Into the World Page 4

  The commander was right. She could not do this job. Look what had happened to her beloved Etienne’s café after he died. It sank faster than a scuttled ship. If she had been capable of saving it, she would not be standing here now.

  Commander d’Entrecasteaux took a deep breath, his powdered cheeks flushed. He turned away from her. In profile, she saw the sharpness of his hooked nose, the angles of his forehead. His thin lips were drawn tight.

  ‘Leave us now, Huon,’ the commander said.

  Huon de Kermadec hesitated. She glanced at him, suddenly afraid to be left alone with the stern commander.

  ‘You must have many details to attend to aboard your own vessel,’ Commander d’Entrecasteaux said firmly to the younger man.

  Huon de Kermadec bowed to him in acknowledgement and winked at Marie-Louise before he closed the door behind him. It did not reassure her. Alone with the commander, she tried to calm her pounding heart. He gestured for her to draw up a chair beside him.

  Sitting so close, she noticed the spot marks of age beside his eyes, barely concealed by powder, and the loose flap of skin beneath his chin that the white ruff of his cravat did not hide. His wig was traditional in style, a short crop of tight grey curls tied crisply at his nape.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what of your father? Can he not provide for you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I cannot go back to him.’

  ‘What manner of man is he?’

  How could she explain? Her father had been a gardener once, that was true, but now he was a different type of man altogether. A wine merchant. A wealthy man. A burgher of Versailles. ‘I have dishonoured him,’ she said. ‘It is not safe for me to return.’

  Commander d’Entrecasteaux stared at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘There was a child.’

  Tears blurred her eyes as she hung her head. The commander was a nobleman, a military man—he would understand her father’s position. Peerages could be lost, generations ruined by the scandal. She heard her stepmother’s shrill voice: ‘Did anyone see you on the step?’ No, she could not go back to Versailles.

  The commander leaned back in his chair. For a long while he was silent. ‘I was duty-bound to resign my post on the staff of the Minister of Marine because of the scandal caused by the actions of my nephew. I was sent far from France.’

  Marie-Louise screwed her eyes tight shut. It was as she’d feared. He understood family dishonour and he had been burned by it. She would be set ashore. Her thoughts whirled. How would she survive?

  ‘Fortunately,’ the commander continued, ‘it meant I could return to the sea.’

  She looked up to see a smile of unexpected kindness. His stern face had softened.

  ‘Have you heard of the corsairs of the Barbary Coast?’ he asked.

  She nodded, confused. Of course she knew of the pirates who raided the Mediterranean towns for Christian slaves. Parents relied on these chilling tales. Behave, or the corsairs will come for you.

  ‘As a young man I served on frigates protecting French trading in the Aegean Sea. There I heard a story that has remained with me all these years.’ He leaned forwards in his chair. ‘A feudal lord had stolen away the daughter of a rich Italian merchant. Enraged, the merchant hired seven corsair ships to sail to the palace of the lord. The pirates raided at night, in a surprise attack, and the merchant gained entrance to the palace.’ He drew back. ‘But the merchant did not seek out the feudal lord for revenge. Instead, he found his innocent daughter and strangled her with his own bare hands.’

  The commander held out his hands as though contemplating the weight of wrath that might be contained in them. He shook his head.

  Marie-Louise held her breath. Did he understand? Did he see why she could not return to her father? A memory of her father’s rage forced itself into her mind. Her father was drunk. She saw her mother’s bone-white hand gripping the edge of the table. Saw her mother on her knees, her belly hanging low, broken shards of the brandy bottle still rocking on the floorboards. She had dropped his last bottle. Marie-Louise dragged her brothers out from beneath the kitchen table. In the last look that passed from mother to daughter Marie-Louise thought she saw gratitude, but at ten years old, would she know? Her mother’s teeth bit into her bottom lip to keep from crying out, to deny him that one last satisfaction. Marie-Louise had watched her father raise his cane and strike her mother’s back. Anger pulsed through her at the memory. I need your courage now, Maman, she thought.

  ‘All women know how to budget for their families,’ she spoke up, feigning a confidence she did not feel. ‘All women know how to make the soup stretch when meat is in short supply.’

  ‘But not on this scale.’

  ‘A matter of multiplication.’

  She thought she saw the commander struggling to hide a smile.

  ‘I cannot guarantee your safety,’ he said. ‘You would be at grave risk.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I expect you to perform your duties like any other member of our crew and I will treat you no differently from the men.’

  Hope began to swell inside her.

  ‘I need to depend on you.’ He leaned forwards, holding her gaze.

  ‘You can rely on me,’ she said, hoping that was true.

  ‘And you must never reveal your gender. On board the Recherche only I will know; not even the ship’s captain will be told. I cannot risk the jealousies—the divisions—that might arise should you make yourself known to the men.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Girardin,’ she said without pause. ‘Louis Girardin.’

  Chapter 7

  Port of Brest, 28 September 1791

  LOUIS GIRARDIN HELD UP THE LANTERN AND SLOWLY TWISTED about. Her cabin was narrow and crammed with wooden crates. It had no windows. She looked down into a stinking pail that had not been emptied for some days and the sight of it nearly made her weep with relief. She leaned her forehead against the door and turned its heavy key, hearing it lock with a reassuring solidity. She pulled the key out and held it tight in her fist.

  A tall man would have to stoop, but being just shy of five foot, she could straighten her backbone and walk freely. Girardin paced the length and counted to four. With crates of ship’s biscuit lining one wall, the width was not much more than her fingers could reach when she stretched out her arms, but the size of her room was not important. She stroked the sound planks that enclosed her space and obscured her from view.

  On the other side of her door the crew were sleeping. It worried her that the crewmen slept so close to her cabin. By day the area was a mess hall, but each night the tables were replaced by dozens of hammocks swinging from the rafters. Above her head was the gun deck with the galley in the bow and officers’ cabins in the stern. Beneath her feet was the hold, filled with barrels of fresh water, food and trinkets for exchange. She was yet to be shown the full extent of the ship. For now, she was thankful to be left alone in a place all her own.

  The solid shaft of the foremast ran down through one end of her cabin. She rested her back against it, feeling its strength like the trunk of a tree. Even without the sails raised she could feel it vibrate against her shoulderblades as somewhere high above the wind pushed against the yards. Tomorrow she would feel it creak and strain and shudder as the wind leaned into the sails, pushing them away.

  Her hammock was slung up high against one wall with a chest beneath to store her spare clothing. There was a desk with its chair pulled out, as though the previous steward had just stood up to greet her. She took off her aged jacket with its dull brass buttons and laid it over the back of the chair. It looked at home there. Opening the chest, she found the belongings of another man: a used cake of soap, a nub of tallow candle, a sewing kit, a Bible. She stared at them, feeling a vague sense of indecency to see them still there. It passed quickly. From the sewing kit, she cut a length of cord and tied the key around her neck. She had a locked door. She had privacy. Here, she could wash hersel
f and her bloodied rags without being seen. In this dark cocoon, she dared to hope she would be safe.

  Lifting up the greatcoat that lined the bottom of the chest, she recoiled from the reek of empty brandy bottles stashed beneath. The smell brought with it a vivid memory of her childhood. She saw the brandy bottle fall from her mother’s hand, the liquor splash across the kitchen floor, the scattered shards of broken glass rocking on the boards.

  Her father’s beating had brought on her mother’s labour that night. Still drunk, her father had banished all the children from the house. They sheltered in a toolshed. Her older sister sat cross-legged with the toddler upon her lap. Together they listened to their mother’s screams. Marie-Louise imagined her mother sweating and twisting in her sheets. ‘We have to do something,’ she hissed to her sister.

  But what? Clemence mouthed in response.

  As Marie-Louise crept from the shed, her toe clipped a spade leaning against the garden wall and she froze, listening as the metal scraped in a slow arc against the stone. She ran. Turning her back to the palace walls, she weaved through the tight streets, past the cathedral of Saint-Louis, searching for the house with flowers painted on the door. At night the streets of Versailles were owned by rats and dogs, the homeless and the drunks, but she ignored their shadows. She had no time to be afraid.

  At last she found the door with geraniums and yarrow painted on its wood and roused the midwife from her sleep. The old woman gathered her implements in a canvas bag. She plucked some bunches of dried herbs from her ceiling and suffered herself to be dragged from her home.

  All through their slow progress in the dark streets, Marie-Louise feared they would be too late. Nearing the wall of the palace garden, she listened hard for the sound of her mother’s birthing cries. She tugged the old woman along, almost slipping in her haste. When they reached her home, the house was black and silent. Marie-Louise was afraid to go inside, but the midwife pushed the kitchen door open.

  Her father had passed out, slumped sideways in his chair. The smell of brandy stained the air. The candle had burned down to a nub and Marie-Louise stared from the doorway at the glistening pool of wax beneath a glutting flame.

  ‘Stay here,’ the midwife commanded, and began to climb the stairs.

  Marie-Louise turned to the yard and saw the haunted faces of her brothers and sisters peering out from the shed. She slid down to the threshold and hooked her skinny arms around her bruised shins. All was silent.

  Sometime later, Marie-Louise heard the midwife creak back down each step. She remembered the bone-hard squeeze of the old woman’s hand on her shoulder and the hopelessness in the shake of her head.

  Louis Girardin kicked the chest away from her and the brandy bottles shifted, clinking and chiming like bells in the wind. Tomorrow she would pitch them over the side of the ship. This was not the time to dwell on her past. She kicked the chest again and the lid slammed shut.

  Chapter 8

  Port of Brest, 29 September 1791

  THE CREW OF THE RECHERCHE CROWDED THE DECK TO WAVE farewell to France. Louis Girardin joined them, taking her place on the forecastle deck in the bow. On shore, there was fanfare and celebration to launch the rescue mission. Girardin heard drums and trumpets and saw musicians marching along the quay. She saw tricolour banners and flags of red, white and blue proudly displayed alongside the King’s white Bourbon flag. Naval regiments came out to salute them. Cannons boomed. All of Brest must have come to wish them well. The expedition had raised the spirits of the town, and she wondered if the families of La Pérouse’s men were among this crowd, watching them cast off. She felt the hopes of the wives and mothers, who had thought never to see their husbands and sons again. We will bring them home, she promised them silently.

  The ropes binding ship to shore were quickly looped undone and thrown back to the ship. Girardin gripped the rail and felt the liquid sensation of the earth sliding beneath her. A gap appeared between the wharf and the ship as men in rowboats towed the frigates out from the docks. The murky water stretched out between her and the shore, the gap becoming further than she could leap. The crowd roared louder. Women waved handkerchiefs. Children skipped like rats along the quay, running after the ships. Her heart lurched. Wait, she wanted to cry out to them, I am not ready! I am not ready to leave.

  A mass of ropes writhed across the deck and Girardin was afraid to move lest they snag her feet. Her knees trembled. The bosun called commands and the crew responded in a singsong way, with words she barely recognised as her own language. Sailors tugged on the ropes to hoist the sails.

  ‘Make fast!’ came the command as the canvas rolled down with a solid thwap, the sound of wet washing slapped by the wind. The ship surged with the choppy waves. Girardin bent her knees as the deck shifted beneath her and her stomach rolled uneasily.

  Captain Kermadec’s ship, the Espérance, was already out in the middle of the bay, surrounded by an entourage of smaller boats sailing alongside to farewell her. Marie-Louise wished that she had seen him before they had sailed. His reassuring smile might have settled her nerves. This first leg of their journey was to be a short one. First stop Tenerife in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa. Perhaps he would seek her out there. But for now, she had to find her own courage.

  To think, when she was seventeen she had begged her father to let her travel with him to the vineyards of the Mediterranean. By then Jean Girardin was a successful wine merchant, and had long since left the gardens of Versailles behind. After her mother’s death, her father had married the widow of a wine merchant and the family moved into a larger home in a better neighbourhood. She remembered being presented to her new stepmother along with her brothers and sisters, all lined up in decreasing order of size. Then, she had been just tall enough to see out a window overlooking a courtyard filled with barrels. Looking down into that walled courtyard for the first time, she had felt certain there would be no escape.

  ‘Send me with your journeyman,’ she had begged her father. ‘You know the travel aggravates your gout.’

  ‘No daughter of mine will be seen in a common coach!’ Jean tossed the last of his cases at the carriage driver. ‘I didn’t work myself out of the compost heaps of the royal gardens to have my daughter bring down our family name. The only women who travel are prostitutes and actresses! Do you want people to talk of you like that?’

  ‘No, Papa,’ she had whispered.

  The town of Brest faded into haze. The entourage of boats had returned to shore, leaving only the two frigates under full sail, heading out to the horizon. I am travelling now, Papa, she thought. I am travelling as far away from you as I can.

  But as the land retreated behind them, her doubts rose. She rubbed the raised welt underneath her forearm. The route back to her son had been broken by this stretch of water. If she stepped off this ship, she would plummet to the sea floor. They were no longer linked by the same piece of solid earth. They were cast adrift from one another and she was the one floating away.

  The sails snapped as they filled with the freshening wind and the ship gained pace, rising and falling on the waves. As the coast fell further and further behind, she began to panic, convinced she had no hope of returning for her son. Mocking voices filled her head. What kind of mother would run away like that? Doesn’t deserve to be one. Worthless bitch. The voices knew her darkest thoughts. Even the tiniest blackbird will launch itself against the circling hawk, not flee and leave its young to be torn to pieces.

  Oh God, she thought, I am going to be sick. Leaning out over the side of the ship, a stream of vomit poured from her. She coughed and spat, her throat burning. The ship rocked again and another gush of vomit rushed from her. Whether the pitch of the waves or her guilt had overturned her stomach, she could not say.

  She wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve. Oh Lord, help me, she prayed even though she knew He would not listen to her. What have I done?

  Girardin clutched a wooden pail to her chest as she reported to
the galley. Two men watched her sidle past the coal-black beast of an oven in the centre of the space. She steadied herself against the benches built into the bow of the ship that served as their kitchen. At her feet, water sloshed in a pail as the bow surged and fell with the waves. Girardin held her bucket tighter. What a sight I must look to these men, she thought. How could Louis Girardin be disguise enough to fool them at such close quarters? A look of incredulity passed between the head chef, Thomas Besnard, and his assistant, a leek-limbed youth named Luc.

  ‘Not been at sea much, then?’ Besnard nodded at the pail.

  She shook her head, not daring to trust her voice.

  ‘Where did they find you?’ he asked. ‘Never seen a ship’s steward look so feeble.’ His sly gaze slid all over her.

  She felt the queasiness of her stomach return, the anxious rolling of her gut.

  ‘Hope you’re better than the last one.’ Besnard looked at her directly, his eyes made small and piggish by the fullness of his face. ‘Steward was a drunk. Fell off the ship at port and drowned.’ He laughed, a hog-like snort.

  She swallowed the urge to vomit and carefully set down her pail, drawing her spine up straight. If he meant to intimidate her by his disregard for the steward’s life, she would not give him the satisfaction. Yet Captain Kermadec had not mentioned that the sudden death of the steward had allowed her this berth. It was not an auspicious start.

  It fell to Besnard to show her the ship and its storerooms. She followed him, keeping her eyes trained on the long braid hanging down his back. He was a big man with a lopsided walk that made his braid swing like a pendulum. She found its motion ominous.

  Beyond the galley were gangways on either side of the ship that joined the forecastle deck to the quarterdeck, leaving the centre of the ship open to the sky. Animal pens had been constructed beneath the gangways of the gun deck, and she saw cows wedged between cannons. She breathed the manure and greased-wool scent of the sheep. The animals pressed back into the dark as she passed, their eyes wary. A kid goat bleated beneath its mother’s legs and Girardin turned her face away.