The Beloved Land (5 page)

Gordon soon turned from the window, his gaze and features softening as he laid his hand on hers. “We have a damp and chilly eve before us. I shall start us a fire.”

“Thank you, but a fire will not warm my spirit.”

He turned to look into her face. “You have heard something?”

“I have. But I do not wish to add—”

“Thank you, Nicole, but there is nothing more I can do for the captain and his vessel, save pray. What is troubling you?”

Nicole withdrew the sheet of paper from her pocket and quickly read it aloud. The reading took only a few minutes. She described how dismayed she had been at the realization that neither Catherine’s longer letters nor her own had made it through the blockade. She yielded finally to tears over her desperate longing to see her father once more. “I feel I have only just come to know them. I can’t lose him now, Gordon. Not like this, without being able to …”

She eventually stopped because she had to. Outside the small hut came the sounds of men busy with the affairs of danger and motion. Though none yet approached, their presence was enough to keep Nicole’s emotions in check. She wiped her eyes and attempted a tremulous smile. Gordon squeezed her hand on his arm.

“Let me pour you some tea,” he offered, moving to the corner woodstove and the kettle.

Gordon soon fitted a steaming mug into her hand. “Have you eaten?”

“This morning.”

“Nothing at midday?”

“The seminary’s supplies did not arrive today. I was planning to scour the market when the letter arrived and Pastor Collins called me in.”

“There is scarce little to be found at any price. I broke up a fight this morning between sailors and stallholders taking only silver for the last of their winter carrots.” He held up a beribboned document from his desk. “Requisition orders I can’t hope to fill. The city’s larders are almost empty.”

“What does this mean?”

“Drink your tea, my dear.” He waited while she sipped, then said, “The war can’t continue much longer. It is not just our city. All the colonies are so burdened. And the British forces as well, from what news I have gathered.”

“Then the war is ending?”

“Not ending, but waning. Perhaps. Or reaching a crescendo. One or the other is my guess. Either there will be a loosening of the grip or an all-out push for victory. Neither side can go on with conditions as they now are.”

“How long—?”

“We shall know by summer’s end, of that I am certain. By the end of this battle season, things will have altered. And drastically if my guess is correct.”

“But I can’t wait—Father might not …” But she could not say the words.

Gordon slowly took a pair of new logs and set them upon the dwindling fire, then gathered up the bellows and began priming the flames.

“Gordon, did you understand? My father’s condition may not allow me the time until autumn.”

Carefully he replaced the bellows, brushed ashes from the front of his uniform, straightened, and turned with obvious reluctance.

In his eyes Nicole saw the same bleak reality after the exchange with the sea captain—that matters might not permit her to do as she wanted, as she felt she had to. And to force it would cast herself and others into danger.

“Oh, Gordon, I don’t know how much—”

The sound of footsteps scraped across the cottage’s front porch. A knock at the door, and Gordon said, “Enter.”

The young officer would have been fresh faced, save for the saber scar across his forehead. “Commandant’s compliments to the harbormaster, sir. He requests your company for dinner.”

“When?”

“This very hour, if you please.”

“My thanks to the commandant. My fiancée and I shall await his pleasure before the watch changes.”

“Very good, sir. Ma’am.” He bowed out the door.

“Gordon, I can’t—”

“Think of it this way, dear Nicole. At least there will be chance of a decent meal. And news that has a hope of being true.”

She did not object further, drawn as she was by both prospects. As she wrapped her shawl more closely about her and permitted Gordon to usher her from the cottage, she could not say which held the greater appeal.

Chapter 4

Boston had always seemed a stern and hardfisted city to Nicole. She would have vastly preferred to reside across the river in Cambridge and held a quiet hope of one day owning a small home there. But as Gordon was apt to say whenever the village was mentioned, Cambridge held neither an adequate harbor nor an easily defensible position. Which was why, once the British had retreated south to New York, the American garrison had moved across the river and encamped.

Another reason, of course, was the public triumph of retaking the city in this most public of manners. The papers smuggled in from England, four months old and full of more dismal news from the south, had declared the city’s fall a tragedy. Which had given the American colonists great reason for celebration in the midst of the bleakest winter in their short history.

One bright spot of an otherwise difficult season had been Gordon’s appointment as the Boston harbormaster. Up to that point, Nicole had known weeks of silent anxiety. Gordon had proven his worth to the garrison officers, and there had been several small coastal vessels lacking experienced commanders. She knew his yearning to be seaborne once again, doing his part for the effort, yet she dreaded the thought of seeing him depart. Still she had said nothing, for they remained surrounded by the tensions of war. She had been nearly afraid to pray, for there remained the question of what God intended.

She wanted to believe the dear Lord would not tear them—and her heart—asunder. Yet she only needed to observe her beloved’s face whenever he walked along the harbor quayside as he studied the wind and the tide and the set of ships upon the waters, or see the way his features worked when discussing the seaborne world with other officers, to know how much it cost him to be landlocked. Especially now.

Gordon’s appointment as harbormaster had been one enormous relief to Nicole. And she secretly hoped that the proximity to the sea would be of at least some satisfaction to Gordon.

The hillside leading up to the commandant’s private quarters was lined with tightly packed row houses. Most were of timber and wattle, but some of the stodgier neighbors were dressed with close-cut stone. The candlelight from their windows gleamed wet upon the cobblestone and the surrounding wrought-iron fencing. In the night’s rising chill, in what seemed a stubborn and endless winter, the warm colors burning ruddy against the windowpanes left her with the faint promise of something beyond the woes of war. She glanced into the passing windows and imagined that one day there would be for her as well a home and family and comfort. She held more tightly on to Gordon’s arm. Would that it indeed come, and soon.

As they approached the hill’s crest there came the sound of rolling thunder. “A storm? Now?” Nicole wondered.

Gordon responded with a noncommittal murmur and raised his chin, as though sniffing the mist and damp for signals.

The fog clamped about them made the sound seem to come from everywhere, great rolling booms more in tune with high summer. “Can it truly be thunder?”

She could feel Gordon’s tension through his arm. He kept his face turned toward the houses on the seaward side. All Gordon said was, “I fear not.”

She wanted to question him further, but they were nearly at the commandant’s home. The road had leveled off as they approached the hilltop. Now the wind struck hard, rising out of the south as Gordon had forecast and dispersing the clinging fog.

The house was of red brick with granite cornerstones and window frames. The formal gardens before and behind had been transformed into picket lines of tents and soldiers. Their campfires created sparks now caught by the wind and flung carelessly into her face. Nicole squinted against their sting and saw that every man in the company was on his feet. At the portico clustered another dozen or so officers. All of them, every face she saw, was directed seaward. As was Gordon’s.

She knew what she would see.

The city hill dropped down from where she stood in a series of stairlike rooftops. The garden’s crest was fronted by a stout iron fence, high metal stakes with arrow points directed at the newly revealed sky. Beyond the slope and the roofs spread the narrow peninsula separating the safe waters of Boston Harbor from the north Atlantic. And out there, upon the inky wash of sea, the battle raged in fire and thunder.

Nicole saw great blasts of flame spurt from guns on ships she could glimpse through the curling smoke. There in the garden, not a man spoke, not a sound rose save the wind, the crackling campfires, and the distant boom of cannon. Then one central vessel caught fire, glowing ruddy as a torch of pure terror.

She did not realize she had cried out until Gordon gripped her shoulders and turned her from the seaborne calamity. His hand under her arm gave her strength to move toward the house. Her heart felt squeezed by grief as she thought of those fathers and sons now lost forever to their families.

Gordon guided her to the brick path and up the front stairs. The commandant greeted her with a formal bow, then looked searchingly into her face. “It is a good sign, my lady, to find one who still has the sensibility to mourn.”

“I begged the captain not to take to sea,” Gordon said from behind her. “If only I had had the power to forbid him—”

“But you did not. And nor did I.” The commandant raised his head and looked at the sky. “If only I had forecast the changing weather.”

Nicole gathered herself together enough to murmur, “Gordon did.”

“Ah.”

“Not with any certainty, General. I merely mentioned it as a possibility,” Gordon acknowledged.

“That and more. Gordon all but stated it as definite,” Nicole put in quietly.

The general turned to face Gordon, eyebrows raised.

“A lucky guess, sir. Nothing more.”

The wind rose to a new pitch, causing several of the tents to billow. The soldiers shouted warnings and leaped to hold down their gear and dampen the fires. At that same moment another thunderous explosion rolled across the harbor. Nicole’s was the only face that did not turn seaward.

“The powder room has gone,” Gordon noted soberly. “Broken her back, I warrant.”

“Those men,” the commandant said. “I hope they had time to put out their boats and …”

Nicole pushed through the group and entered a side room. Three officers were gathered by the open front window. The wind had blown out the candles, and Nicole used the shadows for cover as she attempted to gain control.

Gordon came into the room, soon discovered her in the corner, and walked over to take her arm. “Shall I take you back?” he whispered.

“No, but thank you.”

He tilted his head to catch a glimmer of light on her face. “Yes, well, the officers are waiting.”

“Then let us join them.” She used her kerchief to wipe her eyes, and the two moved across the hall toward the parlor.

The garrison commandant chose not to notice the shadows of Nicole’s distress, and his collection of officers took their cues from him. The general held out his arm to Nicole and offered to escort her in to dinner.

As they walked through the side parlor, now given over to maps and charts and paper-strewn worktables, the general said, “Upon my word, do my senses deceive me, or is that goose roasting?”

Nicole nodded appreciatively. “I cannot remember when I last tasted goose,” she acknowledged.

The general made a small ceremony of pulling out a chair for Nicole. Gordon seated himself to her left, remarking, “If I did not know better, sir, I would say you had something in mind beyond entertaining us with a fine meal.”

The general was caught midway in the process of seating himself to Nicole’s right. “How so, Goodwind?”

Gordon turned so as to rest one hand upon the back of Nicole’s chair. He pressed firmly against her shoulder. “Roast goose in the midst of the direst spring I have ever seen. I can’t even recall the last time I tasted a mouthful of fresh meat,” he said to the general.

Nicole understood then. The exchange was not for the general, but Gordon sought to draw her to full alert. She turned to face him and found in his features a warning born out of a lifetime of skirmishes and danger. “Surely you remember,” she said, attempting with her tone to say that she not only understood but was ready. “Easter Sunday. We shared that haunch of venison with those at the seminary.”

“Ah, so we did.” Gordon eased back in his chair. “How could I forget?”

Nicole turned to the general. From beneath bushy, silvertinted eyebrows, he studied her with piercing alertness. She gave him as unrevealing a smile as she could manage. “But that meal was weeks ago. I am so grateful for this invitation and the opportunity to enjoy this meal with you.”

Dinner was brief and rather silent. Nicole did not mind. The goose was tough and had been cooked over a too-hot fire. Even so, her hunger proved a savory spice, and she concentrated on chewing each leathery bite.

Eventually the general set his cutlery aside and declared, “I fear we saved the poor birds from their last remaining days.”