The Mark of the King

by Jocelyn Green

  When the whip’s tip reached around her side and licked at her belly, she unleashed a scream that could have woken Simon from the dead. Lord! Have mercy on my baby! With every bite of the whip, her prayers grew more fervent, if not eloquent. Cramps gripped her where the leather tongue could not reach. Mercy! Mercy! God, have mercy!

  Prostitutes and drunks laughed at her agony while the soldiers behind the whip seemed bent only on practicing their aim. The ropes rubbed her wrists raw as she jerked and twisted against them. A voice flickered in her ear: Your judgment is for life. You are forever condemned. In her mind’s eye, Mother Superior’s smooth brow puckered into ridges of blame. The past cannot be undone or outrun.

  Julianne struggled to suck breath from the atmosphere. Anguish blazed on her back and darted across her middle. Fear for her baby carved out every kindness, every gentleness, every fiber of long-suffering she had and replaced them with the white-hot flames of hate. “Stop! Mon bébé!” But no one could hear her rasp above the crack of the whip and jeering crowd.

  Then a voice boomed above the others, and the leather ceased to rake its teeth through her flesh. Too weak to turn her head, too consumed with pain to want to, she balanced, motionless, on the plank between her legs and teetered on the edge of consciousness.

  The din quieted, then fell away from her diminishing hearing. Two hands held her waist and rocked her slowly off the beam until she stood on the ground with violently shaking legs, and still she was supported by the hands.

  Julianne knew who it was without glimpsing his face. Too faint to be mortified over her tattered undergarments, she lifted her arm around his neck while he scooped her up beneath her shoulders and knees. She cried out at the pain of being held but knew she couldn’t walk. Hammocked against his chest, she surrendered to oblivion, sinking mercifully into its deep.

  When Julianne awoke, it was to the smell of crushed onions being waved beneath her nose. She jerked her head away from them and immediately winced at the searing pain the sudden movement caused.

  “Saints be praised!” Denise Villeroy knelt at her side in a rustle of silk, her celery-colored skirt pooling around her. “Mon amie, I’m so sorry! They are monsters who did this to you!” Tears glazed shaky paths down her cheeks as she set a bowl over the onion poultice to contain the odor.

  “Where am I?” Vaguely, Julianne registered that she was on her stomach on a feather bed, wearing a clean chemise that must have been cut away in the back, for moist towels smothered her pain. Two candles on the bureau in the corner cast a pale yellow radiance on the bedposts, washstand, and smooth pine planks in the walls and floor.

  “We’re in the captain’s bedchamber. He insisted on ceding it to you until you’ve recovered.”

  “I should be home,” Julianne whispered. Ache throbbed in a latticework pattern across her back.

  “Ma chère, you’re not going anywhere. You should be watched over. Captain Girard will be here whenever he’s not with his troops, and his servant Etienne is here night and day. Plus, Lisette and I will take shifts with you. Francoise will come too, of course, as she’s able. You’ll never be alone.”

  A tear slipped from Julianne’s eye. “Denise,” she choked out, “my baby. I’m so afraid—” She hadn’t the strength to name her fear. She didn’t need to.

  Denise’s face wrinkled with compassion. “We’ll keep watch with you.” She sniffed. “Do you mind if I pray for you? Francoise has been rubbing off on me, I suppose.”

  Julianne blew out a breath. “Please. Please pray.” She closed her eyes and let Denise’s soft voice wash over her as it winged their requests to God in heaven. “Amen,” they whispered at last.

  Julianne sighed. “Thank you.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Denise lowered her dark lashes. Her curving lips pointed to the beauty patch she’d placed near the corner of her mouth. “In Paris—before Salpêtrière—I went to church every week, and in between when I needed extra appointments with my confessor.” Her smile was rueful. “Here, there is no church to go to at all. But this is where I’ve been learning to pray. Simply, but often and earnestly.”

  “And does it change things?” Julianne’s reputation was ruined, her occupation discredited, and though she knew in her mind that babies did not miscarry from wounds to a mother’s skin, her heart was unconvinced that her child had escaped the ordeal unscathed. Would prayer erase the mark from her skin and resurrect her hope?

  Denise’s brown eyes softened. “Prayer is not a magician’s trick. The changes it brings cannot always be seen at first glance. But just as slippery elm soothes inflammation, prayer is a balm for a raw and ragged soul. And isn’t your soul in more need of healing than your skin?”

  The gullies in Julianne’s flesh burned, but no hotter than the hatred leaping up within her when she thought of Pascal Dupree. In time her skin would reach across the channels the whip’s tongue had carved away. But she feared wrath may consume her before she reckoned a way to douse its flames.

  With her fingertip, Denise traced the raised edges of a rose on her brocaded lap. “Jean and I ran to inspect the commotion just as Captain Girard put a stop to it. He’d just arrived back from a supply mission up the river—and none too soon. The way he scattered that crowd and cradled you in his arms . . .” She lifted her head, gaze roving about the room. “He is sick with worry for you and for your wee babe. But I can tell concern isn’t all that troubles him.”

  Julianne waited for further explanation. When it wasn’t forthcoming, she prodded. “What do you mean?”

  Denise stood and moved out of Julianne’s vision. Cool air rushed at her back as Denise removed a dry cloth and replaced it with a fresh, warm, damp one. “I should think it obvious. Love ails a man, Julianne. And Captain Girard has a case worse than most.”

  Her voice floated above Julianne as she closed her eyes and drifted toward slumber, but Denise’s words penetrated her heart.

  Marc-Paul stood outside the door to his bedchamber, listening to Julianne moan in her sleep. Denise had gone home to her husband and baby, and no other woman would come until morning. In his hand he held a cup of laudanum normally used for wounded soldiers. But Julianne’s injuries were severe. She needed it.

  “Well, are you going to help her or not?” Etienne crossed his arms.

  “I don’t want to cause her further distress by entering if she is . . . in a state of . . . disarray.” She had already been humiliated enough today.

  “Bah!” Etienne waved his hand dismissively. “If you’re too modest to bring her the tincture, I’ll do it myself. The only indecent thing around here would be for you to let her suffer when it’s in your power to ease her.”

  When Etienne reached for the laudanum, Marc-Paul stepped back, gave his trusty servant a salute, and tapped his knuckles on the door. “Julianne?” he called. “I’m coming in with some medicine.”

  “I’ll fetch some more ointment and fresh cloths.” Etienne retreated down the hall.

  Slowly, Marc-Paul opened the door. Reassured that she was covered with the sheet, he entered. The candles burned low on the bureau. He stopped for a moment at the sight of her in his bed, her hair fanned out on his pillow. The curiosity that had seized him when he first met her had turned into pity and obligation. But somehow, since then it had deepened into something stronger—and more painful. The whips that had torn into her flesh had flogged his heart as well.

  Setting the cup on the bureau, he knelt by her side. “Julianne.” Marc-Paul brushed her hair off her face and cringed at the lines whittled into her brow. “Julianne, I’ve brought you medicine to numb the pain.”

  Her eyelids fluttered and opened, and she took in the sight of him with no hint of alarm.

  “If you can drink this, it will help ease you.” Taking the cup from the bureau, he offered it to her. When he saw her begin to raise herself up enough to drink, he turned his head away in case the chemise slipped from her shoulders. Felt the cup leave his hand and return to it.


  The whispering of her body in the sheets quieted, and she thanked him. “Do you know why they did this to me?” Her voice was so quiet that he leaned in to listen. “Dupree smothered Dancing Brook’s baby, and I confronted him. It was his baby. He killed his own son.”

  The words fell like rocks to the pit of Marc-Paul’s stomach. He closed his eyes.

  “He said no one would believe me, not now.”

  Blood boiled in his veins. Marc-Paul may have extended leniency to his old friend over the guns he took from the commissary, but he refused to keep silent now. “I believe you. And I’ll report this to Bienville posthaste. Pascal should be punished, not you.” The fact that he once saved Marc-Paul’s life did not atone for this.

  Julianne’s brow wrinkled again as she sought his gaze. “But . . . I shot a man. A soldier.”

  “What did you say?” He watched her lips. Surely his ears had deceived him. He could tell the effort to speak cost her, yet he needed to hear the rest of the story.

  “Someone followed me home from the tavern one night.” She paused for breath, and Marc-Paul held his. “He threatened me. I warned him. I fired the gun into the dark to scare him away. I hit Matthieu Hurlot in the arm.”

  Marc-Paul exhaled. “Well done.”

  “He says I meant to murder him. He says . . .” She rolled her lips between her teeth, and her nostrils flared.

  “Enough. You defended yourself, and rightly so. Speak no more of it now. You must rest. Please, be at ease. You’re safe now.” He filled his voice with calm reassurance, though fire burned in his belly at the injustices laid upon her.

  A quiet knock on the door, and Marc-Paul rose to answer it. Etienne had returned with a fresh jar of slippery elm ointment and a pile of fresh cloths, which changed hands quickly, before Vesuvius could sneak through the open door. The latch sounded, and the pug snorted from the other side.

  Marc-Paul turned back to Julianne. “I—I’d like to change your dressings,” he offered tentatively. “Would it distress you if I were to perform this task?”

  He waited for her response as he spread a thick layer of ointment on one side of a towel. All he heard was her deep, rhythmic breathing. Thank you, Lord. She needed the rest.

  Pulling the sheet off her back, Marc-Paul saw the fleur-de-lys that marked her as a criminal. Not a common one, but a convict beyond hope of rehabilitation. The symbol of the monarchy on her skin said she belonged to the king to do with as he pleased—and so he had shipped her to Louisiana. He sighed, then clenched his jaw. A murderer in the birthing chamber. A murderer in the streets! When he had jumped from the pirogue and left the soldiers to unload the food, the air had been thick with rumors as he’d cut through it to reach her. Now he understood why.

  Carefully, he peeled a cloth from her back. When it did not come easily, he added water to the spot, soaking what had dried until the cloth came free without causing any more pain. Bit by bit, the towels were removed in a tedious, painstaking process until her back was completely exposed. Tears bit his eyes at the sight of her ravaged flesh.

  “How much judgment shall be heaped upon this soul?” he whispered. For as long as he could remember, his life had been guided by the law. He followed the law, he stayed alive by the law, and he punished those who broke it. But ever since he met Julianne Chevalier, a hunger for something more had grown in him. Grace. He craved grace. For her, and for himself.

  He tenderly covered a third of Julianne’s back with the ointment-laden towel. Memory triggered. If I have wronged, I merely ask forgiveness, and grace covers me. My sins are blotted out. He stared at Julianne’s back as the words of his former neighbor, Antoine, jumped over the decades that had parted them.

  Marc-Paul was ten years old then and shared hot chocolate at Antoine’s table every afternoon that winter. Until he learned that sixteen-year-old Antoine was a Huguenot. Protestantism was illegal in France, and so Marc-Paul had told the police. Antoine and his family had disappeared—whether by flight or execution—because Marc-Paul had followed the law. Just like Benjamin Chevalier had been executed because Marc-Paul had followed the law. But was following the laws of man enough? Did pleasing King Louis please the King of Kings? Lately, he wondered.

  Jaw tense with unvoiced doubts, Marc-Paul placed the next towels on Julianne’s back and drew the sheet over her shoulders. Slowly, he opened the top drawer of his bureau and felt beneath the linens until his hand closed over the Bible the Swiss peasant had given him on the voyage. He pulled it out and dipped the pages into the flickering light of the candle. They crinkled quietly as he turned them.

  In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, he read: “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Then, on the next page, “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

  Incredible. Marc-Paul was intrigued by the apostle for whom he was named. Before Paul was an apostle of Christ’s, he too followed the law with what he considered a righteous vengeance. But after his conversion, every letter he wrote to the early churches began and ended with grace. Not the law, but grace.

  Marc-Paul thumbed the edges of the fragile pages to see the words again for himself. “Grace be unto you, and peace . . .” “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” To the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and more. Everything begins and ends with grace.

  Closing the Bible, Marc-Paul laid it reverently on his bureau. Kneeling at Julianne’s side once more, he placed his hand over the black mark on her shoulder. His gaze resting on her face, he whispered the prayer from Paul: “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Grace and peace, ma belle.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “No!” Suddenly ripped from her slumber on her fourth morning in Captain Girard’s house, Julianne found herself panting with pain, rocking on her hands and knees. Her sleeveless chemise clung to her shoulders though its back had been cut away. Beneath her petticoat, lifeblood spilled down her thigh. Crying out in dismay, she frantically snatched one of the towels that had fallen from her back and held it between her legs.

  Knocking rattled the door.

  Without asking who it was, Julianne shouted, “Fetch Francoise and Lisette! I am losing the baby!”

  Footsteps pounded away. A door slammed, and the house shuddered. Time slowed as dawn crept between the slats of the shutters. Grey bars of shadow-light loomed across the room, transforming it from sanctuary to prison. Julianne’s arms and legs shook as cramping racked her. Unable to lie on her back for the stripes still oozing there, she crawled to the edge of the bed and sat with a mound of towels between her legs, watching their white bloom crimson. It was too much blood, too soon. “Please,” she prayed.

  By the time another knock beat the door, her head had grown light and cobwebs tangled her thoughts. Before she realized the door had opened, Lisette stood before her, freckles stark against her face, her blond hair plaited down her back from the night before. Beside her was Francoise, her earnest face wiped clean of its usual toilette.

  “Tell us what to do.” Francoise’s voice sounded far away.

  “It’s too early. The baby is lost,” Julianne choked out. “If I stop pushing, Lisette will have to bring it out. And afterward—” The afterbirth would have to come out. But if Lisette pulled too hard on the navel string, the rupture in the womb could be fatal.

  “I remember.” Lisette’s strong voice belied her trembling lips. She turned to Francoise and listed all the things she would need. Francoise hurried to the door and relayed her requests to whoever was in the hall.

  Another contraction washed over Julianne, and she squeezed her eyes shut to push with it. She felt the flow of too much blood leaving her body, warming and slicking her thighs.

  And then she felt nothing at all.

  When Julianne awoke, she found that she’d been bathed and dressed in a fresh ankle-length chemise that opened
in the back.

  A spark of light flared as Francoise lit the candle in the glass hurricane lamp on the bureau. “Ma foi, Julianne, you frightened us all to death!” Her tone was thick with worry.

  Julianne moaned as she pushed herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Gripping the mattress, she closed her eyes until the spinning sensation stopped.

  “Lisette did well for you. I sent her home to rest. But I—I wanted to be here when you awoke.”

  “Tell me,” Julianne whispered, praying for the strength to hear.

  “A son.” Francoise sighed. “You had a son yesterday.”

  Julianne bowed her head beneath her grief. The stripes on her back stretched painfully as her shoulders slumped forward. Loss pressed down on her until her torso formed a hollow arc. How cavernous her womb felt, and how empty her arms! With her finger, she caught a tear from the tip of nose. “Where is he? May I see him?”

  Francoise picked up a bundle that was so small—impossibly small—and Julianne’s hand flew to her throat.

  “His skin is so thin, like the skin of an onion,” Francoise began to explain.

  Julianne understood the full meaning. He had not been washed in order to leave his skin on his body. Just touching him might disturb it. And yet, how could she not hold her baby?

  She took the bundle from Francoise and held it close to her aching chest. Sorrow hardened into shards that pierced her heart. “Mon bébé,” she crooned through her tears. His tiny body lay unwrapped on the cloth. She longed to stroke her finger over his cheek, his chest, his little hand! But she could not bear that doing so would peel his skin away.

  She lifted him closer to her face. “There you are, my little one. Mama has you.” He was only slightly longer than the length of her hand and weighed less than a pound. One fist was curled, with just the thumb extended, and Julianne wondered if he’d been sucking it not so very long ago. “Ah, mon coeur.” She kissed the tip of her finger and ever-so-lightly touched her finger to his cold, perfect lips. You were supposed to grow into the image of your father, with eyes that sparkled like the ocean. I was going to rock you in my arms and sing to you even after you’d drifted to sleep, for the joy of holding you close. You were going to bring me wildflowers and frogs. And I was going to clean your scraped knees and kiss your pain away and tell you not to rip holes in your breeches again. I would never have refused a single sloppy kiss from you.