Shadowbrook (49 page)

“That is true, Uko Nyakwai. I too have relatives who build their fires near Fort Duquesne. In fact, I have visited there.” Shingas tapped the British-style linen haversack that hung over his right hip. He had kept one hand on it since the conversation began. Something important was in that bag.

“Then you understand my dilemma,” Quent said.

“I do. Now let us go and see if this war chief of the English understands mine.”

Braddock peered at the plan of Fort Duquesne spread on his desk. “Ask him where he got this.” He looked up at Shingas, pointedly ignoring the four other chiefs standing near the door of the tent.

“I have,” Quent said. “And told you his answer. The drawing was made by one of the Virginians who was left behind as a hostage when Colonel Washington and his men surrendered Fort Necessity.”

“But how did this savage get it?”

“Chief Shingas has relatives who are camped near the fort. While he was visiting them he was given an opportunity to smuggle this document past French lines and he took it. If he’d been caught with those plans he’d have been hung as a spy, General. He took a great risk to bring you this gift.”

“Not so much risk, if his relatives are French allies. What if this is a ruse?”

“It’s not. Shingas wants the French out of this valley.”

Braddock opened his mouth to say something, but Shingas spoke first. “Tell
him I and the others want to know what is to happen in this place if the British succeed in driving away the French and their Indians.”

Quent had long suspected that Shingas spoke some English. Nevertheless, he continued to translate. “The chiefs have only one question, General. If they help you rout the French, what is to happen here in the Ohio Country?”

“Exactly what is to be expected, damn it This is English ground. English people will come here and live. No savage will inherit our land.”

There was not a flicker of understanding in the eyes of Shingas or the other chiefs, but they knew. Not just that Braddock was an imperious bastard, but that he despised them. Quent could feel their knowing. He repeated the words exactly as Braddock had uttered them.

“If we are not to have the liberty to live on the land, Uko Nyakwai, why does this man who calls himself a war chief think we should fight for it?” There was no anger in Shingas’s tone, but Quent could feel the rage simmering beneath the calm of all five chiefs. Braddock had to feel it as well. Quent translated the question.

Braddock took a last look at the plan of Fort Duquesne, then folded the drawing and put it in the drawer of his desk. He stood up. “Tell these savages I do not need their help. I will drive the French from this valley because it is my duty to do so. Of that there is no doubt.”

Quent turned to repeat the words. The five chiefs were already leaving the marquee.

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1755
PORT MOUTON, L’ACADIE

Cormac sighted along the length of the arrow and released the tension in the tautly drawn bow. The partridge dropped near enough so he could hear the muffled thud it made as it hit the earth. Moments later he had gutted and bled the bird and tied it to the game cord that already held a duck and a brace of quail. Should be enough, even for Marni. She kept telling him the nicest thing about having him on the farm was all the fresh meat she could eat. Little enough time to hunt when she was running everything herself, she said, the implication being she could bag as much game as he could if she didn’t have other things to do. He grinned and began walking back toward the farm.

Marni was waiting for him in the yard behind the house, rubbing a pinafore on a washboard. Thin whiffs of steam rose from the wash water. Nearby a black kettle was suspended above a fire made on the open ground. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the string of game. “You did well.”

“Keep you from being hungry for a time,” he said. It was cold enough so Corm
could see his breath when he spoke. He reached over and stroked her hair. Lately, when they were alone like this, she had taken to ignoring her mobcap, letting her long straight hair fall free. It was the color of fresh wheat and reached halfway down her back. When they made love and she was on top the way she liked to be, her hair hung around them like a curtain, shutting away the outside world.

Marni ducked away from his touch and reached for the birds. She spent a few seconds examining his kill, then cooed with pleasure. “You didn’t shoot them. You did it the Indian way.”

Cormac slid the bow from his shoulder and released the quiver of arrows. “You prefer that, don’t you? When I do things the Indian way.”

“Some things I do,” she agreed. Once, she’d made him show her how the Indians did it with squaws. He had her get down on all fours and he stood behind her and thrust himself into her. She’d hated it and they never did it again. “With bird killing, anyway,” she said. “With a bow and arrow there are no pellets of lead to break your teeth when you least expect it.”

“Shouldn’t be any, no matter how the bird’s killed. Not if it’s cleaned proper.”

She smiled again, her pink tongue darting forward to taunt him. “Clean them yourself if you do not like the way I do it.”

“I like everything you do. Well enough, anyways.” Again he reached out to stroke her hair and again she ducked away. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “That’s why I want to touch you.”

“But right now I’m busy.”

“Leave off what you’re doing.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to do something else.”

“Later. When I finish the washing.”

Corm shrugged and began to remove his hunting shirt. “Then you might as well scrub this, too.”

He’d been on the farm less than a week when she surprised him in the wash yard, though both of them knew the encounter was pure calculation. It was the first time she’d seen him shirtless and she had found his lack of chest hair startling. “So it’s true that you’re half Indian,” she’d said.

“It’s true. Anyway, I thought you knew everything about me.”

“I had heard … But the way you look … I thought maybe it was a lie.”

“It’s no lie. So what do you think? Would my scalp be worth the full ten guineas in Halifax? That’s the bounty Governor Lawrence has offered for an Indian scalp, isn’t it?”

“There’s a better price than that on your head,” she’d told him. “The Abbé LeLoutre at Fort Beauséjour, I hear he offers a hundred livres for the scalp of any English settler, and two hundred livres for yours. Twice that much if you are
brought to him still breathing. So he can scalp you while you’re alive, he says, and kill you after. But I do not go to Halifax. I have as little to do with the English as I can manage.”

“But you’re living on the English side of the line,” he’d said.

Marni had shrugged. “My family’s farm was here before the line was drawn. No one consulted us about where it would be.”

For the Acadians, little had changed in the fifty years since most of l’Acadie had been ceded to the English. Seven months Corm had been here, and though as far as he could tell Marni never went near a church, most of her neighbors still practiced the Catholic faith, spoke French, not English, and swore only a limited allegiance to the English king. They said they would remain neutral if anyone took up arms against His Majesty, but they did not commit themselves to fighting on his behalf. Most important, they went on farming and being prosperous against all the odds. Those small sheds he’d seen when he came here were not for drying fish or storing apples as he thought. They were part of a remarkable system of earthen dykes that kept the seawater out and drained the rain from the wetlands, so eventually the salt marshes were washed clean and became sweet and were reclaimed for crops. The Acadians grew enough to amply feed themselves and had plenty left over to sell. And most of them secretly supplied the French forts before they traded with the English.

As for Marni and him, they were both outcasts. It was a fact that bound them to each other almost as strongly as the fire that had crackled between them the first time he accidentally touched her hand. She reached to take the shirt he’d suggested she wash. Corm tossed it aside and grabbed her and reeled her into his arms. Marni resisted for only a moment, then pressed herself to him.

Corm put his hand on her breast. “Inside,” she said against his lips, pushing her tongue into his mouth between the words. “Inside. I want to be naked.”

Later he slept. After about an hour Marni woke him with a mug of warm milk and spruce beer. “Here, open your eyes. You are acting like someone possessed. Shouting and arguing with ghosts. There can be no rest in such sleep.”

He came awake instantly. “What did I say?”

“I have no idea. You were talking Indian.”

Corm took the mug and drank half of it in one long swallow. “It’s good, thanks. Are you going to cook me one of—”

The shout from outside cut off his words. “Peace be to this house and all who dwell therein.” A stranger, and not far away.

Marni jumped up from her place beside his sleeping mat. Corm as well, and he reached for his long gun. “No,” she whispered, talking while she bent over at the waist and twisted her long hair into a single coil, then stood and hid it beneath a mobcap. “It’s a priest. I’ll go.”

“How do you know—”

“It’s what they always say. You stay here. Hide in case I have to bring him inside.”

She had gone out the door and pulled it firmly shut behind her before he had a chance to protest.

“Good day to you, Monsieur le Curé.”

“And to you, mademoiselle. I came because I have not seen you at Holy Mass in the three weeks since I’ve been here.”

A black robe. She had heard that one had come to replace old Curé Vincent at the church of St. Gabrielle in the village. “Perhaps if you had been here a little more time, Monsieur le Curé, you would know that I never go to church.”

“You will lose your immortal soul, mademoiselle.”

“Perhaps I have done that already.”

So, Phillippe Faucon thought, everything they said was true. She wasn’t just a sinner, but a defiant one. He had little experience in the day-to-day care of souls, little idea of what to say in the face of such confirmed wrongheadedness. “Eternity is a very long time to spend in the fires of hell, mademoiselle.”

Marni shrugged. “Perhaps it is only spent in the ground, Monsieur le Curé. Perhaps when we die we have only the grave to look forward to. I think we must take our pleasures in this life while we can.”

“They tell me you live here alone.”

“I do. My mother died many years ago, my father not long after. And I have no brothers or sisters.”

“And you are not married?”

Marni smiled. “I am sure there are any number of people around here who will be happy to tell you the story of my betrothal, Monsieur le Curé. In fact, you must have heard it by now.”

“Yes. It is a sad tale, but—”

“But dead is dead. As I have said. Now, Monsieur le Curé, is there something more I can do for you?”

Philippe nodded toward the house. “Perhaps if we go inside—”

“No.”

So she did have someone staying with her. But was it really Cormac Shea?

“Mademoiselle has asked you to leave, monsieur. I suggest it would be wise to do so.”

Marni turned as soon as she heard his voice. “There is no need. I am able to—”

“Go inside,” Corm said. “I will deal with monsieur le curé.”

“He’s not an ordinary priest,” she said.

“I believe mademoiselle means that I am a Jesuit.”
Mon Dieu,
it was true. It was the métis Cormac Shea.

“A priest nonetheless,” Cormac said.

“Most assuredly so. And I am concerned for the soul of Mademoiselle Benoit, here. And for yours, Monsieur Shea.”

“You know me?”

“Everyone knows the most famous
coureur de bois
in Canada.”

“Not quite everyone, Monsieur … ? Do you have a name?”

“Of course, Philippe Faucon.”

Ayi!
Corm’s heart beat against his ribs. Faucon. In English, Falcon. A falcon was a hawk. And all in black like this one was, with his soutane and his cloak flapping about in the wind like wings. “Go inside.” He turned to Marni, surprised at how his voice didn’t give away the excitement inside him, or the fear. “Go inside,” he said again. “Prepare something for the priest to drink. He has come a long way to warn us of the fires of hell.”

“But—’

“Don’t argue, just do it.”

Marni’s stone-gray eyes sent him a message of disapproval and resentment, but Corm’s had become opaque.

To speak to her that way in front of the Jesuit … He had no right to order her about on her own farm. But he had. When she spread her legs for him she had given him the authority every man has over a woman once he lies over her. Cormac might as well announce to the black robe that she was a whore. She could feel her cheeks coloring bright red.

“Go,” Corm said again. “Please,” he added more gently, seeing how she looked. “We will come inside in a moment.” And after she’d left, to the priest, “Faucon. Is that really your name?”

“Yes, of course. In France my family have been falconers for many generations.” He did not add that his uncle was master of the king’s mews. Pride was a sin. Even for a Jesuit.