The storm passed after two hard days of wind and rain and buffeting waves. Henri was the only one of those onboard who did not suffer, trapped as they were upon the ship’s open deck. He had fished through worse conditions, he assured Louise when she asked him if they were to die. She was so ill and so heartsick, she felt faintly sorry at his assurance.
Louise awoke on the third day to a gentle rocking motion, one which allowed her to rise unsteadily to her feet and walk to the railing. The sea stretched blue and white-flecked in every direction as far as she could see, joining finally with an equally blue horizon. She felt tears drawn from her eyes. Wherever they were, she knew they were far from home, and growing steadily farther still.
By the fifth day they had fallen into an accustomed routine. All around her people were either finding inner strength and surviving, or slowly wasting away. To her great surprise, the sea air seemed to be helping her father grow steadily stronger. It was her mother who suffered, like a plant torn from its roots and unable to settle anywhere again. Whenever Louise looked into her mother’s eyes, she saw a shattered soul.
It was her mother’s anguish and the baby’s needs that kept her from the brink of darkness. She could not afford to succumb to the overwhelming sorrow and loss, much as she wanted to. Much as her own wounds felt as though they would never heal.
Baby Elspeth knew nothing and loved everything about the sea. The ship’s gentle rocking sent her cooing to sleep, a blanket upon the deck as comfortable a bed as the baby could ever wish. Every sea gull who came flying in searching for tidbits, every sunbeam that flickered down from between the mighty sails, every flap of canvas overhead, every rattle of rope or hardy seaman’s footsteps, all were cause for delight. Elspeth showered Louise with her happiness and her need for attention. Louise nursed and bedded and changed and loved the infant, and in this loving she came to know the first fleeting touches of healing.
And from Henri. The man was a rock, steady and gentle and firm when necessary. Through the first two endless days he had been everywhere, moving amidst the worst afflicted, carting them up from the holds on his back so they could benefit from the strong sea air, holding them as they were sick over the sides, rigging canvas strips to keep off the wind and rain from those on deck.
When the weather improved he took charge of rations, doling them out, helping the weakest old men to clean themselves after the meals. Through the worst of it he was there for everyone, giving and helping and offering his strength to one and all. When the sun shone bright and the sea sparkled great and blue, he even offered a few smiles and words of comfort to those suffering the greatest sorrow, though Louise could see how much it cost him.
Onward they sailed, steadily south. On the sixth night the wind tasted of a different land, one unseen beyond the horizon yet leaving its distinctive stamp upon the atmosphere. Louise drifted in and out of sleep as always, one ear constantly tuned to the baby lying alongside her, when another sound drew her to the surface. One she had never heard before. Silently she rolled over and raised herself to a seated position to look upon her man. Henri’s massive shoulders shook so hard she could see the movement in the starlight. Sobs wrenched his entire body, for he cried as a man cried, one who had never known the luxury of easy tears. He wept with his entire being, a wrenching, gasping groan of unendurable agony.
Louise was weeping herself within an instant of hearing her husband, sharing not only his pain but hers as well. She flung herself upon him and allowed the wounded heart within to melt and flow together with his.
Henri turned over and took her in his arms, for once not offering strength but rather seeking consolation. Yet she had nothing to give. Nothing but her own deep pain, her own empty soul.
They cried themselves to sleep, locked within each other’s arms, never shifting the entire night.
Louise woke first, her eyelids tickled by the first glint of sun. She did not move, did not want to waken her husband. She lay in his arms, surrounded by the strength, the scent of her man. And she saw in the deep new lines creasing his face a wearing down, a giving up. She had to do something. She could not help but see his need there in the remnants of the night’s sorrow. She had to help him, or risk losing this strength and this goodness along with everything else.
A part of her wanted to give up herself, to give in to the silent cry of agony and bitter anger. Let it all sweep away. Take us all, she wanted to shout at the God who had let this happen to her. Take it all. I don’t care.
The two sides of her mind fought against each other through the morning routine. It was only when she moved over with the baby to greet her parents, and she looked into her mother’s empty gaze, that she saw and understood. There were others who needed what she could give, and only if she did not herself give into the temptation of hatred. If she could not do it for herself, perhaps she could do it for them.
She sighed, and in a voice still raw from the previous night’s weeping, she said to her mother, “Would you like to come and sit with me for a while? We could read the Bible together.”
She could see her mother struggling to make sense of the words. The front of her gown was littered with the remnants of what little breakfast she had eaten. “What?”
“We need to find strength for whatever is to come ahead.”
She made an effort to focus upon her daughter. “The Bible? You brought the Book with you?”
“God can be our strength now,” Louise said, nodding. “We need Him now more than ever.”
Henri chose that moment to join them. “I have just spoken with the ship’s second-in-command. He tells me we are destined for the French colony of Louisiana.”
Jacques Belleveau brushed the crumbs from his front, took a deep draught of water, and said, “There are Belleveaux in Louisiana. My father’s brother and his children. Their children as well by now, I warrant.”
“I have heard of this also,” Henri said. His dark eyes remained ravaged by the night’s struggle, but there was something else to his voice. A first faint hint of something new. “When I was young, my father used to speak of that colony. He said it was a place without winter. My mother never liked winter.”
“You never told me that,” Louise said.
“I haven’t thought of it in years. Not until I heard the lieutenant speak the name. Louisiana. There is a great French city there. Orleans, I think it is called.”
Her mother stirred and waved an impatient hand, as though brushing aside all the talk but the one point. “The Bible,” she said again to her daughter, her voice sharp. “How can you come to me, you of all people, and speak to me about God?”
“Do you know,” Henri said quietly, “I woke up this very morning wishing we could pray together.”
“Pray?” Marie’s eyes flashed as she turned to her son-in-law. “How can you even speak the word now, after all that God has done to us?”
“God did not do this to us at all,” Henri replied, settling down beside his wife. “It was man’s actions, and man will be called to account.
I have read the pages, seated there alongside my wife. This I know in my heart, Mama Marie. God did not do this to us.”
“We need His strength,” Louise murmured, cradling the baby in one arm, freeing her other so that she could reach over and take her husband’s hand. “Now more than ever.”
“And your child?” But Marie’s question lacked fire. “What of little Antoinette?”
Louise felt her heart’s wound reopen and threaten to engulf her. But as the shadows loomed, it was Henri who gripped her hand and said in a voice cracked by the same pain she felt, yet a voice that held to a firm calm, “Perhaps it is God’s hand here after all. Perhaps God knew our little one would not survive this voyage.”
Louise turned to him, amazed by this. It seemed as though Henri had given voice to the gentle whispers of her own heart, voices she had not wanted to acknowledge through these tragic days and nights.
“I think,” Henri said, and stopped to take a shaky breath, “I think God is waiting to strengthen and nourish us. Even here, surrounded by strangeness and loss.”
“If it is God’s will,” Louise said, the words for her mother, but the look for her husband alone, “we have a responsibility to this little one.”
Henri turned fully to her. Her strong and jesting husband, who always before preferred to meet everything with a smile and a warmhearted turn, now looked at her with such gentle wisdom she felt as though she was seeing him anew. He said, “And a responsibility to each other.”
As soon as Louise awoke the next morning, she knew what she was to do. Even before she opened her eyes to the sun and the clouds and the sea and the day, she knew.
She cleaned and nursed the baby, performing exactly the same activities as she had every morning since the tragic voyage began. Only today, everything was different. She could scarcely explain it to herself, how important this difference was. But the mystery mattered little. That the difference, this divine gift, had come was enough.
With a certainty that was not her own, she knew it was divine. Louise had received this gift in the night because of her willingness to open her heart to God and to her family the day before. In turning away from bitterness and hatred and despair, she had turned toward God’s outstretched arms.
There was no great change in her surroundings, in the faces that stared back at her from blank eyes. And yet this gift proved so great that the entire day seemed new. Though her aching, yearning heart remained torn with each mile farther away from her beloved Antoinette, yet there was a message within this tiny gift. A promise of hope. And it was this as much as the gift itself that left her knowing that God was with her. Even here. Even now.
So it was that when Henri came upon her, seated as she was in the forecastle nursing the baby, she was humming a little tune. Quietly, so softly that the wind lifted the notes and tossed them up with the spray and the cawing gulls. But Henri must have heard them, because when he sank down beside her, the look he gave her was filled with wonder.
He asked softly, “What is this?”
“Good morning, my love.” She looked down at the infant. “The baby seems fine this morning. But already the heat is so oppressive.”
“You were singing. I heard it myself.” He reached out one work-hardened finger and touched the side of her face. “And you are smiling.”
“Yes.”
He seemed at a loss for words. He stared at her, at the baby, and his eyes followed the little hand curling around one of her own fingers. He directed his words and his sorrow at the tiny face. “Do you think you can teach me how to sing—to smile again?”
She shook her head, slowly, loving him so fully it felt that her heart might burst. No sorrow could erase this, not so long as she held fast to God. “No. I can’t,” she whispered.
He nodded, his face looking hollowed by the asking and by her reply. “I have felt as though I left my laughter there on the side of Cobequid Bay.”
“I cannot give it back to you, my husband.” She waited until he lifted his dark gaze, then continued, “But God can.”
“God,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“He spoke to you in the night.” It was not a question.
She gave the tiniest hint of a nod, then asked, “You will meet with the lieutenant later about supplies?”
“As I do every day.” There was a young English officer onboard who spoke French and who had confided to Henri that he had studied in Paris. He was the most sympathetic of all the English and had volunteered to act as liaison between captor and captive.
“Ask him for a pen and paper, please.”
Henri’s eyes widened. “You are going to write a letter.”
“Yes.”
“It is a good idea, Louise. A very good idea.”
“I will make it a journal of our little one,” Louise said, pleased that he did not object.
Henri glanced at the officers gathered on the bridge above and murmured almost to himself, “Perhaps he would hide this in his kit and post it when we make landfall.”
Louise felt tears sting her eyelids. She could hear a trace of her beloved Henri’s strength in those words. She said, “I will tell Catherine of her child. I will try to make the baby live for her upon the page.”
“We must set up a chain of communication with the other landings,” Henri said, his tone warming with the plan.
“I will make her understand that I am giving her little one all the love and caring I would give to my own—” Louise’s voice caught and she took a breath, a long one, and willed her heart to settle. “I will write Catherine and give her all the comfort I am able.”
“We will establish contact with all Acadians.” Henri was no longer speaking just to her, but to the future. The power of being able to think beyond the moment granted a new spark to his gaze, renewed force to his voice. “Perhaps there is someone still back in Minas, someone who will act as a go-between. Someone who …” His eyes widened again.
“Catherine,” Louise finished the thought, her heart leaping at the realization. A frail and tenuous thread that might yet connect them with faraway little Antoinette. “Of course. Catherine would be willing to act as our conduit. I am confident of it.”
“She and her Andrew as well. I am certain he will want to help us.” Henri reached for his wife’s hand. “Louise, you have given me hope.”
“Not I, my husband,” she said, and felt tears course down her cheeks at the sight of her husband’s smile. “But God.”