Tides of Honour Page 4

  “Is that what you thought, Danny?” His voice was almost a whisper.

  It was too late to backtrack now. He’d said it, the words were out there, and goddammit, he’d meant them. “Doesn’t matter. I’m back. I’ll be just fine now.”

  His dad hung his head and pressed swollen fingers to his face. Hauling nets and battling the sea for so long had invited arthritis into the man’s hands and knees; Danny’s own hands often felt stiff from the beginnings of the same affliction. When Daniel Sr. looked up a moment later, the familiar posture had returned, his head held a little straighter, shoulders back. Danny sat up taller without even thinking about it. For just a moment, the men’s eyes locked, and Danny was sure his father saw right through him. Then the older man blinked, and the contact returned to normal.

  “I believe that, son,” Daniel Sr. said, showing no emotion at all. “You’re strong. Always have been. You’ll be just fine now,” he repeated.

  Audrey Poulin

  Spring 1916

  FIVE

  Audrey hadn’t seen many soldiers up close before. Not back here, in this quiet piece of land that never did anything. She’d seen the battalions from a distance, even heard explosions when the wind blew the right way. When she spotted a dozen or so men marching along the road, she knew they were headed off to war, just like Laurent, her cousin. Just like him, they marched with their backs straight, heads held high, their minds and hearts full of blind courage. And just like him they were unconcerned, apparently, with family left behind. Just like Laurent, very few of them, she expected, would ever come marching back.

  She leaned over the broken wheel of her wagon and feigned interest in it, taking the opportunity to study these new men out of the corner of her eye as they drew near. Of course they would stop. What man wouldn’t stop to help a woman in need? Then again, they were marching with purpose. Maybe they weren’t allowed . . .

  The officer up front gave her a little bow. “Bonjour! Est-ce que nous—”

  It was painful, listening to him stumble through the language. She smiled gently. “I can speak English, monsieur, if it would be easier.”

  He beamed at her. “Well, that’s great. For both of us. Now, may I offer some assistance?”

  English. Such a relief to hear English spoken again after all this time. It wasn’t English English, but at least the words were the same. Audrey glanced at her grandmère, who looked quickly away, hiding inside the folds of her black shawl. Céleste Poulin was from the old world, and she didn’t trust anyone. Especially these days. Audrey took a deep breath. After living such a secluded life for the past ten years, she had to summon the courage to actually speak to a stranger. But she had no choice. She stepped forward, clenching her thick green skirt for reassurance. “We would be most obliged, sir. My grandmère and I, we were coming from town and hit a bump.” She gestured toward the wagon, hitched to their tired grey mare. The nag’s sorry head drooped in the shadow of a tree, and Audrey felt strangely mortified by its ragged appearance. “The wheel came off.”

  She was distracted by the movements of two soldiers behind the officer. One was grinning directly at her, waggling his eyebrows with suggestion. Another was staring at her as well, but his expression was less aggressive. He appeared to be making an attempt to shut the other fellow up. Audrey smoothed down her skirt, feeling flustered. The second man was uncommonly handsome, an oddity in these parts—in her life, actually.

  “Oh! Well,” the officer said, giving a gallant bow, “we’d be happy to help.” He turned toward the men. “Baker! Joyce! MacDonald!” he called.

  The second soldier, the one she couldn’t seem to peel her eyes from, set his cap on straight, then trotted toward the wagon with two others beside him. It appeared none of the men were strangers to fixing simple mechanical problems like this, so Audrey stood back to admire their handiwork. One went to retrieve the wheel, lying on its side on the road, while the other two leaned down and assessed the situation.

  “Thank you so much, sirs,” Audrey said.

  The handsome soldier pushed his cap back and looked up at her, and in her mind she reached for her artist’s palette. His eyes were the deepest shade of blue, a vivid, lush blue that made something in Audrey’s chest take flight.

  For a moment she forgot where she was, and her imaginary brush swirled a handful of crushed blue wildflowers and vinegar together, then she thickened the dye with yolk. She’d add in just enough charcoal, since she saw deep water, not flowers in the soldier’s eyes. Mr. Black—Richard to her mother—had taught her that, how she must see the colour she wanted first, then study what she had already before adding a sprinkle of darkness or light. Never too much at once. The first time she’d made blue with Richard Black, she’d been small, maybe six. His big, stained hands had closed over hers like weathered gloves, showing her how to use a pestle and mortar, helping her make dust from ashes, then magically turn her dye from sky in the morning to sky at night. She’d watched the colour transform as she stirred, then she’d looked up at him in wonder, seeing the same colour reflected in his eyes. It always fascinated her that his last name was Black when everything she saw in him was vivid, breathing colour.

  At night Audrey curled up between her mother and Richard, safe and loved, listening to him sing some old song to her.

  “D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?

  D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day?

  D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far far away with his

  hounds and his horn in the morning?”

  Then his big hand would move to her mother’s cheek, those blue eyes would hold her mother’s. “Ma chèrie, Pascale,” he’d say softly to her, but she’d shake her head.

  “Only English, Richard,” Pascale said, looking pointedly at Audrey. “Teach us English.”

  The soft lines of his face would ease even further, then he’d quietly sing,

  “Oh, promise me that someday you and I

  Will take our love together to some sky

  Where we may be alone and faith renew,

  And find the hollows where those flowers grew,

  Those first sweet violets of early spring,

  Which come in whispers, thrill us both, and sing

  Of love unspeakable that is to be;

  Oh, promise me! Oh, promise me!”

  Then, one day, Richard was gone. At first Audrey had been confident they’d see him again, that he’d simply gone off seeking the solitude Audrey herself needed at times. But his blue, blue eyes, his unkempt black hair and matching beard never returned. Eventually another man came and took Pascale’s hand, stepped into the place where Richard’s shoes had been. And another after him. Pascale was never without a partner for long, but Richard was the only one who stayed with Audrey. The sadness that came to her mother’s eyes every time Audrey asked about Richard made it too painful to press her further, but the question had never gone away. Is he my father? Is he the reason I see colours and lines and shading everywhere I look?

  “Baker,” one of the soldiers grunted, rolling the heavy wooden wheel ahead of him. Audrey’s thoughts went back to the men on the road. “Eyes in your head, man.”

  The man at whom she’d been staring earlier jerked his gaze away, and she was delighted to see a warm flush rise up his neck and into his cheeks. He muttered something to the other soldier, who chuckled, but something about his tone assured her that it wasn’t rudely meant.

  With a groan, the men heaved up the axle. Two more came to help, squatting under the wagon and pushing up with their shoulders. They were strong men, but the sun was hot and they were sweating by the time the wheel was on. As they stood to go, the sunlight blinked out, blocked by a storm cloud, and a sudden gust flipped up the men’s woolen coattails. Rain was on its way, and from the look of the clouds, it didn’t plan on settling into a mild shower.

  “Yep,” an older soldier
from the group muttered. He was squinting up at the sky, assessing. “Soon then.”

  The soldiers walked back to their place on the road, and Audrey panicked. The man they’d called Baker was the last to go, but she wanted him to stay longer. How could she possibly meet a man like this, then lose him just as quickly? She glanced at her grandmère, trying to disguise her desperation.

  “Peut-on dormir dans la grange ce soir?” she whispered. “Il va pleurir.”

  The old woman narrowed her eyes, dark with suspicion as always.

  “Que ferait le Seigneur Jésus Christ? Aurait-il les faire dormir sous la pluie?” Audrey asked, playing the card Céleste couldn’t fight. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. They would come to no harm having a dozen men sleep in the barn, after all. The old woman nodded once, looking annoyed, and relief surged through Audrey. She turned to the officer in charge.

  “Sir,” she said, “it looks as if it shall rain tonight.”

  “Yep,” repeated the man on the road.

  She saw Baker glare at the weatherman, then he looked back at Audrey, apparently wanting to hear what she had to say. She imagined that—considering all the time these men spent together—they must miss simple conversation with other people. She could think of a million things to talk about with Baker. Anything to break up the monotony of her life.

  “We have a barn two miles along this road,” she informed the officer, tucking a light brown curl under her green head scarf. The rest of her hair she let bounce around her shoulders, but this one was getting in her eyes, bothering her. Especially now that the wind was picking up. “There is plenty of shelter for you and your men to spend the night, if you’d like.”

  The officer’s neat black eyebrows lifted. “Oh. Well, I wouldn’t want to impose, mademoiselle . . .” He left the sentence unfinished until she picked it up.

  “Oh, it’s ‘miss.’ My grandmère is French, not me. I am Audrey Poulin. I’m from Sussex,” she said, feeling heat race into her cheeks. How wonderful it felt to be able to speak her own language again! “And I assure you, sir, that it would be no imposition at all. It is the least we can do to thank you.”

  The officer looked back at his men, and Audrey couldn’t miss the hope in their expressions. They looked so tired. So worn down. She felt an urge to clean them, feed them, make them laugh.

  “The loft has fresh hay,” she assured them. “And we have extra blankets.”

  “If you’re sure it’s no trouble,” Captain Johnston said. He frowned skeptically at the sky, then flashed a wide smile from under his thick black moustache. “We’d be in your debt.”

  The soldier named Baker blew out his breath, then caught himself, but Audrey noticed. Even if no one else did, she did.

  “Not at all, sir,” she said, smiling at Baker and letting her eyes dance for him. “We are more than happy to help.”

  The ancient horse was painfully slow. Audrey feared she might die of embarrassment as she chirped it forward, tickling the reins against its swayed back. Her grandmère sat beside her up front, muttering antique obscenities into her scarf about Englishmen, accusing Audrey of who knew what with her eyes. Audrey had learned to take it all in stride these past ten years. The old woman’s blood had always been thick with suspicion. In the past Audrey had wondered which had come first: her grandmère’s constant bitterness or her mother’s escape to England so long before. Every time her grandmère cast eyes on her, she knew the old woman was reminded of Audrey’s wild-hearted mother and her ill-fated dash to freedom.

  The soldiers marched beside them, dutifully quiet, the only sounds in the air being the shuffling of tired leather soles and the crunching of hooves and wagon wheels over pebbles. The gallant captain moved ahead to lead the horse around holes in the old road, and while Audrey knew she could have done it on her own, she was glad not to have to bother. She was tired of the horse. Of the wagon. Of the muttered black criticism constantly dribbling in her direction. Of the dead farmland that produced nothing anymore but misery now that there was no one left to work it.

  Once upon a time Audrey had laughed out loud and danced, though other children her age had passed through her days like clouds. Her mother and Richard Black had been her best friends, and the lively musicians with whom they’d spent Audrey’s early years had been more like playmates than adults. She’d never stepped foot into an actual school. Her friends had taught her how to speak English, and she’d learned to read by peering over Richard’s shoulder when he read out loud from old books, regaling her with wild tales of adventure. Cold nights huddled together around a fire often consisted of individualized history lessons, when the friends remembered when things were different, when their parents and grandparents had done such and such. There was never any talk of Audrey learning mathematics, for none of them had a coin to add to another. But she learned music and song and art, and she’d known both friendship and love.

  Even as her mother lay dying, she knew a kind of love. She sat by her mother’s bedside for hours at a time, and at night her little back curled against her mother’s chest. The tender fingers playing in Audrey’s hair thinned, their caresses became vague. When her mother’s beautiful, weak voice seemed to tremble more than form actual words, Audrey took over, telling the nighttime stories she knew so well. Her mother would sigh at the familiar tales, her warm breath tickling Audrey’s neck just under her ear. The breaths tickled more slowly as sleep claimed her, and the twig-like fingers stilled in Audrey’s light brown tangles. And still Audrey told the stories, needing to hear the endings said out loud.

  She knew her mother was dying, though all the playmates denied it during the daylight. Your mother will dance forever! Your mother will never leave you! they said, and in her need for any kind of love, she forgave them all their lies. It ended up that none of them were quite loving enough to take her under their wing permanently after she became an orphan, but they did their duty by bringing the ten-year-old to her grandparents’ farm.

  Back then, life hadn’t been as drudging or as dark. Her grandpère had run an active farm, and he’d spent a good deal of time teaching Audrey how to tend the animals while staying out of his wife’s way. Young local men came to work when it was time for harvest, helping in the fields, and Audrey tested her fledgling flirting skills on a couple, though they only smiled and left her alone. Once in a while her bossy cousin Laurent came to visit for a few weeks. He was five years her senior, and despite Audrey’s arguments, he casually fell into the role of her big brother until it was time for him to leave again.

  Laurent wasn’t like her friends in England. He was serious and quiet, and his upper lip tightened to near invisibility whenever he was forced to hold in arguments. He never fought with their grandparents, and he quietly informed Audrey that it was not her place to argue with them either. She must do as she was told, he said, and when she complained that their grandmère was a wicked, evil woman, he quieted her with one sharp look. He wasn’t fun—he rarely laughed—but he was her mother’s brother’s son, and Audrey occasionally saw a flash of her mother in his one dimple.

  Audrey had absolutely no wish to be alone with Céleste. She did what was required, cooking and cleaning, taking care of the old woman’s demands, but when all was done, she infuriated her grandmère by racing outside to be with Laurent and grandpère. Audrey worked much harder out of doors, pretending to be a boy, stacking wood after Laurent chopped it, carrying heavy bags of feed and flour from the wagon to the barn or larder, but she didn’t mind the work. At least she never had to suffer undue criticism when she was with them.

  And when she was done with her work, Audrey painted. Using the soft edges of twigs and grass, bits of material, or her fingers, she created her own flowers and birds and trees, even tried to remember her mother through the strokes. Grandpère had patted her on the head, saying her art was very pretty. Sometimes he came back from the woods with a different berry or flower, adding to
her paint ingredients. Whenever he did that, he bent at the waist and reminded her that although he knew painting made her happy, he didn’t ever want her to show her creations to her grandmère. She would not appreciate them, he said, since she would consider painting to be an idle activity, a waste of time.

  When Audrey was eighteen, a tree had fallen on grandpère. He’d gone hunting, and two days later Audrey had discovered him trapped under the heavy trunk. His hip had been fractured badly, and there was nothing anyone could do. She’d had to run for help a mile away, but by the time she returned to him, all there was left for the neighbour to do was cart him to the churchyard for burial.

  Then the war had hit. Laurent had only ever hugged her once, and it happened on the day he’d come to the farm in his soldier’s uniform, wanting to bid them adieu. He’d stared awkwardly down at her, and Audrey had never understood why they had both been so sad. After he left, though, he never came back. Audrey had no choice but to suffer her grandmère’s grating old age all by herself. She had no other friends, nothing to do with her life but flee to the nearby woods and try to remember her mother’s stories.

  Her grandpère should have been more careful. He should have had her with him even, though she probably couldn’t have helped him anyway. After he was gone, she missed his quiet presence, but she couldn’t quite find it in her heart to forgive the old man, since his negligence had left her alone with dear, spiteful Céleste. And once everyone else was gone, the old woman had done her best to drain the life out of her granddaughter.

  In Audrey’s mind, Céleste and the war had killed everything. Even Audrey’s art had changed. In the past she’d avidly collected petals, leaves, and berries, boiling and smashing them into the shades she desired, mixing them with either egg yolks and water or flour and water, depending on what was more available, then she’d captured the brilliant colours of the world flourishing in the fields and the forests beyond. Now if she wanted to play with anything other than greys or browns, she had to dig deep into her memory to find a model.