by Kim Wilkins
“Has that fool Walter been bothering you?”
“Not at all. He just let me know I could send a letter home.”
Father clicked his fingers. “Hand me the mail bag. I shall take it. We are going to parley with this ship, see if they’ll take these to England.”
Constance handed him the bag, while his letter to Violet seemed to burn a hole in her dress. What was she to do? Pull it out now and let him think she intended to open it? Or keep it hidden and know it would never get to its destination?
“You stay down here,” Father continued. “You should be able to see her from your window. A pretty vessel. Looks like a whaler; her copper sheathing is torn. Probably from ice in the Southern Ocean.”
Self-preservation won out. There were many ways a letter could go missing between here and Dartmouth. She wouldn’t necessarily be blamed. Even if she was, it would be a long time in the future. She moved slightly, pushing the letter further out of view.
He turned and left, closing the door behind him. She pulled her trunk in front of the door so nobody else could burst in uninvited, and climbed onto her bed under the window.
The whaler was a London ship that had been out at sea for nearly two years in icy waters. Her head had been brought up to the wind, her sun-stained head sails flapping hard. Father and the whaler’s captain communicated first through their speaking trumpets, then a rowboat was sent between the vessels to transfer the letters.
Constance watched the transaction from her window, longing to be up on deck in the sun and fresh air, rather than cooped up here like a guilty secret.
Eventually, the two ships went their separate ways, and Constance’s thoughts turned to how best to dispose of Father’s letter. She decided to wait until night-time and let it fly out her window on the wind. That left her three or four hours with the letter, her fingers itching to pick off the seal. Was there any way at all she could resist it? She knew the letter would mention her, expose his feelings about her stowing away. Perhaps it might even mention further news of her mother.
The last thought decided it for her. She had already stolen the letter; she might as well complete the sin by reading it. She unfolded the crisp sheets and leaned towards the light of the window to read.
Dear Sister,
As you have no doubt heard by now, Constance is aboard with me. I expect that Daphne was aware of these plans and probably had a hand in devising them, and I hope that you have punished her accordingly.
Constance clenched her fists, thinking about Daphne getting in trouble on her behalf. Then she remembered that the letter would never reach its destination.
While the girl’s presence on board is extraordinarily vexing, I expect it will be easier when we reach Nagakodi. William Howlett, whom I will stay with, has a daughter her age, and they can entertain each other with their silliness and leave me in peace.
Again she bristled. Leave him in peace? She’d spoken less than a hundred words to him since her illness. She had taken his directives very seriously and isolated herself. And did he really think that she would be satisfied to entertain herself with some silly girl when she hoped to help him find her mother? Clearly he thought her still a child.
I am full of doubts, Violet. You know that I cannot speak of these things in your company, but I find it easier to write them down. I am terribly afraid that I won’t find her. I cannot imagine how Faith might have spent the last sixteen years, if she tried to get back to us, if she has been treated unkindly. But then, I am equally afraid that I will find her. Much has transpired since her disappearance. You know what I did, and you have forgiven me. But will she? I am, perhaps, not the man I once was. When she vanished, something became cold and brittle inside me. It explains what I did, but does not excuse it.
Constance scanned the rest of the letter, but it was only information about winds and tides, and the ports they had passed but not stopped at. She lay down on her bed, holding the letter against her chest, puzzled. You know what I did, and you have forgiven me. She had no idea at all what her father meant, but it stirred uneasiness deep inside her.
What had Father done?
Chapter 5
TUMKOTTAI, SOUTHERN INDIA
De Locke had never paid Alexandre with money. He gave him a place to sleep on La Reine des Perles, and he gave him plenty of food, books and drawing materials that he picked up on his regular trips to Tuticorin. The lad wanted for nothing—he was strong, healthy, well-rested, and lived in paradise. But, rarely, de Locke had moments of niggling worry. Alexandre was different. There was a softness in him that shouldn’t be there, not after the life he had lived. Certainly, he was fearless and tough. De Locke had never once seen him shrink from a task, no matter how strenuous or messy. But he had dreams in his eyes. Dreams could be dangerous.
De Locke watched Alexandre as the boy sketched, settled atop a soft mound of sand. Alexandre worked slowly and carefully, hardly looking up. De Locke became curious. What was he drawing?
He tucked his pistol in his waistband and followed the stone stairs down to the grass verge, and then to the beach.
A gust of wind peppered his face with sand, rattled at his shirt. Alexandre hadn’t yet noticed him. Thunder again, low and distant. Alexandre looked up and saw de Locke approaching.
He fumbled with his drawing book. Pages flapped. He dropped his charcoals. He had all his papers under his control by the time de Locke had crouched next to him, but de Locke had the distinct impression that Alexandre had hidden something from him.
“What are you drawing, boy?”
Alexandre showed him a picture of palm trees, the sea stretched behind them, La Reine des Perles rendered in fine detail.
“That’s very good work, Alexandre. Perhaps we should frame it and sell it at the markets.”
Alexandre lifted his shoulders, a gesture that de Locke suspected was full of fake casualness. “If you like.”
“It was a joke, boy. But if we have many more days of poor weather, we might have to resort to selling a pearl diver’s sketches.” De Locke liked to pretend that he had little money, that they were always one pearl away from poverty. He wondered, now, whether Alexandre believed him. He had a servant; countless items of finely carved furniture; a whitewashed villa made exotic by Indian colonnades, stone lions on the gate posts, forebodingly dark teak doors. De Locke couldn’t take his eyes off Alexandre’s drawing book. What had he hidden? Plans to cut his master’s throat and steal his riches?
A few drops of rain fell.
“Come inside, boy,” de Locke said. “It’s almost two. You may dine with me today.”
Puzzled surprise lit Alexandre’s eyes; he nodded eagerly. De Locke led him back up the beach and into the villa. Mari, his servant, was busy in the kitchen, and the smell of spices and bubbling cream filled the air. Since she had been cooking for him, he had outgrown his waistband twice. His too-small clothes now took up a quarter of his hanging space.
He stopped in the dining room and Alexandre stopped behind him, dropped his book on the table and moved to pull out a dining chair.
“Wait, boy. You know you can’t dine shirtless.” He indicated with a tilt of his head. “Go to my wardrobe and find yourself a shirt.”
“Yes, Gilbert,” Alexandre answered, dutifully moving off.
As soon as Alexandre was out of the room, de Locke pounced on his drawing book. There were many sketches of La Reine des Perles, very detailed, fine rigging lines carefully itemized. At the back, he found the drawing Alexandre had hidden. It was completely different from the others. The misty spire of a church, on the far side of a wide field. A stormy sky, leaves whirling across the page. This was not India. This was not the paradise Alexandre lived in. This was Europe. The cool, almost detached, fineness was gone. Warmth, longing, had been fused into the lines. He turned the page. The same scene again, this time under a still, cloudless sky, sunlight on the church’s windows. And then another, and another. In all, he found twelve drawings of the same scene. Footstep
s in the hallway made him drop the book hastily. He turned. It was only Mari, bringing bowls of steaming rice to the table. He moved to the window recess, leaning his hands on the cool stone sill.
De Locke knew what the drawings meant. Alexandre was longing for home, for France, for somewhere else. But how could he long for a place where he had known such unhappiness? De Locke had always assumed his lack of family or friends had allowed Alexandre to cut off from his home. Instead, he had developed an attachment to this place that he kept imagining.
Alexandre was indispensable. If he was homesick, that meant he might run off. De Locke couldn’t have that. So what was he to do? Offer him money, a share of the profits? The thought caused a pain to shoot through his guts. He pressed his hands over his navel.
“Gilbert?” Alexandre had entered the room silently and stood at the dining table in a shirt too short for him.
De Locke forced a smile. “Sit, boy,” he said. “Eat.”
Mari kept bringing food as well as strong wine that Alexandre refused. The meal progressed and de Locke drank too much; his head felt dull and heavy. Finally, he couldn’t hold his tongue still any longer.
“Do you ever think about France, boy?”
Alexandre answered immediately. “Not much. You?”
“There’s nothing there for me. The cold, the crowds. It’s a stale place.”
“Is that why you left?”
It occurred to de Locke, brightly and sharply, that telling Alexandre the real reason he left could be very persuasive. He had never told anybody before, but the good dose of claret and the desperation to keep Alexandre drove him forward. His heart sped a little, the old guilt making his words tumble out fast.
“It was in the little town of Buis. Do you remember it?”
Alexandre shook his head.
“It’s where I found you.”
“Oh,” Alexandre said. “I never went into the town. We camped in the fields.”
“I was visiting friends. They brought me to Givot’s show, and that’s where I first saw you. I’d been in the pearling trade for ten years already, but I usually came home to France in between journeys. After the show, my friends and I all wandered into town. We found a coffee house, we drank coffee, but I wanted something . . . stronger.” He raised his glass to show what he meant. “My friends and I parted. I fell in with a group sharing rum in a back room. I don’t even remember their names now. Our conversations turned into friendly arguments. The proprietor of the coffee shop asked us to leave. We continued our discussions in the street.”
De Locke shivered as he remembered the details. The narrow, cobbled alley. The smell of damp evening, of rotting garbage. Their voices echoing between the buildings as lamps were extinguished and the emptiness after midnight engulfed them. “One by one, they left for their homes. Until I was left with one fellow, a big man with all his front teeth missing. Friendly arguments became heated. I said something—I don’t even remember it now—and he took offense.” He found his voice stuck in his throat now. “He seized me—I thought he would crush me. He wouldn’t let me go.” He remembered the suffocating smell of him, feeling like a bird in a bear’s embrace. “I still don’t know what he intended, because he was laughing. But I was . . . .” Afraid: he had been desperately afraid, had cried for his mama, had wet his breeches. But he couldn’t let Alexandre know that fear had motivated him. “I was insulted. How dare he? I carried a pistol at my waistband; I still do.” He lifted the flap of his jacket so Alexandre could see it. “I pulled it out, pressed it into his chest, and pulled the trigger.”
Alexandre had paused, a spoon frozen halfway to his mouth.
De Locke smiled coldly.
“Did you . . . kill him?”
“I did. Such a lot of blood.” He swirled his wine in his glass, then forced a bright tone. “Then I ran back to Givot’s show, found you. We sailed, as you’ll remember, the next day. I will never go back, for I do not wish to face a murderer’s punishment.”
Alexandre kept eating, his expression giving nothing away.
De Locke leaned towards him. “You see, that is what happens to those who cross me, boy. I am not a man to make angry. Especially in these lawless parts. Why, imagine if I got it in my head to shoot you? Who would know? Who would care?”
Whatever Alexandre was feeling, he had now become adept at hiding it. “I expect you’re right,” he said. “But I trust you are pleased enough with me not to shoot me.”
De Locke leaned back in his chair and laughed, dizzy drunkenness making his head spin. “I am well pleased with you, boy. If you continue to serve me well, we will continue to get along.”
Alexandre finished his meal, then stood. “Thank you for inviting me to dine.”
“Stay a little longer. Have some wine.”
“No thank you. It makes me sick. I have some jobs to do aboard.” He began to untie the shirt he wore, but de Locke held up his hand.
“No, no. You keep it. It doesn’t fit me any more.”
“Thank you, Gilbert.”
De Locke watched him go, a sense of warm satisfaction in his stomach. Alexandre wouldn’t go now. De Locke had scared him good.
Under the bubbling silence of the water, Alexandre could hear his heartbeat. Steady, strong. With his pick, he collected oysters, the straps of his gunnysack threatening to float away. His companion divers ran out of breath and went up. Alexandre watched, made sure he was alone, and began to crack the oysters open.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
In the weeks since de Locke had confessed to murder, Alexandre had tried not to become too desperate to get away. He had never particularly liked his master, but the threat—for certainly de Locke was trying to threaten him—had driven out of his heart the last shred of loyalty. Alexandre was only nineteen. Years stretched ahead of him. He wouldn’t spend them with de Locke, and he couldn’t allow de Locke to cut them short in a fit of temper either.
So his fingers worked swiftly. Too swiftly. He cut his hand on the sharp edge of a shell. Blood smoked into the water. His heart picked up. These waters regularly played host to sharks, and blood was like a beacon to them. Still, he kept opening oysters. His breath was growing hard in his lungs; it would soon be time to pull the rope, signal that he had to come up.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Then . . .
He almost didn’t see it, so used to the empty insides of oysters was he. But there it sat, gleaming softly. Small, but perfect. A symbol of purity and, for Alexandre, freedom.
A pearl.
Alexandre almost forgot himself and took a breath. But he didn’t want the ocean to rush into his lungs. He quickly realized he hadn’t thought this through. There was nowhere to hide the pearl. The gunnysack would be emptied on the deck, and his knee-length trousers had no pockets. A shadow above told him the other divers were descending again.
With his index finger, he pushed the pearl into his mouth and tucked it against his cheek with his tongue. Alexandre never spoke much; de Locke wouldn’t notice if he stayed particularly quiet today. He pulled on the rope, his heart singing.
Later that evening, after the day’s work was done, Alexandre split open the seam of his hammock with a knife and pushed the pearl inside it. Then he climbed into the hammock, and stopped for a while to reflect.
He and the two Sinhalese men had cracked open every oyster on the deck of La Reine des Perles, while de Locke looked on hungrily. No pearls today, which made Alexandre’s deception all the more acute.
But Alexandre felt no guilt. He had not thieved from de Locke, he had thieved from the ocean. No, it wasn’t theft. The ocean had offered him the pearl; he knew it. He had always respected her, loved her in his own way. Now she was ready to let him go.
All he needed was a ship to take him home. He would not be hasty. He would wait for another bout of bad weather, disappear before de Locke knew he was missing, make his way somehow to Tuticorin. And from there, France.
He climbed out of his hammo
ck, found his drawing book—abandoned for weeks since de Locke’s threat—and flipped to his favorite drawings.
But they were all muddled. September came before March, December’s corner was bent. Somebody had been through these drawings.
De Locke, of course. A timely reminder that his master was not above searching his belongings.
Alexandre returned to his hammock, squeezed the pearl out of the seam and put it back in his mouth. It sat gently against his cheek. It would have to stay there until it was time to barter it for a passage home.
Chapter 6
THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE
As Good Bess moved closer to the equator, that line around the centre of the world that the sun loved so dearly, it grew warmer and more oppressive in Constance’s cabin. The wind was brisk, but blew in the wrong direction to flood through her windows. The low ceilings compounded the feeling of unbearable closeness, and her breath seemed woolly and hot in her lungs. The tedium of the journey, too, had begun to grind her down. At one stage, she saw another ship, but it steered to the east and soon disappeared, probably for Cape de Verd or the coast of Africa. Apart from that, and the occasional excitement of seeing flying fish, she grew fatigued by her own company. She read her astronomy books and worked her way through a complete edition of Shakespeare that Father had aboard. The thrill of adventure had long been replaced by boredom. How she longed for Daphne’s bright company, for somebody to speak to. She supposed she could have spoken to her father, but he was all but a stranger to her. The closer she drew to adulthood, the less they could find in common. What would she say to him? What could they talk about that wouldn’t lead to his chastising her in some way?
