“Do you know what Denmark Vesey had to say about white children?” Marguerite continued. “He said: ‘What is the use of killing the lice and leaving the nits?’ You would have beenluckyif they killed you. I heard they were planning to sell some ofusas slaves. You don’twantto knowwhat they would have done to little girls.”
After that, the children behaved themselves. Marguerite kept watch with a pair of opera glasses. At last the criminals appeared in carts, sitting atop their coffins. Most looked solemn, but one had clearly lost his few brains. He was waving, chattering to the crowd, andlaughing. Perhaps he thought this behavior would earn him clemency. Marguerite hoped not.
The City Guard had to force a way through the throng so the condemned could reach their nooses. The wave of people following them crashed into the mass already waiting. Only with difficulty did their own coachman keep their horses from bolting. Nearby, Marguerite heard screaming and caught enough words to surmise that at least one person had been trampled.
“Can’t we go now,bisaïeule?” Joseph begged beside her.
“It hasn’t even started!” Marguerite snapped. At the thought of leaving, palpitations seized her heart again. She had waited thirty years for this.
The negroes descended from their coffins.
“I want to gohome!” Hélène wailed.
Marguerite yanked on the girl’s bonnet ribbon and forced Hélène to look at her. “Act like a lady!”
Joseph muttered, “There are no other ladies here.”
Marguerite released Hélène and glanced around them. The crowd was full of snivelling colored women, and a few white women of low character. The rest were all men and boys. Fools.Everyonein this city should bear witness, so no one would forget their negroes’ intentions. They werenot“like family.”
Awkwardly, with their hands bound behind their backs, the criminals mounted the benches, and the guardsmen looped the ropes around their necks.
“You’re going to remember this day,” Marguerite told her great-grandchildren in a voice low and fierce. “You’re going to remember it for the rest of your lives, every time someone asks why your children don’t have a black nurse. And you!” She jabbed a finger at Joseph. “Don’t youevertrust a negro with your shaving razor! Do you hear me?”
Without ceremony, a guardsman kicked away the first bench, and then the second. The criminals dropped—except, they did not drop far or fast enough. They onlybeganto strangle. Some of the men’s feet scraped the ground. They dangled, kicking but not dying. They were so close, Marguerite could hear the gagging distinctly. Nearby, one negro tried to keep his legs lifted long enough to choke himself.
Marguerite smirked. What an inept hangman. Or perhaps a wise one. Let them suffer. They had planned to burn children alive. They had mutilatedherchildren. They had left her with a fool for a grandson and weaklings for heirs.
Across from Marguerite, both girls were blubbering now. Without a word, Joseph left the seat beside her and tucked himself between them. His sisters buried their faces against his shoulders and clung to him. He cooed at them but glared at Marguerite. She barely noticed.
Wobbling on their toes like children’s tops, many of the hanged men could still speak, a chorus of hoarse voices begging for mercy among the gasps and shrieks of the crowd.
With a curse, the captain of the City Guard succumbed. He drew his gun and began shooting the criminals, one by one. The impact spun their bodies anew.
Marguerite remembered the pistol tucked into her reticule and laughed. She withdrew it, cocked it, and aimed at the nearest negro. His head burst like a mushroom. One of the guardsmen wrested the pistol from her, as if she had more than one shot.
They couldn’t stop her from admiring what she’d done to her target. It was not an impertinentmulâtresse, but it was something.
The next morning,when Joseph came to give his great-grandmother a letter from his father, he found she had passed away in her sleep. In the July heat, she already smelled horrible, and she was already attracting flies. But before he ran to tell his grandfather, Joseph said a quick prayer for Marguerite’s soul. He knew she needed it. He closed his eyes tightly, because there was a very strange smile on her face.
PART II
A PURE BOY, FAITHFULLY PRESENTED
1822-1825
Charleston
Though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature, and it therefore does not mend the matter.
— Thomas Hardy,Tess of the d’Urbervilles(1891)
CHAPTER 7
Appearance oft deceives.
— Giovanni Torriano,A Common Place of Italian Proverbs(1666)
Joseph would never forget the day of his Confirmation, and not only because of the Sacrament.
