Shadowbrook Part 43

"Well. He's to be married again. The Widow Krieger from Albany."

"Good, that's a fine thing." Quent remembered Ely's daughter and her husband and the tiny baby, and the way the sawyer had looked as he stood over their bodies. "The sawmill must be lonely after so much loss. And the Frankels, how are they?"

"Very well. But John thinks perhaps we won't have enough work to keep the gristmill and the sugarhouse busy next year. He says we may not be able to plant as much or trade as much and-"

"John couldn't be more wrong. About that like so much else. Madam, you're shivering. Come, let's go inside."

It was well past the dinner hour but Kitchen Hannah plied him with johnnycakes and biscuits, and ham and parsnips and potatoes baked into a pie. "Still warm enough," she told him. "Don't you be leaving any, saying it be too chilled to be good."

"It's delicious, Hannah. Thank you." When she had gone, he pulled his chair closer to Lorene's. "Madam, I want to be gone before John gets back. Else ..."

"I know. But he's your bro-"

"We haven't time to talk about John. Just listen. You must see to it that every field is planted in the spring. Grow plenty of wheat, never mind what John says, and take in as much sugar as you can beg or buy. Tell Moses Frankel he's to make rum with the lot. As many jugs as they can manage. And don't send any more to Do Good than you must."

"We're doing less and less trade at Do Good. The Indians seem to be withdrawing from us. At least that's what Esther s...o...b..rry says and she never lies."

"Give Esther my warm regards. And don't worry about the Kahniankehaka, they've got their own concerns at the moment." Some months back, before he went to London, Quent himself had given a Suki bead to Scarouady. He had accepted ayaapia, the elk buck, on behalf of the entire Iroquois Confederation. Just to be sure, Quent had also given eesipana, the rac.o.o.n, to the Kahniankehaka. "Just do as I say, Madam." Quent dropped his voice, speaking in a low and urgent tone. "Next summer, everywhere in the province but particularly here, will be teeming with redcoats. More than you've ever seen, more than you can imagine. They'll need to be fed and supplied with drink and housed. You must have a quiet word with Ely and leave John out of it if you can. Tell Ely he's to cut and plank as much timber as possible over the winter. There will be barracks needed. The wood to build them can be sold from Shadowbrook."

"Quent, I do not doubt that you know things about London's plans, but if we can indeed turn all this profit, what good will it do? The De Lanceys-"

"James and Oliver De Lancey will share in our profits, Madam. But not to any undue extent."

"No, you don't understand. John made everything over as part of some mad scheme to get cane land. With Hamish Stewart dead it must be the De Lanceys who own the Patent. John says no, that with Hamish dead it's reverted to him, but-"

"John is right." The words were bitter in his mouth. Everything he'd done had given the Patent back to his brother. John must die.

He handed her the original of the doc.u.ment she'd found crumpled up in the cold fireplace the night Hamish Stewart died. Lorene looked at each page, her eyes skimming the tiny print, then fastening on the signatures. Oliver De Lancey, James Alexander, Hayman Levy, and John Hale. "But are you sure, Quentin, that it is now the only copy? And what of the deed that gave Hamish Stew-"

"Stewart's deed no longer exists. I burned it myself. And yes, I'm sure this is the only copy of the papers John signed."

She turned away as if hearing him say it pained her. "Your brother didn't mean to give up the Patent, only to add land in the Islands to what we already have."

"It doesn't matter now. Things are as they were."

"Yes, some things are. I am very pleased, Quentin. But ... do I want to know how you accomplished this?"

"It was nothing dishonorable, Madam."

"Do you think I care for honor where snakes and liars and cheats like the De Lanceys are concerned? I do not." She fairly spat out the words. "I would see them all in h.e.l.l and dance over their graves. But they are not fools. Your brother, perhaps, but not the De Lanceys, and not you. What did you have to trade to get control of the Patent, Quentin Hale? That is my question."

"James De Lancey cares more for power than money, Madam. And Oliver pretty much does his brother's bidding. I made certain alliances in London, and London is the source of the governor's writ here. So, fourteen percent of our profit for the next four years, Madam. It will not be difficult with so much coming in. And better to have the De Lanceys as allies than as enemies."

She nodded. "Your father would have said the same thing. But what am I to tell John?"

"As little as possible. John must not know the Patent is entirely free and clear again. It will make him impossible to control."

"How can I keep such a thing secret?"

"You have been keeping secrets all your life, Madam," he said softly. "This one is probably easier than some."

Lorene was silent for a time. She put her hand over his. "He will know nothing. Not until you say he may."

"Until this war's over and I can come home and ... deal with things." John must die. "You can manage this, Madam." He smiled. "You've always been able to manage the Hale men."

Lorene nodded but did not return his smile. The price for arranging things as she knew they must be often turned out higher than she wished to pay.

"One last thing," Quent said. "The Scot. The De Lanceys were using him, of course, and he was so besotted with his desire to possess the Patent he let himself be used. But I need to know if he said anything other than that he was the new master of Shadowbrook. Stewart was a Jacobite with alliances to the papists in Quebec. I don't want any surprises. Could that have been why John killed him?"

"John has said nothing to me of such a thing. I don't believe Canada was ever mentioned. And your brother didn't kill Hamish Stewart. Taba, a little Ibo slave, did. She was bought after you left, so you don't know her." Lorene told the story.

"This Taba," he asked when she finished, "is she still here? Perhaps it would be best if she were sold on."

Lorene shook her head. "No. That's not necessary. She is a fine seamstress. I am training her up myself; she'll be useful for many years. John won't-I gave him to understand that she had saved his life," Lorene said mildly, only her eyes speaking the darker truths. "He will not punish her for running away. And he's stopped ..." She let the words trail away.

Something else he could safely leave to his mother. He stood up. "I must go."

"When will you come back?" Lorene asked when they stood by the front door.

"As soon as I can. After this war's over for sure." John must die. "I nearly forgot, Madam. There's a woman in the town, Annie Crotchett. She's no better than she should be, but thanks to John she's lost what livelihood she had. She's usually at Peter Groesbeck's tavern. I promised a guinea every month or two. Can you find it? You always did have a bit put by the rest of us knew nothing about."

Lorene smiled and lay her palm alongside his cheek. "Any woman not an utter fool does the same. I'll find a bit for Annie Crotchett and see she gets it."

The easy part was done. What remained was a great deal more difficult.

Book 4.

Quebec 1758-1759.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

SAt.u.r.dAY, JUNE 8, 1758.

LOUISBOURG, ILE ROYAL.

NEARLY SUMMER AND it was still shivering cold in this perverse h.e.l.l the devil had fashioned off the coast of Canada. Quent was in one of the most forward boats, stomach churning, blood roaring in his ears, praying this would not be another false start. There had been three aborted attempts, the men loaded into two hundred landing craft, then called back because they could make no headway.

Each longboat was manned by twenty oarsmen and carried sixty-three soldiers, plus a drummer lad amidships to beat the stroke. They were twigs tossed about on the thundering waves, their flat bottoms and lack of serious heft continually punished by the boiling surf. Icy fog and whip-sharp salt spray added to the misery of men drenched to the skin, peering into the mist hoping for a sign of the beach with the smell of their own fear and their own vomit filling their noses.

Behind the flotilla of landing craft was a vast array of fighting sail: twenty-three ships of the line, eighteen frigates, and a fleet of transports. They had been crowding the horizon for eight days, waiting for the fog to lift. And when it didn't, trying anyway to put ash.o.r.e the eleven thousand British regulars and American provincials, militia, and rangers intended to take Louisbourg.

Quent put up his hand to shield his eyes from the spray. His glance raked the approaching sh.o.r.e. Earlier he'd gone in a smaller boat with Jeffrey Amherst, the general in charge of the troops, and brigadier James Wolfe, the colonel Amherst most relied on, to scout the coast. The army men had hoped for great things from his woodsman's instincts, but he'd seen nothing that suggested a landing place even halfway hospitable. Tired of waiting, Admiral Boscawan used his command prerogative-I remind you, General Amherst, that I'm G.o.d Almighty while we're on the water-chose a cove that looked likely, and sent the boats out for a fourth time.

Quent peered at the thin ribbon of coast. It yielded nothing. He thought he heard someone shout his name and turned his head, but it was only the wind's cry. Wolfe was in the prow of the boat on the right, seated just behind a sailor who was crouched over the craft's single swivel gun. He dung to the gunwales with both hands and his customary look of determined agony.

Another wave was building. Quent saw it rippling toward them and braced himself. The sailor manning the oar to his right muttered "holy G.o.d, holy G.o.d, holy G.o.d" over and over again, the words marking the rhythm of his strokes, keeping time with the drummer's tempo. The longboat was sucked into the wave's belly, lifted to a dizzying height, then slapped down with a spine-shuddering thud. The oar on Quent's right clattered loose in its lock because the praying sailor had been washed overboard. Quent thought he spotted the man's bobbing head a few arm's lengths away, beyond the reach of even a fully extended oar. Quent slid into the vacant position and took up the stroke. The drummer boy had lost his sticks, but he'd resumed the beat with the flat of his hand. The rowers quickly got the cadence back The pull was not as hard as Quent expected. The tide was with them, only the weather their enemy. At least until they made landfall.

Despite the fog, the French had seen the great spread of canvas filling six leagues of the horizon. Louisbourg's defenders were dug in at every possible landing point on Ile Royal. They waited until the boats were close to sh.o.r.e, then rained down a deadly storm of grape and musket fire. The landing crafts' single swivel guns were no match for such a fusillade and the soldiers' muskets were mostly too wet to be of any use. The sea turned red with blood, and the screams of the drowning and dying shuddered in the air.

Quent looked to his left. There was a bit of coast, only a narrow strand strewn with rocks, but out of the range of the cannon. "Colonel Wolfe, over there!" he screamed into the wind.

Miraculously, Wolfe heard him and squinted in the direction Quent was pointing. "Quite right, Mr. Hale!" he shouted. "Excellent!" His voice was lost in the pounding surf and the roaring wind and the screech of gunfire, but it didn't matter. He raised his hand. The boats sheered off to the left and the landing proceeded.

By morning there was calm and bright sun, and the boom of the French guns was replaced by birdsong. Quent led Wolfe and some of the other officers along the line where he and five hundred rangers had engaged the enemy during the night, driving them back behind the walls of the citadel because they knew if they didn't go they'd be cut off. The defenders had left their cannon behind. And about a hundred bodies. Every one had been scalped.

"Do you take scalps, Mr. Hale?" Wolfe asked. "I know it is the custom in this country, but do you do it?"

"The rangers fight like Americans, Colonel, in a manner suitable for our terrain, and conditions, and way of life. That's the value in having them."

"I understand that. But you, personally? I'm told you're a gentleman. Do you scalp your enemies?"

Quent stared at him, unflinching. "Every chance I get, Colonel Wolfe. One way or another."

Wolfe had hair as red as Quent's own. No chin, however, and eyes that looked as if they might pop out of his head. And he was ill almost all the time. But according to Pitt, the man had the courage of a tiger.

In India the tigers are something remarkable, Mr. Hale. The most clever and ferocious beasts you can imagine. So tell me, what do you think would occur if a tiger fought a bear?

I'm not sure, sir. But if they both fight on the same side, does it matter?

Wolfe was still looking at the mutilated bodies. "I am surprised there are so few Indians among them. I see just two. Have you any explanation for that, Mr. Hale?"

"As far as I could tell last night, there were only some Mi'kmaq and Abenaki. Not many. Not like before."

"It's true, then? The Indians have deserted the French?"

"A good many fewer have been willing to accept Onontio's war belts, that's true." He hadn't tried to explain the Suckauhock to William Pitt-I can deliver what I promise, sir. How need not be your concern-and he wouldn't try with James Wolfe.

Wolfe was looking at him, waiting for more. Quent stared back and said nothing. Finally the Englishman turned to look again at the scalped bodies. After a moment he signaled to a young ensign. "Organize a detail to bury them."

A New Englander stepped forward, wearing the green jacket affected by many of the ranging auxiliaries. Some, a Colonel Rogers the most famous of them, had adopted military t.i.tles to go with the self-styled uniforms. Quent preferred his buckskins and his ordinary name. But none of the rangers stood for much in the way of ceremony or deference. "Beg pardon, sir, but that's not necessary."

Wolfe turned his iciest stare on the speaker. "Perhaps you Americans leave bodies to rot. We English do not."

"That's not what I meant, sir. We'll burn the corpses."

"Burn ... It's barbarism, I will-"

"No, Colonel, it's not. The stink of all that burning meat will get back to the fort. Put the fear of the Almighty in 'em. You might say we're returning the compliment they paid us at Fort William Henry."

Quent's belly knotted. Even the woodsmen, closest to the Indians and their ways, didn't understand. Separation was the only hope. Thank G.o.d for Corm's notion of how it could be achieved, and his persistence. And the Suckauhock.

It took ten days before all the supplies were unloaded. The operation splintered more than a hundred small boats on the rocks of the iron coast, but in the end they got everything ash.o.r.e, including the heavy guns and cannon. When Amherst finished preparing his camp, the better part of a morning was required to walk from one end to the other.

On the eighteenth of June everything was in place and the siege of Louisbourg began. Before the first shots were fired General Amherst sent a basket of pineapples to the wife of the fort's commander, along with a note apologizing for the noise of his guns.

MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1758.

QUeBEC LOWER TOWN.

The Maria bell of the Monastery of the Poor Clares tolled in mourning. Nicole pulled and released the rope with careful concentration, all the while saying the Miserere, uniting her spirit with those of Dear Abbess and her sisters praying in the choir.

Louisbourg had fallen. Almost as terrible, the brave French soldiers who defended the great fort had been refused the honors of war by the English. They were to be sent to England as prisoners of war, and the eight thousand women and children and civilian men who had lived behind the walls of the citadel were being deported to France. "But ma Mere, who has ever heard of such a thing?" Soeur Angelique's eyes were wide with horror when she heard the news at the afternoon's recreation. "Why send away the people who did not fight? That is not done."

"It is done by the English." Mere Marie Rose was embroidering. Even during the day's hour of relative freedom no Poor Clare sat with idle hands. "Just as they banished the Acadians. At least these poor people of Louisbourg are sent home to France, not delivered to the American colonies where they must live among heretics and be little better than slaves."

"The Acadians are English subjects." Nicole had ventured the explanation tentatively. Did they think her any less loyal to the French cause, the Catholic cause, because of her English father? "I do not defend what was done. Never. But the English could not send the Acadians to France because they were not supposed to be French any longer."

"Les Anglais are beasts." Soeur Francoise, who seldom raised her voice above a whisper, practically shouted the words. "Cochons! Pigs! Every one of them."

Not my Red Bear, Nicole thought. But these stories of the American rangers who fight with the redcoats and the militia, who whoop like Indians when they kill and take scalps like Indians ... Is my Red Bear among them? That night beside the fire in the Shawnee camp, when he danced and went off with a squaw into the woods, he was entirely Indian. But with me, in Shoshanaya's glade ... She bent forward, plying her darning needle with ferocity and letting her veil fall forward to hide her burning cheeks. Forgive me, mon Dieu, forgive my wicked distractions. "Is any explanation made for sending the civilians to France, ma Mere? Do we perhaps know if this is some tactic of the war?"

Clever, Mere Marie Rose thought, just as Pere Antoine said. Almost too clever to be a nun. What do I see in your eyes, ma pet.i.te Soeur? Something, I think, that is not in the eyes of the rest of us. "We are told nothing. Perhaps they wish to empty all Canada of the French."

Then she sent Nicole to toll the Maria bell in memory of the pa.s.sing of the souls of the brave French soldiers who died defending Louisbourg, and for the misery of the survivors.

Pull on the rope slowly and with total attention. Remember, ringing the bell is an act of prayer. Bend your knees as you take it down. Release it with equal care. And because you toll not victory but defeat, wait for two strophes of the psalm before you ring it again.

Miserere me, Deus. Have mercy on me, O G.o.d. Quoniam conculcavit me h.o.m.o. For man has trodden me underfoot.

To empty Canada of all the French had been Cormac Shea's plan. She'd heard him and Quent arguing about it once. And later Monsieur Shea had explained it to her, when Quent wasn't around to contradict him. "It's the only way there will ever be peace in the New World. Canada for the Indians; the rest of it, the part the English have now, the whites can keep."

"It seems harsh, Monsieur Shea. On the Canadians. Is there no-"

"Not as harsh as the alternative. The only other way the whites can live here without being constantly at war with the red men is to kill every Indian they can find."

Conculcaverunt me inimici mei tota die. My enemies have trodden on me all day long. Quoniam multi balantes adversum me. For they are many that make war against me.