She knew she had little time left. Her heart worried her more and more, and it had worried René. If she lived through this night, she would soon be eighty years old. Everyone thought she was turning seventy-six—she’d carefully maintained every fiction, even, especially, those begun with Matthieu half a century ago.
When the sun rose Monday morning, Charleston still stood. Catherine and Hélène scampered off to the kitchen, as if Marguerite had never warned them that the cook might have poisoned every bite. Marguerite hobbled after the girls to rap their greedy little hands and insist that the cook sample everything she served.
In the days that followed, as more than one hundred negroes were taken to the Work House to be interrogated, Marguerite devoured every scrap of news. It did not surprise her that the conspiracy’s leader had been a slave on Saint-Domingue. His fanciful master, a Captain Vesey, had named the boy Télémaque and foolishly taught him to read. Here in Charleston, these English speakers corrupted the negro’s name to Denmark. He won $1500 in a lottery, and Vesey allowed him to purchase his freedom. And still Denmark was not content: he wanted his children and all slaves to be free.
So, like Makandal, he began to plot. Over the course of four years, thousands upon thousands joined his secret army. Among Denmark’s recruits were “French negroes” from Saint-Domingue. Blacksmiths forged swords and daggers and pikes. Gunpowder was stashed away for the attack. The slaves planned to burn Charleston to the ground. Denmark wrote to the mulatto who called himself President of Haïti and asked for asylum. The negroes would leave a few ship captains alive to take them there.
As the trials and whippings continued, the executions began: on the 2nd of July, Denmark Vesey himself; another carpenter; a boy belonging to the Blackwoods; and three of the Governor’s slaves. Forty-three negroes were sentenced to be “transported,” sold to a slower death in the Antilles. Ten days later, two more were hanged: a conjurer born in Africa, who’d claimed he could make them all invulnerable, and Elias Horry’s coachman. Like the Intendant, the Saint-Clairs, and most Charlestonians, Mr. Horry was incredulous that his trusted slave could mean him harm. “Tell me, are you guilty?” Mr. Horry had pleaded. “For I cannot believe unless I hear you say so… What were your intentions?” His beloved negro answered: “To kill you, rip open your belly, and throw your guts in your face.”
In spite of all this evidence, when Marguerite suggested they take the children to the hangings, the Saint-Clairs reacted as if she were mad.
“Hélène is five years old!” Jeanne cried.
Marguerite could only hope the girl was old enough to remember.
“If René were here, he’d never permit it,” Gérard pointed out. Which was precisely why Marguerite must take the children—before they became liberal like their father.
Jeanne concluded with a shake of her head: “You’ll give them nightmares!”
None of them knew anything about nightmares.
Marguerite had been right about the cook: she was trouble. She wore mourning for the criminals, in defiance of the special ordinance. Too soft to do it themselves, the Saint-Clairs sent her to the Work House to receive her thirty-nine lashes. Marguerite stood on the upper piazza so she could hear the negress’s screams.
Since the one cook served both their households and the other slaves were useless in the kitchen, this left Marguerite and Jeanne to puzzle out meals in the sweltering outbuilding. One morning toward the end of July, young Joseph appeared in a daze.
Marguerite scowled, glancing up from the receipt book. “What’s the matter now?”
The boy hovered on the threshold. “I was at Grandpapa’s shop. Men came and took Jemmy.”
“Took who?”
Beside her, Jeanne stopped kneading. “The boy we hired from Mrs. Clement, to help with the cleaning and deliveries.” She spoke low, as if to herself. “They must think he knows something.”
Marguerite raised her chin, vindicated at last. “Or that he was one of the conspirators.”
Joseph blinked at her. “He was so polite.”
“They do that to fool you!” Was Marguerite the only person in this city who understood negroes?
“I’m glad Mama isn’t here,” Joseph murmured, drifting away like a lost buoy. “This would make her worry.”
Fifty-three negroes were actually released. Jemmy Clement was not among them. He would hang alongside twenty-one more slaves. Gérard had lost only Jemmy’s rent for the rest of the year and the use of his cook for a few days. Marguerite wished the cut had been deeper. Perhaps Gérard had not learned his lesson; but she would ensure that the children did.
As soon as the Saint-Clairs left for their clock shop that morning, Marguerite hurried Joseph, Catherine, and Hélène into their grandparents’ open landau. She wanted to secure a good spot, though it would mean missing the procession of the condemned from the Work House. She smacked the floor of the carriage with her cane. “Drive!” she commanded the coachman, who was, of course, a slave. For insurance, she carried the pistol in her reticule.
As the horses carried them northward, people turned at the sound of the landau, peering at them from sidewalks, piazzas, and windows, expecting the criminals. Then the buildings thinned, the fields began, and finally they reached the crumbling walls called the Lines. These had been erected during the War of 1812 as a fortification to protect Charleston from the British. But even then, the greatest enemy had been within.
Their carriage was not the first to arrive. Without anything yet to watch, already an audience was gathering, like bits of metal drawn to a lodestone. The people around them displayed the usual spectrum of skin, from alabaster to pitch and everything in-between. The Saint-Clairs would soon realize their foolishness; they would have no customers today. All of Charleston would be here.
With twenty-two negroes to execute in one day, Marguerite had expected the city to hang a few at a time. Instead, Charleston chose spectacle. For gallows, long benches had been constructed just in front of the Lines, with the old wall used to support scaffolding above. From these beams dangled all twenty-two waiting nooses. Their coachman found a place so close, the wall’s shadow fell across them—a welcome respite, as the late July sun began to climb.
Marguerite returned her attention to the children, only to discover that they were signing to each other. “Stop that!” She slapped Joseph’s hand, since he sat beside her. “You know I don’t understand what those mean! What is this?” Marguerite mimicked his last gesture, tapping her chin with her crooked index finger.
The boy glowered at his shoes and mumbled: “Nothing.”
Marguerite glared at the girls, but they offered no translation either. “I’ve told you not to do that in public—you look like idiots. Speak properly! English is bad enough.” She sighed and changed the subject. “You know they’re hanging your grandfather’s shop boy today?”
The children did not respond. Even their hands were still.
“Will you point him out to me?”
Hélène’s chin trembled. “Jemmy wouldn’t have hurt us, right, Cathy?”
“Of course not,” Catherine told her. “We’re too little.”
“Don’t lie to her!” Marguerite ordered. “They’ve been planning to murder you since you were a baby!”
In spite of the heat, the girls huddled together on the seat across from her.
“Do you know what Denmark Vesey had to say about white children?” Marguerite continued. “He said: ‘What is the use of killing the lice and leaving the nits?’ You would have been lucky if they killed you. I heard they were planning to sell some of us as slaves. You don’t want to know what they would have done to little girls.”
After that, the children behaved themselves. Marguerite kept watch with a pair of opera glasses. At last the criminals appeared in carts, sitting atop their coffins. Most looked solemn, but one had clearly lost his few brains. He was waving, chattering to the crowd, and laughing. Perhaps he thought this behavior would earn him clemency. Margue
rite hoped not.
The City Guard had to force a way through the throng so the condemned could reach their nooses. The wave of people following them crashed into the mass already waiting. Only with difficulty did their hired coachman keep their horses from bolting. Nearby, Marguerite heard screaming and caught enough words to surmise that at least one person had been trampled.
“Can’t we go now, bisaïeule?” Joseph begged beside her.
“It hasn’t even started!” Marguerite snapped. At the thought of leaving, palpitations seized her heart again. She had waited thirty years for this.
The negroes descended from their coffins.
“I want to go home!” Hélène wailed.
Marguerite yanked on the girl’s bonnet ribbon and forced Hélène to look at her. “Act like a lady!”
Joseph muttered, “There are no other ladies here.”
Marguerite released Hélène and glanced around them. The crowd was full of snivelling colored women, and a few white women of low character. The rest were all men and boys. Fools. Everyone in this city should bear witness, so no one would forget their negroes’ intentions. They were not “like family.”
Awkwardly, with their hands bound behind their backs, the criminals mounted the benches, and the guardsmen looped the ropes around their necks.
“You’re going to remember this day,” Marguerite told her great-grandchildren in a voice low and fierce. “You’re going to remember it for the rest of your lives, every time someone asks why your children don’t have a black nurse. And you!” She jabbed a finger at Joseph. “Don’t you ever trust a negro with your shaving razor! Do you hear me?”
Without ceremony, a guardsman kicked away the first bench, and then the second. The criminals dropped—except, they did not drop far or fast enough. They only began to strangle. Some of the men’s feet scraped the ground. They dangled, kicking but not dying. They were so close, Marguerite could hear the gagging distinctly. Nearby, one negro tried to keep his legs lifted long enough to choke himself.
Marguerite smirked. What an inept hangman. Or perhaps a wise one. Let them suffer. They had planned to burn children alive. They had mutilated her children. They had left her with a fool for a grandson and weaklings for heirs.
Across from Marguerite, both girls were blubbering now. Without a word, Joseph left the seat beside her and tucked himself between them. His sisters buried their faces against his shoulders and clung to him. He cooed at them but glared at Marguerite. She barely noticed.
Wobbling on their toes like children’s tops, many of the hanged men could still speak, a chorus of hoarse voices begging for mercy among the gasps and shrieks of the crowd.
With a curse, the captain of the City Guard succumbed. He drew his gun and began shooting the criminals, one by one. The impact spun their bodies anew.
Marguerite remembered the pistol tucked into her reticule and laughed. She withdrew it, cocked it, and aimed at the nearest negro. His head burst like a mushroom. One of the guardsmen wrested the pistol from her, as if she had more than one shot.
They couldn’t stop her from admiring what she’d done to her target. It was not an impertinent mulâtresse, but it was something.
The next morning, when Joseph came to give his great-grandmother a letter from his father, he found she had passed away in her sleep. In the July heat, she already smelled horrible, and she was already attracting flies. But before he ran to tell his grandfather, Joseph said a quick prayer for Marguerite’s soul. He knew she needed it. He closed his eyes tightly, because there was a very strange smile on her face.
Part II
A Pure Boy, Faithfully Presented
1822-1825
Charleston
Though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature, and it therefore does not mend the matter.
— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)
Chapter 7
Appearance oft deceives.
— Giovanni Torriano, A Common Place of Italian Proverbs (1666)
Joseph would never forget the day of his Confirmation, and not only because of the Sacrament.
Bishop England looked like royalty, his black hair and grey eyes set off against his red and gold episcopal robes. Yet His Lordship did not rule like a monarch—he preferred American government. He’d written a Constitution for their diocese and begun annual conventions in which a House of Lay Delegates and a House of Clergy made decisions together.
Joseph’s Mama and his grandparents were always praising Bishop England. Apparently he irritated Archbishop Maréchal, but Joseph didn’t understand why. Everything His Lordship did seemed wise. He had written the first English catechism in the United States and translated the Missal too.
Bishop England was a Doctor of Divinity like Papa was a Doctor of Medicine; many people called him “Dr. England.” His Lordship made house calls throughout the three states in his diocese: North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In Rome, they called him “the Steam Bishop” for his energy. His Lordship was born three years before Papa; he was thirty-four when he came to Charleston. That sounded old enough to Joseph, but Grandpapa said it was young for a Bishop.
Joseph’s little sister understood and respected none of this. After Mass in the cathedral, Hélène marched up to Bishop England, who was deep in conversation with someone else. Joseph chased after his sister, but he was too late. His Lordship turned to meet Hélène’s scowl and her disapproving words: “Mama says you’re from Ireland.”
“That I am.” Amusement tugged at Bishop England’s mouth and sparkled in his eyes, as if he knew what was coming.
“Then why is your name England?”
“Where are you from, lass?” His Lordship knew this too. Papa had tended the Bishop during his most recent illness.
Hélène frowned. “I’m from here.”
“Your name must be America, then?”
“No! It’s Hélène Lazare!”
“Well. Be thankful ’tis not Asparagus.”
Hélène made the same face she always made when Mama insisted she eat that dreaded vegetable.
Beside her, Joseph tried not to laugh. He wondered if Bishop England had learned his sister’s least favorite thing through divine revelation, or through Papa. Joseph took Hélène’s hand. “Come on, Asparagus.”
She tried to pull away. “I’m not—”
“That can be your Confirmation name,” Joseph suggested.
“It has to be a saint’s name! There wasn’t any Saint Asparagus!”
“Your sister is learning her catechism almost as quickly as you did, Joseph.” When he glanced back, Joseph saw His Lordship smiling at him the way his parents, grandparents, and teachers so often smiled at him, as if they expected him to part the Red Sea.
Joseph colored. He would disappoint them. He already had.
Yet Joseph could still feel the chrism oil on his forehead; he could still feel grace entering his body, washing him clean from the inside out. He was a new person now: Joseph Denis Lazare. He’d chosen the name to honor his great-granduncle Denis, the Priest who had died during the Terror rather than abandon his parishioners. With the intercession of such a martyr, strengthened by God’s Sacraments, maybe Joseph could do great things someday, or at least resist his own sinfulness.
The next morning, when Mama began to say grace, Hélène tapped her wrist and signed: ‘Don’t start without Papa!’
‘He had to visit a patient outside the city.’ Mama could see Hélène wasn’t finished, but she made her wait till after the prayer.
Joseph’s little sister frowned at her hominy. ‘Papa said he’d take me to Grandpapa’s shop today.’
Mama stirred her tea, then answered, ‘He can take you tomorrow.’
‘But Grandpapa told me he would receive a new shipment of clocks today! Could you take me, Mama, please?’
‘Sweetheart, you know I can’t.’
‘Why not?�
� Hélène pouted. ‘You never want to go anywhere except church!’
Joseph knew why Mama never wanted to go out. Even at church, there were often new people. People who didn’t understand how Mama communicated. People who stared. And some of the people who’d known them for years still stared, even though they spoke without words too. The looks on their faces said: You don’t belong here.
‘Do you think someone will buy all the best clocks before you see them?’ Cathy laughed.
‘They might!’ Hélène argued. ‘It isn’t far, Mama, and I know the way. I could go by myself.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Then I’ll take May—or Henry.’
Mama went pale and glanced over at May, who was adding biscuits to the table. After the hangings that summer, Mama had watched their slaves with fear in her eyes.
Joseph himself didn’t know what to think. The Grands seemed worried now too. They had decided to sell their cook, since she’d mourned Denmark Vesey and his conspirators. If Papa acted any differently toward their negroes, he was even nicer to them. He’d bought Henry’s mother Agathe to be their new cook, against the Grands’ objections—she’d grown up on Saint-Domingue, though Agathe’s old master had brought her to Charleston long before the slave revolt.
To Hélène, Mama said only: ‘Henry and May are busy.’
‘I could take Hélène,’ Joseph offered. He was a Soldier of Christ now. Surely he could protect his little sister through a few Charleston streets. He liked Grandpapa’s clocks too. The shop wasn’t much farther than the Philosophical and Classical Seminary, and Joseph was allowed to walk to school by himself now. Although Mama still fretted about that.
Necessary Sins Page 7
