Shadowbrook (90 page)

The entire fleet had to leave before the river froze. Admiral Saunders was not averse to allowing some ships to go immediately. The
Three Sisters
under James Cooke would be one of the first; she was to sail at the end of the month. It presented no difficulty to take Quentin Hale and the young woman for whom he’d requested passage.

They came aboard at midday on the Monday the Three Sisters was to sail. The crew were occupied with preparations for getting under way. Quent carried Nicole in exactly the manner in which she’d been given into his arms by the nuns, shrouded head to toe in blankets, only her face showing. The ship’s company paid them little attention and he did not himself get a proper look at her until they were in the small cabin to which she’d been assigned.

“One of the laundresses who was with the troops will be traveling back with us. She’U look after you. And of course I’U never be far.” She did not smile. She was in pain, he knew, and frequently feverish, but he’d give a lot to see her smile. “Listen,” he added, “taking you to Shadowbrook to recover needn’t have anything to do with you and me. What I’m saying … If you no longer feel—”

She turned away from him. “Please, I want to rest now.”

“Yes, of course. Only let me make you more comfortable.” He moved aside the blankets that covered her head. “Your veil’s gone.” The words were startled out of him.

“Today is the Feast of St. Michel the Archangel. I was to have renewed my vows. I did not. Mère Marie Rose tells me I am no longer a nun, so I may no longer wear the veil.”

Her black hair was raggedly cut and as short as a man’s. It made her eyes appear to be enormous purple-black coals in her white face. “But you still feel like one, don’t you?”

“I am not sure what I feel. Except very tired.”

There was a single small porthole on the wall beside her narrow bunk. He glanced out and saw the coast of Québec passing out of sight. They were under way.

Book 5
The Covenant
1759-1760

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1759
NEW YORK CITY

QUENT STOOD ON
the deck of the
Three Sisters
as she approached Burnett’s Key on a raw, damp day in early autumn. The news of Wolfe’s great victory had arrived before them. New York’s streets were hung with red and white bunting, and everywhere the king’s standard snapped in the stiff breeze. Nicole saw none of it. She was confined to her cabin, burning with the fever that had attacked her two days out of Québec.

Quent leapt ashore before Cooke’s ship had been made fast, and came back an hour later with his uncle Dr. Caleb Devrey. The brother of Bede and Lorene, he had diagnosed Ephraim’s dropsy five years before. “Why wasn’t the leg removed?” he demanded after he’d examined her. “Don’t they know in Québec that gunshot wounds poison the blood?”

“The surgeon wanted to do just that. She wouldn’t have it.”

Caleb Devrey was a tall scarecrow of a man dressed entirely in black He had removed his cloak while he attended to the patient, now he swung it back over his shoulders. “Then she has written her own death warrant. Will you bring her ashore? I expect Bede will make a place for her if you wish. She’ll be more comfortable until the end comes.”

“No.” Quent’s hands were gripped into fists, and his rigid stance reflected his unwillingness to concede defeat. “I promised to take her to Shadowbrook.”

In the afternoon he prowled the waterfront taprooms and alehouses and was eventually able to secure passage on a schooner headed up the Hudson on the dawn tide. When he carried Nicole aboard the new vessel—shrouded in blankets, and twitching violently in his arms, murmuring incoherent bits of Latin prayers—the crew looked surly and displeased. Tars were notoriously superstitious and shipboard deaths were always thought to be portents of doom.

Rain and cold followed them upriver, but also a favorable wind. They were in Albany in three days. Though at times Quent despaired, Nicole lived. One more change was required, to a small nondescript boat with a single gaff-rigged mast. It was owned by a tar named Henry Morris who knew him and Shadowbrook, and frequently made supply runs to the Patent’s wharf. The boat had one tiny airless cabin belowdecks where a narrow bench spread with rough, none-too-clean blankets served as the only bed. Quent lay Nicole on it and sat on the floor beside her, leaning against the bulkhead, praying for death to hold off for another few hours.

He was alone with her now. The laundress who had come with them from Québec had taken one look at Albany, still bursting with redcoats and provincial militia, and decided to remain. Quent watched over Nicole for the four hours of the journey, wiping her hot face with wet cloths and making sure her restless and tormented movements didn’t hurl her out of the makeshift bed. Once, Morris poked his head through the hatch to see how his passengers were faring and Quent took the opportunity to ask, “What news of my brother?”

“None I know of. John Hale’s pretty much same as always, except more of it. Drinks at old man Groesbeck’s when he’s in the town. These days that’s usually three weeks out o’ any four.”

John must die.
“And Shadowbrook?”

“Patent’s doing fine. Miss Lorene’s seen to that. No need to worry ‘bout Shadowbrook”

You spill your brother’s blood on this land it be poisoned, Master Quent. Mark o’ Cain, that be.

They arrived at sunrise. A glorious golden light flooded the red-gold autumn landscape. Morris tossed a line over the bollard and made his boat fast to the Patent’s wharf with practiced ease, then poked his head through the hatch to the cabin below. “We’re here and it’s a fine day above. You want me to go up to the house and get some help?”

“Please,” Quent said, rubbing his reddened eyes and feeling his tiredness full on for the first time since they’d left Québec. “Ask them to send for Sally Robin first thing. Say it’s a matter of urgency.”

Nicole had been sleeping more naturally for the past hour, but when he once more gathered her into his arms she felt featherlight, almost insubstantial. For a moment he feared she wasn’t breathing, then he felt her heart beating against his own. “Stay alive,” he murmured fiercely. “I haven’t brought you all this way to be cheated by death now.”

When Quent carried her up to the deck Sally Robin was waiting.

“I can’t believe my luck, you being here at the big house.”

“I been here some weeks now. Mistress be poorly.”

“How bad?”

“Not too bad, Quentin,” Lorene said, coming slowly onto the wharf from the big house path. She walked with a cane and leaned on the arm of Six-Finger Sam. “Sally Robin’s been magicing me well with her potions, and now that you’re here I’m sure to be better still. Am I correct in thinking that’s Mademoiselle Crane bundled up in all those blankets?”

“Yes, it is. She took a shot meant for me in Québec. The surgeon wanted to remove her leg, but she wouldn’t let him do anything except take out the musket baU. Now she’s burning with fever. Uncle Caleb saw her in New York and said gunshot poisons the blood and she must die. Even if he’s right, I promised her Sally Robin and I meant to keep my word.”

“Caleb doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. Besides, I always believed Mademoiselle to be of good, strong stock. The right sort for Shadowbrook. I’m glad you’ve brought her home, Quentin.”

“Nothing’s arranged,” he said, taking her meaning. “I don’t know if—”

Lorene held up her hand. “Time for all that later. Sam, you take—”

“Let me, mistress.” Sally Robin took a step forward before Six-Finger Sam could and reached out her arms. “Don’t look like she be very heavy, and I needs to hold her against my heart to tell what it is should be done. You give her to me, Master Quent. Sally Robin be looking after her now.”

Quent relinquished his precious burden and Sally Robin hurried up to the house with Sam in her wake. Quent hung back, walking at his mother’s pace and giving her his arm to lean on. “How long since you’ve needed a cane?” he asked.

Lorene shrugged. “A few months, maybe. I’m tired, Quent, nothing more. It’s been a great deal of work.”

“I hear you’ve done exceptionally well. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to assist you.”

“I quite enjoyed it, and yes, we’ve done well. You’ll see.”

“John?” he asked. It had to be faced. Now was better than later.

“He’s not home. He seldom is, Quent. Your brother is … less than he was. I know no other way to put it.”

But Shadowbrook was more. He could tell as soon as they approached the front door. Sally Robin had already disappeared, but Kitchen Hannah and Runsabout and Corn Broom Hannah were all waiting by the open front door, their smües wide with pleasure. “Welcome home, Master Quent.”

The morning sun poured into the spacious hallway. Ever speck of wood displayed a recent coat of paint or polish and the pewter chandelier shone. From where he stood he could see into the great hall. The furnishings had fine new coverings, and Turkey carpets gleamed against the wide chestnut floorboards. Each of the three fireplaces in his line of vision was heaped high with logs and blazing. Since no one knew he was coming, clearly this was the usual state of things at the
big house these days. Quent turned to his mother. “Well done, madam. Very well done indeed.”

Kitchen Hannah rushed off to get food and Com Broom Hannah opened the door to the little room off the hall where Lorene had her writing desk. “I got everything ready for you in here, mistress.”

Quent saw a bed against one wall. “Are you sleeping down here these days?”

“Sometimes, when I am late at my desk. Now enough about me. Tell me about Québec and the battle. It must have been splendid.”

“I didn’t see it. I was at the hosp—”

His words were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Sally Robin, and she was smiling. “Come to tell you there ain’t no black, Master Quent The leg, it be hot as the rest of her, but it don’t be turning black.”

“That matters?”

“It be a good sign, Master Quent. You remember what you told me when you went off to get Solomon back from those Indians took him away?”

“I said you should have hope but not certainty.”

“Yes indeed. And that’s how it be now. You got reason to hope, but we can’t be no ways certain.”

“Fair enough, Sally Robin. And whatever happens, thank you.”

He was home and so was Nicole.

Lorene waited for Sally Robin to go before she spoke. “That time after we were nearly burned out, when you went off to get the Barrel Maker rather than stay and help, I was bitter, Quentin. I felt you had given the Patent and all of us into John’s less-capable hands for nothing but your pride. But you were right. Solomon’s been a rock to me these past two years. I could not have achieved half as much without him.”

She reached for her ledgers, eager to show him the shape of those accomplishments. “We were prepared when they came, Quent Thanks to what you’d told me.”

The wave of redcoats that engulfed Albany in 1758 and 1759 had slept in barracks built with lumber milled at Shadowbrook, the troops fed with grain grown at Shadowbrook, and it was the Patent’s rum that went into a goodly portion of the grog required by the British Navy. “That does for the saüors,” Lorene explained. “The Army’s quartermasters are more interested in ale. Since we have never had much land in hops, I couldn’t at first see how we could produce enough to make the trade worthwhile. Then I found the most extraordinary little man, Quentin. Stands no higher than my waist and not a hair on his head, but he has a fine brewery some ways south in Chappaqua. He grows more hops than he requires, and since our two enterprises are far enough apart to be no competition to each other, we came to an arrangement.”

“Is the sugarhouse big enough for so much enterprise?”

“It wouldn’t have been. That’s why I had Solomon buüd a brew house out behind the stables. I made Taba the laundress and put Clemency full time to making ale. She’s remarkably good at it, but Clemency’s old and we must look to the future, so I’ve given Littie George into her keeping. She’s been teaching him brewing for over a year now. We produce enough to sell our ale directly to the redcoats, as well as supply the official requests. They call at Do Good with some regularity.”

Quent chuckled at the thought of Esther Snowberry running a taproom, but Lorene said it wasn’t Uke that. “It’s but a small outlet to service travelers. They can’t drink on the premises, only have their jugs filled, then take them away.”

It seemed a Quakerly compromise. “If Little George is learning brewing, who’s helping Jeremiah in the stables?”

“One of the Ashanti lads John bought same time as Taba. He has a most unpronounceable name, so we call him Tall Boy. He’s almost your height, Quentin. Quite the tallest nigra I’ve ever seen.”

“Good with the horses?”

“As good as he needs to be.” She became quite busy with closing up the ledgers and putting them back on the shelf above her desk. “I don’t go about the place much. There’s plenty to keep me occupied right here. And John’s not at home all that often.” Then, rushing on before he could comment: “So we’re stabling mostly draft animals now, for plowing and cart work Tall Boy’s plenty good enough with that level of horseflesh. And I’ve put a few more fields to hops. The dwarf is cooperative, but in the long term we don’t wish to be dependent on any supplies but our own.”