I trained Sam’s glass on it for longer than was prudent, given the necessity of concealing the plan forming itself in my thoughts. When Sam questioned me I told him not to mention to any of my men how long I had considered the seemingly insignificant spot.

So I had a good long look, that first time, at that beach at L’Anse au Foulon. I did not even write to my mother about it. I was alone with the river, and something in that dark little cove called out to me—it was a strange, comforting call of victory and shadow.

When Sam and I got back to our camp at Montmorency the men could sense my departure from their ways of thinking. The more they mistrusted me, the more I wanted to scout around the unguarded and unremarked Foulon again, by myself, to tread its bleak stones with exquisite uncertainty and make a plan.

My men complained about the secrecy of my plans. They thought it was vacillation. Sam Holland told me they likened my indecision to the tide that twice daily helped the Saint Lawrence render our fortunes unknowable. The more I secretly considered the Foulon the less my men believed in me. The harder Brigadier Murray ached for me to send him upriver, the less I agreed, given that the naval support we had up there seemed to be falling apart. I wasn’t sure what was going on up there. I did not mind being honest about this. But my men would have preferred bombastic lies.

“What do you reckon are our chances if we attack?” Murray demanded.

“I can’t presume to know a sum. Given the wind, the unprofessional tactics of our enemy and their resulting unpredictability…”

“Can you not give us a single definitive word?” Brigadier Jim Gibson poised his pen to pin down my answer.

“Infallibly…” I paused.

Murray rolled his eyes and Gibson brightened.

I faltered. “Probably…”

Brigadier Townshend hauled out his sketchbook and moved around to my side so he could nip in the bud any illusions posterity might spread about the strength of my chin.

I did not muster the strength—or was it the weakness? I can’t always tell—to utter these words I hold privately within my heart:

Uncertainty is my mistress.

Risk is her middle name.

And in truth, once I fastened my mind on the Foulon, the Saint Lawrence River altered.

She allowed me to plan and dream, and no longer drowned my thoughts in her flow. She gave me assent. The wind and the river’s assent separated me even more from my men. I held no council of war. The river knew I’d go to the Foulon once more, alone.