The Meeting Place (4 page)

“I know you are,” he whispered. He lifted a bowl from her hand and planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “But you were right, what you said last night. I must find the words today.”

Yet his finally agreeing to speak did not give her the joy she hoped for. Instead, it only gave rise to all her other concerns. “If only things were different. All this uncertainty …”

He did not deny her words, nor echo her wish, but for an instant his normally cheerful gaze mirrored her anxieties. Then the familiar grin which danced through her dreams resurfaced, and he said, “I offer you the strength of my love.”

It was the perfect thing to say to quiet her fears and give her back a feeling of optimism. He was good at that. The entire village knew that Henri had endured a lifetime of woe in his scant twenty-one years and had thrived despite it all. Even the tightest-lipped villager agreed that if any man was worthy of happiness and good fortune, it was Henri Robichaud.
Worthy
. Louise raised her chin and straightened her shoulders, determined that she would do right by this good man. Starting today. She followed her strong and stalwart man through the front door and over to the garden table.

Their arrival was greeted by a raucous welcome and knowing glances between the family members already gathered. An uncle, one who had joined them from across the bay, called, “It's Louise! Look, everyone. See, the village's most beautiful girl has decided to join us!”

Another uncle, her father's older brother, grinned broadly and showed toothless gums. “Your eyes are worse than mine. She's a girl no longer.”

Her father's wide girth expanded with his evident pride. “True words, brother. We indeed have a princess in our midst!”

Louise's cheeks burned and she lowered her eyes at the extra attention. She came up beside her mother with the bowl. When the woman turned to accept it, her mouth was compressed into the thin, tense line she always wore when preparing a meal for guests. She opened her mouth to speak, and Louise knew it would be something about how hard it was to live in the same house with a would-be princess. But today when her mother glanced at her, dark gazes touched and spanned the distance of age and time. Louise's mother remained silent, and her eyes turned soft as the sunlight filtering through the sheltering trees.

Louise allowed her mother to take the bowl, then moved around the table to sit between her father and her younger brother. Her mother did not look her way again as she ladled out the steaming fish soup. She did not need to. Louise remained caught by all she had seen in her mother's gaze.

She found herself recalling a time from long ago. Louise had been swinging upon a limb that even now reached out overhead. The apple trees which offered shade to this summer table had been planted by her father's father, and the limbs were twisted and gnarled by more than sixty hard Acadian winters. They had been perfect play areas for an adventurous young girl. But one day she had slipped and fallen, scraping her arm upon the table's corner. Suddenly blood was everywhere—on the ground, her dress, her hands, her face. She had run screaming into the house, terrified by the pain and the blood. Her mother had rushed up and swept Louise into her arms. Such strength had been found there, such comfort. Her mother had bathed the cut, all the while singing about a cat and a little girl and a moon that came down for tea. And suddenly the wound had not hurt so bad, and the fear had been banished. Louise had been able to sit and watch her mother probe the scrape, extracting a long splinter before tightening the clean white bandage. Then her mother had kissed the cloth and smiled and said, “There, I have taken all the pain away.” And the little Louise had replied, “But it still hurts.” So her mother had taken Louise's little hand and placed it upon her own heart, and said, “Then you must put it all inside here, and let me carry it for you.”

Her father glanced over and demanded, “What's the matter, daughter? Is the soup not to your liking?”

“Oh yes, it's fine, really.” Louise swallowed the lump of bittersweet memory and picked up her spoon. Why she would think of such things today, when all around her was more than enough to think about already, she did not know.

Her father smiled at her. Then his gaze lifted to the horizon, and his face tightened until deep lines stretched out from his mouth and eyes. He pointed with his spoon and asked his brother, “Did you cross in front of that British ship today?”

“Aye, that we did.” Louise's uncle had the same strong face as her father, but it was set on a body that looked stretched upon the tanning rack. All sinew and stringy muscle, he was a man who ate little and spoke less. “Forty-eight guns and a general's flag.”

“Fifty, Papa,” chimed in Louise's young cousin. “You forgot the two stern chasers.”

“We paddled right by the bowlines. Sailors leaned over and shouted something. Glad I didn't understand them.”

Louise glanced at her youngest brother's face. Philippe traveled twice a year to Annapolis Royal to trade the farm's supplies and had picked up quite a bit of English. He had taken the family's fishing boat across the bay to bring back his uncle's family and would have heard what was said. Philippe was flushing with remembered anger, and he muttered, “Something foul.”

“What business does a general's ship have down Cobequid Bay?” Louise's father mused aloud. “It's like watching a winter storm come crawling along the cove.”

All the table turned from their food to look out over the naturally terraced landscape and down to where the Cobequid Bay stretched silver and blue beneath a cloud-chased sky. Their home stood at the village's edge, upon the first bank of cultivated land. Behind them rose rank after rank of forested mountains, from which they took both game and wood. Before them stretched the finest farmland any of them had ever heard of, land so rich it could grow almost anything, even within Acadia's short summer season.

Down another level spread the muddy tidal flatlands. Over the previous hundred and fifty years, the industrious Acadian farmers had built so many dikes they had reclaimed almost half the land. The dikes were long earthen barriers, standing higher than a man and running like ramparts in lines over a mile long. They truly were fortresses, standing stalwart and firm against the strongest tidal flow in the world.

At low tide, such as now, the deeper waters of Cobequid Bay seemed so narrow that it could almost be traversed on foot. Yet for many months each year, there was no way to cross to the other side except by circling all the way to Cobequid Town at the bay's far end. The muddy bogs became treacherous and impassable, laced with ice and unseen pits, and the central currents flowed so strong they kept ice from forming even during the most bitter of freezes. Which meant that through the long winter season Minas remained mostly cut off from the other French villages along the bay's opposite side.

This first summer family gathering was supposed to be a festive time, a moment to taste the cider pressed and jugged last autumn. A time of sharing the news of family and offspring. An opportunity to hear all that had happened during the long hard winter, and discuss the crops and plans for the growing season to come.

But this year, the news from beyond the bay was so worrisome there was little time given to anything else.

Louise's father was the head of the clan, and thus was the spokesman with the authorities in Cobequid Town. Her uncle demanded, “Jacques, have you heard anything more?”

“Nothing but what we all know. The English hold our Fort Louisburg. And the new edict stands as written. All Frenchmen in Acadia are required to take an oath of allegiance to the English king or forfeit all lands.”

The loss of the small and isolated fort had long been expected. Even so, the oft-repeated news cast further gloom upon the table. Fort Louisburg was fifteen days' hard march from Minas, but with the general's gunship resting in tranquil Cobequid Bay, it might as well have been just around the southern point.

Louise's grandfather spoke in a voice creaky with age. “You won't remember this, but it has all happened before. Back before you were born they took one of our outposts, then made the same threat about oaths of allegiance. Every time there is war in Europe, the soldiers here make such noises.”

“Maybe so,” Louise's father replied. “But we've never had a general's ship come this far up the Cobequid before, have we?”

A man in clerical garb at the far end of the table spoke up for the first time. “I fear what Jacques says is correct.” All eyes turned his way. The parish vicar was a good man, tall and learned and loved by all. Jean Ricard seldom joined in political discussions, one of the differences which separated his leadership in this Protestant Huguenot village from the priests in nearby Catholic towns. “I have traveled up to Cobequid Town as well, and spoken to the canon. At his request, I might add.”

This was news. Years could come and go between meetings of their Huguenot vicar and the Catholic priest of Cobequid Town. “What did he tell you?”

“That the war may well move across the waters this time. That the English are bringing regiments up from the colonies of Massachusetts and New York, headed for the inland fortresses around Quebec.”

Despite the warming sun, the mood at the table darkened perceptibly. Louise wished for some way to escape. Normally when talk turned to politics and threats from afar, she left the house. Today, however, she was unable to move. The news she waited for Henri to announce kept her firmly planted. She lifted her gaze to the last remaining apple blossoms overhead. As she did, a tiny golden shape flitted into view, a miniature hummingbird that poised before a blossom and drank in the space of a heartbeat. Such fragile beauty, such fleeting charm. She shivered, caught by the impression that she was struggling to hold to a happiness as delicate as those invisible wings.

She looked back at the group around the table in time to find her mother watching her. Marie Belleveau shared her daughter's dark eyes and strong features, but her countenance bore the wisdom of family and the years. Her gaze probed deep and drew from Louise the tears she had felt threatening all day long.

Their eyes unlocked, and her mother stood. “Enough!” The sharp word struck the table like a sword. “I tell you, enough!”

Even Jacques, who had lived with his wife and known her stormy moods for twenty-eight years, was taken aback. “What is it with you, wife?”

“Do we invite the English soldiers into our parlors? Are they people we would stop and talk with on the street?” Normally Marie Belleveau wore her dark hair long and braided, but today, being a feast and a gathering, she had drawn it up under her white formal bonnet. The starched hood formed a curving frame for her flashing eyes. “Then why must we make room for them here at our table? Why must they be our constant companion on a day when we are supposed to celebrate the summer?”

A stillness greeted her words. Then Jacques cleared his throat and said, “Marie, my dear, there is trouble. …”

“Not today, there isn't!” She waved expressive hands as though to gather up the laden table with its cluster of family and friends, the nearby cheeping birds and blossoming trees. “Show me trouble. Where on this day is there trouble except in your talk?”

It was the vicar who cleared his throat and said, “Madame Belleveau, you are correct in what you say. I ask your forgiveness for having brought such news to our celebration.”

That their pastor himself would accept fault caused them all to pause. Silence reigned through the soup and on into the main course of roast goose, until Jacques cleared his throat and said, “Marie, you have done yourself proud once more. This is a feast fit for the king's table.”

Smiles and relieved agreement broke out around the table. All clearly were glad to have peace restored.

Mother and daughter exchanged a long look, then Marie replied, “I could not have done it without Louise's help.”

As the table's attention and compliments again turned her way, Louise's eyes sought rescue from the far end, down where Henri sat with the younger cousins.

But Henri remained focused upon someone farther down the table. Henri was perhaps the most popular man in the village, despite his lowly position. For his eyes shone with strength and calm confidence and something more. He seldom spoke, but he greeted the world with an invitation to make him smile, to laugh out loud. Henri must have felt her eyes on him and glanced back at her, a single nervous flicker that she would have missed had she not been watching him so closely. She knew this occasion was hard for him. Even so, it was something only he could do.

Henri nodded to the silent urging in Louise's glance and rose slowly to his feet. He stood there, clearly nervous and alone as attention turned his way.

Then he looked down the table to where she sat watching him, and his eyes cleared. His dark eyes were deep and full of all the mysteries of their future together. He gave her the smile that was for her alone, gentle and caring. And it gave her the strength to breathe.

Henri faced her father and let out the words in a quick rush. “Papa Jacques, Louise and I wish to wed.”

Once more the table was shocked into stillness. Louise clenched her hands, bunching up the sides of her embroidered dress.
That is not the correct way
, she wanted to cry out. She wished she could pull his words from the air and plant them back in Henri's mouth.

Henri glanced her way again, only this time she gave him a look she had learned from her mother. Stern and uncompromising, willing him to gather himself and try yet again.

Henri straightened his broad shoulders and forced himself to say the traditional words, ones brought from the old country and used for generations beyond count. “Father Belleveau, I hope—I hope that you know me and know my worth.”

“I do indeed.” Jacques Belleveau puffed his girth with obvious pleasure at Henri's proper correctness. He nodded ponderously to the smiling table. “A finer man I have never met.”