Isola

Chapter 9

9

The next morning, I told Damienne, “My guardian will be rich as a prince if he succeeds, and we will have our home again.”

“You’re dreaming,” Damienne said.

“It is no dream. He has gone voyaging before.”

“And what good has come of it?”

“He brought back treasure once. He will again.”

“And if he drowns?”

Alys arrived to light our fire, and we stopped speaking. She knelt at the hearth, and her eyes were lively.

“What is it?” I asked.

She smiled. “How do you know I have anything to say?”

“I see it in your face.”

“My master asks for you.”

Now I felt justified in all my hopes, and I dressed quickly. Rushing Damienne along, I hurried downstairs.

I felt a little chill when unsmiling Henri saw us into the great room, but my guardian greeted me pleasantly. “Good morning, cousin.” Then, as I left Damienne to wait by the door, he drew me to the window, where Henri placed a chair for me. My guardian had never asked me to sit with him before, but now he was all courtesy. He said, “Forgive me for a house unready. I am a traveler, and I don’t stay long.”

I said, “Yes, so I see.”

“My business is with ships.”

“It is great work,” I said.

He smiled. “I am here only a few days. Then I return to court for my commission.”

Emboldened by these words, I asked, “My lord, what will your commission be?”

“That is for the King to say.”

I thought, You know already, and yet I could not press. I said, “I wish you good fortune. You will have my prayers, whether you find pearls, or birds, or Saguenay.”

“You listened well,” my guardian said. Then, graciously, he asked, “While I am gone, what will you need?”

My heart beat faster, but I knew I must speak now or lose my chance. “I need to know where I will live, and if I may bring my ladies—my companions.”

He ignored this last and answered, “You will live here.”

“And when you depart?”

“You will stay with me.”

I was not a child, but his answer puzzled me. Stay with him when he sailed? “How will I—”

He interrupted, “What else do you need?”

Unsure of him, I hesitated—and then spoke anyway. “I need something to live on.”

“To live on?” His voice was tight.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Something to live on.” He stood, commanding, “Come.” He had laughed and granted my requests before. This time he seemed affronted as he swept before me.

He led me across the room and Damienne trailed behind. Opening a door, my guardian revealed a chapel, except there was no altar, only a table covered with paper and knives and quills and sealing wax. There worked my guardian’s dark-eyed secretary. “Give her Marot,” my guardian said.

The young man knelt before an open chest and, unfolding a cloth, revealed a library. Ten—twelve—twenty books, some hardly worn. The secretary stacked them all upon the table. Then he lifted a quarto bound in red leather. The spine of this small book was hooped in gold, its cover embossed with gold tracery. Even the edges of the volume’s pages were gilded in a diamond pattern visible when the book was closed. This was an exquisite piece of work, and I thought it augured well.

“Show her the title,” my guardian told his secretary.

Glancing up, the young man opened to the title page printed Psalms of David Set in Rhyme by Clément Marot .

“Do you know these verses?” my guardian asked.

“No, my lord.”

“You will learn them now,” said Roberval. “And you can live on these.”

Live on verses! I needed gold, not gilded bindings. Money for firewood in that cold house. Words would not win servants over, nor would psalms clothe me in winter. “My thanks,” I whispered as the secretary took a knife and slit pages so that I might open them and read.

“These psalms will teach you,” my guardian assured me.

Teach me what? I protested silently. How to abase my soul and accept misfortune with humility? But I answered, “I am grateful, and I hope to learn all you could wish.”

Now Roberval bowed. “I wish you good health.”

I searched his face as I said, “I wish you a safe journey.” But he offered nothing more and took his leave.

Downcast, I waited for the secretary to finish cutting pages. Silent, Damienne stood behind me. I had been dreaming, just as my old nurse had said. The facts were these. My guardian would not send for Claire, nor would he provide me funds while he went voyaging.

“You are disappointed.” The secretary’s voice was so quiet that for a moment I thought I had imagined it, but he looked up and spoke again. “You wish his gift was something else.”

“Not at all,” I answered bitterly.

“It is a beautiful book,” the young man said.

“So I see.”

“You will see when you read it.”

I did not know how to answer that—nor what to think of the young man. He seemed to me not quite a servant, not quite a gentleman. He behaved respectfully but studied my face as though he wished to see inside me. Broad-shouldered and tall, he filled the little room as he stood to present my book. Taking my gift, I saw his hand was stained with ink.

“What is his commission?” I whispered.

The secretary met my eyes but did not say.

—

I knew Damienne would scold me. She was silent until we returned to our chamber. Then, even as she closed the door, she turned on me. “Questioning his secretary! Your guardian will think you are conspiring.”

“And how would I conspire?” The idea was absurd, for I knew no one.

“You will always borrow trouble.”

“I don’t need to borrow.” I sat on my footstool by the fire, and, opening the Psalms, I saw these lines. My eyes cry without ceasing, for despair and distress. My troubles increasing… I shut the book again. “This is a gift for Claire and Madame D’Artois.”

“Yes, they would not disdain to study,” Damienne said.

It was true. Claire and her mother loved to pray and read—but I remembered how they had gathered information. How practical they had been.

“Alys,” I said that evening when she brought us meat and bread. “I have something for you.” I had only a few coins left but did not stint and offered her a pretty piece of silver.

“What would you like?” she asked, delighted with me.

I ushered her out to the stairs, away from Damienne. “I want to know when my guardian leaves and when he will return. What his business is at court, and everything you might learn of his commission.”

“Oh, what I’ve learned! I’ve heard already.” She glanced up and down, and then she whispered, “He is to be Viceroy of New France. I heard him tell the gentlemen.”

“Truly?” To think my guardian would be proxy for the King! He would be sovereign of the New World if he did not perish on the way. Surely he would recover all his losses then. “When is he to go?”

“That, he did not say.”

—

I did not repeat this news to Damienne, who disapproved my asking anything. Instead, I turned the dolorous pages of my book and listened to the house. I marked footsteps on the stairs—the rustle of the maids, the heavy tread of grooms, and then violent raps and knocking and hallooing from the street. I thought at first it must be workmen. Carpenters to amend the walls or glaziers to install new windows.

“What is that banging?” I asked Alys when she came to tend our fire in the morning. “Who is it outside?”

“Don’t you know?” She sat back on her heels. “They always come when my master is in residence. Even if he’s here a day, his creditors find out and assail us.”

How can anybody hound him now? I thought. He will be second only to the King.

“Mercy,” said Damienne as the noise increased. “They will break down the door.”

“When will they be satisfied?” I asked.

With poker and fresh kindling, Alys coaxed the fire from its ashes. “When they have everything my master owns.”

“And when he leaves?”

“Oh, they are a pack of wolves. They’ll chase him if they can.”

“But when he goes to sea?”

Finishing her work, she smiled. “There they cannot follow.”

“And what will happen to this house? To all of us?”

She spoke seriously now. “God only knows.”

The rapping and the shouting did not cease. I heard the grooms call out, “My master is not home.” Even so, the creditors kept hammering.

I ventured to the stairwell, where Marie hurried past. Her stye was gone, but she was as timid as she had been before, curtseying when I stopped her but afraid to speak.

“When will he depart?” I asked.

She ducked her head and did not answer.

I waited, and I listened for horses. Deep in the night, I thought I heard my guardian ride away, but I must have imagined this, because at dawn his creditors returned, hailing the windowpanes. This house, which held such carpets and silver, was but a shell for money owed.

I began to fear these men would break the windows, rush inside, and seize the very beds and chairs from under us. All that day I worried, but the next morning I woke to silence. I crept from bed and listened. The hammering was done.

Alys came to light the fire, and I said, “Does this mean—”

“Yes!” she told me joyfully. “My master’s gone away again.”

—

Now the house was calm inside as well as out. The stairs were silent, and the passageways were empty. I slipped into the great room, and all was still as I gazed upon my guardian’s bed. Sun filtered through the windows, and where the panes were tinted, the light turned gold and green. I held out my arms and watched these tints checker my own sleeves.

A shadow, and the colors faded. I dropped my arms as the door to my guardian’s study opened.

There stood the secretary. “May I be of service?”

With sudden fright, I asked, “Did your master change his mind and stay?”

“No,” the secretary said. “He left this morning, and I will follow.”

I drew nearer. “Forgive my questions,” I said, although I had many more.

He bowed slightly and asked, “Have you read the book?”

I should have lied, answering, Of course, but I said, “Why did he give it to me?”

“Because he is devout.”

“Truly?”

The secretary smiled. “Do you doubt me?”

I did not know which surprised me more, my guardian’s supposed piety or the secretary’s smile. “It cannot be.”

“How would you know?” The secretary seemed nearly playful when his master was away.

“A man’s devotion will be visible.” I was thinking of the little chapel my guardian used as an office. There was not an altar in the house.

“My master is all he should be,” the secretary said quickly.

“He is very secret,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I have never seen him call upon a priest.”

The young man bristled as though I’d called his master names. Reformist. Protestant. “Sincere devotion is not always for display.”

“Do you call him modest?” I asked. “He doesn’t seem so.”

“He must be bold to venture.”

“And to withstand creditors at home.”

“These are the hazards of business,” the secretary said.

His quiet words provoked me. “The whole house hears his creditors demanding money,” I exclaimed. “The servants understand my guardian is in debt—and they know his commission too. Why, then, does your master behave secretly? I am his ward, and you, my witness. Do not compel me to live in the dark. Answer me so that I know what to expect. When will he sail? And what will happen to the rest of us?”

The secretary considered me, and in the shifting light, he was both green and gold. Parti-colored, he stood before me, and he seemed of two minds as well, for he looked at me with feeling but he answered carefully. “It is too early to say. My master’s commission is unsigned, and he must find passengers.”

“Why? Does he intend to settle in New France?”

“Ah, you are too quick,” the secretary answered softly.

“Will he really live there?”

“This has been announced,” the youth excused himself for telling. “He is to establish colonies.”

“And for what purpose?”

“To propagate the Catholic faith.”

I could not conceal my surprise. In all the talk of gold and birds at dinner, no one had spoken of the Church.

The secretary said, “That is the King’s decree, but Roberval must persuade colonists to join him.”

“Are they afraid of sailing?”

“They are afraid of staying,” the secretary said.

“Even if they will be rich?”

“The warriors there abhor us.”

“Because Cartier entertained them with firearms?”

“He took their King’s sons to France, and they sickened and died here. As for our men, they have perished in the New World from hunger and cold. Many have been slaughtered.”

“And so new colonists won’t come.”

“It is a wilderness unmarked, without consecrated ground.” The secretary paused, and then he said, “No one will remember those who die there.”

“And you must sail with them,” I murmured, thinking aloud. It was not wise; it was not kind to say, but I heard it in his voice.

“My master has been good to me,” the secretary said, and I took that as a warning.