Upon A Starlit Tide

15. Darkness

15

Darkness

Strange dreams haunted Luce that night. She was on a ship—the Lucinde —but instead of being fresh and new, its beautiful timbers were black with rot. It was sinking in a terrible storm, and she could see someone huddled at the wave-battered prow.

It was Samuel.

She struggled to get to him, pushing across the broken foredeck, wading through the seawater rushing over the side—but the ship was breaking apart. She fell into the water, kicking, fighting against the waves. At last she reached the bow. Samuel was struggling to hold on as the waves surged over him, threatening to drag him into the furious water below. Luce lunged across the deck and caught his hand, pulling him to safety. They clung to each other as the ship wallowed and wailed, moaning in its death-throes. At last it broke apart, pieces of deck spearing the stormy sky before sinking beneath the surface.

Samuel was pulled roughly away, sucked down into the swirling depths. Luce dived after him, again and again. Each time she came up empty-handed, her panic rising, her terror, too. At last she saw him, draped lifeless over a slab of wreckage, face pale, eyes closed.

‘Samuel!’ She swam for him, as hard and fast as she could. When she reached him, however, he was gone.

Morgan was in his place.

Luce lurched away, panicked, pawing the churning water. ‘Samuel!’

‘Don’t bother,’ Morgan said softly. His eyes were open, his beautiful face serene. ‘I told you I would find the one who stole from me, didn’t I?’

Something gripped Luce’s ankles in the dark water below. She lashed out, kicking, but it was no use. Water flooded her mouth, her nose, as she was pulled down.

‘Do not fear the darkness,’ Morgan crooned. ‘It will show you the way.’

The last thing she saw before she was yanked beneath the surface was Morgan’s smile.

Luce jolted awake, chest heaving with tattered, drowning breaths. Moonlight fell across the bed, cutting across her waist, her legs. The ship’s bell never rang the night watches—there was, after all, only so much shipboard routine a household could be expected to endure— so there was no way of knowing the hour. The malouinière was utterly silent, no hint of movement from above or below.

‘Just a dream,’ she whispered, flopping back on the pillows. ‘Just a dream.’

Sleep, however, eluded her. She could not unsee Samuel’s face, the horror of watching him slip beneath the waves. Morgan’s proposal, too, weighed heavy on her mind. He was offering her a life aboard the Lucinde. The horizon. Freedom. It was everything she had ever wanted, laid neatly before her like one of her father’s maps.

Just waiting for her to reach out and take it.

She rolled over in her bed, sighed. Of course, she would be an utter fool not to accept him. Morgan was all that a young lady could wish for. Handsome. Charming. Ambitious. And there was no denying the attraction that had bloomed between them since that morning on the beach. Indeed, she could not deny that a part of her had longed ceaselessly for Morgan to kiss her so again.

Sleep, she told herself firmly. Sleep. The minutes passed, and the night settled further into its shroud, yet there was no stilling the dark spiraling of her thoughts. The sense of unease, of foreboding, her dream had awakened was gone. Instead, her night-mind, curious now, latched onto the memory of Gabriel’s lesson that day, and the patch of emptiness in the salon’s stone walls. Doubtless the tutor had been right, and the hole was nothing more than an oddity of the house. Whoever built it could have run low on storm-stone and decided to miss a section. Or, they could have simply stolen it. Such theft was not uncommon.

‘Damn my soul.’ Curiosity had chased sleep away entirely. It nudged at her, a hungry cat, forcing her out of bed. It purred happily as Luce carried it down the looming stairs and through the silent vestibule, the ship’s bell glinting in the glow of her candle. Twitched its ears and flicked its tail as she crept through the grand salon and into the adjoining room, where the harpsichord crouched in the shadows beside a wall that should have tingled on her skin, but did not.

Luce set the candle on the side table, careful to keep the flame from touching the fresh flowers arranged in a brilliantly glazed porcelain vase, and stepped up to the wall.

Moonlight cast its beams across the carpet, lapping at her toes. She closed her eyes, listening. There was no sound but her breathing, and the shallow exhalations of the sleeping Manche.

She ran her hands over the wall, feeling the edge of the silence. It aligned, she realised, with the largest of the room’s paintings: a sea scene, her father’s three favorites—the Fleur de Mer , the Lionne , and the Thétis— plowing with stately magnificence through turbulent waters. Running her fingers around the painting’s gilded frame, her fingernails caught on something hard. Taking up the candle and peering behind the frame, she discerned a small, iron latch.

She pressed it.

There was a sharp click , and the painting, the wall itself, shuddered. Luce pushed tentatively against the paneling, and the painting, the entire wall, swung away from her, as though on an enormous hinge. Within, a set of impossibly narrow stone stairs curled into the inky blackness above.

A hidden door.

A hidden door, and secret stairs.

Luce knew a flicker of fear. They were dark, those stairs. Darker than the night, or the deepest secrets of the sea.

Do not fear the darkness. It will show you the way.

Morgan had spoken the words to her just now, in her dream. But surely Luce had heard them before? She clutched at the memory, caught it: the groac’h, pushing the little witch-boat out into the star-stained waters of the Manche.

As though it, too, remembered the tide-woman’s words, the Manche—which had been slumbering beyond the city walls— awoke. Luce heard the slap of its breath, felt it wait for her to take up the candle and climb.

And so, she did.

The stairs were even narrower than they appeared, steep and rough. Her feet protested sleepily as she moved higher and higher into the twisting dark, her nightgown flowing behind her, the candle lighting her way. It was grimly cold, the stone untouched by sunlight or the warmth of a chimney for who knew how many years. The walls squeezed around her, tighter and tighter.

At last she came to another door, small and plain. She reached for the handle, twisted.

An ominous, ancient-sounding creak, and candlelight spilled, a circle of gold, onto a floor of bare timber. Raising the flame, Luce saw a tiny chamber, perhaps half the size of her own. She paused, confused. Where was she? She had not known such a room existed. Indeed, she was certain no one in her family knew. Her father had purchased the town house—all sixty rooms and four and a half storeys of it—from the Rivières almost two decades ago; had this chamber lain forgotten since then?

She stepped farther into the little room, holding the candle high. It was not unlike the storerooms far beneath the house: dusty floorboards as wide as her foot was long, and walls of rough stone. Iron sconces dripped with the hardened wax of long-ago candles. But for an old sea chest shoved against one wall, the room was empty.

A shiver of unease in the darkness. How many secrets did the town house keep?

Her gaze came to rest upon the sea chest. It seemed no different to any other—oaken, squat and sturdy, with thick iron strapwork and a heavily embellished lock plate. Someone, long ago, had left it here. But why? She crouched before it, setting the candle on the floor.

The elaborate lock was a ruse, designed to fool a would-be thief. The real lock, Luce knew, would lay hidden in the intricate ironwork laid along the chest’s rounded lid. She ran her fingers over it, flinching as she felt the unmistakable shape of a key.

It couldn’t hurt to look, could it? Whoever owned the chest— some long-dead Rivière, no doubt—was nothing more than dust.

Luce turned the key.

There was a rusty clunk as the complicated lock sprang into action after so long without use, and then it opened with a satisfying click . Breath held in anticipation, Luce cracked opened the lid.

The chest was empty. Utterly, disappointingly, empty. Apart from a decorative silver back plate depicting fae creatures that were half horse and half fish, there was nothing of interest in its woody depths.

Unless...

Luce seized the candle, angled it to better examine the smooth timber of the chest’s bottom. And then she saw it—a small wooden box, unadorned and unassuming, affixed in one corner.

The real treasure, her father always said, is not always the most obvious .

Excitement thrilling through her, Luce opened the box.

Inside lay a tightly coiled ball of ocean. No, she realised, reaching down to pull it free. Not ocean, but silk.

Sea-silk.

It was blue as the ocean on a summer day, yet green and silver, too. Subtle hints of gold and rose shimmered in the candlelight. Luce got to her feet, and it unfurled like water against her: as long as her body and half as wide, luminous as the moon. Enchanted, she pressed the silk to her cheek, meaning to breathe in its scent and feel its softness. No sooner had it touched her skin, however, than a strange shiver passed over her. She could have sworn she heard the sound of distant thunder. Beyond the city walls, the Manche broke its watchful silence and exhaled, a breath of wondrous cold in her soul.

Luce knew, down to her bones, that there would no returning the sea-silk to the chest. To return it, so rare and beautiful, to the cold and the dark seemed an act too cruel to contemplate. Instead, Luce closed the empty chest and turned the key, tucked the silk into her nightgown, and crept back down the winding stair. She closed the secret door behind her and wended her way through the darkened house, not stopping till she reached her own chamber.

Secrets. Secrets in the dim.

The family always rose earlier than was usual on the morning of the Blessing of the Sea, taking their morning cup of chocolate together before walking the narrow streets to the cathedral. An air of excitement hung over the city ahead of the feasting and dancing that would follow the religious formalities. By nightfall, bonfires would light up the quays and the beaches, an ancient homage to the Fae the priests had never quite managed to stamp out.

Luce walked with Charlotte, noting the careful distance her sister kept from Gabriel Daumard, and the dutiful way the tutor walked alongside her father, listening carefully as Jean-Baptiste explained the origins of the Blessing.

Charlotte, of course, was not the only one keeping secrets. Luce had lain awake for what had seemed like hours after returning from the hidden chamber, wondering if she should tell her father of her discovery. After all, the town house—and everything it contained—belonged to him. And yet, the silk was so rare, so precious, that she could not help but fear that he would be compelled to take it from her. To sell it, perhaps—she had no doubt of its value—or, even worse, display it among his curiosities, within, and yet wholly without of, Luce’s reach. In the end, she had decided to keep the silk a secret, tucking it within her chemise that morning to prevent Nanette finding it when she tidied Luce’s bedchamber. For reasons she could not explain, she felt compelled to keep it near.

‘The Church is the problem,’ her father was saying to Gabriel. ‘It is crushing the Old Ways, strangling the belief in the Fae. We should all dance drunkenly around fires more often, as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it good fun, but it’s excellent for business.’

‘And does everyone take part in these celebrations?’ Gabriel inquired.

‘What?’ Jean-Baptiste said. ‘God, no, Daumard. The Blessing is no place for ladies when the sun goes down.’

Not everyone was welcome around the fires. While Luce and her mother and sisters—and the rest of the well-bred ladies of Saint-Malo—would be welcome at the markets and festivities for the afternoon, in the evening they would all be expected to make their graceful apologies and ‘leave the men to it.’

Luce smiled secretly. Unbeknownst to her family, she had spent the last two Blessings in the thick of the celebrations with Samuel and Bones, hidden by her breeches and tricorn, coatcollar pulled up high around her face. Indeed, it was only Samuel’s boorish behavior of late that was keeping her from doing the same tonight. She had seen neither hide nor hair of him—or Bones—since their argument on the beach after Morgan’s visit, and doubted that would change any time soon.

They soon reached Saint-Vincent’s. The stained-glass windows, with their tones of green and blue, threw ripples of light down upon the entering congregation. It looked, Luce had always thought, as though the cathedral’s great stone pillars and soaring arches were part of some wondrous, underwater city.

The other ship-owning families were there, sitting in their accustomed pews. The Fontaine-Roux, the Béliveaus, and the Desailles. The Landais, the Rivières, and the Gaultiers. The de Chatelaines entered last. As the mass began, Morgan slid his gaze across the aisle to Luce. A hint of that wolfish smile.

Luce wondered how it would feel to stand before the altar with him, before her parents and the other Malouin families, and say her wedding vows. Would they celebrate with a wedding feast, or simply set sail in the Lucinde ? Either way, it would be a charmed life. She would want for nothing, need for nothing.

Unbidden, an image of Samuel appeared in her mind, the wide blue sea behind him, water streaming from his shoulders as he pulled himself onto the Dove.

She looked away.

When the mass was over and the congregation milled about in the square, waiting for the procession to begin, Charlotte and Veronique dragged Monsieur Daumard toward the cathedral’s bell tower. Two of the laquais followed obediently to chaperone, their shoulders slumping at the thought of facing the cathedral’s notorious, winding stairs. Luce, watching them go, fought down a pang of envy. As children, her sisters had climbed the tower often. Each time, Luce had remained in the nave, pretending she did not care about the wondrous view Veronique and Charlotte would soon be enjoying at the top of the tallest building in Saint-Malo. Nowhere else could one see so much: the harbour, the Rance, all four of the forts, and, beyond them, the wide blue sweep of the Manche. On such days, Luce’s heart had near burst with longing. She never wished to be rid of her aching, ill-made feet so much as when she was trapped in the nave, and her sisters were climbing those stairs without her.

Thankfully, the bishop and his priests were soon ready to lead the congregation down to the quay. Charlotte, Veronique, and Monsieur Daumard, flushed and out of breath, returned just as the family joined the procession flooding the cobbled streets. Beyond Our Lady’s Gate, the tide was in, and the harbour was full and blue. The quay was lined with frigates, luggers, ship’s boats, and everything between, masts festooned with colours, splendid in the sun.

Crowds flocked to the waterline as the bishop threw spring flowers onto the water and blessed each of the ships. Afterward, the family walked along the quay, where stallholders hawked oysters and pancakes, cider and wine. Second-hand clothing flapped in the breeze beside stalls selling fine Bretagne lace, sea chests, soap, and pastries.

Charlotte came to Luce’s side. ‘I bought you a madeleine,’ she said, slipping the biscuit into Luce’s gloved hand. Beneath the elegant curves of Charlotte’s bergère hat, her face was troubled.

‘I also want to say that I’m sorry, Luce,’ she said quietly. ‘I know that I have not been kind to you, of late. That I have been prickly, and jealous. You are Papa’s favorite, and Vee is Maman’s, but they have always loved me too. Very much.’ Charlotte swallowed, dipped her head, and Luce wondered if her sister was about to cry.

‘Is everything well, Cee?’ It was not like her sister to behave so. Charlotte was rather prickly and jealous, and it was these sentiments that seemed easiest for her to express. But she was capable of deep kindness and affection, too, which, when all was said and done, made the rare moments when she revealed them to be all the more precious.

‘Of course.’ Charlotte raised her head, smiled. ‘Everything is wonderful. I just—I just wanted you to know.’

‘Very well,’ Luce said, bewildered, but grateful all the same. ‘I love you too, Cee. I always have. Even when you are prickly and jealous.’

They walked arm in arm through the stalls, pausing now and then to watch the wrestling competitions and dancing, the games and musicians. A troupe of actors performed a dramatic play about Keris, the drowned city. Luce’s mind turned at once to the painting of the same scene in the de Chatelaine’s cabinet of curiosities, and, of course, to Morgan’s proposal. She wondered if she should confide in her sister. Tell her everything, from the wreck of the Dauphin to the launch of the Lucinde. At that moment, however, the audience gave a collective screech as a wall of ‘ocean’ (shredded fabric in varying shades of grimy blue) crashed over the theatrically painted ‘walls’ of Keris. The actors playing Gradlon, Ahez, and their horse leapt into action. Breaths were held and encouragement shouted as the trio raced for the safety of the coast, and there were wails of dismay when Gradlon pushed his daughter into the sea to save himself.

‘Do you think Papa would have done the same, had that been one of us?’ Charlotte murmured, when the show was over.

Luce squeezed her hand. ‘Of course not.’

In the early evening the Léons, along with the Gaultiers, Fontaine-Roux, and the Béliveaus, returned to the town house on Rue Saint-Philippe for supper. Afterward, the women of the families would spend the evening together enjoying coffee and petit fours while the men returned to the festivities.

Over supper, the men discussed the possibility of England attacking Saint-Malo. Rumours were swirling up and down the coast—the English king was planning to retaliate for the damage the Malouin corsairs were doing to his shipping and trade. The Marquis de la Chatre, charged with the command of the city, had ordered extra troops to be stationed at the forts, while Monsieur Mazin, Chief Engineer, was ensuring the strength of its defenses.

‘They will not come here,’ Monsieur le Fer sniffed. ‘They wouldn’t dare. An English fleet would break itself against our walls, as they have before.’

‘They will move against Brest, not Saint-Malo,’ agreed Monsieur Fontaine-Roux. ‘If they even bother to drag their cowardly tails across the Manche.’

Luce excused herself at the earliest opportunity. To her surprise, Charlotte rose at the same time, claiming a headache.

‘Are you sure you’re quite well?’ Luce asked her sister, as they climbed the stairs to the first floor. It was not like Charlotte to retire early.

‘Of course. It is just a headache.’ Charlotte reached her door, hesitated. ‘Good night, Luce.’

‘Good night, Cee.’

Some time later, as Luce lay in bed reading, she heard the softest of footsteps on the landing. Curious, she rose and cracked the door.

Charlotte was creeping down the stairs, wearing her plainest dress and traveling cloak, its hood drawn up over her hair. She carried her favorite bergère hat and a bulging leather portmanteau under one arm. Alarmed, Luce padded from her chamber and leaned over the balustrade. She was just in time to see her sister slip through the enormous front doors and out into the night.

Luce stood frozen on the landing. Where was Charlotte going? And why was she dressed for travel? There was no denying that her sister had been behaving strangely. There was the expression on her face, when the actor playing King Gradlon pushed his beloved daughter into the waves— do you think Papa would have done the same, had that been one of us? And she had retired early, though she had seemed well enough throughout supper, if a little quiet. Luce’s hands tightened on the banister as she remembered Charlotte’s words at the Blessing. Her apology, as sweet as the madeleine she had pressed into Luce’s hand. I know that I have not been kind to you, of late. That I have been prickly, and jealous.

It had been, Luce realised, a farewell.

‘Damn my soul!’ The words were a strangled hiss as Luce dashed back into her chamber. She kept a second set of men’s clothing at the town house, and she wasted no time, yanking the breeches on over her nightgown, throwing on the tattered overcoat, and grabbing her tricorn and boots. She did not bother with stays, merely slipped a knotted kerchief around her neck as she hurried down the servants’ stairs and through the—blessedly empty—kitchen, ignoring the startled bleating of her feet as she slipped onto Rue de Toulouse.

Was she too late? Was Charlotte already lost to sight? Peering up and down the street, Luce made out her sister’s small, hooded form nearing the corner of Rue de Dinan. She hurried after her, then froze, throwing herself into the shadows beside the servants’ door.

Jean-Baptiste and the rest of his male guests were about to return to the festivities at the quay. Gathered in the town house’s courtyard, and clearly visible through its high gates, they gamboled like colts, eager to stretch their legs.

Charlotte, meanwhile, would soon be gone.

There was nothing for it. Luce plunged onto the cobbled street, sinking into the distinctive, swinging gait of a sailor. She passed the gates to the town house, forced herself to look ahead, to scrunch her shoulders and bow her legs. Waiting for her father to recognise her, to seize her coat and push aside her hat, his face furrowed with worry and confusion.

It did not happen. No sooner had Luce passed the gates than her father and his friends wandered out of them. They traveled east behind her for a few moments, then turned toward the cathedral, their low talk and laughter bouncing against the high, stone houses.

Up ahead, Charlotte turned the corner and disappeared.

Luce hurried after her, feet braying, until she reached the corner of Rue de Dinan.

A small, slightly shabby carriage—no doubt hired—waited near the Dinan Gate. As Luce approached, she discerned a familiar form, shoulders hunched and furtive, speaking to the driver.

Luce broke into a run, heedless of the pain, and reached the carriage just as Gabriel climbed inside. He was leaning out to close the door when Luce skidded to a clumsy stop, meeting his horrified eyes. Behind him, in the carriage’s candlelit gloom, was Charlotte.

‘What are you doing, Cee?’ Luce blurted. A foolish question; it was appallingly obvious. The little carriage was packed with Charlotte’s and Gabriel’s belongings, his precious scientific equipment nestled at their feet.

‘Luce? What are you doing here?’ Charlotte demanded. She blinked. ‘And what in heaven’s name are you wearing ?’

Luce stared at her sister, torn between bursting into tears and pulling her bodily from the carriage. ‘What are you—how could you—? You’re leaving ?’

‘Gabriel and I are running away,’ Charlotte said, with a determined set to her jaw. ‘We love each other, and we want to be married.’

Luce gaped at her. Was she truly willing to risk everything— her relationship with her family, her good name, her future—this way?

‘There will be no coming back from this, Cee,’ she warned. ‘Once this carriage leaves the gates, once Maman and Papa discover what you have done, there will be no way to undo it.’

‘Good,’ Charlotte said flatly. ‘For I do not want it to be undone. You know as well as I what would have happened had Gabriel asked Maman and Papa for permission. They would have refused him, dismissed him, shunned him. They would have been furious that he had even considered himself worthy of me.’

Samuel’s face, Samuel’s words, echoed in Luce’s mind. What would your father say if he knew you were here with me?

‘It would not have mattered that Gabriel is good and kind, and that we love each other,’ Charlotte said. ‘Maman and Papa believe there is only one way for you and Veronique and me to be happy— we must marry a certain way, live a certain way. But that’s not true, Luce. It’s not. All the money in the world won’t make us happy if we must live without love, and freedom. I don’t want anyone but Gabriel. If I stay, Maman will shovel me onto some impoverished old noble in need of Papa’s money. She values our good name, our connections, above our feelings. I have no choice. Don’t you see?’

So that’s what you want, then, is it? Balls and flowers and ice sculptures. Fine horses and frock coats. It was Samuel’s words, Samuel’s hurt, that Luce was seeing, and hearing. Could it be... could it be that he did care for her, and had kept her at arms’ length because he, like Luce’s parents, believed that she should live a certain way? She looked again at her sister, at the way she held tight to Gabriel’s hand, risking everything to begin a life with him, no matter his place in society. Charlotte, she realised, was braver than Luce had ever imagined.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I do see.’

‘Then... you won’t tell your family you saw us?’ Gabriel asked warily.

She shook her head. ‘No. I won’t tell.’

Charlotte leaned forward, hugged her. ‘Thank you.’

Luce held her sister so tight she feared she would not be able to let go. ‘Are you certain, Cee?’

‘I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life, Luce.’

‘Then I am happy for you. Truly.’

Gabriel’s voice was soft with regret. ‘Charlotte, we must go...’

‘Yes, I know.’ Charlotte was trembling with excitement or fear, or both. ‘I won’t say where we’re going, Luce—it’s better you don’t know.’

Luce nodded. Her tricorn had fallen off; it didn’t matter.

‘You cannot judge a man, or anyone, on their place in society. Remember that, Luce. Don’t be afraid to fight for what you really want.’

Gabriel’s touch, light on her sister’s shoulder. ‘My love, it’s time to go.’

Luce drew back, wiped away her tears. ‘Go,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Quickly.’

‘Be brave,’ Charlotte told her, before Gabriel closed the door, smiling at Luce in farewell. ‘Be free.’

Gabriel signaled to the driver, and the carriage rolled into motion. Luce watched it pass beneath the gates and out of the city, Charlotte’s words ringing in her mind.

Be brave.

Be free.