‘But later,’ I said. ‘Later on when you knew me. You could have told me then! And the Johnsons too. We know you, Elsie. We . . .’ I stumbled over the words a bit, because I meant them so much, ‘we love you. We know you could never be a French spy!’
Elsie stared at me, the firelight flickering on her pale face, tears glinting on her cheeks.
‘But do you not see?’ said that strange musical voice that somehow was exactly right for Elsie. ‘I was a spy, Barney. A French spy, sent to spy upon the colony.’
CHAPTER 7
Spies Across the Ocean
I stared at her. Elsie. My Elsie. ‘You . . . you can’t be a spy.’
‘What is my name, Barney?’ she asked me softly, her eyes so sad I wanted to hold her and never let her go.
‘Elsie,’ I began, then shook my head.
‘What is your real name?’ I asked slowly. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Elsie was Elsie. But still I had to know.
‘Elsie,’ said Elsie. ‘That is all I want to be. But once upon a time my name was Jeanne.’
‘And you came on Captain la Pérouse’s expedition?’
She nodded.
‘But no women were allowed on French ships.’
Elsie looked at her hands in her lap. ‘May I tell you a story? A long story? The story of how I came to be a spy?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I picked up one of the tankards of tea as she began to cough and held it up to her. She sipped it, then put it down.
‘I did not plan to be a spy. My story begins with a love of plants, new plants and new ways that plants can be used or grown. It starts a very long time ago, with a woman called Jeanne Baré. Jeanne is my great-aunt, or was, for I do not know if she is still alive after all this time and the revolution. But I hope she may be.’
Elsie glanced out the window, as if the view of the harbour’s winter grey might let her see all the way to France. I don’t think any of us in the colony ever grew used to never knowing what had happened back at home — if grandparents had died or babies had been born, or even if the king had gone mad again, or whether we were at war with the French or Dutch. At least I had no one back in England to worry about. Ma hadn’t even been one of a gang of thieves. It had just been me and her.
But Elsie was still speaking. It was so good to hear her speak, but frightening too. Would this story take her away from me? Or bring us closer?
‘Great-Aunt Jeanne’s mother and grandmother had taught her the ways of plants, herbs to help with sickness, to make food good, to be woven into different kinds of cloth, or grown just for their beauty. This is knowledge passed down in our family.’ Elsie’s voice became different, even more musical, as she spoke. Her eyes watched the fire now, or possibly a place and time a long way away.
‘My great-aunt was not an aristocrat, not rich. But ours was a good farm, made all the better by the knowledge of its women, their knowledge of plants and herbs, what would cure a sheep or fatten a pig or heal a lame dog, how to tell when the apple trees would set good fruit or if next season would be poor, and so the hay would need to be saved for only the best stock to survive.
‘My great-aunt Jeanne was very beautiful when she was young, they said.’
So are you, I thought.
‘One day, when Jeanne was collecting herbs, she met a young nobleman, Philibert de Commerçon. His wife had died, and he mourned, for he had loved his wife deeply. But he loved the knowledge of plants too. He saw the armful of weeds in Jeanne’s arms and asked what she planned to do with them. She told him, and he asked more questions, and then they met again . . .
‘They taught each other, the farm girl and the aristocratic botanist. He taught her the knowledge from books. She showed him plants, the knowledge passed from woman to woman. At last she went to live in his château, to teach his children too.
‘And then Philibert was offered the greatest adventure a man could have: the chance to sail around the world with Captain Bougainville as a botanist, to find new worlds, new plants.
‘He must say yes! But Philibert could not leave Jeanne. And Jeanne knew even more about botany than he did. She might discover even more on the expedition, this farm girl he loved.
‘And so they planned. The day before the ship sailed, Philibert arranged for his ship’s servant to leave, on the excuse he was needed at home. Jeanne dressed as a man, climbed the gangplank and asked to see the captain, claiming to be a new servant for the “young botanist” on the voyage, a servant who could recognise plants and draw and paint them. The captain accepted.
‘Jeanne became Jean. She wore men’s clothes and padded and bound herself to hide that she was a woman. She shared Philibert’s cabin. She spent as little time as she could with the men, using a chamberpot instead of the plank up on the deck, cooking their food on a charcoal brazier in the cabin, a small world of two in the tiny universe that was the ship.
‘The expedition crossed the world. It was Jeanne who described the bright blooms in Brazil — it is not a true flower — that bear the name bougainvillea. It was she who collected the new plants and painted them and pressed them. And their love grew even stronger, these two botanists who shared not just that extraordinary voyage, but so much discovery and wonderment.
‘But despite all their care, by the time the ship reached Tahiti the crew had guessed Jeanne’s secret. Captain Bougainville was angry, for they had broken the king’s law. But he also knew how much Jeanne had discovered, how much knowledge they owed to her, how she had carried baggage and helped load fresh water and food as well as any man. He liked her and respected her, despite her crime.
‘Jeanne had to stay in the cabin and never come out, until the expedition reached the French colony at Mauritius. She and Philibert were put ashore there, with the excuse that Philibert was needed to assist the governor. It was an honourable excuse, to hide Jeanne’s secret, for her sake and Philibert’s, and Captain Bougainville’s too, so the French authorities need not admit officially that a woman had been aboard.’
Elsie was silent so long that eventually I asked, ‘Were Philibert and Jeanne happy at Mauritius?’
She nodded. ‘Very happy, I think, for seven years. They married and had a baby. Then Philibert died. And later Jeanne married a French soldier. She came back to France in 1774. Jeanne was the first woman to travel around the world, the first botanist ever to discover so many new species, long before your English Mr Banks. But it must be secret. She had defied the edict of the king.
‘Philibert’s family treated her as their daughter and gave her money to live well. The French navy gave her a pension of two hundred livres each year to reward her for her work. But all she had done still had to be kept secret, known only to the crew and the scientists who read about her discoveries and saw the dried specimens she had collected and studied for her drawings.
‘But Jeanne’s family knew her secret, of course. My mother listened to her aunt Jeanne’s stories, over and over. She loved plants too, and she loved her aunt. I think even as a child, Maman longed to do just what Great-Aunt Jeanne had done, to travel the world to see new lands, new plants and to bring the knowledge home, so it could be used for all mankind.
‘And so my mother married a man who loved plants, just like her aunt had done, a scientist, a botanist, a man of good family who loved her not just for her beauty but because she shared the way he saw the world. And she called her daughter Jeanne, after her aunt.
‘They were happy,’ said Elsie softly. ‘That is my earliest memory of Maman and Papa. They stand looking at a bush, but I am too small and cannot see its flowers. So Papa lifts me in his arms, and Maman picks a leaf and shows me the veins where sap flows in a plant like blood does in a person, how it is drawn up from the roots.
‘Other little girls played with dolls, but Maman and Papa gave me a flower press so I might dry the plants and flowers I collected. Every day we walked in the garden or in the woods, talking, finding, laughing.
‘And then everything changed. I think
now my parents must have heard of la Pérouse’s new expedition long before it sailed. I remember Maman crying and discussions by the fire, private ones that stopped when anyone else came near.
‘And then we moved to a new house, away from any village, away from our family and all who knew us. And suddenly I must put my dresses away and wear boy clothes and dress my hair like a boy too. I must use a new name: Jean.
‘I was four years old. I did not question what Maman and Papa told me to do. Their world was the only one I knew. I did not question why Maman wore men’s clothes now too, why I must call her Oncle, not Maman.
‘And so months later we left our new home and walked up the gangplank of a ship and into a small and smelly cabin. But Maman and Papa told me not to be afraid, for we were going on the greatest adventure the world had ever known.’
‘To spy on the English?’ I asked.
Elsie looked shocked. ‘No! Maman and Papa were scientists! La Pérouse had orders to visit new countries and make portraits of the natives and plants. We had two ships, and one hundred and fourteen men . . . or one hundred and twelve, and me and Maman. There was an astronomer and mathematician, a geologist, botanists, a physicist, three naturalists and three illustrators. Even the priests, our chaplains, were scientists. Our discoveries would be for everyone who would read about them, even the English scientists. La Pérouse so admired your James Cook. He longed to explore the lands of the Pacific too.
‘My father was one of the expedition’s botanists. To the rest of the crew Maman was his servant, but one who knew how to draw plants and press specimens too, and I was his cabin boy, his servant’s nephew.’
She looked at me. ‘I do not know if the captain knew my mother was a woman. I think, perhaps, he did, for Great-Aunt Jeanne’s fame among the navy scientists was great. Perhaps he thought that the niece of the great Jeanne Baré might make his name as famous as Captain Bougainville’s.’
She stopped talking, and seconds later Maggie poked her head in and gave me a pretty smile. ‘Would you like more tea, Mr Barney? I’ll just put another log on the fire too.’
‘No more tea, thank you.’ Elsie still had half her tankard, enough to soothe her coughing for a while. I waited till Maggie had shut the door behind her.
‘Was it very bad on the ship?’ I asked. I thought of the nine months of horror on my voyage here, locked in the dark with the women convicts, the stinking swell of water that seeped through the hull and sploshed around us, the wild lurches in the storm, clinging to the bunk and Ma.
To my surprise Elsie smiled. ‘It was an adventure,’ she said simply. ‘My jobs were to collect the food from the galley for Maman to cook, or more coke for the brazier she used as a stove and which kept us warm. I emptied our chamberpot and helped Maman wash and air our clothes and bedding. But all that was almost like what I had been doing back at home. Maman and Papa had planned it well.
‘Oh, it was so wonderful. Watching sea birds and new lands through the porthole or up on deck. Papa reading to me and Maman, all of us on his bed. Maman and I had truckle beds in the cabin, just as a real servant and cabin boy would have had. The other scientists accepted that Papa would be working, drawing, making notes, that his servant and cabin boy would help him.
‘They did not think it strange that a scientist would stand on deck with a servant’s nephew, explaining how an albatross soars across the world, how you can see the curve of the horizon that shows the world is round, the changing of the stars as you sail from north to south and say farewell to the fixed North Star.’ She met my eyes. ‘There was so much love of knowledge on that ship. Every single man took so much joy in the many wonders of creation and our charge to find new ones. The cabin was small, the smell was bad, the food,’ she shrugged, ‘often not good, but we had brought our own stores, dried fruits and meats, and herb and vegetable soups that Maman had dried for us; she knew how to make poor things taste good with herbs.’
‘So do you,’ I said, thinking of her soups and cheeses.
‘Maman taught me well,’ she said quietly.
‘And so you came to New South Wales.’
Elsie shook her head. ‘We never planned to come to New South Wales. We travelled first to Brazil and then to California, and studied plants there and stayed at the Spanish missions. Oh, Barney, I wish I could show you the things I saw! I wish I still had my drawings and Papa’s and Maman’s! But slowly things became . . . not so good.’
She paused to cough, to sip her tea. ‘We sailed far north, into the snow, where rivers of ice come down to the sea. One giant iceberg peeled off from the rest. I . . . I will never forget it. Never can forget it. It was as if a mountain moved. It was a mountain, moving slowly at first, then crashing down.
‘We anchored off a bay Papa said the captain called Port-aux-Français. We lost twenty-one men there when their longboats were crushed by the waves as they went too close to shore — men whom I had known, who had played jokes on me or ruffled my hair, thinking I was a boy who wanted adventure, as they had done. All lost, with not even a grave to mark where their bodies lay.
‘We sailed on. But things had changed. I think now Maman and Papa realised this was not just an adventure. The stories Great-Aunt Jeanne had told were all of grand expeditions, finding plants, strange Indians and their ways. She had never told us of sailors’ teeth dropping from their swollen gums due to scurvy, their hair falling out too, their gums bleeding.
‘But by this time my parents knew the truth. Papa had taken the woman he loved into danger, and his child too.
‘There was little he could do, for the captain’s orders were not to visit French territories but to survey new ones, and it would be even more dangerous for my family to leave the ship in wild lands or those owned by another country. But it was now, I think, that Papa told Captain la Pérouse about my mother and myself. Captain la Pérouse was kind. Maman and I must stay in the cabin, and when we reached Mauritius we would be put ashore, just as my great-aunt had been, and we would take a ship as respectable passengers back to France.
‘Our ships sailed up what you call the Gulf of Tartary, mapping as we went, then, as planned, we called at Kamchatka to replenish our supplies and to send an account of our discoveries overland to Paris. Maman and I were not allowed on shore this time.
‘It was hard, waiting with land so close. But Maman read to me, and we did more paintings of the specimens we had collected, and she told me stories, wonderful stories from her mother and grandmother, of people and plants and what plants can do. And when Papa returned he told us about what he had seen, so it was almost as if we had been there. And we were still a family.
‘But Captain la Pérouse now had new orders that had been waiting for him at Kamchatka. Those in Paris had heard that Captain Phillip’s fleet had sailed for Nouvelle Hollande, to land at a place Captain Cook had named Botany Bay. Captain la Pérouse’s new orders were to sail to Nouvelle Hollande, to claim it for France and to see how big the settlement was, how well fortified. A port at Nouvelle Hollande would help the English navy attack our colonies or ships in the Pacific or India or China.’
I nodded.
‘So our ships sailed south. Maman and I stayed in our cabin, except for an hour each afternoon when we were allowed on deck, for sunlight and fresh air. We were not even allowed that when the ships stopped at the Navigator Islands to take on fresh food and water and to study the land and the natives. And so we were not ashore when the Indians attacked Captain de Langle and eleven of our men when they landed once more to get fresh water. Twelve more men killed and even more wounded . . .’
She took a deep breath, coughed and went on. ‘The expedition was not an adventure now, and the joy of science. It was life and death.
‘And so we sailed through the Pacific Islands to your Botany Bay. Papa said Captain la Pérouse could see your fleet in the bay, but the strong south wind stopped us from entering the bay itself. It blew for two days. Our ships sailed into the bay just as most of yours sailed out, a
ll but the Sirius, with the man who is now our governor, Monsieur Hunter, whom Captain Phillip ordered to help us anchor for, by then, so many of our men were ill, from wounds at the Navigator Islands and from scurvy, that we were not enough to make the ships safe.
‘Captain la Pérouse established a camp on shore. He built a good stockade in case the Indians attacked, for after the Navigator Islands he knew that Indians who seem friendly may kill without warning. The men planted gardens of quick-growing green vegetables and hunted for fresh meat so that those ill from scurvy could recover. The captain put two cannons on either side of the camp too, to ward off any attack.
‘But no attack came. Instead Père Receveur died of wounds he had received back in the islands. He was one of our chaplains, a good man and a scientist too. He had come to our cabin often, to pray with Maman and me and say Mass for us when we were not allowed to join the service on deck. But Maman and I had to stay aboard even for his funeral.
‘We had been at Botany Bay for five weeks when the captain called us to his cabin. The English had visited us many times, offering help and stores, and we French had offered them what little we had that they might use. It was all most cordial.
‘But the English were firm: we were not invited to their camp at Port Jackson. There was no way for Captain la Pérouse to fulfil his orders, to see what fortifications the English were building and where they might be, how many marines they had and what armaments. All the things our navy would need to know if an attack could be made. Nor could a small scouting party tell much from a distance, for there was chaos and the bustle of unloading and putting up tents. The only way to know the full strength and intentions of the English was to be there at Port Jackson, to talk, to watch.
‘And so the captain asked my family to do this for our country. To travel to Port Jackson as refugees, father and mother and their daughter. When we got there we should tell Captain Phillip the truth, that Maman and I had disguised ourselves to join the expedition, but had been discovered.
Barney and the Secret of the French Spies Page 4