"I believe we have been chosen," Genevieve said. She looked at the crush of women surrounding them. "I was so busy rooting for that dress I only half listened to the men this morning. This is the largest group of women I've ever seen them take at once."
The captain finally joined the company of women and their overseers in the courtyard. He stepped up on the rim of a planter and addressed the throng.
"I am Captain Rene de Canvillier. You have been chosen to make a great journey. Our country has claimed land across the ocean, land that is now known as New France, which you will soon know as your home. Every one of you has been chosen for your wit and beauty to make a fine wife for some fortunate colonial who awaits you at the other end of your voyage. I ask you to trust me, to do as I say, and to stay happy on the trip," de Canvillier said.
The light of the courtyard made it almost impossible to keep her eyes open, but Catherine still recognized the man speaking. Replace the elaborate befeathered shako with a powdered wig, and the simple, sturdy coat with an elaborately embroidered one, and the man before her was the same captain that Robert had welcomed to the dinner at Lac d'Or. Her first instinct was to hide, but the open courtyard offered nothing, not even a rock, behind which to conceal herself.
Why must she be ashamed? She was not the architect of her downfall. The captain would probably not recognize her anyway. The red dress was a poor cousin of the elaborate gown Dauterive had made for her and not only had she no makeup or intricate hairdo, she had lost the glow of good health from her weeks in the pit at Charenton. Her skin was sallow, and her dull hair hung limply about her head. Sighing deeply, Catherine tightened her grip on Genevieve's hand and listened to the captain's address.
He turned as he spoke, his gaze falling on individuals in the crowd with warmth and humor. He took a deep breath, and his voice became deeper in timbre and his face changed from the happy expression of a jolly uncle to the glowering mask of a harsh lord of the manor. "If you cannot trust me, if you cannot do as I, or my men, tell you to do, if you cannot remain happy, you will soon have reasons to be unhappy."
The captain stepped down from his post and signaled to the leader of his little squadron, who in turn signaled his men to begin guiding the women out the gate and into two wagons waiting at the curve.
Catherine and Genevieve allowed themselves to be folded into a group of women making their way into the wheeled conveyances, thus avoiding the sting of the whips some of the men had substituted for bayonets as their tool of choice for crowd control. Once in the wagon, whose benches along each side were full, the two women found themselves standing in the center of the cart, held upright by the press of bodies. When the wagon started, the motion made them fall into the women around them, but they soon recovered.
"What do they mean to do with us?" Catherine asked, struggling to remain standing and keeping a grip on her friend's hand.
"You heard him as I did. They are taking us to a new country." Genevieve was impatient with her friend, the situation stressing her civility almost to the breaking point.
"To be some stranger's wife! Do they mean to sell us to the highest bidder?" Catherine asked, shuddering at the thought of being handed off to another man. Her first husband wanted her only to be the mother of his children. What would the next one want her for? She could not imagine what the man had meant by a colonial.
"I think selling us to the highest bidder is exactly what they mean to do," Genevieve said. "They will need to market us well, because the stock they are getting ready to load onto their ship is not all the best. I am suspicious that the captain is a speculator. If our own government was behind this operation, I cannot imagine they would pick the wives to a new province from amongst our sisters in the asylum."
Catherine agreed with Genevieve. Right here in the wagon with them were some of the worst cases from the room she had occupied, including Marguerite, the nun, and Lisbette, the pitiful mother who continually searched for her daughter.
Even as the wagon made its way to the docks, Marguerite sat in contemplation, her eyes closed, her fingers working the rosary beads as she prayed. Catherine had no idea how long the sea voyage ahead of them might be, but she knew that even if Marguerite survived it, she would not survive being forced to become someone's wife.
"How long will the voyage be?" Catherine asked.
"I do not know. I have as little information as you. Why do you insist on treating me like your mother, a font of information and comfort?" Genevieve said.
"Because you have given me both. I repent of my mistake. I won't make it again." Catherine tried to move away, but the women were packed too tightly in the wagon for her to separate from Genevieve. She did not speak of how the exposure to the sun and the breeze in the courtyard had opened her heart like shutters unlatched after a storm. She didn't speak aloud her thought that the captain might listen to her, and instead of boarding the ship, that Catherine might be dispatched to find a way back to her father's house. With eyes closed, she could feel herself walking down a street, arms swinging, face turned up to the sun, her hair flowing in a fresh breeze.
The daydream disappeared when she felt Genevieve's arms around her. An apology was implicit in the physical contact. Catherine leaned into Genevieve and let herself relax. The physical intimacy was comforting, and their future was a huge blank canvas with only an ocean and sky painted on it.
The two women stayed in that pose until the wagon stopped at the docks and the men began unloading them and pushing them along a gangplank onto a waiting ship. As they stepped from the back of the wagon, a waiting man fastened iron cuffs to their wrists, making each of the women a human charm on a terrible metal bracelet.
The captain supervised the work from his personal carriage, and as the guards manacled the women, Catherine called out to him, "Please, I do not belong here."
"Do not fret," Captain de Canvillier called. He had not heard her words and took her outburst for simple alarm at being restrained. "The chains are just a precaution. We do not wish to lose any of you to the streets of Marseilles before you leave or to the ocean once you do."
The sound of the captain's laughter at his own bon mot made Catherine ill. Boarding the ship and being pushed down into the hold with the dozens of other women did nothing to settle her stomach, and the tension that had risen between her and Genevieve contributed to the feeling that left her faint as well. The six words had accomplished nothing. The captain had not recognized her, and she was chained with the other women on their way to New France. She stopped abruptly and leaned over the edge of the plank, retching. Her abrupt change of pace made the manacle linking her wrist to Genevieve's twist and pulled Genevieve down, bending her ankle back unnaturally.
"They won't stop for you. We have to keep moving," Genevieve said as she pulled herself up and pushed Catherine along the ramp. Limping, she grasped the back of Catherine's dress for support.
The hold the women were directed into was three-quarters the length of the ship. Two long benches ran the length of the room, stretching across opposite sides. When they were crammed into the space, about half the women could sit on the benches while the other half were crowded onto the floor between them. The crowding was only marginally tighter than they were used to in Charenton, and the women, most being insensible to the discomfort, complained little as they shifted and accommodated each other.
"I have learned my lesson," Catherine whispered to Genevieve. "I have learned that to have no hope and to live one day at a time is the best action. I could never have imagined myself boarding a ship to sail halfway around the world without family or friends."
"You must count me as both," Genevieve said. Shifting to find more space to rest her ankle, she gasped.
"We must wrap your ankle for support." Catherine reached underneath her dress and ripped a length of material off the shift she still wore. "Here, let me attend to you."
"It's nothing to bother with," Genevieve protested.
Catherine ignored her, fol
ding the strip of material in half and kneeling on the crowded floor to wrap the rapidly swelling limb with the dirty linen. "I cannot let myself think of what kind of man might purchase a wife. You do not know what a tyrant a husband can be. Count yourself lucky you have never had to submit to the rule of a man."
"Why would you think I have never had a husband?" Genevieve asked.
"You have never spoken of one."
"I had a husband. A very long time ago, I had a husband who adored me."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"When I was only sixteen, my mother let me know that keeping me was too dear for her budget and I should find a way out of her home. Conveniently enough, there was a sweet boy from the family next door who had designs on me. I let him know that I was interested, and before long, I had moved from my family's house to his." Genevieve's eyes misted as she recounted a history Catherine had never heard. The interior of the ship's hold, with the sour fragrance of too many bodies and no light, receded as Genevieve told her story.
"The boy was beautiful," she continued.
"As you were, I am sure," Catherine murmured.
"I had my admirers," Genevieve admitted. "The boy had black hair that glinted with odd highlights in the sun. And the lightest blue eyes I had ever seen then or since. So pale they were almost white. But more beautiful than his outward appearance were his manners to me. In my home, no one was kind. My mother, my two older brothers, the children younger than me, no one seemed to care very much for anyone else. I believe we all learned very early to look out for ourselves, and everyone else would get theirs."
"What about your father?" Catherine could not imagine a household without a strong patriarch to rule and love it.
"My father? I am not very clear where my father went. I know that soon after my youngest sister was born, my father never came around anymore. I remember asking mother about him and she wouldn't answer." Genevieve closed her eyes to try to remember her mother's response, but all she saw was her mother washing clothes at an old tub set up on a bench in the yard. One moment, she was laughing and teasing her daughter, and the next she stood with her back coldly turned, her shoulders heaving with the effort to scrub the clothes that remained.
"How sad," Catherine said. She hesitated to finish her thought. She did not want to make Genevieve feel worse by sharing her remembrances of her own good father. Her father had made sure she had every material thing she ever needed, though not everything she wanted, and besides that, had encouraged her to develop a habit of mind that allowed her to think thoughtfully and critically about the world around her. The world around her, though, had been filled with books.
Genevieve had a different kind of intelligence, one that Catherine admired greatly but did not possess herself. The story Genevieve told explained why she possessed the savvy that Catherine lacked.
"I began to tell you about my family only to emphasize that Richard's family was nothing like my bosom herd. Richard's mother, Lucinde, was a woman whose children were like a little business she might run out of the sitting room, and his father, Pierre, was a hard worker with a big, booming laugh. The man was a magnet for his children at the end of a long day of work. He worked in a mill there in our little village." Genevieve's voice warmed with remembrance as she told about the family that took her in. "I do not mean to make Lucinde's attentions sound oppressive. Her thoughtfulness was such a contrast to my own mother's negligence that it completely won me over."
"You married into a family that cared for each other, and they cared for you as well." Catherine said, confirming her friend's memory.
"Yes. It was that simple. Richard loved me, maybe just for my beauty." Genevieve struggled to remember the young boy she had not seen for so many years, and beyond the hottest fire of young love, the fire built of lust and at simple animal attraction, it was difficult for her to remember what other qualities the two of them had seen at first.
"There must have been more, or this story would not be about becoming a part of his family. It would be a tale about a boy you rolled around in the hayloft with," Catherine declared.
Genevieve laughed, "We did our share of rolling around in haylofts! There was very little privacy in that house, as full as it was. Richard's parents, the two of us, three brothers and three little sisters. The house wasn't big enough for them, and then when I arrived, Lucinde reshuffled everyone so Richard and I had our own bed. I don't know how she managed it, but there was never a peep from anyone."
"You were blessed to find such a family."
"Yes. But I was not blessed very long." Genevieve's face tightened with emotion. "For the first two years, we had a very happy family and we remained untouched by any sadness whatsoever. Richard and I hoped for a child that never came, but the family was so jolly and space so tight, we never worried. I'm very thankful now that child never came. When we did begin to suffer, it was like artillery had opened on us and we couldn’t find a barricade to hide behind."
"But you had each other, and that made bearing it all easier, didn't it?"
"That is exactly what was so insidious about it," Genevieve said. "We were torn apart first, and then there was no bearing what came next. First, Pierre died. He had worked a long time, and the job in the mill was very hard physically, so when he passed away, we mourned him, but we knew he went to something better than the hard physical work he had endured for so long. And then, one of my sisters-in-law convinced Richard's brother that their father had left some money and that he was not receiving his part of it. That fanned the flames of some long-hidden resentment among the brothers, and soon, all of them except Richard had moved out into their own houses. Our house was so empty, but we remained with Lucinde and the girls."
"A family so tightly woven rent apart? I agree with those who say, 'money is a fine servant but a terrible master'." Catherine could see the seeds of Genevieve's determination to eschew hope.
"Then the fire came," Genevieve said. "You would laugh to read of the plagues that fell on our family, one after another. You would think it was not possible for one family to suffer so, but it is true. Everything I tell you that led to my miserable imprisonment is true. I lived it, and I am still able to tell what happened." She pressed her lips together and clenched her fists, raising them to her forehead. Even with her chin bent to her chest, muffling the sounds, Catherine could hear her sharp intakes of breath as she struggled to hold back tears.
"Do not go on if it is so terrible to relive it! I cannot stand to see you so. I have never known you to evidence such a misery as you do right now."
"It is past time I told you," Genevieve said, coughing to clear her throat. "You have never understood why I looked at each day alone instead of like a string of beads lined up on a thread. My story tells you why."
Catherine nodded, and waited while Genevieve readied herself to continue. The ship shuddered as it was cast off and pushed out from the dock. While little light permeated the hold, the scent of salt air drifted in and the squawk of seabirds bid them farewell. Nothing the two women could do now would save them from the journey across the ocean they had embarked upon. Catherine probed, trying to name the emotion she felt, but she was nearly numb from the realization her father had not recognized the dire situation she was in and her continued imprisonment. Only the angst evident in Genevieve's retelling of her sad history made her feel a stirring of pity.
"The fire," Genevieve explained, her voice cool and unemotional, "started in the kitchen in the middle of the night. No one realized the conflagration had begun, and by the time the evidence had risen to the second floor, there was no escaping by the usual route, so we tried to exit the second floor windows. Richard helped me out and I managed to cling to the rough timbers until I could drop to the ground safely. He found enough sheets to knot together a rope for Lucinde to descend, but by the time she was safe and Richard tried to evacuate his sisters, all egress had been blocked, and he couldn't reach them. All three of the girls perished."
Catherine held Ge
nevieve more tightly at the revelation.
"In such a short time, a family of ten—and I count myself among them—was reduced to three. And the three of us had no recourse. No other family would speak to us, much less take us in. I don't know if they felt we would bring a curse on their houses if they offered us shelter, or if they thought we had purposefully let our little ones die. We had to take refuge in what remained of the house where the little girls had died."
"No wonder you have so little faith in the Creator that I know, in my heart, molds our ends. I shudder at the terrible tragedies he has sent you. I do not understand why he would take a family and tear it apart. It tests my faith to hear it. How did you find yourself at Charenton? I cannot imagine your husband and mother-in-law abandoning you if the three of you had survived so much already."
Genevieve remained quiet, her eyes cast down on her fingers, working at each other as though she was counting an invisible rosary.
"Genevieve? Are you still here with me? Is it too hard to tell?"
"It is easy enough to tell what I remember," she said.
"And what is that?"
"Nothing," Genevieve said. "I remember nothing after a certain day, a cold day in the winter, when we'd built a fire in what was left of the fireplace and wrapped ourselves in the rags we still had left."
"Surely you remember something about your journey—"
"Nothing, I tell you!" Genevieve wrenched herself away from Catherine. With no room in the hold of the ship to rise, she cowered against the woman huddled on her other side, holding herself as far away from Catherine as she could. "One day, I was in the tattered bosom of my family, and the next I was in a dank room filled with women even more pitiful than myself."
"Was the red dress yours? This dress I wear, did Danielle steal it from you?"
"I do not know what makes you think that."
"That is no answer."
"I don't remember. Anything." Genevieve said and turned, as well as she could, to huddle into a warm ball and seek solace in sleep. "I think what I have just told you is only fiction and you should not believe it at all."
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