Cadoville (unfinished)

Chapter IV

Days ticked down to my new beginning in New Orleans, leaving an old life under my bed and an explosion within the timbers of uncle Stefano's country house.... I was taking my scars with me of course, but they'd tidied themselves up a little over time. In a year, my burns would be birth marks – hopefully – and my missing eye would tell a spine-tingling tale that I had yet to invent. My new life in New Orleans was beginning to take shape in my mind, and I liked it. Soaking up the pulse-rattling cacophony of locals, animals and wagons trundling by from my desk in uncle Stefano's office, quill in hand, mulling over the figures, his staff speaking to me like a real colleague.... A fresh beginning in a city that didn't know me, or what had happened to me – the reins were now tightly in my hands....

Two trunks started to fill with what few belongings I had left. My family and I had arrived on the island with only the clothes we stood in and two chests of cash. I packed some underwear, shirts, a couple of dresses and some skirts, a handful of my mother's old jewellery including a locket on a chain which never left my neck, and a handful of my favourite books....

The first signs of bibliophilia surfaced after my Nonna read me Gulliver's Travels one summer in Venice – I was about five. I re-read the book twice (well, my favourite bits at least). Then my mother bought me Robinson Crusoe at a book market in Fribourg – I had picked it out myself. When I was a bit older, my tutor noticed I was a bit of an adventure-fan. He gave me the Iliad and The Odyssey. I read them one after the other. I also purchased the Divine Comedy and Don Quixote when we passed through Milan.... A good quest is contagious....

In the week we were due to leave, uncle Stefano went out to collect our emigration papers one afternoon, leaving me to carry on sorting and packing the paperwork in his study. Dusty work, sifting through chests of parchment and bundles of notepaper tied up with string, pausing every few minutes to sneeze, but equally exciting work – this time next month, I'd be working in a new office.... He had given me a list of what to keep and what to save as kindling and left me to clear a row of files and records lined up in a row along a cobweb-clouded shelf, high enough that I had to stand on a stool to reach – surely no one had looked at these in years....

The books beat a hollow thud whenever they knocked against the back panels – old ship timbers, most of Sainte-Marie having been built out of crippled vessels. While stripping the shelves, I had apparently knocked one of the panels loose and noticed something quite unexpected lurking behind it.... Four ledgers tied together with cord and surprisingly clean given where I had found them, not to mention the must-riddled books around them....

I reached in and pulled them out, each one scratched with a curious symbol – a pie or cheese wheel with a missing slice – they didn't corresponded to anything on my uncle's list.... They looked like logbooks or journals..., loose letters every few pages.... One ledger was nothing but blank pages toward the end, the most recent one judging by the dates.... One entry after the other tracked the to-and-from of cheese – single blocks of Gruyeres – on various ships to Bordeaux, among other places, then Paris. The last column noted the recipient's name, and one name practically leapt off the page and hit me in my only eye – Lyle Spice.

Dr Spice was our old family physician and friend in Paris. He and my father spent hours playing backgammon and chess in the study.... An Irish turncoat, who deserted and fought for France during the French and Indian War.... That's all I knew really, nothing that explained why he and my uncle Stefano had been exchanging wheels of Swiss cheese, and not only Dr Spice.... According to the ledger, uncle Stefano had been sending and receiving chunks of Gruyere from New Orleans and Vienna as well.

The letters were unusual too – brief and mysterious letters, like fragments of a jigsaw. Some told my uncle Stefano to expect cheese wheels and cargo, others were signed with first names only and brief details of when they would be coming and for how long.... Without any dates, it was impossible to put all the pieces together. Most were signed by the rather intriguing, Confrérie de Gruyères.... Then, one letter, quivering between my fingers, stood out above everything else I had discovered so far, a letter from my father to uncle Stefano...,