Chapter 8
8
The skies were clear that morning, but as we traveled, it began to rain—first lightly in a mist, then heavily. Cold drops pelted our faces so that we could hardly see. The road slickened and then softened into mud. More than once, our horses slipped, and on the third day, Damienne’s mount lost a shoe. Then Henri cursed under his breath because the animal was lame. He gave Damienne his horse to ride and led the lame one by a rope. Together we struggled through the mire.
Wet, aching, filthy, we arrived at that night’s inn. Damienne brushed our traveling clothes as best she could and hung them up to dry. Although our room was dark and stale, we lay gratefully to rest.
In the morning, we had new horses, but we looked sadly at the rutted road, the flooded places where carts sank axle-deep. We did not want to venture out again—but we had no choice. My guardian had sentenced us. Or rather, he had sentenced me and Damienne followed, for she had never considered staying with Claire and Madame D’Artois.
How those two would have pitied us if they had seen our journey, frightful as it was—or so I thought then. In some places, our horses forded roads like streams. We were so muddy I thought we never could get clean. So wet and cold that I no longer dreaded arriving at my guardian’s house. When at last we saw our destination rising in the distance, La Rochelle seemed a refuge.
If only the city had been clean and shining as it looked from afar. When we rode in, the stench nearly overwhelmed me. Although I was covered with mire, I shrank from streets befouled with waste and snorting hogs. We saw buildings crowded close, and every alleyway polluted, piled high with trash.
I thought we would ride on to some better place, a hilltop with a palace set apart, but Henri pulled up at a building on a common street.
“Not here,” I said, disbelieving. Before us stood a mansion tall and faced with stone but without land or distance from the road. My guardian’s house had neither drive nor courtyard nor allée of trees. No garden at all. Grooms led our horses behind the house to cramped stables with no pasture to be seen.
“This cannot be Roberval’s home,” I whispered to Damienne. But grooms were already unloading trunks as Henri ushered us inside.
All was dark within, the stairways narrow, creaking. The place seemed to me no better than a wayside inn, but I said nothing as Henri showed us to a chamber with a bed and a small table. There he left us, his commission done.
A poor fire welcomed us, and a musty smell. We sat on our closed trunks, and a maidservant brought a candle and some food—roast chicken and strong ale.
I thanked the girl, and when she did not answer, I gave her a penny and asked her name.
Now the maid spoke and said, “Marie.” She was a little one, not much older than Suzanne, but serious and careful. Her gown was neat but coarse, her hair tucked into her cap. Her face was bright, her right eye luminous and clear, but she had a stye in the left, which she rubbed with her rough sleeve.
“Is your master at home?” I asked.
Marie hesitated and then shook her head. Because of the stye, half her face appeared serene, the other half confused and weeping.
“Put a potato on it,” Damienne said. Travel-worn and discouraged she might be, but my old nurse knew more than most. “Slice a raw potato and hold it to your eye to draw the infection out.”
Marie curtseyed and tried to leave, but I pressed, “Do you expect your master soon?”
“I do not know,” she answered, and she hurried off as though it was wrong to speak to me.
Then Damienne and I ate quietly.
“The food is good,” I ventured.
“Do you see this?” Damienne lifted our candle to show me how damp crept up the walls. “Mold.” She stripped the bed, rolling mattress, sheets, and counterpane onto the floor because she was certain bedbugs infested them. For this reason, she laid out our own sheets and featherbed reluctantly. “Does he mean to punish you?”
I touched a wall, and it felt slick and soft. “I do not think Roberval enters here.”
“But his servants? What of them?”
“Perhaps I am his servant now.”
“No!” Damienne exclaimed, as though my words would bring bad luck.
—
Our bed was old and creaking, but we slept well because we were so tired. Indeed, my first thought on waking was, I do not have to ride today. For that, I was most grateful. I felt a little hopeful too. Disappointed as I had been, and sorrowful to travel, I was just seventeen. Our journey done, I thought, Perhaps the worst is over. My luck will change, or I will find a way to change it.
By the light of our small window, I saw Damienne kneeling on the floor to pray.
She sighed when she was done and stood up slowly because she was stiff from riding. With hands on her hips, she turned to see our room and shook her head. The fire had died, and Marie had not returned—not even to remove our dirty plates.
“I will get help,” I told her.
“No, do not go,” she warned, even as I opened the door and stepped into the unlit passageway. “Wait,” Damienne said, but it was cold, and we were both hungry.
“I’ll only be a moment.” I closed the door behind me.
I felt my way into the passage because I had left Damienne the candle. Trailing my fingers along the wall, I found another door like ours, but this was locked. I touched a third door and a fourth, but none would open. I felt for the banister instead and crept downstairs. Here I stepped into a great room with a dark table and a tall curtained bed. I gazed at windowpanes of colored glass and carpets woven in strange patterns—courts, colored borders, diadems. These rugs covered chairs and windowsills, and one draped the table. I stroked the pile with my fingertips, and the carpet seemed half-art, half-animal. I had never touched a thing so brilliant and so soft. Surely my guardian was rich and bold beyond compare to bring home a prize like this. If he had lost a fortune, he would win another. What he had mortgaged might be restored, and I might go home again. I told myself this but I saw that Roberval’s great fireplace was empty, his carved bed velveted with dust.
Although the house’s upper rooms were still, I heard voices below. Venturing downstairs, I smelled meat roasting, and following the scent of flesh and fat, I found a kitchen with a roaring fire. There stood a boy turning a joint on a spit, and a ruddy woman plucking geese. Bowls of mincemeat and piles of sliced apples covered the table where Marie rolled pastry. “Forgive me!” she said when she saw me. “I am behind time.”
“Yes,” the ruddy woman muttered without looking up. “And so it is always.” She was a cook, and her arms were burnt and blistered from the work. “Damn it all,” she cursed, and then, seeing me, “I beg pardon!”
I said, “We have no fire.”
“Marie!” The cook rebuked the little maid. “Useless girl.” Then more politely, “I will send Alys.”
I asked, “When do you expect your master?”
“Today!”
A gray cat brushed my skirts. “And does he know that I am here?”
“Indeed.” The cook looked at me, astonished. “He did send for you. Alys!” she called out the kitchen door. “Alys! See about the fire.”
“My thanks,” I said.
The cook said no more to me. She scolded the boy tending the meat. “Will you turn, or sleep standing up?”
Like a watchman, the cook roused the house, sending servants to mop the floors and sweep the hearths. Even as I climbed the stairs, the cook ordered grooms to carry carpets out to beat the dust and set maids to scrubbing on their hands and knees.
“Where have you been?” Damienne said when I returned.
“Only up and down the stairs.”
“And away so long?” Damienne began, but the girl called Alys was already at the door. She was a slender maid of perhaps twenty, her hair copper colored, and her brown eyes flecked with green. She might have been a beauty, except that she was freckled. Her arms and cheeks and nose were dusted by the sun.
“I’ll warm the room,” she said. “And I can find you chairs.”
She worked quickly, lighting our fire and fetching furniture. “This is for you.” She presented me with a dusty rush-bottomed chair. “And this is for you.” She offered Damienne a footstool.
“It is too small for me,” my nurse said.
“Take mine.” I drew the chair for her and took the footstool for myself.
I gave Alys a coin, and she brushed dried mud from our cloaks. Then she took our traveling clothes to the laundress, and when she returned, she brought a little cushion for me. “Now you will be comfortable,” she said, smiling, “but I must run downstairs.”
I asked, “Is it always like this before your master arrives?”
“Oh yes,” said Alys. “He expects us to be ready.”
“And if you are not?”
I was asking about my guardian’s temper. Would he be merciful? But Alys thought only of the task at hand. “We will be prepared.”
—
All day, we listened to the servants rushing in and out of doors. We heard horses and deliveries and men moving furniture until, at last, the cry went up, “He’s here!”
“Do you think he will invite us down?” I asked my nurse.
“Heaven forbid.” Damienne feared entering any room with Roberval. Best, she thought, to remain sequestered for as long as possible, but I thought just the opposite. Hoping to win favor, I wanted very much to see my guardian.
While I dared not appear without an invitation, I hovered on the landing. Leaning over the banister, I saw maids with folded linens in their arms, and I heard the cook directing men to carry chairs.
“Would you like to dine downstairs?” The question startled me, and then I saw Alys climbing the stairs.
“If only to see the table,” I said.
“You will have your wish,” she told me. “You are expected at the banquet.”
“Truly?”
“Yes! I was coming up to tell you.”
Then I could not help smiling at the girl, although she was a servant. In all that dark house, Alys was the one who welcomed me. Her face was open, her eyes laughing, and she seemed unafraid. “I will get ready,” I said.
She assured me, “You needn’t rush. My master and his guests will not sit down before eight.”
But I did rush to my room. “We must dress,” I told Damienne.
“Good Lord,” she said.
But I told her, “Now is our chance.” For I would take my place at table and show what I deserved. Lands, money, all my inheritance. I would have them back again. Wasn’t this the lesson in Madame D’Artois’s books? Those tested were rewarded if they were patient, careful, good.
“Do not speak before the company,” Damienne warned as she combed my hair.
“I would never speak,” I said. “But I will listen—and we shall see. Something will come of this.”
“Don’t assume it will be good.”
I turned to look at Damienne. “In any case, I would rather know than wonder. Anticipation is worse than anything.”
But my nurse said, “No, I disagree.”
Frowning, she opened my trunk and shook out my silver gown. Reluctantly she dressed me, and when it was time, she followed me with downcast eyes. Even as we entered the great room lit with candles, she slipped behind me. Heavy as she was, wide-hipped, buxom, she behaved like a shy girl, while I stepped forward eagerly.
“Cousin!” My guardian bowed and took my hands as though well pleased. “A good journey?”
“Very good, my lord.”
“And you are looking well!”
He greeted me as family but seated me with Damienne at the bottom of the table. He spoke graciously and then forgot me—but I was not discouraged. Curiously I watched him welcome the next guest and the next. He ushered in four gentlemen, and then, at last, he took his seat. At his left hand sat his secretary—the blond youth, who never said a word. And they were surrounded by expensive-looking men, their clothes rich and dark, their collars white as stars.
These were my guardian’s guests—a captain, a navigator, a shipwright, and a banker—and they talked of money and of months at sea. Proud and worldly, they did not praise the table, although our cloth was damask white, our spoons were silver and our glasses light as air. These men were interested in lands far off and treasures yet unseen.
They spoke of islands where cloves grew, and peppercorns, and fragrant cinnamon which you might peel from the trunks of trees. They talked of silver mines and diamonds and birds flying in an iridescent cloud, their faces blue, their plumage ruby, gold, and green—spirits so swift that they belonged to paradise, not earth.
The navigator told of blossoms floating in the air and clear oceans filled with pearls, the wonders of the Spice Islands, blessed with every flower, fruit, and vine. Like Eden, these islands knew no frost. It was always summer, and trees never stopped bearing. Few men sailed there, and fewer still came home—but this would change. The journey would contract to a space of months, so those setting out might return within the year.
“Will that be possible?” the banker said.
“With better charts,” the navigator answered.
And now the captain, whose name was Cartier, spoke of a new passage, broad and deep. He had found it on the feast day of Saint Lawrence, and so named it. This was a gulf so big that it would require many hands to chart it properly. Its banks were timbered, so you could not see an end of trees. In the water were more fish than any fleet could catch, and these were cod. In this country, he had found seal, beaver, sable—furs fit for kings. And this was New France, which Cartier called Canada, an isle so rich it was an empire in itself—but its greatest gift was the wide river—for ships might sail to the Spice Islands and China by this northwest passage.
“If indeed,” the navigator said, “that is where your Saint Lawrence leads.”
“The river will carry us there. I know this from the savages,” Cartier said.
The shipbuilder inquired, “Did they speak willingly?”
“They speak with arrows and with spears. They speak by stealing through trees and slicing throats, but we entertained them with firearms. Then they revealed the secrets of their country.”
I leaned forward to see the captain who entertained such men. His eyes were brilliant but with the quick glance of a squirrel. If he was daring, he was but little. Jacques Cartier was nothing noble, but he had sailed to New France twice. There he had brought beads and little bells to trade for precious furs. He had shown the native folk their faces in a glass, and they had turned to him in awe, for they coveted mirrors, as well as axes and knives of tempered steel. Cartier had given their King a fine blade, but not a gun. “Their warriors bowed when I flew our flag. They worship me,” Captain Cartier boasted, “but heathens that they are, they want to kill me too.”
“Have you angered them?” the banker asked.
“I have impressed them,” Cartier said. “So they would become me if they could. They would eat my heart and drink my blood.”
The table hushed to hear the captain speak this way. I did not know if he spoke truly or exaggerated, but all deferred to him except the navigator, who said, “If you have not mapped this Saint Lawrence, then you cannot know where it will lead.”
“That is your profession,” said my guardian. “What Cartier assumes, you will pursue.” He spoke imperiously, but he looked eager—and so did the shipwright and the banker as they speculated about countries undiscovered. Lands so rich that the inhabitants scarcely valued jewels and gold. A kingdom called Saguenay where the inhabitants were fair and rubies common as our cobblestones.
“There are places we have not imagined,” my guardian said. “Unknown cities and new rivers. We must find them, and we must do it first.” With wonder in his voice, he said, “What lands will we discover? What new fruit and animals? What countries will we conquer for the King?”