Everfair (6 page)

“Which one is the princess?” asked Rosalie.

“They are both princesses, and they have been stolen by—”

“But what about the queen? Will you play her?”

At thirteen George was just entering the phase of his growth when he might fall in love with an older woman. “The queen is dead,” Lisette said firmly. “I will be the evil general who has stolen the princesses to be my hostages against the king.”

“But you can't be a general—generals are men! You're—”

Lisette glowered under her eyebrows. “Do you dare to doubt my powers?” Of a sudden she stood, assuming a rigid stance, her aspect martial. She pointed at a sheltered companionway rising a little ways along the boat deck. “There is my fortress. I retire into it now with my captives.” She took Lily and Rosalie each by the arm and prepared to march away with them.

“Wait—I say—” George hesitated as she turned back to face him. “I mean, how exactly am I to—you know, to overcome you? By myself, you know.”

“Ah. You admit, then, that I am formidable enough as an enemy?”

“Yes! Of course—yes, hang it—but—what am I to do?”

“You must strive for a tactical advantage, and hope that my hostages have not totally been quelled to their fate.” Lisette had intended to offer the boy more direction, but really! She led the smirking girls to the stairs' shedlike entrance, settled them several steps down, and returned to the top to keep watch.

Their brother
should
have gone below using the starboard companionway, then come back up by this one, attacking her from the rear and inciting his princesses to help. But no. Such an idea was too simple.

Loud banging, scuffling sounds, and the scraping and sliding of shoe soles over her head, accompanied by boyish epithets, told Lisette what his preferred course of action was: to climb the sloping shelter covering the companionway and fall on her from above. She clutched her forehead. What idiocy! How now would the girls understand when to—

“I say!” A thump from above, and George's head appeared in the door frame upside down. “There's another big liner coming alongside of us!”

The girls crowded past Lisette, their status as captive princesses abandoned with the rest of the pretend. “Where?” “Can we see it?” “Which side?” “How did you get up there?” “Can we?” they cried.

Looking with her sails unfurled more like a white bird than their own vessel, the new ship glided with increasing slowness past their port side, then stopped. She was a steamer too, but not so swift—Lisette spied one lone funnel between the fore and aft masts.

“V-e-r-o-n-a,” Rosalie spelled out, her chin tipped up to rest on the side rail. “Vair-onn-ah?” Lisette corrected her pronunciation.

“Is this the ship from America we're waiting to meet up with?” asked Lily. “The one which is to sail beside us?” She lifted her arm to wave at several small figures standing facing them on
Verona
's deck.

“'Course it is, you ninny,” said George. “Can't you see how black they all are?”

“I only asked—”

“No bickering, children. George, you will see plenty blacker faces every day in our new home; you must accustom yourself and not make comments.”

“Look! They're lowering a boat!” George sounded not the least abashed by this scolding. Lisette wondered who the boat's passengers were—one seemed to be a woman, but to tell more lay beyond her powers at this distance. Sailors began rowing and the boat progressed—toward
White Bird
rather than the shore. No need to speculate who arrived. Soon she would know.

She shooed the children ahead of her. Their suite lay between the cabin shared by her and Daisy, and the one occupied by Laurie and that conniver Ellen. In moments she had set them to washing their faces and found the comb. She managed to make all presentable before the steward knocked at her door. Sticking her head out into the passage she intercepted him as he turned to go. His message had been meant for Daisy, but none of
White Bird
's crew were ignorant of the Albins' special arrangement. She instructed him to bring the guests down.

No servants had come with them from England, so Lisette admitted the visitors to the suite herself. Thank the heavens there were only three; with George, Lily, and Rosalie, the tiny sitting room was filled. She took their hats and gloves to rest on the folding washstand in the adjoining room, spreading the woman's light shawl on her and Daisy's bed.

The woman was named Martha Livia Hunter. Shorter than Lisette, she yet commanded the men accompanying her without effort. They were younger, perhaps lacking ten years of her apparent thirty-five—the woman's creamy brown complexion glowed not far off its peak, its smoothness barely wrinkling in the corners of her expressive eyes.

Mrs. Hunter—as she styled herself, explaining the absence of Mr. Hunter as due to the gentleman's long-ago death—told her escort where to stand—graciously, but in the manner of an order. George gazed up at her adoringly from a cushion on the floor. So very vulnerable at thirteen.

“These are my godsons, Chester and Winthrop.” Mrs. Hunter made the introductions with a warm smile. “They have already begun training our passengers to make them ready for the Great Work. It will not be long now!”

Lisette smiled in return and nodded. Not that she knew in exact the date they were due in Boma, but it must be a week or less. From there, who knew how long till they reached Kasai Territory?

“I thought to bring them here to review with Mr. Owen what they've been teaching the other settlers—”

“Oh! He has yet to board—but I am sure he would wish you to wait…” As it seemed the only thing to do, she invited Mrs. Hunter and her godsons to lunch with her and the children, who remained on their best behavior throughout the proceedings. Mrs. Hunter called them charming right to their faces, thus completing her conquest of George.

Just as they finished with their pudding, the part of the family who had gone to shore returned. It transpired that Laurie Junior had not much enjoyed his birthday treat, so Daisy brought him back to the ship, with his mother and father as well. Mr. Owen, and the Reverend Lieutenant Wilson, whom Lisette now met for the first time, joined them.

This was too much for the little sitting room to accommodate; they retired to walk about the promenade deck. Lily and Rosalie clung to Daisy's hands as if she were the true mother of both. George remained in Mrs. Hunter's thrall; she, in turn, seemed captivated by Little Laurie and totally oblivious to the blandishments of Laurie Senior. It was all most interesting.

The two godsons, Chester and Winthrop, attempted to discuss with Mr. Owen their concerns over some machinery they'd fetched with them from Charleston; he responded by monopolizing the conversation, talking loudly of the differences between steerage and first class berths on the
White Bird
. Apparently these displeased him. Well, he had only to assign himself to the same quarters as his mechanicals and laborers, if that was the trouble. And the further from Daisy the—

“You needn't fear me telling.”

Lisette started. Mrs. Hunter had spoken softly, but almost directly into her ear.

“Telling? Telling of what?”

“Of your race.”

“My race? Burgundian? What has that to do—” She stopped. Grand-p
è
re.
Le Gorille
had been a mulatto. All the village knew, though it was never a topic of conversation. But how could this woman, a stranger—

“You see, yes. You've done well enough at keeping your secret hidden, though, and it's safe with me—for the moment.”

“My secret?” Lisette laughed. She had to. Extortion was an expensive alternative. Mrs. Hunter smiled, but not as warmly as when they'd made their initial acquaintance.

Maybe a salting of fact. “I'm going to settle in an African country, in the company of socialists and American Negroes, and you think it will matter to them that I am one-sixteenth—”

“Oh, I'm sure the admixture is a bit more than that.”

Lisette shook her head, made a face as if in sorrow at an enemy's mistake. But the woman was, of course, correct in her surmise. Who could have told her of the Toutourniers' shadowy connection to the peoples of the so-called Dark Continent? Daisy didn't know of it. Maman had mentioned it in one letter, but cryptically. True, the letter had vanished from Laurie's bedroom overnight—had that been the work of Ellen?

“In any case, one drop is enough to taint you in certain eyes. I have heard that some members of Mr. Owen's working class entertain quite stupid ideas on the subject of our race.” The merest emphasis on that “our.” “And, of course, no one likes to be lied to.”

And about that this Hunter was right also. Which meant, therefore, that Lisette would need to make Daisy a confession.

 

Fifty Kilometers out of Matadi, Congo, July 1894

To Jackie Owen, the way seemed arduous and long. During this time—miscalled “the dry season”—the Congo sweltered in humidity comparable to the Gold Coast's. The wet air corroded everything. The rank vegetation smoked almost as much as it burned when fed into the expedition's small boilers.

Chester and Winthrop had had the right of it; their steam bicycles were destined for greatness. The traction engines did well enough over terrain recently cleared for construction of a railroad. But that would end. The broad way they traveled would narrow to a mere footpath ahead, up where the Mah-Kow coolies had their camp.

And for now, the ground continued to rise.

Jackie turned to look back along the procession following him. Line of sight ended after only a dozen men, but his elevation allowed him glimpses of those farther behind.

Beside the three heavy traction engines, the baker's dozen of bicycles valiantly pulled more than their own weight. English workers and natives took turns shepherding the narrow, wheeled baskets trundling in the bicycles' wakes. Clouds from their boilers diffused into the mist spiraling up from the jungle's relentless green.

But why was that last machine's plume so much thicker than the rest? Hurriedly he signaled a halt and went back down to investigate.

Winthrop was there ahead of him. “The regulator's faulty, Mr. Owen.”

“Is it possible to repair—”

“It must be replaced. I'll take care of it.”

“We have a spare one?”

The stocky Negro nodded at the first wheeled basket in the steam bicycle's train. “Several.” He leaned forward and began to unpack a wooden chest. “I'll finish tonight.”

Jackie continued to the end of the halted line, explaining the problem. As he had expected, the natives received the news with stoicism. Since the expedition didn't require them to kill themselves with the effort of hauling its luggage up to the river's navigable stretches, they found no fault in however else things were arranged.

The women were another matter. The Albins' governess, Mademoiselle Lisette Toutournier, still held the handlebars of the steam bicycle she had appropriated at the journey's outset. “How is this? We lack at least two hours till darkness and you call a stop?” For some reason that escaped him, the French girl challenged Jackie at every opportunity.

Daisy Albin's anxiety was understandable: she had left the children behind in Boma with their father, Laurie. The sooner the expedition reached their lands beyond the Kasai River, the sooner she would be able to establish a safe home for them there. “Are you sure you couldn't find a more inconvenient camping ground?” Her rueful grin took away her words' sting.

Jackie reconsidered their surroundings. The considerable slope was more than an engineering obstacle; it might indeed prove difficult to sleep or pitch a tent upon.

“If we proceed with less equipment should we not meet with a better location? Soon?” Mademoiselle Toutournier's wide grey eyes unnerved him with their steady gaze.

Jackie shuddered at the thought of the women striking out on their own, meeting with unmanageable dangers such as poisonous snakes or colonial police. He had opposed their presence on the expedition as strongly as it was possible to do without making a churl of himself or intimating that they were somehow inferior to men. That would be contrary to the principles upon which the Fabian Society was formed.

The third woman, Mrs. Hunter, approached, accompanied by Wilson and by Chester, the other of her godsons. “I would like to introduce a suggestion…”

Jackie steeled himself to reject an unreasonable demand of one sort or another—a night march? Several hours' retreat to a site earlier passed by?

“Perhaps we would do better not to sleep at all? Reverend Wilson and I have been thinking to hold a prayer meeting, a revival, and there is no time like the present. We might easily—”

Jackie paid no heed to the rest of the woman's argument. Yes; the idea had its merits. But proselytizing a religion?

“We are part of a socialist expedition.” He could tell by Mrs. Hunter's expression that he had interrupted a sentence. He went on nonetheless. “If I put the issue to a vote, do you think a prayer meeting will be the choice of the majority?”

“I—I believe most of my countrymen to be decent, God-fearing Christians.”

“
These
are your countrymen!” Jackie swung one arm wide to indicate everyone in their immediate vicinity and beyond. “Not only those who came with you from America, but all now on the expedition—Catholics! Skeptics! Atheists! Savages as well—do you not count your African brothers' opinions as mattering? Shall we canvass their number for a suitable spokesman to explain to us the spirits lodged in the trees and bushes?”

“I venture to—”

“Yes, you
venture,
you venture forth to a new life. A new home. A new country, and new countrymen.” If only he could bring the colony's expedition to some sort of coherence, to unity; then the whites' sacrifice would mean so much more. What would that take?