17

If you suppress grief too much it can well redouble.

Molière

June began with ripples of unrest and then a tidal wave of rumors. Sylvie kept close to home, having heard how many English soldiers had disembarked from the transports and were now crawling over Acadie like a plague of ship rats. Undaunted, Père and Lucien and Pascal continued their normal tasks, but their long expressions pulled at her and it seemed they became increasingly brooding.

One sultry dawn, when the men were not far in the fields, Sylvie came out of the barn from the morning milking and nearly walked straight into a stranger—and a dog. She drew up short, and milk sloshed onto the ground from her twin pails, splattering her sabots.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” the man said in nearly flawless French.

Feeling clumsy, she set her overfull pails down as he approached. With a humble manner so contrary to his imposing stature, he knelt and wiped the creamy milk from her shoes with a finely embroidered handkerchief, leaving her speechless at his gallantry. Then, after going to the well, he drew water and washed out the square of linen as efficiently as Mère would do.

Turning back toward her, he smiled. “I apologize for startling you.”

“I was only startled, oui,” she said, flushing. “But I would have been terrified had you been wearing a red coat.” She tore her eyes from him with difficulty to look at the fierce creature by his side. “He is part wolf?”

“Aye. Sergeant Bonami is a master tracker if not marksman.” His subtle teasing both charmed her and made her chuckle. His French—did she detect a slight accent?

Her focus switched to the rifle dangling from his right hand as he removed his cocked hat, a black affair embellished with trade beads. His longish hair was tied back, its gloss blue-black. He wore leggings and moccasins in the Indian style and a hunting frock, more weapons at his waist. Having been raised with so many Galant clansmen, she summed him up in a trice. He wasn’t a man of the fields but the forest. And he moved with a lithe athleticism that told of endless trails and unspoken trials, a man among men who made Boudreau seem a mere flea.

His steady gaze held hers for one exquisite, dissecting second. “I am trying to find your oldest brother.”

“Bleu?” She felt none of the wariness Boudreau had evoked with his queries. This man was clearly one of the Resistance.

“Is he here?”

“No.” She swallowed, willing herself to look away from him. “But I shall tell him upon his return your name and reason for seeking him out.”

“Have you seen many English?” Intensity tightened his tanned features. “Or heard anything that causes you alarm?”

“We have seen the British ships. We want no trouble, as I’m sure you know. As Acadians we simply want to live peaceably and stay out of any conflict.”

His eyes left her to roam the courtyard and outbuildings, giving her a chance to study him further. He was taller than even Bleu and just as well honed. Whiskers shadowed a strong jaw and turned him more handsome than unkempt. And his eyes . . . When they returned to her, she steeled herself against their clarity and hue, akin to silver sand. She forgot all about the milk and the fact Marie-Madeleine was watching from the kitchen window. It seemed the whole world had fallen away, lost as she was in the force of his presence.

Surely he sensed her flagrant fascination. Squaring her shoulders, she had to almost shake herself free. “Let me fetch you a cup of cider.” Without waiting for a reply, she moved toward the cellar, milk pails in hand.

Within moments she was back, having promised to answer Marie-Madeleine’s questions in return for her seeing to the milk.

The stranger took the cup and sampled it with obvious appreciation. “From your fine orchards.”

His compliment warmed her like the sun on her back. “Oui. I have tended them since I was small. This year’s harvest promises to be the best in many seasons.”

“Perhaps I’ll return in autumn, then, Mademoiselle . . . ?”

“Galant.” She lowered her eyes briefly to the sabots he’d cleaned. “Sylvie Galant.” Blinking, she looked past him to the trail Bleu often took. “I’m sorry my brother is not here as you hoped, monsieur.”

He handed the empty cup to her. “Then tell him, mademoiselle, that Le Loup hopes to meet up with him in future.” He took a step back, locking eyes with her a final, spellbinding time. “Merci pour tout votre aide, pour toute votre bonté.”

Will reached an unknown Acadian village, torched and still smoking. At the heart of the carnage a church had somehow stayed standing, its steeple pointing proudly amid the char and rubble, its door open as if even the priest had fled. Boot prints marred the earth, likely those of rampaging English soldiers, though he’d heard some Acadians were setting fire to their own habitations to prevent the English from having them.

With a word to Bonami to stay behind, Will went inside the chapel, struck by the carved oak interior. Someone had taken the valuables, as the altar was bare. Oddly weary, he took a seat on a bench. Rarely did he turn his back to a door, but Bonami stood watch and the place appeared entirely desolate. He bent his head, staring at the floorboards, wondering whose hands had laid them, the nails even and distinct. Where had the inhabitants gone? From a distance he’d seen swelling encampments of displaced Acadians around Fort Beauséjour as the English gained contested ground.

He stared at the empty altar, cast back to Ticonderoga and another mass house, as the English derisively called it. Caught in the teeth of a blizzard along Lake Champlain two winters ago, he and a few snow-blind men had had merely frozen juniper berries and snowmelt to sustain them. Their only recourse was to throw themselves upon the mercy of the enemy French or freeze to death.

Hoisting a white flag encased in ice, he and the last remnant of his Rangers surrendered themselves at Fort Saint-Frédéric, whose twelve-foot-thick stone walls and four-storied citadel seemed more mirage in the storm. Coming over the drawbridge and into the fortress, they’d barely escaped a large company of Indians who’d nearly overtaken them.

He’d not known much of the French tongue then, yet the French officers behaved with striking humanity, even courtesy. When one of his Mohegans died from exposure, they’d performed a moving burial. As other Rangers recovered and were released, the French kept him. He was far less a threat removed from any action than he would be on the field.

In the months that followed, Will had slowly absorbed their speech and made note of their customs. He’d even visited their chapel, to the amusement of the Troupes de la Marine. What was the White Devil, as the Indians called him, doing in a holy place—and the enemy’s holy place at that?

He mourned his lost men there. Mourned his family too, the loss that had started him on the rocky path of Rangering. In that French chapel he’d stopped striving, stopped fighting the wilderness and its enemies long enough to ponder and put down on paper who he’d become and what he’d done. And then in late spring, he’d been ransomed in a prisoner exchange with the British and released.

Without a home, he’d soon been on the move again, his Dickert rifle never far. A decades-old restlessness drove him on with the stealth of an enemy, never allowing him rest.

Yet right here in a shell of a place, for a few hallowed moments, came that odd peace, a silken part of the stillness. Amid jagged, broken glass, a starling sang on a windowsill, Acadie’s ever-present wind stirring the leaves of the elm outside. With effort, Will made himself move, abandoning the calm.

The calm before the storm.

By dusk he’d skirted Galant land while his men combed the woods and ridges elsewhere for anything resembling the Resistance. Noting a well-trod trail in back of the heavily leafed orchard, Will gained the uplands and a staggering view. By full dark he’d returned to the lowlands again and hid behind a laurel thicket, a cool mist concealing him as much as the surrounding forest. Still, he had an admirable view.

Numerous Galant outbuildings gave the habitation the look of a small village. The courtyard where he’d stood that morning was charming, Old World French, the stone well at its center. Nearby a large barn and stable were a possible cover for Bleu. Three men he guessed were Galants soon returned from the fields for supper—without the brother he sought.

Odd how baking bread smelled the same anywhere. It lent to the cramp in his middle, though he was more vigilant when hunger gnawed at him. Bonami contented himself with a strip of Will’s jerked meat, settling down beside him. Silent and unseen, Will clocked the efficient routines of the household as night overtook him.

As dawn lit the sky hours later, an older woman threaded through the shadows to the barn, where a cow bawled as if announcing she was late. Her step was steady, purposeful. Madame Galant? She shooed a jaunty rooster from her path as a young girl in a plain dress and apron appeared next, a long braid a sooty smudge down her back. When she performed a little dance around the well, a striped cat on her heels, Will’s mouth pulled in amusement. She disappeared into a henhouse and soon reappeared with a basketful of eggs, dancing her way to the barn before returning to the main house with the older woman, their low voices almost musical in the morning’s hush.

There came a lull before the men emerged as the sun broke over the horizon. One younger man went to the water where a canoe waited while the other two—one of them most assuredly Monsieur Galant—walked toward expansive grain fields farther down shore. Nary a sign of the warrior Bleu.

Will’s searching gaze returned to the house. Where was the young woman—Sylvie Galant—who’d served him cider? The taste lingered in his memory, rich and sweet. Setting his jaw, he curbed any other thought of her lest emotion overrule his reason. She was simply a comely mademoiselle in the wrong place at the wrong time who had little understanding of British ambitions.

In a quarter of an hour she was walking in the direction of the orchard, her white-capped head bent as if she was lost in thought. Her beribboned skirts were unlike any he’d ever seen beyond Acadie, as beguiling as her bonnet and apron were commonplace and her sabots strange. And though she wasn’t smiling, he remembered that smile, her retroussé nose, and her remarkable eyes—a clear, bewitching blue.

He reined in his gaze as she left his line of sight and went into the orchard. Bonami gave a slight whine as Will took a last look at the Galant habitation. The brigand Bleu was less likely to appear in broad daylight, and Will had stayed up most of the night to no avail. Stifling a yawn, he signaled to Bonami and ended his watch, intent on rejoining his men.

The June evening was aglow with fireflies, the tide’s return a familiar melody. All seemed calm despite the British ships still at anchor in the bay and gray smoke riding the horizon in various places, feeding Sylvie’s fears. Upstairs Père snored, the sound sawlike in the stillness.

Sylvie climbed atop her feather paillasse, weary but wide-eyed. Unusually quiet, Marie-Madeleine lay awake against the wall, sharing Sylvie’s sleeping closet of late.

Leaning over, Sylvie kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Fais de beaux rêves.”

At that, Marie-Madeleine slipped into sleep, her rhythmic breathing a balm for Sylvie’s ragged nerves. Questions darted through her mind like fish trapped in the weirs on the water.

Where was Bleu? Dr. Boudreau? The stalwart stranger she’d served cider to?

Warmth pressed down on her, and she pushed back the bed linens. She longed for an open window, but the house was locked tight.

Finally she drifted, nearly asleep when Père’s snoring was overridden by something as chilling as a Mi’kmaq war cry. Footsteps? Strident voices?

Breaking glass jerked her fully awake. Marie-Madeleine gave a shriek, fisting Sylvie’s linen nightgown with both hands.

The stairwell resounded with Père’s hurried footsteps as Sylvie peered through the bed-curtain, watching Pascal stamp out a flaming torch that had been hurled through a broken window. But none of the Galant men could stop the tide of English soldiers.

“In the name of His Majesty, King George II, we are here to disarm you and all your household,” came a loud shout. “Bring out your weapons, one and all, or we shall further ransack your dwellings.”

Their abode swarmed with crimson coats and smoke, the latter promising that while Pascal had put out one fire, others were burning elsewhere. Held tight in Sylvie’s arms, Marie-Madeleine trembled so violently her teeth chattered. Her back pressed to the wall of the sleeping closet, Sylvie felt she herself might be sick as the drama beyond the bed-curtain played out.

Would these marauding men poke their bayonets into their very feather beds? They stomped about the room, sending crockery shattering to the floor and overturning all that the family held dear.

Père surrendered a musket, a fowling piece, and a pistol, all ancient relics that misfired. The rest he had hidden. Where, Sylvie did not know.

When the soldiers finished their rampage and departed, there was no sleep to be had that night. Ruination ruled, and righting the mess consumed them till midmorning. The sight of Mère standing over her shattered spinning wheel etched an indelible scar across Sylvie’s consciousness, as vivid as Bleu’s glaring wound she’d salved.

The English had taken not only guns but goods, even their breakfast, while plundering their chests for clothes and mocking their sabots. Outside, the henhouse was partially burned, the woodshed smoldering. Someone had tried to fire the orchard, but the grass of June was not as ignitable as in late summer, for which Sylvie gave thanks.

Her mind returned to the stranger, wishing he’d been there with Bleu to confront these soldiers. She’d last seen her brother fade into the tree line, his lank black hair waving in the wind, his linen shirt one of her making, his buckskins worn but still serviceable. He was changed, not only wary but weary, and lean as a leather string, a sign he was constantly on the move. Somewhere Bleu was fighting. For his life and theirs.

Père grew more melancholy while her brothers assumed an unspoken defiance. She read it in the jut of their jaws, their usual affability subdued. When Pascal snapped at Marie-Madeleine over some minor matter, she wept as if the world would end, but he did not make amends, as if doing so was trifling given the turmoil all around them.

Soon, fire lit the ridge where Fort Beauséjour held sway, and word came that Commander Vergor had burned the new church as well as all the houses surrounding the garrison ahead of the English assault. Smoke and soot rolled across Baie Française like storm clouds, spreading ash and turning the fleet of warships more menacing.

The Galants waited, breath held. Père assembled their nearest kin and neighbors to the chapel to pray. Word came that Fort Beauséjour had fallen without much fight and Vergor had raised the white flag in surrender.

Mère simply said, “We are in the hands of le bon Dieu, not the English.”

Only God, oui. It was comforting in a world turned upside down.

Though it sickened Sylvie to hear it, the jubilant English quickly renamed Beauséjour Fort Cumberland. “After the royal English butcher who gave no quarter at Culloden,” Père said in disgust.

Sylvie shivered, remembering Boudreau’s mention of it at the fête. How could a man who had committed such atrocities be lauded? It seemed a portent of what was to come.

“What’s more,” Pascal said, having come from Pont-a-Buot, which was now firmly in English control, “’tis said Abbé Le Loutre disguised himself as a woman and fled with a Mi’kmaq escort when the fort fell.” Sylvie’s shock turned to contempt as he continued, “And Dr. Boudreau has gone over to the English.”

“Good riddance.” Père stood and reached for his coat to go outside, as if he were unable to stomach more. “Le Loutre was not content to concern himself with our souls. Pride and ambition were his downfall and now his disgrace. As for Boudreau, he is the turncoat we suspected.”

Lucien shook his head. “What is even more laughable is that French officers entertained the British victors at a dinner party the night after Beauséjour’s surrender.”

Shaken, Sylvie went to a front window overlooking the harbor and the rise where Beauséjour had once stood strong.

In the days following, as the smoke cleared and news grew thin, there came an uneasy lull. Was the new commandant at Fort Cumberland awaiting further orders?