An Ignorance of Means

by Jennifer Oakley Denslow

  "We must deal with the crew, have you thought of that?"

  "The crew will save themselves. They won't come after us if the boat is sinking. We do just what we planned—we crowd the stairs and wait. Once the door opens, we rush out."

  As Catherine replied to Genevieve, both women rose to their knees and saw the other inmates shifting to avoid water that had begun to collect at the very edges of the hold. A stretch of dry decking in the middle of the echoing gallery was beginning to resemble an island with a high tide encroaching. Aside from a few whimpers, the women were eerily quiet.

  "What complacency in the face of danger!" Catherine exclaimed.

  "I don't believe they understand."

  "We will herd them all to the stairs and guard the door until it opens."

  "If we are at the top, are they not likely to wander back to the deck where we've been living?"

  "Lisbette. Or Marguerite. Either of them can hold the bottom of the stairs if we are at the top."

  Catherine and Genevieve worked together just as they had when they served breakfast in the asylum, pushing the women to climb the stairs and elbowing their way to the top. Braced against the trapdoor that led to the deck, the women conferred.

  "Can we hold them here until morning?" Genevieve asked. "The water is rising faster."

  The deck was no longer a beach, but a lake. Lisbette held on to the stair rails, pushing the women to stay on the steps. Marguerite prayed, kneeling in the few inches of water at the bottom.

  "We have to," Catherine replied.

  There was no sleep for anyone as they women leaned into each other to keep themselves upright until morning came and the man who threw their food into the hold would open the door. "We have to rouse someone to let us out or we will all drown here."

  "Why isn't the ship rocking? Is there no wind?"

  "We'll get a report when we get above!"

  By morning the water had risen until the women on the steps below Catherine and Genevieve could not stand. The most sensible of them held on to the steps as they floated.

  "I can't look," Catherine said. "Some of them have sunk below the water. We should try to keep them afloat."

  Finally, the trap door opened and a pair of feet appeared.

  "Up, ma souers," Catherine yelled. She rushed up out of the door, knocking the sailor who had opened it on his back and moving across the deck toward starboard. The other women followed.

  The morning sun was hidden behind low, dark clouds, and the light was a strange red glow. Beyond the banks of clouds, she saw lightning.

  "Stay out of the way," a sailor snarled, pushing the women toward the bow of the boat. Sailors swarmed over the deck, calling out in the jargon of the sea that neither Catherine nor Genevieve understood. Their ears were no help in judging the state of the ship, but their eyes told them they were not yet safe. The water had reached the door they'd been rescued from and spilled out onto the deck as the ship began listing to one side.

  "Are we women or chattel? We've been stored in the hold until now like so many bales of hay. Some of our sisters have not the sense that God gave a goose," Catherine said. "If we are to be saved, we will have to do it ourselves."

  "Look, I think I see land! There, do you see it?" Genevieve pointed off the port side.

  Catherine shaded her eyes and looked out. The sea was remarkably calm, although the boat was shuddering and the water rising on the deck. She could see coastline clearly, perhaps the outline of a bay of some kind. But there was no way to tell how far away it was. She shuddered as she remembered her dream of sighting land and flinched as a seaman passed close behind her. Frozen, she waited for Picard's voice.

  "We have to get into a boat and off this ship." Genevieve shook her and Catherine returned to the moment.

  "Who's with us?" The women who made it out of the hold wandered the deck. Catherine reached out to grab the arms of two of the women nearest her.

  "We are for ourselves! Come, let us find a way off!" Genevieve pulled Catherine away and toward the edge of the foundering ship. The water was much shallower and the coast closer than it had been moments before, but rocks in the surf made new hazards, and the ship tipped crazily as it bounced from the impact of hitting one rock to hit another and another.

  The boat tilted farther than before and dumped everyone into the roiling water. Catherine felt the woolen dress, already encrusted with the weight of months at sea, grow heavier. She struggled to stay afloat but her churning arms could not keep her above the water; wave after wave shoved her down until she heard nothing but the wet silence of the sea as she sank.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  "Wake up, ma chérie."

  "Maman, I am so cold! What has happened to the duvet?"

  "You need to wake up to be warm, love. Wake up and be warm."

  "Why is it damp?"

  "Wake up and you'll be warm."

  When she opened her eyes, Catherine didn't see the window that had always offered her first glimpse of the day when she woke in her parents' house. Instead, she saw a flat plane covered with brownish green blades of grass sprouting from muddy earth. Her face pressed into that same grass, flattening it and leaving Catherine's cheek pillowed on a muddy cake of earth and vegetation. As cold and logy as she felt, the feel of the slimy dirt on her cheek made her sit up abruptly, and then a breeze caressed her and made her shiver.

  So the voice of her maman had lied to her. She was awake and sitting on the bank of a wide river, but she wasn't warm. Going back to sleep sounded simple, but exposed as she was, she thought it was probably dangerous to pass out again, so she pinched her own cheeks to wake up.

  Her head drooped, and she saw the red dress she was wearing when she had been taken out of Charenton. Now it was a soggy, streaked pink splashed with mud. Her hands, manicured and soft when she was the doyenne of Lac d'Or, were crusted with muck and her nails short and ragged. Her once clean blond hair was lank and almost green from the water and dirt that coated its strands.

  There was no more color in the world around her. The bank of the river joined the water almost imperceptibly, both dirt and water a dark, chocolaty shade. The bank was a matte version of the glossy, turbulent water it held back.

  Catherine struggled to her feet and tried to focus. Where was Genevieve? She heard nothing. Catherine looked around, but knew the scant shift that Genevieve wore was as dun in color as the landscape. If Genevieve was prostrate, finding her would be difficult. Arms weak and trembling, legs almost collapsing, she stood, weaving slightly, looking farther up and down the riverbank.

  Taking a few steps to her right, and then to her left, Catherine slumped with the weight of the decision she had to make. If she chose to walk the wrong way along the river, she might miss Genevieve. Being reunited with her friend was vital. Catherine knew nothing of how to survive on her own in the wild place the water had left her, and Genevieve had enough survival instinct for them both.

  But Catherine was alive and alone. Genevieve was nowhere near.

  Judging by the water, and the sounds of waves crashing against the gulf shore somewhere out of sight, upstream was to her left. Maybe Genevieve had been swept up the river as well. If the current had loosed her and left her along the bank before Catherine, then traveling downstream was the best choice, she convinced herself. If it was the wrong choice, it only meant she'd have to reverse directions and cover the same ground again, and that would mean she would search more thoroughly. With no idea how far she must walk to reach the end of the river and the gulf where the boat had capsized, she began staggering and limping along the bank.

  "Genevieve! Can you hear me?"

  She heard only the water and the natural communication among the birds, the frogs, and all the other animals of the desolate riverbank. The wild, unmanicured terrain contrasted with the sedate, pristine gardens she had long left behind at Lac d'Or. The last time she had seen the estate, it was spring and the rich greens of grass and shrubbery were accented with the colored tuf
ts of emerging flowers. Here, autumn had robbed the landscape of color. The drab palette sobered her. Her breathing was loud in her ears, but still she could hear the rustle of small game in the trees behind her. They sounded like papers being shuffled one on top of another, too small to mean another human might be approaching.

  "I'm looking for you, Genevieve! I will find you! Don't wander away!"

  Again, she heard no answer.

  Her dress was heavy, but as hot as it was on the bank, Catherine knew she needed the protection the material afforded her, so she resisted the urge to remove it and turned to her right. She began walking along the bank looking for her friend as she went.

  The first body she saw stopped her progress, not because it was in her path, but because she was shocked to see the splayed form of a sailor half in and half out of the river on the far bank. Once she was over the surprise, she found it easy to continue. The next obstacle was closer. Another sailor clutched a monstrous splinter of wood. Making a wide crescent around the body, she moved onward until a pile of dark fabric manifested itself as the familiar form of Marguerite, the sweet deluded nun who had spent the voyage from France in the same dark hole as Catherine.

  Ignoring Marguerite to continue to look for Genevieve seemed disrespectful, but no one could save the dead and Genevieve might still be alive somewhere ahead. Catherine paid quick respects by trying to straighten the woman's body into a more peaceful pose and closed her eyes. Making the sign of the cross over her late compatriot, she continued her journey.

  Only a few hundred yards past Marguerite, Catherine was distracted by a leafless stick in the mud of the bank with a scrap of material waving from it like a flag. Moving closer, she could tell that the material had only caught on the small branch. She could see the ragged edges where the material had been torn from a piece of clothing as someone walked too close to the stick.

  Clothing like Genevieve's.

  Snatching the cloth from the stick, Catherine examined it, and convinced herself that it had come from the dress that she last saw Genevieve wearing before the water filled the hold, the boat capsized, and the two women had clung together on a floating spar.

  If Genevieve had been dumped on the bank as Catherine had, and thought the same way, it meant she, too, would be walking downstream. The two women had become as close as sisters in the asylum, and reasoning would likely be the same, so Catherine continued in the same direction, her pace faster because of her recent discovery. As she went, she added tracks to her list of things to look for, in addition to more of the dress material caught by any vegetation as well as Genevieve herself.

  The hope that Genevieve was close distracted Catherine. Glancing at the edge of the river occasionally, she discounted it as a source of anything important. A disturbance in the water made her look closer. Then she saw the beast. She had never seen one in life, but her father's books had included numerous tomes about nature, and she had seen engravings of the long, scaly animal now before her.

  Frozen in place, standing well up the bank, Catherine saw the eyes resting on top of the water like two balls from her father's billiards table. Ringed by dark green, leathery skin, the eyes seemed vacant of emotion, but so wide as to be all-seeing. The alligator looked too large to be very quick, but Catherine knew that the size was deceptive and the animal was capable of overtaking her in pursuit, even if she had not been as drained of energy and listless as she now was. If it had fed recently, it might well have no interest in her.

  Catherine pushed away the thought of what—or who—the animal might have eaten and tried to gather her wits. Alone in an unfamiliar world, she again found herself at the mercy of her own mental faculties. As her physical strength was ebbing, she struggled to focus on her own survival.

  If she began to run, she might attract its attention. With her gaze fixed on the reptile, she moved a few steps in the direction she had originally traveled. The eyes followed her, as did the body of the monster attached to them, so she stopped. The eyes were closer, and larger, and she read some kind of threat in them. The reality of her situation broke over her like a wave, and she longed to loose the sobs that had been building in her since she awoke. Biting her lip, she felt her stomach heave with repressed emotion and prepared to run.

  A boom broke the chattering sound of nature around her, and Catherine's head snapped up out of her misery to see the alligator thrashing in the water. Spinning to find out the source of the sound, she saw a man clad in heavy woolen trousers, linen shirt, and rough jacket running out of the woods toward her. As he came upon her and grabbed her around the waist, she went limp in his arms and surrendered to his rescue.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Catherine heard voices. The last time she had opened her eyes, she found herself alone on a muddy river bank. When she had tried to find Genevieve, her companion from the asylum and across the sea, she found only a monstrous alligator who had made her as tense and still as a deer staring at its imminent death in the jaws of a predator.

  One voice, her shaky sensibility told her. What had sounded like a chorus resolved itself until she heard one voice. It was, however, not a voice she immediately recognized.

  Maybe the muddy bank, the monstrous reptile, and the loss of her one last friend had all been a dream and when she looked around, she would be back in the warm bed of her childhood. Squeezing her eyes tighter, she remembered what that bed had been like, the crisp linen softened by a comfortable night snuggled beneath the heavy comforter, the fresh scent of lavender clinging to the generous pillow beneath her head. The warmth she felt on her cheek might well be the sun peeking through the lacy curtains at her window, the window that looked out from the rooms over her father's store to the busy street outside. The rustling she heard might be the stiff petticoats beneath the skirts of Emilie, the woman who helped keep the house as her mother became more and more frail.

  The memory of her mother, whose health had declined as Catherine grew, softened her face and the light of reality crept beneath her eyelids. She was about to open her eyes and push back the heavy bedclothes when another idea floated into her consciousness: maybe she was back at Lac d'Or in her cold marriage bed. If that were so, she would finally escape her husband's clutches and return to her mother and father. If the terrible imprisonment at Charenton and the awful trip across the ocean had been a dream, it had been a dream of prophesy, of what awaited her if she did not flee, so flee she must.

  She remained still as more possibilities emerged.

  Maybe she would find herself still in the terrible cellar at Charenton, and Genevieve would have another lesson about how to survive in the noisy herd of unwashed bodies. Opening her eyes to that reality meant more squalor and vermin, more searing heat or chilly dampness. But it also meant the distraction of another one of Genevieve's stories, a little plot to make their lives more comfortable in the comfortless dungeon. Waking up in Charenton would be the continuation of a nightmare, but at least she had a comrade to suffer along with her. Genevieve had warned her not to hope, not to plan, but Catherine knew if she opened her eyes to the gray stone of the asylum, she would plan a way to escape.

  Maybe she was even now wrapped up with Genevieve in the straw-strewn hold of the ship they'd traveled an ocean in, and today would be the day they would see sunshine and land at last. With her eyes still closed, she could not feel the rocking of the ship, and even when the ship was in the stillest part of the ocean they'd crossed, there was always that womb-like pulse of the boat carried by the buoyant sea.

  She knew she was not on a ship.

  The only one of these scenes she imagined waking up to with joy was the one she knew in her heart was impossible. Catherine would never wake up in her childhood bed again. The solitary bench she had slept on for almost two decades was somewhere a world away from wherever she now lay, and each breath she took, each inhale and exhale, distanced her further from its cocoon-like presence. She felt grief for that simple place cover her, the weight of the emotion as heavy as th
e combined weight of the blankets she did not cherish when she had them.

  A couple of the other scenarios seemed possible. She might be in Charenton, her wits having abandoned her because of the simple stress of surviving the brutal place. She resolved to wait until she heard a familiar voice to face whatever existed outside her immediate consciousness.

  "Wake up! I am worried that your sleep is a sign of some mauvaise maladie!" No sooner had she made her resolution than a hand grabbed her shoulder and shook her gently. The unfamiliar alto sounded gentle, but it was no voice she recognized. The words were French. If she had crossed the ocean, would she still hear her milk language?

  "Madame, wake up!" The voice's pitch grew deeper and more urgent, and the hand once again shook Catherine, the fingers digging sharply into her shoulder. To make both the sound and the pain of the tightening grip go away, she opened her eyes.

  For the first time in months, she found herself in a bed. From where she lay, if she turned her head she could tell the primitive frame was made of lengths of unmilled wood lashed together with stout rope. A mattress filled with rough vegetation of some kind rested on the frame, and under her head was a pillow almost as soft as the ones on her bed at Lac d'Or. The blanket that covered her up to her chin was a rough contrast to the cushion, and her fingers, coarsened over the months since she last had an attendant to smooth them with the expensive unguents available to her at Lac d'Or, caught on the hairy wool.

  When she turned her face up again, she saw a woman leaning in. Catherine noted the broad forehead and kind, blue eyes. The woman's hair might have been light, but it was difficult to tell if it was gray or blond because it was swept back into a starched cap. The gently lined face, wrinkled mostly with concern, marked the woman as older than she, but not ancient.

  Not my home, Catherine thought. Not my home, not Lac d'Or, not Charenton. Where am I?

  Still, she did not speak.

  "My husband found you on the riverbank," the woman said. "I am Emmalyn."