ship in New York harbour, waiting now to take French prisoners—French officers—back home in an exchange.
She thought of when they’d first arrived. When he had first arrived. And she remembered how impatient she had been to have him gone.
So now he would be going. Now, perhaps, he was already gone. And she could find no joy in it. No joy in it at all.
? ? ?
That evening, when she went to do the milking, she stood quietly alone and for a long time at the centre of the barn. There was no music. Nothing left to mark the place where they had danced.
And yet she stood there and remembered how it felt when he had held her hands and missed the steps and laughed. When loyalties and uniforms and war had seemed like things of no significance, and they had been a woman and a man and nothing more.
She heard the barn door creaking open and she went on standing there and did not move, because she suddenly became aware that she’d begun to cry. The tears slid hotly down her cheeks and would not stop, so she stayed still and held her head up and hoped whoever it was would go, and leave her with some dignity.
A harness thudded on the wall as someone hung it on its peg. The door began to creak again, then stopped.
French Peter said, “You think he left because he did not care.”
She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She felt sure she would fall to pieces if she tried.
He said, “He thought he could not offer you a future. Not a future that was good for you. He thought that you deserved a better man.”
French Peter paused, and when he spoke again his voice held sympathy. “He did not leave because he did not care,” he said. “He left because he loved you.”
Jean-Philippe
“This is an infuriating game.” Captain Bonneau surveyed the cards he had been dealt, while Jeanne de Joncourt took her seat within the family’s parlour.
“Then you’re well-suited to it,” she remarked. She looked at Jean-Philippe. “How is your sergeant?”
“Sleeping.” Dying, was the truest answer. After all these years he knew the signs. But there was nothing to be gained by being truthful in this instance, and La Réjouie for his part seemed content to drift and doze without confronting the reality.
He thought that Jeanne de Joncourt knew. At least, he thought it probable, because these past two days she had been watching Jean-Philippe with an expression of shared sympathy.
Bonneau said, “Truly, too much of this game depends on changes in the play I can’t control.” He spoke with feeling that came more from life than the cards. He’d been here for two months already, having brought his prisoners to New York in the first days of July, only to have to wait a month for Captain Wheelock to arrive from Massachusetts to begin arranging the exchange, and that, in turn, had brought him more frustration.
Still, Bonneau was an experienced negotiator—level-headed, flawlessly polite, and firm in his demands. And he’d decided he was bringing Jean-Philippe back with him, this time. He’d told Wheelock, “Monsieur le Marquis reminds you that to settle the mistake made in your last exchange, you still owe him a captain, twenty-two Canadians, and two lieutenants of the Troupes de la Marine. And there is one of them.” He’d pointed with his glass at Jean-Philippe.
Wheelock had said, if it were up to him, he would allow it. “But the general is reluctant to exchange the Troupes de la Marine.”
“Because he doesn’t trust them, yes? You are too highly capable,” Bonneau had said to Jean-Philippe. “You make the English nervous. But”—he’d turned again to Wheelock—“this is why it would be better to exchange this man, and get him off your soil.”
To watch the back-and-forth between the two men could be entertaining.
Jeanne de Joncourt often joined them, though her own attention rarely strayed from Captain Wheelock. It was very obvious to Jean-Philippe the two of them were smitten with each other, and he envied them.
He envied Captain Wheelock, too, for being able to come call upon the family of the woman he was courting, and be greeted as a friend.
Today, the captain looked preoccupied when he arrived.
Bonneau informed him, “As you see, I’m forced to play the very irritating game of cribbage, so if you must tear me from it, I will not complain.”
But Captain Wheelock was first drawn aside by Jeanne de Joncourt, to a quiet corner of the parlour, where they bent their heads and talked in private.
Bonneau glanced at them and smiled. “Such comfort,” he told Jean-Philippe, “is not allowed for you nor me. A shame, but there it is. Some men get wives while others get the battlefield.” He pointed to the cards and asked, “Now, which will you discard?”
Wheelock came across and said to Jean-Philippe, “Lieutenant, may I see you for a moment? On your own.”
The room he chose was plain, but private. Wheelock closed the door and took a seat and motioned Jean-Philippe to sit as well, and for a moment they sat looking at each other, as they had the first day they’d met, at the Wildes’ house on Long Island.
“Last summer,” Wheelock said, “when I was first sent down here, one of my superiors suggested rather strongly I should try persuading prisoners to change sides, and come fight for us.” His tone of voice told how he’d felt about that order.
Jean-Philippe asked, “And how did you answer your superior?”
“I told him a worse instrument than myself could hardly be found for the purpose. Had any of the prisoners applied to me to change sides, I might then have helped, but I could hardly promise to be active in persuading people to do what I’d disapprove of in myself.” His mouth turned downwards at the corners. “That said, I find myself right now, Lieutenant, in a singular position.”
Jean-Philippe had learned to wait for men to state their meaning clearly.