The Island of Doves (23 page)

•   •   •

A
fter a while she returned to the sink to finish the dishes. When she placed the second cup on a towel to dry, she heard a peculiar sound coming from the yard. Susannah dried her hands. The sound stopped for a moment, then began again, a high-pitched whine. After the dogs had hauled the wood back the previous day, Jean-Henri had let them rest. At the Reveillon, Magdelaine had indulged Ani with scraps of the rich dishes of food. Perhaps he whined in sickness now as so many others on the island were sure to be whining this morning. Too many sweets. Too much meat and wine and butter.

The sound came again, this time grinding, picking up steam. Susannah remembered the growls of the rabid dog Magdelaine had put down, but this sound was only urgent, not so frightening as the sick dog’s barking had been. She took a cloak from the hook by the front door, then passed back through the kitchen and went out the door to the dog pen.

She padded across the snow in her moccasins and carefully swung open the door. The dogs lay in a heap, snoring in the dim light inside the pen. Up high near the roof of the enclosure was a platform Jean-Henri had pointed out to her, where they kept new puppies away from the rest of the dogs. Ani had found his way up there somehow, and he lifted his head and glanced sleepily at Susannah before putting it back down on a bundle wedged at his side. The whine—a little sputtering, revving cry—came from the bundle, warmed and cosseted by his fur and warm canine breath. Smooth flesh, a pink mouth open, mewling. A baby.

Susannah drew in a breath and stepped closer, her mouth hanging open in surprise. The child wore a hat of gray wool that covered its ears and brow. Only the small dark eyes were visible, the peach-colored nose, the wet, open mouth. The baby twisted its shoulders back and forth and back and forth against the swaddling, whining in frustration; finally a tiny bare arm popped out and the crying stopped. It sucked noisily on the thumb, nestled into Ani’s fur, and went to sleep.

She reached up and pulled the warm bundle from its bed. The baby’s eyes opened and searched Susannah’s face, the thumb still planted firmly in its mouth. It didn’t appear to be in pain, or injured, or the least bit cold or uncomfortable. She almost hated to take it away from its protector, and Ani watched her carefully as she did. She opened her cloak and tucked the small body next to her chest, then closed the cloak. Ani trailed behind her as she stepped quickly across the yard, then back into the kitchen, closing the door before she shouted for help.

T
he baby, who looked to be about two or three months old, lay atop a folded blanket on the table in the kitchen, and the four of them—Magdelaine, Susannah, Esmee, and Jean-Henri—stood over it, staring. It stared back at them, the thumb planted securely in its mouth. Magdelaine felt her chest fill with dread. How could Noelle have done this?

“A baby,” Susannah kept whispering, over and over.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Esmee asked.

“I was too afraid of the cold to check.”

Esmee nodded. “Well, perhaps we should now. Jean, will you stoke up the fire?”

He crossed the room to the hearth and went to work with the poker. Magdelaine stared after him, then back at Esmee, still surprised by her use of
Jean
. Esmee wasn’t even conscious that she had addressed him in such a familiar way. It was what she called him in private, Magdelaine saw, and she no longer felt she had to hide it.

Esmee unwrapped the swaddling. Beneath it, the baby wore a cotton gown cut down from a garment for an older child. She lifted it, then put it back down. “A boy! And this is soiled. We need something else to wrap him in.”

“So he has eaten lately, then?” Susannah said. She went into the pantry and began pulling out linen towels.

“Yes, you’re right. That is a blessing.” Esmee glanced at the pile in Susannah’s hands. “No, the red one, I think—yes, it will absorb the most.”

They unwrapped the boy and he opened his mouth in surprise at the cold air on his skin, letting the thumb fall away. Only then did he begin to wail. Esmee moved quickly, wrapping him in the towel and tying it with twine, then in the large wool blanket from the sitting room. She helped him get his thumb back, then placed him in Susannah’s arms. The long tail of the blanket hung down to the floor.

Jean-Henri spoke over his shoulder as he balanced another log atop the blaze. “He can’t have been there more than a few hours. I put the dogs in the pen at midnight.”

Magdelaine tried to imagine how Noelle had kept the dogs from barking when she sneaked in with the baby. Perhaps she brought food for them, something to placate their tempers, and sat on the damp straw to wait for them to settle to sleep. The baby would have been wrapped inside her cloak, latched one last time to her breast, his tiny palm drifting absently over his own cheek, his fingers touching the contours of his ear. And behind Noelle’s breast, her heart tearing, frayed like a root ripped out of the ground.

“Either way, he will be hungry soon. We’ll have to think of how to feed him, madame.”

Magdelaine glanced up at Esmee with a start, then at the baby, looking at his features for the first time. He had sleek black hair, like an otter, and long dark lashes rimmed his green eyes. His cheeks were covered in red scratches. “He isn’t staying here,” Magdelaine said.

“You don’t think the dogs did that, do you?” Susannah asked, touching the scratches.

Magdelaine shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you believe it, madame? A baby in our manger, on Christmas morning? Is it some kind of sign?” Esmee smoothed his hair with her fingers.

Magdelaine wondered why no one seemed to have heard her—the baby couldn’t possibly stay here. But then she realized what Esmee had said, and snapped her reply. “Certainly not.” She looked again at the boy’s eyes, noticing a familiar brown mark in the iris of his left eye. She had only ever seen eyes like that on one other person. The situation became clear to her. “This is no immaculate child.” With that she walked out of the room and back up the stairs, then opened her wardrobe and began to dress.

Esmee was right behind her. “Where are you going, madame?”

Magdelaine shook her head. “I won’t say anything until I am sure.”

Their eyes met, and she could see that Esmee too had noticed the brown mark in the baby’s eye. Very little got by her; Magdelaine understood it now. Esmee saw things about Jean-Henri that Magdelaine herself could not see, and, seeing her son through his lover’s eyes, she liked him more. She wondered whether, at last, Jean-Henri would show some decisiveness, and marry her. Perhaps if Esmee accompanied him, he would go to Montreal.

“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Esmee nodded. “He will deny it.”

“Yes. Even on Christmas Day.”

“But you will try him nonetheless?”

Magdelaine shrugged. “What else can we do?”

It was, of course, futile, Magdelaine thought as she trudged through the snow to Ste. Anne’s. Still, it was a relief to get out of the close quarters of the kitchen. She could barely look at the child. Why hadn’t she understood what Noelle was trying to tell her at the feast? Her words were so plain—if only Magdelaine had been paying attention to the girl instead of letting her thoughts linger on the past and all that was dead in it. She could have reasoned with her, tried to change her mind.

She reached the door and pulled it open. If Father Milani were any kind of priest he would be there now, preparing to give the Mass later in the day. But the sanctuary was dark and cold. He had let the fire in the back go out. Magdelaine sat for a moment in the pew and walked her mind through the steps she could take, had she more energy and more hope, to try to put things right. Somewhere on this island Milani was sleeping off drink, likely in a warm bed some devout man or woman had given up for the comfort of the priest. Magdelaine could search the Catholic homes until she found him. It was a small island. She could confront Milani as she had longed to do so many times. He had neglected every duty he was charged with, from ministering to the sick to presenting himself for burials to comporting himself with a little dignity and keeping to his vows. But the truth was that he couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old and probably had been assigned to this remote territory without ever having laid eyes on it. He couldn’t minister to these people, and he couldn’t be held responsible for their undoing, not solely.

She pushed herself to her feet and went to make a fire. She might have better luck trying to change Noelle’s mind—after all, the girl had told Magdelaine where she planned to go, and Sault Ste. Marie was only a day’s journey by sled across the ice. How Noelle would live to regret what she had done! How she would look back on this day for the rest of her life and see the face of that infant frozen in time, while he grew and grew in the care of some stranger who might love him, but never as well as Noelle. Her own son, abandoned!

Magdelaine stacked the logs on the grate. She could tell Noelle something about sons, how you wrung your hands over them and yet could never at the last shake the longing you had to hold them, even when they grew to be men. Of course, she hadn’t touched Jean-Henri in a decade, except to lean on his arm that one time when he had outpaddled her to Bois Blanc the previous spring. And then because the only other option was to collapse into the water. Still, the longing was there, always, and she didn’t dare give into it.

The sanctuary began to warm. In a few hours, the devout and those they dragged along with them would begin filing into this space and look to the altar for guidance on how they should contemplate this day, the anniversary of the birth of the man who would save them. He was difficult to access, that man. You had to go through men like Milani to get to him, and that, Magdelaine thought, was a shame. Father Adler would be dismayed to hear of what was happening on the island, but of course Magdelaine couldn’t imagine actually writing to him of the details. Milani was still a priest, after all. And there were things one couldn’t say about a priest, even if they were true.

Magdelaine pulled up her hood and went back out into the snow. Noelle’s family might be persuaded to take the child, but she doubted it. The girl had the sort of mother who turned her daughter out when she learned of her condition. She wondered if Noelle’s mother knew of the priest’s involvement in the matter. Probably so. Noelle had no doubt argued her case to her family and found no sympathy there. They would deny the child. But Magdelaine would try reasoning with them anyway, for all the good it would do.

S
oon after Magdelaine left, the baby began frantically pressing his palms against his open mouth and wailing with hunger. Susannah and Esmee took turns trying to soothe him. They walked from the kitchen to the sitting room and back again, passing the windows and showing him the intricate patterns the frost made on the glass, the soft fringe on a wool blanket, but nothing would calm him.

Esmee and Jean-Henri listed aloud the names of the families they knew with small children, but they couldn’t think of a woman on the island who had recently given birth and might be able to nurse the child. People came and went with the seasons, and this time of year the population was at its lowest.

Someone could be sent for, but it would take time. To make do, Esmee instructed Jean-Henri to heat cow’s milk over the fire, nearly shouting to be heard over the boy’s screams. They allowed it to cool and then spooned a few drops at a time into his mouth, and after several long minutes the wailing subsided to a whimper. Soon the baby was quiet but alert, his eyes studying the curve of Esmee’s fingers on the spoon. The sun was shining through the small kitchen window and made a bright square on the table top. The baby watched the light as it moved in a liquid swirl on the wood.

Now that he had finally calmed down, Jean-Henri took a close look at the baby’s cheeks. “He seems so well taken care of, except for these scratches. I wonder what in the world has caused them?”

“The dogs would have done much worse damage than this,” Susannah said. She took the spoon from Esmee and handed it to the baby. He tightened his fist on the handle.

“Is there something we could put on his cheeks?”

“I have a salve upstairs,” Susannah said.

“I wonder . . .” Esmee said as she unwrapped the blanket from the baby’s shoulders and pulled out one bare arm, then reached for the baby’s hand. “That’s what I thought. Look at these fingernails!” The little white slivers were long and jagged.

“I can get my knife,” Jean-Henri said. “Though his fingers are
awfully
small.”

“No, Jean,” Esmee said. The baby watched her as she leaned over him on the table and gently pried open his fist. There were cuts on the heels of his hands too, from where he had dug his fingernails into them in his distress. She kissed the red half moons, kissed the soft chub of his palm. Then softly, steadily, she took the tip of each tiny finger into her mouth and nibbled on the nail.

It was so quiet in the room that they could hear Esmee’s teeth tapping softly together. She removed each nail and spit it onto the floor, then smiled at the baby. He did not smile back, but the square of light no longer held his attention; instead it was Esmee’s dark eyebrows, the pale part in her black hair.

Susannah noticed that Jean-Henri stood beside the table, captivated by the way Esmee seemed to know just what to do, how she solved the problem with such assured calm. She finished with the baby’s right hand and moved to the left. Jean-Henri took the newly groomed fingers in his hand and examined them, then turned his gaze back to Esmee. His closed mouth stretched into a secretive smile, as though something had occurred to him that he wanted to keep to himself for a while, to relish.

The gaze reminded Susannah of the way her father had looked at her mother while she was absorbed in some task—reading a book, turning a stitch in her embroidery with the tip of her tongue pressed between her lips in concentration. Susannah was delighted to see that Jean-Henri might adore Esmee in this same way, but beneath her joy was some anguish too. She was certain no one had ever looked at her in quite that way. Not every woman was so lucky as her mother had been, as Esmee was now.

Susannah stood from her chair to usher these maudlin thoughts away. She had so much to be grateful for, and she was determined to be glad for the couple. They seemed to be yearning for a moment alone, so Susannah mumbled something about going to check the fire in the sitting room and stepped out.

All of them were gathered there when Magdelaine returned a while later through the kitchen door. The baby slept on a pile of blankets near the fire. Susannah went to the kitchen to meet Magdelaine as she came in and realized that she had been holding her breath for news of what would become of the baby. Magdelaine bent to pull off her fur-lined boots, and one of her long braids swung down over shoulder. She flung it back with a sigh, then stood and stepped into dry moccasins. Only then did she acknowledge Susannah with a nod, and they walked in to the sitting room to be near the fire.

Magdelaine fell into the empty armchair. She looked more exhausted than Susannah had ever seen her. Her eyes were heavy. The lines around her mouth creased into a deep frown.

Jean-Henri sat forward with his elbows on his knees. “Well?”

Magdelaine closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “No one is going to claim this child.”

Esmee put her hand to her mouth and looked at the boy. In sleep, his mouth moved as if he were suckling, and he furrowed his brow with the seriousness of the task.

“Do you know who his mother is?” Jean-Henri asked. He didn’t ask after the father because it was a pointless inquiry. If the father wanted to be known, he would have married the girl or at the very least provided for her care, as the traders had done for the summer wives to whom they were not actually married. Babies came into the world all the time without fathers, especially on this island, Susannah had learned. The possibility that the mother might be unknown, or that she would shrink from the task of caring for her own child—now there was a novelty.

“Yes, I do.”

He waited to see if she would tell him the name, but she did not. “And her parents will not claim him either?”

“They say it is impossible that they have a grandson. They say I am mistaken.”

“But there is no chance,” Esmee said, sounding mysteriously convicted, “that you are mistaken.” She and Magdelaine shared a glance.

“No.”

The boy opened his eyes and glanced around the room, then at the dancing light of the fire. He watched it a moment, fascinated, then examined his own hand. His mouth turned down into a pout and he began to whimper. This cry was unlike his earlier wails of hunger; it churned plaintively as if he were reflecting on his own loneliness, the uncertainty of his future.

Esmee went over and lifted him from his makeshift bed. She held him on the inside of her forearm, with the back of his head resting in her palm, and cooed to him. The crying eased some as she swayed her arm back and forth. The room was otherwise quiet as they all watched him. Susannah wanted desperately to ask what they would do with the child—the air was heavy with the question—but somehow she could not find the words.

Jean-Henri stood too and peered at the baby. He stuck out his tongue and the whimpering stopped altogether. The little creature examined the grown man and the complicated workings of the parts of his face. “May I?” he said to Esmee.

She glanced at him in surprise. “Yes, but have you ever—”

“Surely I can figure it out,” he said.

She passed the boy into his arms. Jean-Henri tried lifting him upright so that he could see the rest of the room, but his floppy head wrenched to the side and he began to cry once more. Quickly, Jean-Henri swooped him down into the cradle of his elbow and rocked him as he had seen Esmee do. The baby sighed and chomped at the air in search of his thumb.

“You say no one will claim him,” Jean-Henri said, his body rocking back and forth like a canoe on the lake. “Well.
I
will claim him.”

Susannah watched as Magdelaine tried to comprehend her son’s meaning. She blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

Jean-Henri kept his eyes on the boy. “If he has no father, I will claim him. I will be his father. And Esmee will be his mother.”

Esmee did not react with any sort of surprise but simply ran her hand over the baby’s silky hair, then grinned at Jean-Henri. The two of them had conspired to do this—not just to adopt the baby but to join together to thwart life’s disappointments and injuries. It was audacious and it made Susannah’s chest expand like a bellows. What was love if not a conspiracy, an alliance? You agreed to fight together against a common enemy, to let nothing come between you. Affection was the least of it. This was a kind of soldiering and you did it with a strong shoulder and with a fearlessness that anyone who knew something about what life did to you would have a hard time mustering.

“Oh,
mon fils
, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to do this. Someone on the island will take him in, or someone in one of the villages.”

Jean-Henri shook his head. “I have made up my mind. Esmee and I will be married. And we will raise this boy as our son.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. What about Montreal—how will you earn a living here?” Magdelaine’s voice grew shrill and Susannah took a step toward her, placed her hand beneath the woman’s elbow. It had been a while since Magdelaine had brought up the subject of the position in Montreal; now, faced with this venture that was completely out of her hands, she clung to it.

But Jean-Henri seemed different somehow, certain in a way Susannah had not seen since her arrival. Magdelaine’s protestations wouldn’t dissuade him. If only she could see what a blessing this was, Susannah thought. Her son, who was devoted to her, wanted to stay near her, wanted to make a family with the woman Magdelaine thought of as a daughter. Susannah would give anything to be a part of a family like this one.

“What kind of life can you have if you stay on the island?” Magdelaine asked.

Jean-Henri laughed. “What kind of life? The kind of life
I
want—that’s what kind. You tell me all the time that I should be more like my father, that I should have his courage, his conviction. But I have to hear about these things from you because I never knew the man myself. The only father I ever had is the one who exists in tales you tell me, and you only tell me those tales to illustrate the ways in which I have failed.”

The remark sent a flash of pain across Magdelaine’s face. “That’s not true.”

Jean-Henri shook his head but softened his voice. “Don’t you see?” he almost pleaded. “I can do something he could not do. I can be more than just a man in a story.”

“Be hopeful, madame,” Esmee said gently, then kissed Magdelaine’s cheek. “Or if you cannot, let us be hopeful in your stead. Good things will come from this.”

Magdelaine seemed to know she was losing the argument, and as a last-ditch effort she looked to Susannah. “Do you believe these two could be so foolish? What in the world can I do to stop this?”

Susannah took her hand. “Forgive me, but are you sure that you want to stop it? Life has taken so many people from you, left you with so much grief. But here it is offering you a wonderful gift. Listen to them. Listen to what your son is telling you about what he wants to do.
I
think it is very brave.”

Magdelaine glanced from Jean-Henri to the baby, then let out a deep sigh.

“Cheer up, madame,” Esmee said. “In a few years he’ll be strong enough to paddle. And carry the pails at the sugar camp.”

“You can teach him to fish,” Jean-Henri said, his mouth twisted into a crafty smile. It wasn’t often that he got to taste victory in a battle with his formidable mother, and he was going to relish it.

Magdelaine put her head in her hands and took a deep breath, then walked over to the window and looked out at the lake. Susannah glanced at Jean-Henri, and he shrugged slightly as they waited to see what she would say.

A long moment passed before she spoke. “Mark my words,” she said. “Some day you will be standing at this window trying to persuade that child not to do something disastrous.”

Jean-Henri laughed. “I suppose you are right about that.”

Magdelaine turned around and stepped toward them, shaking her head. “What will you call him? My grandson needs a name.”

“Henri?” Jean-Henri suggested, with a noticeable lack of commitment.

Magdelaine pursed her lips. “No. Let him have a new name.”

“Madame, we want you to choose,” Esmee said.

“We do?” Jean-Henri cut his eyes at his soon-to-be wife.

The new grandmother thought it over. “How about Raphael? Raph.”

Esmee smiled a dreamy smile. “Patron saint of lovers,” she told Susannah.

“And lunatics,” Magdelaine said.

“Well, then, Raphael seems just about right. Now,” Jean-Henri said, touching Esmee tenderly on the back of her neck and holding her gaze, “I will go roust Father Milani from his bed. No point in waiting when there is a marriage
and
a baptism to perform on the same day.”

“No,” Esmee and Magdelaine said at once.

Esmee cleared her throat. “No, Jean. I think we must have someone else.”

“But—this island hasn’t seen another priest in years. Do you want to travel to do it?”

“No, but—”

“Father Adler,” Magdelaine said.

Susannah drew in a breath at the mention of his name. She had been waiting for the opportunity to confirm her suspicion about Therese, and here was her chance.

“It should be Father Adler,” Magdelaine said. “We should write to him. If this doesn’t get him to come, finally, to the island, then nothing ever will.”

•   •   •

J
ean-Henri wrote the letter, and the next morning Susannah volunteered to walk it down to Market Street. When she went up to her room to put on a warmer dress, she pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer in the table beside her bed and wrote out a letter of her own to accompany Jean-Henri’s. If her hunch was right, this letter could set into motion the answer to some very old prayers. If she was wrong, Father Adler could tell her himself when he arrived on the island.

Mail slowed almost to a stop during the winter months, with the boats not running, but occasionally men made expeditions to settlements in the south of the Michigan Territory, or beyond to Detroit, and they never left the island without taking the mail with them in sleds light enough to whisk across the frozen lake. From Detroit, the letters might find their way to a boat traveling over the treacherous shoals at the western edge of Lake Erie, then along its southern bank. A wagon transporting furs or grain might make room for a bag of mail, though delivery to the eastern cities could be delayed by rutted or washed-out roads, downed tree limbs, cracked spokes, disease of man or horse, spring blizzard, winter thaw, bears, wolves, Indian attack, or plain old incompetence. It was a miracle, really, that any correspondence ever met its destination. At best, it would be weeks until the letter made its way to Buffalo, and weeks more before they might hear word from Father Adler or Sister Mary Genevieve.