by Lara Parker
“Yes, I am always there, shopping for the household that employs me. I am a lady’s maid for the du Prés family.”
“I will be selling my fish. Look for me, and I will give you a livre for your work.”
She ran all the way home, the sun flaring the sea to flame as it sank beneath the horizon.
Saturday came, and she found him, perched upon a splendid cart, his fish limed and salted, selling briskly. He barely looked up when she drew near, but after a few moments, he motioned to her with an easy gesture of his wrist that sent an odd ripple though her. She came behind the cart, and he turned from his fish and placed a coin in her hand.
“Come and see me again tomorrow,” he said, and returned to his customers. She held the coin as she walked back to her basket. When she opened her hand and looked at it, it smelled of fish.
* * *
After that, Angelique walked the two miles around the cove every Sunday. Before she reached the boy’s house, she took off her maid’s dress and wrapped a pareu around her body, tying it at the neck. She felt more comfortable in the role of an island girl.
His name was Thierry, and he had been living alone for three years. His father had been a fisherman in Marseilles, and had come to the islands indentured, but both he and Thierry’s mother had died of le mal de Siam, the yellow sickness. Thierry treated Angelique as though he had always known her. Sometimes he did not come back from his day of fishing until almost dark, and she had to leave before seeing him. Those days, she would tidy the cottage or tend the garden while she waited for him, singing to herself.
On other days, when the wind was calm, he would not go out at all, and they would swim together in the reef or wander through the caves, pointing out to one another the colorful creatures beneath the surface. They could watch for an hour as a hermit crab dragged its new shell into a niche in a rock. If they saw a peacock ray lift from the sand, they would swim down and caress its velvet skin. They would hide from one another in the thick kelp, or float along the tops of anemone forests, pricking the delicate tentacles of the living flowers and seeing them shrink away to nothing. They would steal up on nurse sharks basking, or taunt wobbegongs in their sleep, watching them flounce away, ruffles fluttering like ladies’ dresses. Some days they would sit in the dunes, and she would read to him from the Shakespeare, and he would lie on his back and gaze at the sky.
When he took her out in the boat with him, she sat in the bow and watched him fish. Her eyes would wander over his limber body as he leaned into the rudder, his head tipped back to gauge the wind in the sail. She noticed the taut muscles in his legs as he straddled the width of the boat, tossing the net, then gathering it in under him with long easy tugs, the foamy mesh flashing with flipping sardines and the odd goatfish for bait.
He began to touch her casually as he leaned over her to reach for a hook, or to rest a hand on her knee, calling her attention to a frigate bird overhead. Whenever he brushed against her or grazed her with his fingertips, it felt warm at the spot, and a tremor fluttered through her body. All week she would think of the touch and remember exactly where it had been, trying to re-create the tremor.
They began to explore one another in the most innocent manner, as though to each the other was only another new and amazing sea creature pulled in by the tide. They sat in the shallowest pool of the caves one day, under the boulder that leaned out above them as though it would topple over and crush them. Thierry slowly pulled Angelique’s wet pareu off one shoulder and stared at her breast, then cupped it in his hand, tracing its small round shape with his fingers and touching the nipple hesitantly as it grew taut, like an anemone flowering its silken flutes.
He kissed it, exploring its shape, and she felt the warmth of his mouth over the cold firm tissue and his tongue quiver around it. Then he replaced the cotton fabric and tied it at her shoulder. He did not touch her again, but he looked at her, and she let herself sink into the green depths of his eyes, all the while feeling the easy slap of the gentle edge of the whole living ocean curled beneath her body.
All week, as she worked at her various tasks, she imagined him, untangling his nets in the water, mending his hooks, salting his catch. She felt they worked in unison; she stood when he stood, or lifted when he lifted. She thought of little else than his taut body and his slender hands, with their motions so deft and sure, and every time she remembered his careless touch, her body pulsed.
The following week he removed her pareu as she lay in the water, her body half-submerged, and he looked at her shifting shapes in the flickering liquid, and stroked her as though he were trailing his fingers in the sand, leaving goose bumps where his hand had been—down the length of her arms, across her breasts, over her belly.
He touched the flat of her stomach and pressed her thigh, then he lifted her leg and pushed it aside so that he could see, faintly beneath the water, the curved shells of her buttocks, and the fluted gills between, which he grazed with his finger. Then he gently probed, discovering for the first time a sex so different from his own.
She rose up and saw what she thought was a long white fish beneath the water, waving slightly, and they both were curious as she cupped her hand around it, feeling the silken flesh with her fingertips, astonished at its tautness as it stirred within her hand like a live thing. When Thierry lifted it out of the water she leaned in and kissed the tip, then drew it farther into her mouth, closing her lips around it and tasting the salty sea.
And still they had not kissed each other’s mouths like lovers.
Finally, one Sunday, Thierry suggested they take the boat, for the fishing had been good all week, and he hated to miss a day. She ached to return to the caves and continue the tantalizing finger play in the pool, and she was somewhat piqued that he was more interested in profit at the marketplace than in the delicious intimacy they had begun. Still, she had grown used to the aching fire that flowed through her body, and it seemed that nothing would quench it, so she helped him push the boat into the surf and, running beside him through the foam, leapt aboard.
Thierry yanked at the mainsheet and wrapped it around the cleat, pulling the sail to the wind and easing the little skiff into the waves. The eager craft rose and fell on the swell, in a lulling motion that at once relaxed and disturbed her. She watched Thierry’s face against the sky. The soft curls on his forehead stirred in the wind; his tanned cheeks were freckled and his mouth soft. All his fine features seemed carved from some rare, golden wood. She thought he was a beautiful boy. He turned and looked at her with his green eyes for a long moment, and she felt her heart jump.
The boat did not move quickly, as the breeze was not strong, but it had covered a considerable distance from shore when the wind fell off quite suddenly and they were becalmed. Thierry loosed the sail and, going forward, raised a little jib, but the canvas flapped listlessly in the still air. He stood staring out at the sea, so oddly calm, and, following his gaze, she could see an oily scum swirling on the surface of the water. It was silent but for the sea slapping and a bird’s wild cry far off on the island.
Thierry shrugged and turned to his hooks, setting a piece of cut tuna in three of them, piercing the red meat with the silver barb, and letting out the line. The stern line he tied to the anchor hoist and the bowline he wrapped around the rudder post. He kept the third line in his teeth as he pulled in the jib and, never looking at her, unhooked the sail. He folded it and placed it across the bottom of the boat. Then he lay down on the sail, took the line from his mouth, wrapped it around his ankle, the better to feel a strike, and reached for her. She went to him eagerly.
They lay beneath the lazy, drifting mainsail, staring up at the cerulean sky. The shape and motion of the boat, arrhythmic, tossing, lapping on the water, forced their bodies together, and she drifted into the bliss of the rocking cradle as they kissed for the first time, tentatively, tasting, barely brushing lips, tongue, softly exploring salty mouths. They were pressed so close that she could hear their two hearts beating, h
ers a rapid flutter and his, deeper and stronger, as though it, too, were beating inside her chest. But as she heard it, a sudden cold throb of fear flickered through her.
He felt her tense, and said, “I don’t want to hurt you. If we do this, we are pledged and will belong to one another. Is that what you want?”
“I want to live with you forever,” she said, as the wave of panic subsided.
“Yes,” he said. “I, too, want to be with you always.”
She arched her body into his, reaching around to feel his hard shoulders. She ran her fingers down the vertebrae of his back, pressing each one until she reached the rise of his buttocks. She let her hand continue into the crack, moving until she felt the rippling there.
Thierry trembled and pushed her legs open with his knees, kneeling slightly over her and looking down at her. She felt him nudge her between her legs, then press harder, as she lifted her hips from the bottom of the boat to meet him.
What happened next was a confused blur, but Thierry felt a tug at his ankle, then a jerk so vicious, he was almost yanked from the boat. He sat up quickly and reached for the line, first drawing with his arms and shoulders, then standing, his penis erect and his tensed body braced against the other gunwale, as he backed all his weight into the rope, easing, then hauling, with practiced skill, as he set the hook and dragged the fish toward him. “It’s a marlin,” he shouted. “A big one! We have a fortune on the end of this line!” He laughed, a giddy laugh, and grinned at her, his eyes acknowledging the conflicting thrills of the moment.
Angelique watched as he played the fish like a toy, and she rose and curved her body behind him, helping him pull, easing the reluctant creature closer to the boat.
“Why doesn’t he jump?” asked Thierry once, and shook his head. “This marlin wants to hide his face.”
Then the line went slack, and Thierry over-handed it into the boat quickly, the rope coiling at his feet. “I think I’ve lost him,” he cried, but the fish suddenly loomed beside the boat, and they saw that it was not a marlin but a great black shark, its long sickle-shaped tail whipping back and forth, its sail fin cutting the surface of the water. Angelique’s scalp went tight with creeping fear as she and Thierry stared down at the great fish skimming the surface, and she saw the red eye looking up at her out of the black head lurking beneath the plane of the water, with the sleek undulating shape flowing back and forth.
“Cut it loose,” she said to Thierry.
“Why?” he said. “A shark is a good catch, once we’ve tired him. And look at the size, almost as long as a man. There’s good meat there.”
“Cut it loose, I tell you,” she said, her heart pounding and the cold fear snaking. “It’s evil. The fish is the Dark One, the Devil.”
“What? Are you crazy, girl? I won’t give up a catch like this. You should know better than that if you are to be a fisherman’s wife.” And he leaned back against the line and looped it around the cleat, then pulled her against his naked body and laughed, as though she were a superstitious child.
But she tensed, jerked away from him, and said, “Thierry, I saw the red eye of the Devil.” She fell to her knees and scrambled for the knife she knew he kept in the hole under the rudder.
Just then the fish turned and sounded, heeling the boat, and Angelique lost her balance and crashed against the ribs of the skiff. Thierry whipped off the cleated line and held on, as the fish tunneled through the deep, raking the rope through the boy’s hands and ripping the skin from his palms as he braced, and yelled at her, “Come on! Help me hold him!”
But the line whistled and flew through his fists, the loops at his feet eaten up in seconds. Before he could reach for the end, the line still wrapped around his ankle caught, and he was lifted and pitched feet-first from the boat, yelling, twisting, and grasping for the gunwale, clutching, loosing, his eyes wide with surprise.
Angelique grabbed one of his hands and held on with a fierce grip until she was slowly, torturously pulled with him over the rail and into the water. She swam down, down, deeper and deeper after him, until she caught his outstretched hands. Then she was under him, her fingers clutching at his body and he clinging to her, as she turned, her lungs exploding, and swam toward the surface.
She could feel his hands clawing, traveling the length of her body, darkness closing in on her. She was sure he had her, but he was pulled the other way as well, and he could not hold on to her. Finally, she felt him slip away. She turned and saw his face disappearing though the gloom, his anguished eyes and hollow mouth open in a swallowed scream.
She broke the surface with an enormous gasp and stared wildly at the empty sea, slimy with trails of froth sliding over the lacquered surface. She took a deep breath and dived again, piercing the dismal haze, plummeting farther until she could bear the pain no longer and was forced to turn for the light. Many more times she dove, each dive deeper, until the sun motes disappeared and nothing but inky blackness surrounded her. She found no sign. The jaws of darkness had swallowed him up.
Exhausted, she heaved for the boat and pulled herself over the rail. She collapsed in the bottom, wheezing and choking, filling her aching lungs, numb with disbelief. She thought of her fine boy and what pain it was to drown, then she shuddered, staring up at the sky with sightless eyes until she fell into a swoon.
While she lay in a stupor, she heard out of the water slapping on the hull, “Angelique … it is time.…”
She moaned as her mind rolled with the sound. “Why…?”
“Did you think I would let you love him? You are a witch. Remember? Never may you love.”
“Why have you killed him? You are heartless, evil … cruel…”
“To save you,” came the lapping sound. “To save you from human weakness.”
“Murderer,” she whispered. “Fiend!”
“I have chosen you as my bride,” he answered. “How can you deny your destiny? Talent such as yours comes only after centuries of scarecrows and charlatans. Through you, I will be revered and adored, and the greedy souls of men will fall under my power.”
She lifted herself with great effort and looked across the water. “I will never go with you! I despise you!” she cried.
The Devil rose out of the sea on the side of a huge swell, his horse’s nostrils smoking froth. The little boat rode the surge, hovered on the crest, then fell with a shudder. She clung to the rails as she watched him descend from his chariot and cross the water, his robes floating on the waves, his hair tangled with brine.
“Leave me! Begone!” she cried desperately.
He reached for her, and his marble face was gentle and beautiful, like Thierry’s, but she knew it was a trick, and she shrank back as he covered her with his freezing shape.
“My sleek and glossy girl,” he whispered in her ear. “You are born to the oldest breed. Worship the Earth Goddess and live an ordinary existence. Yours will be the pain of childbirth and the humiliation of old age. Or come with me and be my consort, and together we will fly the dark night.”
“I do not want you!” she cried, pushing him off, her hands entering into the modulating surfaces of his shape. Fervently, she said, “The strength of my power is my own. I taught myself. My knowledge did not come from you. And you cannot take it from me.”
“Then call him back…” There was a moment when the Dark One floated off, and the wind gusted and blew the chariot into the sea, but the ebony chaise rose again, and he was standing within it. “Call him back, Angelique. You know you can.”
She hesitated, then said dully, “No. I will not.”
“Someday,” he whispered, “you will serve me, you will rejoice in that service, and that will be your triumph. I own you, and I have owned you since the night on the altar when you destroyed your tormentor. You made your choice, that night. Immortality beckons. Turn and come.”
And slowly, he disappeared beneath the waves.
Twenty-One
It was a bright summer afternoon. A delivery carriage s
topped in front of a fine town house in Saint-Pierre, and a mulatto courier walked to the door carrying a large package. Angelique, wearing a simple frock and a ruffled cap on her blond curls, came to the door and opened it. When she saw the box she frowned, then pressed a coin into the driver’s hand and took the package without a word or a smile.
“Angelique?” The girl turned when she heard her name and saw the countess coming into the hall from the drawing room. She was dressed in one of her ridiculous Parisian gowns, with a long, flowing back. Perspiration had darkened the fabric under her arms. I’ll never get those spots out, Angelique said to herself. The sausage ringlets that Angelique had set that morning were already limp from the heat.
“Did Josette’s gown arrive? Let me see!”
Angelique set the box on a bench beside the stairs and lifted the lid. The dress in the carton was water taffeta in a clear shade of turquoise blue.
“What is this?” The countess was not at all pleased. “This is not the dress I ordered. It was meant to be wine-colored, embroidered with pearls.”
“But … it’s a beautiful gown, Madame,” Angelique said with astonishment.
“It’s atrocious! Josette would look dreadful in that hideous aqua. It’s the ugliest color in the world, and besides, the dress is much too plain for the ball. Oh, I am greatly distressed. That is my reward for making a purchase in Martinique! Those free coloreds are not to be trusted. And to think the woman claimed to be a seamstress.”
“What shall we do with the dress, Madame?”
“It must be returned at once. Catch the driver.”
Angelique ran back out the door and looked both ways up and down the street, but the carriage had disappeared. She stood a moment, gazing at the wide verandahs of lemon-colored houses, and the gardens filled with scarlet-flowering trees. Bright angles of light streamed over the red-tiled roofs, the coral walls, and the lavender shutters, but a shadow fell across her eyes as if she were remembering her childhood dreams.