‘It is the custom on such estates for white children to be given coloured children of their own age as playmates from earliest infancy, on the principle that such a bond will lead to the slave child becoming a most devoted personal servant to the other later in life. For Josephine, I was the natural choice to fill this role; so we were brought up together, and treated in every way as though we were sisters by blood.
‘Josephine had no brothers and only one elder sister, named Manette; but she was an insipid creature much given to introspection, so Josephine was much more drawn to myself. She was very pretty and of a very frolicsome disposition. Both of us loved to dance and sing, and as we grew older we encouraged one another in naughty escapades. Out here in the Caribbean white girls as well as coloured began to feel the urges of sex very young, and from the time Josephine and I entered our teens both our minds were filled with the thoughts natural to fully grown women. I let myself be seduced by the overseer’s son; while she developed a passion for the son of one of our neighbours, who fell equally passionately in love with her.
‘The name of her beau was William de Kay, and his family had been settled in Martinique only for some twenty-five years. Originally, I think, their name was MacKay, for they were of noble Scottish descent and related to many great Lords in their own country; but they had been deprived of their estates and exiled for having taken up arms in the cause of the Stuart pretender, during his attempt to gain the throne of England in 1745.
‘Madame de Tascher and Madame de Kay had long been close friends, so from childhood little William was always in and out of the house, or we at his, and was our most cherished playmate. As he and Josephine grew older the two mothers smiled at the devotion they showed to one another, for at that time the parents of both children favoured the idea of a match between them. But later, on both sides events occured to alter their plans.
‘I never fully understood the complications of the inheritance that devolved on William, but it seems that his father was heir to a Lord Lovell and that his own succession to the estates was dependent on his marrying this old nobleman’s niece. Whatever the right of the matter, news arrived that Lord Lovell had died; it thus became necessary for Monsieur de Kay to present himself as the heir in London, and he decided to take William with him in order that the young man might complete his studies at the University of Oxford.
‘At that time William was not aware that he would be called on to marry his cousin, and he considered himself irrevocably pledged to Josephine. Naturally, at the idea of a separation which might last for several years the two young lovers were distraught. Their parents had, some months before, consented to their regarding themselves as unofficially betrothed, but that no longer satisfied them. They craved some means of entering into a more indissoluble bond before a cruel fate tore them from each other’s arms.
‘Since both were of such tender years, no French priest would have married them without the consent of their parents; but, then being greatly devoted to my young mistress, I took it on myself to secure for them an opportunity to exchange the vows by which they set so much store.
‘As you may know, there is nothing incompatible about being a Roman Catholic and a practitioner of Voodoo. In fact, all the best known Christian Saints are also gods and goddesses in the Voodoo pantheon; and a part of the training of the Houngans, as the Voodoo priests are called, is to fully familiarise themselves with all the rituals of the Roman Church. For some time past a local Houngan, who had recently graduated from the Roman Catholic Seminary for coloured men, had been casting eyes of desire upon me, so I had no great difficulty in persuading him to do as I wished. I then told the two lovers that I had found a priest who would marry them in secret, and two nights later the ceremony was duly performed beneath a giant cedar tree that grew not far from la Pagerie mansion.
‘Some months after William arrived in England M. de Tascher learned from M. de Kay the conditions of the inheritance, but he was not particularly put out by these rendering a union between their families no longer practical, as by that time he had other plans for Josephine.
‘His sister, a Madame Renaudin, who resided in France, was a rich and influential woman. Being a good aunt she was strongly set upon arranging an advantageous marriage for the eldest niece, and it had already been agreed that Manette should cross the ocean to live with her. But, just then, Manette was taken with a fever, and within a week she was dead.
‘Monsieur and Madame Tascher decided that Josephine should take her place, but they did not tell her so at once, because she did nothing but dream and talk of William and they feared to disturb the balance of her mind. Instead, they suppressed his letters to her and hers to him, hoping that both would believe each had lost interest in the other.
‘She became greatly worried by William’s silence, but no wit less devoted to him; and at last the time came when her parents could no longer postpone breaking it to her that she must forget him, and that they were sending her to France where she was to make a splendid marriage.
‘You can imagine their consternation when, instead of protesting and fainting, as they expected her to do, she told them she could not accede to their wishes because she was already married.
‘An earthquake could hardly have created a greater upheaval in the household. By threats and abuse they had the whole story out of her that night. From her description of the man who she said had married her to William they recognised the Houngan, and sent for him. Threatened with being sent to the galleys, he confessed to having performed the ceremony, and disclosed that it was I who had persuaded him to unite them by the Catholic ritual.
‘By morning the de Taschers had convinced themselves that I had led Josephine into the affair against her will, and that she was the innocent victim of my wicked wiles. That was not altogether true, as she had been overjoyed at the chance to marry William clandestinely; and I shall always hold it against her that she made no effort whatever to defend me when their wrath descended on me like a cyclone.
‘They took from me all my pretty clothes and all the presents they had ever given me. They had me stripped naked, tied to the whipping post and flogged. Then they sent me out to labour in the cane-fields. To act so they were fools; for I told everyone the reason for my disgrace, and the story of Josephine’s secret marriage went the round of the island. I did not remain in the cane-fields long, either. Knowing the house so well it was easy for me to burgle it. One night about a week later I took from it all the valuables I could lay my hands on and made off to the port. In return for part of my loot an old woman that I knew there had me smuggled aboard a ship that was sailing for St. Vincent in the morning, and ever since I have sailed the Caribbean seas.’
‘You are lucky, Madame,’ Amanda remarked, ‘to have led so desperate a life for so long without being either killed or seriously injured.’
‘I have a charmed life,’ Lucette replied quite seriously. ‘In Martinique there was an old coloured woman with some Irish blood whose gift for fortune-telling was infallible. She told me when a girl that I would live a life of wild adventure and witness many fights, but could not be killed by bullet, by steel or by rope; only by a fall from a high place. And you may be certain that nothing would induce me to go up into the rigging, or take any similar risk.’
Enthralled by her story, Roger asked: ‘Did you ever learn what became of Josephine?’
Lucette shrugged. ‘Some three years later I ran into my brother in Antigua. He told me that Josephine and the de Taschers had declared the story I had put about to be a malicious invention from start to finish; and that she had, after all, gone to France and made a fine marriage; but I know no more than that.’
For some while they talked on; then the party broke up, and the prisoners went on deck to enjoy the cool of the evening. Again they slept well, but on coming into the saloon for breakfast they found Bloggs and Lucette awaiting them with long faces.
The bad news was soon told. Some members of the crew were evidently oppos
ed to making the long voyage down to Martinique, and had formed a secret league against them. When the pirate who acted as bo’sun had gone down to the hold that morning to supervise the drawing off of the day’s water ration, he had found that the spigots of the last remaining full casks had been pulled out, so that the water in them had run to waste. And that was not all. Between two of the casks Pedro the Carib was lying dead with a knife through his back.
As none of them had the least reason to feel affection for Pedro, and his capabilities as a captain left much to be desired, they did not regard his death as a major calamity; but they were much concerned by the sinister manner of it. In addition, the loss of their water was a grave annoyance, as it meant that they could not now proceed to Martinique without first putting in somewhere along the coast at a place where the casks could be refilled.
Lucette and Bloggs agreed that the most likely suspects were the three pirates and two Porto Ricans who had refrained from voting on the question of making off with the Circe as opposed to continuing under the Vicomte. Since the voyage to Martinique was quite a different issue it was possible that others of the pirates were at the bottom of this attempt to keep the ship in the waters that they knew, but as a precaution it was decided to seize the five suspects and confine them in the lock-up.
When they came to the question of watering, Bloggs had to rely on Lucette’s knowledge of the locality, and she advised that they should make for the island of Tortuga. That meant putting the ship about again, as this small island lay off the north coast of Saint-Domingue. But the wind being against them they had not travelled any great distance during the past thirty-six hours, and with it in their favour could hope to reach Tortuga in considerably less.
With some misgiving Roger pointed out that if they put about they might well run into the Vicomte; but Lucette said that by now he must be well on his way to his lair, which was far up a creek in the desolate coast of Great Inagua, a hundred miles north of the channel that separated Saint-Domingue from Cuba, and still ignorant of the fact that they were not following him to it. She then supported her argument for going to Tortuga by adding that whereas they might waste days lying in half a dozen anchorages along the coast they were passing without being able to locate a fresh water spring, she knew of three bays in Tortuga at any one of which they could refill the casks as soon as they were landed.
In consequence, the five protesting suspects were rounded up and the ship put about without further delay. All that day, on a fair breeze that was a most welcome offset to the broiling sunshine, they again sailed westward along the coast of Santo Domingo. When dinner time came round Bloggs and Lucette reported that despite their close questioning of the crew, they were no nearer discovering who had killed Pedro, and their investigation made them more inclined than ever to believe that the murderer was one of the men who was now under lock and key. This belief gave them good grounds to hope that there would be no further trouble; so, after an evening spent on deck under a myriad of stars, they turned in with minds that were reasonably tranquil.
Yet next day the passengers woke to find themselves in a situation which filled them with the gravest alarm. The galley was silent, the hunch-back nowhere to be seen. The table in the saloon had not been laid for breakfast, and both the doors leading from the after cabins to the deck were locked. They were prisoners again, and in vain they both beat upon the doors and tried to force them. No one answered their knocking and it soon became evident that the doors were being held to by heavy objects on their far sides.
The mystery of what had occurred during the night deepened when they went to Georgina’s old cabin, which since the ship’s capture had been occupied by Lucette and Bloggs. That too was locked, and apparently empty as no reply came to their shouts and knocking on its door.
It looked as if the unrest among the crew had been much more grave and general than they had supposed; and there was cause for fearing that in a new mutiny both Bloggs and Lucette had been murdered. Roger now roundly cursed himself for his over-cleverness in arguing them into agreeing to make the long voyage down to Martinique. Had he scrawled pardons and a commission for them on pieces of paper they would have accepted them readily enough, and put him and his party ashore two days ago. But it was too late to think of that now, and they could only wait events.
About ten o’clock, on glancing through the stern windows, he noticed that a new course had been set some-what to starboard, and the ship was now heading away from the coast. By midday the skyline of the big island was becoming obscured by the heat haze. Shortly afterwards, only a few hundred yards away to port, a wooded promontory came into view; then another further off to starboard. Roger had little doubt that the two capes formed the entrance to a bay in the island of Tortuga; so whoever was now in control of the ship evidently intended to carry out Lucette’s plan to water there.
A few minutes later they heard shouting, loud bumps and a rattling noise, as the ship’s sails were lowered and her anchor let go. Slowly she swung with the tide, bringing into view the bight of the bay. On shore there was a long low house and a number of palm-thatched shacks. At anchor in the foreground lay a barque. As Roger recognised her his heart leapt to his throat, then sank, She was the Vicomte de Senlac’s. For the past two days they had believed themselves saved. Now, either through evil chance or treachery, they were once more in dire peril.
9
The Harbour where Evil Reigned
Suppressing an exclamation of dismay, Roger turned away from the window; but the scene beyond it remained as clear in his mind as though he were still staring at a painting, although no oils could have conveyed such vivid colouring as did the blinding sunshine.
Wave after wave of rich green vegetation mounted to tree-covered heights that stood out in scimitar-sharp curves against a sky of cloudless blue. This seemingly impenetrable forest ran down over the two promontories that, like reaching arms, nearly encircled the land-locked bay. At their water-line no shore could be seen, only a belt of deep black shadow where the waves lapped gently at a natural palisade formed by an incredible tangle of mangrove roots. Towards the flattening of this great arc the barrier fell back, giving place to a deep beach of almost white sand that stretched for about a quarter of a mile along the centre of the bay.
A few hundred yards from the water lay the house. It was painted lemon yellow; only one small portion of it had an upper storey, and it appeared larger than it actually was owing to a wide veranda that ran the whole of its length. To one side of it palm-thatched slave quarters spread in higgledy-piggledy confusion and on the other were stockaded corrals containing cattle.
At one end of the beach a schooner lay high and dry almost on her side, evidently being careened, although no men were working on her during the blistering midday heat. Several boats were beached in front of the house, and one of them had just put off. Half a mile nearer to the Circe, the Vicomte’s sinister greenish-yellow barque lay with furled sails, yet another vividly contrasting patch of colour against the deep blue water of the lagoon.
Roger was still wondering how to break the news of their ill-fortune to his companions, when Clarissa broke it for him by crying out: ‘Merciful God! That is the Vicomte’s ship!’
The others ran to the window and her cry was followed by a chorus of woeful verification. Then, stunned into silence by this abrupt end to their newly-won security, they watched the boat approach.
Roger, having been unconscious when the Circe was captured, had never seen the Vicomte, but the others had caught glimpses of him on his own poop just before the prize crew had been put on board. Now, they recognised him as the thin, elegantly-dressed, smallish figure in the stern. As the boat came nearer they were seized with the wild hope that, all unsuspecting, he was being rowed into a trap. He could know nothing of what had occurred aboard the Circe since he had left her, so must suppose that João de Mondego was still in command and waiting to welcome him. If, despite the mystery of their having been locked up, Bloggs still
had the upper hand aboard, he must resist the Vicomte or pay for it with his life, and one well-aimed shot from the long gun could sink the boat.
But no shot was fired and the boat disappeared from view beneath the Circe’s counter. They knew then that it was not an ill chance but treachery which had brought them to this lagoon and that it must be de Senlac’s lair.
For a quarter of an hour they waited fearful, yet impatient, to learn what fate had in store for them. Then the cabin door was thrown open and the Vicomte walked in, followed by Lucette.
De Senlac was in his early forties, somewhat below middle height, spare of figure, and thin of face. His eyes were a cold hard blue with heavy lids, his prominent nose was pinched at the nostrils, and his mouth thin with almost bloodless lips. He was dressed in a fashion that had gone out six years before, with the coming of the Revolution: silk coat and stockings, a brocaded waistcoat, laced cravat and patent shoes with silver buckles. He still wore his hair powdered, and on his carefully tended hands there glittered half a dozen rings which must have been worth a small fortune.
Sweeping off his tricorne hat in a gallant bow to the ladies, he said in French to Lucette: ‘I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting my prisoners; pray present me.’
As she made the introductions, he bowed to each of them again, then said with a thin-lipped smile:
‘Madame la Comtesse, Mesdames; I learn to my distress that you have had cause for grave fears for your safety during the past few days. It may be, too, that having heard tales of the unenviable fate which generally overtakes females when they fall into the hands of sea-rovers, you are still a prey to anxiety. Let me hasten to reassure you. Were you persons of no consequence I could hardly be expected to put myself to considerable trouble on your account; but your birth makes me confident that either from your own resources or those of friends you will be able to reward me suitably for my protection. My followers, I am happy to say, have learned the wisdom of accepting my decisions without argument, and I shall compensate them for having to forgo any expectations they may have entertained regarding you by buying for their amusement a fresh batch of young women from one of the procurers in Santiago or Port Royal. While you are in Tortuga you have nought to fear, and I trust you will regard yourselves as my honoured guests.’
The Dark Secret of Josephine Page 15
