Shadowbrook (52 page)

Cormac swiftly covered the distance between where he was and where Nicole had disappeared. He found himself outside a door made of heavy oak planks studded with brass nails, with a black latched handle. He tried to open it, but the door was locked. Corm took a step back. The alley was full of shadows caused by the overhanging eaves of the ramshackle buildings either side. There was an odd half-barrel contraption set into the wall beside the latched door. He had no idea what it was for. On the other side was a second door, less forbidding than the first,
not as heavy, with a rough cross carved into the wood. That door was not locked. Corm went inside what proved to be an empty and silent church and looked at what there was to see—the two small windows of plain glass, a few kneeling chairs, a bare altar, and behind it a grille and the heavy curtains. He would have to wait and watch and hope Nicole came out again.

Corm left the church and made his way toward the waterfront, keeping always to the shadows, every sense alert. He heard footsteps behind him and picked up his pace. He reached for the tomahawk at his waist but before he could free it Corm found himself enveloped in a crowd. People were pouring down toward the waterfront from the hills of the Upper Town.

“Les soldats sont arrivés! Vive la France! Vive la France Nouvelle!”

The troops had arrived. The British attempt at a blockade had failed.

“Fog,” Corm heard someone say as the news spread from the decks of the ships to the waiting crowd. “Did the English in, the fog did. Only managed to capture one of our ships.”

“And that only by lying.”

The story circulated of how the officer aboard the French frigate Alcide had called out to the approaching English ship
Dunkirk,
“Are we at peace or at war?”

“And this pig English captain, he shouts:
‘La paix, la paix!’
That’s how he got close enough to attack the
Alcide.
They are all liars,
les Anglais.
”

“But he told the truth; he had no right to attack. We are at peace.”

“Do you think so?” The speaker was a fisherman. “This does not look like peace to me.”

Thanks to the loss of the
Alcide,
the arriving force was made up of slightly fewer than six thousand men, led by a general Jean-Armand, baron de Dieskau, who had already served with distinction in Europe. He was to be in charge of all things military in New France. With him was a new governor-general to rule in all civilian matters, Pierre de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil. Vaudreuil had been born in Canada; he could be counted on to understand how things were here in the north.

So, Monsieur le Roi, Cormac thought, official peace there may be, but you are definitely showing your saber. Are you then the white bear? It was hard to think of Louis XV as any such thing. They said he was ruled by his mistress, the exquisite Madame de Pompadour, and that she arranged for other women to satisfy his prodigious sexual appetites while she involved herself in the affairs of state. They said that Pompadour was the true ruler of France.
Ayi!
How could he know that the white bear was not a female? Had not Bishkek first thought the bear might be Pohantis?

The Québécois were still arriving at the dock. Cormac could make out a cluster of Jesuits come down from their hilltop fortress, and not far away, though separate
from the black robes, Père Antoine the Franciscan. Of Nicole or any other nuns dressed as she had been, there was no sign.

In most Poor Clare houses there was a room called a parlor, divided by a curtained grille so the nuns could receive guests while not exposing themselves to the outside world. The convent of the Poor Clares of Québec was too small and too poor to have a parlor. But since the ending of the Council of Trent in 1563 a confessional had been obligatory for administering the sacrament of penance to women. The one that served the Poor Clares was built into the grille behind the altar, a small and narrow double-sided box with two doors. The one on the nun’s side could be opened only from the cloister. The one in the public chapel was so cleverly crafted that the door could not be distinguished from the wall unless one knew it was there.

Once inside the box, penitent and confessor were separated by a partition that had a tiny square grille at eye level. The confessional was the only place in her convent where the abbess could appropriately speak with Pére Antoine. “It went well?” she asked.

“Perfectly,” the priest assured her. The wooden grille between them lacked a curtain, but Père Antoine was careful to look only straight ahead and the abbess had lowered her black veil so it covered her face. “The townspeople were careful not to disturb her,” he said. “And Soeur Stephane comported herself exactly as she should.”

Mère Marie Rose sighed with satisfaction. “She is almost too perfect. Sometimes I think that it is too great a gift, to be given such a perfect vessel of sacrifice. I am not worthy.”

“Nor am I,” the priest agreed. “But it is not for ourselves, remember. It is for Holy Church, and the Order, and for the salvation of Indian souls.”

“
Oui, mon Père.
That is why I was so worried when this demand came from His Excellency. To send her outside three times a week … Who knows what corrupting influence might—”

“There will be none,” Antoine said firmly. “It is the work of God, this order from the bishop. Soeur Stephane will have repeated chances to face the temptations of the outside world and refuse to give in to them.”

“Much strength will be required to do that.” In those moments when she had occasion to open the cloister door—however legitimately—did not Mère Rose herself sometimes give in to an unfitting curiosity about life beyond her cloister walls? The good God alone knew how much He asked of those who left everything for his love. “We must pray very hard to support her in this trial.”

“Indeed. But perhaps we should do more than pray. I have been thinking …”

It was hot and airless in the cramped wooden box. And her hips were beginning to ache with kneeling in the restricted space.
“Oui, mon Père?”

“Perhaps it is time to introduce the litlle sister to the discipline.”

Mère Marie Rose did not immediately reply. It was not customary to require such a rigorous penance of a novice. In the Rule of the Poor Clare Colettines a nun was not to take the discipline until she had made her first vows. In matters of interpreting the Holy Rule for her daughters, the abbess had ultimate authority. None but the Pope himself could overrule her in some things, or question her in others. It was a great honor, but also a source of constant tension. Abbesses were the only women in the Church who did not submit to men always in all things.

A slight cough from the other side of the box broke the silence. “Only if you think it wise,” Antoine said. “I defer to you in all things to do with your daughters, of course.”

It was not only the Father Delegate who must be considered in this matter. The bishop could easily have been given enough altar breads to see him through the weeks of his novena. It was at His Excellency’s insistence that a fresh supply was to be delivered three times a week. He was testing her, reminding Mère Marie Rose that every bishop was a king in his own diocese, whether or not he had permitted the establishment of a house of religious who answered only to the successor of Peter in Rome. “I will think about it,” Mère Rose said. “And I will pray.”

“I as well,” Antoine promised. “But this matter of the trips to the château of the bishop, they are not, I think, anything for us to be concerned about.”

Corm watched the alley all day on Tuesday but Nicole did not appear. On Wednesday, shortly before noon, the monastery door opened and she stepped into the street. How could he not have recognized her instantly? Now that he had, Corm was struck by how much Nicole was herself even in these strange clothes with her face veiled. He stayed well behind until she had cleared the alley and the road beyond it and started up the hill along the broad road known as the Côte de la Montagne. Then gradually he began closing the distance between them.

“Mademoiselle Crane …”

At first she did not register that the quiet voice was calling to her. She no longer thought of herself with that name.

“Nicole … It’s me, Cormac Shea.” Her shoulders stiffened and she paused and half swung in his direction. “No, don’t turn around. Keep walking. Up ahead five strides there’s a stand of fir trees. Go in there. Look as if you mean to relieve yourself.”

This was the part of the journey that was most isolated, a stretch of road with no houses, not even cobbles, only hard-packed dirt beneath her feet. There was no
one in front of her to see her disappear into the copse that was now just ahead. But behind her? No. Cormac Shea would not have spoken if there was any chance they were observed. She had trekked through the wilderness with him long enough to know that.

The fir trees were at hand, Nicole pulled her skirts tight to her and stepped off the dirt road onto the fallen needles that covered the earth beneath the trees. The copse smelled of urine and she saw a couple of suspicious little mounds.

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle.
I am glad to see that you got what you wanted.”

He looked as she remembered him. Straight dark hair slicked back and tied behind his head, his face bronzed by the sun except for the white scar. “It is you,” she murmured.

“Did you expect an imposter?”

She gave a slight shake of her head. “No, not really. I knew your voice.”

“Oui, après tout …”

“Après tout,”
she agreed. “But no thanks to you. You broke your word and left me behind.” Oh! why had she said that? Now she had the sin of resentment to confess. Until this moment she had committed no sin and need tell no one of meeting Monsieur Shea. “Why are you here? Is it a secret? You must tell me?”

“Why would my presence be a secret?”

The arrival of the troops and of the new governor and Dieskau the great general had penetrated even the cloister of the Poor Clares. The nuns had spoken of these things the evening before during recreation. “There is talk of war. We are beginning a perpetual novena to Our Lady of Victory. If you—”

“You pray for French success?”

“Of course. So the Holy Faith may be proclaimed. The Indians must have the Gospel preached to them, Monsieur Shea—” Nicole broke off. Last night in her cell she had not been able to stop herself from thinking of the many things Quent had told her about the Indians. Père Antoine and Mère Marie Rose and all the authorities of the Church said that if the Indians died without baptism they could never enter heaven. For herself, she could not truly believe that. The Mohawk chief who had convinced Quent to take her to Québec—surely he was a good man who deserved heaven. It could not be his fault that he did not know that Jesus Christ was God. Would
le bon Dieu
penalize good people for their ignorance?

“Look, Mademoiselle Crane, I—”

“You must call me Soeur Stephane now. That is my name in religion.”

“Soeur Stephane, then. I didn’t come to argue with you about the afterlife. It’s this one that concerns me. Quent brought you to Québec, didn’t he?”

She nodded.
“Oui.”
She could not speak his name aloud. If she did it would burn in her mouth all day. The way it burned always in her heart. She had added
that to the reasons for her life of penance, that her beloved, though a heretic Protestant, might be allowed to enter heaven.

“Where is he now? I must find him, it’s urgent.” Corm could feel Memetosia’s deerskin medicine bag around his neck, beneath his hunting shirt.

“I do not think he is still in Québec,” she said. “It’s June. Monsieur Hale brought me here last September.”

Cormac was startled. Somehow he had made himself believe that everything was coming together, that the answers he sought were almost available to him. Finding Nicole here meant he would find Quent close at hand. As for the arrival of the French troops at the same time, it was all a sign. Just as Kekomoson’s dream and the appearance of Philippe Faucon had been a sign.

Nicole glanced anxiously up at the sliver of sky between the branches of the evergreens. The sun was almost directly overhead. “It is almost noon. They expect me at the bishop’s château.” She reached into the pocket of her habit and withdrew a small box. “Altar breads. For His Excellency. I must go.”