by Zia Wesley
Sensing her discomfort, he quickly explained, “Begging your pardon Miss, your uncle instructed me to put myself at your disposal during our voyage, and I just wanted to introduce myself to you to that purpose. So, if any needs there be, I’m your man.” He grinned and nervously twisted his hat in his hands, embarrassed he had blurted out his intentions so crudely.
His frankness and uncommonly good looks completely unnerved her. “Thank you, Mr. Braugham. I will bear that in mind. And now, if you will excuse me I must go below to ready myself for dinner.” Why do my words sound so formal and stilted? Why do I feel so uncomfortable? She was too flustered to do anything other than move away from the disconcerting young man as quickly as possible. Nothing in any of her convent classes had prepared her for the uncomfortably excited feelings this man incited in her. She hoped that no one would notice her burning cheeks. Her heart pounded in her chest as she briskly walked away.
Mr. Braugham doffed his hat and bowed as Aimée walked off. His smiling gaze remained for several minutes after she had disappeared, and anyone watching would have seen that he, too, was plainly smitten.
~ ~ ~
That night, after dinner, the women retired to the ship’s small drawing room as the men remained at the table, smoking cigars and drinking port. Aimée eyed the port hungrily, but could not think of a way to obtain a glass without shocking her fellow passengers. Luckily, she had secreted two bottles of sherry in her trunk.
There were thirty passengers on board, ten of whom were women, with Aimée being the youngest. Seven of the others were traveling with their husbands, and two widows were traveling to Martinique to teach at the mission school.
Madame Leveaux, one of the widows, inquired, “Were you born on Martinique, dear?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“You must be so happy to be going home to your mother and father.”
Aimée paused for a moment. “Actually, Madame Leveaux, my father died shortly after I was born, and my mother when I was six.”
“Oh, I am so sorry, dear.” She clasped her hand to her mouth. The other women made cooing and clucking noises, muttering, “oh, so sorry, dear’” and “poor child” to each other.
“No, it is quite all right. My uncle and aunt adopted me right after my mother passed, and have always treated me as their own daughter. I have quite a few cousins on the island also.”
“Oh, that’s lovely then, dear.” Madame Leveaux seemed relieved. “How long have you been away?”
“I resided at the Couvent de la Visitation for two years. I would have returned home sooner but for the war. My uncle thought it too unsafe to travel, so we waited.”
“Oh yes, a very wise choice I am sure. One simply cannot be too careful when traveling about in the world.” She shook her head and made a tsk-ing sound. “Conflict raging everywhere.”
The passengers made sounds of agreement, and the evening passed with light conversation, mostly regarding explanations for making the journey.
~ ~ ~
When Aimée returned to her cabin that night, she poured two fingers of sherry into her water glass and drank it down. The earlier conversation had brought thoughts of her mother, and she tried to remember her face. She could sense her more as a feeling than as a visual recollection. After the death of Aimée’s father, her mother had taken over the management of the family’s coffee plantation and had spent very little time with Aimée, who was raised mostly by Da Angelique and other house slaves. She was a young child when her mother died of a fever, leaving her in the care of her aunt and uncle and Father Christophe. Aimée never truly recovered from her fear of being alone. As she matured, she tended to distance herself from those she cared about, in the event that they too might leave her. Da Angelique had been the only constant person in her life.
~ ~ ~
For the next few days, as the passengers settled in to life on a ship at sea, Aimée spent most afternoons on deck with the young Scotsman, Mr. Braugham. The ever-watchful Da Angelique was never more than ten steps away, muttering to herself about what either young person had best not do. Aimée had come to understand that the young man’s rudeness was actually the result of his deplorable lack of command of the French language, combined with his thick Scottish brogue. In a circumstance such as this, it was perfectly acceptable for her to tutor him. Consequently, they spent every afternoon seated at a small table in the salon, with one or more of the other women and Da Angelique present for proprieties sake. At the end of the lessons, Mr. Braugham would reciprocate by teaching the ladies the game of whist. As a result, Aimée became more comfortable in his presence, although she still blushed deeply whenever their eyes met.
Alone in her cabin, she spent most of her time basking in the giddy, warm feelings he elicited in her. He reminded her of Signore Cavalieri not just in looks but also in his thirst for life and life’s experiences, and in how he made her feel. Could this be love, I wonder? Could it be anything else? Wasn’t it wonderful?
Angus Braugham had been born and raised on his family’s large and very prosperous farm outside of Aberdeen. As the youngest of six strapping boys, young Angus had learned every task required on a farm, from milking the cows and goats to plowing furrows, planting crops, mowing hay and staying out of the way of his rambunctious older brothers when they were on a tear. He was born curious and asked unending questions from the very moment he began to speak, which might explain why he knew how to do just about everything. His curiosity extended far beyond the countryside he could see and roam over, which is how he became the first Braugham to ever leave Scotland.
“But, do you not miss your family?” Aimée asked.
“Ay, I miss them very much and when I’ve done seeing the world, I’ll return home to them and start my own family there. ’Tis a glorious place, with the deepest and brightest colors everywhere—the bluest skies and greenest rolling hills and valleys—and the mighty rivers. There’s nothing like it anywhere.”
“Why then did you leave?”
“Well, I wouldna known that if I hadna left, would I?” he asked with a wink.
All Aimée could do was shake her head and laugh.
~ ~ ~
On the sixth day at sea, a storm suddenly came in from the east and began throwing the ship around as if it were a flimsy toy. The high winds and rain made it impossible for the passengers to venture above deck, so they huddled in their cabins, many of them too sick to rise from their bunks. Meals and tea were brought on trays to those still able to eat. Despite her delicate appearance, Aimée was unaffected by the ship’s pitching and swaying, and attended to the bed-ridden Angelique, bringing her teas and broth and holding her head when she retched into the chamber pot.
The storm gathered momentum, with forty-foot waves and gale force winds mercilessly battering the little ship and making it almost impossible to navigate. At the onset, three men were lost over the sides in the wave’s backwash, and another was hit by a swinging block-and-tackle and lifted out into the raging sea. The nose of the ship rose perilously high out of the water, and then crashed down repeatedly until a halyard gave way with a loud crack that echoed like lightning. When the next huge wave crashed over the deck, the forward mast snapped, freeing the rigging and sail to thrash wildly around the foredeck, catching four men and sweeping them overboard.
The passengers rode out the storm in their cabins, holding fast to whatever they could, and praying for it to end soon. Aimée tied Da Angelique securely to her bunk bed with a sheet, and held fast to an upright beam, praying aloud to the Blessed Virgin to spare them in Her mercy. The storm raged for several hours and then, in the late afternoon, began to subside.
When the captain assessed the extent of the damage he found the ship to be irreparable. The vessel had already begun to take on water, and the first mate hurriedly assembled the passengers on deck to prepare to abandon ship. Thirty people huddled in a frightened mass in the ship’s raised bow, clutching whatever valuables and possessions they were able to gather. A
imée held on to Da Angelique, whose illness had turned her face an ashen shade. Both women carried bulging carpetbags.
As the crew began to lower the first of three large wooden rowboats, a Spanish galleon hove into view. Seeing the smaller ship’s peril, the captain of the galleon quickly dispatched three sturdy lifeboats to their rescue. Rope ladders were lowered over the ship’s heaving side, and one by one the petrified passengers made their way to the safety of the waiting rowboats. The churning sea made negotiating the ladders very difficult, and many sacrificed their possessions in order to make the descent, giving up their worldly goods in exchange for their lives. Aimée and Da Angelique threw their bags down to the waiting boat, where they miraculously landed safely, as did both women.
Mr. Braugham and the other male passengers helped deliver all of the women to safety before making the climb themselves. The dying ship heaved so roughly that it took almost two hours to safely complete the transfer of passengers. The first two boats rowed back to the Spanish ship, and sailors helped the women climb aboard, where a few of them stood at the rail to watch their men make the same climb down to the waiting boat. Still seasick, Da Angelique went below to find a place to lie down.
Mr. Braugham was the last passenger to make his climb to safety. Halfway down the ladder, the ship heaved to starboard, causing him to lose his footing and swing out precariously from the ladder. He swung from side to side, holding on with just one hand, forty feet above the water and the waiting boat.
Aimée watched in horror as his life literally hung before her eyes. Seeing him in death’s grip, her knees buckled beneath her and she began to sob, “Dear God, please spare him. Please, don’t take him, please.” She crossed herself but could not look away from the horrifying site.
“Please help us bring her below,” Madame Leveaux requested of two of the men. Aimée struggled against their strong arms but lacked the strength to resist, and they carried her below deck.
“Oh, dear God, save him, I beg you! Mother Mary, have mercy on him and do not let him die!” She clutched the tiny gold cross that she wore at her neck and prayed fervently to Mary and Jesus. She had not known the depth of her feelings until seeing him in peril, and only now realized how deeply she cared for him. “Please do not take him from me. Dear God, please.”
Moments later, Mr. Braugham regained his foothold and made his way down the ladder to the waiting boat.
“He is safe,” a male passenger reported to Aimée, who instantly ran to the deck to see for herself. As the shaken young man climbed safely aboard the galleon, they shared their first embrace, holding onto each other tightly. Their words of affection and gratitude were lost to all ears but their own.
“I thought you were lost,” she cried in his ear. “I begged God to spare you, pleaded with all my heart, and He did.”
“Ay lass, He spared me for your sake, I’ve no doubt of that.”
“I am sorry to be so overcome,” she said, embarrassed by her show of feelings. “I should not have spoken so freely.”
He lifted her chin to look into her eyes. “There be no shame in your words or your feelings, lass, for I feel the same in my heart.”
“You do?” He was so beautiful she could not bear to look at him, but neither could she avert her eyes.
“Ay, oui, I do—however you’d like me to say it.”
She felt love for the very first time, and instantly recognized it as what she had been missing. This is the “more” I have craved, the new life that awaits me. God has answered my prayers in a man whom I love and who loves me in return. I will be safe in his arms forever, and I will serve God by being a good wife and mother. I had lost all hope, but here we are together.
An ungodly loud noise from the sea commanded their attention, and everyone on deck watched as the abandoned ship upended completely and slipped beneath the choppy water.
A short while later the rescued passengers gathered in a cramped salon to learn that the ship now headed east, away from their destination, towards the island of Palma de Majorca off the coast of Spain. They would need to share quarters and make do with small rations of food, but they all survived. In a few days they would pass through the Straits of Gibraltar and turn north. After that, it should not be more than a week to their new destination, where they would be able to book passage on another ship to carry them to Martinique.
That night, in a tiny stateroom she now shared with five other women, each snuggled in a rope hammock, Aimée reflected on the near disaster of the foundering ship. Fate had taken a different turn from the one predicted for her; the sailors on the galleon were not pirates after all. They had rescued her, not abducted her. The old witch had been wrong. Certain that her fate had changed, she suddenly felt free of the fear that had haunted her for the past three years. Picturing the face of her new love, Aimée felt safe. Her dream of romance had finally come true.
Chapter 14
Da Angelique did not share Aimée’s happiness. “I know what you tinkin’, chérie,” she said. “Dat young man is no gent’man, no, m’a’m. He got no binness pretendin’ to be good enough for Monsieur de Rivery t’ever give for his lil gull. He not up high enough for dat, chérie. You know dis true. It’s a good t’ing I got my freedom, or I ’spect he whip me when we get t’home. It don’ matter he never whip me before’. Mmmmmm, mmmmm. He might jus’ kill dat boy for t’inkin dat way ’bout you. An your auntie gonna be apaletic! She maybe never leave dat bed a hers again.”
Aimée would hear none of it. “Angelique, as a free woman, you may think what you wish, but I forbid you to speak of Mr. Braugham in this manner to me or anyone else. He is a good man, and it is for my uncle to decide.”
But Da Angelique considered Mr. Braugham someone who might easily damage Aimée’s reputation, so she continued to watch over them diligently whenever they were together.
For Aimée, the first blush of love was intoxicating. She looked upon his worldliness with a kind of reverence, utterly charmed by his ability to enjoy life to its fullest. Although he always treated her with the utmost respect, as Signore Cavalieri had, he had escaped capture by society’s dictates. Unlike her protected life, he had traveled the world alone for ten years, and was now embarking on a new adventure in Martinique, one she was beginning to hope they might enjoy as husband and wife.
During the next six days, Aimée and Mr. Braugham spent most hours of the day together, strolling the deck, in the salon for his French lessons and at all three meals. Neither ever seemed to be short of questions to ask the other. Nor were they the least bit put off by Da Angelique’s constant presence—always close by with a disapproving scowl on her round, brooding face, muttering under her breath.
She learned that Angus Braugham’s farm had been in the family for six generations, during which time no one had ever moved farther than a few miles away. She had not been too far off in guessing his age, as he was just twenty-eight.
“Why did you want to leave?” Aimée asked.
“A good question, that. My father said I had something called wanderlust. I always wanted to know what life was like in other places. When I was thirteen, I convinced him to sign me on a trader as a cabin boy. We sailed between all the countries that border the North Sea: Scotland, England, France, Germany, Denmark and Holland. It was amazing. When my two-year contract ended I dinna want to stop traveling, so I left the ship in Amsterdam and found work on a sheep farm. You must have wanted to see the world too, to travel all the way to France.”
“Not really. I just wanted to see Paris. I thought I wanted to live there—until I actually went there and found it to be not at all the way I had imagined it to be.”
“Yes, some places are so different from what we know that I could never have imagined them a’tal,” he said. “Like Holland, where everyone wears wooden shoes.”
“Shoes made of wood? Truly?” she laughed.
He spoke in an animated way, very excited about everything. “Yes, and everywhere people eat different kinds of food
. I’d had no idea anyone ate anything other than fish, mutton and potatoes. Do you eat snails?”
“Snails? Do you mean the little worms inside shells... the ones that crawl?”
“The very same. People eat them in France, and I must say that with enough garlic and butter they’re quite tasty.”
“No, no, I cannot imagine! What did you like best?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I liked the sweet hot-chocolate drinks in Holland.” He smiled. “Sometimes I close my eyes and try to remember the taste.”
“And are you able to?”
He shook his head. “Not really. It was sweet and bitter at the same time, but so delicious. Nothing else tastes anything like it. I’ve heard it might be possible to grow the cacao plants that are used to make the chocolate on Martinique, and hope to give it a try some day.”
“How exciting. What city did you like the best?”
“I dinna like cities much a’tal. Too noisy and dirty, and not like farm dirt, it’s filth really—sewage and factories and the like.”
“I agree. As beautiful as parts of Paris were, there was a stench that followed one everywhere, even inside the most beautiful homes.”
“Aye, that’s why I prefer the country.”
“And what made you choose Martinique?”
“Besides growing the chocolate, you mean?” They both laughed. “I’ve never been anywhere where it’s warm all the time. I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to be warm day and night and be able to wear so few clothes.”
She blushed deeply and looked away.
“Is it true one can bathe in the sea there?” he asked.
“Of course. The Creole do all the time.”
“Do you?”
“Mr. Braugham!” she sputtered, as her face turned crimson.
Da Angelique saw the exchange without hearing the words and immediately strode to Aimée’s side and planted herself firmly. “Ma’m’zell, you bes’ take some tea now. It too col’ t’be standin’ out heah, mmmmm, mmmmm.”
