Saving The Marquise's Granddaughter (19 page)

Surely, this was why Maman and Papa isolated her from the masses, from the peasants and the villagers and the people who populated the cities. Her stomach clenched. She wouldn’t let herself be sick in front of all of these people. “It’s so hot,” she told Johan.

He only nodded.

Fishing in the pocket hanging under her apron, she clasped the beads. She needed her rosary.
Not mine—
Grand-mère’s.

More passengers crowded in.

A youth hacked as he joined the queue that streamed past. He covered his mouth with a dusty cloth.

Nausea from the body odor of the passengers and the stench of rotten fish threatened to overwhelm her. Suzanne turned away.

How could Johan smile?
What have we done?
There must be some other way. She’d get off the ship now. Go back to France. Hide somewhere in Amsterdam until Paul DeMint had left. Contact someone else at Versailles and make her Catholic faith her salvation. Tell them that she worshiped as her grandmother had and not in her parents’ Huguenot faith. Then she could return to Grand-mère’s estate or stay at Versailles.

Your grandmother’s faith was her own.

Suzanne heard the words in her heart almost as though someone had spoken them aloud. She turned around.

Johan’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be praying.

The sounds of the port were drowned out by the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. She had just enough funds to take her back to France. But what of Johan? She squeezed his hand. She needed to hold Grand-mère’s cool beads in her hands, needed Grand-mère’s faith.

You need your own faith. This you cannot borrow.

Shivers coursed up and down her arms and she rubbed them. “No! Don’t say that.”

“What is it, Suzie?” Johan rested his chin on top of her head.

“I can’t do this. We have to get off.” She could not breathe in this place.

Johan squinted at her. “What?”

She opened her mouth wide and yelled, “I must get off this ship!”

Bewilderment clouded his eyes.

A swarthy deck hand passed behind Johan, his crooked mouth amused, as if he’d seen this before.

She grabbed Johan’s hand. “We have to get off. I can’t do this.” Hot tears streamed down her face. These horrible people, this awful place, this would surely kill her. God was punishing her for all she’d done. For her failure to seek Him out. For her borrowing a faith that she didn’t truly know.
I will seek you, Lord, only let me off of here.
She just needed her freedom.

My freedom will be yours for the taking. Wait. Seek. Believe.

“My father died for his beliefs!” she shrieked at Johan. “I have lost everything. Everything, because of Papa’s precious beliefs!”

“Ja, I know. I’m sorry.” Johan wrapped his arms around her, his warmth dispelling the chill that overtook her.

Images of her father and her mother flowed through her memory and overwhelmed her. Death was everywhere. She felt it as surely as she knew that dread no longer shadowed her. He’d been replaced by the certainty that death waited on the open sea, arms waiting to swallow her up, just as it had in her nightmares. She trembled as Johan released her. “I won’t survive this trip.”

“You can’t know that, Suzanne. Only God knows such things.” Johan rubbed her hands between his own and led her to a trunk to sit.

“Haul up that gangplank!” a crewman bellowed.

Dear Lord, no.
This was it, then. Would God have her die here, with strangers, on this awful ship?

~*~

“Sleep, meine liebe.” Johan pressed a cool kiss against her brow.

But if she closed her eyes, still there would be the soul-sucking despair she’d experienced when she was awake. “How many days now, Johan?” Her voice emerged as a croak. How long had they been underway, stuck in this hole? The darkness in the belly of the ship embodied an image of Hades, a creaking groaning vessel housing a miserable mass of humanity. Suzanne took short, shallow breaths, not wanting to inhale the fetid air around her.

Babies and children cried out all hours of the day, many sick with fever.

“We’re underway for over a week now. Close your eyes and rest.” Johan’s voice seemed far away, although he touched her hand.

Sometimes those on board appeared to swirl around her, calling out for her to bring them comfort. What relief did they have? None.

Lately, when Johan fed her the thin gruel that passed for food, she’d pressed her lips tight, but he’d coaxed her to open them.

The man behind him, the one with the glow about his head, the shepherd, also nodded as though she must partake of the horrid paste she was fed.

She sank into a deep sleep filled with unearthly noises. Sometimes she woke.

The shepherd kept calling for his little goats to follow him—why did he call for goats and not sheep? And why did he now keep reaching his crook out to her?

When she remained awake, tossing and turning, Johan no longer knelt and prayed.

When he crawled into his bunk, she tried to rise.

“No, Suzanne, don’t worry about me.”

“I have to secure you.” She rolled over and slowly pushed to her feet. “You can’t sleepwalk on the ship.”

She stood and he rolled over to face her, grabbing her hands when she began to slump. Dizzy. So weak. “Hand me the rope.”

“I can tie it myself, love. Lie back down.”

“Oui.” She sank to the floor. She’d kneel and begin her prayers. Always they were the same.
God, help me, help me.
Perhaps she wouldn’t die. Perhaps she’d only lose her mind. She crawled into her bunk. Suzanne tried to open her eyes as someone continuously called her name. Cool beads were pressed into her hand. Grand-mère’s rosary.

“Mein liebe, if this brings you comfort, please hold it.”

“Nothing.” She rasped. Nothing brought peace. She threw the rosary at him.

The shepherd didn’t like that.

She could tell by the way he slowly shook his head.

~*~

Johan gently wiped Suzie’s brow. She thrashed in the narrow wooden bunk, but her eyes often remained open. He closed his eyes, longing for the fresh breeze he could take in up on deck. If he didn’t get his beloved out of the belly of this vessel, he feared she might not regain her own will again. Day after day, he’d seen her slip into a place where even he couldn’t reach her.

“You have to get up. The sea is calm.” Johan tried to use a gentle voice, but there was no reaction on Suzanne’s gaunt face. “They’ll let us get fresh air. We’re the last ones down here.” Finally, he hauled her up himself, her body molding to his own. A few weeks earlier, it would have brought him pleasure to have her cling to him; instead terror gripped him. She was so light, he feared a good ocean breeze could carry her away. He stood, arranged her in his arms, and then mounted each step on the ladder slowly, readjusting her body so they didn’t hit the sides of the hatch.

“Don’t let them,” she moaned as he slid her off his shoulder, resting her against his chest as he grabbed a rope and braced his knees for the gentle rocking of the boat.

In the stern, the crew slid a body from a board into the ocean.

He turned Suzanne slightly so that she wouldn’t see. He cringed.
How dare they do that while all these women and children are up on the main deck?
The next time the captain pressed him into duty, he would discuss the crew’s insensitivity with him.

Johan leaned his head against Suzanne’s, his arms clasped around her small waist. He would keep her there always with him, if he could. Didn’t she know how much he loved her? Needed her. Imagined no future without her beside him.

Shuddering in his arms, Suzanne’s wild eyes darted over his face. “Please, don’t… let them… throw me over.”

So she’d seen them. He’d finally gotten his love up above, and those
Dummköpfen
had to throw bodies in the sea. “No, my love.” He pulled her closer.

Suzanne shook with sobs, but no tears flowed. “Don’t let me die here.”

Johan couldn’t speak. He kissed her head.

Two men had lost their wives so far, three children had been thrown into the deep, and the minister had unceremoniously been tossed into the water after his death last week. His widow hadn’t spoken one word since, but sat rocking their two-year-old son all day in her bunk.

All who’d perished evidenced the same symptoms—high fever, dry hacking cough, and inability to retain anything but small amounts of fluid. Like Suzanne.

Even as these facts ran through Johan’s mind, he refused to accept them. She would live. “God convicted me that we’ll be together in the new land.”

Had He said that?

Truly, he wished it with all his heart. But God had stopped answering his prayers—the ones that kept the French soldiers out of his homeland. A ball of
spaetzle
dough settled in his stomach. God no longer cared what Johan wanted.

But she wasn’t listening. Suzanne sank into his arms, her eyes rolling back in her head.

18

His beloved drifted between the realms of heaven and earth, rousing and talking briefly before lapsing back into unconsciousness again. Suzanne’s last words, over two days earlier, still speared his heart. “Could you really see a life together with me—a Catholic Frenchwoman? Someone whose brother brought an army to your village and burned your parents’ fields?”

He hadn’t yet asked her to marry him—nor told her how much he loved her. He should have but feared she’d make another excuse as to why she wouldn’t marry him, a peasant with nothing to offer an aristocrat brought up at the French court. He couldn’t answer her then, but he could now. His two days of sweat had nothing to do with a fever, but sprang from the unrelenting fear that he’d lose her.

Johan stroked Suzanne’s hair, loose and wet, spread out on the pillow around her as though she lay in a river. He recalled the sun glinting on her hair as the barge took them upriver to Amsterdam. Easing into her bunk, he lay down next to her.
Dear God, forgive me for withholding words of love, of acceptance, and grace, when she needed to hear them most.

The continual rocking and creaking of the ship lulled him into a stupor, and Johan forced his eyes open.
Oh, God, please spare her. Take me if You must, not her.

His mind succumbed and Johan fell asleep, his arms stretched across Suzanne’s body, his head resting on her torso.

“
Je vois
,” she called out, the sound echoing through her body.

Johan jerked awake, lifted his head from her form. He would try to speak in French for her sake.

“What do you see?” He rubbed her hands, still cold despite the fever that raged in her.

She sighed and smiled. “They’re waiting for me. It’s time.”

A chill passed through him. He wouldn’t ask who waited. He tried to swallow, but it was as though his mouth was filled with spicy
pfeffernüsse
cookies that hadn’t been dipped in strong coffee to soften them.

“Tell them they must wait, Suzie, tell them you’re not ready.” Johan raised the ceramic water jug to Suzanne’s mouth.

She locked her lips against the intrusion and shook her head, but finally she relented, gulping down the liquid. He lifted her and held her with the water near her lips. She continued to drink. How he wished he hadn’t fallen asleep. Each moment with her was precious.

When she finished, Johan gently laid her back on the mound of clothing piled into pillows.

“Johan?” Her lips were as pale as her face.

“Yes?” Wiping perspiration from her smooth brow, he allowed his fingers to linger a moment on her hot skin. This fever had to break soon.

“Can you help me roll over on my side?” Tremors caused the pale, blue muslin dress to move over her thin frame.

Johan hesitated. A few days earlier, she’d asked him to never place her in that position.

Suzanne had spent so many days leaning over a bucket on her side, that she wished anything other than that. And the fact that the Englishwoman bunked on that side had full view of her plight, seemed too much for his Suzie to bear.

“Away?” he asked. Away from him, her back to him—was she trying to leave, or would it be more comfortable for her now?

Johan rubbed his hand across his head. Despair crept over him and settled heavy, made a home. His love, his very heart, was so weak she couldn’t even roll over. He reached under Suzanne’s back and rolled her onto her side, then pulled her legs up, bent, before lifting her head and positioning her arms. Locating her rosewater-soaked handkerchief, he placed it gently in her hands, her fingers closing around his, his cheek pressed against hers.

She whispered into his ear. “
Je t’aime
.”

A lump formed in his throat. Rightness of purpose blanketed him even while hot tears soaked his beard. Nearby, someone began a death rattle. Another whom the ocean would claim.
Not my Suzanne, though, not her, dear God.

“I love you always.” Johan’s voice cracked.

~*~

Cool, fresh air blasted down into the hold. Johan squinted at the light coming through the open hatch. Never in his life had he endured such conditions. And sadly some couldn’t survive the close quarters where disease jumped from one to another quicker than a hare being chased through the woods.

“I need help with the bodies,” the boatswain’s mate called down into the hold. “My crew is sick from your infernal diseases. Send me up three strong men to assist. This calm is our chance. Once we’ve dumped them overboard, you can all come up for a whiff of sea air.”

Johan hesitated. He wished he could help above deck. Suzanne’s skin glowed with an unearthly pallor. What should he do? She couldn’t die like this. No family here. He knew how important that was to her. He wished to give her the gift of family—for them to be joined in life even if for only a brief time.
Pray God, let her survive. If she does, I’ll trust you to make her ready for the life you would give us together.
Something urged his soul in a way he couldn’t understand to form a union as man and wife so that she would draw from his strength. The two would be one, and she would benefit from God’s blessing of their love. If she knew she wasn’t without family, would it give her new hope?