The Sacred Shore

by T. Davis Bunn

  John Price reached over and covered her hand with his own. They sat like this, her sorrowful questions met with that kind gaze Anne had known from earliest memory.

  In the distance they heard the lowing of cattle and the clatter of cowbells. A thrush landed in the bush behind them, sending out a song clear as crystal chimes. Anne had a sudden image of long ago. She did not even know how old she was. The same soft loving face she looked at now was leaning over her bed. She had just finished her prayers, and her grandfather was tucking her in for the night. Anne remembered how she looked up into that soft gray gaze and decided that God must have eyes just like her grandfather’s.

  John Price finally said, “Anne, my girl, there is something I must tell you.”

  She looked into the much-loved face, at the grave expression, and nodded her question.

  “Back before the Acadian expulsion, I did not know God.” It was John Price’s turn to look out over the sparkling blue waters. “Oh, I thought I did. But He was someone I was aware of only distantly. I read the Good Book only for what I could use to judge others. I was a man of rules and laws and judgment and war and revenge.”

  Anne smiled and shook her head. “You’re telling me stories, Grandfather.”

  John Price neither smiled nor turned from his perusal of unseen distances. “I was a harsh father and a hard taskmaster. I lived for order and anger. And I confess that I did not take much notice of my first grandchild, the infant Elspeth.”

  Her smile slipped away. “I can’t believe this. Not of you, Grandfather.”

  John Price’s jaw muscles tightened. “I was pleased to have an heir to carry on the family heritage, but discontent that it had turned out to be a girl. There was nothing I could do about the infant being a girl, of course. So I decided to bide my time and let her grow up and perhaps then, one day, she would be of some use, some comfort to me. I paid her so little mind that I did not even know it was you and not Elspeth your mother carried with us to Halifax.” Slowly he shook his head back and forth, obviously pained by the recollection. “Six days and nights I traveled with my own granddaughter, or so I thought, and I did not even know it was you. Did not care enough to see the infant who was there before me.”

  He sighed, and suddenly he looked old. Old and sad and defeated by all that was no more. He now turned to her, distress making his voice tremble. “Anne, I knew of the expulsion. I was one of the very few chosen to collect statistics on the region’s French villages—how much land, how many cattle—all carefully recorded and readied for the seizures that followed.”

  “No,” Anne whispered.

  “I did not see them as people. I saw them as the enemy. They were French, and the French had wounded me in battle. That was all I needed to know.” He sighed, a broken rattling breath. “After it was over, after it was done and too late, I learned the truth. About you, and about myself. The Lord used my own actions and my own guilt to break me, to humble me before Him. Then He began the renewing, the rebuilding from the inside to become a servant of God.”

  He turned his gaze toward the sea and the sky’s unbroken blue. “I shall carry my guilt with me to the grave. That and the fact that it is only God’s loving grace, only the Lord’s perfect forgiveness, only the Master’s healing touch, that has changed me and brought me to where I am this day.”

  “Oh, Grandfather.”

  “In my private moments I long to have my other granddaughter restored to her parents, if only because I am responsible for wrenching them apart.” He faced her again, his emotions clearly threatening to overpower him. “You are no longer a child, Anne. I have waited for just such a day as this to confess to you all that brought you to us. Confess my guilt and beg for your forgiveness.”

  Her own emotions poured out in sobs that nearly choked her. She flung herself into her grandfather’s arms, and he held her tightly, stroked her hair, and said softly, “If God’s gentle mercy can bind us in such a wondrous way, do you truly think your wonderful parents could be any less constant in their love? You are their blessed child, their daughter for life. Of this you can be certain.”

  The next day, the Sabbath morning, Catherine woke to feel as though the clouds had rolled in upon her internal world, the storm had suddenly broken. The instant Andrew opened his eyes, he must have felt it too, for his first words that Sunday were, “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Andrew, my husband, what if all my hopes are false?” She clutched at his nightshirt, seeking desperately for something to calm the turmoil. If only she could pull the coverlet of peace back over her terrified and wounded heart. “What if Charles goes and finds our little Elspeth, or what if he finds out—”

  “Don’t say it, please, I beg you.” Andrew’s gaze mirrored her anguish. “I can’t bear to think it, not for an instant.”

  “I want my daughter so. And yet stirring this all up threatens to destroy the peace and the life we’ve built here.”

  “I know what you are feeling, my love. I feel very much the same,” Andrew confessed in a whisper.

  “Charles is such a ruthless, uncaring, cold person.” She waited for Andrew to defend his brother, but he said nothing, only looked over at her with eyes as tormented as her own heart. “I see in him so many threats against our family.”

  “It is so hard to hear you say these things,” Andrew said slowly. “I have been leaning upon your calm confidence and faith in God.”

  “I wish …” She rolled away, no longer able to lie still, and sat upright on the edge of the bed. She looked over at her husband and said sorrowfully, “I don’t know what I wish anymore.” He reached for her hand, and the silent squeeze said that he understood.

  Sabbath mornings were usually a time of quiet anticipation for Catherine, a culmination of the week while looking forward to seeing Andrew in the pulpit. But today there was none of this. Even Charles seemed affected, for he took his morning tea and retreated to the bench outside the window. When Anne, then John Price, entered the kitchen, Catherine watched her father and daughter exchange calm, loving glances. On any other day she would have questioned them about the secret they shared. But this morning Catherine had all she could do to prepare for church.

  Andrew walked ahead of them, and Catherine watched him go through the motions of exchanging Sabbath greetings with the other villagers. His features looked strained along with his voice. Catherine tried to be interested in comments on the weather, on the first buds of spring appearing, on hopes that a late frost would not kill the nestling sprouts. But the questions, the endless doubts, the dilemma that trapped them, all whirled relentlessly through her mind.

  Andrew’s sermon seemed to be a struggle for him from beginning to end. His mental turmoil was clear to all, and worried glances were cast among those seated around Catherine. Charles had joined her in the pew, and she could feel as much as see his ramrod-erect figure and the arrogance with which he viewed the service and the congregation. Catherine wished he had never come, wished he would simply depart for England on the next ship. Leave them to sort out their lives and let the past settle back into comfortable memories and whispered, half-remembered dreams. And the waves of guilt pounded through her tortured soul.

  She bowed her head, not so much in prayer as in defeat. I cannot carry this any longer, she prayed, and at the same time felt God was so distant it was more a conversation with herself than with her Lord. Forgive me, Father. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to think. Every choice seems equally wrong. It is impossible, and it is tearing me apart. Please take this unspeakable burden from me.

  There was no room for concern about the rightness or wrongness of her feelings or even for a sense of correctness to her prayer. The words were simply formed from the impossible affliction of doubt.

  Andrew seemed to stop in time to her prayer. She did not consciously recognize that he had halted in midflow, not at first. Catherine remained with her head bowed and clenched her hands into a tight ball in the center of her lap. Help us. Please help u
s.

  Her head came up and eyes opened almost against her will. Andrew was gazing down at her. He seemed mildly surprised, halted in mid-sentence by some secret whisper.

  Catherine felt a sigh escape her throat, and with it she seemed to expel all the distress, all the doubt, all the anguish. It was not something she did herself. The calm, the inner peace, arrived with such tenderness that she could only know it had come by the sudden absence of her sorrow. One moment she felt trapped in suffering, the next she was at rest in the hands of God. The moment was perfumed by an eternal presence, a gift from the invisible realm. And then she knew.

  Andrew looked down at her and smiled. He understood. Of course he did. This was not a gift to her. This was an answer. One granted to them both.

  Andrew’s glance shifted, and she turned with him to look at his brother. Charles stared up at the pulpit with an expression of confusion. His brow was wrinkled, his eyes squinted, seeking to focus upon what he did not understand. Catherine did the thing that seemed right at that moment, which was to reach over and take his hand, the first time she had ever touched him. Startled, Charles looked at her, and she gave to him a smile drawn from the love and the peace that filled her heart—not her own smile at all, but God’s gift, given first to her and now shared with Charles. They had their answer.

  Chapter 13

  “Lord Charles, welcome, welcome.” The owner of the largest bank in Halifax wore muttonchop sideburns and a smile as lopsided as his powdered wig. “What an honor it is, sir. An honor, yes indeed. No, please, take this seat, you’ll find it more comfortable. A coffee, sir?”

  “Thank you.”

  “A newly arrived vessel has brought fresh coffee beans straight from Curacao, the finest I’ve had in years.” He turned to the door and said, “Coffee for two. Use the silver service.”

  Charles allowed himself to be ushered to the padded chair by the windows. “It is actually about a ship that I have come to see you.”

  “Then you have come to the right place, your lordship. No other house in all the colonies does as much trading business—”

  Charles stopped the man’s enthusiastic flow with his palm upraised. “Can you tell me which is the fastest ship in Nova Scotia?”

  The man stared at him. “The fastest, Lord Charles?”

  “Other than the military, of course.” He had already spent a fruitless period at the Admiralty, seeking to borrow or rent or otherwise gain the use of one of their clippers. But with the rumors of troubles farther south, the officer in charge had the perfect excuse to refuse him, even the king’s envoy. “I am not interested so much with its size, so long as it is able to carry me safely. My concern is speed.”

  “Speed, yes, of course.” The banker clearly struggled to hold back his torrent of questions. “May I ask your destination?”

  “Points south,” Charles replied tersely. “I may require the vessel for some time. Perhaps the entire season. Rest assured I will pay well, and in gold.”

  The banker rose to his feet. “You will excuse me for a moment?”

  “Certainly.”

  “My assistant will be in directly with coffee.” The banker hastened from the room.

  Charles stared at the bustling scene beyond the ornate bay windows, but in truth he saw little. He was too caught up in the conflicting images and emotions that struggled within his mind and heart. He should be impatient. He had a destination. He had a purpose. He was getting on with his business. And yet what he felt most of all was confusion.

  The bank sat on the corner where Halifax’s main street entered the harbor’s market square. Traffic was heavy, and sheep and cattle and horses and chickens and children all added to the clamor of cracking whips and creaking wagons and hawking stall holders. But Charles’s attention remained held by a different scene, one from the previous Sabbath afternoon.

  The church service had been one of the most baffling experiences of his entire life. Andrew had stumbled over his sermon, and he seemed at several points to lose his place entirely.

  And then, in the middle of the service, a change had come. Charles would have liked to attribute the change to Andrew alone. It would have been less mysterious and disconcerting. But, no, the change had come upon them all. One moment Andrew had been uncomfortable and distracted, and the next moment a calm had descended upon the entire gathering. Charles had felt almost overwhelmed by what he still could not fathom.

  After church, Andrew had pulled him aside and asked if they might walk together. When Catherine approached and bestowed upon Charles a smile of warmth and cheer, it had wrenched his heart. No one had ever looked at him like that before. Neither of his wives, certainly. Not even his mother that he could recall.

  Catherine had reached forward, spanning the impossible gap between them with a gentle hand on his arm, and said, “My husband speaks for both of us.”

  The confusion had only heightened then. He wanted to ask how she knew what Andrew was going to say. But she had already turned away, placing the same gentle hand upon her husband. And Charles had seen how her gaze had been returned by Andrew.

  Charles could only stare in unbelieving wonder as Andrew also gave him a smile of love and acceptance. Charles could no longer deny the simple fact that his very presence was a threat to Andrew’s family. Everything Anne had said to him earlier he had come to see as true. His quest for his own selfish ends could destroy everything they had carefully built and maintained for almost twenty years now.

  Andrew accepted greetings from his congregation with gentle words and smiles, gradually drawing the two of them farther down the lane. When they were isolated by the trees and the twisting path, he had said, “I will help you in your quest.”

  Charles found himself rocked again, both by the statement and by the ease with which Andrew spoke. But he was not about to refuse his brother’s offer, even though he was sure the price must be high. “In exchange for what?”

  “I want nothing from you, brother. In truth, I am doing this for God, not for you.” Andrew’s smile held the confidence of one utterly at peace with his decision. “I no longer have any choice in the matter.”

  “I fail to see—”

  “Yes, I would imagine that to be the case.” But his smile did not waver. “Catherine and I spent years searching for Elspeth. If you find her now, it will not be because of anything you yourself do.”

  “Again, brother, I fail to understand your reasoning.”

  “Think on this, will you?” Andrew opened the gate to his home. Charles looked across the garden and saw Anne standing in the doorway, once more greeting him with a smile. “Perhaps you are here because of a much greater purpose than the one you suppose. Perhaps you have been selected as God’s instrument to accomplish something we cannot even imagine.” Andrew halted midway down the path and stared at Charles intently. “And perhaps your true quest is actually a search for something far greater than an heir, something far more lasting. Something eternal.”

  “Lord Charles, may I have the pleasure of introducing Captain Kedrick Dillon.”

  “M’lord.”

  “Captain.” A handshake and an instant’s inspection were enough to know the mettle of this officer. Charles had the experience in sizing up men that comes with wealth. He was also well aware of how things worked in the navy. The captain was lean and battle hard, in his late thirties, and had the direct gaze of one used to the endless vistas of the sea. “An honor to meet you, sir.”

  “The honor is mine.” The officer gave the proper stiff bow of one trained not as a merchant shipper but rather by the Admiralty.

  The banker bustled about. “Come, come, let us sit. I have ordered another pot of this excellent coffee, and then we’ll follow that with a lunch in our dining salon. You will be able to join us, m’lord?”

  “That depends upon the captain here.” Charles resumed his seat by the window, took note of the younger man’s involuntary gesture toward his side with his right hand. “I warrant you have recently le
ft the navy.”

  The gaze turned keener. “How did you know, sir?”

  “As you seated yourself, you sought to adjust a sword you no longer wear.”

  The smile was tight, as measuring as the gaze. “There are few postings for captaincy these days. …”

  “Unless, of course, one is born into a title,” Charles finished for the officer.

  The captain seemed to relax a trifle. “Just so, m’lord.”

  “I understand you now skipper a fast ship, sir.”

  “A swifter vessel you will not find in these waters. A clipper out of Southampton, the keel laid just five years past.” The fire of pride shone in his eyes. “She is a sweet one, m’lord, holding steady at five degrees off the wind even in the belly of a gale.”

  Charles had spent the endless days of his recent crossing talking sea and ships with the naval captain and thus understood. “Which is vital if we are to head down the eastern coastline this time of year, is it not?”

  “Indeed.” The man’s gaze held the grim wisdom of one who had seen his share of hardship and hard weather. “Where exactly were you intending to sail, m’lord?”

  Andrew and he had discussed that very matter. After giving it considerable thought, Andrew’s best estimate of where Charles might begin his search had been in New Orleans. Because of the current difficulties between France and England, letters sent to unknown authorities or to secondhand contacts with vague addresses were either not received or not responded to. Andrew had written for years and received nothing in reply. But he now explained to Charles that a decade earlier the Spanish had taken over control of the region from their French allies and had issued a decree inviting Acadians to come and settle. Over the past ten years, ships had arrived from all over the world—Africa, France, South America, the West Indies, and the American colonies—all containing Acadians desperate to find someplace they might call home. So it was in Louisiana that he would begin his search.