The Mark of the King

by Jocelyn Green

  Marc-Paul scanned the flotsam. “There may be survivors.”

  “Not if we leave them to their fate and let nature serve justice this time.”

  Ignoring Bienville’s statement, Marc-Paul crossed the tilting deck to peer over the starboard rail. Uneasiness about Les Deux Sœurs had churned in his gut during the last several hours of the storm. Benjamin Chevalier was still alive. Would he dare commandeer a frigate in another attempt to desert to Carolina?

  Armistead whooped. “We have a live one!”

  Marc-Paul scooped up an untidy coil of rope and joined Armistead at the larboard rail.

  “There.”

  He formed a lasso in the rope and cast it into the waves with a prayer it would reach its target. The man in the water caught the rope and let Marc-Paul reel him in while Armistead hung a rope ladder over the side of the rocking brig.

  With a heave, Marc-Paul and Bienville pulled the sodden survivor up and over the rail, where he collapsed like any other fisherman’s catch.

  Marc-Paul knelt beside Matthieu Hurlot. “How many?”

  Rolling to his side, the youth coughed and spit before responding breathlessly. “There were eight to start, but—I think there are four others who survived.”

  “Four men overboard!” Marc-Paul shouted, and a few other sailors came trotting on deck.

  Matthieu shook his head. “Captain Girard, your wife.” He closed his eyes.

  A charge lurched through Marc-Paul. Had Julianne made her choice and left with her brother? “What about her?”

  “When the ship capsized, I think she swam out ahead of me. But I haven’t seen her—”

  He had heard all he needed to. On his feet again, he stormed to the rail and held on as a wave broke over the bow. He barely noticed the spray salting his lips.

  “Two more in the water!” Bienville called, the wind flapping his skirted jacket.

  “Men?” Marc-Paul asked.

  “Yes, men.”

  Armistead threw a rope out like fishing line.

  Marc-Paul kept looking, straining his eyes to see through the mists that swirled over the waves. “Julianne!” he called into the fog.

  “Here!” A man’s voice straggled up from below. “Throw me a line!”

  Marc-Paul leaned over the rail. Shock jolted him at the sight of Pascal Dupree in the water below. He had no idea he’d returned from Yazoo. He threw the rope to Pascal, who hailed without waving, one arm holding fast to a plank and the other in a sling fashioned from his own jacket.

  “Where is Julianne?” Marc-Paul shouted down at him.

  Pascal shook his head.

  “Tell me!” A fury to rival the night’s storm exploded in Marc-Paul.

  A wave lifted Pascal toward the rope ladder, and with one hand he clutched it. “She’s with her brother now. Fifty yards behind me,” he panted. Water streamed from his hair and clothing as he climbed the narrow slats.

  “I’m going in!” Marc-Paul shouted to whoever would listen. Ripping off his coat and boots, he vaulted over the rail and into the troubled deep.

  Aching from fingertips to shoulders, Julianne rose and fell with a rolling swell, keeping Benjamin’s body latched against the bale of sodden silk. The sun had risen behind the clouds, a pinhole on the horizon, and the wind had ceased its raging. Only the seas still stirred beneath a blanket of muffling fog.

  Julianne shook her head to clear her ears and peered into the heavy mist.

  “Julianne! Where are you?”

  She sucked in her breath at the impossible sound of Marc-Paul’s voice. “I’m here!” Water rippled around her as she turned to look in every direction. “I’m here!”

  And then she saw him swimming toward her. Lunging away from Benjamin’s body, Julianne met Marc-Paul and threw her arms around his neck, though it meant slipping underwater. For one breathless moment beneath the sea, he clasped her body to his, one hand circling her waist and the other plunging through her floating hair to cradle her head.

  Before they sank any further, they released each other to kick back up to the surface and grab onto a broken mast. With one hand, Marc-Paul swiped his hair off his brow. “Julianne! What are you doing out here? Was this your decision, to leave me without a good-bye?” Water dripped from his nose.

  “No.” Julianne panted for breath. “Pascal and Benjamin took me.”

  A muscle bunched in his jaw, and his eyes burned with anger as he cursed beneath his breath.

  “I would never leave you, mon amour, you must believe that,” Julianne said. “You are my home, my family.” With the mast under her right arm, she reached for Marc-Paul with her left, and he drew closer to her. “I choose you,” she whispered, “with all my heart.”

  “I thought I lost you twice over.” He bowed his head to hers. “Your love. Your life. If anything had happened to you . . .” The sentence broke on the crack in Marc-Paul’s voice. Water lapped in the space between them, splashing at their chins.

  She shook her head. “I am yours, if you truly still want me.”

  “I do.” His hand came around her waist and pressed the small of her back toward him. She lifted her chin, and his salty lips caressed her mouth with slow, deliberate kisses that warmed her to her toes.

  When she pulled away, a moan ebbed from her. “Benjamin . . .” She pointed behind her to his body several yards away, still floating with the bale that held it fast. “Pascal killed him.”

  Marc-Paul expelled a breath and shook his head. “Ah, Benjamin.” Genuine sorrow thickened his voice. “We’ll get him aboard and bury him properly.”

  Julianne could not tear her gaze from her brother’s body. The tears that should have come did not, and shame wiggled through her that her eyes would not obey her heart. Long moments passed in silence, until Marc-Paul laid his hand gently on her shivering shoulder, and she remembered the cold and exhaustion that shook her.

  At length, she thought to ask, “Did you find Pascal? He dislocated his shoulder. I couldn’t set it in the water; I could only stabilize it.”

  Marc-Paul raised his eyebrows in obvious surprise she had even tried. “He’s aboard, and he’ll live. But he’ll be tried for desertion.” And with so many witnesses, he’d be condemned for sure. “Come, mon coeur. It’s time to go home.”

  Back on the brig, while Julianne changed into dry clothes and rested in the captain’s cabin, Marc-Paul found Pascal Dupree locked in the hold.

  “Come to gloat?” Pascal asked, but there was no fight in his voice, no spark in his eyes. He slumped on a barrel in obvious pain, feet splayed against the rocking floor. “Twice I’ve saved your life. And yet you send me to my death with dry eyes.”

  A great heaviness settled on Marc-Paul’s shoulders as he sat on a wooden crate, regarding the man he’d once considered his closest friend. “Why’d you do it?”

  Pascal snorted. “Do what?”

  “The crimes that condemn you to die.”

  Leaning his head back on the wall behind him, Pascal closed his eyes. “Am I to give a reckoning? Are you now my confessor, you who once thought to be a priest?”

  “Confess your sins to God, Pascal, and He will forgive you. Be man enough to confess the wrongs you’ve committed against me, and I’ll do my best to do the same.”

  “What you and I would label wrong may be completely different things.”

  It didn’t used to be so. But drink and gambling, greed and lust had ruined what Marc-Paul had once admired in Pascal. He raked his hand through his wet hair. “Let’s go with my definition. Start with the day I returned to New Orleans. The missing guns from our warehouse. You didn’t use them to pay off an opponent larger and meaner than Le Gris, did you? In fact, if I were a betting man myself, I’d wager there never was such an opponent.”

  A chuckle rumbled in Pascal’s chest. “You’d be right.”

  “Then where did the guns go?”

  Pascal stared blankly through the bars that held him prisoner. “I sent them with Running Deer up to Natchez. They were
payment to the British for Choctaw scalps. Running Deer then fashioned the scalps to appear Chickasaw, and Bienville paid me generously for them.”

  French guns given to a French enemy, paid for by the deaths of French allies, rewarded by the French governor of Louisiana. Marc-Paul’s stomach turned at the utter completeness of his crime. “And your British agent in Natchez?”

  “Your brother-in-law.”

  Benjamin. Marc-Paul gripped his knees as the brig rolled gently in the waves. “How, exactly, did you come to this arrangement?”

  In a monotone tale, Pascal told of being tasked with Benjamin’s execution and the deal the two settled on instead. This, while Marc-Paul was sailing to France to meet with the Regent.

  At the end of the story, Marc-Paul could only nod that he had heard. But not that he understood. Benjamin had been so young and had been isolated from his fellow Frenchmen too long. But that did not negate his crime.

  Drawing a deep breath, Marc-Paul changed tack. “The cache of food Julianne found by the bayou behind your property,” he prompted.

  “Mine, of course. But you knew that already.”

  “To what end?”

  Pascal rolled his eyes. “Have you no imagination?” A dramatic sigh blew from his lips. “I used what I wanted and sold the rest to those who could afford my prices.”

  “Which were astronomical during the famine, no doubt.”

  “Still a bargain, when the alternative is starvation. It was going smoothly until Bienville sent me up to Yazoo, surrounded by warring Chickasaw. Thanks to your wife, I might add.”

  He didn’t have to remind Marc-Paul of the brutalities suffered by the soldiers at that post. “Was your assignment in Yazoo the reason you decided to desert? Was Benjamin still working for you even then?”

  Pascal shifted his weight on the barrel, then winced and curled over his dislocated arm. Moments later, he spoke again. “In theory, he was. Running Deer served as a conduit between us, or one of several. We were both selling information to the British, which they used to support the Chickasaw. But Benjamin grew sloppy and careless with his visits to Julianne. If I didn’t find myself at the wrong end of a scalping knife at Yazoo first, it was only a matter of time before Benjamin exposed our activities and got us arrested.”

  Inhaling deeply of the damp, salty air, Marc-Paul leaned forward. “So it was time to cut your losses and head to Carolina, is that it? And you took as many of our garrison with you as you could persuade.”

  “I needed crew for our hijacked ship.”

  Selfish to the end. “Those men—the ones who survived, at least—will be tried and executed alongside you.” Standing, he gripped one of the bars between himself and Pascal. “I pray for your soul, Pascal.”

  “Is this good-bye? Ah well, you’ll always have me with you. I know you’ll take good care of my daughter.”

  Marc-Paul said nothing, felt nothing as he sought to make sense of the words.

  “Lily can’t be yours, you know. You never slept with Willow. I did, while you snored. But you’re a much better father to her than I ever would have been.”

  The brig groaned, and footfalls sounded overhead as Marc-Paul studied Pascal’s half-scarred face. Sorrow hovered near his heart that he wasn’t really Lily’s papa after all. But the guilt of sleeping with Willow dissolved, slowly but completely. God had seen fit to give Lily to him and to Julianne, to love and raise as their own. The bond that made them family was stronger than blood.

  “I know how this ends,” Pascal said. “I know how I seem to you now. But once we were like brothers.” A rare sincerity laced his tone.

  Footsteps on the ladder grew louder until Bienville himself stood scowling beside Marc-Paul, his white wig made wild by the salty wind. “My turn, Girard.”

  Fear poured into Pascal’s eyes. He reached through the bars toward Marc-Paul. “I never meant you any harm.”

  “Yet you kidnapped my wife and daughter and attempted to rape Julianne. Harming them harms me, Pascal.” His throat tightened with regret that the man he had once called friend had sunk so low. With Bienville’s fiery gaze burning into him, he took Pascal’s trembling hand for the last time. “Good-bye, old friend.”

  “Oh no.” With the brig in the harbor at her back, Julianne stood on the shores of New Orleans wearing sailor’s clothes, Marc-Paul’s hand on her shoulder. The hurricane had battered the settlement to pieces. Half-drowned piles of ruined cypress posts, pine planks, and palmetto fronds obliterated the lines that had once been a grid of streets and canals. Residents shielded their eyes from the glaring sun and picked their way over the rubble, searching for something—anything—to salvage.

  Tears sprang to Julianne’s eyes. In that moment, she felt a kinship with New Orleans that she hadn’t before. For didn’t she know what it was to be buffeted, broken, and in pieces, an unrecognizable version of one’s former self?

  Wordlessly, Marc-Paul threaded her hand through the crook of his arm and guided her around the wreckage. She sensed in her husband the same dread that wrapped her heart as she thought of the little girl with the thick black braids and brown eyes. Lily had been born of a fleeting union between Pascal and Willow. But in the ways that mattered most, she belonged to Marc-Paul and Julianne.

  “Ah! You’ve both returned!”

  Julianne spun toward the voice.

  “Etienne!” Marc-Paul pulled the Canadian into a hug, slapping him on the back. “You weathered the storm, I see!”

  “And you as well.” Etienne’s nose stained pink and tears glistened in his eyes as he kissed Julianne on the cheek. “Wasn’t sure when I’d see you again, ma chère. Forgive an old man for letting harm befall you?”

  She embraced him. “It wasn’t you who harmed me!”

  Sniffing, Etienne nodded.

  “Is Lily with you? Is she home?” Marc-Paul asked, voice tight.

  “No, monsieur. There is no home to speak of, unless you count two walls standing and a scant patch of roof.”

  Marc-Paul nodded, lips tight.

  “Lily.” Etienne shook his head, looking past Julianne. “Lily!”

  Julianne’s breath seized in her chest. Was he mourning her? Or calling her?

  “She should be around here somewhere.” Etienne’s voice rumbled in his chest. “She was playing with Angelique Villeroy, so if you see a shock of red hair, the black braids won’t be far.” He chuckled, and the sound brought a laugh to Julianne’s lips.

  Marc-Paul whirled around. “Lily!” he called.

  The little girl came running, braids streaming behind her. “Papa! Papa! Madame! You came back!” Vesuvius hustled and panted after her, struggling to keep up. Etienne took the leash from Lily’s hand as she passed him.

  Tears filled Julianne’s eyes as Marc-Paul met Lily on a mound of fallen thatch and swung her up into the air. “Of course we did, ma chère!” Only the slight catch in his voice betrayed his profound relief.

  Lily squeezed her arms around his neck, then reached for Julianne, fingers outstretched. “Madame,” Lily said, and Marc-Paul lowered her gently to the ground.

  Julianne knelt, and the little girl rushed into her arms, nearly knocking her over. “Where did you go, Lily? How did you escape?”

  Lily still clung to Julianne’s neck as if she would drown without her. “Running Deer showed me a good place to hide. I stayed there all night, just like he told me to. When the storm came, Red Bird found me and took me home to Etienne. It was awful, Madame. Fist Face ran away, but I saved him. Just like you saved me. I missed you and Papa so much. I was afraid you would never come back. Only—” Lily leaned back and searched Julianne’s eyes. “Did those bad men come back too? The ones who took me?”

  Marc-Paul knelt on one knee and patted the other, an invitation Lily readily accepted. “They’re gone, Lily. You don’t need to worry about them.”

  “But will they come back and surprise me? Like you did?” Sitting on Marc-Paul’s thigh, Lily twirled his queue around her finger.

&nb
sp; Julianne shook her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “No. They won’t.” Her chest ached with the truth of her words. Pascal would soon be hanged, and Benjamin was already gone. Lily smiled and helped Julianne to her feet.

  “Magnifique!”

  Julianne turned to find Adrien de Pauger, the city engineer, walking about the rubble with his arms spread wide. Lifting his beaming face toward the heavens, he said, “Merci!”

  “Not the conventional response to a hurricane,” Marc-Paul observed quietly.

  “Ah, but don’t you see?” Etienne volunteered. “A single storm wiped out all the structures he’d been fighting to pull down. Now New Orleans will build again from the ground up, according to his master plan.”

  The elated engineer strode away, still praising the saints for every piece of debris.

  Chuckling, Marc-Paul scratched Vesuvius behind the ears, then rose again. “Well, mon amour?” His hands slid behind Julianne’s waist as he drew her close. “Shall we begin again too? Lay a new foundation and rebuild our home? Our family?”

  “My family is already here.” Julianne winked at Lily, then fixed her gaze once more on Marc-Paul. “Forgive me for ever making you feel like you weren’t giving me what I wanted most. I have what I want. Right here.”

  He bent his head to hers. “Je t’aime, Julianne. I love all that you are, with all that I am.”

  She looped her arms around his neck and kissed the smile on his face. No longer did she feel cursed by the mark on her shoulder, not with her husband and daughter by her side and God’s grace covering them all. “You are more than I deserve.”

  Author’s Note

  In 2014, I discovered a list of names. It was a list of girls from Salpêtrière, aged between twelve and twenty-six years old, sent to Louisiana in January 1720. Why were they in Salpêtrière, Paris’s most notorious prison for females? How were they chosen for Louisiana? What did they do once they arrived? These questions and many others took root in my imagination. The character of Julianne began to take shape when I read in a New Orleans archive center about the mass marriage of convicts in Paris in September 1719, right before they were sent to La Rochelle for transport to New Orleans. It was a story that begged to be told!