He folded his long limbs beneath the scalloped table and ran a hand over his hair. Sawdust came away on his fingers. He picked up a cup and cradled it in his hands, his attention fixed upon it as he told the rest of his story in lukewarm tones. She suspected agony rode beneath the surface.
His parents had been killed in the raid. Samuel was captured and marched to Montreal. His brother, Joel, older by four years, had been at a neighbor’s home during the raid. The captives had been split into small groups for the march north, and Samuel never saw Joel, had no idea where he was now, if he had even survived.
If Joel had been seen by the Mohawk raiders, Catherine suspected he had been killed on sight. Men usually were. The fact that they had kept Samuel alive meant they saw something in him that made him valuable. Sometimes all it took was personal bravery.
“I was almost adopted into the Kahnawake people, but Monsieur Duval ransomed me before that could happen. He learned I was a carpenter’s apprentice and found it worth his while to put my skills to use here. I cook some, too, and do whatever he bids. It’s been two years. Six more to go before he will set me free.”
So that was how Papa had survived her absence. He’d replaced her with a boy who could do much more than she. Doubt screwed tight inside her chest. Papa’s need for her wasn’t what she thought. Yet she could hardly blame Samuel Crane for that. And after all, she was still Gabriel Duval’s daughter. Nothing would change that.
The thoughts loosed her compassion for Samuel. “I’m so sorry,” she told him. “You must miss home terribly.” That, she understood.
He rattled the teacup back onto its saucer and glanced at the case clock ticking in the corner of the room. “No more than you, I suppose.”
Utterly confused, Catherine searched his eyes. Had Papa already told him that Kahnawake was her home for the first ten years of her life? Or perhaps she’d misheard him, and he’d merely said that she had missed the home she’d now come back to. “What do you mean?”
Samuel kneaded his hands together. “I thought—I thought Duval ransomed you, too. You speak English, you’re cleaning his house—”
“No, no, I am his daughter.”
A hint of laughter lit his face.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. “Did he never mention me?”
Samuel’s eyebrows shot high. “Duval never mentioned having a child at all. I assumed he was an old bachelor. Are you really—”
“Yes, I am his.” Hurt and shame sharpened her tongue.
“I didn’t know.” Samuel dropped his gaze. “I saw him hit you. Fathers don’t hit their daughters.”
Catherine pushed back from the table, and Samuel rose just as quickly.
“I would be your friend, just the same,” he said, pleading. “I meant no offense. Please don’t go. Can’t we be friends, you and I? Or are you not staying?”
“I am staying.”
“Good.” His shoulders relaxed. “What is your name?”
She could not believe that in two years’ time, Papa had never said it. Sighing, she told Samuel her name was Marie-Catherine Stands-Apart, daughter of Agnesse Strong Wind as much as of Gabriel Duval. She was born of the People who had raided his family’s home. He took this in with interest but laid no blame upon her for what the Kahnawake raiders had done. It was a credit to his character.
He laid his hands on the back of her chair. “Tell me more.”
Though the gesture surprised her, she allowed him to seat her and watched as he built a fire in the parlor’s hearth. As the flames snapped and popped, the chill fled the room, and Catherine explained to Samuel Crane who she was beyond her names, desperate to be known. In the telling of her tale, perhaps he would come to understand who Gabriel Duval was, too. He had been a loving papa, once. A father who didn’t hit his daughter. He would gentle toward her again.
When she was born, she told Samuel, Papa had called her Marie-Catherine, and her mother named her Stands-Apart, even though Catherine found herself mostly standing in the middle, keeping the peace between parents who often argued. Until she couldn’t.
As Samuel tossed a pine knot into the fire, Catherine marveled that she was sharing so much with someone she’d just met. But after two years of being shamed for who she was, voicing her past felt like gulping spring water while half dead of thirst.
“One year, Papa returned from a trapping trip with one hand gone from an accident with a steel trap. It didn’t heal right, so more of his arm had to be taken by a surgeon’s knife. He didn’t go trapping or hunting after that, but he didn’t feel welcome in my mother’s house, either.” Pausing, she looked up to read Samuel’s face. “Do I bore you?”
“Not a bit.” He urged her to continue. His attention quenched something inside her that had shriveled during her years at school.
Catherine’s petticoats and skirt clung to her ankles, still wet and cold from the river. Burying her toes into the rug, she looked through the window at a willow tree. The wind moaned through it, stripping bright leaves from its branches. “I was ten when my parents divorced. I didn’t understand why or what it meant. All I knew was that Papa was being sent out of the village alone and that he couldn’t even hunt his own food. My mother died before a full year passed, so I decided to go live with him rather than move with my siblings into the longhouse of my aunts. He needed me.”
The case clock chimed, but Catherine barely heard it. “It’s less than two miles from here to the Mohawk village of Kahnawake, so I often went alone to visit my siblings. My little brother was always happy to greet me, but my sister only showed me her back.”
Samuel rubbed a smudge of dirt from his thumb. “Why?”
“She thought I should have stayed. She said I could not have both Papa and her, too, and that I’d made my choice.” Catherine ended her tale by explaining where she’d been these last two years and why. “Now I’m home at last. For good.”
Samuel’s unaffected manner put her at ease. “I’m glad of it. It’s been lonesome here. Do you know, this is the longest conversation I’ve had in two years?”
She answered his cautious smile with her own. “I should finish cleaning now.” She made to stand, and he came immediately to pull out her chair for her. “Such a gentleman, monsieur,” Catherine teased.
“Oui, oui, mademoiselle,” he countered with a grin, and pretended to doff a hat. “Welcome home, Catie. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Catie?” she repeated.
“Do you mind if I call you that? It suits.”
She didn’t mind at all.
Chapter Three
August 1759
The letter Fontaine had found in the house had to be five years old. Years ago, the words might have had consequence, might have changed the course her heart and life would take.
But that time was past. Her course was set, and it would not double back on itself. Catherine could read the letter out of sheer curiosity now, immune to any emotional pull it might have had before. It was an artifact from a bygone era, nothing more. Besides, it might put to rest the question that had once dogged her: Why had he not returned?
Catherine unfolded the letter and noted the date. It was the last time she’d seen Samuel.
My beloved Catie,
I have just seen you safely back to your house after telling you good-bye, but I can’t bring myself to let you go just yet. You could have begged me to stay, but you didn’t, and the trust you place in me, the patience you’ve already displayed, endears you to me even more.
Catherine looked up, anger simmering in her veins. Any trust she’d put in this man had been woefully misplaced.
Believe me when I tell you that if it were up to me, we’d be together right now. But honoring your father’s wishes was the right thing to do. Just as the cause of our current separation is worthwhile, too. We both know it, and yet I must remind myself of the truth over and over so I don’t lose heart and abandon my plans altogether.
Ironic, Catherine mused. Apparently he h
ad lost heart, or at least his heart for her, and abandoned their plans together. She clenched her teeth, then told herself to relax, for none of this was new information.
It won’t be long now before we are together again. Please know that though leaving for now is the right thing to do, being apart from you pains me more than I can say. When you see the moon, think of me, for I will be thinking of you. Though worlds apart, it seems, the same moon shines down on both of us, and that thought brings me comfort.
I am bungling this letter. I’ve half a mind to toss it into the river, for I realize I am no poet. Instead, I’ll hide it away in our house, the home we will share when I return, and you’ll find it only if you’re meant to.
Catherine skimmed the rest of the page for the answer to her question. Did Samuel know then that he would abandon her? She found nothing to indicate he did.
Samuel had left after their engagement in order to find his brother, Joel. It was something he needed to do before he could marry her and settle permanently in Canada, and she had agreed.
When he didn’t return, and when no letter came month following month, nightmares had haunted her. Sometimes she saw Samuel struck by an arrow, sometimes injured by a steel trap in the woods. In her dreams, she watched him drown in the river. She watched him bleed to death from hatchet, musket, bayonet. Saw him scalped. The means varied, but the end was the same. He was dead. It was the only explanation her mind could conjure. It was Thankful who had shaken her from those dreams, cried with her, prayed for Samuel’s safety.
Until one day Bright Star had gone to Schenectady and learned through the merchant there that Samuel Crane was alive and well.
That was when Catherine had ceased praying for him.
She crumpled the letter and tossed it into the fireplace. Twice now, she’d taken sides for a man. Twice, her heart had broken apart for it. She would not suffer the same mistake again.
The soreness easing in her chest, Catherine unpinned her braid from the coil that wrapped her head. It dropped almost to her knees, as long as Strong Wind’s had been. Ever since her escape from the Montreal school, Catherine had refused to cut her hair—to honor the mother whom she missed so dearly.
She knew what Strong Wind would say now. A man like Samuel, one did not need. A man like that, a woman was better off without.
Snoring from Gabriel’s bedchamber the next morning announced his safe return. After scratching a note explaining the arrival of Fontaine and Moreau and the orders that called her away, Catherine slipped it beneath his door and joined Thankful outside. A one-armed man would not be required to harvest, surely. It was well that he slept, for he tired easily lately.
Her moccasins grew dark with dew as she and Thankful walked. They wore their simplest cotton gowns and their oldest aprons, along with wide-brimmed straw hats.
Pierre Moreau met them, smelling of the camp coffee he must have brewed for himself that morning. Fontaine trailed three paces behind him, reeking of too much rum. The younger man squinted toward Catherine, though the sun remained low in the sky.
“Ready for work, I see.” Though slightly wrinkled, Captain Moreau’s uniform was spotless. “Where is the other woman? Bright Star?”
Catherine tied her hat’s ribbon more snugly beneath her chin. “She won’t be joining us. She has her own cornfields to tend.”
“I thought those savages were supposed to be our allies.” Fontaine winced, as though his words were too loud for his ears.
“And so they are.” Catherine hooked her arm through Thankful’s elbow and walked down the slope toward the dock. The river lapped gently against its bank, reflecting a pale blue sky. “Many of their warriors have fallen in service to New France, including Bright Star’s husband.” She made no mention of the children her sister had lost to the spotting sickness, though the disease could be blamed upon the French, as well. “I daresay they will not risk losing their own harvest to feed your soldiers, too.”
Moreau waved a hand, dispelling the conversation. “We are already late. Come.” He climbed into the canoe first, then helped Thankful and Catherine into it before Fontaine untied the rope holding it to the pilings. The vessel rocked as the private settled into it.
As Catherine and Moreau began paddling, the captain cast a glance downstream. “The current is strong here. Is that because of the Lachine Rapids? How close are we to them?”
“Not close enough to be concerned,” Catherine replied. “They begin a few miles east of here. You must have portaged them, didn’t you, when you came from the north for this assignment?”
Captain Moreau’s uniform jacket pulled at the shoulders as he dipped the paddle. “We came into the city of Montreal first. A tavern owner advised us to cross the island by foot and then cross the river well upstream of the rapids, so we did. Cutting across the land, we were never close enough to the shore to see the rapids.”
Catherine nodded but made no effort to continue the conversation.
Once they’d paddled the mile-wide expanse to the Island of Montreal, it did not take long to find a farm in need of workers. The island was mostly farmland, aside from the walled city of Montreal hemming in more than five thousand souls. The population they had lost to the militia was more than compensated for by refugees from Quebec. The city could barely hold them all.
Just as Moreau and Fontaine had said, women and children from the city had gathered amid the chest-high wheat, some in sturdy cotton dresses, and some looking wholly out of place in bright silks with voluminous lace at the elbows. Some of the children were so young that they could not be seen above the stalks. Peppered among them to supervise were three other officers in blue and white uniforms and a dozen militiamen.
“Women!” Moreau shouted, and the feminine voices quieted. “The situation in Quebec is desperate, or else we would not call you to the fields. Your husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers will starve if we do not supply them with food.”
A knot of women tightened and whispered loudly enough for Catherine to hear. “Do you believe it is as bad as all that in the capital?” asked one.
Two straw hats dipped in solemn acknowledgment. “And not just for the soldiers and militia, heaven bless them.”
Catherine edged closer to hear the haggard-looking woman say more.
“We lived there until we finally had to flee south,” she continued. “With the failed harvests of the last two years and the British blockade cutting off supplies from anywhere else, we were fairly devoured with hunger last winter. Workers and artisans were so weak they could barely stand up, let alone work. Squadrons of soldiers went into the countryside to gain what food they could at the point of their guns.”
A chill cycled down Catherine’s spine despite the damp heat. When Captain Moreau held up his hands to still the murmuring, she returned her attention to him.
“At present, Quebec has provisions for two weeks more, and those rations are less than half what a healthy man would normally consume,” he said. “Work not because of my orders. Work so that they may live. Decrease your own consumption, too, that we may send what you spare to the soldiers.”
At this, Thankful bowed her head, peeking beneath her brim at Catherine. They had already been rationing their food. For the last three winters, wheat had been so scarce that bakers had mixed in horse feed and dried peas to make it last longer. City officials distributed it only on certain afternoons, and only to those who had special tickets. The bread queues fairly writhed, so desperate were those in line to get their shares.
Moreau wasn’t finished with his speech. “If we fail, Quebec falls. This field is a battlefront as much as any. Prove yourselves worthy for a short time, and you’ll share the victory.”
Catherine bit back the reply that sprang to mind. If Quebec fell, the war would soon be over, and that would be an end to four long years of fighting, starving, killing, scalping, and dying. New France would belong to Britain, and the British government would send food into Canada to feed its subjects. Would this be a
worse fate than prolonging the war for another harsh winter or even longer?
Most would call her disloyal for such thoughts, so she kept them to herself. But she could not imagine the British colonies as full of devils when she’d done business with them for a decade, and when a British-born girl such as Thankful lived and worked by her side. Even so, she did not wish harm to come to her countrymen, so she would harvest along with the rest.
She scanned the faces of the other women to measure the effect Moreau’s speech had on those assembled. Stirred by patriotism or not, they submitted to the organizing that followed as Moreau and the other officers divided them into groups, farmers’ wives distributed among them.
“See how Fontaine sips from his flask already,” Thankful whispered. “No good can come of that. I don’t trust him.”
Neither did Catherine. She’d seen what traders’ rum did to many Mohawk men of Kahnawake. They turned violent to get it, and more violent still once it filled their bellies. It was the reason Catherine used only female porters to carry goods between here and New York. The women didn’t drink. She wouldn’t even carry rum in her post if it weren’t for Gabriel’s insistence. “It’s good for business,” he justified. “Take away the rum, and business dries up just as fast.” But she knew he favored it as much as the Mohawks. When he drank, she and Thankful steered clear, for it rendered her father unpredictable at best.
“Captain,” Catherine called to Moreau when he was close enough to hear, “Private Fontaine does not seem quite fit for duty today, does he? He looks to me like a wolf with full access to a herd of sheep.”
The captain’s gaze swung to Fontaine. “He’s not himself lately. I trust you will keep this in confidence, but he lost his brother not two weeks ago in Quebec. They say it was illness, but I suspect that if he had only had enough food . . .” Moreau spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
Thankful covered her mouth, then clasped her hands at her waist. “How horrible. His assignment here can’t be easy for him.”
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