Reflections of Silence (Silent Sentinels #1)

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

GISELLA

1735

My first impression of a fledgling New Orleans was uninspiring. Considering my impending marriage, and my new home, I hoped the locale wouldn’t be indicative of my new lifestyle. As filthy and crowded as the Parisian docks might have been, they retained an air of elegance, of civilization beneath the thick layer of grime and la pute that overpopulated such a place.

Here, mud covered everything. Crud, muck, and sludge, hid beneath another layer of the brown goop. I pressed worn boots into the hard deck of the boat, relishing the relative sturdiness of the surface as passengers left us at other ports, wobbling away on their sea legs. They struggled to keep themselves upright, and that was on solid ground.

While ship life had been my existence these last months, the thought of being back on land was a welcome one. Though my feet were content with their current placement, my legs quivered, brain and nerves warring in a silent battle.

I hoped whole-heartedly I wouldn’t be the exception of my fellow passengers, and find myself on my derriere in the slush.

Sweat tickled my throat, pooling around the neckline of my dress, and ran unceremoniously into the small of my back. The other girls who had traveled with me from Paris—all for the same reason—didn’t appear as discomforted.

Or maybe they hid their emotions better. That had never been a strong point for me, much to my father’s disdain. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he shipped me halfway around the world in order to be rid of the daughter he no longer wanted.

It wasn’t even a good offer. The king’s coffers weren’t what they had been in the reign of Louis XIV, by any means.

I resisted the urge to swish my tattered parasol through the cloud of insects determined to devour every inch of exposed skin, resolved to present a calm face to the first moments of my new home. The swarm of tiny gnats and jeweled beetles ignored my intentions, nibbling away at the buffet my pale skin afforded them.

I had an inkling I was overdressed but also underprepared for my new life. Though when I only owned a single, well-worn dress, there weren’t many options. Like most of the girls I traveled alongside, I left my homeland wearing my dress, my little casket tucked beneath my arm.

My father had placed me in an abbey, under the care of nuns—no more than a glorified orphanage for the unwanted and unloved—when my mother passed. His madness devolved into a violent thing, and I had been glad to leave the luxurious life I’d been born into.

Then, along with our government and other families in need of funds, my father had sold me as a suitable wife to a man I didn’t know, in a country where I had no associations or family of any kind.

Bringing culture to the poor shores of the new land.

Or some such rubbish the king’s representative uttered when he droned through the official position. I wasn’t the only one who nodded off.

My traveling group became known as the Casket Girls. And I was one of them, headed to a home I’d been allocated. To a husband.

I gripped my little box—a morbid, splinter-ridden affair in the shape of a child’s coffin—until my fingers found new pinpoints to torture me, and tried to focus on the mess before me…not the one to come when I married a man I didn’t know.

The fate of every woman—girl—I traveled alongside.

All but one.

A rumble of chatter rolled over the deck in waves. Sailors, hurtling about in their duties, added a hefty layer of confusion to the commotion. Suddenly, after weeks stuffed into a teapot-sized room, I wanted nothing more than to retreat there, to hide in the dim light, and return to my homeland.

An elbow in my ribs lifted me out of my daze, the cacophony of the ship rushing back to me.

“It’s noisy. And not in the least clean.” Amy, a girl of English descent with an atrocious accent, hovered at my side, lines creasing her face.

I wanted to tell her not to frown, but with her heritage, wrinkles were a forgone conclusion. “What is it you English say—put on a brave face?”

Amy scowled. “Once we get to the manor house, I won’t have to be brave. I wouldn’t like to have your fate.” Her chin tipped up, though her gaze remained a little wild at the edges. “The house will be clean and fresh, with all my things already there. Not like you . Don’t you wonder who he is?”

“Of course.” I stared at the encroaching dock, disregarding the growing nest of worms writhing in my belly. If I ignored the sensation, perhaps I would be able to be as brave as I had suggested to Amy.

Though the trip from France had been somewhat calm—as calm as a three-month voyage could be considered—the quarters were a tight fit. Cabins were shared, though my second companion had rarely spoken throughout our shared journey, hiding from the open air of the deck. Over the weeks, she had faded into a pallid, little person who was soon forgotten by the rest of the ship’s occupants.

Though hers was meant to be a single stateroom, the few passenger beds had been overbooked, and I’d been shunted in with her until space became available amongst the other French girls.

Which happened when one dived overboard, clutching her casket stowed full of rocks, leaving her half of the cabin vacant.

I shared Amy’s accommodations for the first part of the trip. An English socialite who missed the parties of her Continental tour, she plied us both with an endless supply of cheap alcohol stashed in her cabin, the cause of many blank nights and headache-ridden mornings.

We talked rubbish of men and gossip, of what to expect when we arrived in New Orleans. In the darkest hours, deep in the stash of contraband she somehow hid from the sailors who offered us a wide berth, she told me stories of her previous husband.

Unlike the rest of the girls we traveled alongside, she wasn’t an unmarried virgin. She was, however, an expense to her family, the remnant of a poor match, and thus outcast with the rest of us.

But her stories…I had curled in my thin blanket at nights on board the ship when all others were asleep, listening to her tales, learning more about what happened behind closed doors of a married couple than I could ever want to know.

“He would come to my bedchamber at night—of course we didn’t share one. Don’t be so naive.” Amy tipped her head up in a show of defiance, though her hand gathered her skirts in her fist. “The first night, he was sweet, attentive. Then, he became more demanding, creating slights we both knew I hadn’t committed against him for the pure pleasure of throwing me over his knee and spanking my backside in recompense.”

“Over your clothes? Did it hurt?” I couldn’t help but wonder, trailing my fingers along my thigh over my tangled skirts and bedsheets.

“Of course not, silly.” Amy rolled her eyes and giggled, her face stained pink in the flickering light our broken lantern afforded. “He flicked up my skirts, one by one, all business-like, until I lay naked and exposed before him. Then he would squeeze my bottom, tell me how naughty I had been, and then he spanked me. It hurt; oh, how I cried! Sobbing as his hand stung against my poor skin. At the end, he would rub his fingers over my heated rear, tell me how good I had been. Then his fingers would dip lower.

“I liked the pain, you see, and he found out how much I enjoyed his beatings. My new punishment was to perform on his hand until he was satisfied. Sometimes he made me work my body for him all night until I was covered in sweat, shaking and crying…” She shuddered, bunching both hands at the apex of her thighs over her skirts. “Well, the pain was worth what would come after.”

Her knowing smile haunted me as I lay awake, guessing what my own future held, unable to question her more. My own embarrassment had heightened as she shifted on her cot on the other side of the cabin’s close confines, moaning and rocking with the ship’s movement.

Amy knew where she was headed before any of us got on the ship that had taken us from France to the Americas. Her new husband-to-be had already prepared her home, whereas I knew nothing about my arrival. Impossible hopes and dreams plagued my sleepless hours. I quashed them into the tiny box all the girls traveled with, except for Amy, who came accompanied by a collection of gothic-looking cases that must be family heirlooms.

I scanned the crowd, wondering who would be waiting to collect us—to collect me. Would we be expected to move on en masse or whittled away, one by one, into our new respective families? Explosions of high-pitched sound erupted around me. A gaggle of girls. Or is it a giggle? My attention returned to the docks.

Should I be searching for a housekeeper, bundled off on errands for the day, or perhaps a lady-in-waiting? Would the estate be wealthy enough to have staff?

So little information had been shared with us before we departed France that we had created our own dream worlds where comfort and riches—and, of course, a handsome young man—awaited us.

No wealthy young men lingered at the dock—though I still didn’t think it was worthy of the title—as gangplanks crashed onto heavy struts. Mud slopped along the banks in a steady stream. The river darkened in shadow as a steady line of impatient passengers formed, jostling around mountains of luggage.

My valise was much smaller, like fake sarcophagi beginning to trend throughout the British nobility before I left France. The tiny coffers were supposed to house ancient holding mummies or the treasures of ancient Egypt when in reality they contained nothing more than the bodies of young urchins plucked from their own streets.

My own treasures were far less grandiose: several pairs of clean pantalettes and other unmentionables —a term Amy shared with me. What hang-ups the English had. I wondered how she would survive in the new world as a sharp sting on my neck reminded me of the whispers floating about the ship.

That our husbands were vehicles for the devil, never seen in society, seeking brides from abroad who would not have been subject to the more local rumor mill.

Or to have the chance to run away from it.

More common were the suspicions surrounding us, and our little wooden boxes. Several nosy passengers—women who knew nothing of courtesy sticking their plain faces into the occurrences of others—pestered us in the first few weeks. Some of the girls had become frustrated, upset, and so we had fabricated the rumor that we were the ones to be feared, shipped from our ruined homes to the colonies.

We hid in our cabins, laughing at the stupidity of the crowd, fueling the whisper of something aboard far worse than what might be waiting for us all in New Orleans: the dead subsisting on the living.

That we were, in fact, vampyre.

It was so laughable that we persisted in the rumor for all of a day. But as is the way with sensational news, the idea caught within the small community forced to exist together within wooden confines, igniting a small rush of panic throughout the ship. I snorted, stumbling on the hem of my dress as a passenger jostled me in his rush to meet the shore.

My box clutched in my arms, I placed each wary foot on the gangplank, chin raised as the nuns had taught me. Looking out at the crowd clustered around the jetty, I noticed a woman standing next to an empty cart. Not because she was active—quite the opposite. It was her complete lack of action that brought her out from the mob swarming around baggage and cargo as it was unloaded onto the muddy bank. Dressed in a plain, brown-belted tunic, she looked unassuming and bland in the chaotic flurry of color around us.

Trailed by a small line of chattering girls, I approached the woman, picking my way through the mud. Her eyes fixed on me, high cheekbones sucking in to give her a skeletal appearance, hair scraped in a severe bun. I smiled tentatively, my early training I’d had before my father lost his mind kicking in.

“Are you from Ursuline?” I asked, gritting my teeth at her stoic expression. “From the abbey—convent, I mean?” I smiled again, but she made no movement at all.

“She can’t be the right one,” a girl from the gaggle muttered over my shoulder.

“We should look around.”

“Don’t tell me we’ve been left behind!”

This last was accompanied by a high-pitched shriek. I closed my eyes as the sound echoed through my head, turning to shush the gaggle clustered behind me.

I turned back to the woman to find her nose inches to mine. Cold, colorless eyes peered into mine as though she delved into my own soul and found it empty. I squawked, retreating a step into the sticky mud underfoot. My worn soles didn’t hold up to the task, my feet failing to find purchase in the mush of too many people milling about the crowded space. Slipping, I windmilled my arms for balance.

The ground shifted from terra-firma to terra-slushius beneath me. I closed my eyes, waiting to plunge into the slop but hands gripped my arms, steadying me. The ground stopped roiling, or maybe it was me. The girls hoisting me upright did their job to perfection. I smiled my gratitude at my two traveling companions.

We huddled together as the silent woman flipped open the back of her cart, motioning us into it. One by one, the girls climbed in. A small pile of wooden boxes filled the center as they found seats around the edges.

“Thank you,” I murmured to the girls who were still clutching my arms.

None of us had moved, yet. An exchanged glance rippled through us. We moved together toward the cart, my hands stone cold in their warmer ones.

I released them with reluctance to shuffle on the dirty wooden flooring, my skirts swirling around my ankles, tattered lace catching on my heels. The woman retreated to the front of the cart, attending to her animal.

Twisting around, I sighted a figure I thought might be Amy, though no part of her was visible, ensconced beneath a heavy woolen coat even as the gnats stuck to my sweaty skin. Waving at the shrouded figure just in case, I took in the energy of the crowd: so much noise, chatter, and life, it reminded me of Paris as a child. If there were a place to see people at their best, it would be difficult to find a location better than this, I was certain.

Amy noticed my goodbye amongst the multitude gathered, shifting shadowed features into a wide grin as she rolled her eyes towards a young, handsome man, who leaned down to speak into her ear. He took her elbow, drawing her away and taking her attention with him.

A pang of loss struck my chest, even as I was nudged, and my attention returned to my own circumstances.

“Gissla. Gissy. Gisselie ? — ”

“Gisella,” I cut off the poor nun mangling my name.

She sent me a wilted smile and patted the step set below a foreboding woman dressed in a full habit.

The girl behind me stumbled, bumping me forward. I caught the rail to prevent myself from sprawling across the small interior of the cart. My land legs struggled against the combination of the solid ground I had yearned for versus the instability of a cart never meant to hold a swath of homesick travelers.

Finally, we were all seated, the cart bumping along a wide dirt path, peppered with potholes and stones. Chances were that my derrière wouldn’t thank me come morning. I fervently hoped my mattress would be thick and minus any infestation, though watching clusters of gnats migrate from one girl to another, I had my doubts.

As the town receded, the countryside took over. Neither fields nor mountains spanned the landscape; instead, bogs and swampy trees, their moss-covered limbs dangling in the stagnant waters, overpopulated the flattened area.

I slapped at a large insect determined to drain my bodily fluids, and the girl next to me jumped.

She shrieked, pointing toward a river that wound its way around the bend. “What was that?”

“It was me, ninny. The sole thing to be afraid of is your own insensibilities.” I snorted.

It wasn’t as though my manners were required out in this mud-encrusted town. How would these girls, each born and bred in Paris, survive in this uncivilized land?

“No, that! ”

This time, it was another girl who thrust a hand unceremoniously beneath my nose. I followed it to see a lump floating in the river. I opened my mouth to tell her not to be afraid of a decaying log when the lump in question launched itself from the putrid waters, revealing a prehistoric-looking creature, all slitted eyes and yellowed teeth.

My stomach roiled as the behemoth exploded from the water and snatched a bird from its perch on a vine above the waterline. The scaled beast sank back into the depths of the river, jaws clutched about its dead prize. The waters closed over its head, stilling in a deceptive vista of serenity.

My breath lodged in my throat. Not a sound broke the tentative silence of my traveling companions. Unwilling to be the least of us, I swallowed a scream as the cart rattled over a fragile bridge, praying it would hold our combined weight. We all peered over the side. Bubbles ruptured the surface, tiny ripples drifting away from the monster lurking beneath.

“It’s breathing . Under the water,” whispered the girl next to me. Shakes wracked her too-thin frame.

I nodded, unable to pry my jaw open lest I devolve into my own bout of hysterics, never to emerge sane again. Sobs echoed around me. More than one girl let her fear overcome her sensibilities. Determined not to join them— yet —I straightened, fluffing my skirts as though a predator at my side was nothing more than an everyday occurrence.

What fresh hell have we been sent to inhabit?

“What is it?”

The question fell from someone else’s lips before I could ask, and I was glad for the opportunity not to betray my discomfort.

The nun offered a sliver of a smile from her perch. “An alligator. Native to these parts. Fearsome monsters reside here, outside the waters, as well as within.” She stared down at a group of girls huddled in the cart’s far corner. Her smile remained as dead as her eyes, sending an ominous cloud rolling over all of us.

Perhaps the les marais’ monsters were the lesser evil. I tried not to shiver, gripping my knees with whitened knuckles. The whole affair was laughable. We would be inside the abbey’s confines and bored out of our minds within an hour.

The river and its horror would be left behind while we pretended to enjoy waiting for husbands who may or may not arrive to collect us. Worrying about some unknown future was both impractical and a useless waste of energy.

Yes, there were more things to occupy a woman’s mind, more critical to her daily regime, especially a new one.

But no matter what dour thoughts I focused on to suppress my fanciful notions, a single, haunting realization remained lodged firmly within my mind.

The alligator was native to New Orleans. We were not.

Despite the stories we created on the ship about our journey, a coldness swept over me. What other creatures might we encounter in this wasted land of mud and myth?

What could be more terrifying than scales and a maw full of pointed teeth?