Chapter 8 – Sunny Above, Cloudy Below
Louisa Sophia and A Legion of Sisters
***Author’s Note: You may have noticed a change in the subtitle of this post. Moving forward the book will be titles Louisa Sophia and A Legion of Sisters. and here is the ebook cover.
Now back to chapter 8.
“Isn’t this just wonderful?” Mère Sainte Adeline said, using a wet brush to scrub soot from her habit. Several hours after leaving the outskirts of Paris, the tour participants, minus the colonel, emerged from their quarters wearing clean clothes. To allow their guests to enjoy the sun, the crew had built a makeshift second deck with several long boards tied together like a raft. They’d balanced the construction on top of some wooden barrels of mixed contents lashed to the deck.
While everyone else found a spot on the raft, Louisa scrubbed her dirty uniform by the doorway. Finished, she tossed the wet dress on the cabin roof. She used one leg to launch herself off the gunwale toward the cabins. With her hands on the top, she hauled herself up and onto an open roof in front of the taller wheelhouse. The captain chuckled from behind the wheel.
“Do they have monkeys in Greece?” Julie––Jeton Un—asked, snickering.
“She gets the monkey from her father’s line,” Joséphine––Jeton Deux—answered.
Louisa glared at the pair as Gabrielle laughed while everyone else, including Mère Sainte Adeline, chuckled.
With a cough, the nun cut off her laughter. “Girls, let’s enjoy the sunshine and beautiful countryside.”
Louisa frowned for a long second at her traitorous clanmates, who had also laughed at the jest. She turned her back on her hecklers and spread her dress out on the roof to dry. She lay beside her damp uniform and took the sister’s advice. The fields near the river were green and lush from spring rains or filled with sprouting plants in plowed rows. The spires of churches heralded the coming of sleepy hamlets and bustling towns nestled along the river’s banks.
Louisa ignored the rest of the ship while watching the world go by. After counting the tenth cross atop a church’s tower, she decided to practice what her uncle called active listening. She tilted her head to the sun, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the conversations below.
“Julie, fetch my parasol. I have to protect my complexion,” Gabrielle commanded.
“Joséphine, bring Gabrielle’s parasol.” Jeton Un passed the order downhill.
Jeton Deux tossed back her sarcastic reply, “Sure, I’m not doing anything,” but hustled off the raft and into the cabins.
She should make a stand.
Louisa considered Joséphine Maneval’s situation. From a once powerful family, she attended the school as the great-granddaughter of some general who had served in Napoleon’s Grand Army. Cursed with aging family connections and without fortune, the tall, solidly built brunette with a pretty smile employed a calculating demeanor to try and better her situation. Although Louisa could appreciate her way of thinking, she couldn’t agree with the girl’s decision to cozy up to Gabrielle in hopes of getting one of her throwaway suitors.
“Cathrine, are you excited for the dances?” Marie’s voice carried above the water slapping against the hull, the mews of the seagulls overhead, and the never-ending clang, bang, screech.
She’ll give you nothing, Joy. Like always.
The girl’s sing-song words came to Louisa like a distant nightingale. “I’m a little apprehensive.”
That’s new. As the only neutral party in the ongoing battle between the Dissipated and the other three girls on the tour, Cathrine was an enigma. The slender girl with a soprano voice that rivaled Louisa’s had arrived at St. Denis only two years ago. Shy to the extreme, the new student kept to herself, never divulging details of her past.
With a mystery afoot, the school’s many gossips turned into sleuths as they sought clues to Cathrine’s history. After two years, there were only a few revelations. The month she’d enrolled, Cathrine’s medal-winning father had died from a lingering wound he’d received during the war, and her mother had died years earlier.
“Do you want to get married?” Eugénie tried to ease the girl into revealing more information.
“What are your plans after school?” Gaiety asked, following what Louisa assumed to be Cathrine’s usual evasive shrug.
In the pause that followed, Louisa pictured another silent lift of the girl’s shoulders.
Louisa detected a hint of exasperation as Eugénie said, “You have considered your options. Right?”
“There’s one thing I want to do,” chirped the songbird.
After an even longer pause, Gaiety asked, “An-nd that is?”
More silence before she said with defeated resignation, “Never mind.”
The door to the cabin opened, and two very different sets of footfalls walked out.
“Merci.” The pop of a parasol opening.
“Where is Mademoiselle Sophia?”
At the colonel’s voice, Louisa opened her eyes. She blinked for several seconds, then looked over the edge of the roof.
The former soldier’s eyes motioned her to come down, and Louisa nodded. She scooped up her now-dry uniform in one hand, and with her other pressed flat on the roof, she rolled off to hang by one arm. She dropped the last foot to the deck beside the colonel. The man shook his head and turned toward the gunwale.
Louisa smiled, opened the door, and ducked inside the cabin hallway. In the clan’s room, she placed the dress back in the small suitcase with her two casual dresses and another spare uniform. She’d brought the only three she owned.
Louisa paused. Muffled sounds came from beneath a hatch at the end of the corridor. With the stealth of a church mouse crossing a sleeping cat’s den, she crept over to the hatch and lifted it a centimeter at a time.
“Set your main, Pierre,” a gruff voice commanded.
“One décimes on eight. Hand ’em over.”
A small light came from the direction of the bow, and Louisa poked her head inside the open hatch, taking in the upside-down scene. Less than ten meters away, the three other barge crewmen squatted toad-style in the yellow glow of a kerosine lamp.
“Come on, Descartes. Make a bet.”
The man with his back to Louisa said in a slow stutter, “Stopp calling m-me that. M-me name’s Lé, Léon, and I, I, always loo, lose.”
The gruff-voiced man said, “You’ll never win with that attitude, Lé, Léon, an’ it’s no fun with jus’ two. Bet for him or against.” He gave the stuttering man a light punch on his arm.
Léon stuttered, “I bet five centimes that he don’t.”
“Good.” Gruff nodded. “Nothing else to do with them princesses on the deck.”
The third man’s voice squeaked. “Did ya see the tall blonde an’ the short brunette?” He whistled. “I’d bet me couilles for a chance to lie with either of ’em.”
Disgusting pig.
In a slow stutter, Léon said, “Don’t say that about the young ladies.”
Gruff stuck his hand in a pocket and passed dice to the pervert. “Lé, Léon’s right. You best shut yer trap, or the Capt’n ’ll crush those tiny balls of yours.”
Not before I cut ’em off, Louisa thought, her upside-down face growing more flushed from anger than from the blood rushing to her head.
The pervert shook his fist and flung two white dice against a box. He exclaimed, “Damn, deuce-ace.”
“I, I won.”
“Your luck’s turned, Lé, Léon.” Gruff held his palm out to the pervert.
Despite feeling lightheaded, Louisa spotted his move. Gruff’s other hand snaked into his pocket as the pervert handed over the dice.
He cupped his hands and said, “Got to make up for my losses. Two décimes on nine.”
The others called their bets, and while they watched his throw of the dice, Gruff’s free hand once again moved to the pocket that only Louisa could see.
Need to remember that move.
Until her discomfort threatened to become a full-on headache, she watched the cheater take his marks’ money a little at a time. He never won more than two rolls in a row to keep them on the hook. The longer she watched, the angrier she became.
Louisa never made the mistake of judging a person’s intelligence based on a speech problem, but after a few more exchanges between the men, it became apparent to her that the stuttering man was also slow. Twice, Gruff had taken advantage of the man’s inability to count simple sums.
The thought of stealing from the poor or the disadvantaged disgusted Louisa, and she hated those who did. Besides the moral implications, her philosophy on practicing her arts lined up with one of her uncle’s favorite sayings, “Why steal one drachma a hundred times when you can steal a hundred drachmas once?”
She closed the hatch and blinked away the spots in her vision as her circulation returned to normal. With her mind made up, she began to plan. Before Louisa left the barge, she would settle Gruff’s burgeoning account.