Andrew raced against the night and the wind. He rode as he had never ridden before, pursuing all the unseen forces that were tearing apart his world. The distance which had taken two days to cover at the head of his troops, Andrew now did in the space of one night. One long, dark, harrowing night.
He saw little more of the trail than a long silver streak of reflected moonlight. After an hour and more of spurring his horse and shouting encouragement into the steed’s ear, the ribbon stretched out like an endless nightmare, taunting him with the threat that it would never end, that he would never reach his goal. And every thundering hoofbeat pounded in time to the name shouted over and over in his head. Elspeth.
Twice he passed French villages, or what remained of them. There was movement at neither, which only spurred him on to greater speed, as though the silence which met him as he looked down upon the dark landscape and shadow-houses only warned him of what he was yet to find at his journey’s end. Elspeth.
Three times he stopped at waystations for new steeds, twice moving so fast that he had stripped off the blanket and gear from his lathered horse and saddled his new mount before the bleary-eyed keeper had roused himself. The third time, in the gray hour before the dawn, he moved more slowly, his arms and his legs so weary that the saddle threatened to bring him down. The keeper came, took one look at his state, and wordlessly pulled the saddle from his lifeless fingers. Andrew watched and drank pitcher after pitcher of cold rainwater drawn from the corner keg, feeling strength fill him with each draught. Elspeth.
He knew he had arrived long before he was able to see the village. The smell of charred cinders drifted in the chill morning mist, stronger and stronger until the stench tore a cry of dismay from his throat. The noise gripped the steed’s heart, for the gallant animal thundered down the final slope, took the turning to Minas, and burst from the forest and into the first field—past the first blackened, smoldering house.
Andrew reined his horse, looking frantically about at the desolation and the ruin. It felt as though his own heart were being branded by the sight. He wheeled his horse around and dug his spurs into the animal’s ribs. “Hyah!”
There was no sun that day. It dared not show its face upon the sight which greeted Andrew as he raced down the trail and came to the exodus gathered by the mouth of the pier. He felt as though his own worst nightmares, the ones so awful they could not be recalled in the morning’s light, all had come to life in the tableau before him. The long pier of Fort Edward was lost beneath a wailing, shouting mass of humanity. At the end of the pier floated a longboat, with another waiting to take its place. A third was rowing out to a lone ship floating in Cobequid Bay. The mist drifted in and out, painting the scene a bleak gray, as though the day itself was shamed by what it saw and wished only to hide it from view. To wash it of substance, to cleanse it from memory.
“Get a move on there!” A lone officer stood waving his sword at the meager throng still standing at the pier’s entrance. Andrew turned, and only with effort did he recognize Randolf Stevenage. The captain’s voice was as hoarse as the call of morning crows from his long night of deplorable duty. “Sergeant, get those people moving! Use your pikes if you must, man! The ship must make the tide!”
“Aye, aye, sir! You lot, pick up your goods and move off, or you can swim to France!”
Andrew slid from his horse and sprawled in the well-churned mud. His legs simply gave way beneath him. He picked himself up without noticing that he had fallen. Then he spotted a familiar face amidst the final throng. “Vicar!”
“You, there! Harrow! Hold off, man, these Frenchies—”
“Vicar!” Andrew searched his exhausted brain and finally came up with the man’s name. “Jean Ricard!”
Up ahead, a skeletal face redrawn by grief and terror turned toward him. With recognition came a shout torn from the pastor’s throat. “They have taken all my people!”
“My baby!” Andrew gripped the man’s cassock as much to keep from falling as to halt the man’s progress. “Where is Elspeth?”
“My flock,” the priest choked. “My children.”
“My child,” Andrew said the word a sob. “Where is Elspeth?”
Jean Ricard’s eyes were unfocused, staring in terror. “They held some of us as hostages at the fort. Only when the last ship started boarding did they let us come forward.”
“But my baby, Vicar, my child, where is she?”
Jean Ricard lifted a heavy, black-robed arm and pointed out toward the empty waters. “There. With all my flock, all my children. Gone.”
Andrew’s hands went so numb he could no longer hold the vicar’s cassock. He staggered back in horror, slamming into a soldier, and would have gone down had the man not caught him. It took Andrew a long moment to turn and recognize the insignia upon the man’s uniform. “Sergeant, where has the other ship gone?” he gasped out.
“Which one, sir? There’s twelve out there gone upon the tide, and this lot here’s soon to join ’em.”
“But where, man? Tell me where!”
The sergeant stared at him with consternation. “Sir, my orders—”
“Sergeant! Get that last lot down the pier or you’ll be sailing with them.” Stevenage’s officer chopped at his horse’s reins, making the weary animal snort and dance in Andrew’s face, pushing him back. “Stand easy there, you!”
Andrew drew himself up. “Sergeant—”
Stevenage’s voice came out a hoarse snarl. “My wife knows all about you and your precious Catherine and your consorting with the enemy!”
“I command—”
“Soon enough you’ll be commanding nothing at all! My orders come from General Whetlock, and his from Governor Lawrence himself. I told them all along you weren’t to be trusted!” But the night had taken a savage toll upon Stevenage. There was no satisfaction in his features, nothing save the scarring remnants of a living nightmare. Another savage chop to the reins. “Move that lot out, Sergeant!”
Andrew stepped around the horse and grabbed the sergeant’s stirrup. “Where have the other ships gone?”
“Have you missed the entire night, sir? Each ship is dispatched to a different location. Boston, Washington, Louisiana, all the places along the eastern seaboard where the Acadians will be allowed to join a French community. A third and more back to France itself, and each of those to a different port. Of a truth, nobody’s falling over themselves to take them in.”
Andrew released the stirrup. “What?”
“Not even the other ships know where each is assigned to go. It was intentional.” The man’s voice roughened. “It’s the only way we can ever be sure they’ll not gather and attack.”
Andrew’s knees gave way then, his strength gone. “No, no, it can’t be.”
The sergeant shouted over Andrew, “You there! Halt, or I’ll shoot!”
The vicar ignored the warning and dropped into the mud beside Andrew. “You must be our conduit!” he whispered urgently.
The sergeant slipped from his exhausted steed and struggled through the churned muck. “Get down the pier, you!”
Jean Ricard shook Andrew as hard as his own waning strength allowed. “There is no other way for us to know where we’ve been sent or how we can regather!”
The sergeant hauled the vicar roughly to his feet. “Enough of that! Get along down the pier or I’ll show you the business end of my pike!”
Andrew rose because he had to and stepped to the vicar’s other side. “A conduit?” he managed under his breath.
“Let us write to you, please, I beg you. I will pass the word to any I find, all who can be found, all who will pass on the word as well. It will risk your career, but I beg you—”
“I have no career. As of this morning I am no longer a part of the British army.”
The vicar accepted this news with only a nod. There was nothing to be said. Nothing at all. “Will you help?”
“I will.” They reached the end of the pier. Andrew offered a hand, then as the vicar stood in the boat, Andrew found himself unable to release his grip. “Elspeth is with Louise and Henri. If you—”
“Enough of this, sir!” The sergeant shoved him roughly back. “All right, that’s the lot!”
“I will tell them. Of course I will tell them.” The priest’s voice drifted across the water. “I think I overheard that my ship is going to Charleston. It is a port south of here. Do you know it?”
“The name only.” Andrew kept his hand outstretched, as though to lower it would cut off his last remaining thread of contact to his child. “Charleston!”
“Tell any who contact you …” The priest stopped then, as though he too was crushed by the weight of loss. “Tell them to pray! To remember to pray for us all!”
Andrew stood long after the soldiers had left the pier. He watched the longboats deposit their final charges. Then the smaller boats were drawn around to the stern and lashed in tandem behind the larger vessel’s rudder. He watched the sails unfurl and the anchor be hauled in and the ship begin to make its way toward the bay’s mouth, toward the broader reaches of the Bay of Fundy and points south.
And then it began to rain.