Upon A Starlit Tide

1. Wrecked

1

Wrecked

Clos-Poulet, Bretagne

May 1758

She thought him dead at first.

A man, draped lifeless upon a wedge of broken hull, cheek pressed against the timber as tenderly as a lover’s as he rose gently up, gently down with the exhausted breath of the sea. The storm had raged all night, howling and hurling itself against the shore, rattling the windows so hard that it had taken all of Luce’s will not to fling them open and feel its cold breath on her face. Only the chintz drapes, her mother’s great pride, had stopped her. Papa had brought the fabric all the way from India, and there was no telling how Gratienne would have reacted had Luce allowed the weather to spoil them. And so, she had kept the window closed, watching the storm as it battered the gardens and orchard and pried at the roof of the dovecote as though it would rip it free and toss it, rolling and bouncing, down the sweep of rain-soaked fields and into the furious waves.

It was the kind of weather that stilled the world and sent folk hurrying indoors, that closed shutters and covered mirrors for fear of lightning strikes, that caused ships to fly before it into the harbour at Saint-Malo. One ship, at least, had not been fast enough.

Its remains dotted the grey water. Shards of decking, slabs of hull, tangles of rigging. Luce narrowed her eyes against the glare of the early morning sun, skirts held out of the weed and foam. She had seen the sea’s victims before, of course. Many times. Could not avoid it, with the storms that blew in from the northwest, tearing down the Manche, leaving ruined ships and their dead strewn across the beaches of Clos-Poulet like flowers after a wedding feast. Faded petals across the sand. This man’s face, however, lacked the telltale pallor of death. And did he cling to the timber? She had seen men who had lashed themselves to ships as they broke apart, only to wash ashore, drowned, their fingers open and empty. But no rope bound this man to his floating sanctuary.

Not dead, then.

A quick glance down the cove’s curved, rocky shore. There were folk from Saint-Coulomb about; she had seen them as she’d climbed down the steep path from the cliffs. Men in their low boats, and shawled women, heads bowed as, like Luce, they combed the beach for treasure in the storm’s wake. Brandy and waxed packets of silk; coins and tea and candles. The men, however, had pushed out into deeper water, sails cutting the grey horizon, while the women had rounded the rocky point separating the cove from the next beach, where, farther along the shore, the path to the village lay.

But for a scattering of foam and weed, the beach was empty.

Decided, Luce tossed her boots, stockings, and garters to the gold-grey sand and shrugged out of her heavy men’s overcoat. She wore it like a shell, that coat; a briny leather casing that hid the soft, female truth of her. Her long, dark hair had been tucked safely within its collar; it unraveled around her shoulders as she bent to unlace her woolen caraco, then unbuttoned her breeches, sliding them down her bare legs. A final glance along the beach and her battered black tricorn joined the motley mound of clothing upon the sand. Clad in her chemise and stays, Luce picked her way to the water’s edge.

One, two, three steps and she was shin deep. Four, five, six and the fine cotton of her petticoat was dragging at her thighs. Luce’s skin prickled. It was May, and the Manche had not lost its wintery bite. Seven, eight, nine and she was pushing off the sandy bottom with her toes, diving clean and strong into the first rush of sea and salt. She opened her arms and scooped them back, gliding toward the man.

A feeling of dread as she neared him. What if she was wrong? What if he was tangled, not clinging? Dead instead of living? Would he roll languidly to greet her, already bloating, eyes glazed and sightless?

Too late now. She had to know. A few strokes more and she was at his side: a man from the waist up, clinging to the surface while his legs fell into shadow. His eyes—to her relief—were closed, his skin pale against his dark hair, but when Luce touched his wrist she felt the fluttering of his heart. A tattered sail and rigging trailed about him. She grasped the rope and turned for shore, swimming hard, towing the cumbersome load behind her.

The tide was coming in. Papa always said that Saint-Malo’s tides were the most powerful in Europe and that, together with the city’s position, surrounded by the Manche on three sides with a happy proximity to the trade routes between Spain, Portugal, England, and the Netherlands; its treacherous necklace of reefs and islands that caused even the staunchest of navigators to falter; and the legendary, protective storm-stone forming its mighty walls and ballasting the hulls of its ships, was what gave it its enviable strength.

Luce let the water help her, let it push broken man and ship both toward land.

When the hull scraped against sand, she drew away the rigging holding him to the timber. He sank beneath the surface as though he were made of marble and not flesh. Panicked, Luce dived after him, wrapping her arms about him as the Manche dragged him hungrily down. How heavy he was! She opened her eyes—the familiar salty sting—and checked to see if the ropes that had saved him were now conspiring to drag him to his death. They were not. Yet still he sank, arms trailing slowly upward, dark hair wafting like weed. She kicked harder. Felt, through the water around her, a nameless prickling against her skin. Surprised, Luce stilled and heard, clearly, the rumble of distant thunder.

Storm-stone.

Sailors on stricken ships sometimes helped themselves to its storm-stone ballast, hoping the stones’ magic might save their hides. Luce plunged her hands into the pockets of the man’s breeches, scooping the fist-sized ballast stones free. They grumbled as they sank, tiny granite storm clouds heavy with magic. Lightened of his burden, the sailor lifted easily in Luce’s arms. She pulled him to the surface and on toward the shore, his head lolling against her shoulder, his fingertips trailing in her wake.

He was taller than she, and well-knit, but she managed to drag him clumsily onto the beach, her chemise twisting around her thighs, her feet sinking in the wet sand. His own feet—bare, perfect—were hardly clear of the water’s grip when she lowered him onto the beach and sank down beside him, gasping. The Manche hissed regretfully, stroking at the young man’s bare toes, the cuffs of his breeches.

Be still, Luce told it silently. You have had your fill of sailors today. You shall not have this one, too.

The sun slid above the storm clouds tattering the horizon, washing the water in weak spring sunshine. It drifted over the near-drowned man, catching at his face. He groaned a little and frowned, closed eyes scrunching tight as though he feared the day.

Luce could not blame him for that. His ship, his crew were gone, the former heaving and rocking itself into death in the deeps of the night, dragging the latter down with it. It seemed that only he had survived.

The strike of a ship’s bell drifted faintly from the clifftop above. Eight strikes; eight of the morning. Luce pushed herself to her knees.

He lay on his back, eyes closed, dark hair—as dark as Luce’s own—fanning across his brow. Long black lashes were startling against his skin, his eyelids the faint mauve of the palest mussel shell. Beads of water glimmered silver on his skin.

Luce shifted closer, heedless of the cold, her exposed skin, the open beach. Took in his generous lips, the stubble on his jaw, the column of his neck. His forearms, tanned to smoothness. The lean and clinging shape of him beneath his shirt. Luce swallowed, exhaustion forgotten. He was waterlogged, near death—and yet he was as beautiful as the dusk.

Her heart panged hard against her ribs as the young man’s eyes flickered open.

Dark eyes, like a moonless night. He blinked twice, rapidly. Frowned. His gaze settled on Luce’s face. The frown deepened, then smoothed away, replaced by something else. Fear? Wonder? And then, before Luce knew what he was about, he raised himself up on one elbow, reached out with his other hand, and cupped her cheek with his palm.

Strong he was, deceptively so, and Luce knew a flutter of anxiety as he drew her face toward his. Then he was kissing her, the rush and the shock of it, the taste of his mouth, saltwater and the stale, almost-death of him. There was life, too—warmth and wanting, and Luce found herself kissing him back, pushing her body against his, wrapping her cold, bare arms about his neck. She was soaking wet, shivering, water breaking jealously over her hips, yet nothing, nothing mattered but the two of them, his arms locked about her, her legs and hair twined about him.

No, she thought to the sea. No. You shall not have him.

Voices drifted from the path along the cliffs above. More of the villagers from Saint-Coulomb coming down to search for survivors or goods that had washed ashore, whichever they happened upon first.

At the sound, Luce lurched away from the seaman, her breath coming fast, his fingers snarling in her hair. Without her to hold him upright he flopped back onto the sand. His eyes drooped closed.

As the voices continued to carry to her from around the headland, Luce crabbed away, seizing up her clothes and concealing herself in the tangle of weedy granite beneath the cliffs.

‘There’s someone lying on the sand, there!’

Luce hunched further against the rocks. It would not do to be seen; whoever approached—a hasty glance revealed a handful of folk from Saint-Coulomb—would recognise her. As though to prove it, the little band of jetins who were wont to patrol the cove marched from between the rocks, brandishing sticks and swords, stones and mutinous expressions.

‘What’s afoot?’ the first of the fae demanded.

‘Something’s afoot...’ His comrade took in Luce, his wrinkled face suspicious. ‘’Tis the Lion’s youngest daughter.’

‘The Lion’s youngest daughter?’

‘Been swimming again, has she?’

They gathered around Luce, a tiny, disreputable crew dressed in pebble-greys and moss-greens, their wild beards woven through with feathers, shells, and bones.

‘Save your stones, lads.’

‘Off we go.’

It was as polite as the creatures were ever likely to get. Through a narrow sliver in the rocks, Luce watched as they strode across the sand to where the fisherfolk had reached the still-motionless man. She winced as the jetins, ever protective of their territory, began to pelt the rescuers—fishermen, mostly—with pebbles, then she took advantage of the ensuing commotion by scraping herself into her breeches, shrugging her coat straight on over her soaking chemise and stays, and tucking her caraco and boots under one arm. One last peek revealed two familiar forms among the fishermen—there was no mistaking Samuel with that height of his, and Bones, his cousin, almost as tall but lanky as a coatful of shins—as, dodging the korrigans’ stones and insults, they hefted the young man between them, carrying him toward the path cutting into the cliffs.

‘... take him to the Lion’s house,’ one of the men huffed.

‘Be well tended, there...’

‘Better than he’s used to, most like.’

Luce’s heart sank: they were taking the sailor to her father’s house.

It made sense, she supposed, pulling her tricorn low and tucking the ends of her wet hair deep into her collar. Nowhere was closer or more comfortable than Le Bleu Sauvage, while Jean-Baptiste Léon himself—shipowner, erstwhile corsair captain, and gentleman— would know precisely what to do with the rescued man.

What he would do if he discovered Luce’s part in said rescue was another matter entirely.

She hurried between the rocks, away from the fishermen and their catch. She knew this cove better than anyone; knew its paths and its secrets. What appeared to be a thick bank of pink sea thrift, for example, might in fact be a perfectly serviceable path, while a thick carpet of reddish maritime pine needles might hide a forest-trail that ended at the broad stone wall surrounding the Léon estate. It was damp and shady there, thick with waist-high billows of cow parsley, and Luce paused to catch her breath and put on her boots, wincing at the pain that was steadily worsening in her feet. She pressed on, ignoring the pain, determined not to imagine what would happen if her family discovered her absence.

Do not think of it, she told herself firmly. Just keep going.

Just keep going.

The forest soon gave way to bocage. Luce avoided the road—it was used regularly by the workers employed by her father to tend the estate’s crops and orchards, its vegetable plots and livestock, all of which would sustain the household when it returned to the walled city in the autumn—in favor of the tall hedgerows, where oak and chestnut trees lent their generous shadows. A robin tittered as Luce limped by— I see you, I see you.

Luce squared her shoulders and lengthened her strides— enhancing the illusion formed by the tricorn and overcoat—as she emerged from the hedgerow and onto the road. There was no one about. The malouinière’s main gate—a grand arch in the stone wall revealing a wide graveled court and a tantalizing glimpse of the house beyond—was deserted, the road before it meandering peacefully through the bocage to join the highroad that would eventually lead to Cancale in the east, and Saint-Malo in the west.

At any moment the fishermen—and the pair of smugglers in their midst—would appear behind her, dangling their catch between them as they approached the gate. Luce must be safe inside the walls when they did.

Keep going, keep going. Every step a fervent wish that she would make it home in time, that her feet, wailing in protest now, would not fail her.

At last, at last , a familiar stretch of wall came into view, its ordered stones broken by the barnacle-like presence of an old chapel.

Luce’s salvation, and her sin.

Laying half within and half without the somber expanse of wall, the tiny stone church—indeed, it was not as large as Maman’s sumptuous dressing room—had two entrances, one at either end. The first, an unassuming door that opened straight onto the road, had been used by long-ago villagers in the days before the newer, larger church had been erected in Saint-Coulomb. The second, which was broad and intricately carved, opened into the private domain of the Léon family, the gardens and pathways and fountains that seemed to be from another world, so different were they to the rolling countryside with its rough stone dwellings and wide Bretagne sky.

The second door was never locked, for indeed any member of the Léon household was free to pray in the chapel whenever they liked. But the first? It opened so rarely that everyone—from Luce’s father to the lowliest kitchen boy—had all but forgotten its existence.

Everyone, that is, but Luce.

By the time the fishermen reached the road, Luce was in the chapel, locking the outer door and brushing the sand and guilt from her overcoat. She undressed once more and bundled the men’s clothes together before hurrying to one of the chapel’s deep, high windows. A beautiful sculpture nestled before it: Saint Sophia and her three daughters, their faces vibrant in the glow of the coloured glass. Balancing on the edge of the nearest pew, Luce reached behind the ladies’ carved skirts— pardon me, mademoiselles — and retrieved a second, smaller bundle of clothing stashed there. Dropping it to the floor, she shoved the coat and breeches in its place, then tucked her tricorn in as well, the key to the outer chapel door—a copy made from one she had filched from the femmes de charge, Claudine, two Christmases ago—hidden in one of its triangular folds.

The second set of clothes was entirely different to the first: a soft cotton petticoat and a fine woolen skirt that matched the dark blue of Luce’s damp caraco. She dressed quickly before cracking the chapel’s second, opulently carved door, and then, when she was certain it was safe, slipped back into the confines of her life.

Lions of the sea. That’s what they called the Léons, one of the oldest and most distinguished of Saint-Malo’s ship-owning families. The family coat of arms, a golden lion against a background of Bretagne white and blue, testified to this. For generations they had ruled the seas, as merchants and sea captains, navigators and explorers. Luce’s father, his father, and his father before him had been shipowners and corsairs, amassing an impressive fortune. None of which, unfortunately, had been left to Jean-Baptiste. As the youngest son, he had received anything but the lion’s share. Even so, through cleverness, chance, and no small amount of bravery he had made his own wealth, including a splendid town house in Saint-Malo. It was the malouinière, Le Bleu Sauvage, however, that was his true pride.

Built by some long-ago member of the Fontaine-Roux family, the large and luxurious manor house sat upon a broad estate twelve miles from Saint-Malo—a distance great enough to offer respite from the crowded city in the summertime, yet close enough to be within riding distance should a pressing business matter require attention. Other shipping families had constructed their own malouinières over the decades, so that the countryside was dotted with stately granite homes, their fountains and formal gardens hidden behind high walls.

The scent of roses replaced the tang of salt in Luce’s nose as she hurried along the gravel pathway, past reflecting pools, garden beds bristling with lavender, and boxwood hedges trimmed with maritime precision. The ordered gardens soon gave way to a wide lawn surrounded by stone benches and chestnut trees. Twin lions carved in creamy stone guarded the steps leading to the house, which reared, as stately as one of her father’s ships, over the green lawn: two storeys of white-plastered granite from the Storm Islands, its stern facade lined with rows of tall windows with frames painted a fresh white, their edges lined with grey stonework. The roof was steeply pitched, the perfect shape of an upturned ship’s hull in austere, cloud-grey symmetry. Narrow chimneys rose above it like sails, defying the laws of balance. The house, like the walls surrounding the estate and Saint-Malo itself, was made from storm-stone. Luce felt its low, not-unpleasant rumble, the nameless prickling against her skin, as she tucked herself behind a pine tree and surveyed the house.

All was still. Within, the domestiques would be quietly beginning another day. Papa would be sipping coffee while his valet helped him dress, his thoughts already on the letters, account books, and fresh pastries waiting in his study. Luce’s mother and sisters would be abed, or lazily drinking their morning cups of chocolate; joining the morning slowly, reluctantly, as they always did. All of them blissfully unaware that the peace of the morning, as ordered as the watches her father insisted be rung on the old ship’s bell in the vestibule, was about to be shattered.

The house was framed on either end by smaller wings, built, like the main house, of storm-stone: the servants’ kitchen and quarters, and the enormous main kitchen where the family’s meals were prepared. Beyond it, built into the walls on each side of the gate through which the fishermen would at any moment arrive, lay the stables, the carriage house, and—closest to Luce—the laundry. It was there that she limped, skin prickling at the nearness of the storm-stone, the rose bushes growing beneath the laundry window catching accusingly at her skirts as she slipped inside.

Was that voices she could hear on the path beyond the walls? The scrape of rough boots, the low grunt of men heaving and hoing a weight between them?

Hurry. Hurry.

The stone room was dim and cool, clinging still to the stormy dark of the night before. Luce crossed the uneven floor and hastily perused the wooden rack fixed to the ceiling, thick with the Léon family’s freshly washed linens. Chemises and shirts, laces and ribbons, stockings and petticoats. And there— thank you — several cotton caps. She chose the plainest—one of Charlotte’s— and rolled her damp hair quickly at the back of her head, tucking the cap over it and tying the white silk ribbons. All the while it was not her hands but the young sailor’s she felt in her hair. His hands, his arms, his lips...

The ship’s bell tolled once—one bell, eight thirty. A shout rose from the yard. Through the laundry’s grimy little windows Luce glimpsed the fishermen crossing the smooth gravel of the yard, the sailor dangling between.

Luce slipped out of the laundry, listening as the house was shaken rudely from its rest. The rapid tread of domestiques in the vestibule, the crunch of shoes on the gravel of the yard, the creak as the enormous front doors were thrown open. A confusion of voices: fishermen and laquais, maidservants and stablehands, questions and answers moving between like goods at a busy market. Luce wandered toward them, doing her best to appear calm and slightly curious. Not a moment too soon: Jean-Baptiste Léon strode from the main doors, splendid in his favorite morning coat. Luce’s mother and two sisters poured out of the house behind him, gloriously en dishabille in morning robes frothing with ruffles and ribbons. They clustered around the fishermen, peppering them with questions and exclaiming over the ailing man, until Jean-Baptiste ordered the men to bring their cargo inside. He met Luce’s eyes briefly before he led them in, sparing her one of his smiles; distracted, kindly. Gratienne, Veronique, and Charlotte were on his heels, as well as the laquais and the maids. The stablehands returned reluctantly to their duties.

The courtyard was quiet once more.

Only then did Luce limp to the well, tucked away beside the laundry, and draw a bucket of fresh water. When she was sure the rose garden would block her from the sight of anyone looking out of the house, she pressed her back to the stone wall and sank gratefully down, stretching her long legs out before her.

Finally, finally, she could finally turn her attention to her feet. To the pain that, even now, felt as if a hundred newly sharpened knives had been slicing into her skin, her flesh, her very bones.