The sight knocked the air from her lungs. Thankful had not been fully overboard, but nearly. “Are you all right?” she called. “Can you bail water?”
Soaked and dripping, Thankful grabbed the pail tied to the inside of the bateau. Her hair and skin gleamed pale as a ghost in the moonlight. She was shaking.
So was Catherine. She kept a closer eye on the glistening expanse around them, scouting for signs of holes in the riverbed beneath the surface. Her skirts pooled around her shins as she rowed.
By the time the water level in the bateau had dropped to her ankles, they’d reached the shoreline, and Catherine turned to glance farther ahead. From there, it was two more miles until they were safely clear of the rapids. When she turned back to her rowing position, facing Samuel, her heart was still thrumming.
“Both here,” said Samuel. Smoke lingered on his clothing, layered over the musky smell of sweat. “Your hats tumbled out of the basket and into the river, but not much else.”
“Thank God.” Catherine grasped Thankful’s hand. “Do we need to stop to change clothing, or can we press on? The farther we can travel by night, the better.”
Thankful squeezed her fingers, then bent and wrung out a handful of her skirt. “Don’t stop for my sake. I won’t be the one to slow us down already. That was the worst of it, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sure it was. It is calmer along the shoreline.”
“Then allow me to help.” Thankful took up an oar.
They soon left the rapids behind, and the river gentled and grew quiet. The stars seemed almost low enough to touch, diamond chips scattered against night’s mantle.
Hours later, Catherine estimated they had traveled more than twenty miles northeast. The sun had not yet awakened, but she knew they had passed into the next day. The rhythmic motion of the bateau and the quiet slip of water over the oars might prove calming if she were not constantly scanning the riverbanks and straining her ears for sound.
Montreal was the nerve center of Canada, Quebec its very heart, and the St. Lawrence River the artery between them. On either side of the watery highway, arpents of cultivated land stretched back into woods. Farmhouses and barns drew dark shapes against the sky. Would Moreau or Fontaine be hiding among them in wait? If they had found horses to ride, they could have outpaced the bateau already. Catherine’s thoughts bounced from them to Joseph and to Gabriel, wondering how the night had passed for them.
A haunting, high-pitched warbling captured her attention before she saw the loons. Aside from the white at their throats, they were obsidian black, scarcely visible on the river they shared. Hidden, but not hiding. Catherine envied them.
Adjusting her grip on her oar, she resumed the dip and pull that came so naturally to her. Dawn would soon lay a crimson ribbon atop the river. When it did, they should not be here to greet it.
“There.” She pointed. “You see that spot up on the right, a break in the trees along the bank? We’ll land there. A cavern lies just beyond it where we can rest.”
“You’re sure?” Samuel asked.
“It’s the best spot we’ll find in thirty miles.”
The river was mercifully placid here. As it shallowed near the landing place, the current thinned to a silver shine that purled over the rocks near the edge.
With a groaning slide, the bateau bumped up onto the pebbled beach. Samuel climbed out, the carrying basket over one shoulder, and set it on the ground. Thankful followed suit, bringing the bottles of rum, while Catherine lashed the oars securely to the inside of the vessel with leather strips.
“Now we sink it,” she said.
Thankful looked at her askance. In the fading night, dark bands hung beneath her wide eyes.
“It’s too wide to fit through the passage we’ll take,” Catherine explained. “Nor will we want to leave it here to signal our presence. We’ll pile rocks inside until it’s completely submerged. Over there, beneath that outcropping. No one will know we’re here. Then tonight we pull it up again.”
Keeping one arm tight to his middle, Samuel had already begun filling the vessel as she explained, though the tension in his shoulders hinted at unspoken pain. With all three of them working together, the task was accomplished in less than a quarter of an hour. The bateau slipped beneath the river’s surface, hidden further by the shadows of the rock that jutted out over it. The black limestone here was soft and had been cut away by water over the years. The cavern where they would rest had been formed in the same way.
Catherine tucked the rum bottles into the basket, then hoisted it into position on her back. But Samuel took it from her to carry himself, strap across his own brow.
Thanking him, she placed a hand on Thankful’s shoulder. How delicate she seemed, still wet with the river that had almost claimed her. Catherine hoped the scare in the rapids would not amplify her every misgiving.
“It’s not far, mon amie. Soon we shall rest and dry out. You’ve done well. You’ve been brave and helpful.” Catherine lifted evergreen boughs from the ground as they walked.
A wan smile cracked Thankful’s lips. “I’ve been terrified, though I desperately want to be courageous for you and Sam.”
Catherine had been frightened in the rapids, too, but would such a confession dissolve their confidence in her ability to take them safely to Quebec? She needed to be strong and bold for all of their sakes, including her own. Holding back a large hemlock branch, she let Thankful pass ahead of her. Samuel took the branch and gestured for Catherine to follow her.
“What is courage,” he said, “but moving forward in the face of fear? If there was nothing to be afraid of, we would have no need to be brave.”
Watery light filtered through the trees, too dim to call dawn but strong enough to show that Samuel’s words had brought the sunshine back into Thankful’s face. Following Catherine’s example, she gathered loose boughs into her arms.
“A rest will do you good,” Samuel added. “It will do all of us good.” He’d always had a way of bolstering Thankful. His voice was still serrated from the fire, and yet it was the very sound of comfort.
Catherine caught his gaze and smiled her appreciation. He returned it, then looked toward the narrow slit in the black limestone cliff ahead of them. In single file, they entered and passed between dank walls beaded with condensation until the cave opened to a space the size of a drawing room. Several yards above, the sky peeked over the ledge, its color a match for the inside of a clamshell.
After laying the boughs on the soft limestone ground, Catherine covered them with stroud blankets to make sleeping pallets.
“Can you rest?” Thankful asked her.
“Soon.” Slowly, Catherine rolled her head from one shoulder to the other. Her muscles were nearly as stiff as her mud-caked skirts. “But first, I’m going to wash.” She pointed to another opening on the opposite side of the cavern. “Just through there is a path to a well-behaved little creek.”
Thankful smiled. “I’ll wash, too. But if you don’t mind, I’ll sleep first, right after I change out of these wet things. Just wake me if I sleep too long.”
“Rest while you can.” Samuel’s voice was tired but determined. “Go ahead, both of you. I’ll keep watch on the river for a spell.”
The cavern walls bottled the gentle sound of the water. It whirled around and over them, a lullaby to cover them, though night had broken and day was at the door. In that moment, Catherine could almost believe it was just the three of them alone in the world, though she knew the dangers that awaited outside the cavern, the empires and colonies at war. Perhaps it was the combination of excitement and fatigue that made her weak, for she gave herself up to the simple sensation of being with Thankful and Samuel, the feeling of being needed. Of belonging.
With a smile, she took a change of clothing from the basket and picked her way to the creek she remembered.
A thicket of trees screening her, she peeled the layers from her body one by one. Off came the front-lacing French gown with it
s stomacher, fichu, and lace-pinned sleeves. Off came the underpinnings of corset and petticoats. With the stripping away of each item, she felt a weight released from her spirit. Wearing only her shift, she waded into the water.
Submerging herself up to her neck, she found the creek cold but not chilling. Water trickled over moss-glazed rocks at the creek’s edge with a musical chiming sound. A whippoorwill trilled his relentless song, and Catherine inhaled the invigorating air. She scooped a handful of sand from the creek bed and scrubbed her skin free of smoke and soot and sweat.
Images crowded her mind, pressing from all sides of her consciousness. She saw Gabriel, disappointed in the color of her skin, the length of her hair, the planes of her cheeks that were broader than his. She saw the mesdames of the Montreal school as they tried to scrub the “savage” out of her and then disguise it in silk and lace. Catherine even saw the resentment in Bright Star when she’d learned of Thankful’s ransom.
She did not believe in ghosts, but she did believe in memories. And these laid thick a residue that congealed to her spirit until she struggled to separate who she was from the judgment that came with who she was not. What would they all think of her now? It took no effort to conjure it. They would say she had defied her mother’s people and her father’s people, both. Catherine Stands-Apart.
She clapped another handful of sand to her skin and rubbed until the spot glowed red, then let it return to its golden hue. Here in this creek, behind a black cavern shaped by water, she would shed the burden of others’ expectations. She would be the river that set its own course and not the rock hollowed out by continual force. A river that flowed between nations and did not heed a man-made war.
The river that carried Samuel where he needed to go.
Sluicing the creek water from her face and arms, she stepped out onto dry land and traded her filthy, wet shift for a dress of butter-soft buckskin over blue linen leggings. Casting a glance at her soot-stained gown, she ripped the French lace and ribbon trim from the bodice and used it to bind her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.
Half-breed, some called her. But she was wholly who the Great Good God had made her, and wholly set upon this path.
When Catherine found him, Samuel was sitting on an outcropping overlooking the river, shielded by yellow birch and eastern hemlock trees. Between the branches, she glimpsed a sky layered with sunrise shades of scarlet, marigold, and indigo. A white-throated sparrow heralded the dawn with its two-toned song.
Catherine lowered herself to sit beside Samuel, nestling between two long birch roots that seemed made for that purpose. “I’ll take over. Go rest,” she suggested. “Or bathe. You’ll find fresh clothing in the basket. I also foraged a bit behind the cavern.” Cupped in one hand were oyster-colored mushrooms she’d broken off a maple trunk. In the other she held a bouquet of sorrel, along with a few clusters of bright red ginseng berries still on the stem. She’d eaten her fill already and had set some by for Thankful, too.
He turned and seemed to take in the whole of her with his eyes. In that unguarded moment, his lips parted, then closed as he pinned his attention to the food in her hands.
“I’ve startled you.” She dropped the mushrooms into his palm and set the sorrel and ginseng down between them.
“Yes. Thank you for this.” Samuel ran his thumb over the velvety gills beneath a mushroom’s cap before popping it into his mouth. He did not look at her again as he ate the rest of the food, down to the last sour sorrel leaf and nearly tasteless ginseng berry.
Twisting the fringe of her dress around her fingers, she wondered if her very presence offended him somehow, as his had offended her. “I’m—” But no. She would not apologize for how she looked or who she was.
“Comfortable?” he finished for her, stealing a glance. He picked up a small round hemlock cone. “And beautiful,” he murmured.
Heat climbed into Catherine’s cheeks. “Some would call the piecing together of French and Mohawk a garish thing.”
“I’m not talking about clothing, but the woman who wears it.” He drew back the hemlock cone as if to hurl it into the river, then thought better of it and settled for rolling it in one hand. “You are not pieced together, Catie. You are not half of one thing, half of another. You are wholly Catherine, don’t you see? Look.” Pointing to the river with the cone still tucked into his palm, he leaned close enough that she felt the warmth radiating from him. “The St. Lawrence River is one river. In some places it foams white, in others it is as still and green as grass, or blue as your ey—blue as trade beads. Its behavior calm and turbulent by turns. The river is many colors and many temperaments, but it is one river.”
Samuel took her hand and turned it over, exposing the veins mapping the inside of her wrist. With his fingertip, he grazed a line. “You have French blood and Mohawk blood both. I know you feel they war against each other, but they needn’t. You are more than the blood of your parents’ peoples. You have courage, compassion, intelligence, strength. All of this makes you who you are.”
All of this, she had just realized at the creek. But hearing it from Samuel seemed to crystalize the truth of it. The urge to slide her hand beneath his, to entwine their fingers, brought a heat blazing across her face and neck. Withdrawing her hand, she tucked a piece of hair back under the ribbon meant to bind it. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Thank you. For this.” He swept his arm toward the river. “You are as brave as you are lovely.” His cheeks darkened to rival the shade of the berries on a nearby viburnum bush, but he made no move to stand. He was uncomfortable yet chose to stay.
Folding her legs beneath her skirt, she searched for something to say. Through the foliage overhead, sunlight bloomed upon the ground. “You never told me what happened, Samuel. When you were captured during this war,” she clarified.
“You never asked.”
“I’m asking now.” Strange, she mused, that war was a safer subject than love. “If you don’t mind telling me.”
Sam frowned. “It doesn’t make for good telling.” He shrugged. When she said nothing, he continued. “It was the end of July, I think. You lose track of the days when afield. We were getting ready to take Fort Saint-Frédéric from the French, and we knew we could do it.” He glanced at her. “You must know the place I mean.”
She did. Situated on a narrows of Lake Champlain, Fort Saint-Frédéric was a hub of activity for French soldiers, with an eight-sided blockhouse presiding over a chapel, barracks, a bakehouse, a storehouse, and a windmill. In addition, Iroquois natives, English captives, African slaves, and the Hudson Valley Dutch could all be found there to trade or be traded to places as far as Quebec or even Boston.
“Then you know the fort has been a thorn in our side for decades,” Samuel went on, “as the departure point for French raids into New England. This summer, we had our chance to destroy it. Ironic that the French did it for us, burning it upon their retreat. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I wasn’t even there to see that.”
The story was familiar. Joseph had returned to Kahnawake in early August, infuriated that the French had given up the fort on Lake Champlain without a fight.
“Let me back up a few days. Our General Amherst was getting ready to attack. I was part of a scout of three dozen men sent in advance to collect intelligence that might prove useful. The number of soldiers, condition of the defenses, that sort of thing. I was the leader of that patrol, and I ordered all of us to get close. Closer than some of them wanted to go.” He winced.
“Closer than necessary?” She plucked a leaf from the bush beside her and ran her finger along its saw-toothed edge.
“It was necessary to the object of our mission. We needed good intelligence, Catie. I was a provincial, and my superior officer was a pompous wig-wearing redcoat fresh from England, whose disdain for the Americans in his unit was so thick we thought he might choke on it. Wished he would, at times.” He chuckled, then grew grave once more. “These officers from England—I res
pect their decades of service, but the wars they fought were in Europe, not here in the North American colonies. Tactics are different here, as Braddock certainly found out down in Virginia.”
“Braddock?” Catherine had heard the name, but couldn’t place it in proper context now.
Samuel flicked another scale off the cone with his thumb. “In short: Celebrated English officer came to save the day. Provincial named George Washington tried to explain a new way to fight the French and Indians. Celebrated English officer didn’t listen, wound up killed in an ambush, and a chest full of his letters fell into French hands, revealing his next plans. Total debacle.”
“And your officer was cut of similar cloth?” She grazed her thumb over the fine hairs on the underside of the leaf, then discarded it and clasped her hands.
“The very same. Bright red, and no give at all. He wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to warn him about French native tactics. So when it came time to lead the scout, I was determined to prove myself. To bring back the most accurate information possible.”
Closing his eyes, he bent one knee and rested an elbow upon it. The silence stretched so long between them, Catherine wondered if he’d fallen asleep. The sun gained strength, and the rock began to lose its chill beneath her.
“When we were ambushed, the war cries were so terrifying, some of the young men—boys, really—lost their bowels on the spot. The natives all had black-painted faces and scalp locks. They loosed arrows and shot muskets, filling the air with smoke.”
Catherine’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Kahnawake warriors?”
He nodded.
Joseph? But she could not bring herself to ask. There were many Mohawk defending that fort. Joseph may still have been inside the walls.
“Our attackers were three times our number, with French soldiers just on the other side of the wall. Most of us were taken as captives and sent to Montreal for trade. But first they made us watch the fate of ten of our men.” He brought the heels of his hands to his eyes, and his lips pulled tight against his teeth.
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