The Beloved Land

by T. Davis Bunn

  The truth of Judith’s words rang with hope. Anne reached over and took the woman’s hands. “How could I ever face this without you?”

  Judith gave her a look of love and concern. “That is the key you must always remember, dear Anne. You need not be alone through any of this. We will aid you in whatever way we can. All of us.”

  The door again pushed open. “Ah, there you are!” Charles stomped in, struggling to get his right foot into his house slippers. “Where is that letter? And I can’t find my reading spectacles anywhere!”

  “That’s because you left them on the floor by your chair last night,” Judith replied, calmly reaching into her pocket. “And I had to rescue them from John.”

  “Ah, I see. Thank you, my dear.” Charles settled the earpieces into place. He turned to Anne, and smiling, she pulled the letter from her pocket and handed it to him. He peered at the pages through his spectacles, then exclaimed, “Here it is! I knew I wasn’t mistaken!”

  “What is it?”

  “The orphanage where Edwin Price’s daughter was taken. It’s in La Rochelle, my dear.”

  “Yes?”

  “La Rochelle!” His enthusiasm lit the room. “Where our last remaining merchant contact resides. Our dear friend … my heavens, now I can’t recall the bounder’s name!”

  “Do you mean Monsieur Duchat, my husband?”

  “Duchat! Duchat! I’ve known him all these twenty years and now couldn’t remember … Never mind.” He turned again to Anne. “When you’ve finished with your breakfast, would you do me the great kindness of penning a letter?”

  “Of course, Uncle.”

  “My handwriting is somewhat less than legible, you know. Duchat speaks perfect English, but he claims to find my script as unfathomable as Arabic. I want to send young Fred down to the coast this very morning and have this letter sent with the next barker aimed at the French coast.”

  “You’re going to make inquiries about the woman?” Judith asked.

  “Where else am I to start? I must have some news to send along with Anne when she departs.”

  In her sorrow, Anne had missed the news of her greatgrandfather’s first wife and offspring during the original reading of Catherine’s letter. But she had discovered it for herself when she and Thomas retired for the night and she read the letter over again. “So our French connection, Nicole’s and mine,” she murmured to Thomas, “is more than simply our mothers’ bond of friendship. …”

  “It will be most interesting,” Thomas had replied, “to see what Charles’s investigation uncovers.”

  Chapter 3

  It was difficult to say which hit Nicole harder, the fact that her father was so ill or that the letter was sent not directly to her but to Reverend Collins.

  The old vicar clearly could see that she was distressed. “I do hope you understand why I opened the letter.”

  Nicole did not know how to respond.

  “With the war and all, your mother of course did not know your whereabouts and thus addressed it to me. I felt your mother would want me to know its contents in case there was anything immediate I could do.” At Nicole’s brief nod, he added, “Goodness only knows how many letters she sent for this one to actually arrive.”

  Nicole stared at the single sheet in her lap. It was hard to call this a letter at all. Fourteen lines, merely a quick note to be sent with friends, just in case. By now, her mother wrote, Nicole would most likely have received Catherine’s previous letters, the ones that gave greater detail of Andrew’s decline. But just in case the conflict had delayed them, Catherine thought it wise to send one further note via church channels. Actually, this had been Grandfather John’s idea, she explained to Nicole. The old gentleman had become a great aid and comfort in these dark times.

  “Dark times,” Nicole repeated, scarcely aware she had spoken at all.

  Pastor Collins must have assumed she was speaking of the here and now. “At least the war is elsewhere,” he noted consolingly.

  Nicole said quietly, “I must go to him.”

  Instead of replying, Pastor Collins roamed about his office, straightening papers on his cluttered desk, lining up the painting on his stone wall, stroking the back of his armchair. “Shall I make us tea?”

  “You are thinking I should not go?” Nicole lifted the letter. “My father is deathly ill.” She could hardly say the last word.

  “My dearest Nicole, I am well aware of your distress. I taught Andrew for four years. He and I became such friends, such soul mates, I consider your parents my family also. It grieves me deeply to know he is unwell.” Pastor Collins seated himself in the high-backed chair with its cracked leather cushion. “But, my dear, you have seen how difficult it has been even for this one letter to make it through the battle lines.”

  Nicole rose and crossed to the narrow peaked window behind the vicar’s desk. She unlatched the lead-paned window and pushed it open. Sounds of the Boston harbor’s market rose in the distance. She recalled her first day here, when another ship had brought her upon yet another unlikely voyage. “I have found passage before when none thought it possible,” she said softly.

  “True, true.”

  “And now there is Gordon to help me.”

  The pastor’s tone remained gentle. “Do not forget, he is a man in uniform, and this is a world at war.”

  The war. It was everywhere, and yet nowhere to be seen. Although New York and much of the Pennsylvania colonies remained under British control, by that spring Massachusetts had become firmly American. For those fortunate enough to call Boston home, it had been a calm winter and spring. Most of the fighting had remained far to the south. In fact, that winter’s greatest drama had not been a battle at all, but rather how General Washington had utilized the frigid hardship of Valley Forge.

  Most had predicted that America would not have a northern army to speak of after this long and terrible winter. Instead, General Washington had given the American colonists their first real military training. Over the space of five frozen and miserable months, Washington had taken a motley band of colonial farmers and villagers and craftsmen and turned them into the first genuine army of the United States.

  The town’s talk was of little besides where the summer conflict would take place. A reckoning, they called it. A birth of a nation. A casting off of chains. Yet there she stood, her father’s heart giving away. “I must try.”

  “Of course you must. But be aware that there is a difference between a vague hope and a real opportunity. Do not allow yourself to be taken in by false promises and those opportunists after deceitful gain.”

  “What should I do, Pastor Collins?”

  “Talk with Gordon. The more I come to know your young man, the greater is my regard.”

  A flicker of hope came to life in Nicole’s heart. Yes, Gordon would help her get to the bedside of her father.

  Truly that was how she thought of Andrew now. No matter that she had spent nearly her first two decades of life an entire world away from him and Catherine. Nor did it concern her that Louise and Henri Robichaud were also recognized by both her mind and heart as bearing the same titles. She had two mothers and two fathers. The laws of nature played no role here.

  “I must go,” Nicole said, rising to her feet.

  “Please, not quite yet.” Pastor Collins indicated a chair closer to him. “Before you embark on this perilous journey, let us pray together—for Andrew’s health, and for our heavenly Father’s direction and blessing to you and Gordon.”

  As Nicole moved to the chair, the vicar reached a hand toward her. “And for His protection on you, my child,” he said. “You too have become part of my beloved family.”

  When Nicole left the seminary refuge and returned to the bustling world of Boston Harbor, she found it desperately hard to hold on to either calm or hope.

  Although they were two weeks into April, the late afternoon was wrapped in a wintry blanket of gray, still mist. From unseen waters stretching to her left came sho
uts of sailors calling down from the shrouds, and the halloos of others casting sounding stones as their ships were rowed toward a safe anchorage.

  From out of nowhere Nicole found herself almost overtaken by six horses. Their flanks steamed as they pulled a wagonload of hogsheads, those great iron-strapped barrels used for stowing water and supplies on board. She drew back in alarm as the drover’s whip cracked near her face. A few steps farther on and a pair of young apprentices came sweating toward her, each bearing a load of canvas upon his back. She recoiled, only to collide with a woman carrying a crate of shriveled winter roots. Nicole apologized and hurried away from the stallholder’s invectives, only to strike the stone wall marking the harbor’s main entrance.

  At least she knew now where she was. The central cobblestone way led down to the series of docks, from which rose the cries of men and animals. Nicole moved off to one side and began making her way along the rougher side track. She continued parallel to the water until the harbormaster’s cottage emerged from the fog.

  She stepped through the door to find Gordon behind his desk. He rose to his feet, delight in his face. “Dearest Nicole, you have brought sunshine to an otherwise gloomy day.”

  A bearded man in the salt-encrusted uniform of a seagoing captain stood to one side of Gordon’s worktable. After a quick glance her way, his eyes remained fastened on Gordon.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing,” Nicole said.

  “On the contrary, you have saved me the trouble of sending a man off to find you. If he indeed could do so in this fog.” Gordon offered a wave of introduction. “Captain Saunders, may I have the pleasure of introducing my fiancée, Nicole Robichaud.”

  “Your servant, I’m sure.” But the captain did not spare her a further glance. “I am telling you, sir, that I could use this weather to slip right through the British lines. Why, I could be clean away and making sail for Charleston before they find their true north.”

  “You might,” Gordon agreed mildly. “Only there are two problems with your assessment, Captain.”

  “And they are?”

  “First, there is no wind.”

  “I shall launch my longboats and row us.”

  “The tide is running hard against you.”

  “I am empty laden and running light.”

  “The last word we had was their line was in two rows, one five miles farther to sea. I remind you, Captain, the British are the world’s finest sailors when it comes to blockades. They’ll have their own longboats launched and hunting with guns primed. A single cough from one of your sailors, a squeak from the oarlocks, and you will be consigning your crew to seaborne graves.”

  The captain’s features above his gray-flecked beard began to color. “I am unaccustomed, sir, to being crossed. Particularly from a landlocked sailor whose own guns are most certainly not primed.”

  Gordon gave no indication that he had heard the man. “There is also the fact that the wind could well be on the rise.”

  “Wind? Wind?” the captain roared. “There hasn’t been a breath in nigh on four days! I lost my way twice just finding this hut of yours!”

  “Nonetheless, Captain, my sea sense tells me there will be a south wind blowing solid by the start of the night’s watch.”

  “Your sea sense, is it?”

  “I’ve been stationed here for three seasons now, long enough to study the winds and currents. I would urge you to give it until the tide’s turning.”

  “That would put me outbound after midnight and lessen my hours of stealth and darkness by half!”

  “If the wind does rise, sir, you’ll know by then and be best waiting until the morrow, when it will blow hard enough to scatter—”

  “Are you intending to deny me the right of departure?” The captain’s sea-scarred hands curled.

  “That is not my place, Captain.”

  “Indeed it is not.” The captain rammed his hat down with such force he crumpled the crown. “I have wasted all the time I care to. Be informed, sir, that my ship raises anchor within the quarter hour.”

  “I do hope—and pray—that you are not gambling with the lives of your men.”

  The man wheeled about and stomped from the cottage, slamming the door.

  Gordon seemed not to notice. Instead, he turned and stared out the window at the gray nothingness which was gradually giving way to dusk. “I do hope I am wrong,” he murmured.

  Nicole stepped toward him and settled a tentative hand on the arm of her betrothed. And it’s very likely my letters have not gotten through either. My parents must not know of my engagement to this man. She stared up at Gordon’s face in profile, noting the set of his features as he wrestled inwardly. She knew the responsibilities he carried for men and mission, and the serious contemplation he brought to every decision, large and small.

  Gordon soon turned from the window, his gaze and features softening as he laid his hand on hers. “We have a damp and chilly eve before us. I shall start us a fire.”

  “Thank you, but a fire will not warm my spirit.”

  He turned to look into her face. “You have heard something?”

  “I have. But I do not wish to add—”

  “Thank you, Nicole, but there is nothing more I can do for the captain and his vessel, save pray. What is troubling you?”

  Nicole withdrew the sheet of paper from her pocket and quickly read it aloud. The reading took only a few minutes. She described how dismayed she had been at the realization that neither Catherine’s longer letters nor her own had made it through the blockade. She yielded finally to tears over her desperate longing to see her father once more. “I feel I have only just come to know them. I can’t lose him now, Gordon. Not like this, without being able to …”

  She eventually stopped because she had to. Outside the small hut came the sounds of men busy with the affairs of danger and motion. Though none yet approached, their presence was enough to keep Nicole’s emotions in check. She wiped her eyes and attempted a tremulous smile. Gordon squeezed her hand on his arm.

  “Let me pour you some tea,” he offered, moving to the corner woodstove and the kettle.

  Gordon soon fitted a steaming mug into her hand. “Have you eaten?”

  “This morning.”

  “Nothing at midday?”

  “The seminary’s supplies did not arrive today. I was planning to scour the market when the letter arrived and Pastor Collins called me in.”

  “There is scarce little to be found at any price. I broke up a fight this morning between sailors and stallholders taking only silver for the last of their winter carrots.” He held up a beribboned document from his desk. “Requisition orders I can’t hope to fill. The city’s larders are almost empty.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “Drink your tea, my dear.” He waited while she sipped, then said, “The war can’t continue much longer. It is not just our city. All the colonies are so burdened. And the British forces as well, from what news I have gathered.”

  “Then the war is ending?”

  “Not ending, but waning. Perhaps. Or reaching a crescendo. One or the other is my guess. Either there will be a loosening of the grip or an all-out push for victory. Neither side can go on with conditions as they now are.”

  “How long—?”

  “We shall know by summer’s end, of that I am certain. By the end of this battle season, things will have altered. And drastically if my guess is correct.”

  “But I can’t wait—Father might not …” But she could not say the words.

  Gordon slowly took a pair of new logs and set them upon the dwindling fire, then gathered up the bellows and began priming the flames.

  “Gordon, did you understand? My father’s condition may not allow me the time until autumn.”

  Carefully he replaced the bellows, brushed ashes from the front of his uniform, straightened, and turned with obvious reluctance.

  In his eyes Nicole saw the same bleak reality after the exchange with the sea
captain—that matters might not permit her to do as she wanted, as she felt she had to. And to force it would cast herself and others into danger.

  “Oh, Gordon, I don’t know how much—”

  The sound of footsteps scraped across the cottage’s front porch. A knock at the door, and Gordon said, “Enter.”

  The young officer would have been fresh faced, save for the saber scar across his forehead. “Commandant’s compliments to the harbormaster, sir. He requests your company for dinner.”

  “When?”

  “This very hour, if you please.”

  “My thanks to the commandant. My fiancée and I shall await his pleasure before the watch changes.”

  “Very good, sir. Ma’am.” He bowed out the door.

  “Gordon, I can’t—”

  “Think of it this way, dear Nicole. At least there will be chance of a decent meal. And news that has a hope of being true.”

  She did not object further, drawn as she was by both prospects. As she wrapped her shawl more closely about her and permitted Gordon to usher her from the cottage, she could not say which held the greater appeal.

  Chapter 4

  Boston had always seemed a stern and hardfisted city to Nicole. She would have vastly preferred to reside across the river in Cambridge and held a quiet hope of one day owning a small home there. But as Gordon was apt to say whenever the village was mentioned, Cambridge held neither an adequate harbor nor an easily defensible position. Which was why, once the British had retreated south to New York, the American garrison had moved across the river and encamped.

  Another reason, of course, was the public triumph of retaking the city in this most public of manners. The papers smuggled in from England, four months old and full of more dismal news from the south, had declared the city’s fall a tragedy. Which had given the American colonists great reason for celebration in the midst of the bleakest winter in their short history.