The Crimson Heirlooms

by Hunter Dennis

  They were both very special, her twins, although it had taken Seonaidh a long time to realize it.

  “How are you feeling, Maman?” Estelle asked.

  Seonaidh didn’t feel like speaking in French. She had spoken to them in Gaeilge since they were born. It was their secret language, one their father did not speak. Seonaidh delighted in keeping their words from him, although now she was filled with regret for being so cruel. “Let us speak in our secret tongue.”

  Guillaume’s face twisted.

  “Please, Guillaume. I am dying.”

  Guillaume calmed, his face went blank. Estelle began to cry.

  “Please do not cry, Estelle. I need both of you to listen.”

  Guillaume spoke, “No more of your stories. I have no interest in feeding your hunger for pity.” His words were as cruel as the ones she had used on him in the past.

  Such as, “I wish you had not been the one to live, and I still had my Ruairí.” Seonaidh found it completely inconceivable that she had said such a thing to her son - but she had, and much worse things beside.

  Seonaidh sighed, and spoke, “There are things I would have you know. I do not ask for pity, only indulgence.”

  He looked down and did not speak.

  “I have told you how I grew up in the forest of Ards, in the ruins of the Kingdom of Tír Chonaill.”

  Guillaume tensed. He hated it when his mother spoke of her past. He couldn’t tell if she was mad or sane, whether the stories were true or false. She couldn’t read, couldn’t write, and her head was full of superstition, like an African priestess. In some places they had lived, the blacks were afraid of her and called her a witch. Now, his mother’s eyes were burning with fever and sickness. Whatever she was about to say could not be trusted.

  Estelle felt the opposite way. She kept and studied every word that her mother spoke, sifting it for nuggets of gold, for insight into her family’s past, of which she knew little. She believed that family history was important, and could provide insight into many present things.

  Seonaidh continued, “A priest came to clan Ó Brollachain to bless my mother, when she was gravid with me. There had been no live births among the clan for six months. The priest came with dire words. He said I was under a doom of cinniúint.”

  “What is cinniúint, Maman?” asked Estelle.

  “It is your fate, your luck, your destiny. The wonderful and horrible surprises of your life. The priest spoke in front of the entire clan. I was called drochthuar ever after.”

  “What is a drochthuar, Maman?” asked Estelle.

  “It is a word I swore I would never use. But I called Old Leather a drochthuar, in Montserrat. He became my dearest friend. He was an ancient African. He perpetrated every evil, and had in turn every evil perpetrated upon him. He was very wise and very kind.”

  Guillaume knew of Old Leather. Maman always spoke about him - Old Leather this, Old Leather that. He had no idea if he existed, or if Montserrat was an actual place.

  She continued, “A drochthuar is an evil harbinger of doom. A bearer of dark magic, affecting one’s cinniúint.”

  Guillaume stood, he had his fill.

  “Please!” Seonaidh begged, “Please hear what little I have to say.”

  Estelle made a subtle motion to Guillaume. On her face was a gentle mixture of love and frustration. He sat down.

  Seonaidh continued, “I hated that priest. I hated God, and the church, and the cruel children of my village. But every word the father spoke came true.” With effort, Seonaidh turned in bed and reached for a thin cedar box she had retrieved earlier. She slid the latch open, and raised the top. Inside were tufts of loose wool. Probing through them, her fingers found the necklace. The children had only seen it a handful of times, and each time was vividly remembered. A first impression offered an explosion of scarlet stars. Sparks flew everywhere, red galaxies spinning over the walls and ceiling. Second, one saw the nearly translucent cross, glowing red unless seen in the proper light, when it was revealed as milky white. Christ was in gold on the cross, so too were the settings and other details. It must have been made by angels, for one could stare at it for hours. Seonaidh whispered. “I am dying-”

  “No, Maman,” said Estelle gently.

  “Everyone dies, child. So do I,” and, with that, she handed the necklace to Estelle, and wrapped the chain around her hand.

  A tear made its way down Estelle’s cheek. This was her mother’s most prized possession - as well it should be, for it would have been the most vaunted of a Czarina. Her gift could only mean one thing: her mother would soon be gone.

  Seonaidh spoke, “I have changed. I have looked back at my life, and where I once saw horror, I now see beauty. Of Montserrat, once I only remembered the beatings of the Ó Conchubhair daughters, now I remember the animals who were my family, the exotic tastes of meals, and the words I shared with Old Leather. However ill I was treated by Captain Eltis, I emerged with a priceless treasure, that I now pass to you.” She could see Guillaume getting impatient again and tried to talk faster. “I have come to love life again, and to love God. An understanding has come to me.”

  “And your time chained in the hold, what treasure did that bring to you?” asked Guillaume, for he knew, from her own past words, that there was nothing but unimaginable horror in that hold. She had been brought to Montserrat in the bowels of a ship, and still Seonaidh woke every morning, wet and screaming, from a nightmare where she was back in chains, lying in her own filth, unable to move or escape. Guillaume asked the question to thwart her, to be ornery and contrary. For a moment, she was lost - there truly was nothing good in that hold. But then the answer came to her like the sudden, gentle break of dawn. She smiled and laughed.

  “Why, if not for the time in the hold, I would not have you, Guillaume, nor your sister, and you were always my greatest treasures of all.”

  Guillaume looked down and breathed deeply. Estelle teared, but held strong.

  Seonaidh smiled, “Life is so achingly lovely. A journey of pure wonder. I find myself thankful for having been alive. I wish that I could have weathered my suffering with a stronger soul, and the eyes I now possess. God is glorious, his plan is a celebration. I am so thankful he gave me the insight I now have. I long to finally embrace him, and thank him for my life.”

  If there was one thing Guillaume knew of his mother, it was that her history had been one long and epic saga of tragedy. She had been forced into a ridiculously bad life - and she had taken every ounce of that suffering and taken it out on them. For a time, she had discovered drink. He remembered her drunk and ranting in French at her father. “You took advantage of me! Captain Fabre told you to take care of me!”

  “I married you, Seonaidh, right honorable, in a damné church!” shot back Féroce. He would yell and scream at her, but he would never strike her. He sometimes hit his children, though.

  She ranted on, “You married my color, not me! Fresh off the boat, I was! I was scared, I was gravid, I was young as a spotted fawn - what did I know? If I knew a soup bowl of what I know now, I would never have had a thing to do with ye. You black macaque! I never would have married you, and had your putain children de couleur!”

  She was speaking of four of her other children, two mercifully dead, but the other two - Guillaume and Estelle - were listening, and had always listened.

  Féroce snarled, “My children are legally white, you salope vérolée! I may be colored, but at least my line has always been free. You were a putain slave, and the only white baby you ever had was the get of your master.”

  “Don’t you speak of him like that!” she screamed, “God returned my dear Ruairí.”

  “Aye, and he killed him dead from the Summer sickness, as well, didn’t he?”

  “Shut up, you merdique nègre!”

  And so it went between Maman and Papa, each slinging hateful words like well-thrust blades. The twins didn’t fully understand all of the references, but they got the gist. When Maman spoke th
e secret tongue, she sounded like a poet. When she spoke French, it was more like the pidgin oaths of a foreign-born dock-whore.

  Strangely, Maman and Papa were absolutely true to each other, regardless and always. It was good they had each other, for they had no one else. There was no other family, they scared the neighbors, and they had no friends.

  Seonaidh coughed from her bed, and continued, “I love you both so much. I’m sorry I was ever cross with you.”

  “I forgive you, Maman,” said Estelle. She had long waited for such signs of love from her mother. She was as grateful for her mother’s words as she was to forgive.

  “I do not want your forgiveness. What I want is for every wound I ever inflicted to heal. I want you to know how I have always felt, not how I made you feel. I love you, my beautiful children. Please know this.”

  She fell silent.

  Then she died.

  A loud wail escaped Guillaume’s lips, surprising Estelle. He had unraveled, broken in a thousand pieces. “Maman! Maman!” he cried. He held her limp body, cradling her head and shoulders and sobbed.

  Estelle hoped Maman was looking down from heaven. Guillaume, deep down in his soul, was good and loving, Estelle wanted to believe. He would have many choices before him - he could extinguish his light or turn his lantern brighter - but right here, right now, he was good. His mother had died, he loved her, he was inconsolable. Estelle was terribly stricken as well, but she knew the tragedy belonged to herself, and to the other living, and not to Maman. This was the best thing that ever happened to her, and, at the end, she saw the beauty and wonder of her experience. Maman was missed, but not mourned, by Estelle. She knew her mother was in a better place than this humid, molten-hot, daub shack outside Le Cap.

  Guillaume’s piercing wails interrupted her thoughts. She put her arms around them both, and rested her head on her brother’s back. He was all she had now. Unfortunately, for Estelle, he could not say the same. It was only a matter of time before he would leave.

  Guillaume found his second family when he was nine. It was a difficult time. They had moved back to Le Cap after living in the mountains, uphill from Milot, on their coffee plantation named Champ-Élevé. They were happy there. They all went their separate ways during the day. Maman mostly spent her time underwater, in a cool lagoon beneath a waterfall. She would never dry off, and would roam about wet. No one could understand why she would want to be wet all of the time, it was cold enough in the mountains as it was. She would mutter to herself in Gaeilge, and sometimes utter strange curses, or hex people with the movements of her hands. The Africans were terrified of her, they called her le Sorcière d'Eau - the Water Witch. It was perhaps not too far from the truth - Maman’s people were a magic-believing, superstitious lot.

  Guillaume roamed the hills, everywhere and nowhere, alone. Estelle did not understand why. He said he just liked to think. and to see what there was to see. Estelle tended her garden, and cooked and cleaned with Bue-Bue, their house slave. Estelle would have rather helped with the coffee trees. Plants spoke to her. Even if no one told her how to grow something, she could suss out what was needed just by seeing the leaves react to sunlight, water and temperature.

  Papa had many wonderful qualities. He was a born leader. He could size up men quickly and know their hearts. He was fearless, jovial and capable. He could find a runaway slave in a jungle, and convince him to return to a whipping. He had never found his equal in a fight, but never hated a soul. Unfortunately, he was also self-consumed and arrogant. He knew next to nothing of farming, and absolutely nothing regarding the growing of coffee. That would be an odd attribute for a plantation owner, much less an on-deck farmer. But Féroce had tremendous acumen in all his prior endeavors, and had saved some coin. It was then his to spend.

  Saint-Domingue belonged to the plantation owners. The planters had the status, wealth, and power. Féroce wanted all three, so he bought the biggest plantation he could with the money he had - a mistake in and of itself, for he had little left over for random misfortune. He had no reason to doubt his abilities, he had never failed at anything. In any case, self-doubt was incapable of penetrating his overwhelming narcissism.

  Estelle knew more about coffee just by smelling the fields than Féroce would ever know in a lifetime. She tried to help. “Papa, the beans can’t be harvested all at once.”

  “The insects eat the beans if left on the branches.”

  “We have to inspect the trees as much as we can, and remove the beans where the insects have laid their eggs. But we cannot harvest the beans all at once because they ripen unevenly.”

  “So, coffee just happens to be the only damné plant in the whole world you can’t harvest all at once?”

  “No, Papa. There are others.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. Lemons?”

  And he would roll his eyes and do it his way.

  “Papa,” she said, “You cannot hunt the birds and the bats. And you cannot kill the good insects that eat the ones that are pests.”

  “Good insects? Mon dieu, what next? Estelle, quit riding me like a saddle gelding.”

  “Papa, I can only tell you what I see plainly. I only want to help,” said Estelle, becoming upset and nervous.

  “Estelle, don’t put yourself in a fit. You know how you get. You’re not even ten Summers old. Let me handle the affairs of the land.”

  And poor Estelle went back to her flourishing little gardens, and Papa failed at his coffee trees.

  They finally ran out of money. Papa’s grand adventure as a plantation owner had failed. They sold their land and their slaves, and returned to Le Cap, so that Féroce could do the work he did best: hunting and policing men. The lowland weather of Le Cap drove Maman insane, even with the ocean breezes, and made her sick every Summer. Everyone but Féroce was miserable.

  Féroce, of course, was soon very busy and successful, and even received a police commission.

  One day a fancy letter was delivered to the house. As he could not read it, Féroce went to the Le Cap cathedral, made a donation of alms and asked a priest to read it to him. Féroce soon found that one Monsieur Pinceau, a plantation owner living in Le Cap, had a serious problem. Slaves had escaped from his sugar plantation outside Valiere, and into the mountains above them. They snuck back regularly, and helped others escape. Monsieur Pinceau had lost nearly a hundred-thousand livre in slaves, and harvest was almost upon him. He needed someone to go into the mountains, break up the den, and return his slaves - precisely the kind of work for which Féroce was known.

  Guillaume, meanwhile, had developed a skill of his own. He would collect news pamphlets and posters that contained engravings of soldiers. He would cut them out and, using bone glue, give them a backing and stand of frond fibers. He was outside in the yard, in the process of painting his latest creation - with paint he mixed himself - when Papa crossed to his rock. That, in and of itself, was highly unusual. Papa never took an interest in his children’s activities.

  “Papa?” said Guillaume in surprise.

  “Want to go to Le Cap?” asked Papa.

  “With you?”

  “With who else, jackass?”

  “Yes! Yes, I do!” said Guillaume excitedly, for he worshipped his father like a curly-headed god, and was never able to spend any time with him at all.

  “Well, put on your good clothes, and come to the cart.”

  Guillaume had one nice outfit. Some would call them church clothes, but they never went to church because Papa was a pagan and Maman hated God. After he changed, they were on their way. If they threw a stone from their southernmost property, it would practically land in Le Cap, but between them were steep cliffs. The road meandered down at a more suitable angle, before turning south and then east into the city gates. Papa waved at the guards, who were his subordinates, and into Le Cap they went.

  Cap Français was charming - quite beautiful actually. The streets were wide and well-planned. The houses were large and winsome
, each floor supporting wide verandas, with arches of ornamental wrought iron and hanging plants. The women, mostly whites with a few mixes, were dressed in the latest Parisian styles. The men, mostly white, were dressed with equal magnificence, and the manners and etiquette of Versailles were plain to see. There were many working people, slaves, and sailors about, but most homeowners had money.

  In fact, they had a tremendous, gargantuan amount of money.

  It was quite simple: anywhere in the world, if one sipped coffee, rum, sweet liqueur or Champagne; if one ate a forkful of cake, any kind of tomato sauce, candies, jams, or preserved fruits; the sugar or coffee necessary to produce them most likely came from Saint-Domingue. Saint-Domingue was the envy of every empire, and the jewel in the crown of France. It was a global center of commerce and Le Cap, as it was called, was the cultural center of Saint-Domingue – the colonial capitol of Port-au-Prince a far distant second.

  The self-made nobles who ruled the island colony mostly lived in Le Cap rather than on their lands, and had created a polite society worthy of the courts of Europe.

  As they rumbled down the wide avenues, Guillaume would occasionally run through traffic and take posters and news pamphlets from their approved spaces on walls and fences. Féroce laughed as he watched his son dodge the other carts and horses on the street. Onlookers tried not to faint in fear for the boy.