Dark Shadows: Angelique's Descent
Page 14
“From the ceremony.”
Her suspicions were true. The priest was threatened by the voodoo rituals because he had never seen one, or he would have known that she was the center of the dancing and the embodiment of the spirit. He had come to frighten her because he was afraid, but she would not be frightened.
“There is no danger,” she said. “My father has seen to that. No one would dare harm me.”
“Your father?” inquired Father Le Brot, raising his eyebrows. “Who is your father?”
“Monsieur Bouchard.”
The priest seemed astounded. “I-I-I didn’t realize,” he stammered, “that Theodore was … that you are his d-d-d-d-daughter!” He threw his arms to the sky. “Oh, Lord in Heaven, preserve us!” With that he hurried to leave. But he turned to her at the door.
“I’ll be b-back to see you,” he said hastily. “Think about what I have said. I will pray for you. And … oh, I-I nearly forgot! Mercy me, what will b-become of me if my mind does not improve! I b-b-brought you this!” He returned and placed a small book on the table. “I thought you might like it,” he said. And he exited quickly.
Curious, she walked over and looked at the book. The words on the cover read William Shakespeare, Plays and Sonnets.
Eleven
Every morning when the bell sounded, Angelique rose and ran to the window. She watched the slaves drag their tired bodies to the field, slaves who had sometimes worshiped her the night before. She remembered the drumming that had brought their souls to life. She had thought about the things Father Le Brot said and was ashamed of her haughtiness. Never did she really believe that she was the source of the power; she knew it would have been the same without her. She was transformed by the slaves’ adoration. The drums came from Africa, as did their deep faith in the spirits. The magic they evoked sprang from within them.
She knew she was only one embodiment of the goddess of love, and the loas floated in the air, longing to be called, as Chloe had called Guede the night she had died and lived again. They circled, waiting to descend, tempted by food or sacrifice, and when they came, they entered a dancer and spoke through him. Angelique began to yearn again for Erzulie.
Erzulie will protect me, she said to herself at night when she fell asleep, and in the morning when she woke, and at midnight when she walked into the chapel. She began to plan the invocation. It would be simple and imploring. She only wanted the goddess within her once more, embracing her, drawing her in waves of pleasure.
She waited until Thais was asleep, then crept down into the courtyard and, under a sky without stars, drew the vévé on the flagstones and lit the candles. She had flowers—amaryllis and tuberose—for color and fragrance, and cakes she had saved for days.
She also had a prize, a white pigeon she had trapped at her window with weeks of crumbs. Finally, he had become so tame that he cooed to wake her in the mornings, and she was able to reach out and touch his trembling feathers. That morning she had stroked him, and said softly, “Come, little dove, don’t be afraid.” When he was most trusting, she had tightened her grip around him, caught him, and wrapped him in a velvet cloth.
Now she had him pressed against her breast, ready for Erzulie. She looked at his quick darting head, his bright eyes, and felt the life within him quivering. She hoped this would be enough.
She took a knife and, with great care, pierced the throat of the living bird, and while it still jerked and thrashed, let its blood flow into a cup. Standing in the center of the vévé with a candle at each corner, she began to chant, softly and cunningly, “Erzulie-Severine, Belle-Femme, La Sirene. Erzulie Boum’ba, Freda Dahomin, Ge Rouge.”
She plucked the feathers from the bird, still soft and warm, and tossed them into the air like pollen. Swaying, turning, she scattered the dust from a potion she had made of herbs and bone meal in the sanctuary, then, closing her eyes and shivering, she stood and drank the blood.
She raised her arms, and cried, “Erzulie, Goddess, I call thee from within the thunder’s rumbling, and out of the fires of Pelée. I beseech you to enter me, as I kneel to you, Mystère, Madonna, Mbaba Mwwana Waresa…” With that she fell to her knees and waited, her head bowed.
At first there was silence, then only the fluting frogs, and, far off, the sound of the sea. She felt weak and unprepared, then wholly unworthy. All at once, her body began to tremble with a tingling heat rising from her feet and flaming through her torso. Her mind fixed on the image of a tiny spark, which grew and flared as though the atmosphere was fractured into swarms of colors, and she could see the molecules of the air dancing around her in splintered rainbows.
There was a humming sound, as if the ether were alive, a living thing, pulsing and breathing, and its fingers caressed her, singing and moaning. The humming grew, piercing and vibrating, and reached a peal of sound that was excruciating, a gathering rumble, rising in pitch, expanding, exploding in the crashing boom of the thunderclap that she thought would rupture her brain.
A mist filled the courtyard, and voices whined like wind, dissonant, eerie. She smelled the odor of dead fish that had rotted in the sun. There was a figure, a human shape, but not of a woman, not Erzulie, that wavered in the gloom, a man’s shape, robed, but not robed, sinewy, shadowy, flickering like a flame, but dense, with corporeal form: arms and legs and a face as smooth as alabaster. Ebony hair fell in waves across his forehead and down to his shoulders.
He was standing in a heaving chariot, legs spread, hands on the reins, and floating before him in tumbling arcs, were velvet horses, dark and muscular as the midnight sea. The vision oscillated, took shape, then vanished, only to return again.
And Angelique whispered, “Who are you? Why have you come?”
His voice was like the wind rushing across the water. “You called. You dragged me from my dreams, the centuries of sleep. But you are still a child, Angelique, too young. I see your flowering talent, and I long to capture it and draw it with me into the center of the world, but not yet, not yet.” And he lifted and sank as he spoke, his voice brushing her ear, then floating away into the channels of darkness.
“Who are you?” she asked again, but she knew, in her deepest core, with a knowledge that was of her flesh and not her mind, that he was Lucifer, or some god of Evil, and that she had mistakenly summoned him.
“You don’t remember?” he whispered, his breath smoky.
“No! I did not call you,” she whispered. “Why did you come?” She panicked. “I don’t want you here!”
“Come?” he said, his voice a sigh. “Come, my darling? Yes, come with me, let me … touch you, feel you…”
He sprang from the pitching chariot and walked on the stones, and beneath the dusky robes Angelique glimpsed cloven feet and a barbed tail. He drew closer and hovered near her, flowed over her. She felt a cold stab like a finger of ice, ripping her, thrusting into her, and his kiss was like frozen sand.
She pulled away. “Don’t! Don’t touch me! Leave me!” she cried. “I don’t want you! I never wanted you!”
He sighed like a wave retreating, sucking the swirling foam, and his face grew dark. “I will never leave you,” he said, his voice like Pelée rumbling, “and you are still too young to choose. But remember, I am there, and I alone protect you. I alone love you, and I have always loved you.” He faded, and his voice grew thin and distant. “I will never fail you,” came the hushed echo. “And I will never desert you.” The last word was as deep as a tremor in the earth. “Ne-ver-er-er-ererrr…” And he was gone.
* * *
After that night, Angelique lost her passion for the ceremony. A deadening dread permeated her mind, and she no longer craved Erzulie, or knowledge of the loa. She was unresponsive on the platform, and the moaning of the slaves gave her neither terror nor joy. All day she feared that her father might come to her, and every night she slept fitfully, imagining the return of the mysterious Dark Spirit.
She woke one morning to find Thais standing on one window seat, pulling the h
eavy tapestry curtains closed.
“Why are you doing that?” she asked. “I like the sunlight.”
“Time to cut the cane!” Thais said. “We gots to move you out of the tower. Slaves comin’ to mend the windmill an’ install those new rollers, brought all the way from France!”
“Must you cover the windows?”
“Massa say you gots to stay hidden. Don’t you go near the window, now, y’hear. He don’t want all those people to see you.”
“Did you say I’m leaving?”
“That’s right.”
“Where?”
“Why, to that place you been wonderin’ about. Massa say put you in the little bedroom on the third floor.”
“In the plantation house?” A shiver ran through her. Being anywhere close to her father was her deepest fear.
Thais seemed to sense her uneasiness. “But not today, chile. Too many people aroun’. We goes tomorrow. So’s you gather up what you want to take with you.”
Later in the day, Angelique heard shouting in the courtyard and, with Thais nowhere in sight, crept to the window and peered out from behind the curtain. There was a great commotion below. Slaves unloaded a wagon pulled by oxen, and a huge set of wooden wheels with deep grooves were set beside the tower. Her father, on horseback, directed another group of slaves to carry the third crusher inside, and Angelique could see a great cog gear still on the wagon, lying under several shiny copper pots.
Suddenly, she felt a vibrating inside the tower and realized that the huge post in the center of her room was turning. Too long out of use, it whined in complaint and slowly revolved, jarring the structure as though an earthquake were shaking the walls.
Outside she could hear slaves climbing on the windmill, hammering on the broken lath. One of the enormous fans swung downward over the window, blotting out the light. Through the fabric she saw the figure, lithe and slender, of a boy. He was stretching a new sheet of canvas over the vane. Angelique was admiring his agility as he clung to the huge rack, the canvas flapping in the wind, when she realized it was Cesaire.
She pulled the curtain aside a little more to make sure. The vane completely covered the window, obscuring the courtyard, and he was clinging to the frame like a tree frog, oblivious of the height, deftly tying off a piece of rope.
“Cesaire!” she called in a harsh whisper. He jerked his head up and looked around. “Here! At the window!” He swung closer to the tower and propped a foot against the stone, peering into the dark room and squinting. When he saw her his face lit up with a smile.
“My God! Angelique? Is that you?”
“Yes!”
“What—why you here?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“I didn’t escape.”
“What you mean? You no find your mother?”
“No. And—my father—made me come back.”
“Oh, so … you are … alone? Shall I come inside and see you?”
“Oh, no!” she whispered. “And move away from the window now. No one must see you talking to me. No one is supposed to know I am here.”
He frowned. “You mean you are a—”
“A prisoner.”
His face clouded, and he shifted his position on the wall, trying to find a way to be closer to her. He grabbed the window bars from the outside and hung precariously, one foot still on the vane.
“How can I talk to you?”
“You can’t.” She began to feel frightened. “Please, leave now, Cesaire, move away, before someone sees you. My father is a ruthless man. He—”
A harsh voice rang out from the courtyard, and Cesaire quickly kicked back from the wall and, clinging to the vane, rode it down to the ground. He ran for a cart and pulled loose another piece of canvas. Once more he looked up at her window, winked at her, then moved away.
* * *
Late that night she heard a strange sound outside. Cesaire had climbed up on the vane and was tapping on the bars. Thais was sleeping, but Angelique was afraid to risk a conversation, so she made a motion to him that she would go down and ran for the stairs. Seconds later she was in the courtyard.
“Cesaire?” she called out in a breathy whisper.
“Here!”
She looked toward the edge of the flagstones, where the wall fell to the sea. He was sitting on the low balustrade.
She ran to the edge of the parapet and sank to the ground at his side. “I mustn’t stay,” she said. “It is dangerous for me to talk to you.”
“Look.” Cesaire pointed to the small inlet directly beneath them. The night was warm and hazy with starlight, and she could look out over the entire expanse of the sea. A long, thin peninsula reached an arm around in a curve, hugging the lagoon in its embrace. Even in the starlight she could see the breakers crashing on the outer reef, but the little inner harbor was calm where the rocks fell straight down to the deep water.
“What?” she whispered.
“There! There be your schooner from Maine.”
She could just make out a shape in the darkness, a ship at anchor, with two tiny lights on board, gleaming like stars fallen into the deep. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Ah, yes, I know all the boats. None of them get by me.”
“Why is it here? Why isn’t it in the harbor in Saint-Pierre?”
“Aw, ’cause she be hidden away. This little bay make a good anchor to wait for morning. She through the Passage, and now she take out across the sea with the morning tide. None of those bigger boats come in here. They be in sad trouble when they cross that reef. But this little barque, she sail fine before the wind. She skim the water like a bird.”
“I wish I were on that boat.” Angelique sighed wistfully.
“No, you would not want to be aboard her. She is a stolen barque, and tho’ she move like a guileless girl, she is a whore.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she carry slaves,” he replied matter-of-factly.
Angelique stood up, walked to the edge, and looked down. “I wouldn’t care,” she said. “A slave is what I am.”
“Gal, you don’ know what you say. Someday you leave here.”
“My father won’t let me. And, besides, I have nowhere to go. I don’t know what happened to my mother, or where she is.” She looked at Cesaire’s frowning face. “And—and I can’t talk to anyone,” she said, sinking down again, her heart aching as she looked behind her. “If my father found us like this, he would…” She shivered. “Do you remember the girl in the well?”
Cesaire nodded, his eyes bright.
“Her name was Chloe. We played together in secret. My father found us one night, and he … he…” She rose suddenly. “I can’t stay here any longer, Cesaire. I should not have come down.…”
“Wait,” he said. “I has something to tell you. Do you know what is comin’? Can you feel it in the air? Listen.”
The waves pounded on the rocks, and, back behind them in the jungle, the frogs fluted. Far off she could hear drums, but that wasn’t unusual. A night without drums was rare.
“You mean the drums…”
“Yes. The drums sing every night. Of rebellion.”
“Rebellion?”
“They be escaped slaves living on the mountain, maroons, drawin’ their strength from Pelée. They sneak down to the slave quarters at night, and they tell the slaves, ‘Rebel!’ They preach to them of freedom.”
“Freedom?” She loved the sound of the word; it was the most beautiful word she knew.
“When rebellion come, all the blancs be killed. They burn the great house—all the buildings—to the ground. That’s what I come to tell you.”
“Don’t the owners suspect anything?”
“When the fox cannot reach the grape he say him no ripe. Listen! Them’s Eboe drums. Your father’s slaves all be Eboe. You know how they got those yellow eyes?”
Angelique remembered Chloe, her copper skin and golden green eyes, and she nodded.
“They be timid, melancholy people
, feel desolate so far from home. An’ in Africa? They are cannibals!” She shuddered, and he laughed to see her so frightened, his teeth white in the moonlight.
“Are you … Eboe?”
“Naw, gal! I be Mandingo! See my hair—so soft and silky. “Aw no, I no Eboe, no way!”
“Then you don’t know those drums.”
“I know enough. Listen to me. It’s their history. They rise up one night and set the fires. When the time comes, I let you know. Then you can warn your father, and—”
“Warn him?” She caught her breath in her throat and felt the lump of pain when she tried to swallow. “I will never warn him! I hope the slaves do come and burn the plantation!”
“What…?” He was dumbfounded.
“And leave him dead! Good-bye, Cesaire,” she cried, backing away. She turned and ran back to the tower.
Twelve
When Angelique woke the next morning it took her a moment to remember where she was. Thais had awakened her in the early hours, moved her to the plantation house, and locked her in a third-floor room.
Angelique looked around at her new surroundings: a rude bed, a dresser, and bare floors. She ran to the one small window and looked across at the tower and the storing sheds.
There was great activity in the courtyard, with many slaves at work. Her father was storming about—cursing, complaining, waving his arms, and pointing toward the tower. She was amazed to see that the windmill was turning briskly and that the doors of the crushing room were thrown open. Slaves were easing the rollers into place so that the gears on their crowns meshed.
Suddenly one of the men gave a cry and several workers inside her tower room bellowed in response. At that moment, the windmill shuddered and moaned. It moved heavily under the load, and the great rollers beneath it began to revolve. A great cheer rang out, and all those present gathered to see the powerful mechanism at work. Even her father seemed relieved. He stood apart, his arms crossed and his feet in a wide stance, watching the crushers grind against each other.
The thought of seeing her father face-to-face, now that she was living nearer to him, made her shiver with fear. She resolved to be as still as a hermit crab in a new shell, watchful and cautious. She wondered when the next ceremony would be, and she suddenly thought she should take from the secret room various powders she might need to protect herself.