Fires of Delight (24 page)

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Selena continued to stare at the woman. “Don’t you remember me?” she asked finally, unable to stop herself.

Celeste blinked a number of times, trying to focus clearly upon
Selena. “Do I know you?” she asked finally. “Have you been here before?”

Martha Marguerite stood by, mystified. “Selena,” said Jean, a kind of warning.

But Selena took no heed. The old, bad blood of outrage and betrayal rose up again. She recalled how Celeste had seemed to rescue her from Captain Jack’s amatory proposals in the barroom, then had seen to it that Selena was ensconced safely in her room, away from Jack, alone in her quarters—with a drugged bottle of wine!

“Are you sure you’ve never seen me before?” Selena demanded. “Do you remember a Captain Jack Randolph?”

Senora Celeste was searching her memory. She was genuinely confused. And embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “You look a dear child to me, but if you’ve been here before, I can’t recall. And there’ve been so many sea captains who’ve stopped here over the years. No, I’m sorry, I just don’t know…”

Selena gave it up, angry at herself for being angry, yet satisfied in a way that Jean had been there to witness the exchange. Surely he would see now, with their son coming, with a new life already gifted to them, how disastrous it would be to persist in his obsession with Chamorro.

Jean admitted as much that night in bed.

“Don’t you see, Selena,” he asked, holding her after they’d made love—gently and with Selena on top because of the child—“don’t you see? Celeste didn’t even remember you.”

“Yes. Let us put our pasts away forever. Nothing matters now but the future.”

In the night, however, Jean turned in his sleep, rolling away from her. Lying there in a state of semiwakefulness, a bit uncomfortable with her swelling belly and trying to adjust to the unfamiliar bed, Selena saw upon Jean’s back the evil, branded letters of Chamorro’s name.

How could a man—how could anyone—forget something like that?

Yet he had promised that he would.

A real man. A true man. She slid across the sheets, pressing her body to his, the two of them like nested spoons that last night in the bed on Tenerife.

Next morning, Selena and Jean had a breakfast of oranges, eggs, fried fish, and coffee in their room, after which Jean went down to the pier to oversee the provisioning of the
Liberté
. Selena washed and dressed, then lounged about for a time, simply enjoying the sensation of a place, a room, a floor that did not rock or sway, dip or plunge. Presently, the room began to grow uncomfortable—the day promised to be hot—and she decided to go out and walk down to the harbor. All waterfronts excited her with the sight of ships arriving and departing, loading and unloading, for they spoke of the great wide world of which she had seen much but not enough.

She was at the door, ready to open it, when a thunder of footsteps came up the hotel stairs and across the hall outside. The door crashed in upon her, into her, and she fell, twisting, trying to gain her balance, onto the hard floor.

Jean Beaumain stood over her. He did not seem to think it odd that she was lying there.

“Selena!” he cried, his face flushed with dark passion. “Selena!” He pulled out his fat black wallet and showered her with bills and notes of every nation, a fortune in money. “Selena, you and Martha Marguerite are taking the
Lancia
to Le Havre. It is in the harbor now and leaves for France on the morrow. A Portuguese vessel. I have made the arrangements. Your luggage is already aboard her.”

Having said that, he turned to race away.

“Jean,” she gasped, trying to regain the wind that had been knocked from her by the fall. “Jean, wait…what—”

“Chamorro!” he shouted, already pounding down the stairs. “He has been sighted in the Azores. I have him this time for sure…”

And so he was gone.

Selena and Martha Marguerite, as instructed, boarded the
Lancia
and sailed for France next day. She was a good ship with an expert crew and a captain, Raoul Telémas, who was kind.

He aided Martha Marguerite in caring for Selena when her pains began, almost as soon as the
Lancia
departed Tenerife.

And he wept along with the two women when Selena gave herself up of a perfectly formed male infant, so startling, so tiny.

So dead.

Not since her flight from Scotland aboard a rat-infested freighter had Selena made as sad a trip. The sight of her child disappearing beneath the waves of the Atlantic, wrapped in a Portuguese flag provided by Captain Telémas, was as hard a thing as she had ever had to bear. Not only did she feel anguish for her own loss: how devastated Jean would feel when he learned what had happened! Perhaps to spare him, she would refrain from mentioning that his carelessness in knocking her onto the hotel floor had probably contributed to the miscarriage.

Revenge. Chamorro. Human passion. Why had things happened as they had? The world had many answers, always. Davi the Dravidian would have told her that her actions in a previous life had surely led to the loss of the child. But if that were true, what could she have done? How terrible a person could she have been to be forced to bear this agony now? And wasn’t that explanation incomplete anyway? Jean Beaumain, too, would have had to have been evil. Or considering the tragedy from another angle, from the perspective of Yolanda Fee, for instance, perhaps Senora Celeste’s hotel was truly evil and the aura of the place itself led to disaster for those who dwelt therein. A Christian would have said that Jean’s sudden appearance at the door was God’s will, as was the miscarriage that followed. But Selena had no interest in a god who would allow such a thing to happen. Maybe fate alone—vast, random, impersonal fate—was the culprit. Yet the very vagueness of that explanation was difficult for grief-stricken Selena to comprehend, and robbed the child’s death of any meaning. A chaplain on board the
Lancia
, Père Giroux, a kindly little old man, came to Selena’s cabin and spoke movingly, tearfully, of the web of life, which would not be understood until the end of time.

The end of time?
Selena reflected.

That was too damn late.

So she suffered, knowing that she would always suffer.

By night, she cried herself to sleep. By day, drawing upon those reserves of strength, which were still, incredibly, present within her and which had never failed her before, she began working with Martha Marguerite in an attempt at improving her French. The effort distracted her from sorrow, at least temporarily, and her mental acuity was a source of satisfaction.

If the baby died for a reason
, she found herself thinking,
then there is a reason for my wits, my life, as well
Out of such knowledge grew a conviction that a future still beckoned her onward and, when Selena realized this, she began to recover. By the time the
Lancia
entered the English Channel, homing on Le Havre, Selena’s spirits had improved to the extent that she slept more, and cried less, in her cabin at night.

Indeed, the green haze of England, lying in the mist to port, roused both her emotions and her blood. What had the poet written of that isle? “A green jewel set upon the sea”?

“Aye!” murmured Selena, standing on the tossing deck. “Aye, and well enou’ t’ say such a thing.” It was as if the mere proximity of Britain, which had so long and so cruelly held Scotland in thrall, evoked her fiery Scots emotions and loosed her Scots tongue. “Well enou’,” she said, “but England, ye’ve na seen t’ end o’ Selena MacPherson yet. Because ye’ve got Coldstream Castle, an’ I mean t’ ’ave ’er back!”

Brave words. Cruel world. Wide ocean. Small ship.

“I will!” she declared, smacking the ship’s railing with the butt of her fist. After all, if life was a web, if there was indeed a plan that underlay all events, she had not traversed the great globe of earth for nothing! There was a purpose in her nearness to England now.

“There has to be,” she said.

“I hope you have not begun to talk to yourself,” said Martha Marguerite, approaching Selena with a smile that did not conceal a measure of concern.

“Don’t worry. I enjoy the conversation,” Selena shot back, and Martha smiled because she knew the younger woman would, in spite of her burdens, be healthy in her mind and in her heart.

“Have you ever been to England?” Selena asked, as the mists cleared for a moment, showing the coastline inviolate since William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066.

“No. Nor do I wish to. I am French,” pronounced Martha with a sniff of her nose and a lift of her chin. With each day at sea, as her homeland had drawn nearer, the older woman had grown prouder of her ancestry and more prideful in bearing.
“La belle
France,” she repeated, over and over, as if it were a land of milk and honey—or at least wine and cheese—superior to all others.

“When I return to England,” Selena said, still gazing at the coastline, “it will be in glory.”

“Well, indeed you are of the nobility.” The older woman shrugged. “And thank the Lord for that. Because in France, we of high birth know how to keep the lower orders in their places.”

Selena sighed. For all of Martha’s numerous good qualities, she had never known what it was like to be penniless and hunted and alone. Perhaps the truly unbridgeable gulf between peoples was the one separating those who had never visited the abyss of impotence and poverty from those who had.

“When we are in Paris, my dear,” Martha Marguerite went on, “I shall see that you live like a queen until Jean’s return. I have friends at the highest level, you see, including Marc and Zoé Moline, who design all the clothing for Marie Antoinette and the women of her court. And Jeanne, the Comtesse de la Motte, was a childhood friend of mine. She is now a favorite of the queen’s.”

“You haven’t been home in years,” wondered Selena. “How do you know these things? And your château has been burned to the ground—”

“Trifles, my dear,” Martha sniffed. “The
canaille
will soon learn who is in command. First, I shall stiffen the spine of Monsieur Longchamps, my family’s lawyer. Then in consort with the clergy and the nobles of Côte d’Or, I shall tax the peasants until they have coughed up enough money to rebuild our country home. As my dear father used to say, God rest his soul, ‘If you flog a dog long enough, he will whimper at the sight of you.’”

Selena, who had very narrowly escaped a brutal whipping in Oakley’s Room of Doom, looked away and said nothing, having attributed Martha’s arrogant pronouncements to high emotions attendant upon homecoming. She knew, based upon her reading of history and her more recent experience in America, that one land, one country, could not indefinitely sustain its internal peace, let alone its position in the affairs of the world, when it was disastrously divided within.

Alas, however. When Captain Telémas sailed into Le Havre and tied up at the swarming pier, Martha appeared on deck dressed as if she were to be carried straightaway to an audience with King Louis XVI himself. A diamond-studded tiara rested atop her careful coiffure. She wore a silken gown complete with train, which in spite of the fact that it was years out of date, conveyed wealth and breeding. The heat of July had not dissuaded her from draping an ermine stole about her shoulders, a piece of fur that did nothing to conceal the strands of pearls at her neck, nor the bejeweled golden bracelets at her wrists. Selena, who was worried enough about her own mysterious cache of treasure—still in the greatcoat’s lining, the coat in a battered portmanteau—gasped in alarm.

“We must still journey all the way up the Seine to Paris,” she told Martha. “Surely you don’t mean to wear those valuables on the river boat?”

“This is France!” declared Martha Marguerite. “I am safe here.”

“If I might be so bold,” interjected Captain Telémas, stepping toward the two women, “the young lady is correct. France has changed, I am afraid, since you last were here. Look.” He gestured down at the docks upon which stevedores labored and all manner of men and women scurried hither and thither.

Martha complied, scoffingly at first, and so did Selena. Her misgivings and the captain’s outright warning were neither idle nor misplaced. Even as the three of them stood on the
Lancia
’s polished deck, hundreds of eyes, hungry or hard or hate-filled, glared up at the handsome woman wearing the jewels and fur.

Martha Marguerite shrank back. Selena, dressed simply in dark-colored cotton, almost did so as well.

She had suffered enough acquaintance with danger to know it when she saw it.

“I told you,” the captain repeated, a bit sadly. “France has changed.”

He was right. Selena scanned the crowd and saw in a moment at least five different people who looked prepared to kill, if only for a piece of bread. There was the gaunt, knife-thin young man leaning against the wooden wheels of a tumbrel. He looked close to starvation, although not for lack of food alone. Hatred, too,
consumed his bones; his fury weighed more than his body did. Or the slattern lounging in a warehouse gateway with a prospective customer. She and the man both eyed Martha’s white throat, not only for the pearls thereon but for the blood therein. An old woman, bent and stooped, wielded a tin cup, begging for alms and calling, “Save yourselves while you can. Save yourselves before the deluge comes.” Even a little boy, scarcely six years old, unwittingly revealed an implacable and remorseless fury at the sight of Martha’s ostentation. He was just sitting on the dock and kicking his feet. But there was power in each kick, and murderous meaning.

Selena saw this and more. Suddenly she imagined a France in which all the poor, the outcast, the lowly and dispossessed were huddled on the howling threshold of flashpoint. Martha and her kind lived in one world, they in another. And they had borne enough. The time to turn tables was imminent. The smell of revolution rode the very air, obliterating the rich, multifarious odors of the harbor and the docks, of oil and grain and leather, even fish. Indeed, Selena did not sense here even a jot of the forces that had driven the American uprising, in which a strong draught of rationalism had seasoned martial fervor. No, this was different; this was malice promised in return for malice performed.