“A wonderful meal, Doña Eleonora,” he said. Now he would learn if she spoke French.
“Thank you.”
Anyone could say “thank you,” of course. They stepped into a courtyard that looked like a stage, with its carefully placed plants and even more carefully placed servants. The lurid sunset sky looked unreal, as if painted in orange and red for the occasion. “I hope Monsieur de Lamanon didn’t overwhelm you with his erudition,” he ventured.
“Not at all. I found him very interesting.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Lapérouse said. “And I hope Monsieur Dufresne did not oppress your spirits—he can be gloomy sometimes.”
She nodded. “Some men are not so suited to life at sea,” she said.
Excellent French. There was just a hint of those irrepressible Spanish r’s. She stopped a servant carrying a tray of wineglasses and handed one to Lapérouse. He had had several glasses already, but how to refuse this oddly poised girl, his hostess for the evening? The rest of the guests filled the courtyard, settling into jovial clusters, wineglasses in hand. He hoped none of his men would become foolishly drunk. During their time at sea, they had grown used to meting out their drink in sensible, barrel-conserving doses.
“I understand that I have the same name as Madame de Lapérouse,” Eleonora said.
His face warmed at the mention of Éléonore. “Monsieur Broudou must have told you,” he said. “He is my wife’s brother.”
“Do you have any children?”
Her directness took him by surprise, and he had no defense except to return candor for candor. “No—that is, not when I left France.”
Her face opened into an artless smile. “You may be greeted by a child on your return?”
He laughed, flustered. “Perhaps.” A letter had reached him in Brest right before they set sail. It has been more than two months this time, Éléonore had written. He knew not to count on it. But how to check hope? If she had been pregnant when he left, and all went well, the baby might have arrived already. He would not learn any news till much later, of course, when they reached another outpost of civilization—Macao, perhaps, or Petropavlovsk, or Manila—and crossed paths with another ship bearing letters from France. As for going home, that would be still later—sometime in 1789, most likely. Again, if all went well. In that time a child could be born, could cut its teeth, learn to walk, to babble prayers for an absent father. A child could also be carried off by fever, by measles, by accident. It had happened to seven of his own siblings.
He looked down to find Eleonora staring up at him with an expression that mixed curiosity with evaluation. “Doña Eleonora,” he said, “you and Major Sabatero, are you blessed with—?”
“I have no children,” she said. Her eyes strayed across the courtyard and toward the dining room, where servants rushed about rearranging furniture while musicians tuned their instruments. Sabatero stood at one of the open doorways, wiping his brow with a kerchief as he conferred with José. He waved when he saw them, gesturing that they were nearly ready to begin. Lapérouse nodded, delivered his empty wineglass to a passing tray, and offered his arm once more to Eleonora.
“You’re young. You have time,” he said.
For a moment her hand tightened around his upper arm; he could feel her fingers through the wool of his dress jacket. “That is what everyone says.”
He led her back toward Sabatero and the warm light of the transformed dining room, relieved to deliver her back to her husband. There was something a bit overwrought about her. Perhaps it was just youth. He rubbed at the place above his elbow where she had gripped him. It did not hurt, but felt marked somehow, as if he would be aware of the spot all evening.
* * *
The distinguished citizens of Concepción began to arrive—retired military officers, members of the local council, magistrates, merchants; wives, many of them much younger than their husbands; some daughters and sisters; and priests, many priests. Lapérouse had never seen so many priests at a ball; it was possible he had never seen so many priests together in his life. He was aware of some hierarchy at work in the ordering of introductions, some complicated calculus of title, racial purity, and wealth, with the early introductions being generally for older, fairer-skinned, wealthier-looking individuals than the later ones. It was by no means straightforward, however. One of the first couples he met was a pompous old Spaniard weighed down by military medals whose wife looked for all the world like an Indian princess except for her startling blue eyes.
Seen now among her countrywomen, Eleonora looked less outlandish than Lapérouse had first found her. Nearly all of them wore the same pleated, bell-shaped skirts that ended just below the knee, displaying calves, shapely under striped stockings, and feet, some dainty, some not, in heavy, beribboned shoes. Like Eleonora, their upper bodies were draped with colorful mantillas, as if to compensate for the generous exposure of their lower extremities, and their hair was unpowdered and pulled back from the brow, arranged in those tight plaits, some coiled over the ears, some left to cascade down the back. It was a coiffure that worked better with some heads than others, but made all the women look like sisters. Then there were the headdresses, exotic and varied—hats, feathers, turbans, and flowers both real and artificial. Eleonora’s head, adorned only by her plaited hair, seemed downright sober by comparison.
Most of the women fell silent as they entered the room and found themselves appraised by so many strangers. On being introduced, each woman shyly spoke a few words in French or Spanish, then retreated to the orbit of whichever man in the room she belonged to—husband, father, brother. It was an odd effect, the combination of apparel so gaudy and behavior so modest.
Langle leaned over. “You remember what Buffon said about New World birds?”
“You know I’ve never read Buffon,” Lapérouse said.
“He said they were brilliantly feathered and largely mute.”
“Perhaps he’d been here.”
Gaspard Duché de Vancy, the Boussole’s likable young artist, was standing nearby. “Monsieur Duché de Vancy,” Lapérouse said, calling him over, “I hope you’ll draw these people while we’re here.”
Duché de Vancy smiled. “I thought I was retained to draw flora and fauna, sir.”
“Exactly.”
The musicians were not so mediocre nor the music so antiquated as Lapérouse expected. “It’s French,” he said aloud, and Sabatero, standing next to him, inclined his head with satisfaction.
Langle was on his other side. “It’s Leclair,” he said, then whispered, “They know Leclair, who’s been dead only twenty years, yet we had no idea their city had been destroyed and relocated years before that.”
“The world will know more of them after our visit,” Lapérouse said.
At a signal from Sabatero, the musicians embarked on a lively minuet. The company stirred: it was time to dance. Sabatero looked out at the room with a benignly expectant smile, too old and fat to begin dancing himself, his part in opening the festivities concluded. Lapérouse experienced a moment of silent panic. Was he expected to start the dancing? Pray God no. He did not mind dancing in a large crowd, the larger and less formal the better, where different social classes might mix and his lack of skill was apparent only to his partner. There had been nothing about dancing in the king’s instructions for the expedition. He turned toward Langle: he could dance, let him begin. But his friend was diffident with strangers and hated being exposed to public view, and was even now quite refusing to return Lapérouse’s glance.
Then rescue: the two La Borde brothers, officers on the Astrolabe, and their friend Barthélemy de Lesseps, the expedition’s Russian interpreter, all three young and handsome and affable, their dress coats still unfaded, white stockings still white, caught Lapérouse’s eye with a quick gesture that meant, undeniably, “May we, sir?” Please, Lapérouse mouthed back, and they were across the room to secure three of the prettiest dancing partners. Not to be outdone, the younger Spanish c
aballeros joined in, then more Frenchmen, even a couple of the more dapper savants, and the ball was under way.
Langle turned to Lapérouse. “Every day I’m glad I persuaded the Marquis de La Borde to let me bring his sons on the expedition.”
“Very able officers.”
“Quite.” Langle cleared his throat. “In truth, I’m bending a promise I made to the marquis by letting them both off the Astrolabe at the same time.”
“Oh?”
“Most mishaps on voyages occur when men leave their ships.”
“True. But this hardly counts as a risky excursion.”
“So I judged.”
“Although I understand they have quite deadly earthquakes here.”
Langle turned to him. “It’s no joke. I considered that.”
Lapérouse laughed. Ever the worrier, Langle. Only seven months into the expedition, he was convinced his water was going bad, that scurvy was about to break out among his crew, that their timepieces were losing accuracy.
Eleonora appeared beside them. “Count de Lapérouse, Viscount de Langle,” she said, inclining her head in turn to each man, “may I consult with you on lodgings for your men tonight?”
The two men nodded in turn.
“You and the viscount and your servants will remain with my husband and me, if that is acceptable,” she began. Lapérouse bowed. “I’ve placed most of the other officers with Señor Quexada, who has several extra rooms.” They murmured gratitude for her kindness. “Your naturalists I assume will want to remain ashore for longer”—another bow—“so I’ve taken the liberty of housing them with various members of our Basque Society. That is our learned society for gentlemen,” she explained. “They are very eager to make acquaintance with the savants on your expedition. Monsieur de Lamanon I’ve put with Don Mateo Moraga, the head of that society.”
“You’ve seen to everything, Doña Eleonora,” Lapérouse exclaimed.
She smiled. “What about your Monsieur Broudou? Shall I put him up with the younger officers, or would you prefer that he be here, near you?”
How had she divined so much about them in so short a time—Lamanon’s need to feel valued and important, the savants’ eagerness to get to their work, Frédéric’s tendency to misbehave? And what should he do about Frédéric? He had acquitted himself admirably since August, but of course opportunities for gambling and whoring were limited on board. He looked around for his brother-in-law, and found him, improbably, in conversation with one of the priests. He turned back to Eleonora. “I think Monsieur Broudou would be disappointed if he were lodged with two old men like Captain de Langle and me,” he said.
“You and the captain are hardly old, sir,” she said, looking up into their faces with an expression of friendly appraisal, “but I understand. We will find a suitable place for Monsieur Broudou.”
He thanked her. She smiled, raising her fan to her lips. It was closed, but he could see that it was made of blue paper, with ivory or bone for slats. He wondered what it looked like inside, then held out a hand to her, acting on an impulse even as it was forming in his mind, an impulse that was absurd, for really, he could not dance well and was conscious of wanting to make a favorable impression—on the colonists, on his own men, on this young woman who was his hostess. But he stepped out onto the floor. “Will you do me the honor, Doña Eleonora?”
* * *
He was not one of those mariners so wedded to the sea that he slept better on board than on land. A capacious bed, solid ground, clean bedclothes, a quiet house—he found these things altogether conducive to long and restful sleep. When he awoke, it was into a yellow room flooded with sunlight and headache, and a long two or three seconds before he recollected where he was. He heaved himself out of bed, noticed that Langle’s bed was empty, and roared for Pierre, wincing at his own noise. “What time is it?” he asked when Pierre appeared.
“Almost nine o’clock, sir.”
“Nine! Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You told me not to last night.”
“Ah,” he said, not remembering. “Where is Monsieur de Langle?”
“He got up early and returned to the Astrolabe, sir.”
Lapérouse frowned, irked and disappointed. He had assumed he and Langle would be making the three-league trip back to the cove together that morning. It was a rare thing—a long trip on dry land, the two captains together, away from the eyes and ears of the men, a chance to talk unhindered and uncensored. And he disliked what Langle’s earlier departure might suggest to others—that Langle was the more diligent and disciplined captain, back to work while the commander slept off an evening of too much wine. He dunked his head into the washbasin and subjected himself to a storm of toweling before letting Pierre help him get dressed.
A servant girl showed him into a drawing room, where Eleonora sat at a small table, the remains of a breakfast for two in evidence before her.
“Good morning, sir,” Eleonora said, standing with a small curtsy before waving him into the other chair. It seemed impossible that Eleonora should look even younger than she had the night before, but she did. Her hair pulled back in a lace mantle, she looked every bit the girl playing at being the mistress of the house. His face warmed with the memory of dancing with her the night before. He hoped he had not looked entirely foolish.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, then smiled when he shook his head no and poured steaming water into a wooden cup with no handles. She stuck a silver straw into it and offered it to him. “Paraguayan tea,” she said. “It is very restorative.”
He thanked her and sipped at the tea, which was warm and smoky and tasted of some hybrid between tea and coffee. “The major, he is—?”
“I am afraid he is still asleep,” Eleonora said. “The party last night, it tired him. I fear he is not that strong.” She paused. “He was injured in a battle with the Araucanians.”
“Recently?” It was hard to picture their host of the previous evening being spry enough to wage any sort of warfare.
“Oh, no,” Eleonora said. “It was about ten years ago.”
“I see.” She had never known her husband in good health. At least he and Éléonore had had a few years together. Long-delayed years, granted, and years interrupted by several stints at sea, so that their total time together, really together, could be measured in months. But they were good months, when they were both young enough to enjoy each other. He looked at Eleonora again. Just how infirm was this husband of hers? She blushed under his gaze and looked down into her lap. There was a curious panel on the front of her skirt, a vertical seam that closed with three cloth-covered buttons. She was toying with one of the buttons. Why would a woman require such an opening in her skirt? He could not look away.
“But I am forgetting,” Eleonora said, looking back up. “We received word from Don Ambrosio this morning.”
Ambrosio, Ambrosio—but of course—Ambrosio O’Higgins, the governor of the town, for whose absence everyone had been so apologetic.
“He is returning from the front today.”
“Wonderful news,” Lapérouse said, then thought immediately of the Boussole. O’Higgins would almost certainly expect to be received on board, but the ship would be in an aggravated state of undress, half of the hold disgorged and sitting in boats, waiting to be restowed, sails and rigging spread everywhere, and sweaty, half-naked crewmen crawling all over with tools and tar and foul language. The officers still here in town would need to be summoned back to the ships. And he would need his cook, Bisalion, to feed O’Higgins and his entourage. Luncheon for we-do-not-know-how-many arriving we-are-not-sure-when. Bisalion was a high-strung individual. Paroxysms of anxiety would follow. “Doña Eleonora,” he said, “I’m afraid I need to return to my ship immediately.”
He stood, head pounding, and Eleonora stood too, and then the steward walked in. Lapérouse stepped back, startled by the man’s sudden and silent appearance, thinking at first that it was Sabatero, finally awake. Indeed, the steward
shared his master’s short stature and wide shoulders. He stood before them without speaking, his expression blank, too blank, as if he had interrupted something between them. Eleonora spoke to him sharply in Spanish, which, Lapérouse reflected, tended to support that impression.
The man then addressed Eleonora. Lapérouse did not know what he said, but there was something about his manner—not exactly disrespectful, but offhand—that Lapérouse did not like. Their eyes met briefly, and then Lapérouse liked him even less. Hostility flared out from the man, and with it a hint of intelligence greater than the man’s position required. Could the blood of the mighty, unbowed Araucanians flow through this man’s veins? Maybe it was true what so many savants said—Lamanon himself was of this opinion—that when you mixed the races you degraded both, ending up with the worst of each. Lapérouse wondered how often Sabatero left his young wife alone with this mixed-blood servant.
“Monsieur de La Borde is here to see you,” Eleonora said, translating for the steward. “He says it is urgent.”
“La Borde?” He remembered the marquis and Langle’s promise to him, their mandate to keep the brothers—or at least one of them—safe from harm. “Please, send him in.”
It was the older La Borde, Edouard de La Borde Marchainville, looking windswept and harried, but not, Lapérouse was relieved to see, injured or panicked. “Madame, Commander,” he said, bowing first toward Eleonora then to Lapérouse, “I’m sorry to burst in like this.” He looked back at Eleonora, as if unsure whether to proceed in her presence.
“It’s all right, Ensign,” Lapérouse said. “What is it? Your brother?”
“My brother?” La Borde said. “No, he’s fine, sir. It’s—it’s Broudou, sir. He never came back to the Quexadas’ house last night after the ball. I’ve been looking for him, but, well—I don’t know the town.”
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