A Sincere Apology from the Author, breaking the Fourth Wall but that's unavoidable, I'm afraid.

A sincere apology to anyone who reads this story--I have to break off this serial, to work on my not-quite-finished-other-novel.

However, be assured that I have no intention of abandoning it--I've the story mapped out already, and it deserves to be finished! I will continue it at the earliest possible moment.

Thank you to those who have followed this novel, and please keep watching this space.

Bright-Face: Chapter III

Chapter III


The brass-ringed spyglass of Admiral Daragon of the king’s Royal Maritime Forces moved back and forth, very rapidly. The Admiral was a broad-lipped man, with bushy whiskers, eyes set at a perpetual squint, and a narrow, unforgiving manner of speech.

Nevertheless, it was he who had saved the king’s life at sea, when Louis XVII and his ex-prison guard had been nearly lost in a storm. The Admiral, then Captain Daragon of the Republic, had conveyed him across the ocean, and now served as one of his most privy advisors.

This position, he noted of late, was progressively being diminished by the prestige and services of Lord Wilmore, the English savant. His Lordship’s military service in favor of the New French State, long before it was a State, against his own countrymen, had sufficiently impressed the high authorities of the king’s court at Montréal, that the king himself had bestowed upon his Lordship a title, the Moonwort Impériale.

Admiral Daragon bit the edges of his lips in vexation. He was a man shorn of his mustache, temporarily, in accordance with his current residence at court, and as such, inclined to chew where its edges no longer hung. From his tall-masted white-clapboard house, made of the remnants of La Poire*, his late ship, his long spyglass twitched out at the city’s streets—left to the city—right to the palace—left again. The morning passed; yet still, he waited, certain that some plot was afoot.

At long last, from a low brown building opposite, there came an answering flicker. “That scoundrel; he hopes to spy upon the king,” said Admiral Daragon to himself, and, in a fury of satisfied indignation, dressed himself in his official sash of black velvet, pinned with the green leaves of a moonwort-shaped amulet, and descended from his room. “La Poire, Gilles,” he told his manservant.

“The carriage, monsieur?”

“What, do you think I am imbecile?”

The long-suffering Gilles, shaking his mop of hair, went off to order the handsome carriage that the Admiral, in his new-found royal patronage, had had occasion to order: the groom, Armand, drove it out. Or, perhaps, we should say, drove her out. Daragon allowed himself one fond glance at the figurehead, salvaged from his ship, which had been attached to the front of his land conveyance. The Poire, according to his whim, had been the name he had given to his handsome Republic ship, and to its beautiful figurehead, his best love. She now sailed forth once more, proudly, through the streets of Montréal—a wooden statue of a scantily clad young woman clutching a pear in her upraised hands.

“The palace, Gilles,” Daragon now said, seating himself comfortably within. The manservant avoided looking at that magnificent building, just yards from the Admiral’s own home.

“Very good, monsieur.”

Quite unbeknownst to the Admiral, Lord Wilmore sat at home on the edges of Montréal, picking at a lavish spread in his palatial breakfast-room. He would not move his fork to a chop or bit of tomato without first drizzling it with maple syrup—a fine local touch, he thought.

A footman, stood nearby, unmoving, while His Lordship finished his meal. After he had set aside the plate, Lord Wilmore spoke into the room, as if finishing up a conversation begun earlier.
"And so, I think it very wise that we not alert our discerning friend as to this, mmm?"

“Yes, my lord,” replied the footman.

One of the scantily clad statues near the wall might as well have spoken, for all
the notice Lord Wilmore took. He commanded his greatcoat and official sash, “For I must go out.”

“Are you to see His Majesty, sir?” asked the footman as he dutifully assisted his master with the specified garments.

“A merchant, Nathan, a stock-merchant. Then, His Majesty.” Nathan fumbled with one of the clasps of the greatcoat; in an instant, Lord Wilmore’s blow had him upon the ground. “Hurry, man, I do not wish to be late.”


In Saint-Pélerin, far from the intrigue of court, Béatrice and Antonin walked near the high walls of the town—more an illusion of a barrier than one in truth, for the towering unsettling greens of the trees flung themselves over their edges, and the sounds one heard were of the wilderness rather than the city.

The two old friends, now reunited, walked in unfathomable silence—Béatrice tentative, eyes to the ground, Antonin hands in pocket, lost to his own thoughts. It had been several days since the evening of the dinner at the Chrysafes’ house, and they had not had much occasion to speak. Now, however, it was difficult to make conversation—difficult to force the tongue to articulate thoughts that had spanned years.

At length, Antonin, gratefully finding a neutral subject to communicate, told Béatrice of M. Hébert’s proposed journey to Montréal. “We shall easily return in time to embark upon our expedition this season,” he said confidently.

“It is a very long journey, to Montréal,” responded Béatrice, dismayed. “Even with the King’s new road—you shall be weeks in travel.” Antonin shrugged, aiming a kick at a round pebble. It clattered off the wall and fell to the ground, spinning gold shards.

“Two weeks, I’ll wager, at most,” he said, though it was Béatrice who had traveled the roads most recently. “In any case, I am glad…glad of the excuse to leave. Saint-Pélerin is so small—it—cramps.” At Béatrice’s expression of concern, he felt himself obliged to explain further—“Home, you know. And my parents…I sometimes wish I had none. Especially now, as I fear I may reveal my secret, at any moment—"

“Your secret—you have something to tell your mother? You feel you would be better off…alone?” asked Béatrice, her heart beating very fast in her throat.

“Oh, I did not mean that, Béatrice—I did not mean that I wish I had no parents. Forgive me, Béatrice,” amended Antonin hastily, seeing where he had been thoughtless.

“No, do not—I took no offense, but, please, what did you mean?”

Antonin left off all his flippancy now, and leant against the wall next to her before saying seriously, “Something to conceal. Something that I have seen…”

Béatrice was still, gazing quizzically at him, her stomach twisted by a surging horror. “Something that you have seen?”

Softly, he said, “My reflection.”

“Your—reflection?”

“Come—do not be a new sort of Echo, Béatrice,” he said laughingly, to her distress. “It is my right to see, is it not? This is a modern Age. Prophecies are for fools, and those who believe in them are even greater fools.” Thus, in a few words, he dismissed his life’s mold of nineteen years.

“When?”

“Last month, just before we received your letter. Nothing happened. It was a lie, told by trickster who wished my family to worry, for her own amusement. It is all false, Béatrice.”

“Why?”

Now, Antonin smiled, seeing her anxiety. “Come—nothing has changed—nothing bad will occur. It was all nonsense, that prophecy. But I must swear you to silence, for you know how my mother would fall into hysterics, if she knew.”

“Bright-Face—"

“For heaven’s sakes, do not call me that!”

“Yes,” she promised reluctantly. Antonin took her hand, and they walked through side-streets until they had reached a printer’s shop (for the town had two, one belonging to the newspaper, the other owned by a private party, a certain Lord Wilmore). It was one of the few shops gifted with glass windows all around, and, freed of superstitious inhibitions, the two looked in beneath a ledge.

Béatrice gazed wistfully at their faces, side-by-side in the glass—she thought, as she often had to herself, “He is so beautiful, and she so marred. If only they might thus stand, together, for all their lives”—but on next glance, she saw Antonin staring at his own features with a frightening intensity—his golden eyes were lit as if with a strange fire, hungry to trace the lines of which he had been deprived for so long.

“Let us walk a different way,” said Béatrice, suppressing a shiver. As they moved away from that shadowy glass, she reproached him: “Could you not wait?”

“Until I am old and grey, and ready to die, do you mean? If I cannot know myself, then what sense is there in living? For all I knew, I might have been—an unspeakable monster, a very devil. I did not know, Béatrice.”

She nodded, touching her own mark, and found no reply. They walked on in silence. At the corner before they turned into the Greek Quarter, Antonin looked through the open public-house windows with an expression of longing—Béatrice’s heart smote her as, following his gaze jealously, she beheld the merry-faced girl who had caught Antonin’s interest; she realized that she could never be first in his affections. She restrained the urge to take him by the sleeve and pull him away, an familiarity that, a year past, she would not have hesitated to take.

Instead, Béatrice related the odd behavior of the raven that had pecked at her window so insistently several nights past. “When morning came, he was still there, and would not depart, however I tried to make him see that he was not wanted. He cocked his eyes at me, and—smirked, I think, if a raven can smirk—and would not be moved until after I returned from Lauds.”

“Perhaps it was the devil,” said Antonin, with some relish, as they walked on.

“You are too gloomy—indeed, it was not!”

“And you are too serious. You will not tell my mother?”

Béatrice hesitated, but conceded, “I will not.”

They parted ways, Béatrice to return to the convent, Antonin to his mother’s house.



* The Pear

© 2009, I.M.S.

Bright-Face: Chapter 2

Chapter II


Antonin Dimitri Chrysafe, meanwhile, applied himself to his remaining work, thinking all the while of the dreadful secret he concealed. His conceit, as all the conceits of youth, lay chiefly in his keeping the news to himself—thus, too, was it doomed to failure. The shadows slanted broader through the little shop, and he began to put away the instruments of his labor—the little brushes and inks, placed safely in their boxes, the precious maps folded carefully, tucked in their shelves.

As he closed the shop, he considered to himself whether he had been wholly wise in his determination. An instant of uncertainty crossed his mobile features, passed through his mind with fluid rapidity, and then was gone. Come what may, the thing was done. His concern, now, was with his own faithfulness—for he had been on the very verge of communicating all with Béatrice; and had she remained five minutes more in the shop, he knew well that he should have been obliged to tell her all.

A footfall was heard from the tiny winding stairs above—seconds later, the cartographer himself appeared, slim and light-eyed and dark-haired, and as detached as Antonin was restive, as nondescript as Antonin was dazzling. Together, the two men closed the office. Usually, they parted outside with scarcely a word, for M. Hébert was not the talkative sort, but on this evening, he seemed to wish to speak. “All well, Antonin?”

“Very well, Maitre Hébert.”

“I thought I heard a voice downstairs…”

“Yes, that was Mlle. Durandel, returned from Montréal.”

“Ah.” M. Hébert paused a moment, thoughtfully. “Your mother, is she in good health?”

The thought of Mme. Chrysafe was not one that Antonin wished to dwell upon; he made an impatient, restless motion with his beautiful head and replied, “As well as might be, Maitre Hébert.”

“Good. Good.” The cartographer paused in looking up at the closed door to his establishment, adjusted his tricorn hat, and regarded Antonin candidly through his weak blue eyes. “I fear I may have to seek an audience with His Majesty the king, in Quebec, before my request for charter is granted.”

“Oh, the king—he is a little boy from what I have heard—“ interjected Antonin with pretty arrogance.

“But he is our sovereign. He has suffered terribly at the hands of the unfaithful French—he was wise, perhaps, to come to us. We may be mixed, rough, and some are too proud of their freedoms, but we are loyal—we are the true French people. And most especially, you should be loyal, for was it is his benevolence that permits your family to remain subjects of New France, though you sought asylum from the Ottomans under the meddling English. Now. Will you accompany me?”

“But surely, no grant is needed. We are self-sufficient here in New France. We take matters into our own hands.”

M. Hébert raised his brows, but uttered nothing directly concerning the near-treason Antonin had spoken, only whispering stringently, “Do not be rash.”

“Very well. Thank you,” the young man added as a guilty afterthought. “I will be glad to accompany you to Montréal, M. Hébert.”

“If I cannot attain this grant, I will retire, and strike out on my own, as you say, or else sell all my books and pens,” declared the other man in his dry, taciturn manner. He had removed to Saint-Pélerin in order that he might soon embark upon his life’s ambition—namely, that of mapping New France’s unexplored western coast—and to be thus prohibited by lack of a royal grant, given that the king had been in New France only a year, was surely galling. Nevertheless, he bade Antonin farewell with customary calm, and hurried away to his boarding-house quarters, slight figure blending with the shadows.

Antonin took longer to leave the area of the cartographer’s office; he mulled over his conundrum in his mind. “And yet, perhaps I needn’t tell her, after all,” he said to himself as he walked slowly home. It was unclear, even in his mind, which “she” he referred to—whether his mother, or Béatrice. “If I am to leave for the king’s city, then maybe I may avoid it.”

The streets of Saint-Pélerin dimmed. Antonin skirted the rough white buildings, past the centre square where, not so long ago, though not in his memory, Guy Fawkes effigies had been burned. The day had been long, but Antonin saw no reason to hurry home; all the more, indeed, had he, to linger. The evening, such as it was, with its morose purple hues and silent streets, was his. Most law-abiding citizens of the king’s domains had retired, and the only people out were habitual drunkards, and a few youths carousing. These last staggered form ale-house to street, and back again—Antonin watched them with disgust, for he had, tonight, an abhorrence for such untidiness, such futility, and though he was as fond of liquor as the next young man, and though he would gladly have stopped in to see Josepha, the brewer’s daughter, tonight, the thought of it reviled.

As he passed the shining window of the tavern, however, he could not resist ducking down to glance, once more, at his reflection in the horse trough—to reassure himself—the gold-and-planed glory of it looked back.

There was nothing, after all, so terrible a fate that could befall him—it had not, the first time, a month ago, when he had first dared—and did not now. “Prophecy,” he snorted to himself. “They were likely afraid I would get a swollen head or some such nonsense; fall in love with myself—such fools! Nothing of the sort will happen.”

Whistling softly to himself, he made his way home, to the bramble of warmth of fireplace and family.

In another part of the city, Béatrice sat at the nuns’ supper. The bent heads of the Sisters all around was comforting, the silence and reverence of their every motion. She thought, warm-cheeked, of Antonin—how she had missed him, during her long absence at school! How he was just as she had imagined, just as she had hoped, just as she remembered him. She had loved him from her infancy, as one child loves another—and now, she loved him more than ever before, as a girl to a boy. Hers was a faithful heart, and during her long years away, what fantasies she had concocted, what vivid imaginings, such as one reads in novels, to bind her affections more surely to their unknowing object! The difficulty of her long journey, and the relief of being home now rendered her sleepy, and it was in a sort of daze that she said compline with the nuns, and retired.

Mother Superior, a droll little Irishwoman presiding over a conclave of French and Métis sisters, had welcomed the return of their ugly duckling with dignified delight, and straightaway set Béatrice to the empty attic, for the present serving as a medicinal closet. Three iron bedsteads stood unused, prepared to receive other such foundlings, amidst the makings of a warehouse-infirmary—rolls of gauze bandages, dried herbs, and sacks of grain.

To these wholesome items, Béatrice thoughtfully added her own small store of possessions: three dresses, three sets of linen, two pairs of woolen stockings, and one of silk, her slate-blue traveling coat, and a parcel of books. She was well-provided-for by her stern aunt and uncle, it was true, though they disapproved of her life at such a remote station; still, it must be allowed that it had been her late parents’ wish to see her thus established. Mme and M. Durandel had been among the first to take up the royal call to move westward, and though they had perished shortly after Béatrice’s birth, it was assumed that she must be allowed to remain in Saint-Pélerin until time for her schooling.

One round window at each end of the attic looked out to the quiet street below, and on the other side, the nuns’ new garden; Béatrice went to the street-side, and looked out. The square was empty, devoid even of Montréal’s watchman. The silence was all-enfolding.

“I shall have to re-accustom myself to it, that is all,” the girl thought, weary-lidded, and doused the single candle that the sisters had given her with which to say her prayers. For she preferred the dark.
Béatrice began dutifully, kneeling by the bed as she ought, in the sheltering darkness—“Ave Maria, gratia plena—“ but after “Mulieribus,” halted, opened wide her eyes and looked about her. A huge raven, such as are unknown to Europe, but flourish on the Western coast, seemed to be pounding at one of the windows—she watched, frightened, as it knocked its onyx beak against the round glass pane, and stared in with its round black eyes.

Rising slowly, Béatrice went to the window, and made several shooing motions, hoping to drive the bird away. The raven, far from complying, tilted its glossy head and barked at her once, twice—alarmed by the sound, and afraid of the great bird’s making an irreparable hole in the precious glass, she hastily unfastened the latch—the raven, squawking in indignation, prized it open, and flew past her to settle on a cross-beam in the room. Gingerly, the girl opened the window wholly, that it might leave if it so chose (and this was her hope) during the night and, skipping across the cool floorboards, returned to her prayers.

But the words had flown from her head with the raven’s disturbance; as she tried to regain her place in the familiar prayer, a different set of words drifted into her head, gently, as a song played on wind-reeds: “…And let me go into the sun-world’s houses, before the making of the time-that-is-to-come…” She rather fancied that a melody went with it—she could almost, whispering the words under her breath, recall it—a lilting, swaying tune perhaps heard in the street—“Amen,” she finished, and, overcome with the day’s greetings and travel, fell into bead and into sleep, curled against the cold.

In another part of Saint-Pélerin, M. Hébert slumbered in his narrow boarding-house bed, dreaming of his luggages. Piles of blank paper, inks, pencils, were stored within, as well as three blank requests for grant of charter, one addressed to the king, a second to a Lord Wilmore, and the third to himself. One should serve him, even if the others were refused.

In his warm bed in a corner of the upper floor of the Chrysafe residence, Antonin dreamed. He fancied that the moon took flight above his roof, smiling, but however he ran, he could not catch it, until a great dark bird detached itself from the night sky, swept down upon him, swallowed him up. Tossing and turning, he half-awakened from the nightmare; he fell again into slumber, dreaming now of the comely Josepha.

In his murky hut, a gnarled old man, tucked in his covers, dreamt of his horde of copper coins, now nearly completed. His dreaming self moved among the carefully arranged piles, caressed the structure he had labored for so long to build—a house, of pennies, constructed in the shape of the king’s palace in Montréal. All at once, an earthquake shook the place; his keep crumbled, and he was dashed to the ground. A long fissure formed through the cellar floor, and he cried aloud, hoping to catch the pennies that slipped through his grasp into the abyss.

In Montréal, in a wide empty chamber filled with costly velvets and silks, tapestries and the finest crystal ornaments, in a four-poster bed that swallowed him in its vastness, Louis XVII, king of New France, dreamt of torment. Leering faces bearing flagons of strong-smelling liquor loomed above him, dark, damp corners, detached windows far overhead—he writhed, trying to escape the misery of his dreams. The king was eleven years of age, ruddy-haired, and rosy-cheeked, and as he struggled with his nighttime wraiths, unconsciously, he covered his mouth with one white hand, lest his cries alert his attendants.

In another part of Montréal, in the box-like embrace of a bleak wooden boarding-house room, a schoolteacher dreamt. He was long-limbed, and his dark coloring, high cheekbones, and dark hair revealed his native ancestry. He seemed to pull unto himself a stillness all-contained; each sleeping breath was softly uttered, as if carefully considered and thoughtfully executed.
He dreamt of his grandmother, who stood at the edge of a clearing of endless, towering trees, and demanded of him when he was returning home.

“Not yet,” he told her with some reluctance. “Not yet.” The tiny old woman scowled her wrinkled, nut-brown face at him; she reproached him with un-dream-like detail. The schoolmaster listened, quietly, but at one charge spoke: “I have not turned my back upon my people,” he said. “My future, and ours, is here.”

But it was of no use. Among the trees behind her, stood a tiny bark cottage, admirably suited to her diminutive stature. It was not decorated with broad strokes of crimson and blue and white, for she preferred it plain, waiting, she said. A single plume of smoke spiraled from it; he had to bite back a surge of homesickness. He tried to close his eyes, in the dream, against the scene, but she forced them open, lecturing on and on until at last he fell into a dreamless sleep.

In an estate outside Montréal, in a fine chateau that had used to belong to the French governor, a lord slept. His amber eyes were shut, but he did not dream. His thin lips curved in a satisfied smile.


© 2009 I.M. S.

All characters, events, and representations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Part I: Bright-Face--Chapter 1

Silence stood all across the empty, broken field from Forest Lake to Cabot Plain. Only a starling stirred hopping among the stone fragments of the ruined abbey, whose echoes this place held. In the centre, where the courtyard had once stood, a smashed sun-dial attested to the violent rippings-away this place had seen. Not a wall stood whole, but curved, in skeletal archings against the pure, primeval blue of the sky. Beside the ruins, ever close at hand, the virgin trees towered, curious sentinels; they had witnessed the reverence, and, too, the destruction that these peculiar New People had enacted. Their forms were common enough, but their colors—something more deep, shadowed still, pigment transfused from the shade-upon-shade of blue-green fir, iridescence of gold ferns and mosses, silence in manifold buzzing anticipation. If trees can be said to wait—these waited.

Waited, for the human steps that were to come—shuffling, breath harried, wizened fingers clutching tightly to the treasure between thumb and forefinger: an old man, cap and coat and breeches as they should be, one knotty hand gripped about the carved handle of his cane—the other, fierce in its clasp of a penny. He moved laboriously—his every breath was a skirmish of nature against will—at last, triumphant, he drew in the air with trumping sound; he stood proud of his victory against the grave; he wheezed. Gazing surreptitiously around the listening trees, he searched for faces anew. The wonder of it was that he should distrust the untouched groves around him, for his knobby face was as wrinkled, indeed, as a grand tree root; behind his small brown eyes glimmered a spark of intent.

Now, as the midday trees clustered near, he clasped his round head with one hand—with the other, he held his prize aloft. Grimed with dirt and mortar as it was, it shone dully in the moist sunlight. With exultant clucks and chuckles, the old man admired it a moment longer, then, grinning, tucked it within his breast pocked, and returned limpingly down the path from whence he had come.

A rustling within the forested grove revealed that their lithe forms, though proud, had not revealed all: a girl of around nineteen peered out at the old man’s receding form, and let free a imprisoned sigh of relief. “Ils sont disparues,” she murmured to herself in tuneful French. Thus reassured, she slid the further way from the tree, and it was shown that her person, though fine enough, was far from perfect—for her face bore a disfiguring birthmark. It formed the shape of a scattered storm, a galaxy spiraled vertically up her right cheek, piercing through to her eyebrow—no pink birth-mark this, but an unsightly dark dusky color near to black, as if someone had spilt India ink across her face. Her features were even, her face not fashionably heart-shaped, but broader, more oval; her brows gently uplifted, so that even if her disfiguration had not been evident, she still should have looked uncertain. Her coiled hair was dark, and wavy—though in all other aspects, save the birthmark, she favored her great-grandmother, who, so it was said, had been one of the forest people.

Turning, the girl disentangled a heavy traveling cloak from the deadwood snag nearby, and proceeded carefully through the ruined abbey that had once been her home. She could not shake her head at the damage, done in the wake of the King’s removal to the Empire of New France—it was not a matter for shaking one’s head at, for the horror mingled with the knowledge of her own long absence. She, too, turned her steps toward town, as did the old man. The road of dark soil was wet still from yesterday’s rain, and she placed her boots with care, holding the edges of her skirts aside with both hands, like a schoolgirl in a play, or a modest marionette.

The road did not lead far until it reached the town, for the Sisters of Imperative Mercy, when choosing the spot for their home, half a century ago, when they were encouraged with the rest of the explorers and traders of New France, to spread westward, to halt the British expansion, had been pragmatic. They wished to retire from the world, it was true, and hadn’t they crossed an ocean and near the full of a continent to succeed? But it was not for them to hide themselves away in the forest, away from charitable works, away from help if it was necessary. These woods and hills, these endless bountiful lands were full of natives, and how could the Sisters of Mercy tell which were friendly, and which hostile? They had built up the town of Saint-Pélerin with their own hands. They had taken in whoever was poor and in need—had helped to settle the bewildered Greek refugees in their own part of town, yea, had even fed and tended to Indians, upon occasion. No group had commanded more respect, more authority, more care. And yet: in the wake of Louis XVII’s escape to New France, a furor of anti-papist resentment was inflamed, the indignation of the more militant British and anti-Royalist citizens of the new Bourbon kingdom had been raised to violent levels; this in turn had led to destruction such as this. A “New Reformation,” these riots had been called. “And yet, for all that, we are all strangers in this land,” thought the girl to herself.

The nuns had removed, she had been told, to an old whitestone building near the now-unused Parliamentary building. Knowing that a warm welcome awaited her there, and thinking again of that hunched figure scurrying away from the ruins like a guilty scavenger, her footsteps did not lead her immediately lead her to the town centre, but instead down a series of dingier streets and past barrel-strewn alleyways until she reached the Greek ghetto.
Though the main thoroughfares of Saint-Pélerin had been quiet enough, this new arrival could not avoid recognition here; a series of greetings followed her as she passed through these busier streets:

“Salut, Béatrice—"

“Oh, Mlle. Durandel, you have returned already? --Alexios, she has returned!”

“Welcome home, Mlle. The city has been sad without you.”

This chorus, in mixed French and Greek tongues, sprang up from those passing, and Béatrice herself, smiling, ducking her head, a flush of modesty warming her immoveable dusky cheek, shyly answered in kind. She did not stop, though invitations to sit within, to sip a dram of mulled wine (the drink of choice, even in summer here; it transcended barriers of heritage and loyalty, and, when no wine was present, was called mulled whillynilly, or, bon-gré-mal-gré), tumbled all about her; she did not stop, but proceeded to the very end of the street, as the residents of this quarter expected.

The particular house that she sought was tall and yellow, unremarkable in every mote—its tiny walled courtyard was as every other house, so too its rough wooden gate, and hordes of children tumbling in the garden; it nonetheless constituted a large part of the happiness of her childhood. When wearied of the incessant turn of prayers at the abbey (for Mlle. Béatrice was an orphan, under the jurisdiction of stern guardians in faraway Quebec), she had stolen away to this house; she always was received with care. The sisters had judged it well that she have playmates her own age, and for this purpose, there was none so close a playfellow as Bright-Face.

Béatrice drew up to the gate, resting her hand upon the latch, hesitant to open it, marveling a moment at the enduringness of the household, its peace. Even its windows, glassless, with shudders ready to be secured against the harsh winter storms, excited no comment—for this was, after all, New France, and glass was dear.

Nonetheless, it was this distinction, and something interior, that lent its air of mystery. Walk into any quarter in town today, and you will likely find a mirror, a glass-enclosed bookcase, a shining silver platter passed down from generation to generation—in all but the poorest of houses. Not so at the time I speak of, for there were no mirrors—at all. Visitors to this particular Greek quarter wondered at it; a popular writer of travel handbooks even remarked to his European audience at home that “It is a superstition peculiar to the Greeks of Western New France, which forbids possession of any reflective material, such as might by augury look into the future, or by effeteness serve for a dinner party…" Not so; indeed: it was because of Bright-Face.

In the Chrysafe household, mirrors were anathema, as were watches, polished silver spoons, or anything with a gleam of reflection that might attract the glance of a certain eye. The entirety of Saint-Pélerin’s Greek quarter, in sympathy, had donned similar restrictions—if not of forbidding glass entirely, of covering it when the person happened to be near. On the night of Mme. Chrysafe’s eldest son, an old, old woman with gums like a baby’s rattle and a face as wrinkled as a walnut’s shell had appeared on the corner of the Chrysafe residence, clutching an empty copper pot to her chest like an infant. The house was not then as fully constructed as it is at the time of our story—nor, indeed, was the Greek ghetto so firmly established. Nonetheless, it was a night of bitter cold, and Mme. Chrysafe, surrounded by loving friends and kindred, bade the old woman enter, out of the storm, lest her death cast a portent of dearth over her eldest child’s birth.

The old woman was set by the fire, with a cup of hot mulled bon-gré-mal-gré, and quite forgotten as the labor descended. All into the early hours, she watched, unnoticed, and when at last the work was done, and the fine bright boy held up to his first morning, the old woman pronounced the following words: “He will take unto himself the brightness of the sun, but his own face he must never see, for certain doom awaits him.” Then, heedless of the women’s cries to remain, she opened the door, and disappeared into the freezing snow, never to be seen again.
As the boy had grown, his beauty had increased, and so, too, the residents’ determination to keep him safe from whatever doom the old woman had predicted. Pains were taken on all sides that the forbidden thing should not come to pass; all held their breath, for fear that some accident would cause the fatal blow.

But an entire community cannot give the semblance of such a fear, not when there are more urgent worries to attend to at every moment of the day, and now, as always, the Greek quarter appeared serene and homely. Mme. Chrysafe, a buxom woman, now swept the front steps to her house, the brisk pattern of her implement turning her gaze downwards. Thus preoccupied, she did not see the newcomer until she stood before her—then, “Béatrice, my dear,” she cried, and, dropping the broom, swept the girl into a many-kissed embrace. “When did you return?”
“Just now—this instant.”
“And shall you be gone from us again, to that school?”
“I could not help it; my aunt and uncle insisted. But I shall not go—no, never, I think, from here again.”
“Good,” Mme. Chrysafe said decisively, retrieving her broom from the spot where it had fallen, and resuming her chore. “You have been sorely missed, my dear. You’ve come to see Antonin, I suppose? He will be as eager to see you as I, when he hears—Antonin! He is at the chartist’s. He will be glad to see you.”

After several more embraces, and after promising to come to supper the following evening, Béatrice at last pulled herself free, and with heartfelt thanks returned to the more central streets, where through a dusty window she beheld her beloved friend. She watched him, a moment, before entering the shop—he was as she recalled, slender, and of handsome form and figure. His eyes were a greeny-hazel color, his hair a ruddy auburn, his mouth long and curved in a perpetual grimace or smile. His features—were of such symmetry, such molded beauty; there is no parallel in nature, save perhaps the languid elegance of a tiger. His lashes were longer than a girl’s, his dusk-rose lips like any garden-flower in bloom. As a child, he had been dazzling—as a young man, he was youth’s summer glorified. There was not a girl who did not envy him, adore him, revere him.

And yet, I believe, there was something terrifying in that beauty that was his—a perfection that, if stilled, might as easily turn to a mask as a god.

It was fortunate, then, that stillness was not his way. Even now, as he labored with his inks and brushes, painting the contour of the etched land before him, his right fingers, unengaged, drummed on his desk. Surveying his careful work, each moment his countenance twitched into a new expression, his feet, restless, shifted to and fro as he worked.

Béatrice allowed herself one moment more to gaze, affectionately, on the golden face lowered over the map—then, she climbed the step, and entered. As the plain slate blue door opened, a bell pealed out in the shop. Antonin, thus distracted, glanced up with brief irritation—it slid away once he had seen his visitor. “Béatrice—“ he exclaimed, “You did not say that you were returning, so soon.”

“I believe I sent a letter, as I ought. And—so soon—It has been five years. Did you miss me so little?”

“Nay—not so soon. So long,” amended Antonin. They regarded one another for a moment, as old friends reunited must do. Béatrice, with the peculiar consciousness of their time apart, noted again the difference between them—Bright-Face, and Dark-Stain. The defect of her birth seemed, though she could not see it as he could, incandescent, insurmountable, in face of his beauty.

“You have been busy,” she remarked, forestalling any requisite observation on the state of how they had changed. She turned away, that he might not see her change of countenance, focusing closely on the half-finished maps upon his desk.

“Coloring is very dull work, but it shall not last for long,” he told her, with an unconscious arrogance that caused her to bite her lip to suppress her tender smile. “Maître Hébert is going on an expedition to map the coast, even to the far edges of the continent, and I am determined to accompany him. To mark down for all the world the secrets of the untraversed frontier—the secrets that are now hidden, in superstition and fear. We will map the coast, Béatrice, even to Indian territory.”

“When does this expedition take place?”
Antonin looked down, as if reminded of a bitter fact. “Master Hebert is still in search of funds, and a patron. We need a lord’s seal at least upon a ship—the king’s charter, even—before we can set off.”

Secretly relieved, the girl Béatrice wandered through the offices, regarding the finished maps, and the sketches with equal interest. Antonin followed her with his eyes a moment, torn between his desire to show her about, and the necessity of returning to his work. They had been apart for so long, it seemed, yet immediately he yielded to the old impulses of confidence –he wished to tell her everything; a particular communication hovered at the edges of his lips, then faded. After a moment, he yielded to his first impulse, and went to join her in her examination of the maps, explaining how they were drawn up, where, and by whose commission, even if it had been before his apprenticeship with the cartographer began. Béatrice followed his every word with interest, and when he had finished, she commended his master’s efforts. But, “I saw old M. de la Tombe at the ruined abbey today,” was what she had wished to say—though her young heart may have harbored other intentions, it was by this excuse that she had come. “Engaging in his habitual pursuit.”

Antonin let out a sharp laugh, with a childlike neutrality and a child’s unconscious cruelty: “Yes, that crazy old man, still collecting pennies, after all these years. When the King goes to war, he shall have to give them up, though—for copper, they say, is valuable to the government.”

“Do you think war likely?”

He shrugged, one shoulder up, the other steady. “You may tell better—after all, it was you who were just in the East.”

“If that is so, I wonder what he intends to do with what he has found.”
“Drown in them, like as not.”

A cloud covered, suddenly, the sun—a first startled glance outside proved that it was later than Béatrice should have liked. “I must return to the Sisters.” Antonin accepted this with a nod, and held open the door for her to descend. “Until tomorrow, then.”

“Until tomorrow.”

As she walked through Saint-Pélerin, seeing its steepled silhouette flame against the brush-strokes of a fine sunset, Béatrice failed to notice that a small toad, sitting by the empty Parliament steps, watched her recede with beady, impassive eyes. When she had passed, it emitted a call of startling force—“Crraak,” it said, as if to herald in the wild, troubling sounds of the night.


© 2009, I.M.S.

Forward and Explanation

This is a serial novel, in the style of the great 19th century serials that are classics today. It is also set in a semi-fantastical world:

This story takes place not in any history that was, but a history that might have been, had certain events transpired differently.

The French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years’ War, and the War of the Conquest), lasting from 1754 to 1763, and concluding in victory for the opposing British forces, has in this story been won by the French, who then established a series of campaigns to de-anglicize the Canadian territories.
These later political moves included furiously building roads and routes of trade, opening up the West a trifle sooner than our history shows.
Counter-moves from the British, before the Revolution in America, included sponsoring an immigration program smuggling willing Greeks from the Ottoman Empire to the New World, as is obliquely mentioned in the first chapter.
The chess-game of Canada was forgotten, however, in the struggles with suppressing rebellion in the south, and New France was left to its own devices. Shortly after this time, as you may recall, the French Revolution took place; old-world France supported the USA’s severance from Britain, and continued to its own Terror. Subsequently, the Republic was proclaimed, the royal family imprisoned, Louis XVI and his queen beheaded.
In this novel, Louis XVII escaped, with help from a sympathetic Republic prison guard, and established royal rule in New France. One can well imagine the implications of two French nations, each vowing it is the true state; one can well imagine that they might have come to blows. Throughout the story, there is an additional threat from the north—namely, that the Russians, allied with the Spanish, might attack (heretofore overlooked) New French possessions.
There were Russian colonists in Alaska from the 1740s; by the 1790s, they had become permanent settlements. Alaska was purchased from Russia by the United States in 1864.

I do apologize for the use of advertizing on this page, but it is a well-established practice in the publishing business!

All characters, events, and representations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009, I.M.S.