“Étienne was thirteen! Thirteen!”
“Same age I was,” the girl muttered, “when the other ones started pawing me.”
Was shebragging? Marguerite strode forward and grabbed her wrist. “Did you cut my daughter’s throat with this knife? Did you?—”
The girl twisted free and thrust the blade so close to Marguerite’s face, she nicked her cheek. Marguerite stumbled back and fumbled for the pistol.
“You whites started this, long ago,” the girl hissed.
Inside the pocket, Marguerite cocked the pistol fully.
The girl didn’t hear it. “This is only ‘eye for eye,’ as your precious Book says—for Makandal and Ogé and all the others you’ve killed and mutilated: ‘burning for burning, stripe for stripe, hand for hand’—”
For a long moment, the memory of Matthieu caught in the machine blinded Marguerite. “Were youthere? Did you tell them to?—”
“I didn’t do anything! I was hiding!”
“‘Hiding’?” Marguerite scoffed. “What didyouhave to fear?”
“I wasn’t afraid for me.” The girl seized a pile of letters from the ruined desk and squinted at them. “I was afraid for René.” She glanced at the child. “They were crazy for white blood. I didn’t want them to think…”
Marguerite looked back to the boy, who was pouting at the now-empty bowl. René. Yes…someone might mistake him for white, with those eyes. Astounding, that such a fine child should have come from this brown bitch. His complexion was olive, at most. Marguerite had seen Frenchmen with darker skin. Away from this tropical climate, the shade would surely lighten.
Gingerly, Marguerite reached down to touch his black hair. The coils were softer than she’d expected. The width of his nose worried her, but perhaps age would improve it. He must be Gabriel’s boy, with those eyes; that was in his favor.
This boy was all that remained of Gabriel, of any of her children—of Matthieu.Hehad planned to free René. If the girl had been lying about the manumission papers, why would she have returned here? It was just like Matthieu. Marguerite could still carryout his wishes. This boy was what he’d meant:Find our grandson with the remarkable eyes.
Marguerite assessed the girl as coldly as she could, setting aside what the little whore had done to her sons to conceive this child. With the corner of her head kerchief sticking up like a feather and those high cheekbones, she did look part Indian. If Étienne’s theories about their nobility had any merit, then that was in the boy’s favor also. Indian blood would explain the girl’s melancholy, and why her shade was more like agriffonnethan a truemulâtresse.
Whether quarter or half, she clearly hadsomeFrench blood, so altogether the child was more white than anything else. The best in him simply needed to be nurtured. To let this girl take him up into the mountains to be lost among the drumming and dancing of the negroes would be like tossing a pearl among swine.
Marguerite simply had to invent a new mother for him. She had lied to her children all their lives and they’d never suspected; she could lie to one grandchild with ease. Stiffly she knelt before the boy, who stared back at her with the curiosity of his uncle Étienne. Marguerite smiled. “Bonjour, René.”Re-né. Re-born.She could not have chosen a better name.
The girl snatched up her knife again. “You get away from him,” she ordered, as if she had the right.
Marguerite scooped the boy into her arms and backed outside. “I can take better care of him than youeverwould.”
“Let go of my son!” She was only a child herself. But as the girl stalked toward Marguerite, she looked more like a panther than a kitten, baring her single metal claw.
René began whining at once, but Margueritehadto clasp him tight in one arm in order to access the pistol. She wrested it from the pocket and pointed it between the girl’s eyes.
They widened at once and she hesitated, so close to Marguerite that the end of the barrel nearly touched that chestnut skin.
Whining in her ear, René pushed against Marguerite’s shoulder and chest, trying to twist around.
“Please don’t take him,” the girl whispered, obsequious at last.
Marguerite glanced down the steps to the animal waiting below.A baroness riding in a mule-cart… She would do what she must. With her injured leg, Marguerite could never outrun this girl, and she needed those provisions. But how in the world would she untie the mule and keep the pistol steady, while holding a flailing child?
The girl guessed her thoughts. “Let me come with you! You sit in the cart, and I’ll lead the mule.”
She might be useful, it was true…
“There’s food and water already, and I’ll get more, whenever you want it!”
She would run off the first chance she got, and probably take the boy with her. He was fussing worse than his father ever had, blubbering nonsense in Creole. Marguerite would soon correctthat.
The girl seemed to think Marguerite had agreed. She hurried down the steps ahead of them to spread a blanket on the seat of the mule-cart.
