Catherine tilted her head, considering this. “What about the wheat brought from France this spring by the purveyor general? We heard Monsieur Cadet brought fifteen transports full for the army.” It had been an astonishing feat, bringing them across an ocean dominated by the British Royal Navy. More so, since Joseph-Michel Cadet was a butcher from Quebec who had risen to the challenge of provisioning New France’s colonial government.
“Those transports carried enough for twenty thousand rations for two months. But there are thirty thousand soldiers, sailors, warriors, and civilians to feed.” Moreau’s voice was low and matter-of-fact. “Monsieur Cadet’s provisions barely lasted until the end of July. Your soldiers are starving, mademoiselles. Civilians, too. This harvest has always been part of Cadet’s plan. The situation is critical, but you can help. In fact, we must insist. Resisting would be breaking the law.”
Bright Star looked to Catherine, but it was Thankful who laid her moccasin aside and stood. “If it is help you need, you shall have it. You don’t need to threaten us.”
Moreau plucked the weightless orders from the scale and returned the paper to his waistcoat. “A wise response, mademoiselle. Now, you will take us to the house at once.”
Defiance rose up in Catherine. She was as willing to help feed the hungry as Thankful, and yet she chafed at the demand for her house. “The house is otherwise occupied. Pitch tents if you must, but you will not evict us from our home.”
Fontaine shrugged his arms out of their straps and set his pack on the floor. Reaching into an outer pocket, he pulled a plug of tobacco from a paper bag and tucked it into his cheek. Sitting on a barrel of rum, he stretched out one leg and crossed his arms. “We may do whatever we say. How many live there now?”
“Three.”
Moreau laughed. “Bah! And here I thought you would tell me a family of ten slept within those walls. That’s plenty of room for everyone. We’ve suffered tighter quarters than that, by far. I won’t sleep outside when it rains every other day here. We’ll learn how to get along. Consider it proof of your patriotism, ma chère.”
Two strange men living with two women and a sixty-year-old, one-armed man? Catherine balked. Patriotism had nothing to do with it.
Bright Star pursed her lips and gave a tiny shake of her head. In Mohawk, she said, “I do not trust them.”
“You don’t trust anyone,” Catherine hissed, irritation edging her tone. “I can handle this.”
“Of course you can,” Bright Star lashed back. “You manage everything so well on your own.”
“You make it sound like a weakness to take care of one’s own affairs,” Catherine murmured.
“Weakness is dismissing good counsel because you’re so convinced of your own strength.”
“Totek!” Raising her palm, Catherine halted the conversation. This was not the time to air lingering grievances.
“If you are quite finished . . .” Moreau cleared his throat. “You really have no choice in the matter of our lodging.” He leaned on a display table, and it wobbled on its uneven legs, sending tallow tapers rolling to the floor. “We need a place to billet.”
Catherine scooped the fallen candles and stacked them like cordwood on a silver platter. “And I have one for you. Not our home, but another. It is smaller, but if you’re used to cramped quarters, you’ll do fine. You’ll be out of the rain, comfortable and dry, and you’ll have the place all to yourselves. Better for all of us, no? Collect yourselves, messieurs, and follow me.”
Thankful caught Catherine’s eye as Fontaine hoisted his pack onto his back once more. “Not your house, surely?”
“It was never my house.” She led the men outside.
Catherine escorted the soldiers through a thicket of oaks, maples, and pines. When they emerged, a small wooden house came into view.
Fontaine spit into the grass. “It’s a cabin.”
“It will do.” Moreau asked her to show them in.
How she had loved coming here the first few times. Visiting had been like trading secrets. “You won’t be empty for long,” she had whispered into the barren rooms, filling them with expectation. In her imagination, she had fancied she heard the house whisper back, “Oh, the joy you will find here, if you can only endure the wait.”
Lies, both of them. But by now she’d grown used to the truth.
Two rockers swayed on the porch as she opened the front door and bade the soldiers enter. A breeze lifted the edges of the curtains inside before they hung limply once more at the windows. She had sewn them herself, and Thankful had embroidered flowering vines along the edges.
Fontaine’s footsteps echoed as he trudged from one room to the next and up the stairs before coming back again. “You’ll be wanting the bed, then,” he muttered to his superior.
Moreau eased his pack from his shoulders and lowered it into a corner. “Naturally. You have a bedroll, Fontaine, and a roof over your head. You’ve nothing to complain about.” He turned to Catherine and gave a small bow, then straightened. “This will serve, mademoiselle. Thank you.”
“Then I’ll take my leave. Good evening, messieurs.”
“What’s this?”
Catherine turned to find Fontaine pulling something white from between the windowsill and the wall. An envelope.
“‘Catie,’” Fontaine read. “Is that you? You have mail. From the wall.” He chortled but held it out to her all the same.
She crossed the room to retrieve it, then bobbed in a curtsy and walked away, vaguely registering that Moreau was issuing instructions about beginning the harvest in the morning.
Closing the door on his voice, she tucked the envelope into her pocket. She’d seen the handwriting and recognized it. No good could come of reading the letter inside, this she knew. The sentiments it contained belonged to a different time, long buried. She had no business resurrecting them.
Catherine marched away, memories of the cabin and the promises it represented trailing her like cobwebs. Stepping over a gnarled root, she steadied herself on a sugar maple trunk scarred from last winter’s tapping. Light lanced through the leaves in spears until she broke free from the woods.
Bright Star, a bale of fur on her back, ducked into the trading post. She came out a few moments later, tumpline in hand.
Catherine intercepted her on the way to the dock. “I’ll take over from here.”
“In that?” Bright Star scoffed with a derision that seemed to go deeper than Catherine’s tight bodice and burdensome skirts, down to the person she’d become to fit them. Catherine suspected that her sister would not spend time in her company at all were it not for the trading work that tied them together. “There are only three left. I will do this and then go. I’ll return with the porters for the journey when they’re ready.”
Catherine nodded, and the sisters’ paths diverged.
Her house loomed large as Catherine strode toward it. Made of oyster-grey fieldstone, with two chimneys thrusting from the roof, it was more reminiscent of Gabriel Duval’s privileged roots than of the youthful rebellion and wanderlust that compelled him to forsake propriety for the adventure of trapping and trading.
Once inside, Catherine stepped out of her moccasins and climbed the stairs. The door to her chamber made no sound as she closed it.
A tread on the stair signaled Thankful’s approach. “Catherine? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she replied. The envelope weighed nothing, and yet it was a burden to be rid of. She drew it from her pocket and tossed it onto the mahogany bureau.
“If you’re certain . . .” Thankful said, still outside the door.
Catherine wiped her palms on the apron over her skirt. “Quite, thank you. I’ll be down for supper in just a bit.” A breeze billowed the mosquito netting draping her canopied bed.
Retreating footsteps, then silence. Her hands did not tremble as she picked up the envelope and beheld the firm hand that had spelled her name. Catie.
Only one person had ever called her tha
t.
Chapter Two
October 1748
Eleven Years Ago
“That’s it! That’s my house!” Heedless of rocking the canoe, Catherine pointed to the dock stretching out into the river, beckoning her to come home. Autumn had touched the trees with fire, and the sight of it set her joy ablaze. Had it only been two years since she had seen this place? It felt like five. Or ten.
Behind her, Monsieur Bonneville grunted as he pulled on the paddle. “Congratulations. And do you suppose your papa will be pleased to see you? To hear that you have been expelled from Madame’s school?”
Without turning to face him, she could see his small, close-set eyes and the one long black eyebrow above them, which the students called his pet caterpillar. A chill tickled her skin, but only briefly. It was time for her to be home. King George’s War was over now, and there was no more danger of border raids between native allies of the French and English. Papa would be surprised to see her, but he would recover. She’d been gone so long, and he hadn’t written to her or visited, not even to mark her thirteenth year. Or her fourteenth. Was it possible that he had even missed news of the peace treaty, secluded as he was in the woods? She had clamored for every scrap of information to be had inside Montreal’s walls. In any case, surely by now he’d had time to miss her.
“My Catherine,” he would say when he saw her. “Daughter. How you’ve grown. Enough learning to be a proper lady. The war is over, the danger is past. I need you home with me.”
Catherine grinned with anticipation. She didn’t even care that river water soaked her silly slippered feet and her gown. Aside from the shoes, she could tolerate the clothing now, petticoats and corset and all. How changed she was, at least on the outside.
Madame Bonneville’s School for Young Ladies had made certain of that straightaway. Catherine could still feel the stinging humiliation of being stripped naked by Madame Bonneville and her spinster sister on her first day at the school. They weighed her, measured her, took note of her in ways that made her burn with shame. Then came the scalding hot bath, the scrubbing with sand and soap. It was as if they meant to take her golden skin away so that it could grow back pale and fair. With her own hair piled high and powdered white, Madame cut off Catherine’s braid and flung it to the floor as though it were a snake. “Only savages grow their hair to their knees.”
Catherine knew exactly what they were doing. Hadn’t she seen the same thing done before at Kahnawake, when a white person was adopted into the clan? The terrified white girl had been stripped of her British gown and underpinnings, then scrubbed in the river to wash all the white away. When she emerged, it was as a Mohawk. She was dressed in deerskin and adopted as one of the People.
Catherine looked down at the silk gown she wore. She’d been scrubbed that day two years ago and countless days since. She had watched her deerskin and stroud burn. She was layered with French undergarments, and her hair had been pinned, not braided. But she had not become one of them.
The canoe slowed its glide, and she looked up, heartened to be so near home. Kneeling in the bottom of the vessel, she reached out and grabbed a piling, pulling the canoe close before leaping out onto the dock. The sodden slippers she let fall from her feet and into the water, where they floated like pale green leaves before sinking beneath the surface. She was home at last. She was free.
Catherine took off running toward the riverbank, leaving Monsieur Bonneville in her wake. The land greeted her with the moldering smell of autumn. Before she even had the chance to shout Papa’s name, there he was.
He was so still as she ran to greet him. His face held no recognition.
Leaves shook on their branches all around her, waving their colors like banners. Her lips curved in what she hoped was a winsome smile, waiting with trapped breath for the moment he would see her for who she was. She was his, and his alone. He was her papa.
He frowned.
She faltered. “You are surprised,” she said at last, excusing his disappointing reaction.
His fist clenched as he took her in from hatless head to the toes peeking from under her hem. “You aren’t wearing shoes.”
Curling her toes, Catherine bit her lip, her pulse skipping beats. She wanted love, she wanted joy. She needed to belong to someone again. Bewildered, she said, “It is me, Papa. Catherine Stands-Apart.”
His hand came across her mouth so fast, she heard the strike before she tasted blood. Her mistake: speaking her Mohawk name.
“What is the meaning of this?” He projected his shout beyond her, and she realized Bonneville was finally near.
“Monsieur.” Bonneville dropped a bag of Catherine’s clothing on the ground. “Your daughter has run away from the school three times now. Once, we pulled her from the port before she attempted to swim. This last time, we chased her on horseback all the way to Lachine and caught her just as she was about to steal a canoe.”
“I was going to return it later!” she protested.
Monsieur Bonneville ignored her. “As you are aware, the third time results in permanent expulsion, without refund of fees already paid. I am here to deliver your daughter back into your keeping.”
“You what?” A hint of rum rode Papa’s breath. So that was why he had struck her. It was the drink that did it, not him.
Catherine licked the corner of her swelling lip. “If you knew what it was like, you would have come for me yourself. Besides, the war is over! They signed a treaty for peace. New France and New England won’t be raiding anymore!”
Papa jabbed a finger at Bonneville. “We had an understanding. We signed papers. You were to train the Mohawk out of her until she was as civilized as any of your pureblood French girls. Did you forget the sum that would have been your reward? As you have utterly failed, you will take her back and keep her until you succeed.”
Catherine stared at him in disbelief. It was the war that had compelled Papa to send her away, nothing more. He had sent her inside the walled city of Montreal to keep her safe. And now the war had ended. There was no more reason to stay in that place, where she felt crammed into a shape that did not fit.
“Oh no.” Bonneville waggled his eyebrow. “Catherine has caused more than enough trouble to prove it cannot be done. We are casting our pearls before swine, monsieur, when we attempt to refine a half-breed. Not only has she thrice run away and been caught, but her health is not up to standard, either. She sank very low this past winter with tuberculosis, costing us more for her medical care than anticipated. We are through with this project. Good day to you.” Without a glance at Catherine, he retreated back toward the dock.
Stunned, Catherine grasped her father’s hand. She’d heard wrong. He would explain it when he was calm. Sober. “Papa,” she whispered, “I can help at home . . . at the trading post . . .”
He yanked his hand from hers. “Then do so.” He turned from her and walked away.
The wilted lace at her elbows moved in the wind, but she did not feel it brush her skin. She felt nothing. She was so full to the brim with emptiness, she feared she would choke.
Papa disappeared with a bottle, and Catherine wondered if she had driven him to drink. She would just have to make her presence worthwhile for him, because there was no question of leaving again. There was nowhere else she belonged.
She rubbed a linseed oil–soaked rag over the tea table in the parlor, drawing satisfaction from the polished result. Whatever Papa said, he did need help here. The house was filthy. And how had he been eating when she was not here to prepare the food?
“I saw him hit you.” English words.
Dropping her rag, she turned to find a young man in the doorway. Thin as a bean, with large brown eyes and sunny blond hair tailed at his neck. Cheekbones pushed beneath his skin. He looked older than her, but not by much. He had fifteen summers, if she didn’t miss her guess.
Pointing to her lip, he approached her. His movements were graceless as he scooped up her rag, wadding it in his fist and transfe
rring it back and forth between his hands. His palms grew greasy with oil and dust, but he didn’t seem to mind. The earnestness in his expression reached out to her.
Catherine wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Papa would be repentant tomorrow. “It’s nothing.” The English language was the one useful thing she had studied in Montreal.
“He shouldn’t have done that.” He extended the rag, and she sensed he was offering more than just her dusting cloth.
She took it. “Who are you?”
Curling up on just one side, his smile was tentative but warm. “I’m Samuel Crane. I didn’t mean to startle you, and I didn’t mean to spy. Duval can be difficult to ignore. We so seldom get visitors here, even to trade, and when I saw you—” A lump shifted in his throat. “He shouldn’t have done that,” he said again.
Heat pricked her cheeks and neck. “But why are you here?”
“Same as you, I guess.” A shrug lifted his shoulders. His toe scuffed at the fringe of the Persian rug on which he stood.
“You’re British,” she guessed.
He nodded. So this was what the enemy looked like. But no, now they were at peace once more.
“How came you to be here?” she tried again.
“It’s a common tale.” But his resistance to share it proved fleeting, and he told her that Kahnawake Mohawk had raided his family’s Massachusetts home during the war, along with several of his neighbors’. “The war that just ended with a treaty that returned all conquered land to its original owners,” he added. “The war that accomplished nothing for either France or England.” The bitterness in his tone was undeniable. The raids she’d been cosseted away from had turned Samuel’s life inside out.
“Go on.” Suddenly exhausted, she sat on the needlework-cushioned chair, wiped the rag over the Vincennes porcelain tea set in the middle of the table, and invited him to sit next to her.
Between Two Shores Page 3