The Sacred Shore (9 page)

“I thought perhaps I had been so branded by years of wandering that I would never belong anywhere.” Nicole surprised herself, both by the secrets she confessed and the ease with which she spoke. “Even before I knew how to put this into words, I felt as though I had never really had any sense of home, anywhere.”

With Guy's paddle again suspended in midair, he paused, this time turning to study her. His gaze said he was seeing her not as the child he had known, but as the woman she had become. Nicole went on, “When the letter arrived and you decided to return to Acadia, and then again when Papa spoke with you about the treasure, I felt as though I had finally found a purpose, something to do with my life. I would travel up, I would bring back your report, I would carry the treasure. If I cannot have a home, then at least I can scout for the clan.” She took a deep breath at the effort of revealing her innermost thoughts. “Perhaps I will never find a place where I belong, but at least I can still have a life of worth.”

“I hope,” Guy said quietly, “the future proves you wrong.”

She was saved the need to respond by Pascal's saying, “Papa, the bayou ends up ahead.”

“No, it doesn't,” Nicole answered, pointing. “Between the two trees there.”

Both men showed astonishment. “In there?”

Her terse nod was the answer. She felt herself tensing as they approached the pair of giant cypress, both so thick three men could not link hands around either base. The roots appeared to join in a snakelike tangle. But on closer inspection, a sliver of open water appeared between them, scarcely broader than the skiff.

The branches overhead became so intertwined the day grew dim like twilight. The water broadened once they had passed the trees, but the light remained as dusk. The bayou opened farther still, until it was twice the boat's length from bank to bank, almost as broad as the Vermilion in front of the village. But the water here was utterly quiet, the silence broken only by a pair of hunting hawks. Where the Vermilion banks boasted grassy slopes and wild flowers, here the bayou was edged with black mud and roots, the water as dark as the banks. High branches clustered overhead, filtering out all wind and almost all light. The two men looked about in astonishment. This was an unfriendly, hostile place, a world utterly different from the light-filled delta where they lived.

They rounded a gloomy bend, and the water broadened yet farther. Faint sounds carried in the still air, men calling out, and raucous laughter. Guy's shoulders stiffened as they heard a fiddle strike a tune. Nicole understood perfectly. This was not the sound of festivities at the end of a hard day's work.

“Hold there!” A figure rose from his place by a pair of fishing poles, drawing up a rifle and fumbling for the hammer. As one, Guy and his boy reached and pulled up their own long-barreled hunting rifles. The man froze in midmotion.

Nicole was the one who called out a response. “I seek Jean Dupree!”

“Nicole?” The man squinted across the broad black waters. “That you,
cher
?”

Another figure, stocky and squat, stepped from the gloom. “You know better than to bring strangers out here!” His voice held fierce anger.

“I have nothing to say to you, Daniel!” It pleased her to feel the rush of fury burn so harsh she could not be frightened. She gripped the gunnel with both hands and shrilled over the waters, “You are the reason I had to come here at all!”

“Nicole?” A third man joined them at the water's edge, taller than either of the others. “What are you thinking of, bringing outsiders here?” Jean Dupree sounded incredulous.

“I needed to see for myself!” Tears of rage and sorrow burned hot behind her eyes, but she held them back by will alone. “I could not believe that your love was so small, and your will so weak!”

Jean Dupree glanced at the sharp-faced man standing next to him. “I came back here because you said it was over.”

“It is over because you make it so!” She did not care that all the men were staring at her, did not care who heard or what was said later. All the entreaties she had planned to speak, all the last efforts she had hoped would win the love of her life to her side, everything was lost. By choosing to be with these ruffians, Jean Dupree had confirmed that he cared more for the dark side of his own nature than he did for her.

The future they could have had together was ashes in Nicole's heart. “You refuse to see that these men are evil! This Daniel destroys everything he touches! Even his shadow is poison. And he will make you into a fiend just like himself!”

Daniel Lafoe's features twisted into their accustomed snarl. Reaching over, he demanded of the first man, “Give me your gun.”

“No!” Jean Dupree stepped between the two of them. “Nicole, go! Leave immediately! You are not welcome here!”

The older man snarled a French epithet. “Get out of my way, Jean!”

“You will not harm her!” Jean Dupree squared off against the smaller man, his fists large as mallets. “Let us be, Daniel. I will make her leave.”

The man, obviously not accustomed to being crossed, muttered, “Better you leave with her.” He turned away. “Go and hide yourself in a woman's skirts.”

Jean Dupree's voice trembled with controlled rage as he turned back to Nicole. “You were wrong to come like this, Nicole.”

“I was wrong to ever become involved with you,” she lashed back. “I was wrong to ever think you would be worthy of more than scorn.”

His voice became menacing through the gloom. “This is why you came, to push us even further apart?”

“No. I came because …” And just as suddenly as it had ignited, her rage was gone. And with it all hope, all caring. Nicole slumped over an empty heart. “I came for no reason at all.”

“Go home, Nicole. I will see you—”

“No, Jean. You will never see me again.” She pointed downriver, and the two men immediately turned the boat to begin their return. “This is a sorry end to what never should have begun. Good-bye, Jean. Forever.”

Chapter 9

Catherine felt as though she were two people. One stood by the kitchen window, making dinner and listening as Andrew and Charles walked back and forth and argued quietly in the front garden. The other person seemed to be watching herself as she worked. She studied her flour-covered hands, rough and hardened, as though they belonged to another. Two sets of hands filled her vision and her mind. One picked up the rolling pin and pressed the dough upon the table. The other recalled a day some twenty years earlier, as she had fastened a ribbon into her hair and listened to the music of her wedding trilling in the air. It had been a strange day, her wedding—a lively village festival, yet carrying a martial air in keeping with Andrew's position as a British officer. She had walked down a row of saber-wielding soldiers to where her Andrew waited, tall and proud in his uniform. Silver trumpets had heralded the day and the time to come, joyful and foreboding all at once. Catherine sighed over the young girl and all her hopes and fears, and felt the past push hard against her.

Now angry tones drifted in through her open window, forcing her attention upon the present outside her kitchen. Charles nearly shouted, “I fail to see why you resist my decision to go in search of your daughter.”

Andrew's tone did not meet that of his brother, neither in hardness nor in volume. Only someone who knew him as well as Catherine would fathom his turmoil. She knew his heart as well as she knew her own. It was for both of them that he answered firmly, “First of all, brother, the decision is not yours to make. And secondly, our daughter is here with us now.”

Charles's strident voice told better than words that he was used to having his own way. “You know perfectly well what I mean!”

“Listen, my brother. Are you listening? I don't mean just hearing the words. I mean hearing what I am saying and what I am not saying. You owe me this much, if I am to speak at all. Because it is the only way you will ever understand how much it costs me to speak of this.”

Catherine put down her rolling pin and went to check that the pots were not boiling over. She pulled them farther from the flames so they would only simmer. Then she returned to the window. She wanted to give full attention to what was said next.

“All right. Yes,” Charles was saying as he heaved a great sigh. “I will listen. Speak away.”

“Thank you.” Now the two brothers were seated side by side on the bench, positioned so it would catch the afternoon sun. Their garden was the first in the village to lose its snow, the first to bloom. This early spring day was warm enough for the brothers to sit in shirt sleeves. Andrew continued in a voice as controlled as it was quiet. “In the early days, we tried to make connections with the Acadians in every place we knew the boats landed. We had agreed to be conduits for correspondence between those scattered to the winds. Almost no mail ever arrived, I am sorry to say. And what news we did receive was not good.”

“Perhaps it was because you did not go through official sources.”

“But we did, brother. We did. You have met Catherine's father. John Price was the garrison's notary and a friend of the governor. He used his official position to garner information, which was refused to all but a few. What we learned was, as I said, not good.” Andrew paused a long moment, long enough for Catherine to be very glad she had sent Anne off on an errand with Grandfather Price to pick up a ham offered by one of the more distant farms. Andrew finally continued, “Five of the eight ships that sailed from our end of Cobequid Bay were sent to the colony of Maryland. Four of them were lost to a great storm.”

“Oh no.” Charles's groan held, in a moment, the despair that Andrew and Catherine had felt and fought for nearly a score of years.

“I beg you, brother, don't mention any of this to Anne. Your arrival is causing her enough distress as it is. We have tried to shelter her from as much of this as we could.” Andrew paused. “Where was I?”

“The storm.”

“Yes. Four of five vessels lost there. Three other vessels from this end of Cobequid Bay, I regret to say, we were never able to determine their destinations. We fear it is because they were lost in storms as well, and the officials prefer to keep all this tragedy secret. There was outrage over the actions they took here, expressed at the highest levels. Every new disaster that befell the Acadians only fueled the fire. We heard that one entire convoy bound for the African colonies never arrived. I am certain the officials would have done their best to keep this also secret, rather than cast yet another dark mark upon their actions.”

There was a long silence, one filled with the unspeakable tragedy, then Andrew continued softly, “Four other vessels from neighboring regions were sent to Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean. We wrote two dozen letters and received only one reply. There was trouble between the colony and the new arrivals. Apparently they were not able to acclimatize and suffered from both heat and disease. Many begged their way onto vessels bound for France.”

Charles's own voice began to resemble the quiet flatness of his brother's. “You wrote there as well, I suppose.”

“Orleans, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Nantes, Paris. All the cities known to have accepted Acadians. Correspondence was very difficult because of the war. But friends within the church attempted to help with our search. No identification was ever made of an Henri and Louise Robichaud.”

“What about asking after your daughter herself?”

“Think a moment, Charles. If you had smuggled aboard an English baby, after everything the English had inflicted on these people, would you admit it?”

“No. Of course. I see.”

“You would change her name and declare her as your own.” Andrew's voice broke slightly. “So, you see, we do not even know under what name our daughter has been raised—if she indeed is still alive.”

This time the sigh was quieter, longer, sadder. “I regret that my coming has brought you distress.”

“Much of life is like that, I find—happiness and sadness so intermingled it is hard to know one from the other.” Andrew's voice strengthened. “Nonetheless, I am glad you came, Charles. Very glad.”

Catherine returned to her bread making. She found herself wondering at her own inner sense of peace. If someone had come to her the day before Charles's arrival and announced that all the memories and wounds from eighteen years ago would be brought back to the forefront, she would have fled in terror. Yet now she felt no pain. Sorrow, yes, but even this was held within by a peace so strong it could not be denied. The calm of her heart made no sense, the harmony almost belied the words she heard spoken just beyond her window. Yet here it was, surrounding her and comforting her.

Catherine placed the dough on the baking pan and slid it in close to the coals. Their dinner would be a far cry from the fine meals Charles no doubt was used to. Yet even here there was no sense of shame or distress. Their life was what it was, and despite the hardship and the absence of many comforts, it was a good life indeed. She had a home, she had a husband and a daughter, she had a purpose that only serving God could bring. She had love, she had contentment. No grand palace or earthly power could compare with her own wealth. Even now, as she brushed flour from her work-hardened hands, she knew a rightness to her life and her place upon this earth.

It was the most natural thing in the world to close her eyes and pray for guidance. The only conscious response she was aware of was the smell of bread and the quiet simmer of pots. And the peace that overlaid everything that day. Catherine opened her eyes and accepted the message. So long as that quiet rest remained, she could face the unknown.

A pair of familiar voices sounded from down the lane. She went back to the window and called out a welcome and a warning both. “Father, Anne, hurry now! Dinner is almost ready.”