“No. The Lord did protect me; the Shawnee sold me to a band of Mohawk who had with them a Jesuit priest—they were escorting him to a mission in Canada. He spoke only French, and I had little enough of that, but he bound and poulticed my wound and I showed him that I could write and figure, and he persuaded my captors that I would be worth more to a man of property than working someone’s fields.”

“Mr. Brant?” Silvia sounded utterly horrified, and Rachel was, too.

“Eventually.” Gabriel sounded suddenly tired, and the lines in his face showed stark. “I am—not a slave here, though. I am … free.”

Free.

The word hung in the cold morning air, glistening and sharp as an icicle. No one spoke for a moment, but the unspoken words were as clear to Rachel as if they’d been shouted.

Then why did thee not come home? Or at least send word that thee was not dead?

“Have—has thee been well, Silvia?” Gabriel stood still, leaning on his crutch. He wore no wig and the cold wind lifted his fine, thinning hair so it shimmered for a moment, like a fleeting halo.

Silvia laughed at that, a high, half-hysterical titter.

“No,” she said, stopping abruptly. “No, I have not. I had no money and little help. But I have kept my girls fed, as best I could.”

“The girls. Pru and Patience, they’re with you? Here?” The excitement in his voice was unfeigned, and Rachel’s shoulders relaxed a bit. Perhaps he had been constrained from leaving, even though no longer a slave.

“Prudence, Patience, and little Chastity,” Silvia said, with a note in her voice that dared him to ask. “Yes, they are with me.”

He froze for a moment, looking closely at her face. Even from the back, Rachel could easily envision what Silvia’s expression must be: shame, defiance, hope … and fear.

“Chastity,” he repeated, slowly. “When was she born?”

“February the fourth, in ’78,” Silvia replied clearly, defiance uppermost, and Gabriel’s face hardened.

“I take it thee married again,” he said. “Is thy … husband … with thee?”

“I did not marry,” she said through her teeth.

He looked shocked. “But—but—”

“As I told thee. I kept my children fed.”

Rachel felt that she really must not be witness to such painful intimacies between the Hardmans. But a dried honeysuckle vine had attached itself to her clothing and her feet were sunk in the remains of dead tomato plants; the wind had died suddenly and there was no way she could move in the midst of this ghastly silence without detection.

“I see,” Gabriel said at last. His voice was colorless, and he stood for several moments, hands knotted before him, clearly making up his mind about something. His face changed as he thought, and the emotions of anger, pity, shame, and confusion smoothed into a hard surface of decision.