I went with the Abbot to the cottage behind the Pleasure House, prepared to plead our case. It was not the first time. As the grumblings from the mansion grew louder and more insistent, we wrote letters in secret, sending them to the other islands and to France. Marguerite, dressed in a plain white linen shift, her golden hair braided and looped around her waist like a belt, laid out plates laden with fruit and bread and fish. Gabrielle sat in the corner on a little sleeping pallet. She was nine now and able to read. She came to the abbey often to look at Bibles and maps and poetry. What she read, she memorized. Once she was heard reciting the entire book of Psalms while perched high in a tree gathering nuts.
“Eat,” Marguerite said to us, sitting opposite on the wooden bench and taking out her sewing.
“Later,” the Abbot said, waving the plate away impatiently with his left hand. “Your child is not safe here anymore. You know this, my daughter. The Governor has his spies and assassins everywhere. We could hide her in the abbey, but for how long? It is only at my intercession that he has not come this far down the road, but neither of you is safe within a mile of the town.”
“We need nothing from town,” Marguerite said, filling our glasses with wine. “Drink,” she commanded.
I brought my fist to the table. Gabrielle sat up with a start. “No,” I said. “She cannot stay. I will accompany her back to France, and the Sisters of the Seventh Sorrow will protect her and educate her. No one will know whose child she is. No one will know of the Governor’s hatred. She will be safe.”
Marguerite took my fist and eased it open, laying her palm upon my palm. She looked at the Abbot and then at me.
“She is rooted here. I rooted her myself. She will not go to the sea. There is nothing more to say. Now. Eat.”
We ate. And drank. The wine tasted of flowers, of love, of mother’s milk, of sweat and flesh and dreaming. The food tasted like thought, like memory, like the pale whisperings of God. I dreamed of Gabrielle, growing, walking upon the water, standing with a sword against the sun. I dreamed of the taste of Marguerite’s mouth.
The Abbot and I woke under a tree next to the abbey’s stable. There was no need to say anything, so we went in for matins.
The next day, a ship with black sails appeared a mile out to sea. The girls of the Pleasure House reported that Marguerite went to the shore, screaming at the ship to depart. It did not. She called to the wind, to the ocean, to the birds, but no one assisted. The ship stayed where it was.
Soldiers came for Gabrielle. Marguerite saw them come. She stood on the roof of her house and raised her hands to the growing clouds. The soldiers looked up and saw that the sky rained flower petals. The petals came down in thick torrents, blinding all who were outdoors. With the petals came seeds and saplings, rooting themselves firmly in the overripe earth. The soldiers scattered, wandering blindly into the forest. Most never returned.
The next day, a thicket of trees grew up around the Pleasure House and the little cottage behind, along with a labyrinthine network of footpaths and trails. Few knew the way in or out. Whether the girls of the Pleasure House grumbled about this, no one knew. They appeared to have no trouble negotiating their way through the thicket, and trained a young boy, the son of the oyster diver, to stand at the entrance and guide men. If an agent of the Governor approached, the boy darted into the trees and disappeared. He was never followed.
The morning of Gabrielle’s tenth birthday, a storm raged from the west, then from the north, then from the east. Everyone on the island prepared for the worst. Anything that could be lashed was lashed. We boarded ourselves in, or ran for high ground. Outside, the wind howled and thrashed against our houses and buildings. The sea churned and swelled before rearing up and crashing down upon the island. Most of the buildings remained more or less intact. At the abbey, the chapel flooded, as did the library, though most of the collection was saved. Several animals died when the smaller stable collapsed.
Once the rains subsided, I journeyed through the thick and cloying mud to check on Marguerite. I found her kneeling in the vegetable patch, weeping as though her heart would break. I knelt down next to her, though I don’t think she noticed me at first. Her pale hands covered her face, and tears ran down her long fingers like pearls. She turned, looked at me full in the face with an expression of such sadness that I found myself weeping though I did not know why.
“The guava tree,” she said. “The sea took it away.”
It was true. Instead of the broad smooth trunk and the reaching branches, a hole gaped before us like a wound. Even the roots were gone.
“There is nothing to hold her here,” she said. And for the first time since the night in the ship’s hold during the storm all those years ago, I reached my arm across her back and coaxed her head to my shoulder. Her hair smelled of cloves and loam and salt. Gabrielle stood on the rocks at the shore, gathering seaweed into a basket to be used
