The Beloved Land

by T. Davis Bunn

Catherine leaned forward and placed a hand on the sallow cheek. “You are anything but useless. I don’t know what I would do without you, especially now that Andrew is so ill. I would have given up had you not been here to help bear the load.”

  He kept his gaze upon the book in her lap. “I could not bring myself to ever read it. At first it was too painful. Then I went through, well, a time of great anger. For a while I blamed her for leaving us. I know you can’t understand that. I don’t myself anymore. I suppose I thought she should have fought harder and not given in to death. Then I simply put it out of my mind. I was afraid, you see. What if … what if I read something that told me she had found me to be troublesome or did not love me?” Reluctantly he lifted his gaze and revealed the old pain. “I knew myself well enough to know there was much she could have complained about in those pages. I was cocky and rigid and selfish. It is a wonder she could love me at all.”

  “Oh, Father. You are none of these things.”

  “If I am not now, it is only by the grace of God. For that is surely how I lived the majority of my life.” He sighed and reached for the older volume. “And this is my own father’s journal—another generation beyond the one you hold.”

  She watched him cautiously open the cover, only to have this too come off in his hands.

  “I should have told you before now—”

  “Told me what?”

  John Price was carefully turning each fragile page as he spoke. “I have read these pages only once. It was in the days after your mother died bringing you into this world. Those were dark times. Had it not been for you, I don’t know what would have come of me.”

  Catherine could feel the cold radiate up through her dress from the hard-packed earthen floor. But she simply tucked her skirt about her legs as she focused her full attention on her father.

  “You never knew your grandfather. Old Edwin Price was as stern and unbending a figure as any I have ever met. Like an admiral he was, hard as old iron and full of pride. Never knew a man who could rage worse than my father. Like facing a firestorm, he was, when crossed. He was a military man himself, a colonel. You know we come from a long line of officers in the royal corps.”

  “I know. But—”

  “He passed on close to the same time as your mother. They shipped his gear to me at the outpost. It took months to arrive, along with word that he had gone. Which was not altogether a bad thing, the distance and the time, don’t you see. Because when his things did arrive, in the midst of all my grief over losing your mother, I discovered this diary. And what I read, what I read—”

  He stopped abruptly and slapped an open page with one hand. “Found it! After all these years, it was right where I thought.”

  “Found what, Father?”

  But his eyes remained focused upon the page. After a moment he said, “And it’s just as I recall reading it all those many years back.” He looked at Catherine. “So shocking then I almost burned the thing. Can’t understand what it was that made me keep this book. A small token of the old man, I suppose.” He turned away then and spoke as though to himself. “Of course, it was God’s hand all along. I see that now. Yes. Here it is before me once again.”

  Catherine reached over and placed a hand upon her father’s arm. “Father, speak to me.”

  He looked at her again. “My father was married twice.”

  “What—?”

  “Never knew it, of course. He had never spoken to anyone about his early days. What a shock it was to see the words written here in his diary. You can’t imagine.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “No, of course not.” John Price took a long breath. “My father fought against the French in one of our many wars. He was captured and imprisoned. He shared his cell with an elderly Frenchman, who had been incarcerated over some minor matter. His granddaughter came to visit him daily, bringing him what she could in the way of food and clothing. Over time Edwin came to know and … and admire her.”

  “Your father fell in love with a Frenchwoman?” Years of antagonism between two great nations were captured in her question.

  “Hard to imagine even now, I agree. You can see what a blow that would have been, reading it those many years back. What with me carrying such a load of hatred over the wars and my wounds. But there it was. The old Frenchie who was my father’s cellmate died, but still the young lady kept coming. They talked of marriage and a future together, though it all seemed so bleak in that wartorn time. But young love was not to be denied.”

  He turned the page, all without taking his eyes from his daughter’s face. “One of the young French guards was infatuated with her, and she led him on a bit until she had won his confidence. One night she served him full of wine and used his key to release Edwin.

  “They married in secret and hid themselves in a remote fishing village. They began making plans to escape to England. Then word came through one of the fishermen that the police were scouting the region, looking for an escaped English officer.”

  “A Frenchwoman.” Catherine shook her head in wonderment, recalling her father’s previous hatred for the French and all the pain it had caused them both.

  “She had become ill and was too sick to travel. She insisted Edwin flee for his life, promising she would follow as soon as he sent word. Celeste’s brother, a fisherman, risked his life to take Edwin across the Channel. He could see, as did the entire village, that Edwin and the Frenchwoman were bound by a love more vast than any nation or war. Those were the words my father used in his diary.”

  John Price stopped then. But Catherine could see from the expression on his face that there was more. “Tell me the rest, Father.”

  John Price studied her face for a long moment.

  The realization struck her very hard indeed. “She was pregnant?”

  “Indeed so.” His eyes dropped to the page. “What hit me even harder than the news that I had a half sister was that my father eventually learned his first wife had died in childbirth.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “All my life I thought I was my father’s only heir. Here in these pages, just after you were born, I learned how he had spent years searching. But our two countries remained at war— at least as near as breath to that state. And there was no concern for a young orphan lass.”

  “A daughter,” Catherine murmured. “A half sister. My aunt.”

  John Price suddenly raised his head. “I have thought of something.” He reached a trembling hand to grasp Catherine’s.

  “I wonder if Andrew’s brother, Charles—” “Oh yes, I will write to him,” Catherine said, her thoughts leaping ahead in the conversation. “I’m sure he would want to take up the search for some news, maybe even to be able to find her.” She squeezed her father’s hand. “It will be wonderful to have something like this to add to my letter. Something with a measure of hope.” Excitement filled her heart and her voice. “He knows many influential people, both in England and in France. If there is news to be had, Charles will discover it,” she finished confidently.

  Chapter 2

  “ ‘Although Father John is getting on in years,’ ” Anne read aloud to the small group gathered by the fire in the sitting room, “ ‘he continues to help me as he is able.’ ” Catherine’s letter included the little story about the unwearable darned socks, and they all chuckled. Anne picked up where she had stopped. “ ‘I fear all this only adds additional strain to his frail body, but there is no stopping him. He feels a responsibility, especially now that Andrew is unwell.’ ” Anne tried to swallow over the lump in her throat.

  “His heart,” Charles murmured, his hand against his chest. “What a family trait to share with my dear brother.”

  Catherine’s next words appeared and vanished on the page through the film of tears in Anne’s eyes. “ ‘Andrew has good days and bad. The bad, I am sorry to say, are coming more often and are far more severe.’ ”

  Anne could go no further. The letter dropped to the flo
or as her hands covered her eyes.

  “Anne, my dear.”

  Anne heard the rustle of skirts as Judith, Charles’s wife, rose from her place beside her husband. She was a woman well versed with sorrow, having lost both her husband and her oldest son, Anne’s own first husband, in scarcely the space of a year. She would know that words had little effect at such a time, and she only knelt beside Anne and put gentle arms around her.

  Charles asked softly, “Shall I finish reading for you?”

  Anne nodded mutely.

  From the other side of the fireplace, where Anne’s Thomas sat holding the child, her boy John observed softly, “Mommy’s sad.”

  Anne pressed a small square of cambric to her eyes and drew as steady a breath as she could manage. Small John now stood on the settee alongside Thomas. His round arms circled her husband’s neck, cheeks touching, dark hair burnished and intermingled in the firelight. Two sets of eyes regarded her with loving concern. John’s little chin quivered with effort to not cry also. “I’m fine, darling,” Anne managed to say, though forming a smile seemed beyond her. “It’s just … it’s the news that your grandfather isn’t well.”

  Thomas held the little boy closer.

  John released his grip on Thomas’s neck long enough to wipe his own eyes. “I’m a big boy now.”

  Charles had crossed the room to retrieve the letter at Anne’s feet.

  Anne had thought she would never feel as separated from her parents as she had at her wedding to Thomas. But now … The tears returned, this time nearly blocking out Charles’s voice as he found the place and began to read.

  Anne found herself surrounded again by the scent of the bright English morning on the day of her marriage to Thomas. They originally had planned for a small double ceremony in the largest parlor of Charles’s manor. It was, after all, a second marriage for both her and Judith. Charles had become less than welcome in London society since his vocal opposition to the war against the American colonies. The family had not returned to the city for over a year. No, the ceremony was to be a private family event.

  But when they spoke to the vicar about their plans, he had counseled them to make it more public. Not for the society folk from London, he urged, but rather for the villagers who cared so deeply for them. Was it not right, said the vicar, that local families who in recent years had been so blessed by the Harrow estate and the benevolent outreach of the family should witness this wedding?

  Thomas had joined Anne in forming schools and nursing care, and had with Charles’s blessing begun organizing private ownership of what formerly had been commons land. Whereas so many of England’s villages and small landholders were desperately impoverished, those within Charles’s domain were not only protected but even prospering. And so it was decided that it would be a church wedding.

  When Charles and Judith, Anne and Thomas and John had arrived in the village at the time arranged with the vicar, they found the entire community decked out in garlands and bunting. The children, dressed in their best, sprinkled petals from the season’s first blooms on the path up to the church doors.

  Inside the ancient Norman structure, flowers and candles filled the air with light and color and scent. As Anne had walked up the aisle with her husband-to-be on one side and her son on the other, joining Charles and Judith before the vicar, her heart sang with the rightness of the day.

  If only her parents, Catherine and Andrew, and yes, Louise and Henri, had been with them, the moment would have been perfect indeed. …

  She returned to the present with Charles’s voice reading the final lines of the letter. “ ‘. . . not asking you to come, Anne. It is exceedingly distant and with the war on and no end in sight, it is no doubt impossible. But I feel you should know the truth. Hopefully, by the time you receive this, Andrew will be much improved. With love, your mother, Catherine.’ ”

  The entire manor seemed to have awakened early the next morning. When Anne went downstairs to have what she hoped would be an hour of quiet reflection after a rather restless night, she found her son and husband already seated at the servants’ table in the kitchen. Maisy was busy at the stove.

  “I remember it clear as day,” the bighearted woman was proclaiming as Anne entered. “Fifteen musicians gathered upon the upstairs balcony makin’ more noise than the Second Coming. Half a hundred people thunderin’ up and down the grand hall, doing a dance like I’ve never seen before in all my days.”

  “It was a polka if I recall,” Thomas supplied, tying a napkin around John’s neck. “All the rage at the time.”

  “Sounded like elephants on parade if you ask me.” Maisy turned and pointed at John with her ladle. “Then what do I find but young lordship here curled up on top of a laundry basket full of my best damask tablecloths, fast asleep.”

  “I was sleepy,” John announced confidently.

  Maisy advanced upon him, the wooden spoon held like a weapon, her face a mock scowl. “Then why is it,” she demanded, “that you have insisted upon waking the whole household from useful slumber a’fore the sun’s even crested yon ridge?”

  John shrieked with glee and hid his eyes at Maisy’s approach. The woman had cared for the child since his arrival, and they loved each other dearly. Maisy grumbled and ruffled the child’s hair, kissed the top of his head, then retreated to her stove. “Whatever should we feed such an impossible young man?”

  “Porridge!”

  “No lad who robs me of my sleep deserves a fine bowl of porridge. I think maybe dried husks with a bit of water will do you this day.”

  John began waving his spoon in the air. “Porridge—with cream!”

  “Quietly, now we must let the others have their rest.” Thomas gently wrested the spoon from John’s grip, then turned to his wife standing in the doorway. “Forgive us, my dear. He awoke me with his singing.”

  Maisy smiled a greeting as she stirred the cooking oats. “Shall I fix you a tea, ma’am?”

  “I hoped to bring him down and feed him a bit of toast,” Thomas continued before she could answer, “but Maisy heard him as well.”

  “It’s all right, ma’am.” Maisy ladled out a steaming bowl, brought it over to the smiling child, and plied the cream pitcher. “There’s no finer way to start a morning in my book than feedin’ a happy child.”

  “More cream!”

  “And how do we ask, John?” Anne put in.

  “Oh yes, please, more cream,” John sang out.

  “That’ll do for now, lad. Else I’ll be mopping up your mess from now ’til the Sabbath.”

  Judith chose that moment to enter behind Anne. “Good morning, all. Please grind us some of those fine coffee beans that came in the other day, would you, Maisy,” she said, still working on the neck catch of her housedress.

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “Excellent. Bring coffee for us both when it’s ready, thank you. Anne, why don’t you and I retire to the front room.”

  Anne followed her down the connecting hallway and into the small dining alcove where she often had her morning time of quiet meditation. Judith went straight to the tall doors to the garden and levered them open. The air was brisk but not unpleasant. “I do so love these early spring mornings, when all the world seems ready to burst into bloom.”

  “Yes,” Anne agreed somewhat distractedly. “Did you want—do you want to see me about something?”

  “Indeed so.” Judith motioned her toward two chairs, and they moved to sit down. “I awoke this morning with certainty that you had reached your decision,” Judith declared.

  Anne was caught midway in the process of seating herself. “Yes?”

  “I have been through my own share of shocks and sorrow, as you well know.” Judith was dressed in a cotton morning frock in colors as bright as the growing dawn. Since marrying Charles she had cast aside her widow’s black and embraced her new life with a vigorous determination to cheer Charles’s world in every way possible. “And I know that sometimes the hardest moment is n
ot in deciding, but rather in finding peace with what you know must be done.”

  The woman’s brisk no-nonsense tone made it possible for Anne to speak what she had scarcely admitted to herself. “I am going to Nova Scotia.”

  “Of course you are. You simply must go to your father— and mother—at this time!”

  “But how is it possible, dear Judith? What with the war, a ship’s crossing that is dangerous in the best of times …” Her voice caught, and she looked helplessly down at her hands.

  Judith leaned toward Anne. “Now let us move to the heart of what troubles you most about this decision.”

  Anne took a deep breath and turned to look into the loving eyes of the woman gazing into hers. “John,” was all she said.

  Judith nodded. Then the rear door opened and Maisy entered, bearing a well-stocked tray.

  “I toasted a bit of fresh bread in case you grew peckish,” she announced, setting it on a small table between them.

  “That was most thoughtful, Maisy,” Judith said as she began pouring coffee for each of them.

  Through the open doorway there came the sound of a child’s delightful laughter. Maisy smiled in response. “That lad is the light to my days, I don’t mind tellin’ you.”

  Judith waited until the door had shut behind Maisy. “Yes,” she said, “I can imagine that he presents the greatest dilemma in thinking through your decision.”

  “I have wrestled with this all night long,” Anne murmured. “One moment I am determined that John must go with us, that I could not bear to be separated from my child. The next, I am full of anguish over the thought of putting John through the risks and dangers of a sea voyage at wartime.”

  “Have you spoken with Thomas?”

  “Not yet.”

  Judith put down her cup. “This is what I suggest you do, my dear. First, you will have breakfast. Then you shall leave the child in my care and go for a walk with your husband. You will talk over with him your desires and your fears.”

  “And then?”

  “And then,” Judith replied, “you will wait. You will begin to make your preparations, and you will talk further with us, and you will pray. We will all pray. And I am certain the proper answer will come to you. In due time.”