Without lowering the pistol, Marguerite followed and climbed inside with René. Before she’d even set him down, he crawled toward the girl. Marguerite gripped the neck of his shift to keep him from going too far, which only set him to wailing louder.
“I’m here,trezò mwen!” the girl babbled, swiping at his tears with the pale undersides of her thumbs. “It’s all right.”
This would never do. “Take off your kerchief,” Marguerite ordered, motioning with the pistol barrel.
The girl pulled the cloth from around her neck and swabbed at René’s snotty nose.
“The one on your head, then!” Marguerite clarified through her teeth. “Tie him to the rail.”
She only stood there slack-jawed while the boy continued struggling, proving Marguerite’s point.
“He’ll fall out otherwise!”
Finally, the girl unwrapped the large green kerchief from her braided hair. She tethered one corner of the cloth to the rail on the side of the cart.
René slipped from Marguerite’s grasp and stood on the seat to fling his chubby arms around the girl’s neck, sobbing something thatsounded like “Maman!Maman!” His paler skin against hers was a startling contrast, proof they did not belong together.
Great crocodile tears began to splash down the girl’s cheeks as she disentangled him and bound his wrist to the cart. “It’s only for a little while,trezò mwen.”
Marguerite swallowed and picked up the reins in her left hand. She did not let go of the pistol. “Now untie the mule.”
The girl obeyed. René cried even louder, if that was possible. “I’m not leaving you!” she assured him. “I’ll never leave you!” She looped the mule’s tether around her wrist.
Marguerite waited till the girl had walked the rope’s full length, till she was as far away from the animal as possible. The girl’s back was to her. That made it easier. She had no chance to react or dodge. Marguerite knew she was a terrible shot, even at this range, and she couldn’t be certain the pistol would still fire. But it did. The explosion startled Marguerite as well as the mule, making her drop the reins. The animal bolted and dragged the body of the girl several yards before the rope came loose and they were free of her.
Marguerite retrieved the reins, but she let the mule run. She did not look back.
She tried not to worry. Even if the girl lived, everyone knew negroes had minds like sieves. In a day or two, the girl would forget René entirely. She’d throw herself at other men and get more children. Marguerite never could.
Beside her, René strained against his binding, but he was only making it tighter. She wished he would stop screaming.
“Shhh,” Marguerite soothed him. “Your grandmother’s here now.”
CHAPTER 5
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau,Du Contrat social(1762)
Marguerite had plenty of time to construct her grandson’s new past, on the long journey by land to Le Cap and by sea to Charleston. Even her fellow refugees pitied her: to have lost all her family but this one grandchild, and him so ill-behaved. René had had a colored nurse, Marguerite explained, and he’d learned Creole from her.
Before they reached South Carolina, he stopped speaking altogether. He even stopped throwing tantrums and settled into mere sullenness. Marguerite was relieved.
She considered making him Delphine’s son, then rejected the idea. If they survived the revolt, Guillaume’s family must have no claims on René, no questions; the boy must be Marguerite’s alone. His mother had been aseñoritawhom Gabriel had met at Fort Dauphin when he went to buy a horse. She was the daughter of a Spanish officer, a beautiful, pious, aristocratic, headstrong young woman who had died in childbirth but left behind this little angel… Marguerite chose the name Maria Dolores, after Our Lady of Sorrows. She and Gabriel were far too young to wed, but they’d done it anyway, in secret, and her family had disowned her. Marguerite made their tale into a romantic tragedy.
Matthieu’s uncle, Thierry Lazare, knew no better; he’d communicated only fitfully with his nephew. Marguerite knocked on the door of Thierry’s brick house on Archdale Street with considerable trepidation.
The old bachelor greeted them coolly—until René looked up at him. Then, Thierry smiled. “You have her eyes,” he declared, referring to his late sister, Matthieu’s mother. “The very color of a blue Morpho!” This was, apparently, a butterfly from South America. Thierry showed them a specimen of the creature, for which he’d paid a ridiculous sum. If he could afford to throw away money on something likethat…
“Aren’t those wings the prettiest blue you’ve ever seen?” Thierry asked the child.
“Blue,” René agreed solemnly. It was only a murmur—but it was the first word he’d spoken in weeks.
The old man was obsessed with butterflies—and their “caterpillars.” They looked like worms to Marguerite. No wonder Thierry had never married. The reason he lived on the outskirts of Charleston wasinsects. Day in and day out, Thierry went traipsing about the nearby fields to collect his worms, which he brought homealive.
Outside his house, the society was hardly better. Directly across Archdale Street: not one but two Protestant churches. Directly behind them: a brewery, a poor house, and a jail, in that order. This was hardly the return to civilization Marguerite had hoped for. But as these English-Americans put it: “Beggars must not be choosers.”
Besides, Charleston was only a sojourn before Marguerite and René returned to France. She wrote to her brother Denis, who was relieved Marguerite was alive and delighted to learn he had a grand-nephew. They were welcome to join him in his presbytery—as soon as France was safe again.
