The Beloved Land (26 page)
“Could you tell us how you know this gentleman?”
“Didn’t know a soul when I got here. Wife grew ill, cattle were sickly, crops weren’t growing. Thought I was a goner. Robichaud here spent nigh on as much time by my homestead as tending his own holdings.” The burly giant’s beard quivered with fervor. “Aye, I’ll stand up for Robichaud. And count it an honor to do so.”
“Would you call him a man of God, sir?”
“Aye, I would. A papist, indeed. But he’s bowed his head over my table more often than I care to count.” He stabbed the air between them. “I’d call him kin for no other reason than the sweat he’s dropped into my soil, and count myself fortunate.”
“Thank you, Mr. McDougall, you may sit down.” Thomas addressed the gathering. “Do any of you here know of any reason why this man’s testimony should be doubted?”
When none responded, Thomas focused upon Guy himself. “Mr. Robichaud, how do you come to know about the former ownership of this disputed land?”
“Laroux’s holding anchored one end of the village, ours the other.”
Anne leaned forward and whispered to her husband. Thomas called over, “Is it correct that prior to the expulsion your own father was village mayor?”
“We called him the headman, leader of the council of elders.” Guy remained where he was, hemmed in on all sides, fumbling with the brim of his black hat. “But it is true nonetheless.”
“Would you have anything to add to the testimony you have heard?”
“Only that when Laroux arrived, he offered to buy Reynolds out.”
“Is that true, Mr. Reynolds?”
The English farmer folded his arms. “I ain’t selling.”
“That was not the question. Did Mr. Laroux offer to buy you out?”
“Aye, he came traipsing in with some song and dance about how—” “A simple yes or no will suffice.”
“Aye. He offered. I refused.”
“Thank you.” Thomas returned his attention to Guy. “Mr. Robichaud, may I ask, are you currently farming your family’s original homestead?”
“No, sir. I am not.”
“Why not, may I ask?”
“Well, it’s a bit complicated. You see, there were three families whose holdings stood where ours probably was—”
“Probably?”
“Yes, sir.” Ancient shadows creased Guy’s features. “You see, it was not merely our homes which the British soldiers burned. They torched our barns. They set fire to our orchards. Their plan was to wipe out every trace of our life and our heritage.”
Thomas raised a hand to his brow and leaned his head on his elbow. “Go on.”
“When we first arrived back, we searched and searched. But we could not be certain exactly where our farm stood. The road has been moved, new houses built, a whole new village. So as best we could figure, there are three farms sharing what once was our own land.”
“Why is the situation different for Mr. Laroux here?”
“There is no mistaking where their land begins.” Guy’s voice turned more confident. “The Laroux family farmed a natural promontory. A rock cliff on one side, ancient woodlands on another, a steep rise climbing up behind.”
“So this is definitely the same place where Mr. Reynolds lives and works.”
“The new house is situated farther to the northern border, but—”
The chair to Thomas’s left scraped back. Joshua Reynolds leaped to his feet and declared, “I ain’t selling and I ain’t moving. This is my land! Anybody come against me, I’ll put them in the grave.”
“You will remain seated.” Thomas did not raise his voice overmuch, but his certain authority in the situation was clear to all.
“But—”
“Sit down!”
Thomas directed a finger at the man.
Reynolds dropped like a shot. “He was the one who started it,” he muttered.
“Started what?”
“Second time he came around, it was to say if I didn’t take his money and move, he’d burn me out.”
Thomas wheeled to his right. “Is that true?”
The Frenchman squeezed tighter in his seat. “The land has been my family’s for seven generations.”
“Have you people failed to learn anything from the tragedy that forced your people from your land?” Thomas was on his feet. “There is
nothing
to be gained from violence and bloodshed. Nothing!” Both hands came down upon the table. His audience was absolutely still. “You and your community elders have vowed to abide by my ruling. If you will not both retract these foolhardy threats of violence, I will order both farms and crops burned, the homesteads razed to the ground, and the earth salted!”
The gasp that followed his pronouncement was echoed after the translation had been completed. The two men’s faces both were drained of color. Joshua Reynolds was the first to recover sufficiently to stammer out, “Y-you can’t do that!”
“Can and will, sir. Can and will!” Thomas’s iron will was unmistakable. He looked from one side of the gathering to the other, then back again. “We are surrounded by the most dire turmoil any of us have ever known. War threatens from every side. Communities like this one survive by only a fragile thread. Yet you would snap even this thread with your stubbornness and greed and hatred.” His burning gaze swept the group once again.
“Your silence convicts you all.” Thomas methodically gathered together his papers and deliberately stacked them. “This proceeding is concluded.”
Even Anne was caught by surprise.
“I will present my decision in two weeks. Until then, I urge you all to pray for wisdom. Pray for peace.” He stuffed the papers into his carryall and came around the table to stand at the top step. “Pray for us all.”
The journey into bayou country began with hired carriages to carry them from the New Orleans docks to the main ferry point. On the Mississippi’s western side they hired boats large enough to transport both the men they would recruit and the goods they hoped to purchase. Once they actually entered bayou country, Nicole felt that time seemed to slow with the currents. The waters flowed green and inviting, and branches hung with green veils floated on the humid air above them. The air was laced with fragrances and sounds drawn from her earliest memories.
The journey into Nova Scotia, and the joy found there after a weary and difficult beginning, granted her an assurance of what was yet to come. Even so, there was no escaping how she was now feeling.
Do I belong here anymore?
she wondered. The softly scented waters of Cajun country no longer seemed like her homeland.
During the several evenings they had spent on their waterbound journey, when tents had been erected, the evening meal completed, and damp wood set upon the fires to ward off the insects, Gordon had seated himself at the fireside. He had taken to drawing out the Good Book and reading a passage aloud. The men he had chosen for this voyage were those most open to its message. His answers were often halting, as he himself sought his way forward through the questions of his men after the readings.
Nicole had reveled in the discovery of her new husband’s depth of character and another aspect to his leadership of men.
Now the oars’ tempo increased to where they almost matched Nicole’s heartbeat. The village began long before she expected. The first houses were set where once there had been unbroken forest. For a moment she thought they had perhaps arrived at the wrong place.
They rounded the final bend in the river, and the village she remembered was there before her. Some who seemed immediately familiar and others who were total strangers stared back at the trio of longboats.
“Alarm!” A voice cried in French from the riverbank. “Soldiers!”
“Peace!” Gordon shouted back across the water in English. “We come as friends!”
But consternation along the riverbank seemed to be heightened only further. Nicole heard French voices cry back, “British! British soldiers!”
The cry was taken up and spread like the sweep of human wildfire. More people were gathering there by the riverside. She saw glints of metal in some hands, heard the angry shouts. She opened her mouth to call out her identity but realized immediately that she would not be able to make herself heard above the tumult.
Nicole felt the tension around her as the crew grasped sword handles, but Gordon called to the men, “Hold yourselves back, lads. Keep the boats offshore and your hands out where they can be seen!”
“They’ve got muskets primed and aimed, Captain,” murmured Carter at his elbow.
Gordon rose to his feet, turned shoreward, held out empty hands, and shouted, “Henri and Louise Robichaud!”
There was an instant’s halt to the hubbub.
“Robichaud!” Gordon employed his foredeck roar to its fullest. “Henri and Louise Robichaud!”
The armed throng lining the riverbank was silent. Then a woman’s voice arced high over the crowd. “
Nicole!”
Nicole’s joy at the reunion with her parents was all too brief. Henri and Louise welcomed her home most lovingly. But when she introduced her husband, explaining how and where they had met, she could immediately sense their unspoken questions.
A British officer
. And she could hear again those childhood stories of their family’s harrowing flight from the bloodshed and destruction at the hands of such as Gordon. They had learned to love and trust Andrew and Catherine because circumstances had placed them side by side in Acadian country. Tragedy had bonded them more closely than blood ties. But these men were not neighbors. Not friends. They were British. They spoke with strong accents, walked stiffly like soldiers, and looked far too much like a military presence, when the Robichauds and their neighbors wanted no reminders of a painful past.
Many villagers were adamantly hostile toward Gordon and his men. Their allegiance to the American cause mattered little to the Acadians, as did the fact that the Louisiana region and its Spanish and French consul-governors had declared themselves for the Americans. Here in bayou country, all who were not Cajun were suspect. The crew was forced to make camp in the farthest fields to the north. Gordon’s daily walk out to their encampment was made along dusty lanes bounded by silent suspicion.
All it took was one brief glance into her father’s dark eyes, and Nicole knew that similar suspicions had invaded the Robichaud home.
She came to dread the evenings. They gathered on the porch after their supper, out where they could catch whatever breeze might be blowing. Gordon would sit on the side railing in the twilight, peering intently at the pages of the Bible. She sat on a low stool at his feet, and her mother and father would settle in chairs at the porch’s other side. Occasionally Gordon would lift his head to ask if he could read a passage aloud. At their silent acquiescence, he would proceed, each phrase followed by Nicole’s careful interpretation.
Night after night she prayed for a miracle, even a faint shred of hope. She could not see a solution. Her parents and the other Acadians had wandered too long, too far, from the place that had been home to view Gordon and his men as anything other than their enemies.
Nicole wept as she prayed. In finding one love, she seemed to have lost another. She knew her beloved land was no longer a Louisiana bayou.
Besides the sickness in her heart, Nicole’s body no longer seemed to tolerate the heat and the humid air, and she felt as ill as she had ever been. She had managed to make her way to the kitchen for breakfast. But she only nibbled at a piece of bread, and soon after she had found herself nearly overcome by dizziness and nausea. Louise helped her out to the front porch and settled her into a hammock. “I’ll get a basin of water and a towel,” she said.
The hand dipped into the basin, the towel was twisted dry, the cool cloth applied to Nicole’s face. “You do not have a fever,” her mother noted as she rose to her feet. “I am going to prepare some tea with herbs.”
Nicole tried to nod, but the movement of her head made her so dizzy she thought she would fall out of the hammock. She closed her eyes in hopes of vanquishing the nausea and waited for her mother to return.
She was lying like this when the scrape of heavier footsteps signaled the arrival of someone else. Nicole opened her eyes to find her husband leaning over her. Gordon reached out toward her brow, but then withdrew his hand quickly.