Chapter Text
Matthieu begged the Virgin to drown him with the blue cloak of her waters as the shock of the cold washed away the sensation of pain. Silvery bubbles burst from his mouth. The rush of water curled around his feet as he disturbed the current. His St. Laurence was his heart, and he wanted to bleed away into it, dissolve into the water and wash away into the sea. The dark shadow of the small river ship passed over his head. He sank deeper still and hoped it was his soul he felt sliding away from his body like warmth when winter set in.
As he did, the voices of thousands faded from his mind, and he hoped he would stay dead this time. The Fille du Roi had filled the church pews everywhere with the pitter-patter of little feet and the babble of baby French, and that faded from him too. He thought he might miss them the most, the children who had once promised to be his future. But their faces and voices faded the same as the farmers in homespun who dragged their ploughs through the still, cold earth.
He couldn't hear the voyageurs' music, belted out as they paddled their canoes and sang the steady songs that kept their rhyme in time as they brought the pelts to port. Countless times when the economy was good, he had gone to the river one in a crew of many, strong enough to portage and small enough to kneel in the canoe. Men would just consider him another boy if he couldn't navigate these places as well as any man alive.
He was good luck on the river runs, known to guide his party better than the oldest captains because the rivers ran through his body as if they were his own veins. But for every trip west, he had to come east once more, following the rivers home to his bustling market heart in Montreal and Quebec City. Every year he paddled away, he had to paddle home and land at the docks. And every year, the furring season would end, and he would take his pay. And every year, he was alone. Always alone. Matthieu waited on the docks for François to come by way of the sea. François had never stayed on the docks for Matthieu to come by the St. Laurence.
Men who had ruffled his hair all along the journey as if he were their kin were every year gone on the docks without a thought for him. Clasped close by wives and brothers and sisters and parents and children, they all but forgot he was there.
So every year, he stepped out of the canoe with his pack. And every year, Mathieu stood there with nought save the rotting docks creaking below his feet for a welcome home. As he did, Matthieu tried to remember he had a father somewhere over the sea. He tried to remember that he had a brother who loved him. He tried to remember being held and being loved by them the way these mothers and wives and fathers and brothers love the men who, only a day before, had felt as kin to him. But Papa's love had never crossed the ocean as well as François thought it had, and now it was gone. All vanished. It had disappeared if it was ever there at all. Water filled his lungs, and it was a relief.
The next thing he knew, he was warm. It took a moment to figure out why but there was a crackling fire, and he was dressed in clean, warm clothes, and the itch of filth was gone from his hair and skin. Startled, he realized he was propped up in a bed, with clean sheets and a pile of blankets and a sheepskin drawn over his body. He was wrapped up well under that, too, some sort of overly large woollen plaid blanket around his shoulders. So much time had passed since he had been properly dry and warm he almost didn't recognize the feeling. Matthieu stared at his surroundings. The flames swirled in the hearth, and the bed was in a pride of place in a quiet parlour. There was a cabinet of china plates, a tea table and other trappings of the wealthy. Everything was so bright and cheerful Mattieu didn't have it in him to sit up properly. The well-to-do white-washed walled home had a plank floor and proper lace curtains. Matthieu wanted to cry just looking at it after so long in the cold and damp. Someone had drawn up a velvet upholstered and overstuffed wingback chair next to the bed.
"There you are, lad," Alasdair appeared in the doorway from another room. He'd shaven since Mathieu had last seen him and was dressed in a finely woven waistcoat and a shirt so white and well bleached Matthieu blinked. Everything was so bright here. Wherever here was.
"Awake at last," Alasdair said.
Matthieu stared at him, bewildered. The sight of his surroundings frightened him. He had the vague notion he going to be hung if he stayed here in this beautiful English house. Jack-knifing up, Matthieu made to swing off the bed and run from that beautiful, cheerful place because if he wasn't dead, then he was in trouble. But the beautiful room spun as he tried to make his legs work, and it was with a bolt of horror as he realized just how weak he felt. A solid, warm arm was suddenly around him and pushed him gently back onto what Matthieu learned was a mound of cushions behind his back. He coughed painfully until something eased in his chest, and he had to relax into the cushions because he was boneless.
"Sorry, lad, I didn't mean to frighten you," Alasdair said, offering him water out of a porcelain cup. The thick brogue, now speaking French, was bizarrely soothing. Matthieu didn't know why, but the water and the words made the wash of anxiety drain from his body, and he felt faint even already on his back.
Alasdair frowned at him. "Easy, now, easy,"
"I'm alive?" He whispered.
"Aye," Alasdair said, with a brief, wan smile. "You're alive, lad. Weak, but alive,"
"Where am I?"
"Halifax," Alasdair said. "I've done my best to see to ye, which was a haul considering you're no' exactly braw,"
Matthew didn't know what 'braw' was, but the shock still flashed through him, even if he was too drained to do anything about it. "Why?"
Alasdair chuckled. "Aye, as it seems you're going to live, lad. You might not want to, but your people do. This city is yours now, and don't tell me ye can't hear 'em calling,"
"They're so far away," Matt muttered. The big bright room, the sudden reminder of survival. It was too much. He usually heard the musical roar of his existence. There should be church bells and chatter, evidence of life when he dies and revives, but now there was only the rush of his own breath. Maybe the call of his name, Canada, said in the English's odd and terribly flat way. That was too much, too, and he felt everything in his body spasm with it. It stuck in his chest like a piece of shrapnel, and the pain of it left him breathless.
"They sound far away, and it feels as if it doesnae matter anymore. But it does matter, lad," Alasdair said. Though the man's smile was gone, and Matthieu had to close his eyes against the horror of hope. That pain in his chest was higher now, louder and burned fiercely like someone was stoking the fire. He didn't like it, and he didn't want the desire to live.
"It hurts," He said, and he didn't know why. He knew better than to speak such things aloud. There was nothing so dull to others as his suffering. Still, he was so warm and the closest to comfortable he might have ever been and so very tired it slid out of him like an exhale.
"Ah, lad, haven't a clue of what hurting is yet," Alasdair said sharply. Matthieu drew back, his eyes had rapidly filled with tears, and he had to turn away into the pillows. So much of him was incredibly grateful to be clean and blessedly warm now.
There was still his body, though. The cuts on his scalp from the shears, and the jagged edges of his curls and the pain in his body from the long years of war. Every muscle was stretched too tightly, every joint felt hot and swollen, and his chest still hurt so badly.
Alasdair had been soft with him before, but now he had made Matthieu feel like a reproached child, the same extra mouth to feed that refugee families had loathed having around, the same troublesome burden to the soldiers he had marched with. It reminded him he was small and all but worthless. Matthieu was the embodiment of disappointment itself. To Montcalm, when he had lived, and all of France before and after be was nothing. He buried his face in the cushions and curled away. If all of that wasn't a clue as to what suffering was, he was just a blip of history who didn't deserve to live.
"You're just a wee welp who can't decide if he wants to live. Your people do. Don't tell me you can't hear 'em calling," Alasdair said and sounded softer this time, but the damage was done.
Matthieu wished Alasdair would have just let him drown, let him slide into the river and drift from this life. What was the point if the horror so far hadn't been anything like real pain and was not like anything he would face if he grew to manhood? He strained to listen for the words of French he wanted to hear. His home, his people. If they were there, he could hardly feel them.
"They're so far away," He murmured.
"I know, lad," Alasdair said like he regretted something. "God knows I do. But you have to want it. You have to let them love you, and you have to what to be what you are,"
"Why do you care?" Matthieu snapped even as a wave of dizziness overcame him. He had hoped Alasdair would give him the dignity of a clean death. But the man wasn't his father or relation. Just then, all he was to Matthieu was the man who would not grant him the mercy of rest. "You should have left me in the river or let the redcoats starve me in that fucking basement. Why are you making me suffer? They're going to force all my people back to France, and I'm going to die anyway," Rest. He only wanted rest, to make everything whispering in his head and hurting in his chest cease its battering of him.
"This city is your own lad. There's no reason for you to die,"
"There's no reason for me to live," Matthew said and had to close his eyes against the bright, cheerful room. Alasdair said something more, but breathing hurt too much to respond now. All that wasn't suffering? He could still feel in his body where he'd been lashed and shot and shackled and starved, and it wasn't enough suffering? Then he should have died anyway, weak waste of space that he was. He was so used to the hollow, sick feeling in his stomach now, the sense of having icicles for bones under his too hot flesh, that he didn't even care when the wave of cold dizziness crept over him again. He fell into feverish sleep and, as he had for every night for the months since the treaty declaring him worthless had been announced, wished with everything he had that he would not wake.
Alasdair knew he had made a mistake the second he reproached the boy for the single two-word complaint that had slid out of him like a prayer admitting pain to God. He had meant to tell the boy things could have been far worse, to cheer him and buck morale up a bit. But before he could, the lad had turned over and gone to sleep. As he had for two days since Alasdair had hauled him out of the river, he slid out of feverish sleep all day, shivering into the cushions. Even when his temperature rose and he became clammy, the lad didn't kick off the layers, only coughed fitfully when he shivered. He only woke properly to stare at the ceiling with dead eyes far too old for his physical age as he fought to recover his breath.
At first, the boy refused porridge but then water. When Alasdair couldn't rouse him, he panicked, fetched, and sat by the bed all night. Morning came in a fit of worry. Alasdair couldn't eat the cold breakfast the landlady sent over or even think about tea. He didn't know what to do with the feeling. With his heart in his throat and wound like a spring, Alasdair heaped another armful of wood onto the fireplace, fetched his bible from the trunk and sat on the edge of the bed to lift Matthew to lean against him. He thanked the careless God he didn't believe in when the boy stirred, making the soft distressed sounds of childhood illness and a pit of fury and grief opened in Alasdair's stomach like a wound. It ripped like stitches when the boy automatically snuggled against him, seeking warmth and safety. Everything hurt like salt in the wound when Matthews's eyes opened, and he tugged himself away, whimpering an apology even as his eyes only fluttered open before shutting again. He turned on his side to curl as close to the fire as he could.
The stab of hurt retreated to sorrow, and Alasdair scooped the boy to his breast, lifting the entirety of his great spare plaid around them when the lad shivered. Holding Matthew was like holding a lit brazier of coals even after the willow bark had settled his fever lower. Hands in the boy's hair, he ran fingers through the uneven curls of hair that had reappeared upon being washed. They were the colour of Hibernian gold, the precious metal that his sister pulled from the earth and had worn in torcs and used to close her cloaks before Arthur's ambition darkened the doorstep of her island. It was lighter than the fox pelt red curls Alasdair and Bridgid shared or Alfred's wheat waves but richer and much prettier than either Francis' or Arthur's. The lad was more bonny than braw, but what did that matter so long as he lived. Arthur had claimed the lad as early as Francis, and he was obviously Alfred's brother. Alasdair might not be the lad's father but wasn't uncle was near enough? His mind made up, he roused the boy.
This bible had been packed with Matthew in mind. Nearly a hundred and thirty years earlier, the boy had scribbled in the margins of the pages in the gospel. By candlelight, Matthew had scratched out letters in a small child's clumsy handwriting. Paper had been terribly rare in the little colony, so he had taught Matthew the spellings of English in every spare corner. The lad had written little repetitions of English verse, interspersed with round little birds in varying stages of taking flight. Even as little more than a bairn, it was clear Matthew was terribly clever. Alasdair thumbed a sparrow perched on the header and read some of the first English words Matthew had ever written as a wean. _God commanded, honour thy father and mother. May he that does forsaketh a parent suffer death._ Christ, he cursed. Of all the things to have taught children with shyte parents.
"Come here," He said, though he already held the boy. "Come here and listen to me,"
Confused, feverish eyes blinked up at him, owlish and painfully young. Alasdair had long since placed any thoughts of fatherhood from his mind. There were a million or more scattered souls that called themselves Scottish. That had been enough. More than enough. But he only felt whole as he lifted the boy's limp, clammy hand to the words on the page and pointed one pale finger to a specific piece of text.
"You wrote that," He said.
"You kept that?" Matthew rasped in breathless French, his grey fingertips following the line of child's writing before it fell. He's weak, that Doctor had said. But Alasdair sees now it was less weakness than emptiness, exhaustion and dereliction of what might have been a father's only duty in the world. Hopelessness, or at least the lad's fighting of hope, was more dangerous than any disease. Francis' abandonment had killed many people after Culloden. Many perished of starvation, but the lack of hope had killed just as many.
Abandoned by the French, after Bonny Prince Charlie's rising Alasdair had never had an option but to worm its way back into England's good graces after Arthur had scooped his soul from him. Abandoned, the poor bairn in his arms had no choice but to do the same. Hopefully, there was a soul to salvage. Alasdair swallowed. Derelict ships are the responsibility of the salvager, he knows because Arthur's entire world was seagoing. He clasped Matthew to him.
"Aye," Alasdair said. "I did," He buried his nose in Matthew's remaining curls and held him. The wound in his chest where the suffering of children cut him may as well have been bleeding. He had so wanted children of his own, and he has loved Francis. And here was a motherless child now adrift in the world.
"For God's sake, lad, you're so loved,"
Matthew looked up sharply, and he looked so like a grown man who knew he was being lied to instead of a boy who needed tending to that Alasdair had to breathe in and out three times to continue without wanting to shout at God.
"I'm not your Papa," Alasdair said, and tender as he knew how, held the boy tight to him. "But listen to me lad, I'd have ye live. And be well. And I'll not leave ye till you're hale, understand me? You're so bloody loved. Your father loves you, and that surly bastard is kin to me, and so are you then. Do you understand me? You dear wee thing, do you understand?"
There was a nod, and more shivering and a tiny sound he might not have recognized as the boy twisted to bury his face in Alasdair's waistcoat if it hadn't been for the wave of force that rolled up the wean from his back, a sob half lost in a cough.
"You don't want me," Matthew said in hitching French. Alasdair held tighter Matthew as he wheezed at the end of the sentence. "You'll just sink gold in me and lose it, and I'll disappoint. I always disappoint. There's no point,"
"You think I give a shyte about my brother's gold, lad?" Alasdair said, even though he very much did. But it was strange, how little it meant compared to the lad in front of him. He had always wanted weans, and now one was crying on him, who needed him. "Because I don't,"
"I've tried," Came the boy's half-smothered words and they dissolved into more tears. "I've tried, and I've tried, and I've tried—"
"I ken, "Alasdair said and rocked him. "I ken you couldn't have done anything else. You couldn't have fought harder, lad. You've been so brave. So very brave,"
"It's never enough," He whimpered. "I'm not enough!"
"You're enough," Alasdair said automatically. He might never forgive Francis for the grief and shuddering shame that this child was trying to heave from his body in hiccoughed sobs.
The tears and shuddering came anew like Alasdair had pulled some cork and upturned the boy's soul to spill out on the bed. Alasdair hated the entire world just then. He hated Francis for giving up, Arthur for not giving up, God for letting children baptized in the name of his holy son suffer so.
Eventually, there was no choice but to gather Matthew's face in his hands and look at him. He had Francis' hair and delicate features, but his eyes were the dark grey of a churning sea, only just blue. Tearful, bloodshot and sunken into the boy's face, he was a pitiful thing to behold. It didn't seem to matter, though. At that moment, Alasdair might have traded Arthur's entire empire just to cease Matthew's crying.
"Listen well, lad. You'll live and be hale again," He said and thumbed more tears away. "You'll be right, it'll be all right, and I'll be here."
He thought about when Matthew was little more than a baby, a tiny child that toddled around on little legs less often than he was held on one woman's hip or another. When the snow was deep, and the lad had gotten over Alasdair being a stranger, he'd learned to tug on the tail of his coat and extend tiny little hands until he was scooped up to Alasdair's chest. Where Alfred plunged intrepid and unfailing through the snow, Matthew didn't mind being tucked in tight and carried. The boy was taller now, not so round in the face, but
Alasdair wrapped him in his great plaid and the blankets and held him tight to his chest.
Like he was fighting hope, Matthew stared at him, teary but firmer now.
"You can't stay forever," He said, already planning for another abandonment. Alasdair wanted to crack Francis into stone.
"That's true," Alasdair said. "But it's not just me. There's Arthur and our other siblings. And even on this side of the sea, you have Alfred."
He thinks about Arthur. Their conflict, the things they've done to each other. He thinks about the blood spilt and borders skirmished, and he thinks about the grief of the boy curled tight to him. He thinks about this boy who was the lesser of the two children to appear on this continent.
"You always have your brother. He loves you so very much," Alasdair said. "Do you remember when one of the treaties was being hashed out, and you and Alfred were so very wee, and we had that little house in Boston for almost a year?"
The boy nodded weakly and squinted up to ask, "With the apple trees?"
"With the apple trees," Alasdair confirmed, rocking Matthew gently.
"Alfred carried me with him. Up the branches," The boy pressed his face harder into Alasdair's chest and clenched his fist in the blankets as if the happy memory hurt him.
"You made stewed apples. And baked apples," Alasdair said, running a hand in circles down his back.
"Alfred liked baked apples," Matthew coughed again, sucked in air through his teeth, and his hands shook, and tears came anew. When he had enough air, he spoke after a long moment, and his voice was painful to listen to but full of hope. "Does this mean Alfred and I are brothers again?"
"I think it does, lad," Alasdair said, one hand in the lad's hair. "And you'll be fine and fed, and you'll grow up strong, and you'll have your brother,"
"Does he—" There's the sound of a painful swallow. "Does he hate me?"
"Hate you?"
"We just fought a war," Matthew said. "I shot him,"
"Whats a musket ball on a lad that broad?" Alasdair snorted fondly. "I'm sure he hardly noticed,"
There was a quick flash of a smile from Matthew. Alasdair could feel the twitch of his face against his shirt.
"You don't think he's angry?"
"Lad, if he was, your brother doesn't have the attention to remember it,"