The unadorned hall leads to a small sitting room. The space smells of hyacinths: there are two pots, one on a large oak sideboard and another on a low table between a striped silk settee and two brocade armchairs. The room is crammed with furniture in a style that must have been the height of fashion thirty years ago. Madame Kerjean bids them to take a seat on the settee while she rings for tea. “I know coffee is the thing these days,” she says, “but I prefer a cup of tea myself. I do hope you both agree. What brings you to see me today, Madame Cuvelier?” Though she addresses Madame Cuvelier, she’s looking at Isabel.
“It is this,” Madame Cuvelier says, and she begins to tell the storyJack told the evening before. “So that’s how Mrs. Henley was found in a small town in Cornwall, nineteen years ago this September.” She stresses each syllable of the month—Sep-tem-ber—as if Madame Cuvelier might miss its significance. “She was soon adopted by her parents, Admiral and Mrs. Farnworth of…Woodbane House, Mrs. Henley?”
“Woodbury House, in Norfolk,” Isabel says. “But yes, that is my story.” She forces a lightness in her tone she doesn’t feel. “Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
Madame Cuvelier says, “It reminds me of something that happened in our town nineteen years ago.”
Madame Kerjean is now openly staring at Isabel. She’s leaning forward in her chair, her elbows planted on a set of bony knees visible under the black cloth of her dress. She lifts the silver cross to her lips and kisses it. “Mon Dieu, mon enfant,” she whispers, making the sign of the cross. She draws a lace handkerchief from the folds of her gown and pats her eyes, whispering again, “Mon Dieu.”
“Could it be her?” Madame Cuvelier says. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but you can understand how important it is. The family stayed with you and Captain Kerjean the night before they set sail, did they not? Do you think it’s possible?”
“You are twenty-three now?” Madame Kerjean asks Isabel.
“As of last December, as far as I know. My parents chose a birthday for me based on their physician’s judgment of my age.”
“And you have no memories? Not of your parents, nor of France? Not of my husband and me?”
“None. I don’t recall ever having been here.”
“You have her hair,” Madame Kerjean says. “The same, what to call it now? Waviness. Not quite curls. But it was a shade lighter.”
“Hair color can change as we grow older,” says Madame Cuvelier.
Madame Kerjean says, “She had freckles, like you. And your eyes…yes, I believe it could be. Perhaps. Aurélie, her name was. Does it mean anything to you, this name?”
Isabel shakes her head again, her tongue turned to sand in hermouth. Madame Kerjean continues. “Aurélie Du Pont, she was called. But when they fled Paris, the family took the name Fournier, so they would have taught their daughter to call herself Aurélie Fournier.” She leans in closer and touches Isabel’s hair. “It could be,” she says slowly. “I can’t be sure.”
When the woman draws back, Isabel lets out her breath slowly. “But how could I—that is to say, how could one little girl have survived when no one else on the ship did? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“She could swim,” Madame Kerjean says. “I remember distinctly her telling me. She was a sweet little thing.Douce. She told me she could not wait to go to sea. She dreamed of it, she said, back in Paris. I said to her, ‘Are you not afraid of the water? The ocean is very big,’ and she said she wasn’t, for she could swim.” Madame Kerjean puts the handkerchief to her eyes again. “I thought she was telling tales. A little thing like that, swim, I thought. My face must’ve shown my disbelief, for the father told me it was true.
“ ‘I taught her myself, as soon as she could walk,’ he said to me, and he explained that he had lost a cousin at a young age, drowned in the pond on the family’s land. He’d make sure this would never happen to his child. He said she could swim like a fish. So you see, if any child would’ve known how to save herself in the water, it would have been this one.” A heavy pause, then Madame Kerjean says, “Captain Kerjean was a very good swimmer, too.”
They’re all silent. A pigeon coos outside. The sun is high in the sky, already; the smell of the sea blows in through the window, overtaking that of the hyacinths and tea. “Pastry?” Madame Kerjean says thickly, offering the basket Madame Cuvelier has brought.
Isabel shakes her head. Madame Cuvelier takes a small round cake and nibbles it. Crumbs rain onto the skirt of her yellow gown. The air grows oppressive, despite the half-open window. The ceiling is too low; the beams only an inch above Isabel’s head when she stands. There’s no space to breathe. She wants to get out of Madame Kerjean’s house, the town, the stone seawall of the harbor. She wants the open ocean so she can breathe.
She stands up abruptly. “Thank you, Madame Kerjean,” she says. “You’ve been exceedingly helpful. And you, Madame Cuvelier, I thank you kindly for your hospitality and for bringing me here. I’m afraid I must go back to the ship now. Captain Carlyon is expecting me.”
Madame Cuvelier has risen, too. She brushes the crumbs from her gown and says, “Are you quite well, Mrs. Henley? You look pale.”
“Some fresh air will help, I’m sure.”
They take their leave of Madame Kerjean in a swarm of platitudes. Yes, Isabel will come see her again if she’s ever in Roscoff, and yes, it’s a marvelous story and thank you, thank you, thank you again.
At last, they’re out in the street. As they walk back to the port, Isabel thanks Madame Cuvelier again. “It’s strange to think they may have been my parents,” she says.
“I’ll try to find out more about the family,” Madame Cuvelier says. “I believe there may be an ancestral home somewhere in Brittany. I shall write to you, if you tell me where to direct my letter.”
She gives Madame Cuvelier the name of the cottage and the village. “I shall look forward to your letter, Madame,” Isabel says, and Madame Cuvelier tells her to please call her Lucie.
She declines the offer of another night in the Cuveliers’ guest room. Jack will sleep on board tonight so he can oversee the loading of the cargo until the small hours and she’s eager to join him. At the quay, she doesn’t have long to wait for a boat to take her back to theRapide.Before the sun reaches its highest point, she’s back on board. The top deck is such a hive of activity she flattens herself against the mainmast to get out of the way.
“Isabel.” Jack comes striding over. “You’re back. How was it?”
“Fine,” she says, dragging up the corners of her mouth. “Shall I tell you about it later? I can see you’re busy.” The words are as light as the breeze.
“We sail with the morning tide,” Jack says. “So yes, it’s best if you tell me later. Do tell me, however—do you think they could’ve been your parents?”
