Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  “Thing is,” the old woman continued, “I could have sworn there was two peoples eating up my store of johnnycakes. You got any idea who the second people might be, Master Quent?” She glanced up toward the attic above their heads. “You think I be having to save some of these nice fresh johnnycakes for whoever might be presenting hisself to eat ’em?”

  “No, Hannah. I don’t think that’s necessary.” He could tell from the surprise with which his mother and the old slave looked at him that Kitchen Hannah had already told her mistress Corm had arrived. “There’s no one here planning a late breakfast as far as I know.”

  “But Hannah said—” Lorene broke off and waited for her son to explain.

  “Corm did come during the night, but just to give me a message.” Quent was afraid to look at Nicole. Too much of what he was feeling might show in his face. Damn her, she made him forget everything he’d ever learned. “He was sorry not to see either of you,” he nodded toward his mother and Nicole, “but he had to leave right away.”

  “And when will he be back?” Nicole seemed to be trying as hard as he was to maintain some dignity. “Did he say when—”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “But he promised! Monsieur Shea promised me, and he promised Papa—”

  “I know. We talked about that. Corm asked me to take you north to Québec and I said I would.”

  “But he—”

  She stopped speaking and Quent wondered what other promises Corm had made.

  “More drink, my dear. It’s good for you.” Lorene refilled Nicole’s tankard from the pitcher of frothy brown ale cut with heated milk. She was sorry not to see Cormac, but he had been like that since he was grown, coming and going according to his own thoughts and fancies and explaining little. Besides, she was glad to have the girl here a bit longer. The blue frock suited her even better than the lavender had. Lorene told herself she’d have to look for the remains of that blue cloth before the mantua maker called again next week. It had been a very dear bolt, come all the way from London, and she had thought to have a cloak made of what she had left. But just now that blue cloth could be thought of as an investment.

  John appeared and took his place, waiting for Kitchen Hannah to serve him. He’d been out on the land for some hours already and had heard the news of Cormac’s arrival. “Ah, I was expecting our tame savage to be here.” He spoke to no one in particular. “It’s always interesting to see if he’ll show up in breechclout and feathers or done up in his fancy white-man costume.”

  Quent did not rise to the bait, though he saw the distress of both the women and hastened to change the subject. “Corm stopped by, but he had business in the north. He’s already gone. How’s the harvest looking?”

  “Good—excellent, in fact. Best in years. Takes a strong hand to get the niggers to do anything, but once they understand that slacking won’t be permitted, they fall into line.”

  Quent made a noncommital sound, then asked, “Exactly what is it you’ve got planned for them today?”

  John stopped eating and stared at his brother. “And just why should you care? Gone for three years, then back and asking for explanations?”

  “I was wondering, is all. And about that wheat, the field down near the sugarhouse road’s gotten itself full of weeds. Going to be a huge amount to winnow if they’re not pulled soon.”

  “Don’t tell me how to run Shadowbrook.” John’s words were spit out through clenched teeth.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. Just happened to notice that field when we walked in and thought I’d mention it. Considering what we were speaking of last night. I’m sure you remember our conversation.”

  Nicole hardly registered what they were saying, or the animosity between them, or the way Madame Hale was looking from one son to the other. She was too absorbed in her own distress.

  Lorene searched for a way to relieve the tension. “There will be a prayer service in the great hall on Sunday, mademoiselle. Perhaps you—”

  “Mademoiselle Crane is a Catholic.” Quent spoke the words with no particular emphasis, as if he didn’t know how distasteful that idea would be to his mother.

  Lorene, however, didn’t look surprised. “Yes, I presumed so. I just thought—”

  “Thank you for inviting me, Madame Hale. It is most gracious. But if you don’t mind, on Sunday I will simply stay in my room and say my prayers.”

  “Yes, of course.” Lorene rose from the table and both her sons quickly got to their feet.

  The two men waited until she’d left the room, then took their seats again on either side of Nicole. It was obvious that neither would leave the room until she did. Nicole waited a few moments, then got up and made her escape.

  Quent and Nicole again sat on the circular bench that surrounded the chestnut tree on the front lawn. “He promised,” she told Quent. “Monsieur Shea promised. He has broken his word.”

  “No, he has not. He has given me the charge, and that’s the same thing as doing it himself. I’ll take you the rest of the way. As soon as I can.” Small wonder she was upset. After claiming her the way he had, Corm had left her behind without a word. Hard for any white woman to understand, particularly one like Nicole. Probably she’d been a virgin until that night in the woods. Shoshanaya had come to him a proud Ottawa squaw, knowing and aware. Nicole had probably never been with anyone before her first night with Corm. She would—Sweet Christ, he was a bloody fool, and worse, a disloyal friend.

  “You defend him,” Nicole said with some bitterness. “But a gentleman would not do such a thing. Not go back on the word he gave to a dying man.”

  “Look, Corm’s not like us, exactly. He’s half Potawatomi. Their ways are different from what you’re used to. You had to have known it before you let yourself become—” He broke off.

  “Become what?” she demanded. “Please, Monsieur Hale, I would like to know what you are thinking. Before I became what?”

  “His … Corm’s woman. That night with the Shawnee, when you chose—”

  “I did not choose anything that night, Monsieur Hale. The squaw, the one who called herself Torayana, she told me I had to pick one of the men, but I refused. She pushed me at Monsieur Shea. I did not choose.”

  Quent shrugged her words away. “Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”

  She felt her cheeks redden with anger. “Nothing is done, Monsieur Hale! Nothing of what you mean! I am not a squaw, not some savage who—”

  Quent looked at her, saw the rage. “Wait a minute, you’re telling me—Are you saying you and Corm didn’t—You didn’t promise—”

  “We did nothing. And I promised Monsieur Shea nothing. Except for my undying gratitude and a lifetime of prayer in return for his bringing me to Québec. I have taken a vow, monsieur. I mean to give myself to God and become a bride of Christ. A nun. It is a sacred and solemn duty and—”

  “But with the Shawnee … You and Corm, you spent the night in the woods. I saw you come back the next morning.”

  She looked at him, some of the fire turning to ice. “I spent many nights in the woods with both of you, monsieur, and many days. Was my conduct on those occasions not appropriate for a lady? And did I have a choice to do something else?”

  “No, but that was different. The drums—”

  “Some of us do not become animals just because we are in the forest, Monsieur Hale.”

  His heart was pounding against his ribs. He wanted to whoop but he didn’t dare. “Listen, I’m going to do what you want, I’ll take you to Québec. I gave my word and that’s that. But there’s one thing you have to do. Now. Otherwise all promises are canceled.”

  “What thing, Monsieur Hale?”

  “That’s it exactly. Stop calling me Monsieur Hale. My name’s Quent. Call me Quent. Promise?”

  She stared at him, then nodded. The look in his eyes was remarkable. It was almost … triumph. The way men looked when they won a battle, or did some remarkably dangerous thing and survived. Papa and the ot
her military men she had known since childhood, they had looked like that sometimes. She shivered, then got up to go.

  Quent clenched his hands into fists. In a few weeks, a month perhaps, they would be in the woods again. But this time there would be just the two of them. Corm had staked no claim and she had given no promise.

  Lorene Hale watched Nicole walk back to the house, then dropped the curtain. Quentin, she noted, had remained where he was, staring after the girl. “I think Quent is quite smitten with that young mademoiselle, Ephraim. Have you seen her? She is very beautiful. And she has exquisite manners.”

  She turned to her husband. These days, even in the summer heat, he was always cold, and his mind was not what it had been. The newspapers he had delivered each month when the mail packet reached Albany, the Weekly Post-Boy from Boston and the Gazette from New York City, were stacked on the table by the window, untouched unless Quent or John read them. Ephraim did not ask about the progress of the crops or the reports from the trading station at Do Good as avidly as he once had. Her husband was receding from her and from this world while he prepared for the next. He was sitting up in a chair today, but he had two blankets piled on his knees and clutched a woolen shawl around his shoulders. “Are you still chilled, Ephraim? I can get—”

  “She’s white, is she?”

  “Who, Mademoiselle Nicole? Of course she’s white. Her mother was French and her father English. An officer.”

  “Never thought Quentin would be interested in a white woman, not after—”

  “Shoshanaya’s dead, Ephraim. Quentin is here and there’s a young woman with him and she is eminently suitable for …”

  “What? Finish what you were going to say. Suitable to be mistress of Shadowbrook. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  Lorene nodded.

  “John’ the elder.”

  “Quent noticed that the wheat in the sugarhouse fields is thick with weeds. He told John about it at breakfast this morning. I think John forgot all about those fields.”

  Hale was seized by a coughing fit so severe it left cold sweat running down his face. When he’d taken a few sips of ale and could breathe, he said, “John’s the elder. And Quent has a taste for red women.”

  “So had you once.” She drew her breath in sharply, surprised at the words she hadn’t planned to say.

  “And you,” her husband said softly. “And you.”

  Lorene turned away. “In the past, Ephraim, all of it.” It wasn’t like her to call up those memories like this. “It’s Shadowbrook that concerns me, that must concern us both.” She’d been sixteen years old when she married him and he brought her here from New York City. She was fifty now. She’d spent the better part of her life on the Patent. “You’re doing the wrong thing,” she said. “Quentin will look after the land and everyone on it. You must—”

  “I’m tired,” Hale interrupted. “Go. And send someone to put me to bed.”

  “Ephraim—”

  “Go, I said!” Then, before she was out the door: “Later, after I’ve had my dinner maybe, bring that Mademoiselle whoever up here. Let me get a look at her.”

  SUNDAY, JULY 26, 1754

  QUÉBEC, NEW FRANCE

  There were plenty of mean streets in the lower part of the city of Québec where Père Antoine spent most of his time, but nothing to compare with the bleakness of the little settlement of St. Pierre on the Ile d’Orléans. The church where he was celebrating Holy Mass in honor of Ste. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, was the finest structure in the settlement, and it was little more than a rough shack, devoid of ornament and hot and airless though the front door was open.

  “Introibo ad altare Dei,” the priest said softly. I will go unto the altar of God.

  “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” The boy who was acting as server reminded him that God gave joy to youth.

  Antoine sweat profusely under his heavy green satin chasuble, the top garment that since medieval times a priest must wear when offering the sacrifice. Beneath it he had on a long white garment called an alb and the rope tie known as a girdle, a green maniple draped over his left arm, and a green satin stole around his neck. And underneath all of that his brown habit. Dear Lord, this Canada was a place of penance. Most of the year it was frozen solid, but for a few days in summer it baked as if the fires of hell had broken through the earth. “Gaudeamos omnes in Domino.” Rejoice we all in the Lord.

  Père Antoine’s back was to his congregation, but he knew who was there. He had confessed each of them before Mass began. There were twenty people in all: nine Catholic Hurons—five squaws and four braves—and five French farmers with their wives, plus three Frenchwomen whose husbands were either dead or confirmed in sin and unwilling to be shriven. All the white women had come from France years before as part of a program said to have been devised by Louis XV himself to increase the population: Single women without dowries, who couldn’t expect to find a husband in their homeland, were sent as brides to New France.

  Only le bon Dieu knew how hard the white women of St. Pierre had tried to satisfy His Majesty’s hopes for this northern part of New France. These eight had probably had forty or fifty children between them and it was the same everywhere else. Some seventy-thousand white people, good Catholics of French descent, called this place home. Fewer than fifteen thousand lived in the three cities on the St. Lawrence—Québec, Trois Rivières, and Montral; the rest éoccupied farms in little villages and missions and seigneuries, trying their best to do what the king—and indeed, Almighty God—asked of them: increase and multiply. But the land was so vast, and most of it so inhospitable, that no matter how many were born and how many the mothers managed to nurse to survival, much of the territory remained a frozen wilderness empty of any but heathen savages.

  Holy Mass continued until finally the Franciscan bent low over the altar, fixing his concentration on the flat wheaten wafers and goblet of thin, sour wine. “Sacrificiis praesentibus quaesumus, Domine, placatus intende: ut per intercessionem beatae Annae …” Look favorably, Lord, upon these dedicated offerings, so that by the intercession of blessed Anne … For some obscure historical reason it was called the Secret Prayer and not spoken aloud. Not that it mattered; all the words of the Mass were a secret to this congregation. Not one could understand the Latin, and probably none could have read a translation in their own language if such existed.

  No matter, Père Antoine felt their devotion, and never more intently than when he intoned, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” and lifted the sacred host above his head. A few seconds later he had, by the awesome power of Almighty God, turned the wine into the Blood of Jesus Christ. “Hic est enim calix sanguinis met.” Blood shed to save. Lord, look favorably upon my desire to give You glory. Let it all happen as I have planned.

  He moved along the altar rail, distributing the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The men opening their mouths to receive the Sacred Host, red and white alike, were past warrior age. The Franciscan had come seeking warriors, but he didn’t expect to find them in St. Pierre.

  At length the service ended. The villagers left the church and Père Antoine soon followed them. His way back to the river and the boat waiting to return him to Québec led through the woods, silent except for the occasional burst of birdsong and the noise his sandals made as he walked. He was grateful to at last be wearing only his threadbare brown habit. And for the deep forest shade.

  The priest slowed as he approached a large rock with a flat, tablelike top. An Indian appeared in front of him as if he’d been conjured from the air. A Huron, but not one of those who had been at Mass. This one had a musket over his shoulder and a tomahawk in his hand. The Franciscan nodded toward the tomahawk. “You can put that away. I’m the man you are expecting.”

  The Huron didn’t acknowledge the words, just used the tomahawk to point to a small, half-hidden path that cut off the main one the priest had been on. “Very well. I will follow you.” It was exactly what he had arranged. And prayed
for.

  A few minutes later he was sitting on the ground across from the renegade Lantak. The Huron said nothing, waiting for the priest to speak. “I am glad you could meet me here,” Père Antoine began. “It is good to see you again, Lantak. Have you thought about what we discussed last time we spoke?”

  “Your words are like the snow, priest. When it falls it seems heavy, but as soon as the sun comes it melts and disappears.”

  “Jesus Christ does not disappear, my son. He is with His followers always. Here.” The priest touched his heart. “In the Mass He gives us His Body and Blood to eat, food that will never fail.”

  “Two winters past, in the mission of Ste. Charité, twenty-seven Huron died of disease and starvation. The black robes who lived with them died as well.”

  “Ah, but Lantak thinks in terms of this life only. Our time on earth is short. It is important only because it is a test, an opportunity to give ourselves to the love of Jesus Christ. When it ends we rejoice with Him in heaven. If …”—the priest paused for effect—”… we have not failed the test.”

  Lantak spat on the ground. “Your words make an ugly taste in my mouth. Perhaps I should wash it away in your blood.”

  Père Antoine felt a pleasurable trembling deep in his belly, the same unbidden ecstasy that sometimes came to him at night when he was sleeping and could not control … No, no. He could not expect this. It was too easy. To be martyred here and now, on the feast of the mother of the Blessed Virgin, shortly after offering Holy Mass. To go straight to heaven this very day. Thank you, Lord, but I do not yet ask for such an honor. I still have much to do for Your Church. “I do not think that is what you want, my son. I am useful to you, am I not?”

  Père Antoine took a pouch of coins from a pocket in his habit and put it on the ground between them. Would it count as martyrdom to be murdered for money? And blood money at that. But the answer need not concern him. Lantak was smart enough to understand that once you wrung the neck of the gander, there could be no more golden eggs. “Two hundred now,” the priest said. “Two hundred more when the deed is done.” He had made an offering of a third of Hamish Stewart’s original six hundred lives to the upkeep of the Poor Clares. Their prayers might keep the Scot from eternal hellfire.