Shadowbrook (67 page)

“And when the Saracens threatened Assisi,” Antoine interrupted, “what did our Holy Mother Clare do? She climbed to the parapets, holding the monstrance that contained the Holy Sacrament. She repelled the invaders and Assisi was saved. Is that not exactly what happened, Mother Abbess?”

“Yes, but—”

Antoine heard the slight doubt in her voice and pressed his advantage. “There are no buts. It must be as I say.” The confessional was stifling. It took all his stamina to summon the breath to continue the argument he had made for the last ten minutes, and at least twice a day for the two days since the drawings had been given into his charge. “St. Clare showed her face to the world because the safety of her city and her Church required it. Is she not the example you and your daughters have sworn to follow?”

“But Soeur Stephane is so young, so untried as yet in our life. She has not been here three whole years. Why not Soeur Angelique, or Soeur Joseph?”

“Soeur Stephane is the most clever of your daughters.” Antoine had been confessing the little nun since the moment she arrived in Québec; he was convinced of her intelligence and resourcefulness. The ability to think and act quickly might be required for his scheme to work. “Besides, only she speaks perfect English. So if by chance she were intercepted she could—”

“
Mon Dieu!
You told me there would be no danger.” The abbess made a quick
sign of the cross, and begged God that she might endure the pain of kneeling here as long as it took to protect her authority and the souls of her daughters.

“I said, if something should happen,
ma Mère.
But she need go only as far as Montréal.” Père Antoine mopped the sweat from his face with the hem of his scapular. “Mère Marie Rose, listen to me very carefully. I have information that shows how the most terrible disaster can come upon this city. If we do not prevent it, New France is finished. The Church is finished here. Heretics will overrun this land and millions of souls will perish.”

Sacré Coeur!
That she should be asked to take on herself the responsibility for such a thing. Mère Marie Rose trembled. The voice of the priest continued to hammer at her conscience. “If I could go myself I would do so in an instant.” Now his voice was less commanding, more pleading. “I am watched, Mère Marie Rose, suspected. I cannot go. Is a vow made by one young woman—a vow, I might add, that I am entirely and legally able to temporarily dispense—more important than that?”

“If we could wait until September, when Soeur Stephane will renew her vows as we all do every year. I could let her go before she has again made her promises. For a few days she would not be in vows at all.”

“By September,
ma Mère,
the vultures might well be picking over our flesh.”

Marie Rose told herself she was shaking with fatigue, not fear, and that the tears that ran down her cheeks were caused by exhaustion, not surrender. “I have been given the care of this girl’s soul,
mon Père.
I cannot lightly ignore that responsibility.”

Her voice gave her away. Antoine knew he had won.
Grâce à Dieu.
“Not lightly,
ma Mère.
After much prayer and consultation with your confessor, who is the Delegate of the Minister General in Rome. For the good of thousands and the glory of God.”

Much prayer indeed. She had prayed without ceasing since Père Antoine made his proposal two days before. And this morning, during Lauds, the very same image had come to her, of Holy Mother Clare standing on the walls of Assisi, facing the world and repelling the Moslem invaders who had almost overrun all Europe, by holding up the monstrance that contained the Sacred Host. “Very well.” She whispered the words, beating her chest in penance as she spoke them. For my fault, for my fault, for my most grievous fault “Very well, it will be as you say.”

“God is speaking through you, Mère Marie Rose. You do what is right.”

SOON AFTER MIDNIGHT, MONDAY, JULY 30, 1757
THE WOODS AT THE NORTHERN END OF LAKE GEORGE

SHABA-SHABA-SHABA.
The sound of little bare feet on the earth. Taba feet.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.
Keeping no count of the days and nights, or the difference between them. Only run. When you stop, climb into a tree and sleep. Portion out the hardtack and jerky you took from Kitchen Hannah’s stores. Make it last.

Shaba-shaba-shaba.
Don’t make a sound. No little gasps for air, no sucking-in sounds to make the spit come, no matter how thirsty you are. Something feels dangerous about these woods now. Got to get away from whatever is in these woods wasn’t here before. No sound. Just
shaba-shaba-shaba.
Bare feet flying over the earth.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.

Soft black earth. Black night woods. No moon and no stars woods. A path, narrow as ever it can be, but soft and springy. Been here since before Jeremiah and Solomon the Barrel Maker and Six-Finger Sam were bom. They were the oldest people she knew, but Taba was sure this path was older.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.

Clemency the Washerwoman had taught Taba most of what she knew about Shadowbrook. Clemency said Taba had been three years a Hale slave, “So don’t you be grieving for your home place no more, child It be time you stop all that.” But it didn’t matter how long it had been. Taba remembered her village and the lake, and the fish she caught that last day. And the slavers. Only mostly she didn’t think about them. Clemency was right about that. Stupid to keep thinking about what could never be changed. Lilce Ashanti slavers and Master John and the things they did to her.

“You got to be smart you gonna survive, little missy Taba. And smart means not thinking no more ‘bout how things was. Just thinking ‘bout how they be. And knowing what the white folks know, and some things they don’t. That way you get to keep the inside-free alive. Right here where it counts.” Clemency touched

Taba’s heart when she said that, but she didn’t feel a nice soft pap that could feed a baby some day.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.
No soft round mound with a pink circle around the dark baby-suck. She had one pap and one hard, rough lump. It took a long time until she told Clemency how that lump came to her. Then one day while the Washerwoman was putting Taba’s hair into so many tiny little plaits Taba couldn’t count them, she did* Clemency didn’t talk when Taba told her the story, but she had plenty to say when she told the others that night sitting by Kitchen Hannah’s fire. And when she finished, Runsabout said that when Master John got hard between his legs he was a crazy man. Did things no natural man who was right in his head should do or would do. White or black.

Shaba-shaba-shaba.
Taba had heard them talk because she was behind Kitchen Hannah’s big fireplace at the time. They didn’t know Taba was there, not even Kitchen Hannah, who had said Taba could go to that sleeping place behind the fire whenever she wanted. Shaba-shaba-shaba. She was smelling a lake smell. She knew there was a lake in these parts. Taba had never seen it, but she had heard the others talking about a lake that used to be Bright Fish Water but was called something else now.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.

“Poor little thing,” Com Broom Hannah had said that night. “Too bad not having two paps don’t put him off wanting her in his bed.”

“Ain’t nothin’ gonna put Master John off nothin’ if he don’ want to be put off. Master John, he don’t be a natural man. And he don’ change for nothin’.” Those were Runsabout’s final words. But even if Master John never changed, Taba did.

Shaba-shaba-shaba.
She came to a place where there was a big wall inside herself. A high stone wall, big as the walls of the Guinea fort where the slavers kept her until the white men and their ships came.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.
She had to be free outside, had to be on the other side of that wall. The inside-free that Clemency and the others talked about, that wasn’t enough.

Black as tar here in the woods. Blacker than in the big house cupboard where she hid until everyone was asleep the night Master John had left for Albany. He wasn’t home so she didn’t have to go to his room that night. The women, all except Kitchen Hannah, they slept up in the place they called the long room under the roof, and when Master John wasn’t home Taba could sleep up there too, comforted by the sound of the others’ breathing. But that night she didn’t go to the long room after all the candles were snuffed out and the fires banked.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.
That night she stayed in the cupboard until it was dark and everyone was sure to be asleep. She knew the others were so used to her not sleeping in the long room they wouldn’t miss her, even though Master John wasn’t home. If she was going to get over the wall, find the outside-free, this was the time to try.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.

That night when she crept across the Frolic Ground and headed off to find her outside-free, the only thing she knew for sure was that she wasn’t going the Albany way.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.
No idea where this way was taking her, except that it didn’t go to Albany and it took her away from Shadowbrook.
Shaba-shaba-shaba.
Nine sunrises and sunsets. Maybe ten. Could even be twelve. She wasn’t really counting. Besides, it had rained so much and there were so many clouds covering the sun and the moon you could hardly tell when the days came and when they went. One thing she was sure about, nobody was following her. She had the outside-free now. No Master John. That was as free as she needed to be.

She’d come to a village sometime. She could smell a lake and in her home place a lake meant fish so—“Oh!” A small, right-out-loud scream. Squeezed out of her when she stumbled over a rock and fell. Before she could get to her feet and keep running, she was grabbed and lifted and imprisoned in the crook of a strong arm. After she’d come so far. The grief welled up in Taba so big and so fast she thought she’d drown in it, drown in all those tears she dare not cry.

“You must be stark raving mad, lassie. Dinna you ken there’s soldiers and savages in their hundreds prowling this forest?” The words were whispered right into her ear, but Taba couldn’t understand them. Whoever her captor was, he didn’t speak like anyone she knew in her home place or here.

The girl kept trying to squirm out of his grip, struggling with more strength than Hamish Stewart would have thought possible for such a wee thing. He held onto her nonetheless—head down, body tucked firmly under one arm, the way he’d heft a bale of oats—and pressed back into the hidden cave that gave him cover and a vantage point. The bairn made a hissing sound and tried to beat on his thigh with her fists. Hamish clamped his free hand over her mouth and held her tight with the other, then lifted her so he could press his lips to her ear again. “Quiet. Otherwise the pair o’ us will finish up wi’ no hair and boiled for broth.”

The lass struggled a few seconds more, then calmed some. Black as a lump of coal, she was. That’s why she’d got this far with no painted savage behind her swinging a tomahawk. And thank God for thick clouds covering the moon and the stars. Might be my hair would na still be on my head if it had na been such
dreich
weather these past few days. Has to be this wee gel’s a slave from Shadowbrook. Running away, from the look o’ it. God’s truth, she chose a bad direction to run in.

Hamish had been many times in these woods. He knew the lay of the land so well he could see it in the dark. Fort William Henry was less than a league distant; he’d discovered this hiding place several months before, and taken refuge in it earlier that evening when he spotted an advance scout of Canadians and savages circling behind the fort. He’d toyed with the notion of speaking to one of the Canadians, explaining that he was a Catholic and a Jacobite, that he was on their
side. But talk, he’d realized sometime since, would not get him off this hilltop. He’d simply have to wait and choose his moment to make a break for freedom.

With the wee gel in his charge he had to think again on what was to be done. The weather was changing. Hamish felt wind in his face, fierce and sudden, blowing in off the water and clearing the clouds as if a great broom were sweeping the sky.

Moments later a round summer moon had risen above the trees and lit the land and the lake and the entrance to Hamish’s hiding place, which was formed by an outcropping of boulders at the edge of the flat field where the fort’s garrison grew beans and maize and cabbages. God’s truth, e’en if you were staring straight at the rock face, you wouldna ken the cave was there. Not unless you tried to wedge yourself between what seemed like a narrow fissure in the granite, the way he had one day because it was pelting hale and e’en a tiny bit o’ shelter seemed better than none. The grotto was beyond the crack, six strides in length and three in width. Not much, but in some circumstances, enough.

Hamish moved deeper into the cave, glancing down at the girl still tucked under his arm. She wore a calico frock and her black hair was a mass of tiny plaits. “Listen, lassie,” he whispered, “if I take my hand away will you promise na to shout or scream?” He barely breathed the words, spoke them slow and separate so she’d understand. “You’re safe wi’ me, lass. And not safe out there.” He jerked his head to indicate the forest and the fort and the lake. “Do you ken?”

Taba nodded. She didn’t understand his words, but his tone was kind. Maybe he was what Runsabout called a natural man. Yes, he was a natural man. She knew it in her bones.

Hamish put his finger over his Ups. He felt some relief when she nodded. Still he hesitated a moment before releasing her from his tight grip and setting her on the ground. When he did, she stood where he’d placed her. Dinna move and dinna make a sound. Thank God, lassie, whatever else you may be, you’re na a fool. Because heaven as my witness, if you were mad enough to run I’d let you go. Choose to die, lassie, and you can die alone.

Two seconds went by. Three. Hamish held his breath. Finally he exhaled and crouched down, motioning to her to squat beside him. There was bright moonlight now; he could see the fort to his right and beyond it, across a marsh, an entrenched camp on a hill called Titcomb’s Mount. The Sassenachs had made the camp to protect the wide military road they’d built through the forest. The road connected Fort William Henry with Fort Edward, ten leagues to the south. The camp overlooked the lake, and if the French attacked, that’s where—Sweet Mary in Heaven and all the Blessed Saints, protect us.