A willfulness that confounded my father. I had been a docile child, perhaps not so much from my nature as from a desperate desire to please him, and it was rare that any punishment was ever inflicted on me. But the most vivid awakening I experienced came at his hands, and without the slightest understanding on his part.
Chapter Two
The capricious willfulness reared its head after Epiphany, as the island prepared for its most joyous holiday, Carnivale, four days of wild celebration before the dreary self-denial of Lent. Many of the great families gave elaborate masqued balls, while the slaves had their own celebration, called Canboulay. I'd always wanted to see it, though Papa had forbidden this. Urged on by my friends, especially the chief provocateurs, the three sons of Marcel Ducasse, I played the truant, going with them to swim, then slipping into the hills by the river to join the festival.
It was as nothing I'd ever seen, the lively cariso music, the chouval bwa of drums and bamboo flutes. The dancers spilled out from beneath the traditional kaiso bunting, many in costumes that were caricatures of the grand blanc masquerade. As night descended, the torches of cane were lit, the cannes brulées of its name, and the stick dancers, wearing tiny bells, engaged in sham combat as they leapt and caroused.
It was primal and free, the rhythm intoxicating. We danced, hidden in the shadows, while the singers called out improvised lyrics, the crowd replying, like responses in the Mass. My patois was fluent, and I knew they were mocking the planters, which made it all the more daring. I stayed until the Vaval was lit and set adrift, a huge figure of twigs and papier-mâché that burned across the water, closing the gay evening.
My father was under great pressure at that time, for the British had taken our island, and would hold it for more than a decade. In consequence, he was now dealing with the factors in London to sell his sugar, and the price had plummeted, putting him in debt to a race he despised. He'd spent several years building a second plantation where he could grow coffee, which fetched a better price, lavishing on the plants his every care. I suppose this toil and worry was the reason his patience snapped on discovering my petty misdemeanor.
Calling me into his study the next afternoon, he intoned, "I've had a note, from Sister Celestine, informing me you were not in school yesterday, and don't bother lying about where you were."
I did not, nor had I intended to.
"Létice, you've always been a good girl. You have never been naughty or defiant. But the influence of these new friends, the Ducasses, is causing you to behave as they do, and I won't have it! I haven't inflicted corporal punishment on you since you were eight years old, but I'm afraid you've forced my hand." I was stunned when he added, in a tone I knew better than to defy, "Now, lean over my desk, and lift your skirts." When I demurred, my face flaming, he added quietly, "At once, if you please."
With that he reached down and produced a switch, obviously having already prepared it for my chastening.
I shook my head back and forth, truly appalled that he would do such a thing, but it availed me nothing. Stepping around to my side, he took me by the arm, firmly and with authority, leaning me over the front of his desk. I was, in fact, so shaken that I didn't realize I wore nothing under my muslin day gown. But once I assumed the position of complete submission, my forehead coming to rest on the cool island rosewood of his desktop, he raised my skirts since I had refused, and discovered it for himself.
"Létice Marie!" he thundered, "just where, may I ask, are your pantalettes?"
I offered no reply, for I had no defense. I'd always detested them, particularly in the jungle heat, the horrid linen drawers inflicted upon their charges by the nuns, for the sake of modesty beneath the thin cotton gowns of fashion. I was seventeen, and no longer a little girl. The great ladies of Paris wore scandalously little beneath their sheer lawn and muslin, and feeling myself now a woman grown, I followed where fashion led.
"You have just earned yourself another ten. And if you were a son, it would be with a leather strap, so count yourself fortunate," he said harshly, and before I could take it in, the switch descended on my bared backside.
It made a swishing sound as it snaked through the air, far softer than the gasp I cried out with the first blow, but this did not deter him. The second fell even sharper, and the whiplash motion of his wrist made the sting worse, like a wasp. I suppose he chose my humiliatingly bared cheeks because to lay it across my back would have been too much a suggestion I was a slave rather than a daughter. I did not agree, for I had come of an age to find my position degrading.
Squirming, I turned my head enough to see part of him, his waist and broad chest, and sensed his movements, his shoulder rising, the muscular arm in his white linen shirt descending forcefully in a relentless rhythm. Between the gasps I began to moan, twisting helplessly on the desktop to escape him, while his other broad hand spread wide and pressed my back to pin me down.
As the sting blossomed into heat, spreading down toward the inward curve of my bottom, I began to feel something that startled me. Despite the pain, I was growing damp between my legs, and a thrumming ache was born there, the ache I both provoked and eased in bed at night, though it was far more acute. For the first time, I connected that nightly ritual with something else, something occurring in broad daylight. By the tenth blow, despite the searing lacerations that were making my eyes tear, there was a hunger as well, a turbulent excitement as the flesh grew even hotter, more alive to sensation, including a deep craving for the opposite of what it was being given.
When he was done, the final lash laid on with the greatest force, I felt my knees had turned to water, and wasn't certain I could stand. I wished more than anything that he would press his huge hands across my abused cheeks, that he would soothe the reddened welts, and then move downward, between my legs. For the first time, I wanted it to be someone else's hand, and far worse, I desperately wanted it to be his. When I stood, I dared not look him in the face.
Nana used a balm on me that night, all the while agreeing with my father that, though perhaps he'd been too harsh, my friendship with the Ducasse boys, who ran wild as boars, would bring me nothing but disaster. My backside only hurt for a few days, but it burned for months, every time I remembered him towering over me, the evocative motion of his body as he administered his power on my prostrate form. My hand always burrowed between my legs under the sheets, as I sought to bring myself some relief, my imaginings of the other things he might have done vivid, but somehow formless. This made it more tortuous rather than less, for in many ways I didn't know what it was I yearned for, knew only that my body was stretched out on that rack, tormented by the ephemeral, indistinct longing.
I do know that I found myself making mischief, deliberately, hoping for another session with him behind the closed door of his study. He was an intelligent man, as well as a passionate one, and looking back, I believe he realized the reason for my behavior, that I was "forcing his hand," pleading for his discipline, and so he began to deny it to me, finding other ways to punish me, in order to keep from overheating my blood.
Yet I still believe the need would have remained formless, had it not been for something Nana let slip to me. She was only in her thirties, with a wisdom far beyond her years. A Catholic, she was still a woman of the islands, part African and part Carawak, the fierce natives who'd killed the first Carib inhabitants and taken the land for their own, before the whites came and did the same to them. A woman of wind and sea and the natural rhythms of life.
I indulged in a cool bath before bed, and as I put on my night rail we gossiped of the planters, particularly Monsieur Fortier of Trois d'Ille. They were, like the Ducasses, petits blancs, their plantation not a prosperous one. They were held in contempt by men like my father, for their feckless ways and lascivious behavior, and their count of bastards was impressive. Nana had told me there was a plant that grew in abundance on the island called rue that could be used to force Nature's hand and bring on a woman's courses, ensuring, if sh
e'd been taken, that no child would come of it. This treatment being so effective, she had little patience for young women who "whelped bastards by the litter," as she put it, branding them slovenly and ignorant, with the contempt of the house slaves for the field workers I'd heard so often before.
But that night she was especially scandalized, for she repeated to me the gossip flying over the island from Fort-Royal to Basse Pointe that Monsieur Fortier had taken the oldest of them, his own daughter, as his latest concubine, a girl of only fifteen.
I froze, hoping my secret wasn't written across my face, as I asked, with all the insouciance I could manage, if she believed it was true. I felt my face redden when she replied off-handedly she had little doubt it was, for this was not an uncommon thing among the islanders, for a man to take his own daughter, though she'd expected better of the whites, who espoused their principles out of one face and demanded their darkest desires be satisfied from out the other.
I attempted a suitable air of shock, while she defended her people, who sadly were only doing as their ancestors before them had done. And this I knew, since it was true as well for many of the ancients, the Egyptians and the Persians. For who better, they thought, to lovingly take a girl's maidenhead than her own father? Who better to take care she not suffer? Who better to learn the secret needs of his own seed, since he would be the one to choose the man she would wed? To me it seemed a logical beginning to womanhood, no matter the shock or outrage it engenders in our own society.
I had been amongst the natives too long, and being motherless, was beginning to take their attitudes as my own. Hearing it spoken aloud, not as a vague fantasy but a thing occurring not ten miles from where I stood, I faced the truth at last about Papa. I wanted to lose my virginity, and I wanted to give it to him.
However, imaginings being one thing and reality another, it took me some little time to lay my fledgling plans for seduction, childish intrigues that would never come to pass. For even if my father had done such a thing, which I gravely doubt, I had waited too long. A serpent had appeared in my Eden. I shouldn't have been surprised. Martinique was more plagued with snakes than any island in that vast, curving chain linking the Americas, even gracing our flag. The early settlers, overwhelmed, had imported a number of odd little creatures called a mongoose, the viper's deadliest enemy, to bring them under control. But this particular serpent, like the one wrapped around the Tree of Knowledge, was too powerful to be dispatched so easily.
She was a quadroon named Solange Doumier, to whom my father gave over a cottage on our property, situated not far from our house, built for one of the overseers. He explained with solemnity that it was merely his Christian charity, for she had come home with her brother to find she had nowhere to go, their parents having died. As he'd once shared a business venture with Monsieur Doumier, he naturally felt an obligation. I despised her from the moment I saw her, for she was incredibly lovely, her flawless skin the color of rich coffee with pure cream, her enormous golden eyes unsettling, knowing.
And yet, as so many foolish women, I lived on a lie for some time, believing my father had, in truth, offered her a home, not merely from kindness, but so that she, in her turn, could offer companionship to Samuel, another Free Black, my father's trusted overseer and accountant, and I knew that Samuel loved her. He'd even hinted of a marriage between them, a marriage that couldn't come soon enough for me. For the vicious rumor had already reached my ears, from Eugène Ducasse, who took great glee in telling me the little cottage was a rendezvous, not for Samuel, but my father. When he said it, I shoved him, hard, and he landed in the surf, laughing. I wished there had been a shark at hand to swallow him whole.
But I still denied it in my heart. Denied it until the night I watched from my own window as my father moved down the torch-lit path through the constantly encroaching jungle on either side, the palms and immortelles and frangipani trees, their scarlet and orange blooms reflecting back the color of the fire. A path that ended in only one place.
Several grief-stricken days passed, until I came to understand one thing; I had to know. No matter how underhanded the method I used, I had to know the truth.
Chapter Three
Finding a dark gown was no easy task, for they were far from popular on Martinique. When we swam, we wore what the natives called a madras, a huge square of dyed cotton or nankeen that we wrapped about us with the ease of an Indian with her sari. Often I kicked myself free of it in the water, swimming naked, like one of the wild creatures around me. I donned one of purple and brown, the darkest I owned, then waited in an agony of nerves until I saw him heading down the path. This time, I followed.
I kept at a distance until the torchlight faded and I was swallowed up into darkness, into that moving, breathing organism that was the jungle at night. I still tried to find another reason for his destination, for despite her beauty, it was difficult to believe even the most overpowering lust would drive my father to her of all women. My mother being such an arrogant specimen herself, I didn't think Solange's overweening pride would repel him. But she'd lived in Paris, attending a convent school, because her brother, César Doumier, manumitted by a loving father, had been educated there, becoming one of the most powerful voices for emancipation, and in consequence, a rather large thorn in my father's side. For my own part, I found César the most compelling of men, his speeches moving and profound, his stature heart-stirring. A man of principle and high ideals. A man not like his sister.
It was to my advantage that most island homes, even this cottage, had louvered windows and French doors, generally left open to admit the air. I could already hear my father inside, his deep voice carrying in any circumstance. I crept nearer, climbing over what we called the glacis, a railed veranda with an extension of the roof above as shelter from the constant threat of rain. Then I hid myself within the sheer white draperies that flowed beyond the open doors. Remaining in the shadows, I found a spot where I could not be seen, despite the fact that I was heart-stoppingly close to her bedroom, just outside it, able to peer not only through the sheer draping, but more clearly around it with one tiny push of my hand, leaving an unobstructed view.
Though a small bedroom, it was annoyingly well-appointed, lit with candles that flickered in the breeze, even the one under a cut-glass shade. The light undulated over the white walls and bed linens, the gossamer netting of the canopy drawn back and tied to the four mahogany bedposts. Solange drifted in, her high-waisted, Grecian evening gown of fine-spun batiste in the latest fashion. I waited, my stomach in turmoil, until my father followed with his purposeful stride. He was carrying, quite absurdly I thought, a basket of fruit, of all things, as if he'd come to visit a sick maiden aunt, and he set it on the bed.
He'd dressed as did all the planters, uniform white linen in coat, waistcoat and breeches, with fairtop boots and gold-tipped cane. But the coat was taken off at once, thrown over a chair, then, without pause, the meticulously-pressed shirt was pulled over his head and tossed aside, a painful thing for me, seeming just as careless of my work as of my adoration.
Shirtless in candlelight, he was more beautiful than I had imagined, his broad, muscular chest matted with thick, dark hair just beginning to grey, his flat belly and arms powerful. My father was no armchair owner, but worked the fields cutting the cane and rolling the hogsheads, a point of pride for him, and his youthful body reflected it.
"How can you stand that gown? It's too hot."
"I don't think I'll be wearing it for long, will I?"
She slithered toward him, running her hands over his chest, then further down, under the waist of his breeches, and I heard his indrawn breath. I knew from instinct where her hands were, and watched as she moved them up and down, frigging him, making his breath even harsher.
"You're wicked, Solange."
"I know how to be wickeder."
With her own hands she unbuttoned him, falling at his feet, a thing I couldn't imagine her doing before any man. Then, once they were undone
, she yanked his breeches and drawers down to his hips, and I forgot to breathe.
My father was a passionate man, and I saw him clearly in the candlelight, my heart hammering at my ribs until I couldn't bear the arousal. Some women find a man's most precious gift to be an ugly thing, certainly frightening from the first glance. But I was transfixed, fascinated from the moment I saw the rigid shaft of flesh rearing up once it was freed, heavy, heated, alive. Even being so young, I knew that its place was inside a woman, and wanted desperately just to hold that vibrant length in my trembling hands.
She kissed it, brushing her long fingers over it, then looked up, asking throatily, "Well, you're the master here. Do you want me to suck it?"
Almost choking, he croaked out, "Yes."
She took him into her mouth, to my astonishment, though not for long, only long enough, I realized later, to torment him, to bring him to an even more impassioned state. When she stood, she was still stroking him with her hands.
"And what will I get for it? A basket of fruit?"
Insinuatingly, his breath still heavy, he said, "Look inside the basket."
"Isn't that where Cleopatra found a snake?"
"The snake I have for you is not inside the basket. It's already in your hand. Now, go look."
She spun about, her movements fitful with greed, and reaching within, past the colorful mangoes and pineapples and plantains, she raised her arm high in triumph, holding a jewel on a golden chain. The fury overwhelmed me, for I knew he was already in debt to the factors. That he would purchase such a thing for her made my rage run hot enough to kill.
Martinique (The Acolyte Book 1) Page 2
