Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  After Yolanda’s demise, those in the Hidden Harbor household could not have been more gracious or grateful toward Selena. Yolanda had long held most of them in thrall with the mere threat of the powers she possessed. But only Selena had finally come to the conclusion that the Haitian girl’s use of symbols, such as Martha Marguerite’s ring and Erasmus Ward’s cross, was not a ploy to guard herself against the perceived powers of others, but rather, by assuming their symbols, to rob them of the power and identity they might have had. That was why Yolanda had been so startled to see the cross concealed in cloth. She had been divested, she believed, of her hold over Selena.

  How many of these things were real, were true, Selena herself did not know. But Yolanda Fee had believed in black magic, and her belief alone had armed her in hubris, with the gall to wreak terrible acts.

  During the months that followed the discovery of Royce’s sandy grave, Selena grieved, and sometimes took the sloop over to La Tortue, there to stand on the windy beach and look down at the cross that seemed so out of place, dreaming of things that might have been.

  Things that now would never be.

  But while it had at first seemed inconceivable that a man such as Royce, so vibrant, so full of life, should ever die, gradually the mysterious healing forces that salve and balm the human heart began to do their work. Selena went less and less frequently to La Tortue.

  Then Jean Beaumain, who had wisely and lovingly left her alone in grief, came forward. He was neither tentative nor cautious—these traits were not prominent in his nature—but he was gentle and considerate. He did not wish to press her too hard too soon, lest by mischance or excessive ardor he drive her back into herself.

  He was thoughtful: making sure that her room was filled with fresh flowers, seeing to it that her favorite dishes—lobster stew, poached marlin, pickled pigeon eggs—were served often. And when he returned to Hidden Harbor from one of his trading forays to Mexico or the Bahamas, he always brought her something—a necklace, a vase, a rare artifact—to wear or to enhance the rose room.

  Finally, one night after returning from a trip to Florida, he came almost shyly, as if he might be rebuffed, to her room. Without speaking, he held before her eyes a broad gold ring in which a cluster of rubies gleamed scarlet in the light.

  “This is for you,” he said.

  Selena took it, held it, turned and admired it.

  “Put it on,” he said.

  She did, on the third finger of her right hand.

  “Right finger, wrong hand,” he said.

  That was how it began, or how it began again.

  He had chosen precisely the right time, when Selena’s heart was well on its way to healing, and when she had begun again to turn outward toward life, driven by the instinctively spirited forces of her nature. They made love slowly and reverently that night, but afterwards, as they grew more comfortable, more natural with one another, the hindrance of customary inhibitions fell away completely. Sensuality, now fierce, often wild but never wicked, opened for them its casket of myriad treasures, and each thrill, each variation of love, was keener than the last, leaving them soaring and shaken in the splendor of its grace.

  Selena used upon him delights she had learned in India, intricate caresses and movements and touches that enhanced and prolonged his ecstasy, so that when she finally brought him lingeringly to the heights, he would pass for long moments into dreamy unconsciousness from the effects of pleasure alone.

  And she taught him how to do the same for her, with the added benefit that, given the female nature, she would go on and on and on before dropping free from the top of the world. All the variations of the Kama Sutra became familiar to them, and she rejoiced at his shape inside her.

  But most of all she grew to love most the comfort of his presence beside her in the night.

  Then one night at the dinner table, Martha Marguerite, who approved of Selena as strongly as she had once deplored Yolanda, held an open letter before them and began to read.

  Dear Mme. LaRouche (for that was her surname):

  It is my fond wish that this missive finds you in good health. It is my fonder wish, indeed my fervent hope, that you will immediately board ship for Paris as events suddenly threaten to engulf and submerge the fate and welfare of properties that it has taken your esteemed family generations to attain. I must regretfully report to you that peasants in the province of Côte d’Or have, in a shockingly bold uprising of heinous consequences, seized your lands and burned your château to the foundations. Given the situation here in Paris, I think that I am perhaps erring on the side of sanguinity when I tell you that a similar fate might well befall your family home on the right bank of the Seine, along with all of the great houses in that arrondisement. As the people, more and more, gather and conspire to denounce privilege, it becomes difficult for me to protect the estate of an owner who is absent therefrom. Do favor me, madame, with a letter at first opportunity and with your presence here as soon as possible.

  Your servant,

  Vergil Longchamps

  Counselor-at-law

  Martha Marguerite folded the letter. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  “Well,” decided Jean Beaumain, lifting a glass of rosé to the light, “if we sail now, we ought to be able to reach France by early July. Mind you, I shall not set foot upon her soil. I have not yet had done with Chamorro, though I curse him wherever he may be. But I can take you as far as Le Havre, at the mouth of the Seine.

  “Or perhaps we might sail in late summer,” he went on, thinking over the possibilities. “Could you wait that long?”

  “I don’t think so,” Martha replied. “Monsieur Longchamps is nothing if not urgent. Our poor château! Oh, the happy summers I spent there as a girl! What kinds of devils have those peasants become?”

  “We had best sail as soon as possible, darling,” Selena spoke up, meeting his eyes, her voice soft.

  “Oh?” he said. “You have a reason?”

  “I think so,” she replied, smiling now. “For a woman in my condition, it is inadvisable to travel too late in the term.”

  “Well, yes, I guess that’s right,” Jean allowed casually, thinking perhaps of the preparations that would have to be made. “You’ve got a point there…”

  Then he realized what she’d said, her words coming back to him now, and he leaped up so suddenly that his chair overturned.

  “Selena!” he cried. “Selena?”

  Selena just smiled.

  Selena knew from the start that Jean Beaumain would make a wonderful father, and for that reason, as well as for her own joy at having conceived, she exulted in her pregnancy. According to her calculations, she would be about five months gone by the time they reached France—showing a bit by then—so other matters involving parenthood needed to be discussed. Marriage, for one.

  That was no problem. In one way or another, Jean had been asking to marry her almost since they’d met. Now aboard the Liberté, bound for the Canary Islands and thence to France, he asked again, and she accepted.

  They kissed to seal the bargain. Then he said, “I mark that look in your eyes, Selena. Your mind sees a little cloud somewhere in the sky. What is it?”

  “Jean,” she said, holding him, looking up at him, “exactly when will we be married? And where?”

  He grinned. “You don’t think I’m planning to weasel out, do you? After I spent so much time winning you in the first place?”

  “Yes, how you suffered in our bed all those nights!” she shot back in jest. “It must have been terribly hard.” Then she turned serious again. “Darling, you’ve already agreed that our son should be born in Europe”—they both knew the child would be a boy—“where the midwives and doctors are well-trained. So why can’t we be married in Paris as well? France is your homeland, and without a homeland there is something missing. You know how much I long to return to Coldstream one day. Surely now, with our son coming and a new life already upon us, you can set aside yo
ur quest for revenge against Chamorro. Rise above it. Forget it—”

  “Would you forget your dream of Coldstream?” he replied.

  “That’s different.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  “I simply want what is rightfully mine.”

  “Well, perhaps evening things with Chamorro is rightfully mine.”

  “It will come to no good.”

  “Who is to say?”

  “But think about it. And let us wed as soon as we reach Paris.”

  Jean did not say yes, but neither did he say no. He promised to think about it. That, Selena felt, was a good sign.

  When the Canary Islands came in sight, the port city on the north coast of Tenerife, Selena was up on deck. The Liberté would stop there for several days to take aboard water and provisions for the final leg of the journey to France. Sometimes she thought she felt the child moving within her, but it might also have been the motion of the ship. The trip thus far had been swift and peaceful, but a glimpse of the islands upon the horizon stirred old memories.

  It had been just north of there, years ago, that Royce Campbell, feverish with buboes and expecting death, had put her off his plague-ridden Highlander. Alone, she’d floated into shore aboard a dinghy, to be befriended by a woman on Tenerife called Senora Celeste.

  Selena remembered her thoughts that day as she’d drifted toward shore, watching Royce’s ship, manned but by terror and disease, sail out of sight. She’d accepted the fact of his approaching death and hoped that, in some eternal port, he would find the ghost of the wolf that lived in his dream-haunted past, a meeting of mates in a mythical Highlands beyond misery and time. And recalling these things now, Selena knew why the cross on La Tortue had seemed so incongruous. Royce would never have chosen to be buried beneath a cross. It was not him at all, nor was it the way of his riotous Campbell kin.

  She sighed. His well-meaning crew had erred.

  But the cross gave comfort too, and so it had to be all right.

  Just not…just not fitting.

  Anyway, too late now.

  Tenerife had not changed much since Selena had been there before. The streets were still narrow and dirty, the buildings along the waterfront and in the town crowded together and somewhat dilapidated. Except for Senora Celeste’s hotel in the center of the village, which itself was unprepossessing, there was nothing of distinction.

  Jean, however, suggested that they spend the night on terra firma, and in a regular bed. Selena was not opposed to the general idea, but she balked. Jean wondered why.

  “When I was here before,” she explained, “the woman who runs the hotel pretended to be my friend. But she drugged me with wine. I awoke aboard a ship called the Massachusetts. I had been abducted by Captain Jack Randolph who was in league with Senora Celeste. He took me to India and sold me in concubinage to a maharajah.”

  “Well, that is certainly not going to happen this time, darling. Come, let’s go to the hotel and get a room for the night.”

  “I don’t…I don’t know if I could see her again without…without doing something drastic.”

  “Selena, I recall your lecture a very short time ago about forgetting the evils of the past. You mean to tell me—”

  “All right, let’s go,” she said. After all, how could she counsel him against vengeance in one breath and admit to a craving for it in the next? This was her opportunity to give Jean Beaumain an object lesson in letting bygones be bygones. Senora Celeste might be dead by now.

  But she wasn’t.

  The woman who had deceived Selena years ago lounged in a wicker rocking chair in the lobby of her establishment. She was much heavier than she’d been, and looked a lot older. One of her eyes was afflicted with cataracts and the other was rheumy and unfocused, although this was quite possibly due to the effects of an empty rum bottle on the wicker table beside her.

  “Yes?” she inquired in Spanish, as Selena entered the hotel with Jean and Martha Marguerite. “What do you want?”

  Martha had a bit of Spanish, Selena less, so Jean asked for rooms. “One night, perhaps two,” he said.

  “It shall be done,” declared Celeste, drawing a cane from beneath the folds of her skirt and banging it on the floor.

  “I have a little trouble with my old bones these days,” she explained gruffly, as a young man in a soiled white jacket appeared in answer to her crude summons. “It’s not as easy to get around as it used to be. Pablo,” she commanded the clerk, “take care of these people. Nothing but the finest now, understand?”

  This was clearly a fatuous remark, idly made and meaningless, given the state of the hotel, but the pretension in Senora Celeste’s tone irritated Selena. She dropped to the floor in front of the old woman’s rocking chair and stared into her good eye.

  “Do you still serve that fine wine here?” she asked pointedly. “The kind that makes sleep come so readily?”

  Senora Celeste looked back with a baffled expression. “If you wish…” she said vaguely.

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Selena continued to stare at the woman. “Don’t you remember me?” she asked finally, unable to stop herself.

  Celeste blinked a number of times, trying to focus clearly upon Selena. “Do I know you?” she asked finally. “Have you been here before?”

  Martha Marguerite stood by, mystified. “Selena,” said Jean, a kind of warning.

  But Selena took no heed. The old, bad blood of outrage and betrayal rose up again. She recalled how Celeste had seemed to rescue her from Captain Jack’s amatory proposals in the barroom, then had seen to it that Selena was ensconced safely in her room, away from Jack, alone in her quarters—with a drugged bottle of wine!

  “Are you sure you’ve never seen me before?” Selena demanded. “Do you remember a Captain Jack Randolph?”

  Senora Celeste was searching her memory. She was genuinely confused. And embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “You look a dear child to me, but if you’ve been here before, I can’t recall. And there’ve been so many sea captains who’ve stopped here over the years. No, I’m sorry, I just don’t know…”

  Selena gave it up, angry at herself for being angry, yet satisfied in a way that Jean had been there to witness the exchange. Surely he would see now, with their son coming, with a new life already gifted to them, how disastrous it would be to persist in his obsession with Chamorro.

  Jean admitted as much that night in bed.

  “Don’t you see, Selena,” he asked, holding her after they’d made love—gently and with Selena on top because of the child—“don’t you see? Celeste didn’t even remember you.”

  “Yes. Let us put our pasts away forever. Nothing matters now but the future.”

  In the night, however, Jean turned in his sleep, rolling away from her. Lying there in a state of semiwakefulness, a bit uncomfortable with her swelling belly and trying to adjust to the unfamiliar bed, Selena saw upon Jean’s back the evil, branded letters of Chamorro’s name.

  How could a man—how could anyone—forget something like that?

  Yet he had promised that he would.

  A real man. A true man. She slid across the sheets, pressing her body to his, the two of them like nested spoons that last night in the bed on Tenerife.

  Next morning, Selena and Jean had a breakfast of oranges, eggs, fried fish, and coffee in their room, after which Jean went down to the pier to oversee the provisioning of the Liberté. Selena washed and dressed, then lounged about for a time, simply enjoying the sensation of a place, a room, a floor that did not rock or sway, dip or plunge. Presently, the room began to grow uncomfortable—the day promised to be hot—and she decided to go out and walk down to the harbor. All waterfronts excited her with the sight of ships arriving and departing, loading and unloading, for they spoke of the great wide world of which she had seen much but not enough.

  She was at the door, ready to open it, when a thunder of footsteps came up the hotel stairs and across the h
all outside. The door crashed in upon her, into her, and she fell, twisting, trying to gain her balance, onto the hard floor.

  Jean Beaumain stood over her. He did not seem to think it odd that she was lying there.

  “Selena!” he cried, his face flushed with dark passion. “Selena!” He pulled out his fat black wallet and showered her with bills and notes of every nation, a fortune in money. “Selena, you and Martha Marguerite are taking the Lancia to Le Havre. It is in the harbor now and leaves for France on the morrow. A Portuguese vessel. I have made the arrangements. Your luggage is already aboard her.”

  Having said that, he turned to race away.

  “Jean,” she gasped, trying to regain the wind that had been knocked from her by the fall. “Jean, wait…what—”

  “Chamorro!” he shouted, already pounding down the stairs. “He has been sighted in the Azores. I have him this time for sure…”

  And so he was gone.

  Selena and Martha Marguerite, as instructed, boarded the Lancia and sailed for France next day. She was a good ship with an expert crew and a captain, Raoul Telémas, who was kind.

  He aided Martha Marguerite in caring for Selena when her pains began, almost as soon as the Lancia departed Tenerife.

  And he wept along with the two women when Selena gave herself up of a perfectly formed male infant, so startling, so tiny.

  So dead.

  11

  Two Worlds in One

  Not since her flight from Scotland aboard a rat-infested freighter had Selena made as sad a trip. The sight of her child disappearing beneath the waves of the Atlantic, wrapped in a Portuguese flag provided by Captain Telémas, was as hard a thing as she had ever had to bear. Not only did she feel anguish for her own loss: how devastated Jean would feel when he learned what had happened! Perhaps to spare him, she would refrain from mentioning that his carelessness in knocking her onto the hotel floor had probably contributed to the miscarriage.

  Revenge. Chamorro. Human passion. Why had things happened as they had? The world had many answers, always. Davi the Dravidian would have told her that her actions in a previous life had surely led to the loss of the child. But if that were true, what could she have done? How terrible a person could she have been to be forced to bear this agony now? And wasn’t that explanation incomplete anyway? Jean Beaumain, too, would have had to have been evil. Or considering the tragedy from another angle, from the perspective of Yolanda Fee, for instance, perhaps Senora Celeste’s hotel was truly evil and the aura of the place itself led to disaster for those who dwelt therein. A Christian would have said that Jean’s sudden appearance at the door was God’s will, as was the miscarriage that followed. But Selena had no interest in a god who would allow such a thing to happen. Maybe fate alone—vast, random, impersonal fate—was the culprit. Yet the very vagueness of that explanation was difficult for grief-stricken Selena to comprehend, and robbed the child’s death of any meaning. A chaplain on board the Lancia, Père Giroux, a kindly little old man, came to Selena’s cabin and spoke movingly, tearfully, of the web of life, which would not be understood until the end of time.