Chapter 24
24
We had imagined we would have more time. By the calendar, it was only August, but we began to shiver in the night. The dark wind chilled us, and we took shelter with Damienne under the sail. There we slept together to keep warm.
The sun seemed hooded, its rays softer. We could not tell how cold winter would be, but we began to salt more meat away.
Damienne worked quickly, plucking and butchering birds upon the rocks. Auguste went hunting every day, but I had no occupation now that I had lost my garden, and idleness began to eat at me. “If we had another blade,” I told Damienne, “then I might help.”
She slit a bird’s body with our knife. “No, this is bloody work.”
I said, “I am not afraid of blood.”
She answered as she always did. “You were not meant for butchering.”
“What does it matter now, what I was meant for?”
“Hush,” she told me.
I turned to Auguste, cleaning his musket, and said, “Teach me.”
“To clean a gun?”
“To shoot.”
“No! It is too dangerous.”
“I might come with you for eggs.”
“I don’t think so,” Damienne said.
“But we must eat,” I appealed to Auguste. “While I take eggs, you might shoot more birds.”
“Are you a goose girl?” said Damienne.
“Who will see me?”
“It is not how you appear,” she said, “but how you live.”
“I should go,” I insisted.
Auguste looked troubled, but when I took up Damienne’s basket, he reasoned, “I will be with you. We shall try.”
Damienne said no more, although she disapproved.
I carried the basket, and Auguste took his arquebus. I tied my cloak, and Auguste wore a bandolier—a strap with plugs of powder.
Then I hurried off with Auguste, for I wished to prove myself, and I did not think assisting him was wrong. Hadn’t I read of hunting in the book of ladies? Queen Zenobia left her palace and armed herself with sword and spear. Stalking wild game, she climbed steep mountains and slept in forests on the ground. Princess Camilla grew up hunting with her exiled father. She clothed herself in animal skins and ran swiftly as a hound. I imagined myself like these women, fleet and brave.
Arriving at the rookery, I felt a thrill of joy. The colony and the birds were glorious, a white city of their own.
“Step carefully.” Auguste took my hand and helped me to the nests below.
Louder and louder, the birds whirred and roared. Larger they became as we climbed down, and now I found myself surrounded. I had seen birds fencing with their beaks before, but only from a distance as I stood upon the rocks. I had seen birds flying and diving and they had seemed white angels. Alas, they were squabbling harridans up close, their faces brazen, their eyes not black like those of other fowl but blue and shrewd and mocking.
“When I shoot and they fly up,” said Auguste, “then you can collect their eggs.”
We were now so close that my skirts brushed nests and feathers, but the birds scarcely flinched. They stared me down.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Auguste.
He thought I dreaded the gun’s roar, but it was the birds, each keen and individual. One cocked her head to look at me. Who are you? she seemed to ask. What have you come for?
Even as Auguste’s fuse burned, this odd soul and others near her watched. The birds stared intelligently, but they did not imagine our intent. They had wings to fly, but none tried to escape.
“Now,” Auguste murmured.
He took his shot. I jumped. Wings beat the air, and my ears rang with the birds’ screaming. They called and flapped and blotted out the sun. In this storm, Auguste collected two bodies. Heart pounding, I retreated and then turned back in confusion. Forgetting my own errand, I had dropped Damienne’s basket. Now my face burned as I snatched it up and followed him.
“Forgive me,” Auguste said. “I should not have brought you here.”
“It is my fault,” I panted, stumbling after him. Although my gown was cumbersome, it was shame that slowed me. So frightened I had been by that coven of birds.
When we reached Damienne, I sank upon my trunk.
“You are ill!” she said.
“I failed,” I confessed.
“You see. This is not work for you,” she said. “You will not go back.”
But I said, “No, I must.”
“Why?” she asked, astonished.
“The birds will haunt me if I don’t.”
The next day I returned with Auguste, and this time I avoided the birds’ eyes. When these uncanny creatures gazed at me, I turned away. After Auguste took his shot I rushed to the nests. I kept my head and searched for eggs, even as the birds rose in a cloud.
Returning to our settlement, Auguste carried a brace of birds, and I brought three speckled eggs.
“You did not hesitate,” said Auguste.
I answered, “The blue eyes still frighten me.”
“And why is that?”
“Because they are like our own.”
“Birds are only animals,” he said.
“But they live as we do in society. They raise their young and fight and hunt.”
“Exactly,” Auguste said. “As they hunt, so must we.”
I knew that this was fair and right, that we must hunt for food. And I tried to live as the white birds did, bravely. But in dreams, birds haunted me. They stood like martyrs, daring us to murder them. Always their blue eyes shamed me. I said they were like us, but they were better—braver, warmer in down feathers. Their colony dwarfed ours, and they were rich, well fed in autumn, for they could dive for fish, while we could only cast a line.
Seeing the birds succeed so well, we knew that fish were plentiful, but it was difficult to catch them from the shore. One morning, Auguste unspooled twine and baited a hook with offal from our kills. He ventured to an outcropping and cast patiently, but he caught nothing and retreated, wet and cold.
The next morning, Auguste returned and stood farther out upon the water. The rocks here were treacherous, and the waves were rough, but he thought he would have better luck. Then, casting again, he caught a great silvery fish.
“I have it!” he shouted.
My nurse cleaned this fish and roasted it, and the flesh was white and good. Damienne said she liked it better than the pike at home. We ate our fill and dried and salted what was left.
Auguste said this fish must be the cod the officers had talked about, and several times he fished for cod again. But hunting birds was quicker, and we feared that once the weather changed, the flock would fly away. Because of this, Auguste shot as many as he could. Damienne cleaned, Auguste salted, and I did not sit apart, nor did I ask permission, but I packed our meat in empty biscuit boxes. In this way, we became a factory.
Together we stocked meat and fish, and even the seagrass Damienne laid out in the sun to dry. I layered the brittle greens in empty paper packets from our seeds, and though it crumbled, we found the grass a good herb, salty and flavorful.
Filling these packets and wood boxes, I felt a joy I had not known before. It was not love, and it was not comfort, nor was it mastery or beauty, but it was usefulness.
Auguste looked at me and sensed it too. Even Damienne approved my work, saying, “That is well done.”
We celebrated our success with undiluted wine. At dusk we lit our fire and warmed our hands and gave thanks because we had saved up so much food.
In that moment of accomplishment, Damienne said for the first time, “I wish we could have music.”
“It is true that we’ve had none,” said Auguste.
“Nothing but birdcalls,” said Damienne. “And when the weather turns, we will have nothing but the waves.”
She looked so yearningly that Auguste unwrapped his cittern. He set it on a rock, and then he pried open the crate containing the virginal, which he balanced on two trunks pushed together.
“Now,” he said. “We shall make the first music in this place.”
But what horror when we tried to play! Auguste could not turn his cittern’s pegs to tune because they were so warped and swollen. As for my virginal, the keys thumped soundlessly. Damp had crept in, rotting the mechanism.
Damienne mourned, “Alas, I thought I’d kept our instruments safe.”
“Heat and the sea air ruined them,” said Auguste.
“But there’s not a scratch on either one,” Damienne said, and this was true. Our instruments were beautiful as ever. Only their voices were now silenced. And here was my guardian’s lesson and his curse—a cittern without tuning, a virginal corrupt inside, although its case was satin smooth.
I shut the lid, and my eyes stung. “We should break these up for fuel.”
“No.” Auguste turned his long-necked cittern and examined its round base. “We might find some use for this.”
“Impossible,” I said. The cittern was too delicate to fashion anything we might need—so I thought then.
“The wire strings,” he began, but interrupted himself. “Look.”
I saw something black on the horizon. A slender fleet gliding through the water. But these were not the wide boats men used at home. They were light and narrow, and their oarsmen dark.
Auguste seized my hand; Damienne beat the fire out. We snatched our weapons and our powder, leaving our possessions and our food upon the rocks. We who had longed for any vessel were now so afraid of being seen.
Racing upland, Auguste led the way. He broke a path through bracken, and I dragged Damienne along. When she stumbled, Auguste helped, and together we bore her away.
We did not rest until we reached the rock pool where we did our washing, and there we crouched to conceal ourselves. We were sure that warriors would storm our island. They would steal our belongings and then murder us. A spear in the back, an arrow through the throat—this was what we were imagining. However, the oarsmen did not stop to plunder our poor dwelling. From our perch, we saw them rowing without pause. As quickly as they came, the vessels swept away and to the south.
“They are hurrying,” said Auguste.
“But what are they escaping?” Damienne asked.
I said, “What if they come back?”
“We must find a better shelter,” said Auguste. “We can no longer live upon the shore.” And this was when we gave up our signal fire and admitted we must save ourselves.