Summers, True

by Poppy

  "Let's go with him," Andy begged, dancing with eagerness. "Let's go."

  "Why should we?" Poppy asked.

  ''Maybe they can't prove you gave the warning, but they suspect," Jack said. "Mrs. Wilkins doesn't like you. She'll make the most of it."

  "She'll write Daisy and His Lordship," Poppy realized, appalled as she took that in fully for the first time.

  "She doesn't want us here, but we don't want to stay anyway, now the smith's gone," Andy pleaded.

  "Never mind the smith," Poppy said, absentmindedly. No use tearing down an idol by telling Andy the truth. "We're in trouble."

  "We'll get sent back to London," Andy said.

  Worse, after this Daisy would be desperate. She would arrange a marriage, any marriage to almost anyone, to get her troublesome daughter settled and out of the way. That Poppy knew she could not endure. She would rather die first.

  "Yes, we'll come with you," she decided suddenly, trying not to think of sailing on the heaving waves of the Channel in that tiny boat. "Just give us time to get our things."

  "No." He shook his head. "Mrs. Wilkins won't settle down after a night like this. She'll be napping like a cat with both ears and one eye open. And some of the excisemen may still be on the prowl. We've got to get away while there's still some fog and dark. What's a dress or two?"

  "Nothing. If you've money for new."

  "I've only a few pounds on the boat," he admitted, frowning. "The few things I brought back in the Dolly I gave to my fishermen friends because I didn't want to start an alarm about contraband being around just before we brought in the big cargo."

  "Then I need clothes. And Andy a jacket."

  "I've a spare jacket on the boat. No. I tell you, no. It's run for it now or we're caught." He went to the window and opened it.

  "I'm leaving."

  "We're coming," Poppy snapped with exasperation. "But I'll need a new dress when we land." She pulled the velvet cover off a table, dumped the four silver goblets in it, and slung it over her arm. She said succinctly, "Worth their weight if you're hard up."

  "A most practical lady," he said with a little bow as he ushered them out on the terrace.

  She quite agreed with him. Sometimes she despaired of men, they were so impractical. First he destroyed her best petticoat when it would have dried them just as well in one piece. Then, with his pockets empty, he had been ready to walk blindly past a nice piece of cash goods any child could have told him was worth picking up.

  Part Two

  France

  October- November 1851

  Chapter Ten

  POPPY leaned out the small third-floor window of if the rooms they had rented, looking across the beach to the sea beyond Les Sables d'Olonne. She had never seen a place so beautiful or one occupied by people so primitive and menacing. In front of her, the perfect crescent of fine white sand with a black headland at each end encircled the clear blue water. The sun shone brilliantly, but the air was chill. Nothing moved on water or land except at one end of the beach where barefooted men were tramping red dye into a sail spread on the sand. Below her, the sidewalk cafes and shops that looked out on the beach showed no signs of life. The season for tourists from Paris was long over. The fishermen were out in their squat boats with sails of red, blue, and yellow. The children were shut up in school. The women, with their clattering clogs, black dresses, and great white headdresses, had finished their early shopping at the open market. Now they were busy inside their stone houses, which crowded together along the narrow cobbled streets mounting up from the beach.

  Poppy shivered and drew her head in and closed the window. It was Dexter Roack's fault they were marooned in this English-hating Vendee province! She had assumed when they fled from Cornwall that they would stay in some spot where the English were known and welcome.

  She still would not willingly recall that trip across the Channel in the tiny Corn Dolly. She had been wet, cold, terrified, and miserably sick every mile of the way. When Andy called that they were coming into the harbor at Brest, she had staggered to her feet, so .weak she could stand only by holding to the rail. She had looked with bleared eyes at the boats anchored closely all around, too exhausted to marvel at the way Jack was slipping between them to get to the wharf.

  She could hardly believe they had not capsized or been swamped under those monstrous waves and were not all drowned and dead. She swore she would never again set foot on a small sailboat as long as she lived.

  When Jack tied the boat at the end of the wharf, she realized she could not go ashore with the drenched and soggy garments clinging to every curve of her body. She would not parade in the streets like a spectacle to be stared and laughed at. Jack took his pound notes to change at the bank and the bundle of silver goblets to sell. He promised to inquire about lodgings and return with money and a dry shawl to cover her until she could get to a shop. Andy went scampering off with him, calling back they would return with rolls and ham and cheese, too. She nodded numbly. All she wanted was to get ashore to a warm, dry place with a bed that did not rise and fall or threaten to toss her like a shying horse. The meanest inn would seem a palace.

  She huddled by the rail, a damp bundle of misery, face raw and hair stiff from salt spray, eyes swollen from the buffeting wind. Then she saw them coming, running as if for their lives, Andy leaping to match Jack's stride. They jumped aboard, and Jack jerked the ropes that tied the boat fore and aft and then leapt to run up the sail. Andy hauled with him. A breeze caught the canvas and began to pull the Corn Dolly about.

  "What are you doing?" Poppy shrieked.

  "We made it," Andy whooped, laughing and dancing as he continued to pull and Jack ran to the helm. "We made it. We got away."

  "Away? We just got here."

  "He was waiting for us at the bank . There he comes. See? But he'll never catch us now."

  She turned dull eyes back to the wharf and could not believe what she saw. Dexter Roack, impeccably groomed as always, stood at the end where they had been tied up. As they came about and headed back out to sea, he took off his hat, waved it, and bowed an ironic farewell.

  "Where did he come from?" Poppy whispered.

  Jack did not turn his head as he maneuvered the Corn Dolly through the water lanes between the closely packed boats. "Just be glad we sold the goblets and got that much cash before we went to the bank. These two little flies walked straight into the spider's web. Roack was there waiting for us."

  "I threw the velvet cloth right over his head," Andy boasted. "Before he got out of that, we were away and running."

  "I thought you liked him," Poppy said.

  "I do. But we're with Jack now, so I'm on his side."

  Jack slipped the Corn Dolly between two fishing smacks and slid under the bows of a coastal freighter. "Word of our battle with the excisemen got to Brest ahead of us. The Frenchman who transshipped our cargo to the fishing boats out in the Channel was still close enough to hear the shots and guessed what had happened. Naturally he told the story in Brest when he returned. They know me there and knew I'd made the venture, selected and paid for the cargo."

  "That doesn't explain Dexter Roack."

  "No? Those merchant bankers have an intelligence system that even our diplomats use. It's faster and surer than their sealed pouches. He probably had word wherever he was the next morning at the latest. He knew I'd run for it and make straight for the nearest French port. So there he was, waiting. He's an extremely clever gentleman, and I'm a simple sailor. Nothing for us to do but run again."

  Poppy reached for the rail and shivered as she saw open water ahead. ''Where now?"

  "Around the coast to the Bay of Biscay to a place no English-speaking person ever goes. He'll never trace us there."

  "Is it far? 'How long?" Poppy asked faintly.

  ''That depends on the wind. Far enough."

  "I'm hungry," Andy wailed.

  "We'll find a place to put in for supplies as soon as we've put enough distance behind us tha
t we won't be recognized by anybody from Brest."

  "Far." Poppy understood.

  "Far enough and safe enough that we'll be able to stay awhile,"

  Jack said, squinting against the sun. "Unless you know a place you want to go."

  "No place."

  "Then you're my sister, and Andy's our little brother. No one will question that."

  He was right. Both he and Andy were the same blue-eyed, fair-haired English type, and her resemblance to Andy, especially around the eyes, was unmistakable. "You really are determined not to be caught," she marveled.

  "I'm determined to serve out my time in the Navy because there's no reason for me not to," he said. "The Pater is a fine old gentleman, and we all love and respect him. But he's also a stubborn old tyrant, and he's not taking the best years of my life away from me for a whim."

  "But you're the heir," Andy gasped.

  "I'm one of the heirs. But when am I going to inherit? The Pater may live another ten or fifteen years. Then my brother takes over for the rest of his life. After that I'll accept with all 'grace and thanks. Meanwhile, why should I twiddle my thumbs playing the role of heir when I could be happy in the Navy? We're not at war. Nothing's going to happen to me."

  "You're right," Poppy said.

  "Of course I'm right. If I keep running long enough and far enough, Father will have to admit he'll never catch me and cry 'Pax.' Then I'll go back and resume my commission. With luck, I'll retire a captain. After that, I'll play the heir."

  The run around the coast was farther and took longer than crossing the Channel, but it was not as rough. Still, when Poppy staggered ashore, she felt like falling on her knees in gratitude for a solid footing.

  Jack had said no English people went to Les Sables d'Olonne. He had not said the people there hated the English. Poppy did not understand it, except that these were an ignorant and isolated people who feared strangers and therefore hated.

  If she had realized that, and not been deceived by the great natural beauty of the place, she would have tried to stop Jack before he sold the Corn Dolly and left them stranded. Though she knew it had broken his heart to part with the boat, he only had said gruffly they needed the money to live. Even though he knew the buyer would sell it to some Parisian at double the price in the spring, he let it go cheap, in return for the chance to sail with the man's fishing boat and take a share of the profits. Because he was a superb sailor, the fishermen accepted him. Andy was a child, usually busy in some mysterious but surely harmless way at the basin where the squat fishing boats were built and anchored, so he was tolerated.

  Only Poppy received the full blast of burning hatred every time she stepped out on the street. A little of it was her lilting English voice and accent. Mostly it was her grace and beauty that made her stand out among the short, squat women with their dark, weather-lined faces like a gaudy cockatoo in a hen yard.

  She had done her best. She wore a plain, short, black skirt and a high-necked, long-sleeved black blouse such as all the women did, though she could not endure the heavy woolen socks and wooden clogs and wore, instead, her own fine brown boots with thin lisle stockings.

  Now she looked around the combination kitchen and living room, with the two small bedrooms opening off it, and tied a black kerchief over her bright hair. Reluctant to leave this shelter, she went again to the window.

  Her eyes widened in disbelief. She had loitered until this late morning hour, although it meant little would be left at the market, to avoid the women who shopped early and then disappeared to prepare the midday meal, not to be seen again until late afternoon. Now a woman came out of a shop below and walked along briskly. She soon was joined by two others. That was unusual. Their high, white, elaborately folded headdresses and lace-trimmed aprons were not the same, so this was not a family matter. Each individual fold and shape of the headdresses and each lace pattern were handed down in families for generations and identified the wearer on sight. The three were turning to climb the steep cobbled street that led to the convent and beyond that to the market.

  She hesitated. Could they be going to the convent? She had never seen any nuns on the streets or anyone coming or going through the narrow iron gate in the convent walls, except a hobbling, crook-shouldered priest, and had decided it was an enclosed order. Perhaps, though the nuns never left their high-waned home, they did sometimes permit visitors for special occasions, she decided doubtfully.

  She had only some carrots and potatoes in the house. She must go to the market and then the bakery. She had never confided to Andy or Jack how much she dreaded this small daily trip because they had never seemed to sense the seething violence she felt barely held in check. She would not be thought a coward for no reason they would credit. She had learned to cook on that tiny primitive stove, and she must do the shopping.

  She could not ask anything more of Jack. He had sacrificed his boat. He worked to support them. More, he was the perfect English gentleman, who never by word, gesture, or hint behaved as if they were anything other than the brother and sister he had said they were. Except, Poppy often thought, he probably would not have been so meticulously courteous and careful of her privacy if she truly had been his sister.

  She already had delayed far too long. Andy and Jack would be back before she had time to prepare their midday meal. They would be ravenous and must be fed.

  She slipped down the dark, narrow stairs and hurried up the steep cobbled street hemmed in by the small stone houses, close-shuttered against passersby. When she reached the high convent walls, she slackened her pace and breathed more easily. She could not imagine what kind of women would choose to spend their lives behind those walls, never leaving them, but she felt no menace here except from the priest. From the darting, fierce glances of his narrowed eyes, she knew this man who spent his life ministering to the self-effacing, praying women considered her a walking personification of evil. That was strange in a priest, but these people of Vendee were strange. For once, he was not by the gate.

  As she expected when she reached the small square with the market barrows lined up along two sides, many spaces were vacant and those which remained held only meager scraps, the rejected leavings. She edged along, knowing the market farmers despised her as a stupid foreigner who could not even shop early to get good food for her men. She shook her head at the man with the large dead rabbits dangling by their hind feet on a rope behind him. She had noticed his odd, sneering smile the last time he had sold her one already skinned. After it was cooked and eaten, she had recalled his smile and thought that the hind legs had seemed somehow odd. Perhaps French rabbits were different, but could that man have been malicious enough to sell the ignorant foreigner a skinned cat? She had said nothing to Andy or Jack, but she had determined to buy no more rabbits unless she saw them in their skins.

  She found a good head of cabbage and took it. Perhaps Jack would bring home an especially fine fish to grill on the embers of the fireplace, but she must have meat if he did not. The lamb cost too much. She reached the rabbit stall again, searching, and the leering man beckoned to her and held out a skinned carcass enticingly. She smiled as she shook her head, but he said something out of the side of his mouth that made the man beside him laugh. He flourished the carcass again, and involuntarily she shrank away.

  "Our good French food is not enough for the Englishwoman," he taunted.

  "I have fish," Poppy lied. "I must hurry to the bakery for some of their excellent bread and fine pastries."

  "But you don't like our rabbits," the man laughed and thrust it close to her face.

  She knew then. That was a cat, and the whole market knew it and had been laughing at the grisly joke for days. "Another time," she said and turned hurriedly. She stumbled straight against a rough black serge shoulder. The priest staggered on the rough cobblestones and braced himself with his cane. He hobbled not only because he was crook-shouldered, she realized, but because he was crippled. She stammered, "My apologies, my apologies." Eyes b
lazing in his thin, Sallow face, he held out his crucifix in front of him and intoned something. It could only be an exorcism against evil. She saw behind him some thirty women and as many more large boys and girls. She had collided. with a procession headed by the priest on its way to some religious ceremony. Frightened, she mumbled meaningless words and tried to turn away, but the rabbit man swung the long, stiff carcass until it nearly brushed her face.

  The priest pointed one shaking finger at her and went into a shrill tirade in the local patois she could not follow. But she saw the women's faces, eyes glaring out of their square, muddy countenances and the drab lips contorted to spit. She heard the dull mutter of a mob. Horrified, she thought faces like that must have gloated at the foot of the guillotine, waiting for the dull thud of death. She looked around frantically for a path of escape. Behind her, the man still flourished the stark carcass.