He rose to use the basin and looked through the window at the courtyard, a dark space barely washed in the pale light of what he knew was an almost-quarter moon. Once more he heard a door close, then light footsteps outside. A tiny, disembodied light appeared to the left and began to travel diagonally across the space. Lapérouse moved to the edge of the window, not wishing to be seen peering out in the dead of night. The light reached the center of the courtyard and stopped for a moment. Face lit briefly by the taper in his hand, the figure looked up with an expression of wonder at the southern sky. It was Dufresne.
* * *
The cold surprised him as he stepped outside. He looked back once at the house, where José stood in the doorway watching them. It was impossible to read his expression in the dark. Lapérouse turned away in relief and set off with Pierre into the streets of the still dormant city.
They found their way easily enough to the edge of town, footfalls echoing off the crumbling mud walls of the buildings as they passed. Once outside of town, they occasionally exchanged nods with fishermen or peasants on their way to town with fish and produce. At the top of the first rise, they stopped and unpacked the parcel José had silently handed them: two flasks of water, two minced-meat pastries, and some jerked beef. Lapérouse took one pastry and Pierre the other. Looking back, Lapérouse could see the roofs of the dusty town below just brightening while to the east, the rising sun gilt the jagged line of the cordillera.
“Why did we leave so early, sir?” Pierre asked.
“We didn’t,” Lapérouse said. “I meant to leave at daybreak, and see?” He pointed to the mountains. “It’s daybreak.”
“It is now,” Pierre muttered.
Lapérouse got up and set off again down the road. He could hear Pierre groan sleepily as he hoisted himself to his feet and followed his master.
By the time they crested the highest point in the road between Concepción and Talcahuano, there was enough light to distinguish three bodies of water: the Bay of Concepción to the north, the frigates just visible in their anchorages; the great Bío-Bío River to the south, marking the boundary between the Spanish colony and the untamed Araucanians; and to the west, still murky with night and unanswered questions, the Pacific Ocean. Lapérouse’s heart lifted at the sight of so much water and at the mostly downhill path that lay between him and the Boussole.
He was not a man to obsess about a thing for too long. He knew this about himself and trusted it. Every step he took away from Concepción resolved some of the turmoil he had experienced during the night and restored clarity to his mind. He thought of Éléonore with a twinge of guilt, but he had not, after all, done anything wrong. He knew what Jesus was reported to have said about lust, how it was the same as committing adultery. But only a man who had never been with a woman could have believed such a thing. He moved on, down the steepest part of the pass, and welcomed the return of his usual yearning for Éléonore, a feeling painful in its way, but not intolerably so, and familiar for all that. Some mariners suffered acutely from lovesickness at sea, but seemed to enjoy missing their wives or lovers more than being with them. Not he. He thought of Éléonore every day, many times a day, but he remembered her equably, and did not allow his longing for her to distract him from work. Every time he returned to her, she delighted him all over again and, he liked to think, he her, but it was never a surprise. It was simply what it was: happiness. Stepping carefully over the loose gravel on the road, he began composing in his head the next page of his letter to her: Some of the husbands in Chile are so very much older than their wives that you and I would be considered quite contemporaries, my dear.
They reached a flatter part of the road, and Pierre unwrapped the sun-dried beef and handed a piece to Lapérouse before taking a bite for himself. A large shadow passed over them, and both men ducked by instinct. Looking up, Lapérouse saw the most enormous bird he had ever laid eyes on. Two more flew in long, graceful curves, never flapping their wings. He was not much of a naturalist—one bird was much like another, to his mind—but these creatures could not fail to impress. “They must be the famous Andean condors,” he told Pierre, who nodded. Lapérouse tossed his meat out into a clearing by the side of the road and waited to see if they would come down for it, but the wide gyres they traced in the sky were apparently focused on something else.
“Sir?” Pierre said, offering what remained of his dried beef. Lapérouse regretted the loss of his breakfast, but he shook his head, and the two men proceeded in silence.
The village of Talcahuano was already in full bustle when they arrived, but the sudden appearance of two dusty, rumpled Frenchmen coming from the direction of Concepción, one in partial dress uniform, surprised the inhabitants and soldiers they passed. Even more surprised were two other Frenchmen, who had just hauled one of the Astrolabe’s small boats ashore. “Commander!” one of them cried out when he recognized Lapérouse. It was several paces before Lapérouse recognized him: It was Tréton de Vaujuas, Langle’s young ensign. The other man was middle-aged, pale, and very thin.
“Good morning, Monsieur de Vaujuas,” Lapérouse called out.
“Good morning, sir,” Vaujuas said, then looked around for a corresponding boat from the Boussole, and finding none, toward the village for a carriage or horse or some other explanation for the commander’s appearance. “Where did you come from, sir?”
“Never mind that,” Lapérouse said, feeling testy and enjoying it. “Just row us back to my ship.”
Vaujuas held the boat steady while Lapérouse and Pierre climbed aboard, then helped his companion on with great gentleness, and pushed off. The other man sat in the back and did not help row. Vaujuas sat facing Lapérouse and took the oars. “My manservant, Jean Le Fol, sir,” he said by way of introduction. The servant leaned to the right so as to be seen from behind his master, and inclined his head in greeting. It was the sick servant La Borde had told him about.
“And how do you fare, Monsieur Le Fol?” Lapérouse asked.
“I’m very well, sir,” the man replied, but he shivered in the light breeze, and sweat beaded his pale forehead.
* * *
Lapérouse did not leave the Boussole for three days. Indeed, he hardly left his cabin, spoke to almost no one, and did little but write. He wrote to Major Sabatero, thanking him for his hospitality and apologizing for his hasty departure, assuring him that only the most pressing need could have dragged him from their gracious company and home. He wrote to Monneron, who was still in town, with instructions regarding preparations for the fête. He wrote to decline an invitation from O’Higgins to celebrate Mass on Sunday at what passed for a cathedral in Concepción, then sent a note to the Astrolabe, directing Langle and a few officers to go in his stead. He wrote to the minister, assuring him that they “had not one sick aboard either vessel.” He remembered Vaujuas’s servant as soon as he’d penned the line, but he didn’t wish to cross it out. Langle would be writing his own report to the minister—let him mention the sick servant. He wrote to accept a subsequent invitation from O’Higgins to join an outing to explore the ruins of the old city. He drafted a bill of exchange for Delphin and a short speech to give at the fête. He caught up on his journal, had it copied, then corrected the copy. He struggled to finish his letter to Éléonore. It seemed thoughtless not to mention a child if there were one, but equally thoughtless to mention one if there were not. In the end he punctuated the note with numerous “my dears” and “my loves” and trusted to her affectionate understanding.
Every time his thoughts strayed back toward Concepción, to the Sabateros, the darkened courtyard, the floating light, he forced his mind to something else, and failing that, cast doubt on his memories. Perhaps Dufresne had just stepped out for the night air or to examine the stars. Perhaps it had not been Dufresne, after all. Perhaps his own disordered state of mind had created recognitions and associations where there were none.
By the fourth morning, he was pale and ink-stained, and his right hand ach
ed from the hours spent writing, but he had caught up with his administrative duties, and his mind and conscience felt clear and unencumbered. Unfortunately, the day’s reports challenged his hard-won equanimity, bringing as they did a second letter from Dufresne, requesting once more that he be released from the expedition. Lapérouse tried to bring a disinterested reading to the request, to put aside his suspicions, his own antipathy to the man, but it was impossible. Whereas before the young man had seemed motivated by a strong sense of having made a mistake, of realizing he was not suited to life at sea, and simple homesickness, in this new letter he was more polite, but also more assertive. He sounded as though he just wanted to be freed from the expedition to go his own way: as if, Lapérouse could not help but think, he had found a compelling reason to stay behind.
Lapérouse set the letter aside. He had no stomach for writing back to Dufresne, and indeed, was not sure how to respond. Losing Dufresne would have little effect on the scientific aims of the voyage, but it set a bad precedent, suggesting that the savants might come and go as they pleased. Lapérouse fingered a scratch on his bust of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He liked to think of himself as a man unswayed by personal pique, but he could not deny there would be some satisfaction to turning the man down and forcing him to leave Concepción and whatever attachments he might have formed there.
An urgent rap on the door ended his introspection: one of his lieutenants requesting that the commander “please intervene right now in a problem on deck.” The problem turned out to be an argument between Bisalion and Langle’s cook, Deveau. The two men had not had occasion to interact with each other before, but now they were both charged with cooking for the fête, and each man wanted nothing more than to feel superior to the other. Deveau, strangely thin for a cook, was older and claimed to have cooked for Bougainville during the American War. Bisalion, high-strung and prematurely bald, believed that his position with the commander made him the senior cook. Deveau had rowed over to the Boussole that morning to confer with Bisalion, but by the time Lapérouse arrived, a disagreement over the soup course had devolved into shouted accusations of incompetence, drunkenness, pilferage, and, less relevantly, bastardy and impotence. Lapérouse stepped between them just as fists were raised. Both men shrank back in chagrin when they saw him.
Lapérouse dismissed the seamen who had gathered around, then turned to the two belligerents. “You will prepare exactly what Monsieur de Langle and I tell you to,” he said. “Monsieur Deveau, kindly tell your captain that he and I will be settling on a menu for the fête when I visit the Astrolabe tomorrow evening.” He heard Bisalion gulp behind him, ready to protest the unfairness of being left out, and held up a finger to maintain both cooks’ silence. “Neither of you will be present at the discussion. We will inform you of our decisions and of who will be making what.”
The men continued to glare past Lapérouse and at each other. “Monsieur Bisalion,” Lapérouse said, addressing his own cook. “You promised me eggs this morning, but I still haven’t seen them.” The cook strode off, red-faced with anger and shame. Deveau made the mistake of laughing at his opponent’s discomfiture. “You may return to the Astrolabe, Monsieur Deveau,” Lapérouse said, then left the deck so he would not have to see the way his men, naturally taking their shipmate’s side, harassed Deveau as he clambered gracelessly over the rail and down into the waiting boat.
* * *
Deveau may have been physically excluded from Lapérouse and Langle’s discussion the following evening, but he took full advantage of the meeting taking place aboard the Astrolabe to ensure that he and his skills were not forgotten. The captains-only dinner, an occasional event that alternated between the two ships, was usually a casual affair, but that evening featured plates of Chilean goat cheese, steamed mussels with garlic, a deliciously light onion soup, stuffed pheasant served with mashed potatoes piped into rosettes, and warm fig tarts topped with fresh cream. Surely it was not Deveau’s fault if some of these items made it onto the final menu.
Over a second serving of tart, Lapérouse told Langle that he had received a second letter from Dufresne.
“I know,” Langle said
“Why is it that the least valuable men on a ship always take up the most time?”
“Why don’t we let him go, sir?”
Lapérouse sighed. They had already discussed the whys and why-nots of the matter. “Is he still staying with the Sabateros?” he demanded.
Langle’s eyebrows flicked upward in mild surprise. “I believe so. He was sitting with them in church on Sunday.”
“He was?”
Langle looked at him for a moment before speaking. “If you’re concerned about it, sir…”
“What do you mean?”
Langle gently set his fork down on the table. “We have an old, not very attentive husband; his very young, very pretty wife; a commander who is—shall we say—solicitous of her; and their guest, a dissatisfied but handsome naturalist—”
“Handsome?” Lapérouse blurted out. “Dufresne?” Langle laughed, and Lapérouse found himself covering his embarrassment with a volley of words: “I am surprised beyond measure to hear you describe him so, Monsieur de Langle. God knows I am no connoisseur of male beauty, but to me the man looks sallow and underfed, with that weak chin and eyes that refuse to meet yours. Is that what women like these days?”
Langle was still smiling. “He’s also tall, with a full head of thick, dark curls. And a carefully cultivated air of tragedy that some women might find irresistible.”
Lapérouse frowned, annoyed by Langle’s mirth.
“I can order him back to the ship tomorrow if you wish,” Langle said mildly.
Lapérouse waved a hand in dismissal, then briskly suggested they have the table cleared so they could consult their Pacific charts. “I need to inform the ministry of our plans from here,” he said. Langle called for François to clear the table.
To decide on a plan of sail for the coming months, they needed a firm departure date from Concepción. That date depended on the completion of critical repairs, and the work was proceeding slowly. Some tasks took time and could not be rushed, like the caulking. Some things turned out to be in worse shape than they had expected, like the rigging. Some of the men had been diverted from repair work to preparations for the fête. But the main problem seemed to be an excess of leisure. The long stay in Concepción Bay, with its clement weather, ample food, friendly inhabitants, and lack of urgency, had turned even some of the more industrious seamen into idlers.
“We could promise the crew time in town if they complete the repairs more quickly,” Langle suggested.
“We could end up with two frigates full of Frédérics,” Lapérouse said.
“Yes. Some of the men will debauch themselves.”
“And come back unfit for duty.”
“Or diseased.”
“Or not at all.”
But it would get the work done sooner, as they both knew. Lapérouse sighed. He wished they could do something other than appealing to the men’s animal appetites, something that fostered the finer virtues—camaraderie, pride, loyalty. “What if,” he began, toying with the edge of the chart, “on the night after the fête, we were to use the same location to feed everyone from both frigates? Someone in town will be only too happy to sell us an ox or two for the occasion.”
“An all-hands dinner on the beach,” Langle said, nodding his appreciation. “One is less likely to desert ship captains who treat you to such things.”
An hour later, their course was decided: In two days, the fête. The day after, an all-hands feast in the same place. Meanwhile, they would make it known that everyone would be granted leave for one day if all the repairs were completed by March 12, five days hence. On March 15 they would set sail. As for their itinerary thereafter, they would head west for Easter Island, then north to the Sandwich Islands, and still farther north for the coast of North America, where they would spend the summer exploring. Tinian by year’s e
nd, Manila in February, Kamchatka the following summer. New Holland the spring after that, then islands and more islands in the South Seas—hopefully some of them new—and through the Endeavour Strait for Île de France by the end of 1788, and finally back into the Atlantic and north for home.
“We should be back in France by July of 1789,” Lapérouse said.
Langle’s forehead was furrowed, betraying his ordinarily better-concealed disquiet. “It looks so easy on paper,” he said.
“It won’t be easy,” Lapérouse said, “but I have no doubt we can accomplish it.”
Langle cast his eyes over their scrawled notes and ran one finger down the expanse of the Pacific, still open on the table between them. “I keep wondering where the unforeseen calamity will strike.”
“Well, that’s the thing about unforeseen events, isn’t it?”
Langle’s lips twitched upward in a half smile. He gathered up the notes strewn across the charts. “Do you never lie awake at night with thoughts like this?”
Lapérouse considered for a moment. “No,” he said. “I have my sleepless nights, of course. But they usually concern problems already present or about-to-be.” Or lonely young wives and their mysterious buttons, he thought with a rush of private embarrassment. “Surely it’s not a foregone conclusion that we’ll experience a calamity,” he said.
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