A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri 2024 399pg

 Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson1850-1894 (44 years) and his wife and muse, Fanny Van de Grift(1840-1914)                                                                          15/06/2025

Henry James considered her a termagant- a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman. Stevenson's his “Complete Works” takes up more than three feet on my bookshelf.  A credible posthumous diagnosis is bronchiectasis, which would have caused his frequent hemorrhages. Without fanny there would be no RL Stevenson.

He was an educated writer from a prominent family in Scotland while she was  high school graduate from the  rustic Mid West. This is the first book that deals with Fanny's work as we as her famous husband. Her role was to keep him alive and to keep him writing. The only medications he had laudanum (tincture of opium) and ergotin( a LSD derivative)Her younger sister Nellie van de Grift wrote The Life of Mars Robert Louis Stevenson. (Died 1935)

 Jacob Vandegrift wanted his 5 daughter to feel they could be independent. He taught to them hunting , horse riding and to use a hammer and nails. |He owned lumber and had a real estate business.

1857 Fanny married Sam Osbourne.1864 She and Sam went out west before the railroad was build via Confederates blockaded ports and Panama to S. Francisco. She had visions of women having greater status in the west and was an avid reader. Silver had been discovered in 1862 in Toiyabe range, Nevada but it was in decline when they arrived. Sam was bankrupt and in debt but Fanny thrived where there were 6000 men and less that 60 respectable women.

In San Francisco it was the prostitutes' that set women's fashion

1866 Fanny was back in Indiana at her parents. After Belle they had a son Lloyd, followed by Hervey  in 1871. Sam was living with his mistress in San Francisco. Women who divorced their philandering husband lost out in those days. Fanny enrolled Belle at what later become the San Francisco Art Institute. Fanny hired a nanny for the 2 boys and joined Belle.

1875 Fanny Osbourne left S. Francisco to get a mail steamer from NY to Europe with her children ,she wanted to be an artist. She took Belle to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Belgium. After the Franco Prussian War 1871 they moved to Paris. The person assigned to help Fanny settle in was Abigail May Alcott Louisa's whose sister wrote Little Women.

Hervey contracted tuberculosis and died  a few days after Sam arrived. Fanny Belle and Lloyd went to live in Grez- sur-Loing  on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest.

Louis had a hacking cough and his parents were concerned about him and he was largely a shut in child with a nanny as a playmate. He was an only child unusual at this time as he had 54 first cousins. His mother Margaret at the age of 70 learned to ride a bicycle.  The Stevenson's were strict  Calvinists and knew the bible, and he was terrified of sin as a young kid. Later he upset Thomas his father as he did not believe in Christianity. Alison Cunningham was his nanny was with him all the time and his second mother. From A Childs Garden of Verses  1885 we see that he was home alone and played alone. Some of his happiest days were visiting his grandfather Lewis Balfour. His mother also had chest ailment so they travelled abroad to the French and Italian Riviera's. Climatotherapy. He became a Francophile and could speak and read French perfectly. He was a story teller as a kid and wrote the only issue of School Boys Magazine at 12. Later as rebellion or adventure he hung out with seamen, chimney sweeps, thieves, and preferred prostitutes to girls.

On the Scottish coast in 1799 alone in a 3 day storm more that 70 vessels sent hundreds to their death. Grandfather Robert Stevenson build 97 light houses as he felt it a duty. Bell Rock the oldest is in a JMW. Turner picture 1819.

Louis started studying engineering in Edinburgh at his father insistence. 1870 He took apprenticeships in engineering which supplied him with stories about smuggling and shipwrecks.

Louis switched to Law as a compromise with his father. 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman published in UK but heavily censored.

1800s Edinburgh was renown for medical research but needed corpses for anatomy but religious beliefs limited the supply of cadavers. 1884 RLS wrote a short story called The Body Snatcher. 

As a writer he was a disappointment to his parents but reliant on them for financially. Later he became more famous than the Lighthouse parents. Opium was freely available in the UK and he had an experience with it. In London became a member of the Saville Club which included people like Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf's father the publisher. Louis started many stories that he never completed. 1875 he passed the Bar exam. 

Ernest Henly best known for he poem Invictus 1888.

American literature reached Britain with Uncle Toms Cabin and books by James Ferrymore Cooper , Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe , Thoreau and Whitman. Louis met Fanny at Grez, France and  he started writing fiction again. She believed in his talent and urged him on.

Fanny's husband Sam could use her adulatory as grounds to take the children. While Louis was penniless.

1879 Louis hired a donkey and went for a12 day hike the purpose was that his parents wanted him to distance himself from Fanny in the US meanwhile he wrote the book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. 106 pg Today this trail attract hikers to do his walk.   Meanwhile at this same time Fanny wrote an article about Chinese men attracted to the U S to work on gold mines and the railroads for low wages were seen as a threat to jobs and wages. 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Louis sailed to the US at a time of a surge of immigration there. He wanted to travel steerage for the experience but needed a  desk to write on so went Second Class and wrote The Amateur Emigrant 1895 106pg This was only published later. He took a train to California and this was the time that the railways needed immigrants to keep them busy.

Sam was prepared to divorce Fanny as long as she and Louis  lived separately for a decent amount of time. However Sam lost his job at the district court. and could no longer support her  Meanwhile living in Monterey was a opportunity for ideas for Louis and was the setting for Treasure Island. 240pg. Louis live 5 months in S. Francisco where he got ideas for The Wrecker 1892 297pg here he met Italian fishermen , Dutch merchants, Mexican vequeres, and an English schooner captain. In Scotland Louis family who build lighthouses faced hostility of wreckers.

Fanny knew Louis would get fame and fortune, and he urged her to marry him to legalize her claim to his inheritance if he should have one. When he became ill she moved him into her family home and probably saved his life. Fanny heard of an abandoned mining camp high up on mount St Helens as it would be good for his health. 1880 a year to the day that he had arrived in NY they arrived in Liverpool. Thomas Stevenson got on with Fanny even though she spoke her mind.

Since the death of John Keats in 1821 aged 25 there was considered  link between genius and consumptive. Only in 1882 was tuberculosis discovered to be a bacillus bacteria. Between 1850 and 1910, 4 million people died of tuberculosis in Britain.   Sometimes Fanny was not comfortable amongst all of Louis men circles and more than a century later Yoko Ono was blamed for the Beatle break up and ruining "a boys club" She  found it difficult to make women friends. 

The moved to Davos where almost all visitors had TB and Louis loved toboggining here. Thomas Mann described Davos sanatorium in his book Magic Mountain. A lot of patients came there for relief of symptoms and died.

Thomas Stevenson had told Louis sea stories on his long sick night, Louis was doing the same for Fanny's son reawakening the child of his own father. But Louis had many unfinished novels. Once he had good work of a serialized story over 17 installment he had to finished the novels fast. Treasure Island caused Louis to be the most read author by 1890 but many of his books were bootlegged  editions in the US. Long John Silver with his peg leg and Captain Flints parrot would become famous as a real pirate. Fanny with her adventurous spirit kept the boyishness alive in Louis. He called her" teacher , tender comrade , wife."

1885 A Childs Garden of Verses was dedicated to his nanny Alison Cunningham. He felt she would understand it the best and it showed her, his appreciation. Only after his death did this appear with drawings. He was a sickly child who knew what it was like to hear other children playing outside.

Living in France had always suited Louis as he was fluent in the French language and literature. Hyeres (close to the Cote de Azur in Southern France) was a great time of productivity. 1884 They left Hyeres as their was a plague of cholera and moved to Toulon.

Trevor Haddon a British painter said " about any art think not of what it pays, first of what pleases."

1891 Congress passed the International Copyright Act, till then despite his big sales he was always short of money.

Louis wrote plays with William Ernest Henley who was a famous poet, known for the poem Invictus but they were not successful.

1885 Feb. Dynamite Saturday bombs went off in House  of Commons , Tower of London and Westminster Hall simultaneously. This was by the IRA and it lead to the Special Irish branch of the Metropolitan police to deal with this. Louis wrote the book  the Dynamiter- More Arabian Nights short stories.

Louis lived a remarkable long time for an afflicted man and he never infected anyone. He had bronchiectasis  bronchial tubes damaged by his childhood illnesses like whooping cough, flu, croup and bronchises. Fanny suffered from PTSD from losing her son. Fanny like many caregivers neglected her own health. In the 1880s there began to be warning about addiction to pills that contained opiates cannabis and cocaine. Aspirin was first patented by Bayer in 1899.  Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Barret Browning and Elizabeth Siddal (artist 1829 to 1862) were addicted to laudanum. Louis health came first his writing second and Fanny 's needs last.

Louis on the way to Bournemouth visited Thomas Hardy in Dorchester as Louis admired Far From the Maddening Crowd which rocketed Hardy to success.

1886The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by  Louis. This book appeared first in the US and this book became the subject of countless sermons one in St Paul's. The moral message about the struggle between virtue and sin. It was a major  bestseller in its day.  Only at the end of the book do we discover that he is one person and the idea came to Oscar Wilde who wrote about a double life  person in 1890 The Picture of Dorian grey.

1885 Criminal Amendment Act . Any sexual between males became a punishably offence and made it easier to blackmail gay men and convict Oscar Wilde. This Act also strengthened the prostitution laws and raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.

Louis and Fanny had moved to Bournemouth  to be near Lloyd but he began studying at the University of Edinburgh in 1885. There, their favorite new friend was Henry James Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady made him a celebrity and Fanny appreciated the portrayal of ex patriot American women. James appreciated Louis works more than most Brits.

1886 Kidnapped came out in 14 weekly installments in a juvenile magazine. It is set in the period after the crushing British defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie.1746 Battle of Culloden.  

Sam Osbourne had disappeared mysteriously. He had asked his wife Rebecca Paul to have supper waiting ready for him after work at the night court and never returned. Sam's disappearance did draw Lloyd closer to Louis. In 1887 they went to the ailing  Thomas Stevenson in Edinburgh and he died 2 days later.  Louis was now freed of his fathers strict Calvinist domination, and Louis inheritance was £3,000.

Margaret, Lloyd,  Louis, Fanny and their maid Valentine travelled to Le Harve to take a cheaper less popular shipping line they discovered they were on a smelly cattle ship. In NY waiting at the dock was a crowd and reporters to greet Louis. In NY Louis met another fan Mark Twain. they were 2 authors whose boys novel confounder standard notions of Victorian masculinity - Kidnapped and Huckleberry Finn.

Magazines had offered Louis a lucrative contract for articles of his travels when they heard he was going to the South Seas. While in the Adirondacks they decided to take a South Seas voyage as an adventure but also to to to a warm climate.

In California Fanny's ex Sam Osbourne had left his wife Paulie with his debts for another women. Fanny reconciles with her daughter Belle and  her 7 year old grandson Austen. Belle's husband Joe Strong had left her.

1888 they sailed from San Francisco to French Polynesia. They visited Nuka Hiva , Fakarava and Tahiti written about by Herman Melville. Then the took a 62 ton trading schooner Equator that toured the Gilbert Islands (now Republic of Kiribati) Fanny was the only woman amongst 15 men. They decided to settle in Samoa as the climate was right for Louis's health. They bought 315 hilly acres for $10 an acre.  This was relatively close to New South Wales and had a good mail service. 

The US and Europe were carving up the region to expand their empires. David  Kalakaua the king of Hawaii had brokered a free trade agreement with the US. After meeting Edison he installed electric lights in his palace 5 years before the White House. The monarchy in Hawai was overthrown and in 1898 it was annexed to the US. Britain had annexed the Gilbert Islands. 

1890 the visited Sydney and when the wanted to leave there was a strike of seamen and dockworkers. The  Janet Nicoll  managed to get a non union crew of mostly Solomon Islanders. They found that islanders were conned by promises and taken to be slaves on mines and plantations by French German British , American labor traders.  They visited 35 islands over 4 months including the Cook , Marshall and New Caledonia. Wherever they went they got to know about the local inhabitants. Not only Western powers were changing the face of Polynesia but missionaries , beach combers, traders, and the indigenous people wad creating a new hybrid culture.

Fanny sold Skerrymore in Bournemouth a gift from Thomas Stevenson, to build their house in Samoa. Vallima had a tennis court and grass for cricket and croquet. It became the social centre of Upolu. They also had a plantation of nearly  8000 coffee trees. At this time the artist Paul Gauguin was on Tahiti fathering children with young girls and producing paintings promoting the island as a sexual paradise for Western men.

"A writer has to keep on being reborn" The story The Enchantress is of a man who married a heiress she ditches him the same day with a pledge of £300 a year. This way she can inherit and is independent of a man. It shows the length a women will go to gain independence. 

1880 a few German firms had taken over land for plantations while the Samoa's were in tribal battled. The US intervened.  Germany UK and US now formed a tripartite government with a puppet Samoan king. Louis wrote  Footnote in History : Eight years of trouble in Samoa. Galsworthy, Author Conan  Doyle, and J.M.Barry started corresponding with him. The White Company a novel by A.C.Doyle on the 100 years war. Conrad was thinking of Louis's 1894  Ebb Tide when he wrote of the charterers in Heart of Darkness a decade later.

The Beach in Falesa is what in 1953 Dylan Thomas based a screenplay and  which later Richard Burton got Christopher Isherwood to work on but it never got to the screen.

On Samoa Belle's husband Joe secretly had a Samoan wife and Fanny pushed her to divorce him. Her son Austin, Louis sent to San Francisco to be with Fanny's sister Nellie Sanchez

Later New Zealand ousted German from Western  Samoa in WW1 1914 and administered as a mandate till 1962 independence.

Louis altered his will leaving some to his brother Alan's children but most in favor of Belle , Lloyd and Austin.

Louis was a chain smoker even though he was advised against it and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.  Graham Green's grandmother was Louis first cousin.

Vallima the house was sold by Fanny to a German merchant who sold it to the German Government in 1911and became the Samoan governor's residence. Today it is the Stevenson Museum. 

Fanny got Graham Balfour to write the official biography and it came out in 1901 The life of Robert Louis Stevenson.

1907 Fanny and Ned went for a motor tour of Europe with Lloyd as driver, early car enthusiasts. Austin was becoming a successful playwright,

1914 Fanny died also of cerebral hemorrhage and Belle and Ned Field  who she later married took her ashes to Samoa to bury in Louis grave.  Lloyd edited some of Louis works and died in 1947 after 2 unsuccessful marriages and an undistinguished literary career. Belle died in 1953 aged 94 having outlived both husbands , her brother and her son Austin by a year.

Of all his work Louis is best known for his children's fiction. Walter Scott and Robert Burns were given memorials in Edinburgh but Louis only got one in 2013 as a child  sitting on a tree stump reading a book.

I am the clay by Haim Potok1992 240pg

Korean War 1950 to 1953  6/5/25

To say we are the clay is an acknowledgement of Gods work. . “Behold, like clay in the potter’s hand, so you are in my hand, O house of Israel.” Jeremiah 18:6

This is about a boy found wounded, in a ditch and a old women takes care of him despite her husband.  He is wounded and she tries to stop an ambulance to help but the driver just gives her a  bandage and packet of sulfonamide powder to put on. After a few days they find a hospital and she begs them to operate and they take a piece of shrapnel from his belly and she get the 11 years old boy back with a new bandage. The old couple have fled their village ahead of the Chinese  coming from the north. The boy was looking for his dog in the wood when his village was destroyed with his siblings and his parents who were scholars.. He is put in the cart covered with quilts and the old man is sure he will die. They survive in the cold by always keeping a brush fire burning and are always looking for brush wood.

The boy recovers and now the old man is sick. The boy breaks a hole in the lake and with a sharp stick. On the way back he has 3 dogs blocking the gap between the boulder, he throws a fish to distract the dogs and gets back. Later with fish cooked into jelly he entices the small dog to follow him into the cave where he feeds it but where the old man needs meat the she kills it for food. The set up a shack of scrap metal that they found at the battle sight. They are given packets of rice outside the US Feeding station. They later head back north to their village where all 12 families have returned. 

They have to get permission from the village carpenter for the boy to remain. The boy leaves to return to his own village but all is destroyed and he returned to the old couple. The carpenter advises him to get  a job with the American army. He goes to the camp where he is given a chest X-ray to prove he has not tuberculosis. He is given cream to cure  sores on his face, and a  week later he is given a job in the kitchen where the cook gives him leftovers to take home. that keeps the old couple healthy. He later gets a better paying job being a servant to the officers. Now the old couple regard him as a miracle.  A youth askes him where the phonograph is hidden, he tells him and the next day it is stolen. He refuses the kickback for complicity.  The old women is pulling the plough till he gives them money that he has been saving  to buy an ox which is used to plough the fields or is rented out. The old women dies and he mourns her like his mother.

He has a problem with the teenager who demands that he join him and his gang as he is useful as he has learned English. He wants to leave to become a scholar in Seoul and he spoke to the army chaplain about his troubles.  The  old man says he owes him loyalty as he saved him. He visits the grave of he old women his real savior and the one who adopted him.  The carpenter gives him his blessing and he and the old man are with him to see him onto the train to go study in Seoul. He had saved up money to become a scholar like his father. 

Chaim Potok a rabbi was a  chaplain in the US army in Korea 

 

Isola by Allegra Goodman 2025 343pg.

A story of French early settlement in Canada and Christianity 6/6/25

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. 

The novel introduces Marguerite de la Rocque, a French noblewoman born in the 1500s. Orphaned in infancy, her inheritance was squandered by her guardian, Jean-Francois de la Rocque de Roberval. He had been the kings boyhood friend.  Damienne, an older woman with an unwavering moral compass. Accustomed to  privilege, redefine herself when stripped of all material comforts and societal expectations. Contrasting the guardian’s oppressive use of religion as a tool for fear and control. 

This book deals with religion, morality, women's rights ,cruelty. The author lives a tradition Jewish life and her other books are on Jewish subjects this book is different as it is on Christianity.

 Guard against anything that will anger God. Her mother died in her childbirth and her father died fighting for the king in Pavia 1521(battle between France and Italy.) She has her chateau and estates of Périgord. Her guardian controlled everything until she could marry at aged 15. She had 3 maids looking after her and the steward collected the rents from the tenants. Ecu's d'or (gold) or later Ecu d'argent (silver)minted during the reign of Louis IX of France, in 1266. She had a music master who taught her to play and a tutor to correct her reading writing to be able a lady.

 Jaqualine d'Artois and her daughter Claire. We are ruined when a father dies. Claire had no inheritance but had seen the world with her she shared clothes and reading, she regretted she had no sister. The guardian mortgaged the  house and the Montfort's merchants moved in. Because he had reversals. 

In Greek legend  Griselda obeyed without  complaint Hypsicratea who fought alongside her in battle. Zenobia the huntress. Camilla raised in the wilderness by her exiled father Deborah and  the Judge Dido .  Queen Julia was Caesar's daughter. 

She told Claire you are Reason your mother is Rectitude and Damieone can be Justice. Your guardian lost a kingdom in his ships. The Montfort's have no title or history but are rich enough to buy both. Artemista  the queen loved her husband Mausalus and when he died she build a great tomb afterwards called a mausoleum.

Her guardian threw her a bag of gold and was astonished that she caught it.

One of the children has a drawing with a arrow through a stags heart. She saw  Claire as Penelope working at her loom while suiters paced below as hungry curs. Nicholas was interested in Claire and brought them venison and partridges but he fell when his horse reared and got crushed and died. She gave Claire her mothers Jewel as a parting gift.

1539 -1542 Roberval sent trunks for them to pack and go to a house in La Rochelle. When he was not home the creditors were hammering at the door. The servants also had to wait for Robavals return to get their wages. Claire and Madame D' Artois, and Claire would now be employed by the Montfort's. 

By now she was 20 and no longer considered a good match. The House in Périgord had been sold and was her home no longer. He had sold her lands to fund his expedition trading her future for his own. She tried to send a  message to Claire as she did not want to go on the ships. The maid given the gold for this used it to buy  her trousseau and got married on this, but her guardian was handed this note. Provisions were being readied for the ships and colonists with families recruited, they were all debtors.

She and Damieone got on one of 3 ships to head to La Nuova Francia what Cartier had called Canada. The headed towards the St. Lawrence river supposed to be the northwest passage to the Indies.  Psalms of David to the Rhyme of Clement Marot. 1496-1544 was  friendly with the kings sister, but never the less supported the reformation. Her guardian wanted her to know these  by heart. Because he was a devout person?

 Roberval was going to be the Viceroy of New France and would propagate the Catholic faith.

 1542 at sea. You had children as young as nine working learning to be seamen. They were on Anne but he also rules Lechefraye and Valentine. These ships were her inheritance and she was the instrument of her own exile. Robaval wanted greatness. She heard the sailors stories of serpents cracking hulls like walnuts and great jawed fish swallowing ships whole. Mermaids on rocks and cannibals eating seamen. They dreaded the voyage outlasting supplies. They were joining Cartiers on the established colony.

There was a brawl on a sister ship and she had to watch the 4 men being hanged. The colonist wives did as well. On the ship she begins to get friendly with Robavals secretary who tells her his story that his father was a merchant and taught him to read, but ship sailed on sank on the way to Cadiz. Now his stepfather who had him apprenticed to a tanner died and Robavel supports him. She becomes intimate with the secretary Auguste Dupre and he calls her Marguerite. What would Robaval do if he found us together. "Kill me said Auguste". "Sinners will be dammed to hell whether on the ship or the New World , I will exile them as lepers." Weevils infested the flower and rats the seed. Birds are the first sign of land. and after 8 weeks they arrived.

They saw Jacques Cartier 3 ships sailing east. The French Colony had been named Charlesbourg Royal 1541 -1543 when it was abandoned. There they were besieged by the natives who murdered all that ventured out. 35 colonist had died this way and another 20 from sickness and starvation till Cartier abandoned the settlement. Robaval instructed them not to return to France but during  the night they cut their anchors and vanished.

Augusta drew a sword against Robaval, he was tied up. She Auguste and Damieone were abandoned on an island with vegetation rather the pure granite ones they passed . The island trees were stunted but they found a nesting place for big birds and shot one, with his arquebus now they knew they had a source of food, in summer.

She felt she had to contribute and she tried to grow the seeds they brought and watered and nurtured the the plants but Damieone had warned her that the soil was too thin and just when she thought she had success the plants died.

Here they could live freely but with such uncertainty, Robaval had given them what they wanted most he gave them time, and eternity. When Augusta went to shoot a bird she went to collect eggs from their nests.

 Legendry Queen Zenovia left her palace armed with a sword and spear, while Princess Camilla grew up hunting. They fished and caught cod. Seagrass Damieone laid out to dry it became a tasty herb. The music instruments with them had warped and could not be played.

Before winter they found a narrow entrance to a granite cave. She was pregnant and dreamed of her son becoming a prince. The birds migrated away and with winter came snow and a white fox, an omen. You could walk across the ice to leave the island. Augusta became ill and died and they put him into an empty  trunk and covered it. A white bear  came and dug up the trunk and was devouring the body. She shot the bear and Damieone skinned it as a blanket and they ate the  bear but what was left was picked clean by other creatures. The hoped to kill creatures that came across the ice. A deer followed by 6 wolves but it ran away across the sea.

Her finger was thin  so that she lost Claire's ring. She gave birth to a healthy son but her milk did not come as she was starving. She used the afterbirth as bait to fish for cod in a hole in the ice. The baby died and no scripture could comfort her. Damieone cut her hand badly while cleaning a fish and she had to look after and provide for  her like she had been looked after by Damieone. Damieone told her that she had come to look after her. After Damieone's mother had died her family could not feed her on the farm. Robaval 3 vessels passed but ignored her signals he was sailing home after 1 winter. She felt he had cast her off as a thief might throw away a key.

Her ammunition would only last the season.

Damieone died of sepsis,  quietly she had been blameless for the isolation. Her body was put in the 3rd trunk and a cairn on stones was build on it. Margarita had never been alone in her life. A bear came into the cave entrance but could not fit in, and she shot it. The story of Lazarus moving the stone from the cave.

She finds Claire's ring in the cave. She sees 2 small vessels in the bay, open and with no flag, but a net and silver fish. They cleaned hundreds of cod and dried them in the sun. She discovers they are Basque fishermen and one of them can speak a plausible French from Navarre, on the French border. When they first saw her they thought she was a witch but she proved to them that she was a Christian as she repeated "Hail Mary full of grace in Latin" and she had a Royal token M for Margarita. She brought the jewels, coins , pearls secured in her pocket. She brought the picture of the lady to protect them, and watched her isle. prison, secret kingdom slip away. She slept with a knife from fear of the sailors. A storm came up and washed away half their stock of fish   as well as the virgin, rosary and new testament. They survived but their sister ship had vanished and they had to find there way , as they had been driven off course. The seaman had lost their comrades and the expedition had not paid. They met up with another larger Basque ship that had been whaling and had oil, teeth and ambergris.

The arrived at La  Rochelle and she went to the house of Jean Alfonse, her friend the navigator, but  her clothes were rags, they chased her away. In any case he was abroad. She slept in  the Cathedral till they were thrown out in the morning when she discovered she was not alone. She managed to get other cleaner used clothes and started walking to Périgord  and met with other pilgrims on the way the Camino de Santiago. When she got to the house there she pressed Claire's ring into her hand." Where did you get that? You gave it to me" I am disreputable now and have no claim on this house but charity. The Montfort's now owned the house, they had bought property and nobility. The Lady Montfort  was with the Kings sister in Bearn (in the Pyrenees)while her guardian was with the king.

Everyone knew about Charlesbourg Royal on the Isle of Canada, they had also heard of Cartier's winter there.

Marguerite had kept the bears claw  a trophy from the battle to show as everyone wanted to hear about how she dealt with the bear.

  Robaval wanted a word with her but she refused to talk to him. There was a feast for the arrival of the Queen but she could not eat any of it. She described how she survived with the Basque fishermen.

Claire would have been happy to go into a religious order but the  Queen gave Margarita  and bag of gold to set up a school for orphan girls and they 2 would go do this together.