She glanced toward the stables, but they were blackened ruins. She would have to walk, in spite of her burned knee and her sore ankle. She was grateful for Étienne’s boots.
In the ditch beside the road, tall grass grew wild, making the way more difficult but offering her shelter while she made sure no one was coming. Job’s Tears, the grass was called. She almost laughed. Job had been lucky.
She darted across the road into the banana field on the back of Guillaume’s land. The long leaves waved above her like thick green feathers, in welcome or in warning. She smelled burnt flesh but found only a wild pig collapsed in the dirt. Her empty stomach begged her to stop, but she went on.
Between the banana leaves appeared the orange tiles and blue shutters of Guillaume and Delphine’s belvedere. Still intact. Thank God. Marguerite limped faster. At the center of the enclosed gallery, the front doors yawned wide, but they were left that way, night or day, for the breeze.
“Delphine?” Marguerite did not see the chairs till she entered the gallery, and her voice gave out. The caning of the seats had been stamped through. The negroes had been here after all. Marguerite gripped her pistol more tightly and swallowed, still tasting bile.
Inside, the sphere of Guillaume’s globe greeted her first, loose from its base and upside down on the floor. Nearby, one of his model ships lay sunken in debris next to the dining table: shattered crystal and china, papayas oozing their shocking black seeds. On the walls, crooked portraits of Guillaume’s mother and father were slashed through, decapitated.
Marguerite shuffled through the destruction to the side gallery and the foot of the staircase. Guillaume lay face down on the landing in his night-shirt, blood and brains dripping down the steps. No matter. Delphine was better off without him.
Marguerite waded back to the smashed papayas, knelt, and ate like a watchful animal. The soft pink flesh soon alleviated her hunger and her thirst. In the beginning, she used her fingernails to claw out the guts, the peppery seeds inside their gelatinous sacs. Then, she chewed a few purposefully and grimaced at the strength of their bitterness; but the taste of vomit remained in her mouth.
Delphine was young yet and beautiful. As a widow with a tragic story, she would have no trouble finding another husband, a superior husband. Marguerite would see to it. Their ties to this godless, godforsaken island had been severed completely. Together she and Delphine would leave this place; they would make a fresh start in—not France, not till that revolt had been quelled. Charleston; yes, Charleston, in one or other of the Carolinas. Matthieu had an uncle who was a merchant there.
Marguerite sucked her fingers clean and passed Guillaume’s body as quickly as possible. She reached the spare bedchamber in the belvedere. Through the doorway of Delphine’s room, Marguerite caught a glimpse of a black face.
She flung herself against the wall and clutched the pistol. “Come out of there right now!” Marguerite ordered in Creole, pleased some of the strength had returned to her voice. “I have a gun!”
No response.
“Did you hear me? There’s nowhere for you to go!”
Still no reply. It had been only an aging mulâtresse, probably robbing her mistress.
Marguerite took a breath and strode forward, leading with the gun. In the dressing glass atop the small table on the other side of the bed, she met only her own reflection. Her own singed curls and haggard face, so smeared with dirt and ash that her skin was more black than white. Marguerite lowered the pistol and released her breath. She looked like a zombi.
Between her and the mirror, the great canopy bed stood violated. It had been her and Matthieu’s gift to their daughter and son-in-law, with its beautiful mahogany posters carved like pineapples and its headboard like palm fronds. The rich wood had been shredded as if by the claws of a monster, the coconut husks of its mattress bulging out like intestines. At her feet, a smashed decanter filled the room with the tantalizing scent of rum, but it did not quite mask the reek of urine.
Across the soiled bed, that hideous reflection kept mocking her. Marguerite snatched up the decanter’s crystal stopper and hurled it at the dressing glass. The stopper hit its lower half, giving a satisfying crack and tilting the broken mirror to reveal what waited on the other side of the bed.
Delphine. Eyes and mouth gaping. Dark hair spilling down the front of her white chemise, framing the blood that had spilled from her open throat.
Marguerite staggered closer. In the fragmented glass, between her daughter’s limp arms where her great belly should have been, there was only more blood. Marguerite gripped the ravaged bedpost but slid to her knees.
This was God’s punishment. There was no other explanation. To lose the man she loved and every one of their children in a single night…even their grandchild before it was born… In one terrible swath, the scythe had destroyed every fruit of her sin. These savage negroes were merely the instruments of God’s wrath. Marguerite had been running from this judgment for half her life. She’d dishonored her parents and committed adultery for twenty-three years. “The wages of sin is death.” And death, and death…
So be it. Nothing mattered now. Not even damnation. She refused to spend eternity praising the God who had done this. She preferred Hell with Matthieu.
The pistol was still in her hand. It felt as heavy as a millstone, but she raised it. Beneath her chin, the mouth of the barrel was one last caress, not so very different from the ones that had brought her here. She did not regret one of them. What else could she have done?
Before she could pull down the cock, a child’s cry pierced through her labored breathing, coming from somewhere below. Still trembling, she let the pistol sag a few inches. Could—could Delphine’s child have survived? Marguerite wobbled to her feet, to the window. A mule stood tethered to the star-apple tree beside Guillaume’s office, where the unseen child was whimpering now.
Marguerite wheeled toward the stairs before she remembered she was nearly naked. She yanked open a drawer of Delphine’s wardrobe and found a morning gown. Marguerite fastened it over her ruined chemise, covering black with white.
She found a large pocket as well, tied it around her waist, and tucked the pistol inside. She might need her hands for the baby. She hastened down the stairs, past Guillaume’s body and into the yard. The mule did not look up from cropping grass. It was harnessed to a cart filled with calabashes, blankets, and sacks of supplies.
Marguerite crept up the steps of the office and peered through the open doorway. She saw a child seated on a skirted lap. Perhaps two years old, not a newborn. But he was beautiful, with a halo of dark curls. Something in his small face was familiar, though he looked Spanish. What would a Spanish child be doing on this side of the island? He wore only a dirty shift that ended above his knees. One of them was skinned.
A female voice was cooing to him. Broad lips bent to kiss his forehead, and a brown hand offered him a piece of succulent orange fruit—mango, perhaps. The boy accepted it, and the brown hands lifted him from her lap to stand on the floor. With her back to Marguerite, the mulâtresse strode toward Guillaume’s desk.
Silently, Marguerite crossed the threshold. Mouth still full, the boy reached for another piece of mango from the wooden bowl on the chair beside him. He saw her and hesitated, as if she might scold him, gazing up at her with huge blue eyes, blue as indigo, blue as—
The mulâtresse turned then, as she wiped the knife on her skirt, and Marguerite’s breath caught. It was the girl who’d seduced Gabriel and Narcisse. Matthieu had banished her here. For two years, he had lied, by omission, by concealment; Delphine and Guillaume too, every time Marguerite visited their plantation…
The girl looked her up and down, then smirked. “Madâme.” Without another word, she leaned over Guillaume’s closed fall-front desk, frowned at the lock, and poked it experimentally with the point of her blade.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting our papers.” The girl did not turn. She jammed h
er knife into the slit just above the fallboard. “If the maréchaussée catch us, I can show them we were going to be free.” She was running away, taking this beautiful little boy into the jungle to live with the maroons.
“You can’t read,” was all Marguerite could stammer.
“I saw what the master signed, the day René was baptized.”
“What who signed? Matthieu? Guillaume? They’re dead!”
The girl paid no attention to her. She only grunted with the effort of using the knife as a lever.
“They’re all dead!”
With a great splintering of wood, the fallboard dropped open.
“Étienne was thirteen! Thirteen!”
“Same age I was,” the girl muttered, “when the other ones started pawing me.”
Was she bragging? Marguerite strode forward and grabbed her wrist. “Did you cut my daughter’s throat with this knife? Did you—”
The girl twisted away with appalling ease. She thrust the blade so close to Marguerite’s face, she nicked her cheek. Marguerite stumbled back and fumbled for the pistol.
“You whites started this, long ago,” the girl hissed.
Inside the pocket, Marguerite cocked the pistol fully.
The girl didn’t hear it. “This is only ‘eye for eye,’ as your precious Book says—for Makandal and Ogé and all the others you’ve killed and mutilated: ‘burning for burning, stripe for stripe, hand for hand’—”
For a long moment, the memory of Matthieu caught in the machine blinded Marguerite. “Were you there? Did you tell them to—”
“I didn’t do anything! I was hiding!”
“‘Hiding’?” Marguerite scoffed. “What did you have to fear?”
“I wasn’t afraid for me.” The girl seized a pile of letters from the ruined desk and squinted at them. “I was afraid for René.” She glanced at the child. “They were crazy for white blood. I didn’t want them to think…”
Marguerite looked back to the boy, who was pouting at the now-empty bowl. René. Yes…someone might mistake him for white, with those eyes. Astounding, that such a fine child should have come from this brown bitch. His complexion was olive, at most. Marguerite had seen Frenchmen with darker skin. Away from this tropical climate, the shade would surely lighten.
Gingerly, Marguerite reached down to touch his black curls. Coarser than she’d hoped. But with the right care, and a wig when he was older… The width of his nose worried her, but perhaps age would improve it. He must be Gabriel’s boy, with those eyes; that was in his favor.
This child was all that remained of Gabriel, of any of her children—of Matthieu. He had planned to free René. If the girl had been lying about the manumission papers, why would she have returned here? It was just like Matthieu. Marguerite could still carry out his wishes. This boy was what he’d meant: Find our grandson with the remarkable eyes.
Marguerite assessed the girl as coldly as she could, setting aside what the little whore had done to her sons to conceive this child. With the corner of her head kerchief sticking up like a feather and those high cheekbones, she did look part Indian. If Étienne’s theories about their nobility had any merit, then that was in the boy’s favor also. Indian blood would explain the girl’s melancholy, and why her shade was more like a griffonne than a true mulâtresse.
Whether quarter or half, she clearly had some French blood, so altogether the child was more white than anything else. The best in him simply needed to be nurtured. To let this girl take him up into the mountains to be lost among the drumming and dancing of the negroes would be like tossing a pearl among swine.
Marguerite simply had to invent a new mother for him. She had lied to her children all their lives and they’d never suspected; she could lie to one grandchild with ease. Stiffly she knelt before the boy, who stared back at her with the curiosity of his uncle Étienne. Marguerite smiled. “Bonjour, René.” Re-né. Re-born. She could not have chosen a better name.
The girl snatched up her knife again. “You get away from him,” she ordered, as if she had the right.
Marguerite scooped the boy into her arms and backed outside. “I can take better care of him than you ever would.”
“Let go of my son!” She was only a child herself. But as the girl stalked toward Marguerite, she looked more like a panther than a kitten, baring her single metal claw.
René began whining at once, but Marguerite had to clasp him tight in one arm in order to access the pistol. She wrested it from the pocket and pointed it between the girl’s eyes.
They widened at once and she hesitated, so close to Marguerite that the end of the barrel nearly touched that chestnut skin.
Whining in her ear, René pushed against Marguerite’s shoulder and chest, trying to twist around.
“Please don’t take him,” the girl whispered, obsequious at last.
Marguerite glanced down the steps to the animal waiting below. A baroness riding in a mule-cart… She would do what she must. With her injured leg, Marguerite could never outrun this girl, and she needed those provisions. But how in the world would she untie the mule and keep the pistol steady, while holding a flailing child?
The girl guessed her thoughts. “Let me come with you! You sit in the cart, and I’ll lead the mule.”
She might be useful, it was true…
“There’s food and water already, and I’ll get more, whenever you want it!”
She would run off the first chance she got, and probably take the boy with her. He was fussing worse than his father ever had, blubbering nonsense in Creole. Marguerite would soon correct that.
The girl seemed to think Marguerite had agreed. She hurried down the steps ahead of them to spread a blanket on the seat of the mule-cart.
Without lowering the pistol, Marguerite followed and climbed inside with René. Before she’d even set him down, he crawled toward the girl. Marguerite gripped the neck of his shift to keep him from going too far, which only set him to wailing louder.
“I’m here, trezò mwen!” the girl babbled, swiping at his tears with the pale undersides of her thumbs. “It’s all right.”
This would never do. “Take off your kerchief,” Marguerite ordered, motioning with the pistol barrel.
The girl pulled the cloth from around her neck and swabbed at René’s snotty nose.
“The one on your head, then!” Marguerite clarified through her teeth. “Tie him to the rail.”
She only stood there slack-jawed while the boy continued struggling, proving Marguerite’s point.
“He’ll fall out otherwise!”
Finally, the girl unwrapped the large green kerchief from her braided hair. She tethered one corner of the cloth to the rail on the side of the cart.
René slipped from Marguerite’s grasp and stood on the seat to fling his chubby arms around the girl’s neck, sobbing something that sounded like “Maman! Maman!” His paler skin against hers was a startling contrast, proof they did not belong together.
Great crocodile tears began to splash down the girl’s cheeks as she disentangled him and bound his wrist to the cart. “It’s only for a little while, trezò mwen.”
Marguerite swallowed and picked up the reins in her left hand. She did not let go of the pistol. “Now untie the mule.”
The girl obeyed. René cried even louder, if that was possible. “I’m not leaving you!” she assured him. “I’ll never leave you!” She looped the mule’s tether around her wrist.
Marguerite waited till the girl had walked the rope’s full length, till she was as far away from the animal as possible. The girl’s back was to her. That made it easier. She had no chance to react or dodge. Marguerite knew she was a terrible shot, even at this range, and she couldn’t be certain the pistol would still fire. But it did. The explosion startled Marguerite as well as the mule, making her drop the reins. The animal bolted and dragged the body of the girl several yards before the rope came loose and they were free of her.
Marguerite retrieved the reins, bu
t she let the mule run. She did not look back.
She tried not to worry. Even if the girl lived, everyone knew negroes had minds like sieves. In a day or two, the girl would forget René entirely. She’d throw herself at other men and get more children. Marguerite never could.
Beside her, René strained against his binding, but he was only making it tighter. She wished he would stop screaming.
“Shhh,” Marguerite soothed him. “Your grandmother’s here now.”
Chapter 5
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat social (1762)
Marguerite had plenty of time to construct her grandson’s new past, on the long journey by land to Le Cap and by sea to Charleston. Even her fellow refugees pitied her: to have lost all her family but this one grandchild, and him so ill-behaved. René had had a colored nurse, Marguerite explained, and he’d learned Creole from her.
Before they reached South Carolina, he stopped speaking altogether. He even stopped throwing tantrums and settled into mere sullenness. Marguerite was relieved.
She considered making him Delphine’s son, then rejected the idea. If they survived the revolt, Guillaume’s family must have no claims on René, no questions; the boy must be Marguerite’s alone. His mother had been a señorita whom Gabriel had met at Fort Dauphin when he went to buy a horse. She was the daughter of a Spanish officer, a beautiful, pious, aristocratic, headstrong young woman who had died in childbirth but left behind this little angel… Marguerite chose the name Maria Dolores, after Our Lady of Sorrows. She and Gabriel were far too young to wed, but they’d done it anyway, in secret, and her family had disowned her. Marguerite made their tale into a romantic tragedy.
Matthieu’s uncle, Thierry Lazare, knew no better; he’d communicated only fitfully with his nephew. Marguerite knocked on the door of Thierry’s brick house on Archdale Street with considerable trepidation.
Necessary Sins Page 5
