Crossings, A Thomas Pichon Novel

by A. J. B. Johnston

  ——

  Thomas feels the rise of his chest at the sight of the pale blue ribbon looped tightly round the handle to his door, and with its tiny bow. The very same colour with which the game began.

  He does not unravel it, nor touch it at all. Instead, he climbs the stairs two at a time. He was thinking about the ribbons today at work, during the two-hour pause allowed for lunch. While walking along the Seine, Thomas pulled out the half dozen ribbons he keeps in his pocket in case some inkling about how to solve the mystery descends. It was while he was leaning against the stone rail overlooking the river that it dawned on him. There was something particular about that first blue ribbon. It had been a sufficient clue right from the start, but he had been too blind to recognize it for what it was. And now he has just seen further proof.

  Thomas does not hesitate for a second. He thuds the woman’s door with the side of his fist.

  ——

  “Ah, so it is.” Madame de la Rose steps back to open her door half-way, just slightly wider than the space where she stands. She is pleased to see eager expectation on the man’s face, though there is no way she will let him know that. “Monsieur from downstairs, I believe. Is that right?”

  “It is. Monsieur Pichon,” he says, followed by a bow.

  “And what is it that brings you to my door, Monsieur Pichon?”

  “Madame,” he says, thrusting his right hand into the pocket of his justaucorps. Out comes a clutch of silk ribbons, held in his hand like an offering to her. “I think these are yours.”

  “Are they now?”

  “I think so.”

  “And what if they are?”

  “Then I thought, I hoped, you would appreciate me bringing them back to you.”

  “Do you not think that presumptuous?”

  She sees him relax, with a hint of a cocky smile appearing on his lips and in his eyes. Désirée does not mind. In fact, she likes what she sees.

  “I was rather hoping,” he says, “that this return of your ribbons might be … might be an opportunity for us to converse.”

  Désirée grants him a slight smile. “To converse. Is that what you would like, Monsieur, to converse with me?”

  “Yes, Madame, to … to converse with you.” He inclines his head.

  “And the subject?” Désirée rolls her wrist.

  “That, Madame, is entirely up to you. I shall be at your command.” And with that he makes a second bow.

  “Tell me, Monsieur, would you say anything to get me to open my door and let you in?”

  “I think I would.”

  “And do you think such candour should be rewarded?”

  “I do not presume,” he says, holding out once again his ribbon-clutching hand to her.

  Désirée laughs, and snatches her ribbons back. “Fortune smiles on you, Monsieur.” She gives her door a gentle push to open it all the way.

  ——

  Thomas likes that Madame keeps the custom going. When she wants him to pay her a visit to her upstairs rooms, she ties a short length of silk around the handle of his door. It seems to him the perfect means to a delightful end – simple and sensually feminine. His only wish would be that she give him the sign more than once a week. But he is not about to complain.

  As always, they begin with conversation, an exchange that takes place in the salon while they are fully dressed. She insists on that, just as she never calls him anything other than Monsieur, to which he always replies, Madame. The opening never varies. She asks Thomas if anything of interest has occurred in his life since they last spoke. It is then his turn to ask the same of her. He understands she will not be rushed. Each step of the evening has its protocol. The time in bed must be preceded by what he thinks of as a slow warming up, in which it is her mind and not her body that is engaged.

  It was not until the third evening, when they were in bed and the deed was done, that Madame put a hand on his shoulder and held his gaze. There was clearly something on her mind.

  “Tell me, Monsieur, do you think me less than you?”

  Thomas knows he leaned back. He imagines his face must have shown the shock he felt. “What is this?”

  “You French, you have many terms for those of us who come from the Isles.”

  “Do we?”

  “Do not be coy. You know you do. You make it a science, a pretend science, the calculation of the amount of French blood that courses through our veins. No matter the percentage, we are always less, less than you.”

  “You mean a term like mulatto?”

  “And griffonne. Quadroon. Octoroon. There are more.”

  “But these are not terms I use.”

  “No? Not even when you are back in your rooms, thinking of me, as your dark lover? Your tawny perhaps?”

  “No, Madame. You are a beautiful woman. That is all. And it is more than enough.” Thomas held up his hand. “I do so swear.”

  “And what do you swear upon? Tell me that. Upon a Roman Catholic God? Or maybe the King?”

  “No, Madame. Upon my heart and head.”

  Thomas does not think he imagined seeing a hint of water upon her eyes when he said that.

  Then Madame de la Rose told Thomas her story. How lucky she was to be the exception and not the rule. That to be considered pretty as she was on the plantation back in Martinique did not just help, it determined everything. It is what took her out of the fields and into a great house in Saint-Pierre, and then later from Martinique’s administrative capital of Fort-Royal on a ship across the sea to France. Yes, it meant there were things she had to endure, like the two babies she gave life to at fourteen and fifteen and which were taken away from her back in Martinique. But she was able to get through it all. For that and for her face she is eternally thankful. It is why, she explained, she bestows what charity she can on others less fortunate than herself, whenever she gets the chance.

  “Such as me,” Thomas said, raising his eyebrows.

  “I suppose,” she said, scrambling to sit astride his waist. “Now, how about you give back a bit. I’d like one more before you go.”

  ——

  With Aimée having bid her au revoir and gone down the stairs to end her long day, Madame de la Rose and Thomas raise a glass of the sweet aperitif she wants him to try.

  “Excellent,” he says, glass upraised in a salute.

  “Isn’t it? It’s called Pineau. It’s from near La Rochelle.”

  “I like it.” Thomas also likes how the flickering light dances upon the pale grey walls of the room, and upon the features of Madame de la Rose’s beautiful face.

  “Still the same, I suppose?” she asks after a long pause. “In the bureau, I mean.” She puts her stemmed glass down and places a hand beneath her chin.

  Thomas does not need to ask to what she refers. It is his situation at the magistrate judge’s office, of which they lately talk every time they get together. Not wanting to have yet another pointless discussion he merely shakes his head. It is bad enough he has to endure a low-level job and Gaspillage. He should not have to talk about it as well. Instead, he takes another sip.

  “Well, I do not like the sound of him, your overseer.”

  Thomas has to allow a smile at that reference to a plantation brute. “He is not quite that, Madame de la Rose. Young Gaspard rules me and others with his thumb, not a whip.”

  “Let me think on it for a while.” She retrieves her glass and takes another taste. “I have friends, you know.”

  “I do know, Madame, but please do not trouble yourself on my account. Some things are meant to be endured.”

  “I thought you a lapsed member of the Church. Apparently not.”

  Thomas hunches his shoulders. Though he will not say so aloud, he does sometimes miss a couple of the sacraments. Confession and penance. There are times when he does something he reg
rets yet has to keep to himself. He occasionally wishes he could unburden himself by making a clean breast of it.

  “Neither denial nor admission?” asks Madame de la Rose. She tips her glass to finish off her Pineau.

  “No, Madame. I prefer to leave you the final word.”

  “As is right.” She flexes her eyebrows. “Shall we then?”

  Thomas rises to his feet. “With distinct pleasure, Madame.”

  It used to puzzle Thomas, how they could make love with consummate skill and passion every week, and yet continue to refer to each other with such polite formality. He had not once called her by her Christian name nor she by his. Then he realized that she wanted it like that. It must help her maintain detachment. He can understand that. So he does not complain. Madame de la Rose she remains, nothing less than that. She is at the moment not only the best thing in his life, but also the only good thing at all.

  ——

  Heavens, that is strange. Désirée is coming slowly back into the world of thought after the rhythm of the act fades away, when suddenly a name pops into her head. Breteuil.

  Why him? Yes, she has met the Marquis a few times. She even spent a couple of evenings getting to know Bretuil in the Biblical sense. He was a bore, but then maybe that is what he needs to be, since he is constantly around the King. The air at Versailles seems to bring out tediousness in all who inhabit the place. Certainly Breteuil was incapable of lively conversation and his trysts with her were a stiff-legged, wooden-handed attempt at amour. He was nothing in bed compared to the agreeable-smelling Monsieur Pichon. Oh, heavens – that’s it.

  “You!” says Désirée, pulling the bed cover up over her chest.

  “Me?” Pichon says, more than a little startled. “What is it? Is there something wrong?”

  “No,” laughs Madame de la Rose. “But you shall be pleased. Thanks to your assistance—” she glances down at the sheet to where his loins are covered, “it seems the muse of love has given me a name.”

  “A name?” The man bites his upper lip. “A name for what?”

  “Not what but who. A marquis no less,” announces Madame de la Rose. She feels a smile bestride her entire face. “The Marquis de Bretuil.”

  Thomas blinks. “The Principal Secretary to the King? He who introduces all the ambassadors?”

  “The same.” Madame swings her legs and is out of bed. There seems to be somewhere she has to go or something she has to do.

  Thomas watches as she puts her arms and her head into her linen chemise and pulls it on. As quick as that, her lovely form disappears.

  “I don’t understand,” he says.

  “No? You truly do not?”

  He holds up his right hand and presents a solemn face.

  “No matter. What does count is that I know Breteuil and he knows me.”

  “Lucky you, Madame. Am I correct in surmising it is time for me to go?”

  She offers an apologetic face. “Yes, it is.”

  ——

  “Don’t ask me,” Gaspard instructs.

  Thomas follows his supervisor to the door of the inner sanctum office. It is only the second time he has been called there since he came back to work here after his London interval. The other was when Thomas and the other clerks were summoned to learn who was to be the new superior clerk. And an instant later the magistrate judge asked Gaspard to step forward and stand at his side. The right hand of God, came into Thomas’s head as he walked back to his table.

  “Thank you for coming, Pichon.” The judge turns to Gaspard and shows him a gentle wave of the hand. “Monsieur Gaspard, would you please close the door on your way to your desk?”

  “But of course.”

  Thomas catches the accusatory glance from the fellow. He wishes he knew what it was that Gaspard thinks he has done.

  The magistrate takes his seat behind his great desk with the enormous hand-carved legs. He gestures for Thomas to sit in one of the three bare wooden chairs lined up against the wall.

  “So then,” the judge begins, “I have to say it came as a surprise.”

  Frequent pauses are the measure of the man’s speaking style. Thomas does not move or speak. He knows he is to wait.

  “I did not realize you were … interested in.…” The magistrate checks something written on his desk. It looks like a letter, one with a bright red seal on its outside flap. “The hospital service of our armies.” He gives Thomas a stern glance, which then disappears, replaced by indifference. “That is what I read here.”

  Thomas feels his eyebrows rise, but he feels he should still wait. If nothing else, his working life has taught him to never presume. Unless he is asked a specific question, he will not say a word. Still, whatever is it that the judge has on his desk? And how could it have anything to do with him? The hospital service certainly does not.

  “Nor did I know,” the judge continues after making one more perusal, before tossing the letter down to the surface of his desk, “that you were … connected.”

  “Connected?” Thomas repeats. He feels his shoulders rise. He brings them back down.

  The magistrate squints slightly, as if to see whether Thomas is only pretending to play dumb.

  “Yes, connected.” The expression on the judge’s face is now one of genuine surprise, verging on disbelief. “And as high as the Marquis de Breteuil,” intones the great man. “Pichon, I had no idea. Well done. “

  Thomas mouths the name of the marquis. It brings a slow smile of recognition and a long exhale. Thank you, Madame, he thinks, momentarily closing both eyes. Then, eyes back open, looking as relaxed as he can, he dares to say, “Yes, Monseigneur, the Marquis de Breteuil thinks well of me.”

  “So it seems.”

  The magistrate is off his seat and coming toward Thomas, who surges to his feet. The judge has the refolded letter in his hand and is holding it out for Thomas to take possession. The texture and weight of the paper in his hand feels like the best thing he has ever held.

  “Congratulations, Pichon. Monsieur Pichon I should say. As you know, with the right connections in this world one can go far.”

  “Monseigneur,” is all Thomas can say. He wants to open and read the letter for himself, yet he understands he has to resist. Until he is out of this man’s sight.

  “Is that not right?”

  It seems the judge is asking Thomas something. “I’m sorry, Monseigneur.”

  “I say, connections can help us to rise, but just how high is up to us. This is your chance.”

  “Thank you.” Thomas begins to slide backwards toward the door.

  “Do not thank me. Thank whoever put the quill in Breteuil’s hand.”

  Thomas nods that he will. Ribbon or not, once he gets back to his place he will bound up the building’s steps, up to Madame de la Rose’s and knock hard upon her door. If she is there and lets him in, he will press against her for as long as she can bear. He cannot recall anyone ever helping him like this before. The air inside his chest wants to explode.

  The magistrate judge lifts his chin, a sign Thomas recognizes as the one the man uses to tell people it’s time to go.

  “Monseigneur,” Thomas says with a deep bow.

  But the judge has turned his back to Thomas and gone back to sit at his desk. His focus has now turned toward something fresh upon its surface.

  As Thomas closes the door behind him without a hint of a click, what comes into his head is the view of Vire on its hilltop, as seen from the window of a bouncing coach. It is a coach rolling away froma life he could not imagine himself living and toward possibilities he could not yet imagine. He was so young back then. A mere boy. His entire life ahead of him, blank pages waiting to be written.

  “That’s right,” he whispers just loud enough for his ears alone to hear. “And I’m not done yet.”

  He is but forty-one, wit
h perhaps another twenty years to go. He can and will do whatever the letter in his hand requests. For apparently it gives him what he wishes, an escape from the magistrate’s office, out from beneath Gaspillage’s thumb. Where it leads matters not. All he asks for is an opportunity to shine. He is capable, he knows that.

  X

  Crossing

  La Rochelle to Louisbourg – May to August 1751

  “One rung after another,” echoes in Thomas’s head.

  He knows the refrain smacks of self-satisfaction, but there is no harm in that. He has earned the right to a bit of pride. Besides, the words are what best goes along with the rhythm of the creaking sounds of the swaying coach. It comes to him like a chorus off the bending wood and straining leather. “One rung after another,” the groaning coach is saying to him.

  That his fellow passenger, has tumbled into sleep in the seat opposite, bewigged head lolling with the sway of the coach, adds to the appropriateness of the refrain. For the dozing man, the lanky comte de Raymond, Seigneur d’Oye, is the one who has lifted Thomas to the highest level yet. Thomas Pichon, born and raised in little Vire, is now nothing less than the right hand of a count, trusted confidant of a representative of the King. To be sure, it would be better to hold such a role and honour in France, in one of the naval ports or in a landward frontier town. Instead, Thomas is heading off to a distant colony. Across the turbulent ocean sea, nonetheless.

  Thomas glances at the hedgerows the coach is bobbing between. The land here is similar to the bocage he knew as a boy in Normandy. It would be sweet as a cherry if word of his appointment would get back to Vire. Back to any and all who ever doubted him when he was growing up. His parents are dead, so they’ll not know how wrong they were to try and force their son into the Church. He wishes there really was a life after death so people could recognize their many mistakes and faults, all the wrongs they’ve done. Thomas would like his parents to know how high he has climbed. Surely they would be pleased. And confess to him that they were wrong about him. And his sister too, wherever she might be. Yes, it would be satisfying if all of Vire was to hear what Thomas has accomplished with his wits.