Frustration burned through her. “I am your daughter.” Her father always seemed to absolve himself of his role in bringing her into this world.
The blur cleared from Gabriel’s eyes long enough for Catherine to see in them his disappointment in her. A shake of his head told her the rest. She was his daughter by a technicality. But she was not her namesake, Marie-Catherine, the perfectly French daughter he’d had with Isabelle. She was a substitute child.
“Come now, Monsieur Duval,” Captain Moreau cut in. “You’ve been too much in your drink tonight. I have a matter to discuss with you, but I can see you’re in no state for it.”
The door opened and Samuel stepped out, stubble shadowing his jaw, candlestick in hand. He looked from Moreau to Gabriel. When he saw Catherine, his eyes warmed. It was not the first time he’d seen her this way. Stunning, he had called her then. Regal. And he had crowned her hair with wildflowers.
“Like what you see, do you, Crane?” Gabriel’s speech seemed to slosh from his mouth. “Take my word, you were right to leave it alone the first time. Savage blood is no good in a wife. It’s barely tolerable in a daughter.” His head swayed to look at Catherine again.
Humiliation washed over her. It was the drink insulting her, she told herself, but the lie was getting harder to believe. If the papa she loved was still within the man Gabriel had become, he was locked away tight, and she despaired of finding the key.
Jaw tense, Samuel put himself between Gabriel and Catherine, the taper’s flame bouncing light across his face. Moreau shifted to let her pass, and she quietly stepped over the threshold. But she could not bring herself to shut the door on the conversation unfolding outside.
“Have a care, Gabriel,” Samuel ground out. “You may not remember what you say come morning, but the rest of us will. Surely you don’t mean to belittle your own daughter.”
He should not defend her like this. She did not want his kindness when it changed nothing.
“Oh, don’t act like you care overmuch,” Gabriel snarled. “If you did, you’d have married her years ago, as you promised. You’d be living in that little house you built for her, but I venture that Moreau and the private were pleased enough to find it empty.”
“Married her?” Captain Moreau’s back was to Catherine, so she couldn’t read his expression, but his tone belied his shock. “That house was to be yours and Catherine’s?”
Gabriel scuffed his boots closer to Samuel, sending a spray of shells from her necklace into the dark. “You did well to stay single, to my thinking. But you’ve no right to interfere with family affairs.”
Samuel and Gabriel continued to spar, one voice escalating, the other steady, but Catherine no longer made sense of the words. For Pierre Moreau had turned and was staring at her, thin lips parted in unspoken questions.
Or accusations.
He knows, a voice whispered in Catherine’s mind. She countered it with logic and reason. What could Moreau know now? That she was half Mohawk. That her father regretted her birth. That she and Samuel had once loved each other and planned to marry, but that Samuel had broken the engagement. What sort of conclusion could he draw from that?
She closed the door and leaned against it. Moreau could believe Samuel loved her and would stay for her sake. Or he could believe she loved Sam still and would help him escape for his sake.
Either way, the captain was wrong. There was no love between them.
Catherine had no idea why Gaspard Fontaine loitered about while she and Thankful labored over the washtubs, but he was decidedly out of place.
“Something troubles you, sir,” Thankful tried. Clouds floated across the early morning sky like downy feathers. The air was sweet and clean, even if the smells from the boiling kettle were not.
“Does it not trouble you to be breaking the Sabbath?” he asked. “Or do Protestants and half-breeds not bother to keep the day holy?”
Catherine had expected the term to be repeated now that Captain Moreau had learned her blood was mixed. But hearing it slung like dung, she had half a mind to shove her bar of lye soap into Fontaine’s mouth. Instead, she replied with convincing calm. “Our work in the fields has prevented us from doing laundry any other day of the week. Our clothes would stand up on their own if we didn’t wash them today, yours included.” She gestured toward his trousers and linen spread to dry on the grass.
“If it’s worship you want, there are Jesuit services at Kahnawake this morning and evening,” Thankful offered. Or he could do as she and Thankful had learned to do, and worship wherever he was.
“So I hear.” Private Fontaine tucked a plug of tobacco inside his cheek. “The captain insists on our going, although between you and me and these fetid garments, it’s not our souls that are uppermost on his mind. He means to talk to our Mohawk allies.” Squinting one eye, he spewed a brown stream into the grass. “There is news from Quebec.”
Catherine let the wooden stick lean against the side of the boiling kettle while she stepped away from its wafting heat, giving Fontaine her full focus. Thankful followed suit.
Fontaine edged closer, dropping his voice low. “Moreau paces at night. He says General Montcalm received a shipment of wheat from us on the twenty-third, but in order to make it last until he receives the next, he had to cut rations. The daily allowance of bread for soldiers, militiamen, and warriors is down by a quarter. The civilian ration has been cut in half. In place of the missing bread, the fighters are given an extra shot of brandy per day.” He grinned, his stained teeth betraying his own penchant for drink.
Catherine winced. Thankful closed her eyes and murmured a prayer.
Crossing his arms, Fontaine nodded, clearly enjoying their rapt attention. “Word is, Canada’s survival depends on the rest of the wheat reaching the army no later than September 15, for at that point, they’ll be completely out of their stores. Moreover, news from the south is that the British plan to invade and burn whatever wheat they find before it can be shipped out. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that now, would you?”
“Of course not!” Thankful backed away.
He turned to Catherine. “And you? Don’t you have plenty of British friends down in Albany?” He paused. “Don’t you have a very good British friend right here? Someone other than Mademoiselle Winslet, that is. Someone all too ready to fight. Or burn, as the case may be.” He cocked one eyebrow high.
Catherine measured his stance, his tone. He was making sport with them, nothing more. “The only thing burning right now is the fire beneath this kettle of soiled clothes,” she said. “Do you truly suppose any of us would be so foolish as to torch the food we’ve been harvesting?”
A dark laugh possessed him. “The truth is, I don’t really care. Captain Moreau certainly does, though. He hasn’t slept in three days. My guess is he suspects that if any British come to raid and burn, Samuel Crane would prove most willing to help. But me? I sleep like a baby.” Fontaine ended his speech with a shrug. If Catherine didn’t know about his brother’s death, she’d think him shockingly callous.
Before she could form a response, Moreau hailed Fontaine. The captain’s face was haggard, the dark bands beneath his eyes visible even from this distance. She did not envy the responsibility that stooped his shoulders.
“Time for church. Or more war-making, depending.” With a bow and a smile, the rusty-haired private sauntered toward Kahnawake.
Neither woman spoke until the soldiers were well away, and then only in somber acknowledgment of Fontaine’s news. Men starving, or men coming to burn the wheat—either scenario was unnerving enough on its own, but even more so was Moreau’s suspicion. It seemed that here, on the Duval property, he saw werewolves where there were none. Now he went to mass with an eye to ally himself with the Wolf Clan. If it was warriors he sought, he would find them there. He would find Joseph.
Veering from that thought, Catherine stirred the laundry in the boiling kettle while Thankful spread shirts and petticoats to dry on bushes in
the sun. “You took Samuel the salve for his ankles, yes?”
“I did, and he was grateful for it,” Thankful said over her shoulder. “He said to tell you so.”
Steam rose from the cauldron and seemed to collect beneath the brim of Catherine’s straw hat. She lifted a shirt into the washtub. The shackles Samuel wore at Moreau’s insistence had cut through his trousers and chafed his ankles until the skin broke in angry red lines. Though he’d made no complaint, the raw wounds required attention.
“You could have taken it to him yourself.” There was no reproach in Thankful’s tone as she took over Catherine’s place at the wash kettle. “Unless it pains you too much to be near him.”
Catherine plucked the bar of soap from the wooden bench on which the washtub sat and set to scrubbing the collar of her father’s shirt. A strand of hair slipped free of the braids beneath her hat and hung straight as a pin beside her face. “He causes an ache I would rather go without.” And he was still waiting for an answer she was not ready to give. An answer she had not yet formed.
Thankful was quiet for a moment as she prodded stockings and aprons boiling in the kettle. “I would not be surprised if your presence affects him the same way.”
Finding the only sleeve Gabriel had use of, Catherine scrubbed the inside of the cuff with renewed vigor, the lye stinging her hands. “You jest.”
“I do not.”
Plunging the shirt into the rinse tub next, Catherine sent Thankful a sidelong glance. The young woman’s face was flushed beneath her hat, flaxen tendrils of hair coiling from the steam. She fed another pine knot to the fire beneath the kettle and stirred the laundry again, one fist pressed to the small of her back.
“You don’t look at Samuel, so you cannot see the way he looks at you.” Slowly, her stick circled the kettle. “You don’t talk to him.”
“I have spoken with him, just not always in your presence,” Catherine told her. “I’m not ignoring him, and I’m not angry anymore.”
Thankful lifted her shoulders. “I’m glad of it, but that’s not enough. You have the opportunity to forgive him, and it would do you both more good than I can say. But Catherine, he feels more than guilt. Regret, I’m certain of it.”
“Has he told you?”
“In all ways but in words.”
Shaking her head, Catherine chuckled and spread her rinsed garments on a bush to dry. “Words are most important, mon amie.”
“Sort it out before it’s too late.” Even beneath the shade of her brim, Thankful’s eyes were bright with conviction, especially since Catherine had shared Samuel’s story of Joel’s death. “It’s a chance to close up old wounds and heal. For your own sake, as much as his. Don’t you see what a gift these short days could be?”
These days, a gift. Only Thankful would say such a thing with war raging on either side of them, with soldiers starving, women and children blistering to cut the grain that might save them. But of course, the battle Thankful referred to was the one within Catherine.
Returning to the washtub, she rubbed at apron stains until her knuckles grew raw. Catherine had spoken with Samuel briefly yesterday. It was during the harvest, while they paused to drink from the water bucket that was being passed around. She had assumed he’d press her for his escape, but instead, he’d spoken of hers. “Leave Gabriel, Catie. He mistreats you, uses you as much as he ever did. Break away from him. We’ll leave together, and you can make a new path for yourself.” It was far too similar to a previous proposal he’d made and had not honored.
Samuel’s words did not close old wounds, but reopened them. She felt weak near him, when she needed to be strong. It was true that she felt scant love from Gabriel, but he was her father nonetheless. And who was Samuel Crane? He was a phantom, here now, but not for long.
“I believe you’ve rubbed that spot clear away, and half the fabric with it.” Thankful’s gentle voice pulled Catherine from her thoughts.
“So I have.” Smiling, she transferred the apron to the rinse tub and swished the linen about. At length, she added quietly, “I will work to forgive Samuel.”
Thankful dropped the laundry stick in the kettle and threw her arms around Catherine, pulling her into an embrace that smelled of woodsmoke, lye, and sunshine. “God be praised!”
Laughing, Catherine returned the embrace with hands still dripping rinse water. “Come now,” she said, releasing Thankful. “We’re nearly done here.”
Movement flickered at the edge of the woods.
“Bright Star,” Catherine called out.
“Go on,” Thankful offered. “I’ll finish this.”
Thanking her, Catherine went to meet her sister beneath the canopy of a towering sugar maple, its leaves curling and unfurling in the warm wind. The beaked hazelnut bush tucked beneath it had dropped more husks to the ground, so Catherine scooped them into her apron pocket before pulling her hat from her head to use as a fan.
A rare smile curved Bright Star’s mouth as she swatted the folds of Catherine’s skirt and petticoats. “You would not be so hot if you wore one dress instead of three.” She bobbed in a playful French curtsy, showing off her cool, soft deerskin. Her sheathed hunting knife rested on her uncorseted chest.
“But you have not come to judge my dress,” Catherine prompted.
Scanning their surroundings, Bright Star beckoned Catherine deeper into the shadows that gathered beneath the trees. Joseph appeared, tomahawk in hand, quiver of arrows and bow slung across his back.
“I thought you’d be at mass,” Catherine told them, “and instead I find you ready to meet an enemy.”
“Always.” Joseph looked beyond her. Spotting Thankful, he tucked the tomahawk into the loop at his belt and strode toward her.
Catherine watched as they spoke. Her porters, Silver Birch and Sweet Meadow, would have relished such attention from Joseph, but Thankful did not blush. Catherine wondered if he wished she would.
He’d had only ten summers to Thankful’s seven when the girl was ransomed, and he’d made no effort to disguise his fascination with her then. Bringing her wampum beads and captured butterflies, he learned what chased the shadows from her haunted face. Eventually he had noticed that while she smiled timidly for him, she beamed for Samuel Crane. It wasn’t until after Samuel returned to New York that Joseph had pursued a friendship with Thankful. She had not been as receptive as he’d hoped.
Bright Star tilted her head, lines tracing from the corners of her mouth to her chin. “See how he looks at her.”
“As a brother upon a sister, I should think,” Catherine suggested. Though Thankful was grateful for Joseph’s provision and protective care, she could not forget that he had participated in raids on New England. The knowledge was a barrier she could not surmount. “She’s been more than clear.”
A chuckle escaped Bright Star. “What is clear to a woman is less so to a man. But we have not come so Joseph could go courting.”
“Of course. I have news to consider.” Spying a felled tree, Catherine placed her hat atop the trunk, then pushed herself up to sit beside it, the bark scraping hands already raw from the lye soap. “Captain Moreau says they won’t be using bateaux to carry the wheat to Quebec, but schooners. So the original plan will need to be adjusted.”
“Catherine.” Bright Star sat beside her, feet dangling a few inches above the forest floor.
“I know it sounds dire, but I’ve been thinking about this, and we can still get him away. We’ll need to do it quickly, though. Moreau already suspects Samuel simply because—”
Bright Star held up her hand. “I have decided.”
Waiting, Catherine clasped one hand over the other, the sweat from her palm stinging her work-worn skin. A shining brown beetle waddled over a fold of her skirt until she shook it away. “Tell me.”
“I have discussed the matter with Joseph. We have decided together. Jaghte oghte.”
Jaghte oghte. The literal translation was “maybe not.” But in the Mohawk tongue it was plain de
nial, and it was final, however soft the bearer meant to land the blow.
Bright Star twisted a shell necklace around one finger. “We think it best to leave the matter of Samuel Crane alone.”
They did not face each other, but looked straight ahead between the trees, toward the white linen hanging from bushes and branches. The apron Catherine had worked so hard to clean fluttered on a breeze like a small flag of surrender. Fanciful thought. The war raged on, while she wanted nothing more than for it to end. So did Samuel. But he couldn’t affect change from here.
“Joseph persuaded you against it?” Catherine should have expected that he would try. Still, “I thought you would come to your own mind on this.”
“There is wisdom in counsel. Joseph knows the war in ways we do not. He knows British soldiers.”
Almost as though he’d heard them, Joseph looked up from his conversation with Thankful. Raising his hand, he bade Thankful farewell and with long, purposeful strides joined his sisters inside the wood’s edge. “I see Bright Star has told you our decision.” He stood before them in a warrior’s posture, as if Samuel was the enemy he was prepared to face.
“Samuel is not just a British soldier. I trust him. I know him,” Catherine said.
“You knew him,” Joseph countered. “There is a difference.”
Catherine opened her mouth, but a response was slow to form. It was true she didn’t know Samuel the way she used to. But was it possible that the core of his character remained unchanged, as he had said of her? “He’s made mistakes. So have we all. But I believe his motives and purpose are for the greater good.”
“His motives and purpose are British,” Bright Star said. “The People are allied to the French, who would call it treason to aid the British. If I were caught, the consequences would extend to my family, my clan. The French would make an example of it, if not by official sanction, then by individual soldiers just waiting for a reason to take more land away from us.”
The truth in Bright Star’s words was impossible to deny.
“You share this opinion?” Catherine eyed the bow slung over Joseph’s shoulder.
Between Two Shores Page 15
