To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Sylvie watched the road coming from Williamsburg for any sign of British soldiers as much as she did for Will’s return, fear forcing her into corners she’d rather not consider. If she saw those detested scarlet coats, should she grab the children and run into the woods like so many Acadians had done when the English arrived? Had their fleeing done them any good?
She sought the company of others rather than risk soldiers overtaking her alone with the children at the cottage. In the spinning house, the wheels whirred with a routine contentedness and work played out all around her, yet she knew everything could be upended in seconds. Still, she plied her needle and placed newly made garments on the shelves as if she had no other worry than Liselotte’s continual counting and inventories and surliness.
“Miss Sylvie, I hurt.” Henrietta was at her side, holding up a finger with a thorn embedded in the pink flesh.
“I’m sorry, Rietta. Here, let me look.” Sylvie set aside her armful of shifts, sat down, and took Henrietta gently onto her aproned lap. Try as she might, she couldn’t free the thorn.
“I saw her plow straight into the sticker bush.” Liselotte’s voice sounded from the doorway, an odd mix of concern and condemnation. “Come here and I’ll take care of it.”
Henrietta squirmed off Sylvie’s lap and ran to the other woman, who, in seconds, relieved her with the help of some tool on the chatelaine dangling from her waist.
“Thank’ee,” Henrietta said, casting Sylvie a backward glance as she hurried out of the spinning house.
Sylvie watched her go reluctantly. Will had advised her to not tether the children so tightly in a bid for their growing independence and to quiet her mother-hen nerves. Nolan was even helping the men in the fields of late, and she felt a motherly pride, especially when two indentures remarked how well behaved and polite the children were. Still, she worried, and Liselotte seemed determined to fan those fears.
“Next the little hoydens will be snakebit,” Liselotte said, watching Henrietta return to her doll beneath the eave. “Or drown themselves, as they play so near the river.”
Biting her lip lest she give a saucy reply, Sylvie walked around Liselotte and out the door, craving a drink of well water as much as quiet. To her dismay, Liselotte followed.
“We’re in want of a dozen wool petticoats ahead of winter. And if you’ve need of any supplies, come to me, not Major Blackburn. He shouldn’t be concerned with such trifles.”
Sylvie saw through the ruse of her words. She wound the bucket to the well’s bottom and back up again, then took a gourd dipper of water to slake her thirst, trying to keep in mind the good of the settlement. “I can begin knitting stockings and caps if you’re thinking of winter. I’ll just need wool and knitting needles.”
“I’ll manage the knitting myself.” Liselotte shook her head when Sylvie offered her water. “For now my hands are full helping Antoinette in the kitchen and Lucie in the garden since Eulalie is ill.”
“Ill?”
“She’s feverish as of this morning and confined to the pesthouse.” Liselotte grimaced. “Major Blackburn calls it an infirmary. Mr. Dubois has seen her, but what we need is a bona fide doctor. How I detest the role of nurse. Whatever her malady, time will tell if it’s a mortal illness.”
Mortal? But not the pox, surely. Eulalie had been away from Williamsburg and the contagion for weeks now.
Calling for Henrietta, Sylvie left Liselotte standing by the well, intent on the infirmary. Set apart farther down the riverbank, the building was empty of all but Eulalie now that several of the men had recovered from a recent ague. She lay atop a pallet near a window, asleep, the light showing her high color. Bending over her, Sylvie gently placed a palm against her alarmingly hot cheek.
In minutes Sylvie was back at the well, relieved to see Liselotte had gone. After drawing an entire bucket of water, she returned to the infirmary, Henrietta in her wake, her doll dragging in the dust.
“Play here on the stoop, mon chou,” Sylvie whispered.
“Chou?” Henrietta looked up at her with all the offense of a budding four-year-old. “I am not a cabbage.”
“No, you are much prettier.” Sylvie knelt down, looking into her remarkable eyes. “How about ma fille? It means ‘my girl.’”
At that, Henrietta’s arms snuck around her neck, and she gave Sylvie a hasty kiss before sitting down, digging in her pockets, and producing acorn cups and leaf saucers for her favorite pastime—a pretend tea party. Sylvie wished she had a confection or two to sweeten the fête.
Toting the bucket inside, she found Eulalie awake and looking relieved to see her. “I miss home especially when I am ill,” Eulalie said. “How I wish for our old remedies. Elderberry foremost.”
“I’ve brought a few things from the Williamsburg apothecary,” Sylvie reassured her, not wanting to ask Liselotte to open the stillroom. She gave Eulalie a long drink, then poured water into a basin and took up a clean cloth. She cooled her friend’s brow while searching for something to say amid her suffering. “Do you know what I just learned? That God Himself collects our tears and stores them in a bottle.”
The words fell into an uneasy silence.
“Why would He?” Eulalie frowned. “Where did you hear such fancies?”
“I read it in the Holy Word,” Sylvie continued. “The Psalms. God takes note of our suffering. It is no light matter to Him. I find that . . . comforting.”
“There is no bottle big enough for Acadie’s weeping.” Eulalie’s eyes closed, but a tear trailed down her flushed face. “Where was God when we were robbed of our homeland and so many perished? When we live in a continual bewilderment about all that has befallen us and wonder where our loved ones are?”
Those questions had been her own, asked on the long wagon ride with Will coming here. She could only echo his response back to Eulalie now. “God was there in our midst. He is right here, right now. And He is no stranger to death or separation or evil. He gave up His own Son.” The memory of the crucifix in their former chapel had never seemed so significant.
Eulalie’s eyes fluttered open. “What if I die? There’s no priest, no last rites here.”
Sylvie’s mind clouded with all the things she had no answer for. “You’re going to recover, Eulalie. You’ve come through so much and are bonne santé.”
“No. I am guilty of living when so many perished. I wish that I had died too.” Taking a breath, she rambled on in a fever of misery and remorse. “I should have done more to help my family . . . I should have fought for us to stay together . . .”
Sylvie felt near tears herself, for had she not often regretted the same? “You have reason to live. You can make a new life, have a family, a home of your own in time. There are many men here who need a helpmate.”
“But not Sebastien. He is intent on leaving before les Rosbifs come against us again.” Her eyes closed again, her tone resigned. “I tried to tell him how much we depend on him here, but he’s obsessed with reaching the French fort—I forget its name.”
“Duquesne.”
“Oui, on the frontier, a hundred leagues distant.”
“So far.” Sylvie felt weary even pondering it. “And so very dangerous, given the Indians and French are fighting the English there.”
“The war seems so close . . . Are we not in enemy hands here in Virginia as much as before?”
“Shush. You need to rest. I’ll see what I have from the apothecary in the meantime.” After giving her another long drink, Sylvie left her to sleep, praying her fever would break.
Outside the infirmary she met Sebastien, the earliest of Virginia’s wildflowers in his gnarled hand. “How is she?” he asked.
“Resting.” Touched, Sylvie admired the petite bouquet. “In need of your prayers.”
“Prayers.” He spat into the dust. “I curse more easily than I pray.”
She looked from the flowers to his face. “You’ve not yet recovered your strength from the ague.”
“My malady always returns.” He passed her the blossoms, wiping his brow with his sleeve. His high flush seemed akin to Eulalie’s, but it was his mental state—his mood—that most worried her. “If I were to leave this place I might be well again.”
She bit her lip, wondering if it was true that the ague, once taken, often recurred again and again. If so, it seemed especially vicious. “I have cinchona, the Jesuits’ bark. You’re welcome to more of that if you need it.”
“I need more than cinchona, Sylvie.”
Though she wanted to return to her work lest Liselotte accuse her of sloth, she motioned him out of the sun beneath an eave. They sat on a bench, the forgotten flowers lying between them. Calling for Henrietta, Sylvie asked her to bring Sebastien a dipper of water.
Henrietta skipped away and soon returned, eyes on the dipper. “I didn’t spill a drop!”
“Merci, princesse,” Sebastien said with a smile that sent her blushing into Sylvie’s arms. Sylvie kissed her forehead and straightened her cap before Henrietta returned to her playing.
Sebastien drank deeply, his smile fading. “I am a sick man—and a restless one. The future holds little for me since I continually suffer another malady for which there is no cure, one that affects not only the body but the mind and spirit.”
This homesickness she couldn’t deny. But how would they survive unless they sought the good?
“I know this isn’t what we know, nor will it ever be,” Sylvie said, “yet you have a future here, a guarantee of your own acreage in time. You’re working the land again and benefiting all of us till then.”
“I’d gladly go into the wilderness and face the enemy if I could regain what we have lost.”
“Did you not see the burning? The destruction? That life is lost to us forever,” she replied so matter-of-factly she surprised herself. “And we have no choice but to begin anew.”
“You would stay here rather than search for family and friends?” He regarded her with something akin to disbelief. “I remember the Galant reputation across Acadie. As fine a name as Broussard or Melanson or Belliveau. What would your father and brothers say to see you now? A servant among servants, laboring for a former English soldier. You should be ashamed, Sylvie Galant.”
Ashamed? No. But wiser when she’d once been naive. She wouldn’t say that she felt her family had perished. How did one explain the bone-deep sense that they were no more? That searching would be futile and more heartrending?
“I cannot rest till I try to find the others,” he said.
“And if you survive the journey to Fort Duquesne, what then? You still have no home, no prospects. Here there is hope and promise, though it may not be what you envisioned.”
“You have made peace with being here?”
“Not entirely. But I am learning to not compare the past with the present and let discontent cloud my days.”
He spread one hand in entreaty, his reddened palm a crust of calluses. “I want to do the same, but . . .”
“Please, Sebastien. Give it more time. You’re needed here. Few farm as well as you. You are made for the land no matter where it is.”
He seemed to consider this, a light in his eyes. Then, with an apologetic half smile, he showed her yet another rent in his shirt. “And you and your needle are just as necessary.”
“See? We must all work together.”
“There’s another matter . . .” He regarded her with sunken eyes. “Will you tell Blackburn I was in his house?”
“It isn’t my place. You tell him. I was also trespassing, remember, and need to confess that.”
He expelled a breath and a chuckle. “Something tells me your trespassing shall sit better with him than mine.”
She almost smiled. “Wait here and I’ll bring you salve for your hands—and a new shirt.” She rose from the bench and started toward her cottage. “And a vase for Eulalie’s lovely flowers.”