The Prize Page 2

  He gathered her into his arms and comforted her, stroking her hair with one hand and softly rocking her in his embrace. “I’ll take no foolish chances, Polly. But I do not think it meet to stand idly by while my sons can manage the farm, and my service is needed.”

  He held her at arm’s length and tilted her chin up with hard but gentle fingers. “Your father did not ask other men to defend his family’s safety when the Indians were sent to visit savagery upon your settlement. A different form of savagery looms now, and I’ll not shirk my duty to you or our neighbors.”

  At the mention of her father, Polly closed her eyes in pain, but her sobs subsided and she gazed at her husband with unhappiness but understanding in her eyes. “I know you speak the truth, Elijah. Just … come back to me. Certainly, we can manage for a little while. But the boys need you … and I need you. Come back as soon as you’re able.”

  “I will, Polly. I know this is hard … war always is. But peace purchased at the cost of capitulation is harder still. If the rebellion fails and the Yorkers prevail, we will lose everything we’ve worked so hard for. The time has come to take up arms and defend what is just, lest all should be subject to the caprices of the Crown and his officers.”

  Polly knew, as she watched Elijah stride out of sight up the track to Fort Frederick, that this would be just the first of many farewells. His enlistment was for the remainder of the year, not just the few weeks this particular campaign might take to complete, and she had no faith at all that a single victory would make the King or his agents in the Colonies see reason.

  The boys were both eager in attending to their duties around the homestead for the first week or two after Elijah’s departure, and the family soon settled into a new routine, each doing their part to do the work usually reserved for the head of the house.

  At the first dinner the evening after Colonel Allen’s force had departed, the three had taken their seats as usual, and then there was a momentary pause as they waited for Elijah to say the blessing. After an awkward silence, Caleb had spoken up. “We beseech You, O Lord, to keep our beloved father Elijah safe in his journeys, and we thank You for the bounty that graces our table.”

  Polly had choked back a sob and left the table for a moment, until she could regain her composure, but the new ritual had been established, and Caleb continued to offer the mealtime prayer each evening.

  A week later, Caleb had finished up his morning chores and then gone to Polly. “I’m going to take the canoe and see whether the geese are still over in that bay on the island. I want to set some snares.”

  “You can’t set snares just off Mallett’s point?”

  “No, Ma. He chased me off the last time I did that. I’ve got to go further.”

  Polly sighed and nodded. She knew that Caleb’s interest in the island had less to do with the ideal place to find geese and more to do with a better vantage point from which to observe events on the lake. While nothing had been said aloud, British forces in the region were encamped along the far side of the lake, and a young man who knew Lake Champlain as well as anyone around might be able to observe enough to discern what actions his father might be engaged in.

  And so began Caleb’s nearly daily excursions along the shoreline. A steady traffic in men brought news overland from the south, but Caleb’s intelligences had more than once been the first information either the family or the men in the village had had of events on the lake.

  One afternoon, as Caleb skirted the point where Captain Mallett’s homestead overlooked the lake, on his way back from his favorite spot on the island’s shoreline, he saw the old Frenchman standing sentinel and looking over the lake from the westward-facing bluff. While Caleb knew that he was doing no wrong in paddling past the homestead, he still felt a chill as the man looked directly at him, and then beckoned to him.

  Bracing himself for a confrontation with the unpredictable Mallett, he reluctantly turned his dugout toward the shore and grounded it on the narrow strip of sand below the homestead. As he finished pulling the boat up onto land, the man was already striding down the meandering path to the beach. With remarkable agility for a man with an unruly shock of white hair, Mallett negotiated the path and then approached the boy.

  Without preamble, the old man said, in heavily accented English, “I see you paddling back and forth nearly every day. I make it my business to know what passes on this lake, and yet I know not what you do. I ask myself, ‘What is this boy doing, paddling back and forth every day past Captain Mallett’s house? Where is he going, and what is he doing there?’ I do not see fish in the boat, I do not see gooses, I do not see beavers, I do not see deers, just the boy, day after day. It is a mystery to me.”

  Regarding Caleb with lively blue eyes, Mallett now fell silent and waited for the younger man to fill the growing silence with answers.

  “I, uh, the island, uh, geese—“

  Mallett snapped, “Do not tell me stories, boy. I have heard stories from les raconteurs all my life, and nobody can tell me lies and I do not know it. You are watching, like I do, no? But why do you go so far to watch, when you can see all from just here?” The old man pointed to the top of the bluff and the crest of the hill beyond, which, indeed, had a clear view to the west, offering a broad vista of the lake.

  “I see the English ships sail up the lake to their forts, then a few months later, I see them sail back north, but I do not see them under English colors any longer. Your Green Mountain Boys, they take the English ships, no? And then turn them against the English themselves, yes?” He uttered a sharp bark of laughter. “I like this. Why build ships when the English will bring them to you?”

  Caleb’s head was awhirl, and he could do little but nod mute assent to the rapid flurry of questions.

  Mallett nodded abruptly. “Good. You will save your strength, then, and watch from just here.” Again he gestured to the top of the hill. “And perhaps you can even set some snares for the gooses if you like, too, hmm? Just give Captain Mallett half of what you snare here, and we will no more have any fight about that. Now, follow me, I will show you the best way up.”

  The Frenchman’s long wiry legs made him a challenge to keep up with, but before long, Caleb stood beside him, in a spot where Mallett had obviously cleared the trees and underbrush to provide an unimpeded vantage over the lake. The additional elevation gave Caleb a far better sense of the breadth of Lake Champlain than he had ever gotten from the low-slung dugout sitting down in the water.

  “There,” said Mallett, extending a stiff arm to the distant shore. Peering closely, Caleb could see a group of small bateaux as they scuttled along the far shore, bobbing up and down in the sparking waves, the sun glinting on the water around them. The group of boats was far too distant to see whether they carried friend or foe, but Caleb immediately gained a new sense of just how good the old man’s eyes were, to have spotted them.

  “All day, moving around over there, like a swarm of mosquitoes. I do not think they are English, but I do not know. Perhaps someone in the village will know, hmm? Best to ask them, I think. Now it is time to go back. I will see you here tomorrow.” It was not a question or an invitation, but an order, and Caleb found himself liking the old man in spite of the flash of irritation he felt at Mallett’s imperious tone and attitude.

  “I, uh, thank you, sir,” Caleb stammered.

  “I am called Captain Mallett,” the old man snapped. “’Sir’ is what an English dog will wish to be called when he knows he does not truly deserve your respect, but wants to make you think he is better than you. Do not call me that.”

  “Yes, si- uh, Captain Mallett,” Caleb replied, his ears burning. They walked in silence back down to the bluff over the beach where his dugout rested. At the top of the bluff, the Frenchman turned off toward his homestead without another word of farewell, and Caleb, still somewhat shaken by the whole encounter, turned and picked his way down the slope to his canoe.

  Caleb ducked his head to enter the cabin, pausing for a
moment to sniff deeply of the rich odor of the soup bubbling gently over the fire. “I didn’t know that we still had some lamb,” he greeted his mother, who looked up from the sewing in her lap and smiled at him.

  “Did you spy anything on the lake, Caleb?”

  “The lake was quiet today, but I did have an interesting encounter on the way back,” he replied. She looked up again, sharply this time, and he smiled. “Nothing bad, Ma. Just a little … strange.”

  He began to relate the conversation with Captain Mallett, and at the first mention of the man, he noticed that his mother’s manner became very tense, and her eyes narrowed as though she were lost in bitter thought.

  “What’s the matter, Ma?”

  She took a moment before answering, and then spat out in a fury that he had never suspected she could muster, “The very idea that they permit that French maggot to live amongst decent people has always filled me with despair for our fair country. Oh, I know, he has the tavern, and the men like to go and drink and tell each other lies about how very brave they all are, but do they not know what sort of treachery lies in the heart of every Frenchman?”

  She choked through tears and rage and continued, “They would cut out the heart of a decent man, and leave his children to fend for themselves, and his widow to work until her fingers bleed white, and all for what? A scrap of land, barely fit to grow a crop? A tavern boast? Do not speak to me of this man again, Caleb, nor any other Frenchman, I cannot bear to hear of them thriving while my father’s bones yet molder and my mother’s memory haunts my nightmares!”

  Caleb stared in wonder at his mother, and then nodded in mute agreement, his eyes wide. In a small voice, he said, “I need to attend to the cows, then,” and made his escape.

  As he went through the rote motions of calling in the farm’s two stocky milch cows from the field and then milking them each in turn, Caleb wrestled with the conundrum presented by his mother’s vehemence. He knew that he could not slip past Mallett’s point without the old man spotting him, and knew, too, that the higher vantage point of the bluff overlooking the lake offered an advantage for his purposes. Finally, the Frenchman’s bluff was less than half as far away as his normal vantage point along the island. The nearly daily excursions had built up Caleb’s arms and shoulders to the point where he could probably best any man in the village at a contest of arm wrestling, but the time that it took sometimes made it difficult to keep up with all of his work around the farmstead.

  As he hauled the two heavy pails in to the house and set them by the churn to let the cream rise to the top, Caleb continued to ponder what he might be able to do. Polly was setting trenchers and the new spoons Samuel had recently learned to whittle on the table for dinner, her mouth still held in a pinched, firm set from her earlier anger. He noticed, too, as she stepped into the light at the door to call for Samuel, that her eyes were red and swollen, as though she had cried the whole time he was out in the barn.

  It was that that made up his mind, and he resolved that he would simply have to pay no heed to Captain Mallett’s command, and that he’d stay with his old lookouts on the island. In truth, too, he preferred the prospect of keeping all of the geese he snared, instead of having to give up half of them to the old man.

  For a few days, this resolve worked well enough. Once or twice, Caleb spotted the old man watching him from the bluff, standing alongside his house, silently following his progress along the shoreline and around the bay to the island.

  News reached the village of a costly British victory at Bunker Hill in Boston, but more importantly, all of the militias in the region were called out for a major operation of some sort. Emboldened by their success along Lake Champlain in the prior months, the Continental Congress had decided to press their advantage in the north and further disrupt British supply lines.

  The typical crowd in the blockhouse dwindled as more men answered the call and joined up with the Green Mountain Boys. Caleb had broached the subject tentatively with his mother, but hadn’t gotten more than a couple of words out before she gave him such a glare that the thought died on his lips without so much as a whimper. For those who still gathered at Fort Frederick, though, there was an air of excitement in their discussions.

  “Ethan’s going to collect himself a whole armory of British guns ere long,” chortled the stout proprietor one steamy afternoon. He mopped his brow with an already-limp rag and stuffed it back in his pocket. “How long do you supposed before the King begs us for mercy, and oh, do you think you could return enough of our ships that we might sail back to England?”

  The men roared with laughter for a few moments, and then one piped up, “Do you suppose they’ll go as far as Montreal?”

  “It’s hard to say,” answered MacGregor, “but I’ve heard Ethan say that he could take the city with just a couple thousand men under arms.”

  A number of the men exchanged raised eyebrows at that boast, but a grizzled old veteran of the French wars nodded thoughtfully. “I’d be willing to wager on his success.”

  After he returned home, he gave his mother the news, which she accepted in silence, though he noticed that she was looking perpetually tired and grey. In the oppressive heat of the day, she was picking through a sack of currants Samuel had picked that morning. Caleb’s mouth watered at the thought of the preserves she’d be making later on.

  “Ma, I think I’ll go have a look at the lake, if you don’t have anything you need me to do right now. I’ve got the water hauled for the corn, and I collected the eggs.” He frowned. “I think that red’s been laying somewhere else again … I haven’t seen any of her eggs in a few days.”

  “That will be fine, Caleb. Be back before sundown, all right?”

  “I will, Ma.” He kissed the top of her head quickly as he headed for the door.

  Paddling the dugout was no fun in the still, close air along the river, but once he reached the lake, there was a bit of a breeze, which cooled him as he pulled the canoe forward. He rounded the point and started around Mallett’s shoreline. Involuntarily, he glanced up at the bluff, but he relaxed when he did not spot the old man.

  He returned to the steady, soothing rhythm of paddling, lost in thought as he pondered the latest news and wondered where his Da was, and whether he was well. He nearly leapt straight out of his dugout, then, when Captain Mallett’s voice spoke up just behind him.

  “For what reason have you not come to look from up on my hill?” The older man had overtaken Caleb’s heavy dugout in a birch bark canoe, paddling as silently as though he were Abenaki himself.

  Caleb swallowed a mighty oath and willed his heart to stay within his ribcage, though it hammered for escape. Once he’d regained his composure, he said, “I apologize for my ill manners, Captain Mallett.” He had long since decided to be forthright in explaining himself if the need arose, so he continued, “My dear mother prevailed upon me to avoid your company, as her own father was slain in the conflict with your country when she was but a girl.”

  “My country, hmm?” Mallett spat into the water on the far side of his canoe. “I am not French any longer, boy. If I were to go to France, the only home I would find would be on the gallows.” The old man pondered. “You must listen to your mother, naturally. But I think that she needs to see the man and not the country. I cannot help where I was born, but where I live, that I have chosen most carefully.”

  He jerked his head toward the island across the bay. “Go, then, until she has changed her mind. I will continue my watch from where I have been. Perhaps you will see something I miss from my hill, and perhaps I will see something you miss. I think maybe it is better this way, after all.” He swatted a mosquito that had been busily working on his arm, leaving a splatter of blood across his skin. “Merde,” he muttered, “How I hate these little beasts. Watch well, my young friend. Go, go!”

  With that, the old man turned his light craft with a couple of strong strokes, and then set it skimming back across the water to his farmstead. Caleb blin
ked and shook himself, dispelling the last of the shock of the man’s stealthy appearance, and continued to his favored shady vantage along the island’s shoreline.

  For two months, Caleb paddled past the silent point and sometimes looked with longing at the high bluff, remembering its vantage over the lake. He wondered if Captain Mallett was seeing anything of note, for he surely was not. Other than the normal comings and goings of fishing boats and other private shipping, Lake Champlain was left for the occasional summer thunderstorm to lash, and the less impressive conflicts between mere humans were absent from its waters.

  As he had begun to despair of anything interesting happening on the lake at all, he was paddling past Captain Mallett’s point when again the Frenchman appeared seemingly out of nowhere to accost him.

  “I have information of interest to your Green Mountain Boys,” the old man called from just behind Caleb’s dugout.

  When the younger man had caught his breath, he turned to Mallett, and replied, “What have you seen, Captain Mallett?”

  “Seen? Nothing.” He tapped his ear. “But I have heard much, and there are few here who might have known what it meant. A trapper from up the river has just this morning told me of a curious sight at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu … what is called here Saint John’s,” he continued, exaggerating the English pronunciation to a parody.

  “I would have desired that your Colonel Allen should have been reinforced to have held that place when General Arnold took it, but then I am no general, so who am I to say?” He shrugged. “Now the English are nearly done building two ships there, more than fifty feet in length, and equipping them each with eighteen cannon. If I were a general, this would cause me grave concern for our position on the lake. On the other hand, perhaps if I were a general, I would let the English build me some more ships.”