Unselfconsciously she pulled off her own clothes, kneeling at the bank and swishing the garments through the shallows to loosen some of the dirt and grime that fouled them. When she was satisfied, she spread them out on a low branch in the sun, then eased herself into the creek and swam toward Michel, challenging him to a race. They raced and splashed and cavorted, and once Michel wrestled her under the water, holding her struggling head beneath the surface until she jabbed an elbow into his midriff and he released her, gasping for air. At last, winded, she made for the shore and a soft patch of grass, stretching out and luxuriating in the feel of the warm sun on her naked body. Sighing contentedly, she sat up and ran her hand through her yellow hair, then cursed as her fingers caught on a knotted tangle.
“Copain says I should comb it sometimes.”
Michel had been practicing a series of small dives on the surface of the water, submerging and reappearing again. Now he stopped and looked at her.
“Do you think I should comb it?” she asked, her face suddenly troubled.
“Does it matter what I think?” he said sourly. “If Copain says, then surely you will do it! Copain says comb your hair! Copain says come and read poetry!” He made a face and blew bubbles in the water. “Poetry!” he scoffed.
She bristled. “Poetry is beautiful! If you were not such a fool, you would have tried to learn to read when my father wished to teach you. Now you’ll be a stupid lout forever!”
“You were always putting on airs,” he sulked, “and now, with Copain, you are even worse. Rot and damnation! I wish he had never come aboard.” He slapped sullenly at the water.
“I have not been sorry these past two years, since Copain.”
“You know nothing of him. Brise, the carpenter, says he has been in prison!”
“I know he is gentle and kind! I can talk to him—tell him things that—” She stared away into the distance, her eyes suddenly wistful. How she had suffered with the shame of her first sign of maturity, the bloody badge that had marked the gulf between her and the crew—between her and childhood. Red with embarrassment, her father had explained how the women of the towns used wads of rags and rinsed them out when they were soiled. Disgusted, she had for years burned her linens when she was ashore, or cast them to the stormy ocean when aboard ship. Then Copain had appeared and talked gently, reassuring her that she need not feel ashamed. The first flowering of your womanhood, he had said, making it seem a kind of benediction. “I never had a mother. Copain has been like—like a mother to me.”
Michel snickered. “A mother! Soft and weak like a woman! Always with his books. He never goes aloft, never mans the capstan! Hides behind his charts—just because he can read. He never looks for a woman in port either!”
Delphine jumped up in anger, glaring down at him in the water, her hands on her bare hips. “Damn your eyes! There are better things to do, I’ll wager! It makes me sick, the way the men always talk about it—as if going down on a woman is all they live for! Pah! I cannot imagine any joy in it!”
Michel looked smug. “That’s because you know no better.”
She sneered. “Be cursed, but you never had a woman!”
“I did!” he bragged. “When we made landfall two weeks ago—there was a girl—”
“Aah!” she said, annoyed at his superiority. “Well, no man will ever touch me—tap at my door—suck at my breasts!” She looked down at the rounded swell of her bosom, her mouth twisted in disgust. She looked up. Michel was standing immobile in the water, staring at her. She threw back her head and laughed uproariously. “Sink me for a bilge rat! Is it happening again?”
“Shut up!” he growled, his face tight.
She giggled. “Is your poor prickle standing up, there under the water?” She motioned him ashore. “Come show me how you salute me!” Michel turned away in agony. Delphine plucked her clothes—now nearly dry—from the bushes and began to put them on. “Sometimes,” she muttered, “I’m glad not to be a man after all.”
Still burning with anger and humiliation, Michel hauled himself out of the creek, taking care to keep his back to Delphine as he dressed. “How do you know you wouldn’t like it if you don’t try,” he said at last.
“With you?”
“Pourquoi pas? Why not?”
“My father and Gunner would skin you alive for talking like that!”
“Then let them skin me for the doing!” he cried, and clutched fiercely at Delphine. She exploded in fury, pummeling him about the head and shoulders until he tripped and fell backwards onto the grass. She kicked him once in the ribs with her bare foot, then stood looking down at him, feeling her anger drain away at the sight of his forlorn face.
“Why do you spoil our comradeship?” she asked sadly, and held out her hand to help him up.
“It’s just—when I see you—I can’t—” He looked as though he would cry.
“Poor Michel,” she said, stooping down to pick up her shoes and stockings. “We shall not swim again, I think.” They walked along the bank in silence, mourning the loss of something they could not even name.
“Has it never happened to you?” he said at last. “A strangeness—when you looked at a man?”
She shrugged. “Men, women, sea-oxen—they’re all the same to me!”
“It will happen to you.”
“Never!” And yet—she recalled clear blue eyes in a handsome face, deep golden hair, smooth bronzed skin that she ached to touch, to see if it felt as cool and sleek as it looked. “Never!” she cried again, and stamped her foot to drive away the tantalizing image.
André emerged from the Great Cabin, noticing that the doors of the two cabins that flanked the passageway were open, the cabins beyond empty. Copain and Gosse must already have gone to supper. He had put aside his fancy trappings—sword and cape and lace falling band—and removed the heavy doublet. His shirt, with its small neat collar, was covered with a sleeveless leather jerkin. After a year of buckskins, he really felt more comfortable dressed thus. Feeling the gentle sway of the ship beneath him, he made his way down the aft companionway, the interior ladder that led from the quarterdeck and his cabin to the messrooms and galley below. There was another companionway to the roundhouse above on the poop deck; Master Fresnel and the crew could move through the ship in foul weather without going out into the storm.
He was not looking forward to this voyage. When he’d left France a year ago it seemed as though the war with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire was drawing to a close. Indeed, though Richelieu always needed the services of his generals, the cardinal had been sufficiently optimistic about the future to allow André to leave for New France, even going so far as to charge him with restrengthening France’s ties with the Hurons, that full trade might be resumed when peace came again. And then, perhaps, the cardinal had read the grief in André’s eyes, and knew that a man who courted death would be useless on the battlefield.
But much had happened in a year. André had spent hours with de Mersenne, catching up on all the news. There was the joy, of course, at the birth of the Dauphin, Louis Dieudonné, Louis the God given, and an end, at last, to the plots and cabals against the throne when King Louis XIII and his queen had been childless. But the Prince of Condé, under whom André had served at Dôle, had been routed at Fuenterrabia on the Spanish frontier. There were whispers of treason. Condé’s second-in-command had fled to England, and had been tried in absentia and executed in effigy. There was the loss of Saint-Omer in the Netherlands and the defeat at Vercelli in Italy. It was clear there would be more fighting before this war was done! André would arrive home in time to mobilize his own men for the summer campaign. He had welcomed this sea voyage and the last weeks of tranquility it would provide before the press and tumult of battle. But—farewell serenity! That young hoyden of Fresnel’s would surely give him no peace! He frowned in disgust, still half disbelieving that such a coarse creature could possibly be female. A disagreeable child—full of fire and temper when she was crossed, but con
tent to torment others. He rubbed his tender kneecaps. Damn the little savage!
They had sailed on the evening tide, their yards braced round to catch the wind, the sun an orange blaze on the water. André had strolled the deck, watching Quebec vanish in the setting sun, threading his way past the jumble of ropes and shrouds that hung from the rigging. The seamen had begun to disentangle the lines and coil them into neat piles on the deck. André had not noticed the line that had suddenly gone taut at his ankles; he had pitched forward, his soldier’s reflexes breaking his fall a bit at the last moment. Pulling himself up, his knees and palms smarting, he had seen Gosse sitting on a large coil of rope, grinning like a cherub, her eyes wide and blameless. Gulled by that innocent face, he had almost thought it an accident, until Gunner had hurried to his side, all humble apology, and cast a reproachful look at Gosse. But when she frowned, Gunner had smiled sheepishly and turned away. Nom de Dieu! thought André. It was beyond him why they should be afraid of a little chit of a girl—even if she was the master’s daughter! Perhaps it was just habit to defer to her—but she wanted a bit of taming, that one!
He sighed and opened the door to the captain’s mess. The voyage was just beginning. And unless he sulked, played the haughty nobleman, and supped alone in his cabin (with too much time to dwell on Marielle), he would have to take his meals with her and swallow his displeasure at her behavior. Damn! he thought again, feeling himself bedeviled.
Gosse was laughing, her voice deep and throaty, as he entered. André was struck by the vibrant timbre of it, so surprising in a young girl.
“Split me!” she exclaimed, taking a swig of ale from her tankard and wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “But here is your passenger, father! Did you mind the way he danced on deck?” She took another drink and laughed again, ignoring the dribbles of ale on her chin.
Master Fresnel arose, indicating with his lame arm André’s chair at the long table; Gunner, sitting next to Gosse, tugged politely at his forelock and nodded in greeting.
“How kind you are to our guest, Gunner!” Delphine smiled across at André, the devil peeping out of her eyes. “Did you like his dance, bosun?”
Gunner looked at her fondly. “That was wicked of you, Gosse.”
“I?” she said. “What had I to do with it? Ah, Monsieur le Comte! You will ruin your pretty face if you do naught but frown!”
“André!” said Gunner, emphatically. “You must call him André on the voyage. He is as any other seaman on this voyage—no different!”
She snickered. “I wonder—will he know well enough not to piss into the wind?”
“We need not wait for Copain,” said Fresnel quickly, indicating the wooden trencher piled high with roasted pigeons. “Come, monsieur, while the meat is fresh and the voyage is young.”
André reached for a bird, but Delphine was there first, snatching it from his grasp and biting savagely into the tender meat. He helped himself to another pigeon, disjointing it on his pewter dish, stripping each savory morsel from the bones with his fingers before putting it in his mouth, carefully licking the sauce from his hands. He tried not to look at Gosse as he ate. It was enough to make his stomach chum, the way she gestured with the carcass in her hands and belched noisily and let small crumbs of food foul the front of her shirt. But once he caught her eye and was surprised to see her blush, as though she were embarrassed at his obvious disapproval. But surely he was mistaken: after that her eating seemed to grow even more crude. Indeed, when she toppled her tankard in his direction and the last drops of ale spilled on him, he was convinced she had done it deliberately.
“Nom de Dieu,” pleaded Fresnel. “Mind your manners, Delphine!”
She picked up her empty tankard and slammed it down on the table. “Why must you call me Delphine? Sink and scuttle me, but I hate the name!”
His face twisted in distress, Fresnel opened his mouth to speak, but André interrupted him smoothly.
“You must be more understanding, Master Fresnel. I would say that Gosse minds her manners—though there be those who would vow that there are all kinds of manners: for men and ladies, and savages in the New World, and pigs in their sties!”
Delphine gasped in outrage and rose to her feet, swinging back her arm to toss the mug at André; Copain’s gentle voice stopped her.
“Have you left me aught to eat, Gosse?”
Her rosy cheeks turned a darker shade of pink and she sat down, unable to look at Copain.
“You must forgive my daughter, monsieur,” said Fresnel. “She never learned gentle ways. Her mother died when she was just a babe. I had no sisters nor cousins to tend her ashore. And so we raised her aboard ship, Gunner and I.”
Gunner beamed proudly. “And a fine sailor she is! You’ll not find a better hand in a storm, I’ll be hanged, nor a braver one when the wind is northerly and the lines are frozen!”
Gosse grinned at André. “Have you ever been up in the rigging, landlubber? Mayhap before this voyage is done we shall see how brave a soldier you are!”
“There is not a man faster than she in the shrouds!” Fresnel smiled fondly at his daughter. “She has been climbing for almost all of her eighteen years!”
André looked at her. Eighteen years. She seemed so much younger. Eighteen. Marielle had been nineteen when he met her. He felt suddenly old and tired. He rose to leave.
Gosse laughed, that rich, musical sound that was so unexpected. “Split my gut!” she said. “Have we chased you away, my proper gentleman? With all this talk of climbing?”
He turned to her, his blue eyes cold. “Perhaps it is a pity you did not have the gentling company of women.” He left the room.
Copain sighed. “There is a man who has known torment.” He smiled at the look of surprise on Delphine’s face. “There is no torment in your sunny world, is there, ma petite? And now—shall we read Ronsard?”
They mounted the companionway to the quarterdeck cabins. André’s door was closed. Copain led the way into his small cabin, striking a spark with his flint and lighting the lantern that hung from a beam. The sudden flame shimmered on his silver hair. Taking a small book from his sea chest, he set it on the table in the center of the cabin, and pulled up a long bench, that he and Delphine might sit side by side. She looked from the book to Copain, her eyes troubled.
“Think you he is unhappy?” Copain nodded silently. Delphine bit at a fingernail, lost in thought. “I like him not,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“I know not.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“No, God rot!”
“Is that why you tripped him on deck? To prove that you fear him not? And you would have bounced your tankard off his skull had I not stopped you. Wherefore?”
There was a catch in her voice. “Oh, Copain! His eyes—” Then, “I wanted to hurt him!” she cried fiercely.
“When you have words at your command, you can bank your fires a little. Words can be the greatest weapon. Now, to our book,” he said, turning the pages with delicate fingers.
Delphine saw the scars of shackles on his thin wrists. She had accepted them in the past; now, remembering Michel’s words, she was filled with curiosity. “Why did you come to sea? You scarce belong in this rough life.”
“There was—nothing left,” he said, his mouth pinched in a sad smile. “The last refuge.”
“Are you a ruined nobleman?”
He laughed. “You are more the romantic than you know! But—no. I have been many things, but not that. Teacher, churchman, fugitive,” he sighed, “until I am weary of remembering—weary of life. Far more weary than our monsieur next door. He will live again, whilst I—” He shook away the thought. “Come! Ronsard!” He lit a pipe and turned to the book.
They read for an hour, sometimes silently, sometimes saying the verses aloud to hear the melodious roll of the words. Occasionally Delphine would ask the meaning of a line, an unfamiliar word.
“I am not a romantic,” she said at last, ja
bbing at a page with her finger. “Look here. ‘Amours de Cassandre.’ This verse. Comparing his love to a rose. Pah! What nonsense! I like this one far better—‘Amours de Marie’—where he tells his lover Marie to get up and enjoy the day.” She turned to Copain, her amber eyes sparkling. “There is joy! In life! In the moment!”
“But look you,” he said gently. “See what follows: ‘Sur la Mort de Marie.’ She dies. Like the rose, all things fade.”
“No! Nothing shall change! The sun shines forever!”
“But life goes on—”
“No—” more softly, the eyes dark with sudden pain. “I shall not let it change.”
“But even you—since I came aboard Olympie—you have changed.”
“No! I am Gosse still—and always! Never Delphine!”
“Delphine will cry to be set free some day, and there will be tears, and clouds that cover your sun—”
She jutted out a determined chin. “Then you and I shall laugh together and play skittles on deck and send the fool Delphine away!”
“Shall we?” he asked sadly. “Here. One more verse. My favorite, I think. One of Ronsard’s last. Where he welcomes death.” Copain pushed the book toward her. She read it silently, then looked up, her eyes filled with tears. Copain smiled gently and recited the last two lines aloud.
Pass on, say I, and seek your fate,
Nor trouble my repose. I sleep.
“You cannot mean that!” she cried. “You cannot.”
He shook his head. “Of course not, Gosse. It is just a poem. Now smile, and I shall give you a pretty trifle I came by in Quebec.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long pink ribbon which he handed to Delphine.
“Nom de Dieu! What do I want with a ribbon?” She nearly threw it down, but he stopped her, his thin hand on hers.
Delphine Page 3