A single nod was all Catherine could manage as she moved her gaze from his familiar, beloved face to the shoreline.
“It’s too much to ask of you now, perhaps, but someday you’ll see beyond your own hurts, too. You’ve done it before.” Samuel leaned back in his seat and looked away. Her chest ached, but she could not tell if it was his pain or her own.
The St. Lawrence was calm and buoyant, but wariness churned, and not just over Samuel’s revelations. Facing aft as she rowed, Catherine remained vigilant for any sign of the schooners returning this way with grain. The farther north they traveled, the more fire burned into the branches. Flaming foliage nudged up against a sky of blinding blue.
While Thankful inquired about the pain in Samuel’s shoulder, their course bent east and split into a channel threading around the Sorel islands, where bulrushes fringed the marshy shores. Gabriel’s voyaging songs ran through Catherine’s mind, but she did not feel like singing. Instead, she tried to pray, though her attempts felt as fragmented as the St. Lawrence split by the Île de Grâce, Île à la Pierre, and Île des Barques.
The sun slipped low on the horizon, and cool air dropped like a curtain. The warbling of loons, which Catherine usually found melodic, grated on her. When she spotted a place to beach the vessels for the night, she declared it was time to rest, and no one complained.
Dense shadows spilled from the woods. Fontaine, who had been banned from weapons and tools, was no longer bound and helped Joseph and Bright Star secure the vessels. The carrying basket slung over one shoulder, Samuel went with Catherine and Thankful to find level ground on which to sleep. Tree trunks against twilight walled them in with deep purple and silver stripes. Before the hour was over, all would be painted over with night’s ink.
“This looks fine to me.” The hem of Thankful’s cotton gown dragged behind her, banded with dingy grey. A few curls slipped from the bun at her neck and coiled against her skin.
Catherine was distracted by what Samuel had shared earlier until a scrambling in the leaves seized her full attention. Wheeling toward the sound, she found a French lookout rousing from sleep ten yards away.
Tricorne askew on matted brown hair, he staggered to his feet. “Halt!” The young man could not have been older than Thankful. Filmed with sweat, his boyish face was creased on one ruddy cheek from sleep. “Who are you, and what is your business here?” He leveled a pistol at Samuel.
Catherine’s heart pounded against its cage. “Calm down.” She held out her hands, palms up, while Samuel shoved Thankful behind him. “We’ve given you a start, which is no way to wake up. Be at ease, soldier, and we’ll talk.”
Not that she knew what to say. She should have been rehearsing just such a conversation instead of rearranging her feelings for Samuel! The lookout was disoriented, scared, and alone. A volatile combination for the only person currently armed.
Thankful receded into the trees while Samuel remained.
The soldier licked his lips as he clenched the gun. “State your business or I’ll shoot!” Panic pitched his voice high and raised the hair on Catherine’s arms.
“Steady, man, there are women here!” Samuel spoke in French, but his accent was imperfect.
The boy noticed, blinking wide eyes in rapid succession. “You’re British, aren’t you? A scout, a spy? Stay back!”
Catherine could find no words. She’d led them all straight into harm’s way.
Fontaine emerged through a copse of birch, his bright hair capturing the soldier’s attention. A torrent of speech tumbled from Fontaine’s lips. “Don’t shoot! I’m in the Canadian militia, and that man is a British—”
“Put down the gun, soldier,” Catherine called to him, diverting his attention. Whether Fontaine intended to betray them or was trying to protect them, she had no idea.
“Halt! Come no farther! How many are you?” The boy’s arm quavered in a uniform too large for his frame.
“Calm yourself,” she said again, louder, to drown out Fontaine. She stepped closer, though Samuel called for her to stay back.
“You’re with the Englishman?” He swiveled and trained the gun on her instead. His composure was nearly gone.
Joseph and Bright Star appeared, knives stark against their tunics. Joseph notched an arrow to his bow.
The soldier blanched. “Ambush!” He wavered, and the sweat-slick weapon slipped from his grip into the leaves. He fumbled for it.
Samuel jerked a musket from the carrying basket, but there was no way he could find the powder horn and shot pouch and load it in time.
“Give me a weapon!” Fontaine cried.
“Catherine, down!” Joseph’s voice.
A shot cracked the air. Thankful screamed from some distant place, but Catherine could not look away from the violence unfolding before her. An arrow parted the air, then another. Joseph had hidden himself within the wood’s edge, but his arrows launched true and found their mark in the soldier’s chest. The boy dropped to his knees, clutching a shaft with his left hand but raising his pistol again with his right.
“Lieutenant!” A second lookout barreled through the trees from the north, his gun gleaming in the twilight. Shouts and shots were overpowered by Joseph’s chilling Mohawk war cry.
All of this happened in the span of a single frantic heartbeat. Out of nowhere, Bright Star pulled Catherine behind a boulder and held her fast. More arrows whistled past, each ending with a sickening thud in human flesh. The war Catherine had longed to end blazed around and above her, and those she cared about were caught in its fray.
“Stay down.” But Bright Star watched, a vein throbbing at her temple.
Catherine clamped her hands over her ears but couldn’t stop the screams from vibrating through her chest. It wasn’t Thankful this time, but the soldiers, in terror and agony from her brother’s warfare. A horrifying notion seized her, and she gripped her sister’s arm. “Will he scalp them? In front of Samuel and Thankful?” The war cry alone surely evoked their childhood captures and their parents’ murders.
Bright Star shook her head. “He wouldn’t scalp Mohawk allies.”
Allies. The word cut through the noise. It was one thing for Joseph to escort her north, as a free and independent agent. But if any French heard that he’d killed French soldiers, they’d make an example of his transgression and hang him from the nearest tree.
When whimpers replaced the war cry, Catherine fought to master her galloping pulse. Smoke and a wet metallic smell choked the air. Bright Star peered around the boulder, then leapt to her feet and hurried away.
Ears ringing, Catherine stood on shaky legs and leaned on the rough stone that had hidden her. Arrows bristled from both lookout soldiers, blood staining their uniforms purple and pooling beneath their bodies. Bending, Samuel wrenched a pistol from one of their clutches. For one nauseating moment, Catherine thought he meant to shoot them, but he didn’t. The men expired on their own with gurgling, bubbling breath so loud it seemed to shake the trees.
Only then did she turn and see both Thankful and Bright Star kneeling beside Joseph and Fontaine. The men sat with their backs against trees, heads bowed.
Her sister looked up. “Shot,” she said. “Both of them.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Night stretched out long by the light of a small fire and promised little sleep. With a strip of Thankful’s petticoat binding his arm, Fontaine waited while all eyes turned to Joseph. The militiaman had worn himself out insisting he could have talked their way to safety if they’d only let him.
Catherine sat on her heels and cut away her brother’s leggings a few inches above his knee. White shards and splinters pushed up from the muscle and tissue. The bone had shattered.
“Did the ball exit?” Samuel knelt beside her. He’d been the one to examine Fontaine’s wound and declare the ball had passed clean through his bicep. Fontaine would heal.
Catherine slipped her hand beneath Joseph’s calf and felt the dry ground. “There’s no blood from th
at side. It must still be in the wound.”
The cords of Joseph’s neck were tightly strung. “Get it out.” He forced the words through clenched teeth.
“I’ll do it.” Thankful squeezed his hand. “At least, I’ll try.”
“You have the smallest and steadiest hands,” Catherine said. “You’re the best one for the job.”
Releasing Joseph, Thankful pulled an awl from the moccasin mending kit and, with a prayer on her lips, began to probe. When Joseph’s back arched in pain, a tear slid down her cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” A hairpin slipped free, and blond tresses tumbled down, obscuring her view.
Bright Star swept the hair back and held it at the base of Thankful’s neck so she could see, just as she’d held back Catherine’s hair when they were girls and Catherine had been sick.
Joseph’s body relaxed as he fell into merciful oblivion. Catherine angled herself so more firelight wavered over the wound. Looking away from the ruined limb, she caught Samuel’s gaze and held it. Shared blame and regret arced between them, for she had led them to danger for the sake of his mission.
“I never meant for this to happen,” he murmured.
“But it did.” She glanced at Joseph, whose expression screwed tight unconsciously. The moan he’d so bravely trapped before now escaped him.
Tears glistened on Thankful’s cheeks as she worked. “I’ve almost got it,” she whispered. The awl dug deeper and tilted, lifting the ball so she could pluck it out with her other hand. “There.” Her shoulders sagged, her hands dark with Joseph’s blood. “I’ll need to stitch him, but I need someone to hold the skin together. After that, it will be your turn, Gaspard.”
At the sound of his Christian name, the private looked up, something like gratitude softening his features. “I could have convinced him I was on his side. I could have earned his trust and then tied his hands and feet while he slept.”
Ignoring him, Bright Star bound Thankful’s hair for her, then stood. “Those bodies should be buried.”
Rising from where he knelt, Samuel said, “I’ll do it.”
Catherine eyed the sling that held his arm and stood, stepping away from Thankful and her patients. “No. You can’t.”
“I need to do something.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. “I need to help.”
“Of course you do.” Catherine’s nerves unraveled, leaving her raw and sharp. “You always need to help. That’s why you took an interest in me when we were young, isn’t it? To help me. Then you wed your brother’s widow, for her need for help was greater still. In fact, your compulsion to help is why we’re all on the way to Quebec, so you can aid the entire British empire toward victory, and in so doing help all who suffer in a drawn-out war.”
Samuel narrowed the gap between them. “You make that sound like a character flaw.” His left hand curled near the fringe running down the side of his buckskin trousers. “Did you ever consider why my desire to help runs so deep? Imagine hearing a war cry like Joseph’s multiplied by twelve but made to sound like a hundred warriors. Imagine the moment they descend upon you in your home, the one place you ought to feel safe. Their teeth are bared, their faces are painted black and red to terrify. Now imagine being made to watch as they kill your mother even as her hands stretch out to you. The last thing she screams is your name. Your infirm father pleads for mercy, until he, too, is murdered before you. Both are scalped and mutilated. I vomited. I was helpless to save them.”
Catherine squeezed her fists until her fingernails bit her palms, for she’d rather feel her own pain than his.
Thankful translated this story for Gaspard. “When did this happen?” the militiaman asked, words slurred from the rum they had given him to dull the pain.
Samuel blinked at him, as if surprised he’d taken interest. “I was thirteen. Young, and yet six years older than Thankful was at her capture.”
His gaze traveled to the fire, where it rested so long that Catherine wondered what he saw there. His nostrils flared. A branch snapped and sent sparks into the rising column of smoke, and he rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyelids.
“If I could have spared my parents from death or terror or pain,” he continued, his voice softer, “I would have, but I couldn’t, and it haunts me still. Just as Joel’s death does, and his son’s, for I couldn’t save them, either. So yes, if I can help in small ways or large, I must. You make it sound like a strange obsession to make myself feel important, but don’t you see? If all of New England and New France belong to just one empire, there will be no more government-sanctioned raids between the two. I’m not out for revenge against those who killed my parents and Thankful’s. But ending this war also protects my wife and children, so I will not apologize for trying. Let me help along the way.”
Moths fluttered, drawn by the popping flames. While Thankful finished translating for Gaspard, Catherine swallowed for a second time at the mention of Samuel’s family. But she could no longer afford to pine. “So help.” She gestured to Joseph. “Assist Thankful. Fashion a splint, do whatever she requires. I’ll dig with Bright Star.”
After pulling two hatchets from the cache of supplies, Bright Star led the way to the bodies at the edge of the firelight’s reach. “We may need the arrows later. I have to cut them out so I don’t leave the arrowheads behind.” Flipping her braids over her shoulder, she put the hatchets in Catherine’s hands, took her hunting knife from its sheath, and bent over the first lookout.
Skin turning cold all at once, Catherine whirled from the sight. Cloaked in shadow though the body was, her imagination supplied what she couldn’t see. “How can you do that?”
Crickets chirped, and twigs crackled as they burned in the fire. Bats flapped and squeaked overhead. Light-headed from worry if not from hunger and exhaustion, Catherine lowered the weapons to the ground, then leaned her hands on her knees. When she straightened moments later, Bright Star stood before her. Amber light flickered over one golden side of her, while the other half was hidden in darkness.
“How can I do this?” Her sister raised the arrows she’d harvested, then tossed them to the ground. “I do what needs to be done. I don’t have to enjoy it. Do you call me savage for this, and Thankful brave? Come now, Catherine. We are not the only ones with blood on our hands.”
That truth struck through her. An apology tipped her tongue, but she let it die. She had known the risk and counted it worth the cost. “I don’t deny it.” She lifted a hatchet from the ground, and Bright Star did the same. “If Joseph doesn’t recover . . .”
“Don’t say it,” Bright Star hissed. Ash peppered the air, drifting onto her shoulders. “Just dig, but with care. Use the blades to loosen the earth, and then I’ll fetch our canoe paddles to scoop the soil away. These will be shallow graves, so near the water, so we’ll cover both of them with rocks to keep animals from rooting them up.”
A knot cinched around Catherine’s throat. The last time she had stood at a graveside with her sister, they’d buried their mother, and since then Bright Star had buried two husbands and both children. Catherine knew better than to say it aloud, but if Joseph did not survive, it would be her fault. She could not bear to lose him, nor could she stand to be the cause of one more death in Bright Star’s life.
Bright Star trod the soft ground, looking for a place to bury the bodies. Satisfied, she held the handle of the hatchet in both hands, light and shadow dancing over her heart-shaped face. “I have one more thing to say to you. Samuel’s words were meant for your ears, and yours for his. But one thing you said did not fit, and as he did not correct you, I will.”
Catherine braced for a scolding.
“You said Samuel took an interest in you because you needed help. Help with what? Living with Gabriel?” Bright Star’s eyes narrowed. “No. Samuel must have loved you for other reasons, because you do not need his help. You didn’t need anyone’s, ever. You were Catherine Stands-Apart, so independent that you broke fellowship with the P
eople. I have chided you for this many times, because that was easier than admitting how hurt I was that you went away when I longed for my sister to stay. But it was not fair to call you selfish. You are the one who helps Gabriel and Thankful. You are the one who helped me live again, when I longed to bury myself just to be near my children. You are still Catherine Stands-Apart, and strong. Now dig.”
At last the sun’s disc surfaced in the east. The lookouts were buried, Joseph and Gaspard had been tended, and both men were still asleep.
Wind rushed through trees that shivered and gave up their leaves in a blizzard of bronze and gold. Catherine fastened a cape about her shoulders as she stood and examined the sky. “We need to move.”
Gaspard was likely just thick with sleep from too much rum, but it was Joseph who concerned her. The bandages ripped from Thankful’s petticoats had soaked through three times already. He wouldn’t recover here.
“He has lost a lot of blood,” Bright Star murmured. “He won’t be able to paddle.”
Catherine had already considered this, along with Gaspard’s injured arm and Samuel’s weak shoulder. The men, it seemed, would be cargo for the women to port. “We can manage. We’re close to the Saint-François River, and we have allies at Odanak.” The detour off the St. Lawrence would add roughly eight miles there and back again, but it was their best option. “The Abenaki have healing herbs, and I’m sure they will not turn us away if we come seeking their help.”
Bright Star stood and raised an eyebrow. “They will not turn us away. Samuel Crane will not be welcome.” She glanced over her shoulder toward where he kept watch over Gaspard while cleaning the musket.
Thunder rumbled. Catherine led her sister toward the river, where they could speak more freely. Spying Thankful kneeling at the water’s edge, Catherine joined her at her task. The water stained pink where they scrubbed strips of petticoat that had been used as bandages the night before. Upstream from them, Bright Star squatted and refilled her canteen.
Between Two Shores Page 24
