Gut twisting, Catherine began walking toward her, but Josephine straightened, one hand to her mouth, the other high in the air, palm out. “I’m all right now, Catherine, thank you.” Her voice trembled. “I won’t have you tending me when there are men still on the field.” With unsteady gait, she skirted the body and knelt by a man who might still need aid.
The firefight grew louder, though it remained out of sight past the buttes. By now Catherine recognized the sound of grapeshot being blown from cannons and the quake of the earth in response.
She whirled back toward the wounded and set her course for a soldier whose blue-cuffed hand lifted in the air from where he lay. Sunlight gleamed on his buttons.
“Bonjour, my name is Catherine,” she told him as she knelt by his side, “and I’m here to help you.”
His grey-white breeches were slick with congealed blood where a ball had entered his thigh. Another ball, or grapeshot, had taken off two fingers of his left hand. Muscling back a gag, she bandaged the wound in his thigh first. She noted from the exit wound that the ball had gone fully through it, then proceeded to bind up his hand.
“Catherine?” The officer was shaking, his pupils small beneath the open sky. She doubted his body registered yet the magnitude of his pain. “Catherine Duval?”
She bent his arm at the elbow so his injured hand was aloft, and supported it at the wrist. Then she again took in his face.
“Captain Moreau.” Recognition sparked a tumult of emotions, none of which were practical for the moment. She poured brandy into a dipper and helped him drink.
“Ah, Catherine. It has come to this. I was so certain the harvest would be here in time. If our men had eaten, they may not have collapsed. How can starving men fight? And why would they fight for an empire that doesn’t feed them?”
She shook her head, at a loss. She tugged her apron to cover her knees, and it tore in a threadbare spot.
“Everything I thought I knew, I now doubt. Except for this. I knew I’d find you here.” With his good hand, he caught her wrist. “And the prisoner you set free.” His skin was damp and waxy, his hold a clammy pinch.
“Have you seen him?” As soon as she asked, she knew she’d made a mistake.
A smile creased his face, pushing folds of skin toward sagging ears. “I didn’t need to. Word arrived from Cap-Rouge to put me on alert. I know he’s here. I knew it even before you confirmed it. He is a spy and will be treated as such. And you are the woman who helped him.” His speech was halting, his voice like a saw through wood. Though he paused for breath between phrases and sentences, his meaning was undiminished. “What do you suppose they will do with you, the woman who made possible this subterfuge? May this defeat of your army hang about your neck to the end of your days.”
From his face and voice, she believed more than ever what Gaspard had said. Moreau had ordered the burning of the barn with Samuel inside. But she had no desire to stay long enough to hear him confirm or deny the report, or anything else he might say.
Wresting from his grip, Catherine stood. The sun was high overhead, her shadow barely present.
“And so you leave me here to die,” he said. “Convenient solution.”
Ringing filled her ears. The fighting, she realized, had stopped. “I do not leave you to die. Others will come for your care.” She swept a glance up the buttes and across the field.
“No matter. Should I die, others are already looking for you and Samuel Crane. You will not be difficult to find.”
Chest tightening, Catherine turned her back and walked away.
The English had won the battle, but the French still held Quebec. On the Plains of Abraham, looting had been quick to begin. In search of coin, unemployed weapons, and mementos of battle, soldiers and militia alike swooped in to pick over bodies and field.
British soldiers still on their feet loaded their wounded onto handbarrows and rolled them over the furrowed field and down the muddy road. The injured cried out with every jostle, all the way down to the temporary hospital on the beach at Anse-au-Foulon, where they awaited transport to Point Lévis. French wounded, and some English, were delivered to the convent’s hôpital-général, which lay northwest of Quebec’s walls and about half a mile west of the buttes. It sat on the south bank of the Saint-Charles River, just out of range of the batteries coming from Point Lévis, yet still close enough to house civilian refugees and wounded alike.
Josephine had returned to camp at Point Lévis, and Eleanor had been called to embalm General Wolfe’s body before it was shipped to London, but Catherine stayed at the convent and served alongside Sisters in grey habits and white wimples. How spotless, how clean they looked to her, while her own dress and apron were a blend of stiff and sodden. With blood and brandy beneath her fingernails, she pumped fresh water from a well outside the hospital, back aching from bending over the wounded. Yet she was grateful to be of use, whether drawing water or translating for patients or nuns as necessary.
Finished at the pump, Catherine hoisted her buckets and turned back toward the hospital, focus locked on the uneven ground at her feet. When water sloshed over the bucket rims and onto her dress, she slowed her pace.
“Catherine.”
She glanced up, then halted. Samuel stood not five paces before her. His clothes were filthy, but he was whole. Relief pushed through every part of her. “Where did you come from? Did you fight?” She scanned him for any sign of injury.
“I offered—quite forcefully, I might add—but the officers wouldn’t allow it. Their own men were trained so well, they mistrusted whether I could keep up, especially with my weak shoulder, and there weren’t rifles enough to go around as it was. If I’d had our muskets, I’d have at least given them to the cause, but we lost them in the river.”
She lowered her buckets to the ground and wiped her palms on her tattered apron. “How did you find me?”
“When I didn’t see you at Point Lévis, someone told me a few women had come to the field. It was the sort of thing you would do. I figured the nearby convent had turned hospital, and so it has, and here you are.” He stepped closer, reaching out. For a moment Catherine thought he would embrace her or take her hand. But he only cupped her elbow for a moment, his callused fingers brushing her skin. “It’s over, Catherine. At least our part in it. We did it. The battle is won. It’s only a matter of time before Quebec buckles beneath the new siege. Once it does, the rest of the nation must follow. The war on this continent cannot last long now.”
All the energy Catherine had mustered for this day—and for the weeks leading up to it—fled her body all at once. A stone bench beckoned from beneath a tree, and she went to it, bringing her buckets with her. Sitting, she lowered her head into her hands.
Cannons boomed, and the ground trembled beneath her feet. Samuel’s presence was warm beside her, but she didn’t look at him. Artillery fire resounded and shuddered through her, an echo to her thudding pulse. This was her doing, hers and his, at least in part if not entirely. Would she have played this role if anyone but him had asked it of her? Could she still justify her actions when she was marked by the blood of her countrymen? These were questions she could not, or would not, answer.
Another blast reverberated in the distance, and Catherine could well imagine smoke and fire and toppling stones. “Does Gaspard know?” she asked. Deserter though he was, she wondered how he would feel about the defeat of the army he’d left, especially since he’d played a more critical role than he first intended. Whatever his response, she felt confident she’d be able to relate.
Leaning against the maple at his back, Samuel stretched out his legs, crossing an ankle over the other. “It’s likely, although I haven’t seen him today.”
It was better this way, sitting side by side rather than face-to-face. Catherine didn’t want him to read her expression—or misread it. It was all she could do to comprehend the magnitude of today’s battle and siege. “All he really wanted was to go home. Have they released him?”<
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“They detained him during the battle, but I imagine they’ll release him soon, at the latest when the siege breaks and we occupy Quebec.”
A bittersweet smile cracked Catherine’s dry lips. “I’d like to see him before I leave, but I’m anxious to return home, too.”
“Don’t rush away.” Samuel sat up straighter, angling to search her face. “The river is crawling with retreating French and pursuing British. Stay until the way is safer. I’m attaching to one of the regiments here, but when I’m off duty, I’ll build you a new canoe. Besides, you need to rest.”
Held up against her need to see how Joseph fared, the delays sounded like excuses to her ears. And yet she agreed to stay.
The unbinding from Samuel Crane had already begun, however, for the mission that had brought them together was complete. Good-bye was all that was left.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A yellow-grey haze hovered over the siege-battered city, an echo of the fog in Catherine’s mind. She’d agreed to stay a little longer before returning to Montreal, but if Samuel thought the wait would ease her exhaustion, he’d been mistaken. How could she rest when the nuns were vastly overwhelmed by patients? Whether she was motivated by goodwill or guilt, Catherine didn’t examine. Instead she occupied herself with drawing water and boiling it, bandaging wounds, and bringing drink to the thirsty.
Artillery fire rumbled the ground. Smoke clouded the air. When the pump outside the hospital brought a mere trickle, Catherine carried her buckets to the shore of the Saint-Charles River. While the St. Lawrence was a fairly straight channel, the Saint-Charles turned back on itself, changing its course over and again.
How well she understood. Now that the battle was over, her thoughts looped from this war to the peace that must follow, from doubt to resignation over her actions, and from parting with Samuel to reunion with Thankful and her siblings. This was the direction she drifted as she filled the buckets from the river.
One of the tales Bright Star had told while Strong Wind and Gabriel argued outside was about three sisters. It was a story that belonged to the People, she’d said, and so it was especially important. According to the tale, three sisters lived in a field a very long time ago, before Strong Wind was born. The youngest of the girls couldn’t walk yet, so she crawled along the ground, wearing green. The middle sister was restless, never content to stay in one spot. “Like me!” Catherine had laughed. She wore a yellow dress and ran this way and that across the field. The eldest sister stood straight and tall, with long silky hair. “They all loved each other very much, but it was the eldest sister who kept the younger two together,” Bright Star had explained.
One day in late summer, a boy visited the field, and the youngest sister disappeared. The other two sisters mourned. The boy returned later, and the middle sister disappeared. The eldest sister sighed for her siblings night and day until her hair dried and tangled in the wind, but she did not bow down. Still, no one heard her.
“Hurry up!” Catherine had always urged at that point, even though she knew it was a story about green beans and squash and corn. “It’s too sad. Get to the good part!”
Bright Star had tapped her on the nose and called her impatient. But she went on just the same. The boy finally heard the eldest sister crying and took her in his arms to carry her to his home. There, she was astounded to find her younger sisters waiting for her. “And from that day to this, the three sisters were never separated again. That’s like us. We’ll be together even if the moon and sun never face each other,” she’d said, glancing outside toward Strong Wind and Gabriel.
Joseph had scrunched his small nose. “But I’m not a girl, and we’re not vegetables.”
Bright Star laughed. “You are right, little brother. But am I not the eldest sister just the same, and responsible for both you and Catherine Stands-Apart?”
The recollection stung. Catherine was still the sister darting near and far, pulling against vines that sought to hold her. In a few days she’d leave Quebec for a reunion with her siblings. She only prayed it would be a happy one.
Cannons roared, jerking her from her reverie. The ground quaked, the river trembled, and Catherine scooped a handful of water to her parched lips. Then, pails of water in hand, she headed back to patients who awaited the same.
A redcoat stood guard outside the hospital, which now operated under British control. As he let her in, all thoughts of Thankful, Bright Star, and Joseph moved to the back of her mind.
The air was as humid here as it was outside, due to the damp stone walls and floors. In this chamber, beds were arranged along both walls, each with a curtain to provide privacy to the patient within. Most, however, kept them open to allow a breeze. Two columns of cots had been set up end to end in the wide middle aisle to accommodate the influx from yesterday’s battle. Women refugees from Quebec threaded between patients in search of husbands, sons, or fathers. Their distress was obvious at finding British wounded in their midst. Handkerchiefs scented with lavender could not mask the smell of ruined flesh.
“Pardon me.” Catherine pushed between a wigged woman in silk and a peasant in threadbare linen, both looking for their men. Sisters in black and grey moved between the cots, many of them having come from convents inside Quebec.
“Mademoiselle, if you please!” Dr. Simmons, a surgeon with the British army, beckoned to Catherine from the far end of the chamber. If there were French doctors for French troops, they’d fallen back inside the city’s walls. “These men have been waiting too long.”
A breeze bitter with saltpeter swept the room. Catherine barely registered the color of the uniforms she passed as she shifted between the stone wall and a row of wounded. This convent, she’d learned, had received soldiers ill with smallpox and typhus who’d arrived at Quebec on French troopships throughout the war. “French patients, we are accustomed to,” one nun had told her yesterday. “Battle wounds and British soldiers and surgeons, we are not.”
Perspiration bloomed beneath Catherine’s arms and across her chest and back. Uneven flagstones rose and dipped beneath her steps. “Water, soldier?” Helping him drink, she saw past his mangled limb and thought of Bright Star and Thankful doing the same for Joseph. The notion put resolve where there might have been repulsion. What she couldn’t do for her brother, she would do for these men until it was time to go home.
When she moved to the next patient, it was recognition that rolled her stomach.
“Bonjour. We meet again,” Pierre Moreau rasped. His wounded leg and hand had been treated and bandaged. Whiskers sketched charcoal over his jaw, contrasting with his parchment-pale complexion.
“Bonjour, Captain Moreau. It would appear you’ve been well tended.” She felt the urge to either flee from him or justify her actions. She did neither.
“Never trust appearances, Catherine. A lesson you taught me too well.” His tone was sour as vinegar but weakened by blood loss. She had nothing to fear from him now.
On the other side of Moreau from Catherine, Dr. Simmons returned to the narrow aisle to treat the patient opposite him. A rolling cart held a tray of knives, scissors, needle, sutures, ligatures, a roll of bandages, and a bowl of wet plaster compound.
“Will you drink?” Catherine lifted the dipper.
“Water?” Moreau laughed. “Have you nothing stronger, for the love of all that is holy?” He glanced at the neighboring patient, who was being dosed with brandy by a nun called Sister Anne-Marie. “What he’s having will suit, but a lot of it. Enough to make even a sailor drop. But you can’t do that for me, and I wager you wouldn’t even if you had the power. You enjoy seeing me suffer. Admit it.” Thick black eyebrows pinched together above his nose, and colorless lips cinched tight, so that his face was pleated and creased.
“I do not.” But it did not surprise her that he thought so.
“Why did you do it? How could you prevent your own army from getting food? But you did more than that, if I don’t miss my mark. You passed through Cap-Rouge.
You knew the plan.” The captain’s eyes took on an eerie shine to match the sheen of his brow. “You must have reported it to Wolfe. Every French and Canadian soldier here ought to place their blame on you alone.”
Her mouth turned dry as starched cloth.
“Mademoiselle.” From the opposite aisle, Sister Anne-Marie spoke low but firmly. “Many thirst. Do you mind?”
At her gentle reprimand, Catherine turned to move on and found Samuel threading toward her, wearing a fresh set of clothes. “I brought someone to see you,” he said.
Gaspard appeared from behind him, raising a hand in greeting. He, too, was clean and freshly shaved. “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” His tentative smile looked brave but unconvincing. His gaze bounced from her to the sea of wounded in which they stood. “I hear you may be taking your leave from us—”
“Gaspard Fontaine?” The cot squeaked behind Catherine as Moreau shifted. “And Samuel Crane! You brought both spy and deserter to the capital? Arrest these men!” he roared. “Arrest this half-breed woman!”
His French words were clearly lost on the British surgeon and soldiers in the chamber, and Catherine didn’t translate.
“It’s over, Moreau,” Gaspard told him. “The British run the place now, and it’s only a matter of time before they take the city, too. Those who can do the arresting think us heroes.”
Samuel’s steely tone cut straight to the point. “Go back to France. There is nothing left on this continent for you to do.” For the captain could not fight without the fingers he’d lost.
A shard of laughter burst from Moreau. “Return after defeat! Return less of a man than the one they sent off with cheers! Because of you.” With a primal growl, Moreau lunged with his good arm and grabbed a knife from Dr. Simmons’ cart. Light flashed on its blade as he dove toward Catherine.
Between Two Shores Page 31
