Catherine swallowed the sting in her throat.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Once, to be with Samuel beneath a moon such as this was Catherine’s own version of paradise. But in no version in her imagination did they share the romantic setting with a deserter groaning again for lack of drink.
Bowed low in the bottom of the vessel, Gaspard trembled between Samuel and Catherine. At least his retching had stopped several miles upstream, but his suffering remained obvious to them. She only prayed it would not be obvious to anyone else. Reaching forward, she touched his back. Heat radiated from beneath the linen.
Samuel looked on, his profile severe with censure. “If fever wracks his mind as it did when he attacked me . . .”
“It may not come to that,” she whispered as she rowed. With Gaspard unable to help, she’d tied the steering oar into position, reaching to swivel it and make course corrections as necessary while she helped Samuel move the bateau north.
“I pray you’re right. But he may not have his wits at his disposal.”
Catherine knew that well enough. “Just let him rest.” For the past two days, she had matched their travel to the moon’s pull on the tide so the currents could carry them swiftly downstream, well out of view of any lookouts on the bluffs. The river had been two miles wide or greater since they’d left Trois-Rivières. The one time the bateau had drifted too close to shore, Gaspard had persuaded inquiring soldiers that all was just as it should be. All they needed to do now was keep quiet.
Bright Star had excelled at that, even when there had been no risk of danger. The first porting trip they’d made together after the loss of her family, Bright Star had been so silent that Catherine could scarcely believe she was the same sister who had once had so much to say. As children, Bright Star had been the first to grow up and quick to correct Catherine’s ways. But she’d also told the best bedtime stories, especially on the nights when their parents argued outside.
Almost as soon as Strong Wind and Gabriel began slinging harsh words by the fire, Bright Star had scooped Joseph and Catherine onto her bed and spun fantastical tales that always began with, “I have a story you just won’t believe!” And just like that, the ugliness between their parents faded behind adventure, love, loss, and reunion. Joseph was always the first to fall asleep, and then it was just the two sisters. Bright Star brushed the hair off Catherine’s sweat-damp forehead and gave her stories happy endings night after night after night. “Your kids are going to love that one!” Catherine would tell her, for she’d always known Bright Star was born to mother.
So when the silence had stretched for hours on their first trading trip together, Catherine had been the one to break it. “Tell me a story?” she’d asked, hoping to reach back to the place in time when they’d had at least that in common. Bright Star hadn’t responded right away. Then, “I’m all out of happy endings.”
Oars creaked in the oarlocks, and Catherine pulled herself back to the present. By the time she rejoined her siblings and Thankful after this trip, what tales would they have to share? Whatever lay ahead at Cap-Rouge and Quebec, the one thing she knew was that the story of her forced reunion with Samuel Crane would soon be at an end.
The bateau bobbed in the current, and Gaspard moaned again. Samuel offered him a canteen, but Gaspard pushed it away.
“What does he need?” Samuel whispered to Catherine. “What could make him feel better?”
“Aside from being on dry land, I don’t know,” she replied. “My father has never tried to give up drinking, so I have no experience with this.” Her lips tipped up on one side.
Samuel chuckled and shook his head.
Perhaps she ought not make light of Gabriel’s struggle, if one could call it that. “He isn’t a completely horrible person, you know.”
“Bright Star and Joseph would disagree, and I’ve seen enough myself to know why.” Finger to his lips, he began rowing once more.
While they resumed their silence, Catherine recalled fond memories that tempered her father’s faults. Gestures as small as tucking a wildflower into her hair had told her what his words rarely did.
The loons were muffled in the early morning fog. Dew settled a chill onto her skin and made heavy the braid coiled about her head. Not ten miles separated them from Quebec. The closer they were to gaining that city under siege, the more alert Samuel grew, a soldier preparing to rejoin the fight.
Thick mist hovered over the river and slowed their progress. Sounds, though dim, traveled across the water.
Voices.
Samuel’s back jolted ramrod straight. Catherine held firm the oar, tilting her head, straining to hear. Before she could distinguish the words, let alone the riverbanks, the bateau jerked and skidded to a stop. In the fog and her distraction, she had accidentally beached it on the shore. She winced at the scrape of the bateau against rock, unnaturally loud in the quiet morning.
Grunting, Gaspard sat up and peered around. He put a hand to his troubled stomach, but the tremors seemed to have passed.
“What’s this, what’s this?” A man emerged from the vapors, spying Samuel first. “Are you here to caulk? Monsieur Cadet sent you?”
Catherine could not believe their fortune. No suspicion laced the man’s tone as he mentioned the purveyor general of Canada. In fact, it seemed they would fit right in, exactly as Samuel had hoped.
Rallying, Gaspard licked his lips and replied. “Mais oui.” As the French soldier introduced himself to them as Richard Martin, Samuel climbed over the edge of the bateau and into the shallows. The river eddied about his buckskin-clad legs as he grabbed the vessel’s side with his good arm and pulled it farther onto the beach. Rocks crunched under the bow as it swiveled sideways, becoming parallel with the shoreline.
“There are four other caulkers here already,” Martin was saying. “Arrived not long before you, but . . .” He scratched his chin while looking at the bow of the bateau. “You’ve come from a different direction, it would seem.”
Catherine’s heart tapped an erratic beat. “The fog did not make you easy to find.” She climbed out and stood beside Samuel, feet wet inside her moccasins. Gaspard was slow to join her, his strength clearly not recovered.
“True enough.” Martin peered into the thick mist. “Went right past Cap-Rouge, did you, before you turned around again? Well, no wonder you’re later than the others.”
Gaspard introduced himself with a false name and explained that Samuel was a military captive skilled in bateau repair.
“We have need of that, for certain.” Martin straightened the hat on his head. “But pardon me, young lady, you cannot be here to caulk, too.”
“No.” The only explanation was the original plan she and Samuel had devised. The one Pierre Moreau had extinguished, the one that had flared back to life in Samuel’s mind in Trois-Rivières. “I have many skills, but caulking is not one of them. I came to offer the use of my bateau here, should you need it. It is seaworthy, and I’m a fine hand at rowing, so I’ll carry whatever cargo it bears myself.”
Martin grunted, then scratched the side of his bulbous nose. “A woman rower.”
She stiffened. “I’m a trader, monsieur. Voyaging is part of my business.”
His gaze narrowed on the knife hanging about her neck and her buckskin dress. “You savage women are such drudges, doing all the heavy labor while your men go off and hunt, eh? Seems you’re bred for strength, if not beauty.”
“I am just as French as I am Mohawk, which means I also possess the grace to be embarrassed by your lack of manners. You meet my generosity with insult.” She clicked her tongue. “It would seem you’ve been away from civilized company too long. Or do you simply have no need of aid?”
Martin scratched behind his ear. Behind him, several other men had come to inspect the situation. The fog began to lift its lacy veil, and beneath it, Catherine spied an armada of bateaux dragged onto the beach, away from the tide’s reach. A quick count revealed nineteen of them.
/> “That vessel looks solid,” one of the men called out to Martin. “Some of ours aren’t anymore and won’t be, no matter how much caulk they get.”
“What happened?” Gaspard pressed a balled-up handkerchief to his face and neck, dabbing fever-sweat away. What he needed was a bath.
“Holmes happened, that’s what,” Martin grumbled. “About fourteen miles southwest of here, the British Royal Navy pounced. We had already transferred the wheat from the schooners into the bateaux, expecting the smaller vessels to sneak past the British unnoticed. We were wrong.”
“Spotted you anyway, did they?” Gaspard asked.
“A British warship opened fire on us, so we had no choice but to beach at Pointe-aux-Trembles. We saved the cargo, storing some in the local church and the rest in wooden carts, but some of our bateaux did not handle the sudden landings well. Others were damaged by Holmes. He had us trapped there before an all-day rain turned the ground to quagmire. He gave up his attempt to make a landing and drifted downstream. It was a delay we can ill afford.”
“So you lost the use of a bateau,” Catherine prompted. “Or more than one, perhaps?”
A dark laugh erupted behind Martin. He waved it away, then composed himself. “All right, if you’re offering the bateau and your help to row it, we accept. Monsieur Cadet says the men at Quebec have just two days left of food—and I warrant those two days’ worth are reduced rations that wouldn’t amount to one decent meal when put together. Meanwhile, here we sit on thirty-three tons of flour and five hundred twenty-five bushels of wheat from Montreal. We’ll take all the help we can to get it north.”
Catherine sat in the shade of a tree and mended the moccasins of those who came to lay them at her feet. Her supply of patch leather already exhausted, she did the best she could with her awl, boring new holes through which to sew the seams together. The sinew in her patch kit had been quickly used, so she had taken to unraveling the fabric of an apron to salvage thread. Strips of it had already been ripped off for bandages for Gaspard, so whittling it further did not trouble her. The change of pace was a welcome relief for her shoulders and arms.
Every now and then, she paused to eat a few hazelnuts from their dwindling supply, saving the last of Fawn’s venison for later. She glanced up to see Samuel caulking a vessel and teaching Gaspard to do the same. The fact that they’d come without the necessary tools had not concerned the men here, as the policy among the French army was to supply men with what they needed only at the moment they needed it. Samuel made use of the tools sent with the four other caulkers and was not questioned. His skills were enough to recommend him, and Gaspard proved a reliable apprentice, though they both had much to lose if their true natures were discovered.
From where she sat, the mood at Cap-Rouge was restless and tense. With the morning fog but a memory, the sun set the red shale cliffs surrounding the settlement ablaze. The V-shaped cape off the St. Lawrence narrowed along the path of the Cap-Rouge River. Maples, oaks, and ash trees moved in the wind, gemstone-colored blurs of ruby, topaz, and garnet. On the north shore of the river, on the heights, lookout soldiers moved back and forth, patrolling for the enemy. From some place unseen, Catherine could hear columns marching, drilling.
Richard Martin ambled toward her and kicked off his moccasins, adding them to the pile beside her. Apparently, his turn drilling would be later. For now he sat cross-legged on the ground, squinting at the men repairing the bateaux. “He’s good, that Englishman you brought. Some of these bateaux were run aground so hard, I thought they couldn’t be saved, but he might yet prove me wrong.”
Catherine sent him a small smile. “He might.”
Martin turned toward the sun-sparked river. “We’ll make the final run to Quebec past Holmes’ squadron as soon as we finish repairs and get reloaded.”
She thrust her needle through a hole in the leather and pulled it through. “And when do you suppose that will be?”
“The night of the twelfth. So the day after tomorrow, we’ll hurry to reload the cargo and then set off at dark for the six-mile trip. Tidal conditions will be ideal then, likely the best of the month. You’re all right to row at night? Silently, like?”
She smiled. “I’ll manage rowing in the dark just fine.”
Martin swiped a hand across the back of his neck. “I figure we’ll leave around ten o’clock, and then the falling tide will carry us right quick starting about two in the morning. If all goes well, we’ll be in Quebec before first light at five thirty. None too soon, but not late either.”
Catherine’s hands stilled. “But we’ll be rowing right past Holmes’ squadrons? All nineteen bateaux?”
He raised his hands. “Real quiet-like, though! Just as silent as you please. They won’t see or hear us this time. That disaster where Holmes pinned us down won’t be repeated. They must have been tipped off by a deserter that we were near, that’s all. But on the twelfth, the British won’t even hear our own lookouts giving a challenge as we go by. And we’ve got a whole chain of outposts from here to Quebec, ready to fire on British ships should they harass us.” His grin creased his face.
“But why wouldn’t the lookouts challenge us and ask for a countersign?” Masking her eagerness, she bent over her work once more. Shifting a finished moccasin to the ground beside her, she drew its twin into her lap and inspected it.
“It’s being managed. Monsieur Cadet sent word from Sillery just today. Governor-General Vaudreuil has ordered Bougainville’s troops—the lookouts—to remain as silent as possible while our convoy passes by. No challenges.” He tapped the side of his nose. “The British will have no idea we’re bringing this campaign to a glorious close right beneath their noses. And all they’ve done so far is make useless attacks.” He pushed himself up and stood over her, the breeze pushing the smell of his unwashed body in her direction. “You’ll be ready, then? When the time comes?”
“I will,” Catherine told him, and he left. As she pushed her needle in and out of the holes in the leather, her thoughts darted in similar fashion, binding together what patches of information she held. New pieces and old aligned.
But with just one tug in the wrong place, it would all unravel.
“Tell me again.” Samuel adjusted his grip on the fishing pole. After a warmer than usual day, twilight had brought autumn’s crisp tang to the air. All along the shore of Cap-Rouge, other soldiers were catching their dinner, as well. Gaspard sat and watched, his shaking having returned. Rather than stop it with the rum now available, he chose to endure it. Soon he’d be home, and he wouldn’t show himself a drunk, an effort Catherine could respect.
Fishing net in her hands, she repeated in low tones what Richard Martin had revealed to her earlier that day.
“You’re certain,” Samuel prompted. “The plan is to deploy the night of the twelfth.”
Campfires cracked and popped along the beach where men cooked their catch and sent ribald laughter soaring above the flames. “I’m not mistaken.” Her fingers laced tighter into the net, eager to fill it with her own dinner.
In typical fashion, Samuel didn’t speak as he digested the information. A song rose up from a knot of soldiers behind them, while some on the bluff looked down, their silhouettes sketched against a burning sky.
The English search for laurels,
just like our fighters.
That’s the resemblance.
The French gather them in heaps,
the English can’t harvest them at all.
That’s the difference.
“They believe the British will attack at Beauport, if anywhere. Have you heard the same today?” he asked.
She had. “A considerable number don’t even believe that. They trust the British to be a scattered lot, all noise, no bite, who can do no damage before winter sends them off the river.” They were spies for certain now, though the intelligence had been freely given. The label rattled her conscience. They could be executed for this.
What had Joseph said at Odana
k? What had he and Grey Wolf said before, after the French abandoned Mohawk hunting grounds without a fight? Catherine summoned the sentiments to mind. The French had not proven good allies to the People. Ties of friendship had already been broken. “The tides are changing,” Joseph had said. “We must be ready to change with them.” French, British, Mohawk. In Catherine’s mind, they were three pieces to one puzzle, but not one of them fit with another.
“They are confident.” Samuel’s musing was barely audible. “Too confident, now that they believe themselves so close to their aim. This will work in our favor.”
Rocks pointed into the soles of her bare feet as she waited for fish to bite. “I want this over,” she murmured, speaking of the war, not just the journey.
He seemed to understand. “We’ll speed the end. I heard the HMS Sutherland is anchored at Saint-Nicolas, with General Wolfe on board. Where is that? If we can get there, we won’t need to go all the way to Quebec.”
Catherine cringed. “It’s three to four miles from here. Upstream.”
His lips parted in surprise. “So we passed it already? How did we miss it? It’s a fifty-gun warship.”
“The fog, for one. But even if the mist hadn’t shrouded everything, we wouldn’t have been able to see it. The river is three miles wide at that point, and Saint-Nicolas is on the opposite shore.”
Samuel stared out at the water. In the distance, birds swooped, diving into the river and then flapping away with their catch. “Just as well. If we had reached the Sutherland first, we wouldn’t know about the plans to carry the grain. Now the question is, can we get there? If we leave after dark tomorrow?”
She wanted nothing more than to say what he wanted to hear. But she couldn’t. “It would be unlikely. Rowing upstream is challenging enough, but to do so in the dark, with the moon dragging us the other way . . . Saint-Nicolas is three miles behind us, and three miles across to the other side. Better to work with the tide, not against it, and let it carry us to another British ship, yes? Martin said the convoy would slip past Holmes’ squadron between here and Quebec.”
Between Two Shores Page 27