"But why would you tell me such a story if it were not true? My sister, my mentor, you have given me so many tools to survive our imprisonment. Let me give you my sympathy and comfort." Catherine reached for Genevieve, but her hand was pushed away.
"There is no comfort. Your sympathy will not keep us warm, it will not keep us from retching from sea sickness, and it will not keep us from being sold like cattle to a rough farmer on the other side of the ocean. This trip to New France is another affront from God upon my person."
Chastised by the bitterness in Genevieve's voice, Catherine shrank back from her and tried to draw into herself for warmth and comfort. There was no escape from the ship. Once it landed on dry land, days and weeks away, some opportunity might arise to flee and abandon the iron chains that linked her to the other women in the hold. Until then, she must keep her wits about her. Genevieve's sanity was in question, as her denial of her own biography, the terrible story that Catherine believed to be true, was evidence. Around her, Catherine saw the women whose minds had deteriorated until they had completely escaped reality. She could not let herself do that, as many hardships as the trip promised. When the ship made landfall, she must be at her best or she would never survive.
"I promise," she spoke aloud her own credo, "I will be as strong as I can be at the end of this trip, and I will never belong to anyone other than myself."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Catherine had the stomach of a veteran sailor. Perhaps she had inherited it, as her father had spent many days out on the sea bringing back supplies for his store while Catherine and her mother waited for him at home. During the first week out of port, many of the women herded into the hold of the ship were sick from the rolling of the vessel. Catherine escaped the nausea and tried only to comfort Genevieve, another victim of mal de mar. Her efforts were met with little response. Ever since Genevieve had shared the pitiful story of what had happened to her family, her communications with Catherine were short. Catherine had wished to know Genevieve more intimately, but when she had finally heard her sad story, their friendship did not grow stronger, but atrophied until it was a thread instead of a cable.
Catherine continued to nurse Genevieve, tending to the healing ankle and trying to comfort her through the nausea, but Genevieve rejected other overtures of friendship such as the intimate conversations they had once shared. The rejections stabbed Catherine like pins pushed into the cushion of her heart, because she could not tell if her friend mistook her respect for pity. Genevieve's illness on top of the emotional distance unbalanced the friendship until Catherine was carrying the whole weight of it and Genevieve none.
This imbalance did not deter Catherine from remaining loyal. She knew from the experience of nursing her mother that every illness had its difficult days as well as its hopeful ones. This friendship was likely the same, she thought, and so she kept doing the little things a friend might do, other than talk deeply and intimately. Granted, in the dark hold of the ship, there was little to do to convey how she felt about Genevieve, but she tried to mop her hot forehead with a wet cloth and keep her as clean as she could as she suffered the illness so many novice ocean travelers suffer.
The weeks at sea dragged on, and the women's close quarters, mitigated by a few deaths from seasickness and general bad health, grew even more claustrophobic. Hammocks had been improvised, and the women who still had their senses tried to work out a rotation so everyone could enjoy some freedom from the closely piled bodies on the floor. The crew threw food into the hold once a day and lowered kegs of water. Sanitary conveniences were nonexistent. On two or three occasions a sailor had climbed into the hold and swabbed the deck with a ragged mop, trying to wash away the accumulated filth. In the aftermath of these measures, the women unlucky enough to be on the floor were left wet and shivering.
The sailors' visits challenged Catherine. Determined to find out more about the voyage, she attempted to engage the boy with the mop in conversation. One morning, as he sullenly pushed the filthy rag across the deck, she asked, "What is the weather like today?"
He shrugged and grunted.
"We see none of the light down here. We can hardly tell morning from night. Does the calm sea mean the weather has been fine all the way?"
"Suppose it's passable," the boy grunted, still listlessly mopping.
"I thought I heard a whistling outside the door yesterday. Is someone on the crew very musical?" Catherine had heard nothing, but she knew from her father's stories whistling on board was considered bad luck. If an old salt caught one of the men doing it, he would pay. Her comment, delivered in an innocent tone, poked the boy and finally, he responded.
"Oh, there's no whistling on this good ship, I'll tell you! The captain would have a new skin if he caught anyone doing it! It's bad luck, don't you know!" The boy's alarm at the thought of it stopped his work, and he stood wide-eyed, staring at Catherine.
"Yes, I seem to remember my father saying that. He was a sailor, you know."
"Was he now?" The boy moved a little closer to hear her response.
"He sailed for many years, bringing back goods to sell in his shop in Nantes."
"I bet he was a jolly tar, then."
"I adored him," Catherine said. "I know circumstances have made us strangers, but please, tell me your name. It will feel so much less strange if I can know it."
"Tristin."
Once he identified himself, the boy went back to work as if he'd lost interest, but on subsequent appearances, Catherine continued to draw him out. Conversations with Genevieve were no entertainment, and Catherine hesitated to befriend anyone else. If they were of like mind, why hadn't she forged bonds with them back in the asylum? The thought that she might be overly concerned with social niceties in such a debased society occurred to her, but she knew that her survival depended on her own resources and forging more relationships might make her lose sight of what would be in her best interest. Already the emotional toll of trying to succor Genevieve had worried and distracted her from planning what to do once the boat made port, wherever that might be.
About halfway through the voyage, in the middle of the night, Catherine curled around Genevieve, trying to keep the two of them warm in the damp dark. The closeness of another human being was an incalculable comfort, but it gave rise to a certain unease.
"Why have the men not been to visit us?" she whispered to Genevieve, thinking her friend was insensible and asleep.
"Perhaps they have given up women for Lent," Genevieve whispered back. These few, terse words showed Catherine her friend was still there and had not completely fallen into a dark hole of depression.
"I do not think it is the Lenten season," she said softly, pretending she took the reply seriously to see how Genevieve would answer.
Genevieve snorted.
"Are we so repellent they do not desire us?" Catherine mused.
"You do not wish to entice those salty, crusty boys, do you?" Genevieve sat up and pulled away in horror.
"No, ma soeur, I do not wish them to come visit us. I only wonder why they do not. Given our weakened state and submissive situation, I am surprised we have not had night visitors. Or day, given that we are barely able to tell which is which in this dank hole."
"I think there must be a man on this ship who has made it his business to protect us," Genevieve said.
"A priest, do you think?"
"No, my little innocent, the investor. He wants to sell us at the other end of the journey and would like to deliver undamaged goods. Ça coûte la peau de cul."
"I will not submit to being sold like a cow," Catherine hissed.
"Ce n’est pas donne, mon amie. I do not know how you will escape it if it is our fate. Surely when we land they will haul us out of this hold and onto a dock for inspection. How will you get away? Run past the crowd of settlers with their grubby money in their hands? They will catch you like a child running in a little game. Will you swim away? Back across the sea to France?"
&nb
sp; "You are not the woman I once knew. Your tone is beyond cynical. It is not just that you have no hope; you are the soul of a dark cloud."
"I see no sun and haven't for weeks."
"How could they claim we are undamaged? The men who took us out of Charenton know that most of us have been married and even the girls who haven't were used badly. None of us resemble a maiden, even the youngest of us is haggard and worn from the cruise across the ocean."
"Do you think a man who would haul us out of an asylum where we were unjustly kept to sell us to the highest bidder has any compunction about lying? If I am beyond cynical, you surpass the innocence of a saint. I think you have lost some of that intelligence you preened your father helped you cultivate." Genevieve voice was a rough whisper in the dark hold. "We were abandoned in Charenton to die. We have been kept alive to be someone's wife, their cook, their courtesan, their mule for pulling a plow, for all I know. Someone will be paid for bringing us across the ocean. If the buyer is unhappy with the merchandise, there will be no refund."
The sad, insensible women who had been hauled out of the reeking dungeon and thrown into the hold with them were mostly asleep as Catherine appraised them, weighing Genevieve's words. What man would want the idiot girl who could only rock and moan? Or the crone bent double with age who only cackled? And what kind of man would buy a woman to take into his home? The idea that at the end of the voyage she would be loosed from the dark hold and able to breathe the freshest air and feel the sun on her skin once more had kept her alive. But if what Genevieve had said were true, she would be little more than a slave.
In the dark, Genevieve turned over and slept, leaving Catherine to wrestle with the truth. The bond of friendship she had tried to reinforce to keep herself from falling into her own pit of despair was broken by the harsh words. She thought, it is charity to stifle my own words in reaction. Genevieve had so little to sustain her before we began this trip, and the experience has left her bereft of even the most fundamental kind of comfort. If I bite back, she will only get worse. I will forbear.
The words calmed her and she went to sleep in the rocking ship, but in her dreams, she found no peace.
Catherine opened her eyes and looked at her fingers, wrapped around a grey, wooden rail. Her nails were short and rough, the cuticles yellowed and ragged. Her wrists seemed too thin for the red sleeves around them. The humid air lifted her tangled hair from her neck intermittently as she looked up and across the water. The horizon was changing. Under a few bright white clouds on a calm blue background, the sea that met the sky thickened and darkened, bunching up into wrinkled piles like fabric on a table.
"Land," a voice behind her said.
When she turned, Robert Picard stood on the deck. He wore the loose shirt he'd worn on their wedding day and a brocade waistcoat made of a material that shone like the scales of a fish. The embroidery on it emphasized the marine effect, and his trousers were the same dark blue of the sea that stretched out from the boat on all sides.
"How did you get here?"
"Catherine, I will always be here. No matter where you go, I will always be with you."
"I do not believe that. I am almost an ocean away from you. Nothing would make you leave Lac d'Or."
"I don't have to leave my estate to torment you. You carried me with you into that pit and onto this scow. You'll not leave me behind. I can enjoy a glass of wine with our neighbors and still twist the knife of my infidelity into your heart."
Catherine whirled away from her husband's reaching hand and fell over the rail, arms and legs flailing until her body hit the water and she spiraled down into an unfamiliar darkness.
Her eyes opened to the dark interior of the hold and she sat up, struggling to draw in enough air to breathe.
The encounter with Robert reminded her of how she and Marie had escaped Lac d'Or. Of course she could not swim back to France, but there had to be a way off the boat. Unable to go back to sleep, she tried to imagine what the top deck looked like. She remembered that her father's merchant ship had a boat used to ferry the crew to the dock or for some amphibious project while out to sea. If they could find their way to it, such a vessel might be their escape.
Soon after sunrise, Tristin returned to the hold and Catherine had more questions for him.
"Why are you tasked to clean our cell?" she asked.
"It's my first trip. All the dirty work falls to me." Tristin didn't allow the conversation to interrupt his mindless swabbing. With his back to Catherine, he pushed the mop over the deck.
"Enough work to go around? No one's napping on the quarter deck while you clean up down here?"
"There's plenty of us, a dozen or so, I'd say. No one has time to sleep, especially now we're so close to landfall."
"How will we know we're really there?"
"Aye, Bernard has a set of lungs like a bellows. When he calls, 'Land, Ho,' you'll hear him, even down here."
Like Danielle, who had hidden away trinkets in the asylum, Catherine stored the information. When Tristin left, she woke Genevieve, who was still sleeping on the molding straw, and whispered her plan.
"We've had no chains to bind us together for weeks now. We can move freely. Once we're in sight of land, we can launch ourselves to freedom."
"Do you plan to swim ashore?" Genevieve asked. Struggling to right herself and sit up beside Catherine, the woman ran both hands through her hair to untangle the bits of straw left there from her sleep.
"We take one of the boats. A ship this size has to have at least one that the crew might use for some task or another." Catherine saw Genevieve tilt her head and raise one eyebrow. "Remember, my father was a sailor. I know whereof I speak."
"If we make it to shore, then what do we do?"
"We find the river and follow it. We keep moving." Catherine reached out and took Genevieve's shoulders in her hands, looking directly into her friend's eyes. "We have to try."
Genevieve nodded and listened as Catherine told her how the two women could lead the others to freedom once they heard that land had been sighted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The two women made marks on the underside of the stairs to represent the passing days at sea, and the accumulating notches began to crowd the hidden canvas just as the women crowded the dark hold. Within the hold, the scenery was as unchanging as that of the sea around them. And yet Catherine and Genevieve tried to make their voyage, if not pleasant, at least less unpleasant.
A door at the top of the stairs opened once a day, and a hand or two threw down food. Early in the voyage, it was bread that was pitched in and rolled down the stairs. Later, there was hardtack. A bucket of fresh water was placed on the steps each day as well, and Catherine and Genevieve made it their duty to ensure it was shared among all the women and guard it so it didn't spill.
The first night out to sea, Catherine was certain that they had both escaped the asylum with only what they wore, but when they felt ready to sleep (and a feeling is the only thing that prompted them, as the cargo hold admitted no light and therefore no indication of what time of day or night it might be), Genevieve surprised her amie by pulling a generous flannel skirt out from under the soiled frock she wore.
"We may have to use each other as comforters, but this piece of flannel is soft enough to roll into a pillow for our heads," Genevieve said. "I don't think it is thick enough to deter any pests that have infested the hold, but it will be of more comfort than the straw."
"At least the straw seems fresh."
"For now. A few days into our journey, I shudder to think what it will be like."
"No need to try to imagine, when we will experience the reality so shortly," Catherine responded.
A little flannel pillow for their two heads to rest on was a small civility, and each night one of the two women would roll it up as they laid down close to each other in the rapidly deteriorating straw on the deck of the cargo hold. They went to sleep tangled together to conserve their body heat, pulling the str
aw over them to help insulate themselves from the clammy sea air. Each morning, they helped brush the straw off each other's clothes and found a place to hang up the flannel, with the idea that doing so aired it out and kept it fresh, even in the stagnant atmosphere of their little prison on the ocean.
One night soon after the conversation about escaping the ship, something disrupted their usual routine.
"I feel the dampness is encroaching even more than usual," Catherine remarked.
Genevieve shrugged. Since Catherine's dream and the plan she had devised, the two women had grown closer again. The intellectual stimulus of planning their liberation had given their friendship new fire. Putting their pasts out of mind and looking for a way to escape their mutual misery gave them a reason to depend on each other.
"We have moved somewhat south of where we started, and the air is warmer. When the warm air fights the cold, sometimes a fog results. Maybe we are feeling its effects." Catherine mused.
"No, it's not just the air. The wood feels swollen and damp." Genevieve pressed her hand along the beams of the deck, and as she swept her palm back below the straw and along the hull that she and Genevieve bedded against, she jerked her palm back.
"What is it?"
"I think it's not just damp. I feel water seeping in. Here, give me your hand." Genevieve guided Catherine's hand along the hull. Now she felt a puddle of moisture where she had only felt a drop of water.
"It's moving in quickly, I think."
"It's only a little puddle. It's hardly enough to abandon ship."
"It takes very little water to upset a ship. If she's leaking this quickly, we may not have long. It's time."
"We have no idea how close land might be," Genevieve cried.
"It doesn't matter. Our marks tell me we've been out to sea long enough that landfall is imminent. We can make our way to the boat and away from the ship."
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