by Janet Lunn
“I will inform General Powell of your adventure and of your steadfast courage in seeing your cousin’s mission accomplished. I will give him the message you carried so faithfully.” He took Phoebe’s hand again and shook it, put on his coat, and went out.
Phoebe sat down on the settle, suddenly aware of how very tired she was. She had finally reached the end of the journey that had started at the hollow tree. She had done for Gideon what she had set out to do. She knew now that she had done it for herself, too, and for her father and for all that he had cherished — loyalty, trust, the keeping of promises. How very much she had learned from her quiet scholarly father! She felt, too, that with the telling of Japhet Oram’s escape, she had laid a fear to rest — the Sherwoods had not turned against her. But even if they had done, she knew that if she could go back to that moment when she had cut his bonds from him she would do it again.
The next few hours were completely blissful. While Sarah Sherwood nursed her two-week-old infant in the front room, a servant girl brought a large tin tub into the kitchen and set it in front of the dancing flames in the big fireplace. She filled it with steaming water and set a screen around it. She gave Phoebe a cloth and a large slice of strong soap, and Phoebe scrubbed her body and her hair free of two months of dirt. Looking at the bath water afterwards, she decided that the Sherwoods, if they had a mind to, could grow cabbages in it, it was so thick and black. It was the first spark of humour she had felt since the night she had fled the camp.
Sarah Sherwood gave her one of her own shifts and an old wool gown. It had once been blue, she told Phoebe, but it had been washed so often it was now the soft blue-grey colour of a nuthatch’s wing. It smelled of the wild thyme it had been laid away in.
At Sarah Sherwood’s bidding, she sat down at the deal table in the middle of the warm kitchen and ate a meal of roasted pork and potatoes and sauerkraut. She thought she had never said a blessing before a meal with more gratitude in her heart.
Will you Wait?
The journey from the rapids at Chambly to Fort Sorel on the St. Lawrence seemed like a holiday to Phoebe. She hadn’t minded the twelve-mile trip from Fort St. John’s to Chambly, riding pillion behind one of the soldiers on his horse, but the trip on the big, flat-bottomed bateau down the Richelieu River was a joy.
It was a clear December day. The sky was bright blue and cloudless. A few small birds fluttered in the bare branches of the towering hardwood trees along the shore. The wind was cold, but Phoebe was warm. Sarah Sherwood had given her an old but still serviceable hooded brown wool cloak to cover her tunic and leggings. She had given her the shift and the blue gown, too, but Phoebe had wanted to wear Katsi’tsiénhawe’s clothes. She had washed them and spent painstaking hours mending them because they felt like a talisman, a safe conduct from Peter Sauk and his family. So, while she had accepted the gown gratefully, she had worn the deerskin clothes despite Sarah Sherwood’s disapproval. Mary Maracle had made her a new pair of moccasins.
Now, wrapped warmly in the cloak, the hood pulled up around her face, Phoebe stood at the railing of the boat and gazed at the country around her with keen pleasure, lazily aware that she did not have to keep all her senses alert for signs of danger. She paid scant attention to the soldiers talking among themselves. The Richelieu, slow moving through this low land, was a beautiful river, although, she thought, not as beautiful as her own Connecticut, fast flowing through the high hills. It was frozen over now, except for a channel barely wide enough for the boat. The boat’s captain said that a few more bitter-cold days would close the river for the winter.
He told her that people had been settled along this river for a long time and pointed out well-established French villages on either shore. Smoke rose from chimneys, and she could distinctly hear the creaking of mill wheels, the jingling of sleigh bells, the neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, and the sound of human voices over the water. She wondered what it might be like to live in a place where generations of one’s own people had lived, where the forest had been shoved back, leaving no trace of itself, where the land had been tilled for so long it only waited for the farmer every spring to make it ready for a new crop. She could see, in the frozen fields, the stubble of last summer’s Indian corn.
She thought about the French people who lived on these farms, in these villages, who had lost their war and now had to be loyal to the English king across the ocean, a king who didn’t even speak their language. Loyal. That word that caused so much trouble. Loyal. How could people feel loyal to a king they didn’t know, who lived in a far-off country, even when he did speak their language? Wasn’t it more important to be loyal to what was right or to those people you knew and cared about? What was the good of killing people or being hateful to them because someone you didn’t know was doing something hateful to someone else you didn’t know? She grieved for her father dying in Boston for his strong belief in an idea of freedom, and Gideon for a king over in England. She grieved for Deborah Williams driven from her home, for Aunt Rachael and Uncle Josiah, for Jem, whose own father had gone off to fight in the Royal Yorkers and might be alive or dead, and for Tibby Thayer.
“It’s true what I said to Jem,” she whispered fiercely to herself. “It really is true. I don’t care, I cannot care who wins this war.” But she realized she did care about the war’s refugees — those refugees she had travelled with for so many weeks. Had they all survived? Would they despise her? Would Jem — in spite of what Captain Sherwood had told her and what Jem himself had said on that hillside by the waterfall? Aunt Rachael, she felt sure, would never turn away from her, nor Uncle Josiah, though he was all but witless now. She did not think about Anne.
She brought her thoughts back to the river billowing up around the sides of the boat. It was mid afternoon. The boat was nearing Fort Sorel, where the Richelieu flowed into the St. Lawrence. That great river glittering under the sun, the ice, tossed up on shore by the wind and the moving water, looked from a distance the way Phoebe had always imagined castles to look.
“It must be as big as the ocean!” Phoebe stared at the expanse of it in amazement. She realized she had spoken aloud when a voice responded.
“Not here, Mistress.” One of the soldiers had come to stand beside her. “Northeast of here she gets even wider, and on up by Quebec she gets salty and then she’s more like the ocean. It’s mighty fine up there, where the wind sings loud and high through the big pines and along the rocky shore.”
There was a wistful note in his voice that caused Phoebe to turn and look at him more closely. He was thin and young with straw-white hair. He was dressed like so many of the Loyalist soldiers she had seen at Fort St. John’s, in a patched dark blue uniform coat and shabby linen leggings that had likely been buff-coloured but were a sort of nondescript tan now.
“Do you come from near the ocean?” she asked.
“Yup. I come from Maine ’n’ I’d give three years of my life and a good bull calf to be back there now.”
“Why aren’t you?”
The soldier sighed. His shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry.” Impulsively Phoebe put her hand on his arm. “But I don’t understand what snags so many men and boys into going to war. I really don’t.”
The soldier sighed again. “I reckon fer me ’twas when the mob stripped the clothes off old Obadiah Hanks and slathered him with hot pine pitch and rolled him in chicken feathers, then rode him around on a fence rail ’til he screamed. He hadn’t done nothin’ but call them a clutch of rowdies and roughnecks. That set my blood a-boilin’ and I lit into Billy Pierce, and it wan’t but a sneeze-up afore the whole clanjamfry of ’em was after me. I lit outta there lickety-split. I was set to hide in the woods fer a time and then go on home, but I was so riled, I up and took myself up to the St. Lawrence River and marched all the way to the British holdings at Three Rivers here in Canada and,” he finished on a low, sad note, “I joined up with ’em.”
“And now you hate it.”
�
��Wal, I don’t see the use of it, much. I been in Gentleman Johnny’s army alongside of Captain Sherwood and Colonel Peters and the rest in this here Queen’s Loyal Rangers and I seen things worse than what happened to old Obadiah Hanks. What I ain’t seen is, I ain’t seen anything to make me doubt we’d all be a sight better off gettin’ the hell outta here and goin’ home, beggin’ your pardon, Mistress.
“My ma used to break up fights between my brother Dan and me. She’d set us to polishin’ the front window, one on one side, one on the other. We would of give up teeth to bust that window and have at each other, but the wrath of our ma wan’t a thing to play light with. So we polished and we polished, and by ’n’ by, we began to feel so foolish we’d have to laugh. Well, mebbe this here war needs my ma to set us all to polishin’ windows.”
Phoebe had a sudden picture of General Powell, Captain Sherwood, Joseph Heaton, and a thousand others lined up along one side of an enormous glass window with an equal number of angry rebel generals, soldiers, and Sons of Liberty on the other, all polishing away. She giggled.
The soldier grinned. “I guess it ain’t such a practical notion. Anyways, here we are and I got chores to do before we tie up. I wish you Godspeed, Mistress.”
“Goodbye. Thank you for keeping me company — and for making me laugh. I am Phoebe Olcott from over on the Connecticut River, in Vermont. If … if you tell me your name I will keep you in my prayers,” she said shyly.
The soldier smiled at her and suddenly he looked very young. “Well, Mistress Phoebe Olcott, I’d take that most kindly. My name’s Ben Larkin.” He took her hand and shook it vigorously. “When I’m up here to Sorel again I’ll come see how you’re fairin’.”
Ben Larkin’s window polishing and his warm smile had made Phoebe a little less worried about facing Fort Sorel and her old travelling companions, and she looked with open curiosity towards the fort that would probably be her home for the duration of the war.
Fort Sorel stood on the western shore of the Richelieu, where it met the St. Lawrence River. Except that it was open to the water on two sides, it was much like Fort St. John’s, only larger. There seemed to be more barns, more houses, more barracks, and the shipyard was bigger. But it was so like the place she had just left that Phoebe almost expected to see the faces she had been used to seeing during the two weeks she had been at Fort St. John’s. And, in a way, she did. There were soldiers, dressed in all manner of uniforms, some wearing bandages, some using walking-sticks. And there were the refugees with the same bewildered look, like children set down in unfamiliar surroundings without their mothers. With her cloak drawn tightly around her, her bundle of clothes under her arm, Phoebe marched bravely down the gangplank towards the big building at the west end of the compound that looked to be the fort commander’s headquarters. She had, carefully tucked inside her sleeve where she could feel the crackle of it, the letter on heavy, official stationery that Justus Sherwood had put into her hands early that morning.
She was threading her way through the knots of people, the carts and horses, when she heard someone cry out her name. She whirled around. It was Jem. Tall, lanky, his light-red hair flying loose behind him, he was racing towards her. In one swift move, he threw his arms around her, lifted her off her feet, and hugged her so tightly she could hardly breathe. He kissed her all over her face, her eyes, her nose, hugged her again, then set her back on the ground but did not let her go.
“Phoebe, oh Phoebe.” He was trembling and his voice was husky. “I thought … I thought … Oh, Phoebe!” His face was wet with tears. He hugged her again, until she had to cry out. He loosened his hold. “Oh, God, Phoebe, I thought you were dead.”
“I … I’m not.” Phoebe hugged him tightly but quickly around his waist. She was happy, she was embarrassed, and suddenly she didn’t know what to do. No boy had ever kissed her, no one had ever shown her this kind of affection. She was quite overcome. Jem stepped back and hastily drew his sleeve across his eyes.
“I’m all right, Jem,” she said breathlessly, trying to cover her confusion. “I wasn’t, because I hurt myself and I nearly starved, but then I got to Fort St. John’s — no, that’s not so, I almost got to Fort St. John’s, when some soldiers found me, and then there was Mary Maracle and Lizzie O’Neil who took care of me, and Mistress Sherwood and Captain Sherwood — and she gave me a gown but I didn’t want to wear it because Peter’s sister gave me these clothes but I have it anyway and I was so worried about coming here but a nice soldier named Ben Larkin made me laugh about polishing windows—”
“Whoa!” Jem grinned at her. He put out his arms to pull her to him. He dropped them to his sides. He flushed and stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. “What are you talking about, Phoebe?”
“I don’t know.” She started to laugh. Jem started to laugh. They looked at each other, then looked away. They laughed again for the sheer joy of finding each other. Finally their laughter subsided, leaving them both a little less self-conscious. Phoebe became aware again of voices, of people coming and going, of a horse whinnying.
“Jem” — she paused hesitantly, afraid of what she might hear — “is everyone all right? Did everyone reach here safely?”
The lingering smile left Jem’s face. “Not everyone.” He sighed. “Phoebe, your uncle Josiah got all the way here, but he died only a few days after. He was just plum wore out, your aunt said. Anne took it hard.”
Uncle Josiah. He had always been such a shadowy figure in the family, quiet, studious, always a little frail. Phoebe felt the tears rising in her to think of him dying so far from home, so far from his books and the work he loved so much. She remembered Aunt Rachael saying once that Uncle Josiah ought never to have left Connecticut. Now he was gone.
Jem took her bundle from her and they walked together across the hard-packed snow towards a log barracks along the south wall of the enclosure. Jem said it was where the Vermont and New York refugees were housed.
“And there ain’t but the one room fer us all,” he grumbled. “But then there’s folks come after us who’s got to live in tents.” He pointed towards the west end of the compound where half a dozen tents were set up. “They’ll get buildings soon enough, but the General don’t know what to do with us all,” he went on. “There’s so many of us and there’s more comin’ every day. And we sure don’t know what to do with ourselves. Ma figgered things was gonna be dandy if we could just get ourselves into this British-held country. Well, here we are but I’ve heard tell that Governor Haldimand over in Montreal thinks for sure some of us is rebel spies, so he’s plannin’ to set up a Loyalist camp over in a place called Yamachiche on the other side of the St. Lawrence so’s we’ll all be farther away from rebel country, where we can’t do no harm.”
“Why would there be spies? What could there be to spy on here in a Canadian camp full of refugees?”
“Well it ain’t just refugees here, there’s soldiers. This here’s a proper fort. Over in Yamachiche across the St. Lawrence, there’d be just you refugees.”
Phoebe turned his words over in her mind. She stopped walking and turned to Jem. “ ‘You refugees’?” she said. “What do you mean, ‘you refugees’? You’re one, too.”
“Phoebe, there’s a thing I got to tell you.” Jem gripped her hand. He looked at her, then looked away. “I’ve joined up.”
“Joined up?”
“Phoebe, I told you. I told you way back when we was gettin’ ourselves from Lake Champlain to find my ma. I told you I was itchin’ to join.”
“Yes, but …”
“And I figgered my ma was safe here ’n’ would do well enough without me. And I thought you wasn’t ever comin’ back.” He took a deep breath. “And, anyways, I done it.” He looked at her apprehensively. After a long wait he asked, “Ain’t you gonna say somethin’?”
“No.” What could she say? She couldn’t even think.
He grimaced, looked at her as though he wanted to say something more, sighed, and started walking again.
Inside, the barracks was, as Jem had said, one large room, about twenty feet long and not much more than half of that wide. It’s naught but a covered campground, thought Phoebe. But no campground had ever been so smoky or reeked so of unwashed clothes, unwashed people, stale food, and old smoke. The fireplaces at each end of the room sent out almost no heat and a lot of smoke to add to the stench. What fresh air there was seeped in through the chinks between the logs and around the edges of the door, and the windows, one on either side of the door.
Phoebe pulled her cloak up to cover her nose as she looked around her. Through the haze she could see all the people she had so dreaded meeting again. But now the dread was gone, altogether gone. She was glad, glad even to see Joseph Heaton’s sour face turned towards her in shock.
Before Master Heaton had time to say a word, Betsy Parker caught sight of her. She hurled herself at Phoebe. Phoebe swung her up into her arms. Over Betsy’s head she saw Jonah Yardley grinning at her. In his arms he held George. Phoebe’s eyes filled.
“I’m happy to see you, Jonah.” She smiled tremulously. “And George, too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He put the cat down and came swinging towards her on his crutches. He held out his hand. Phoebe took it and squeezed it hard. “Come,” she said. With Betsy Parker cradled in one arm, Jem on one side of her, Jonah on the other, she started towards the far corner, where Aunt Rachel had risen from a chair and was moving towards her.
