Revenant Eve (8 page)

She dropped her reticule, a ribbon-tied paper, and her bonnet onto a side table, and sank into the chair next to it. “I could never go to England, Mimba, I’ve no longer the way of it. The child must go while she still retains the manners my mother scolded into her. She will have a chance at a better life, but I am too old to leave off my privateer habits. Devil fly away with these clothes. If I do not get out of these stays I shall burst!”

“Is the passage arranged, then?”

“That much is done. I’ve a letter of credit for the child, and the wife of a warrant officer will look out for her. I paid her a thumping high fee, so I’d better hear a good report when Aurélie writes to us.”

Mimba shook her head slowly. “I know that Nanny said it must be, but she also taught us that we shape our futures, our future does not shape us.”

Aurélie looked from one to the other, her black eyes so wide that the candle flames reflected in them, points of gold.

Anne said, “I brought comfits for all you children,
ma petite
. In my reticule, there. You and Fiba divide them up.”

Aurélie snatched the little bag from the side table, and she and Fiba began dividing the sugar-candies as a cluster of small kids formed a circle on the floor. Everyone was busy clamoring for the one they liked best, and the kids paid no heed to the adults.

Mimba said to Anne, “Your father was sent out of England for no good reason. Do you truly wish to send the child there?”

“The family misliked having a Quaker among them. Aurélie is not a Quaker,” Anne said with a wry grin that faded. “I cannot bear to see another of my children die. And Nanny did tell us that Aurélie’s future lies overseas. If I balk, will I have another dead child to bury?”

“But
England
. Why not send her back to your mother on Saint-Domingue?”

“Would you?” Anne retorted. “You know my mother and her prejudices. Surely these English will not scold all the time the way she does.” Another flash of the wry grin. “My father once told me that the English worship God, honor rank, but worship
and
honor wealth. God put the child here. I can amend His work by seeing to it that the second and third conditions are met.”

“By a falsehood? Do you think it will answer?” Mimba lowered her voice. “You think they will not see she’s a mulatto?”

Anne grimaced. “Though I’ve turned my hand to violence, I’m still Quaker enough to hate these terms for their inferences.”

“I hate them, too,” Mimba retorted. “But they are
legal
terms. If Beauveau catches up with us, he can claim the child.”

Beauveau? Who’s that?
I thought.

“By what law? Has not French law been overthrown at least twice?” Then Anne went on in an even lower voice, and I guessed that Beauveau had to be a French-born landowner on Saint-Domingue. “Aurélie is lighter in skin than Mascarenhas was, and he claimed the pure blood of a hidalgo.” Her jaw jutted. “’Twas one motive for my taking his name. But I’ll admit my greatest pleasure is thinking of him looking up from Hell as I spend his treasure and claim his noble name, for what he did to Baptiste.”

“I, too, hope he burns in eternity for his many murders, my brother among them,” Mimba said.

Now I’ve got it
, I thought. Beka had heard wrong: the mysterious runaway slave in Aurélie’s background wasn’t female; it was her father, a man named Baptiste. He and Anne had been a couple, but after his death Anne co-opted the name of his murderer, a highly born Spanish or Portuguese pirate named Mascarenhas.

Uh oh
, I thought, at the very same time Mimba crossed herself and added, “But I fear no good can come of this ruse of yours.”

“No one has said aught so far, what with the troubles.” Anne patted the ribbon-tied paper. “And with so many churches burnt, more marriage lines than my presumptive ones are gone. How would anyone prove I am not a marquise? With noble rank, I can keep the Kittredge ships, and I can hold this plantation. I will sew this bank draft into oilcloth myself. It is probably the best gift I can give the child, a claim to exalted birth and thirty thousand reasons for the Kittredges not to inquire too closely into it.”

Time blurred again, then came a flurry of activity: sewing, packing the trunk, pistol and etiquette practice, good-byes. Aurélie had to wear a gown all day now, which fretted her, for she was constantly reprimanded and reminded how easily muslin shows dirt. My anxiety to get moving, to fulfill my duty to the kid and get back to Dobrenica, fretted
me
.

The day came when Anne, Mimba, and Aurélie climbed into the dinghy, and the entire population of the plantation gathered at the dock to see them off. The sail shook out and caught the breeze as we rocked across the azure water toward Kingston. There lay the frigate that would carry to London the governor’s request for reinforcements, along with individuals of sufficient rank, wealth, or importance to demand passage.

Aurélie clung to her mother as they wound through the forest of ships bobbing and rolling to either side, busy with sailors cleaning, caulking, repairing, loading, and unloading. Or lounging about on mastheads, hallooing to passing boats.

As the dinghy neared the formidable ship with its open gun ports, the coldly glinting iron cannon visible within, Aurélie glanced up the huge tumblehome, and tears slipped down her cheeks.

Anne knelt down and took her daughter’s shoulders in her hands. “Remember, you go to England as the daughter of the Marquis Alfonso Eduardo de Pacheco y Mascarenhas,” she said fiercely. “You are Doña Aurélie de Mascarenhas,
Lady
Aurélie to the English.”

Aurélie whimpered. “I thought Papa’s name was Baptiste.”

A quick exchange of glances over her curly head, then Anne murmured, “That is how he was known in the family. To the world, your father was a Spanish don, that is a grandee, connected to the Portuguese family who were once the Dukes of Aveiro. He had a letter of marque from the Spanish government to cruise against the French.”

Aurélie said in confusion, “But your
Maman,
that is, my
grandmère
, she’s French. Are the French the enemy, or not? Cousin Fiba said they ended slavery.”

“It is all politics, and these days, if the news be half true, the French are their own worst enemy, child,” Anne said. “Yes, they did a good thing in declaring an end to slavery, but they are doing many other evil things in the name of liberty, and that’s why there’s fighting. Remember what I gave you.”

Aurélie made a convulsive movement, clapping one arm against her middle. I heard a faint crackle of paper.

“Hssht!” Mimba said. “Do not let anyone know it is there.”

They had switched to French, as English voices made themselves heard in the towering masts overhead.

“Wear that oilcloth next to your skin day and night,” Anne whispered. “And when you get to England, you give it straight into the hands of your Uncle Kittredge.” Anne straightened up as their dinghy drifted alongside the frigate.

Mimba had loosened their sail. Anne left the rudder and caught the rope-chair that sailors threw down. Up went Aurélie’s small trunk of belongings, and then it was time for a last kiss and last tearful hug.

Aurélie climbed into the chair, which was boomed up to the deck, and I drifted along behind her, thinking:
Okay, England is definitely happening. England is that much closer to Dobrenica. I can do this.

T
HE FIRST VISION I EVER SAW
was on a fourth grade field trip to the Mission San Juan Capistrano, when I gazed out the bus window at a girl my own age in Acjachemen dress looking out over the sea. Below her was a row of kiicha huts overshadowed by elderberry trees and lining a stream that tumbled down the rocks from a recent rain. Everything was green—a rarity in what was to become Southern California.

I still wasn’t sure if she was a vision or a ghost. If she’d been a vision, that was a brief glimpse of her life. If she was a ghost, earth-bound after a sudden death, then she must have wandered away from the ruins of the mission cathedral after a quake had knocked it down, killing a lot of those gathered inside. Or maybe she had lived a long and happy life, like the second ghost I met: Queen Sofia of Dobrenica, who as a bride traveled to Vienna to make her oath of fealty to Maria Theresia of the Holy Roman Empire. It was there, while I was walking around the grounds of the imperial palace, that I saw her.

The most eerie part of the business is, I know she saw me. She not only saw me, she grinned, and turned in a way that practically begged me to follow her, with the result that I met Alec, and, well, here I was, invisible guide to a kid I couldn’t talk to—a kid who was supposed to save Dobrenica.

I have never believed in destiny. But now I wondered if I’d been set
up the moment I saw that smile of ghostly Queen Sofia’s—maybe before then. If so, why hadn’t anyone given me better clues? Like, would it be too much to ask of some ghost to show up a few months ago to intone warningly,
Beware! Read up on Dobreni history, especially the life of Aurélie de Mascarenhas, for you shall be called to great destiny!

No. I still couldn’t get a grip on predestination. Free will was too important to me, and Nanny Hiasinte did say that the future was a fog. That had to mean it could change. But I didn’t want it to change, I wanted to get right back to the moment I’d left. Protecting the timeline was going to be my strategy.

That meant thinking ahead on how to be a guide to a kid born two hundred years before me.

There was no guiding at first.

Aurélie was pretty much alone on the man-of-war, ignored by the adults, except for brief, brisk orders from the stout, middle-aged Mrs. Cobb, wife to a warrant officer. Her job aboard ship was to look out for the younger boys. Anne had paid her to add Aurélie to her charges.

Mrs. Cobb’s style of looking out was to check Aurélie’s head each day for lice and to see to it that she appeared in the gun room for meals. “Mind you keep your distance from them powder monkeys, duckie,” she said the first night. “A day out of port and they are always crawling. Bless me, I’ve never met with worse.”

Otherwise, Aurélie was adjured to be a good girl and stay out of everyone’s way, and she would probably be invited to Sunday dinner on account of her being a marquis’s daughter. In preparation, on Saturday they would air out her Sunday gown.

She was also given a cabin, that is, the tiny closet belonging to the third lieutenant. She had to share it with an older woman, mother to a parson’s wife. This woman remained utterly silent except when she wished Aurélie to get out of her way.

The poor kid was soon bored, as no one let her on deck. Subsequently time elided into a confusion of sea and sky and towering sails overhead.

I focused again when Aurélie’s emotions spiked into anxiety one morning. Sunday meant divisions, Mrs. Cobb explained. That meant the ship was scoured for inspection, then they stood in the hot sun on deck as the parson led the Sunday service. After that, the captain went on his tour of inspection.

Aurélie’s emotions shifted from anxiety to intent when the inspection ended, and the captain gave the midshipmen permission for target practice under the guidance of the oldest of them, a master’s mate named Benford, who was around high school age. Aurélie dashed below then soon reappeared, holding her pistol and advancing on the midshipmen.

The boys reacted as if they’d been goosed by cacti as she marched up to them, her muslin hem ruffle flapping around her ankles. She’d kicked off her shoes to get a better grip on the holystoned deck, and took her place in line.

“You must go below,” Benford declared, his voice breaking, which caused a flush of embarrassment. The other boys snickered. “You might get injured.”

“You make targets. I come to practice, me,” Aurélie said in her French-accented English. “I must make sure my aim is ver-ry good.”

“Girls don’t shoot,” squeaked a brat who couldn’t have been more than ten. He was lost in a uniform that would have been loose on a boy five years older.

When Aurélie held out her pistol—point properly down—the boys jumped back. “I do.”