Sailing Against the Tide

JEANNE BARET – SAILING AGAINST THE TIDE

The Story of the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

CHAPTER ONE

I, JEANNE

LA COMELLE, FRANCE

SPRING 1746

I cannot remember my mother. I was an infant when she died. But when I close my eyes, I hear her voice like the breath of angels whispering me to sleep.

Lullay, lullay, my little child,
Sleep and be now still;
If thou be a little child,
Yet may thou have thy will.

My reverie dissipates when I hear Father’s voice from across the dinner table recapturing me from my reverie. “Tomorrow, I need all three of you working in the fields. The days are getting longer, and the time for rest is growing short. If we want to eat next winter, we must tend our fields.” Father chides. He is old, weathered by wind and work, bent from a lifetime hunched over the plough and hoe, laboring on the small plot of land we rented from the owner, Seigneur Girard. “Pierre, you are strong enough now to plough. And Marie, you follow him with the hoe. Make nice, even furrows. You have skill at that task.” He nods, indicating that the conversation is finished.

Turning to me he says “Jeanne, run outside, and put the hens in the coop. I heard a wolf howl last night, and we need to keep our chickens safe. Tomorrow, it is your job to look after them. Chase off any stray dogs, with a stick.” He bends to kiss the top of my head.

It’s a big job for a six-year-old, but if Father thinks I can do it, I will do my best. I’ve been collecting eggs since I was five, and the chickens all know me. I love the way they sing to me when they see me coming. I scatter a few handfuls of breadcrumbs as they burble happily. I know I shouldn’t because one day soon Father will chop their skinny heads off with an ax, but I have given them names. I slip into their yard and six fat, fluffy hens flock to me. Babou, Babette, Mon chou, Loulou, Lapin, and Poule push each other to get the best spot. Babette is the bossy one, and despite trying to feed them all equally, she always gets more than her share. In the evening, they ascend the steps to their coop, always in the same order and arrange themselves, each in her own little nest. I haul up the ladder and make sure the door is closed tight. “Sleep safely my girls.”

Our home is humble indeed, made of wattle and daub, with a low thatched roof, hardly any more luxurious than the hen house. A single room serves for living, sleeping, cooking, and eating. Our small family - Father, sister Marie, brother Pierre, and I – share the work to ensure we have food to eat and a place to lay our heads. But we share more than our daily bread. We share the love only a family can give. I feel as secure and carefree as my little flock.

I wrapped myself in a coarse woolen blanket and curled up in a corner of the hut with my sister, Marie. She is three years older than I and remembers more about Mother than I do. She drapes her arm over my shoulder and curls her body behind mine to keep us both warm. I can smell the scents of the countryside, clover, cut grass, compost and manure, on her well-worn dress.

Mother died when I was a newborn, and my sister was only three. Phillipe was six, and he at least could be of some use to Father, so he spent his days at Father’s side. One of the village ladies came in to prepare our meals and care for Marie and me. We called her Auntie Juliette. She was widowed long ago and supported herself as the village as the herb woman and as our nanny. Our predicament, having lost our mother to the childbed was not unusual. Until a widower man found another wife, he sought the services of women like Juliette, herself a widow and too old to remarry. As soon as we were old enough to walk through high grass without falling, we followed Auntie Juliette to glean food from the hills around the village. Marie and I tripped along behind Auntie Juliette and absorbed her store of knowledge about wild plants as a sponge absorbs water. Auntie taught us how to scour the countryside for herbs, berries, small fruits, and nuts that fell from the gnarled trees. By the time I was nine years old, I was strong and curious enough to have learned all Juliette could teach us, yet I was voracious for more knowledge. Whenever we were not needed in the fields, we roamed the hills and forests, hunting for fruit, herbs, and medicinal plants. The healing plants fascinated me most of all.

“Every plant that our Lord put on this earth has a use,” she opined. “Every ailment of the body has a treatment. We will all die, but we herb women can at least allay suffering.”

I held her teachings in my heart. I would be proud to grow up to be an herb woman just like Julliette.

Pierre’s lot was more difficult than Marie’s and mine. When he was only nine years old, he had already started clawing at the earth with a hoe Father had shortened for him. By the time he was twelve he was doing a man’s work in the fields at Father’s side. At about that time Pierre started sprouting hair from his chin and lip, he grew itchy and irritable, complaining about the amount of work expected of him. Father did not tolerate his complaints. Though he did not strike Pierre, he clapped his staff against the table and shouted.

“How do you expect us to live if we don’t work? You realize, don’t you, that this hut belongs to the Seigneur and the moment we do not produce an acceptable crop for him, he has the right to evict us. Then how will we live?”

Pierre shuffled his feet, grumbling as he looked at the ground. An expression of hopelessness dragged down the corners of his mouth.

“Think of someone other than yourself for once. You are the eldest, and as I get older you must take up my responsibilities, feeding these girls until they are old enough to find husbands.” He pointed directly at Marie and me as if we had misbehaved. I clung to her skirts baffled by Father’s outburst. He was usually even-tempered, but on this day, he did not try to disguise his displeasure. “Now go. Harness the oxen unless you wish to pull the plough yourself.”

Though I cannot name the feeling that shot through me. I understood for the first time that our lives here in our simple hut may not last forever. Roaming the hills with my sister and Auntie Juliette was my principal pleasure, but tending the fields for the Seigneur was everyone’s responsibility. No one was exempt from laboring in the fields, neither men nor women, boys nor girls.

CHAPTER TWO

PLANTING NEW SEEDS

LA COMELLE to TOULON-SUR-ARROUX

1756

A bitter and unforgiving winter followed a dry fruitless summer. In spring, when the unusually heavy snow melted, fields and forests erupted in ambitious growth. Plants, both wild and farmed, grew uncommonly tall and robust. Then in midsummer, the rain ceased, and the promising greenery of spring wilted then dried, leaving the landscape pocked with tall dead stems and shriveled flowers and fruit. The crops languished under the sallow sun, as dry and brittle as cinders. Everyone and everything in La Comelle was hungry. Farm horses’ heads drooped to the ground, refusing to pull their ploughs across the hardened earth. No amount of flogging, whistling, pushing or pulling could get them to move.

Father began to droop too. I knew he was getting older, and would naturally lose his youthful vigor, but this was more than simple weariness. Marie married two year ago, and now, with a baby balanced on her hip, she spent her days making a home for her husband, Antoinne, and her child. In hopes of earning hard cash Pierre slipped the noose and moved to a farm three hours’ walk from our hut, far enough away to be of no help at home. They visited infrequently. It was not that they didn’t want to see Father and me, they just didn’t have time for the long walk to our hut.

Now only Father and I labored in the fields. When I looked up from my hoe I saw a broken man, old beyond his years. The final blow came in late summer when I was sixteen. One day, as we toiled in the open field, a sudden deluge poured down on us. We slipped and staggered as we struggled through slippery, clinging mud trying to make our way home. I threw Father’s arm across my shoulders and practically dragged him through the doorway. I laid him on his woolen blanket, now worn thin, and warmed the weak stew I made the day before, but he was too exhausted to sip the broth I spooned to his lips. He slept through the night and most of the following day. When he woke, his cough was violent and painful. Over the next several weeks he worsened, and soon yellow mucous dribbled from his mouth with each bout of coughing. I tugged him into a sitting position leaning him against my chest. He shivered violently and his lips became unnaturally blue. I wrapped his thin blanket around both of us attempting to warm him with my own body heat. Sweat coursed down his back, his skin hot to the touch, and his breath came in quick gasps. I wracked my brain, summoning up the cures I had learned from Auntie Juliette.

“Here Father, take a sip of this,” I coaxed. He grumbled and shook his head, dodging the proffered cup. “Come, take it. It will help. It’s a simple tea made with feverfew, licorice root and honey.”

I leaned my ear near to his lips to hear his raspy voice. “All I want is to sleep without waking. I’m done. I hope God does not curse me by allowing me to see tomorrow’s dawn.” Father turned his head to the wall and shivered.

“No Father, I still need you,” I whined. “Together we will bring in this year’s crop and next year will be better.”

His eyes found mine. I could see clouds forming in them as he drifted further and further away. “You are my good and faithful daughter. I know you will do well in this world. I haven’t given you much, but I’ve blessed you with the strength of a horse and the fortitude of an unyielding oak.”

“I am proud to be just like you, Father,” my voice began to quaver. “You have been my rock.”

“Your other traits are blessings from God,” his voice barely audible. “Your steadfast loyalty, your determination, your stoic strength in the face of hardship. You will find your way.”

He had never spoken to me like this. He was a hard-working, down-to-earth farmer of very few words. Personal conversations never interrupted the practicalities of everyday life, and this one terrified me. I rocked him through the night, until finally I laid him down and crumpled on the blanket beside him. God granted his wish, and that night he passed into the next world. By morning he had become cool and rigid. What would I do without him?

* * *

I knew I could do nothing to save our farm without the strong back of a man. I was adrift. I was only fifteen, of marriageable age, but I had no prospects. I knew I could not manage the farm by myself and besides, Seigneur Claude would never allow a single woman to continue to work and live alone in the hut. He would certainly find a strong, steady man to take Father’s place. Apart from farming, I had no skills other than those Juliette had taught me.

The funeral was as simple as Father’s life had been. After the funeral, my sister Marie, took my hand and led me from the church. “You will come home with me,” she said matter-of-factly.

“But you live in Toulon-sur-Arroux and I have always lived in La Comelle.”

“That’s right. And it will be good for you to leave this little village behind with all its bad memories. You can help with my household duties and help take care of the baby. When time allows, you and I can go out herb hunting.” She knew the prospect of roaming the hills searching for herbs would please me.

I brightened. “Perhaps I can sell herbs to the townspeople. That would bring in a little extra income, wouldn’t it?”

“We’ll see,” she said. “One step at a time. For now, you will come live with us.”

Though I loved my sister, she and I were as similar as water and wax. Marie was only three years older than I, but at eighteen she was in every way a grown woman. She was tall, stately and lean, with an open visage that showed she was a friend to all, and a demeanor both women and men found attractive. She was content in her domestic duties and well-liked by the townspeople. She was always the first women to come to a neighbor’s aid when needed.

When I walked through the door of her house, the insistent wails of her one-year-old son, Roman, greeted us. “Mama, Mama,” he hollered.

“You take him,” her husband, Antoinne said, handing the baby over the Marie. “I need to get back to the barn to muck the stalls and feed the horses.”

“Are you overlooking something?” Marie smiled, nodding in my direction.

“Oh, it’s you, Jeanne. I’m sorry about the death of your father,” he called over his shoulder as he headed for the door.

“Wait!” she called. “Now that Father has died, Jeanne’s hut will revert to the Seigneur, and she will have nowhere to stay. So, I invited her into our home.”

Antoinne turned to face me as he paused a moment to consider this. “Well, we may be a little cramped for space, but you are welcome here.” He did not smile about the prospect of having another mouth to feed, but he didn’t oppose Marie’s wishes.

“Yes, we might be a bit cramped,” Marie smiled. She winked at Antoine and gave him a saucy smile. He stopped and planted his hands on his hips and looked at her with suspicion.

“What do you mean?”

“In about six months’ time, we will have another little one to bless our marriage.”

“Heaven help us!” Antoinne rolled his eyes. He came to Marie’s side, nuzzled her neck, and gave her a kiss full on the mouth. I turned away in shock. I’d never seen such a thing.

“Go now! You are embarrassing our new family member.” Marie smiled coquettishly and pushed him away.

So began the baby years. In the five years I was with them, Marie and Antoinne produced three more children for me to dote on and love. It was as close to family bliss as I ever got. As generous as they were, I knew they were stretching to feed so many hungry mouths. If I was going to contribute to my sister’s growing family, I must earn my keep doing the only thing I knew - hunting herbs. I took to the hills, fields and forests single-mindedly gleaning every curative or tasty herb I could find. I peddled them from my basket directly to our friends and neighbors and walked to the weekly market. I was now officially the herb lady.