Land of Hope

by Paul C R Monk

  He cracked open his eyes at the caress of a calming hand on his greying temple. Jeanne knew his nightmares came especially when he was agitated over something. She too had spent a wakeful night, unable to get to sleep under the weight of her regrets.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said as he held her hand an instant on the side of his face.

  A few moments later, Jeanne jumped out of bed and threw on a brocaded robe over her nightgown. Jacob eased his legs over the edge of the bed while she folded back the interior wooden shutters, then pulled open the window that looked out onto the emerald hills south of Dublin. The deep green scenery always had a soothing effect on him, whatever the weather, especially after a nightmare. Jeanne enjoyed the view, too, for it was the colour of hope.

  There came a soft knocking at their door.

  ‘Come in, my boy,’ called Jacob, having recognised his son’s footsteps in the corridor. He told himself he must kick the habit of calling him my boy. He was a young man now, after all.

  Paul pushed the door into the bedroom, where morning light flooded through the window that his mother was closing. She turned to face him with an anxious furrow on her brow. He was already dressed in his uniform, not grey as he had remembered his father’s to have been, but Venetian red. ‘Mother, Father,’ he said. ‘A messenger has come. The Sapphire is in the roadstead.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, dear Lord!’ said Jeanne, clenching her hands.

  ‘But the tide will be out, so might I suggest we head out for Ringsend?’

  The village of Ringsend was located on the estuary of River Liffey, a mile from Dublin, and barely a couple of miles from their house. It was where ships could ferry urgent goods, messages, and passengers when faced with contrary winds, or if the tide was not favourable for an entry into Dublin harbour.

  ‘Should I get the messenger to tell them to unload the barrels as well, Father?’

  ‘No, Paul, the wine can wait, my boy,’ said Jacob, slowly half turning with a hand on the base of his back. ‘The barrels can be unloaded in Dublin. Ouch . . . I only wish I hadn’t put my blasted back out.’

  ‘Serves you right for trying to lift one on your own! Honestly!’ said Jeanne, in mirthful rebuke. Jacob realised her playful tone was a vent for her deep relief. The ship was in!

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t so much the barrel as my blasted shoulder giving me gyp; that’s what put my back out.’

  Jacob had been laid up for two days already, but at least he was able to sit up and walk now.

  ‘I can go on my own if you prefer, Father,’ said Paul.

  ‘Oh no, my boy, much better today. But I shall let you take the reins, though.’

  Paul said he would have the carriage ready in half an hour. Then he took a step back into the corridor and closed the door behind him.

  A robust young man of eighteen, bicultural and bilingual, Ireland was now his home. He had been schooled by a master in the new Huguenot town of Portarlington and was destined for a military career in the British army, albeit against his mother’s wishes. But Jacob still hoped to bring him over to the family business.

  It was May, the year 1698, twelve years after the dragoons invaded Montauban and ejected Jacob, Jeanne, and their children from their home. After William of Orange had chased James Stuart from Ireland, Jacob was among the loyal Huguenot officers who were awarded a pension which equated to half his normal pay. Like many Huguenots, he was invited by the English Crown to settle in Ireland, where the cost of living was cheaper. They had been settled in their new home since ’92. Around the same time, he had also received an invitation from friends to settle in New Rochelle. But Ireland was closer to France, and Jeanne had never lost hope of seeing her daughters again. ‘As long as there is a breath in me still, I shall hope,’ she would say.

  Jacob’s pension was barely enough for a family to live on, even in Ireland. But from the proceeds of the sale of Jeanne’s jewels, Jacob was able to build a house a mile south of Dublin from the ruins of an old farm. He had since managed to build up a small trading nexus with the help of his late brother-in-law, Robert Garrisson, and former business partners now settled in Amsterdam. There had been ups and downs with cargo lost to the French and rough weather, but Jacob had long since learnt to hedge his orders by not putting them all in the same ship. The small business had kept him going.

  The house that they called Les chênes—translated as The Oaks—was a far cry from the château Jeanne and Jacob Delpech de Castanet had left behind in the south of France. It was of simple construction, with large windows and spacious enough with five bedrooms, three good chimneys that also served the upper floor, flagstone flooring in the kitchen, and solid oak floorboards elsewhere.

  Despite his back pain, Jacob was particularly joyful this morning, and pleased by the knowledge that the ship at anchor had brought his first delivery of barrels from France safely to port. Since the Treaty of Ryswick, signed the previous autumn, so bringing an end to the Nine Years’ War, business was flourishing. The Channel had become a less dangerous place, now that trade had resumed with France.

  However, trade was far from being his main concern today as he sat contemplating the early-morning sunshine breaking through the clouds, flooding the distant hills here and there in a golden sheen. It was not the warm, vibrant sunrise he used to love in his homeland of southern France, but it nonetheless brought him an inner peace.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come to the landing stage?’ he said to Jeanne, who was doing her toilette at her dressing table behind a three-fold screen.

  ‘No, Jacob, there will need to be extra room for baggage, and besides, who will look after Pierre?’ Of course, the maid could look after their youngest, but Jacob said nothing, suspecting that she wanted it to be like a homecoming.

  *

  The mackerel sky, strewn with longer rags of blue, brightened the deep greens here and there of the surrounding fields. Little Pierre, Paul’s six-year-old brother, jumped off the swing attached to the oak tree upon the sound of an approaching carriage.

  ‘Mother!’ he called out from the front door. ‘They’re here!’

  Having removed her apron and left her culinary preparations to her maid, Jeanne now stood, wringing her hands on the threshold.

  How could she explain her flight from France, leaving her daughters for the sake of her faith? In their eyes, was she not the mother who had abandoned her children?

  Paul pulled on the reins, and the open carriage slowed to a halt at the bottom of the garden, a stone’s throw from the front door. Jacob climbed stiffly down, then gave his hand to his eldest daughter.

  Elizabeth had felt overjoyed and strangely humbled to find her father waiting for her at the windswept landing stage, along with her brother Paul, a young man now, and so fine in his military frock coat and boots.

  Neither she nor Jacob spoke about what had become of the townhouse, the château, the estate, and the farmland. Before his death the previous winter, Robert had made it clear in a letter to Jacob that there was no possibility for Protestants abroad of recovering confiscated land and property.

  Neither did they speak of religion or of his daughters’ forced Catholic upbringing. Instead, they spoke about the difficulty of leaving France, of the long voyage and how Aunt Suzanne had insisted on having her manservant, Antoine, chaperone them to the ship in Bordeaux.

  ‘She has become more fretful since Uncle Robert passed,’ Elizabeth had said. ‘Thankfully, she still has Cousin Pierre, and us . . .’ After an awkward pause, she had said: ‘Father, you do know that I must return to Montauban?’

  Jacob recognised the steely resolution of Jeanne in his daughter’s eyes. He had said: ‘Fear not, my dear daughter, I have not asked you to come here to deprive you of your free will.’ She was contented, but what about her mother?

  Isabelle, overawed at meeting her father and brother, sat with her hand in her sister’s. Jacob let her get used to him in her own good time. He trusted the knotted threads of the pa
st would all become untangled in due course.

  But other long-harboured worries assailed Elizabeth as they had made their way between laboured fields and meadows with gambolling lambs to the house in the country. She had had her reasons for refusing to leave France all those years ago, for letting Paul go with the guide instead of herself. But was it really to remain with her sister? Or was it through self-interest and preferring the company of her friends in Montauban? She had nevertheless taken it upon herself to become her sister’s surrogate mother, albeit not realising the role would last so long. It was one reason why, at twenty-five, she had so far refrained from marrying, even though she had not lacked suitors, especially with the Delpech patrimony thrown into the marriage portion. And would her mother forgive her for wanting to return to her hometown after this visit? Would she forgive her at all?

  Jeanne recognised Elizabeth in the body of a poised, pretty, and refined young woman as Jacob helped her alight. Then she instinctively turned to take the little girl’s hand in a motherly fashion.

  It suddenly occurred to Jeanne that she must look a great deal older than the lady in the painting that the girl had grown up with.

  After a moment of unblinking hesitation, Jeanne marched forward, her hand to her mouth. But then emotion got the better of her self-restraint, and she ran like the wind as Elizabeth burst into tears and opened her arms unreservedly. Mother and daughter fell into each other’s arms.

  Moments later, Jeanne was at last holding the baby, now a girl of eleven, snatched from her breast in one of France’s darkest and cruellest periods of intolerance.

  *

  Half an hour later, while Elizabeth, Paul, Jacob, and Jeanne chatted excitedly in the lounge before dinner was served, Isabelle played with her younger brother on the swing under the oak tree. She thought it all very strange, being an elder sister and having parents. Yet somehow it all seemed to fit, like a torn tapestry stitched back together.

  Thanks so much for reading this book, I hope you enjoyed it.

  Honest reviews of my books help bring them to the attention of other readers. If you’ve enjoyed Land Of Hope I would be very grateful if you could spend just a few minutes leaving a review on Amazon, here for the US and here for the UK.

  Thank you very much.

  Paul C.R. Monk

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Paul C.R. Monk is the author of the Huguenot Chronicles historical fiction trilogy and the Marcel Dassaud books. You can connect with Paul on Twitter at @pcrmonk, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/paulcrmonkauthor and you can send him an email at paulmonk@bloomtree.net should the mood take you.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  In The Huguenot Chronicles trilogy:

  Merchants of Virtue

  Voyage of Malice

  Land of Hope

  Also in the Huguenot Chronicles series:

  Before The Storm 1685 (prequel)

  Other works:

  Strange Metamorphosis

  Subterranean Peril

  A BLOOMTREE PRESS eBook.

  First published in 2018 by BLOOMTREE PRESS.

  Copyright © Paul C.R. Monk 2018

  ISBN 978-1-9164859-0-7

  www.paulcrmonk.com

  Cover design by Sanja Gombar.

  Formatting by Bloomtree Press.

  The moral right of Paul C.R. Monk to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.