Revenant Eve

by Sherwood Smith

  “Would you?” Anne retorted. “You know my mother and her prejudices. Surely these English will not scold all the time the way she does.” Another flash of the wry grin. “My father once told me that the English worship God, honor rank, but worship and honor wealth. God put the child here. I can amend His work by seeing to it that the second and third conditions are met.”

  “By a falsehood? Do you think it will answer?” Mimba lowered her voice. “You think they will not see she’s a mulatto?”

  Anne grimaced. “Though I’ve turned my hand to violence, I’m still Quaker enough to hate these terms for their inferences.”

  “I hate them, too,” Mimba retorted. “But they are legal terms. If Beauveau catches up with us, he can claim the child.”

  Beauveau? Who’s that? I thought.

  “By what law? Has not French law been overthrown at least twice?” Then Anne went on in an even lower voice, and I guessed that Beauveau had to be a French-born landowner on Saint-Domingue. “Aurélie is lighter in skin than Mascarenhas was, and he claimed the pure blood of a hidalgo.” Her jaw jutted. “’Twas one motive for my taking his name. But I’ll admit my greatest pleasure is thinking of him looking up from Hell as I spend his treasure and claim his noble name, for what he did to Baptiste.”

  “I, too, hope he burns in eternity for his many murders, my brother among them,” Mimba said.

  Now I’ve got it, I thought. Beka had heard wrong: the mysterious runaway slave in Aurélie’s background wasn’t female; it was her father, a man named Baptiste. He and Anne had been a couple, but after his death Anne co-opted the name of his murderer, a highly born Spanish or Portuguese pirate named Mascarenhas.

  Uh oh, I thought, at the very same time Mimba crossed herself and added, “But I fear no good can come of this ruse of yours.”

  “No one has said aught so far, what with the troubles.” Anne patted the ribbon-tied paper. “And with so many churches burnt, more marriage lines than my presumptive ones are gone. How would anyone prove I am not a marquise? With noble rank, I can keep the Kittredge ships, and I can hold this plantation. I will sew this bank draft into oilcloth myself. It is probably the best gift I can give the child, a claim to exalted birth and thirty thousand reasons for the Kittredges not to inquire too closely into it.”

  Time blurred again, then came a flurry of activity: sewing, packing the trunk, pistol and etiquette practice, good-byes. Aurélie had to wear a gown all day now, which fretted her, for she was constantly reprimanded and reminded how easily muslin shows dirt. My anxiety to get moving, to fulfill my duty to the kid and get back to Dobrenica, fretted me.

  The day came when Anne, Mimba, and Aurélie climbed into the dinghy, and the entire population of the plantation gathered at the dock to see them off. The sail shook out and caught the breeze as we rocked across the azure water toward Kingston. There lay the frigate that would carry to London the governor’s request for reinforcements, along with individuals of sufficient rank, wealth, or importance to demand passage.

  Aurélie clung to her mother as they wound through the forest of ships bobbing and rolling to either side, busy with sailors cleaning, caulking, repairing, loading, and unloading. Or lounging about on mastheads, hallooing to passing boats.

  As the dinghy neared the formidable ship with its open gun ports, the coldly glinting iron cannon visible within, Aurélie glanced up the huge tumblehome, and tears slipped down her cheeks.

  Anne knelt down and took her daughter’s shoulders in her hands. “Remember, you go to England as the daughter of the Marquis Alfonso Eduardo de Pacheco y Mascarenhas,” she said fiercely. “You are Doña Aurélie de Mascarenhas, Lady Aurélie to the English.”

  Aurélie whimpered. “I thought Papa’s name was Baptiste.”

  A quick exchange of glances over her curly head, then Anne murmured, “That is how he was known in the family. To the world, your father was a Spanish don, that is a grandee, connected to the Portuguese family who were once the Dukes of Aveiro. He had a letter of marque from the Spanish government to cruise against the French.”

  Aurélie said in confusion, “But your Maman, that is, my grandmère, she’s French. Are the French the enemy, or not? Cousin Fiba said they ended slavery.”

  “It is all politics, and these days, if the news be half true, the French are their own worst enemy, child,” Anne said. “Yes, they did a good thing in declaring an end to slavery, but they are doing many other evil things in the name of liberty, and that’s why there’s fighting. Remember what I gave you.”

  Aurélie made a convulsive movement, clapping one arm against her middle. I heard a faint crackle of paper.

  “Hssht!” Mimba said. “Do not let anyone know it is there.”

  They had switched to French, as English voices made themselves heard in the towering masts overhead.

  “Wear that oilcloth next to your skin day and night,” Anne whispered. “And when you get to England, you give it straight into the hands of your Uncle Kittredge.” Anne straightened up as their dinghy drifted alongside the frigate.

  Mimba had loosened their sail. Anne left the rudder and caught the rope-chair that sailors threw down. Up went Aurélie’s small trunk of belongings, and then it was time for a last kiss and last tearful hug.

  Aurélie climbed into the chair, which was boomed up to the deck, and I drifted along behind her, thinking: Okay, England is definitely happening. England is that much closer to Dobrenica. I can do this.

  SEVEN

  THE FIRST VISION I EVER SAW was on a fourth grade field trip to the Mission San Juan Capistrano, when I gazed out the bus window at a girl my own age in Acjachemen dress looking out over the sea. Below her was a row of kiicha huts overshadowed by elderberry trees and lining a stream that tumbled down the rocks from a recent rain. Everything was green—a rarity in what was to become Southern California.

  I still wasn’t sure if she was a vision or a ghost. If she’d been a vision, that was a brief glimpse of her life. If she was a ghost, earth-bound after a sudden death, then she must have wandered away from the ruins of the mission cathedral after a quake had knocked it down, killing a lot of those gathered inside. Or maybe she had lived a long and happy life, like the second ghost I met: Queen Sofia of Dobrenica, who as a bride traveled to Vienna to make her oath of fealty to Maria Theresia of the Holy Roman Empire. It was there, while I was walking around the grounds of the imperial palace, that I saw her.

  The most eerie part of the business is, I know she saw me. She not only saw me, she grinned, and turned in a way that practically begged me to follow her, with the result that I met Alec, and, well, here I was, invisible guide to a kid I couldn’t talk to—a kid who was supposed to save Dobrenica.

  I have never believed in destiny. But now I wondered if I’d been set up the moment I saw that smile of ghostly Queen Sofia’s—maybe before then. If so, why hadn’t anyone given me better clues? Like, would it be too much to ask of some ghost to show up a few months ago to intone warningly, Beware! Read up on Dobreni history, especially the life of Aurélie de Mascarenhas, for you shall be called to great destiny!

  No. I still couldn’t get a grip on predestination. Free will was too important to me, and Nanny Hiasinte did say that the future was a fog. That had to mean it could change. But I didn’t want it to change, I wanted to get right back to the moment I’d left. Protecting the timeline was going to be my strategy.

  That meant thinking ahead on how to be a guide to a kid born two hundred years before me.

  There was no guiding at first.

  Aurélie was pretty much alone on the man-of-war, ignored by the adults, except for brief, brisk orders from the stout, middle-aged Mrs. Cobb, wife to a warrant officer. Her job aboard ship was to look out for the younger boys. Anne had paid her to add Aurélie to her charges.

  Mrs. Cobb’s style of looking out was to check Aurélie’s head each day for lice and to see to it that she appeared in the gun room for meals. “Mind you keep your distance from them powder mo
nkeys, duckie,” she said the first night. “A day out of port and they are always crawling. Bless me, I’ve never met with worse.”

  Otherwise, Aurélie was adjured to be a good girl and stay out of everyone’s way, and she would probably be invited to Sunday dinner on account of her being a marquis’s daughter. In preparation, on Saturday they would air out her Sunday gown.

  She was also given a cabin, that is, the tiny closet belonging to the third lieutenant. She had to share it with an older woman, mother to a parson’s wife. This woman remained utterly silent except when she wished Aurélie to get out of her way.

  The poor kid was soon bored, as no one let her on deck. Subsequently time elided into a confusion of sea and sky and towering sails overhead.

  I focused again when Aurélie’s emotions spiked into anxiety one morning. Sunday meant divisions, Mrs. Cobb explained. That meant the ship was scoured for inspection, then they stood in the hot sun on deck as the parson led the Sunday service. After that, the captain went on his tour of inspection.

  Aurélie’s emotions shifted from anxiety to intent when the inspection ended, and the captain gave the midshipmen permission for target practice under the guidance of the oldest of them, a master’s mate named Benford, who was around high school age. Aurélie dashed below then soon reappeared, holding her pistol and advancing on the midshipmen.

  The boys reacted as if they’d been goosed by cacti as she marched up to them, her muslin hem ruffle flapping around her ankles. She’d kicked off her shoes to get a better grip on the holystoned deck, and took her place in line.

  “You must go below,” Benford declared, his voice breaking, which caused a flush of embarrassment. The other boys snickered. “You might get injured.”

  “You make targets. I come to practice, me,” Aurélie said in her French-accented English. “I must make sure my aim is ver-ry good.”

  “Girls don’t shoot,” squeaked a brat who couldn’t have been more than ten. He was lost in a uniform that would have been loose on a boy five years older.

  When Aurélie held out her pistol—point properly down—the boys jumped back. “I do.”

  “Whose is that?”

  “It is my own.”

  “Why do you talk like a froggie?” the littlest one asked.

  “Quiet, Fletcher.” Benford cuffed the boy on the ear hard enough to send him staggering. “Have you ever shot a pistol, miss?”

  Fletcher, who was probably about ten, blinked back tears, but didn’t say anything, and Benford turned back to Aurélie.

  She said, “Naturellement—it is natural that I have shot my pistol. Why else am I here?”

  The boys considered this, then one said, “You ever shot at anybody?”

  “But yes. Not, what do you call it, a fortnight past. We were attacked by Ruiz the pirate, and I shot one in the knee. I hit another with my rapier.”

  “You fought a duel with a pirate.” Benford’s derision made the others laugh.

  Aurélie flushed. “I shot him! The other knocked my own rapier out of my fingers. But Benjy knifed his foot, and we ran away before he could pick up his cutlass and try to kill us.”

  Another brief silence ensued, as far above, the topmen exchanged incomprehensible comments, and the rising breeze toyed with everyone’s clothes and hair.

  The boys seemed to come to the mutual conclusion that the details in her telling, as well as the matter-of-fact tone, were convincing enough for trial.

  Benford said, “Let’s have a squint at your shooting, then.”

  Aurélie brought her pistol up, planted her feet, licked her finger to test the direction of the air, then sighted, all quick enough to make it plain that she was not a complete stranger to the heave of a deck.

  The target was a crudely painted man shape on a stained, weather-rotted piece of sailcloth lashed to a grating. A flash—a report—a puff of smoke instantly wafted away on the wind, and the boys looked at the target, already peppered with holes. But they knew whose shots had landed where.

  A new hole had appeared, well within the man shape, though to one side. The boys ran down to the target, and Benford stuck his finger in the new hole, as if Aurélie had somehow effected a cheat. But from the way he yanked back his finger, the burned edges were still smoldering from the hot iron ball.

  “You shot a pirate?” one of the boys asked her, his tone more cautious.

  “I told you,” she said. “Now I must reload my—”

  “I thought this was the quarterdeck of a man-of-war, not a drawing room.” The newcomer was the third lieutenant, roughly the same age as Benford. He and the latter eyed one another like a couple of bristling dogs, making it clear that the real conflict was between them.

  Aurélie said, “It is only that the gentlemen wish me to demonstrate my pistol.”

  “That one is the marquis’s daughter, sir,” one of the boys said in a significant whisper.

  “So I am given to understand,” the lieutenant said with heavy sarcasm. After all, it was Aurélie and the parson’s mother-in-law who had displaced him from his cabin. “Carry on, gentlemen,” the lieutenant said with an air of importance, and he waited.

  The others saluted, and he turned away—making it plain that he’d mostly spoken to get that salute from Benford, who as clearly hated being required to give it.

  Benford flashed a grim look Aurélie’s way, but she was already in retreat, having obviously been around boys long enough to know that when the top dog of any given hierarchy indulges in a spot of legally sanctioned bullying, as soon as he’s gone, the next dog down will look for someone else to hassle.

  Aurélie did not intend to be the recipient of Benford’s bad mood. She dashed down the companionway, dodging around the sailors carrying huge lengths of rolled up canvas, and almost smacked into the oldest of the lieutenants just coming up from the hatch. “I have been seeking you, your ladyship, to convey to you the captain’s compliments, and his invitation to dinner.”

  Aurélie looked frightened as she dropped a curtsey, the pistol hidden in her skirt, which was now dusted with gunpowder.

  “One of the marines will fetch you when it is time,” the man said, quite kindly. “You’ve only to look your best.”

  Mrs. Cobb was waiting for her when she reached the lower deck. Scolding in a constant undertone, much the way she scolded the boys when she supervised their once-weekly bathing on the upper deck, she took Aurélie in hand, exclaiming and blessing herself when she saw the pistol.

  She tried to make certain the child was clean from top to toe, forced to call loud directions through the flimsy canvas door because Aurélie would only bathe in private. Perforce I had to remain in the tiny cabin as Aurélie carefully poured hot water into the bowl, and scrubbed herself all over. She put on clean underthings, and carefully tucked the oilcloth-covered letter of credit into her clean chemise. Behind the oil-cloth, the necklace pressed against her skin, its outline completely hidden. Last came the figured muslin gown. She emerged fully dressed.

  “What a very fine print,” the parson’s mother-in-law commented.

  “Straight from Paris, that’s what the marquesa told me when she hired me. Paris to Saint-Domingue,” said Mrs. Cobb as she eyed Aurélie critically.

  “I am amazed it is not splashed with blood from their dreadful guillotine.”

  “Heh! The frogs are mad, everyone knows that, and as for that new government, Cobb says worse tales he’s never met with.”

  The gown was patted and twitched into place. Mrs. Cobb’s strong hands were respectfully gentle with the fine muslin, edged with green velvet ribbon at the high square neck, along the long sleeves, and along the top of the double ruffle that reached to the tops of Aurélie’s slippers.

  Last was a broad green velvet ribbon that had been carefully rolled so that the ends still showed a tendency to curl. It was tied high, with a large bow at the back where the V of the inset shoulders met.

  “She’s brown as a monkey,” the parson’s mother-in-law decl
ared dispassionately. “No amount of fine French clothing will disguise that.”

  “That will go off soon’s she’s back in England’s cold,” was the cheerful rejoinder, and to Aurélie, “Mind you apply cucumber water every night, and my grandmother always said that bleaching with buttermilk would keep the skin pale as silk.”

  Aurélie muttered in French, “I do not wish to be pale.”

  The mother-in-law said to Aurélie, “It is rude to speak in heathen tongues before your elders. I trust you were properly baptized, child.”

  Aurélie’s chin lifted. “I was baptized twice. Once by the priests at Saint-Domingue. And by my Nanny Hiasinte the obeah. That I remember, for it was when I turned ten, after we come to Kittredge Plantation.”

  The old woman hissed. “Hush that heathen talk.”

  Mrs. Cobb chuckled. “The dons and the frogs are all Popish, ma’am, they cannot help it. Heathens all! Bless me, that fine family she’s intended for will beat it out of her quick enough. There you go, lamb! Remember your curtsey for the captain, and let Amos, who is most like to stand at your chair, tie your napkin to keep your gown clean. And you are not to drink wine, even if they offer it. Half-wine at most, and you will do me credit.”

  When the marine appeared, imposing in his red coat with his belt clay-piped and buttons polished, Aurélie followed close behind him to the doors of the captain’s cabin, where the officers were gathered in full uniform, cocked hats under their arms. Off to the side stood the fat, cheerful parson, his wife, and his mother-in-law.

  At the sweet ting-ting! of the ship’s bells, the doors opened, and the guests entered the captain’s cabin, which stretched all across the back of the stern, with windows overlooking the ship’s wake. Aurélie was escorted to one side of the captain, the parson’s wife at his other side.

  Aurélie had been taught dainty manners. She quietly avoided the gravy-rich slab of meat put on her plate, confining herself to the potatoes, peas, and what turned out to be the last of the white bread.