Obediently Girardin followed, but her hand slipped into her pocket and rested on the hilt of the knife. Her mouth was dry, her pulse loud in her ears. The General led her past his neatly folded bunk and out onto a small balcony at the stern of the ship.
‘An uninterrupted view for miles around.’ He spread his arms wide. The morning sun filtered through the hazy air and cast a creamy glow on the horizon. Far behind, the Espérance and her reflection appeared as an ink blot against the sky. Storm petrels swooped and reeled, scanning the ship’s wake for food. Beneath their feet the water rushed past. ‘And there is always somewhere to go.’
‘And yet we are still trapped,’ she ventured. ‘Trapped on this ship.’
‘Better to be trapped on a moving object than a stationary one!’
‘Only if you are the one directing its route.’
‘Very true.’ He laughed. It was a rolling, gentle sound.
‘How do you know where we are?’ she asked. ‘How do you navigate?’
The General leaned forwards. ‘You want to know?’ He looked sceptical.
She bristled. ‘Yes.’
‘Very well.’ He grinned, as if amused that she would ask such a thing. He gestured for her to follow him back to his desk. ‘Two things are important to remember. To find your place anywhere in the world you need latitude and longitude.’ He took the globe and placed it in front of her. ‘We need to know where we are up and down, and side to side. You have heard us speak of this?’
She nodded, looking at the plotted course of the Recherche on the chart on the wall.
The General continued, ‘Remember that the earth is round and that it spins.’ He flicked the globe so that the earth turned in front of her. ‘Like a ballerina in a pirouette,’ he said. ‘She sees the lights of the auditorium swirl around her just as we see the lights of the sun and stars circle around us every day.’
He ran his finger along the line circling the middle of the globe. ‘Today, we are here at the equator. This is the sun.’ The General raised his fist. ‘At noon today it will be directly over our heads.’
With the index finger of his left hand he traced the path of the ship on the globe, trailing down the belly of the earth. ‘As we sail away from the equator towards the Cape we will look back at the sun; it will be behind us, not ahead.’
It took Girardin a moment to comprehend. Now when she looked back towards home, towards her son, she would have the sun in her face, not at her back.
The General continued. ‘As we move further away, the angle changes, so at noon the sun will not be overhead, it will appear lower in the sky. With the Borda Circle, I measure the angle of the sun above the horizon and know how many degrees we are away from the equator. That is latitude: our position north or south of the line. At night we can take the same measurements with stars.’
Girardin frowned. She feared to show her stupidity, but also knew she may never get another chance to ask questions. ‘But if latitude is measured in degrees, what distance is that?’
‘It is a way for us to draw lines across the earth, and to put the globe onto sheets of paper.’ He cupped his hands around the top of the globe. ‘You see the lines converging here? They look like slices of a pie. It is because the earth is round that we can divide it into angles. Do you know that a circle has three hundred and sixty degrees?’
She did know this. But who had taught her? Certainly not her stepmother. Nor the nuns, who taught her to read and write well enough to make housekeeping lists. Besnard had already discovered her inadequacy. ‘You write like a girl,’ he had said, peering over her shoulder at the ledger. She had been shocked, forgetting that her education could betray her. Women were not taught to spell as men were and her written language was a female one. ‘My mother taught me,’ she had lied to him. In truth, she was fifteen when her father finally sent her to the Catholic convent, afraid her illiteracy reflected poorly on himself and her marriage prospects. By then he was a respected businessman, a worldly man.
The General was talking about Babylonian astronomers, but she pictured a boy scratching circles in the gravel paths. A boy she had met in the garden of Versailles where she was not supposed to be. She heard the squeal of her father’s wheelbarrow. The boy had taught her about the magic formulas to measure circles.
The General continued, enthused by his lesson. ‘If we draw a line right down through Paris, think of this first line as our prime meridian. Now all we need to know is how far east or west of it we are. That is our longitude. And for this I need two chronometers.’ He pointed to the brass clocks on his desk. ‘One I keep at the same time as Paris, the other I change to match our local time.’
‘Time is different in two places?’ This was something she had not thought of before. ‘How can that be?’
‘Time is measured by the passing of the sun through the sky. Or as we turn past the sun, if you remember the ballerina.’ He pointed to the map on his wall, where the position of the Recherche had been marked with a black dot. ‘When we reach the Cape—’ he moved his finger forwards ‘—we will be an hour ahead of our friends in Paris because we greet the sun before them.’
She looked at the ticking chronometer, telling the time of Paris. In its brass cogs, time passed steadily. Unceasing. Unstoppable. Her son was growing older without her.
‘The earth turns fifteen degrees each hour,’ the General continued. ‘If we are two hours ahead of Paris, we must be thirty degrees east of Paris.’
He pulled out a chair and sat. ‘When I first joined the navy we had no reliable chronometers, no way of knowing where we were from east or west. We set sail into the unknown. That was true adventure.’ He sounded wistful.
Girardin touched her finger to the globe. The equator, the imaginary line separating the old world from the new. Sharp as a knife edge, they teetered on it, in the middle of this ocean.
The General clapped his hands together. ‘Enough. I have work to do and so have you. Alert the cooks to prepare for a feast. Tell the butcher to slaughter one of the cattle. The men need a diversion to take their minds off their disappointments. Tonight we will have music and dancing!’
Chapter 17
Latitude 35°40′ S, longitude 14°45′ W, 15 January 1792
‘LOOK AT THAT!’ FÉLIX CRIED. GIRARDIN FOLLOWED HIS FINGER to a spot in the choppy waves. She saw nothing.
A school of fish leaped into the air. Their fins spread like wings as they burst from the water in a flash of shiny colour, gliding above the waves with wings flared. Girardin spun about. The ship was surrounded by flying fish. What bizarre creatures! Fish that wanted to fly? Surely a cruel trick that God had played on them.
The naturalists danced along the rail in front of her, their faces turned upwards to the sky. Girardin looked up to see a flock of enormous white birds swooping down like angels. She jumped back. The heavy birds spread their wings above the water to slow their dive and scooped the flying fish into their mouths. A golden sack inflated beneath their long bills, trapping the fish inside. Amazed, she watched the birds plummet from the sky and pluck the hapless fish from the air. One of the birds landed on the water with the fish fighting inside the pouch, like bony elbows struggling to be free.
Girardin was used to the fleet, little storm petrels that followed the ship. The tropics had brought the black man-of-war bird with its bright red pouch, like a goitre, at its throat. She had once seen a trusting booby light down on a sailor’s outstretched arm. But these huge, white birds with golden purses beneath their bills were like nothing she had seen before.
‘Pelecanus onocrotalus,’ Labillardière said excitedly, ‘just as Linnaeus described it!’
‘The great white pelican,’ Félix translated.
Ventenat flapped past her in his long black robes, not yet changed after the morning’s sermon. Eyes intent on the birds, he tripped on a coil of rope, fell sprawling to the deck, but righted himself before she could reach out. Even the sailors seemed excited watching these magnificent birds.
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‘The birds are a good sign,’ Armand said. ‘Land is near.’ The monkey stood up on his shoulder, resting one hand on the old sailor’s head, as if it too were searching for land along the horizon.
After crossing the line, the winds had blown strong and fair and both frigates made good speed. But for six weeks the winds blew only from the east, pushing them so far off course that the crew laid bets on when they would land in Brazil. Girardin had despaired of reaching the Cape before their supplies were exhausted. All the fresh meat and vegetables were gone and she conjured meal plans out of nothing at all. Soup with onions and oil. That was a dish her mother used to make for the family when they couldn’t afford meat and vegetables. She remembered her mother complaining in hushed tones, ‘What use is a garden if you can’t grow any vegetables?’ Once, she had seen her mother wish aloud for more carrots in front of her father and receive a smashed nose. Girardin counted the remaining bags of onions in her head, while the men grumbled that the broth was not nutritious.
Eventually the winds had turned westerly and pushed them hard and fast towards the African continent. The sound of the wind driving the ship forwards was a comfort to her. Each morning, Girardin scanned the horizon for land. Each morning, the relentless sea stretched in all directions, showing her that the two ships were utterly alone on this ocean.
At New Year, Girardin was overjoyed to see the Espérance draw alongside the Recherche. The officers and crew shouted out their greetings to one another. She saw Kermadec with his men, his smile broad, his arm raised. The ships met like two albatross on the wing, passing one another briefly in mid-air. She waved to the Espérance with a smile she couldn’t hide from her face.
After that, the sightings of seabirds became more numerous and the sailors began to lay their bets, convinced that land was near. One day she saw a tiny bird flit past her ear. Its golden breast flashed. A wagtail! It stunned her to see this bird of the fields so far from home. She remembered them dancing around the ponds in the gardens at Versailles. Where are you going to little bird? she wondered. Seeming lost and fatigued from its long flight, she watched as it fluttered down to rest for a moment on the taffrail, then suffered itself to be taken in Labillardière’s net.
Ange Raoul now spent most of his time aloft, locked in competition with his older brother Joseph over who would be the first to spy the Cape. Raoul had shown her no further aggression, given her no cause for alarm, but yet when he looked at her she felt uneasy in her skin, like a doe quivering at the scent of a wolf. He regarded her with the patience of a hunter and a smug familiarity, as though he knew exactly who she was.
A squeal from the starboard made her turn.
‘Félix! A net!’ Labillardière cried while drawing his pistol. ‘Careful, don’t scare it off.’
‘Have you seen the size of its beak?’ Félix squawked.
A pelican stood on the taffrail. It towered above the crewmen. Girardin was sure if she were standing on the deck beside it, she would be looking straight into its beady black eye. Puckered golden skin hung down at its throat, gently fluttering in the breeze. It ducked its bill down and surveyed the shipmates with easy nonchalance. Spreading its massive wings wide, it gave two strong flaps.
‘My God, Ventenat, what would you say its wingspan is? Nearly three metres?’
‘Yes, eight, perhaps nine feet!’ Ventenat agreed.
Labillardière inched closer with his pistol held out in front of him.
Félix and Ventenat unravelled a seine net used for fishing and crept towards the pelican. Beside her, Armand’s monkey leaped from his shoulder.
‘No!’ cried Armand as his pet trotted along the rail with its tail spiked into the air, intent on the intruder. Girardin watched the pelican. It waited until the monkey came within range then drew itself up tall and lashed out. The monkey squealed and twisted away just as the heavy beak snapped shut with the solid clap of an axe on wood. A gulp of air inflated the pouch and the monkey scampered across the deck and back up onto Armand’s shoulder.
The pelican regarded them calmly.
‘Throw the net now!’ Labillardière commanded.
Girardin wanted to warn the pelican. Flee, flee now. You can fly! The filaments of the net glistened in the sunlight as Félix raised his arm. The pelican swung its head and gazed at him with a black-eyed stare.
‘Shoot it first!’ he cried.
‘Don’t be stupid, we’ll lose it over the side!’
The pelican snapped its beak together and thrust its wings wide, baring its breast. Girardin imagined the shot bursting red upon its feathers. Saw it fall back and float upon the water. Don’t you know what will happen to you if you are caught here? She flicked her arms at it, not caring if Labillardière saw her. The pelican turned its head to her. With a small hop backwards, it disappeared below the rail.
Labillardière ran to the side. ‘You fools! You’ve lost it!’
The pelican flew low across the ocean, the black tips of its marvellous wings lightly brushing the water’s surface. Girardin smiled.
Chapter 18
Cape Town, South Africa, 18 January 1792
WHEN TABLE MOUNTAIN ROSE OUT OF THE SEA BEFORE HER, Girardin wept with relief. Out of this wide, endless ocean, the General had found the Cape. The Cape of Good Hope. Good Hope. Hope. She clung to the words. She had survived three months packed tight with these men, like salted fish in a barrel that had been set afloat. She wanted to feel solid earth beneath her feet, to smell the warm scent of land.
She swayed, feeling her seasickness return as she took her first steps onto the wharf. The boards seemed to buckle upwards and she tottered like a bandy-legged old salt. Around her supplies were being delivered, animals traded, barrels rolled loudly along the planks used as makeshift gangways. Soon she would have fresh beef and pork to feed the crew, and chickens and goats to load into pens. She halted, unable to take another step. There were too many people, too many bodies jostling for space. Everyone moved so quickly. Her shoes felt weighted to the wharf.
Behind her, Labillardière ran down the gangway. She watched him push aside the sailors carrying sacks of grain on their shoulders, and heard the men swear and curse at him. Labillardière bounded past her on the wharf and made straight for his friend Claude Riche, who was arguing with the surgeon from the Espérance, Denis Joannet. Girardin had met the chief surgeon for the first time just that morning when he sought her out in the galley.
‘The air down here is foul.’ Joannet had screwed up his face. ‘It will bring fevers in the crew. Fumigation is what you need.’ She began to tell him they smoked the tweendecks with gunpowder twice daily, but he had already turned away.
‘The crew are like children frightened of medicines. Would you believe they accuse me of poisoning them? How dare they!’
He strolled around the galley, tapping his fingernail thoughtfully against the canisters of treacle, juniper extract and malt barley.
‘While we are in port these men will practise the excesses of debauchery in all manner of evil places.’ He shuddered and lifted a jar of treacle from the shelf. ‘A spoonful of this should disguise the taste of mercury.’
He leaned in close to her, so close that Girardin could see the hairs sprouting from the tip of his nose and the splintered red veins on his cheeks. ‘Syphilis,’ he said. ‘Will the navy ever be rid of this scourge of the seas?’ His breath of pickled walnuts was strong in her face.
Joannet had pocketed the jar of treacle as he left.
Now Girardin watched the surgeon tussle with Claude Riche over a cage trap. She thought Joannet had the advantage. He was shorter and stouter. He dug his toes into the wharf and leaned his weight against the bamboo cage. Loyal Michel Sirot, Riche’s servant, flapped about beside them, beating Joannet with his parasol like a maid punishing the dust from a floor rug. She smiled. They are children, she thought; children who had not been taught to share. Labillardière rushed between the men. From this distance, Girardin could not hear the altercation
, but she could see Labillardière wrench the cage away from Joannet. Words floated across to her. Pseudoscience. Profession. Respect. The surgeon straightened his coat and shouldered a canvas pack before stalking away.
Girardin felt the muscles in her legs begin to relax. Her breathing slowed and became more regular. She let the push and pull of the dockyards wash around her like waves. She was amazed at the freedom her clothes gave to her. You are fortunate, she told herself, to have made it this far. A mouse limped along the wharf, missing a hind foot. It stopped and sniffed the air, its whiskers throbbing. You are like me, little friend, she thought. Both of us small and brown and unnoticed, and yet still afraid. A sailor dropped a sack of rice and a loose board jumped. Girardin saw a pink tail disappear over the side.
Girardin walked. Placing one unsteady foot in front of the other, she left the wharf and made it to the flagstones of the quay. Her stomach rolled. She kept walking and soon she felt dry-packed earth beneath her soles. She heard voices in many languages: Dutch, Portuguese, French and English. Chickens screeched and flapped. In the marketplace, the crowds were disorientating. Random noises alarmed her. She stumbled and put her hand against the flank of a cow to steady herself and felt the annoyed swatch of its tail strike her. Like the marketplace in Brest, the air stank of oily fish and oysters going bad in the sun. She was reminded of the boy with the stack of papers being pushed into the muck of the street. What news was there of home? she wondered.
‘Have you ever seen a more sickening sight?’ She turned at the familiar voice, squinting up at Labillardière. She followed his gaze. The ship docked alongside the Recherche had begun to offload its cargo.
‘How many are there?’ Girardin whispered.
‘Near four hundred would be my estimate.’
The Negro men and women shuffled from the ship. Heavy manacles bound their ankles and kept them close together. They were emaciated and could barely stand. Girardin had never seen black people before, never seen the people of Africa. The manacles dug into their flesh, and she saw the streaks of fresh red blood over crusted black. When the chain of women was pulled apart from the chain of men, their warbled cries to one another grew frantic. The sound was deafening, and Girardin felt the busy marketplace pause and turn to look.
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