Thankful’s knuckles were chapped and red as she wrung out the linen she’d just rinsed. Her thin cotton gown sank limply against her legs without her petticoats beneath her skirt. “What do we do?”
Catherine plunged a crusted strip of cloth into the river and worked a handful of pebbles against it. “Joseph needs more care than we can give him. He will stay at Odanak while I take Samuel the rest of the way. I’m thinking about bringing Gaspard, too.”
Bright Star corked one canteen and began to fill another. “He may prove useful to you, since Samuel’s French is so accented. I will oversee Joseph’s care and keeping in Odanak.”
Low-bellied clouds hung heavy in a sky of hammered pewter. Thankful sat back on her heels, countenance wary beneath smudges of dirt across her cheek. “Odanak,” she repeated. “The Abenaki? We’re going to their village?” The tip of her nose was pink with cold.
“They will not capture you again,” Catherine said. “You’re safe now, Thankful.” But that rang untrue. This entire journey put her at risk. “I know you’re afraid, but you would be far safer staying with them than continuing on to Quebec with us.”
The hair that had worked free of Thankful’s bun hung in greasy strands over her shoulders. “Safe. With the people who raided my home and killed my parents?”
“The past is buried,” Catherine began, and then halted to examine her motivation. Was she once again ordering Thankful about for her own good? Or was urging Thankful to face the Abenaki truly in the young woman’s best interest?
Large drops made ripples in the river. Catherine blinked the rain from her lashes. “The closer we get to Quebec, the more danger there will be. I know how you feel about the Abenaki, and I understand why. But you said yourself that the best way to work on forgiveness is to face the ones you aim to forgive. Bright Star will be with you. Their hospitality will be generous, I promise.”
The rain came faster now, pattering through the silver maple above them with a hum and a whir. Cold streams spilled down the back of Catherine’s neck.
Shoulders lifted rigidly toward her ears, Thankful twirled a wet strand of hair around her finger. She bit the inside of her cheek, pulling the skin even tighter across the bones of her face. Her stomach growled, a faint echo of thunder, and she soberly met Catherine’s gaze. “I pray you’re right.”
Before Catherine could form a response, Bright Star snapped her fingers, then gestured for them to fall back, away from the shoreline. She pointed upstream.
Catherine crouched beside Thankful behind a thatch of river bulrush five feet high. The convoy of schooners sailed toward them, white canvas snapping against masts, rigging rattling, bowsprits spearing toward Quebec like bayonets. Loaded with wheat and flour, the hulls sat lower in the river than the last time she’d seen them. Now going downstream, they clipped through the water with good speed.
The sight brought both a lift and a twinge to Catherine’s spirit. Those ships bore the means of the French army’s survival and the promise of another hungry winter for Montreal. For some to live, some might have to die. This was the truth that sat like a boulder on her chest.
As the last of five schooners came near, Thankful shrank to hide herself more fully behind the shrub. Ducking her head, Catherine peered through the leaves until she saw the cause of Thankful’s reaction.
Heedless of the rain pelting his face, an officer gripped the rail, feet planted wide on the forecastle deck as he scanned both banks of the river. She knew the slant of his shoulders beneath the grey-white justaucorps, the gold braid on his tricorne hat, the curve of his nose. It was Pierre Moreau, his work done in Montreal. He was looking for something.
Without a doubt, Catherine knew he was looking for them.
By the time Catherine’s bateau neared the village of Odanak, with Bright Star’s canoe close behind her, Gaspard had quietly finished last night’s bottle of rum. Joseph had awakened long enough for Catherine to explain that she would leave him with the Abenaki for better care. His face was tight and his skin beaded with sweat from pain he would never admit to, but the fact that he’d conceded without a fight was confession enough.
After beaching the vessels on the low-lying terrace, Samuel climbed out and squinted up the hill toward the fortified village surrounded by wooden palisades. Bright Star carried the last jug of rum in one arm as she came up next to him. Thankful and Gaspard followed her out.
Catherine steadied Joseph as he pushed himself up on one leg. Jaw clenched, he took Samuel’s arm and hopped out onto dry land. Quickly, she scrambled up beside him and supported his weight on one side while Samuel held him up on the other.
As they wended up the wooded path to the village gates, the rain thinned to a drizzle, but they were all soaked through to the skin already. Catherine leaned forward to speak to Samuel. “Remember, you are my captive.” Technically, it was true, since her father had paid his ransom. And it was more reasonable to present this clearly than to make Samuel stay behind, alone, while she and Bright Star spoke with their trading contacts. “You belong to me.” Heat flashed over her face. “I mean—”
A rueful smile tipped Samuel’s lips. “I know what you meant. I’ll play along.”
Joseph hobbled between them, and Catherine was struck once more by the magnitude of his injury. Infection had invaded the wound and brought intense fever with it. She squeezed the hand that gripped her shoulder and held him firmly around his solid waist, with Samuel’s arm crossing from the other side.
Recalling what had happened to her father’s arm, she knew that Joseph might lose his leg. If he kept it, he might never recover the use of it, for she had no illusions that the bone could heal from such a smashing. In either case, how could he hunt? Could he be a warrior still, or would he be dependent on others? Her mind choked on visions of Gabriel, who had plunged into depression and drunkenness after his trapping accident. She could not bear the thought of Joseph suffering a similar decline.
He deserved none of this.
“I’m so sorry,” Catherine told him, pressing him firmly to her side. Odanak was situated on a bluff, and the uphill climb was taking its toll on him. “If you hadn’t followed me, this would not have happened.” Her throat threatened to strangle the words.
He sighed through gritted teeth. “A warrior’s life is short, my sister. I accept this.”
“But if you’d known protecting me would cause this—”
Joseph grunted, features twisting into a grimace. “If. If. A useless word. I did what any man would do for his family. I would do it again.”
The words were razors against Catherine’s ears, spoken by a man who was her kin by half and yet still called her fully his own. Regret and gratitude battled for the upper hand, each as fierce as the other, until she felt filled with nothing else.
Inside the twelve-foot-tall palisades, the village of Odanak, otherwise known as Saint-François, was not at all like Kahnawake. Instead of a stockade arrangement of longhouses, about fifty European-style homes held several hundred Abenaki. Most were made of square log timbers covered with lengths of bark or rough-cut boards. At least a dozen were one- or two-story French-style wood-frame houses with clapboards, and a church was built of stone. All of them were arranged in rows around a central square, which held a Jesuit church and a council house. And yet above houses and prominent buildings, including the mission church, poles bore not flags, but scalps. Hundreds upon hundreds of scalps.
Thankful faltered when she spied them, and Bright Star murmured in her ear. Whatever she said at least kept Thankful moving.
Odanak was the launching point for so many raids into New England that it was notorious among the British and famous among the French, who encouraged their actions. The people who ventured outdoors were proof of decades, if not longer, of successful captures. Their skin was white, red, brown, and black. British settlers, African slaves, and other native peoples had been assimilated into this enclave, marrying and mating between races, and yet all were known as Abenaki. Al
ong with their linen tunics and deerskin leggings or skirts, some wore conical birchbark hats to shed the rain. Nose rings and earrings adorned the men.
Clouds broke apart, and shafts of timid sun spilled down. Reaching the trading post, Catherine and Samuel eased Joseph onto a barrel inside the door. Dust hung suspended in the shadows. The air was thick and musty from the recent rain, sharp with the smell of animal skins. In many ways, it reminded Catherine of home, from the bucket and drinking gourd inside the door to the patterned baskets and beaded collars on display.
“Fawn? It’s Bright Star.” Her sister hoisted the rum onto a table.
A shuffling sound preceded the emergence from the back room of an Abenaki woman whose long silver-streaked hair was secured by a feathered headband. Her face was creased from age and weather, her eyes deep-set and kind. Greeting Bright Star and Catherine, Fawn’s smile piled more lines into her cheeks. She had traded furs with them for years.
Samuel ducked back outside to wait with Thankful and Gaspard while Bright Star presented the situation—and the remaining rum—to Fawn. “My brother has been injured.” She gestured to where he rested. “If you agree, I would stay and care for him myself, just until he’s well enough to travel. Could you spare a room?” It was understood that with shelter would come food, water, and any herbs and poultices that may help.
“Of course.” Glancing his way, Fawn rubbed a thumb over the polished slate pendant about her neck. “Stay here as my guest as long as you need. Catherine, you’ll be staying, as well?” She brought a pipe to her lips and puffed.
The sweet tang of tobacco lined Catherine’s nose, reminding her of the smoke rings Gabriel used to blow. When she’d laughed, so had he. But those uncomplicated days were a distant, fading memory. Shoving his face from her mind, she focused on Fawn’s question. “I have business elsewhere, but if you don’t mind, there is another young woman named Thankful who might stay.”
“She may if she likes,” Fawn said. “What of the yellow-haired man? Who is he?”
“My captive. A ransomed British prisoner of war.”
Narrowing her eyes, Fawn cradled the bowl of her pipe in her palm. “He is not another emissary from the British general Amherst?”
Catherine told her he was not. “You’ve had emissaries here? What did they want?”
Bright Star’s expression feigned a casual indifference. “Excuse me, but first, is there somewhere we can take our brother?”
Following Fawn’s instructions, Bright Star and Catherine supported Joseph once more and brought him to a small room at the back of the post. Bright Star spread a fur over the floor, and with a silent grimace, Joseph lowered himself onto it. Animal skins and bunches of corn tied by their husks hung from poles near the ceiling, shrinking the already small space.
“What did she say about the British?” Joseph rasped, and Catherine squeezed his outstretched hand.
Bright Star folded a faded blanket beneath his injured leg to cushion it. “It isn’t wise to appear curious.”
“My sister, the tides are changing. We must be ready to change with them.” His eyelids drifted closed. “Our friends have not all been true . . .”
Bright Star’s braids swung as she leaned over Joseph and told him to rest. “I will see you soon and will bring help.”
In the front room, Fawn stood just inside the open door, pipe clenched between the teeth that remained to her. In the wedge of light she occupied, her gnarled hands busied themselves grinding hominy with a long wooden paddle in a straight-sided barrel.
She looked up when Catherine neared, and beckoned with her finger. “We have known each other many years,” Fawn said. “You know our custom would be to welcome you and your entire company to eat. But this time, it will be a kindness to you if I send you on your way.” Taking her pipe in her hand, she pointed with it to a pouch on a nearby table. “There’s dried venison to last a few days if you can stretch it, and a few rounds of flat bread. Take that with you, and soon. There are some who would not believe your man is your captive, but assume he is a spy, as they called the other two British men who were escorted here by six Stockbridge Mohicans.”
Catherine thanked her for the food and tucked the welcome offering under her arm, dropping her gaze to the corn being ground into meal. “What happened to them? The British and Mohicans.”
“One Mohican was killed, but I doubt either army cares much about that. As for the British, they were not slain. Abused, as is our custom, but they live.”
Ritualistic torture. It was the only true name for what must have happened. Catherine fought to disguise her recoil.
“Our warriors took them straight to Trois-Rivières, where they are in irons on the French ship there,” Fawn continued. “If you don’t want the same for your captive, I’ll bid you good-bye and peace. Get you gone and in good time, for our warriors love a chase.” She poked the pipe back between her teeth and took to pounding the corn once more.
Bright Star pulled Catherine by the elbow, accusation in her grip, for she had always been against this voyage. But her lips formed just one word. “Go!”
Catherine would go, indeed. And their path led straight past Trois-Rivières.
Samuel’s arm was around Thankful’s shoulders when Catherine emerged from the post with Bright Star. Tears slipped down Thankful’s wan cheeks, meeting below her chin. Gaspard slouched against the outside of the post, one knee bent so that his foot rested on the timbered wall.
“Time to go? Can’t say I’ll miss the place.” Gaspard pushed away from the post and took a few steps, but when no one followed, he stopped with an exaggerated sigh and sidled back into the shade.
“Thankful?” Catherine took her hands and found her fingers stone cold. Her urgency to put this place behind her bowed to the need to address this fear. The nine-year difference in age between them expanded until Catherine felt more like an aunt or mother to the young woman. “I believe this is for the best. I think you can do this—stay here with Bright Star and help Joseph get well. But I want to know if you believe you can, for that is what matters most.”
“If I can, it will only be by the grace of God.” Thankful’s voice betrayed her doubt.
“Then give the grace of the Great Good God a chance to do its work.” Bright Star’s sharp tone belied her impatience. She began again, more temperate. “Thankful, you can assist me here, but that is not why I think you should stay. I think you have something else that needs mending, and it can best be done right here. You do not need my sister for this. You need Someone else.”
As Thankful glanced about, Catherine could almost hear the objections forming in her mind. That this was a godless place, though a chapel spiked a spire toward the sky. A place where her terrors had been born and her nightmares lived in broad daylight.
Scalps on poles lining the street lifted in the wind. Grimacing, Gaspard watched them, fists jammed into his trouser pockets. The scalps were old, by Catherine’s reckoning, shrunken and without smell. But blond hair fluttered like tattered ribbons.
Thankful covered her mouth with both hands and turned her face into Samuel’s chest. His hand came over the top of her head with as much care as if they were family. In the sense that mattered most, they were. He, more than anyone else, understood exactly what she felt.
Samuel lifted Thankful’s chin with his finger. “Thankful.” His voice held a father’s warmth and comfort. “Remember what we have talked about before. God is not hemmed in by church or chapel, He does not belong to priests alone. He is no respecter of the lines drawn between nations, armies, or empires, but lives within you, wherever you are. You cannot get away from Him. He is here, because He dwells in you. Don’t be afraid.”
A tremulous smile transformed her face. “My faith is weak.”
“He is strong. That’s all you need.”
Thankful reached out and grasped both Catherine’s hand and Bright Star’s. “Pray for me,” she whispered, desperation in her tone. Then she bade Samuel a tearful farew
ell before hugging Catherine around the neck. “Don’t stop praying, even if I am not the subject of your prayers. And I will pray for your safe return.”
Agreeing, Catherine bussed Thankful’s cheeks and asked Samuel and Gaspard to wait one moment more. She ducked back inside the trading post to say good-bye to her brother. Kneeling beside him, she spoke his name, and his eyelids fluttered open.
“I’m going now, with Samuel and Gaspard. Bright Star and Thankful will take good care of you here, and I’ll see you when I return.”
Joseph licked his lips. “I do not like that you go alone with those two men.”
“A few days, brother, and it will be over.”
He grunted. “Thankful is afraid, I think, to be among the Abenaki. But I will keep her safe. I will make her feel safe if I can.”
“I have no doubt of that.”
“O:nen,” he whispered. Good-bye.
“Au revoir, Joseph.” See you again. Catherine kissed his cheek and left.
Bright Star remained outside with Samuel, Thankful, and Gaspard. How weathered she looked, but how nobly and tall she still stood.
“Thank you,” Catherine whispered. “This is more than I wanted you to bear. Don’t wait for my return. As soon as Joseph is well enough, take the canoe home again.”
Confusion flickered over Bright Star’s features. “You are only days away from Quebec. How many sleeps until you come back this way? Won’t you just make your deliveries and return?”
The pouch with Fawn’s food still pressed between her elbow and side, Catherine retied the ribbon around the end of her loosening braid. “That is my plan. But who can say what might happen? You do what is best for you.”
Her sister lifted her sheathed hunting knife over her head and placed it over Catherine’s. “Protect yourself.”
Catherine’s hand went to the weapon. “I will.”
Bright Star’s smile was rueful. “Good. But I meant your heart.”
Between Two Shores Page 25
