The vast African sky, bright and quivering overhead, seemed to vibrate taut as a drum, and the palm-fringed coast was fit to wilt in the heat. La Tauride lay at anchor in the roadstead of Assinie, tugging a little at her cables beneath a gentle onshore breeze, and the endless surf broke on the beach beyond, where a handful of pirogues lay drawn up under the sun. Another darted swiftly between the waves, guided by a few skilful strokes of the paddle from a dark-skinned native stripped to the waist. From his vantage point at the edge of the knot of officers gathered on the deck, the young Vicomte de Chagny watched it come, discreetly easing the prickle beneath the collar of his naval uniform with one finger and conscious of a certain envy.
His fair complexion resolutely refused to tan, and despite the smart moustache he’d been at some pains to cultivate, Raoul still looked younger than his years. He’d been one of the smallest boys in his training ship, and had suffered for it until he learned to hold his own; but after a childhood spent within the confines of the chateau de Chagny, the call of the sea had been strong enough to overcome any number of indignities.
He’d wanted to join the navy since he’d been twelve and fostered out to an aunt in Brest, where the Home Fleet lay, and only one other dream in his life had come close enough to rival the promise of those wide horizons. But barley-ripe hair and eyes of Northern blue formed a dream that never could be for the Vicomte de Chagny, however much they might haunt his memories, and Raoul had pledged himself never to love where he could not wed. He had plunged into his studies, come top among the cadets in his year, and been posted as a matter of course on board the frigate La Tauride on passing out of the old Borda. His brother Philippe had influence at the Ministry and high hopes of young Raoul’s future when he should return to France... and for all that he could still pass for a stripling of seventeen, Lieutenant Raoul de Chagny was a seasoned officer who had seen out his twentieth birthday some three days since.
However, since he had not seen fit to disclose this last fact to his fellow-officers, it was quite another celebration that was the subject of conversation at present.
“Christmas with palm trees.” Martin Reviers wiped a trickle of sweat from his broad features and swore, with feeling. “December the twenty-first, and still hotter than August in the Midi — it’s enough to make you homesick for a good hard Strasbourg frost. Coconuts and coffee beans can’t hold a candle to the winter cold nipping at your fingertips and the crunch of coke underfoot when they light the stoves in the cathedral—”
“Myself, I’d swap chilblains for tropic shores any day of the year,” put in Jussy, drily. Older than the rest, he’d been enlisted below-decks as a boy and made his way up to the officers’ mess —as he could never forbear to mention— by dint of hard work and raw merit. “How about you, De Chagny?” There was a certain edge in his voice. “Homesick for the baronial halls — the Yule log burning in the open hearth, the boar’s-head borne in with all due ceremony, and the cheery rustics serenading the Comte and Comtesse from the hall door?”
Raoul flushed up painfully beneath the sunburn, but kept his temper. “My mother the Comtesse died when I was born, monsieur, and my father when I was twelve years old. My brother the new Comte has always preferred to live in Paris... and for myself, I have never much cared for the season. It is not, you will understand, one of happy memories where my family are concerned. Now, if you will excuse me—”
Jussy’s lean cheeks had taken on a dull tinge of crimson in their turn as glances exchanged among the group showed a clear sense that this time he had gone too far, and Raoul was reasonably certain of being able to keep his clenched fists to himself; but it would do no harm in any case for someone to check that the anchor cables were not chafing at the bitts, and for the next hour the watch was still nominally his.
He ducked past Reviers with more haste than courtesy, heading forward along the deck. But he had taken no more than a couple of strides when he was stopped short in his tracks by the captain’s voice.
“Good news, mes gars!” Capitaine de vaisseau Thierry Côtard was not one to stand upon ceremony; if he had noted the brief discord amongst his officers, he was wise enough to give no sign of it. Raoul remembered, suddenly, the pirogue that he had seen making its way out from shore, and the rippling muscles of the paddler he glimpsed now beyond the captain’s shoulder. There must have been a message.
“Excellent news,” Côtard promised them cheerfully. “The Resident has offered to celebrate Midnight Mass for us all with his own priest up at the old fort, and invited us to take Réveillon with him afterwards. I can’t promise you oysters on ice, gentlemen, but we’ll do our best to feast the season just as we would at home — and help bring a little corner of the mother country to this benighted continent. They’ll be delighted to host us. And I’m confident”—he turned a stern eye upon the younger ensigns—“that you will be proud to comport yourselves after the manner of good Christians and honourable Frenchmen.”
Jussy, looking on, curled his lip but remained silent; he was rumoured to be a freethinker. But Reviers, who had been among the chief targets of his captain’s pointed stare, bubbled over, oblivious.
“A missionary Christmas? What a prime notion! Sir, is it true they’ve taught the blacks to sing?” He broke into an enthusiastic impromptu rendition of “Minuit, chrétiens”, disclosing a pleasant drawing-room tenor that Raoul might under other circumstances have appreciated.
“As I understand it they have more ado to keep them from singing and dancing and all that juju,” Côtard responded somewhat testily, cutting the singer off short. “However, Ensign, should you wish to indulge the natives with a demonstration of your prowess no doubt it would not go unappreciated.”
Reviers, unabashed, shared in the general laughter at this sally, while Côtard turned to the waiting messenger, whose gleaming grin of appreciation was as broad as any. “Tell monsieur le Résident that we accept, with pleasure —understood?— and I’ll be ashore later to discuss the matter of those dispatches.”
The native bobbed agreement, teeth flashing again at some unseen jest, and swung himself dexterously over the side and down into the slender hull of his pirogue with the enviable ease of long practice. Raoul moved to the bulwarks to watch him go, marvelling at the speed with which the frail craft shot back towards the breakers. Beyond lay Assinie, a fringe of palm-thatched huts along a sandspit at the edge of a continent, with its vast unknown hinterland of mahogany, ivory and gold. A few blocky roofs marked out the location of the French comptoir, and he sighed. On Christmas Eve no doubt they would all be ferried over to the buildings of that trading post, to act out the rituals of a distant home and banquet into the small hours on whatever delicacies this coast could provide, starched collars wilting in the hot breath of an African night. It was not a prospect for which he could find it in himself to summon any great enthusiasm.
“Cheer up, De Chagny.” Jussy had come up behind him. His dry tone was not without fellow-feeling. “There’s a rumour below decks we’re being posted out East — odds are, come February we’ll be in Cochinchina.”
And all this will seem no more than a dream, Raoul thought, with a sudden longing for the open sea. Maybe they’d see out Lent in the mouth of the Mekong, or make soundings off Cap St-Jacques; just at present he had rather look forward to anything other than the spectacle of Christmas re-enacted in West Africa.
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