Into the World

by Stephanie Parkyn

  The women wailed, heedless of the swift canes on their flesh. They were pushed through the streets. Girardin stared at the manacles around their ankles as they were shunted past. She could not meet the eyes of these women. She wrung the fabric of her tunic in her hands. While she could hide within her clothing, these people could not hide their skin. She smelled them. It nearly made her retch. Their legs were smeared with shit, and urine had stained their rags. The townspeople drew back, holding their handkerchiefs to cover their mouths, screwing their faces in disgust.

  ‘These slaves have been forced to stand in their own excrement since Mozambique!’ the naturalist cried, looking around him, accusing anyone who would meet his gaze. Girardin felt the power in Labillardière’s muscular frame as he stiffened with anger. ‘You people should feel ashamed of yourselves!’

  The slaves bore the marks of the cane, bloodied welts on their shoulders, backs and heads. Their faces were bewildered, distraught. What did they think was happening to them? The men and women were herded into separate pens.

  ‘I caught one of the traders boasting that he could purchase three blacks for the price of one handsome dog,’ said Labillardière. She saw that he was trembling. His anger reminded her of Olympe. Her friend would not stand idly by if she were here. Olympe would add her voice to his condemnation.

  ‘The practice of slavery is an abomination!’ Olympe had cried out from a table in the middle of Etienne’s café. ‘We writers must do all in our power to condemn it.’ Back then, Marie-Louise did not know her name and it would be many years before they became friends. She was amazed by this beautiful woman sitting openly at a table with her male companions, her voice loud and unconcerned. Her showy white headdress towered above all, gleaming like silver satin.

  A group of men stood and slapped their napkins onto the table, pulling their eyebrows into frowns and making a display of their exit. Women should not be seen eating in public.

  Marie-Louise hovered at the kitchen door, uncertain. She looked quickly to Etienne but he was too busy in the kitchen to notice the woman in the centre of their café.

  ‘I am going to write a play,’ she told her companions. ‘L’Esclavage des Noirs.’

  ‘No one will put on a play about slavery,’ the man beside her scoffed. He caught Marie-Louise’s eye and gestured for coffee.

  ‘You must give them names. That is the key. These Negroes could be you or I if they have names. I will not write about slavery, I will write about two slaves, Zamore and Mirza. It will be a love story.’

  As Marie-Louise poured them coffee, the man shook his head. ‘It will not make any difference; the practice is too important for the economy.’

  Olympe had arched her brow and gave her fan an annoyed flick. ‘It is the doing of the thing that matters. We must do something.’

  Marie-Louise was secretly pleased to see this remarkable woman come more frequently to the café. The customers eventually grew used to her and ceased to complain. Olympe de Gouges, the eccentric woman playwright. They ignored her or treated her with disdain. Olympe did not care. Marie-Louise loved it when she swept into the room, wearing her opinions like her mode of dress, audacious and bizarre.

  ‘It is only colour that separates the African from the European. If they are animals then so are we,’ she had exclaimed, oblivious to the startled glances of her friends. ‘Colour is the beauty of nature. Do you treat your brown chicken any different from the white?’

  But Girardin was afraid to speak out as Labillardière had done. She was not as brave as Olympe de Gouges.

  In the marketplace, the auctioneer’s voice rose above the cries of the Africans. Girardin recognised the singsong rise and fall of the business at hand. The men and women, held in separate saleyards, screamed in terror. Girardin knew this would be the last they saw of each other. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and sons.

  The marketplace resumed its daily business and she heard the people around her complaining of the racket. Did they not know what it was like to lose the ones you loved?

  The auctioneer’s gavel slammed on wood. She started. The slaves were lined up before their owners, their feet and wrists still bound. What kind of life awaits them, she wondered, in these masters’ homes?

  After Etienne’s death, Marie-Louise had had no choice but to seek her father’s protection. She had lost her husband and let his café fall into ruin. Jean Girardin had suffered her return, even though everyone knew that a widow under one’s roof brought bad luck. Still grieving, Marie-Louise was slow to realise that her life was no longer her own. Her father stripped her of her married name, Lesserteur, and reinstated her as Marie-Louise Girardin. He chose the clothes she wore, the books she read, even the needlepoint patterns to occupy her days. Since she had no funds of her own she could not send or receive a letter without him knowing. He permitted her no friendships. From her stepmother, she was entreated not to cause any further embarrassment. She could do nothing but wait for her father to find her another husband.

  ‘No man should have complete domination over another,’ said Labillardière, clenching his fists. ‘It makes beasts of both.’

  Nor any man over a woman, Girardin heard Olympe whisper in her ear.

  Chapter 19

  ‘LA PÉROUSE HAS BEEN SIGHTED!’

  ‘In the Admiralty Islands.’

  ‘By an English captain.’

  The rumours had circled the Recherche faster than a terrier chasing its tail. Captain Hunter, an English officer aboard the Dutch ship Waaksamheyd, had recently visited Cape Town and left behind news that he had seen islanders with French uniforms near New Guinea. But Captain Hunter’s ship had left port the same day as their arrival in Cape Town and the rumours could not be confirmed.

  Girardin pictured Kermadec’s large map open on his desk in his library in Brest and the tiny dots of islands in the vast expanse of ocean. Back then, she had thought the mission ridiculous, that they were fishing for raindrops. But now it seemed there was hope La Pérouse and his men might be found. It warmed her heart to think of it. If a mission as impossible as this could succeed, it gave her hope that she too could be reunited with her son.

  She slipped her thumb under the cuff of her sleeve and felt the raised ridge of her burn. It reassured her, this touchstone, to remind herself of Rémi. She dug her thumb into the burn, consoling herself that the matching scar he carried was a promise she would return. But the further she sailed from France, the more distant and unreal her old life seemed. Her son would be six months old. Six months! The recognition of it made her gasp.

  Félix looked up from his work. She faked a sneeze. It was not hard to believe with all the pollen dancing in the air. Today, Girardin was with the naturalists in the great cabin. They were preoccupied with a heavy haul of plants from their explorations at the Cape. Blooms of irises, lilacs and orchids were strewn across the table. On return from each of their sampling trips the naturalists came back to the ship to catalogue and preserve their specimens. Félix was plucking seeds from spent flowerheads with his tweezers and placing each one carefully in a partitioned wooden tray. An ornate tin and copper chest lay open before him, and the wooden trays fitted neatly inside. He was collecting the seeds of his future, she thought, watching him pull the fine threads from the flower and lay each one in its nest.

  With the officers housed ashore in Cape Town, the naturalists’ books and papers were once again spread across the cabin. Dozens of jars filled with butterflies lined the walls and drying flower stems hung from the ceiling. Out of loneliness or boredom, Girardin found herself drawn to the naturalists. She hovered close, like a bee to nectar, and they accepted her without question.

  The chaplain passed her another sheet of paper. ‘It is an art and a science,’ he told her. He arranged the plant specimens attractively with their flowers opened out and leaves flipped to display the detail of both sides. Using his tweezers, he spread the petals of the iris before she placed the paper on top. He had shown Girardin
how to place the sheets within the press. She carefully lined up the sheets of paper and laid the wooden slab across the top, turning the baton to tighten the straps around the collection. With each turn she couldn’t help but think of the bandages wound tight around her own pressed and flattened breasts.

  The artist, Piron, sat at one end of the table, half hidden by a mound of fluffy pink proteas. ‘The General will change our course now, you mark my words,’ he said, shaking his paintbrush at Labillardière.

  ‘Pah! What evidence do we have?’ said Labillardière, not looking up from his microscope. ‘Some second-hand reports of natives wearing pieces of red and blue clothing and gesticulating that they want to be shaved? Am I the only one among us who thinks a finger scraped across a throat and directed at an Englishman may have been misconstrued?’ He made the quick, sharp motion to prove his point.

  ‘But we must investigate,’ Girardin blurted. ‘This is a rescue mission.’

  ‘That is not my mission.’

  She shook her head, exasperated. She did not understand him. It heartened her that the savant could care so much about the plight of slaves, but that he could care so little about their lost countrymen puzzled and frustrated her.

  ‘If we change our course, I will leave the expedition,’ Labillardière declared.

  Félix snorted. ‘Good. I will have your cabin.’ He winked at Girardin.

  ‘The needs of the naturalists always come last. It is becoming intolerable. Claude Riche and I will no longer stand for it.’

  ‘So melodramatic,’ wailed Félix, clutching his hands in front of his heart.

  Girardin hid her smile.

  ‘It is a point of principle.’

  ‘You would give up your chance of new discoveries?’ Girardin did not believe it.

  ‘There is no country in the world where one finds as many interesting plants in so small an area,’ said Labillardière, selecting another flower from the pile beside him. ‘I should be very happy to stay here and explore further.’

  Félix mouthed to her, ‘No, he will not.’

  Without warning, the door to the great cabin swung open. Girardin yelped with surprise. Piron swore as he knocked his jar of brushes and the murky water spilled across his illustration.

  ‘Does no one knock?’ Labillardière muttered.

  Captain d’Auribeau entered, followed by the General. He raised his eyebrows at the mounds of flowering plants piled on the table and the flower stems strung upside down from the beams, but made no comment.

  ‘Ah, Citizen d’Entrecasteaux!’ Labillardière said, not bothering to rise from his microscope. ‘Perfect timing.’

  She saw Captain d’Auribeau bristle at the impertinent address and the General put a hand on his arm to quell him.

  Labillardière stood and stretched, exaggerating his full height beside the diminutive captain. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a letter, solemnly handing it to the General. ‘As trained professionals and head of our respective areas of natural history on this expedition, Citizen Riche and myself demand that all collections be handed over to us for proper scientific evaluation, or else we shall be forced to tender our resignations.’

  The General stared at him. ‘But surely, Monsieur Labillardière, the enthusiasms of the men should be encouraged. Natural history belongs to all. Is it not for the good of science that knowledge is shared?’

  ‘Science is a careful, considered matter undertaken by learned savants—not a free for all! Many of the officers and crew have begun their own collections and even the surgeon Joannet fancies himself a botanist and wishes to join our collecting. This fever of pseudoscience is unconscionable!’

  To Girardin, the General looked weary, like a father tired of settling the petty squabbles of his children. He regarded the savant from beneath his brows. ‘You would abandon your chance to explore in lands where no other savant has been?’

  Labillardière swallowed. ‘Of course.’

  ‘We should sail without them,’ d’Auribeau declared. ‘He admits there are others capable of collecting these plants and shells. Leave them behind and let us concentrate our efforts on geographical discoveries.’

  Labillardière looked pale.

  The General sighed. ‘I will consider the matter. We have few days remaining in this port, so if you wish to collect more flowers—’ his gaze lingered on the fluffy proteas ‘—I suggest you make the most of the opportunity.’

  The General turned stiffly to Girardin. ‘The cook said I would find you here.’

  She coloured, feeling guilty without knowing why.

  ‘We need to discuss the search for La Pérouse,’ he said.

  ‘Foolish,’ Labillardière couldn’t help but observe. ‘Another long sea journey without opportunity for botanising.’

  ‘Enough! What consequence is this to you if you have resigned your post?’ said d’Auribeau.

  Labillardière’s mouth opened and shut. For the first time Girardin saw him speechless.

  ‘Come,’ the General said to her. ‘We have need of your opinion.’

  Flustered, she passed a wilting specimen to Ventenat and wiped her hands on her tunic. With a glance at Félix for reassurance, she followed.

  ‘And clean this cabin up!’ d’Auribeau snarled as he slammed the door behind him.

  In the General’s cabin, Girardin saw that the officers of both ships had been called to the meeting. All heads turned to face her. She scanned the sea of blue frockcoats and white-cap wigs for Captain Kermadec, seeking his encouraging smile. She stepped forwards. Ahead of her were the observatory trio: stout Rossel, sparrow-like Beautemps-Beaupré and the fiddle player, Saint-Aignan. The surgeons—Joannet from the Espérance and Renard from the Recherche—stood close together. The lieutenants of both ships were introduced, but their names were lost to her as soon as they were uttered. She failed to find Kermadec in the crowd.

  Captain d’Auribeau took his place before the map on the General’s wall. ‘You have heard the rumours?’ d’Auribeau asked, without looking at her.

  Did he mean of La Pérouse? She was afraid to speak.

  The General smiled gently. ‘We have need of your advice. If we investigate this sighting in the Admiralties, we must deviate from the King’s plan. We would head north to Timor immediately and abandon the charting of the southern coast of New Holland.’

  The observatory trio stirred. She glanced across at Beautemps-Beaupré. The young cartographer looked distraught.

  ‘How long will our supplies last?’ Captain d’Auribeau asked her.

  Girardin swallowed. She looked at the map upon the wall. Where was Timor? She had no idea. Where could they restock? Dare she ask or would that expose her ignorance? The men stared at her expectantly.

  ‘The holds have been refilled with dried vegetables, grain and biscuit,’ she murmured.

  The General cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Speak up.’

  Girardin cleared her throat. ‘The fresh vegetables will not last long if we are heading north to the tropics.’

  D’Auribeau waved his arm with irritation. ‘How long can we feed the men on this ship?’

  Girardin thought of the long journey from Tenerife to Cape Town. ‘Three months,’ she said, ‘if we can make our own flour for bread. Perhaps more if we ration the salted meat.’

  The men exchanged glances. Girardin felt light-headed. What if she were wrong? What if she had condemned them all to starvation?

  ‘Captain Kermadec,’ said the General, ‘would you conduct a thorough investigation of our stocks?’

  ‘And do it properly this time,’ d’Auribeau muttered beneath his breath.

  A chair scraped back, and she saw Kermadec rise at the back of the room, head bent beneath the low ceiling of the cabin. Relief flushed through her at the sight of him. Her heart thrummed. It was only relief, she told herself, to see a friend among these stern men.

  He gestured to the door for her to join him. ‘Let us consult your records.’

  As
they left the General’s cabin, she felt his hand press against the small of her back. It was there for only a moment, but long enough for her to feel the heat of it.

  ‘My…My ledger is in my cabin,’ she stammered.

  ‘I am sorry I could not come and find you before now. Damn Claude Riche and his demands. He bickers constantly with the surgeon Joannet. And now the savants all threaten to leave the expedition! They vex me greatly. I wish they would leave and relieve me of my headaches!’

  She thought of Labillardière and his disdain of the search for La Pérouse. ‘Do you believe this rumour?’ she asked.

  ‘We have to believe it.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Hope keeps one alive.’

  They continued in silence to her cabin door. She fumbled with her key. For a moment she thought Kermadec might follow her into her cabin where they would be alone and out of sight. Her breath shortened. But Kermadec waited outside, respecting her privacy. She opened her neatly ruled ledger and ran her finger down each column, the names of foodstuffs, the numbers of barrels and crates. The ordered lists calmed her. Never in her life had such responsibility fallen on her shoulders.

  ‘To the holds,’ Kermadec said, lifting a lantern from the wall.

  The air below deck was moist and hot. As they climbed down the rope ladder, she was pleased to see the holds were fully laden. The supplies were neatly stacked. The ship was ready.

  ‘You have a system,’ he said, noticing the date marked on a barrel.

  ‘So I know how long each one will last.’

  The space was small and cramped and she had to stand uncomfortably close to him.

  ‘May I?’ he asked, reaching out. She had wrapped her arms around her ledger, holding it against her like a breastplate. He lifted the ledger from her grasp. Removed of her armour, she felt exposed, with no shield to cover her heart. She quickly crossed her arms.