The Beloved Land (27 page)
“I must go and wash. I—”
“What have you been doing?” Nicole asked, looking at his soiled shirt and pants.
“Your father has put us to work.” Gordon looked over his shoulder at Henri standing on the bottom step.
“What have you been doing?” she asked again.
“Anything and everything.” Gordon brushed at the dirt on his shirtfront. “The men welcomed the opportunity for some activity.”
Nicole watched her father climb the steps to join them on the porch. Henri’s English remained meager, but he must have been able to follow the conversation enough to add, in heavily accented words, “They good workers, these men.” With a nod of approval, he added in French, “They have set to helping us raise the new barn. And this morning your husband and two other gentlemen weeded the entire north field.” He nodded. “A strong back and willing hands has your husband.”
“Please say his name, Papa.” When he hesitated, Nicole pushed herself up on one elbow, though the porch tipped crazily at the sudden movement. “I’m asking you, Papa,” she implored.
Henri’s face crinkled with a smile. “But how can I get this old tongue around such an English name as this? Gor-don,” he attempted slowly. The three laughed together, and Henri said it again.
Louise appeared through the door, bringing a steaming cup of fragrant tea. “You are here,” she said to Gordon, motioning with her hand. “Good. You can help her sit up.”
“Oh, Mama, I don’t think—”
“Yes, you will feel better after you drink this.” Then she looked at Gordon’s clothing and waved him away. “Henri can do it.”
Her father eased his arm beneath her shoulders, and she couldn’t help but groan as he lifted her to a sitting position in the hammock. She gripped her father’s arm and waited for the world to stop spinning.
Henri’s face showed deep furrows of concern. At this proximity, she could see how the winds of age and time had plowed deep fissures in the beloved features. “Oh, Papa,” she murmured.
Henri must have misunderstood the emotion in her voice. “Here, let me settle you back.”
Louise quickly instructed, “No, no, not yet. She must drink first.” She pushed between her husband and Nicole. “Here, daughter, take a sip of this.”
“I can’t, Mama. Please.”
“No argument, now.” Louise carefully brought the mug to Nicole’s lips, and she took a tentative taste.
“Again.” Louise watched Nicole closely. “That’s it. Drink it all.”
Nicole could not help seeing how age was wrapping itself around Louise as well. She seemed to have settled into herself, growing thicker in body and shrinking in height. Silver traced its way through the dark hair and seemed reflected somehow in her mother’s gaze, as though a life’s worth of weariness, of strength, of hard roads and experience were imbedded there.
Nicole swallowed again, this time over the lump in her throat. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered.
“There, did I not tell you?” Louise gave no acknowledgment of Nicole’s bittersweet emotions. “Are you not feeling a world better?”
Nicole finished the mug, handed it back, and looked around in astonishment. “I … I do feel better,” she said. “I think I am hungry.”
Louise set the mug upon the windowsill and clapped her hands. “I knew it!”
“Louise, what is it you know?” her husband demanded.
“She is hungry! And look, see how the nausea has vanished?”
“It is a miracle, for certain.”
“A miracle? Yes, a miracle.” Louise laughed.
Gordon asked in English, “What is it? Are you feeling better, Nicole?”
Before Nicole could answer him, Louise reached over and hugged her daughter. “My darling Nicole.” She then turned to her husband and declared, “Nicole is with child!”
Gordon had looked at the three faces, obviously trying to determine the gist of Louise’s joyful announcement in French from their array of expressions. When Nicole had finally found the words to tell him, his own face reflected shock, disbelief, and then joy as the truth became clear.
“We are going to have a child,” he said, holding her hand in both of his. Nicole echoed his statement, not minding at all that his hands were not yet washed.
By the third day Nicole was feeling well enough to wash and pare the vegetables, a mug of the tea ever at hand. Working together with her mother at the simple chores affirmed her improving condition.
Nicole had found herself marveling at the simplest of things. The sound of her mother humming as she kneaded bread, the tread of her husband’s footsteps as he left the house in the early morning, the smell of coffee brewing, the sight of a neighbor poling one of the village’s flat-bottomed skiffs down the bayou across from their home—everything carried with it a special meaning and reminders of family, of memories, of the cycles of life.
In the evenings Gordon returned from the fields as weary as she had ever seen him, yet satisfied with the day. He would bathe in the shed Henri had built by the well, come in to greet her with a kiss, then kneel at her side. One work-stained hand would grip hers, the other would curve around her waist, and he would bow his head and hold himself still.
Louise finally asked in a hoarse whisper, “What is he doing?”
“You should ask him,” Nicole said.
“But I speak no English.”
Nicole simply looked at her mother.
Henri stepped through the doorway. Nicole held her mother’s gaze for a long moment, then turned to her father.
Louise took a long breath. “Gordon,” she said carefully.
He raised his head.
“What are you doing?”
When Nicole had translated, he smiled and said softly, “Praying for my wife and our child.”
Henri leaned against the doorjamb and rubbed his face hard. “As should we all,” he murmured. “Tell your husband— tell Gordon we welcome him to our family. We are happy for you, Nicole, and for the child who will be born.” He waited while she translated, then added, “A new little Robichaud-Harrow-Goodwind”—he paused momentarily as he worked on the unfamiliar name—“to carry on the heritage of families joined by faith under the mighty hand of God.”
Nicole and Gordon looked at each other as she said her father’s words for him in English.
“It’s a benediction,” Gordon said quietly.
Louise used the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes. “Come, let us eat.”
Henri sat at the head of the table, the covered dishes spread before them, and said, “Nicole, perhaps you would ask Gordon if he would bless this meal.”
Henri and Louise’s two sons and their families also were seated around the table, making sixteen in all. There was a faint shuffling as the two brothers shifted in their places. Each had a lifetime’s collection of reasons to loathe this outsider. But Nicole knew their respect and loyalty for their father was too great for them to protest outright.
Nicole’s throat was so choked she could not speak for the longest time. The table waited silently as she collected herself and finally was able to say, “Father asks you to pray.”
Gordon sat next to her, the tallest of the gathering. But it was not merely his height that set him apart. He held himself as a leader of men. Even here, at her family’s dining table with the lamplight flickering and the last of summer’s daylight glowing against the lace curtains, his presence was commanding. He now nodded to Henri in acknowledgment of the request.
“Father in heaven,” he began, pausing so Nicole could translate his words, “we ask your blessing upon this gathering, upon this clan, upon this village, upon this nation, upon this world. We ask your peace to spread from this table out to encompass us all. We ask that the miracle which we see here, where people who have been enemies for generations can sit together and walk together, will be seen again and again until nations no longer are at war. We thank you for the divine peace. We ask that it be a blessing known by all. May your miracle come, Lord. We receive this food with thanksgiving. Amen.”
Amen
echoed around the table.
Though she could feel the tears in her eyes, Nicole did not make any effort to wipe them away. When she looked up, it was to see Henri’s eyes also shining with unshed tears. His voice was gruff with emotion when he said, “Please thank him for his words.”
There was no easy conversation at the dinner table, yet the quiet this time did not hold the strain that had marked earlier meals with the Robichaud family. Louise continued to set the mug of herbal tea at her daughter’s place, saying that the more she drank at night the better her stomach would feel the next morning. Other than that, few comments broke the comfortable silence.
Toward the end of the meal, Henri cleared his throat and said, “Please tell Gordon that my sons and I are deeply grateful for the help of him and his men.”
Both sons shifted again in their seats, but this time it was as though their father had opened a door for them. “None of us expected to have the barn completed in time for the midsummer harvest,” the elder son put in.
“This is the most difficult part of our year,” the younger son agreed. “Some fields are ready for picking, others for planting, and there is never enough help to go around.”
“The barn was hit by lightning in March,” Henri explained.
“We scarcely had time to get the horses out.”
“All the produce we had stored in back was lost.”
One of the children piped up, “The whole village smelled of roasting apples.”
“They had their cider press too close to the barn. I told them that.”
“The cooling cellar was under its eaves. The placing made all the sense in the world.”
Nicole laughed and held up her hand. “Please, I cannot explain to Gordon so quickly—” “Shah, shah, listen to you all,” Louise admonished her family. “How can Nicole eat and talk so much?”
“I like hearing it,” Nicole said, smiling around at all of them. “It sounds like family.”
Gordon cleared his throat and said, “I confess there are two reasons for our help with the barn and the other things. …” He slowed to a stop, and Nicole quickly picked up with the translation.
Everyone around the table fell silent.
“First, because we are beholden for our keep. My men and I make it a habit of paying our own way.”
“Well said,” Henri replied, speaking to Gordon through his daughter but looking at him directly now. “And the second?”
“We have arrived with a problem.” Gordon glanced at his wife. “Should I speak of this here?”
“If you wish.”
“I don’t know the proper protocol here for addressing such a matter, and I don’t wish to cause offense.”
“Please,” Henri said, “we don’t stand on formality. Tell us of your problem.”
“I represent the commandant of the Boston garrison.”
“The
American
commandant.”
“Yes, sir. That is correct.”
“But you are a British officer.”
“Papa, I have told you of this.”
“I wish to hear of it from Gordon.”
“You are correct, sir. I served in the British merchant navy for twelve years and two months. But more recently I have given my loyalties to the American cause. I have relinquished my British citizenship.”
Henri waited until Nicole had finished translating. “So you can never go home.”
“On the contrary, sir.” Gordon’s hand came to rest upon Nicole’s. “I am home now.”
All the family stared at the two hands resting upon the tabletop.
“Well spoken,” Henri finally spoke, nodding slowly. “And what does the American commandant require of us?”
Swiftly Gordon outlined the problems—the lack of supplies, the blockade, the difficulties faced over pricing and shipping in New Orleans. “I confess that I accompanied Nicole here in hopes of finding another source of supply. One that would not gouge us so deeply as the merchants in New Orleans.”
“The New Orleans traders are no friends of ours.”
“They are pirates,” the younger son muttered. “They offer pennies for our wares. Pennies!”
Gordon asked, “Would there be any chance of—” The group turned as one toward the window and the clamor of voices.
“Not another fire.” Henri leaped to his feet. “The fields—”
“I will gather my men.” Gordon was already on his feet and moving to the door.
But when they reached the front porch, it was to find an excited throng clustering in the lane separating them from the bayou.
Henri called out, “What news?”
“The English!” One voice rose above the others. “The English are leaving!”
“From the fort at Baton Rouge?”
“From everywhere!” A young man leaped into the air. “They are defeated!”
When Nicole translated, however, Gordon looked sober. “Impossible,” he stated flatly. “The news is false.”
Henri was watching Gordon intently. “Ask him why.”
“Because the American forces do not have enough strength to bring a sudden victory. Their success is gradual, one battle at a time—”
But Henri was already turning to the joyous street scene to roar at the top of his voice, “
Hold!”
The effect was an instant sign of Henri’s authority. When the crowd’s clamor died down, Henri called, “Gather the elders! We are holding a village meeting!”