Into the World

by Stephanie Parkyn

  ‘Where are they leading us?’ she called to Labillardière.

  ‘To the site of our gardener’s magnificent garden.’ His tone sarcastic. ‘We shall soon see what prodigious growth has occurred in the year since our last visit.’

  Félix rushed past her. ‘Quick, before they damage the vegetables!’

  ‘I suspected as much.’ Labillardière scuffed the dry earth and sneered at the pitiful vegetables.

  ‘Here’s the sorrel.’ Félix pointed.

  ‘Prepubescent leaves at best! Why didn’t you dig your seeds into the moist humus near the rivulet we have just passed? Surely the cresses should’ve been planted on its banks? Is this ignorance, stupidity or forgetfulness?’

  Girardin saw Félix wilt. He cradled a shrunken cabbage in his hands. ‘Perhaps the potatoes?’ he said hopefully.

  Labillardière dug up a worm-eaten nugget. ‘Hardly a demonstration of the beneficence of our mother country.’

  Beside her one of the native men knelt on the dry soil. He wrapped his finger around a seedling and pulled. A malformed and shrunken radish sprouted from the base. Then he pointed to each of the herbs struggling to survive among the wiry bracken.

  ‘Remarkable!’ Labillardière enthused. ‘He distinguishes the foreign specimens perfectly!’ He began to pronounce the names of the plants to his new student.

  Félix looked wretched. He unearthed a few more shrunken potatoes. ‘It was the drought,’ he murmured.

  Girardin patted his shoulder. She remembered digging her hoe into the dry clay. Feeling the hardness of the earth jar her wounded arm. Now, only the strong stems of the bracken ferns seemed to benefit from the turned earth. The failure of the garden was not a surprise, but it saddened her to see Félix so downhearted.

  ‘It needed your care,’ she said to him. ‘That is all. We cannot expect to leave a garden without its gardener.’

  His smile was glum but grateful.

  From Félix’s garden, the savages led them safely through the forest and out to the beach. She blinked in the sunlight. The glare of the white sand stung her eyes after so long in the shade of the forest. She knelt down on the dune, relieved to see the ships anchored in the bay. She had survived her first night under the stars and returned unscathed.

  Mérite signalled the ship by firing his pistol into the air. The savages scattered in alarm, but they soon returned, racing each other along the shore. Targets were set. She watched the young man who had guided her through the forest throw his spinning spear a hundred yards distant and reach his mark. He trotted back towards them, taking the opportunity to leap over a massive tree trunk that had fallen across the beach.

  ‘If I were not fatigued from our exertions, I would gladly enter this contest,’ Labillardière said. ‘A tolerably fit European would have the advantage over these savages in agility.’

  Girardin smiled to herself. She tilted her head back. The sun was warm on her throat. She felt the grains of sand under her palms. Félix had built an imaginary fire and was demonstrating how to cook his potatoes in the embers. The men watched him with unmistakable scepticism.

  The boy who had thrown the spear came to sit cross-legged on the sand beside her. He smelled of the clay in his hair and the smoky charcoal blackening his skin. He was startling. It was not the otherness of him that surprised her, but the sameness. She pointed to the welts on his chest, and he proudly picked up a shell and mimed a slicing action. She winced and rolled up her sleeve where the ragged scar from her own rite of passage on this shore was stark red against her white muscle. The young man nodded.

  Mérite jogged up to them. He was breathless from racing some of the boys along the beach. He had a wild look in his eye and his hair was loose. She thought she had never seen someone who looked so alive.

  He reached for her hand. ‘Come on!’ Without thinking, she let him pull her up. Mérite looped his arm through hers. The native boy leaped to his feet and copied Mérite, taking her other arm. She saw his dark muscle against her white sleeve. He flashed his strong teeth at her.

  ‘Félix, put down those sorrowful potatoes,’ Mérite called. ‘Link arms and dance a jig with our hosts!’ Mérite capered away to the left, pulling her off balance and together they laughed and sang and twirled around Félix’s imaginary fire.

  When the boat eventually arrived for them, she was reluctant to leave. Labillardière encouraged the men to come aboard the ship, but they would not step into the water. She felt a great sadness to be leaving them so soon. She watched the boy with his spear backing away from the waves. How strange and precious this fleeting moment of connection had been. Reluctantly, she climbed into the boat after Félix.

  ‘I feel ashamed,’ Mérite said to her.

  She looked across at him.

  ‘I thought they meant us harm, but instead they offered us friendship.’

  She had misjudged this young officer. A year ago, she had thought him reckless and over-confident, caring for no one but himself. But now she saw something else in his eyes.

  ‘How fortunate are we?’ he said. ‘To be here. At this moment.’

  She felt the pulse of the waves beneath her like the rhythm of a heartbeat. Had she let guilt and fear make her dead to beauty and wonder?

  ‘We shared tea and biscuits with savages!’ He laughed with delight.

  The thought was fantastical. She grinned. Her heart pounded with a burst of emotion. Today I have danced with savages! How many others at home safe in their beds can say the same?

  As the boat passed through the breaking waves, she turned back to see the natives watching them from the water’s edge. She raised her hand in farewell and heard an answering shout of joy from the young man with the spear.

  In that moment, she wished she had thought to ask his name.

  Chapter 44

  BY THE NEXT MORNING, THE NEWS HAD SPREAD THROUGHOUT the ship of the encounter with the people of Van Diemen’s Land and almost all the men wanted to go in search of them. The holds were raided for supplies of red kerchiefs, mirrors, beads and other trinkets meant as gifts. Saint-Aignan hurried past Girardin carrying his violin. Piron climbed into a boat holding his box of charcoals beneath his arm. Two parties were forming, one led by Labillardière and the other by d’Auribeau.

  Girardin watched the boats leave. The General was to meet Huon de Kermadec this morning. She went below decks, determined not to be seen waiting for his arrival. She rattled through the pans, added salt to the barrels of pork and chased the monkey from the stores, but as she heard the Espérance’s boat bump against their ship, she couldn’t stop herself from climbing back into the morning sun. She was just in time to see Kermadec duck into the General’s cabin.

  A gob of black oakum splattered on the deck at her feet and a voice called out a belated warning from above. She swore back. The expletives rolled off her tongue as easily now as if she had been taught to curse from a baby. She scanned the deck. It felt wide and spacious with both boats launched. The Recherche was almost deserted. Only a few sailors remained to tar and grease the sheets. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then strode towards the quarterdeck.

  What are you doing? she scolded herself, while inventing a hundred reasons to knock at the General’s door.

  At the base of the stairs, she paused. The door of the General’s cabin was closed. On the poop deck above his cabin, the splintered remains of the windmill stood as a monument to the fury of the southern ocean. Up there would be a skylight window that provided daylight to the General’s dining room. Many evenings she had spent gazing at the moon and stars through the distorted whorls of glass as she waited to serve the General’s table. But without a specific duty to perform she could not be caught on the poop deck; that was an area reserved for officers only. Casting a glance behind her she saw the observatory trio of Rossel, Saint-Aignan and Beautemps-Beaupré in the bow, clustered around their charts, their backs toward her, heads bent.

  Swiftly, she climbed the steps, crept past the window box
and lay beside the base of the ruined windmill, her heart hammering into the oak boards. What was she doing? Why risk discovery just for a glimpse of a man who had no genuine interest in her?

  She raised her head and peered through the panes of glass. She saw no shapes, no movement. Rising to her knees she changed position, dismayed to see the fresh tar smeared across her clothing. She still could not see Captain Kermadec.

  Raised voices drifted upwards from the stern. They are outside in the gallery, she thought. Inching forwards, she hid behind the base of the windmill.

  ‘If you take up the matter with Fleurieu, I will be forced to defend myself!’ Kermadec was saying.

  Girardin could not hear the General’s reply.

  ‘You are mistaken,’ Kermadec continued. ‘Unlike others, I have not forgotten the primary aim of our mission. We are to rescue La Pérouse. The King, the people of France, demand this of us. For heaven’s sake, Bruni, the man is our friend!’

  The General raised his voice. ‘The King instructed us to explore the southern coast of New Holland. He made it clear that we are to chart these waters for France. We failed in our mission. We failed in our mission because the Espérance was poorly provisioned. In good conscience, I must report this in my letter to the minister. Captain d’Auribeau—’

  ‘Captain d’Auribeau is most anxious that the blame for any failings should not spatter his boots, I am certain,’ Kermadec interrupted. ‘And who will take the blame if we fail to find our compatriot? We should not have attempted the circumnavigation.’

  ‘The King—’

  ‘Do you fulfil the King’s ambition or your own?’

  Girardin shifted her weight. It pained her to hear them argue. She should not be here. This was foolish. She pushed herself up to a crouch.

  ‘What have we here?’ a voice as thin as a wire snare whispered above her.

  She looked up.

  Raoul dropped onto the deck as lightly as a cat. ‘Not supposed to be up here, are you?’ he said softly, placing a finger to his pursed lips at the sound of coughing below. ‘Eavesdropping.’

  She scanned the deserted deck. He had her trapped behind the splintered windmill. She crouched, waiting for him to move, waiting for a chance to spring away.

  ‘You want to know something amusing?’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Captain d’Auribeau has asked me to report anyone acting suspiciously. He believes we have a republican spy on the ship.’ He laughed and her spine went cold.

  ‘Keep away from me.’

  ‘Or what—you’ll cry out? I think not.’ He gestured towards the arguing voices below. ‘Not if you want to keep your shameful secrets.’ She turned to flee but he struck her down from behind, slamming her chin on the deck and pressing her face into the tar between the boards. Her nose spouted blood and her breath bubbled out in sharp painful gasps. His knee on her back skewered her sternum to the deck. She felt him tearing at the cords around her waist. The knife hidden in her trousers pressed into her thigh, trapped beneath her. Raoul said nothing as he tore her clothing. She squeezed her eyes closed, waiting for the moment when he would shift his weight back to unbutton his trousers and she would have a chance to go for her knife. But he knelt on her elbow, pinning her down. Her scream came unconsciously as the full weight of his body descended on her arm.

  He picked her head up by her hair. ‘I know who you are, Marie-Louise. I know you were Hébert’s bitch. So if you want to protect your secret from your beloved captain, you’ll stay quiet.’

  She smelled the vinegar stench of his breath. She heard the door of the General’s cabin slam and footsteps disappear. They hadn’t heard her scream. Kermadec was leaving. There would be no rescue. She squirmed and kicked out, but Raoul laughed and shifted his knee to her thigh. Then as he tugged once more at her trousers she felt his hands leave her body. She heard a surprised grunt followed by a roar of pain. The weight of his body left her back. She turned to see the fingers of the monkey pressing into his eyesockets. It clamped its teeth on his ear. Raoul ripped at the monkey and flung it into the ocean. Blood streamed down his neck. Girardin gripped her knife and scrambled over the side of the boat.

  Chapter 45

  RESTING HER TOES ON A NARROW LEDGE ABOVE THE GALLERY OF the General’s cabin, Girardin waited for the shaking in her legs to subside. Behind her, the angry squeals of the monkey announced it had found its way to the anchor chain and climbed out of the water. She could not see Raoul.

  Sidling around the side away from the stern, she made her way back into the ship. Lieutenant Rossel charged down the deck towards her like a bull. He swept his gaze over her tar-smeared shirt and bleeding nose and shook his head. ‘Clean yourself up, steward, fighting is a fool’s game. Someone call your mother a whore, did they?’

  Girardin mumbled something in a thick voice, but Rossel had already passed and was climbing the steps to the General’s cabin. She looked at her tar-blackened hands, thankful he hadn’t noticed the knife she clutched in her right palm.

  In her cabin, Girardin barricaded the door with the crates of ship’s biscuit. She curled up in the corner of her room, nursing her throbbing elbow. Her face mangled with tar and blood, her nose engorged, she knew she looked like a monster.

  He knows about Hébert. She dragged a blanket down on top of her. How could he know? She closed her eyes, willing herself to find his face in her memories. Who was Ange Raoul? A royalist spy? An informer? It was possible she had been seen with Hébert when they met in the streets of Versailles. Hébert would be known to the King’s men for his republican newspaper, for his inflammatory pamphlets. Raoul could have seen her in Hébert’s carriage or followed her from one of the rooms he rented. He could have been watching her at the palace. The thought sent pinpricks of terror through to her fingertips.

  Girardin spat blood onto the cabin floor. Leaning back against the wall she felt her face throb and swell. She remembered his crowing laugh in Espérance Bay. He had watched her with Kermadec and knew he had this knowledge over her. Hébert was right. Knowledge was power. All Raoul needed was the right moment to strike.

  He could be lurking outside in the messroom. He could be watching her door even now, waiting for her to come out. It would take no effort at all to push her back into her cabin; then who would hear her screams? And it would not stop at that. Once he knew she dared not go to the General, she would be his to take whenever he chose.

  Much later, Besnard banged on her door. ‘The baker says we are running out of flour!’ She heard him curse and stomp away when she didn’t respond.

  Her face had swelled and her skin felt taut, but she pulled the blanket off her shoulders. She could not stay locked in her cabin forever. She pushed the crates away from the door. Holding the knife out in front of her, she pictured her path. A few short strides and then she would be at the stairs.

  Besnard was gone when she reached the galley, but the monkey was waiting for her. It had been grooming the salt from its fur and a lick of hair stood straight up on top of its head. It regarded her with large, serious eyes, its expression clear: I do something for you, you do something for me.

  Girardin rummaged in a barrel. ‘There’s no fruit left.’ She tossed it a stale bun. ‘Come back tonight. There’ll be something better for you then.’ The monkey scurried off with its prize, as if pleased with their understanding.

  Girardin pinched her nose against a fresh gush of blood and slid down to the floor, leaning her back against the oven, still warm from the morning’s baking. She closed her eyes. She remembered how powerless she felt beneath Raoul’s weight. The terror as he tore at her clothes. She scrambled for a pail and vomited into the scraps.

  Girardin wiped her face and bloodied nose with a cloth. She pushed herself off her knees and stepped cautiously from behind the oven. She left the galley, walking out past the animal pens and into the middle of the open deck. From there she could see Raoul hanging from the rigging, his arm flung out and pointing to the shore. She forced herself to keep her eyes on hi
m, almost daring him to look at her. He accused her of spying, so a spy she would be. If she had to stay aboard this ship with him then she would be the hunter—let him be the prey.

  Raoul jumped down from the rigging. Her gut lurched, the flush of bravery immediately extinguished. He held out his hand to Captain d’Auribeau to help him climb aboard. She watched Raoul speak in the captain’s ear. What was he telling him? she wondered. If Raoul knew all about her past, why hadn’t he exposed her already?

  She felt the bump of another boat hitting the ship. Ropes were thrown out. The voices of the men rose in an excited gabble. Piron climbed over the side of the ship, clad only in his underwear, his naked skin smeared with black charcoal. She lost sight of Raoul again. She crouched down behind a coil of rope, afraid to be found so exposed. The goats shied away from her as she ducked into their sheltered stalls beneath the gangway. She crept along, like a rat shuffling through the straw.

  All the sailors had climbed on board. The General stood in the middle of the two excited groups, each vying to impress him with their tales. Saint-Aignan stormed red-faced out of the crowd, holding his violin. She froze among the cattle, and he passed inches from her hiding place. ‘Lively tunes,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Next time I will play more lively tunes.’

  ‘Saint-Aignan!’ Labillardière called after him. ‘Tell the General how much the natives enjoyed your concert.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ St Aignan swore back at him.

  ‘Excellent taste in music. The entire group showed their appreciation by stuffing their fingers in their ears.’

  As the men roared with laughter she crept closer, climbing in among the sheep, smelling their greasy lanolin. She knelt in their manure. Their bodies pressed against her and she felt them quake, suspicious of her intentions.

  She overheard snatches of conversations.

  ‘They wouldn’t take any of our food. Not even sugar for their babies. I saw one mother take it straight out of the infant’s mouth!’