The Island of Doves (17 page)

Susannah rose in the dark each morning and dressed in her room, then emerged with her disastrous hair coiled tightly at the back of her head beneath the black bonnet. Only a little of the deep color showed around her brow. When Father Milani called to tell them he was bound for Detroit once again, that he would return sometime in the fall, he glanced twice at Susannah, perhaps noticing that something was different, but said nothing.

“Good-bye, Madame Fonteneau,” he said, taking her hand. Magdelaine held his gaze, examining his unusual eye, with its half-brown and half-green iris. Perhaps the split had something to do with the half-truths he told to the people of the island. He had always looked a little fearfully at Magdelaine, as if he knew she could see through his façade. Indeed, Milani’s secrets might come in handy, she thought. They would certainly keep him quiet about Susannah.

She squeezed his hand back. “Safe travels, Father.”

Monday morning brought a heavy rain and a fog that billowed up over the limestone bluffs like smoke off a fire. It was not a day for working outdoors. But her students were instructed to come, rain or shine, and Magdelaine thought about how she would introduce them to their new teacher.

“You have worked wonders already in the garden,” she said to Susannah while they waited in the sitting room for the girls to arrive. “I never could have imagined the possibilities you have seen for this little plot of land.”

Susannah shook her head. “I’ve done nothing yet but make room for the new plantings. I hope we will have vegetables by the fall.”

Magdelaine cared very little whether they would. They hardly
needed
the food. She had always fared very well on wild leeks and whitefish, and the Presbyterians grew enough vegetables that the grocery was always well stocked in the fall. But she sensed that aimlessness was Susannah’s enemy now. She needed work to do with her hands, and with her mind, which the teaching could provide.

They heard the girls chattering as they came walking up the path. Amelia carried a basket of corn cakes still warm from the fire in her cabin. In the front hall they removed their cloaks and hung them to dry. Esmee whisked their moccasins away and placed them in a line in front of the fire in the sitting room. They padded in wool stockings to take their places on the sofa and chairs.

“Good morning,” Magdelaine said. Just as she had expected, the girls seemed startled by Susannah’s presence. They glanced at each other, then at her. “Girls, this is Miss Dove. I have asked her to come live with me so that she can help me with our lessons from now on. She is a very special teacher and you are very fortunate to have her here.”

“Welcome, Miss Dove,” Amelia said, her reliable confidence on full display. Pauline and Marie smiled shyly but couldn’t find their voices.

“Now,” Magdelaine said, unfolding one of Henri’s old trade maps and spreading it on the floor, “let’s begin with—wait, where is Noelle?”

Marie and Pauline looked down at their laps. Magdelaine turned to Amelia, who continued to sit up tall, her chin in the air, but she too remained silent. Magdelaine held up her hands. “Well?”

“Madame, she won’t be returning,” Amelia said.

“Why not?” Magdelaine tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. The girls were free to attend the lessons or not, and over the years she had seen students come and go. There was a large Odawa village a few days’ travel south, where Lake Michigan met the mouth of the Grand River, and often the island’s summer wives traveled there to visit relatives. It was not remarkable to lose a student. But Noelle was unusually bright, if shy, and Magdelaine had begun to look forward to her presence at the lesson.

“I know not, madame. Her mother only told us this morning that Noelle has gone from the island and won’t be coming back.”

It could have happened for any number of reasons, and Magdelaine’s first instinct was to go to Noelle’s mother to find out more, but she knew from experience that the errand would be a waste of time. They had probably sent Noelle off to be married, and that was the end of her story.

Susannah stepped in to turn the girls’ attention to the map. “What do we have here?” she asked them.

“The Michigan Territory and beyond,” Marie answered in her mousy whisper. “That’s where we are right now.”

Susannah smiled. “I see. Where in particular is the island?”

Marie pointed to a small circle between the two large peninsulas. Outside, the dogs howled, then barked in sharp bursts at something near their pen. The sound startled the women and they paused to listen, then turned back to the map.

“We left off last time listing the towns along the river,” Magdelaine said. “What is this one called?” She pointed to the place where the river joined Lake Michigan at the western edge of the land.

“Gabagouache,” Pauline said.

Magdelaine nodded. “They call it Grand Haven now.”

“And what about you, Miss Dove?” Amelia asked. “Where on the map do you come from?”

Susannah and Magdelaine exchanged a glance. Susannah shook her head. “That place isn’t on this map,” she said.

The dogs began growling once more, a vicious, frightening sound. Magdelaine stood.

“Girls, please excuse me a moment. Continue going over the map with Miss Dove.”

She left the sitting room and went out to the yard through the kitchen door, Esmee trailing at her heels. Jean-Henri was standing at the door of the pen, peering between the slats at the dogs as Magdelaine and Esmee rushed over.

“They’re fighting,” he said.

Magdelaine shouted a command for silence, but the dogs did not heed it. The steady rain had subsided to a stinging mist she could feel on her cheeks. She opened the door to the pen and saw in the dim light the dogs tumbling over one another in a pile, claws and teeth flashing smooth and white amid the chaos of gray and brown fur.

She whistled again and Ani looked up, finally, and backed away from the pack, through the door of the pen to her side. But the other dogs continued the fight.

Finally Jean-Henri stepped into the fray and pulled two dogs out by the scruff of their necks, his whole body engaged to control their strength. Sled dogs were all muscle and will, bred to pull hundreds of pounds over the snow for hours at a time without stopping. The worst thing you could do to them was try to keep them still. Out on the trail they would pull and pull, the harness slicing into the flesh of their chests, until they died.

The fourth dog barked and spit by itself in the center of the pen. It leapt from its back up onto its haunches, then lowered its head and growled at them, its teeth dripping with foam.

Magdelaine understood at once. “Rabid,” she said. “
Mon fils
, we have to get your father’s musket.”

Jean-Henri pulled the two writhing dogs through the open door of the pen and let them run across the yard, then slammed it shut with his hip and forced the latch into place. He nodded.

“Esmee, run, please, and get it. But carefully—it is loaded.”

She nodded and took off running.

Jean-Henri examined the scratches on his forearm, then pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. A moment later Esmee bolted back through the kitchen door with the weapon swinging in the crook of her elbow and Susannah following behind her.

Esmee held the butt end of the musket out to him. “Please, monsieur, be careful.”

Jean-Henri took the musket, first wiping his hands on his trousers to dry them, then letting the weapon rest lengthwise on his open palms. He glanced over his shoulder at the pen, the rabid dog howling inside.

“Jean, hurry!” Magdelaine hissed at him. “It has to be done now. You know that latch on the door is loose.”

He opened his mouth to reply but closed it again, and didn’t move. Magdelaine felt her jaw tighten and her eyes grow wide with fury. She was ashamed on his behalf, since he didn’t seem to feel the shame he should himself. How he hesitated! Any man worthy of his place on the trade route knew that a sick dog could bring down an entire pack within hours. What was there to consider, to pause and reflect upon? It was a moment for action, but he could not do it. Was it too much to ask that her son behave as any man would, as Magdelaine herself had behaved many times? The world issues its threats and one must answer them, and quickly, or pay the price. What would Henri say if he could see what his son had become?

Magdelaine wrenched the weapon from her son’s hands. She heaved it up to her shoulder, then crossed to the door of the pen and lifted the latch. Inside, the dog paced back and forth along a small semicircle in the dirt, breathing with a low pant. The light was dim but the dog’s eyes were bright in the dark nest of fur, and Magdelaine aimed an inch above the patch of brow between its eyes and fired. The powder in the pan popped and the animal made a high-pitched cry and fell, just as the charge in the barrel echoed like a thunderclap.

She came back out through the door of the pen. Ani was at her side in an instant, peering between the slats of the pen to confirm that the danger had passed. While the other dogs had moved far away across the yard, he had tracked Magdelaine’s movements the entire time with absolute loyalty, anxious to protect her.

“Since you could not perform the deed,” she said to her son as she handed him the spent weapon, “you may have the honor of reloading this and putting it away. And burying that carcass. We will have to watch the other dogs carefully now to see if any of them grow sick as well.”

Esmee and Susannah glanced between them. They were embarrassed for Jean-Henri too, Magdelaine assumed, as any woman would be. Esmee had defended his hesitant nature before, but would she persist in doing so now that she had seen the danger in it? Susannah murmured something about the students, and she and Esmee went inside.

Jean-Henri did not notice them go. His eyes were not on them but on his mother, challenging her. “Did you even think to ask if
I
was bitten?”

The rain had stopped and a garish sun began to burn through the remaining clouds, causing them both to squint. Magdelaine shielded her eyes with her hand. “But it was clear you were not.”

Jean-Henri emitted a hard little laugh. “But did it occur to you once to
ask
whether the dog had bitten me?”

She glared at him, allowing the hard shell of her anger to cover her surprise. In fact, she had not thought to ask him, had not thought to worry for his sake.

He shook his head, then tried again. “Let me ask you this: Would you have moved so quickly to fire if the rabid dog had been Ani?”

Magdelaine did not have to think about her answer. “Yes.”

Jean-Henri nodded. “Yes, that’s what I would have said too. You would have done it just the same.”

“And you fault me for that?”

“It does not trouble you at all, that you could with great
ease
put down this beast who has been your loyal companion for years? Who has traveled with you to the sugar camp and back, kept wolves away from your bedroll, worked tirelessly pulling your sleigh? It does not trouble you at all?”

Magdelaine shook her head. “No.” She felt no conflict between her words and what was in her heart. It was because of her love for the dog—and even as she thought of the word
love
she felt ashamed, how silly it was to love a beast—that she would be willing to put him down. For her own sake and for his, that he would not be able, in his derangement, to hurt her, the one he loved most of all. It would be an act of mercy.

“That, Mother, is the difference between you and me.”

T
he rain came back the next day and Susannah was forced to delay her work in the garden once more. The girls came again for their lesson and after it had ended and they had left, Magdelaine went to inquire—against her better judgment, she said—after Noelle, the girl from her class who had gone missing. Susannah settled in the sitting room with a book and tried to read, but her mind kept leaping to matters off the page.

She had been careful to avoid the mirror on the wall of the sitting room so that she would not catch a glimpse of her hair. She tried hard not to think about it or wonder how long it would take for the color to grow out. Magdelaine was right that it was time for her to seize control of her life, to do what must be done to survive. Changing her hair ought to be a small price to pay for her safety.

She tried to focus not on what she had lost but instead on the effect her work in the garden seemed to be having on the rest of her body. Every muscle in her back and arms, each small tendon in her hands, everything ached with fatigue. But it was a marvelous ache. She found the work hypnotic, like a deep prayer. She had never gotten down in the dirt and planted a garden of her own, a garden that waited on the rain and the sun—forces outside her control—to act upon the plants and bring them to life. Now finally it seemed she was putting all her study in the greenhouse to use. She thought of Magdelaine’s students, hard at work trying to understand the idea that their island was only a small dot on a map, and that map only a portion of the region, the continent. She thought too of Mr. Corliss, wondered if he was teaching the physics of birds to the children at the mission school. A small part of her had hoped that he would call again after the day she encountered him in the garden, but she knew she should be grateful he had stayed away.

When Esmee finished her work in the kitchen she joined Susannah in the sitting room, pulling her chair up close to the fire for light. At her feet was an open sewing basket containing spools of thread and brightly colored porcupine quills. Susannah watched as Esmee slid a quill into her mouth for a moment to soften it, then pressed the flat side against the newly sewn moccasin in her lap and sewed it into place with a back stitch. She folded the quill back and forth in the shape of a letter Z, then repeated the steps with a quill of a contrasting color.

“I’d like to have seen the porcupine who wore such a fanciful coat,” Susannah said.

Esmee smiled. “There’s an old woman on the island who dyes them. The same way we dyed your hair, in fact.”

Susannah leaned across the hearth and touched the patchwork of color. “So beautiful. Are you making them as a gift for someone?”

Esmee didn’t look up. “Making and repairing the clothes is part of my job.”

Susannah couldn’t help but press her just a bit more. “So you don’t take a little more pleasure in making things for a
particular
member of this household?”

Again, Esmee would not look up, but she twisted her mouth to the side to prevent a smile from sliding into place.

“You have set your heart on him, haven’t you?”

“I didn’t know my feelings were so plain,” Esmee said. Finally she looked up at Susannah. “Do you think he knows?”

“I honestly don’t know. Jean-Henri seems like a good man, but he also seems lost inside his own head sometimes, doesn’t he? And more than a little defeated by things. Perhaps he would never think to hope he could be with someone like you.”

Esmee shook her head. “I doubt that very much!”

“Well, he would be a fool not to return your affection.” Susannah wondered how it was possible that Esmee didn’t know how lovely she was—that long black hair, the dark eyes, her delicate chin. Surely she had received attention from other men, proposals even. But there was something else about her that was even more appealing than her beauty: a steadfastness that calmed anyone who was fortunate enough to be in her presence. She knew what was important and what was frivolous, and she didn’t waste any time on the latter. Esmee had decided that Jean-Henri was the man she wanted to marry, Susannah could see, and she had known it for a long time.

But perhaps his uncertain plans for the future were beginning to wear on her patience because she seemed anxious now, even despondent. She set the embroidery down. “It hardly matters. He will be gone to Montreal before the summer is over.”

“Esmee, I don’t think he wants to go.”

“But
madame
wants him to go, and so he will. He would never defy her. He will come back once every few years until she passes. And then I don’t think he will come back any more.”

“Perhaps he would take you with him,” Susannah said. She couldn’t understand why a grown man like Jean-Henri allowed his mother to have so much power over his fate. He seemed to be trying to gain Magdelaine’s approval, and she seemed determined to withhold it from him.

Esmee gave her a shy smile and shook her head. “I don’t dare to think of such an outlandish thing as that. Besides, I could never leave this island. It is my home.”

“And you don’t think you could”—Susannah hesitated—“
tell
him how you feel?” Esmee gave her a doubtful look and Susannah nodded. “Of course. I understand.” She couldn’t think of anything to say that might offer comfort. It was an unavoidable truth that most people had very little say over whether they would get the thing they wanted. Jean-Henri might love her back, but he might leave anyway. Or he might stay on the island but set his sights on another woman. There was no telling. Esmee could only wait and see.

Susannah stood and walked over to the window. She looked out at the gray beach and longed for the rain to stop so that she could get back to the garden. Her attachment to it bordered on desperation. In its cage, Magdelaine’s pet bobbed its head up and down, watching Susannah.

“What do you feed this dove?”

Esmee took up the embroidery once more and glanced at the cage. “Cracked corn,” she said.

The dove used its beak to pick at its feathers, then dipped it into the dish that held the food. Susannah thought about how Magdelaine had said that the mere sight of the bird in its cage upset her. She had been puzzled by the comment but found now that watching the bird filled her with a strange dread. Her throat felt tight as she asked Esmee, “Are its wings clipped?”

“I don’t think so,” Esmee said.

“But you do not ever take it out and let it fly around?”

“I think Magdelaine is more upset by the idea of giving the poor thing a taste of freedom and snatching it away, than she is about leaving it in there all the time.”

“I wonder why she doesn’t just let it go,” Susannah said.

“I’ve wondered the same thing. She never asked for that dove, you know,” Esmee said. “But now that she has it, it’s hers. She feels responsible for it, for whatever fate might befall it.”

Susannah wasn’t unaware that she had plenty in common with this bird. “I think I’m going to take a walk.”

“In the rain?” Esmee gave her a confused look.

Susannah shrugged. “That way no one will be out. And don’t worry—I won’t go near Market Street. No one will see me.”

At the kitchen door she took a shawl that hung from the hook and wrapped it over her hair before stepping outside. She gulped the fresh air. The dread she had felt for the dove remained, but she knew it was really just dread for herself, for the future. Worrying about how she could continue surviving as Edward’s wife had filled every minute of every day. Even though she had escaped, she still feared him. She dreamed about his boots thumping up the stairs to her room, his eyes flashing with anger. She examined her memory of what had happened at the port in Detroit, wondering whether the man she had seen on the boat really was Wendell Beals and, if so, what he would tell Edward he saw. Her future brought new uncertainties too. Who would she be now if she wasn’t that fearful wife, afraid of her own shadow? What would rush in to fill the void?

She surveyed the garden. It was coming along, though most of it still existed only inside her head. She had pruned back the apple tree as far as she dared, and not a day too soon, for the buds had already appeared and now the tree could direct its energy into producing more fruit instead of wasting it sending leaves to its overgrown branches. Beneath it and along the perimeter of the tall fence, Susannah had dug beds. She expected she could find lady’s slipper and sweet pea growing wild, or at least in a nearby garden owned by someone willing to share a cutting. She could plant them midsummer. For the kitchen garden Susannah had put in the grocer’s lettuces and peas, corn and squash. She had been concerned about water, but now after three days of rain, things were looking up. Still, the growing season this far north must be short. The squashes would be small, tender.

Taking the stone path that ran along the back of the house, Susannah crossed out of the garden and through the gate into the churchyard next door. Rain washed the faces of the small gravestones that leaned like a line of crooked teeth, a grim smile. One, shaped differently than the others, caught her eye and she crossed over to it. The top right corner of the stone was crowned with a small statue carved in the shape of a rabbit. The face read:
Josette Savard, 1799–1816
.

Seventeen short years, Susannah thought.

The rain began to come down harder and the church looked deserted and dry. Ste. Anne’s, Susannah could see, was the plain little sister of Magdelaine’s house. It too was made of white clapboard but it stood only a story high, with a pitched roof and a wide door on iron hinges. She hurried to the other side of the yard and tried the door, feeling a wave of surprise that it gave so easily.

Inside, ten pews fanned out from the middle aisle, five on each side. The only light in the space came from the two small windows cut into the clapboard on either side of the altar—a simple low table covered in an embroidered cloth. On the floor next to the altar was a tall likeness of the Virgin, carved into the face of a log and varnished to a dull sheen.

Susannah moved into the last pew on the right side and slid all the way to the end, where she nearly disappeared into the darkness. She rested her hand on the back of the pew in front of her, then lowered her forehead down on top of it, listened to the whisper of her breath, smelled the damp fabric of her dress. Nothing moved. Nothing shifted or whispered back. She heard only the tapping of the rain and felt herself sheltered from it by the sound construction of the roof. If a church could do nothing else for you, it seemed it could do that.

Just then she saw motion in the front pew. A man who had been bowed down praying in the darkness sat up and turned.

“Forgive me,” Susannah said, standing to leave. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

“It’s all right,” Jean-Henri said. “Please. Stay.”

She lowered herself uncertainly back into the pew, and he walked down the short aisle and sat down beside her. “I came in to get out of the rain,” he said.

She nodded, feeling like an intruder. “So did I.”

A silent moment passed. Jean-Henri folded his hands in his lap, glancing down at them, then back up at the altar. Susannah tried not to think about the last time she had seen him, cowed by the rabid dog, as well as his mother’s impatience. She wondered again why he couldn’t seem to seize control of his life. He was a man, after all. What could stop him?

“I hope that the dogs didn’t frighten you yesterday.” He seemed to read her thoughts. “It’s very rare for us to have trouble like that.”

“It
was
frightening to see that dog’s nature change so quickly, but I knew I wasn’t in danger,” Susannah said.

Jean-Henri pursed his lips. “Because of my mother, you mean? The way she takes things in hand?”

Susannah didn’t want to say that his mother seemed to be the one capable of protecting them, while Jean-Henri had faltered. “She is a remarkable woman,” she said instead, answering a question other than the one he had asked. “But it seems she is very hard on you.”

He laughed. “Yes, I suppose she is. But I haven’t ever known any different.”

“And you never think to speak up to defend yourself?” The question was out before Susannah could stop it, before she could choose her words more carefully.

He winced. “I haven’t done a very good job of staking my claim in the world the way she had hoped I would. I hoped for it too. But I’m not much for business—my father was, but I am not. My mother called in every favor she could to secure a position for me in Montreal when I was a young man, but I could not succeed, despite my best efforts.”

“I am sure you were better at it than you think.”

He laughed. “No. I wasn’t. I lost my mother’s associate a good deal of money. And now she wants me to go back and try again. To make my mark. But I can’t bring myself to do it.”

“And you can’t tell her that?”

“Believe me—I’ve tried. But she won’t listen.” Jean-Henri shifted in the pew and squinted at the front of the sanctuary. “What my mother doesn’t understand, what she will never understand, is that there is more than one way to leave your mark on this world. What about a man who has not founded a village, has not made a fortune in trade, but has, simply, tried to live a good life? Doesn’t that life leave its own kind of mark?” He paused, then shrugged. “I love this island. I love the people here and I like helping them fix things that are broken—roofs, wheels, boats. But she wants something else for me, something that doesn’t
mean
anything to me. I feel like I know the answers to questions that nobody is asking.”

“Nobody?” Susannah replied, thinking of Esmee, who was at this moment making a plain shoe into a beautiful object because it meant something to her.

“Well, not my mother anyway. She sees no value in my way of living. She is determined to make me leave.”

Susannah thought about that determination. Was Magdelaine trying, as Jean-Henri believed, to control him—or was she afraid?

“Do you think,” Susannah began, remembering that her attempt at discussing family history with Magdelaine had not gone well, “that her insistence has something to do with what happened to your aunts?”