She awoke with her head aching and shivering from the cool moistness of the cell. The delicate fabric of the gown she had worn as maid of honor was no protection, and she wished she had thought to change. But then, how was she to know that she would have to spend the night in this awful place!
After some hours, the door was opened carefully and one of the guards pushed a tray of something towards her. Confused, Gabrielle stopped him.
“But why are you bringing me food—when—when I shall be leaving today?” At his lecherous grin, she shrank back. “I will—I will be leaving today, won’t I?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. They might forget you’re here.”
“Forget? But what about the man who was arrested with me?”
“They’ve called him before the tribunal—for smuggling.” The man laughed and spat, missing her hemline by inches.
Gabrielle’s hand went to her mouth. So—they had found out! But—but how? Alexandre had told her some time ago that he was quitting the operation. How had the authorities found out? Someone had informed on him! But who?
She must wait—wait until this was over, and then she would be able to find out what was going on. The officer had said that he was going to arrest her for questioning, so they would surely be calling her soon in order to interrogate her. Then she would be able to find out why they were keeping her here.
In the meantime, she must keep herself from falling apart in this black hole. She snatched at the tray on the floor. The contents nearly made her sick, but she forced herself to eat the greasy soup and the hard bread.
More days passed, so many that Gabrielle lost track of them, wondering if her mind were becoming unhinged. She could hardly believe that she was still locked up with no word either of Alexandre or from anyone who might be worrying about her. She forced herself to remain as calm as possible, but it took all her strength of will not to fling herself against the door and scream at the top of her lungs. When—when would she be told why she was being held here? And when would she be released?
Chapter Ten
At the rasping of the key in the lock, Gabrielle looked up dully, her mind barely registering the shadowy figure that stood in the doorway to her cell. She had been in her cell a whole month, and still no one had told her of Alexandre’s whereabouts.
“Get up, girl. Lieutenant Rué wants to see you now.” Gabrielle struggled to fight down the nausea that engulfed her as she stood unsteadily on her feet. The guard grasped her arm roughly and pushed her out of the cell and down the hall, back through the guard room, and into the lieutenant’s office.
“Ma’m’selle de Beauvoir, please be seated.” The lieutenant motioned her to a chair, and Gabrielle took it silently.
“I can assure you, ma’m’selle, that I deplore such treatment as our prisoners must receive, but our accommodations are old and funds somewhat lacking.” His thin face broke into an apologetic grin that did not reach his eyes.
“However much I do deplore these conditions here, there is nothing that can be done about them, so let us get on with the matter at hand.”
“My release,” Gabrielle said. She was surprised at the croak that was her voice.
The lieutenant’s colorless eyes measured her as though he were taken aback by her lucidity. He folded his hands deliberately on top of his desk and set his mouth in a hard line.
“I’m afraid, ma’m’selle, that you are not at liberty to return to M’sieur de Chevalier’s house.” His eyes went over her, making her wince with their probing.
She could find nothing to say to him, nothing that could possibly convey her misery and humiliation. She noticed that he was nodding to someone—the woman who had led her to her cell upon her arrest.
“Berthe will take you to where you can bathe and change into a clean gown in order to appear before M’sieur Gall. If you will follow her, ma’m’selle?”
Gabrielle hesitated, wondering who this M’sieur Gall might be, but she was too tired to think about it for long, and she followed the woman to a cubicle where a tub of water was steaming. The woman placed a folded towel on a stool and waited for Gabrielle to undress so that she could take away the torn remnants of her gown.
Gabrielle immersed herself in the water with a pleasure so keen it brought tears to her eyes. She scrubbed herself thoroughly, only just finishing when she heard Berthe’s footsteps coming through the door once again.
Berthe pulled back the screen and handed her a clean dress. Gabrielle quickly slipped the gown over her head, feeling the scratchy material against her skin; there was no chemise to be worn with the garment.
She followed the woman back to Lieutenant Rué’s office, where he stood impatiently, his hand drumming loudly on the desk top. When he heard their footfalls, he seemed to brush at Ids uniform nervously.
“Follow me,” he said abruptly to Gabrielle and led her into another room. As soon as she entered through the low door, a large black bag was thrown over her head, startling her so that she did not even cry out. Something hard hit her alongside the head, and she whirled down into blackness even as she felt someone catching her limp body and flinging it over his shoulder.
“For Christ’s sake, man! Did you have to hit her so hard? Now she’s got an ugly lump at her temple which isn’t going to raise the price any!”
Drifting back to consciousness, Gabrielle heard the man’s voice, and it seemed to her so familiar that she moved without volition towards the sound of it. The bag had been removed from her head and she felt rough hands examining the knot at her temple. She flinched as they pressed down on the lump.
“Well, no matter, get what you can out of her.” The words were uttered without mercy, with no feeling at all.
The early morning sun lit up the harbor of a bustling city as Gabrielle looked out of the window of the carriage she had been confined to for two days’ travelling. A man jumped down from the seat and helped her out, prodding her in the back towards a large, square building that looked to be some sort of warehouse. They passed through a door that someone unlocked from the inside.
“Good work, Turpin. M’sieur Gall has been waiting for this one. He will see you in his office and make payment for your employer.” The man who spoke indicated that she was to follow him, and he led her to a bare, small room where he told her to sit quietly on a stool. He clapped his hands twice, loudly, and two enormously >tall men with shaved heads entered the room and stood on either side of her so that she felt dwarfed between them.
She waited anxiously, not daring to look up at either of her two sentinels.
“Gabrielle de Beauvoir?”
The voice came from behind her, and Gabrielle was so startled that she jumped up from the stool and turned her head in the direction of the voice before two pairs of strong hands pressed her back to her seat. A tall, darkhaired man walked in front of her, his fingers brushing his chin as though trying to make up his mind about something.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked her swiftly. She shook her head, then looked up into his swarthy face.
“I’ve been told nothing.” She hesitated, then plunged on. “Please, please, m’sieur, you must tell me what this is all about. I was held in prison for a month—”
“A month? I suppose he thought to gentle you. People, especially women, are notoriously easier to break once they have tasted the hell of a prison cell. The idea that they might be sent back there causes them to do anything to escape such a fate. Have you not found this out for yourself, ma’m’selle?”
The question was uttered softly, but Gabrielle had the distinct impression that it was meant as a threat. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that no one would tell me where Alexandre is or what has happened to him. No one has told me anything.”
“Then I will tell you, ma’m’selle. My name is Julien Gall and my profession is a lucrative one—I deal in slaves, ma’m’selle, slaves of all kinds. You are in my warehouse in Marseilles, and you have been sold to me
.”
“Sold!” Gabrielle’s eyes widened in incredulity. “Sold like a—a slave. But, surely, there has been some mistake. I am Gabrielle de Beauvoir—my father was a marquis of France! I am under the protection of the Marquis de Chevalier! You cannot do this to me!”
“I’m afraid that it has already been done,” he answered quietly.
“By whom? Who would do such a thing? Why?” The questions were piling up inside her head, and she thought she might scream with the frustration and fear. Who had the right to sell her to this slave trader? Hadn’t she been arrested by the authorities in order to be questioned about the smuggling venture? Surely Lieutenant Rué would not have the authority—or the audacity—to have her sold to this man without a trial! Why would he have done it? She had done nothing. Nothing!
She was aware that the two giants were holding her arms now on either side, pulling her up from the stool so that she could stand in front of the slave trader who was looking at her with a practiced eye. She hated the expression of inhuman interest on his face that told her so clearly she was not being looked at as a woman but as a piece of merchandise.
He nodded casually to the two giants, and in a flat voice he commanded: “Strip her.”
“Oh, no!” she cried out and proceeded to struggle against this final outrage. The two guards, expert at their job, held her firmly, but not so hard that they would leave marks on her flesh. It was a simple enough task to rip the gown from her body, and, as she had been given no underclothing, she was instantly naked to his gaze, her dress crumpled in a pile around her ankles.
She shrank from his probing glance, pulling back to the limits of her arms as the two men continued to hold her, not looking at her, like twin molded statues. Julien Gall’s hand reached out to feel the smoothness of her skin, to test the weight of her proud, young breasts, to trace the line of her hip.
He clapped his hands twice and the two giants pulled her, protesting, from the room and down a dark hall that led into several other rooms. She was thrust, still naked, into a room by herself. She did not have long to wait before the door was opened and Julien Gall stepped inside without his two assistants.
“I will arrange your passage on one of my ships.” His voice was the same, flat and uncaring. “You and some fifty others will be put on board the Lillias to be sold at port somewhere in the West Indies, possibly Jamaica or Cuba.”
“I have no taste for being sold like—like an animal!” she lashed out in despair.
He shrugged. “That is your misfortune, ma’m’selle.”
He moved towards her, and Gabrielle backed away, hardly daring to put her fears into thoughts, for the look on his face was unmistakable. He was going to take her—sample the cargo for himself, she thought in a rage. She cried out, but it was too late, and she choked back a sob as he pushed her backwards to the bed.
PART TWO
The Pirate
Chapter Eleven
On October 15, Gabrielle and some fifty other women were taken aboard the ship, the Lillias, a cargo vessel. It would stop first in Haiti, and then on to the English port of Jamaica where she and the others would be disposed of like contraband bales of hay or barrels of salt pork, she thought bitterly.
After the first two weeks, when the newness had somewhat worn off, Gabrielle took little interest in the running of the ship, although she still marvelled at the dextrous agility the sailors displayed when trimming the sails and shinnying up the tall masts. During the women’s exercise periods, she would gaze out at the sea and think of what lay ahead for her. She would stroll quietly in the line of women, joyful to feel the sun on her face, the breeze in her hair, before she must go back down into the hold of damp wood and unbearable stench which served to house the women with the rest of the cargo.
Gabrielle was grateful for the attraction she perceived in Jacques Andrès, the ship’s physician, for it was evident that he enjoyed her company. She found herself looking forward to his visits; he would talk to her when she came above board, and he even risked the stench and the insults he would receive when he came down to the hold.
He tried to tell her something of the islands, advising her that as they neared the Caribbean the weather would begin to get hot and laughing at Gabrielle’s incredulity. It was nearly November, she would protest, but she realized that as the days went by it did, indeed, seem to be warming up. And with the additional warmth, there came another torment for the women, for the hold became almost an oven during the day, and the captain had to increase the exercise periods or risk losing more of his cargo to the heat. The hold was washed down with bucketfuls of water, which rose in steam from the boards, making an even worse hell for the prisoners.
Gabrielle looked forward to her usual walks with the other prisoners—anything to get out of the hold, which was was hot as an oven by midday. She was glad to feel the wind fanning her hot cheeks and looked with delight at the deep blue-green of the sea where a school of brightly striped sea bass swam by, followed by a pair of dolphins that jumped high in the air and arched gracefully back into the water.
Dr. Andrès joined her often during these exercise periods, and it was on one of these occasions, as the two stood side by side at the ship’s railing, that another nightmare began.
“Ship sighted to port!”
The cry from the crow’s nest alarmed Gabrielle, and she saw the look of concern on Jacques’ face as he gazed out to sea.
“Bearing fast. Three-masted and sleek! Twelve guns on her!”
The cry was followed swiftly by another. “Second ship to starboard—sixteen guns!”
Gabrielle could feel the sudden tenseness flowing through Jacques’ body and communicating itself to her own. She looked in the direction the sailor had indicated and was able to see a speck on the horizon, and then another, both of which seemed to loom larger every second, until she could make out the three spindly masts on the two ships’ decks.
“She’s a pirate vessel—a privateer, as they like to call themselves,” Jacques whispered beneath his breath, indicating one of the ships.
She heard a sailor agreeing. “Sailing under letters of marque they’ve made up themselves, no doubt.”
“Oh, Jacques, what will they do?” she whispered.
He put his arm around her shoulders and hurried her to the hatchway and down the steps. “They most likely will want to see if we are carrying anything of value,” he answered briefly once they were in his cabin.
She watched, not understanding, as he pulled the bedclothes down and let them spill over the bunk.
“If they do come aboard—” and he stopped, noticing the increased fear in her eyes, “if they do,” he repeated, “it is better that they do not find out there are women aboard. I want you to be safe, Gabrielle. Crawl under the bunk and make yourself as small as you can. I’ll throw the blankets over it so that they hang down and cover you, if someone should look in here.”
“Oh, Jacques, you don’t really think they would. . . .” Gabrielle’s voice faltered, and she looked up at him for reassurance.
After she had crawled under the bunk, she heard his footsteps and the closing of the door. She strained to hear more, but all seemed deathly quiet. She could only listen with growing anxiety to the pounding of her own heart and the labored breathing that she could not control. It was dark underneath the bunk, and she was pressed, out of necessity, close to the side of the ship. It seemed she had lain there for hours, and her legs felt as though she would suffer cramps if her position were enforced much longer.
Then, suddenly, with a frightening explosion, a cannon roared and a ball ripped through the side of the ship. Gabrielle, with her ear to the floor, could hear shouts and cries coming from the hold of the ship and felt a rush of pity for the women in the hold. Captain Gaston must have stationed several men below to pump out water should the hold begin to fill up. With a fateful clarity, she realized that she, too, would die if the ship went under.
The explosion was followed by another ca
nnon ball and then another. She heard the creaking of the mast as it toppled to the deck and then the shouts and screams that issued from the deck. She felt sick at the thought of human bodies crushed beneath the stout oak of the mast.
A sudden, shuddering bump testified that the enemy ship had drawn alongside. The privateer crew must be boarding the Lillias. In the next minute, she felt all her hopes leave her as she heard the clash of sabers and the explosions of pistol shots. The pirates were not even going to give the crew a chance to surrender! She heard the frantic footsteps above her and wondered what was going to happen next.
More booted feet sounded above her—and then poured through the hatchway and down to the hold. The uproar was at its height, and she could not make out who the screams were coming from. Muskets fired and metal clashed and men cried in agony. She could hear the women in the hold screaming against reports from pistols.
Gabrielle huddled against the wall, nearly out of her wits with terror. She heard men bawling orders to other men and quick footsteps coming up from the blackness of the hold. They were transporting the cargo from the hold of the Lillias to their own ship, she guessed, but the fate of the women prisoners she did not even think about She continued to listen to the never ending footsteps that descended and then ascended from the hold. Every time they passed her door, she tensed for the inevitable opening of it. She waited for agonizing minutes, still straining for the sound of a familiar voice, despite her certainty that she would never hear another one again.
Perhaps they only came for the cargo and have decided to let the crew go, she thought. But her hopes died quickly as she caught the smell of burning wood. It took her several seconds to realize that they were burning the ship!
Within minutes, the smoke was thick within the cabin and, in panic, she struggled from underneath the bunk and, coughing and choking, raced out the door into the hatchway which was already full of dense smoke. She dashed up the steps and looked back, realizing that they must have started the fire deep in the hold after the cargo had been emptied. Women’s screams, curses, and agonized calls filled her ears, but it was too late to save any of her fellow prisoners.
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