Authors: Sherwood Smith
A
URÉLIE SCARCELY PICKED
at the breakfast of weak tea and biscuits they were served. When they disembarked soon after, she walked with her head down. She didn’t see the smirking, angry anticipation in her aunt’s face, or her uncle’s remote expression, the slight betrayal of shame in the tightness of his shoulders. She didn’t see the misery in James’s face, or Diana’s impotent, white-lipped rage. Only Cassandra looked around with interest, unaware.
Aurélie didn’t see any of this, but I did.
Soon they were wedged in the carriage together, Cassandra going on about how she hadn’t slept a wink for the hideous rolling of the ship, and the terrible excuse for a bed. Aurélie kept her attention on the murky glass as they rolled through the streets of what had been a beautiful town, and would be again, when the ravages of the Revolution were repaired.
When they reached the inn, Kittredge spoke in painstaking French, ordering the disposition of baggage to rooms. Then he gestured to James, Cassandra, and Diana, saying, “We will take a tour of the town, and look at the chateau on the hill, while they settle our things.”
Diana whispered to Aurélie, “Meet James at the well at the square we just passed!” She ran after the other two.
“Step inside,” Philomena said to Aurélie, and whisked herself into the inn before the spatters of rain could mar her hat.
Aurélie followed, her hands clenched on her skirts as she picked her way to the steps. The innkeeper pointed them to a suite of rooms at the top of the stairs, where male servants were unloading the trunks as a pair of girls lit lamps and the fire in the fireplace.
Aunt Kittredge spoke in a penetrating voice, her French so peculiar that the inn servants just stared at her.
So Aurélie said, “She would like to be alone, and for you to return in a little while.”
Faces cleared, and the servants filed out, leaving their work half done. The incident, small as it was, seemed to infuriate Mrs. Kittredge more—or maybe, somewhere deep inside, she knew she was not wholly in the right and needed anger to push her where she wanted to go.
Anyway, the moment the door shut, she let fly.
Poor Aurélie stood there under the diatribe, and her very lack of horror and surprise seemed to enrage her aunt further.
“And so you may take what you can carry, for we will permit you that much, and we never want to see your base-born, half-breed face again. If you dare, you will be driven from the door.”
Aurélie stood there a moment longer, as if waiting, until her aunt snapped shrilly, “Did you hear me?”
“I am waiting to hear in what form my dowry is to be furnished to me,” Aurélie said with dignity.
Mrs. Kittredge gave a contemptuous laugh. “You mean your pirate ransom? For there is no dowry, not for a blackamoor’s by-blow. That money is
ours
, a small portion of what is due us for housing and feeding the likes of you. And for this trespass upon our trust. Right now there is a revolution going on in those islands, the savages rising against their masters. Your mother may be dead, for aught we know. She ceased writing these three years—”
“Because you destroyed my letters,” Aurélie flashed.
Mrs. Kittredge flushed, then lifted her chin. “That is as may be. But this is for certain: If your mother ever dares to show her face in England, she will be reported as the pirate’s whore that she is.”
“So you are robbing me of my dowry? What am I to live on?”
“I lay legitimate claim to what was already ill-gotten gains,” was the bitter answer. “No court in England would deny me. As for what you do next, everyone always finds their level. I feel certain, after the way you unbecomingly flaunted yourself all over our neighborhood, you will discover yours on the streets. Now go.”
Aurélie walked blindly to the room where the girls were to stay—and found Cassandra’s and Diana’s trunks before the two beds. Her own had been set against the wall on either side of an old, spotted looking glass.
She knelt and flung it open. “Duppy Kim?” she whispered.
“I’m here,” I said.
She swayed with relief, and with her eyes tightly closed and tears leaking from them, she whispered, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t think.”
The creak of floorboards outside the room caused her to recoil. She dug through her trunk until she found her little trinket box. From it she pulled her few nice pieces, like the gold cross she’d been given for her thirteenth birthday. “At least you’re with me still,” she said, then hurried to Cassandra’s trunk. Her expression tightened as she sifted deftly through until she found Cassandra’s little mirror.
She slipped this into the pocket of her traveling pelisse and then returned to her own trunk. Here she dug feverishly through her clothes, as if seeking a gown and accoutrements small enough to roll up. Her hands shook, and she had to give up.
She tied her bonnet on more firmly, opened the door, and sure enough, there was Philomena standing in the doorway of the room opposite. Waiting for tears? Begging? Recriminations? To make certain Aurélie left only with her clothes?
Aurélie walked past her without so much as a glance.
I admired her guts, but cascading in my mind were the ramifications of an eighteen-year-old girl being totally alone and friendless in the tumbled country of France at a time when the government had been changing every year or two for over a decade.
My first taste of Napoleonic history had come from Annemarie Selinko’s
Désirée,
when I was twelve. I’d found it so glamorous and romantic—
this story of a shopkeeper’s daughter who was engaged to Napoleon, married a general, and found herself Queen of Sweden—that I’d later traced the history of all these people in college. It turned out that Selinko had glossed a lot, but the result was, I had a reasonably good memory of the main players and key events of this period.
For example, I was pretty certain that Napoleon had just (or was about to) restore the authority of the Catholic Church, but I had no idea if that restoration would have propagated out this far. So taking sanctuary in a church or convent might not, in fact, be a safe refuge. He’d reorganized France into the prefecture in 1800, but I don’t remember reading that it was all that reliable in its early days.
And here I was, restored to guardianship again and no power to actually do anything.
But at least we’re on the right subcontinent
, I thought.
We’ve just got to get her east. Somehow.
Aurélie headed into the wind and marched down the street. She crossed a muddy square with tough grass coming up between ruined flagstones, and stopped by a well, her cloak pulled around her.
She pulled the mirror from her pocket, worked her glove off, then touched the glass. I put my ‘hand’ over hers, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “You must see that you were very wrong, that James and Diana are loyal and true.”
“I’d be glad to be wrong,” I said to comfort her, and added, “If you want to elope, you needn’t wait weeks for banns to be posted or to find an English divine.” The fact that Diana alone had done all the communicating worried me, but I didn’t tell her. “All you have to do is go to the prefecture for a civil ceremony. It should be simple enough.”
Her worried expression eased slightly. “Thank you, Duppy Kim. This is good advice.”
All right, I was out of the doghouse. I had to make sure I didn’t lose her again.
A man rode by, giving her a long glance. She looked at the ground, and hurriedly tucked the mirror away.
Rain began to spatter but, at least, never turned into a downpour. She
stood there. And stood there. I don’t know how long it was, but the light was fading when she spied a furtive figure bent into the rising breeze.
This figure scurried along the closing shop fronts then darted to her, revealing mud-splashed knit stockings and caked walking shoes. Once again, it was Diana.
And it was time for the final blow.
“I hope someday you can forgive James,” Diana said quickly. “He feels wretched. I know he does. But he can’t…” She shook her head, her bonnet turned the other way. Then she sniffed and gulped.
“I see,” Aurélie said. “It’s the dowry, isn’t it?”
“And they will not buy his commission if he—well. They think I’m bathing for supper. I have to get back. Listen, Aurélie, James and I settled it between us. You are to have these things. We’re agreed it might be safer if you go about as a boy than as a girl.” She thrust the bundle into Aurélie’s arms, leaned up to kiss her, and said, “I love you always. You are a true sister. I will pray for you every night. And I will also ask God to give Mama a calenture for cruelty.” Then she darted away, muffling a sob.
Aurélie watched her until she was out of sight up the twisted lane, and she wept, too. When she was done, she gave a shuddering sigh, and pulled out the mirror again, peering at it in the dimming light. “Duppy Kim, is this why you turned against James?” She frowned. “Did you know this was to be?”
“I did not,” I said, feeling my way. I couldn’t lose her again! “Remember the obeah ceremony, when you were twelve, and Nanny Hiasinte bound me to you?”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, then nodded. “I’ve not forgotten.”
“Do you remember her saying that the future was a fog to her?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“She said it to me. And it’s true. Your future is a fog to me, too. I don’t see your path, except in very small glimpses. But in those glimpses, I never saw James.”
She nodded slowly. “I remember Nanny Hiasinte saying many times that the
lwa
would show different futures, and that we choose where to go when we come to crossroads.”
Relief flooded through me.
“You didn’t see James on my path. You only said he was wrong for me,” she said with quiet dignity. I could sense that resentment remained.
“I apologize,” I said. “I went about it all wrong.”
“And I didn’t afford you the opportunity to explain it better,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “Forgive me, Duppy Kim?”
“I’m just glad you’re talking to me again. I can’t help you if we don’t talk.”
“Do you see my path now?”
“No,” I had to admit, and braced for her to retort,
Then what use are you?
I probably would have, but she gave a slow sigh.
“It helps to think of my peril as a crossroads. It also helps that you are with me in spirit again.”
“I was with you all along,” I said. “I just couldn’t talk to you.”
She nodded again. “That was my error. But I must go onward if I cannot go back. I’ll seek an inn that isn’t so fine. No. First I’d better become René, as Diana suggested. We’ve always been warned about the dangers of girls alone, and I can see from the stares I’ve received that it is so.” She peered around the store fronts in the darkening gloom. Most were shuttered for the night.
She slipped into the narrow space between two buildings, grimacing, then breathing through her mouth. From the looks of things I was really glad my nose didn’t work, as the glories of plumbing had not quite reached this area. The walls and ground in that alley had been used as an open-air restroom.
She picked her way carefully, found an old, broken cart, and climbed onto that. Then she unwrapped the bundle that Diana had given her and disclosed James’s second-best beaver, a shirt, waistcoat, breeches, stockings, and James’s dancing shoes. When she unfolded the shirt, she found two unexpected treasures, her pistol and James’s coin purse. Aurélie checked the pistol. It was unloaded, so she laid it gently aside.
Then, with many desperate glances around, she wrestled out of her clothes and into James’s. The pants were nankeen breeches, rather than buckskin, and though on James they buttoned just below his knees, on
her, they hung to just below her calves. His long stockings went under, thoroughly hiding her slender, feminine ankles and the double-looped necklace with its glittering stones.
The trinkets went into the purse with the coins. She tucked the purse into a waistcoat pocket, and into the other pocket, where guys usually tucked their timepiece, went the little mirror. The pistol got stuffed inside her waistcoat. She wrapped the neck cloth around her throat, pulling it well up under her chin, tied it in a plain knot, and tucked the ends into the waistcoat, fussing over it to hide her slight figure, which was already well hidden by the voluminous shirt and the thick waistcoat.
Diana had even included James’s black hair tie. Aurélie pulled out her hairpins and cast them into the muck, then clawed her hair back and clubbed it with the tie. What emerged was a handsome boy’s face. She didn’t look all that much older than she had at twelve.
She rolled up her clothes and shoes, and set them on the cart. “I hope they will be found by someone in need,” she said softly into the mirror. “I am ready, am I not?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Try the hat on.”
It was too large—it slid to her nose.
“The clothes will pass, I believe,” I said. “In France, mobs still hang persons who look too aristocratic. James’s clothes are so large that they look shabby, but that hat, even though it also is too large, is too clean, too obviously the hat of an English gentleman. I think you should knock it against the cart. Dent it. Get it well smeared with dust.”
She whacked the beaver against the grubby rail of the cart, rubbed it around, then clapped it on her head. “Is that sufficient?” she asked the mirror.
“That’s better,” I said, and she tucked the mirror back into her waistcoat.
Then she climbed carefully to the ground, for the pumps threatened to fall off her feet. She cast a last, longing look at her own shoes. But she couldn’t wear the pointy-toed female walking slippers. So she reopened her bundle, pulled out her stockings, wadded each up, and thrust them into the toes of James’s shoes. The way she walked reminded me of a kid
with her first pair of swim flippers as she proceeded carefully into the square.
The shine on the shoes was soon obscured by muck.
She headed toward noise and lights of the town center, and its rows of taverns with people coming and going. All around were mostly French voices, with a smattering of English and Dutch. Everyone used the informal
tu
with one another, instead of the polite, formal
vous
for ‘you.’ This, Miss Oliver had told them in hushed, disapproving tones, was a result of the Revolution. It was strange to actually hear it in practice, so strong was my habit and training. Aurélie proceeded slowly, watching everything. Rain spattered now and then, ruining the clean look of her clothes.