“Are you feeling ill?”
“No, not at all.” His smile did not convince her. “I just think it would be good for all of us to get away from here for a while.”
“But Gabriel just returned from Le Cap.”
“Don’t delay on my account, Papa—I can be ready at a moment’s notice to view ladies in bathing attire.”
Marguerite tried to ignore this remark and how Narcisse snorted when he laughed. “Should we invite Delphine and Guillaume? I don’t know if she will want to travel…”
“Her confinement isn’t for another month, is it? I think the waters will do her and the baby good.” Matthieu turned to their youngest son, who stood on the steps still holding his trophy. “What do you think, Étienne? Can you tear yourself away from your skeletons?”
The boy frowned, considered the skull, and glanced in the direction of the latrine pit. Finally he looked back at his father and nodded. “I still have today!” he cried as he ran toward hisajoupa.
CHAPTER 3
Everything is disastrous under slavery; it renders the master cruel, vindictive, proud; it renders the slave sluggish, deceitful, hypocritical; sometimes it brings man to atrocities which, without it, he would never have been capable.
— Pierre-Paul-Nicholas Henrion de Pansey,Mémoire pour un nègre qui réclame sa liberté(1770)
In the humid oppression of August, sleep was a welcome release. Naturally, as soon as Marguerite achieved it, she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder and heard Matthieu’s voice in her ear. Their year of continence had certainly fed the flames ofhisdesire.
“It’s too hot, Matthieu…” she moaned.
“Please, Marguerite.” For heaven’s sake, he sounded as frantic as he’d been at nineteen.
Something assaulted her nostrils then, at once pleasant and acrid, and she squinted open her eyes. “Do I smell…smoke?”
“The cane is on fire.”
She still didn’t understand why Matthieu was waking her. He had planned the plantation to protect them fromsuch danger. Even in this drought, the flames shouldn’t jump across the irrigation ditches. She rubbed her eyes. “A lightning strike?”
“I don’t think so.”
The silence began to worry her—not a single tree frog or insect drumming. Marguerite’s bleary vision focused slowly on a pattern of blue and ivory stripes: Matthieu’s banyan. He had said he wanted to finish reading the latestAffiches Américainesbefore retiring—yet beneath the robe, he still wore his breeches, as if he had never intended to come to bed.
When he turned his attention from her, Marguerite followed his gaze through the mosquito netting. Étienne stood in the doorway holding a rifle as tall as he was. She sat up at once.
“Pellé rode to warn us,” Matthieu explained. For the first time, she saw the pistol butt sticking out of his banyan pocket. “There’s a band of negroes coming up the road. They’ve got hoes and cane knives.”
“What?” She stared at the window as though she could see them. Through the slats seeped only a strange orange glow. It couldn’t be any oftheirslaves rebelling. Perhaps their family was not as lenient as the Gallifets, but neither were they like “Caradeux le cruel,” burying negroes alive in the?—
“You have to hide yourself,Maman.” Étienne was offering her a pair of his own leather boots.
Matthieu caressed her cheek, but only for a moment. “You are still a beautiful woman, Marguerite.”
What use did flattery have— Then she realized what he meant: Forty-nine years and eight childbirths would not deter the lusts of black men. Marguerite grabbed the boots from her son and did not bother with stockings, though she glanced longingly toward her wig. Somewhere on the lower floor, Gabriel’s monkey began screeching.
“Pellé and the boys and I will try to scare them off,” Matthieu promised. “But if we can’t… You have to hide.”
In nothing else but her chemise, she stood, and found that Étienne’s boots almost fit her. “Hide where?” Apart from that road, beyond the outbuildings, they were surrounded by cane fields, and if those were on fire…
“Étienne suggested the new latrine. I can’t think of a safer place.”
“It hasn’t been used yet,Maman,” their son put in before she could protest. “It’s not even finished.” Fluidly he passed the rifle’s sling over his head and under his right arm, then took the lantern from his father. In that moment, he looked so much older than thirteen.
Matthieu pressed the foreign weight of the pistol into her palm. “I’ve loaded it and put it at half-cock. Remember: you have only one shot.” She opened her mouth to object, but he silenced it with his own, kissing her quickly—yet so fiercely it frightened her even more than the gun.
“Come on,Maman.” Étienne seized her hand. Marguerite had only a moment to glance back at Matthieu, who tried to smile. Their son towed her past the other bedchambers and down the staircase without stopping. At the bottom, she tried to pull against him, to catch a glimpse of Narcisse and Gabriel; but Étienne was surprisingly strong. “There’s no time,Maman.”
