HF - 03 - Mistress of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  'Man, you ain't remembering she?' Eunice demanded. 'She did drop from the belly of that big bitch what used to lie with Mr. William. Oh, I remembering she good. You remembering me, girl?'

  Gislane didn't realize she was being addressed until a hand twined itself in her hair and jerked her head back.

  'I is speaking girl. You ain't answering?'

  The pain was intense. Gislane struck behind herself in a sudden frenzy, and a moment later found herself on the ground, gasping for breath, staring at naked black feet.

  'She hit me one time with a stick’ one of the men said. 'I remember she good. But I going take she good too.'

  'You all had best watch out,' said a new voice. 'You ain't knowing she is for Hodge?'

  She rose to her knees, identified the speaker, and remembered him. His name was Charles, and he had been her father's butler, a small, wizened, old black man, who still wore the faded green livery jacket William Hodge had insisted on.

  'Charles?' she whispered.

  He grinned at her; his teeth were broken and yellow, unlike most of the others present. 'Eh, eh, but you remembering me, girl?'

  'Charles.' She scrambled to her feet. 'You'll help me, Charles?'

  'Help you, girl? Well, I going see these people don't hurt you bad. There it is. But you got for respect them, or they must be going take a stick to you.'

  She glanced from him to the grinning faces around her, dragged hair from her eyes. She wanted to say, yes, yes, I'll respect you. I'll do anything you say. Only please don't hurt me any more. But she lacked the courage to be such a coward.

  'You got gown for she?' Charles asked Eunice. 'The mistress want she look a proper servant, and is a fact if she stay so somebody going mount she before the master.'

  'Is I,' said the man who had first spoken. He came close now, fingered her breast, squeezed her shoulder and then her bottom. 'Oh, is I.'

  He thrust his belly at her and she shrank away.

  'Dress she,' Charles commanded, and a moment later a white cotton gown, entirely shapeless except for the hole through which her head went, was dropped over her shoulders. 'Now bind up she head,' Charles said, and another roll of cotton, this time in strips, was bound round and round her head by Eunice, while Wilma gathered her hair out of sight. 'Now take she sweep the floor,' Charles decided.

  Gislane licked her lips. 'Please,' she whispered. 'If I could have something to eat...'

  There was a cackle of amusement from around her. 'You

  wanting food, then?' Eunice asked. 'You best follow them dogs around, girl. There ain't no food now.' 'But I'm so hungry,' she begged.

  'We going eat when the master and mistress done,' Charles said. 'And that ain't coming soon. Now you take she, Eunice, and show she where she going work.'

  'Come, nuh,' Eunice said.

  Gislane followed the big black woman. Suddenly she felt more tired than at any previous moment in her life; far more tired than when she climbed the gangplank of the Antelope. But hadn't she suffered violence before, and survived it by a simple act of will? No doubt there were different sorts of violence. To be kicked or cuffed in an excess of brutish passion or equally brutish anger was somehow impersonal; to have the flailing thong of the cartwhip slicing through skin and, it seemed, arteries and bones and nerves and into her very brain, still left her uncertain of every footstep, unsure when she would again break out into a violent trembling, incapable of restraining the tears which she felt might come at any moment.

  But that was Janet Hodge. Surely and singly Jamie, her own cousin, had not seemed such a bad fellow at all. Had his wife not been present, she might even have thought she was improving her station, from that of cabin girl on the Antelope. So Janet was jealous. No doubt she would get over her jealously. And, she told herself, she must never forget that she was now in Nevis, only a few miles from Antigua and Green Grove, and not that terribly far from Jamaica and Hilltop. The Hiltons were all around her. She had but to find them, or have them find her, and her troubles would be over.

  Except that surely she could never again be the girl with whom Matt had fallen in love. But was she now more, or less of a woman? Could she ever lie beneath Matt, as she had lain beneath Runner and Penny, as she would certainly have to lie beneath Hodge, and not remember? And remembering, tremble with fear. And with hate.

  Well, then, she must learn to control the fear and conceal the hate. Even from Matt. And even that were wasted time unless she reached him. Survival. Only survival mattered.

  Eunice was indicating the bedrooms which lay at the back of the house, and which they had reached by means of a narrow, lightless corridor; it was all but dark outside, but there were scarcely any candles burning in the house, or in the overseers' houses down the drive. 'You going keep these clean,' she said. 'You going sweep, and you going polish, and you going wash that linen. You understand me, child?'

  Gislane peered into the gloom, and wrinkled her nose. She could feel the dust gathering on her bare feet, her face had just been brushed by a cobweb, arid her nose told her that the sheets had not been changed for several weeks. 'Who did this work before?' she asked.

  'Is me, nuh,' Eunice said. 'But now you is going do it, or I going bust you ass. Like so.'

  She swung her hand and hit Gislane on the side of the head. Once again taken entirely by surprise, she fell to her hands and knees, gasping for breath.

  Eunice grinned down at her. 'You understanding me, child?'

  Gislane got up, slowly. Suddenly she was as angry as she had been that first night in the cabin of the ship; but now she was more aware of her helplessness. She nodded, slowly. 'I understand you, Eunice.'

  'Well you can turn down them bed, eh?'

  Gislane nodded again, slowly approached the tent bed which occupied the centre of the room; there was a spotted mirror on the wall, and a dressing-table, but no chairs and the floor was unpolished wood. It occurred to her that she did not really remember this room at all; yet the bed looked old enough. Perhaps her mother had lain in it, with Papa Hodge. How many years ago. Perhaps she had been conceived, in this very bed, in a long night of passion.

  She checked, her hand on the gauze mosquito netting. Then certainly she would have been delivered in this bed. There was a waste of energy and effort, to deliver a child into this world, this West Indian paradise of hell. Why, she was becoming quite a philosopher.

  A floorboard creaked behind her. Eunice, about to hit her again? Hastily she parted the curtain, reached for the rumpled, sweat-stained sheets, the disordered pillows, and felt a hand on her shoulder. But this was not Eunice's hand; the fingers dug into her flesh, and now she smelt the gin-laden breath swirling around her head, while a moment later the half-empty bottle was itself tossed on to the sheet.

  She turned, sitting down as she did so. The hand slid away from her shoulder, and instead seized her chin, moving it this way and that, raising her head to stare into his eyes. These were bloodshot, as his whole face seemed to have changed in the short hour since she had last seen him. Because then he had been sober, and now he was drunk. And now she was afraid. Here was no boisterous excess of liquor such as had affected Runner. The small eyes had receded until they were no more than reddened pits in the handsome face; but the handsomeness of the face had itself dwindled into coarseness, the mouth loose with a trace of saliva dribbling from the corners, the breath rasping, the tongue emerging to flicker at her.

  Oh, God, she thought. So soon? Oh, God.

  His fingers twined in the turban, and released it. The cotton uncoiled itself on to the bed, followed by her hair.

  'By Christ,' he said. 'Gislane. By Christ. I remember you, girl. I remember a child. By Christ.'

  His fingers kneaded her scalp, pulling her head forward so that her face was lost in his shirtfront, her breath gagging on the odour which came from his body. Now the fingers were poking into her ears, massaging her neck, feeling the line of her jaw, even squeezing her nose, as if he were blind and could only discover her through
the medium of his fingertips. And there was nothing caressing in his touch; she realized that he was unaware, or uncaring, that she might have feelings, that it might be possible to hurt her in his search for gratification.

  'The gown,' he muttered. 'Take it off.'

  'I cannot move,' she whispered.

  The hands released her, and he sat beside her. She stood up, head brushing the netting, gathered the gown in a quick movement and lifted it over her head, allowing it to fall to the ground at her feet.

  'Christ,' he said. 'By Christ.'

  The fingers were back, and she remained standing, feeling as if her entire person were being turned inside out. He explored with a relentless interest, like a child examining a new toy whose working confounds him. He raised her arms to pull on the soft down, and even to inhale her sweat. He sucked and bit at her nipples, kneaded her belly, carried his minute investigations between her legs, amused himself for near half an hour before drawing her on to the bed. Then he wept and slobbered, alternatively sucking and biting, rolling and working her body up and down the mattress. She closed her eyes, and sought to close her mind. She thought of Runner, strangely, but of Runner hanging, as she had so often thought during the voyage. Then she could replace Runner with Hodge and he too dangled from the neck, naked, a long obscene sliver of ghastly whiteness. And she stood beneath and looked up at him, and by her side was Dinshad, who laughed, and occasionally poked the dangling figure with a stick.

  'Drunken wretch,' Janet Hodge remarked.

  Oh God, Gislane thought. Oh, God. Hodge's weight still lay on her belly, still moved against her. The unexpected presence of his wife did not seem to disturb him in the slightest. But the movement was slowing, and a moment later he rolled away from her.' 'Tis as we agreed.'

  'Oh, aye,' Janet Hodge said. 'She's to be a slave. But in my bed, Jamie? You have no shame. Up, slut.'

  Gislane sat up, cautiously; the room was quite dark now, but Janet carried a candle, behind which her face was invisible. As was her right hand.

  ' 'Tis settled you are, no doubt,' Janet said. 'You have clothes?'

  Gislane stooped, picked up her gown, and before she could straighten the riding-crop cracked on her back. ‘Ow,' she screamed before she could stop herself, and landed on her hands and knees.

  'Slut,' Janet shouted. 'Nigger bitch.'

  The blows seared across Gislane's shoulders, and without thinking she dropped further, seeking to protect her head.

  'You'll not harm her, Janet,' Hodge protested from the bed.

  'Harm her? She's a nigger,' Janet said. 'What's there to harm? 'Tis as we agreed, you'll remember? You'll lay the wench and I'll flay her, as the mood takes us. Out, slut, out.'

  She added her foot to her riding-crop, and Gislane forced herself to move, crawling towards the door, her heart rebelling against the shame of it, her mind unable to force her body to do anything better than respond, abjectly and quickly.

  She fell through the door and into the corridor, and the light was extinguished as the door banged behind her. She lay and panted, her gown drawn into a bundle against her belly, and saw feet, black and looming. 'No,' she whispered. 'Oh, please God, no.'

  Surprisingly, the hands on her shoulders this time were gentle, and helping her up. And Eunice's voice even contained some sympathy. 'That woman done hate you too bad, child,' she said. 'You want for watch she good. You know what she done with that Gertrude?'

  Gislane reached her feet, leaned against the massive, comforting shoulder, tears streaming down her cheeks, each silent sob seeming to rise from her very belly.

  Eunice moved slowly down the corridor, the girl cradled in her arm. 'She find she in that bed, one time, because that Hodge can't keep he stick down no how when he been drinking, and you know what she done? She pin she to the wall with a knife, one through each ear. Child, you should have heard that Gertrude screeching. It fit to wake the dead. I going show you the mark tomorrow. One through each ear, whap, whap. And she hanging there, afraid to move in case the whole ear cut off. The mistress leave she there for two hour before she take she down. And then she gone in the field. Child, you want for watch she.'

  'Oh, God,' Gislane whispered. 'Oh, God. What am I to do?'

  Eunice paused, and glanced at her, her huge face half invisible in the gloom of the corridor. 'Do, child? You got for do like we. And live for the night.'

  'It is night now,' Gislane muttered.

  Eunice grinned at her. 'Not night, child. The night. That is the thing.'

  Gislane awoke with a start, raised herself on her elbows. She had been sleeping deeply; after a week, even the hard floor of the servants' room had become comfortable. Rivers of exhaustion spread up and down her thighs, made the muscles of her arms jump; rivers of fear coursed constantly through her mind, seeming to move round and round her consciousness; rivers of shame filled any part of her waking self that could still think. She worked from dawn until well after dusk, sweeping and cleaning, making beds, preparing and serving food; she worked not only for the Hodges, but she worked for the servants as well. 'You got for learn, child,' Charles the butler said. 'Or I going put Henry on you. It ain't mattering now that Hodge done have you.' And Henry would leer at her, squeezing her thighs and allowing his fingers to wander up her crotch. Hodge was bad, but Henry would sure be a great deal worse. And once she had hated Runner.

  The worst thing about Hodge, she reasoned, was his unpredictability. When sober he was a thoughtful, withdrawn, somewhat uncertain man, entirely dominated by his wife, who even seemed a little embarrassed by his position as a slave-owner, and certainly embarrassed by the remarkable being who had so strangely come into his possession; when drunk he was a monster, vicious and cruel, and yet his cruelty was the curious brutality of a child. His wife was some years older than he, and no doubt had bullied him from the moment they had first met. And like any white man in the tropics he had been brought up to believe the blacks as nothing better than animals, sent for the benefit of his labour requirements and occasionally to gratify his senses. To discover a woman who was to all intents and purposes as white as himself but bound to obey his every whim was to discover himself apparently in a gigantic playroom, with an unimaginably splendid and interesting toy. He delighted in exploring her; she felt that could his questing fingers reach her very womb he would have it out to examine it and decide for himself how it worked. He delighted in physically irritating her, pinching or squeezing or biting until she wanted to scream with a combination of discomfort and revulsion. And yet, so limited, so one-sided was his view of life that he never demanded anything of her save that she be there, waiting for his sex and his hands; it never seemed to occur to him that she might be capable, perhaps with kindness and bribery, of responding to him. Which was as well, she reflected, for she would not have been capable of responding, and that would no doubt have led to another beating.

  Because the fear lurked, constantly, and the fear possessed a physical shape in the personage of Janet Hodge. Janet was the fear and the shame wrapped up together, for she often discovered her in Hodge's company, as on the first night and would stand there, watching them, while Gislane shivered with apprehension. So intent was the white woman's gaze that she feared herself about to become the victim of some obscenely perverse assault, but the only feeling she seemed to arouse in Janet Hodge's breast was hate, and although she seldom interfered with her husband's pleasures not a day passed but she would seize Gislane by the hair as she scrubbed a floor, and push her face down into the bucket of water, cursing her for a filthy wretch, or would kick her on the back or thighs, or commence belabouring her across the shoulders with the short stick she always carried. And with every day the beatings grew more severe, as Gislane gradually lost the ability to cry. In the beginning the very first throb of shocked pain brought the tears racing down her cheeks, but after a week she merely bowed her back, and waited for the punishment to stop, and took refuge in her vision; only to Runner and Penny, and the nameless man who had brought her
to this, and to Hodge, was now added Janet, hanging from the same gallows, but Janet was suspended by her hair, and thus living and waiting... for what? Gislane did not know. Her hate stopped at her own experience and none of that was sufficient for Janet.

  There was no escaping the pair of them, for Hodges was as lonely as if there had been no other plantation on the island. Their fellow planters seemed to shun the present owners, and even the overseers seldom came up to the Great House for a meal or a convivial evening; Gislane could not help but remember the often crowded dining-room during the lifetime of her father.

  She longed for the sight of a strange, and perhaps a friendly face, for the return of Dr. Nisbet and his pretty young wife. She was isolated in a desert of hatred, resentment, and contempt. There was no point of contact with Charles and Eunice, even if she knew their dislike was mainly directed against her mother, merely for being William Hodge's mistress and thereby raised above them. They seized the opportunity to do as little work as possible, and to make sure she did as much; they discussed her and the Hodges in front of her, and took pleasure in reminding her that she had seen nothing yet, that when that Janet, as they called her, got herself worked up, then she would know what had hit her. They made sure she received the very scrapings of their already meagre ration of food, and that she served them before eating herself. Did she make the slightest mistake in her allotted task they cuffed her about the ear and if she lay down at night, from sheer exhaustion, before the last of them, they kicked her until she got up again. She was terrified that they would do more, her anguish centring in the obvious desire of Henry the footman. She realized that to be jointly assaulted by these four, after a long hour with Hodge, would be to snap the very slender links that contained her sanity, and wondered whether that might not after all be a good thing. Because if the Hiltons were on their way to rescue her, surely they should have been here by now. And then she remembered she had herself only been here a week; the thought of the dominant figure of Robert Hilton riding triumphantly up that driveway, Matt at his side, accompanied by the wealth and power of the Hilton name, brought a continuing revival of courage and determination. She would live, and she would remain in full possession of her sanity, for that glorious day.