Broken Wing (43 page)

They were married in June, in front of Sarah’s family. There were flowers, and music, and Sarah wore a beautiful dress. Only Davey and the
chevalier
knew it wasn’t the first time. Things were a little awkward. Sarah’s family rejoiced in her obvious happiness and Gabriel’s safe return, but they were wary, too, unable to understand why he’d stayed away so long. He had no intention of explaining anything so private. It was enough that Sarah knew and understood. He hoped that things would improve and smooth with time, but it
didn’t concern him unduly.

After the ceremony, they made their way down to the docks, accompanied by a merry throng of well-wishers. Gabriel’s ship,
La Mignonne
, strained and pulled at her ropes. Crisp and clean, newly outfitted and painted, flags flapping and snapping in the breeze, she was decorated stem to stern with bright ribbons and garlands of flowers. They bid farewell to friends and family with hugs, and tears. Gabriel surprised Valmont by pulling him into a fierce embrace

“I didn’t think I could live without her, Jacques. It was you who kept me alive so I could find my way back to her again. I love you,
mon frère
. Stay safe.”

The
chevalier
hugged him back. “I seem to recall you saving my skin a time or two. I love you, too. You and your Sarah are the only family I have now. You’re a lucky bastard, Gabriel. I envy you what you’ve found.”

“Perhaps one day we can find the same for you,
mon ami
, we’ll see you in a sixth month.”

Turning to Sarah, he smiled, all the joy and hope she gave him shining in his eyes, as he held out his hand.
“Arise my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.”

Sarah sat in the captain’s quarters, checking the charts. It had rained for nearly three days, and she could still hear a gentle patter tapping against the skylight. It was a warm and cozy stateroom, furnished with solid armchairs, a settee, and a piano. A large and comfortable double berth was built into the wall. Gabriel had been giving her lessons in navigation, teaching her how to work out the position of the ship, sighting by the sun in daytime, and using the stars at night.

Pushing the papers aside, she crossed to where he sat, sprawled in an armchair, writing in his logbook. She pushed his long legs apart, kneeling between them, and hugged him by the waist, laying her head in his lap and nuzzling him.

“Mignonne, you are a naughty wench,” he said, setting his work aside and pulling her into his lap, kissing her soundly.

“What shall you do with me then, Lord Husband?”
she whispered in his ear, biting his tender lobe.

“I’ll show you, wicked child!” Growling, he gathered her in his arms and dropped her unceremoniously into the bunk, diving in after her.

Much later, drowsy and content, she realized that she couldn’t hear the rain anymore. “Gabe?”

“Mmm?”

“I think the rain has stopped.”

“Shall we head out and see?”

There was nothing Sarah liked better than walking the deck under the moon and stars, with Gabriel’s arms wrapped around her. They poured some wine, and then barefoot and wrapped in blankets, they stepped out on the deck. They looked up in awe. The sky had cleared, and the stars glittered above them, diamond bright and impossibly lovely. The air was crisp and cool against their faces, and glowing wisps of silver mist skimmed and curled against the flat surface of the sea.

“Oh, Gabe. It’s beautiful!” she whispered, leaning back into the cradle of his arms.

“Sarah, look! Over there!” She followed his gaze and gasped in wonder as an orange plume of fire hurtled across the sky. It was followed by another, and then another. They could hear excited whispers and amazed exclamations as men in other parts of the ship stopped to watch the show. Enchanted and eager, like little children, they lay back on the deck. Wrapped in blankets and each other, bundled together against the cold, they watched in amazed delight as arcing trails of light streaked overhead,
and the heavens danced before them.

“Do you remember, Gabriel?”

“Oh, yes, mignonne! I will never forget. We were on your balcony, sailing together under the stars. You shared your world with me. It was the first time I held your hand, the first time I held you in my arms, the first time I dared to dream. It was the night my life began.”

Alone, lost inside a nightmare world, all Gabriel had ever wanted was companionship and a place to belong, but Sarah had given him so much more. She had taught him to trust in friendship and in love, and by believing in him, she had taught him to believe in himself. He had faced his demons, and with her help, he’d survived them. He would always carry scars, but the wounds had healed and the adventure was just beginning. They sailed together, under the stars, fellow journeyers in life, and love. He was a man with an enormous capacity for love, and Sarah had released it. Forgetting the stars, the ship, and his men, he adored her with its full measure. There was only Sarah, and he kissed her with all the ardor in his soul.

I’ve always been drawn to independent people who rebel against stereotypes and challenge the conventions and norms of their times. There’s a tendency sometimes, to think such behaviors, particularly among women, are unique to our modern age, but anyone who reads the works of historian Antonia Fraser will find accounts of women who led troops, went to war, ran their own business, wrote books and plays, dressed and lived as men, secured divorces, abandoned husbands, and didn’t die of shame. Although some of Sarah’s behaviors are unconventional for the time, they are by no means unique. A century earlier, Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, made a practice of wearing men’s clothing, and was soon the mistress of a smitten King Charles II. Thirty years after this story takes place, the novelist George Sands, a French Baroness who counted among her lovers Chopin and Jules Sandeau, lived her life in men’s clothes and traveled about Paris smoking a pipe.
Dekker and van de Pol, in their study
The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe
give several examples of women who lived their lives disguised as men. They go on to say there were several circumstances in which it was considered acceptable for women to “cross-dress” giving the examples of flight or escape from dangerous circumstance, sexual play, during travel, and ‘while carousing.’

Women also traveled, often alone, sometimes together, and some made a name for themselves as travel writers. Brian Dolan’s
Ladies of the Grand Tour
gives a fascinating account of these accomplished ladies (who included bluestockings, divorcees, great ladies, and courtesans) and their adventures on the fringes of society and the fringes of Europe. Among them was Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher, and feminist, who in 1792 wrote what is now considered one of the first major feminist treatises
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
.

Contrary to popular belief, women also went to sea with their men. Ships with women living, as opposed to traveling, on them, were referred to as Hen Frigates. Cordingly’s fascinating
Seafaring Women
is filled with stories of the ‘surprising number of women who went to sea, some as the wives or mistresses of captains, and some dressed in men’s clothing.” Perhaps most interesting of all, according to
Life At Sea in the Age of Nelson
, by Steven Pope, women travelled aboard warships and were present in numbers at all the major battles of the era, usually as assistants to the
surgeon. Most were the wives of officers, but the rules governing soldiers allowed each company of marines to travel with five women. It could be argued that Sarah’s travels with her cousin Davey, and later Gabriel, were not terribly unusual for the time.

These women weren’t stereotypical and they didn’t fit the norm, but they were real flesh and blood people. Like Sarah, many of them, particularly those in the upper classes, paid a price, facing ostracism and social disapproval, but they also lived adventures and lives forever closed to their more timid sisters.

Sarah would have had to be unconventional and far from timid to become involved with someone like Gabriel. This book is in large part his story. Brothels like Madam Etienne’s, frequented by men, and even some women of quality, were not unusual in Europe, and young boys and girls were sometimes taken from the streets and sold into prostitution, a practice, unfortunately, that persists to this day. Although it might be shocking for some readers, I’ve attempted to deal honestly with the after effects of childhood abuse as well as battlefield trauma.
The Age of Illusion
, by James Laver gives a gritty, entertaining, and sometimes shocking account of the manners and morals of the period, including the darker aspects.

In regards to language, Gabriel’s isn’t always appropriate or polite, but neither is his background, and he spends much of his life in the company of mercenaries and soldiers. Several words we sometimes assume to be common only since the twentieth century,
have in fact been in wide use for a very long time. The writings of the seventeenth century court poet, the Earl of Rochester would put some modern rappers to shame, as would the ode Horace Walpole wrote to the Earl of Lincoln in 1743. You can find it in
The British Abroad
, by Jeremy Black.

Bohemia, which now forms the core of Czechoslovakia, was home to nomadic populations of Roma (gypsies) and also provided refuge for Huguenots fleeing France. Kali Sara, also know as the Black Madonna, is by some accounts Patron Saint of the Romany people, and was said to be an Egyptian maid who accompanied the three Marys as they escaped Palestine for France after Christ’s crucifixion. It was said she begged alms for the Marys and spread her cloak over the water to save them when their boat was sinking. To others she is a Romany Goddess, one of the faces of Kali, whose worship predated Christianity and was later incorporated by the Christian church. The origin of her statue in France is lost in antiquity, and the latter explanation seems most likely.

Vingt-et-un was a precursor to the card game blackjack, one of the few games where attentive statisticians and card counters can have an advantage over the odds. Although there are many accounts of card counters making a fortune and being banned from casinos today, I can find none from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Perhaps Gabriel was the first to recognize and profit from this method.

Several prominent Cornwall families made fortunes from smuggling (or free trading, as it was called at the time), piracy, and privateering, including the Killigrew family who established Falmouth. There was an upswing of privateering during the Napoleonic wars. Although most of the characters in this story are fictional, Lieutenant Gabriel Brey did scour the coast of Cornwall at the time in the revenue cutter the
Hind
, leading raids by land and sea and in one instance catching his man after a chase lasting twenty-eight hours. There was increased pressure to curtail the trade after the murder of a customs officer on the
Lottery
in 1798.

The turmoil and shifting alliances in Europe at the time resulted in an increased number of Europeans being taken captive and held for slavery and ransom in the Mediterranean. The practice was at its peak in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but still flourished well into the nineteenth; indeed, the words from the United States Marine Corp anthem “to the shores of Tripoli” refer to a campaign instigated by Thomas Jefferson to suppress the Barbary pirates and free American slaves in 1804. There were still 120 European slaves in the
bagnio
in Algiers when the French took it over in 1830. Sultan Mulai Slimane ruled Morocco from 1792 to 1822 and had to put down several rebellions in the early years. The Scottish renegado Peter Lisle, known as Murad Reis, was also active at this time, eventually becoming admiral of
Tripoli’s navy and marrying a daughter of Yusuf, the
bashaw
. Galleys had been largely replaced for use in warfare in Europe by the early 1700s but were used in the Mediterranean in an auxiliary capacity until the advent of steam propulsion. Chain mail was worn in the Barbary states until well into the nineteenth century.

The quotations and snippets of poetry are borrowed from Thomas Bullfinch, William Shakespeare, and the Bible. For those who are interested, I have included a glossary and loose translation of the foreign phrases used in this story.

French words and phrases (in order of appearance)

Maison de Joie:
House of Joy.

Non? C’est bien:
No? That’s fine.

Au contraire,
monsieur:
On the contrary, sir.

Les Anglais sont ici:
The English are here.

On-dit:
The gossip, what everyone’s discussing.

S’il vous plait:
If you please.

Mon vieux:
Older French phrase, my old friend, old man, old boy.

Mignonne:
Small and pretty, dainty, cute, a term of endearment.

Et bien:
And so, it’s good, all right, ok (depends on the context used).

Au revoir:
Until next time, until we meet again, good-bye.

Ma belle:
My beauty, my pretty.

Réveille toi, mon ange:
Wake up my angel.

Bon Dieu:
Good God!

Ma chère:
My dear

Mon chèri:
My darling.

Mon ange, ma belle amie, mon amour:
My angel, my beautiful friend, my love.

Merde:
Shit.

Je t’aime, je t’adore, ma vie, mon âme, mon cœur:
I love you, I adore you, my life, my soul, my heart.