The Meeting Place (7 page)

Again she spoke quietly. “Mama, if you were here, if you could be with me today, I feel this is exactly the place you would have taken me. This place of serene calm, of beauty. I'm so glad I found it.”

Catherine shifted her position to sit among the meadow grasses, her long skirt tucked up under her legs, her fingers trailing gently through the flower faces on either side, a smile slowly tilting the corners of her mouth. Though the setting was new to her, she felt wonderfully at home.

Empty basket in hand, Louise Belleveau crossed the small footbridge over the river's narrowest point and made her way up the hillside. The main trail leading along the ridgeline was far too risky these days. British soldiers seemed to be everywhere, their horses stomping and blowing, the saddles creaking and muskets rattling. Though she could not understand the words, their voices always sounded angry and harsh. Louise gave no thought to the Micmac. She had been taught to consider the Indians her friends since childhood. Well, not friends exactly. Allies. The thought of meeting a small hunting party in the woods brought no flicker of fear. The British soldiers, though, were another matter entirely. Her father had often solemnly cautioned her and the rest of the village against unnecessary contact.

Henri's warning had been far more personal. When she had once spoken of her love of such forest walks, his eyes had darkened and his normally jovial tone had vanished entirely. “Take great care,
ma chérie
,” he had cautioned. “They are not to be trusted. Even the eye of an uncivilized Brit can see that you are a beautiful woman.”

Louise was secretly pleased that he was so protective. It made her feel much more confident of her safety and of her place in his heart. Even so, she had no intention of forsaking her walks. But she did pay far more attention than ever before. For Henri.

Now she walked quietly through the trees, eyes and ears alert to any movement, any sound about her. Henri had once joked that she moved through the woods like a Micmac. Like a silent shadow, he had said. Louise smiled at the recollection.

In spite of his natural reserve, Henri had said many things to her that sent her heart racing. She could hardly wait for the ceremony of the morrow that would finally bind her to him for a lifetime. It had seemed so long in coming that she had often chafed in impatience. “I will be an old woman before becoming a bride,” she had complained at one point when Henri still seemed to be stalling. But now the actual day was close—tomorrow. Tomorrow when the birds began their morning song, she and Henri would be preparing themselves for the sacred vows. Louise wanted the house and the chapel filled with flowers to add to their celebration of the occasion. She knew exactly the place to find them—the meadow on the hillside overlooking the village.

Since the day she had discovered it, Louise had visited the meadow whenever she could slip away. She had fallen in love with the solitude and the peace it offered. The highland glen was a wonderful place to draw apart. To close her eyes and pretend that all the uncertainty, all the troubles that seemed to wreath the entire village like blue curling smoke, did not exist. In the meadow she could shut it all out. Quiet her thoughts to concentrate only on good things. Her future life with Henri. The children that she hoped to one day have. She wanted the first to be a boy, just like his father. She would be so proud to cradle Henri's son.

Her cheeks flushed at the thought of being a wife and mother, and she quickened her steps and hurried through the shadows of another grove. In her anticipation, she almost lost her caution, so she checked her steps and looked carefully into the sea of green before advancing farther into the meadow.

Yes, she was alone as usual.

Her mother would scold if she spent too long on her errand. Louise could hear her clicking off the anxious words.
Have you no idea how many things remain to be done to be ready for the wedding guests? You think that food prepares itself? Maybe the wild turkeys will climb into the ovens of their own accord
. Louise smiled again. It was true. There was much to be done. She had been working hard since before daybreak. Even so, her mother had been working even harder. Louise tried in vain to imagine her mother slipping away for a bit of respite during the day.

With her conscience getting the better of her, Louise began quickly to gather armloads of flowers for her baskets. As much as she longed to linger, to quiet her heart and prepare her mind for what was to come, she must get home to help finish the wedding feast preparations. With the rising of another sun, family and friends would be streaming into the simple but spacious house, spilling out under the trees in the yard, boisterous and merry and ready to celebrate her joy in becoming Madame Henri Robichaud. She must finish her quest and hurry home.

A hint of movement to her left brought Catherine's head up quickly. Her first thought was that she had unwittingly invaded a bear's territory. Her pulse raced even faster as she imagined another human stealthily moving near. Actually, she had heard nothing and seen no one. But then she had been wrapped in her dreams, oblivious to the world around her. She slowly rose, her head swiveling around, eyes searching as her feet prepared for flight.

Catherine's frantic gaze fell upon the form of a young woman moving across the meadow, filling her arms with flowers. Even at this distance Catherine knew by her dress that she was Acadian. A Frenchwoman was sharing her meadow. Catherine felt a keen flash of disappointment, then resentment. What right did a French villager have to be here? This was a British meadow.

Catherine momentarily let her gaze move down the hillside, sweeping the plain, the coastline below. To her surprise, she discovered that both villages nestled below. The British settlement of Edward with its outlying fort on the one side and the French village of Minas on the other.

Catherine turned back to the approaching French girl. Indeed, she was probably her own age, barely eighteen, quite pretty in a pixyish sort of way, with dark hair flowing about her face. The flashing dark eyes never left the flowers growing among the meadow grasses as she reached for one after the other. She wore a long-sleeved dress of simple homespun, with an embroidered apron, and a starched white bonnet hanging down her back. Such clothes would have identified an English lady as coming from peasant stock. Yet on her the garb seemed appealing and unaffected. She was close enough now that Catherine could hear her singing softly to herself as she walked, probably some little French ballad.

Catherine had once spoken and read French so well her teacher had stopped instructing and merely urged her to continue with her reading and writing. Yet the books had been packed away for years, and now she could only catch a word here and there of the French girl's merry song. Something about a French maiden, loved by a daring cavalier.

The girl was approaching the center of the oval-shaped meadow. Catherine realized that it was only a matter of minutes until she would be discovered. Should she move forward, greet her? She did not wish to startle the girl as she herself had been. But certainly she should make her presence known.

Slowly and deliberately she took a step forward, her eyes never leaving the oncoming singer. Just as she thought, the simple movement brought the dark head up. The song stilled on the lips, the eyes threw an anxious look her way. The woman stopped in midstride. The two stood several feet apart, flowers on their arms, a startled, questioning expression on each face. Still and staring at each other.

The French girl was the first to move and break the silence. With a slight nod of her dark head, she spoke one word. “
Bonjour
.” Her voice was soft. Musical. Catherine found herself hoping she would say more. When she didn't, Catherine murmured, “Good morning.” She offered a tentative smile of her own and followed up with a nervous, accented “Bonjour,” and a dip of her head.

Then each girl moved off in opposite directions, totally absorbed in completing the gathering of bouquets. As Catherine left her side of the meadow she glanced back over her shoulder. She saw only a brief glimpse of dark hair and the flash of skirt as the other young woman disappeared into the greenery of the forest.

Chapter 5

The first day of July dawned with a sky etched by just a few clouds, enough to lend depth to endless shades of blue. The fields, growing tall and fragrant, lay below forested green mountains standing like protective sentinels beneath the sun's glow. The distant waters of Cobequid Bay sparkled like a mirror. By midday the entire village of Minas had turned out for the wedding of Louise Belleveau to Henri Robichaud. It was a tale made for generations of winter fires, a story to warm the hearts of young girls as they dreamed of their own days to come in the sun of romance and love. How a girl lovely enough to capture the heart of any French nobleman had instead given her heart to one of their own.

When his peers were still delighting in childhood games, Henri Robichaud had been forced to mature beyond his years. His father had gone first, dead of a fever that one summer had swept away almost a third of the village. His mother had followed only two days later, so soon that their burials had taken place the same afternoon. Poor Henri, only twelve years old, faced further trauma on top of tragedy as his family's crops threatened to rot in the fields.

Louise drew her thoughts back to the present with a little shake of her head and allowed her mother to straighten her dress and retie the wedding bonnet with its long satin bow—the only satin to be found in the entire village. Her embroidered dress was cut in time-honored style, falling loose and long so she had to grasp it in one hand as she carefully stepped down the stairs. The stairs to her home, the only home she had known. Louise felt a gentle constricting of her heart as she moved down one step, then the next, knowing that she was walking into her future. One which beckoned to the longing in her heart, yet included many unknowns.

As she pushed through the front door of the Belleveau cottage, she saw villagers she had known all her life smiling and murmuring a welcome. Beyond this crowd was yet another throng, one larger still and made up of neighbors from surrounding villages and hamlets. A mist veiled her eyes, making their faces indistinct. Her vision was dimmed by all the bittersweet emotions swirling through her heart and mind.

Louise had known since her eleventh year that she was going to marry Henri Robichaud. And there he was now—she could just make him out as the crowd parted before him, making a path up to where he stood in his new dark coat and white shirt. She felt more than saw his beloved smile, the one which had never diminished, never faded, even during those first years of struggling mostly on his own.

As Louise continued walking toward the familiar form, she thought she saw villagers point at Henri and murmur traces of the famous story. How Henri Robichaud had slaved through that first summer alone. Almost every family in Minas had lost someone to the fever. Louise could still remember the sadness in her own home over the tiny basket by the fire, the one which had remained as forlorn and empty as her parents' gaze. And because the sadness was so total, and most were hard pressed to manage their own harvests, few had the strength or the time to offer more than a word of sympathy about young Henri Robichaud's plight.

But Henri had not asked for help. Not even when the first chill winds of September arrived, and his family's fields remained only half cleared. Those who were aware of it had admired the young boy for trying so hard, but they also assumed he would be forced to leave the house and fields and go to live with relatives or to work for another farmer.

It had been Louise who had passed by the Robichaud farm that fateful day and found Henri collapsed in the field. She had run home for her father as fast as her eleven-year-old legs could carry her. Together they had gone back, only to see that the young boy had struggled to his feet and returned to his harvesting. Now, as Louise walked on through the happy throng, she remembered that time as clearly as if it had happened only yesterday. Her father had plucked the hoe from Henri's hands, then stared down at a handle sticky with blood. Her father had turned over the boy's palms to see the flesh scraped and torn. The boy had tried to pull away, but he had scarcely enough strength left to stand. Henri had stared at the bewildered older man and said simply, “This is Robichaud land.” And then he had fainted a second time.