The Meeting Place (10 page)

“Hello!” She smiled at the way the young woman stood, her openly curious eyes as dark and brilliant as her hair. One hand was poised halfway to the bush, like a blackbird balanced upon the branch, ready to take flight at the first hint of danger.

But Catherine carried no danger with her. Just gladness at seeing another person there, a young woman with the same love of nature and of wild berries as herself. She sought the phrases from the French she had learned in her lessons, worried that in this moment she would find nothing at all to say.

The tall grasses and few remaining autumn flowers swished against her skirt as she drew nearer. She saw that the young woman's lips were stained with fruit she had been eating as she plucked. Catherine smiled at the sight of that face, full of life and mystery.

Catherine said her first complete sentence to a Frenchwoman. “I desire to bid you good day,” she managed in French, then switched with joyous abandon to English. “Isn't it a wonderful morning?”

The flashing eyes crinkled in merriment, and the young woman's delightful laugh, like bells, joined with Catherine's.

Chapter 8

Some days after her encounter with Catherine in the highland meadow, Louise found herself with her housework done and a yearning for the season's last fruit. Wondering if the frost had denied her a final picking, she bundled herself into two shawls. The clouds were heavier than Louise had seen in months. They spread flat and featureless just above the hilltops, as though their burdens were too great to hold at accustomed height. The next time the clouds released their load, she knew it would be snow. The past three nights, temperatures had fallen low enough to freeze the ground by morning. Louise stepped carefully over rocks made slick with rain, her breath coming in steamy puffs.

Yet even with winter's quiet warning at every turn, Louise could not feel disappointment. It had been a good summer. Very good indeed. Despite the rumors of distant conflicts and the constant political worries, she had busied herself with the task of making a cozy home within Henri's farmhouse, and she usually managed to ignore such talk.

But it was difficult to shut it all out when every trip through the village brought alarming news to her ears. In the leathersmith's shop, she would hear of more warships arriving at the Halifax harbor. In the chapel gardens, there were rumors of English soldiers camped near one of the few remaining French forts. At a meeting of the clan elders, there was talk of soldiers closing the market road to any French attempting to trade at Annapolis Royal. And on and on it went.

Louise had watched her mother's reaction to it all and seen that her fuming had done little but silence the men whenever she was around. The men were justly concerned about their families, their livelihoods, even their lives. They could not help but discuss, analyze, and dissect each piece of information that surfaced. And of course the bearer of such items of information always received his moment in the sun. Louise had seen how the man with the latest news could stand for a moment in a light all his own, puffed up with the importance of having something to tell.

As the summer waned, Louise had found it increasingly easy to put the worries out of her mind. Henri helped enormously. Her beloved husband lived to smile, to laugh. To turn her thoughts to more pleasant things. He did not permit these bad tidings any significant place in his world. Or in hers. Her
husband
. Louise stopped to shift the basket she carried to her other arm. Such a wonderful word. One she had heard all her life, but now one she was beginning to understand.

Now there were so many words like that, ones which had come to hold entirely different new meanings since her wedding. Such as
home
. Life in Henri's little cottage was a constant source of joy. The house itself had shouted its forlorn need of a woman's touch. She had spent most of the summer bringing order to what had before been merely a place for a bachelor to eat and sleep.

She remembered that first time Henri had shown her around the cottage. He had been so worried, so afraid of what she would think. The place had been scrubbed and polished and swept, but all his efforts had only highlighted its bare and tattered state. Henri had apologized continually while she had walked through the three rooms and looked at the plank bed with the corn-husk mattress, the single cracked mug and one set of utensils, the two blackened frying pans. He had been so astonished when she had turned to him and flung her arms around his neck. “What are you on about?” he had cried. She had laughed into his ear and replied, “You have given me a dream come true, a home I can make from beginning to end.”

There also had been the need for a garden. The first one of her own. It had taken time to plant and cultivate. Now she was looking forward to winter. Henri would complete the harvest in a few days, and then he had promised to help her. Together they would finish making the cottage a home.
Their
home.

Louise held the basket in front of her as she came to the narrowest jink in the trail. The earthen jar she had placed in the basket rolled about the bottom. She had felt a little silly, but the idea of bringing a little gift had seemed right as she was leaving the house, and it seemed right now. Just in case. The lady of the smile. That was how she remembered the pretty Englishwoman. As she crested the first rise, Louise found her heart warming at the memory.

From here the trail ran straight and true along the lower ridgeline, until opening into the meadow. She knew this section well. She had been coming here since she was old enough to walk and hold her father's hand. And yet she had never been inclined to show it to anyone else. It had been such a surprise to find the woman up there, not once but twice. A stranger, an Englishwoman, in what Louise had come to consider her own private meadow.

But what a smile the woman had given her. “A heart in full bloom”— that was an expression she had often heard her father use. The Englishwoman had been dressed in clothes finer than anything found in Louise's entire village, finer even than her own wedding dress, and for a walk in the forest. And the way she had walked, so upright and correct, just like all the illustrations she had seen in her father's tattered journals. Back when she was a child, before the English blockade had closed off news and books and journals and materials from France, Louise had loved to look at the pictures of places and people from far-off lands. Her father had taught her to read from those pages. Now the pictures were yellowed and crinkled from years of use, the sheets torn from the binding and the words almost memorized, yet read over and over nonetheless because there was nothing new. When the Englishwoman had appeared, she had walked forward with the queenly bearing of characters lifted from the pages of Louise's childhood.

Yet the Englishwoman's smile had shone with warmth and clarity, as though none of the troubles between their two nations had ever existed and they had been friends for life. The thought stopped Louise just at the point where the trail opened to greet the meadow. Could she ever be friends with an English lady? What would Henri think? What would her father say? How would the villagers treat such news?

Then she stepped through the thicket, and there at the meadow's edge stood the English lady. Only this time, it was she who stood with hand poised by the berry bushes, eyes wide and startled by Louise's sudden appearance. And it was her lips which were berry stained.

After a pause, their laughter mingled in merriment over the bushes. “I have seen infants who eat more neatly!” Louise finally was able to gasp out.

“Slowly, please to speak more slowly. My French, it is terriblest in the world.” But her smile was just as sweet, as Louise recalled. “I have more to be placed in my mouth than my basket.”

“And more still upon your face, mad'moiselle.” Louise confidently walked forward, as though they were acquaintances meeting upon the lanes of Minas, rather than strangers separated by a river and language and history and a world of woes. “I am called Louise Robichaud,” she said with a little curtsy.

“My name is Catherine. Catherine Harrow,” she said. “Madame, not mademoiselle.” Catherine responded with her own curtsy and spoke very carefully. Obviously, she was searching hard for the French words. She motioned to the bushes with a berry-stained hand. “The frost has—what you say—finished them.”

“The frost, yes. I feared it would be so.”

“But they are still … tasty.”

Louise nodded, reaching for a berry that she popped into her mouth. “So you are married?”

Catherine's eyes brightened as she nodded. Again the smile, the sense of sharing more than two strangers should ever reveal to each other. “I am married this summer past.”

“I as well!” Louise smiled at her own memory and said, “I was married upon the most beautiful day in all the year, the first Friday in July.”

Catherine's eyes widened further. “July, the month after June, yes?”

“Just so, madame. Every summer it is the same.”

Catherine stared at her, two stained fingers touching her chin. She said words in English, then struggled to say, “That day … that day I marry also!”

The news stilled Louise's outstretched hand. “Surely you are jesting with me.”

“At three o'clock after the midday. The number one Friday in July. The most beautiful day of the summer.”

Louise put down her basket. “I heard your wedding bells just as we were sitting down to our own celebration.”

“And I hear your music also!” Catherine clapped her hand to her cheek and said something in English.

“I beg your pardon, madame. I know only a few words of market English from my trips to Cobequid Town.” Hand on hip, Louise cocked her head to one side and managed the English words, “Non, non, zee eggs, zay are two shillings a douzing.”

That was enough to break out in further merriment. The two young women shed their baskets and retreated behind hands. But the laughter was not easily stemmed, and the hands dropped in defeat with the last of their reserve. The pair of them laughed until tears streamed down two faces.

When they stopped for breath, they turned to stand side by side and gaze down over their world, at the land falling away from the meadow in a series of grand tiers. Beneath the solid blanket of gray, the river's many fingers gathered and grew to a strong silver ribbon. From this height, the two villages seemed more joined by the waters than divided.

Louise was the first to turn back. “What is your husband's name?”

“Andrew.”

Louise noted that simply his name seemed to bring the English lady both joy and concern.

“He comes home this day, or perhaps tomorrow. He travels to Cobequid.”

Louise wondered if this Englishman would be happy to know his wife was speaking with a Frenchwoman. She could well understand if he would not. She herself had no idea how her own family would react to such news.

“I wish to make him a … a welcome cake.” Catherine shook her head. “Please, excuse my French. It is horrible bad.”

“It is far better than my English, madame.”

“You must to call me Catherine. Please.”

“Catherine.” Louise returned to filling her basket. She had so many questions she wanted to ask this lovely woman. So many things it would be nice to know. But did she dare? Just from Catherine having spoken her husband's name, she could feel the centuries of hostilities back in place. Perhaps the man had something to do with the fort. But he could not be a soldier. The thought was enough to still not just her hand but her breathing.
No, surely not a British soldier's wife!

“Something is wrong?”

“It's nothing, I just pricked my finger.” The words were spoken so swiftly that she was certain Catherine had not caught her alarm. Even so, each woman now concentrated on the filling of her basket. Louise's hands moved at a blur, and soon the basket at her feet was full of gleaming berries. The soft ones would cook up nicely for preserves to brighten a winter meal.

She started to say the polite farewell of two strangers. But she was stopped by Catherine's warm expression.

Louise did not need to ask what caused the interplay of emotions on her companion's face. As soon as she turned fully about, she understood. The season's first snowflakes were drifting gently down, soft and delicate.

Catherine murmured something in English.

Louise said, “Excuse me, madame … Catherine?”

“Oh, is nothing. I say only that it is lovely but comes too soon.”

“Oh yes, every winter it is exactly the same with me. The summer is wonderful here—why could it not stay just a little longer?” Her heart was suddenly sparked by a desire to share mysteries and delights she would not have dreamed of talking about with another stranger. But here, standing shoulder to shoulder as winter's veil drifted down upon the meadow, she felt that a discussion of the weather was probably all they could safely manage.

Catherine's sigh matched her own as they picked up their baskets. “I must be going before trail is … lost to me.”

Louise remembered the gift. “Oh, just one moment, Catherine!” Gently she pried up the cloth at the base of her basket and reached down one side. She pulled out the corked clay jar and extended it to Catherine. “This is for you.”

“For me?” Once more Catherine's eyes widened with astonishment. “A present for me?”

“It is nothing. Just some maple syrup flavored with my mother's special recipe.” A touch of apple cider, a trace of refined ginger added as the maple sap was boiled down. Words Louise was certain Catherine would not understand.

Hesitantly, the Englishwoman reached out and took the jar. “But … I have nothing for you.”

“Do not be concerned, Catherine.” Louise found it possible now to sort through the confusion in her heart and mind and bring out something worthy of a winter's farewell. “It is in return for your own gift, that first day we met. Your lovely smile.”