Between Two Shores

by Jocelyn Green

  Praise for Between Two Shores

  “Richly historic, even haunting, Green pens a remarkable tale of the clash of cultures and the quest for enduring love. Between Two Shores is extraordinary storytelling, showcasing an unforgettable heroine who is both fierce and a force for good in an ever-changing frontier landscape. A novel not soon forgotten.”

  —Laura Frantz, author of A Bound Heart

  “Jocelyn Green captures the tensions of war in Between Two Shores, on the field with musket and tomahawk and in the tender battlefield of the heart. With gorgeous prose that sings across the pages, vibrant characters, and a plot as unpredictable as a river voyage, Green has penned another winner for historical fiction lovers.”

  —Lori Benton, author of Many Sparrows and Burning Sky

  “Jocelyn Green has done it again with this masterful tale, Between Two Shores. She had me mesmerized from the beginning as I lived and breathed Catherine’s story of family heartbreak and resounding joy. The backdrop of the Seven Years’ War brought history and culture to life in this must-read story.”

  —Kimberley Woodhouse, bestselling author of Out of the Ashes and In the Shadow of Denali

  Books by Jocelyn Green

  The Mark of the King

  A Refuge Assured

  Between Two Shores

  © 2019 by Jocelyn Green

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1727-8

  Epigraph Scripture quotation is from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2011

  Other Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of historical reconstruction; the mention of certain historical figures is therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Jennifer Parker

  Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC

  Author is represented by Credo Communications, LLC.

  To Ann-Margret

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Between Two Shores

  Half Title Page

  Books by Jocelyn Green

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Part Two

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,

  and to give his life as a ransom for many.

  —Mark 10:45

  Prologue

  Kahnawake, Quebec

  August 1744

  “I told you, I’m not staying.” Catherine Stands-Apart drew back from her sister’s touch and planted her feet wide at the edge of their mother’s grave. The freshly turned soil pushed between her toes. “I only came to say good-bye.”

  Bright Star put her fists on her hips and frowned. She had thirteen summers to Catherine’s ten but acted as though she held all the wisdom and authority of a council full of clan mothers. “You can’t leave. This is our home.”

  Catherine’s gaze traveled across the burial ground and past cornfields to the rows of shaggy birchbark longhouses. The Mohawk village of Kahnawake was tucked between wooded hills and the southwest bank of the St. Lawrence River, opposite the island of Montreal. Beside the village was the French fort of St. Louis, where a black robe baptized Mohawks into the Catholic faith and a garrison of soldiers watched for any British who might try to attack Montreal by coming up the river.

  “Yah. It was my home.” Catherine and her sister had been born here, along with their little brother, and had lived in one of the few European-style homes suited to just one family. They had stayed there even after the divorce that sent their French-Canadian father away. He had lived nearly two miles from the village ever since.

  “You know we can’t stay alone in the house without Mother,” Bright Star said. “We must move into the longhouse with our clan. They are our family, too. We have many mothers.”

  Defiance swelled in Catherine, and she shook her head, beaded strands of hair clinking together. She had one true mother, named Strong Wind, and Strong Wind was buried here in the earth as of two sleeps ago. Despite all their efforts to revive her, she had died of the spotting sickness, along with four others from the Wolf Clan. They had caught the illness from the soldiers at the fort. Smallpox, the French called it.

  Catherine rubbed the burning from her eyelids, then peered up at her sister. “You are my family, but you will marry within a year and start your own.”

  “What about our brother?” Bright Star asked. Joseph Many Feathers, who preferred to be called by his Christian name, had only four summers and ran wild in the village.

  “He will stay with you in the longhouse with everyone else.” Catherine was fond of Joseph, but in only one or two more years, he would follow after his uncles and learn to be both hunter and warrior, gone from Kahnawake for months at a time. “He won’t miss me.”

  Bright Star’s heart-shaped face drew to a sharp point at her chin. “He will. You are his sister.”

  But Catherine felt like she couldn’t breathe every time she thought of living with five or six other families under one roof. She wasn’t used to the closeness, or the noise, or the smoke from so many fires. “I told you, I am going to live with our father. He needs me.”

  “He chose his path.”

  A sigh rose and fell in Catherine’s chest. “He did not choose for that steel trap to take off his hand.” If he had both hands, he would have been able to hunt and trap for his family, and maybe Strong Wind would not have divorced him. “You have all these people, Bright Star. Papa has no one. If you had seen him today when I told him the news about our mother—”

  “You should not have done that.”

  “He deserved to know. And I miss him.”

  He missed her too, he’d said. He needed her. She was old enough now to help him with cooking and laundry and anything else. “Come live with me again,” he’d pleaded. “You’re
as much my daughter as you were Strong Wind’s, aren’t you? You have just as much French blood in your veins as Mohawk. I would never take you away from your mother, ma chère, but now—must I live alone to the end of my days?” That didn’t seem fair.

  “His blood runs in my veins, and I choose to live with him. Awiyo. It is good.” Her eyes were the same blue as her father’s, a sign they belonged together. Once Catherine was there to help, he wouldn’t drink so much anymore. Life wouldn’t be nearly as hard for him.

  Beyond Bright Star, women stooped in the fields, black heads shining in the sun as they harvested corn. Children ran shrieking through the stalks to chase away the crows that swooped and squawked overhead. Catherine would never do that again if she lived with Papa. He had a different idea of how to live. He said she could help him run his trading post. She could help him with so many things! She would not forget Strong Wind by living with him, but perhaps she could forget this twisting pain of looking for her mother around every corner and never finding her.

  Sweat beaded on Bright Star’s brow, and her dark eyes glittered. Bits of corn silk stuck to the fringe of her buckskin dress from her own labor in the fields. “Your place is here, with your mother’s people. Don’t you remember what our mother said about that man you want to live with? He is selfish. He cares only for himself.”

  “Totek! Be quiet!” Catherine clapped her hands over her ears. She did not remember Strong Wind saying those words and did not want to. If she could bring any memories back, it would be of her mother singing to her or telling her stories. But all she could recall of her mother right now was the way she had looked with those blisters all over her skin. They had been everywhere. Her arms, her hands, her face. It was horrible and terrifying. Catherine had to leave this place, or she would go mad with seeing the sickness in her mind every time she thought of Strong Wind.

  Bright Star pulled Catherine’s arms down to her sides. “You are who your mother is, not your father. This is the way of things. What you want to do, it is not done.”

  Catherine turned away, weary of her sister’s constant disapproval. It was a weight that bowed her head like a tumpline attached to a bundle of furs. She would be glad to shed this burden by moving away from here. But she could not convince her feet to leave the spot where her mother’s body rested. Not yet.

  The noise from the fields grew shrill and gleeful with children’s voices. Women laughed and sang. Joseph burst from between two rows of cornstalks, a gourd rattle in his fist. Catherine waved at him.

  He ran to her, his brown body naked save for a breechclout. Damp black hair clung to his neck. “We are supposed to chase the crows! I am very good at scaring them away. See?” He shook his rattle and shouted at the sky. “I am fierce, yes?” He grabbed her hand, and the dirt from his palm rubbed hers.

  “Tohske’ wahi. Very fierce,” Catherine said. “I need to tell you something. You and Bright Star are going to live in the longhouse from now on, and I am going to live in a different house. With Papa.”

  Joseph wrinkled his nose. “Where? Why?”

  He was too young to remember much of Papa, and Papa never took pride in him, which Catherine could not explain. Fathers prized their sons. But her father wanted her, though she was neither male nor firstborn. She was special somehow. That was why Strong Wind had named her Stands-Apart. But Papa preferred her Christian name, Catherine. So did she.

  Joseph tugged her hand. “Where are you going?”

  A gust of wind swept over her, smelling of cooking fish. “It’s not far. I can come back to visit you. Hen’en, everything is fine.”

  He looked at her with large black eyes that seemed to measure what she’d said. Then a shadow flickered over his face, and he squinted into the sky. “Crows!” he shouted, releasing her hand. He scrambled back into the field, shaking his rattle. “Wahs! Go away, crows! Wahs! No corn for you!”

  Bright Star crossed her arms and bent her head toward Catherine, her thick braids swinging. They were many shades of brown, like walnut shells, the same as Catherine’s hair. Porcupine quills fanned tall and straight from the back of her head. “You say you will visit? Maybe I will not want to see you, a sister who rejects her people.” Her voice quivered like a bowstring pulled too taut. She used her words like arrows. “Well were you named Stands-Apart, for you stand too far apart from us. Go away, then, and stay there.”

  Something ripped inside Catherine. She stared at the mound of dirt that covered Strong Wind and wanted to fling herself upon it, arms open wide to soak in the summer sun baked into the earth. She wanted, one last time, to pretend that warmth was her mother’s embrace. She wanted to feel loved again. Right now, she felt alone and shamed.

  So she pointed her toes away from the grave to put Bright Star, and that pain, behind her.

  Chapter One

  Lachine, Island of Montreal, Quebec

  Late August 1759

  Catherine Duval was used to waiting.

  Outside the old settlement called Lachine on the south bank of the Island of Montreal, she sat on the end of the dock, her empty bateau bumping the pilings beside her. With her petticoats and silk skirts pooling at her knees, she dangled her bare feet in the river and looked across its mile-wide expanse toward Kahnawake. Clouds hung low and full in the sky, a lid on the simmering humidity. She unpinned her straw hat from the mass of hair piled upon her head and fanned herself, cicadas ticking away the time.

  They would come. Bright Star had brought the news to Catherine’s trading post yesterday that clan brothers who had just returned from fishing on the Ottawa River had seen the coureurs des bois. The trappers, untethered to any official fur company, were nearby and would be in Lachine today. Her sister could be as prickly as porcupine quills, but she was reliable.

  The first strains of boisterous singing floated down the river, signaling the trappers’ approach. Shaking the water from her feet, Catherine stepped back into her moccasins and retied the satin ribbons of her hat beneath her chin as she stood. She arranged herself into a posture of confidence and authority. Hands folded, chin high, back straight. With five and twenty summers behind her, she knew how to manage these men even without her father at her side. In truth, it would be easier without him. His gruff manner tended to impact profit.

  After waiting with her for merely an hour this morning, Gabriel had declared that the men weren’t coming, for he gave Bright Star’s report little credit. “I’ll find my own way home,” he’d told Catherine, and ambled toward Montreal’s city gates, nine miles away, on an errand he did not divulge. When he was finished, he’d hire someone to row him back across the river.

  No matter. Catherine had been acting on his behalf for years, for he had no head for market rates and no talent for negotiation whatsoever. She knew that, deep down, he was grateful for her help. That she meant more to him than he admitted. This was the truth she circled back to when she longed for a family of her own. She’d been engaged once but was abandoned. There had been other suitors, and she’d even thought she’d loved one of them, but nothing came of it. So she had bound up her dreams of a family into hard knots and cast them into the river to be stepping-stones to the other side of disappointment.

  A chirping bank swallow became a blur of black and white as it fluttered out of a burrow in the riverbank, briefly claiming Catherine’s attention. One bateau headed toward her. At roughly twenty-four feet long, it was bigger than a canoe and built for carrying heavy loads. But it was only a single vessel, when before the war it would have been the first in a line of one hundred or more, returning from months spent in the west trapping beaver, muskrat, fox, and wolf. Lachine would have been teeming with merchants vying for their wares.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle!” the steersman called out when he spied her. She recognized Denis and Emile from years gone by, but not the two other men with them.

  “Bonjour, welcome!” She returned their smiles. “I see you have left all the other trappers behind!”

  The bateau cut t
hrough the river, the blue-grey water ruffling as it parted. A dragonfly perched on the bow. “Oui, ma belle, and where is all your competition?” Emile laughed as he drew close and threw her a line, which she tied to the pilings while all four men climbed onto the dock.

  Catherine lifted her hands. “In the militia, monsieur, fighting a war. Some might say you ought to do the same, unless you are younger than sixteen or older than sixty and very good at hiding it.”

  “Ah!” Creases fanned from Emile’s eyes and framed the grin on his leathered face, though she knew he was no more than five years her senior. “Some might. Some might. But then who would be left to bring you furs each year? Who are we to allow a little war to interrupt your business?” He winked, for this war was far from little.

  What had begun as a squabble between English and French governors over who controlled the Ohio River Valley had since blown into a full-scale war for much more than that. Now all of New France and New England hung in the balance. The battles had spread beyond this continent, too, to Europe, Africa, the Philippines, and South America. The whole world, it seemed, was at war for a chance for empires to gain new lands.

  “Come, then,” Catherine said after learning the other two men were named Stephen and Philippe. “You must eat.”

  Ignoring the ache in her empty stomach, she led the men onto the grassy shore, where she had a basket of food waiting. They were made from one mold, these burly men, the same mold that had formed her father. About five feet six inches tall, muscled and stocky, ruddy-faced, independent, carefree—and thirsty. She knew they had been living on dried peas and corn, hard biscuits, and if they’d been lucky, a little salt pork. The corn cakes she offered from her own kitchen came dear, but if she had learned one thing from the famine of the last two years, it was that hunger was a distracting and irritating companion. Business was best done without it.

  While Philippe and Stephen traded ribald jokes, Emile said nothing as he ate. Denis tipped his canteen to his lips, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Swiping his toque from his mud-brown hair, he swept an appraising glance over Catherine. She wondered if he noticed that her gown hung looser this year over stays that cinched ever smaller about her waist.