CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

JAN JOUBERTSGAT

Saturday, 1st March 1862

In the summer’s morning on the mountain, Isabelle looked at Xavier. They were both wondering the same thing.

‘So, what went wrong?’ he said.

‘That is precisely the point at issue. We know Phillipe was not on board when the ship docked in Amsterdam,’ Isabelle replied. ‘And Tom Smith did deliver Louise’s prison diary and Gilles’ Tarot card to her great-aunt Alis and her friend Cornelia in Amsterdam after they arrived, but does not mention Vidal. So, either Vidal died en route, or he did not sail on the Old Moon.’

‘Or he boarded, but disembarked and returned to the mainland,’ Xavier added. ‘Though is it possible that . . .’

Isabelle completed the thought for him.

‘That Gilles was already in the family way before the Old Moon sailed? Yes, I considered that, too. That it happened on board, not once they were in the Cape.’ She shook her head. ‘But everything Louise writes makes it clear how much Phillipe and Gilles hated one another, and how both Louise and Gilles distrusted him. And at no point does she say that her half-brother realised that Gilles was biologically a woman.’

‘No, but would Louise dare write such a potentially explosive truth in her diary?’ Xavier countered. ‘There would be no privacy on the ship and the fear of Vidal reading it must have always been on her mind.’

‘I agree. It’s why I rejected that idea. Besides, if we assume that any relations between Gilles and Phillipe were not consensual – and I think we can – then surely Smith, or another, would have dispatched Vidal there and then?’

Xavier nodded.

‘But the main reason against the child having been conceived on board,’ Isabelle continued, ‘is that Suzanne relates the story of how a Khoi woman delivered a baby to a white woman in October 1623, which means Gilles could not have been with child in early May 1622. The dates do not fit.’

‘Which means . . .?’

Isabelle frowned. ‘I think Vidal somehow came back to the Cape, either immediately after the Old Moon had sailed or a little while later, determined to find them and make them pay for duping him. It is clear that he was obsessed with Louise, that he thought in some way that he owned her because he had saved her from the gallows.’

‘And Gilles?’ Xavier asked.

Isabelle looked up at the mountains, taking comfort in the beauty of the day while her head was filled with such troubling thoughts. ‘If Phillipe wanted to punish Louise, what better way than to hurt Gilles,’ she said, aware that her thoughts were turning back to Suzanne’s story many years later. Suzanne, who had been raped in her own home, and found a way to survive. Isabelle ran her fingers across the page of the book. ‘If I read on, I think we will find the answer. But do you want to continue, Xavier? We can stop.’

He shook his head. ‘I would rather know.’

Isabelle nodded. ‘Very well. The next entry is not until three months later. The seventeenth day of August. Mid-winter.’