André glanced at Copain’s scarred wrists with their marks of chains, his blue eyes dark with understanding. “Were there years of peace, at least between La Rochelle and—” He left the words unspoken.
A gentle laugh. “There is no peace, save only in God’s heaven, but ‘Father’ Copain found serenity for a time—” A long silence. “Did you fight at La Rochelle, Monsieur le Comte?”
“No. I was at La Forêt, in the Languedoc campaign. Marielle used to say it was a happy circumstance of fate.” He stopped in surprise, the name still strange on his tongue. “She—my late wife—was born in La Forêt. We met in the midst of the battle.”
Copain nodded. “The spring of ’29.”
“Yes. We were married for nearly nine years. Two fine sons she bore me.”
“And then—?” Copain’s voice was soft and gentle, urging him on.
André sighed. He had not thought he could talk so freely of those times; now it seemed as though a weight were being lifted from his heart. “We had begun to drift apart, as so often happens, I suppose. And then—she was captured by brigands, held for ransom. She suffered a miscarriage and we thought she would die. Then, wonder of God, she recovered. It was a gift. Six months almost we had, as sweet as any we had ever known together, even in the first years of our marriage.” He stopped and took a long drink from his flagon, fighting back the emotion that threatened to unman him. “A winter fever carried her away. She was a gentle woman; she died as she had lived—softly, sweetly.”
“What was she like?” asked Delphine sharply, suddenly filled with an aching need to know this woman.
He smiled at her indulgently. “She was, above all women, most fair, chaste, and pure. A woman of modesty and grace, who blushed to hear my grooms swear.”
“And what did she look like?” It was almost a desperate cry. Copain put a restraining hand on Delphine’s arm, but she shook him off, her eyes burning into André.
“She was the most beautiful woman that Paris has ever seen—I shall not find her like again in this world! She danced once in the court ballet; the king himself did her honor, entering the tableau to salute her beauty.”
“I heard of such a woman,” said Copain. “I had thought it court gossip, meant only to bedazzle us in the provinces.”
“See for yourself if I tell the truth.” André pulled the locket from his neck and proffered it. Delphine snatched it quickly and held it in the palm of her hand. It was an embossed oval case, some two by three inches, with a hinged lid. Opening it with trembling fingers, she gazed at the portrait of Marielle.
It was the picture of a stately woman, elegant and serene—and breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin was pale and creamy, the hazy green eyes modestly cast down; her features were fine-chiseled and delicate, save for the sensuous fullness of her red lips. Her hair, like a brilliant halo of burnished chestnut, hung full and loose about her face, curling in gentle ringlets on her shoulders, caressing the soft bosom.
Delphine pressed the locket quickly into Copain’s fingers and jumped to her feet. “She would blow away in the first gale,” she sniffed. She slapped at her forehead as though a sudden thought had struck her. “Split me for a sailor’s whore! But I have forgot that Michel was to do a chore for me tonight! If that lout has gone to sleep, I shall kick his lazy backside out of his hammock, though his howls wake the whole fo’c’sle!” She hurried from the messroom and onto the deck, where she knew the men would be gathered swapping stories, and tugged urgently at Michel’s sleeve. “Come,” she said quietly, and led him up the ladder to her cabin on the quarterdeck. He followed in silence, waiting until she had lit her lantern and closed the door before giving way to his curiosity.
“What’s in the wind?”
She turned and rummaged in her sea chest, pulling forth a pair of scissors. “Here,” she said. “I want you to cut my hair.”
“God’s blood! Why?” He fingered his own dark curls. “’Tis shorter even than mine, as it stands now!”
“Damn your eyes—cut it!”
“Gosse—nom de Dieu! I am no barber. You will look like a shorn sheep.”
She forced the scissors into his hand. “Cut it!” she raged.
Hesitantly he took them from her and clipped a small straight lock beside her ear, leaving the edge more jagged than ever; then, with a curse, he threw the scissors down. “I cannot!”
She began to cry. “Please,” she said. “I hate it so.” She turned away, sniffling deeply, then turned back to him, impatiently scrubbing away the tears as though he had no right to see her weep. “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked suddenly.
He gaped, then nodded and shuffled toward her, putting his hands up to take her by the shoulders. She pushed him aside.
“I said kiss me, don’t touch me!”
He shifted uneasily, then bent his mouth to hers, closing his eyes and pressing as hard as he dared, intoxicated with his good fortune. At last he lifted his spinning head to see her smiling at him, the smile of a queen, regal and proud.
“Good-night,” she said, and watched him stumble to the door and go out. She stood motionless, for a long time; then, her lip curled in disgust, she wiped her hand across her mouth again and again, and kicked violently at the pair of scissors on the floor.
Chapter Four
The weather turned cool, and rolling clouds obscured the warmth of the sun for days at a time. André wrapped himself in his heavy cloak to stand on the quarterdeck and watch the darkening sky that seemed always on the brink of storm. When the rain came at last, the ship was damp and cold, and the men shivered as they came below, their clothing drenched from standing the watch for hours. Fresnel had a fire built in a passageway between decks, and it helped to ease the discomfort brought on by the steady downpour. A spare canvas was stretched on deck to catch the precious rainwater. The wind was fresh and they made good headway despite the rain.
But the next day the storm began in earnest, with a howling that made the yardarms rattle in their chains, and sent great waves crashing into the bows. Fresnel sent a crew of topmen aloft to inch their way across the treacherous footropes that hung just below the yardarms. Leaning precariously over the yards, their hands numb with cold, the men gathered in the flapping sails and tied them securely to the yardarms by means of those short ropes called buntlines, taking care lest a sudden gust of wind should snap a corner of the sail and send a man plunging to the deck below. The three topsails were furled—fore, main, and mizzen—as well as the lower course of both the foremast and mizzenmast; only the mainsail was left as a storm sail to steady the ship.
By the next day the tempest had increased its fury. The masts creaked dangerously, their stay lines stretching with each pitch of the ship, and the men worked furiously to take up the slack with tackles. If the lines were too loose the masts might crack; too tight, and the tackles might burst or the stay lines snap. Fresnel was reluctant to pull in the storm sail because it helped to stabilize the roll of the ship, aware, however, that a sudden burst of wind could split the sail or pull the whole mast down. He waited for half a day, hoping for an end to the storm—while the wind roared and the timbers shook—before ordering the mainsail to be furled. Now they rode under bare poles.
The storm became more terrible still. The ship tossed on the wide ocean with such violence that the fires were doused for fear a stray ember, thrown from its sandpit, would ignite the decks. Already miserable from the wet and chill, the men ate cold food. They made their way on the slippery deck from one handhold to another, while the waves hissed and foamed around them and the water sloshed into the hatches. The kegs and barrels of food had to be checked constantly for leakage, and lashed more securely into place as the turbulent pitch of the ship increased. The crew stood on a catwalk above the stinking bilge water, the rats squealing frantically underfoot, as they manned the pumps around the clock to keep the constant torrents of water down the hatches from sending them to the ocean floor.
After two days with no sleep, th
ey were exhausted and snappish, growling sullenly at one another. Despite the tossing of the ship, André’s stomach had held, and he had insisted on taking his turn in the bilge with the rest of the men. He had been astonished at Gosse’s fortitude. The work was obviously exhausting for her, despite her young strength, but she never complained, heartening the men with her jokes and buoyant laughter.
At last the storm eased a little, the rain slackening and the seas calming, though the fierce wind showed no sign of abating. Master Fresnel came to the bilge to tell Monsieur le Comte that the cook had managed to start a fire and there was hot food waiting in the messroom.
André straightened, feeling the ache in his shoulders from the long hours at the pump. He smiled warmly at Gosse working beside him, noticing for the first time the pale lavender shadows under her eyes. He felt an irrational urge to pick her up and cradle the foolish child’s head on his shoulder. Whatever possessed Master Fresnel to allow his daughter to toil for so many hours without rest?
“Come, Gosse,” he said. “Have you not had enough of this stinking place?” And held out his hand to her.
She laughed, deep and vibrant. “Landlubber! Sink me, father, you should see André’s face sometimes! For whilst the bilge is a singularly unlovely place”—and here she indicated the fetid water below them, foul with dead rats and excrement, garbage and vomit—“only a landlubber would make faces the way André has!”
“’Tis true enough,” said André, “and no denying it! I could not live aboard ship, I think. I have been spoiled by life ashore.”
The three of them clambered up the aft companionway, stopping at the steerage—a smelly little hole below deck—to see how the helmsman had weathered the storm. There had been a time, in the height of the tempest, when the whipstaff—the long steering pole that emerged from the floor and was attached to the tiller below—had swayed and vibrated so violently that it had sent the helmsman crashing against the bulkhead, and required six men to hold it steady. Now the seas had begun to calm enough so they could hear the creak and groan of the swinging rudder far below, and Copain, navigating from the poop, three decks above them, could be heard calling down directions through his speaking tube. Gunner was with the helmsman, peering at the compass set into its binnacle.
“What’s the course?” asked Fresnel.
“East, northeast.”
“Hold her steady until the storm passes,” said Fresnel. “We shall not know until tomorrow, when Copain can take a reading with the quadrant, how far off course we have been blown.”
“Think you that—” began André, then stopped, as the Olympie gave a sudden shudder. Master Fresnel frowned. It was a stronger shock than usual, even for a storm of this magnitude, and he turned about, minded to send Gunner to seek out the reason.
Michel burst into the steerage, his eyes wide with dismay. There was almost a flicker of panic in them as he glanced briefly at Delphine. “Bosun,” he said to Gunner, “come quick!”
“What is it, lad?” said Fresnel.
“The foremast—the brace snapped and the yard was shaking and twisting—and some of the buntlines on the topsail broke—half of the sail is flapping free and one of the buntlines is twisted into the broken stay—” Michel panted heavily and wiped the salty spray from his face.
“I’ll be hanged,” growled Gunner. “Would you waste the time to tell me this? Did no one go aloft?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Michel looked shamefaced. “All the men are tired—and he never works hard—they dared him—” He looked uneasily at Gosse. “Not me, of course, God rot!”
Delphine turned white. “Who?”
“Copain.”
“Mother of God,” she whispered, and pushed past him to race to the main deck. The men followed her.
The wind whipped at their garments and the seas still washed across the decks. Holding firmly to a brace, Delphine shielded her face from the rain and looked up into the rigging. Copain had managed to work himself out to the end of the yardarm that, freed from its stay, wobbled precariously. He had taken up a fresh line that he had contrived to fasten to the arm, and had dropped the other end to the men on deck, where they were threading it through the tackle and belaying it to the pin set into the railing. Now he was attempting to disentangle the buntline from the broken stay, for if the topsail was allowed to flap free it would soon split in this fierce wind or pull down the mast. Already the violence of its shaking had carried off the top lantern, and the canvas slapped at Copain as he frantically worked to pull out his knife and cut the twisted lines that hung in a jumble all around him. Just as he severed the cords, there was a sudden gust of wind and the sail struck at Copain, knocking him from his slippery perch. The tangled buntline, still attached to the sail, twisted around his leg as he fell, and he hung, upside down, a hundred feet above the deck. His body tossed brutally back and forth in the wind the rope cutting ever more deeply into the flesh of his leg until the flapping topsail was spotted with his blood.
Delphine was up in the rigging before Fresnel could stop her, making for the yardarm of the lower sail, working her way across the footrope until she could reach up—one hand on the yard, one for Copain—and clutch at his arms as the pitch of the ship swung him in her direction. She had him once, lost him in a sudden toss of the ship, clung to him again. She was trying to figure out how she could release the rope that held his leg when the sail tore, dropping him several feet below her. She wrapped one arm firmly around the yard and reached down with the other; he managed to take hold of it. She closed her eyes against the strain of his weight as he hauled himself up, but at last he was beside her, gasping, leaning against the yardarm, balanced precariously on his good foot on the swaying footrope. Delphine drew her knife and bent over to slash off the line that held his leg, then bit her lip and turned away as she straightened. The rope had cut so deeply into the flesh in some places that the muscles of his calf gaped wide, flaccid and useless. If he were lucky, he might be crippled; if he were not, the leg would have to be removed. Delphine motioned frantically at the half-dozen men who were already swarming into the rigging, some to refurl the sail, some to help Copain. Then she looked at him. The rain pelted his delicate features, dripped off his snowy hair, plastered his shirt to his thin body. He glanced once at his useless leg, then smiled at her—a weary, sad smile—and closed his eyes. In the next roll of the ship he was gone, slipping gently off his perch as though he had planned it. She saw his body sprawled below for a moment or two, then a great foaming wave swept across the deck, bubbling and hissing. When it departed, cascading over the railings, the deck was empty.
Numb with disbelief, she made her way down the rigging and staggered to her cabin, deaf to the comforting hands and voices that reached out to her. She slammed the door on them all and threw the bolt with a savage swipe of her hand, throwing herself on her bunk and holding the pillow tightly against her ears. To keep out their voices, the storm, reality.
André groaned and stirred in his bunk, dragging himself reluctantly from the depths of sleep. He wondered at first what could have wakened him—he had thought a battle cannon could not have disturbed his slumber! He sat up, groping on the small shelf above him for his tinderbox and a tallow candle, then lit the candle and set it back on the shelf. He swung his long legs over the side of the bunk and pulled on his boots, grimacing as his stockinged feet came in contact with the cold damp leather. It could scarcely be near morning—the boots had had little time to begin drying out from the soaking rain. He was aware for the first time of the noises that had disturbed him: a loud pounding outside in the passageway, the sound of frantic voices, and an occasional muffled crash. He thought at first that the sound was coming from Gosse’s cabin—she had stayed locked in her room all afternoon and evening, not even emerging when Fresnel led the company in prayers for Copain and the end of the storm—but when he opened his door he saw that Gosse’s door was ajar, the room empty. Across the way, Fresnel and Gun
ner were at Copain’s closed door, alternately banging furiously, then wheedling and pleading with Gosse through the heavy timbers. There were shrill curses from within and the sound of breakage as some object or other crashed against the bulkhead or the door.
“Nom de Dieu!” cried André. “What is it?”
Fresnel rubbed at his crippled arm and sighed tiredly. “’Tis Gosse. She’s in a rage. Locked herself in Copain’s cabin and won’t come out—and now it sounds as if she’s breaking everything she can get her hands on!”
André shook his head in annoyance. He would never understand why they allowed her childish tantrums. “Why not let the hellion spend her anger undisturbed? What matter if Copain’s cabin is ruined?”
“She has been drinking, I think. I had a bottle of distilled spirits in my cabin—very dear, and only for when we must cut a man. I think she took it.” Fresnel turned back to the door. “Delphine—child—please, I beg of you, open the door!” There was a metallic clank as something struck the other side of the paneling.
“Come, Gosse!” Gunner’s voice was bright with false cheer. “Remember that perspective glass you doted on? Sink me, but your father wants to give it to you now!” He looked quickly at Fresnel, who nodded in agreement. “Come! Here it is!”
André muttered under his breath and turned away. “Mayhap it is her way to grieve for Copain. Why can you not leave her in peace?”
Fresnel’s shoulders sagged wearily. “Because she has taken the compass and the backstaff and every chart aboard ship! And the hourglass as well! I have men who can navigate—but not with empty hands! We have put out several sea anchors to keep us from straying further off course, but the sea is choppy and I must set some sail lest we capsize! But how are we to navigate? I can put the men to searching the ship, but le bon Dieu alone knows where she has hidden the things!”
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