‘I am not sure I understand your meaning.’
He had tilted his head. ‘Come now, Marie-Louise, you have been a married woman. I am sure I do not need to spell it out.’
How fitting that Hébert should come to mind in this barbaric land.
Chapter 52
Balade Harbour
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, THE GENERAL CAME TO THE GALLEY. Girardin stared at him, a tray of freshly baked bread held in the space between them. Her mouth dropped open.
He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. ‘I have been a fool,’ he said softly. ‘A delusioned old fool.’
The tray began to shake, the breadrolls shifting towards the edge. She placed it down.
‘I spoke carelessly,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘Do not apologise. My actions were unforgiveable. I am ashamed. I acted as if it was my right to take you for my own, like some feudal lord. I despise men like that. I grieve that I almost became one.’
She met his eye and saw only sadness.
‘Come,’ he said, gesturing for her to follow. ‘Before there are too many prying eyes and ears.’
Hastily, she removed her apron and dusted her hands.
Two sailors rowed them across the bay. The sun had not yet risen, but the night sky glowed a brilliant blue and the last of the stars faded one by one from view. Girardin could feel her stomach sway with each pull of the oars. The General remained silent as the men rowed and she could not ask why he was bringing her to the Espérance. Her mind reeled with possibilities. Had Kermadec asked for her? Was she to be transferred after all? The boat collided gently with the hull of the ship—this ship she had travelled alongside for so long and so far without ever setting foot on board.
The officers of the watch stood to attention when they recognised the General coming on board. Joannet met them, his face grave. He drew her aside. ‘We must discuss the matter of our supplies. This harbour has been most disappointing.’ His jowls wobbled as he shook his head. Girardin frowned. Had she been brought here only to talk about coconuts and bananas?
On deck, the sailors were splicing worn ropes and mending sails. Their silence as they watched her pass was disconcerting. She took heart that the General led her straight towards the captain’s cabin.
Kermadec’s cabin was a replica of his library at his home in Brest; the walls were lined with books. It took her back to the night she had first met him. The armchairs, the side tables, even the pictures reminded her of that night. She saw the gilt-framed painting of two ships cresting the waves that had been above his mantelpiece. All that was needed to re-create the illusion of his library was a roaring fire and the man himself, stretched out in an armchair before it.
She looked around, confused. He was not here.
Pinned to the wall was the map that Kermadec had first showed her. In his library, he had pointed to those dots of islands lost in the middle of a blank expanse, and now she was here among them, so far from home.
She heard a cough. A heavy, wet cough. Eyes wide, she turned to the General. A curtain separated the study from the sleeping chamber and, quietly, the General drew it aside.
Kermadec lay cramped in his cot. Too long for it, his knees poked out; he looked like a skeleton folded on the bed. For a moment, her heart was afraid to beat, as if it were trapped in a cage of thorns. Then, with a guttural moan, she collapsed to her knees beside him.
Kermadec opened his eyes and tried to smile at the sight of her. She clasped his hand, gripping his fingers tightly. Translucent skin stretched over the prominent bones of his knuckles.
‘I didn’t know,’ she whispered.
He nodded.
The General helped Kermadec to sit up. She stood back, noticing the bucket at the head of his bed, marked with thick black stains.
‘My friend, forgive me,’ the General said, his voice cracking. ‘I should never have pushed for you to make this journey with me. I had no right to ask this of you.’ The powder on his cheeks was streaked with tears. ‘And I have not treated you well.’
‘We make the best of the choices offered to us,’ Kermadec whispered hoarsely. She saw he strained to suppress the need to cough. ‘Who among us has not made mistakes? There is nothing to be gained from regret.’
As a coughing fit racked his body and the General held a crumpled handkerchief to Kermadec’s mouth, Girardin wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She struggled to understand how he had declined so quickly. We must turn for home, we must go back, she thought. He can still be saved.
She squeezed his hand. ‘We will not be in this anchorage much longer. Just until we have enough water.’ She waited for the General to reassure them, wanting him to confirm they would sail for France as soon as they were able, but he remained silent. We need to sail north immediately, she wanted to say, for the sake of his health. We need to get far away from this humid, cloying air filled with the smoke of charred flesh.
‘And what of La Pérouse?’ Kermadec asked.
She shook her head. ‘No trace.’
‘A blessing and a curse,’ he said sadly. ‘I would not like to be marooned here. If I should die here in this barbarous land, promise me you will give me a Christian burial somewhere these heathen cannibals will not be able to find me!’
Girardin shared a stricken glance with the General.
As Kermadec turned his face to the wall and drifted off to sleep, Girardin listened to the labour in each breath.
‘He will recover,’ the General said to her as the boat rowed them back to the Recherche.
Her voice was choked in her gullet, and she could not agree.
Each day the General collected her in the hour before dawn and they would be rowed across to the Espérance to sit with Kermadec until he tired. Sometimes they read plays, sometimes poetry. Sometimes the General would tell them stories of his adventures, tales that both of them already knew well. All three feigned an optimism they did not feel.
The stay in Balade Harbour had been a disaster. The watering hole that Cook had used had dried up in this season and the crew were forced to travel great distances inland to collect water, at risk of being set upon by the cannibals. A few coconuts were all they had traded in the way of food and, worse still, she knew their supplies were diminishing as the sailors stole food to trade for sex. Trading would be conducted peacefully on board, but then the departing islanders might turn and pelt the ship with stones, their edges sharp enough to take out an eye.
By the end of the week, relations with the natives of Balade Harbour had turned violent, with more skirmishes breaking out. The water and wood parties had been attacked for their axes and the fishermen for their fishing net, leaving wounded on both sides. Labillardière still spent his days exploring the forests, but Girardin refused to set foot on land again. ‘It is safe,’ he assured her. ‘We are not their enemies. We do not intend to stay.’
She was silent. They see us shoot their birds, take their water and chop down trees to mend our boats. We give nothing in exchange for that. She saw that no one, neither the officers nor the naturalists, understood. It did not occur to any of them to offer payment for their trespasses. To take the necessities of life from this land was as natural to them as breathing.
Two weeks passed in this way, until one morning, the General did not call for her. On deck she saw immediately one of the boats was absent. The General had left for the Espérance without her.
All day she worried herself into a frantic state. Why had the General left her behind? She picked at the thought until it became an open wound.
It was late afternoon when an ensign came from the Espérance to collect her.
‘Is your captain well?’ she asked him, but the man would not commit to an answer.
As the sailors rowed her between the ships, she watched the tropical clouds grow fat and full with moisture and darken to a purple bruise.
She entered Kermadec’s cabin alone and found him dressed in full naval uniform and seated at his table.
‘You are better!’
He smiled gently. ‘Come sit with me.’
On the table in front of him were some of his books, sheets of paper and a quill. ‘I want to give you this.’ Kermadec pushed a leather-bound volume towards her.
It was a book on mathematics. She frowned as she slowly read the title aloud. ‘Principes Mathématiques de la Philosophie Naturelle. A Translation and Commentary of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica? You want me to have this?’
He chuckled. It was a wet sound that did nothing to cheer her. ‘I don’t understand it either. It is by a woman of formidable intellect, Émilie du Châtelet. I think you will find her an inspiration. Promise me one day you will ask the General about her. I believe she once beat him soundly and most profitably at the card table.’
‘I cannot take this. Your books are precious to you.’ She turned to see the bookshelves behind her were almost empty.
‘Clearing the decks. Making it easier for our dear friend d’Auribeau to move in.’
‘Do not say such things!’ she snapped. ‘How can you jest?’
‘How can I not?’
He signed the paper he was writing on and folded it decisively. ‘The rest I will leave for Bruni to take back to France’s libraries. But I wish to give my dearest friends something of mine to keep close to them.’
‘What do you mean? You are speaking nonsense. The General has seen how ill you are. He must let us go home—he must!’
‘D’Entrecasteaux is a man of duty. He knows his duty to the King and he will not falter.’ He picked up her hand and kissed it. ‘You must find La Pérouse for me, and make all this suffering worthwhile.’
‘We will find him together,’ she sobbed, her tears falling freely.
‘Don’t cry, please don’t cry—not when I no longer have strength to hold you in my arms and comfort you.’
She pressed the back of her hand to her eyes. He must be mistaken. She would speak with Joannet. He looked so much improved.
Gently, he kissed the tears from her cheeks and touched his lips to her mouth. ‘You are extraordinary,’ he said. ‘I have never known a woman like you. I think I have loved you from the very beginning.’
‘You are not leaving me.’ Her voice was a growl, a threat.
‘I have made my peace with life. My only regret is that I will not be with you when you find your son.’
Sorrow centred in her throat with the pain of a knife blade. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to wail her grief and rage at the world. But instead, she got up from the table and wrapped her arms around him, holding him.
‘Will you lie with me?’ he asked. His eyelids were heavy, his smile soft. ‘I want to stretch out, I want to lie down flat.’
She took the mattress from his cot and laid it on the floor. When he lay down, Huon de Kermadec let out a long groan as if the last air of his lungs had been expelled. He flexed and pointed his toes, and smiled with childish delight. She lay down beside him, unable to speak, touching her head to his shoulder.
‘It is the simple things,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘In the end, it is the simple things that matter.’
Chapter 53
Islot Pouidou, New Caledonia, 7 May 1793
THE FUNERAL FOR CAPTAIN JEAN-MICHEL HUON DE KERMADEC was held according to his wishes. Under the cover of darkness, his men began to dig in the sand of a low, flat islot. She learned he had chosen the place himself, an inconspicuous smudge of white sand separated from the mainland of New Caledonia, but protected from the ocean waves by the outer reef. At midnight his body was lowered into the unmarked grave. The Espérance’s chaplain gave the eulogy. All around her, Girardin heard the men weeping. The moon was absent and the night was as black as a charred and empty pot.
Girardin could not comprehend the loss of him. He had put his affairs in order and gracefully, acceptingly, died. With her eyes squeezed closed, she pictured his broad smile and could not believe that she would never see it again. She had never met a man so filled with love of life.
Her mistake had been to imagine that love was possible, that there would be a way out for her, a way to be with her son. God had no forgiveness for her. Instead it seemed she was doomed to have everything taken from her over and over until there was nothing left to give.
The boats ferried the silent mourners back to the ship. She felt unworthy for thinking of herself, of her own loss. A man was dead. A good man was dead. A man of wit and humour, of kindness and intelligence. A man whose sister loved him and did not yet know that he was dead. I am not the only one who has suffered, she told herself, and I do not deserve pity. She opened her eyes. The General was kneeling by the grave, smoothing the sand with the palms of his hands.
D’Auribeau took command of the Espérance later that morning. Girardin watched him board the yawl with all his possessions already packed. She hated to see him claim the Espérance as his. Just for a moment she thought she saw a look of foreboding in his features, before his stony countenance returned. Perhaps he too wondered how he would replace their beloved captain.
It was three more days before the General ordered their departure. Girardin understood his reluctance. They would be leaving Kermadec behind. It was not right or fair. She could not even leave a token upon his grave.
They left New Caledonia before dawn. In the grey light it was difficult to make out the low island where Huon de Kermadec lay buried. Girardin felt cheated of this last chance to say goodbye. She stood on the deck, hiding the tears on her cheeks as the Recherche found a passage through the reefs and out into the open sea.
The General kept to his cabin in a wretched melancholy. In the evenings she sat with him in silence. She knew he blamed himself.
‘My ambitions have blinded me,’ he confided as he drained his brandy glass. ‘God forgive me.’
She could not find the words to reassure him.
‘How is it possible to complete these surveys and search for La Pérouse? I am torn. Kermadec would have me dedicate all to the search for him, but if we are to fail, if we can find no trace of La Pérouse and his ships, dare we return to France with no other accomplishments?’
Girardin could not counsel him. He spoke more freely with her than any other aboard the ship, especially as he had long ago stopped using Ventenat as his confessor. All she wanted was to return to France, an option that would not ease the General’s conscience. The sacrifice of his friend had to be for some purpose.
Girardin moved numbly through the routine of her days. For the next three weeks, the expedition limped towards the Solomon Archipelago, still desperately short of fresh food and water. All the fruit they had taken on at Tongatabou was long since spoiled by the heat. Rain lashed the ships daily.
At the Santa Cruz Islands, Girardin saw a small flotilla of canoes launch, waving to entice the French ashore. Uncertain of their intentions, the General would not allow it, and neither would the natives be induced to come aboard.
‘They remember Mendaña,’ Ventenat said to her. ‘The Spaniard who tried to settle here in search of Solomon’s gold.’
‘That was two hundred years ago!’ Lieutenant Rossel scoffed, holding up a bolt of red cloth. The men in the canoe warbled in high-pitched glee.
‘The Spaniards hunted them down as a show of strength,’ continued Ventenat. ‘And let their dogs feast on their remains.’
While exploring these waters, the General made few visits to the deck and rarely came to interview the islanders when their canoes drew alongside the ship. Trading was conducted by tossing items into their canoes. Often the price of goods increased after the bargains had been made, and sometimes they refused to pay at all.
Later, sitting with Girardin in his cabin, the General confessed to her that he could not bear to look on their scowling countenances. ‘To be among these men fills me with great despair.’ He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and rested his forehead against his palms. Late at night he walked the deck alone.
Still
grieving herself, Girardin was incapable of rousing the General from his lethargy. She knew he felt as she did. Cold. Numb. She went about her duties in a dull haze.
‘I have found something,’ Labillardière said to her one evening, holding out a plank of wood.
Earlier that day she had seen him interviewing the islanders who approached the ship while Piron sketched each of their ornate canoes.
‘It is varnished!’ he said. ‘It must be from a European ship. The islanders would not say where they had come upon it.’
She felt a spark of interest pierce her numbness.
‘I thought you would want to know,’ he said with a slight shrug. It was a kindness to her and she was grateful, even if she could not show it.
‘And I saw a wooden chisel of French manufacture,’ said Saint-Aignan eagerly.
She took the news to the General.
‘Could it not be from Carteret’s expedition here?’ he replied, distracted. Tonight, he seemed distant, muddled. She had noticed he could not finish his train of thought and his voice died away mid-sentence.
‘But didn’t Carteret find the natives unwilling to trade with him?’ she countered.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I cannot recall.’
‘This might be our last chance to search for La Pérouse. It is what Kermadec would want us to do.’ Her voice was becoming more sure and steady. They owed this to Kermadec, they owed it to his memory. ‘We should investigate.’
‘Go ask Lieutenant Rossel. Whatever he thinks is best.’ The General stood up from his table and passed through to his sleeping quarters, leaving her sitting alone in his cabin.
Rossel was convinced they must make for Waygiou as quickly as possible for the sake of the General’s health. There, he assured her, they would find a safe landfall and fresh food. She knew the General ate little or nothing, surviving only on putrid water and a small roll of plain bread. Coffee gave him spasms. He could not stomach the walnuts soaked in spiced vinegar that Joannet prescribed. The act of dressing exhausted him. She had watched his grief turn to anxiety and delirium. He imagined himself a young boy again and Girardin his sister. Reluctantly, she agreed with Rossel to abandon the search.
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