A final check of their suite of rooms revealed nothing left behind. With a measured step, Julia followed a pair of footmen carrying the last box down the stairs.
There was no one in the drawing room or the down stairs sitting room. Rud was still closeted with his uncle, then. She did not wish to interrupt their farewells. The drawing room would be the best place to wait.
The windows of the long room looked out over a pleasant rose garden, Aunt Lucinda’s special retreat. In the weeks since Julia had arrived in England, spring had advanced slowly into summer. Now, the mossy green buds of the roses unfurled their petals in masses of red, pink, and white. Drawn forth by the warm sun, their fragrance was wafted into the drawing room through the open window. Julia inhaled the perfume as she moved into the window embrasure in order to look out, wondering if Aunt Lucinda had stepped outside for a few moments. Yes, there was Rud’s aunt standing beside the ancient gardener. From their gestures, they appeared to be discussing the weeding of a herbaceous border Red with iris and spicy carnations.
Dear Aunt Lucinda, Julia thought. The elderly woman’s breeding and ingrained courtesy prevented her from inquiring too closely into the relationship between her nephew and the young woman he had married, but still she was sensitive enough to realize that all was not as it should be. It would have been a relief to confide in her and seek her advice if so many things — the security of the mission, the nature of the trouble, and Rud’s likely reaction to the impulse — had not prevented it. It would also have been a shame to disabuse his aunt of her illusions. Aunt Lucinda could have little experience with which to judge the strange bond that tied Julia and Rud together. Julia herself did not pretend to understand it. Her anger with him for what she considered his deceit had died away. Without conscious intent, she had clamped a tight lid on her feelings since then. She had discovered the holocaust that could ensue and had no desire to repeat the experience. So much feeling could not be safe, not under the circumstances. The exact danger she would not allow herself to perceive, but she protected herself from it as best she could. When next Rud approached her, she had retreated behind a facade of cool reserve, responding dutifully, but without enthusiasm. It was an attitude she managed, at great cost, to sustain. Not that it deterred Rud one whit. He seemed to recognize, without the necessity for words, that this was also a form of warfare. He continued to exercise his conjugal rights, retaliating for her passive acceptance in the most effective manner possible, with honeyed phrases and gentle, insistent caresses that made her bite the inside of her lips to prevent herself from crying out. Afterward, Rud would sometimes raise himself on one elbow, staring down at her with an expression so bleak it nearly undermined her defenses. She learned to avert her face or lie with her eyes closed until he turned away. Once or twice she had sensed his anger, but for some reason beyond her understanding, he never released his control over it. He would remove himself to the far side of the bed, lying with his back to her for long hours. Later, in the dark stillness of the night, he would turn half in sleep to draw her roughly to the curve of his body before settling into slumber.
Julia was so deep in thought that she did not hear the door opening behind her. The first indication of others entering the room was the voice of Rud’s uncle.
“I’m really sorry, my boy,” he was saying, “that things between you and Julia had to work out as they have. Duty is a jealous mistress; it seldom allows happiness to those who serve her.”
The abrupt gesture Rud made to silence Thaddeus Baxter was plain to Julia as she tamed. Their voices had been low, almost confidential. In the brief instant of time she had in which to react, it seemed the best thing to do would be to pretend she had not understood, and hope the faint color in her cheeks would be attributed to excitement. Smiling a little, she started forward, saying, “At last! The trunks are loaded and I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to come and drag you out of the library. We must go or the ship will sail without us.”
“Highly unlikely,” Uncle Thaddeus declared, his voice over loud. “The captain would not dream of raising anchor without my nephew aboard. He knows if he did he would find himself without a ship before he could blink an eye. Still, the rise and fall of the tide means money. It would be a pity if you had to wait another day, and it would not be the best thing to get off on the wrong foot with the man who is going to be your host at table for two months and more.”
Before he had finished speaking, Aunt Lucinda had hurried in from the garden to join them. The goodbyes became general. Julia and Rud’s aunt embraced, promising to write each other long letters, while Rud and his uncle contented themselves with a hearty handshake.
Then, Rud was ushering Julia out of the house with an arm about her shoulders. The dray laden with their baggage was just pulling away down the drive. They stepped into the carriage, and with a final wave to the elderly couple standing on the steps, set off after the dray.
The David was a three-masted, square-rigged frigate built for commerce, but armed for combat with twenty-four cannon. She was 148 feet long and could accommodate twenty-four passengers as well as two hundred tons of cargo. Her usual destination was around the horn to China. On the outward voyage, she carried household goods of iron and steel, woolen cloth, Scotch whisky, Spanish wine, and a multitude of other small items. She returned laden with tea by the ton, with spices, opium, ivory, and lengths of silk and Indian mull. She roamed the seas, defying pirates, weather, and the gods of the deep. And, before this voyage was over, Julia found herself thinking as they slipped their moorings and moved with the tide down the Thames, she would be carrying the most valuable cargo ever entrusted to her. She would be carrying Napoleon Bonaparte.
There was no sign of Marcel de Gruys among the passengers, nor had he appeared with Gourgaud and the others who came to see them off. Julia welcomed the news with relief and the fervent hope that the man had lost his taste for the venture. He was not dead; that much they had been able to discover. What had become of him was something of a mystery. Inquiries revealed that a physician had been summoned to him, then later he had been taken away from his lodgings in a fancy carriage. After that, nothing. Rather than explain the exact nature of his interest in de Gruys’ whereabouts, either to the authorities or to Gourgaud, Rud had had no option except to let the matter drop.
~ ~ ~
Little occurred to relieve the tedium of long days at sea. One sunny day followed another. Julia slept, read, and sat on the deck watching the endless miles of ocean roll past. She saw little of the other passengers, though now and then, one or another of the ladies would try to engage her in conversation. In some subtle way, perhaps through the ship’s captain, it had become known that she and Rud were newly married, and so they were left alone except for the occasional company of M’sieu Robeaud. The three of them sometimes played cards together or took a turn about the deck. More often than not, M’sieu Robeaud kept to his cabin, plagued by an unrelenting seasickness and a general feeling of debilitation. It was thought wise, in any case, for that gentleman to keep his public appearances to a minimum. In his new beard and mustache, he did not particularly look like the emperor, but there might be someone on board who would mark the resemblance, some who might look closely at his drab figure and be amazed if he did not appear so subdued after putting into port at St. Helena.
One afternoon while Rud was absent, called by special invitation to the cabin of the captain, and most of the other passengers were dressing for dinner, Julia strolled the deck with the mild-mannered Frenchman. A fine wind lifted her hair and fluttered her skirts about her ankles. Overhead, the sails bellied full, while the sheets hummed and the pulleys creaked in accompaniment. As she passed, one or two of the deck hands glanced up, eying the way the wind molded her gown to her form. Julia, her attention on M’sieu Robeaud, did not notice. The quiet man seemed to be enjoying their walk so immensely that she felt a pang of guilt that she was a part of a scheme that would forever prevent him from enjoying sea breezes.
“When you are on St. Helena, M’sieu,” she said in a low tone, “what will you do to amuse yourself?”
A smile flickered over the benign countenance of the man beside her. “For a time, I shall simply play the emperor,” he said. “It is a heady feeling to receive the deference, the bows and scrapings, accorded to one so highly placed.”
“Yes, I am sure it must be,” Julia said.
“That isn’t all,” Robeaud went on as if he had given much thought to the matter. “The food and wine will be excellent, and the comfort superior, or so I surmise. There have been tales of rats, mice, roaches, and fleas at Longwood, but these will be minor inconveniences to a man born a peasant like myself, I do assure you. I shall be upheld by the knowledge that I have served my emperor and my country. There will be cultivated men and women, such as Count and Countess Bertrand, and the Count and Countess de Montholon, whose very purpose it is to entertain me. I will have the services of a valet, any or all six of those in the household if I so desire, to keep me presentable. And, if all else fails, I can always revert to being myself. I might indulge in a bit of French humor at the expense of the English. Or, embark on the life of a farmer by cultivating a garden. That should astonish the English commander, should it not?”
“Of a certainty,” Julia agreed, smiling at the idea of the great Napoleon grubbing in the soil with his, graceful white hands. “You do not think you will be bored, then?”
He shook his head. “One hopes, of course, that Napoleon will have regained the throne of France before that state of affairs can come to pass. In any case, although I hesitate to remind you, Madame Thorpe, at the end of a year, two at the most, I shall be dead and buried.”
“You are satisfied?” she insisted.
“Indeed, yes. I live only to serve the emperor, and my gratitude is boundless that in my final days I can be of use to him. Were you aware, madame, that my symptoms mimic those of Napoleon’s father, who died with cancer of the stomach? That is not my complaint. Still, it seems like the hand of fate that I should have a similar disease. If I should die before the emperor comes to power, it will not seem unusual that I will have expired from a cause that might easily have been contracted by the emperor. Naturally, I realize that Napoleon considered all these things before he chose me. Still, it appears, to be the will of the almighty, does it not?”
It was an odd way of looking at the situation. Julia could only send him a small smile before looking away to hide the moisture in her eyes.
Rud’s absence was an oddity. It was seldom that he left Julia alone. Day and night he stayed close to her side. If she sat in a deck chair reading, he sat next to her. If she walked the deck, she had the support of his arm. Descending to their cabin for an afternoon nap was tantamount to an invitation to make love. The slow, plunging rhythm of the ship, up and down, up and down, acted as an aphrodisiac. They spent hours lying in their bunk, rocking endlessly across the ocean, allowing the pulsating motion to lull them into sated somnolence.
Julia might have allowed herself to feel flattered at Rud’s close attendance if she had not remembered too well his motives for it. At times, she even suspected him of putting about the news of their recent marriage to ensure their privacy and make certain she was given little opportunity for female chatter that might betray their purpose. He never alluded to the possibility by word or deed, but still Julia could not forget the times in the past when he had done so in no uncertain terms.
Another possible reason for his preoccupation with her was his unaccustomed position as a passenger on the ship. Unable to stride the quarterdeck and shout orders at the crew, he found other ways to make use of his excess energy. When not below, he often propelled Julia to some point on the ship where he pointed out the mistakes made by the frigates captain in close sailing, or his slackness in keeping the ship in trim. He thought nothing of rousting Julia out of bed in the first light of dawn to go above and cast a weather eye over the heavens or watch the sun rise over the sea, and it was not unusual for him to take a final tour of the deck in the dog watch before turning in for the night.
In the Canary Islands, they landed for fresh supplies of water and perishable foodstuffs. The passengers were encouraged to disembark in order to stretch their legs in the tropical atmosphere and to partake of the pale Canary wine, but were warned not to go much beyond the port. Within forty-eight hours, they were again at sea, making their way with the wind behind them toward St. Helena.
They were three days out from the Cape Verde Islands when a sail was sighted. It was not the first, nor would it be the last, to hail into their view, yet, it caused excitement among the crew and no small amount of consternation among the passengers.
The ship that came swiftly down upon them was identified by Rud as a felucca of Turkish design. It featured a bank of oars numbering more than twenty per side, and red, triangular lateen sails stepped to twin masts. On each side of the stem was an enormous painted eye which seemed to turn, ogling, in their direction as the ship passed them just out of the reach of their cannon.
“Part of the navy of the dey of Algiers,” someone said.
“Bloody Barbary pirates,” someone else declared bitterly. “You can safely wager those oars are being plied by Christian slaves with whip marks on their backs.”
“Will they attack?” a woman asked fearfully.
The answer came from Rud. “They dare not brave our guns. If we were smaller, less well armed, it might be different.”
A man in clerical garb drew himself up. “We should do something to free those poor souls in captivity if ours is the superior ship.”
Another man snorted. “We are not a military vessel. Do you seriously suggest we endanger the lives of our women and children?”
“It goes against the grain,” the cleric said unhappily, “to do nothing to stop this abominable practice of using free men as animal labor.”
“Hard luck on them, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” the other man said, and he turned away, taking his wife by the arm.
Rud, standing silently at Julia’s side, followed the felucca with his eyes until she was out of sight.
They landed at Jamestown harbor on the island of St. Helena on August 18, 1818, sixty-seven days after they had left England.
10
It was hot and humid. A fine mist hung over the island like steam. It enveloped the David, muting the cries of the sea birds overhead and beading the surfaces of the furniture in the cabin with moisture. Standing at the open porthole, Julia could feel it upon her face. It blurred the lines of the island, making it appear less barren and rocky than it actually was.
It was possible, from where she stood, to see a large portion of St. Helena. The volcanic outcropping in the middle of the south Atlantic Ocean which served as the prison for the former emperor of the French was not large, only a little more than ten miles long and six miles wide. It rose above the bay where the ship was anchored in a series of crags strewn with gray lichen-covered rock and stands of prickly pear. On the higher elevations could be seen English gorse, brambles, and the dark green of pines and cedars. In the sprawling port of Jamestown, nestled in the narrow valley at the head of the bay, the umbrella like branches of palm trees could be seen amid the brightness of bougainvillea.
The hovels and decaying mansions were in need of some form of camouflage, Julia thought, though nothing could hope to cover the stench of open sewers and rotting fish drifting seaward from the town. Closing the porthole would alleviate that problem, but with the heat of a tropical afternoon pressing in upon the ship, the cabin would be stifling.
The click of the cabin door brought her head around. Rud entered, closing the door behind him. He surveyed her cool state of dishabille — she was wearing no more than a batiste peignoir — with a lifted brow. “Dressing, or undressing?” he inquired.
He was just returning from a tour of the island with the captain and one or two of the male passengers. The irritation Julia felt at being left
behind, pent up on the ship, made her answer shortly. “What difference does it make?”
“I have a certain interest in the outcome,” he drawled, tossing his beaver hat on a chest before sauntering toward her. “I don’t like to miss any of the few opportunities offered to me.”
“If you think I was waiting for you, you mistake the matter!”
“You disappoint me,” he said, heaving a mock sigh as he reached to take up the ribbons of her peignoir, which she had left dangling untied for coolness. The batiste material of her wrapper was old and soft from many washings, yellowed to an ecru shade, and so thin as to be transparent. She wore nothing underneath, neither chemise nor underdress, since she had not yet begun to dress for dinner.
“A pity,” she answered, and snatched her shell-pink ribbons from his hard brown fingers.
His pensive gaze on her shapely form through the film of batiste, he said, “Now, I wonder how I might tempt you? Maybe my welcome would be warmer if I were to tell you how the matter of freeing your emperor is proceeding?”
“You have learned something?” she asked quickly, her hand going out to touch his arm in an unconscious gesture.
“On second thought,” he mused, “the results might be better if I allowed you to persuade me to give up the information.”
She drew back instantly. “You wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t I? Do you really expect me to refuse the prospect of something more from you than a tepid surrender? A kiss, freely given, should do for a start.”
Julia hesitated, trying to decide if Rud was serious or merely having a joke at her expense. She assayed a smile. “You can’t mean it. It isn’t fair. How can you — you enjoy it knowing you had to bribe me? You may as well offer me money and be done with it!”
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 20