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her arms over her chest, hugging herself tight, her fingertips finding the sharp wings of her shoulder blades, her lips together and her eyes closed, feeling herself swell with the bursting giddy miracle of it.
    Was she truly the same person who, in exasperation, had thrown her book to the ground and demanded of the girls to know why, if their situation was so fine and the men of Louisiana so handsome and prosperous, was it that the King himself had been required to purchase them a wife? They had looked at her, then, and the bruised bewilderment in their eyes had made her want to scream.
    Later that day Elisabeth had found herself accosted by Marie-Françoise de Boisrenaud, a girl a little older than the rest, who had quickly established herself as cock of the roost. The daughter of a squire from Chantilly, Marie-Françoise was a practical, pale-haired girl who had made it her business to become acquainted with the present situations of all of the bachelors of Louisiana. From an initial catalogue of fifty or sixty eligible men, and taking proper account of prosperity, position, age and health as well as congeniality and a pleasant appearance, she had proceeded to compile a list of the twenty-five she regarded as the colony’s best prospects. Among the chickens she had become known, not without gratitude, as the Governess.
    ‘We have been sent here to do God’s will,’ Marie-Françoise rebuked Elisabeth, and she raised her voice so that the other girls might be certain to hear her. ‘Do you dare to know better than Our Lord, to tell us what we should hope for?’
    ‘The Lord may tell you all He pleases,’ Elisabeth had answered, and she had glanced over at the chickens who dropped their eyes hastily and busied themselves with their sewing. ‘I know only that the only proper protection against disappointment is to expect nothing.’
    Aside from causing Marie-Françoise’s mouth to pull tight as a stitch, Elisabeth’s words had not the slightest effect. As the weeks lengthened into months, the chickens traded the men like the cards in a game of bassette, snatching them up or frowning over them and fingering them before letting them drop. They mocked Elisabeth for her books and her gloominess, threatening her with the assistant clerk of the King’s storehouse, Grapalière, who was ancient and toothless and, as a result of an accident with a musket, had an iron hook for a right hand.
    Elisabeth only shrugged. She did not care if they thought her proud. When at last the interminable voyage reached its end, they would be unloaded like barrels of salt pork and sold, if they were not deemed to have turned, to the highest bidder. If Elisabeth might in time contrive to accept her fate, she for one would not conspire in the preposterous pretence that it would all end happily.
    She knew it now, of course, the lunacy of hopefulness, though she dared not submit to it. He possessed more than enough for them both, a sanguinity that was almost carelessness, and the simplicity of it in him took her breath away. It was like a lamp inside him, so that he was always brilliant with it. He dazzled her. That first night, that first perfect night when she was his and he hers, one before God, she had watched him as he slept and she had understood that this would be her part, that she would arch herself about him with her vigilance always, the glass around his flame so that he might burn the brighter. His face had been loose in sleep, like a child’s, his limbs sprawled and his hands curled open upon the sheet. Outside the night had hummed, alive with insects, and it had seemed to Elisabeth that she listened to the singing of her own heart.
    Twenty-three girls and he had chosen her. He told her that he had never considered another but she knew it was not so. She remembered him. When they had at last arrived at Mobile, there had been a welcoming party of sorts but, though some of the chickens attempted cheer, the mood was subdued. Fever had