Dark Shadows: Angelique's Descent

by Lara Parker

  “Oh, you are so lovely,” she whispered at last, “so tall, your body so strong—a woman now, I see.”

  “I’m fourteen.”

  “And have you learned many things about life?”

  “Of life, I still know very little, only what you taught me, Mama, but I have been to Port-au-Prince—and I fear I have learned the secrets of death.”

  “The Devil Island—the spirits there are powerful. Sit down here close to me as you can get, and tell me everything. I want to hear—I know you fled Basse Pointe, during the rebellion.”

  “Mama, my father tried to kill me during the ceremony. All along he wanted me for that. He lied to you. He never meant to raise me as his daughter.”

  “The bastard tricked me. Oh, I was a fool to have believed him. I am sorry for your suffering.”

  “I slew him, with his own dagger.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you sailed to Hispaniola?”

  “Ten days on a privateer. Halfway across, we were boarded by sea beggars, set on plunder. Their clothes were stained with blood, and they carried knives and bayonets. Mama, they murdered almost everyone—officers, sailors, even the cook! They spared my friend Cesaire because he was a Negro and he could sail the ship.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “They only let me live because I had been working in the galley, and they needed someone to prepare their meals. The drunken fools never knew I made a brew from a rat’s tail and whiskers that I put in the rum, a potion that burned their insides and made them blind.”

  “Ah, yes, fatal vomiting from the hair. I see you have become a sorceress.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “No more and no less than I have done.”

  “They called you a witch.”

  “They say it is witchcraft, but it was not witchcraft. It was the manchineel tree.”

  “But everyone knows that is poison. What did you do?”

  “Let’s just say they caught up with me at last. I was three years working in the slave hospital at Trinité, a very big plantation. I birth babies, set broken limbs, stop sickness in his tracks. Often they say of me ‘witchcraft’ when I was only a dedicated healer.”

  “Then why were you unhappy?”

  “There was an overseer, a greedy lustful man who would not let me be. In the early years I never worried. I thought my place in the hospital was secure. I was necessary. I was needed. And when the overseer troubled me, I put the green worm in his drink to dull his lust.

  “One night, he was drunk, mean drunk, and he caught me out in the yard. He pulled me into the bushes but I scraped my fingernails on the manchineel tree. While he held me down, I dug my fingernails into his back. The villain goat thought he was pleasuring me until the poison set. I heard him scream in agony when he died.”

  “And they accused you of murdering him?”

  “That is what is so contrary, it mocks their tribunal. They found me guilty of not saving him. I could not do it. I would not give him any medicine. You see, they want me dead. For many reasons.”

  “So what is your sentence?”

  “Oh, sweet darlin’, you don’t want to know.”

  “Tell me…”

  “Not too bad. They give me a painless death, because of my service.”

  “What?”

  “The gallows.”

  Angelique felt the blood spin in her head. “When?”

  “Two days hence.”

  “Oh, Mama…” Angelique sucked in her breath, unable to speak, and her eyes burned. Cymbaline reached through the bars.

  “Angelique, my darling, do not grieve. I could ask for no gift as fine as this one, to see you again before I die.” Although her eyes brimmed with tears, she was smiling as she reached for the girl’s hand and held it tight. Angelique’s chest ached with a dull pressure, as though she had been holding her breath for too long underwater. She hesitated, then spoke in a quivering voice.

  “Mama, I have brought a secret dust with me from Port-au-Prince. If they knew I had taken it, they would kill me.”

  “What is this thing?”

  “It is a powder that produces a deep sleep, so deep it seems like death.”

  “You don’t mean Zombie Powder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Made from corpses? I don’t want Zombie Powder!” Cymbaline withdrew, horrified.

  “Mama, Mama, come back! The powder does not bring death, only the sleep of death.”

  “But the Zombie is pitiful and crazy because his soul is taken! He walks the world in a lifeless trance, trying to get his soul back. Death is far better than that.”

  “No, the taking of the soul is a ritual the Bokor performs.”

  “How you know, Angelique?”

  “I have seen it, many times. The powder is only for the sleep, and the madness comes from waking in the grave, the horror of it, being buried alive. But I can bring you back from the sleep. I will be the one who wakes you, and you will never know where you have been. I have seen this happen again and again. You must trust me.”

  “You want me to use this powder?”

  “It is your only chance, and, Mama, look. I even have the antidote.” She showed her mother the sacks with the two powders, one white, one crimson. Cymbaline recoiled in distaste.

  “What has happened to you, child? Who has given you this evil thing, and taught you how to use it?”

  “Mama, I have been with a famous Bokor in Port-au-Prince. I have seen the way the powder is made. I have seen the man rise from the dead. You have only to blow it from your palm and suck it out of the air. One breath, and you will lose consciousness. You will fall into a sleep so still and lifeless, they will be certain you are dead. They will take you out to the graveyard behind the morne and bury you in the earth.” Cymbaline listened, shuddering in disgust.

  “No! It’s too horrible—to be buried and to be still alive? I haven’t the courage. I could never bear it.”

  “When everyone has left, I will come, open the casket, and wake you. You will never know—it will be like a dream for you. And we will escape together. I will take you with me back to Port-au-Prince.”

  Cymbaline looked at her child as though she did not know her and shook her head, her eyes filled with worry and pity.

  “Mama, there is no other way.”

  “Give me the powder,” she said at last with a deep sigh. “I will think on these things you have said to me. I do love life with all my heart.”

  “I promise you, Mama. It will save you.”

  Cymbaline touched Angelique’s face again and gazed at her as if to memorize her features.

  “Before you go,” she said, “I must … there is something I thought I never would have the chance to tell you.”

  “What, Mama?”

  “Theodore Bouchard, that vile monster, I’m glad you killed him, he … oh, Angelique, I did you a mighty wrong. It was my greedy dreams for you that made me do it.”

  “What about him?”

  “I lied to you. He was not your father.”

  “What? But how can you say that? The birthmark on my leg is the same as his!”

  “My child, a birthmark is an easy thing to fake, for someone like me.”

  “But why did you tell me I was his?”

  “I thought he would become a powerful, rich planter, and he would give you a good life. He was willing, he said, to raise you up a lady. I am ashamed to say he was my lover, as black-hearted a villain as he was, and I lay with him many times. He wanted to marry me, but I tell him no. Still, I told him you were his daughter, and he believed me. I never knew he was Couchon Gris. I let you go to them—and you such an angel child. I did a very evil thing to tell that falsehood, and it makes my heart wretched. So, you see, I really deserve my woeful sentence.”

  “You mustn’t say that!”

  “I should pay for such a crime.”

  “Don’t talk that way!” Angelique looked down at
her hands, flexing the fingers. “Mama, who was my father?”

  “I don’t know. I truly believe he came from the sea. Remember I used to tell you you were born of water?”

  “Yes, and I always thought it was true, that I was the child of the sea because I was so happy there.”

  “I’ll tell you the story of the day your father came, and you decide. It was a peculiar morning and there was no wind off the ocean. The wind came from Pelée, scorching and harsh; the sky was sizzling blue, and the foam of the sea was like cream. I was gathering crabs, but I was seeing the air, fractured into rainbows, and the sand was like grains of gold. That’s when I think a spell is coming because the air was so hot and still, and then I see the white bird standing, watching me, and I know I’m right.”

  “The bird told you?”

  Cymbaline nodded. “I went up the beach a ways, but I was having trouble finding crabs, because all the little white shells on the beach had come to life and were moving. Then I saw the great turtle, so green and spotted, like a sea beast come up in the day. She had dug her hole, there in the daylight, where she had no business being, where she had no way to hide, and I came close and saw her dropping her pearly round eggs out from behind her tail. She swished her behind back and forth, back and forth, burying her eggs, and I know it is a spell.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why, sure enough, a man steps out of the sea—golden like a god, eyes like pieces of the sky.”

  “And he was the one?”

  “He stayed with me five days. We have love, love of man and woman, and when he goes, I have you inside me.”

  Angelique closed her eyes and had a vision of her mother, in a flowered pareu, walking in the foam—slender, her hair long and dark, her body supple and curved, and her pareu clinging to her, flowering her body. But most of all, she saw her shyness and her awkward, girlish movements, the woman a man would see, not the mother who was so wise and loving and held her to her breast, but the rippling girl walking in the sand, shy and smiling the way she would smile to a lover, moving like music in her bones.

  * * *

  The dead man hung from the gibbet. He turned slowly on the rope, and his eyes bulged in the contortions of death. The air was hot and drenched with moisture, but the sky was leaden and there was not a breath of wind. The sun hung, a red and rotting sphere, and there was a far-off rumbling, a subterranean grumble that meant a hurricane was on its way.

  Angelique waited outside the prison with a crowd of mulattoes and békés who had come to watch the executions, and she tried to quell the panic in her breast. The guards removed the body of the slave who had just been hanged, and flung the empty noose back to the sky. A row of crude wooden boxes serving as coffins stood by the prison wall under the arcade.

  There had already been several hangings that day, and the crowd was growing impatient. She saw only a few blancs, tradesmen, shopkeepers; but the judges were there in black robes, a shabby detail of French militia, and she spotted Father Le Brot standing near the scaffold to administer the last rites. She drew back, afraid that he might notice her.

  “Do you know the witch?”

  The voice startled her, and she turned to see a kindly brown woman with a baby on her hip. She answered her softly.

  “She is my mother.”

  The woman sucked in her breath and let out a low sound of commiseration, then turned and whispered to her companions. They all looked at her with pained expressions, and another darker woman approached, her face lined with compassion.

  “Your mother did no wrong,” she said kindly. “This is an unjust sentence. She is a good healer. She birthed my child. All the slaves at Trinité loved her.”

  Another woman spoke in a low voice. “It was the planters from the Grande Anse who wanted to avenge that overseer—his drinking comrades in Saint-Pierre. Ever since the rebellion there has been tyranny, suspicion, and cruelty. Many are executed for no reason.”

  The sky darkened, and rain threatened as Cymbaline appeared in the prison arch, and began the slow walk to the scaffold. Angelique could feel her heart racing, and she glanced anxiously at the low clouds on the horizon, for she feared rain drops would wash the powder from the air.

  Her mother was dressed in a long white shift that failed to disguise her fine figure, and her black hair fell in waves down her back. She was without ornament, but her beauty shone from the gleam of her skin and her lustrous tiger eyes, which raked the crowd and lingered on Angelique. Just the shadow of a smile passed over her face.

  The thunder rumbled like deep drums, and the air was palpable, thick and hot, hovering like a pall. Cymbaline mounted the scaffold with her head held high, stumbled slightly on the last step, then stood tall on the platform, only her trembling lip betraying her fear. A welcome breath of a breeze ghosted through, caught the hem of her skirt, but fled before it had cooled the square, and the air was still again.

  Angelique hoped Cymbaline had the powder in her hand. But something was wrong. Something was not as she had imagined it. Angelique was jolted by the sudden realization that her mother’s hands were tied behind her back! How could she breathe the powder?

  A black-robed judge read the sentence, his nasal voice ringing in the sodden air. “Cymbaline Harpignies, you have been accused of the crime of witchcraft, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. Do you have anything to say?”

  Cymbaline looked down at the crowd. Her dark hair framed her face, and her eyes were wide. “I beseech you people to hear me one last time. I have committed no crimes and have only defended myself from the humiliation no woman should be forced to endure.”

  Angelique saw the old anger rise in her. “You say he was a white man, and because African blood runs in my veins, I had no right to strike him down. He was white, I admit that, but he was a vile and licentious beast, not a man at all. I will not call him a man, and any that seek revenge for his well-deserved death are the same brutal monsters as he!”

  There was a murmur through the crowd as the judges conferred among themselves, then one nodded to the priest. Father Le Brot mounted the scaffold.

  “She is a witch!” a man called out. “She does not have need of communion!”

  The priest turned to the man, and said gently, “All are equal in the eyes of God, and all who receive the sacraments ascend to the Gates of Heaven.”

  Angelique could wait no longer. Hoping he would not recognize her, she pushed forward as the priest placed the wafer in Cymbaline’s mouth, and when she reached the edge of the platform, she called up to him, “Father, give her a crucifix to hold.”

  Father Le Brot turned and frowned slightly when he heard the voice, but he did not look down.

  “She needs a cross, Father,” Angelique insisted urgently.

  The priest looked instead to the judges, questioning. One hesitated, then shrugged, and Angelique breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the guard untie her mother’s wrists, and the priest hold the crucifix up to her. Cymbaline looked at the wooden cross for a long moment, then her gaze flickered, and she saw Angelique beneath the platform. Their eyes held, and Angelique nodded to her slowly.

  Cymbaline reached quickly for the cross, took it, and pressed it swiftly to her lips, releasing a wisp of white smoke into air. Then she clasped the crucifix to her breast. Her nostrils flared, her eyes grew wide, she looked at Angelique, and took a last deep breath, just as the hangman lifted the noose. At that instant her eyes glazed over, she wavered, then swooned, and fell, crumpling to the wood. Her arm flew out, with the cross still in her hand. As the astonished crowd hovered around her, her breathing slowly ceased.

  As if in response, the sky darkened. The clouds belched rain, drenching the populace. The downpour hammered the still body of Cymbaline as the guard turned her over on the platform and peered into her face.

  “Is she dead?” a voice spit out.

  “Dead,” he said, with bewildered finality, shaking his head, raindrops falling from his nose.

  The
crowd exploded, and angry demands were hurled at the judges.

  “She was a witch! The crucifix destroyed her!”

  “No! It proves she is a martyr. The cross was her salvation.”

  “Hang her nonetheless!”

  “Her sentence was unjust!”

  “What if she is a witch? She’ll return and torment us!”

  “That isn’t true! Christ took her with him when she held his crucifix to her breast! She deserves a holy burial!”

  “The witch must be hung! Or she will live again!”

  But Father Le Brot intervened, and Cymbaline’s body was lifted and carried back to the prison. There she was wrapped in a shroud and placed in the last empty coffin, which stood within the arched gallery. Sheets of rain blasted the stones of the square.

  The funeral procession began slowly, winding its way toward the edge of town. The coffins were stacked on a heavy wagon pulled by two horses, and Angelique could see that there were many mourners, mostly families of the condemned and executed, some weeping, and others trudging in dull-eyed remorse. Her mother’s coffin was the last one at the back of the cart, and Father Le Brot had tied the crucifix to the rope which held the lid to the box. Angelique walked close behind it, sometimes reaching out with her hand to touch the rough wood, as if to reassure herself that all was well.

  The incessant rain fell in curtains, gusted by a treacherous wind which seemed to come from no one direction, but drove the rain sideways across the road, bending trees to the ground, then spun and whipped the grasses to tangled mounds. The roar was constant now, rolling in from the sea, and Angelique could hear the surf pounding from its great height on the beach.

  Angelique watched as the coffin was lowered into the dark grave, which seemed to fill with the water flowing from a thousand rivulets newly created by the downpour. Rain spattered on the flat wooden cover.

  The diggers could not shovel the dirt but were obliged to scrape the mud into the hole, struggling to cover the box with sodden lumps of earth. The force of the gale made it difficult to stand, and the two men leaned into the thrust of it as they labored. At last they were finished, and one man rested against his spade and wiped the dripping water from his face. As he stood and looked toward her, Angelique was surprised to recognize the prison guard, with his fuzzy red beard and the one cloudy blind eye that lent a dull malevolence to his gaze.