Landfalls (11 page)

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do you and your brother share a cabin on the
Astrolabe
?”

“No, sir,” La Borde replied. “My brother shares the council room with Monsieur de Lesseps and two other officers. I'm in a cabin with Monsieur de Vaujuas.”

“I didn't see Vaujuas last night,” Lap
é
rouse observed.

“No, sir. The captain invited him, but he stayed behind. His servant has been quite ill.”

“Ill?” Lap
é
rouse felt a small shock. He thought no one was sick. The man was only a servant, but still— “What's wrong with him?”

La Borde seemed to realize he had said too much. “It's just a chest complaint. Vaujuas believes the sea voyage will improve him.”

“Just a chest complaint?” Lap
é
rouse cried. “Chest complaints kill people every day, Monsieur de La Borde.”

“Of course, sir.”

Eleonora returned to announce the readiness of three horses—one each for Jos
é
and La Borde, and one for Fr
é
d
é
ric when they found him. La Borde bowed and followed Jos
é
out of the room, looking relieved to be on his way. Eleonora turned to Lap
é
rouse: “Do not worry, sir.”

“We've put you to a great deal of trouble.”

“Not at all.” She smiled and sat down. “It may be only a misunderstanding. He may have ended up with another family last night.”

Lap
é
rouse shook his head. “I know him too well to hope for that.”

“Are you worried he may try to
leave
the expedition?”

“Desert?”
Lap
é
rouse laughed. “No. That would require some resolve. No, no, he's probably just found some—” He stopped, not wanting to subject Eleonora to a description of Fr
é
d
é
ric's likely diversions.

She met his eyes with no hint of embarrassment. “You were eager to return to your ship. I have asked the groom to prepare a carriage to take you back, but would you prefer to wait awhile?”

“I hardly know,” he admitted. “I'm afraid we'll leave your household with no means of transport.”

She shook her head. “We have nowhere to go today. And it is only a humble cart. Nothing like your elegant French carriages.”

He smiled. He could tell her that his life had not involved many elegant carriages; that his family owned only the meanest-looking phaeton and a cramped portable chair that still smelled of his grandmother; that he was not really so distinguished—not like Langle or the La Bordes or any number of the officers who served under him; that he was not a count, not officially, not
yet
; that he had not been born a Lap
é
rouse, the name purchased to make him sound more noble when he decided to apply to the naval school in Brest. But she stood before him, the perfect, aristocratic girl-hostess, expecting him to play his part as the distinguished French guest, and he could not break the spell.

“You speak French better than anyone in Concepci
ó
n,” he said.

“Oh, the bishop's French is much better than mine,” she said, but she was smiling, pleased by the compliment.

“Did you learn it at home?”

She shook her head. “I was raised in a convent school here. Two of the sisters were French.”

“Ah.” Could it be through such individuals, he wondered, that the colonists knew so much about France? “Do
ñ
a Eleonora,” he said, “we were surprised to hear the music of Leclair last night.”

“Were you?” Her girlish mouth turned down into a concerned frown. “Is he not well regarded in France?”

“No, that's not it at all,” Lap
é
rouse hastened to assure her. “It's only that he was alive till quite recently, and here you are so far from Europe—”

She smiled archly. “Ships come from C
á
diz at least once a year filled with news and books.” She leaned a little toward him and whispered: “I have even read
Manon Lescaut
.”

“Have you?” He could not help laughing and hoped she did not think he was laughing at her, although he was. “Did the nuns assign such texts at school?”

She leaned away, her lips pursed as if to protect her secrets, but her eyes were still smiling. “They were wonderful teachers. I was there until last year, when—” She stopped. “This house was my father's,” she said at last, looking around the room with her hands held out, as if the fact surprised her. “When he died, I came here. My husband was a friend of his.”

Lap
é
rouse nodded. The revelation explained both too much and too little. Perhaps Sabatero had married her out of consideration for his friend, saving a young orphan from social isolation, from life in the convent, from rapacious suitors. Although it occurred to Lap
é
rouse that a more conscientious friend of the family might have found a younger, healthier husband for her. Perhaps Sabatero had taken advantage of his position with the family to assume control of his friend's estate when he died. But no more conjectures, he told himself. There was unhappiness under Eleonora's studied composure, and he did not wish to discover it.

Eleonora turned abruptly toward the corridor, and then Lap
é
rouse heard it too, a commotion at the back of the house. “Are they already back?” she cried. They followed the sound past the dining room and through a large kitchen, then out into a warm breeze, hanging linens, chickens underfoot, the smell of hay. A group of servants had stopped working to watch while Jos
é
and La Borde hauled an inert body down from a horse.

“Oh, God,” Lap
é
rouse cried, running toward them.

La Borde turned: “It's all right, Commander. We found him right nearby. He's a mess, but he's fine. We'll clean him up—don't come any closer, sir.”

Lap
é
rouse did as he was bid. He had already caught a whiff of Fr
é
d
é
ric's night on the town—a disgusting mix of cheap smoke, cheap drink, sex, piss, vomit. He took Eleonora's elbow and pulled her back into the house.

*   *   *

“I suppose that's the last time I'll ever leave the
Boussole
,” Fr
é
d
é
ric muttered from his side of the carriage.

“Most likely,” Lap
é
rouse said.

Fr
é
d
é
ric was still drunk, but on the downhill side of it, belligerence and self-pity vying with each other for preeminence. “That's what I suspected from the start,” he said, “so I made the most of it, you see.”

“Don't be an ass, Fr
é
d
é
ric.”

The taunt rallied him. “Guess who showed me the sights last night, Jean-Fran
ç
ois—guess.” When Lap
é
rouse said nothing, he sidled over and whispered, “A
priest
.”

Lap
é
rouse looked away, repelled by the younger man's fetid breath, but also remembering his last sight of Fr
é
d
é
ric the night before, talking to a priest at the ball, and how that sight had reassured him, allowing him to let Fr
é
d
é
ric lodge elsewhere.

“Brother Marco, my guide,” Fr
é
d
é
ric declared. He tried to sit forward, but his inebriation was no match for the jostling of the carriage as it wound its way through the hills between Concepci
ó
n and the bay. “He has a properly monastic cell with the Dominicans, but on the edge of town he keeps house with a fiery little mestiza called Clara. Cla-ra,” he repeated, exaggerating the
r
. He laughed at Lap
é
rouse's expression of disapproval. “They all do it, Jean-Fran
ç
ois.”

“Do what?”

“Even this man O'Higgins, the governor, he keeps a woman in Chill
á
n, he has a bastard son there.”

“O'Higgins is not a man of the cloth.”

“And Sabatero.”

“What about Sabatero?”

“He has his own house in town with his Indian ‘housekeeper.' She's borne him four or five children. He's installed the eldest in his home as steward.”

“Jos
é
?”

“I don't know what he's called, but he stands to inherit that big house and a great deal more if little Eleonora doesn't produce an heir.”

Lap
é
rouse called up Jos
é
's face, the resemblance to Sabatero, his odd manner toward Eleonora, hers toward him, her strange eagerness when she learned about
É
l
é
onore's possible pregnancy, and he did not doubt the truth of Fr
é
d
é
ric's information. He shook his head in dismay, wishing he had remained ignorant.

The younger man laughed sloppily. “Poor girl. Probably still a virgin. Marco says old Sabatero isn't up to the task anymore. Something about a well-aimed Indian arrow.” He used his left hand to mime an arrow hitting him between the legs, then doubled over in mock agony. He sidled over again. “I saw you dancing with her last night, brother. Maybe you can help her. I won't tell
É
l
é
onore.”

Lap
é
rouse shoved him away. “I'm confining you to your quarters.”

Fr
é
d
é
ric laughed again, but with less conviction. “It's just like home here, Commander—or should I say ‘Count'?” he said. “Just like Port Louis.”

“I don't see the resemblance,” Lap
é
rouse said, although he did. Like Concepci
ó
n, Port Louis in
Î
le de France was a remote colonial outpost, a victualing station for ships headed elsewhere, a place ignored and looked down on by most Europeans. It was also where, more than ten years earlier, Lap
é
rouse had first met
É
l
é
onore and Fr
é
d
é
ric and the rest of the Broudou family.

“In both places,” Fr
é
d
é
ric began, “you have natives who hate you and Europeans with guns.” He paused, as if recollecting his next point. “And then you have the
children
of the Europeans, who've ruined their morals and intelligence in the hot sun.” He tapped his head as if offering his own case as evidence. “Or taken up with natives and bred mongrels. In any case they don't measure up, and have to watch while newly arrived Europeans”—he wagged a finger at Lap
é
rouse—“drop in and take the best of everything—the best posts, the best land, the best women—like my sister.”

Lap
é
rouse rounded on him. “Mention
É
l
é
onore again and I'll have you flogged.”

The watery smile on Fr
é
d
é
ric's face wavered, and he slumped down in the carriage seat. He began to murmur about the unfairness of everything, about officers on the
Boussole
who had slighted him, then other men who had wronged him—in Port Louis, in Paris, in Brest; about his family, how they craved advancement for their daughters but cared not a whit for him; how things could not,
would
not, go on like this—society poisoned, festering, set to erupt.

Lap
é
rouse looked out the side, waiting for the hills to give way to a view of Concepci
ó
n Bay. He had had nothing to eat yet that day, and the bumps and twists of the road were making him ill. Fr
é
d
é
ric's stink and talk were not helping. It was all nonsense, of course, every complaining word. Fr
é
d
é
ric had never shown the slightest ambition for anything. The voyage was his best chance to improve himself—and more than he deserved. Indeed, had he not joined the
Boussole
, he would have been in prison. For years the Broudous had overlooked their only son's dissipation, debts, tavern brawls, even a duel. But when Fr
é
d
é
ric waved a loaded pistol at his youngest sister, Elzire, their mother obtained a lettre de cachet for his incarceration at Mont Saint-Michel. It was to spare
É
l
é
onore, and not out of any regard for Fr
é
d
é
ric, that Lap
é
rouse had offered him a place on the voyage.

Surprisingly, his brother-in-law had done well on board until now,
very
well, quite beyond anyone's expectations, proving himself a quick study and a cheerful crew member. Lap
é
rouse had been considering an official appointment for him. Maybe Fr
é
d
é
ric was one of those men who withered in the wide open spaces of terra firma but thrived under the limitations of life on board. He had met such men before: men who craved discipline even when they raged against it. That revolutionary talk—where had
that
come from? Fr
é
d
é
ric was not given to reading, and as far as Lap
é
rouse knew, had never had radical friends, nor any inkling of philosophy or politics. Could it be Lamanon? Notwithstanding his much-vaunted democratic ideals, the fussy savant was not a likely companion for the likes of Fr
é
d
é
ric.