In partnership with Rocambole, the app for reading differently, we are offering a new episode of Tina Bartoli's literary soap L'Ancre Noire every day at 5 p.m.
Summary of season II (the summary of the first season is here):
In Corsica, Clémence is spotted by Octave, the other son of Jean De Saint Geores, accompanied by a man with a disturbing appearance. She manages to escape them and take a flight to the mainland. Direction Hyères, where she finds her ex-stepfather and her ex-stepmother, Daphne, suffering from Alzheimer's disease. While searching the archives of her missing husband, Clémence comes across correspondence from Estienne Lebel, shipowner of Espérance and first owner of the De Saint Geores manor. In the middle of the night, Daphne, caught in a dementia crisis, tries to assassinate her before fleeing by setting fire to the surrounding forest.
For his part, the eldest son of Jean De Saint Geores took refuge in the Czech Republic after a life of search for treasure which led him, in particular, to assist on August 8, 2008 to the sinking of L'Espérance, with on board Abel and his class. For years afterwards, he searched in vain for the trace of the wreckage of this ship, until, under investigation for an investigation of wreckage, he took refuge far from the sea. While he was walking in a village, he falls into a mysterious shop on a seller who orders him to go back to sea and gives him an old bible. Inside the binding, he too discovers part of Estienne Lebel's encrypted correspondence.
SEASON II, EPISODE 7 - Les Roissants
I was not mistaken: the César code had been used to write the coded correspondence. Deciphering them was child's play for me and what I discovered there left me speechless. It was indeed about a boat whose path I had already crossed: Hope . I had looked for it so much under the Caribbean Sea. She had kept all her mystery. And now, 10 years later, the mysterious frigate came back to haunt me.
My previous investigations had taught me that his owner had made a fortune in trade with the Indies thanks to his flourishing counter in Pondichery, run by his eldest daughter and her husband. Unfortunately, financial difficulties had arisen. Thinking he could absorb them by launching himself into the profitable trade of the time, the ebony, he had acquired a reformed frigate from the French army to make it a slave ship, the Hope . My research had led me to discover that the ship had been declared shipwrecked during a tropical storm on the night of May 8 to 9, 1788, in the Pass des Rugissants, near the south coast of Hispaniola, a stone's throw from Santo Domingo. It was also at this precise place that I had witnessed, helplessly, the sinking of his reply on August 8, 2008.
Today, through the ample and curly writing of a ship's captain named Franck Dupasquier, officiating in the 18th century on behalf of the owner Estienne Lebel, I had just understood that the history of Hope had been much more convoluted than what official documents had retained.
Indeed, during his first triangular voyage in the spring of 1787, Captain Dupasquier had been approached by smugglers who offered him gold bars stolen from the Hôtel de la Monnaie in Santo Domingo. The quantities were astronomical: more than 1,000 pounds of gold, divided into 80 ingots of 400 ounces each, the equivalent of 500 kg of pure and unmatted gold, extracted from the mines of new Spain, current Mexico. In exchange, the smugglers demanded Hope and its cargo of slaves.
In his coded letter dated June 15, 1787, Captain Dupasquier explained this traffic proposal as well as the technical modalities which he had thought of: during the next triangular voyage, he planned to declare to the authorities the sinking of Hope at the first storm , then buy discreetly, outside the official circuits, a smaller boat, with a limited crew for the return to Europe. To escape customs control, to compensate for a possible mutiny and to avoid the theft of gold during a possible pirate attack, Dupasquier referred in his mail to a stratagem that he preferred to hide to ensure the confidentiality of the plan. In return for this risky and dangerous service, he officially asked for the hand of Laure, the youngest daughter of Estienne Lebel.
I knew that the market had been accepted by the shipowner when deciphering the second coded letter, dated June 3, 1788, a year later: since the first letter in the spring of 1787, Dupasquier had had time to return to Europe, load a new cargo in Nantes, set course for the island of Gorée then head straight for Hispaniola. In this correspondence, the captain made a point of situation at Lebel's address: Hope had been declared sunk during the storm from May 8 to 9, 1788, the exchange of the ship and its cargo had gone well unrolled, the gold bars were safe, the new boat called "Laure" had been bought and its crew recruited. The captain was now waiting for favorable weather conditions to set sail for Europe.
The last sheet found in the old bible had been handwritten three days later, June 6, 1788: Dupasquier let Lebel know that he was sailing on board the "Laure" to Europe. He hoped to return to Nantes by the beginning of August. On the back of the sheet, I recognized the writing of Estienne Lebel: he had written, with a visibly trembling hand, a word and a date: "Shipwreck - 8.8.88".
This last correspondence confirmed that the treasure had indeed left Hispaniola at the beginning of the summer of 1788. The inscription on the back of the letter, however, suggested that this last crossing had had a tragic outcome.
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The exchange between these two men acts on me like a bomb: the discovery of the secret hidden in these letters resuscitated me. This intriguing discovery aroused my old reflexes as a seasoned archaeologist, as if the questions that remained unanswered were intended for me. I suddenly had the feeling that I had been chosen to end an adventure that started at the time of the great century of daring sailors. Yes, I acquired the conviction that my long sleep was coming to an end, that my tormented existence still had a purpose. The interrupted book was far from finished, Hope had come to get me. If there was one wreck that I still had to talk about, it was her.
Estienne Lebel and her Hope , August 8, Otaville and my father's manor. These coincidences suddenly seemed so obvious to me that, without further ado, I jumped on the first train towards the Vosges. Without nostalgia, but grateful, I left this discreet region of Moravia which had silently sheltered the secret of my existence; once again, I disappeared without a trace. Otaville called me, I had to find the cellar under the castle of my childhood to assess the anchors who slept there. These cast iron objects had so often ignited my childhood imagination! How many times had I played the reckless filibuster between the dark walls of this secret room? From there, no doubt, was born my vocation as an underwater archaeologist.
The long train journey seemed endless, my brain was running at full speed, I could not help feverishly scribbling hypotheses on my little notebook. The information gleaned from the coded letters allowed me to reconstruct the genesis of this thrilling adventure; it was as if Estienne Lebel had asked me, through these forgotten writings, to find the trace of her fabulous treasure.
Finally arrived at the De Saint Geores manor, I was annoyed in my reunion with Octave by the prying eye of a foreigner: it was my father's new "negro", as my brother explained to me. She was spying on us behind the door to the dining room, but she was interrupted by my father's unexpected arrival. At his approach, we all evaporated as if by magic. Under no circumstances did I want my father to know of my presence here. Octave installed me in the attic, and, as if I had been a clandestine prisoner, secretly fed me and provided me with the documents that I asked him to steal from the library. This is how I learned, by consulting the old grimoires of the castle, that Laure Lebel never married. Should I conclude that Captain Dupasquier had lost his life during the sinking of the "Laure"?
I had to consult the maritime archives to find out whether the sinking of a ship so named had been noted during the summer of 1788. But before I dove west, I absolutely wanted to go back to the cellar. Lighting the room with my flashlight, the skeletal silhouette of the anchors appeared. I was surprised to find that there were only half left. Where had the other four gone? However, the one I was looking for was still stored there, near the coal sacks. Hope - 1788. But when I took out my notebook to write down the details of my expertise, the door lock at the top of the stairs creaked, it slammed, then I guessed steps timidly down the steps. When the ceiling light spewed its livid light, I jumped towards the door dug in the wall and, quick as lightning, I swung on the other side, in the corridor which meandered in the bowels of the castle.
Too eager to discover what the maritime archives would reveal, I postponed my study of the anchor. But the registers did not tell me anything: no ship wrecked in the summer of 1788 was closely or remotely like my ghost ship. Appalled, I got lost in conjectures all the way back to the manor De Saint Geores. I knew that the ship had left Hispaniola on June 6, 1788 and that Laure Lebel had not married Captain Dupasquier. If the date on the back of the third letter actually corresponded to the sinking of the ship, it had to sink not far from the French coast, since a crossing of the Atlantic at the time took about two months. The question was: where had the boat sank, dragging its fabulous cargo down? Thereupon the registers had remained silent. It was not surprising in the end: the raft having been illegally acquired, the owner could not declare his loss, so it seemed logical that the shipwreck should not appear on any register. Caught in his own trap, Lebel had therefore lost everything: the most beautiful ship in his fleet, but also the nest egg of 500 kg of gold. The bankruptcy of his already bad society was then inevitable.
But while at last, I was approaching the De Saint Geores mansion, a luminous halo greeted me: through the ornate gates of the high portal, I discovered with fright that it was on fire. Amazed, I watched the flames of the pyre destroy the castle of my childhood for a moment. I realized then that once again my life was going to take a radical turn.
(…)
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