The Sacred Shore (5 page)

Nicole began walking again. “You wrote them?”

“So many letters. Through every contact we could muster. We even asked the family I worked for in Charleston to write on our behalf to the garrison commander at Fort Edward, and even to the military chief in Halifax. No answer was ever received. None. We are certain the letters did not arrive. We have heard the same from so many others of our people. Letters sent and never answered. It is an additional price we still pay to ensure our banishment.”

“English,” Nicole whispered. “I am English.”

“You are both,” Henri prompted. “You are French, more Acadian than most of those who claim the right by blood. But, yes, your first parents were English.
Are
English, as I can only hope your father survived.”

“You think he might have died?”

“Of one thing I am so certain I know this in my bones, daughter. Andrew Harrow would never have taken up arms against the peaceful villagers of Minas or anywhere else. What may have happened to him for disobeying such an order, I am afraid to even guess.”

“Papa, why did you not tell me all this until now?” The pain in her voice carried far more weight than the words themselves.

Henri sighed deeply. “Yes, my beloved Nicole,” he began, “you have every right to wonder about that.” He paused for a moment. “In those earliest days of our banishment, only a handful of our closest family members knew at all. And the danger from the English did not cease when we were expelled. So your English roots were a carefully guarded secret. The danger of this becoming common knowledge was not simply to us but to our whole clan. During our years of wandering, the danger continued.”

Henri paused again to search Nicole's face. “When we settled here, your mother and I were also settled in our hearts. God had given us a peace and an acceptance of His will that led us to feel He would show us the right time and place to tell you.” With his tone as gentle as he could make it, Henri finished, “And we believe that has happened.”

Henri could hear Nicole's deep sigh. She did not speak but turned to walk on.

They continued to where the village ended and the lane joined the trail north to Opelousas. Silently they turned back. Before them the houses glowed with candles and fires, the lights soft and yellow and welcoming. Henri felt his heart swell with thanks for the gift of a place to call his own. He murmured, “Home.”

Nicole sighed again beside him and whispered a word of her own, disbelief still edging her voice. “English.”

Chapter 4

The ball in Halifax was intended to be in his honor. Charles had no choice but to attend. He stepped from the governor's carriage, nodded in response to the honor guard's noisy salute, and climbed the steps to the governor's mansion. The house was a rather grand affair relative to the rest of the colony, stone and stalwart. So was the ball, full of swirling gowns and powdered wigs and loud talk and shrill voices that probed at him constantly. Charles danced with the older ladies only, avoiding flirtatious glances from women half his age.

When the musicians paused, Charles forced himself from circle to circle, restless and impatient. It had been four days since his arrival, and still no word had come from Winston Groom. Four days he could ill afford to spend waiting and wandering about this unkempt outpost.

One of the officials' wives approached with a veiled smile. For the life of him, he could not recall her name. “Lord Charles, would you be so kind as to accompany me for a breath of air?”

“Delighted,” he replied with a bow. In truth, he did not mind. He had been expecting such an emissary to be sent. His presence all the way from England was too great a mystery. But perhaps this bit of digging for information could work both ways. With any luck, he might discover some yet unknown piece of his own.

The woman waited until they had stepped onto one of the small upstairs balconies to say, “You have the entire colony abuzz, Lord Charles.”

“No doubt.” Through the windows of the double-doors, Charles watched as the sentry stepped over to stand duty directly in front of them. Clearly this was a calculated moment, one intended to politely wrest some truth from him. So he made known that he was willing to speak openly by responding, “With unrest brewing in the American colonies south of here, I am certain to be raising all sorts of rumors and concerns.”

“You must forgive me, m'lord, I am but an addle-headed woman.” She had a sweet voice and a winning smile that belied eyes hard as agate. “I know only one way to speak, and that is directly.”

He gave a second bow. “I am at your service, my lady.”

“Tell me, why are you here?”

“I have several reasons. One for public propagation, the other strictly private.”

“Oh, you mustn't worry. I am very good at holding secrets.” The smile came easily to her. “I shall only tell those who truly must know.”

Despite himself, he liked her and her direct manner. “Then I shall entrust you with both. The first is, His Majesty was kind enough to grant me deed to lands south of here.”

“Yes, indeed. And where, may I ask?”

“Along the westerly borders of Massachusetts Colony.”

“Forgive me, sir, but Halifax is a circuitous route to take to Boston. Especially when it means braving late-winter storms in the North Atlantic.”

“Yes. But if I am to manage one colonial estate, why not two? I hear there is land to be had near Halifax.”

“That there is. Half the land once tilled by the Acadians still lies fallow, though more settlers arrive every day from Scotland and Wales. Even Europe.” The gaze turned piercing. “Not to mention those fleeing the coming troubles in the American colonies.”

Charles understood perfectly. “The king did not send me to spy upon his subjects here, my lady. Nor does he question your loyalty.”

She relaxed a trifle. “Do you know, Lord Charles, I almost believe you.”

“I am no more comfortable with convoluted conversation than you, my lady. A worse diplomat or spy the king could not have chosen. Believe me, if he were to ask my opinion of the loyalties in these parts, my response would be, I have no opinion at all.”

Below them, on Halifax's central avenue, a mule skinner cracked his long whip and shouted so loud both their glances turned downward. Charles counted sixteen slow-moving mules pulling a wagon piled so high with bales he could almost reach out and touch the top. When he turned back, he found the woman's gaze had turned more kind. The lady asked, “And the second reason?”

“The second.” He could not help but sigh. “I have a brother. My only living kin. The last I knew of him was from this region.”

For once the lady's practiced demeanor faltered. “I may have heard something …”

It was his turn to smile. “Come, come, my lady. We promised one another honesty.”

“You are right, of course.” She bowed her acceptance. “There have been rumors of this also swirling about since your arrival. Something to do with a former captain of the King's Own Regiment, one who resigned his commission only because he was threatened with court-martial and disgrace.”

Though the news was old, still to have it spoken of aloud pierced his soul. “All true, I fear. I have had agents inquiring after Andrew for several years now. He did indeed resign. Eighteen years ago. It happened just after the Acadian expulsion.”

A cloud flitted across her features. “A horrible time.”

“You were here?”

“I had arrived the year before.” She shuddered lightly. “I shall carry the sound of those pitiful screaming women and the smell of their burning fields and homes to my grave.”

“Andrew left the army. He went to seminary in Boston. The head of the seminary believes he returned here.”

“A minister,” the lady murmured.

“I must find him.”

The corseted lady found her smile once more. “Rumors are that England's most eligible earl braved the North Atlantic in winter because he wished to take a colonist as a wife.”

Charles could not repress his own smile. “Hardly. I have been married twice, and lost both ladies to illness. I have no wish to know a further such trial.”

“That news will drive our maidens into mourning,” she said archly.

“Why—” His question was broken off by the sound of scuffling beyond the balcony door. Charles recognized the figure trying to make his way past the sentry, and hastened to open the door. “Let the man pass.”

“But the general himself—”

“Let him pass, I say. He means no harm. He is known to me.”

The sentry stood aside, and Winston Groom hurried out. He looked quickly at the woman standing by the balcony railing and gave them both a sharp bow. “M'lord. Lady Brighton.”

Charles demanded, “You have news?” Winston glanced hesitantly at the lady, his shrewd eyes shifting. Charles barked, “Never mind her. Tell me, man! Do you have news?”

“Better than that, sir. I have found your brother.”

Charles took a deep breath, his hand going up unconsciously to his brow as though wiping away long days of anguish. When he spoke, it was one emotion-fraught word. “Excellent.”

He started from the balcony, then halted to demand, “Is he married?”

“He is. As you said, to a local woman.” Groom was clearly very proud of ferreting out such information. “Her father—”

Impatiently he waved further commentary aside and demanded, “Do they have children?”

Winston Groom looked puzzled, shifted from one foot to the other, then answered, “One child. A girl.”

Charles stifled a blast of disappointment. A girl. He had hoped for at least one son to have been born to Andrew. Well, it could not be helped. He moved for the doors, ignoring the curious stares. “Then there is not a moment to be lost.”

Henri sat at the borders of the gathering. It was a strange position for the clan leader to take, but he had never been comfortable where all eyes might rest upon him. Whenever he could, he preferred to sit back and let the talk swirl around him. Henri spent most of such times whittling kindling wood into toys for the village children. He had practiced his art over many such nights, carving for hours as his peers talked and argued. After setting out the main questions, rarely did he speak, until it was time to decide and act. And then often Louise would speak for him, directing the flow of discussion or cutting off someone who went on too long.

Henri had long ago discovered two important facts about such gatherings. The first was that for many elders, having a chance to speak their mind was their primary concern. The second was that the less he spoke, the more people listened to what he had to say. Besides, much of what he learned was wisdom garnered from people who did not think he was listening. This night he was whittling a wagon and a high-prancing horse. Over the twenty years that he had been clan leader, his whittling had grown from something to keep his hands busy into work that some called art.

Responsibility for his people had fallen on his shoulders the year before the expulsion. But the folk he now called clan had little or no connection to those Acadian villagers. Most of the original clan remained scattered to the four winds. Henri eventually had accepted leadership of all who gathered around him, all who did not wander further to seek comfort and loved ones elsewhere. It did not matter where they had called home before the expulsion. These Frenchmen were his people, by right of origin, time, and hardship.

The fifth year after their expulsion, word had arrived to the group of Acadians in Carolina that the Spanish had taken over control of the former French colony of Louisiana. It had mattered little to the local citizens of New Orleans, as France and Spain had been allies for centuries. But the other news that had spread through the Acadian clan was extraordinary, the first ray of hope since their tragic departure.

The new Spanish rulers recognized that outside a tiny sliver of Mississippi River borderland, much of their province remained utterly untamed. They had sent out a proclamation that swept around the entire globe—to Africa, South America, and all the colonies. Any Acadian who wished might come to the Louisiana delta and receive seed and tools and land. Spanish ships were ordered to stand ready to transport all who decided to come.

And come they did. Land-hungry Acadians flocked in from everywhere, shipload after shipload, desperate at long last for the chance to call someplace home.

Here and now, eighteen years after the expulsion, they still were arriving, their journeys delayed by the need for money, or simply because they had been so lost it had taken the welcome news this long to reach them. Eighteen years.

Henri paused in his whittling and listened as the talk moved on from illness in Plaquemine to crop rotation. Their village of Vermilionville planted mostly cotton, sugarcane, vegetables, and indigo. The demand for indigo dye was growing, and one elder suggested giving over all available land to the crop. Henri was against it. The village had finally become self-supporting. They grew almost everything they needed. They even had their own blacksmith and weavers. But the elder was voted down before Henri felt the need to argue against him. He returned his attention to the tiny wooden horse's tossing mane.