The Meeting Place (36 page)

He asked softly, “What is this?”

“Good morning, my love.” She looked down at the infant. “The baby seems fine this morning. But already the heat is so oppressive.”

“You were singing. I heard it myself.” He reached out one work-hardened finger and touched the side of her face. “And you are smiling.”

“Yes.”

He seemed at a loss for words. He stared at her, at the baby, and his eyes followed the little hand curling around one of her own fingers. He directed his words and his sorrow at the tiny face. “Do you think you can teach me how to sing—to smile again?”

She shook her head, slowly, loving him so fully it felt that her heart might burst. No sorrow could erase this, not so long as she held fast to God. “No. I can't,” she whispered.

He nodded, his face looking hollowed by the asking and by her reply. “I have felt as though I left my laughter there on the side of Cobequid Bay.”

“I cannot give it back to you, my husband.” She waited until he lifted his dark gaze, then continued, “But God can.”

“God,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“He spoke to you in the night.” It was not a question.

She gave the tiniest hint of a nod, then asked, “You will meet with the lieutenant later about supplies?”

“As I do every day.” There was a young English officer onboard who spoke French and who had confided to Henri that he had studied in Paris. He was the most sympathetic of all the English and had volunteered to act as liaison between captor and captive.

“Ask him for a pen and paper, please.”

Henri's eyes widened. “You are going to write a letter.”

“Yes.”

“It is a good idea, Louise. A very good idea.”

“I will make it a journal of our little one,” Louise said, pleased that he did not object.

Henri glanced at the officers gathered on the bridge above and murmured almost to himself, “Perhaps he would hide this in his kit and post it when we make landfall.”

Louise felt tears sting her eyelids. She could hear a trace of her beloved Henri's strength in those words. She said, “I will tell Catherine of her child. I will try to make the baby live for her upon the page.”

“We must set up a chain of communication with the other landings,” Henri said, his tone warming with the plan.

“I will make her understand that I am giving her little one all the love and caring I would give to my own—” Louise's voice caught and she took a breath, a long one, and willed her heart to settle. “I will write Catherine and give her all the comfort I am able.”

“We will establish contact with all Acadians.” Henri was no longer speaking just to her, but to the future. The power of being able to think beyond the moment granted a new spark to his gaze, renewed force to his voice. “Perhaps there is someone still back in Minas, someone who will act as a go-between. Someone who …” His eyes widened again.

“Catherine,” Louise finished the thought, her heart leaping at the realization. A frail and tenuous thread that might yet connect them with faraway little Antoinette. “Of course. Catherine would be willing to act as our conduit. I am confident of it.”

“She and her Andrew as well. I am certain he will want to help us.” Henri reached for his wife's hand. “Louise, you have given me hope.”

“Not I, my husband,” she said, and felt tears course down her cheeks at the sight of her husband's smile. “But God.”

Chapter 32

“Evening to you, sir.”

“What? Oh, yes, yes.” John Price had difficulty recalling exactly who the tall soldier was, though he had seen him day in and day out for these long years. Of course. He remembered now. “Evening, Sergeant Major.”

No wonder the man grimaced as he offered a stiff salute. This soldier had held his son-in-law in particular regard. As had so many of the other soldiers, all of whom walked under a cloud these days. The soldier offered, “Grim night of it, sir.”

“Indeed.” Though there was not a cloud in the sky. Neither man spoke of the weather. “A grim night it is.”

John Price left the fort and trudged the dusty lane homeward. A grim night. That day Andrew Harrow's replacement had arrived, bringing with him the papers formally severing Harrow's ties to the regiment. A grim night indeed.

But the fact that his son-in-law, a young man John Price regarded with an affection he would shower upon his own flesh and blood, had left the regiment under a cloud was not the only reason Price walked stooped and burdened. In fact, it was not the principal reason at all.

Overshadowing everything was the devastating news of his granddaughter, a wound still raw after three weeks of torment. They had searched for Elspeth as much as they could, given the fact that their country was now formally at war with the French. But these discreet inquiries had brought nothing but further stains upon Harrow's record.

No one could tell them which ship had taken away the people of Minas village. Vessels from Cobequid Bay were bound for Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Chesapeake, Charleston, New Orleans, Dieppe, Bayonne, Bordeaux, La Rochelle—even one to a colony on the coast of West Africa. John Price had spent the previous nights preparing letters to his counterparts in each of the American cities, then readying himself for the process of going through official channels for the French colonies and ports. Nothing could be done until the hostilities were over, but what little word he had received up to now confirmed that in truth almost nothing would be possible afterward. The ships had been crammed with people so hastily that no record had been made of which families were sent where. The villagers had truly been scattered to the winds. And his baby granddaughter with them.

Yet even the aching void caused by the loss of his grandchild was not the worst of it.

Catherine had been unable to explain why she had wept so, that day of their arrival in Edward. Her sobs had been her only response to his increasingly irate demands for an explanation. Surely it was not concern over a few French villagers that caused her such brokenhearted woe. Surely not. They had ridden thus through the village, she crying and he shouting, until the din had brought Andrew to the doorway of their cottage. An Andrew he had never seen before.

Mirrored in the young man he had seen a shattered tragedy, one far beyond what was merited by losing his place in the regiment. After all, he was still young, he still had his health. But no. He stood supporting himself with one hand clutching the doorjamb, battered and muddied from head to foot, his dark hair bedraggled and streaming about his face. And his eyes. John Price had shuddered at the first glimpse of Andrew's eyes.

Catherine had taken one look at her husband and screamed with a force that shook her frame.
“No!”

“Elspeth, she's …” Andrew stumbled as he forced himself forward and almost pitched headlong in the dirt at the wagon's side.

“She's …”

“No!”
Catherine shoved the baby into John Price's arms and spilled from the wagon into her husband's exhausted embrace. “Oh, no, no, tell me it's not so!”

John Price looked down at the wakened fretting baby, then back to the couple clutching each other and sobbing so hard they could no longer speak. And with a rising horror he glimpsed the truth that his daughter had been unable to speak aloud. This small bundle of lightness—this frail, pinched little face—this was not his grandchild that he held in his arms.

But even that was not what troubled him the worst as John Price trudged homeward.

Three nights ago he had walked down to his daughter's cottage, drawn by his loneliness and his need for family. Despite the ire he had showered upon them, the raging, shouting fury he had shown when they had revealed how the babies had been traded, still when he had knocked upon their door, he had been greeted with quiet welcome.

Yes, there had been sorrow. Yes, their gazes had remained as wounded as their voices and their hearts. And yet, and yet. Their welcome had been calm and genuine. And forgiving. He had been ready for argument, for quarrels, for a banishment he could have carried in stubborn, angry pride. But not this. Anything but this.

Catherine had offered him a mug of cider, seated him by the fire, then returned to her place by her husband. The crib was there at her feet, little Antoinette asleep and beautiful in her frailty in the firelight. They had spoken of this or that for a few minutes, then Catherine had lifted the Book back into her lap.

“You must excuse us, Father. We take the dusk every night for our time of devotion.”

“And prayer,” Andrew had quietly added.

He had stared from one face to the other, astonished by the admission. Every word became its own question. “You? Pray? Now?”

“It is all we have,” Catherine said. She shook her head at that. “No, that is not what I mean, not at all. But we do need prayer now— more than ever.”

John Price watched as a struggle went on inside his daughter, one which forced her features to contort with the strain of seeking proper words. Andrew watched her as well, sad yet calm, seemingly willing to wait forever.

Finally Catherine said, “We are weaving together the fragments of our life. And our love. This we can only do with God's help. And His strength. And His light and love to guide us.”

Andrew reached across and took her hand. He did not speak, yet there was something in the gaze he turned on his wife, something so warm and overwhelmingly gentle that John Price had been forced to turn away. Shame had burned like acid as it poured over his heart.

The memory still brought pain as it would for all the long and lonely nights he had yet to endure.

“Good evening, sir. May I walk with you?”

“Ah, Andrew. Of course. Of course.” John Price paused long enough for the young man to catch up. Andrew carried a heavy bucket in each hand, walking carefully to keep the milk from sloshing over. “Can I help you with that?”

“Thank you, no. The two balance each other out. How are you this evening?”

John could not help but stare. “Not three days ago you were drummed from your regiment under a cloud of dishonor, and you ask
me
that?”

Andrew shrugged as much as the load would allow. “I was going to leave the regiment. I have known that for months now. It was only a question of when and how. Besides …”

“Yes?”

Andrew hesitated. “I am not sure you would wish to hear this.”

“There is almost nothing about the past few days,” John replied grimly, “which I had any interest in hearing.”

“No, I suppose not.” Carefully Andrew set his pails down upon the earth. “The day of the, well …”

The disaster
, John found himself thinking, each word a stab to his heart.
The disaster I helped to bring about
. But all he said was, “Go on.”

“General Whetlock sent me to round up a French village. He warned me that if I refused his command, I would be sent back to England in chains, there to be tried for disobeying a direct order in wartime and hanged.”

John Price clutched at his own throat, a groan all he could voice.

“I'm afraid so. Despite the general's warning, as I was leading my troop down the Annapolis Royal road, I realized I could not do it. Not for Catherine, not for my child, not for my own life. There would be casualties. It seemed inevitable. There are always some resisters. And I can't say I would have blamed them, sir. But to strike them down for defending their homes … their families … ? It was against everything I had learned in my studies of the Scriptures with Catherine. Faces of the French I had seen in the village flashed before my eyes. I wondered who among them would be left behind for the army to bury the next morning. Which wives heartbroken. Which babies left as orphans. I couldn't do it. It was wrong.”

John Price opened his mouth to object, but the words were not there. He could scarcely find the strength to draw a breath through his constricted throat. Yet there was no condemnation in Andrew's tone, and his gaze had become fixed upon a scene so distant only he could see it. Even so, the quietly spoken words rang true.
It was wrong
.