Elene did not, ordinarily, care for face painting, but she looked so pale this evening that she agreed to a little carmine cream on her lips and a brush of red Spanish paper across each cheekbone. Her brows and lashes were naturally dark, in spite of the pale color of her hair, so that they needed no more than a touch of oil to give them a soft sheen.
Devota was lavish with her compliments when at last Elene stood ready. Elene thanked her, but could feel no gratification. It did not matter what anyone thought of her appearance, including Durant. She felt more like a sacrifice than a bride, and all the praise and platitudes that usually surrounded such affairs were not going to change that. If she must go through with this wedding, all she really wanted was for it to be over.
There came a faint tap on the door. “It’s time, mam’zelle,” the butler called from the other side.
Devota told him they were ready. Suddenly flustered, she looked around for Elene’s fan, in case she should be overcome by the heat, and also the nosegay of yellow roses and fern she would carry. Placing these things in Elene’s hands, Devota gave her a quick, fierce hug, then moved to open the door.
The music heralding the coming of the bride rose from below, sweeping up the outside stairway and along the gallery to where Elene stood. She took a deep breath, then started forward.
“Remember,” Devota said, her voice low, “your man will love you beyond life itself. He cannot help himself.”
“Yes,” Elene whispered, and stepped through the door and out onto the gallery.
The Larpent house was built of limestone cut and hauled laboriously from the mountains of the island. It had escaped burning in the years when Elene’s father was in exile, but had not been free from looting or from damage. Most of the once-grand furniture was gone from the rooms, and the gallery floor was scarred by the dragging of heavy objects from the house. The railing of the gallery, carved of the same soft limestone, had been hacked by machete and bayonet, and several of the urn-shaped balusters across its width were missing, doubtless knocked out by carelessness or carried away for some other use. The carved pineapple that had once decorated the newel post of the stone stairs that descended to the terrace was gone. To cover the jagged hole where it had been ripped away was a large porcelain jardiniere filled with cascading pink geraniums. More of the same flowers sat at intervals down the stair steps and were grouped about the bottom newel post.
Elene paused at the head of the stairs. Below her were the wedding guests seated on small gold-painted chairs in a semicircle about the altar. Among them, in the first row, was her father. The altar itself was draped with gold and red and set about with ferns. The priest in his surplice stood ready in front of it, watching, as were they all, for her arrival.
The faint murmur of conversation died away and clothing rustled as those congregated below discovered her presence and turned in their seats. It suddenly came to Elene as she stood there, the focus of attention, that she could no longer hear the beat of the drums in the hills.
The music of the trio of musicians swelled. Below her, the guests rose to their feet in her honor. There was a flicker of movement and Durant stepped from beneath the gallery to the newel post at the foot of the stairs. He stood waiting, a handsome figure in his wedding attire of a gold satin swallow-tailed coat and white knee breeches. On his mouth was a smile of satisfaction.
Elene stared down at him, at his thick brown hair, which he wore rather long, and his deep-set black eyes. His face was square, with a long lower jaw, a Roman nose, and muscular lips. Though of average height, with a stocky build, there was about him an air of supreme self-assurance that intimidated some men and infuriated others. A man of refinement, he was used to the best and would tolerate no less, whether in a glass of wine or a woman. He would not be an easy husband to please, she thought, though he might be one other women would envy.
Durant put his foot on the bottom stair and rested his hand on the stone bannister, ready to reach out to Elene, to lead her to the altar. Elene moved down one step, then another, striving for poise, trying to ignore the stiff reluctance in her muscles that threatened to trip her.
It was then a woman screamed.
The cry, shivering with a knife-edge of horror and hysteria, rang out from the back row of guests. Immediately it was echoed by savage yells and undulating war cries of a kind that lived in nightmare-haunted dreams. It was an attack of the Negro renegades.
The guests leaped up and stared around them, shouting, uttering exclamations of terrified disbelief. Women began to scream. There came the rasping sounds of men drawing the dress swords that hung at their sides. Others sprinted for pistols and muskets left in the house. Across the lawn the dark figures ran, waving their weapons, their teeth bared in ferocious blood lust.
In an instant, the terrace was a mass of struggling, flailing bodies from which rose curses and grunts, desperate cries and the sickening sound of blades slicing flesh to the bone. Bright red droplets of blood splashed on the paving stones.
Elene, standing in stunned disbelief, saw Durant fling away from the stairs to grapple with a wiry black in a loincloth. Her groom wrestled the man’s machete from a grasp slippery with blood. Hacking, slashing around him, Durant was lost in the melee as Elene swung her gaze toward her father. She was in time to see him struck down, an ax buried in his neck, half severing his head.
She screamed, the sound rising unbidden in her throat in her horror and sick rage. She stumbled downward a step, her gaze on the fallen body of her father. Below her, a pockmarked attacker turned, then started at a lope up the stairs. There was a knife held blade uppermost in his fist and a glaze of murderous fury in his eyes.
Elene hurled her nosegay and fan at him, then spun around, snatching up her skirts as she leaped back up the stairs. She could hear the thud of the man’s bare feet on the treads below her. The noise acted like a goad, Nearing the top, she dropped her skirts and reached for the heavy jardiniere of flowers on the newel post. Dragging it from its place, she wrenched around and heaved it down upon her pursuer. It crashed into him in a spill of dirt and geraniums. He howled as he tumbled backward down the stairs amid broken crockery. Elene did not wait to see the damage, but whirled once more.
There was a dark face above her. Her heart gave a painful leap, then recognition came. Devota. The maid grasped her arm, pulling at her.
“This way! Quickly!”
They plunged across the gallery and through the main doors of the house, coming to a skidding halt in the stair hall. Ahead lay the broad width of the grand staircase that led down to the front entrance, while to the right was the dark, twisting well of the servants’ stairs. They swung to the right, diving down the narrow steps in a headlong scramble until they reached the bottom.
There was a small door closing off the stairs, one that opened into the butler’s pantry that in turn was connected to the formal dining room. Devota turned the knob and eased the door ajar. She looked and listened for an instant, then gave a beckoning nod.
Once more they were running, crossing the pantry and dining room, thrusting through the French windows that opened onto a secluded side garden. They clattered down the steps of the small terrace and, fleeing across a stretch of lawn, threw themselves among the tall hibiscus of the shrubbery border. Using that concealment, they angled away from the house toward the cane fields, scurrying like hunted animals across open spaces, glancing over their shoulders, gasping for breath. Then they were plunging between the first tall stalks of the sugarcane, thrusting into the protection of its great, waving stand.
They could not stop, even then. They pounded down the rows, like long green tunnels with broad, grasslike leaves of cane arching above them. They held up their arms before their faces to protect themselves from the dry and viciously sharp lower blades, ducking under or leaping over the canes that were so thick and heavy with juice that they leaned into the rows. Sometimes they slowed to a walk to catch their breaths, but quickly pushed on again. Behind them, the screa
ms and yells, blasts of gunshots, and tinkling of broken glass receded. It was both a relief and a torment when they could hear the sounds no longer.
The fields seemed to go on forever, mile after endless mile. They crisscrossed one another, running with the lay of the land and of the irrigation ditches. Now and then there was a cane patch gone to seed, choked with weeds and wild coffee bushes and vigorously growing vines, or else a stretch that had not been planted since the first uprising and was already being reclaimed by the forest. These patches grew more and more frequent, turning at last into the forest itself.
The two women moved more slowly after a time, partly from exhaustion, partly from the fear of running into a remnant of the attacking blacks or else another band altogether. When they were well into trees, they stopped at last. This section of wooded land was no more than a strip perhaps a mile and a half in width, with the cane fields through which they had come on one side and the main road leading to Port-au-Prince on the other.
They pushed into its depths. When they could go no farther, they staggered underneath a great tree and dropped to the ground. They sat with their backs to the trunk, their heads tilted back and eyes closed as they sought to draw air into their lungs and ease the ache in their heaving sides. It was some moments before they could move or speak.
At last, Elene opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was that somehow, without her noticing, darkness had fallen. The second thing was the flickering red glow in the sky back the way they had come. She tested the warm air and smelled the unmistakable taint of smoke.
“The house, they’re burning the house,” she said in flat tones.
“Yes,” Devota answered without opening her eyes.
“And look over there. Is that — can it be another house on fire?”
Devota peered through the canopy of leaves above them. “Where?”
Elene pointed. “There, you can see the glow reflecting against the clouds.”
“It must be an islandwide uprising, then,” the maid said. “What can have set it off?”
Elene shook her head, letting her eyelids fall shut again. “Does it matter? The question is: What are we going to do?”
Her father was dead. She had seen him die. She should feel terrible grief, but beyond that first instant of horror, all she could feel was a pervasive numbness. She shuddered from the scenes of carnage as they passed through her mind; still they seemed without reality. In the lethargy that held her, she could not seem to think what would be the best means to reach safety. As far as she could see, there was no such thing.
“It may be we could go to the French soldiers at Port-au-Prince.” Devota’s tone was tentative.
Elene felt the brief stir of an emotion she had not known since before she had learned she was to be married. It jolted along her veins, then faded, but in that brief moment, she recognized it in something near shock as interest in the future. She said slowly, “Perhaps we could.”
“We would have to take care.”
“Yes,” Elene agreed. “The road will most likely be too dangerous. It would help if we could discover just what is happening.”
“I might find out,” Devota said.
“What do you mean?”
“If I could come upon some of the slaves from the house, they might be able to tell me what Dessalines is up to, or at least give some idea of why these attacks have been ordered.”
“It’s too risky,” Elene said with decision. She had known the slaves from her home must have taken part in the uprising, the people she had tended with her own hands in their illnesses, the men and women who cleaned and dusted in the house and pruned and raked in the gardens, the hands who sang in the fields. She had known, but had not wanted to face it.
“There’s no great risk, not for someone of my color.”
It was seldom Elene thought of Devota as being non-white, just as she hardly ever thought of her as being related. She was just Devota, always there, ever thoughtful, ever wise. Was it possible the woman might have known what was to happen tonight, could have warned her father and the others? No, it could not be. There were some things that had to be taken on trust.
“Suppose you are recognized as my maid? It might be enough to put you in jeopardy.”
“It’s a chance I’ll have to take. We must know something, and soon. If this really is a general uprising, we will need a place of hiding, need it desperately, by morning.”
Devota pushed to her feet and straightened her apron and tignon. Elene watched her shadowy movements there in the darkness. She could order Devota to stay, as mistress to slave, but that had never been their relationship. In any case, Elene was by no means certain Devota would obey, particularly now, or that she herself would want her to stay for that reason.
“If you must go, I’ll come with you, at least part of the way.”
“What good will there be in that, chère? No, no, it will be easier if you remain here. I won’t be long.”
“I could keep watch—” Elene began, then stopped abruptly. Where Devota had been standing seconds before there was only darkness. She had disappeared into the night.
The other woman was used to moving about in the dark countryside, Elene told herself. As a follower of the Voudou rites, or perhaps even a leader of them as a priestess, she must have left the house often in the midnight hours to travel to the gatherings in the hills. Devota would be all right.
Time crept past. Elene became aware of soft rustlings around her. It was only the stirring of small night creatures, or perhaps the fall of a dead twig or limb or the drift of a vagrant breeze through the thick tropical foliage. There was nothing to alarm her. Once she caught the sound of voices raised in drunken celebration. It was some distance away, however, perhaps on the main road beyond the wooded strip where she stood. The noise grew no louder. After a time, it faded out of hearing.
The night was without a cloud. Moonglow brightened the horizon beyond the far-stretching cane fields. The moon itself cleared the treetops and lifted slowly into the sky to filter its beams through the leaves overhead. It made the shadows under the spreading limbs appear darker, while shafting odd-shaped puddles of silver light poured down onto the forest floor. A spot the size of a man’s hand penetrated the branches above where Elene sat. Its brilliant gleam pooled in her lap of cream silk, turning the material of her skirts to shimmering tissue of gold. The radiance, soft as it was, dazzled her eyes.
It might as well be a signal light, directing the renegades to her.
Elene scrambled to her feet and whisked herself into the shadows. Even there, the fabric of her gown seemed like a beacon, and the gold of the chain that held her mother’s cameo glinted back and forth along its length with her every breath, her every movement. She removed the cameo and thrust it into her petticoat pocket. She thought of discarding the gown, but her petticoats underneath were hardly less lustrous. She wished she had thought to snatch a cloak, a blanket, anything to hide the pale sheen of what she was wearing.
Perhaps if she smeared her gown with dirt? There would be dampness under the mulch of leaves on the forest floor, but would it be enough? And her skin with its pearl sheen caught the light nearly as well as her clothing. It could use dulling also.
She knelt down, raking at the leaves at her feet, scraping the earth with her cupped hand. The rich, fecund smell of it filled her nostrils while the rustling she was making sounded loud in her ears. She scratched up a handful of the damp dirt and smeared it along one arm. Its moisture acted on the perfumed oil she wore, drawing out its scent so that it mingled with that of the earth. The crumbling black soil fell back to the ground, leaving no more than a smudge. She reached for more.
A short, sharp exclamation brought her head up. Standing not ten yards away was a pair of black men, one squat, one tall. They wore only rough breeches, leaving their upper bodies bare. The designs they had painted on their chests and faces in orange and white made them appear cruel and inhuman. One carried a silver pitcher by its han
dle in his left hand and a machete in his right. The other man had no trophies, but hefted an ax on a short handle.
Elene rose slowly erect and took a step backward. The movement brought her into a direct flood of moonlight. She felt it pour over her, glinting, shimmering on her hair, her skin, her dress. She stood at bay, but held her head high and regal with her determination not to show the terror that coursed along her veins.
The two men drew in their breaths with a rasping noise of amazement, as if they had seen a vision. The one with the silver pitcher muttered what might have been a prayer. The other with the ax flung him a short hard glance. He spat.
“Get her,” he said.
2
ELENE HELD HER GROUND until they were upon her. The instant they touched her, such fury erupted inside she could not contain herself. She struck out, clawing, kicking, screaming in throat-searing defiance.
It availed her little. After the first instant of surprise, the men were entertained by her ferocity. The one with the machete laughed as he snatched her nails away from his face and twisted her wrist, forcing her to her knees. They called her she-cat and bitch and worse things, and wrapped the pale gold braid of her hair, as it came loose from its pins, around their hands like a rope, hauling her this way and that before they threw her to the ground among the leaves.
Still Elene struggled, writhing and twisting from side to side with her breath coming in harsh gasps against the pain of their hold on her wrists and ankles. In the back of her mind she wondered why they did not strike her with cane knife or ax, why they did not kill her, and knew the reason even as the questions formed. She heard the silk of her gown tear loose at one sleeve, felt the neckline give. There rose in her mind a red haze of distress and disbelief. This could not be happening. It could not.
Louisiana History Collection - Part 2 Page 39
