by Rita Woods
“To sweeten the drink of the blancs,” she muttered.
She moved quickly down the deserted rows. Her sons had probably worn old Edynelle to the bone. The ancient slave woman had been freed in her old age by Monsieur Rousse to spend her final days gumming sugar cane and rocking on a low stool in the shade. She was supposed to watch over the ones too little to go out to the coffee groves and cane fields, but mostly she either ignored the children or screamed curses at them with words no one understood.
The last time Abigail had left the twins with Edynelle, she’d come back to find the boys taunting the old woman after having tied her stool up in the branches of a guava tree.
Maybe the fires had been nothing. Maybe it’d simply been another blanc clearing the forest to grow more coffee or rice or whatever it was these ghost men wanted next for their fancy tables across the water. Or maybe it had been one of their warehouses used to store gunpowder. She sniffed at the air. There was only the scent from the frangipani trees that stood at the edge of the big house.
An image of Hercule, his eyes black and dull, flashed through her mind, and for a moment she saw him running through the thick smoke around Cap-Français, head back, teeth bared. Like a zombi, one of the soulless dead. She crossed herself.
Non.
That was not her Hercule. He would not have joined the maroons. Left their sons. Left her.
She straightened and moved quickly through the quarter where the cook fires still burned, lighting the doors of the squat mud-and-palm-leaf huts. The boys would have eaten by now. Someone, not likely Edynelle, would have given them something, but if she didn’t hurry, she was afraid that she might find it was the old woman herself lashed to the guava tree this time. The thought made her smile.
“Manman!”
Two small figures detached themselves from the shadows and ran to her. Henri and Claude flung their arms around her knees, nearly bringing her to the ground. They were dirty and scratched, their dark hair white with dust.
“Look at you two,” she clucked. “Like wild animals.”
Claude released her and dropped to his hands and knees, snorting like a pig.
Abigail sucked her teeth. “Arret! Stop that, child.” But she laughed, hugging Henri tighter to her side.
“We fed the wild things,” called one of the women from the door of her hut. Edynelle was nowhere to be seen.
“Mèsi,” said Abigail. “Vini, boys. It is late.”
She gathered her sons to her, relishing their warmth, their sweaty boy smell, and bundled them toward their hut.
* * *
The sun had not yet cleared the horizon and already the air was thick and wet. Up and down the quarter, the slaves were beginning to stir. Abigail stretched, moaning softly, her body reminding her of her tumble on the mountain the night before.
Her eyes burned. The night had been filled with bad spirits. They’d ridden her back, scratching at her eyes, pulling her hair. When they’d tried to whisper evil words in her ears, she’d shaken them off and refused to hear, but the effort had worn her down. And now the day was set to begin and she’d barely slept.
Abigail splashed water on her face from the jug by the door and sighed. The boys were still sleeping. She poked at the coals of the cook fire and unearthed three ears of corn that had roasted in the cocoon of heat through the night. Stoking up the fire to brew coffee, she poured water into a tin cup before tucking back into the hut.
“Bonjou, petits,” she whispered. “It is morning.”
She smiled. Her sons were splayed across their straw mattress like spiders, arms and legs tangled.
“Wake now. Wake.” She dipped her fingers in the cup and sprinkled water across their dark brown faces, so like their father’s. Both boys stirred but neither opened their eyes.
“Up, you lazy creatures.” She pretended not to see Claude’s grin as she leaned and planted kisses on their eyelids, the tips of their noses. Eyes still closed, they began to giggle, squirming like frogs in her embrace. When Claude could stand it no longer, he leaped from the mattress.
“We are not lazy, Manman,” he cried, hopping from foot to foot. “See? We are awake.”
Henri, content as usual to let his brother speak for them both, reached up one warm hand to stroke her face. She turned her head and kissed his palm.
“Eat,” she said and handed them each an ear of steaming corn. “Then go find Mama Edynelle.”
At five, they were old enough to begin working the coffee, but Monsieur Rousse had not yet sent for them and Abigail was content to let them taste their freedom as long as they were able. It would be the only freedom they would ever know.
“Such a dirty thing,” she said, wiping Henri’s face with a damp rag. “You would follow your brother into…”
She stopped and sniffed at the air, trembling. Henri, who had been wiggling under her ministrations, froze. Even Claude stopped his bouncing and watched her warily. Something was coming. The bad spirits had come again and were whispering at her neck.
“Stay,” she commanded her sons. She stepped from the hut.
Abigail smelled the coffee brewing on the cook fire, ready for the boys to drink before they were sent to Edynelle, but she made no move to take it from the coals.
A man was crossing the grass from the big house. She squinted, trying to see, but the sun was at his back and his features were lost in the brightness. Behind her, the boys jostled each other in the doorway. She ignored them.
The man stepped from the glare of the sun and her heart thudded in her chest. A white man in the quarter usually meant trouble.
“Bonjour,” he said.
It was Monsieur Dreyfus, the master’s friend from Gonaïves.
Abigail bobbed her head and dipped slightly, a simulation of a curtsy.
“Bonjou, Mét,” she said, returning his greeting in Creole.
André Dreyfus was a small man, slight, with hair the color of dry grass. He was a Jew. It was what all the other blancs said when they spoke of him: Il est un juif.
Abigail didn’t know what a Jew was. To her, he seemed not much different than any of the other blancs. His clothes were a bit shabbier, his skin less sun-reddened, but perhaps that was because he lived in the city and didn’t work the land like the other blancs. Abigail thought that perhaps a Jew was a white man that owned no land, but Hercule told her once that it had something to do with the gods they worshipped.
She watched him, wary. The few times he’d spoken to her, he’d aimed the words at her face and not to the air behind her. And he seemed more interested in Monsieur Rousse’s whiskey and books than in the slaves of Far Water. But whatever else he was, he was still a blanc.
“Vous êtes Abigail, oui?” The little man’s pale face was sweaty and splotched with red.
“Wi.”
“The mistress wishes to see you.”
Abigail nodded and turned to her boys, who were trying to peek around her skirts at the white man. Dreyfus smiled and wiggled his fingers at them.
“Bonjour, young sirs,” he said.
The twins stared, openmouthed, and Abigail pinched them both hard on their necks until they bowed.
“Bonjou, Mét,” they said in unison.
“Go now,” said their mother. “Go to Mama Edynelle. And mind yourselves.” She turned to follow André Dreyfus back across the lawn to the big house.
“Your boys are lovely,” said Dreyfus.
“Mèsi,” murmured Abigail. She clenched and unclenched her hands, trying to slow her thoughts. She had been in the big house many times before. She had a way with roots, a feel for healing, and the mistress often sent for her, especially these past few months. But never before had a white man been sent to the quarter to find her. What could this mean? The bad spirits whispered all around her.
The big house of Far Water was not as grand as some. Abigail had been to Monsieur Quennelle’s estate twice with Hercule, and his home dwarfed the Rousses’. But her master’s house was bright and airy. Low
-slung and perched on a hill overlooking a valley, it had a broad porch and tall windows to catch the breezes that found their way down the mountain. The windows had no glass, but rather louvered shutters to keep out bugs and let in air.
When they reached the porch, André Dreyfus climbed the steps, but Abigail hung back. Slaves didn’t enter through the front door. The white man turned.
“Abigail?”
When she didn’t move, Dreyfus came back down the stairs and touched her shoulder. “Come, the mistress is waiting.”
Reluctantly, she followed him into the house, across the cool mahogany floors and into the small parlor near the back of the house.
“Ninette?” said the white man. “I have her here.”
Ninette Rousse turned from the window.
“Shall I stay?”
The white woman seemed to think this over, then shook her head. “No, but … I may need you later.”
Dreyfus nodded then left the room, softly pulling the door closed behind him. For a long moment, her mistress didn’t speak. Abigail stared down at her bare feet, instinctively moving away from the large clock that hung over the fireless hearth. She mistrusted clocks. They seemed an unnatural way to track the passage of time. And they did odd things when she was around. The mechanisms inside whirred and broke, the tiny pieces spewing into the air. The little hands ran backward or stopped moving altogether.
She heard her mistress moving around the room but didn’t raise her head. Her heart beat hard in her chest. It was not like the mistress to be so quiet.
“Abigail.”
Abigail looked up. Ninette Rousse had perched on the edge of the chair nearest the hearth. The slave looked away quickly, biting her lip to hold back a nervous laugh. Short and round by nature, the white woman was now also heavily pregnant, looking like a ripe fruit about to burst.
“Metréss?” Abigail exhaled sharply through her nose, blowing the laugh away.
Madame Rousse said nothing and Abigail looked up again. The white woman was pulling nervously at the lace cuff of her sleeve.
“You are well, Madame? The baby is well?” It was a breach for her, a slave, to speak first, but Abigail thought she might begin to scream if the silence wasn’t broken.
The corners of her mistress’s mouth turned up. “It is fine. We are fine. Thanks to you.”
Abigail bobbed her head then looked away again.
The mistress had come to Saint-Domingue from a small village north of Paris to marry her husband not long after Abigail arrived at Far Water. Barely out of her teens, wide-eyed and cheerful, Ninette Rousse had taken an inexplicable liking to the sullen slave girl. Abigail suspected she’d been lonely, the only white woman for miles. And they were close in age. She’d taught Abigail French, brought her into the grand kay to work in the kitchen instead of the coffee groves. And it was she who’d introduced her to Hercule. She’d also been the one to discover that Abigail knew the ways of curing sickness. It was after she’d lost her babies—one to fever, another dead before it had even drawn a breath—that she’d come to Abigail and begged for her help.
“Please,” the white woman said now. “Sit.”
Abigail’s head snapped up in surprise. She glanced at the chair nearest her, then at her mistress and shook her head.
“Non, Metrés.”
“I need you to sit, Abigail.” Madame’s voice sliced through the thick air, sharp as a cane knife, and Abigail started. Her mistress had never raised her voice to her, never spoken a word in anger.
“Please.” Madame Rousse’s voice was soft again, but her face was flushed and she was trembling.
The edges of the room went soft and her mistress seemed to blur. For a moment, Abigail sensed something else in the room with them: something angry and dark.
“Abigail?”
Her mistress gripped the arms of her chair and stared at her. Abigail ducked her head and shuffled to the chair. She gazed at it for a moment. The red swirls of fabric on the cushions were like the inside of a mouth and she felt her stomach turn. Swallowing hard, she balanced her hips stiffly on the chair’s edge.
The white woman didn’t meet her eyes. She gazed instead at the hearth, frowning as she ran a hand over her pregnant belly.
“Mistress?”
Ninette Rousse raised her eyes and Abigail rocked back. It was here, in this room. The bad thing. The thing that had haunted her dream, the thing she had felt licking at her neck all morning.
“Bondye,” she whispered, leaping to her feet.
“Name it.” Her voice was harsh, strangled. “Name it.”
“What?” Her mistress quivered on the edge of her chair. “What do you mean?”
“There is evil here. Death.” Abigail could barely get the words around the knot that had formed in her throat. “Say its name.”
The white woman made a noise but no words came out.
Abigail had a horrible thought. “You have sold me away. Me … or my children.”
“What? Never…”
The spark of relief that flared in Abigail’s stomach was short-lived. She held her breath and waited.
“They…,” began Madame Rousse. She stopped and her blue eyes filled with tears.
Abigail said nothing.
“They have found Hercule.”
Abigail staggered backward, sitting hard when her knees found the chair. Eyes closed, she rocked back and forth.
Thank you, God. Thank you, Legba. Thank the saints.
Her body shook with joy. She would go to him. Surely the mistress would let her. She wouldn’t have given her this news only to keep them apart. She would …
It took her a moment to hear the silence that filled the room. Abigail opened her eyes. Ninette Rousse had risen and was standing in front of her, so close that the fabric of her gown puddled around Abigail’s bare feet.
She bent as much as she was able and clasped the slave girl’s hands in her own. “Oh, Abigail, I am so sorry.”
Tears ran down her round face and Abigail jerked, confused. She tried to pull her hands free but the white woman held on.
Sorry?
“He was with a band of maroons that attacked a garrison near Trou-du-Nord.”
Abigail shook her head. What was the mistress telling her? She didn’t know that place.
“They had weapons. They burned several rice plantations, killed the owners, their families, even the dogs. Marcel Quennelle has gone to bring Hercule back. To punish him himself.”
“Manti! It is not true.” She wanted to cover her ears, to make the words stop, but her mistress’s tiny hands had suddenly become like the mouth of a snapping turtle, trapping her, as the terrible words rained down on her head.
“He is to be made an example,” said her mistress, the words barely audible. “I wanted you to know. I thought you should hear it from me.”
“I will go to him,” whispered Abigail. The world had gone soft and fuzzy again. She was in the parlor, her mistress standing in front of her, her rosewater perfume floating in the air. But she was also in the quarter, the dirt warm under her feet, the coffee scorched now. She needed to take it from the flame. Her head throbbed.
“You will not,” snapped her mistress.
Abigail was jolted back as if slapped. Madame Rousse still gripped her hands but she wore an expression Abigail had never seen before.
“You will not,” she repeated. “Hercule … Hercule has done a terrible thing. I can barely believe it myself. He…”
She shook her head and went on, her expression softer. “And it will be the most terrible thing to see. You would not want … Quennelle is a hard man, brutal. It will be terrible, Abigail.”
Abigail had stopped listening. She wanted the white woman to move. She would go to Hercule and nothing—not this woman who had always been kind to her, not that bata Quennelle—would stand in her way.
She stared up at her mistress and a black void opened inside her. Inside that dark place, she could see her hands around Madame’s
throat, could actually feel the warmth of her mistress’s breath against her wrist as she strangled the life from her.
Ninette Rousse fell silent and loosened her grip on the slave girl. Abigail dropped her eyes to her mistress’s pregnant belly and leaned forward slightly. It was a boy, this baby, she knew that as surely as if the baby already rocked in her arms. She could see him curled there under his mother’s heart. He would have his mother’s red hair and fair skin, his father’s slim build. She felt the baby’s heat, a small furnace in the womb, its heart thrumming quickly.
But she felt cold, as if she had just clawed her way from the grave. The spirits had followed her to this room. They whispered in her ear, waiting for her to acknowledge them. She ground her teeth. If the mistress did not release her, she would call their name. They would speak through her mouth, see through her eyes. And she would let them stroke the fine, golden red hair of the unborn Rousse. She locked eyes with her mistress and Ninette Rousse swallowed hard—Abigail could see her throat working—and stepped away.
The slave girl rose and began to walk toward the door.
I will go to him and they will not stop me. They cannot stop me.
Halfway across the room the floor seemed to buckle and a sickness filled her. She fell to the floor.
“Hercule!”
9
Abigail gripped the straw saddle. It would have been easier on foot, but the mistress had insisted that she ride the donkey. The slave girl stared at her mistress’s back. Ahead of her, Ninette Rousse sat awkwardly astride the back of a spotted mare. She was a poor horseman in the best of times, and now, heavily pregnant, slogging downhill through thick vegetation, she rolled side to side in the saddle like a pea in a bottle.
Abigail had come to on the floor of the little parlor, Dreyfus and her mistress leaning over her, her mistress so close she could see the vein pulsing beneath her eye.
“We leave for Quennelle’s immediately,” was all she said.
