Mistress of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  There was no escaping the pair of them, for Hodges was as lonely as if there had been no other plantation on the island. Their fellow planters seemed to shun the present owners, and even the overseers seldom came up to the Great House for a meal or a convivial evening; Gislane could not help but remember the often crowded dining-room during the lifetime of her father.

  She longed for the sight of a strange, and perhaps a friendly face, for the return of Dr. Nisbet and his pretty young wife. She was isolated in a desert of hatred, resentment, and contempt. There was no point of contact with Charles and Eunice, even if she knew their dislike was mainly directed against her mother, merely for being William Hodge's mistress and thereby raised above them. They seized the opportunity to do as little work as possible, and to make sure she did as much; they discussed her and the Hodges in front of her, and took pleasure in reminding her that she had seen nothing yet, that when that Janet, as they called her, got herself worked up, then she would know what had hit her. They made sure she received the very scrapings of their already meagre ration of food, and that she served them before eating herself. Did she make the slightest mistake in her allotted task they cuffed her about the ear and if she lay down at night, from sheer exhaustion, before the last of them, they kicked her until she got up again. She was terrified that they would do more, her anguish centring in the obvious desire of Henry the footman. She realized that to be jointly assaulted by these four, after a long hour with Hodge, would be to snap the very slender links that contained her sanity, and wondered whether that might not after all be a good thing. Because if the Hiltons were on their way to rescue her, surely they should have been here by now. And then she remembered she had herself only been here a week; the thought of the dominant figure of Robert Hilton riding triumphantly up that driveway, Matt at his side, accompanied by the wealth and power of the Hilton name, brought a continuing revival of courage and determination. She would live, and she would remain in full possession of her sanity, for that glorious day.

  Hope and hatred. There was a strange combination. She even tried extending her hatred to the Negroes who tormented her, but found this difficult, to her surprise. Perhaps they did not possess sufficient personality, as yet. Perhaps she had to be brought into active contact with someone to hate him, or her. She was more aware of a sense of rejection by them, than of contact. She lived with them, and they ill-treated her as the fancy took them, but she was not of them.

  Their minds were withdrawn behind an impenetrable black wall of knowledge and memory, and, she was sure, of anticipation. She could not forget Eunice's words on her first day, that she must live for the night. This had been the most terrifying thought of all, in the beginning, that she would be alone with them, at night, in this small and noisome room, at the mercy of whatever monstrous desire might overtake them. Yet throughout this week they had done no more than sleep.

  Until tonight. Gislane strained her ears in the darkness, and heard nothing. And this was the strangest thing of all, because all four of them snored and tossed in their sleep. But the room was silent as a grave, and for that reason suddenly more terrifying than ever.

  And then she realized that there was, after all, sound. The steady, distant throb of a drum. Or perhaps there was more than one, seething across the night, in their incessant rhythm dulling the senses, but beckoning at the same time. Come to me, come to me, come to me. Or flee from me, flee from me, flee from me. Indeed perhaps that was it. Perhaps the French were landing, and the drumbeat was summoning the men to arms, the women and children to retreat into the hills.

  She scrambled to her feet, went to the door, opened it a crack and listened. The house was silent. So was the yard beyond, and the village. There was no hurrying and scurrying such as might have occurred were an enemy really about to destroy the plantation. And the night was dark; there was no moon, and thus no shafts of light to alternate shadow and brilliance. And still; there was no wind to interfere with the endless throbbing of the drum.

  She discovered her heart was pounding and sweat was gathering on her neck. The drum was obliterating her senses, driving the ache from her arms and back, the terror from her mind. She tiptoed to the stairs, crept up them into the hall of the house, and thence to the side door, which stood, amazingly, ajar. She went on to the verandah, scarcely less close than the house, suggesting a thunderstorm might be gathering in the mountain valleys. And still there was no sound above the throb. No sound, and no movement.

  Until she realized she was wrong. There was indeed movement. As she stared down the drive she saw white-clad figures, leaving the slave village and disappearing into the fringe of trees which lay beyond the road.

  Without quite realizing what she was doing, she found herself tucking her hair up in a bundle on top of her head, swathing the whole in the white turban. She wore a white gown, as did the other women. And the night was black. Only the white of their garments could be discerned. And the drum was summoning her, more and more incessantly.

  Her bare feet scuffled the dust of the drive; she skirted the overseers' houses, dark and silent, and reached the back of the village, heart still pounding, afraid, but determined. This was surely the night of which Eunice had spoken, the occasion for which the slaves preserved their lives and their sanities. And she was not less of a slave than them, not less in need of preservation. Thus rationality. But there was a more compelling urge than that. The throb of the drum caressed her mind, reached her belly and beyond, demanding, urging, calling. It possessed a power strangely reminiscent of the gaze, and the touch, of Dinshad.

  She passed the slave village, and discovered herself behind a white-clad figure, moving slowly into the trees. She took her place in the column. Now the darkness increased, as they entered the shade of the huge branches, and twisted vines snatched at her feet, together with scurrying lizards and the thousand and one rustlings that made up the night in the tropical forest. She felt no fear. She had explored these woods often enough as a girl, and knew that the most vicious creatures in them were stinging ants. But even had she been afraid, she could not now have resisted the beat of the drums.

  The trees were parting again, and the white-clad figures were moving to their right round a clearing. And here there was light, provided by emptied coconut shells, cut in half and filled with oil, to burn with an eerie glow, guttering even in the windless night. And here too there were six fowl cocks, tethered by their legs to sticks, eyes darting to and fro, heads jerking at the stealthy sound around them. For the moment they occupied the clearing alone; but surrounding them were people, kneeling and crouching in the tree fringe, men and women, and even children. Gislane knelt, well to the back of the throng, to stare at the flames and the cocks, and identifying, in the gloom beyond the helpless birds, the shape of the rada drummers, three of them, each commanding a different-sized instrument, each sending forth a different note, over and over again, echoing through the trees, and up and down the mountain.

  She was one of the last to arrive. Only a handful of white-gowned figures came behind her, to take their places in the silent assembly. She wondered how many there were altogether; not less than a hundred, she thought, or perhaps even more. She wondered if there were a hundred slaves on Hodges.

  Her attention was caught by the flickering lights in front of her, because the frightened fowl cocks were no longer alone; beside them had appeared a woman, tall and strongly built, and wearing a red gown instead of a white, with a red turban on her head. She moved to the rhythm of the drums, slowly and sinuously, and she threw her arms to the heavens, and called upon the great Damballah Oueddo, the Serpent, ruler of all things, and upon Agone, the master of the sea, and upon Ogoun Badagris, the Dreadful One, who would soon be coming to lead his people to war. And as she prayed to the God of War, she seized one of the cocks, and with a twist of her powerful hands tore his head from his neck.

  There was a shriek from the people around Gislane, and they surged forward, carrying her with them, holding up their
hands to catch the flying blood, reaching for the quivering body to grasp it and shred it into pieces, cramming raw flesh and blood and bone into their mouths, seizing the other birds to destroy them in turn. And as they did so, the beat of the drums changed, slightly and perhaps insensibly to all but a careful listener, but the rhythm had increased, and the slaves danced, sinuously and even gracefully at first, but rapidly becoming more vigorous and forceful, while the drumbeat gradually quickened its tempo even more. Now passion and desire and hate and fear came bubbling to the surface and turbans and gowns, cotton drawers and straw hats were discarded, flung to the edges of the clearing. Sweat flew, and the panting cries of the dancers began to surge above the drumbeat, until the noise stopped entirely without warning.

  Gislane found herself alone, as the slaves shrank away from her. They had not observed her, had ignored her, in the rush to share the dismembered cocks. They had not noticed her in the beginning of the dance. But now she stood, as naked as they, nipples pointed and belly throbbing with aroused sexuality, body dripping sweat, long midnight hair clouding around her face and shoulders as she swirled with them, and now they had noticed her. She also stopped dancing, and waited helplessly; she could not remember discarding her clothing, she could not remember beginning the dance. But she could still taste the piece of warm, blood-dripping flesh which had been thrust into her mouth.

  She stared at them, uncertain what to do, unable to decide on shame or ecstasy, ecstasy or fear, and the drum began again, slowly now, but always quickening. From the darkness around her there came a man, twisting and bending, bowing and stretching, smiling and frowning, posturing to thrust his towering penis towards her, pushing his belly forward to caress hers, withdrawing it from her, moving his shoulders and arms in time to the rhythm. As was she, again. The touch of his body sent shivers running up and down her spine, rippling across her shoulders. It recalled the occasional emotion, the occasional desire, she had felt when standing in front of her mirror in London. But that had been a different woman, in a different world. Here she had entered a world of darkness, to which she undoubtedly belonged, and which was now stretching out eager hands to welcome her. It was a world to which she had first been introduced by Dinshad, on the deck of the Antelope, and which perhaps she had not even understood. But now she understood. Dinshad was coming to claim her, and Dinshad would make her once again aware, strip away the cocoon of insensitivity which she had deliberately draped around her to protect her mind from the enormities committed on her body.

  She reached for him, felt his hands on her ribs as he brought her against him. But Dinshad was a hundred, perhaps a thousand miles away, by now. Perhaps he was dead.

  The man holding her against his throbbing belly, she realized with a strange shock of mingled horror and delight, was Charles the butler.

  The night had been still; the morning was even more stagnant of movement or sound. By nine o'clock the heat was oppressive, and the great thunder clouds gathered around the peak of Mount Nevis. And nothing had changed; the slave gangs had trooped to the canefields at dawn, the house servants had gone about their duties. Gislane had been awakened from a deep sleep by Eunice's invariable kick on the thigh, and now, on her hands and knees, white gown pulled up to her thighs, she scrubbed the front verandah, chasing columns of ants across the scuffed, unpolished wood. Last night was no more than a dream, could be no more than a dream.

  Certainly Charles had given her no more than a glance this morning as he had prepared to serve coffee to his master and mistress. No ecstasy there. But she could remember every second of it; she could remember every thrust of his member, she could remember screaming with pleasure and desire as she had been overtaken by orgasm after shuddering orgasm; she could remember dancing without touching the ground at all, her legs wrapped around his spindly thighs. She could remember.

  Therefore, so could he, and so could everyone. She had attempted to ask Eunice, what it had all been about, why, and how, and when. Oh, especially when. And Eunice stared at her.

  'But you were there, Eunice,' she had insisted. 'I saw you there.'

  'You done have one nightmare, child,' Eunice said. 'There wasn't nobody there. You done walk while you sleeping. And you going dream so, because the great god Damballah done enter into you.'

  So she had understood. 'But when, Eunice?' she begged. 'When again?'

  ‘I ain't got no power over your dreams, child,' Eunice said. 'Maybe you got for wait until you hear the drum in your head. Then is the time for dreaming.'

  When, when, when? And why, why, why? Not just release, surely. Not just animal passion. There had to be more to it than that, else was she damned forever. But it was the animal passion that she craved, the touch of Charlie's hand, the thrust of Charlie's weapon. Charlie? Her head jerked, and gazed at him as he passed her. He was probably the ugliest man she had ever seen, entirely lacking in nobility or youth or even muscular development. But last night he had been young and noble and enormously strong. Last night, like her, he had been dreaming.

  To what end? This was what she must discover. Because surely, where more than a hundred people, all of whom must carry the bitterest of sentiments in their hearts, assembled to share a dream, the dream must have to do with revenge, with the blood which had flown around their faces, with the determination to achieve their own salvation, here on earth.

  The slash of the riding-crop across her shoulders made her shriek with mingled anger and pain, and she turned, on her knees, wet cloth clutched in her fist like a stone.

  'Dreaming, girl?' Janet Hodge demanded. 'You'll be telling me next you followed the sound of the drum.'

  Gislane stared at her in horror, and her mouth fell open. But she stared past her mistress at Eunice, and the expression on Eunice's face, and hastily closed her mouth again and began to scrub. No dream. No dream. Janet Hodge had also awakened to the drumbeat. And gone back to sleep? But then, surely, every white person on Nevis had heard that drumbeat. And turned over, pillow pressed across their ears.

  'I spoke to you, girl,' Janet Hodge said, her voice brittle. 'Did you follow the drum?'

  ‘I heard no drum, mistress,' Gislane muttered.

  'Wretch,' Janet Hodge screamed. 'Foul whore. Nigger bitch.' She seized Gislane by the hair and dragged her across the verandah. 'You heard the drum. You followed it. You prostituted yourself before it. You drank blood and swore death to all white people. Tell me, or I'll tear your heart out.'

  Gislane gasped for breath; she felt as if her entire scalp was being ripped from her head. ‘I heard no drum,' she screamed. 'I heard no drum.'

  'Manton,' shouted Janet Hodge. 'Brenner. Take this nigger bitch and string her up. She followed the drum, and she'll not speak of it. Flog her until she confesses. Flog her until the flesh leaves her bones. Make her howl.'

  The fingers left Gislane's hair, and her face bumped on the floor; she tasted blood. But now she was surrounded by the booted feet of the overseers, and hands were seizing her arms to drag her to her feet. Yet Manton was prepared to protest. 'We all heard the drum, Mistress Hodge. And maybe she did follow it. But she'll not say so. You know that, Mistress Hodge. The niggers would tear her into pieces if she said so. She'd no doubt rather die.'

  'Then let her die,' Janet Hodge yelled. 'Flog her to death, by God. I want to sec her bones. I want to hear her scream. I want to hear her beg, for my mercy. I want to see her heart, by Christ. Lay it bare for me.'

  Gislane's mouth sagged open. 'Oh, God,' she gasped. 'Oh, God.' She twisted her head to look at Eunice, and Eunice looked back, her face expressionless. Instead she found herself staring at Manton, his unshaven chin the picture of irresolution. But his companion, Brenner, was already dragging her towards the steps. 'Oh, God,' she gasped. 'Oh, God,' she screamed. 'Please. You cannot, mistress. I'll beg you, mistress. You cannot. Please.'

  The overseers stopped, their fingers biting into her arms, and Janet Hodge came closer, smiling, thin lips drawn back from the white teeth. 'Then tell me, child.
You heard the drum. You followed the drum. Tell me where. Show me the place. Show me who was there with you, child. I'll protect you from them.'

  Gislane stared at her, and past her at Eunice. And beside Eunice, as if materialized from nowhere but undoubtedly summoned by her screams, Charlie, ugly face expressionless, staring at her. 'Oh, God,' she whispered, and felt her knees give way. 'I heard no drum.'

  Janet Hodge's hand slashed across her face, and her head jerked. Again she tasted blood, licked it from her lips. 'Flog her,' Janet said. 'I want her skin hung out in strips to dry in the sun.'

  Gislane closed her eyes. She could only think, Oh, God.

  Oh, God. But then she thought, Oh, Damballah Oueddo. Oh, mighty serpent, rise up from the ground and strike these people down. Allow me to live. Oh, God, allow me to live, until the Hiltons come for me.

  She felt the sun on her back, and knew that they had removed her gown. Now she was between the uprights, and her arms were being extended above her head, and tied to the wood. And for a moment she stood there, in the heat and quiet, her eyes shut tight, her whole being filled with the pounding of her heart. 'Oh, God', she whispered. 'Just let me stay here, oh, God. Let me stay here.'

  Hooves, and voices. 'You'll not flog her, Janet,' Hodge said.

  'The bitch will not admit she followed the drum,' Janet Hodge declared.