Ruth’s Journey Read online

  This godchild, that British architect, absurd water closets—all, all of it: Pierre’s fault. “Poor Captain Fornier.”

  “What? Captain Fornier?”

  Louisa’s sad, philosophical headshake deplored the mischances of so many modern marriages.

  “My husband’s partner is a Yankee. How can he be expected to know our ways? Savannah ways—so tried and true.��

  Antonia was startled but too delighted to repress her smile. “Oh dear! Surely, you can’t mean . . .”

  “For the life of me, I can’t think where they’ve got off. Perhaps they’re in the library. Perhaps they are great readers. Dear Antonia, do promise you won’t say a word.”

  Antonia’s spine was stiff as sugar sculpture. “Louisa! Aren’t I the soul of discretion?”

  Louisa patted her friend’s arm. “Of course you are, dear. Of course you are. Poor Captain Fornier. Exiled from his fabulous plantation—the Forniers had money to burn!—and now this! That innocent child in the window seat. Has she seen”—Louisa lowered her voice—“more than any child should?”

  Her friend giggled. “A child is not the best chaperone!”

  Louisa Robillard felt a pang of regret when Antonia began circulating through the other wives, but the pang was bearable.

  ———

  Augustin felt eyes on him. He half-overheard remarks.

  It couldn’t have been the drink. Soldiers—Napoleon’s ­officers—were expected to drink! Abjuring the ladle, he dipped his cup directly into the brown punch and offered it to his great new friend, Philippe. Philippe’s eyes may have seen it or may not. He sat suddenly and heavily with open mouth and head back. Nehemiah sent for Philippe’s coachman.

  Now that damn child was plucking at his sleeve. “Master, I fetch Mistress and we go home.”

  “The hell with her,” Augustin heard himself say.

  “Master, we go home now.”

  “Who’s master here?” he asked the unconscious Philippe. “Who’s master here?”

  * * *

  Though Clara was old enough to put herself to bed, her parents were upstairs with her.

  Taking her husband’s hand, Louisa said, “How we will miss these tender moments, when our baby is grown.”

  Pierre squeezed her hand, relieved their quarrel was ended. But, when trouble erupted in their orangerie, the hosts could do nothing to stop it.

  Do You Blaze?

  I hold Wesley Evans to be a COWARD and POLTROON.

  CAPTAIN AUGUSTIN FORNIER’S challenge appeared in the January 2 issue of the Columbian Museum & Savannah Advertiser. Fornier’s second, Count Montelone, posted the challenge at the Vendue House among advertisements for slave sales, races, and stallions at stud. When the Count returned to Gunn’s Tavern, its habitués clamored for details—had the Yankee’s friends been there to receive the insult?—to which the Count responded with his customary asperity that affairs of honor are not vulgar entertainments.

  Gunn’s Tavern was such a favorite with French refugees, Savannahians had nicknamed it Frère Jacques, and the Georgia-born and bred William Gunn had become reconciled to his establishment’s “Frenchy” ways. Most of Frère Jacques’s habitués were, like Captain Fornier, Saint-Domingue refugees, a few were émigrés, and Count Montelone, it was thought on vague evidence, had come to these shores with General Lafayette. The Count sustained himself selling horses of unknown provenance and young high yellows. He took elaborate precautions against poisoning and avoided some neighborhoods after dark. He never set foot on the docks.

  Although the Count never mentioned General Lafayette, French patriots liked to ask him, “Who is the greater general? Napoleon or Lafayette?”

  “Le Bon Dieu, only He knows.”

  The Count’s reticence was clear proof of perspicacity. A few detractors mentioned the Charleston scandals, but nobody knew much about them, and, in any case, the affair had been thoroughly hushed up.

  In William Gunn’s tavern every French victory was vigorously celebrated. In this savage, inhospitable, and un-French America, these victories sustained the refugees’ pride, and it was an article of faith that were it not for the damnable British blockade, every Frère Jacques habitué would return to France to enlist.

  Napoleon’s victories were also popular with native-born Savannahians whose commerce was disrupted by the blockade and the British habit of impressing American seamen.

  A few days before Christmas, news of a great battle trickled into Savannah, initially as rumors, then as disconnected facts, and finally in flood. The earliest reports said the Prussians had defeated the French and many gloomy glasses were drained on that account. The subsequent report—not twenty-four hours later!—refilled those glasses toasting Napoleon’s victory. News of the second battle—and Napoleon’s second triumph—didn’t reach Savannah until the new year, when Frère Jacques was already engrossed in its own scandal. Captain Fornier (a bon homme if ever there was one) had discovered his wife (a French lady of previous spotless reputation) compromised by one Wesley Evans, a Yankee newcomer. The captain had surprised the couple in Pierre Robillard’s new orangerie at that gentleman’s Christmas ball, a venue and occasion which sauced the scandal. Although Pierre Robillard had never set foot in Frère Jacques, he was honored there. When the Robillards dined with Georgia’s Governor Milledge, Savannah’s French community preened in the afterglow.

  As thoroughly as they approved of Pierre, his impressive new home, and, for that matter, his orangerie, Frère Jacques’s patrons disapproved of Cousin Philippe, whose advocacy for heathenish savages made other Frenchmen seem careless and sentimental.

  Augustin himself remembered remarkably little of that night—just distorted and disconnected images. Solange and the Yankee had been sitting too close, he remembered that. He thought they were fully clothed. They were all three shouting, he remembered. He remembered Ruth hiding her face in her hands. He was struck a stinging blow on his cheek: he recalled the blow perfectly. That blow, the actual laying on of hands, had elevated what might have been a drunken shouting match into an affair of honor.

  The morning after the Christmas ball, Augustin didn’t get out of bed until noon, whereupon he vomited, washed his face, and ventured forth to Frère Jacques, where much misinformation greeted him. Augustin, who didn’t know what to think or for that matter exactly what had occurred, shrugged. “Evans did me no harm. He is a Yankee and does not understand our ways.”

  Frère Jacques was divided between those who thought Augustin’s indifference to insult was “très gentil” and those who imagined the blow that had reddened Augustin’s cheek had struck all Frenchmen.

  Sympathizers and offended alike bought Augustin drinks, and he came home late and tipsy, then went to the sideboard and poured himself a glass despite Ruth’s sad expression. “You, too? Even you?” he asked.

  “Master,” the child said solemnly. Ruth plucked a small volume from Solange’s books. “Please read to me.”

  In a high-pitched, slurred voice Augustin declaimed,

  Strange fits of passion have I known:

  And I will dare to tell,

  But in the Lover’s ear alone,

  What once to me befell.

  When she I loved looked every day

  Fresh as a rose in June,

  I to her cottage bent my way,

  Beneath an evening-moon.

  He closed it. “I’m in no humor for poetry.” He burped a hot fluid which stung his nostrils and washed his throat with whiskey.

  “Mistress don’t read to me no more neither,” the child said sadly.

  “Well, read for yourself” hovered on the tip of his tongue. Why couldn’t the child read? She wasn’t as stupid as other niggers.

  When Solange came into the room, her eyes lit on the glass, so Augustin emptied it. “Oh,” his
wife said. “You’re home.”

  He drew himself up. “Apparently.”

  “Was your evening agreeable?”

  Augustin tried to think of what might interest her. “The French government is demanding reparations from the Haitians.”

  Solange sighed.

  “We will be recompensed for Le Jardin.”

  “Indeed?”

  They hadn’t discussed the orangerie, Augustin because he couldn’t remember and Solange because she had been indiscreet and refused to feel guilty about it.

  Ruth said, “Mistress, please read to me?”

  “Not now.”

  “Market girl—that girl sellin’ them oranges—she say Count Montelone partial to ’em. Say Count askin’ ’bout me. ’Bout me, mistress.”

  “Go to bed, child.”

  “I so happy, livin’ here, livin’ with you and the captain. I one lucky pickaninny, yes I is!”

  “Augustin,” Solange asked sweetly, “can you learn our share of those magical reparations? Officially, I mean? Apart from thoughtfully discussing them with your drinking companions?”

  “How?”

  “Ah yes. That is the question.”

  Augustin poured another glass, which he offered to his wife, earning a look of icy contempt.

  Ruth said, “I tries make you happy! You only family I gots.”

  A tremor began at Augustin’s knees and climbed his frame. He shook so he could hardly get words out. “I am a la . . . la . . . laughingstock. A contemptible cu . . . cu . . . cuckold.”

  “Mistress! Mistress!” Ruth cried. “I opens the window. It so, so hot in here!”

  “Of course I welcomed Wesley Evans’s attentions,” Augustin Fornier’s wife said coolly. “At least he is a man.”

  Next forenoon, Wesley Evans was grading cotton at the Robillard and Evans warehouse when his partner appeared, dressed as solemnly as his expression. Pierre laid a mahogany box on Wesley’s desk.

  Wesley was telling an Up-country planter why his cotton graded poorly. “If you think you can do better,” Wesley said, “there are other factors.”

  “Already tried t’others,” the planter replied. “I’ze jest hopin’ you mightn’t have your eye on the sparrow today.” He removed his hat to vigorously scratch his scalp. “I plumb forgot you was a Yankee.”

  Puzzled. “So?”

  “You Yankees never take your eye off the sparrow for ten seconds. Reckon I’ll take your offer.”

  Wesley counted out money while the planter’s Negroes unloaded his crop.

  When the man’s wagon rattled off, Wesley turned to Pierre. “Now, what the hell was that about?”

  “That is precisely why I have come.” From his coat, Pierre extracted a folded copy of the Advertiser.

  “I haven’t time for news,” Wesley said. “All the late-harvest planters are coming in. They will leave their cotton too long in the field and they still expect top dollar.”

  Robillard pushed the paper at him, tapping the advertisement.

  “What the hell?”

  “I cannot second you.”

  “Second me? For what? Because I took Mrs. Solange’s hand—and was roundly cursed by her drunk husband until I slapped him sober? It was nothing. A bagatelle. Come now, Pierre. I am too busy for absurdity.”

  “Apparently the gallant captain is not.”

  Did Wesley hear a hint of satisfaction in his partner’s voice? “A duel? He expects me to fight a duel? We don’t fight duels anymore.”

  “Ah, then we unenlightened Georgians are mistaken that not long ago just outside New York City, in the very heart of Yankeedom, Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel.”

  “We don’t duel. It’s no longer our custom.” Wesley set his hat brim at a busy cotton factor’s businesslike angle.

  “Well, my friend. It is our custom. The gentleman who ignores a public challenge is . . . is . . . he is no longer a gentleman.”

  Wesley smiled. “Did I ever pretend I was?”

  His partner looked at him sorrowfully. “However you disprize Low Country customs, my dear Wesley, we will suffer for this. Our partnership will find fewer planters willing to do business with us. Why sell your crop to a poltroon when one can as easily sell to a gentleman?”

  “Jesus Christ. Je-sus!” Wesley hurled his hat to the unswept warehouse floor.

  Satisfied his partner had got his point, Pierre Robillard continued. “It is our way, Wesley. You Yankees make things marvelously well. In a thousand years, we Georgians wouldn’t have invented the cotton gin. We Georgians are reckless, courteous to a fault, hospita­ble, and, for the most part, pacific. But when my beloved daughter Clara’s young gentleman calls on me, I shall make it a point to ask him: ‘Do you blaze?’”

  Wesley laid a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Monsieur Robillard, you amaze me. You are indeed a man of parts.”

  “No, sir. I was a simple soldier under the great Napoleon, and now I am a simple merchant.”

  The mahogany box contained a brace of plain, unengraved pistols. Pierre’s finger streaked a lightly oiled barrel. “They’ve killed five men.”

  “Oh.”

  “Manon, their maker, has been accused of rifling his bores—imperceptible to the sharpest eye but rifling nonetheless. These pistols are from Manon’s London workshop. They have hair triggers, the faintest touch sets them off. I beseech you, do not cock until you mean to fire.” Pierre concluded, “I cannot second you, not against Captain Fornier. Count Montelone acts for Fornier.”

  Wesley groaned aloud.

  “Your second must be a gentleman of equal rank.”

  “I am a stranger in Savannah, barely acquainted here.”

  “To be sure. Our seconds are the linchpins of the affair. Your man and the Count will make all arrangements, and on the day they’ll manage the . . . affair. If, on that day, you are indisposed, the second may fight in your place. If you ‘show the white feather,’ he is empowered to cut you down on the spot.” Pierre smiled. “The rules are established.” He coughed. “Wesley, I have taken the liberty—”

  “You’ve asked someone to act for me.”

  “Yes, dear boy. My cousin Philippe may have eccentric ways, but he is undeniably a gentleman. None will quarrel with your choice. My cousin has never before served in that honorable capacity, but I shall school him, trust me I will. Although I cannot stand for you against Captain Fornier, I will guide Philippe.”

  “Philippe of the red Indians?”

  Pierre flushed. “He is a student of our red brothers, to be sure.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Wesley retrieved his hat, beat it against his leg, and hurled it down a second time.

  * * *

  Augustin enjoyed the happiness of a sailor at home after months at sea. He was neither here nor there, and, for once in his life, things seemed to be as they should be. After he issued his challenge, a great grave silence enveloped him, which only poignant or loving remarks could penetrate.

  Ruth treated him as if he were gossamer, following him from room to room as if, unwatched, he might disappear. When he and Solange made love (as was only natural, only right), he could feel Ruth’s eyes boring through their closed bedroom door.

  The aggrieved husband didn’t remember the scene in the orangerie or how compromised his wife and the Yankee had been. That didn’t matter now—if it ever had.

  For her part, Solange never troubled to explain, but, curiously, she seemed to love her husband, perhaps for the first time. Augustin couldn’t spit in the face of his luck.

  * * *

  On the appointed morning, he awoke beside his wife to the crunch of wheels and jing-a-jing of carriage harness outside their home. A horse snorted. His wife’s body was warm as new life. He started to stroke her but st
ayed his hand. He’d shaved last night before he came to bed. His cheek, the famously struck cheek, felt no different than the other one.

  Moving quietly, he drew on his best shirt, the same ruffled linen he’d worn to the Christmas ball. The wine stains had been banished and starch applied.

  Augustin wondered what remained after we were gone. He pictured waves thrown outward by a stone flung into a pond, diminishing, intermingling, lapping at the shoreline, tending to stillness.

  “Je vous salut, Marie, pleine de grâces . . . Hail Mary . . .” Would he ever learn to pray in English? He’d survived Saint-Domingue when so many had not. Perhaps Le Bon Dieu had a purpose for Augustin Fornier? Augustin shrugged. Bon Dieu.

  From her quickened breathing, he knew Solange was awake, but he let her pretend. His loneliness was delicious, and what more had they to say? Her love warmed him. He hadn’t dared hope for so much . . . He drew on the boots Ruth had begged to polish last night and the same frock coat he wore to L’Ancien Régime. Before the pier glass, he tied his triangular cravat in a fat, flamboyant bow.

  Ruth waited on the stoop. Her steady brown eyes sent shivers down his spine. He rested his hand on her head, feeling the warmth of her skull through her hair. “I shan’t be long.”

  Unblinking gaze. “I will pray to you.”

  Stepping into the mist rising from the damp sand street, Augustin pondered—pray to?—but Count Montelone urged him to the carriage.

  “You’ll catch your death,” Augustin advised. The Count tucked his hands into his sleeves.

  They proceeded west out of the city to the Jewish Cemetery, which duelists preferred for its high dark walls, isolation, and their belief that Jews who might object oughtn’t.

  Not long after they arrived, as their coachman dismounted to open the door, a second coach drew up alongside. Its varnished doors bore a garish blue and green escutcheon, and its roof was outlined by serpentine undulations in the same colors. White feathers sprouting from the roof were less ghastly than the black feathers of a hearse.