by Lara Parker
As the day progressed, Angelique began to wonder whether anyone would come for her. She did not have her books or any clothing, other than what she was wearing, and no one had brought her any food. She went to the door, tried the lock, and, to her surprise, found it crude and easily forced with a pin. But she ventured out no farther than the hallway, which was dark and deserted. On the inside of her door was a drawbar and she realized she could bolt herself in.
All at once she heard cries from the courtyard and ran back to see two oxcarts lumbering through the gate, laden with cane. Twenty or so slaves unloaded the cumbersome grasses, then carried them to the crusher and, with much shouting and awkward thrusting, forced them between the rollers.
She glanced at the sky and saw a long plume of dark smoke rise from the stack. Through the windows of the curing house she could see flames reflected on the round bottoms of huge copper kettles. In the excitement of that first day of harvesting the cane, she had been completely forgotten.
Finally, late that evening, Thais appeared with a tray of food. She was exhausted, her clothes were filthy, and she collapsed wearily upon a small stool and dropped her head to her breast.
“Thais? What’s happened to you?” Angelique asked.
“I be made to cut cane, chile, and it destroy me.” She held up her hands; they were swollen with cuts and bloody welts. Angelique drew in her breath.
“Why must you go to the fields? You are supposed to care for me.”
“We’s all go; we’s all walkin’ before the whip now.” And she looked up at Angelique with sorrowful eyes.
Angelique realized that the demands of the harvest would consume the time and energy of everyone on the plantation, and she would be ignored.
* * *
Before many days had passed, she began an exploration of the empty mansion. Most of the rooms were deserted except for an occasional ornate table or carved bench. Dust lay in the corners; mirrors were dim with grime; candles, streaming with globs of melted wax, hunched in unlit candelabra; and the shutters were closed to the sun. But the castle had once known grandeur, she could see that. There were floors inlaid with parquet or mother-of-pearl, leaded stained glass in arched stone windows, and, in some of the rooms, great tapestries hanging on the walls.
Compared to the gloom of the castle, the courtyard swarmed with life. From the hour before dawn, when the conch shell was blown, until far after midnight, the slaves toiled. The work fell into a grueling pattern. The carts came from the fields, rumbling up to the windmill, straining under the load of cane. Stacks rose in great piles against the wall; the crushers screamed and clattered; the windmill groaned; and the tall smokestack spewed forth its noxious gases into the turquoise sky.
Thais proved too old for the field and was stationed now at the fires. She would come into Angelique’s room with the sweat pouring from her body, her clothes drenched, and the sweet smell of molasses emanating from her skin. Always she brought some simple meal, and always she was dragging her feet with weariness. One evening she moved so slowly, Angelique looked at her with concern.
“Thais? Is something wrong?” she asked.
The poor slave woman began to weep. “He beat me,” she said in a voice that was barely audible.
“What? Where?” Thais slowly pulled off her shirt to show her back. It was crisscrossed with bloody stripes.
“But, why? Why would he do that to you?”
“They call the order to strike, but it too late. The syrup turn hard as a rock, and is lost. I say, do it now, but the man in charge, Lazairre, he pull the bead between his finger, and he say no, not yet. Yes, I tell him, yes! Now! But he no do what I say and the foam get so high it boil and overflow the vat. Lazairre burned, and Massa say beat me, for ruin the batch.”
Angelique felt a pity beyond words in her heart, and she went to Thais and sat beside her, laying her head in Thais’s lap. “Poor Thais,” she said. “I am so sorry for you. He is a hard and vicious man, and I hate him.”
A thought flashed across her mind that might give Thais some consolation. “Do you know, Thais, that there is rebellion in the air?”
The slave made no answer; there was only a tightening of her muscles and a short intake of breath. Angelique looked up at her expectantly, but Thais only sighed.
“No, chile, no rebellion. Slaves rebel, they be hanged, or shot, or worse. When the slaves rise up over Trinité way, they call in the militia. No hope against backra. No pride against guns. All be dead now, twenty brave slaves massacred. Last maroon caught, he hung out in a cage to dry.”
“But the drums! Don’t you know what they say? I heard them again last night!”
“Drums sing like Pelée mutters, big talk, no explosion. Chile, the slave be doomed to labor to death, and the cane be his burial ground.”
Angelique sat with her arms across Thais’s lap and felt her heart shrivel. She had a sudden image of the stonefish, so venomous, so difficult to see, mottled and covered with mucus that looks like slime. She thought of how he lay on the bottom in the sand, with real rocks around him, covered by the same scaly growths, invisible until some unsuspecting shrimp fluttered past. Then a spine like a dagger would fly out, a silver needle from within the false debris, and death would come. She decided her heart would be like the stonefish. She would wait, and the dagger in her heart would stay hidden.
* * *
One morning Angelique heard her father ride out the gate on horseback quite early, and, wondering why the day was so still, she ran to the window and saw that the mill was shut down and the vanes were turning slowly in the windless air. Slaves sat about on the ground, exhausted and morose. It was deadly hot, and she was restless and even more bored than usual.
She decided to seize the opportunity to wander through the castle and, after an hour or so of searching, found herself outside her father’s chambers. Tempted by the possibility of discovering some clue to her mother’s disappearance, she pushed open the heavy door.
She saw a large, dark room with a huge, canopied bedstead. Rumpled sheets were strewn upon the mattress, and the curtain was frayed velvet, hanging at an angle across the frame. A chair was buried in filthy clothing, and, slung over the back, was the foul-smelling coat her father often wore. The imposing desk was covered with papers.
She glanced through the letters, harboring some faint hope of discovering her mother’s whereabouts.
One short note complained: “Sugar not selling. No boats. Suggest you retain molasses for rum.” Another, signed by her father, requested “patience,” saying “the cane is too old, and shows little juice,” “excessively hot,” or “I cut too late, and it piles before the mill and sits, losing its sugar. The workers still don’t have the way of it.”
Farther down she saw “A pivot of one of the rollers came loose, and I have had to stop the mill.…” “Desperately need new large rollers…” “A set has been found in Saint-Pierre for the horrendous sum of 1300 francs.” She tossed the letter aside indifferently and continued to search but found nothing about women sold into slavery, no word of her mother—only the lonely miseries of a man in the sugar trade.
* * *
The terror began one night after the mill was back in operation. For days, the slaves had been driven to work all night, feeding cane to the crushers’ insatiable maw.
This particular night, Angelique woke to screams, and ran to the window to hear several slaves cry out, “Stop the mill! Stop the mill!” They ran toward a lone slave, who was flailing with one arm, while the other was somehow caught, jammed in between the cylinders. He must have fallen asleep at his post, she thought in a daze, and his hand went into the gears.
Her father staggered out into the courtyard, his arms over his head, his voice thick with sleep, cursing and raging, “What? What happened? Why the devil did he do that?”
“Massa, he caught. We gots to open the rollers!”
“What? No! I tell you I won’t have the mill shut down. Keep going, you wretched imbeciles! Fin
d an ax! Cut it off!”
The windmill thundered and the crushers whined as the slave bellowed, and Angelique saw the ax rise and fall. The bloody stump whipped upward and jabbed the air, before the agonized man gathered his maimed arm to his breast and fell to his knees, his fellows about him in a terrified huddle.
Angelique watched as they carried him off, and when she returned to her bed, she lay awake, her mind a jumble of terrors. The air was vibrating with heat and the sound of the windmill, like an enormous press, with sharp scales, scraping her skin and flattening her bones.
Suddenly she heard someone walking in the hallway outside her door, and her heart gave a thump. Something was sliding on the wood, scraping and moving, and she could hear faint, ragged breathing. She crept to her door and bolted the drawbar, then lay in fear, staring at the closed door, not moving, not daring to make a sound, until her muscles ached for relief. The breathing wheezed, and an unseen hand jiggled the latch. For the first time since her imprisonment, she was glad for the bolt, which held, and, after a long moment, she heard the sound of departing footsteps.
* * *
After that night Angelique could sense the slaves change; they were sullen and restless. Though the overseer beat them, all their energy force had been drained. They moved slowly, dragging their feet, and the stacks of cane piled up by the wall, uncrushed. The drums throbbed before dawn, when the sky was still dark, and the moon had set.
One midnight her father and several other planters tore into the courtyard on horseback. They went into a room behind the curing house and came out with muskets in their hands, shouting to one another, their voices crazed with rum and rage.
“They’ve killed them all!”
“Wife and three daughters!”
“Slaughtered!”
“Set fire to the cane!”
Amid vicious oaths and clattering hoofbeats, they were off once more, thundering down the road.
* * *
Angelique woke to a low whistle, ran to the window, and looked out. Cesaire was standing alone in the courtyard, lit by the fires from the boilers.
“Angelique!” he called. “Come down!”
“I can’t,” she called back. “I dare not!”
“All’s safe,” he cried. “Your father be at the next plantation, seeking vengeance. I must talk to you!”
A few moments later, she crept out into the night. It was the first time she had been so close to the threshers, and she was staggered by the size and noise of the machine. Weary slaves, stripped to the waist, their muscles quivering, fed the unwieldy stalks into the cylinders, and juice trickled out into a lead-lined gutter that flowed into the curing house.
“In here!” Cesaire shouted, and dragged her toward the boiling room. Thais and another older slave woman were leaning over a great copper kettle stirring the golden syrup. They were so numb from tiredness, they never raised their heads. Bubbles blistered the surface of the molasses, and white scum collected around the edges. The air was dripping with steam. Looking around, Cesaire finally pulled Angelique to the far corner.
“The rebellion is coming!” he said, his eyes wild, and she could see the sweat on his forehead.
“My father has gone off to join the militia,” she answered. “He came back for muskets.”
“No, no, that is nothing,” he said. “The foolish slaves at Sainte-Marie make plan to take over the plantation there. They be crazed with hatred. Like idiots, they leap ahead. All for silverware! Ah, yes, and they pay with their lives, poor souls.”
“Will they all die?”
“Yes, all, all. Still, it is a lucky ruse. The soldiers will massacre them and think they have smothered the fire.”
“Then there is to be no rebellion.”
“Aw, gal, you have no dream like this one. Maroons in the hills be arming slaves all over the island. Plot rumble deep, like fire at Pelée’s heart. Tomorrow night at midnight, they set fire to Saint-Pierre! Hundreds, thousands, maybe, kill all the grands blancs. It be the time for the black man. He get his own back now.”
“Will they come here? To this plantation?”
“You are doomed, gal, unless your father rouse his slaves to defend it. You think they fight for him?”
“Never. He treats them like animals.”
“So this plantation, too, will light the stars in the sky. You must warn him.”
“I will never warn him!”
“Listen,” he said patiently. “There is a little path down to the bay, and I will have a boat waiting there for you. Even if Pelée overflow, and rage fire down his sides, you be safe in the water.”
“Are you sure? Won’t it be dangerous?”
“Angelique, gal, I’m standin’ here in this spot telling you all this because I don’ want see you come to no harm. Them crazy slaves will rape you, and then they will kill you. You must do as I say. Warn your father. As soon as possible. No matter how much you hate him, you don’t want to see him die, do you?”
She didn’t answer, but she thought perhaps he was right.
“I will wait for you tomorrow night,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”
Thirteen
It did not seem possible for Angelique to fall asleep after this terrifying news, but somehow she drifted into the deepest level of consciousness, a dreamless slumber in the cavern of night. She woke to see her father’s shadow hanging over her.
Her eyes flew wide at the sight of his leering face. His smile was lecherous, and his breath reeked of rum. Clumsily, he reached for her, and she shrank back from his grasp, even as she felt his rough hand graze her arm. He laughed, a hoarse rack, and stood up, his hands in his pockets, his legs spread wide.
“Get up now, dolly,” he rasped.
“What do you want?”
“I came to tell you, your old father is a grand fighter, and you should be proud! Proud to be his daughter! Look! Look at that on my hands, and tell me what you see!” He smirked with self-satisfaction. “Do you know what that is? It’s death, girl, human death! And these hands were in it!”
“Don’t touch me!” she said, repulsed. “Don’t come near me!”
“Why, Angelique, my angel, why do you hate me so much?” he complained, his mood shifting. “Haven’t I been good to you? Given you lovely things?”
She didn’t answer, but pulled herself into a fetal position, drew into the corner of her bed, and stared at him. She was conscious only of the waves of hatred flowing through her, filling her, like a murky pool of backwash rising in a cave with the tide.
“I only wanted to tell you, dolly. I saved your life tonight. Doesn’t that make you like me better? Those bastards were coming for you, and I stopped them—I and my men—and wrung their wretched necks with these bare hands. God, it is a thrilling thing to kill a man, to feel his heart stop beneath your fist!” He stared at his hands, turning them over and back in wonder. Then he grinned at her again.
“Come give me a kiss for my pains,” he said, and moved a step toward her.
“Stay away!” she hissed, her voice so deadly that it stopped him cold.
“What makes you so sour? Ah … I know! It’s because you are my own kin, and you have my spite in you! By God, I like that temper! It riles me, but it sets me afire as well, it does. Come, give me a battle, my pretty, I want to feel you struggle.”
He lunged for her and caught her up and pulled her squirming body against his, laughing and burying his face in her hair. She lashed out, clawing at him, fingernails scratching for his eyes.
Surprised, he fell back, the breath caught in his throat, but only for a moment, being too drunk to feel even pain. He drew back his hand and struck her a blinding blow across the face. She fell with a stifled cry, her head reeling, and he grinned down at her again. “You’re a proud bitch, you are, but it takes more than that to stop me.”
“I don’t have to stop you,” she said, her voice contemptuous, “because even if you kill me—and you will have to kill me to hurt me again—you will not see
the light of morning two days from now! You think you’ve won the battle at Sainte-Marie, but you are a fool. They are coming! Thousands of them! Tomorrow night! And they will burn this plantation to the ground and you with it, and I shall be glad to see you in the fires of Hell.”
He gaped at her, not comprehending, but stopped by her vehemence. “What makes you think that, girl?”
“I know!” she said. “The killing tonight only gives you false confidence! You think you have triumphed over them, but you are wrong!”
“Who told you this?”
“Cesaire. The sailmaker’s boy.”
“Free Coloreds!” said her father in a scathing tone. “They’re behind all this! But—” He stopped and glared at her. “How did you talk to him?”
“I didn’t,” she lied, knowing she had him now. “I listened at the window, and I heard him tell the slaves at work in the windmill. He said if they would not defend you, you were doomed.”
“You heard all that?” The liquor drained from his face, and his visage became grim and anxious.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “The slaves all over Martinique will burn Saint-Pierre!”
It gave her great satisfaction to see her father’s face blanch at her words, and his lips tremble. He stared at her a moment, then turned and staggered from the room.
* * *
The next morning the mill was shut down, and the slaves were not at their posts. The courtyard was deserted, and she could hear music coming from the direction of the huts. She knew her father had given the workers a free day. Thais brought her breakfast, then sat on her stool, shaking her head in sorrow.
“Las’ night be bad,” she said in a low voice.
“I know,” Angelique answered. “Sainte-Marie.”
“Many dead, many in jail. So much bloodshed. What we goin’ do now? We jus’ find strength to fight back, and we be cut down by the soldiers.”