The Meeting Place (9 page)

Here in the church almost the entire Fort Edward community was present to greet her, standing in honor of Lieutenant Harrow and his bride. Here the aisle she walked was bound by friendship and the ties of a lifetime. She found her smile coming more readily, springing from the gladness of a full heart. And there again at the aisle's end stood the man she loved, answering her smile with one of his own.

The days and nights of wondering how it would be to stand before the vicar and be joined to another for a lifetime, of hoping and yearning once she had met this man beside her, all of it combined into a single moment. Catherine scarcely seemed to have time to breathe, it happened so swiftly.

Then the vicar smiled at them both and said the words she had dreamed of for so long: “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

Chapter 7

Berry basket in hand, Catherine climbed the steep trail leading up and away from the village, warmed by the memory of breakfast and the talk with Andrew. The early September sky was as overcast and dull as the bay down below her. The brisk wind smelled not of the coming rain but of winter. As though each leaden day was merely a forerunner of the long cold months soon to come.

But today it did not matter. Today she was comforted by the fact of being Mrs. Catherine Harrow. She had been married two months and two days, and already it was hard to recall another existence. Her earlier years seemed to belong to someone else entirely.

Andrew was off now on another patrol. She had stood at the door of their cottage and waved her handkerchief as he had led the patrol down the winding lane and out of the village. She had felt proud, not only because of the way he had sat tall upon his shining steed, with the scabbard gleaming and the flags fluttering and the men lined up behind him. Her heart had been filled by their discussion at the kitchen table and by Andrew's special farewell gift.

Catherine arrived at a level place in the trail and paused to catch her breath. She turned and looked back, pleased at how high she had already climbed. To her right, the church steeple pointed its solitary finger toward heaven. The town of Edward spiraled out tightly from the church, upon lanes that rose and fell along the uneven terrain. She could see her own little cottage there, and she felt a warm sense of pride, and of belonging. Their home.

The lane broadened as it left the hamlet and approached the fort. Although Fort Edward was only an offshoot of the much larger Annapolis Royal garrison, still it seemed quite large enough to her. The outer bastions were of local rock, heaped into triangular escarpments three times the height of a man. These had been covered with sod, then grass, so that now it looked like a hill which had risen in unnaturally straight lines and clean angles. Within the outer walls rose stone-and-log lodges, narrow and long. Her gaze lingered upon the garrison's supply house, where her father worked. As he often did, he had joined them for breakfast that morning, something which had not pleased Catherine, since it was Andrew's last meal with her for a while. But upon John Price's departure their special discussion had begun. So Catherine was now glad for the interruption.

John Price noticed nothing amiss with her initial welcome, and saw no reason not to linger over his cup of hickory-laced coffee. He was very proud of his new son-in-law. “I see from the duty roster you're off again today.”

“East to Cobequid Town, a stop at the Chelmsford fort, then on up around the bay's northern side. We've had word of some bandits raiding the Tatamagouche Road.”

“More Indian nonsense, no doubt. Allied to renegade Frenchies, you mark my words.” Subconsciously John Price stretched out his leg and kneaded his old wound. “How long will you be away?”

“Ten days, perhaps twelve.” At this Catherine had turned away, busying herself at the dish basin and trying not to think about the lonely days ahead.

“I must tell you, sir,” Andrew added carefully, “that we have no concrete evidence the French are taking part in these disturbances.”

“Only because they're slippery as eels, the lot of them.” Price clattered his cup down upon the saucer. “The French are our natural enemies.”

“Not here,” Andrew murmured.

“Here, there—it makes no difference. The English have fought the French for nigh on four hundred years. You of all people should know that.”

“I do know it very well, sir.” Andrew had adopted the formal tone he often used around his father-in-law. “I only question it in the very special circumstances of Acadia. The French have lived here on Cobequid Bay for over a century and a half, and in all that time there has never been any conflict between their settlers and ours. Yes, we have battled their fortresses, but the settlers and the villages have remained—”

“Enemies now and enemies for all time,” Price barked. “I can see them now, them and their foppish ways, gathered in some hall and plotting our demise.”

“Sir …” Andrew paused, then said simply, “No doubt there is some truth in what you say.”

“Of course there is.” John Price rose from his chair and headed for the door. “Well, I shall let you get on with your preparations. Good day, daughter. Thank you for the repast.”

When the door had shut behind him, Andrew said quietly, “And his is the opinion of almost every officer in my regiment.”

Catherine turned back, not at the words but the sadness in his tone. “Will there be—war?” She stumbled over the dreaded word.

“There already is. Not here, but in the homelands.” Speaking thusly seemed to tire him. “The latest dispatches are full of new conflicts. France is up to her old tricks, encroaching on British territory, bombarding Gibraltar, making false accusations in the courts of our allies.” Andrew looked at her with helpless eyes. “I had hoped and prayed none of this would touch us. I hope it still.” He shook his head. “I can't think of a single Frenchman here in Acadia who is an enemy.”

She did not know what to say. The talk of war, even one separated from them by a storm-crossed journey of four long months, troubled her so. Catherine crossed the room and settled into the chair still warm from her father's presence. She reached out and took her husband's hand.

When she did not speak, Andrew said softly, “Tell me what you will do when I am away.”

“Miss you,” she said, and felt hollowness creep higher in her chest.

“Tell me,” he said, softer now. “Let me carry with me an image of where you will be and what you will do. It makes the parting go easier.”

She looked at him, smiled into that familiar face, and shook her head. “I will clean up the breakfast dishes and sweep the floors and then watch through the window for you to pass.”

“Ah, good. I shall make it a point for the parade to be as smart and polished as a new penny.”

“I shall go and stand on the porch and wave my handkerchief,” she said. “Even though it will hurt and worry me to see you go, I will give you a smile to carry with you.”

“In my heart,” he said and raised her hand to kiss it gently. “What then?”

“Then I will come back and sit right here to read the Bible.” The words were easily spoken, somehow lightening the burden of her coming sorrow. “I find great comfort in the Book. It tells me that God is here with me when you can't be. And I will pray for you. At least in this way I am helping to bring you safely home.”

Andrew's gaze joined hers to look at the Bible by the window. In the gray light of a cloudy morning the leather cover gleamed soft and warm. “I've never given much thought to the Book outside Sunday gatherings. The sight of you reading by the fire of an evening …” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “It has warmed me.”

“Me as well.” She had wanted to tell him all that had been growing within her but felt as though it was still too new, too fresh to fit well with words. “I don't know if I have ever really understood the Book before, not with an open mind and heart.” When that felt inadequate, she added, “Somehow I feel as though I am reading it for us. For our marriage.”

Andrew did not question her as she half expected. Instead he nodded slowly, then said, “Perhaps when things calm during the winter months, we can read it together.”

“I would like that,” she said, her heart full of love for this man. “Very much.”

He nodded again, but his gaze remained absent. “All I really know of the Bible is how it fit into my family's tradition.”

Catherine waited a moment, then asked, “What was it like inside your family, Andrew?”

“Cold. Especially after my mother died. You know about that, of course.”

She nodded but said nothing. That much Andrew had spoken of. When he was eleven, how his mother had died giving birth to a little girl who also had not survived.

“After Mother passed on, Father retreated even further from me. He lived for his horses and his hounds. I was sent off to boarding school, where I stayed until I reached my seniority. My brother hated my being around. It was one of the defining parts of my life, like the sun rising in the east. He hated me, and I was happier being away. Especially after Mother passed on.”

For the first time Catherine thought she could ask questions. Now it seemed as though there was not so much pain in his eyes and voice. As though within their marriage he felt the same distance from his past as she did from hers. “It must have been hard, though, giving up a castle and all the servants and such a rich life,” she commented.

“I do not miss it a whit, not an instant. A castle is no more than a tomb of many rooms when there is only coldness and anger.”

“Your father must have loved you.”

“Oh, I'm sure he did, in his own way. But Father was as trapped in tradition and as bound by his past as your own father is by his feelings for the French. I hope I am not offending you when I say that, my dear.”

“No. It is true. Sad, but true.”

“Since marrying you I have begun to see how these same chains of tradition have trapped me as well.” Andrew was speaking more slowly now, his brow furrowed with the effort of seeking his way through unfamiliar terrain. “There is so much of my life I never bothered to question until now. For generations beyond count, the younger Harrow sons have all gone into the military. Their portraits decorate the front staircase of Harrow Hall. They make up one of my clearest childhood memories, climbing the stairs at night, followed by the fierce stares of these men, with their medals and their prancing horses.”

Catherine remained caught by two words that she quietly repeated: “Harrow Hall.”

“Of course I attended Eton, and then did a brief stint at Oxford. Every Harrow minor—that's what the younger sons were called. Harrow minors. We all followed that course, and straight from there into the King's Own.” His gaze had turned as bleak as his voice. “It is only now, when I sit by the hearth of my own home with my own wife, that I find a need to question this road. One chosen for me by others, long before I had a power of choice of my own.”

His candid speech granted Catherine the chance to say what had long rested in the dark recesses of her own heart. “When I think of your family and all you once had, sometimes I feel so inadequate.” She could not help but glance around their simple little cottage. “I'm just a colonial lass, I was taught by the vicar's wife, I've only been to Halifax twice in my entire life, I've never seen England, I don't—”

“Catherine, my dear sweet angel, look at me.” His eyes were startling in their clarity. Nothing but truth could exist within his gaze when he stared at her as he did now. “I have never felt as complete, nor even dreamed that I could know such happiness, as I do here in the home you have made for us.”

Catherine carried the warmth of those words with her the rest of the way up the trail. The River Minas was split into a series of streams that she could easily cross. The babbling water seemed to agree that yes, of course, she missed her husband. But she was also happy. There was nothing unusual with feeling the two emotions at the same time, sorrow over his absence yet blissful over how their lives were joining.

The trail meandered through trees as ancient and gnarled as time itself. Roots crabbed about the stony soil, then dug through rocks with stubborn determination. Beyond the old growth there came the sound of a merry waterfall, which invited her to stop for a drink. Then she moved over the final rise and stepped into the meadow. The berry bushes were across the meadow, just where she remembered and just as full as she had imagined.

But to her surprise, there was another figure pulling at the ripe fruit. The same Frenchwoman Catherine recalled from her last visit, the day before her wedding. With Andrew's words about the Acadia French people in her mind, she walked across the meadow, her hand raised in greeting. The young woman looked kind and lovely. It seemed not only natural to walk toward her, it felt right. Only later did she wonder at her boldness.