“I’m just restless, lately,” he explained it away when she finally raised the subject of why they were back to separate bedrooms. “I don’t like to disturb you.”
Twice, Marie got up early to see Charles headed off across the back lawn with a bouquet of flowers. She identified those same bouquets, later, after he had ridden off to oversee the cacao planting, as having become part of the very same heap of decaying flowers Marie had spotted previously in the jungle, surrounded by small wooden amulets hanging from the branches of parenthesizing trees.
So, the way Marie saw it, her marriage was definitely on the skids, without her really knowing why. Since her sources seemed quickly to have dried up at the Château (not even Jannette coming through), Marie decided on looking for help from the only other person she knew in the vicinity...Pierre Yonne...if she didn’t die from seasickness en route to see him.
As the tiny boat nosed toward the small harbor of Isla Charlotte, Marie found the island didn’t improve any, by way of visual, when seen up close. If anything, nearness only made it all the more austere.
She thought she might persuade the young captain to wait, but he assured her there would be plenty of the locals willing to ferry her back for the same price she had paid him to get her there. So, she was no sooner on the small jetty than she was left stranded there.
Luckily, it didn’t prove all that difficult to locate Pierre Yonne. There was only the one school on the island, and only the one teacher. Besides, it soon became apparent to Marie that everyone on Isla Charlotte pretty much knew everyone else who was present.
The harbor was a small natural shelter with moorings for the ten fishing boats that, aside from the occasional tourist, provided the majority of the island’s economy. There were three storage warehouses around the water’s edge, in one of which Marie found an overweight native, wearing what had to be a mile of bed sheet, who told her how to find Pierre.
To reach the top of the island required boarding a tram that creaked its way at a snail’s pace, all of the while threatening to break free. It ran via a maze of belts, wheels, and pulleys. When the power generator went off, which was more often than not, mules were attached to the cable mechanism and did the job just as well, if not better.
From the top of the rock, Marie had a good view back toward Saint-Georges and Mont d’Esnembuc.
Pierre’s students were at recess, their teacher at his desk and relaxing in one of his rare moments of peace and quiet during the school day. He’d just finished a chapter in the novel, Incident at Brimzinsky, he was reading (one of countless paperbacks he always brought back with him from his holidays in the States). As the sun shone directly in through the open door, casting Marie in complete silhouette, it was impossible for him to identify her, even after she spoke.
“I suppose you don’t remember me,” Marie had said. She had realized the triteness of that introduction, but she couldn’t think of anything else more adequately to fit the bill. She was, however, a little disappointed when he genuinely seemed not to remember her. “From the ship. I’m Marie Camaux.”
He got quickly to his feet, approaching her from an angle that finally allowed him to bring her out of concealing shadow.
“Of course, I remember, Madam Camaux!” he assured. “The light incoming with you through the door was what kept me from it. Whatever brings you here? I’m afraid our accommodations are a little more rustic than you’re probably used to on the big island.”
He commandeered a chair for her during his running commentary. When she was comfortably seated, he disappeared outside the building for a few moments.
“I sent the beasties home for the day,” he said, returning shortly. He seemed younger than Marie remembered. Also, she remembered his hair more brown than its present attractive shade of blond. Possibly, the sun (the island seemed to have precious few trees) had been busy bleaching his strands to their present lighter shade. “It’s so very seldom I get a visitor, I figure the occasion, now come, sees me deserving the rest of the day off.”
“You won’t get into trouble, will you?” she ventured. “About sending the children home early, I mean.”
“We run a loose ship over here. Besides, everyone knows if I ever get in any kind of snit, they would have a hard time finding any quick replacement. This doesn’t exactly look like a teacher’s Shangri-la, does it? I figure, I’ll stick it out another year, until my contract runs out. After that, I’ve an offer from a school in Villeneuve.”
“Maybe, then, you’ll be able to drop by for that promised visit.”
“Actually, I thought of coming over on several different occasions,” Pierre admitted, smiling guiltily. “Then, I figured it might be well to let the newlyweds settle in a bit before I forced them into entertaining a mere acquaintance. Then, the earthquake came, and I had more good intentions of making sure you’d weathered the storm, but word crossed over that all was well. After which....” He left it at that.
Marie smiled.
“The road to hell is always paved with good intentions, yes?” Pierre additionally excused. Actually, he’d simply decided Mr. and Mrs. Camaux were in a totally different social league from his, and he’d immediately talked himself out of calling, each and every time the idea had seriously come to mind.
“So, if Muhammad isn’t coming to the mountain, the mountain must come to Muhammad,” Marie said. She flashed Pierre another of her best smiles. If she wanted this man’s help, it was important he like her, although it seemed fairly obvious he already did. Then, again, maybe his obvious delight in seeing her was no more than the typical reaction he would have had to anyone showing up on this God-forsaken bit of land in the Caribbean.
“How about a little stroll?” he suggested. “I’ll show you the island’s high points. That should take us all of five minutes.” He laughed. “Then, I know a spot, right beneath one of the few trees that have managed to somehow take root on this rock pile, where we can get a cool glass of liquid refreshment.”
”My husband is frankly surprised everyone here hasn’t already packed up and moved over to the bigger island,” Marie said, finding the heat was kept from being totally oppressive, once, again, outside, only by a cool breeze that came up from the sea and across the mesa-like summit.
”Most of the young people do move off when they get old enough,” Pierre admitted. He held to Marie’s left arm to steady her, since there were no sidewalks or paving. “The older ones swear they’ve been saved once already and refuse to tempt Fyrea’s wrath again.” He lowered his voice to an amused whisper, even though there was no one but her to hear. “Everyone, you know, is quite convinced that mountain of yours is about to let go with one big bang. Every earthquake that has happened during the last hundred years has only strengthened those beliefs. When a family has been burned once, it gets a little leery about trying its luck again in one and the same place. I suppose you’ve heard of the big-island village that got run over by the lone lava flow in 1901. Well, the inhabitants of that village decided it was safer to set up housekeeping here, or you probably wouldn’t find me here teaching their children and grandchildren.”
“I heard the village was empty at the time,” Marie said. She saw a tree up ahead and hoped it was “the” tree at which they were planning to stop. As far as she was concerned, she had already seen as much of Isla Charlotte as she, or anyone else, could ever possibly care to see.
“Oh, the village was empty, all right,” Pierre said, delighted to have fresh ears to hear a very well-worn story. “That was because a psychic local girl showed up to warn the inhabitants away. Luckily, they believed her, or it would have ended up final curtains for the lot of them.”
“You believe that story, do you?” Marie asked, hardly thinking it possible that he did. “I mean about the girl having foretold the eruption. We had a couple of scientists at the house recently who said it’s hard even for them, with all of their modern scientific equipment, to predict just when, or if, any given mountain plans to blow it
s top.”
Pierre shrugged.
Marie was heartened by the sight of a kiosk and several empty tables set up in the shade ahead.
“The animals know such things,” Pierre said. “I heard the birds took flight before the latest earthquake began.”
Marie remembered the sight she’d had of them as they rose out of the trees into the darkness of the night. Would she, in fact, ever forget?
“I’ve heard it said some scientists believe we all had just such second sight as those birds, at one time, civilization having dulled our natural capacity to call upon it,” Pierre continued.
They reached the tree. Pierre pulled out one of the chairs in the shade and waited until Marie was seated before he sat across the small table from her. He ordered lemonade for both of them.
“She’s still wandering around over there, you know,” he said, taking their drinks from the young native boy who had just managed to deliver them in the process of spilling a good bit on the ground. Pierre passed Marie’s glass off to her.
“Who is?” Marie asked. She’d momentarily lost the gist of their conversation, more caught up in trying to decide if the hygiene of this particular establishment warranted her chancing any actually drinking of the drink.
“The psychic who warned off the villagers. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you must have run into her; an old woman by now. Her people used to be owned by your husband’s people, back in the days when slave labor made all of the wheels turn around here.”
Marie, thirsty, took a sip of her lemonade. Her thoughts were no longer on how clean or dirty the glass was.
“Lucie Bruay,” Pierre surprised.
“Lucie Bruay, a psychic?” Marie asked; her glass down on the table. Her eyes were intent upon Pierre across from her.
“She’s direct-line from some of the original island stock. From back when it wasn’t Saint-Georges but some unpronounceable pagan name. Actually, I guess Lucie is now the only one left of the indigenous tribe. Most were killed off in the first days of French settlement. Worked to death, quite frankly. When they were used up, the French brought in the Negroes. By the way, feel free to interchange psychic with priestess, or witch doctor, or diviner, or conjurer, or any number of other as likely apt terms. Not that old Lucie goes around casting spells on anybody, mind you, as you’ve likely very well noted. From what I hear, she’s never done anybody any harm but has done an awfully lot of good. As for her daughter, you and I know that’s a completely different....”
He stopped mid-sentence, realizing he had possibly approached the bounds of conversational good taste, forgetting himself because it was so seldom possible for him to engage in enjoyable conversation with anyone. If he was interested in getting some first-hand facts from Marie (Pierre, after all, had been in the States when the scandal had happened), he resisted the temptation. She was an influential woman to have as a friend. For that matter, her husband was even more influential. There was little point in alienating either wife or husband by letting Marie know Pierre was well aware of certain rumors regarding skeletons in the Camaux closets.
“Her daughter?” Marie asked. “Lucie Bruay has a daughter?”
Pierre wondered if it was really possible that Marie didn’t have a clue, as she pretended.
“Had is the key tense. The girl died a few months back.” He decided to leave it at that.
However, Marie was curious to know more.
“Died how?”
Pierre delivered a noncommittal shrug and decided it was time he shifted the conversation elsewhere. He should never have guided it in that particular direction.
“You didn’t come all of this way to hear me spout a bunch of superstitious nonsense,” he said. “You must have come for some very specific reason. For, you’ll note, I’ve not flattered myself into believing it was just me that brought you over that seasickness-producing channel of water.”
“You remember my rather green-around-the-gills complexion the last time you saw me, do you?” Marie bantered, although she had all intentions of pumping him for more information on Lucie Bruay and Lucie’s dead daughter.
She took another sip of lemonade.
“Actually, I need your help,” she said.
“Sure. Anything I can do.” He wondered what kind of help Marie Camaux could possibly want from him.
“Your next trip over to Saint-Georges, I’d like you to ask around about a certain woman. I’ve done a little research on my own, but I’ve been unable to come up with all that much.”
“I would think your best bet would be to hire a private detective.” Pierre was suddenly very leery. There was no way he wanted to choose sides if Charles and Marie Camaux were already pairing off over another woman.
“Oh, it’s nothing like I probably have you thinking,” Marie said, giving a don’t-be-silly laugh. “I have no suspicions at all that my husband is cheating on me. Actually, the woman in question is, I believe, like Lucie’s daughter, dead.”
“Dead?”
“I’m embarrassed to admit that’s about all I’ve been able to find out about her. That, and, of course, that her name is...was...Cécile.”
Marie was a little uncertain just what could be read in the expression that suddenly crossed Pierre’s face.
“That’s all you know?” Pierre managed finally. “Her name is Cécile, and she’s likely dead. Nothing more?”
“I’m afraid that’s it,” Marie admitted with an apologetic smile. “Not really very much for anyone to go on, I know, but I thought, maybe, you, since you’ve done so much research into the area’s history, might be more successful than I’ve been.”
”Can I ask just why you’re so interested in this woman?”
“I’ve heard several servants mention her, in passing, but every time they see me, they clam up,” Marie out-and-out lied.
Pierre could very well imagine why servants might go mute, especially if Charles Camaux kept his wife in the dark about Cécile.
“I suspect she might have been one of my husband’s old flames,” Marie said.
Pierre took another swallow of his drink. The liquid was going warm in the glass.
“Her full name was Cécile Bruay,” he said finally. “Other than that, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
In the end, though, he told her most of what he knew, which—he kept impressing upon her—was purely hearsay, since he hadn’t been a confident of any of the parties involved; he hadn’t even been on the island at the time.
Maybe, he told her as much as he did, because he was simply a sucker for any woman who cried, and Marie had quickly broken into tears.
Maybe he told her, because he truly believed she was out to save her marriage that she sincerely believed to be on the rocks because of secrets kept from her about a woman now dead.
Maybe he told her simply because he liked her, and he found it frankly ridiculous that she should be brought to so much unhappiness by a bunch of superstitious folderol that any sensible man, like Charles Camaux, should have been able to identify as the claptrap it really was.
That is, if Charles was capable, anymore, of comprehensive reasoning. The rumor was, after all, that Cécile Bruay had drugged him, using certain recipes learned at her mother’s knee. She had, then, seduced him, and had somehow connived to have some Catholic priest perform a marriage ceremony. Then, suddenly, she was dead, her body spirited away by natives to some jungle burial plot before there could be an official autopsy.
The local goddess-of-the-volcano, Fyrea, supposedly had been very unhappy that the daughter of Her chief priestess, Lucie, had given more intense worship to a man than to Her. So, Fyrea had supposedly cursed Cécile to an early grave, as well as cursed Charles to perish in the same flames as those with which Fyrea intended, very soon, to kill most everyone on Saint-Georges.
The French community, of course, believed Lucie Bruay, adamantly against the marriage of her daughter to Charles Camaux, might have actually gone so far as to do away with her own daughter.
>
* * * * * * *
Marie sat in the bow of the boat, looking back toward Pierre at the outboard motor. She wasn’t really seeing him. She wasn’t focusing, either, on Isla Charlotte which was fading from foreground to background as the craft neared the Saint-Georges coastline.
Her thoughts were turned inward, trying to decide how she was going to take what she now knew and use it to save her marriage.
The trouble was, as Pierre had successfully pointed out to her, all of what he had told her was purely scuttlebutt. As the most prominent landholder on the island, Charles Camaux was always talked about. There was bound to be whispers of intrigue and scandal. Just because a thing was said, didn’t mean it was Gospel. In fact, it might be an out and out lie, or even a half-truth.
What, though, if Cécile had, against the will of her mother and Fyrea, conspired to marry Charles? What if she had resorted to some form of native herb, drug, or witchcraft, feeding it to Charles in his food or drink? Wasn’t there, then, the possibility that certain aftereffects from that could still linger in his system, causing him to confuse Marie at times with the dead and buried Cécile? His erratic behavior could, in that context, be rationalized. Likewise, it could be very clear as to why Charles would be disturbed by Marie’s continual attempts to bring up Cécile. His thoughts of her would likely be confusing and seemingly best forgotten. The chances were very good he was even unaware of what he had said and had done during his relapses. Not remembering, wasn’t it logical for him to be unable to grasp why Marie had suddenly developed such a need to know all there was to know about the manipulative Cécile?
Did Charles even know he’d been drugged?
Did Charles even remember his marriage to Cécile was performed by Father Westbrook?
On the other hand, there were several aspects of the rumors which Marie found harder to believe.
Take the notion that Charles was entangled within some kind of ju-ju native curse, based on a pagan religion that had Lucie Bruay as its chief priestess, Charles scheduled for death in some kind of volcanic upheaval scheduled for Saint-Georges by a vengeful goddess. While it could be argued that he had been drawn back to the island, after having first tried to flee to England (where he had met and married Marie), it could, also, be rationalized that he had returned for simpler reasons. Saint-Georges was his home. He had been born and raised there. His parents, grandparents, and a whole gamut of his kin were buried there. His roots went deep into its volcanic soil. Why shouldn’t he prefer his island home to island England, or to anywhere else in the world for that matter?
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