‘He did.’ Aramis fixed his gaze on a corner of the ceiling and talked rather quickly as January packed the wound and bound it again with cleaner wrappings. ‘When Great-Granpère Absalon came here in 1809 his son was with him, our Uncle Guibert. Our great-uncle, really, but he was only a few years older than our father, fourteen years younger than Granmère. I never saw him. He stayed on Hispaniola Plantation – Granpère Vitrac’s original place over the other side of the island – less than a year, and when he left, just before I was born, Great-Granpère Absalon came back here to Chouteau – which was Mama’s plantation, originally – and the Hispaniola house was allowed to fall to ruin. But the servants talked about him.’
‘And he was the only other child besides your Granmère?’
Rose, who had resumed her contemplation of the wall, turned now in her chair, lemonade cup in hand. ‘M’sieu Thiot at the Café des Refugies said Great-Granmère Amalie was fragile.’
‘Well, she died only a few weeks after Guibert was born. I think she had two or three others before him who didn’t survive,’ said Aramis. ‘That’s what Mammy Zett told me.’
‘Oh, good Lord, Mammy Zett! Of course, she’d know everything.’
‘Mammy Zett’s mama was one of the maids Great-Granpère brought from Cuba,’ Alice explained to January. ‘Old Mammy Pé.’
‘I was terrified of Mammy Pé,’ Rose affirmed.
‘We was all terrified of Mammy Pé, Rosie.’ With a trembling hand, Aramis steadied the cup January held to his lips: bitter willow-bark tea that Olympe swore strengthened the blood. ‘She’d tell us tales about Uncle Gunnysack – Tonton Macoute – who came around at night snatching up children in the dark to eat for breakfast, or the Plat-Eye that hides in the woods near where blood has been spilled.’
‘For Mammy Pé,’ said Rose, ‘everything was some dark spell or other, or the work of demons or leopard men. I used to steal milk from the dairy and put it out in the woods, and then hide, to see if the spirits really would turn it into blood.’
‘Did they ever?’ asked January, who had been kept from wandering in the night woods himself, as a child, by tales of the Plat-Eye Devil. Only Rose, he reflected, would try to bait the thing in order to get a look at it.
‘Usually, the wild pigs would knock it over trying to get at it.’
January laughed, recalling Mammy Zett’s stories from his previous visit here with Rose in the summer of 1835. Those had mostly concerned the small incidents of life on the islands, or what had happened during this or that hurricane, or the secrets of animals. But clearly the old woman had inherited her skill as a raconteuse from her formidable mother, and he guessed that, if asked, she could produce plantation rumor and family gossip that went back well before her own birth.
Alice walked with January and Rose out to the weaving shed, where Mammy Zett and the older women of the plantation were to be found on summer days, while those able to do so knelt and stooped among the garden rows pulling weeds. Like the kitchens, the weaving shed had doors all along the side that faced the bay, and these stood open, so as they crossed through the gardens January heard the steady thump of the looms and the voices of the women, singing as they worked:
The winds roared, and the rains fell,
The poor white man, faint and weary,
Came and sat under our tree.
He got no mother for to bring him milk,
He got no wife for to grind him corn,
No wife for to grind him corn, oh …
The poor white man, faint and weary,
Got no wife for to grind him corn …
When Alice stopped to exchange words with the head woman of the gardening gang – Mammy Ti, January recalled her name was – he scanned the line of oaks and oleanders on the low ridge behind the house, looked out past the plantation buildings toward the head-high fields of dark-green cane, motionless in the yellow morning light.
Shaw was right. There’s money behind this, money enough to split his forces, to send men after Aramis here while others waited outside the house in New Orleans …
Do they just want to put us down? Put us out of the race? Or is there something more? Something that’s worth making sure of us: Aramis, Rose, and me?
The weaving shed stood on piers of brick, like the house, though not so high. Pigs rooted in the pen underneath. As he climbed the steps to the narrow gallery, January noted that the railing was in good repair and the plank floors had been swept. A sort of pen had been made from pieces of broken chairs in a corner of the weaving room, where two tiny girls and a boy – all three naked, and only one of the girls old enough to stagger – were being watched by a four-year-old girl, clothed in a sort of dress made from the faded scraps of a worn-out shirt. Two of the shed’s three looms were being worked, one by a woman who looked to be in her sixties – though January guessed that in fact she was not much older than his own forty-three years – the other by a woman so bent and wasted that it was hard to tell her age. Flies roared around the shade of the peaked ceiling. Even from here, he could hear the slow beat of the surf on the other side of the island.
The singing stopped, and the two old women turned. The younger said, ‘M’am …’ And then, her lined face breaking into a smile, ‘Miss Rose! And Ben, of all people! I hear it tell that you done made a fine baby boy—’ Her French was the thick cane-patch pidgin of the slave quarters, French words grafted into African patterns, the first language January had learned.
Rose, he observed, had to listen more carefully, though she spoke it well enough to make herself understood.
‘We have,’ she said, and smiled in return. ‘And who’re these?’ She knelt beside the makeshift pen and introductions were made. Time on Grand Isle wasn’t like time anywhere else, but even in New Orleans, January would have made the time – despite the unexpected reminder that their enemies were close at hand – to re-establish the thousand homey connections with the people of Chouteau Plantation, the people who might unwittingly hold the key to the deadly puzzle of the de Gericault treasure.
‘M’am Amalie.’ When at last, in answer to January’s eventual question, Mammy Zett spoke the name of Great-Granmère de Gericault, there was a note of sadness in her voice, as at the shadow of some old tale. ‘My mama’s brother was married to her maid – Reina, her name was – at La Châtaigneraie. She went with her, when Old Michie Absalon send her away to L’Ange Rouge by the mountains in the south.’
‘L’Ange Rouge?’ Rose frowned, as if at a name half-recalled.
‘Michie Absalon’s other plantation. Back in the forest, away from anywhere. My mama said her brother never saw his wife again.’ And she shook her head at the tragedy that whites didn’t even notice: even Alice, though she looked sympathetic, had, in her pale blue eyes, no true sorrow. Not the sorrow she’d show, or feel, at a white man losing the girl he loved.
‘A little pretty lady, M’am Amalie, my mama said. Hair soft like a cloud, the color of dust, an’ wavy like a waterfall.’ The soft, regular thump of Old Mammy Dulcie’s loom laid a warp of rhythm behind Zett’s gravelly voice. ‘She been born in France, and she longed all her days to go back there. An’ she was a good lady, mama said, an’ always try to help the field hands, an’ keep ’em away from old Dr Maudit.’
‘Dr Maudit?’ January straightened up on the bench he’d brought in from the gallery.
The name meant accursed, and Mammy Zett’s eyes narrowed dramatically. In the hunch of her shoulders, January detected the echo of her mama’s scary tales. Not, he reflected, that it would take much imagination to make Saint-Domingue scary to the blacks who’d served there …
‘He was an evil man, Dr Maudit. A ouanga-man that cast spells on Michie Absalon’s mind, so he’d do his bidding like a zombi. Yes, and he’d make true zombi, mama said. Bring the dead back to life so they’d work for Michie Absalon, and steal little children and cut them up and eat them … yes, and sometimes their mamas and their daddies, too. I’m not make this up,’ she added, seeing the s
tartled glance January traded with Rose. ‘You think this is like stories they tell about Tonton Macoute but it’s not. Dr Maudit was an evil man, and he made Michie Absalon evil too, Michie Absalon that was as good a man as God made, in those parts, ’fore he met old Dr Maudit. Mama said he made Michie Absalon send poor M’am Amalie away to the south, ’cause she spoke out for the field hands against Dr Maudit when he’d steal their children.’
‘White man can’t make no zombi.’ Old Dulcie spoke without pausing in her rhythmic passing of shuttle through warp. ‘Nor is no white bukra alive gonna let nobody cut up an’ eat pickaninnies that can grow up an’ work for him. An’ Mem say, that was valet to Michie Absalon on Cuba, that he heard Michie Absalon done send Miz Amalie away ’cause she need rest. She tire herself out, runnin’ back an’ forth to Cap Francais to go shoppin’ an’ take tea with her friends an’ go to parties all wearin’ her diamonds. She bear three babies that all break in two an’ die, ’cause she runnin’ around so much when she carry ’em, so he send her away clear to the south where she can rest an’ bear him a healthy child.’
‘Was your granmère not healthy?’ January glanced curiously at Rose.
‘She was fragile,’ Rose replied, after a moment’s thought. ‘She seemed very old to me when I knew her, though I don’t think she was even quite fifty when I came here in 1818. Her hair was mostly white, and she couldn’t walk more than a few steps …’
‘That’s ’cause her mama was all gallivantin’ around Cap Francais in her diamonds goin’ to parties,’ said Dulcie firmly. ‘She’d been grow up in France in the King’s palace, an’ got used to it. An’ for sure when Michie Absalon send her away to the south an’ make her rest, she birth a big healthy boy.’
‘You don’t know what you talkin’ about,’ snapped Zett. ‘Dr Maudit put a cross on Michie Absalon, got him to send M’am Amalie away where Michie Absalon couldn’t keep an eye on her. An’ as soon as Michie’s back was turned, he poison her, on account of she tried to help the slaves ’gainst Maudit.’
Dulcie said, ‘Huh.’
‘Huh yourself, nigger …’
‘Did Michie Absalon love his wife?’ asked January, fascinated though not entirely certain any of this went any distance in explaining where the treasure might be or who would know of it.
‘He did ’fore Dr Maudit come along,’ put in Mammy Zett quickly.
‘I heard he had two plaçées in town,’ the older woman retorted.
‘Hell, that don’t mean nuthin’. Wasn’t a man, white or colored, in Saint-Domingue didn’t have women in town.’ Mammy Zett turned back to January. ‘You listen to me, Ben. Folks don’t understand what it was like in Saint-Domingue. They was near twenty black slaves to every white man on that island, and the whites came up with ways of makin’ their niggers too scared to even think about liftin’ a finger ’gainst ’em. Slow beatin’s that’d skin a man over the course of a day, then hangin’ him up raw on a tree alive for the ants to swarm, or stuffin’ their arse with gunpowder an’ callin’ every man, woman, an’ child of the plantation to watch when he lit the fuse. M’am Amalie did what she could to stop Michie Absalon from doin’ such things. But Dr Maudit, he was evil, evil an’ crafty, like a stripe-eyed snake. My mama told me it tore Michie up inside, the things Maudit would do, but Maudit had a cross on him that he couldn’t un-cross, even for M’am Amalie’s sake—’
‘Pah! Never in my life!’ Old Dulcie snapped her fingers without breaking the beat of her loom. ‘Michie Absalon married Amalie de Gericault ’cause her father done him out of his share of their grandaddy’s land in France, an’ the title, an’ when they got to Cuba I hear tell Michie Absalon went around callin’ himself the Vicomte de Gericault. That’s the only reason he wanted a strong son, was so’s that son could get the title back from their uncle in France. An’ he sent M’am Amalie away to where she couldn’t get into any trouble, an’ just went down there to get her with child, same as puttin’ a stud horse to a mare, ’til she took, an’ in the meantime had his ladies in town, Calanthe an’ Emmanuelle, that was both so bright he’d take one or the other of ’em across to Martinique or Santiago, when there’d be balls there, an’ introduce ’em as white.’
‘Did he have children by them?’ asked January. ‘Children that might have lived in his household?’
‘Huh.’ Mammy Zett scowled at her rival. ‘No man’d bring a child of his anywhere near Maudit.’
‘No,’ answered Dulcie flatly. ‘Not as I ever heard.’
‘Like you was there, nigger …’
‘Like I ain’t heard the tales your mama told about it, ’fore you was ever born …’
‘What about Mammy Ginette?’ asked Rose.
The two old women glared at each other. Mammy Dulcie sniffed. ‘What ’bout her?’
Mammy Zett’s eyes darkened with old sorrow. ‘She was sister to M’am Amalie’s maid Reina,’ she said, ‘the one that was married to my mama’s brother. Michie Absalon, he gave Ginette to that plaçée Calanthe for a gift, same time he gave Reina to M’am Amalie.’
‘High-yeller,’ said Dulcie dismissively, ‘an’ proud as Lucifer.’
‘When Ginette came here looking for her granddaughter, did she ever tell you anything about being forced to guide an old blind man back to Saint-Domingue, to the ruins of the plantation?’ Rose looked from one to the other.
‘Now, when’d we have had a chance to sit and pass the time of day with anyone?’ returned Dulcie tartly. ‘It was roulaison when she come here, an’ everyone on the place was in the field haulin’ cane.’
‘She never did get on with my mama,’ admitted Mammy Zett. ‘Mama never did forgive her, for servin’ that stuck-up bitch Calanthe, and then for bein’ the one who ran away when her sister Reina died there on the island.’
‘How did she die?’
‘In a hurricane,’ said Mammy Dulcie shortly, but Mammy Zett shook her head.
‘It was old Dr Maudit that poisoned her,’ she announced. ‘Like he poison poor M’am Amalie, and her brother as well—’
‘Her brother?’ Rose’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I thought her brother was the Comte de Caillot, back in France.’
‘He was,’ declared Mammy Zett with morbid relish. ‘But my mama told me that when there was the revolution in France and all them counts and dukes got their heads cut off, M’am Amalie’s brother Neron come to Cuba, to shelter with his cousin Michie Absalon. An’ Michie Absalon turned him out like a dog …’
Quick footsteps on the gallery stair vibrated the little shed, and a voice from outside called, ‘M’am Alice?’ It was a boy whom January recognized vaguely from his visit to Chouteau three years ago, Didi, grown now to a gangly adolescent. ‘M’am Alice,’ he said, ‘Jacque told me to come tell you, this is twice now this afternoon he’s seen men in the woods: men he don’t know, men he says he got a bad feelin’ about. He says their tracks look like those he found near where Michie Aramis was shot.’
NINE
Jacque was Aramis Vitrac’s foreman, African-dark as January was, but – January was distressed to see – at least thirty pounds thinner than he’d been three years previously. There was a raspiness to his breath, even at rest, that spoke of overwork and poor food for too many years in a row. The first touch of pneumonia would take him, he thought, as it took so many.
Jacque told Hercule the sugar boss to keep the woodcutters at their work, and then took January up the ridge to show him the tracks. These meant little to January’s unpracticed eye, save for the obvious fact that they’d been made by a man of above average height, with narrow feet, in slightly worn boots with square toes. A little distance away, Square-Toes had encountered a smaller man with wider feet, and – on the other side of the ridge – two horses had stood for a time and dunged. ‘I found this same man’s tracks near where Michie Aramis was shot, sir,’ said Jacque, and he swatted – with wearied resignation – at the ever-present gnats that swarmed the stifling woodlands where the bay’s breezes did not reach.
The fact that it rained every afternoon (and was, in fact, getting ready to do so again) provided a terminus a quo to the signs.
January took the shore path back to the house, though it was longer than the way through the woods along the ridge and got him soaked in the first of the storm. Even with a clear field of vision around him, he was deeply conscious of the island’s isolation, and of the fact that there were a thousand places where a man might hide with a rifle.
‘Much as I hate to say it, my nightingale,’ he said, once he’d changed to dry clothes and was sitting with Rose on the back gallery with the gray downpour like a curtain before them, ‘I think we’re going to have to go to Cuba.’
She let her breath go in a sigh. The thought, he could see, had been in her mind from the time it had become clear that neither Aramis nor Mammy Zett – nor, probably, anyone on Chouteau Plantation – recalled sufficient information about the de Gericault family to show them in what direction danger would lie.
‘There have to be people there who remember Absalon de Gericault, who remained in touch with the family, who can tell us where this Uncle Guibert is now, and who can give us some clue as to whether he’s the one who’s hunting this treasure – who’s hunting us. They lived there for eighteen years; there might have been someone in the household, someone in the family, who can tell us who might be our enemy and who can give us some clue as to how to checkmate them. Otherwise all we can do is disappear and hope they’ll pass us in quest of the treasure …’
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