But the corner of Matthieu’s mouth flickered with a grin, and not one of their children appeared. She realized he’d chanted each name loud enough to frighten her, but not loud enough to attract their attention. Still he motioned to the garden bench across from their own. “Sit down, please. Your mother and I have something very important to tell you.” Matthieu paced before their imaginary audience with his hands clasped behind his back in mock gravity. “Remember the choleric baron we’ve told you about? My erstwhile employer? The reason we cannot return to France? He is not in fact your mother’s father, but her husband. I tutored her stepson. You are all?—”
Now her own threatening laughter lent her strength: Marguerite sprang to her feet and clamped her hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t saythat word.
Matthieu pulled it off and continued: “—indebted to the little demon for bringing me under your mother’s roof. Where she and I made the beast with two backs until we madeyou, Delphine. Your mother was elated but terrified. She thought she was barren: ten years with her husband and not one child—until you. Until me. What were we to do but flee? We couldn’t do that without money. Unfortunately the baron didn’t see this as reclaiming your mother’sdowry; he used it to convince the court that I deserved to hang.” For the first time Matthieu’s smile faded, and his steps faltered. “I was nineteen years old.”
Even that would shock the children; she and Matthieu lied about their ages as well, to obscure the fact that he was seven years her junior. Too many questions would be raised: why had Marguerite still been unmarried at the age of twenty-six? Their name itself was false—Lazare belonged to his mother.
It would be exhilarating, after all these years, to tell the truth. But it would serve only themselves, not their children, blissful in their ignorance. The truth was a door that, once opened, they could never close. The children would see themselves differently, see her and Matthieu differently, and each of them would have their own decision to make. For all these reasons, they must remain in exile, or some police spy or gossip would make the decision for them. Matthieu was right.
But so was she. This place was destroying them all, and only the children could escape it. Marguerite stared at the blue pleats of her lustring skirt. “It’s ruined us too, this island.”
“What do you mean?”
She’d been deceiving herself, to think it would last forever. It was a wonder they’d lasted so long. He’d made no vows to her. “When we came here, we were like…oxygento one another.” Till the day she died, she would never forget Matthieu’s countenance that first time, his gratitude and astonishment thatshewantedhim. “Now…” Fiercely she wiped away the tears that rose against her will. “You haven’t touched me in months, Matthieu.” It was like the baron all over again—she’d become more furniture than woman—except she and her husband had never loved each other, so it hadn’t hurt like this. “I know I’m—shrivelling up…” She grimaced at her own breasts, concealed though they were beneath her fichu, elevated as they were by her stays. She knew the truth. “And you’re still…” She raised her eyes miserably to his face: skin tanned and lined now; but he was as virile and handsome as he had ever been, those luminous blue eyes undimmed after all these years.
Yet that beloved face was crinkling tolaughat her. “Oh,m’amour.”
It was cruel, for him to call her “my love” now. She tried to pull away, but he grasped her hand.
“I haven’t touched you because I am waiting till you are a littlemoreshrivelled. Till we can be certain you won’t…”
She made herself look at him.
“Three in succession, Marguerite. Félicité wasso hardon you, even before she was born.” With a sigh, Matthieu’s eyes settled on the flowers beside them. “I decided we have enough rose bushes.”
Marguerite stared at him. Every line of his body was taut. How could she have mistaken his own suffering? “It isn’t because of the bees, then?”
Matthieu chuckled. “The bees are a welcome distraction; that is all.” Yet he kept his gaze averted. “I would give them up tomorrow—if you would allow me topreventanother child.”
How she wanted to say yes… But she could not let him commit such a sin.
It was only for her brother’s sake that Marguerite felt any guilt about what she and Matthieu had done. Not for her tyrant of a husband; not for her terror of a stepson; not for her parents, who had chained her to a widower twice her age simply because he was a baron. Denis was the only member of her family who had not disowned her, he who might have the greatest reason to recoil; he was a Priest.If you persist in this sin,had come his first letter to Saint-Domingue,do not compound it. Live faithfully as husband and wife and accept joyfully all the children God gives you. If you do anything to prevent them, you usurp a prerogative that is His alone…
Surely it wouldn’t be much longer till this women’s hell passed, till there was no risk of conception. More than another child, she’d needed to know that Matthieu still wanted her. So she would not break her promise to Denis now. Slowly Marguerite shook her head, even as she met Matthieu’s blue eyes. “You will wait for me?”
“I have been waiting for you for twenty years,” he smiled, taking her face in his hands. “One day,m’amour, Iwillmake you my wife. All we have to do is outlive your current husband.”
CHAPTER 2
Two Years Later
I felt a certain revulsion when I first saw what resembled the heads of four small children in the soup, but as soon as I tasted it, I easily moved beyond this consideration and continued to eat it with pleasure.
— Jean-Baptiste Labat, on consuming monkeys,Nouveau voyage aux isles de l’Amérique(1742)
Her son raised the skull like a Priest elevating the Host at Mass. “Maman!” Étienne cried. “Look!”
Even through the jalousies of the gallery, Marguerite could see that his fingers were as filthy as the bone. When he moved toward the steps, she scowled. “I don’t want that thing in the house, Étienne.”
“Yes,Maman.” Her son stopped and lowered his trophy, his shoulders sagging with it. The boy did not take his eyes from the dead sockets but turned toward theajoupahe had fashioned for such artifacts. The collection in his hut was beginning to rival themuseum in Le Cap. Étienne would make a name for himself someday, if he ever escaped this island.
Narcisse, meanwhile, seemed to belong here. Snoring open-mouthed beside her, he sprawled in one of their caned chairs with his legs propped up on the extended rests. Marguerite worried about him. He had inherited Matthieu’s face, but little of his intelligence and none of his good humor. Instead, Narcisse too often reminded her of the parable about the Creole boy who wanted an egg. When he was told there weren’t any eggs, the boy responded:“In that case, I wanttwo!”
With a sigh, Marguerite tried to resume her brother’s letter, but Gabriel emerged from the doorway behind her. In spite of the heat, he retained his militia jacket, though he had undone its gold buttons. Gabriel must know how fine he looked in it, how the indigo dye matched his eyes. “Where have you been digging now, little brother?” Gabriel called to Étienne as he leaned against the outer doorway and sliced into a guava.
The boy returned breathlessly, still cradling the skull. “Iwasn’t digging. The negroes found it in the latrine—what will be the new latrine, when it’s finished.”
The monkey Gabriel had brought back from the market in Le Cap shrieked in anticipation and skittered up the jalousies in pursuit of the guava. The noise finally awoke Narcisse, who grumbled as he stirred.
