Chapter 14
14
The sky was bright, and the sea calm, but Damienne trembled as she looked upon the water. A sweat came over her as I searched for a place where she might rest. All about us, men were working, and we could scarcely take a step without tripping over tools, cargo, canvas, and coiled rope. Nor could we walk easily from one end of the ship to the other. The mainmast rose above us, blocking our way like a great tree, and the deck itself was terraced. At the rear, which was called the stern, I saw a quarterdeck where sailors managed a network of ropes tied to the mizzenmast. Above the quarterdeck, I saw a smaller, higher platform where sailors might spy other ships or coming storms. At the ship’s front, the bow, I saw another deck whence rose our foremast. This deck’s planks were built out to a narrow beak extending perilously above the sea. But tucked underneath this platform, I found a little cabin. This room was the forecastle and contained a square table, chairs, and sleeping pallets.
“Rest here.” I settled Damienne in a chair because she was so pale. “You are safe now.”
“I am not,” she told me.
“Safely aboard.”
The crammed ship was noisy, creaking. I could hear the captain and the navigator walking above, but here we stayed sheltered until my guardian burst in.
“Come now. Has no one brought you to your cabin?” He led the way to the other end of the ship and showed us a ladder to descend. He went first, offering his hand to help me down, and then I helped Damienne into a close-curtained room with a round table. “This is where we dine, and you may sit,” my guardian said. “Here are beds.” He pulled back heavy curtains to reveal two bunks set into the walls. Here the navigator and the secretary would sleep, but the captain and my guardian had their own cabin.
“And this is yours.” My guardian opened a sliding door to reveal a chamber scarcely larger than the bed inside.
As soon as Roberval had gone, Damienne sank onto our narrow mattress. “I feel as though I’m in my coffin,” she declared.
But we were fortunate to have a door and walls, for my guardian’s colonists had none. Even gentlemen with wives shared space below with stores of wine, salted fish, and biscuit, tools, and trinkets Roberval would trade.
As for the sailors, they lay where they could in open air and slept in shifts so that they could keep watch day and night. Some were boys and some were men, but all were bold. The youngest was our cabin boy, a towheaded lad of nine or ten. Small as he was, he climbed nimbly as a squirrel, and I never saw him slip or fall or cry for home. After three days waiting for the wind, all hands spoke eagerly of leaving shore.
Our cabin was our refuge when Damienne latched the door. Distrusting sailors, she stayed within, almost afraid to take a step. Even so, I brought her to the table so that she could eat and drink, and I led her to the deck to breathe lest she catch fever in the putrid air below. I encouraged her as best I could, but even the slight rocking of the anchored ship unsettled her, and the prospect of our journey darkened her mind.
Sometimes she confused day and night and asked if she were gone—or if we were all gone. Every morning when she woke, I told her the day and date and prayed with her, but panicked as she was, she could not keep track of time. On the fourth day, she said, “Where are we?”
“Still waiting to sail.”
“Oh, have we not begun?”
I said, “You know that we have not.”
“But we do not lie still.”
“We lie as still as we can upon the water.”
“I wish the journey over, and I were dead and buried,” she declared.
“No, no,” I told her. “You said you would not leave me.” I offered her a needle, although she had not the heart to sew. “You have never given up your work before. Please try,” I begged.
But even as my old nurse faded, my guardian brightened. His voice was eager, and his step quick. Everything about the voyage interested him, and he amused himself by teaching me the workings of our vessel.
He took me to the tiller room where the helmsman would stand to steer the ship. “He will pull this whipstaff.” My guardian showed me a stout wooden bar which turned a pole extending from within the ship to the rudder outside in the water.
I touched the heavy wood and said, “But how will he know which way to go?”
My guardian pointed to the ceiling, and there I saw a grate cut into the wood. Here the navigator might stand on deck to call instructions through square holes.
All through the ship, one level communicated with the next by ladders or grates, allowing just a little light and air to penetrate. Piercing every deck, our three masts descended from bright sky down to the ship’s dark hold. Here our captain had filled the bottom of the ship with rocks for ballast so that we might lie sturdily and level in the water. My guardian told me this, but he did not take me to those depths. Instead, he showed me what entranced him. The ship’s instruments.
“Look at this, but never touch it.” He pointed to an hourglass big as a lantern. “The sailors turn the glass to tell the time. And mark this.” He held up the navigator’s gleaming astrolabe, an instrument of round layered disks the size of a small plate.
“What are these?” I pointed to etched grooves in brass.
“They represent the stars,” my guardian said, “and by these lines, we calculate our position.”
“Then it is a map of heaven.”
“Yes.”
“But will it truly guide us?”
“Of course.” My guardian spoke with perfect confidence. And he was jovial—considerate to me, magnanimous to others. Such was his satisfaction, ruling his own fleet. Officers and passengers gave way to him as though he were a sovereign lord, as indeed he was upon our vessel, Anne . He also ruled the smaller ships, Lèchefraye and Valentine, anchored close by, for he commanded their captains, and it suited him to order everyone. “Hold out your hand,” he told me. I hesitated, but he said, “Do not be afraid,” as he placed the astrolabe in my palm. “How does it feel?”
“Like a precious jewel,” I said.
“And so it is.” Roberval smiled as he took it back. But I had come to fear approval as much as anger. Gentle or berating, kind or cruel, in all his moods he exercised his power over me.
“Come,” he ordered on our fifth morning, and he led me to the deck along with the secretary. “Quickly.” He helped me up the ladder without waiting for Damienne.
Now when we stood in the fresh air, Roberval gestured to the sailors turning the ship’s windlass. “What do you see?”
“Men raising anchor.”
“Yes.” He looked out upon the ocean. “ The Lord lays the earth’s foundations with intent. ”
I finished the verse. “ He covers them with the deep as with a garment. ”
“Exactly.”
The colonists were cheering as our men pulled, hoisting sail. The harbor’s gulls swooped overhead.
“At last,” my guardian told the secretary, and all watched the canvas rise, unfolding broad, crisp, new, above crates and cannon and penned chickens, pigs, and goats. The mainsail grew, and the ship’s trumpet sounded. Another trumpet and a third echoed from our sister ships while our caged hens scratched and squawked in fright. Sailors labored; colonists cheered.
And so, we sailed from La Rochelle with its stone towers. We left the fishing boats and crowded lanes, the market stalls and wagons, my guardian’s green and gold glass windowpanes, his kitchen with its cook and cat.
Roberval climbed to the quarterdeck, and I should have seen to Damienne, but I lingered at the rail to watch port and city and the whole country vanishing. My chateau with its lessons and walled garden. Prayers, music, writing—all seemed a dream—the years that I had lived with Claire.
“Are you afraid?” the secretary asked, gazing at the receding coast.
I turned to view the ship with all its men and cargo. I looked up at the masts and sails, the bright pennants flying, and I saw those of my house. Blue with gold lilies. These ships are my inheritance, I thought. I paid for this voyage. And then most strangely, I am the instrument of my own exile. “I hardly know what to feel,” I said.
“To leave at last?”
I tried to find the words. “I feel ghostly now—but I fear drowning.” I glanced at Roberval on the deck above, conferring with the navigator. “And my guardian.”
Immediately, I regretted saying this. It was not politic; it was not wise. But the secretary did not look askance. “You have reason.”
Now I turned to him, surprised. At times when we were home the secretary had looked on me with sympathy. I will never hurt you, he had said—but he had never spoken of his master directly. “What does he want?” I asked.
“Greatness,” the secretary said.
I was embarrassed because my question had been narrower. What did my guardian want from me? And yet I knew. He would have me as his mistress, but subtle as he was, he waited. “What does he require of us?” I asked.
“Obedience.”
“He has it,” I answered.
But the secretary said, “In heart and mind.”
I asked, “Is that how you serve him?”
Then the secretary looked at me with his dark eyes, and he said, “No.”
All around us, men were shouting. The ship was swaying, sails swelling in the wind. In the tumult, no one heard my question or the secretary’s answer—but we held still because we understood each other. The secretary obeyed but did not love his master—and when he said this, he allied himself withme.
—
To all appearances, the young man served Roberval perfectly. Writing, copying, keeping accounts—the secretary did everything with diligence. Only in his silence could I detect a distance. Watching the young man, I saw his sober manner and his downcast eyes. His master sailed jubilantly, but the secretary did not celebrate.
Did my guardian notice? Did he care? He did not expect joyful compliance. Deference pleased him, and I saw that he favored the young man. He praised his servant’s ledger and accounting and showed his fair copies to the captain as we sat at table. And Roberval smiled upon his secretary because he adjusted to the rolling ship so quickly.
I was not so fortunate, and Damienne was wretched. Our first night sailing, she took to our bed, and I held her as she suffered from vertigo and nausea. When my guardian ordered me to dine, she could not accompany me, and I sat alone with Roberval, the captain, navigator, and secretary. Our wine was good, our meat fresh because we had animals to eat, but the room was close, the ship narrow, swaying. And now my guardian was studying me.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If you please,” I said. “I should not leave Damienne, for she is gravely ill.”
“She is not gravely anything,” he said, amused. “She is afraid.”
“May I go to her?”
At first, he ignored the question, but I looked at him imploringly, until he said, “Yes, go along.”
Then I hurried to Damienne in our tiny room, and I closed the door behind me.
“Ah, me,” she said as I lay down beside her.
“At least we are alone in our own cabin,” I said.
“It is not a cabin; it’s a cabinet,” she declared. “There is scarcely air to breathe.”
“There is air,” I said. “If you will but breathe slowly.”
“And there is water,” she said fearfully, for we could feel the ship rise and fall.
“We are floating. We are sailing gently on the wind. Is not the ocean cradling us?” With such words, I tried to comfort her and calm myself, until, at last, sleep carried us away.
That night we rested, but in the morning, Damienne was sick again, and Roberval was disgusted by the sight and smell. Even when she began to recover, he would not allow her at table.
“Please,” I begged. “She is unaccustomed to the waves—but she must eat.”
“She needn’t eat with me,” he said.
“Where else will she go? Have pity.”
Hearing me plead, Roberval softened, granting me the favor. “We will try her, and we’ll see.”
Sitting with Damienne at dinner, I prayed she would not take ill again, but the waves were choppy so that our dishes rattled. I held her arm and coaxed her to try a little meat and ale. However, the men ate as though no winds buffeted us, and after our meal, the navigator and the secretary played chess.
I had never seen the game, although I’d heard Claire speak of it. I dared not ask the rules, but I watched curiously, exclaiming in surprise when the secretary pushed a crenelated tower from its corner. Without thinking, I said, “Can the castle move?”
Then the navigator smiled, and the secretary looked as though he might explain, but my guardian did not like his men to play so long, nor did he approve my questions.
“Hurry up,” he said as the secretary studied the board. Before the game was done, my guardian could foresee the end, and so he called for music.
Then the secretary unwrapped his instrument, a cittern with a long neck and a round body like a gourd. He tuned eight strings with pegs intricately carved, each embellished with a pip of ivory, and he began a galliard, his fingers dancing on the strings, his notes sounding and repeating lightly. He played with such grace that even Damienne leaned forward in her chair. It was a tune we knew, its rhythm rollicking, so that for a moment we forgot the rocking of the ship. Too soon, the secretary thrummed the last chord, and while we applauded, I hoped he would play again.
“Well done,” the navigator said.
“Encore,” the captain urged.
But Roberval said, “No.”
I thought at first he was rebuking us for clapping—but he was speaking to the secretary. Ordering the cabin boy, my guardian had another instrument brought, and this was his own cittern, with a shorter neck and flatter back. After tuning and testing his strings, Roberval showed the secretary what he should have done.
“Cleaner” he said. “Brighter.” Strong, quick-fingered, my guardian filled the room with sound and pattern. “Do you hear?” he asked the secretary as he demonstrated. “This run is fast and hard.” He played a phrase cascading down, and then he played it louder. If the secretary’s galliard had been air, my guardian’s was fire. And in truth, Roberval was brilliant, as skilled as he had been upon the virginal. He had not the light touch of his servant, but he thrummed his strings with passion. As in all things, he was bold, and I could not help but listen.