Have pity on me, Saint Margaret…Huddled in the dark, waiting for death or delivery—was this how her patroness had felt, after she had been swallowed by the Devil in the form of a dragon?
Was it morning yet, in France? Her brother would be saying Mass.Offer it for us, Denis…Unless he was in prison, awaiting his own executioners. When she came out of this pit, would there be anything left?
She should have gone back with Étienne. Why hadn’t she gone back?Saint Monica, Saint Anne, Blessed Mary, all you holy mothers—only spare my children; only spare my children…
CHAPTER 4
[Blacks’] griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.
— Thomas Jefferson,Notes on the State of Virginia(1787)
She waited and prayed until silence fell thicker than the ashes, until her throbbing eyes found it easier to call shapes out of the shadows: the unfired pistol; her burned knee poking through the filthy muslin; the toes of Étienne’s boots; the ladder. This must be morning: the sky was grey instead of black.
She could not remain in this pit forever. Marguerite crawled to the ladder and used it to drag herself upright, ignoring the pains in her left leg. She stared at her hands and saw the blisters for the first time. She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry as bone.
Cautiously she raised her eyes, sensitive to any trace of movement in the world above.
She found neither threat nor ally, only ravaged earth. To the east, their cane was still burning. Past the plumeria trees with their eerie white blossoms, sheshouldbe able to see the house. She set the pistol at the edge of the pit and pulled herself from the latrine rungby rung. Where the belvedere of bedchambers should have been hung only smoke—and below, charred boards, smoldering embers. Marguerite’s heart seized. No one had been inside, surely…
She snatched up the pistol and tried to call Matthieu’s name. It came out as a croak. Better that way; better not to make too much noise; what if one ofthemheard her? Still she needed water desperately. She reeled toward the well, grasped the crank, and drew back her hand. What if they’d poisoned it, as Makandal had planned?
Étienne’sajoupastood relatively untouched, its palm fronds only singed. She sighed with relief and started running as best she could. He might have hidden here. “Étienne?” she whispered. Pistol first, she ducked beneath the leafy roof of his museum.
In the murky light, her eyes skimmed over the boards displaying Étienne’s treasures: arrowheads; bits of pottery; little fetishes fashioned from conch shell (one of them clearly a penis, which she had insisted he throw back where he found it); ribs and limb bones from the latrine pit; the skull he’d brought her yesterday; another one; and—the head of her son.
Marguerite clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the surfacing scream and nearly dropped the pistol. She stumbled backwards, trying to convince herself she hadn’t seen it, but the shelf leaking blood drew her eyes irresistibly like metal to a lodestone, and it wasn’t just Étienne, it wasallof them, all her sons, set there amidst the bones.
She staggered only a few steps before the bile overtook her, before her knees gave out, and when she opened her eyes again her stomach convulsed again—it did not stop, because she was kneeling next to the body of one of the older boys, she couldn’t even tell which. She wanted to squeeze his hand, as if it could comfort either of them now; she wanted to go back and close their eyes—she should, she was their mother, how could she be afraid of them?
She stroked the trigger of the pistol. But the sugar works on the rise pulled her attention away from her sons: the machine for crushing cane stalks, the channel for the juice, and below, the boiling shed with its row of vats. Under the roof, the form of a man leanedover the clarifier vat. Her legs shuddering beneath her, she made herself stand.
As she limped toward the boiling house, the man did not move; he only stared into the first vat as if it were a wishing well. Realization weighted her steps. The tilt of the man’s body was too severe, too complete. His feet did not quite touch the ground. She halted just outside the roof. The man’s face was submerged in the grey-green juice, his bald head boiled crimson. He had been drowned in the sugar, his blood streaking it as though some part of him had burst.
But the body was too short and stocky to be Matthieu—it was only their overseer, Pellé. She released a breath and leaned against one of the roof supports. To her left rose the channel for the juice, a neat narrow man-made river descending from the machine. The great geared wheel and the three iron grinders stood motionless now, no oxen to turn them. Marguerite frowned. Why was the channel stained with blood as well; it would have to run uphill from Pellé in the vat…
Her gaze followed the channel to the machine again, and she saw it. A ragged, white-cored, horribly branched redthingerupting from the grinders meant to crush cane. Thatcouldn’tbe a…
The closer she came, the more she sank towards the ground, the more she began to crawl. Grass and dirt and ash ground into her burns, her ankle throbbed, yet she hardly felt it. She reached the machine but refused to look up at the grinders, to see any closer what she knew was there. Still gripping the pistol, she dragged herself around the side of the base. Her eyes groped ahead of her, saw—blue and ivory stripes. Matthieu’s banyan.
The pistol dropped from Marguerite’s hand. She reached out to grip the edge of his robe, to convince herself this was not some mirage of smoke and madness. Beneath her fingers, the silk was horribly smooth, horribly real. She sank into the ash and sobbed and did not care who heard.
The skirt of his banyan pooled on the ground, concealing most of Matthieu’s legs. He must be kneeling. Among the folds of silk hung his pale left hand, white as marble. Above her, she could justsee the back of his shaved head, sagging forward in death—so close to the still grinders, to the place where his right arm disappeared into the machine and the stripes of the banyan became blue and ivory and red.
She crawled to him, pulling herself upwards with the robe, wanting to pull him free of the grinders and yet dreading what she would reveal. Dear God, he was still warm, but she knew it must be only the heated air of this inferno. She wrapped her arms around his back; she buried her face in the open throat of his shirt; and she felt a shudder that was not her own.
Marguerite cried out, let go, and fell to the ground. She gaped up at the groaning corpse. “Matthieu?”
His eyelids fluttered. He was trying to say her name.
“I’m here! They didn’t find me!” She ducked beneath his good arm and kissed his neck, his jaw, his cheek, whatever she could reach. “Thank God, Matthieu!” She fought to support his weight. She knew she mustn’t put any more pressure on what remained of his right arm. Or…should she look for the machete they kept here to free the slaves? “I have to find a doctor!”
He answered in a murmur she couldn’t understand.
“What?” She had to hold her breath so she could hear him.
“Too late…”
When she gripped his undamaged hand, his fingers felt like ice. She bit into her lower lip, tasting blood with the vomit. Too late for a doctor. Too far to go. For a Priest, as well. But there was still a chance Matthieu could die in a state of grace. “All right. All right. Do you remember the Act of Perfect Contrition?”
