Into the World

by Stephanie Parkyn

  ‘Scared of the savages?’ a voice called out from the bow of the boat. ‘Or scared to get out from beneath the General’s nightshirt?’

  Girardin turned to see Raoul wipe his arse with the ragged end of a knotted rope. She snapped her head away. She heard the men around him laugh.

  She stood her ground as Raoul stalked towards her. ‘With your fresh face and fine wrists—’ he snatched one of her hands ‘—you’re nothing but a girl.’

  ‘You can’t let him talk to you like that, lad!’ Armand growled.

  Girardin tugged her hand free.

  ‘In my day, no man would take an insult like that to his honour. Defend your reputation, boy!’ Armand called down.

  Raoul laughed. ‘This wet chicken? There is no way he would fight me!’

  The old sailor scaled down the ratlines and slammed his tin of tar on the deck. ‘He is calling you a coward. I’ve run men through for less than that!’ Armand pushed his face into hers. His blue-filmed eyes were shining. ‘This rascal needs to be taught some manners. Challenge him to a duel!’

  ‘What say you, Louis?’ Raoul took the frayed rope from the ablutions pail and slapped it against her chest. A fleck of soiled water landed on her lip. Disgust flooded through her.

  She spat on his foot. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said without thinking. Anger pulsed in her throat.

  Armand crowed with delight. ‘I’ll make the arrangements! Get yourself a second, Monsieur Raoul. Tomorrow at first light we will meet on this savage shore!’

  Chapter 24

  Port du Nord, Recherche Bay

  GIRARDIN PACED OUTSIDE THE CHAPLAIN’S DOOR. IT WAS DARK, but she saw his lantern light glow beneath it. The corridor was empty. She took a deep breath and tapped on the door. She heard a chair drawn back inside and feet shuffling towards her. When Ventenat drew open the door she saw him blink with surprise. He wore a nightcap over his bald head and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. She stepped into his cabin before she could lose her nerve.

  ‘Forgive my intrusion,’ she mumbled. Her eyes darted around the room. Beside the desk was a large dresser with a drawer pulled open. Rows of insects were splayed and pinned to a board, each one pierced through the heart. She stared at the tiny shining daggers. Ventenat nudged the drawer shut when he saw her looking.

  ‘An interest of mine,’ he said with a small chuckle. ‘No need to tell Labillardière.’ He clasped his hands in front of him and inclined his head. ‘How can I be of assistance?’

  Her mouth was dry. She stared at him. Could he help her? She touched her chest, wondering how easily a rapier might run her through.

  ‘Does God forgive?’ she blurted.

  ‘Have you come for confession?’ He gestured for her to sit, but she could not.

  ‘No, not confession.’ She wrung her hands. ‘When I die, will my death be payment enough for my sins?’ Her voice was high and strained. She saw the confusion on the chaplain’s face. ‘Will those I love be safe from His condemnation?’

  ‘If you will confess—’ he began.

  ‘I cannot.’ This had been a mistake. What had she thought he would say? That if she went to her death willingly God would be assuaged, that what she had done would be forgiven? She fled from the room.

  Of her own eternal damnation she was assured, but now she was thinking of her son. She had left him in the care of the Church. Her hands were shaking when she put her key to her cabin door. The crew were already in their hammocks and she did not linger. She bolted the door behind her.

  What have I to leave him? she wondered, opening her chest of belongings. A spare tunic, a heel of soap, a purloined bandage. Perhaps the knife she had stolen and strapped to her thigh. Nothing worthy of sending home to her people. Nothing that spoke to her son. How will he ever know that I meant to return for him?

  She searched for her journal. At first she had hidden it in the grain, attached to a piece of string, but the mealworm had begun to nibble at the edges of the pages. Then she had prised a floorboard loose to make a secret cache. But fearing this hiding place would be too easily found, she had placed the journal in a tin box and buried it deep within a chest of tea leaves.

  For all this preoccupation with the safety of her journal, she had yet to write another word on its waiting pages.

  Now, she set it upon her desk and took up a quill.

  To my dearest son,

  Forgive me, I am not a brave woman. I have done a foolish thing. Many foolish things. Tomorrow I face my death and I do not go easily to it. They tell me to set my affairs in order, and I must explain why I have abandoned you.

  Her hand stalled. How could she explain? What was done was done. No good would come of writing it down for others to find. She closed the journal.

  Sleep, when it finally came to her, was fitful and brief. In the darkness of her waking hours she thought of the skewered beetles in the chaplain’s drawer. She touched a point on her breastbone and remembered the time when a stick had pierced her skin there and left a bruise that had stayed with her for weeks. She had not thought about that day for many years. She huddled in her hammock with her blanket wrapped around her and kneaded the imaginary lump with her fingers.

  ‘No, you hold it like this.’ The boy snatched the yew stick out of Marie-Louise’s hand and wobbled it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Balance it like you are presenting a rose to your mother, not gripping an axe to chop down a tree.’ He folded her hand around the stick.

  ‘Put your feet like this.’

  ‘You look like a rooster.’

  The boy ignored her. ‘Always salute your opponent.’

  She raised the yew sword to her forehead and curled her left arm behind her even though she felt like a teapot.

  ‘En garde.’

  They held their stick swords aloft, facing each other. The boy shuffled forwards and Marie-Louise burst into laughter.

  ‘Look, if you can’t take this seriously, I’m not going to teach you anymore!’ The boy slapped the stick against a copper leopard. The sound reverberated around the bosquet and Marie-Louise snapped her head back, listening for her father. But the high trellis walls, dense with creepers and moss, kept them safe in the labyrinth.

  ‘Sshh.’ Marie-Louise put a finger to her lips.

  The boy lunged forwards and Marie-Louise squealed, forgetting what he had told her about how to parry and riposte. The point of his stick struck her chest above her heart.

  ‘You see,’ he said. ‘These lessons could save your life.’

  Chapter 25

  THE FIRST KNOCK AT HER DOOR WAS TIMID.

  ‘Steward!’ hissed a voice.

  She opened the door to the gap-toothed smile of her second. He had combed his hair, shaved his whiskers and dressed in his best coat for the occasion, and had a sword hanging at each hip. She pressed her hand to her breastbone. Would she remember what she had once been taught? This was madness. How could two children playing with sticks help her now?

  Slowly, she pulled on her frockcoat over her best white shirt. Armand put a finger to his lips and she followed him silently towards the deck. The air was crisp and the night retreating. She walked as though condemned. Rumours had spread and men nodded in silent tribute as she passed. She could not meet their eye. The custom of duelling may have been outlawed, but here the tradition was still respected. Yesterday, Girardin had dismissed the thought of going to the General—far better to die in this charade of honour than to live with the consequences of her shame. There would be no peace for her if she did not meet Raoul on this beach. And yet as she passed the copper urinal, she rapped her knuckles against it, setting it ringing, almost as if she hoped to draw the attention of the officer of the watch. Armand whirled around, listening. They waited, but no officer appeared. Perhaps his silence had been bought, she thought glumly.

  The boats were lowered at the side of the ship and Raoul was already waiting, his face shadowed by his hat, his cloak pulled high. Girardin faltered, her heart falling into her stomach. Sh
e wiped her palms on her coat and tried to be calm. Do not shame yourself, she thought. Meet your death with dignity.

  In the boat, she recognised the butcher and the blacksmith, a big German named Fitz. Armand nudged her with his elbow. She climbed down the rope ladder and then clung for a moment, her fingers curled around the rough coir.

  ‘Hurry up,’ hissed Armand, and as she stepped down, the boat lurched beneath her feet.

  Armand unhitched the rope swiftly—too swiftly. She wondered where his squalling monkey was today. Armand had not yet begun to climb down the ladder. It occurred to her that she could still scramble back up and seek the General’s protection. But even as she thought it she knew such action would condemn her. She looked up again. Armand seemed to be waiting; had he had a change of heart? Suddenly a figure appeared beside him. Girardin glimpsed a uniform beneath a dark coat and her heart squeezed hard. Am I saved?

  ‘You took your time,’ Armand growled. Both men climbed down into the boat.

  The midshipman turned and flashed a smile at Girardin. ‘Never one to miss a duel!’ It was Mérite de Saint-Méry. He wore no wig and his brown hair had fallen loose of its braid. She remembered him running away from Raoul on the day they crossed the line. A hot-headed boy by all accounts. Not her saviour.

  ‘Quiet! Do you want to get us all court-martialled?’ Raoul spoke for the first time. She was pleased to hear the strain in his voice. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness. The two opponents sat at either end of the boat. She kept her eyes fixed on the bald head of the butcher as he swung backwards and forwards on the end of the oar. Her stomach surged and swelled even though the sea was calm. With only two men rowing it seemed to take an age for the dark shore to inch towards them.

  Be strong, her mother whispered in her thoughts. Girardin remembered her mother kneeling beside her when she was a young child, consoling her. ‘Your father named you Marie-Louise, but I gave you your middle name,’ her mother had said, dabbing salve onto the welts on the back of her legs. ‘Victoire. It was your grandmother’s name. She was a survivor and you will be too. Always remember that.’ But Girardin did not feel victorious now. She felt like she was being rowed across the water to her death.

  The gentle waves parted with a sigh as the bow of the boat wedged itself into the sand. Climbing out, Girardin felt the cold water bite at her ankles. She staggered onto the beach. Onto an exotic land. She had no time to marvel at it. All six of them tugged on the ropes to haul the boat safely onto shore. The grains of sand beneath her feet were the colour of ground-up bones.

  They followed the blacksmith to his forge. Armand drew Girardin to one side, rubbing his gnarled hands together in a motion that was either nervous or excited, she could not tell.

  ‘Don’t worry, lad,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth, his clay pipe clamped between the gap in his teeth. ‘If ye should stumble, I’ll be here to run the rascal through!’

  ‘My thanks,’ Girardin muttered wryly.

  He dropped into an elaborate bow before gravely removing her coat and folding it across his arm. The hairs on her nape pricked as though cold fingers had circled around her neck. Armand handed her the sword. She took the hilt and balanced it between her thumb and forefinger just as the boy in the gardens of Versailles had shown her. Her hand trembled and the vibration travelled to the tip of the fine blade, causing it to arc wildly. Armand wrapped his hand around her wrist and pointed the blade away.

  ‘Courage, lad, courage.’ He thumped a fist to his heart.

  Mérite had marked the en-garde lines into the sand. ‘We don’t have much time. We have to return to the ship before the change of watch and it’s almost dawn.’

  Girardin looked up to the spreading glow along the horizon. The early rays caught the edges of the purple clouds and turned them flaming orange. A fittingly dramatic sky under which to die, she thought.

  ‘Gentlemen…’ Mérite cleared his throat. ‘We stand here today to settle a dispute of honour in the noblest tradition. Monsieur Louis Girardin desires reparation from Monsieur Ange Raoul. Let the matter be settled on first blood. Salute.’

  Girardin raised her sword to her forehead and looked back down to her feet. Put your ankles together, the boy had said. Point your right foot to the north and your other to the west. Girardin held her lips clamped into a tight white line. Go to your death well, she thought.

  ‘Come now,’ Raoul purred. ‘I have no desire to maim one of our fairer sex. One word and we can end this now. Let us kiss and make up.’ He pursed his fleshy lips.

  Blood pumped into her face. Beside her, Armand howled curses. ‘Don’t let the bully win!’ Girardin only dimly heard him above the pounding in her ears. Ange Raoul stood before her in the half-light, head thrown back in laughter, a shadow man, a faceless man. He could’ve been any one of the men who had betrayed her.

  ‘En garde!’ Mérite cried, impatient to begin.

  She moved her left foot back and sank her weight down. Now that the moment had come she felt steady. Her breathing slowed, and she felt the weight of the sword in her hand. Balance it like you are presenting a rose to your mother, the boy had said. This is for you, Maman, Girardin thought as she lunged.

  Raoul parried her thrust easily with a flick of his wrist and a shriek of steel against steel. He did not return the strike. Instead, she saw the glint of his teeth. ‘You are content to die for your secret then,’ he whispered.

  Girardin scuttled back on the sand. Raoul danced forwards with his sword outstretched and Girardin forgot her stance and fled backwards into the darkness of the trees.

  ‘Ha, you see? A coward!’ Raoul called after her.

  Girardin felt the strength of the trunk against her back. It was smooth and stripped of bark. It was solid and would not bend. She turned her head and saw the face of a child. A dark child with hooded eyes. They shared a look of shock. Girardin blinked and looked again but the girl had disappeared without a sound, as though she had never been there. A girl about the same age as I was, she thought, playing in the garden of Versailles.

  Pushing herself from the tree, Girardin walked slowly back into the open. Imagine you hold a stick instead of a sword in your hand, a voice told her. Imagine you are back in the labyrinth at Versailles. Remember yourself as you were then. You were once brave. Remember, remember. This voice seemed to think she could fight.

  She raised her sword in her right hand and curled her left beside her ear.

  Raoul assumed the stance without a word. He leapt, striking the sand with his heel, bouncing forwards and then back. Girardin matched his feint. Both swords flicked out like lizards’ tongues tasting the air, but they did not touch.

  Raoul advanced again and the swords clashed. Parrying his strikes was instinctual, but she could not return his attack; he sliced her sword away before she could lunge. Too slow, the boy’s voice screamed in her ear. Remember the positions, have your hand ready to strike when you parry his blade! Instead she slashed at his rapier, shuffling backwards on the sand, aware that Raoul was smiling as he pushed her towards the trees. He was playing with her, she realised, like a cat torturing a mouse.

  Girardin ducked sideways and spun out of his range. This was foolish. How could she compete with a trained swordsman? A girl who had learned to duel by playing with sticks in the garden of the King! Every fibre of her body screamed for her to run. She glanced into the dark forest and wondered how far she would get climbing through the tangled limbs before he tracked her down.

  Taut-lipped, she raised her sword once again.

  Raoul tossed back his fringe, his gaze intent, hungry. ‘Admit your secret and this foolishness can be over.’

  She should throw down her sword, admit her sex, plead for their silence. At least then she might survive long enough to return to her son. Yet she did not speak.

  Raoul launched his attack, driving her backwards until her spine pressed against a tree. Their blades slid together, hilt to hilt. His face close to hers. ‘Don’t make me hurt
you, Marie-Louise Girardin.’

  Her head jerked back. He knew her name. How could he know her name? It was a guess, that was all—he could not know. He meant to frighten her.

  ‘I am Louis Girardin.’

  ‘Such dedication to your disguise.’ He smirked. ‘Our mutual friend would be impressed.’

  Her eyes widened. He knew someone from her past. She forced herself to look at his features—the cleft of his chin, the full lips, the long, dark eyelashes—but her memory failed her. She did not recognise this man.

  ‘We could come to an agreement,’ he suggested, raising one eyebrow, inclining his head towards the men. ‘To both our benefit.’

  He meant to keep her as his whore and sell her to each of the men in turn. Her breath was rapid. She saw the heavy shapes of the butcher and the smith and imagined them pinning her to the sand.

  She twisted away from him. ‘No.’

  Raoul renewed his attack, backing her towards the sea. Her wrist ached with the effort of absorbing each blow. Her swollen knee began to throb. I could end this, she thought. I could still survive this day if I submit to him. If I let him be my master.

  In that moment, Girardin saw her chance. She stepped quickly to the left and Raoul’s blade whizzed past her chest. She stood tall, no longer backing away, and stretched out her arm. Raoul reared back in surprise. She saw the flare of his nostrils as his head tilted back. The tip of her sword licked at his chin. A streak of red bloomed on his shirt.

  ‘First blood!’ Armand cried. Girardin turned to see him leaping about, hands raised over his head like his monkey. Dazed, she felt the sounds of the alien forest rush back into her head. She heard Mérite declare the duel over. Somehow, by some miracle, she had survived. Her head slumped forwards.

  ‘Watch out!’ Mérite cried.

  She threw her arm up to shield herself as Raoul lashed out. No longer laughing, his face was brutal. She saw the flash of silver as the blade swept downwards across her upper arm. Blood sprayed, splattering the sand. Girardin sank to her knees, gasping as she landed. Strangely, she felt no pain in her arm, only in her knee.