by Colette Gale
Julie was a beautiful young woman with sparkling dark eyes and a gently plump figure; today those eyes were dull and worried.
“I remembered that today was the day your father’s debt is to be called,” Mercédès replied, walking along with the young woman, their full skirts swishing in tandem. Despite the fact that they were separated in age by a decade, the two women had become friends and confidantes, and it was only because Julia had mentioned her family’s dire straits in a recent letter that Mercédès was aware of the looming tragedy.
It had been that letter that brought Mercédès from Paris here to Marseille. “How is Monsieur Morrel?”
“He has locked himself in his office and refuses to see anyone, even Maximilien. The debt is to be paid at noon today, and it’s already past eleven o’clock. There is no hope.”
“But where are you going?” asked Mercédès, wondering why such a loving daughter would be leaving her father at such a time. “And where is your brother if he is not with monsieur?”
“Maximilien paces outside of Papa’s office door, but there is nothing he can do. But I . . . I have one small bit of hope. Come, we must hurry.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Allées de Meilhan, to a certain house there.”
Mercédès looked at the young woman in shock, but kept her pace. “Julie, what are you about?”
“You know that my father’s debt is to be called today, but I didn’t tell you all of the story. The debt was actually due to be paid three months ago today, but something quite extraordinary happened that day. My father had a visitor—a man who introduced himself as Lord Wilmore—who came to deliver the news that he had purchased Papa’s debt. While he was in the office, the news about the Pharaon came.”
Mercédès felt a wave of sorrow. The Pharaon was the last ship Edmond had sailed, and when it had returned to the harbor those fourteen years ago, Morrel had named him its captain. That was the day she and Edmond had made love on the hillside, and it was two days later that her lover had been taken away by the authorities—during their betrothal party.
“What happened to the Pharaon?”
“It was lost in a hurricane, and while Lord Wilmore was with my father, the three sailors who had survived the accident came to bring the news.” Julie looked up at Mercédès, shielding her brow with a plump hand. “My papa, though it was his last ship, and his only hope for salvaging the company, cared not for the loss of the ship but for the loss of lives that had accompanied its destruction. He paid the wages for his good sailors out of our last bit of money, and made a small stipend to the widows of the ones lost at sea. Then he turned to Lord Wilmore.”
“But he did not call the debt, did he? If it is due today, he must have given your father an extension.”
Julie nodded, gesturing for Mercédès to turn with her down Via Meilhen. The houses here were crowded plaster ones, with narrow stoops and irregular walkways. The smell of baking bread wafted from one of the nearby windows. “My father did not lower himself to ask for an extension, but Lord Wilmore offered it and Papa accepted gratefully. But there was little he could do. He went to Paris to see Baron Danglars—do you know him?”
Mercédès did indeed know Danglars. He had been a purser on the Pharaon with Edmond and now did business with her husband. “Did he not once sail for your father too?”
“Indeed, but now he has become a successful banker, and my father thought that due to their past business relationships he would grant him a loan. But Danglars turned him away. And there is no one else.”
Mercédès’ lips tightened as she hurried along. It surprised her not in the least that the sly man with pinched eyes and groping fingers would refuse to help someone in need—especially someone he’d once worked for. He’d been visibly envious when Edmond was given the captaincy of the Pharaon, instead of himself. “So the three-month extension is for naught?”
“Perhaps. But there is more to the story,” Julie said. “And, voilà, we are here.” Mercédès followed her young friend up the short walkway and was surprised when Julie opened the front door and walked in.
Mercédès followed more cautiously, but when she heard a soft cry from Julie, who’d walked into the next room, she ran after her, her soft little shoes slipping on the polished wood floor. In the next room, she saw Julie standing in front of a fire-place mantel, holding a red silk purse.
She was sobbing.
Mercédès put an arm around her friend and brought out a fine lace-edged handkerchief to wipe away the tears. Certainly, there would be more to come.
But when Julie raised her face to look at her, Mercédès saw that rather than sorrow, her tears were ones of joy. She was smiling rapturously. “We are saved!”
“I don’t understand.”
Julie thrust the purse at her, and Mercédès took it. “I’ve seen this purse before! This is one your father gave to Père Dantès, filled with money, when Edmond was taken away. How did it come to be here?”
“Sinbad the Sailor,” Julie said cryptically, smiling through her sobs. “He sent me a note only one hour ago! Come, we must get back before noon. I must show my father before—before he does something tragic.”
Mercédès opened the purse and inside were two pieces of paper . . . and a diamond! The size of a walnut! “Dios mio!” she said, lapsing into her native language.
She pulled out the papers. One of them was a bill for two hundred eighty-seven thousand, five hundred francs—and it was marked paid. And the other was a handwritten note that said: For Julie’s dowry.
“Now I shall be able to marry Emmanuel!” Julie said, pulling on Mercédès’ arm to drag her out of the house, fairly dancing down the walkway.
Clutching the red velvet purse, Mercédès hurried along with the ecstatic young woman, scarcely able to believe what she held in her hand. How could this be? And who was Sinbad the Sailor?
She peppered her friend with questions as they rushed back to the House of Morrel, skirts flapping. But she received only bits and pieces of the story, tossed over Julie’s shoulder while they hurried along.
From what Mercédès could understand, Lord Wilmore had spoken briefly with Julie on the day of his visit and told her that she would hear from a man called Sinbad the Sailor, and that she should do exactly as Sinbad instructed.
“And this Sinbad told you to come to this house in Allées de Meilhan?” Mercédès asked incredulously. “And you would have come here alone?” Would she have ever done something so foolish, so blind, when she was Julie’s age?
And then she remembered sneaking out to meet Edmond when he was courting her, avoiding the sharp eyes of her mother, and lying to her cousin Fernand when he would have followed her. For the Spanish-Moorish Catalans kept to themselves, away from the French residents of Marseille, even though they lived on the outskirts of the city. They lived and married among themselves and kept their own traditions and cultures. For her to be trysting with a non-Catalan woud have been cause for reprimand.
Sí, she would have done the same. She’d been young and adventurous then. The whole world and its possibilities had been open to her.
The two women burst into the House of Morrel in a manner that would have caused any spectators about to stop in surprise—especially to see a distinguished comtesse in her fine Parisian clothing haring about on the heels of the younger, less fashionable woman.
“Papa! Papa!” cried Julie, clattering up the steps to the upper offices. “Papa, we are saved!”
“What are you about?” asked Maximilien Morrel, who stood at the top of the landing. He was a youth of seventeen, on the verge of manhood, and Mercédès saw that his handsome face had gone beyond worried to gaunt and was striped with perspiration. “He will not let me in, and it is one minute until noon! I swear I have heard the click of a pistol, for Papa has said he will die and be remembered as an unfortunate, but honorable, man.”
“Papa! You must open the door! We are saved!” cried Julie, banging on the heavy wooden door.
Monsieur Morrel had cracked open the door. The kindly man, his gray hair brushed neatly and his face shaved smooth as if he were ready to attend church, rather than his own suicide, looked out. “Julie—”
But Maximilien shoved on the door, opening it fully. “Papa, put that weapon down! Julie is right. We are saved. Look at this!”
And no sooner had Monsieur Morrel opened the purse and comprehended its contents, and the family was sharing tears of joy, than Mercédès knew it was time for her to leave. She placed the basket of oranges and the small packet of ribbons on a little table at the foot of the stairs and made her way out onto the sunny street.
What a miracle! What a miraculous thing to have happened to such a good family!
When Edmond had been taken off by the officers of the court from the midst of his own betrothal party, Monsieur Morrel had immediately gone to the crown prosecutor’s office to plead his innocence, to post his bond, and to demand information about the charges and his disappearance.
The crown prosecutor, Monsieur Villefort, had been able— or willing—to give Monsieur Morrel little information about Edmond, despite several visits made by the shipmaster. The only thing he had told Morrel was that Edmond was being held on charges of being a rabid Bonapartist, and that Morrel’s incessant attention to the matter shed an unflattering light on himself and his shipping company.
Monsieur Morrel had visited Mercédès and Edmond’s father, providing the old man with the very same red velvet purse filled with enough francs to feed him for months. But Père Dantès would not eat, and within weeks of hearing that his son had been imprisoned, he died of starvation.
That had been a dark time.
Yet Mercédès’ life had become even darker since she had gone to Prosecutor Villefort to ask for information herself.
Shouts drew her attention, and she realized she’d begun to walk the short distance from the House of Morrel to the wharf. Ship masts striped the horizon, thrusting up from the cluster of vessels at the docks, and the familiar tang of sea salt reminded her how much she’d missed the simplicity of this bustling seaside town. Paris was full of pretension and fashion and falseness, to her mind, and she’d never felt completely comfortable since she and Fernand had moved there.
That was part of the reason she’d immersed herself in her education—it was a way to keep distance from a life she hadn’t been born to, and didn’t fully understand. She would have been perfectly content to remain in her little house in Marseille, growing her own vegetables and herbs . . . or sailing with Edmond.
The shouts had become more excited, and Mercédès tilted her head, straining to understand what the men were calling.
“The Pharaon! The Pharaon has returned!”
Frowning, she picked up her heavy skirts, crinolines and all, and ran toward the docks. Julie had just told her that the ship had been lost. . . . How could this be?
But when she reached the docks, the familiar sight of Edmond’s last ship—looking gleaming, and as if it were brand-new—sat, golden and proud-masted in the harbor. People were running and shouting and staring in disbelief.
“Tell Morrel!” someone shouted. “It is a miracle!”
Another miracle for the Morrels. Surely some angel had smiled down on them at last.
Mercédès felt a surprise tear sting the corner of her eyes. Where was her angel?
She was sincerely glad for the Morrels and their good fortune, but suddenly overcome by her own problems and fears. She missed her son, Albert, who was safely ensconced in their opulent home in Paris while she tried to determine a way to bring him with her. But Fernand would never allow it—he loved his only child too much.
If she could figure out a way to do that, she would never return to Fernand.
Mercédès saw Julie and her family as they rushed onto the scene, Monsieur Morrel stumbling along as though he’d just awakened from a dream. As she pushed through the crowd, which had continued to grow due to the miraculous news, she caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man ahead of her.
She stopped, her heart pausing for a moment, then continuing on in a painful, rapid beat.
Edmond.
From behind, he’d almost looked like Edmond for a moment there.
The man turned, and she couldn’t stop watching him as he moved gracefully through the crowd. His eyes were shadowed by the hat he wore low on his forehead, and he sported a dark, well-trimmed beard and mustache. His garb was not that of a common sailor, but the loose-fitting clothes of the Orient: sleeves and trousers of pale blue silk, gathered at the wrists and ankles. Dark hair fell in a braided queue from the back of his neck well past his shoulder blades.
Perhaps he felt the weight of her gaze on him, for he paused, turning to look in her direction. She, in turn, felt his attention settle on her as if to determine why she had been staring at him so boldly. Before their eyes met, Mercédès’ manners won out, and she quickly averted her attention to the joyous Morrel family, moving through the throng of well-wishers to get nearer to them.
It was an odd thing for her, a distinguished comtesse: pushing through a crowd of ordinary people, smashing her skirts and crushing the very full sleeves of which the fashion mavens were so proud, scuffing her slippers in the dirt.
Fourteen years ago, Mercédès would have thought nothing of moving about alone, or with a single companion; but along with her wealth and power had come propriety and restriction.
A sense of freedom such that she hadn’t had for years settled over her. She was here in Marseille, the city of the happiest— and most sorrowful—times of her life. She was alone, without constraints, without a schedule, without expectations.
Alone.
A short while later, when she looked over again, the man was gone.
And her chest felt tight once more, her grief from the loss of Edmond opened like a new wound to the flesh.
As the merrymaking at the Pharaon’s return came to an end—for the sailors and townspeople alike seized upon any cause for celebration on a humid summer evening—Mercédès found herself drifting from the wharves, her feet following a familiar path.
Before she quite realized it, she had walked for some time, and made her way along the narrow, uphill street that led past Père Dantès’ house. Here, Edmond had courted her, brought her from the close-knit Catalan world into his. She hadn’t been along this street for more than twelve years.
Suddenly, she realized the sun had dipped behind the irregular row of houses between this hill and the bay, and a narrow thoroughfare that had only moments ago been bathed in soft golden light was now browning. Shadows fell in thick blocks on the cobbled street, casting doorways and small yards into darkness.
The street was curiously empty and silent, and Mercédès felt the lift of hair on the back of her neck. A quiet scuff behind her had her heart thumping faster, and her parasol at the ready. She turned and saw three figures suddenly a mere two houses away. One man leaned nonchalantly against a low plaster wall covered with ivy. Another stood next to him, his hat brim low over his face.
And the third in the center of the empty street had his hands on his hips.
Even from her distance, Mercédès could tell that they were roughly dressed and had likely either just put in from a voyage, or bore the remnants from an evening of celebration.
But where was everyone else? The street was empty.
Her heart began to beat faster, and she closed her fingers tightly around the parasol. Its pointed tip would make a fair weapon, but it was all she had.
And it was obvious she would need one.
The man in the street began to walk toward her, purpose in his step, and Mercédès picked up her skirts and started to run. But even as she did, another figure moved from the growing shadows and stepped into the street in front of her.
She stumbled to a halt, but began to angle slightly toward th
e edge of the street.
“What be your hurry?” drawled the man behind her. “Don’t you want to keep us a bit of company?”
“A fine ransom the bitch’ll fetch us,” commented the one in front of her. “From the looks o’ her clothes.” He swiped toward her, grasping a handful of her generous sleeve.
“Release me,” Mercédès said in a voice much calmer than she felt. “You’ll receive no ransom but a visit from the authorities if you do not let me on my way. My husband is a very powerful man.”
The one who’d come from behind was much closer now. He laughed and gestured for his companions to come closer. “Now, my fair lady, wouldn’t ye like to see a bit of the world? From the deck of a ship, perhaps? We’ve got room on ours, and we be shipping out in the morn.”
The others laughed, and suddenly they were pulling at her, flipping something heavy and cloaking over her head, a hand slamming over her face to muffle her screams and smother her very breath. She managed to get one good strike with the parasol before someone jerked it out of her hands and the enveloping cloth wrapped tightly around her arms. Her flailing foot slammed into something soft, but she couldn’t revel in that minor success, for she was upended over someone’s shoulder and her face was full of prickly wool.
Suddenly, she heard the pounding of a horse’s hooves and felt tension in the man who held her. Though she could not see, the sounds told the story: The horseman galloped up, drawing his mount up next to her abductors with an elegant clatter. A sharp click of metal, and then a low, accented voice: “It would be best for you to release the woman, else I shall have to tell Luigi Vampa that you have tread beyond your boundaries.”
Then she felt the hold on her change, and the man—her rescuer—grasped her by the waist and lifted her against his hip and thigh. Suddenly, they were cantering off down the street, Mercédès still wrapped in the mean cloth, her parasol left behind.
He seemed to hold her easily against his leg, her hip half-wedged against his, with a single arm. If she expected he would stop and uncover her rather immediately, thus releasing any strain on his arm, she was to be disappointed, for they continued through several twists and turns and must have gone some distance away.
