Corbeau smiled. 'Now really. Whenever two Hiltons get together there is a shouting competition.'
'She never wrote,' Georgiana shouted. 'Did she, Louis? Did she?'
'Of course she did,' Corbeau said. 'But I did not think you were always in a suitable frame of mind to read Sue's letters.'
'You kept them from her?' Sue asked. 'But...'
'You wretch,' Georgiana shouted, and burst into tears. 'Oh, you wretch. I'm a prisoner, you know, Sue. I could as well be wearing chains. I ... my God, I'll skin that nigger woman. What of my letters?'
'Why, Gislane delivered them to me, of course,' Corbeau said. 'But you have not met Gislane, Sue. I'm sure she is lurking in the hall. She is usually close to Georgiana.'
'Gislane?' Sue asked. 'Now there is a strange coincidence.'
Georgiana stopped crying and began to laugh.
'No coincidence,' Corbeau said. 'Gislane, come in here.'
There was a moment's hesitation, then the mustee stepped into the room.
'Mistress Suzanne Huys, Miss Gislane Nicholson,' Corbeau said.
Sue stared at the girl in consternation. 'Gislane Nicholson?' she whispered.
The mustee's face was as beautiful, as impassive, as a painting. Only the black eyes moved, from the woman in front of her to Corbeau, and then back again.
Corbeau smiled. 'Mistress Huys lives with Matthew Hilton,' he said. 'She will be his wife. One presumes.'
Gislane's lips parted, just a little, and then closed again.
Georgiana sent peal after peal of laughter racing to the ceiling. 'You'll have lots to talk about,' she shouted. 'Oh, lots.'
Sue had recovered her composure. 'I am sure we shall, Miss Nicholson,' she said. 'I look forward to it.' She glanced at Corbeau. 'Is she also a part of your establishment?'
'Of course.' He jerked his head. 'Now begone, both of you. I believe madame has something to reproach you with, Gislane. She has just discovered that you have been purloining her letters, instead of sending them on. Oh, she is very angry with you. Be careful you do not turn your back on her.'
'You ... you bastard,' Georgiana hissed.
'Come along, madame,' Gislane said.
Georgiana hesitated, looked from her husband to her sister, an expression of almost childlike humility on her face, and then turned and followed the mustee from the room. The footman placed the tray of goblets on a table, and also left, closing the door softly behind him.
'You have lots of time to talk with Georgy,' Corbeau said. 'For this evening I wish to enjoy you, all by myself.'
Once again he held out the punch.
'That girl,' Sue said. 'You keep her here, with Georgy? But do you not know...'
'Of course I do. That is what makes it so amusing. And they really get on very well. And so will you. You'd never met her, had you? She is lovely, don't you think? You are the only woman who can stand beside her. And you can tell her about Matt.'
Sue gazed at him, her desire melting into disgust. 'I think I shall leave,' she decided. 'It would be best, in the circumstances. But I should be very obliged if you would permit Georgy to visit me in Cap Francois. I imagine that even in her condition she could manage the journey, were the coach to travel slowly. And I am sure we have much to say to each other. Much that we have already said, perhaps, without being able to reach each other.'
Corbeau smiled at her. 'When you are angry, you are the most beautiful creature in the world. So tell me, my sweet. After you have had your chat with Georgy. What will you do?'
‘I shall return to Jamaica. I told you, Matt and Robert only wanted me out of the way while the trial was in progress.'
'And no doubt you will tell Matt and Robert everything that you have seen here?'
‘I have no doubt they will be interested,' Sue said.
'And what will they do then? Do you think Robert will come to St. Domingue, because my wife has turned into a lecherous, drunken cabbage? That is my misfortune. Oh, Robert might suppose that I was perhaps to blame. What then? Will he come here, pistol in hand? Robert is past fifty, Sue. I would kill him. Then what of Matt? Will he come here, seeking to regain his Gislane? Would you really want that to happen? Seeking to regain you? He shall, in time. And his children. But should he come uninvited, be sure I would kill him as well.'
She gazed at him, the coolness of her expression masking the tumult in her chest. ‘I wonder if you are quite sane,' she said. ‘I wonder if too many years of living like a king have not made you suppose you are a king.'
He raised his goblet to her. 'Then share my throne. At least for a while, Sue. If I am mad, it is at the sight of you again, after all of these years. Do you know, I fell in love with you, the first time I ever saw you, deep in the bowels of that English warship. I lay there, panting for life, and you stood but inches away, washing smoke from your body.'
'You remember that?'
'It has been a secret of mine, Sue. I fell in love with you then, and I have remained in love with you, ever since. Oh, I had to make do with a substitute. But no longer. And now I shall tell you some secrets of my own. My philosophy, for a start. In my public life, I sacrifice everything, or anything, or anyone, to my honour. But you will have no part of my public life ...'
The sound of music filtered upwards, through even the vastness of the house. It was late spring, and the strong sea breezes had not yet begun to blow; the noise travelled without distortion, an even boom of rhythm. Georgiana lay on her bed and wept, cried with great sobs and heaves of her trembling shoulders.
'I am sorry,' Suzanne said. 'Truly sorry, Georgy. But the invitations were apparently sent before I could protest.'
Her sister raised her head, gazed at the ice-pink ball gown, shoulderless and slashed in a deep decolletage, which only seemed to make the golden splendour above the more radiant. 'And the gown?' she cried. 'They did not have to fit the gown?'
Sue bit her lip. 'I ... you'll understand I have to humour him. Until I can think of what to do.'
'Humour him,' Georgiana said disgustedly. 'You'll pretend he has not had you to bed?'
'He has not laid a hand on other than my arm,' Sue said. 'Although of course I am aware of his intention. Hence I must pretend that I need an unusual amount of coaxing.'
'Instead of being the whore we all know you are,' Georgiana said. And then sat up. 'Oh, Sue, I'm sorry. It's just that... it's not what he does to me that I mind. It is his selfishness. A ball... how I have longed for a ball, so often. And he would not have one. Now he is having a ball, and I am confined with this wretched burden. How could ever a man be so cruel?'
'Will he not be condemned for it, in Cap Francois society? Perhaps no guests will come.'
'Not come, to Rio Blanco, to a ball? Condemned? Oh, he will be talked about. But that is all he seeks, to be talked about. Nor will anyone condemn his treatment of me, tonight. The things I could tell you ...'
'The things you must tell me,' Sue said. 'Listen. I will make my way back up here, early, tonight. This night, at the least, that coloured woman will scarce be present, and we shall be able to talk, and tell each other ...' she paused, at the expression on Georgiana's face.
'Monsieur Corbeau desires your presence, Mistress Huys. The guests are arriving.' Gislane wore her ordinary gown, and her hair was loose. She waited, holding the door of the bedchamber open, and the noise was louder.
'Do you not attend the ball, Gislane?'
'No, madame. I am cafe-au-lait.'
Sue hesitated, glanced at Georgiana again, and went into the antechamber. The doors were softly closed behind her.
'Do you not stay, to torment madame with your presence?' Sue asked over her shoulder. 'Or do you suppose you can torment me the more, with your presence.'
'I do not torment the madame, Mistress Huys. In many ways I am her only support, as we have suffered, and continue to suffer, in much the same way.'
Sue stopped before the outer doors to the apartment, waited for the mustee to draw level. 'Yet you must hate her.'
>
'I could say that your sister destroyed my life, madame.'
‘You have survived, after your own fashion,' Sue said. 'And I would say that I played a greater part in your destruction, by distracting Matt from your search. Because you may believe me, he was bent upon finding you, and marrying you, even if it caused his own ruin.'
Gislane smiled, for the first time that Sue had noticed. 'Then you have made me very happy, madame. I would not have liked to suppose that he forgot me in a minute.'
'And me?'
'Oh, I imagine I hate you as well, madame. But then, is it not reasonable for someone in my position to hate everything and everyone which is purely white? Especially someone as remarkably white as yourself.' She continued to smile. 'I really would go down now, madame, or the master will become angry. And when he is angry he is capable of the most remarkable acts of violence, regardless of the company.'
Sue hesitated for a moment longer, then opened the door and stepped into the corridor. Gislane followed, but did not go down the stairs. She remained, standing outside the closed door to Georgiana's apartments, listening to the music for some seconds. Another blessed night of freedom. Another blessed night.
She turned left, hurried along the corridor, down the inner stairs and through the pantries. There was no need for concealment. The servants, busy with their bowls of punch, their trays of canapes, waiting to be refilled by the perspiring cooks, carefully averted their eyes. No slave on Rio Blanco would dare suppose where their mamaloi might be hurrying while the white people danced. No slave on Rio Blanco would even dare remember that they had seen her, come morning.
She made her way through the rose garden, taking deep breaths of the cool fresh air, reached the marble wall which surrounded the chateau, and opened the postern gate. She stood for a moment on the edge of the rushing water of the white river, and then made her way along the bank, beneath the shade of the huge trees, gently rustling, the night to her right a blaze of sound and light and laughter as Mistress Huys was displayed to Cap Francois society. Now there was some need for caution. The petit-blancs from the overseers' village always gathered at the foot of the drive when the master was entertaining, to admire and to envy. Usually the cafe-au-laits also did so, but this night they were absent. The mulattoes had kept very much to themselves since the dreadful deaths of Oge and Chavannes. And was she not a mulatto? Or were they not merely as much outsiders as the whites themselves, because as they would ape those with fairer skins they went to mass and believed in the Christ, instead of the true master of their souls, the Great Serpent, Damballah Oueddo?
And beyond the gates there waited the noirs, also watching, and envying. And hating. But, like the house servants, they would not acknowledge her passing even if they saw her. Nor were all of them there this night, for now that the music was dominating the night as it issued from the chateau, it was time for the drum to start.
Gislane paused beneath the trees, to change her gown for her blood-stained, sweat-stained, earth-stained, semen-stained, red gown, to wrap her hair in her red turban, to feel the night air caressing her body, to know what she was about. And this night would be like no other. She waited, for those who would approach her, took her place with them, close to Boukman, gazing with wide eyes at the wizened figure of the coachman, for who had not heard of Toussaint, and at the short, squat, immensely powerful figure of the bull man, for who had not heard of Dessalines, and then smiled at the tall, strong, young figure of Henry Christophe. For he she counted her friend.
'There is a woman,' he said, as they walked through the night, following the drum, following the dancers, following the sacrifice. 'A woman with yellow hair.'
'She is sister to madame,' Gislane said. And glanced at him. "You have seen her?'
'In Cap Francois, when she first came,' Christophe said. 'For a moment. And she looked at me, and saw me.'
'And now you wish her,' Gislane said. 'When the time comes?'
'No,' Christophe said. 'No. I have little time for women. And none for white women. My fate is to serve my people. But she noticed me, and looked at me, and felt my eyes upon her. She is not as others.'
‘Yet she is one of them,' Gislane said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
And now Christophe's head turned, and he looked at her. 'How you must hate,' he said. 'How you must hate, Gislane.'
They reached the clearing, and were taking their places. Christophe remained behind, with Toussaint and Dessalines, dropping to his knees on the earth, away from the guttering oil-filled coconut shells, from the swaying believers, already prepared to lose themselves in the chaotic ecstasy of the coming minutes, away from the sacrifice, seated cross-legged between his attentive maidens, away even from the hougan and his swaying, tossing mamaloi. He glanced at his two companions. Did they believe, in what they were about to see? Did he believe himself? He did not know. He sometimes wondered what he did, with these two mighty men. He was so much the younger, so much the less known. Yet they valued his words, valued his presence, valued his service.
The drumbeat quickened, the mamaloi danced in the centre of the gathering, threw her arms to heaven, called upon all the great spirits of the universe to come down this night and visit their people.
'There is news, from the English islands,' Toussaint said. 'A planter is dead. He has been hanged, by his own people, for murdering a slave.'
'They fight amongst themselves,' Dessalines growled. 'As they fight in France. In France it is said the king himself is a prisoner.'
The mamaloi was finished, and the hougan advanced into the centre of the clearing. Christophe felt his heartbeat quicken. At what would now happen? Or what would happen later? He did not know. He watched the mamaloi, kneeling close to her priest, watched the cutlass flying through the air, watched the blood spurt.
'Then it is now,' Dessalines said. 'All the signs are with us.'
'Not all.' Toussaint also watched the hougan, offering the severed head to the heavens. Did he believe? Could he, the old one, who was so wise and so thoughtful? 'Do you not understand what we do, Jean-Jacques. Have you thought?'
'I think of nothing else,' Dessalines said. 'I know what we do, coachman.'
'I doubt that,' Toussaint said. 'We declare war, not on the planters, Jean-Jacques. We declare war on the world, for there are only white people, in our world. No one will come from Africa to be our allies. It will be a time for killing, yes, for being avenged, yes, but it will also be a time for dying, and for suffering. For all of our people. Have you thought of that, Jean-Jacques?'
The head had been replaced, and the drumbeat was quickening. The corpse rose slowly, stiffly to its feet, pulled the red cloth from its head. The mamaloi was naked, and dancing, posturing and shaking, her turban unwinding and her hair following it to flail the night. And now she looked for her hougan.
'So we will wait,' Toussaint said. 'For the day the prophecy is fulfilled in every way, for the day Damballah comes to us, dark as night and yet covered in shining light.'
'Then look,' Christophe shouted, rising to his feet. 'Look and bow your head to the Serpent.'
For as Boukman danced, the moon came through the trees; pin-pointing his blackness, and gleaming from the sweating white body of the woman as she twined herself around her lover, leg with leg, groin with groin, arm with arm, mouth with mouth.
'It is there,' Dessalines whispered. 'White shrouding black, moving, alive. It is there. Now Toussaint. Now. The hour will not come again.'
'Yet must it be prepared,' Toussaint said. 'We will need time. A month. Perhaps two.'
'But you have seen the god,' Christophe said. 'It will happen. Swear that it will happen.'
'I will give the signal,' Toussaint said. 'It will happen.'
'And the leader?' Dessalines demanded. 'Who will lead?'
Toussaint stared at the dancing figures, the gleaming white and the impenetrable black. 'The god will lead,' he said. 'In the beginning.'
Daylight filtered through endless opaque
atmospheres, and was followed by sound. Plantation sounds, house sounds. And memory. This was not Hilltop, as she might have first supposed, but Rio Blanco, a strange world. An alien world. Which had finally engulfed her in its tentacles.
Suzanne sat up, dragged hair from her eyes, looked across the room at the discarded ice-pink gown, the scattered gloves, the shoes. And then down at herself, for she had kicked off the sheets in the night. The spider and the fly. And now the fly belonged to the spider. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That was childish talk, and she was no child. She wondered if she had ever been a child. If she had, her youth had ended with her marriage, with her sudden transference into a world of masculine adultness. Dirk had been brutal, selfish, domineering, without considering the matter. He was a brutal, selfish, domineering man. And he had valued her. Matt was still in many ways a boy. But he was such an attractive boy, filled with romantic, idealistic, energetic quests and fancies. And Louis?
How easily she thought the name, how easily she slipped into the way of accumulating another man. There. She had accumulated him, and not the other way about. As long as she remembered this, there was nothing to fear.
So then, was she not ashamed of herself? She drew back the mosquito netting and walked across the room, still scooping sweat-stained hair from her face and eyes, holding it clear of her neck with both hands, arms up to stretch her muscles and raise her breasts. She stood before the full length mirror, gazed at herself, and then smiled, at herself. Suzanne Marguerite Hilton. The name had never meant anything before. Now it meant everything. She had been christened after the two most famous Hilton women; should she not then expect herself to take after them? Because it was dawning on her that she had indeed accumulated. She had known that she would find herself in bed with Louis Corbeau from the day of their first meeting. As from that moment he had wanted her. And she had known that too. That she had resisted the temptation for so long was entirely out of loyalty to Matt.
So then, what of Matt? He would have to forgive her. As she had forgiven him for Gislane. Because she was realizing, too, that it was meeting the mustee which had brought her to the point of doing more than dream. No doubt it was femininely childish, to need such an excuse, to require such an excuse. But all evening, as they had danced, oblivious of anyone else in the crowded room, oblivious of heat and noise and even movement, smiling at each other as they whirled in front of each other, knowing that this was their night, she had thought of Gislane. She gave another little pirouette in front of the mirror, still holding her hair away from her neck and shoulders.
Mistress of Darkness Page 49
