Landfalls (23 page)

He sat in the commander's cabin, choking down a glass of wine. Lap
é
rouse, never one to stand on ceremony, had forgone it altogether, doffing hat and coat as soon as they'd entered the room. His vest was unbuttoned, his shirt wrinkled and untucked, and his hair, just beginning to gray at the temples, pulled back in a careless knot at the nape of his neck. He paced the room, tears spilling from his eyes as he railed against d'Escures.

“I told him to avoid the pass if there was any danger at all,” Lap
é
rouse cried.

“Boutin says they were driven there by the current,” Langle said.

The commander shook his head. “Boutin's asked to write an official report on the incident. He's the most senior survivor, so it's right he should do so. But he's also trying to protect a dead friend from blame. It's no use, however.” Lap
é
rouse handed a piece of paper to Langle. “I gave d'Escures explicit written instructions before he left this morning.”

Langle scanned the writing:…
Monsieur d'Escures is forbidden from exposing the boats to any danger whatsoever, or from approaching the pass if it is rough. If the ocean is not breaking over the pass but the water is turbulent, he will put off taking soundings, as the work is not urgent. I ask again that he exercise the greatest possible caution …

Langle found himself wondering if the commander had written out the instructions
after
the accident in order to protect himself. They had, after all, sent three boats toward a pass they knew to be dangerous. Langle touched his thumb to the paper to test the ink. It felt dry, yet the suspicion persisted.

“Was I not clear enough?” Lap
é
rouse demanded.

“Absolutely clear.”

“Do you know what d'Escures said when I gave this to him?”

Langle shook his head wearily. Lap
é
rouse's anger, so pointless now, exhausted him.

“‘Do you take me for a child?' he said. ‘I have commanded the king's ships,' he tells me. And now twenty men are drowned, five of them officers!”

“Twenty-one,” Langle said.

“What?”

“
Six
officers.”

Lap
é
rouse stopped pacing, and stood before Langle. “Who else was in your boat?”

Please, sir. It's our only chance to go hunting together. Maybe we'll bring back a bear.
“I let the younger La Borde join his brother.”

He felt Lap
é
rouse's hand on his shoulder, then its weight increase as the commander lowered himself to the floor and crouched beside him. Lap
é
rouse looked up at him; the anger had left his face. “Paul,” he said, dropping the formality between them. Langle covered his face and wept. Lap
é
rouse remained at his side, saying nothing. Langle finally sat up and emptied the wine in his glass, but it tasted spent and moldy. He coughed a few times, afraid he might retch. He wanted Lap
é
rouse to stop looking at him; the pity in those searching eyes unmanned him completely. Lap
é
rouse took the wineglass from him, then stood, buttoning the top of his vest, as if to signal his resumption of duty, as if he knew to relieve Langle of his sympathy.

*   *   *

A few hours later, the officers of both ships ate in near-silence aboard the
Astrolabe
. Langle pressed the side of his fork repeatedly into his fish, separating it into many small pieces that he did not eat. It was poached salmon, just as he'd requested of Deveau that morning. Cooked to pink perfection, it was served alongside sorrel they'd found in the woods.

Lap
é
rouse cleared his throat. “Tomorrow,” he whispered, as if testing his voice, then louder, “
Tomorrow
—we'll move our anchorage away from the island, and closer to the entrance of the bay.” There was a ripple of barely suppressed reaction down the row of officers, shorter now by one table length. Lap
é
rouse looked up from his plate and the men stilled themselves. The urgency that had fueled their earlier exertions in the bay had given way to exhaustion, sadness, and fear. No one wanted to spend time near the site of the disaster.

Langle knew he should say something. He understood the need to continue searching, how important it was that the accounts they sent back to France leave no doubt about their conduct in the hours and days following the tragedy. But it was already hopeless. He continued to shred the salmon on his plate, his mind pitching between fretfulness and grief. Something struck the back of his head, and he lurched forward.

“Oh, Captain de Langle, please excuse me!” It was Fran
ç
ois, holding a carafe. “More wine, sir?”

“For God's sake,” Langle cried. “Go away.”

Fran
ç
ois stepped back into the shadows, but not before Langle saw how his nose had pinked with shame, and that his eyes were red from long crying.

Across from him, Lap
é
rouse took a great bite of salmon. Langle felt a flash of contempt. Only a man of shallow feeling would be able to eat with such relish after losing so many of his men. At least Fran
ç
ois, for all his ineptitude, was showing proper emotion. But as Langle watched, he saw how his friend labored to get through the mouthful he'd assigned himself, his jaws working with grim determination. Ashamed, Langle brought a forkful of fish to his lips, then another and another. He stumbled into his cabin afterward, feeling almost drunk with grief. The musky smell of the otter carcass assailed him; he couldn't help but look at the dark mass of it lying on his table, then rushed to a basin to be sick.

*   *   *

The fair weather held the next day. They paid the natives to guide them around the headlands, and searched all day along the rocky, oceanside coast outside the bay. The search continued the next day under overcast skies, and the day after, with more wind, and then for two days in the rain, a nasty, changeable rain that seemed to drive at the men's faces no matter which direction they turned. They found nothing and no one, and Lap
é
rouse announced that the sixth day would conclude the search.

That morning Langle rose at dawn and left his cabin, only to trip over someone lying in front of his door. “What the devil!” he cried, grabbing the figure and heaving it to its feet. It was someone thin and light, and for a confused moment he imagined it was the native girl he'd met out on the spit. Maybe she'd come back with his canteen. But it was Fran
ç
ois, sleepy, embarrassed, and dressed for an outing.

“Oh, please, sir,” Fran
ç
ois said, “may I go with you today?”

“Go where?”

“To— to help look.”

“Don't you have duties on board?”

“Yes, sir,” Fran
ç
ois said. “But I haven't left the ship forever. Please. I'm about to jump overboard.”

Langle let go of the boy and sighed. He didn't want him along. He was likely to chatter inanely, make mistakes, and irritate Lieutenant de Vaujuas, who was joining Langle that morning. But Fran
ç
ois looked so earnest and desperate that he couldn't refuse.

Vaujuas raised an eyebrow in surprise when Fran
ç
ois climbed down into the small boat, but he was too well-bred to comment in front of the captain. Seated aft, Vaujuas steered the boat away from the
Astrolabe
and toward the northern side of the bay. Langle and Fran
ç
ois sat across from him, watching the
Astrolabe
and
Boussole
grow smaller then disappear behind the island. Beyond the bay, the sun crested the craggy mountains to the east, revealing a fresh layer of snow on the peaks.

“It doesn't feel like summer, does it, sir?” Fran
ç
ois said. He'd been much quieter than Langle expected.

They drifted along half a league of shoreline. As had become habitual with all of them when navigating this part of the bay, Langle turned repeatedly to check for breakers near the pass, and also watched their speed relative to the shore, to be sure they weren't getting caught in a fast current. Meanwhile he let Vaujuas decide where to pull in close, which small coves to explore, how long to examine a spot of beach through his glass before moving on. Of all the men on the
Astrolabe
, Vaujuas had been the most untiring in his search efforts, insisting on going out every day. The older La Borde had been his cabinmate. And then there was his servant, Jean Le Fol. He'd been ill since leaving France but had fallen into a rapid decline after they'd entered these northern latitudes. Whenever he wasn't attending to his duties, Vaujuas had been at Le Fol's side, trying to entice him to eat or carrying him up to the deck for fresh air.

“I'd like to see what that is, sir,” Vaujuas said now, pointing to a dark mass in the water. They approached the object until the boat bumped bottom. He sighed. “I'll get out and take a closer look.”

Fran
ç
ois stood, jostling the boat. “I'll go,” he said, then clambered overboard, landing thigh-deep in the water. He gasped at the unexpected cold, but waded out to the object, then placed his hand on it. “It's just a rock,” he called back.

Langle puffed out his cheeks. He was growing numb to the demands of the search, the impulse to mistake every rock for a corpse, every piece of driftwood for wreckage from the lost boats, the constant immixture of relief and disappointment. But Vaujuas breathed jaggedly next to him, and Langle realized the younger man was trying to stifle his sobs. Langle laid a hand on his shoulder, at which Vaujuas gave way completely. Fran
ç
ois stood on the shore, lanky and damp, and looked toward the boat, unsure of what to do. Langle motioned for him to wander off. Fran
ç
ois walked a few steps away, then picked up some rocks and began tossing them in the water.

“You've done your utmost,” Langle told Vaujuas.

“We've found nothing, sir. Nothing,” Vaujuas said. “How can that be?” He pulled away from Langle, and for a moment Langle thought the lieutenant was calling him to account. For how could it be that twenty-one men should perish on a calm, clear morning? How was it that he and Lap
é
rouse had not foreseen the danger? But Vaujuas went on: “Every night I return to my cabin, and there are all of La Borde's things, just as he left them.” Another sob overcame him. “He was so untidy,” he finally said, then regarded Fran
ç
ois, who was now trying to skip the stones. “That boy has no idea how it's done.”

Langle watched too as Fran
ç
ois flicked stone after stone in the water, each one sinking as soon as it struck. “That's enough, Fran
ç
ois,” Langle called. “Come on back.”

*   *   *

The next day, Lap
é
rouse ordered the ships back to their anchorage by the island, and required all but a few soldiers ashore for a memorial service.

Langle dressed carefully for the occasion. With no bodies to inter and only a crude stone cenotaph to mark the event, attending the service in full naval splendor was the only thing in his power to do. He called Fran
ç
ois to help him dress; the boy worked in silence, bringing in warm water for Langle's shave, laying out his clothes, polishing his shoes. Langle watched as Fran
ç
ois fussed over his wig on the oak table, and suddenly noticed what was missing from it.

“What happened to my otter?” he demanded.

Fran
ç
ois swung around, his face flushing. But his voice was steady when he replied: “It was beginning to rot, sir, so we had to discard the innards. Also the entire head, I'm afraid. You hadn't skinned that part yet. But Monsieur Dufresne saved the pelt for you, sir. Minus the head, of course. He said to let him know when you wanted it back.”

Langle nodded. When had Fran
ç
ois managed it? The otter was still there when he turned in that first night after the accident, but he had no recollection of it thereafter. Watching—and smelling—it decompose in his cabin would have depressed him extremely. Fran
ç
ois must have sought out Dufresne's help to save the pelt. An unhappy member of the expedition, Dufresne wasn't the most approachable of men. It would have taken courage. Langle buttoned up his crisp white shirt. “Thank you, Fran
ç
ois.”

*   *   *

“We will call this place Cenotaph Island,” Lap
é
rouse said as he opened the memorial service. His voice shook as he read out the names of the dead. The written notice was placed in a bottle and buried beneath a stone memorial they erected. A small group of natives stood among the trees just outside their circle. Langle found himself scanning their faces in search of the girl he'd met, but only men had come to witness the strangers' death ritual. They scattered into the trees when the cannons on the ship went off to mark the end of the ceremony.

And now the expedition could leave, but a gale blew in from the west, preventing their escape. A ship in readiness for departure but not leaving—only a dead calm might be worse for the morale of a ship's company already affected by grief and fear. Langle himself was hard-pressed to contain his own desperation to be off. All of his old anxieties had returned. Every day he tasted the water from his pitcher, swishing it about in his mouth, testing it. He imagined daily that it declined in quality, yet found himself drinking it from morning till night, as if it were liquor and might help him forget. The pitcher was never empty, and one sleepless night it occurred to him that Fran
ç
ois was keeping it full, making sure his captain never had to ask for more. The boy deserved an increase in pay. He would remember that in his next dispatches to France, dispatches he would be sending from Monterey in Alta California, their next destination. The crew were relieved to be heading south, to warmer weather, well-charted coastline, and Spanish hospitality. But the prospect of relief eluded Langle. Lap
é
rouse would expect him to arrive in Monterey with completed condolence letters.
My Lord, It is with unutterable regret that I write to inform you …