The Island of Doves (21 page)

Susannah sank into a chair, letting the rolling pin clatter onto the table. Therese Savard was alive, and Susannah knew where she was.

“What’s wrong?” Esmee said with alarm. “Are you all right?

Susannah swallowed and nodded, then stood back up and took up her work with the dough once more. “I’m fine.” She wouldn’t say anything yet, not until she decided what to do. She sensed that Esmee was watching her, but Susannah wouldn’t meet her gaze.

They heard footsteps on the stairs. Jean-Henri stumbled through the kitchen in his sleepiness, pulling on his boots as he went out to attend to the dogs that howled for their breakfast. Susannah stole a glance at Esmee as he passed by her without so much as a word of greeting. But Esmee was well practiced in hiding her tenderness for him. She might as well have been invisible.

The dogs’ howling quieted and a few moments later, Jean-Henri returned to the kitchen. Without asking whether he wanted it, Esmee poured coffee into a mug, then added hot cream and handed it to him. The sun was coming up, light coming into the kitchen. It would be a clear day, just right for the celebration in the evening. He gave Esmee a benign smile, murmuring his thanks.

Magdelaine joined them in the kitchen. “Good morning,” she said. She poured a cup of coffee for herself.

Susannah tried to imagine how Magdelaine would react if she blurted out the words:
Therese is alive.
She wasn’t the sort of woman who liked surprises. Susannah knew she couldn’t say anything yet, not until she knew whether her suspicion was correct.

Jean-Henri sipped his coffee. “We’ll need more wood before tonight,” he said. “The pile is low.”

Magdelaine sighed. “And you had not thought to check it before now?”

Jean-Henri laughed in frustration. “If I had, you would have complained that I concerned myself too much with the management of this household, that my attention should be on my business. Whatever I do, you will find a way to be dissatisfied with it.”

Magdelaine glanced at Susannah as if to say,
See what I must endure?
But Susannah only smiled back. She thought Jean-Henri had plenty to endure himself.

Magdelaine set down her cup and smoothed back the wiry gray hairs that had escaped from her long braids. “Let me dress and we will harness the dogs.”

Esmee cleared her throat. “Madame, why not let Susannah go instead? She hasn’t yet seen the other side of the island. Or really seen what the dogs can do.” She turned to Susannah then. “Have you?”

Susannah shook her head. All summer and fall the dogs seemed to lie indolent in their pen or in the sunshine when Jean-Henri let them wander in the yard. As Magdelaine’s favorite, Ani had the most freedom. Magdelaine had told Susannah that she suspected Ani had given his heart to one of the children enrolled in Reverend Howe’s school, as the dog waited outside the door each day for the students to emerge. But even Ani had seemed bored in the heat, aimless.

“Just wait,” Magdelaine had said to Susannah many times. “Just wait until you see them in the winter. When they are in their glory.”

“I would love a chance to go,” Susannah said now to Jean-Henri.

Esmee nodded. “You must.”

Jean-Henri shrugged, still irritated with his mother. “You will need warmer clothes.”

Esmee lent Susannah a pair of loose wool stockings and tall, fur-lined boots that laced up with a leather cord. They were too large for Susannah’s feet, but she didn’t complain. Over the wool dress she fastened Esmee’s hooded cloak, then shoved her hands into large stiff mittens. She looked strange, she knew, but she had come to think differently about clothes since she had arrived on the island. In Buffalo her dresses were made of the finest silk, cut close on the body and finished with exquisite detail. Here clothes simply provided protection from the elements. In its own way, this new ensemble had a kind of beauty. It performed a task. Here, the value of a thing came from what it did for you, not how it appeared or whom it might impress.

Outside Jean-Henri showed Susannah how to help him harness the dogs. They slipped leather straps over the dogs’ heads and across their chests, then buckled them at the back and clipped them to the reins. She expected the dogs to yelp and shuffle as she had seen them do so many times before, but they stood completely alert, their bodies like coiled springs. The covered sled was painted green, with sloping sides and wide black runners that held the seat aloft. With a short chain, Jean-Henri attached a flat sled to the back, which they would use to carry firewood back home. He attached the harnessed dogs to the front, then helped Susannah in, showing her how to stretch her legs out straight inside. Then he pulled one blanket over her shoulders and another over her lap.

“These dogs are born to do one thing,” Jean-Henri said. “And that is
pull
. Do not reach your arms out. Do not sit up high. Keep your back and head low. Understand?”

Susannah nodded and pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head.

“Then we are off.” Jean-Henri stepped around to the back of the sleigh. Susannah felt the sleigh shift as he stepped up with one foot and then the other onto the wide runners. He held the two handles that jutted out behind her shoulders and shouted. “Yah!”

The dogs jolted forward and the sleigh was in motion. The carriages Susannah was used to sat up high, on wheels that rolled across the road, slowed down in mud. Horses were trained to walk at a slow clip, and even when they trotted, a carriage could only move so fast. But these dogs pulled at a mighty pace, and the dry, packed snow offered little resistance to the slick runners. In a flash they reached the wooded path and the dogs increased their speed once again. Jean-Henri shifted his body weight onto the right runner and the dogs made a distinct right turn, following the curve of the shore. The frigid wind shocked the senses and Susannah’s eyes teared up. As the droplets escaped across her temples, they froze against her skin. Back in the yard Susannah had been able to smell the dogs’ matted fur, but the air on the lake was so dry and cold that she smelled nothing, even as the dog closest to her evacuated its bowels on the ice, never breaking its stride. The excrement flew to the side and Susannah understood the real reason for Jean-Henri’s instruction to keep her head low.

They reached the back half of the island in just a few minutes. The dogs headed right for a dense stand of trees. At the shore they pulled with all their might up the incline, and the sleigh slowed enough for Susannah to take a breath and look around. The sky was a pale gray, almost as white as the ground. A row of cabins churned wood smoke into the sky; behind them the bluffs were green with pine and cedar boughs frosted with snow. Jean-Henri navigated an opening in the trees where a man stood splitting logs and throwing them onto the huge woodpile behind him. His ax made a
thwap
and
creak
with each split. The dogs slowed as Jean-Henri pressed on the iron lever that created a drag in the snow. They continued to pull against it a moment, then relaxed, their breathing hoarse.

Susannah climbed out and together they stacked several bundles of wood on the sleigh. The dogs would have to work harder to pull the extra weight, but she didn’t doubt they could do it. She felt the color in her cheeks from the wind and the exertion, her heart pounding beneath her cloak. Jean-Henri paid the man for the wood, and the two of them walked back to the sleigh and leaned against the nose to catch their breath before they departed.

“I wish we had the time to go all the way around the island,” he said. “There is so much to see this time of year. But we should get this wood back.” He took a pipe out of his pocket, and then a small birch-bark box embroidered with quills, from which he scooped a portion of tobacco.

Susannah pointed to the box. “That is very fine.”

“Esmee makes these,” he said.

Susannah watched his face for some clue of whether he returned Esmee’s feelings. Only a truly unseeing man could be blind to the things she did for him in the hopes of winning his favor, but he seemed to be unaware of her motives. His mind was too much on his own problems to see anything else.

Jean-Henri lit the pipe and puffed on it for a quiet moment. “I am going to tell my mother today, for the last time, that I am not going to Montreal.”

“She already knows—she must,” Susannah said.

She thought back to what Esmee had said in the kitchen, that Jean-Henri probably didn’t know that Therese might be alive and well. It would be cruel to bring it up now, to taunt him with that hope when she wasn’t even sure if it was true. But she couldn’t resist bringing another potential source of happiness to his attention. She felt a little guilty for the manipulation in her next words, but someone had to make him see what was right under his nose. “Your mother will not stand in the way of the match. I’m sure of it. She is very fond of Esmee.”

Jean-Henri turned quickly to her and furrowed his brow. “What match?”

Susannah smiled. “You
are
in love with her, aren’t you? Isn’t that what’s keeping you here?”

“In love with Esmee?” Jean-Henri studied the box in his hand as if he were seeing it for the first time, as if he were considering the idea of love itself for the first time in his life.

“I may be speaking out of turn in saying this—in fact, I’m
sure
that I am—but you do know, don’t you, that Esmee is very much in love with
you
?”

“With me?”

He appeared to be truly dumbfounded by this news. Now it was Susannah’s turn to laugh. “Can it be that you honestly did not know? A girl as beautiful as she is, still unmarried, finding every far-fetched reason to cook for you, give you gifts, embroider for you! And you
really
did not know? I saw it the day I arrived.”

Jean-Henri’s face was growing red, redder even than the chill had made it. “You are mistaken.”

“I don’t mean to embarrass you. I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his sleeve. “But this is not speculation. I know it to be true. And I know her to be despairing that you will never return her affection for you.”

“For me?”

Susannah nodded.

He shook his head. “I suppose I always assumed she had a beau. She is a good deal younger than me, you know. I thought I must seem old to her, and not much of a man, still living in my mother’s house, no vocation to speak of.” Jean-Henri looked at the birch-bark box. Esmee used a very sharp needle when she worked with the quills, sometimes pricked her fingers and bit down on them to stanch the blood. “Me? You are
certain
.”

Susannah laughed at the way he kept repeating the question. “Oh, yes. Quite. You do not think her beautiful?” She was teasing him now. A dead man might claw his way out of the ground to be the object of one of Esmee’s glances.

He looked at her and a smile took hold at his temples, but he pursed his lips to keep it from ruling his face. She could see what he was thinking: first, that he was delighted; but next that acting on this news, to seize it and make something of it, terrified him a little.

She thought back to the way he had hesitated the day the rabid dog had attacked the others in the pen. Magdelaine had been so exasperated with him, and it only made things worse. Jean-Henri wouldn’t ever be a bold sort of man, but the world was full of bold men. He was something else: cautious, thoughtful. He took his time with things, Susannah thought, but he was true to the ones he loved. Esmee had made a wise choice to set her sights on him.

“I think we should be getting home now,” he said.

On the ride back he was silent, contemplating. Susannah felt herself growing eager, as they drew near to the house, wondering how he would announce himself to Esmee, whether he would ask her to walk with him so that they could speak in private, or perhaps take her hand right there in the kitchen and make his feelings plain before them all.

But when they returned he led the dogs to the pen, methodically unhooking each one from the harness, then fed and watered them, and climbed the steps to his room without a word to any of them.

T
hat afternoon it snowed a little more, and then the sky cleared first to blue and then to purple dusk and then to an inky black shimmering with stars. The purpose of Reveillon was to stay awake and greet the early morning on Christmas Day, and, while waiting for its arrival, to celebrate what the world had to offer—game and casks of wine and hot fires and music, friends and love and the blessing of children, each one steeped in the hope that he would fulfill the promises of the Prince of Peace. And each one, in his own time, falling short.

Magdelaine knew something about this. She had stopped pestering Jean-Henri about his plans because her inquiries yielded no new information nor revealed any ambition on his part. Though on every other day of the year she bemoaned the state of things with her son, the holiday pried open her heart just a bit and she was able to be happy, as Susannah had urged her to be, that he was nearby.

She almost never let herself think back on the time when Jean-Henri was a baby. It had been a terrifying chapter in her life. A man shot Henri in the chest and she watched him sink into the river reeds, his torso gored as if by the antlers of a buck. She paddled slowly home with his corpse in the bottom of the canoe. His men paddled their own vessels nearby but gave her a wide berth, waiting patiently as she stopped along the way to retch into the river. She believed it was her body rejecting the images she had seen, for what woman—even a woman like Magdelaine—could bear it? She did not know then that the baby was there too amid the sickness, probably the cause of some of it.

And perhaps because it was Christmas, that tricky loosening holiday, perhaps because she and Esmee had shared some wine as they carried the last of the food out to the tables on the beach, Magdelaine allowed her mind to linger on the image of her baby boy. What pure openhearted joy he had worked up in her, like a mania. He had a mouth like a little fish, wide and hungry, and her breasts had ached with the weight of her milk, never enough to satisfy him. He rooted and rooted, his dark eyebrows expressive from the first day, arching peacefully in sleep, then ramming together in anguish, then tipping up, questioning. She slept ten minutes at a time and woke with a start in case he might have vanished somehow into the night, chasing after his father. But he was there, still in her arms, wrapped like an ear of corn in his swaddling. The blinding love she felt for him was a terror, a nightmare of vulnerability after what had happened to Henri, and she pushed it away as hard as she could, her elbows locked. Sometimes, though, it found its way back in anyhow, an exquisite wound.

And now he was a man and she had wished him gone so many times that the words of the wish had become a kind of prayer she repeated, not even thinking of its meaning. But today, a day for reflecting on joy, she knew that she wanted Jean-Henri to leave because someday he would go anyway, and forever, the way the others all had, and for once she wanted to be able to control the timing. In truth she was surprised each year he continued to live at all. Her life took place in a forest with the swinging ax of death felling all the other trees. It never reached her. That was the true suffering. It only took everyone else.

Women began to arrive with baskets of food. They spread cloths on the tables and unpacked the dishes, arranged partridges on spits over the fires. Their children, clutching dolls and games, chased each other in and out of the darkness. Tonight they would eat whatever they wanted from the tables loaded with food, and they could run at top speed and scream with laughter and fall into a heap beside the fire to listen to the men play and sing. Sometimes Christmas Eve was so frigid the celebrants had to move indoors, fractured into the few parlors large enough to hold them, but this year the weather was in their favor. The night was almost mild, and everyone on the island arrived bundled in their warmest clothes and gathered around three large fires on the beach.

Susannah and Esmee stood together near a man playing a fiddle and singing a carol. When the music finished, they clapped and Susannah shook the musician’s hand, her smile bright in the firelight.

Father Adler had insisted in his letters that Susannah needed Magdelaine’s particular assistance to ensure her safety. But she wondered now as she watched Susannah if he didn’t have something else up his sleeve, an idea about what Susannah might do for Magdelaine. Susannah had gotten that garden to yield more food and flowers than Magdelaine ever could have imagined. And it wasn’t just that. Somehow her arrival had shifted things between Magdelaine and Jean-Henri, between Magdelaine and her own memories. In offering Susannah refuge, Magdelaine had found a kind of refuge for herself. Of course, when the thaw came Susannah would be free to move on, and yet Magdelaine found herself hoping that she would stay.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see her student Noelle, who had slipped out of existence the previous spring. Her mother had told Magdelaine she wouldn’t be returning, and yet here she was.

“Madame,” she said.
“Joyeux Noel.”

“
Joyeux Noel!
We have all been wondering whether we dreamed you. Where have you been?”

Noelle’s eyes skidded across the fires. “I was visiting family in Sault Ste. Marie. I’m sorry if I gave you cause to worry.”

The girl looked thinner and tired, hollow in her eyes. Magdelaine tried not to probe her face too openly. “We missed your contributions to the class. The others look to you to guide their thinking, you know.”

Noelle’s mouth hardened. “Well, they should not. They should think for themselves.”

“I agree. But as I’m sure you know, many cannot, and many more do not want to. It is not an easy way to live.”

Noelle shrugged. The shrug seemed to ask,
What good is an active mind for a woman in a place like this?
But then such a thought was for an older woman, not a girl. As if to show Magdelaine she had imagined it, Noelle’s face lightened. “Certainly I missed seeing you, madame. And I thank you for thinking of me while I was away, and for your kindness. You are nothing like my mother.”

“Your mother is angry with you?”

Noelle shrugged again. “For things she doesn’t understand.”

Magdelaine nodded. She didn’t doubt it.

“I cannot live in her home any longer, she says.”

“So you will not be rejoining our class in the new year?”

Noelle shook her head. “Maybe you’ve heard—Bishop Rese has opened a school for girls in Detroit and I am determined to go. Perhaps they will let me assist the teachers. So it is back across the lake for now and then south in the spring.”

“Oh, how wonderful, Noelle!” Magdelaine smiled—she had always known Noelle had potential. “But why don’t you come and stay with me until you leave? The empty rooms in my house feel like a sin.”

Noelle gave Magdelaine a gentle smile. It said
yes, yes, yes, let me stay
. But when she spoke she said it was impossible. “My family is expecting me. It is time for me to leave this place for good.”

Magdelaine nodded. “There is nothing for you here.” Noelle winced when she said it, and Magdelaine softened her tone. “What I mean is that your life is ahead of you. Will you promise me something?”

“Yes.”

Magdelaine took Noelle by the hands. She thought about how the same stories kept repeating, over and over, and she knew they would keep on repeating long after she was gone. All a person could hope to do was change the ending. “Promise me that you will be careful, that you will never forget what your life is worth.”

Noelle nodded, her eyes filling, and she looked away.
Something is wrong here
, Magdelaine thought.
This girl should be happy—her life is just beginning and she has nothing but freedom and time
—but Noelle seemed full of sorrow.

“Did something happen, Noelle? Something you are not telling me?” She shook her head, but Magdelaine wasn’t convinced. “Come and eat. You will need your strength.” She led Noelle by the hand to one of the tables heaped with food, then began stacking meat pies on a plate for her.

A small sound escaped Noelle’s lips. Magdelaine held the plate in one hand and put the other one gently on the girl’s elbow. Noelle could not hold back her tears any longer. She collapsed against her with a sob, pressing her cheek into Magdelaine’s collarbone. Magdelaine’s hand went to the back of the girl’s head, touched the soft fur of her hood. A few revelers glanced at them, and Magdelaine led her away from the people again before she said, “What can I do to help you, Noelle?”

Noelle pulled away and as quickly as the wave of weeping had overtaken her, it subsided. She wiped her eyes, sniffed. “You have already done it. I cannot stay now. I only came to say good-bye, and thank you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I hope you will not be angry with me. I chose you because of what happened to your sisters. Because you will not be careless. So many people are.”

Magdelaine stiffened at the mention of Josette and Therese. For nearly twenty years, no one had dared to mention their names, until Susannah began to ask about them after her arrival. And now Noelle, who must have heard the story from her mother, as it all had happened long before she was born. Magdelaine wondered how much of the truth people knew, and how many details they had invented to satisfy their own curiosity. She knew that people whispered tales about Therese, that she was not really dead. Jean-Henri had seen one thing and Ansel had seen something else. Magdelaine had been forced to accept that she would probably never know what had become of her sister.

She shook off the memories and turned her attention to what else Noelle had said. “Noelle, what do you mean you
chose
me?”

“I have to go now,” she said, then whispered to herself, “Oh, Mary, help me.” She opened her cloak and wrapped the pies in a handkerchief. She put them in the pocket of her dress, then tied the cloak closed again.

“Bon voyage, Noelle,” Magdelaine said, embracing her once more. “Keep a strong heart.”

The girl set off into the darkness, hunched against the cold with her arms crossed in front of her. She clutched her elbows as if she were bracing herself for a blow.

Magdelaine watched her go, then saw Esmee and Susannah approaching.

“Was that Noelle?” Esmee said.

Magdelaine nodded. “She came to say good-bye. She is leaving for Detroit, to try to get a job as a teacher. But I think something is wrong. Perhaps I should . . .”

“Did she ask for your help, madame?” Esmee asked gently.

Magdelaine gave her a warning look, but then considered the question. “It is strange, but she said I have helped her already. She thanked me. But I don’t understand . . .”

“Perhaps you should wait, then. Wait and see.”

Magdelaine chewed her lip a moment. She wondered if Esmee was talking about Jean-Henri as much as Noelle—Magdelaine’s tendency to make plans for other people’s lives, whether or not they wanted her intervention. She nodded. “Yes. I suppose my help isn’t always welcome.”

Esmee took her hand. “Let’s have some wine. And get close to the fire. I am chilled. Susannah, are you coming?”

Susannah hadn’t heard the question. Her attention was focused on the far side of the gathering, where a man with a neatly trimmed beard stood laughing in the crowd.

“Who is that?” Magdelaine asked.

Susannah’s eyes darted to her mittens. “What do you mean?”

Magdelaine laughed. “I mean the man over there, who seems to be holding your attention.”

“Oh,” Susannah said. “That’s Alfred Corliss, the new teacher at the mission school.”

Magdelaine looked at Esmee, who responded only with a coy smile and a shrug. Magdelaine thought back to the walk they had taken in the spring, when she had caught Susannah gazing at the mission and mistook her wistfulness for religious feeling.

“Susannah,” Esmee said, “how long has it been since you’ve spoken to him?”

“Oh, I haven’t at all.” Her eyes darted to Magdelaine’s. “I haven’t. I promise.”

“Well, I don’t see why not. He is a newcomer here, just as you are. It is our duty to make him feel welcome. Let’s go wish him
Joyeux Noel
,” Magdelaine said.

“Yes,” Esmee said, taking Susannah’s elbow. “Let’s.”

“I—” Susannah tried to protest, but they had her by the arm and the two of them marched her toward the group of men, swinging by a table along the way to pluck up a jug of wine. They could have been any three women in the world approaching Mr. Corliss and he wouldn’t have known them in the shadows of their hoods.

“Are you enjoying our Reveillon, Mr. Corliss?” Magdelaine said as she pulled the hood from her head. The men let out a cheer when they saw the jug, then held out their empty cups so she could pour for them.

“You must be Madame Fonteneau,” he said, taking her hand. “I have been looking forward to the chance to meet you, finally.
Joyeux Noel.
” He looked at her companions.

“Joyeux Noel,”
Esmee said.

“Thank you, miss,” he said to Esmee. Susannah let her hood slip off her head, and when he saw her his eyes widened into a smile. It was too dark now for anyone to see, but Magdelaine had noticed earlier in the day that the dye had finally faded from Susannah’s hair. “Miss Dove. I didn’t recognize you.”

“I’ve let my friends dress me up for the occasion.” His eyes shone in the light from the fire and his cheeks were pink. Though his hands did not hold a cup, Magdelaine wondered if he had thrown off his temperance for the holiday and gotten into the wine. She hoped so.

“Tell me, Madame Fonteneau—have you found that Miss Dove makes a competent teacher?” Magdelaine saw that Mr. Corliss had already formed an opinion on this topic. She wondered just how much the two of them had talked on the boat.

“I feel fortunate to have found her,” Magdelaine said. “I have more students than I can handle. This region is full of girls who would like an education, but it seems I am the only one willing to give it to them.”

“The Reverend Howe
does
enroll girls in the mission school,” Mr. Corliss said.