The Meeting Place (16 page)

“There is someone in the village who is spying for her—for them. It can be nothing else.”

Catherine's distress mounted. “Why would anyone hate me like that?”

“They don't hate you, my darling. They are simply trying to curry favor with the powers in Halifax. Almost anyone here in Edward could be tempted. Someone seeking a permit for selling at market, or rights to transport goods for the army …” A dozen different possibilities sprang to mind, but he pushed them away. “It would do us no good to wonder. All it would make us do is question our neighbors.”

She could not keep the tremor from her voice. “Do you want me to stop seeing Louise?”

He was sorely tempted to say yes. As spring had grown into summer the frequency of Catherine's visits up the hillside had increased, as had the length of her stays. But she was finding such joy up in the meadow, such purpose and peace.

And there was something else. Something Andrew could not precisely put his finger on. As though a still, quiet voice at the very center of his heart was whispering to him, urging him not to do what his more logical mind was suggesting.

And this quiet inner voice could not be denied. “No.” The word was murmured, quiet as the birdsong beyond their open window. “I cannot ask that of you.”

Any reservations he might have had over his decision were erased at the light which sprang to her eyes. “Oh, thank you. I wouldn't defy your decision if you had said I should stop. But it is so wonderful being up there with her, I wish I could explain. …” She turned, and her shining eyes fell upon the Bible lying open upon their dining table. “We have such a wonderful time reading the Bible together. She does not have a Bible of her own. There have been no French ships since the blockade, and books in the French villages are ten times what they cost us. She brings a church prayer book, and once she brought her parents' family Bible. But that was too precious, too large and difficult to bring again. It has five generations listed in the family tree at the beginning.” Her words tumbled upon one another. “It has been so wonderful, the two of us sitting in the sunshine, the Book open on our laps. I read passages from our English Bible and translate, and then we discuss them together. The last time, Louise brought a French Bible that the vicar had loaned to her. Oh, I wish I could describe to you how it feels.”

Andrew's own gaze turned to the Book. It remained open to the Gospel of Luke, which they had just started perusing before his departure.

A change seemed to overtake his vision, as though the whisper of his heart began to take on form before his eyes. Andrew saw not the open page but rather his beloved wife, seated at the edge of a meadow he had never visited and knew only through her. Alongside her was seated another woman, a stranger of darker hair and complexion, who laughed and talked in a language he did not understand. A total stranger, yet one who was bound to his wife by the Bible in her lap. The holy Book opened and discussed in different languages and held by different hands. So close, yet divided by centuries of war and hardship and conflict. So close.

Andrew drew the room back into focus and said, “Just be careful. That is all I ask. In your going and in your coming and in the time you spend with this Frenchwoman, take every possible care.”

Chapter 13

Henri Robichaud walked around to the back of his house and entered the shed where he kept his tools. This was the place where he felt closest to his father, where the heritage which had almost been lost was clearest to his mind and heart.

His father, a taciturn man, had measured out his words with the care of a miser weighing purest gold. But he had been a good man, good with his hands and better with his son. It was through work that his father had communicated best, showing by example the bonds that tied the Robichaud family to their God, to this home and this piece of earth. He had bound his son deeply to the place and the community, so deeply that even when he was plucked too soon from this earth, still his son strove to keep the fragile flame of heritage alive.

All his father's tools were still there. Even when they had long outlived their usefulness, Henri refused to let go of this part of his bond. Instead he had mounted the pieces high upon the walls on wooden pegs, so that everywhere he looked he was confronted with the imprint of that grand old man. Henri found himself staring at the wooden hay fork with the middle tooth broken off, the handle darkened almost black with his father's sweat. Next to it hung the poke used at lambing time, a collar to immobilize the sheep. Henri's gaze ran on around the shed's walls, taking in the ancient winnower and crop-cradle and flat-hammer and hardy and adze and broadax and auger—all vital components of his memories, his heritage.

He reached into the corner and pulled out his own eel spear. The shaft was as thick as his upper arm and carved from the trunk of an ash, one of the most hard woods to be found. Imbedded at the crown was a razor-sharp trident, each blade twice the length of his middle finger.

Henri took down his father's grist stone and spat into its center. Carefully he ground the trident's three fingers in slow circles, refining the points until they shone in the light streaming through the shed's open door. Finally satisfied, he reached back into the corner for a second more slender pole. He stepped outside, balanced the spear on one shoulder and the pole on the other, and started off.

As he rounded the corner of the house, Louise appeared in the doorway. His heart lurched at the sight of her. She was such a lovely one, this darkly beautiful queen of his home and his heart. From beneath her starched bonnet streamed hair long and lustrous as a raven waterfall, a shining river that he loved to run through his fingers. They had been married almost a year, and still he marveled at that simple movement. His fingers were so stubby, his hands so hard and rough, when twined through her long tresses. Gentle as he might try to be at those times, he could scarcely believe that she would permit him such a liberty, much less mean it when she said that she truly loved his touch.

But her normally dancing eyes were somber now, her usually shining face shadowed and turned down at every plane. Henri longed to set down his burdens, walk over, take her in his arms there on the stoop, and let the entire village know just how precious she was to him. But not this morning, not this day. Instead he willed himself to smile, though it was only his mouth that carried the movement. Louise answered with a smile of her own, one which did nothing to erase the sadness blanketing her features.

There was none of their normal banter, none of the promise to take care and be back before the setting sun. Today there was only a heavy silence, filled with all that remained unspoken between them.

Henri took the long path down the terraced earth to the bayside. He arrived at the correct moment, when the tide was beginning to flow out and pulling strong. He walked to the bushes where he had last moored his flat-bottomed canoe, and set down his tools. Normally two men were required to pull such a boat across the bank and into the water. Henri was one of the village's few men who could do so alone. His father had been another, but whenever he and Henri had come down to the water's edge together, his father had pretended that he could not manage the burden by himself. “Come help me,” his father would say, “give me your young strength.” And Henri would pull with all his might, dragging the rough-hewn boat down to the water's edge, feeling like the man he hoped one day to become.

Since his marriage, Henri some days imagined what it would be like to have a youngster there beside him, one whom he loved so much that he would willingly play the weakling and give his son the right to know a strength of his own.

But this morning he did not dream of times to come. Instead he felt only relief that he had a day of solitude before him, confined not by his own efforts but by the much stronger tides. He pulled the boat down to the water's edge and stepped deftly into its stable center. Two strong pushes upon the skiff pole and he felt the ebbing current grab hold. He reversed his hold on the pole and began pushing against the tide, keeping the boat to the edge of the retreating waters.

Searching the tidal ponds was only possible from a boat. The mud was so glutinous and deep that a man could not stand, much less walk. Just that spring a neighbor's prized cow had escaped the corral and stumbled into the low-tide flats. Before men could be gathered and a noose fitted, the bellowing cow had sunk out of sight and drowned. A dugout canoe with a flat bottom was the only conveyance of use in these circumstances, one whose outer shell had been hardened by a slow-burning fire. The thick skin bobbed like an unstable cork and drew only a few inches of water. It was a hard vessel to steer and harder yet to hold stable when fighting an eel.

Eel fishing was a very precise practice, one which required extreme care and attention, and therefore suited him perfectly this day. For Henri had not come out here to think. He only wanted to hold the world at arm's length. Henri had found that answers to the hardest questions came when he was able to forget about them entirely. Otherwise he found his thoughts becoming a storm, and nothing was solved, nothing accomplished. If he could only manage to put the problem aside for a few hours, more often than not he found the answer appearing all by itself.

The bay was empty today, which he took as a good sign. The grand English ship had unfurled its sails and left at sunset the previous day. He poled against the tide, carefully searching each of the gullies he passed. Henri had heard that Cobequid Bay held to the highest tidal surges in the world. He had seen it rise and fall as much as eighteen feet in each direction. As the tide continued to drop, more and more mud flats became exposed, the mucky black surface pocked and cratered. These ponds sometimes trapped and held huge ocean eels, which the women of his village salted and pickled. A barrel of pickled eel from Minas was a delicacy known as far away as France.

The morning was hushed and warm, the air so breathless each tidal pool became a mirror. Henri searched and poled, the sweat dripping freely from his brow. In the quiet solitude he found himself recalling the previous evening's events, ones which had robbed his night of sleep and stolen peace from his morning. Despite his desire not to think at all, the memory and its troubling mystery insisted on coming back time and again.

Yesterday Louise had invited her entire family to join them for the evening meal. These were occasions for great laughter and jollity, as Henri cared deeply for all the Belleveaux. Louise's two younger brothers, Eli and Philippe, considered Henri a perfect brother-in-law, for he seldom spoke and rewarded every story and most comments with his rich laugh. Henri loved the brothers' company and felt honored by the comfortable kinship shown to him by Louise's parents. He hungered for the sense of belonging to such a family.

Yes, Louise's mother was a bit of a scold. Marie Belleveau was known throughout the village as a woman more comfortable with a frown than a smile, and most times when she opened her mouth it was to nag. But she approved of Henri. He knew that even when she arrived full of criticism for his front garden.

“How you can show your face about the village with such a jungle for a garden I will never understand,” were the woman's first words.

“You are right, of course, Mama Marie.” Henri adopted his most soothing tone and bowed her into their little living room.

“And the state of your roof, I believe you have more moss up there than slate.” She huffed herself down by the fire, for the setting sun had brought a north wind and with it an uncommon chill for late June. “And your shutters, the paint peeling so, never have I seen such a—”

“Here, Mama.” Louise's arm swooped down with a cup of steaming cider. “Let's see if this will take the edge off your tongue.”

Henri was not certain who of the family was more surprised at Louise's words. She rarely showed anything but patience and calm in the face of her mother's tirades. On the infrequent occasions when something did unravel her control, it was normally at the end of a harangue, not the beginning. Henri's eyes quickly scouted the room, and he found surprise on every face, including Marie Belleveau's.

So he did what he was best at, which was to warm the room with his most infectious smile. He turned to Eli to say, “Word has it you had a good day at market.”

“Ah, let me tell you, you don't know the half of it.” Young Eli considered himself to be the best trader in the village, and took it as a personal affront when anyone claimed to have made a better deal. “Took a load of our cheese down to Cobequid Town. The road was wet and the horses angry, but it was well worth the journey.”

The adults settled themselves about the room and offered jests and jibes to punctuate Eli's bragging. All but Marie, who seemed to be studying her daughter with a pensive squint. Louise scurried about the kitchen, refusing offers of help from Philippe's new wife. Her back remained stiffly erect with an emotion Henri could not fathom. After all, it was she herself who had called for this family meal together.

The gathering remained in good cheer throughout the meal, warmed by a hearty stew and good cider and the prospect of a fine crop this year. Henri noted that Louise did not join in, remaining distant and reflective. Twice he slipped his hand into hers, masking his concern with a smile and warm compliments over the meal. She nodded to his words, but her gaze was unfocused and her hand cold.

As she was serving a steaming peach cobbler, there came a knock on the door, and the vicar let himself in. “I could smell the aroma of your cooking halfway across the village, Wife Robichaud.”

The formal way of addressing a young woman was one from the distant days of yesteryear, but Henri felt pride and even affirmation of himself as he stood to greet the vicar.
Wife Robichaud
. “You honor us with your coming, Jean Ricard.”