The Meeting Place (13 page)

Since his marriage to Louise, winter had taken on yet another special meaning. The long nights were no longer lonely. Loneliness had been etched so deeply upon his soul that now, with his beloved wife to fill their home with love and light, he noticed its absence more keenly than he had ever known its presence.

He had tried to explain this to his wife the night before. Finding him seated by the hearth staring deep into the fire, she had been sure something was wrong.

“No, nothing is wrong. Not in the least.” His mother tongue, spoken quickly, carried no hint of sharpness, yet the French words did not have the same soft, musical tone as when Louise spoke.

“You were sitting there like a statue. I don't remember ever seeing you so still for so long.”

He told her the truth, though it was hard, and harder still to meet his wife's query with anything other than his customary smile. “I was thinking of my parents.”

“Oh, Henri.” She drew the other bench up close enough to hold his work-hardened hand with both of hers. “Do you miss them?”

“I can hardly remember them.” He tried for the smile, but here and now it was false. And he wanted nothing false between Louise and himself. Not ever. “But somewhere inside me there is—there is a little boy. And this waif, he does miss them—terribly.”

The words silenced her. They sat together for a long moment as he continued to stare into the fire. The flames crackled and the logs hissed, as though whispering to him that this was the time to speak. He might never talk of this again, and it was good to speak his heart. Here, with this wonderful woman, it was good.

So it was that Henri finally spoke the thoughts haltingly. “I think there has always been a hollow point at the center of my soul, the place where my parents must have lived. And it is here and now, in the home I love, at night when the work is done and I have been preparing for sleep, that I remember the empty basin. Only here. Only at night.”

Louise did not speak for a while. Then she said, “Sometimes I think that one reason you work so hard is because it keeps your mind occupied. Does that sound harsh?”

“No, it sounds true.” But he spoke to the flames and not to her. The truth was easier to bear when he knew the fire would take the words first, releasing them both from the shadows the words contained. “It sounds so true I have spent a lifetime trying to flee from it.” His voice was very low.

“I am sorry, my beloved. I did not mean to sadden you.”

“It is not you who has brought me this sadness. It is life. I have always been afraid of looking too deeply into the past. I have run from memories—in laughter, in work, and in the company of friends.”

Louise stirred, gripping his hand more tightly still. “You have never spoken like this before.”

“I have never even thought like this before.” He was more amazed than she, not only at the words, but at how easy they had come. “I feel as though your love has freed me, Louise. Freed me to look back at those lonely years.”

“Oh, my dear, dear husband.”

Suddenly there was a burning to his eyes, and a pressure building in his chest and rising up that clutched at his throat. And it took all his mighty strength to press it down, gaze upon her face, and say in a hoarse voice, “I think I can look at it all and understand it now, because the emptiness is no longer there.” His tone lifted as he finished. “The caverns of my heart have been filled again.”

Walking the winter lanes and hearing the snow scrunch beneath his boots, Henri wished there was some way to take back all he had said the night before. He was most comfortable with silence and a smile. The questions which had no answers were best left unspoken, and confessions were best whispered down a dark well at midnight. That was one of the few things he recalled hearing his mother say, and this philosophy had formed a vital part of his life.

But the thoughts had been spoken. There was no way to take them back now. Henri called a cheery good morning to a neighbor and turned down the lane leading to one of the hamlet's more distant farms. The day was so quiet he could hear a dog barking in the English village beyond the River Minas. Then the lane fell into a cul-de-sac, and the drifts of snow began spilling into the tops of Henri's boots.

The Duprey farm rested upon a knobby butte sticking far out toward the bay like a giant earthen whale rising from the frozen mud flats. All was white in this wintry world, and silent. Too silent. There was no smoke rising from the Duprey chimney, and no sign of movement. Henri quickened his step.

Closer still he could hear the bawling of the cattle, a clear sign that all was not well. He hallooed the house and was relieved to be answered by a quavery shout from within. Henri stomped his feet upon the porch and pressed against the latched door. He shouted through the thick wood, “Can you rise, Gerard?”

“Wait, wait, I am coming.” The voice was hoarse, the footsteps scraped heavily across the floor. Finally the door was flung back. A man, stooped and flushed, leaned against the jamb. “Henri. Our prayers have been answered.”

Henri answered with his customary grin. “You sound like a bear waking early from winter.”

A woman's voice called feebly, and the man turned to cry, “It's Henri Robichaud. I told you someone would come.”

Henri moved past the man into the house. The front room was scarcely warmer than outside. He could see his breath as he piled the few pieces of kindling still in the woodbox in the fireplace and struck a spark on the tinderbox. “How long have you been without heat?”

“It went out sometime yesterday. We didn't know when we would get more wood. The wife, she tried to do all the work herself and did her back in, just like I said she would. She had to crawl back from the cow shed. And me—” Gerard stopped to cough, a wracking sound that went on and on, bending him over almost double.

“Go back to bed,” Henri ordered. “You've got the croup. Anybody in their right mind can see you shouldn't be up.”

“But the cows—”

“I'll see to the cows after I get something hot into the both of you. Go back to bed, I say.”

Louise had told him that Gerard had come down with a terrible cough and fever, which had laid him out flat for the first time since he was a boy. All this she had learned from his wife. It was the way of their village, to know the state of all their neighbors and all the clan, as far out as the roads remained passable. But then the wife had not been seen for some days, too long as far as Louise was concerned.

There was little enough in the larder, a strip of side meat and meal and some dry bread. Henri's face drew down into an unaccustomed frown as he thought of how the two older people must have spent their Christmas. Even over the sound of frying bacon, he could hear the old man coughing from the back room. Henri poured the meal into boiling water, set the bread in the bacon grease to soften, and called, “I'll have Louise come by this afternoon with some proper food.”

The woman's voice was almost as feeble as her man's. “You are a prince among men, Henri Robichaud.”

Henri felt his face flush at the words. He had never managed to accept compliments well and had no idea what to say in response.

Thankfully there came another rapping on the front door. Henri turned to see the vicar, Jean Ricard, enter and say, “I should have known you would make it out here before me.” He called to the back room, “How are you, Gerard?”

“Better, now that I know my cows will be—” He concluded with another furious spate of coughing.

When the noise had died down, his wife told the vicar, “I just said that Henri is a prince among men.”

“A prince,” the vicar agreed, stepping over to the fire and warming his hands. “Indeed.”

With all the attention Henri found the room growing too close for comfort. He handed the skillet to the vicar and said, “You see to their meal, vicar, and I will tend to the cattle.”

The woman's voice followed him out the door. “A prince among the angels!”

The cattle's bawling had grown louder since he entered the house. Which was no surprise if they had not been milked since the previous morning. He entered the barn's sweet warmth and shucked off his coat. Swiftly Henri lost himself in work he knew well—milking the cattle, filling the water trough, mucking out the stalls, spreading out new straw and feed. Normally when his hands were busiest his mind was quietest. That was one of the things he loved about work, how he could spend hours straining his body, then seem to come awake from a long slumber and not recall a single thought that had occupied him all day. It was somehow refreshing, this ability of his to place all cares to one side through labor.

Today, however, he found his mind drifting back to the conversation he'd had with Louise the night before. And from there it went on to what he was doing here. It was not as though he did not have a full day's work at his own farm. Especially now, when Louise had a list as long as his pitchfork of things she wanted seeing to around their home before the spring thaws.
Their home
. The words were still new enough to send a little shiver through his muscular frame.
Their
home.

For as long as he could remember, Henri had filled his free hours— and some hours which were not free at all—helping people around the village. It was only now, as he worked down the long series of stalls with their moaning cattle, that Henri had an idea as to why. As he walked to the last cow but one, he was struck afresh by the thought that somehow his marriage was waking his mind as well as his heart, permitting him the ability to see inside himself. Part of that freedom he had talked about with Louise last night. He was not sure how he felt about this. Not at all.

But the awareness was not to be denied. He leaned his forehead against the cow's side and squeezed the milk in rattling streams into the pail, and he knew why he was willing to be the friend in need to all the village. It was because they were the only family he knew. The only family, in fact, that he could really remember.

The cattle seen to, he then turned to the other animals. He had fed and watered the horses and was about to see to the chickens when Jean Ricard pushed through the big outer doors. “Do you need a hand?”

“You are just in time, Vicar.” Though Henri had known the man almost all his life, he still felt uncomfortable around the pastor. Jean Ricard seemed to share Louise's ability to see what was masked by his smile. “I've just finished all the work.”

“It is good of you to help out like this.” Vicar Ricard walked over and watched Henri gather up the last of the eggs. “I'm sure you have a hundred things going begging at home.”

“A thousand, Vicar, a thousand.” Henri kept his grin firmly in place. “But who's going to thank me for doing what I always do around the house?”

“I don't know what the two of them in there would have done on their own.” Jean Ricard had deep-set eyes and a gaze that seemed able to peer inside Henri's mind. “Do you know what they are saying about you around the village these days?”

“I've got more important things to do with these short winter days than listen to village talk, Vicar.”

“They are saying that maybe Henri Robichaud is preparing to step into the shoes of the clan's elder.”

Henri froze. “What?”

“Marrying the daughter of Jacques and Marie Belleveau, seeing to the needs of those who cannot cope with winter on their own—they say it could be a strategy of a man with an eye on his father-in-law's position.”

Henri's laugh was forced. “That is the most foolish nonsense I have ever heard.”

“Is it?” The dark eyes probed deep. “I know that you are not seeking the title. And it is precisely because you do not want it that you could indeed make a perfect elder.”

Henri worked his mouth, but no sound came. Finally he managed, “Vicar, you don't … I can't be the one to make clan decisions. You—I'm … I'm not a thinking man. I do with my hands, not my head.”

“Yes, you are correct.” There was no guile to the quiet man, nor moving away from his intent. “But your wife possesses the finest head in the village.”

“Vicar …”

“You have heard the passage, the two shall become one? There is no reason why you cannot rely on your wife's wisdom, just as she relies on your strong arms and good heart. Learn to trust your wife, and learn to pray to God with her so that you both are filled with His eternal wisdom.” The vicar waited. Then he turned away, saying, “It is time to prepare yourself for what may be presented to you, Henri. Whether you want it or not.”

Chapter 11

As Catherine picked her way along the muddy lane that May morning, it appeared to her that spring was the most troublesome of seasons, the one hardest to love. She had read the English sonnets to spring, about warm breezes scented by fields strewn with wild flowers in full bloom. Whoever wrote those verses had never seen an Acadian spring, she decided. The wind still held icy teeth, no matter how determinedly the sun shone. Even on cloudless days, such as this morning, everything remained wet with the snow and ice melting from every surface, and the world was filled with the sound of dripping. Stepping beneath a tree was fraught with peril, as the topmost limbs seemed to hold their final snowy burdens for just such an opportunity, flinging them down upon the unwary with dank abandon.