A Refuge Assured

by Jocelyn Green

  “I’m sorry,” Suzanne said suddenly. “Do I know you?” She twisted the ring on her finger.

  Vienne caught her breath.

  The ring.

  “I—I’m Vivienne Rivard,” she stuttered, but all she could think of was the signet ring of Louis XVI. She hadn’t seen it when they unpacked their things. Where was it? “We met in Philadelphia. I’m one of your neighbors here in Asylum.” She heard herself say the words as one listening from a distance. “And I’m very sorry, but I need to go now.”

  Rising, she flew back outside into the fog, ignoring Suzanne’s protests behind her.

  It wasn’t a long way home. Trusting Henri to Jethro’s care, Vivienne hurried through the blocks of matching houses and up the gentle slope until she reached Liam’s property. Without bothering to remove her cloak, she bounded up the stairs and searched the bedrooms, taking everything out of the drawers.

  Nothing.

  On her hands and knees, she looked under the bureaus and beds, searched with her fingers along the grooves of each floorboard, looking for a chink into which the ring might have slipped. But the planks were smooth and tightly joined.

  Heart sinking, she descended the steps and searched the first floor, though she knew it would be futile. Their belongings had been unpacked upstairs. If the ring were anywhere, it would be there. Wouldn’t it?

  When she heard the jangle of Red’s bridle, she waved to Jethro from the door and ushered Henri inside.

  “Henri, do you have the ring?” she asked.

  He gaped at her. “No! But we brought it with us, didn’t we?”

  She racked her brain. “I thought surely we did!”

  But it was not she who had packed their things.

  Henri sagged against her, still buttoned into his cloak. “Louis-Charles will need that ring when he’s king.” His tone was mournful. He spoke of Louis-Charles every day now. Which of Talon’s toys might please him, how they would play together, what he could teach him about living in the woods.

  Head aching, Vivienne took off Henri’s hat and smoothed his hair. They hadn’t seen the signet ring since she’d packed it away the day Sebastien brought him home full of hard cider. She had wrapped it in something—a stocking? a glove?—and tucked it deep into a bureau drawer until she knew what to do with it.

  Vivienne had never known what to do with it. But she hadn’t intended to leave it behind, and it wasn’t here. So either it had somehow gotten lost on the way to Asylum, or it was still at the Pension Sainte-Marie.

  She prayed it was the former. Nothing good could come from possessing it. But something worse might come from losing it.

  Henri shrugged off his coat and unwound the scarf from his neck, then laid firewood in the cold hearth. Vivienne remained at the window, looking through lace at a world still wrapped in fog.

  Asylum, Pennsylvania

  December 31, 1794

  Smoke spiraled from Liam’s old kitchen house, and the leaded windows shone bright against the lowering sky. Dismounting Cherie, Liam plowed through the snow and pounded on the door before bursting inside.

  “Vivienne, I need you. Will you come?” Steam rose from his ice-glazed scarf.

  “Liam!” The oven door slammed closed as she whirled to face him, skin aglow. A fine sheen of sweat formed a beaded diadem on her brow. Apple pies cooled on the table beside loaves of bread. After the miserable journey behind him, the warmth and fragrance, the sight of her there, went to his head like strong ale.

  Henri bounded from the table, knocking a book to the floor. “What’s wrong, Mr. Delaney?”

  Liam clapped the boy on the back in greeting. “It’s Finn. He’s in bad shape, but . . .” There were no doctors in Asylum. “Please—I don’t know who else could help.” She had sewn up Armand without liking him. Perhaps she’d take pity on a whiskey rebel, too.

  Vivienne’s expression snapped from surprise to steely determination. “Henri.” She pointed to the loaves on the table. He gathered two of them into a basket while Vivienne snatched up jars and herbs. “You have needle and thread?”

  “I don’t know,” Liam said. “Maybe Jethro does.”

  Wiping her hands on her apron, she dashed from the kitchen house without her cloak. Moments later she returned, dusted with snow, and patted the bulge in her apron pocket. “Henri, stay and bank the fire.”

  “I’ll send Jethro for you, all right?” Liam assured the boy. “It won’t be but a few moments.”

  He took Vivienne’s cloak from a peg and draped it about her shoulders lest she forget it again. After fastening only the top hook, she pulled up her hood and plunged into the cold, basket over her arm.

  Liam helped her onto Cherie, then climbed up to ride in front of her, urging the poor, tired beast to carry them the final distance home.

  Vivienne’s arms wrapped his middle, and her basket bounced against his hip. “Is Finn very bad off?” she asked.

  “Likely. But he could have been worse.” He could have died on that march. Liam clenched his jaw.

  “And how are you? Liam?”

  Grunting, he focused on the column of smoke ahead. “Glad to be home.” The word stung his tongue, but not so much as it had before he left.

  They rode the rest of the way in silence, as if storing up their energies for what lay ahead.

  Liam drew rein before Jethro’s kitchen house, where he’d deposited Finn minutes ago. It was no hospital, but neither was it a jail. Liam dismounted first, then took Vivienne’s waist in his hands to help her down. “Thank you,” he said, and led her inside.

  With a word of greeting, Jethro took Vienne’s basket and unpacked it on the table. Finn looked up from where he sat in a chair and mustered a smile for Vivienne. “As I recall, you’re pretty good at this sort of thing.”

  “That remains to be seen, but I’ll try.” She unhooked her cloak, and Liam took it from her, hanging it on a peg.

  “That’s all I need.” Finn’s breath rattled before erupting into a cough that folded him in half.

  While Jethro went to stay with Henri, Vivienne told Liam how to help her, and he gladly did her bidding. Peppermint leaves were crushed and spread on Finn’s bare chest, then covered with a rag soaked in warm water. Another treatment was applied to his back, which Liam held in place. When the coughing subsided enough, Finn grabbed a loaf of bread and began to eat.

  “Easy, now,” Liam told him. “You eat too fast, it’ll all come right back up.”

  With a nod, Finn reluctantly chewed slower.

  Vivienne knelt at his feet, black curls tumbling over her shoulder from where her hair was tied at the nape of her neck. With a sponge, she soaked the encrusted bandages covering his feet until they loosened. “Tell me how this happened.”

  Carefully, she unwound the ruined linens, and Liam unspooled the story at the same methodical pace. Layer by layer, he tugged free the ugly truth that had been coiled inside him, so that by the time she reached the battered feet beneath their bindings, he’d laid bare all that had brought them here. The odor of Finn’s wounds pinched his nose.

  “Faith, lads,” she whispered, and Liam smiled at the French accent on the Irish term. If there was any scold rising in her for their heedless flight from Philadelphia, she held it back. Law and liberty. Order and freedom. It was all a tangled mess.

  “What have you got down there?” Liam asked. Finn’s feet had already suffered during his forced march over the mountains and hadn’t fared any better during the hard ride from Philadelphia. They’d been fools to attempt the journey in this weather, but they’d have been bigger fools to stay in the city.

  She took one wretched foot and then the other into her aproned lap to examine them from every angle. After pouring water from a kettle into a basin, she mixed in some snow to cool it. At her bidding, Finn immersed his feet. “Possible frostbite on the toes. Untreated cuts.”

  Liam swallowed a groan. He’d seen this in the war. Dirty wounds didn’t heal. They grew worse and worse, until the surgeon
lopped off the offending area altogether. But he would not speak of that.

  Exhaustion battled to take Liam under, and he felt every one of his thirty-eight years as he forced himself to stay awake. Time blurred. He was eating Vienne’s bread but did not remember taking the compress off Finn’s back or when his cousin had donned a fresh shirt. Mugs of steaming tea appeared on the table, and she made both Finn and Liam drink. The smell of comfrey sharpened in the warm kitchen as she pounded out a salve. She stitched, she soaked, she spread the ointment. Vienne was a marvel of remedies.

  “Where did you learn all of this?” Liam asked her. “Or are lacemakers routinely trained in the healing arts?”

  She smiled up at him. “During the winter of the Great Cold in Paris, pneumonia and frostbite were all too common. It was too cold for the nimble work of lacemaking, so Tante Rose and I volunteered at the convent, caring for the sick who flocked there. All of this, I learned from the nuns.”

  Finn cried out in pain.

  “That’s good.” Vivienne winced in sympathy as she gingerly dried his feet and wrapped them. “If you can feel anything, that’s a good sign.”

  The door scraped open, and Jethro returned, Henri in tow. Snowflakes swirled in with them, melting as soon as they hit the wooden floor. The boy darted to sit at the table across from Liam.

  Jethro whistled. “You’re right lucky I got used to the idea of having company while you were gone, Liam. Looks like Finn here ain’t going anywhere for some time.” Arms crossed, he leaned against the side of the fireplace, one ankle crossed over the other. “Anything I missed?”

  Finn cleared his lungs with a cough far too large for his frame. “The long and the short of it, then. I paid the infernal tax.” His sigh was punctured by another round of coughing. “And then my neighbors burned down my still. When the army came over the mountains, them that never paid fled farther west, into Indian country. I didn’t go because I had nothing to fear. But as Liam knows, them as made the arrests didn’t bother with petty concepts such as guilt and innocence. They just rounded us up. For sport. No charges were ever made.” His speech was slow, made more so by his frequent breaks to cough. “Marched twenty of us all the way to Philly, where we were greeted by our adoring fans.”

  “Twenty thousand of them,” Liam added, still impressed with the figure he’d seen in a newspaper. Twenty thousand people more interested in a ragtag bunch of broken down men than in celebrating Christmas with their families inside.

  “Then Liam saw me, came to the jail, and we lit outta there just in time.”

  Jethro’s brow wrinkled. “Will you stay here until the spring and then go home?”

  “Ain’t no home anymore, lads. How do you like that? All three of us, landless.”

  “Five.” Vivienne poured more hot water into Liam’s mug before refilling Finn’s. She replaced the kettle on the crane above the fire and sat on the bench beside Henri. “You’ve not forgotten, surely, that Henri and I are landless, too.”

  Swallowing a gulp of tea, Liam met her gaze over the boy’s head. Reluctantly, he conceded, for she was right. And right to point it out. Her position was as temporary as any of theirs. A common bond for an uncommon group. The mademoiselle and her courtly orphan, a free black man, and two Irish cousins all bunched into a kitchen house on a piece of earth that belonged to none of them.

  Jethro broke his reverie. “They burned your still, but you still have your land, don’t you?”

  Finn spoke into the fire. “I may not have told you the full truth about my . . . situation.”

  “Out with it, then.” Liam wrapped his hands around his mug.

  “I thought I was buying that land when I traded in those worthless paper bonds after the war. But as it turns out, I was only renting it.”

  Had he feared Liam would think less of him for not owning the land outright? After all these years, Finn still wanted to impress the cousin he’d grown up shadowing.

  “With the stipulation,” Finn continued, “that I could stay only so long as I improved the land. When the still burned down and I could no longer make whiskey, the landlord gave me thirty days to yield something or he’d evict me. But your army came and evicted me instead.” He wheezed, catching his breath. “I’ve got nothing left to go back to. The land was never mine to begin with.”

  Jethro caught Liam’s gaze and shook his head as if to say, You two and your imaginary land.

  “We’ll get you sorted out.” But expenses for three men piled up in Liam’s head. “We’ll all be fine. Come spring, there’s plenty of work to be done at the settlement for those who can’t—or won’t—help themselves.”

  “And before spring?” Jethro asked. Hail pelted the windows. “’Cause I see a whole lot of winter still ahead.”

  “I aim to pull my weight, Liam, as soon as I’m back on my feet,” Finn insisted.

  Who knew how long that would be? “I can fix this. I can . . . I can . . .” The heat of the fire in the enclosed space made Liam light-headed.

  “Teach again.” Vienne’s soft voice was bright with confidence and persuasion. “With private tutoring, even in winter. Teach Henri.”

  “Oh, would you, Mr. Delaney?” The boy’s blue eyes shone. “Mademoiselle can pay you. She bakes for the inn now.”

  “Apple pies and bread?” Liam asked, recalling the industry he’d walked in on.

  She nudged a chunk of bread toward him, which he took. “I was fortunate to find a store of dried apples in your cellar. I bake at home, and Henri helps me walk it over, with warmed stones in the baskets. If you would teach Henri—for fair wages, of course—he and I would both be grateful. Surely some arrangement can be made.”

  “You have a talent for making such arrangements, I’ve noticed.” He smiled at her, and at Henri, growing red from holding his breath, and knew he would not tell them no.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Asylum, Pennsylvania

  February 1795

  Henri’s chalk hovered over the figures on his slate. Lips rolled between his teeth, he glanced at the snowshoes propped up against the wall, wishing he was already wearing them. Mr. Delaney had promised to take him to the woods to try them out after his lesson.

  Indulging a small sigh, he turned back to his slate and tried to concentrate. Which was difficult when Mr. Delaney was talking to Mademoiselle while she baked. Lessons were always held in the kitchen house. It saved on firewood, they said, to heat one room instead of the kitchen and the parlor both. But Mr. Delaney didn’t seem to mind being close enough to sample whatever Vivienne was baking for the inn.

  “Have a taste, Henri.” She leaned over the worktable to hand him a spoonful of filling for some kind of tart. “Too sour, yet?”

  The blend of dried cherries, softened and sugared in the saucepan, melted in his mouth. “Oui.”

  Mr. Delaney’s laugh rumbled below Vivienne’s. “Well, I think it’s just right.”

  “You always say that.” Henri licked his lips and handed the spoon back to her.

  Truth be told, he didn’t really mind having school here. Probably he thought better around good smells. His stomach didn’t hurt anymore, and he saw so much more of Vivienne than he did in Philadelphia, too. Mr. Delaney was a fine teacher indoors, but he also said that not all learning came from books, that nature had its own lessons to teach. Henri couldn’t wait to go snowshoeing and call it school. When the time was right, Mr. Delaney would show him how to tap trees for maple syrup, too.

  Restless, Henri rested his chin in his hand, frowning at his numbers. “Is this right?” He tapped his slate.

  But Mr. Delaney didn’t hear him. He was talking to Mademoiselle, their voices a comforting undercurrent to rolling pins and tapping knives and whisking, scraping spoons. But how much was there to say about cherries and sugar, anyway?

  “Mr. Delaney?” Henri said again, and his teacher looked almost surprised. As if he’d forgotten that he was here to teach and not keep Mademoiselle company. “Can you look at this?” />
  “Absolutely.” Mr. Delaney slid onto the bench beside Henri. “Ah. There. What’s six times eight?”

  “Fifty-eight.”

  Mr. Delaney narrowed one eye.

  “Forty-eight! Forty-eight.”

  “Once you fix that, the rest of the problem should be straightforward. Your method is correct, just make sure the basics are right at every step.” Mr. Delaney squeezed his shoulder, then went to the hearth and fed wood to the fire. Henri let him do things like that when he was here, but it was Henri’s job when Mr. Delaney was on a mail trip.

  Sparks danced above the flames like fireflies. With the pop and hiss of the fire in his ears, Henri worked on the rest of his problems. The rest of them were easy, and his thoughts drifted while his chalk seemed to work on its own. Henri liked living here in the wilderness. It made him feel brave and important to be the man of the house in such a place. When Louis-Charles arrived, he would likely be afraid, but Henri would teach him how to get along. Henri would take care of his friend.

  He glanced out the window, gauging the daylight, before turning over his slate and copying his spelling words. Night seemed to fall in the middle of the afternoon here, quick as a window dropping its sash. But even the long winter evenings were interesting when spent in the company of their neighbors.

  “Are you going to help me with my horse after dinner tonight?” Henri pulled a misshapen piece of wood from his pocket.

  Mr. Delaney took it in his hands, turning it over, pretending to admire it, which made Henri laugh. Someday it would be a horse for Louis-Charles, to replace Bucephalus. But Henri had only just started learning how to whittle.

  “I can see where the tail will be.” Vivienne gestured with sticky, floured fingers. “Well done!”

  “Mademoiselle,” Henri said, “that is his nose.”

  Vivienne flushed. “Oh dear. My mistake, I’m sure.” She flashed a sheepish grin and returned to filling her crusts.