Thread: Madame Brunet (LingeringDesire & CharmSnake)

Her feet stepped from the worn grey stones of the street to the withered grey boards of the pier, jutting out from the damp grey shore, reaching over the vast grey sea spread out beneath the heavy grey sky. Indifferently, the bleak ship awaited the last of its cargo as its crew worked the deck and climbed the rigging, preparing to set sail. At her side, her sister kept up the solemn pall pace set by the trailing priest. A mere thirty yards remained. Two full days of jostled carriage had brought them here. It had been a tiring journey already, yet it was only about to commence. The priest would deliver the cargo and be rid of them once and for all. It had taken six years for the republic to come to this conclusion. The politics of Paris may have been strangulating of its own accord, but the twisted mess of a fallen aristocracy had weaved a web so intricate that even the most diligent could not gather the wherewithal to sort out such details as her and her sister. Her family had never seen the revolution coming. Life had been a privileged shelter until they were swept up in the wave of persecution. Remanded to the care of the Catholic Church, the siblings were placed in the orphanage, a state of arrest. Stripped of all the luxuries of the noble life, many months passed without a word of her parents until one day they were escorted to the tower for a visit. She had no idea that it was an act of compassion to allow the family to be together one final time. Mother and Father did not let on. Perhaps they did not know themselves. Two weeks later, on a bitter winter morning, the girls were taken to the public square to witness the guillotine. Le Duc de Rouen and his wife - her father and mother - were abruptly no more. She was a young girl then. She was a young woman now. Soon after the death of her parents, she was separated from her sister and placed in the convent, only recently reunited as the younger came of age. Suitors were not allowed, if not by the church, then surely by the republic. Noblesse ancienne which was once her right, now worked against her. The absence of noblesse uterine within the boundaries of Normandy had been argued and rejected. The republic would take no chances of a claim to an heir. She was one of a handful, perhaps a dozen or so, that needed to disappear. After six years, les politiques in Paris had finally come to a decision, sweeping them under the rug. The church, cozying up to the new regime, had obliged, setting up an exile to the savage woods of Qubec. Perhaps a simple exile could have been palatable, but the details were unprecedented. Old New France had been thirty years lost to the British, but Paris still had economic ties to the fish, furs and lumber. French cultural dominance in the region was under threat from an influx of Irish displaced from Britain, seeking a Catholic haven overseas. The Irish arrived as families starting farms and businesses while many of the French still hunted and trapped in the woods, mixing with the natives. An incentive program had been derived to encourage these French woodsmen to settle on the land. The cargo on the ship was such incentive. The threesome reached the boat and turned to face the gangwalk. Le Jugement swayed gently as the murky waves lapped at her sides. It may have chilled her further to know that the ship was regularly commissioned to transport convicts away to places far flung such as Africa and the Caribbean. At the top of the walk the first mate handed two other girls over to one of the crew who led them away, cargo previously laden. Absently he waved her and her sister forward up the creaky wooden planks. The priest nodded but did not follow, his duty fulfilled, his hands washed of them. Wrapped in her peasantly muslin and burlap, she led her sister up the gangwalk. At the top, the first mate unrolled a parchment and read it without raising his eyes. De Rouen? Deux? he queried. Les derniers. Behind her were the stone walls of Brest and the certain shores of home. Ahead was the churning barren infinity of the Atlantic Ocean. On Wednesday, April 1st, 1795, le Jugement departed Brittany for the new world.