Acadia Song 04 - The Distant Beacon (4 page)

Nicole resisted the urge to sweep up both girls in a fierce embrace. The parents were watching closely and might not care to see a stranger hold their children so. “I am absolutely certain,” she said, forcing her voice to hold steady, “there will be no guns around Georgetown, not in the day or the night.”

“It’s all right, then.” Maggie hugged little Nel to herself. “See there, what did Papa tell you? We’ll be safe and sound—you just wait.”

Nicole walked the two girls back over to their parents and set the sack of provisions at their mother’s feet. “My father is vicar of Georgetown.”

“Your father?” The husband seemed to have difficulty fitting his mind around that news.

“That’s right. He and my mother do all they can to help out newcomers like yourself. I urge you to seek them out.”

He slowly rose to his feet, slipping the sweat-stained hat from his head. “Your pardon, missus. I thought, well, with the carriage and all—”

“It’s not mine. I’ve been away for almost two years, and this was lent to me to help speed my way home.” She gestured to the sack. “Please accept this as a token of welcome to your new home.”

Gordon called, “Nicole!” When she turned, he said, “The carriage is free now. We can eat and continue on our way.”

“One moment.” She turned back and urged the parents, “Please contact Pastor Andrew Harrow as soon as you can. And do not consider what they offer as charity. They seek only to build a better, closer community. When you can, give to the next ones who arrive and are in need.”

To free them from any necessity to find words of thanks, Nicole bent down and placed both hands on the shoulders of young Maggie. “Remember what I say to you, little friend. Hold fast to God, and be strong. This too shall pass.”

She then strode back to the carriage, heartsore at the matter-of-fact way the child had learned to carry her suffering. She looked at Gordon as he watched her approach.

They had seen this kind of hardship numerous times before. They moved to the side of the road and bowed their heads to thank the Divine Creator and Sustainer of Life for the gifts before them, simple as they might be.

Chapter 2

Finally the road rounded a bend that seemed carved from Nicole’s most heartfelt memory. She could no longer contain herself and cried for the carriage to halt. Before the driver had fully reined in the horses, Nicole opened the carriage door and dropped to the ground, almost spilling head over heels. But she managed to keep her balance as she hurried forward. A hundred yards along the trail, a hundred fifty, then she suddenly stopped. She pressed hands tightly to her heaving chest.

Up ahead, rising from the browns and grays of an early spring landscape, rose the slender spire of her father’s church. It seemed only fitting that this be the first signal of her return.

Nicole flew back to the carriage. “Hand down that small trunk! Please. No, not that one, the other bound in leather.”

Gordon was standing at the door of the carriage, watching her curiously. “What is it?”

She accepted the trunk from the driver, set it on the ground, and found her hands to be trembling so much she made hard going of the straps.

“Nicole, what’s the matter?” Gordon asked again.

She finally got the trunk unlatched and flipped open the lid. On top, wrapped in clean bunting, was the dress she had decided upon while still on board the vessel. A white frock, the simplest she owned, the only decoration was tiny mother-of-pearl buttons and a froth of lace rising from waist to neck and adorning each wrist.

“Nicole, my dear, Georgetown is but an hour’s ride ahead of us.”

“Yes, that is so. You don’t think I can meet my parents wearing four days of road dust, do you?” She dug through the trunk to find a pair of shoes of ivory kid leather. She glanced at Gordon. “Do you have anything finer to wear than that dusty old greatcoat?”

The rains came just as Andrew had predicted, and just as she was putting Father to bed for his midday rest. The old man was so much like a child these days that even his eyes had taken on a newborn’s milky unclarity. She would never have admitted such a thing to anyone, but it seemed as though her father was waiting for something. What, she did not know exactly. But when it arrived, he was intending to leave. Or even more shattering to her lonely spirit was the thought that God was intending for him to go. Because with this thought came a second impression, that both God and her father were merely waiting for Catherine to let him go.

She sat by his bed as she had many times through the difficult winter, when ice and snow had closed the roads and she couldn’t make the journey to her beloved French settlement a day’s ride northeast of Georgetown. She would sit here by her slumbering father and listen to the snow and wind and think about her earlier days with a clarity that words could never provide.

She would recall her beloved friend Louise and their meeting place high above their two villages—and the day they exchanged babies, the journey to Halifax for the doctor to see to her little one. Then came the horrible day of Acadian expulsion. Those nearly two decades of not knowing what had happened to her baby, to Louise and Henri. The years of loving and raising little Anne as their own. Here there was no pain to the memories, not even over the loss of her own Nicole. She thought of her by that name now, which was as it should be. And she prayed for them all.

By the time she emerged from Father John’s room, the rain had ceased its thunderous drumming on the roof. A few moments later, while she was washing the midday dishes, the sun reappeared. The air beyond her kitchen window sparkled with a special clarity now, every scent etched against the backdrop of wet earth and a clean spring breeze. The church bell rang the hour, and all the world seemed to shimmer in cadence with the chime. Even a gentle birdsong held a strength echoed by the whinny of a horse determinedly shaking its bridle.

A driver’s whip cracked through the clear afternoon. Catherine paused in her chores and squinted out the window. Beyond her range of vision, an angry driver used his whip a second time and shouted, “Ho there, you! Pull your weight now, giddap!”

The horse neighed in protest. No, not just one horse. Obviously several of them were straining hard against a heavy load and the mud from this most recent rain. Catherine stood there amazed that any driver in his right mind would attempt to force his steeds through the aftermath of a spring downpour.

Then, to her astonishment, four horses rounded the corner, heaving and straining to pull a stately carriage. Catherine raised a hand and rubbed her eyes. The picture seemed drawn from a childhood fairy tale, yet there it was. A royal crest adorned the travel-stained door.

She watched as a young man leaned out the window and called, “All right, that’s far enough.”

“And high time too,” the driver shouted back. Even in his mud-spattered state, the man was dressed in regal finery. And the horses. Though with muck dripping from their chests and each one foam draped and blowing hard, she knew these were magnificent animals. The driver slackened the reins and threw on the hand brake. “Whoa there, ease up now.”

It seemed to Catherine that half the village followed in the lane behind the carriage. And all of the children. Well they should, for it was only the fact that she could see them chattering and pointing that allowed her to believe her own eyes.

The driver climbed down from his high perch, when the carriage door opened and the young man said, “No, no, Samuel, you go ahead and see to your horses.”

As the driver moved away toward the horses, Catherine saw he was dressed in the formal blue of a naval officer, with long hair tied back in a blue velvet ribbon. He inspected the muddy lane by the carriage, then reached inside and pulled out a greatcoat, rather the worse for wear. He stepped down, ignoring his polished boots now in muck beyond his ankles. Then he did the most gallant thing Catherine had ever seen. He spread his coat to make a clean path from the carriage to their stone front walkway.

He turned and reached up a hand, and Catherine’s hands went to her mouth at the sight emerging from the carriage. Too young for a queen, a duchess, perhaps. The young lady’s white dress seemed to float about her. An awestruck murmur rose from the villagers gathered around as she stepped carefully to the ground and trod across the greatcoat.

She arrived at the gate and fumbled with the latch as one blind. She was crying. Raising her head to search the housefront, she called, “Mama?”

“Nicole!” Catherine flew around the kitchen table, spilling a bowl of vegetables in her haste. She fumbled with her own front-door latch until, with a second cry, she hammered it back with the palm of her hand. Nicole was still standing by the front gate, unable to make it open. Catherine ran down the path and reached over the gate to sweep her daughter up in an embrace so fierce nothing could hold them apart. Not the gate, nor time, nor linen finery, nor life’s changes, nor the cheering of all those crowded along the lane. Nothing.

Chapter 3

“I didn’t want the carriage to come down the lane at all,” Nicole said again. She sat, her back straight, with Catherine’s best teacup and saucer placed carefully on her knee. “But the mud was so very bad, and Gordon insisted.”

“It’s fine, dear. I couldn’t care less about such matters.” Catherine noticed for the first time in years that the handle of Nicole’s cup was chipped, and the cup didn’t match the saucer. Even worse, Gordon’s cup was cracked from rim to base.

“She halted us an hour’s ride outside the village to change into this fine white frock you see,” Gordon noted with a small smile. He stood by the unlit fireplace, almost as one ready to snap to attention. Not even his stockinged feet could diminish the young man’s military bearing. “I couldn’t permit her to muddy up those shoes walking across your village lane.” He hastily added, “Not that I mean to denigrate your town, madame. Georgetown is as fine a hamlet as I have seen. It puts most English towns to shame, and I mean that most sincerely.”

“Thank you.” Catherine gripped her cup without raising it to her lips. She wanted to reach out and again draw her daughter close but found herself gazing in awe at this refined young woman.

Nicole’s poise wasn’t just in her bearing. She spoke with the finest diction, her French accent a mere trace now. Her face was dusted with some powder, and she carried about herself the fragrance of Oriental spices. Her hair was bound up in a fashion Catherine could not even begin to fathom.

Nicole reached out and took hold of Catherine’s hand. Even here there was discomfort, when she only wanted to recapture the first moments of joy at their reunion. Catherine looked down at the two hands and wished she could hide away her own, red and winter-chapped as they were.

“I’m so glad to see you, Mama. I have waited so long, I can hardly believe it is true. How have you been?”

Catherine willed herself to give back a taste of the love and care she found in her daughter’s eyes. At least this had not changed. And yet it had, for the person who gazed at her was a woman indeed, and the expression had deepened and strengthened such that even here Catherine found herself stumbling over the confession, “Missing you—.”

“And I you,” Nicole said. A sheen of tears appeared. But the woman who was her daughter showed her strength of will. She lifted her chin and blinked repeatedly, holding back the flow. Catherine wanted to squeeze the hand she held and tell her daughter to let go, to release the tears and weep for them both. But she couldn’t bring herself to speak, and Nicole smiled tremulously at the young officer and said, “Look at me. I’m such a ninny.”

“Not anything like that,” Gordon reassured her. The young man straightened to full attention as the rear door opened.

“I heard voices,” Father John said, unsteadily making his way through the doorway, adjusting his suspenders.

“Grandfather!” Nicole hurried to embrace the old man.

“Good gracious, child. Could this be you?” The old man’s eyes sharpened as they hadn’t in months. He smiled and said, “You leave a fine young lass and come back to me a duchess.”

“That is exactly what I thought,” Catherine said, not able to keep the pride from her voice. “A duchess has come to visit us.”

“My dear sweet Nicole,” Father John said. “You do us all proud.”

Nicole led the old man over to the fireplace. “Grandfather, may I present Gordon Goodwind, who has escorted me all the way from England.”

Gordon gave the military half bow. “An honor, sir. Nicole has often spoken of you, and always in the highest possible terms.”

Catherine watched as the old man’s gaze sharpened further still. “An officer, are you?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Navy?”

“Actually, sir, I am with the merchant marine.”

“As honorable a position as any.” John pointed to the rocker by the fireplace. “Give me a hand with settling my bones, will you?”

“Of course, sir.” With Gordon on one side and Catherine on the other, the old man lowered himself into the padded seat.

“Gordon is captain of his own vessel, Grandfather.”