The Island of Doves (16 page)

“You want to begin now, today?” Jean-Henri asked with a delighted laugh. “Yes, of course. I’ll get you whatever you might need. How about seeds?”

“Where can I get them?”

“Morin will have some at his store. He sells goods that come in on the boats and sorts the mail too. I was planning to go there now for a few things—I’d be glad to ask him about the seeds.” Jean-Henri stacked the empty buckets beside the house and pulled his collar up against the chilly wind. “What do you want to plant?”

Susannah shrugged. “Anything he has, I suppose. Peas, pumpkin, lettuces . . .” She thought of the wild carrot seeds she had chewed faithfully each day back in Buffalo, the sharp hulls sticking between her teeth. “But no carrot—please.”

He gave her a curious look but nodded. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, and set off down the lane. As Jean-Henri disappeared around the curve of the island, Susannah stood in the bare yard in her plain dress and felt again a sense of being completely unencumbered by possessions. She reached for a coin purse, a silver mirror in her pocket, and there was none; she felt at her throat for her brooch and there was nothing there. She had only the pins that were tucked in her hair when she departed for her journey. In Buffalo she had owned crystal vases, paintings, embroidered pillows, rugs, egg cups, tiny forks whose sole purpose was to pull a steamed snail out of its shell. Everyone she knew in that former life envied her possessions; for Edward, each one was an emblem of his success, his dominance. And yet she had walked away from all of it without one backward glance. Now, unadorned, unencumbered, she felt weightless, invisible.

But she knew that she was not invisible. The previous evening, leaving the boat with Father Milani, she had felt the triumph of surviving alone in Detroit and somehow managing to make it to the island. She had hoped she could leave her fear behind in that chaotic place, and yet it had followed her here after all. She could not forget that Edward might be searching for her. If he had learned of her escape he could soon be here. If Wendell Beals had written to him about seeing her on the boat in Detroit, Edward might have received the letter by now. Her hostess was right; she had to stay near the house and be careful.

Susannah tried to shake off her fear by making plans for her seeds based on the pattern of sunlight and shade in the yard. Magdelaine’s house faced south and the front of the yard would be the best place for corn. Lettuce might fare better near the apple tree. She stooped down and dug her index finger and thumb into the earth. She was pinching up a bit of soil to feel its consistency when she sensed someone was standing behind her. She shot up and turned.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Susannah drew in a breath she hoped the man didn’t hear and cast her eyes down in panic. She knew him—he was the teacher from the boat, the one who had made her the sketch of the bird. He wore the same coat with the upturned collar he had worn that day, the same cheerfully curious expression. What was he doing here?

“I’m looking for Mr. Fonteneau,” he said, glancing at the house, then back at Susannah, tilting his head in recognition. “Why, I know you. I am Alfred Corliss—I believe we met on the boat.”

Susannah swallowed and looked up at him. She felt the damp soil clinging to her fingers. “Yes, hello. I remember.”

Alfred took off his hat and pushed a hand through his hair, then put it back on again. “Forgive me for being rude, but I do not believe you ever told me your name.”

“Miss Dove,” Susannah said. Her mind raced to recall what she
had
told him on the boat, the details of her supposed plans—that she was bound for a convent in St. Louis. How would she explain her presence here?

“How remarkable!” He clasped his hands together. “I am very glad to see that you are well. I looked all over the boat for you when we departed Detroit, but you were nowhere to be found. I feared you had taken ill.”

Susannah took a breath to calm her nerves, reminding herself that Mr. Corliss had no reason to be suspicious of her, to want to catch her in a lie. He was, simply, a kind man on a journey of his own. “Father Milani, the priest who was escorting me to St. Louis, had some sudden business in Detroit,” she explained, concocting the story as she told it, “and we stopped there for a few days. Then he was needed at the church here, and asked me to delay the rest of my trip to spend some time here.”

Mr. Corliss smiled. “I can’t imagine that you would mind, now that you’ve seen this place. Isn’t is lovely?”

Susannah nodded, trying to think of a way to end the conversation without being rude. Magdelaine had told her to keep from being noticed, and here she was standing in the yard talking to a stranger.

“You might remember that I was headed to the Wisconsin territory,” he continued, oblivious to her anxiety, “but on the boat I met Reverend Howe, the head of the Presbyterian mission school here. He insisted that I consider teaching there instead, and the man
is
persuasive. So I agreed.” He glanced behind him, in the direction of the school. “Though now that I’m here, I am not sure I endorse his methods. He is a force. You should meet him, take a tour of the school—he will be fascinated and more than a little bedeviled to know how the Catholics lured you away. He may very well try to convert you back to Calvin’s way of thinking.” Alfred smiled. He didn’t seem too concerned about her affiliation himself.

“That is kind of you,” Susannah said. “But Father Milani has found me a position helping Madame Fonteneau with her own teaching, here at the house. I expect that commitment will consume most of my time.”

“I admire your focus. I think I have decided to stay on here as well. The school needs a . . . moderating force if it hopes to succeed at its aims.” He took off his hat again and the curls slipped down over his eyes once more. “Of course, my brother wants me to come to my senses and get back to Boston immediately. We are charged with running my late father’s factory together, but neither he nor my father ever understood my interest in this kind of work. Most people don’t, do they?”

She gave him a weak smile.

“Isn’t it something that providence has brought us together again when we planned to end up in such different places?”

She wanted to return his friendliness, but she couldn’t afford to. Instead, she brushed the dirt from her hands. “I wish you well in your work, Mr. Corliss, but now I must get back to mine.” Without waiting for him to say good-bye, she turned toward the house.

“Miss Dove—one more thing. Do you know when Mr. Fonteneau will be back? We have a leaking roof at the school and I hear he is the man to see for help.”

Susannah nodded. “You might try back in a few hours,” she said. She would be sure to spend the rest of the day inside, so she wouldn’t risk seeing him again.

H
ow long has she been out there?” Magdelaine asked the next morning as she placed the pail full of fish on the kitchen worktable. She crossed into the front room to where Jean-Henri stood at the window. She had seen Susannah working in the garden when she returned from the lake. The young woman was crouched down with her back to the lane, hacking at the hard-packed soil.

“I woke at dawn and she was already out there, though I don’t know how she could even see what she was doing before the sun came up. Esmee took her some coffee a while ago because she didn’t want to come inside for breakfast.”

Magdelaine shook her head. “Yesterday afternoon she wouldn’t leave her room. Now she won’t come back inside?”

Susannah ascended a ladder and worked with methodical confidence in the boughs of the apple tree. The small saw Jean-Henri had given her was in her right hand.

“She says it is safer for her to work very early when most people are not yet out and about.”

“She is probably right about that. Not that we get many visitors here.”

“True.” Jean-Henri straightened then. “But yesterday the new teacher at the mission school came looking for me. He wants me to fix their roof.”

“And what did you tell them?” She was a little surprised they would deign to let a Catholic make the repairs. When the reverend and his wife first came to the island a few years back, Magdelaine had tried to extend a welcome, inviting them to the Christmas celebration and other feasts, but they never came. They were interested only in saving souls, and saving them in a very particular way. She had heard they took boys from their families, cut their hair, and forced baptism on them like pouring a tonic down a sick child’s throat.

“I told them I’d be glad to do it, of course.” Her son turned to look at her. “I thought
you
would be glad to hear that someone must have recommended me to Reverend Howe. My work speaks for itself—I’m building my business. Isn’t that what you want?”

Magdelaine gave him a weak smile. “You know what I want—I want you to get to the city, seize a
real
opportunity.” She put her hand on his shoulder as a concession. “Let’s not argue about it now. I’m glad for you about the job. Be careful not to fall through into the sanctuary when you are working on the roof—you might get converted by accident!”

They both laughed then. The sun was coming out. Susannah had her calico sleeves unbuttoned and rolled up over her elbows. Her fair skin would burn, even in the weak sunlight of spring, but she seemed not to know or care. She moved the saw to her left hand, but when she tried to grip it, it sailed to the ground. The injured fingers still weren’t ready for work.

Magdelaine glanced at the ground where the saw had fallen and was alarmed to see that it was littered with dozens of small branches. “
What
is she doing to my tree?”

Jean-Henri laughed. “A month ago you would have nothing to do with this house. Now you own a tree that has been here for fifty years?”

Magdelaine narrowed her eyes at him. There was nothing worse than Jean-Henri when he was right. “She’s going to kill it.”

“She says it needs pruning. She says she can double its output of fruit if she trims back those overgrown branches and thins it out before it buds. I believe she knows what she is doing.”

Magdelaine watched as another heavy branch fell to the ground. Odawa men thought that growing food was women’s work, and since Magdelaine had spent her life doing the work of men, she knew little about it. “Perhaps she does.”

In just the one day, Magdelaine had learned that Susannah knew more about everything than she had expected she would. She thought back to the awkward moment in the sitting room the day before, when Susannah had tried and failed to get Magdelaine to talk about the past. It made sense that Father Adler would tell Susannah about Josette and Therese—he needed a way to explain why a stranger would be willing to take her in. Magdelaine didn’t have to wonder how he himself knew of the sad tale. When Josette had been killed and Therese disappeared, Magdelaine had put out the call to every priest between Wisconsin and New York, begging for information on the sister who had vanished. Surely Father Adler had heard about it then.

She was still torn between opposing beliefs about Therese: Part of her believed that her older sister was dead. Jean-Henri, just a little boy then, had told his mother he saw Therese take her own life. But Magdelaine wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Then, the following year, Esmee’s father, Ansel Leroux, who had worked for Henri and then Magdelaine, told her that he saw Therese walking down the street in Quebec City. Magdelaine had scoffed and pretended not to believe him. But later she went to Quebec City in secret to see for herself, looking at every face, checking every doorway. But of course Therese was nowhere to be found. Still, she couldn’t be certain that Ansel had been mistaken.

They watched as Susannah climbed back down the ladder once more and removed her bonnet, revealing her striking red hair. She shook out the twigs and slivers of bark that had fallen into her skirt from the branches.

“She is very unusual looking, isn’t she?” Jean-Henri said.

Magdelaine turned to him, amused. “Beautiful, you mean?”

“No.” His tone was earnest. “Well, yes, perhaps she is. But what I meant is that she is conspicuous. That red hair is very . . . distinctive. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a woman with hair quite like that before.”

“All the more reason we must be careful,” Magdelaine answered. Susannah’s hair had been on Magdelaine’s mind since she arrived. If anything marked her as a visitor, if anything drew attention to her, it was that hair.

Magdelaine glanced at her son and wondered for a moment if she was going to have a new problem: Jean-Henri in love with Susannah. She pushed the thought away. He wouldn’t be so foolish—would he?

Magdelaine left him at the window, shaking her head as she came back into the kitchen. Esmee was sweeping the ash out of the fireplace with a wide broom and collecting it in a kettle to boil for soap.

“I believe Jean-Henri is more than a little taken with our guest,” Magdelaine said quietly, casting a worried glance back at the sitting room.

Esmee’s face stayed blank, though she paused for a moment in her work. “I hope she is worthy of his interest, madame.”

Magdelaine laughed. “
I
hope she is a very patient woman, for my son can take a lifetime to make the simplest of decisions.”

Esmee continued sweeping, then tapped the last of the ashes into the kettle. She kept her eyes on her work, her hands moving. “Indecision and prudence,” she said without a hint of impudence in her voice, though her words laid it bare, “might, at times, be easy to confuse.”

Magdelaine raised her eyebrows at Esmee and expected the girl to wilt under her gaze. Although Magdelaine was standing in the kitchen of the house she never asked for and still felt was a burden, a house she would be happy to turn her back on tomorrow so that she could seek solace in the deep woods on Bois Blanc for the rest of her days, Esmee was still her employee. Yet she faced her haughtily, then turned away and moved gently through the motions of her work as if nothing were amiss. Why in the world would she defend Jean-Henri’s passive nature? She was one to watch, this girl.

“I keep thinking about her hair,” Magdelaine said, turning back to her concern. “I think we need to do something about it before it gets her noticed.”

Esmee shrugged. “What can we do? Her hair is her hair. She wears a bonnet when she is outside.”

“I know, but still—how many women with red hair have you seen on this island? People are going to talk about her. If anyone is looking for her, that hair is how he’ll find her. I wonder . . . is there some way we could tint it darker?”

“With a dye, you mean?” Esmee raised her eyebrows. She placed a lid on the kettle.

Magdelaine stepped into the pantry and moved her hand over the jars and canisters that lined the shelves. “Manoomin water probably wouldn’t work. And beets would only make it
more
red.”

Esmee stepped in behind her and reached for a jar of nearly black preserves on the top shelf. “What about elderberry? It stains everything it touches.”

Magdelaine took the jar. “It could work,” she said, nodding. “Now we just have to persuade her to let us try.”

When Susannah came inside a while later, Magdelaine and Esmee were waiting for her in the kitchen. Her cheeks were bright pink from the wind, her hands caked with soil. She removed her bonnet. “Esmee, may I wash up at the sink?”

“Of course,” Esmee said, rushing over to help her. She poured hot water from one of the kettles they kept over the fire throughout the day into a bowl and gave Susannah a clean cloth. Susannah winced as she dipped her hands into the water and wiped them with the cloth.

“We’ll have to get you some gloves,” Magdelaine said. “Did you cut yourself?”

“No,” Susannah said. “They are just raw from the wind. I lose myself in the work. I don’t notice how tired I am until I stop. I have always been that way.”

“Well, aren’t we lucky,” Esmee said, “that we will reap the benefits of your hard work this summer. It will be a beautiful garden.”

Esmee and Magdelaine exchanged a glance. A compliment was as good a way as any to open this discussion, Magdelaine thought. She pulled out a chair and gestured for Susannah to sit down.

“Do you remember, on the night you arrived, when you said that you would do anything I asked you to do, if it would help keep you safe?”

Susannah glanced nervously between them. She nodded.

“I think we must do something about your hair.”

Susannah’s hand drifted up to the back of her head. “You want me to cut it?”

“We want to dye it.”

Susannah’s eyes widened. She looked at the jar of elderberry on the table, then at Esmee, who nodded her encouragement.

“All right,” she said, and reached up to remove her pins.

“Here, let me help.” Magdelaine stood and stepped behind Susannah’s chair. One by one she pulled out the pins that secured Susannah’s long hair in a twist at the back of her head. It uncoiled and spilled down her back in soft, shining waves, like the waxy red of maple leaves in autumn.

Esmee handed Magdelaine her hairbrush and Magdelaine swept it through Susannah’s hair with long, steady strokes. As Magdelaine watched the motion of her own hands, she remembered the last time she had done this task, nearly twenty years ago, when she had brushed and braided Josette’s hair for the last time. It was before she had left for the winter the year Josette died. The old sorrow rushed up. It would never leave her, that sorrow, no matter how much time passed.

Magdelaine shook off the memory and tried to focus on the matter at hand. “Is it ready?” she asked Esmee.

“Yes.” Esmee brought the pot over from the fire. They had decided to add vinegar to the preserved fruit because that was what fixed the dye to wool.

“It smells terrible!” Susannah cried.

Of course they had no idea whether the dye would work the same way on a woman’s hair, but they didn’t dare let Susannah know they had never done this before.

Magdelaine smoothed the preserves on in sections until Susannah’s whole head was covered. Then Esmee wrapped a rag around it while Magdelaine tried to wash the fruit from her hands. The color remained beneath her fingernails when she sat back down at the table across from Susannah to wait. Esmee made another pot of coffee, then joined them.

“I hope you aren’t too sad,” Esmee said, putting her hand on Susannah’s. “It will grow out. Eventually.”

Susannah shrugged. “I know. It’s only that I’ve had this hair my whole life.” Her tone was wistful, but Magdelaine could see that she was trying to shirk the sadness. “But it doesn’t matter now. It’s just one more thing that ties me back to him.”

Esmee gave her a vigorous nod. “That’s right. Good riddance.”

Susannah still didn’t look convinced. Magdelaine turned to her. “A woman who endures is a woman who does what must be done,” she said sternly, then softened her face into a smile. “You should be proud of yourself. From now on,
you
decide your fate.
You
decide who you will be.”

Susannah’s eyes welled and she nodded, taking a deep breath.

When another half hour had passed, they helped Susannah lean over a large basin and rinsed her hair until the warm water ran clear. They squeezed out her hair with towels and snatched them quickly away before Susannah saw that they had turned a disconcerting shade. They sat her next to the fire and combed the hair out once more.

When it finally dried, Susannah’s hair was a strange color. Not black, but not brown exactly. The striking red was gone, replaced by a washed-out shade of very dark purple.

Magdelaine and Esmee exchanged a glance, and Susannah looked at them with wild eyes. “What? Tell me.”

“It is certainly . . . changed,” Magdelaine said.

Susannah pulled a lock over her shoulder and in front of her eyes, then winced. “I want to see it.”

They led her into the sitting room, where a mirror hung above a small table. Susannah let out a shriek and clapped her hand over her mouth. Across the room in its cage, the startled dove shot up and began to bash against the bars. She reached for a section of hair and examined the strands in the dim light of the room.

“Shh,” Esmee soothed the bird, crossing the room to comfort it.

Susannah smoothed the hair back into place and took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It is only hair.”

Magdelaine stood behind her in the mirror and placed her hands on Susannah’s shoulders. She set her jaw and lifted her chin, the way she had done countless times when fear or sorrow threatened to take over. Susannah studied Magdelaine a moment, then squared her own shoulders, lifted her own chin. If there wasn’t so much time between then, Magdelaine thought, they could almost be sisters.

•   •   •

E
ach morning for the next three days, Susannah worked on her garden. Magdelaine watched as she first staked out a large rectangle of earth to receive all the seeds she had to plant. Then she cleared out brambles and cut back the tall grasses that obscured the yard from passersby. She dug beds, one for vegetables, one for herbs, and one for native flowers she said she hoped to find when Magdelaine felt it was safe for her to take walks in the early morning. For now, Susannah asked Jean-Henri to dig up two thimbleberry bushes so she could transplant them to the garden.