A dozen times she began a letter to Anne’s parents, then threw it in the fire. Gérard and Jeanne Saint-Clair prided themselves on being the kindest master and mistress in Christendom; but they would never let their daughtermarrya negro, Marguerite knew—even if she was an idiot. Marguerite could put an end to this engagement at once. Yet in their fury at her deception, whom else might the Saint-Clairs tell?
A part of Marguerite hoped her grandson would never marry. As much as she wanted great-grandchildren, she also dreaded them. What if René’s African blood showed in his offspring even more strongly than in himself? She’d read that could happen. Marguerite could only cling to the theory that mulattos always became sterile by the third generation.
So her grandson obtained the Saint-Clairs’ blessing, found an attorney to argue his case, and married Anne. They mixed their blood with indecent alacrity. Their firstborn was premature, frightfully small, and too dark for Marguerite’s liking—all signs of degeneracy. But René and Anne would not let Joseph out of their sight; they were determined to keep him. The idiot’s one attribute was her color, and she’d failed to impart it. At least Joseph was alittlelighter than his father and responsive to sound.
His sister Catherine was not much of an improvement. She was born during the Russian occupation of Paris, but named for the fourteenth-century Italian saint, not the Tsar’s grandmother. Finally Europe settled into peace and René completed his medical studies. He decided to return to Charleston. France was already overflowing with doctors, he said, and Anne wanted to be near her family.
Marguerite tried to dissuade her grandson, but in the end, she could only follow. In France itself, there were no slaves, and so few coloreds they were more a curiosity than a concern. In SouthCarolina, René’s position and his children’s futures would be far more precarious. So surely his choice of residence proved that her grandson didnotknow of his black blood, andthatwas the important thing. Her own children had never known they were illegitimate, so the truth could not harm them. If René thought himself white, if he acted white, others would take him for white.
At least in Charleston, her grandson would escape the influence of his liberal student friends. But Marguerite feared the damage had already been done—that René would remain unorthodox for life.
As soon as they left France, that missing parish register began to haunt her. What if it were not at the bottom of the ocean? What if it had simply fallen into some dusty corner of the archives?What if someone found it?Across the Atlantic, she could do nothing to ensure its destruction.
Across the Atlantic, they would be safer from its secrets.
CHAPTER 6
There is nothing they are bad enough to do, that we are not powerful enough to punish.
— Charleston Intendant [Mayor] James Hamilton,Negro Plot: An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection(1822)
René had asked his father-in-law to look after his property. Instead, Gérard had improved it. He’d purchased a new pair of slaves. He’d added a three-story piazza to the house. And he’d set up an office for René in the front room, with a desk and two great cabinets: one for books and one for medicines.
Marguerite’s grandson might have become wealthy in Charleston, if he’d chosen the right patients. Instead, he threw away most of his talents on paupers, even masterless negroes. When they offered some paltry payment, René often refused it—even as he added more mouths to their household: another girl, Hélène, and another boy, Christophe.
The boy’s hair was as yellow as his mother’s, but its texture was alarming. And hisnose! René and Anne did not seem to notice. Fortunately, Christophe died in his cradle one night. Marguerite’sfears of discovery, more potent than they’d been the past thirty years, were put to rest with him.
Anne grieved as if she were the first mother to lose a child. She showed herself for the savage she was, wailing like some sort of banshee and then lapsing into a catalepsy. Finally René coaxed her into mere despondency. He decided to take her back to Paris so that she could visit her school friends, who still lived together like nuns at the Institute—sensible men did not want idiots for wives. Marguerite hoped her grandson would leave Anne there, but she doubted it. The thought of crossing the ocean twice more made Marguerite nauseous—and the truth was, René could afford passage only with Gérard’s aid. So, while their parents were abroad, Marguerite promised to look after Joseph, Catherine, and Hélène.
At least, she could look after the boy, who generally stayed in one place with his nose in a book (his mother’s nose, thank God). Joseph was ten years old now. He still appeared delicate, but his health was surprisingly robust, and his mind was as quick as his father’s. “A very prodigy,” Gérard liked to call the boy. Joseph was hardly Mozart, though he played the piano ably and sang soprano remarkably.
His true talent was languages. Marguerite’s great-grandson could converse in French and in English with equal facility. He’d also taught himself a great deal of Spanish (believing it was his grandmother’s tongue), and he knew as much Latin as a Priest. To Joseph, Denis was a hero, their family’s very own saint.
Joseph’s sisters were more defiant, and they made Marguerite’s heart pain her. She should have been able to call on Anne’s parents to discipline the girls, but the Saint-Clairs spoiled them as atrociously as René did. If Catherine or Hélène did not find Marguerite’s rules to their liking, all they had to do was run bawling to their grandparents through the gate in their shared garden fence. Marguerite had to settle for an occasional whack with her cane as the girls darted by. Saint-Domingue had literally crippled her; she was lucky to have kept both legs.
Three decadesafter she thought she’d escaped it, that damned island pursued her. All over again, the slaves planned to gorge themselves on fire and blood. To ingratiate himself with his master, a mulatto domestic revealed this conspiracy rather than joining it. Charleston’s dubious Intendant wanted corroboration before he would act, so another mulatto spied on his fellow slaves and returned with a date: Sunday the 16thof June 1822. This time, Marguerite would be ready.
Even as the City Guard patrolled the streets, carrying firearms for the first time in its history, Gérard would not believe the reports. “Surely it’s nothing,” he tried to assure Marguerite. “Ourpeople have no reason to revolt. South Carolina isn’t Saint-Domingue. We don’t work our servants to death and replace them. We take care of them, and they know it.”
The only difference was that in Charleston, the negroes grinned and bowed as they plotted how to murder you. Unlike Gérard and his equally naïve wife, Marguerite refused to sleep inside that Sunday night or to allow the children to do so. What if the slaves set fire to the houses?
Finally Gérard agreed to obtain a pistol for her, but he also came back with a white tent for the children. This wasnotan adventure! Catherine and Hélène dressed up the canvas like the abode of a sheikh. Then the girls chased fireflies around the joined gardens, giggling, till they collapsed and slept like innocents.
Their neighbors took the threat more seriously. Across Archdale Street, the Protestant churches glowed like twin lanterns and reverberated with hymns as the congregants prayed for deliverance from these black devils. Even with all the outbuildings between them, Marguerite could hear Mrs. Mitchell becoming hysterical every time a patrol passed. Again and again, the woman mistook sounds for attacking negroes. Across the south fence, the Blackwood children were sobbing. Catherine and Hélène murmured in their sleep but did not wake.
In the insufficient, unnerving lantern light, only her great-grandson sat soberly beside her. Marguerite swung the pistolbetween their own slave quarters and the gate to the Saint-Clairs’ yard, her hands shaking with more than age. Her heart felt erratic and too large for her chest. While Marguerite tried to forget what Saint-Domingue had done to her boys, Joseph bowed his head over his rosary, murmuring prayers of protection.
He was as weak as his sisters. When the negroes assaulted them, her great-grandchildren would cower and submit. Joseph, Catherine, and Hélène knew nothing of the fear or hatred they would need to survive. From their parents and grandparents, they received only coddling. Marguerite must find a way to educate the children before it was too late.
She knew she had little time left. Her heart worried her more and more, and it had worried René. If she lived through this night, she would soon be eighty years old. Everyonethoughtshe was turning seventy-six—she’d carefully maintained every fiction, even, especially, those begun with Matthieu half a century ago.
When the sun rose Monday morning, Charleston still stood. Catherine and Hélène scampered off to the kitchen, as if Marguerite had never warned them that the cook might have poisoned every bite. Marguerite hobbled after the girls to rap their greedy little hands and insist that the cook sample everything she served.
In the days that followed, as more than one hundred negroes were taken to the Work House to be interrogated, Marguerite devoured every scrap of news. It did not surprise her that the conspiracy’s leader had been a slave on Saint-Domingue. His fanciful master, a Captain Vesey, had named the boy Télémaque and foolishly taught him to read. Here in Charleston, these English speakers corrupted the negro’s name to Denmark. He won $1500 in a lottery, and Vesey allowed him to purchase his freedom. And still Denmark was not content: he wanted his children and all slaves to be free.
So, like Makandal, he began to plot. Over the course of four years, thousands upon thousands joined his secret army. Among Denmark’s recruits were “French negroes” from Saint-Domingue.Blacksmiths forged swords and daggers and pikes. Gunpowder was stashed away for the attack. The slaves planned to burn Charleston to the ground. Denmark wrote to the mulatto who called himself President of Haïti and asked for asylum. The negroes would leave a few ship captains alive to take them there.
As the trials and whippings continued, the executions began: on the 2ndof July, Denmark Vesey himself; another carpenter; a boy belonging to the Blackwoods; and three of the Governor’s slaves. Forty-three negroes were sentenced to be “transported,” sold to a slower death in the Antilles. Ten days later, two more were hanged: a conjurer born in Africa, who’d claimed he could make them all invulnerable, and Elias Horry’s coachman. Like the Intendant, the Saint-Clairs, and most Charlestonians, Mr. Horry was incredulous that his trusted slave could mean him harm. “Tell me, are you guilty?” Mr. Horry had pleaded. “For I cannot believe unless I hear you say so… What were your intentions?” His beloved negro answered: “To kill you, rip open your belly, and throw your guts in your face.”
