Page 2 of Reflections of Silence

We talked rubbish of men and gossip, of what to expect when we arrived in New Orleans. In the darkest hours, deep in the stash of contraband she somehow hid from the sailors who offered us a wide berth, she told me stories of her previous husband.

Unlike the rest of the girls we traveled alongside, she wasn’t an unmarried virgin. She was, however, an expense to her family, the remnant of a poor match, and thus outcast with the rest of us.

But her stories…I had curled in my thin blanket at nights on board the ship when all others were asleep, listening to her tales, learning more about what happened behind closed doors of a married couple than I could ever want to know.

“He would come to my bedchamber at night—of course we didn’t share one. Don’t be so naive.” Amy tipped her head up in a show of defiance, though her hand gathered her skirts in her fist. “The first night, he was sweet, attentive. Then, he became more demanding, creating slights we both knew I hadn’t committed against him for the pure pleasure of throwing me over his knee and spanking my backside in recompense.”

“Over your clothes? Did it hurt?” I couldn’t help but wonder, trailing my fingers along my thigh over my tangled skirts and bedsheets.

“Of course not, silly.” Amy rolled her eyes and giggled, her face stained pink in the flickering light our broken lantern afforded. “He flicked up my skirts, one by one, all business-like, until I lay naked and exposed before him. Then he would squeeze my bottom, tell me how naughty I had been, and then he spanked me. It hurt; oh, how I cried! Sobbing as his hand stung against my poor skin. At the end, he would rub his fingers over my heated rear, tell me how good I had been. Then his fingers would dip lower.

“I liked the pain, you see, and he found out how much I enjoyed his beatings. My new punishment was to perform on his hand until he was satisfied. Sometimes he made me work my body for him all night until I was covered in sweat, shaking and crying…” She shuddered, bunching both hands at the apex of her thighs over her skirts. “Well, the pain was worth what would come after.”

Her knowing smile haunted me as I lay awake, guessing what my own future held, unable to question her more. My own embarrassment had heightened as she shifted on her cot on the other side of the cabin’s close confines, moaning and rocking with the ship’s movement.

Amy knew where she was headed before any of us got on the ship that had taken us from France to the Americas. Her newhusband-to-be had already prepared her home, whereas I knew nothing about my arrival. Impossible hopes and dreams plagued my sleepless hours. I quashed them into the tiny box all the girls traveled with, except for Amy, who came accompanied by a collection of gothic-looking cases that must be family heirlooms.

I scanned the crowd, wondering who would be waiting to collect us—to collect me. Would we be expected to move on en masse or whittled away, one by one, into our new respective families? Explosions of high-pitched sound erupted around me. A gaggle of girls.Or is it a giggle?My attention returned to the docks.

Should I be searching for a housekeeper, bundled off on errands for the day, or perhaps a lady-in-waiting? Would the estate be wealthy enough to have staff?

So little information had been shared with us before we departed France that we had created our own dream worlds where comfort and riches—and, of course, a handsome young man—awaited us.

No wealthy young men lingered at the dock—though I still didn’t think it was worthy of the title—as gangplanks crashed onto heavy struts. Mud slopped along the banks in a steady stream. The river darkened in shadow as a steady line of impatient passengers formed, jostling around mountains of luggage.

My valise was much smaller, like fake sarcophagi beginning to trend throughout the British nobility before I left France. The tiny coffers were supposed to house ancient holding mummies or the treasures of ancient Egypt when in reality they contained nothing more than the bodies of young urchins plucked from their own streets.

My own treasures were far less grandiose: several pairs of clean pantalettes and otherunmentionables—a term Amy shared with me. What hang-ups the English had. I wonderedhow she would survive in the new world as a sharp sting on my neck reminded me of the whispers floating about the ship.

That our husbands were vehicles for the devil, never seen in society, seeking brides from abroad who would not have been subject to the more local rumor mill.

Or to have the chance to run away from it.

More common were the suspicions surrounding us, and our little wooden boxes. Several nosy passengers—women who knew nothing of courtesy sticking their plain faces into the occurrences of others—pestered us in the first few weeks. Some of the girls had become frustrated, upset, and so we had fabricated the rumor thatwewere the ones to be feared, shipped from our ruined homes to the colonies.

We hid in our cabins, laughing at the stupidity of the crowd, fueling the whisper of something aboard far worse than what might be waiting for us all in New Orleans: the dead subsisting on the living.

That we were, in fact, vampyre.

It was so laughable that we persisted in the rumor for all of a day. But as is the way with sensational news, the idea caught within the small community forced to exist together within wooden confines, igniting a small rush of panic throughout the ship. I snorted, stumbling on the hem of my dress as a passenger jostled me in his rush to meet the shore.

My box clutched in my arms, I placed each wary foot on the gangplank, chin raised as the nuns had taught me. Looking out at the crowd clustered around the jetty, I noticed a woman standing next to an empty cart. Not because she was active—quite the opposite. It was her complete lack of action that brought her out from the mob swarming around baggage and cargo as it was unloaded onto the muddy bank. Dressed in a plain, brown-belted tunic, she looked unassuming and bland in the chaotic flurry of color around us.

Trailed by a small line of chattering girls, I approached the woman, picking my way through the mud. Her eyes fixed on me, high cheekbones sucking in to give her a skeletal appearance, hair scraped in a severe bun. I smiled tentatively, my early training I’d had before my father lost his mind kicking in.

“Are you from Ursuline?” I asked, gritting my teeth at her stoic expression. “From the abbey—convent, I mean?” I smiled again, but she made no movement at all.

“She can’t be the right one,” a girl from the gaggle muttered over my shoulder.

“We should look around.”

“Don’t tell me we’ve been left behind!”

This last was accompanied by a high-pitched shriek. I closed my eyes as the sound echoed through my head, turning to shush the gaggle clustered behind me.

I turned back to the woman to find her nose inches to mine. Cold, colorless eyes peered into mine as though she delved into my own soul and found it empty. I squawked, retreating a step into the sticky mud underfoot. My worn soles didn’t hold up to the task, my feet failing to find purchase in the mush of too many people milling about the crowded space. Slipping, I windmilled my arms for balance.

The ground shifted fromterra-firmatoterra-slushiusbeneath me. I closed my eyes, waiting to plunge into the slop but hands gripped my arms, steadying me. The ground stopped roiling, or maybe it was me. The girls hoisting me upright did their job to perfection. I smiled my gratitude at my two traveling companions.

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