Contents
Part One: Saint-Domingue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Two: France
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Afterword
PART ONE
SAINT-DOMINGUE
Chapter One
October 1775, Jeremie
“Benedict has always been free!” I glared at the new boy, Pierre. I did not shout. I tried to make my voice sound like his foul words didn’t matter.
My friends on the beach had skin of all colours, some lighter, some darker than mine. We all came here most days when the sun was cooler, to ride our horses on the sand. There were Dan and Henri, who were fishermen’s sons. And Georges and Jean, whose fathers, like mine, ran coffee farms. Benedict, who was darkest of all, had a mother who ran a bar on the main street; he had better clothes than any of us, but never made any fuss about it.
“Well, you are all no better than slaves.” Pierre sat tall in his saddle and looked round at the group. “In France, we call you scum.”
“Shut up, Pierre!” Benedict kicked his horse into a trot and rode away down the beach. Pierre Despard, his face ham-pink from the sun, started laughing.
I pulled my horse, Merle, round to face him. “You think you are better than us?”
“Naturally. My father owns people like you. This horse cost more than any of you would fetch at market. I expect even my boots—”
“You know what?” I said. I was fed up with this boy. “I will make a bet with you. I bet my horse can beat yours to the rocks and back.”
He sneered.
Merle began to dance around. She could tell I was upset and snorted at me to calm down. I took a deep breath, settled myself. Pierre’s horse looked expensive, it was the colour of the finest pastry and its mane and tail were white as sea foam. But I knew my Merle was faster. My father had given me Merle when I was seven, taught me how to train her, how to ride. I was nearly fourteen now. Merle and I had grown together, learned to work together as smoothly as if we shared the same breath. I knew she could beat him. She might not look as smart, but she would do anything for me.
Pierre said nothing for a long minute.
“Are you chicken?” Jean and Georges made clucking noises.
“Of course not!” Pierre turned his horse around. “I cannot lose!”
The wind whipped in from the sea and blew up some sand. It stung my eyes a little and it must have stung Pierre’s horse too because she suddenly reared up on her hind legs. For a moment I thought he might fall – in fact it was hard not to enjoy the fear that flickered across his face. Some of the others laughed and we could all see just how angry that made him.
“You cannot best me!” Pierre spat, and kicked his horse on into a gallop.
He was at least four strides ahead of me, but I knew Merle could catch them.
“Allez!” I called, and Merle’s ears pricked forward and she almost flew.
The sound of her hooves matched the sound of my heart. The sand flicked up with every step and the sea glittered silver. To my left, the hills of the island were the brightest green, and above, the blue of the sky was so bright you could not look at it for long. Merle stretched out even faster and I flattened myself against her back.
We overtook easily. I heard Pierre swear all the worst words I’d ever heard.
Up ahead a log lay directly in our path, half in and half out of the water. I gave Merle a tiny squeeze and she took off, leaping up into the air and across the log. I would tell Papa about this when I got home, I thought; how high Merle had jumped, how fast she had run.
We’d almost reached the rocks when I heard a shout. I didn’t look round at first, Pierre was full of tricks and I would not put it past him to cheat. To make it seem he was the winner whatever happened. But when I did look, it was as if the log had come to life. His horse reared again, swung round and screamed. If you have ever heard a horse screaming you will know it is a terrible sound.
I could see now that it was not a log. It was a caiman, longer than a man, snapping its huge jaws and thrashing its massive tail. Its teeth, I swear, were white and shining, and each one was as big as my forearm.
“Pierre!” I yelled. I hated the boy, but no one deserved to be eaten alive.
The other boys were all far away down the other end of the beach. I cupped my hands and yelled. “Serpentine!” I waved my hands like a snake. Pierre did not see. He did not even look at me. He and the horse were frozen with fear as the caiman’s jaws snapped closer and closer.
If I did nothing there would be no horse and no Pierre.
I leaned forward and whispered into Merle’s ears. “Come on.” I felt her hesitate; she was afraid. I could feel her heart, fluttery under her ribs, beating ten to the dozen. But I squeezed her on, and we rode straight towards the boy and the horse and the snapping monster.
Without breaking stride, I leaned across as I got close and took his horse’s bridle in my hand, pulling the terrified animal away from the caiman and leading it in a zigzag motion over the sand. The caiman tried to follow. Travelling in a straight line, those things can propel themselves up and down the beach faster than lightning, but side to side they are lumbering and slow.
Pierre was still praying when we reached the others and had almost stopped shaking. His perfect horse was rolling its eyes, its flanks heaving as it gulped down air. It would not stay still, and pranced and danced around. I thanked Merle with a pat and jumped down from the saddle to hold Pierre’s horse. I sang soothing words in its ears, the words Papa had taught me from when he was a cavalry officer in the French army.
The horse calmed, tossing its head and nuzzling me. I smiled, I may not have a friend in Pierre but at least his mount appreciated me.
Suddenly all I heard was laughter. Pierre was laughing at me.
“Jungle boy!” he said, and at first I thought I hadn’t heard him properly. “Are you speaking to my horse? Is it only animals that understand you?”
Henri was angry on my behalf. “Hey! Thomas beat you! He beat you and then he saved your life!”
Pierre scoffed. “He did it on purpose. He led me to that creature. I would have caught him if he hadn’t. It was his fault. He could have killed me!”
I would have hit him then, but Henri held me back. “It’s not worth it,” he said quietly. I shook him off.
“You may look like a gentleman,” I said, “but you are nothing.”
Pierre looked down at me from the saddle.
“You are Antoine Delisle’s son?” He said it as if I were a piece of rotting filth and not a boy. And he was sneering too. “Soon you will have nothing and you will be nobody.” He took the reins and trotted away.
I was seething. I shouted after him, “You know nothing about me! About my family!”
“He’s all mouth, that one,” Henri said. But he did not look at me when he said it and I could not help feeling a shiver of worry. Papa had been too busy to be himself these past weeks. The last harvest had been poor. We all needed new shoes. And Papa had stopped teaching the little ones the Greek and Latin he taught me. He said they wouldn’t need it – that no one needed any learning out here.
I shook those bad thoughts away. I told myself I would stop off at Maman’s grave on the way home and tell her my worries. Then they would float away up into the blue sky and be forgotten.
Chapter Two
Maman’s grave was at the side of the churchyard on th
e hill outside town, a mile and a half from our farm. I tied Merle up outside the church and hopped over the low wall, then spent a good fifteen minutes clearing the plants from the grave.
“Papa will buy you a stone soon, Maman,” I told her. “I made him promise.”
I moved the creeper from where I had carved her name: Marie Cessette Dumas Delisle.
The sound of the tree frogs and the hum of the insects filled the air.
It was two years now. I wondered if the little ones could even remember her. I ought to tell them the story of how she had chased Papa’s old dog when it stole his tartine. And how she had made the best cornmeal, and had known where the best custard apples grew.
I decided that if Papa was in a good mood when I was home, I’d fetch some of the brandy he liked from the bottle hidden in the outside kitchen at the back of our yard, and I would remind him about the gravestone.
When I did get home, the sun was dipping down over the coconut palms and the light was fading. The long branches of the palms made dark ribbons of moving blue shadow all across our front yard. Up on the veranda, Papa was talking to the coffee factor, the man with a squashed three-cornered hat who bought our beans and roasted them. But the harvest was over, and I thought it odd that he was here now. I went to ask my littlest brother Charles what was happening, but he was busy in the dirt making a pile of stones into a little farm, with pebbles for horses and melon seeds for goats.
“What’s happening, Charlot?” I asked.
“Papa says we are going away,” he said, and made one of his pebble horses jump high in the air. “Where are we going, Thomas?”
I was suddenly worried again, but I kept my voice steady. “No one is going anywhere.”
I went to put Merle in her stable. The saddle was flecked with saltwater where we’d galloped through the waves. I ought to take it in and clean it.
I was walking back to the house when I saw the coffee factor lead Charles and my sister Berthe and my other brother, Petit Antoine, away. Berthe had to pull Charles away from his toy farm, and he grizzled as they climbed up into the cart. But they waved at me, smiling, as the cart pulled out on to the track that led back into town. So I waved back. Berthe and Antoine sometimes went to help with fruit picking, but I wondered what good Charles would do, surely he would only cry and get in the way.
In the house, Papa was cleaning his best boots on the veranda. His ancient travelling trunk had been pulled out by the steps. It was older than me and had come, along with Papa, from France, when he had first been posted here with the army.
I put the saddle down close by and started washing off the saltwater and sweat. Papa nodded hello but he didn’t turn his attention away from his careful, methodical work for more than a moment. I looked at him sideways. Sometimes talking to Papa was like approaching a skittish horse – you had to do it in a roundabout way.
He was old, my father, nearer the age of most boys’ grandfathers, but he was still strong, his white skin tanned and freckled from the sun and almost as creased and leathery as those boots. He had sharp grey eyes, like the stones at the bottom of a river, shiny and hard, but when he smiled, when I showed him how well I’d come on with my Latin, or how straight I could shoot a pistol, or how I took care of Merle, kindness would flood his face.
So, after a while, I set aside the saddle and fetched the brandy; then I would bring up the gravestone, I thought. That was always best with Papa. He was a bit like a caiman; he could be snappy.
“Should I fetch them tomorrow?” I asked as I poured him a measure. “The little ones?”
Papa took the brandy and gulped it down, but didn’t reply. I refilled his glass and set it down close by, then went back to cleaning the saddle: small circles with a soft cloth, making the leather shine like new. He drank the second measure in one go and gasped with the sting of it. Maybe the brandy would take a while to work.
Papa lifted his old cavalry sabre from the ancient trunk and took it out of the scabbard. I loved that sabre. It looked as good as new. The tassels that hung from the handle had not lost their colour; they shone scarlet as new bougainvillea flowers.
“One day, Thomas,” he said, “this sabre will be yours.” He smiled, but he wasn’t looking at me.
I had to get his attention. “We won the race today, Merle and me...”
“Merle and I,” he snapped.
“Merle and I,” I corrected myself, and went back to polishing. Tonight would not be a good time to ask about Mama’s stone after all, I realised. I would finish cleaning the saddle and go to bed. I sighed, but quietly.
Papa cleared his throat, poured himself more brandy. “I have been meaning to tell you, Thomas.” He gave the sabre a long look, checking the blade was still true. “I have sold the estate.”
I felt my insides turn over. I must have heard him wrong.
“Excuse me, Papa?” My voice was small.
“The house, the fields. Things have not been well, not since your mother...” He slid the sword back into its cover and put it away in the trunk.
“I am too old to be a coffee farmer.” He waved an insect away from his face. “It is time to go home.”
Papa was talking as if what he had said was the most ordinary thing in the world. But Saint-Domingue was my home; our home. The only home I could remember. Our farm, from the side of the hill to the top where the coffee berries grew, from the stream that flowed through our land on the way to the sea to the road that led into town. My mind was racing. I wanted to shout, to yell. But I kept quiet.
“There is a ship leaving Port-au-Prince at the end of the week. We will ride north, you and I, in the morning.” He said it so matter of fact, as if he was telling me to look to the fence around the goat pen, or finish my Greek homework.
I felt my throat so tight I could not speak. Suddenly all I could hear was the blood rushing around my head. Not the insects or the frogs, not the night birds or the wind swishing around the leaves of the trees around the house.
Papa had got up. He’d gone inside and lit a candle, and I was alone on the veranda.
I didn’t sleep at all.
Papa had told us about the winters in Normandy, the part of France where he’d grown up; about living in an old stone castle and getting so cold his skin turned blue. Would I turn blue too? Pierre had said yesterday that they didn’t let free people of colour into France. I imagined me and the little ones stuck on a boat in the cold. I rolled over. There was another worry: why had Papa sent my siblings away?
I don’t remember when it finally began to grow light, but the cockerel in the yard suddenly called loud and jagged. I got up to feed him for the last time.
What would happen to Maman’s grave now? I hoped perhaps I would have time to make one last visit, but there was too much to do. The carrier came for Papa’s trunk, and as I helped load it on to the cart, I thought that in one year, perhaps two, no one would even know the grave was there. The trees and the creepers and the yellow flowers would grow right over it.
There would never be a gravestone now, and no one would remember her.
Chapter Three
Port-au-Prince
Me and Papa left after breakfast. I had a small bag with my best clothes rolled up tight, and a pebble from the bottom of the stream, one I had found years ago when I was little and bothered with pebbles. I had the knife Papa had given me too, and I should have liked to take the head collar I’d made for Merle out of rope but Papa said we would not need it.
“When will we meet up with Charles and the others?” I asked. But Papa simply changed the subject.
“There are things you do not know about me, Thomas-Alexandre.” We were on the road out of Jeremie that followed the coast to the north. He looked out at the sea as if he could see things I couldn’t.
I said nothing.
“I am not Antoine Delisle. That is not my name.”
“What do you mean?” I pushed Merle on and rode alongside him. “You are not my father?”
He
laughed then. “No, I am your father, that is true. But what I am about to tell you is also true.” He took a deep breath. “I am a marquis, the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie.” He sighed then. “And you, Thomas-Alexandre, you are a count.”
My mouth was flapping open, I swear a fly hit the back of my throat. Merle stumbled and I was still so stunned I almost slid off.
He nodded. “You understand, my son? The boat is waiting, I must claim what is mine. And yours.”
Every night when we stopped at an inn, Papa talked about France, how with his land and castle there, there would be more money than I could imagine. How the hills were a different green to our own, with different trees.
“And none of these damn insects!”
He said nothing about the little ones. It was as if they didn’t exist. I told myself we’d catch up with them at the next inn, or perhaps on the boat.
On the fourth day, though, as we rode down the hill into the city of Port-au-Prince, the capital of our island, I am ashamed to say that the sight of the city almost put all thoughts of my siblings from my mind. The place was much bigger than Jeremie, which was the only town I had ever seen, but it was not as grand. We had an opera house and enough people with fine clothes and money to spend to go there – I had only visited once, but it had been like magic. Here in Port-au-Prince, though, there were lines of African slaves shackled and weeping. I saw an auction too, and wondered if that was how Papa had bought Maman? I think the feeling in my bones was fear, and I was not used to it.
As we rode, Merle tossed her mane and whisked her tail. She could tell something was not right and I knew, like me, she was not happy being so far from home. I leaned forward and whispered into her ears that it would be all right. I made sure not to promise, though, in case it was another promise I could not keep.
The harbour was full of boats. So many boats! All with tall masts, like a forest of dead trees that had been struck by lightning and lost their leaves. We tied up the horses and Papa told me to make Merle tidy and presentable.
“The horses are sold already.” He said it matter of fact, as if he had told me already and I had forgotten.
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