Bon Marche (3 page)

But as September lengthened into October, and October into winter—a bitter winter of unrelenting cold that froze over the Seine—all of Paris was hungry. There was competition now for the garbage from the cafés. Deadly competition as desperate fights broke out in the back streets and alleys.

There was no bread; the French wheat crop had failed. The rich always ate, of course, but now the middle class had difficulty getting bread; the poor got none at all.

A rumor ran through the alleys that a
boulangerie
on Boulevard Saint-Michel had bread. Charles was only one of hundreds who answered the rumor's siren call.

Police tried to cordon off the bakery, but there weren't enough of them. When the rioting started, Charles was caught in the middle of it. In the struggle he came face to face with a policeman. A club was raised and came crashing down on the side of his head just above the ear. There was sudden warmth in the cold, the warmth of the blood gushing over the right side of his face.

On his knees, the boy tried to crawl free of the mob. Someone stepped on his hand. And his back. There were minute flashes of unconsciousness, and consciousness again.

Somehow—
and it just had to be by the intercession of the spirit!
—he found himself clear of the main body of the angry mob.

Struggling to his feet, he stumbled away.

To Marie.

Alternately weeping and offering him consoling words, the whore washed the blood from him and bound up the cruel cut on his head. She made a nest of blankets for him in the pantry. And she poured hot tea down his throat. He vomited, but Marie cradled him to her accommodating breast, rocking him, cooing
“mon chéri, mon chéri”
over and over again.

A week went by. And two—before his fever and nausea and pain passed and he was strong enough to consider doing what his guardian spirit had told him to do.

It was on an afternoon when Marie was busy at her trade in the bedroom that Charles left, unable to find the words for a good-bye.

He presented himself to the French naval recruiting station on the Ile de la Cité, where a scowling older man, with tattoos on the backs of his hands, showed his skepticism.

“Are you sure, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about your parents?”

“I don't have any.”

“An orphan, then?”

Once more the boy's lack of knowledge of his parentage caused him to pause. “Yes, I guess I am,” he said finally.

“Your name?” The recruiter dipped his quill into an ink pot.

“Charles Dupree.”

Someone had called him by that name once; he couldn't remember who that might have been or when it was, nor did he have any idea why his name might be Charles Dupree. But that was the name he said.

“How old are you?”

The boy hesitated.

“You have to be ten to sign on as an apprentice seaman.”

“Oh, I'm ten—
older
than that, sir.” Was he lying? He honestly didn't know.

The recruiter looked hard at him, then wrote the numeral 10 on the enlistment paper.

It was the first documentation of Charles's life.

III

W
RINKLES
smoothed from his buff uniform, his long hair pulled back into a queue and fastened with a light blue ribbon, Charles presented himself for inspection by Admiral de Grasse. The officer was abed in his cabin, afflicted with an intestinal ailment that was keeping him from the Cornwallis surrender ceremonies.

“Very neat, boy,” de Grasse commented.

“Thank you, sir.”

“You'll be witness to great history today, young Monsieur Dupree,” the admiral mused. “More than you can fully appreciate, I'll wager.”

Charles found himself resenting the remark, believing he understood the implications of the English capitulation as well as any man.

De Grasse sighed. “There's something sad about a surrender. Brave men on both sides have died. And one must wonder whether the bravery of the defeated was in vain. Were they any less brave because they fought under the wrong banner?”

Charles stood stiffly silent, knowing an answer wasn't expected.

“War is not kind to the losers.” Another sigh. “Well, it's time that you leave.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, son—”

“Sir?”

“Remember your station today.”

The admiral's words cut him. He was disappointed, annoyed, that on this most important day de Grasse would see fit to remind him of his lowly position. He felt he didn't deserve that kind of chastisement, no matter how fatherly it might have been meant to be, in light of the three years of loyal service he had given the nobleman. It made him even more determined to carry out his plan.

Without a word to anyone else, and seeking to be as inconspicuous as possible, Charles boarded the launch just as it was being pushed off in the direction of Yorktown.

For no apparent reason, his mind's eye showed him the rugged face of Captain de Boade.

IV

A
PPRENTICE
Seaman Charles Dupree presented himself aboard the warship
Refleche
at the Atlantic port of Bordeaux. His first station. Captain de Boade scowled as he looked at the papers the boy had handed him.

“A bastard, eh?”

“No, sir.”

De Boade's right hand lashed out, catching Charles high on the cheek, sending him sprawling on the deck. Sailors standing nearby laughed.

“On this ship, Dupree,” the captain shouted, “the master is never wrong! Now let me ask you again—are you a bastard?”

Charles's answer came as he was still scrambling to his feet. “Yes, sir.”

“I hope so, boy, because on this goddamn devil-infested vessel, every mother's son is a bastard as far as I'm concerned!” He was bellowing. “Does that please you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, good,” the captain responded, laughing boisterously. “You should know, then, that the master is a bastard, too!”

The sailors joined in the laughter, Charles following suit, realizing that it was expected of him.

De Boade wasn't a nobleman, like many other French navy captains, but a career sailor who had been in the navy since his youth. To Charles, though, de Boade was an ageless man, giving the impression of
always
having been captain, of
always
having commanded men.

He had a wide purple scar on his left cheek, the trophy of earlier hand-to-hand combat while repulsing a British boarding party. De Boade hated the English because of that disfigurement. But as Charles got to know him, he realized that the captain's hate was more basic than a saber cut. He hated the English just because he was French.

For young Dupree, de Boade represented an opportunity. He could learn a great deal from the captain, and once having absorbed his lessons, he might use de Boade for his own advancement.

Charles ingratiated himself with the captain, being ever vigilant to his slightest needs. Eventually, he plumbed the master's weakness—his ego. De Boade loved to talk about himself, about his adventures, and Charles gave him frequent opportunities to do just that, framing questions that opened the floodgates of self-aggrandizing storytelling.

In time, Charles made the ultimate breakthrough with the rough sailor. He was no longer just the captain's cabin boy; he was his friend.

De Boade was unmarried and fond of proclaiming, “
Aujourd'hui marié, demain marri
—today married, tomorrow sorry.” But he had an all-consuming weakness for women, and Dupree's understanding that his association with de Boade had reached a new and more intimate plateau came when the
Refleche
put in at the Mediterranean port of Marseilles for refitting. Charles had been aboard the man-of-war for nearly two years.

“Tonight, my young rooster,” the captain boomed, “we're going to sample the fleshpots of Marseilles. It's time you know the pleasures of the female body. Time to make the hens cackle, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” the cabin boy answered with little enthusiasm.

De Boade grinned at him. “Lad, there are few enough pleasures in life. When you find one as accommodating as a soft, warm woman, only a fool would deny himself.”

They started drinking before they left the ship, then visited several taverns on the quay along the way. By the time the captain guided Charles to the
maison de tolérance,
they were both quite drunk. But intoxication didn't seem to diminish de Boade's sexual appetite.

On his orders, the madam lined up her girls—perhaps a dozen of them—for the captain's close inspection. It was a naked international assemblage: blacks from Africa, women from Greece and Turkey and Italy and Tunisia, a few natives of France.

“In light of this special occasion, Dupree,” the captain roared, “you shall have the first choice.”

Charles stared at them, trying to focus his eyes and his mind on the task of selection. Finally, without a word, he pointed to a dark-haired, petite Frenchwoman. Perhaps she reminded him of Marie.

“No, no, no,
enfant,
” de Boade interrupted. “Not for the first time! You need something more … eh …
passionnante.
”

He walked over to an earthy-looking Turkish woman and draped one arm over her bare shoulders. “
This
one, lad. With the broad hips, the full breasts. Yes, yes—this one!”

For himself the captain chose a long-legged Greek girl. As they went off toward their cribs, de Boade shouted to the Turkish whore: “You have a great honor,
mademoiselle.
My friend is a virgin! Perhaps
you
should pay
him,
no?”

His laughter could be heard even after he had disappeared from sight with his Greek.

To Charles, it was all confusion. His only clear perception, in his drunken state, was of a woman undressing him. After that it was an unreal mélange of sensations: soft flesh, sweat, musky odors, groping, kissing, sucking. If, in the midst of all that, there was consummated a full sexual act, he wasn't aware of it.

How long it went on, he didn't know. He fell asleep. Or passed out.

The next reality he knew was being carried back aboard the ship over Captain de Boade's shoulder like a sack of grain. He was set on his feet, and as he weaved unsteadily, de Boade bragged to the crew.

“You should have seen him,” the captain exulted. “He had that whore at his mercy—a true Frenchman, our brave Dupree!”

The sailors' raucous laughter was the last thing Charles heard as he collapsed slowly in a dissipated heap.

There were other ports, other whores, other debaucheries. Master and cabin boy—they were partners in it all.

Dupree, his friendship with the captain secure, did not hesitate to approach de Boade with a request.

“The word is, sir, that the
Ville de Paris
will be commissioned soon.”

“Aye, and a fine ship, too, it's said. The largest man-of-war ever built.”

“Sir, I want to serve aboard her.”

The request shocked de Boade. After a moment of reflection: “I'd miss you, my boy.”

“And I you,” Charles assured him. “But if I'm to make my way in the navy, if I'm to follow in your footsteps”—he knew the captain's ego would welcome the remark—“I'll need new opportunities.”

“Aye, that's true.”

De Boade made the recommendation to the master of the
Ville de Paris,
Comte de Grasse, the Marquis de Grassetilly. The nobleman, aware that the flamboyant Monsieur de Boade, although he was crude and hardly a gentleman, turned out good sailors, accepted a lad named Charles Dupree as his cabin boy.

The move—directed, Charles believed, by his guardian spirit—probably saved his life.

In the sea battle off Cape Henry, Virginia, that denied the British fleet entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, effectively trapping General Cornwallis at Yorktown, the
Refleche
took a direct hit from an English broadside.

Captain de Boade was killed instantly.

His cabin boy, except for the intervention of fate, might have been standing by his side.

V

T
HE
Ville de Paris
contingent, one midshipman carrying a flag displaying the de Grasse family coat of arms, marched smartly toward the Yorktown surrender grounds, the flagship's cabin boy at the end of the column.

In his station.

His insignificance a shield.

Charles marched more slowly than the others until some distance separated him from the main body. He watched for the best opportunity. It came when a farm cart, drawn by a lop-eared nag that had never known a brush or currycomb, crossed the road in front of him. He stopped marching, becoming just one of the people along the road.

“Adieu, pour toujours,”
he muttered aloud to himself. Then, in English: “Farewell forever.”

He glanced at the morning sun, put his back to it, and walked westward into America.

His
America!

2

S
UNLIGHT
filtered through the cracks between the logs and played on Charles Dupree's face, waking him finally. He groaned sleepily, stretching aching muscles, pushing back the old hay that had kept him warm during the night.

He knew only that he was in a small barn—little used, apparently—hard by a road some miles west of the village of Yorktown, Virginia. And that the month was October 1781. But he didn't know exactly where he was, or how far he had walked before darkness halted him, or what his next move ought to be.

However, there was one other important realization: he was now an American. His guardian spirit had willed that he be an American; that was why he had walked away at Yorktown, without concern for being a witness to the drama of the surrender ceremonies. He had missed it all, but he didn't care.