Chapter 11
The transition from the relative clarity of the river to the green labyrinth of the Atchafalaya was not a sudden event, but a slow immersion into a world where the sun was a distant memory and the water possessed the consistency of thin soup.
By the end of the first week, the expedition had traded the wide sky for a canopy of cypress and Spanish moss that seemed to weep with the humidity.
It was a country that defied the precise lines of the maps Mr. Wickham had unrolled with such confidence in New Orleans, a country where land and water were not so much distinct entities as they were varying degrees of saturation.
Mr. Darcy stood at the bow of the lead pirogue, his gaze fixed upon the impenetrable wall of vegetation.
His linen, once crisp, now clung to him with a persistence that mirrored the dampness of the air.
It was a truth he had quickly discerned that in the bayou, a gentleman's dignity was a weight better shed, yet he maintained a rigidity of posture that suggested he was personally offended by the lack of order in the swamps.
"The map indicates a passage here, surely," Mr. Wickham said. He was seated in the middle of the boat, a silver flask held loosely in one hand. His eyes, usually so adept at finding the most advantageous path in a drawing-room, were bloodshot and squinting against the dappled light.
"The map appears to have been drawn by a man who preferred his imagination to the damp reality of the terrain." Mr. Darcy did not turn.
"In fairness to the mapmaker," Miss Elizabeth said, "the terrain may have been entirely different when he visited. The bayou is democratic in that way—it treats all previous arrangements with equal contempt."
"It is a government chart, Darcy. One does not simply ignore the Admiralty's surveyors."
"The Admiralty's surveyors have never seen a cypress knee, I suspect."
The exchange was familiar, a rhythm of polite hostility that had become the soundtrack to their progress.
Miss Elizabeth, seated near her father, Thomas, watched them with a curiosity that had long since lost its edge of amusement.
She found the bayou a place of strange, terrifying beauty, but it was also a place of deep exhaustion.
Her own skirts were stained with the black mud of the banks, and her skin was a map of insect bites that no amount of lavender water could soothe.
"Cécile says we must turn south." Miss Elizabeth's voice cut through the heavy air.
Mr. Wickham turned a charming, if slightly unfocused, smile toward her. "My dear Miss Elizabeth, the girl is a local. She knows the paths to the market, perhaps, but we are navigating a wilderness. She cannot read a compass."
"She can read the water, which is more than can be said for the compass in this current. The iron deposits in the silt, or perhaps the sheer perversity of the place, render your needle as sluggish as a well-fed spaniel."
Cécile, sitting silent at the stern, met Miss Elizabeth's eyes and gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
The two women had formed a silent alliance of necessity.
While the men debated the merits of British cartography, it was Cécile who whispered the names of the birds—the ibis, the snowy egret—and Miss Elizabeth who translated those whispers into a language that the voyageurs could understand, or at least, one they chose to respect.
The second week brought with it a shift in the nature of their discomfort.
The heat was no longer a mere inconvenience; it was a thick, oppressive weight.
The food, painstakingly packed in New Orleans, began to succumb to the environment.
The flour in the barrels grew damp and sprouted strange, grey molds.
The salt pork, despite its preservation, took on a scent that even the hungry voyageurs eyed with suspicion.
"It is the damp." Thomas peered into a sack of hardtack. "Everything is returning to the water. We are all of us becoming amphibians."
"My mother," Miss Elizabeth said, examining the grey mould with the air of a woman comparing two equally disappointing bolts of cloth, "would have had the entire household out with vinegar and opinions. I confess the mould would not have survived her."
Thomas, who had spent the better part of the journey examining the flora with a scholar's detachment, had been forced to turn his attention to the group's health.
The mosquitoes—the 'gallinippers' as the men called them—were a constant plague, and the water, though plentiful, was a source of mounting concern.
It was on the tenth day that Miller, the younger of the two Crown agents, failed to rise from his bedroll at dawn. He lay in the bottom of the pirogue, his face flushed with a heat that was not born of the sun. Thomas knelt beside him, pressing a hand to the lad's brow.
"Fever."
"How bad?" Mr. Darcy was at his side in an instant.
"The swamp fever. It is the humors of the place." Thomas's face was lined with worry. "He needs quinine, and he needs dry ground. Neither of which we possess in abundance."
"A bit of sun-stroke, surely? A day's rest and he will be as right as rain." Wickham leaned over them, the smell of brandy preceding him.
"He is as right as a man in the grip of a delirium.
" Miss Elizabeth's tone was sharp. She had been tearing a strip of linen to make a cool compress.
"Mr. Wickham, if you cannot assist, perhaps you might find some useful occupation elsewhere.
The maps, perhaps? I believe there is an island noted three miles back which we never encountered. "
Wickham's jaw tightened, but he withdrew to the other end of the boat, taking a long pull from his flask.
The navigation failures became more frequent.
Three times in four days, they found themselves in a 'cul-de-sac' of cypress knees and floating lilies, forced to backtrack for hours while the sun beat down upon them.
The voyageurs began to grumble in their patois, a rough, rhythmic French that Miss Elizabeth had begun to parse.
They spoke of the 'marais' and the 'grand bois', and they spoke with increasing frequency of the 'maudite carte'—the cursed map.
"They are losing faith." Miss Elizabeth spoke in low tones to Mr. Darcy one evening as they made camp on a narrow ridge of land that was barely eight inches above the water line.
"The voyageurs? Or the agents?"
"Both. Miller's condition is not improving, and Davis is looking at the water as if he expects it to swallow him whole. Even Mr. Wickham... well, the less said of Mr. Wickham's state of mind, the better."
Mr. Darcy looked up. The firelight played across the sharp planes of his face, highlighting the weariness in his eyes. "And you, Miss Bennet? Are you losing faith?"
"I have faith in Cécile. And I have faith in your stubbornness, Mr. Darcy. I suspect you would walk all the way to the Western territories before you allowed yourself the indignity of being lost."
"I am a Darcy." A flicker of his old irony appeared. "We are rarely lost. We are merely exploring alternative routes."
"It is much like a country dance," Miss Bennet said. "One goes up the set, down the set, and eventually returns to where one started, having accomplished nothing but the exercise. Only here, the set is full of alligators and the music is entirely mosquitoes."
"It is a comfort to know that even in a swamp, your pride remains buoyant."
"In this place, it is the only thing that is."
The third week was a descent into the true heart of the bayou.
The water became so shallow and choked with logs that the pirogues could no longer be paddled.
The men were forced to stand in the waist-deep water, heaving the vessels over 'chicots'—the submerged trunks of fallen trees.
The air was thick with the smell of decay and the constant hum of insects.
Progress was measured in yards, not miles. Miller was now fully delirious, his skin a sallow yellow. He had to be lashed into his seat to keep him from falling into the murky water.
"We cannot continue like this," Mr. Wickham said. He was standing on a half-sunken log, his balance precarious. "The boats are a liability. We should abandon the heavy stores and strike out for the high ground."
"What high ground?" Mr. Darcy asked. He was knee-deep in the mud, his shoulders straining as he pushed the pirogue. "Your map shows a ridge that does not exist. Cécile says the land ahead is more of the same for another twenty miles."
"The girl is a local, Darcy. You would take her word over a gentleman's instruments?"
"The 'gentleman's instruments' have led us into a bog. The 'girl' has kept us from being eaten by alligators. I know which I prefer."
Wickham let out a sound of disgust. "I am the guide of this expedition."
"You were the guide," Mr. Darcy said. "Now, you are a passenger. If you wish to be useful, take the lead of the second boat. Otherwise, get out of the way."
Miss Elizabeth, standing in the shallow water with her skirts pinned up, watched the exchange.
She saw the flash of hatred in Wickham's eyes, and the steady, cold determination in Mr. Darcy's.
It was a revelation to her, seeing them thus.
In Hertfordshire, Wickham had been the one of easy charm and Darcy the one of stiff reserve.
Here, the charm had curdled into a bitter incompetence, while the reserve had hardened into a steel-like competence.
The crisis came on a Tuesday, though time had become a fluid concept.
They reached a section of the bayou where the water disappeared into a vast field of 'trembling earth'—a mat of vegetation and mud that would support neither boat nor man.
To continue, they would have to carry everything—including the sick man—over a narrow, winding ridge of firmer ground that Cécile had found.
"We cannot move him. He'll die the moment we lift him." Davis looked at Miller.