A smattering of shots, like Fourth of July rockets, erupted next. My ears were still ringing from the Navy Yard blast. So I wasn’t sure of the shots’ direction until fire flared over Capitol Hill. At first the flames were no more than yellow banners rippling from the windows of the House and Senate buildings. Then the wooden hall between them ignited. The fires swelled and came together in a yellow curtain the same colour as the satin in Miss Dolley’s private parlour. The night glowed so bright I could’ve read my missal by the glare, but that would’ve been true blasphemy – to read Holy Writ by the light of hellfire.
To the south, the sky over the fort at Greenleaf Point flared orange. The blast from the fort was the loudest one yet.
My whole head rang from the din. It was as if an angel of the Lord had used my ear for a horn – not one of the kindly angels, either, but one of those dire messengers whose trumpets foretell the coming of Judgement Day. The prospect before me could’ve been a scene from the Apocalypse. Between the smoke, the fires and their shooting sparks, it truly seemed as if the stars had fallen, and a third of the earth was burning.
Coloured men in ragged clothing fled down Pennsylvania Avenue and up the numbered cross streets, shouting, ‘The British are coming! The British are coming! Run for your lives!’
It was 1775 all over again. But in Washington City, there were no patriots waiting to take up arms and no General Washington to lead them, only Mama and me at the tri-part gate. We were two witnesses dressed in sackcloth, all right, but we had no fire to burn our enemies. It was they who brought the flames.
With nothing to block the view along Pennsylvania Avenue, I could track the redcoats’ advance all the way from Capitol Hill. Lit from behind by the burning Capitol and from above by lanterns bobbing on long poles, the red-enamelled barrels of their guns glistened like spikes of blood. Their coats were dyed in the same gore. The air around them shimmered with the infernal heat and the tears pooling in my eyes. The outlines of the distant column blurred into a single mass – the many-headed, many-horned Beast of the Deep.
My mind stuck on the sight. Mama had to pry my hands off the bars and drag me back to the thicket. She shoved me behind some bushes. Dropping down next to me, she coiled herself around me, pressing my face into her bosom to stifle my moans. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. The howling inside me had nowhere to go.
It seemed to take forever for the storm to pass, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Capitol Hill was scarcely a mile away. Yet the light from the redcoats’ lanterns was only now breaching the Pennsylvania Avenue gate.
The British marched in silence, without fife or drum, as if ashamed of what they’d done. The only warning of their arrival was the measured tramp of their boots over the gravel and the creak of their lantern poles. I cringed in Mama’s arms, expecting portents and monsters. But my panic must have cried itself out, as well. In the glow of the fires they set and the lanterns they carried, I saw the enemy for what they were: men. Not the Beast of the Deep, for all they had come from the sea. Not the Dragon of the Last Days, for they’d come to burn. Only men.
The column passed within thirty feet of our hiding place. I counted nearly a hundred soldiers in red coats and shako hats. Their shiny red guns had blades on the ends. Some of the soldiers hefted rockets on their shoulders. But they were still men.
A smaller number of blue-coated, straw-hatted sailors marched alongside, carrying the lantern poles. Two officers rode at the end of the column. One wore the same bloody red as the soldiers. The other wore a blue coat so dark it looked black. Heavy gold-fringed epaulettes sparkled on their shoulders, and gilt trimmed their high cocked hats. They were the leaders of the party, General Robert Ross and Admiral George Cockburn. But they were hardly a sight to inspire awe, not when they were riding the sorriest pair of nags this side of the Alleghenies.
A single, lantern-bearing sailor brought up the rear. As he rounded the curve of the drive, Mama’s breath hitched. Her fingers raked the front of my dress, scratching my skin through the thin layers of cloth. I squeaked in surprise.
The sailor turned in our direction. We froze. He shook his head. He never broke stride.
The first breeze in days carried their jeers and bawdy songs out the open windows of the house. I gnashed my teeth, imagining the British taking their ease around the table we’d set for dinner not ten hours before. They feasted on our food, while we cowered in the garden of the house where I’d lived half my life, the place where I’d learned my letters and cherished my first kiss.
I hated them for that. I hated them worse when the fires they set took hold. Every window of my home wept tears of fire. The house groaned through the pillars of the burning south porch. Smoke soiled everything that didn’t burn outright, turning my home into a blackened sepulchre.
But most of all, I hated them for making me afraid.
The British left a sight gayer than they arrived, flaunting trophies just like Miss Dolley said they would. At the head of the parade they carried Miss Dolley’s portrait on a pole. They boasted they were going to display her in London as a prize of war. Hats, wigs and red velvet cushions topped a score of bayonets.
Once again, their commanders led from the rear. From where I lay, I couldn’t see much of General Ross beyond a flash or two of red. But Admiral Cockburn looked downright jaunty. As he neared the gate, he ordered the men to sing ‘Yankee Doodle’, and waved one of Mr Madison’s old hats in time.
Outside the gate, the column turned north towards the Treasury Building. But the fire they lit there didn’t burn nearly as bright as they would’ve liked, and the money was all gone. There wasn’t so much as the corner of a paper bill in the vault they worked so hard to crack. The rising wind carried their complaints through the gate as they marched back down Pennsylvania Avenue. Dry-eyed and hate-hardened, I smiled.
Mama thrust the drum into my hands. ‘It’s time.’
I nodded. My skin felt tight and tender from the fire’s terrible heat. My eyes were gritty from smoke, old tears and ash. My fingers ached from clenching. My palms were scored with the imprint of my nails. I was more than ready to make those redcoats pay.
Mama stripped to her shift, knotted her red shawl over one shoulder, and wrapped one of Miss Dolley’s red brocade turbans around her head. She set the silver bowl at the southernmost point of the lawn, in a line with the burning porch. The groans of the house behind it made me want to weep all over again.
I prayed to shut out the sound. My hands fitted the drumbeat to the words:
Hail-Mary,
Full-of-grace,
The-Lord-is-with-thee.
Hail-Mary,
Full-of-grace,
The-Lord-is-with-thee.
I never got to the ‘Blessed’ parts. Hate and grief stole the rest of the prayer, and I began to get an inkling of what Mama meant about the difference between magic and witchcraft, harm and sin.
Mama chanted her own devotions, dancing clockwise around the bowl. It almost sounded like the Lord’s Prayer, only she called on Damballa instead of Our Father. Despite the ungodly direction of her prayer, the familiar cadence of praise and plea soothed me more than I would’ve thought possible. The longer she went on, the harder it became to stay mad and hateful. The odd beat of my broken Aves added to the sense of peace, like being rocked to sleep in a well-sprung carriage travelling a freshly graded road. In the light of everything that happened, it made no sense. But I lost all fear. I felt weightless and grounded, as if I was both air and earth at once.
Like a priest elevating the Host, Mama offered the napkins full of flour and cornmeal to the sky. Then she scattered their contents at the four corners of the compass. When that was done, she snatched the General from his basket. Holding him by the legs over the bowl, she sliced his throat. His head disappeared in a gush of blood. She cast the headless carcass to the ground. It got up on its own two legs and ran away, flapping its wings as if it could still fly.
I didn’t find
it strange at all. If I were a chicken, I could’ve flown.
The burning house snapped and roared, splashing the lawn with waves of heat. It would’ve been a mercy to put the building out of its pain.
In the distance, the sky grumbled, faint and cranky like a cross old man.
Next Mama raised the bowl of the General’s blood. She lowered the silver vessel to her lips, drank a single sip, and poured the rest into the ground.
The earth sighed. The withered grass of the lawn seemed to shiver with pleasure. Around the edges of the gravelled loop formed by the south drive and the garden promenade, the ground rippled. The ripples travelled towards us in ever-tightening rings, the exact opposite of ripples in a pond. The flow surged to the edge of the blood-stained grass. The ground beneath the spill pushed upwards. The tip of what might have been a dark, furled bud poked through the matted blades. But it was no flower. It was a snake, the biggest black snake I’d ever seen. It reared as tall as Mama and flicked its tongue at her face.
I should’ve been terrified, but somehow I knew there was nothing of the Serpent in that snake. It was as much God’s creature as Mama or I, and had not come to do us harm.
Mama greeted the snake with a curtsey, and called it Papa. I didn’t understand the conversation that passed between them, but they seemed to reach an accommodation. Mama bowed her head, touching two fingers to her forehead and to the snake’s. When it lifted its head like the point of a spear, she grasped it around its middle and launched it at the burning house. The snake flew like it was the most natural thing in the world. It zigzagged overhead the same way it would’ve slithered across the ground, scales gleaming like black glass. Then all at once, it vanished in the smoke.
Mama shouted at the sky.
The sky shouted back. A blast of wind rattled the trees. Lightning struck the house at the spot where the snake disappeared. The sky flashed white. The answering crack of thunder rang louder than the blast from Greenleaf Point.
The noise shocked me back to myself. I flinched from the glare, the sound and the strange, too-clean smell. Water splattered my face. I raised my hands. Fat, soft raindrops splashed my overheated palms and dribbled between my smarting fingers.
I cast my gaze heavenward. A host of purple thunderclouds winged across the sky like a multitude of angels. At first the rain they brought was no more than a drizzle. But only instants later the sky seemed to be falling on top of us. I clambered to my feet as the parched grass of the lawn disappeared under a sheet of water.
A surge of wind swept the torrent through the house. In no time at all the flames were gone. The Treasury fire winked out next. The Capitol went dark. The Navy Yard and Greenleaf Point blazed no more.
I should’ve been afraid of drowning. I should’ve run for the shelter of the service wings, which the British hadn’t bothered to torch. But I was caught up in wonder. After three weeks’ drought, any rain would’ve been a blessing. This was so much more. God forgive me, for all I knew it was a spell, it felt holy, like a sacrament, a second baptism to wash away all my sins. And not just my sins. The Lord had written His Will across the sky with a finger of lightning, cleansing the city of its hellish fires so it could rise anew. And as far as I could tell, not one soul had suffered harm.
Mama shouted through the rain, ‘What do you think of my voudou now? Can I cook up a storm, or what?’
‘It’s a miracle.’
‘I can’t hear you!’ she yelled.
I was pretty sure she could, but I shouted just the same. ‘It’s a miracle!’
A flash of lightning lit her blazing grin. She seized my arms and whirled me into a crazy jig. We capered in the dark, splashing and laughing, with lightning for our candle. We didn’t stop until we were wheezing too hard to go on. Somehow we fetched up near the lantern, which Mama lit in the rain without flint or ember. Still giggling, we gathered our belongings and the bedclothes. Mama left behind the bowl, the cider jug and the drum, but she wasn’t giving up those sheets, not for anything.
‘I’ve done my part,’ she said. ‘Now I’m gonna sleep like a lady’s s’posed to.’
I snorted. The counterpane and linens had soaked up so much water, Mama’s bundle was almost too heavy for her to carry.
‘So it won’t be tonight,’ she countered. ‘But soon. Real soon.’
A coloured footman met us at the back door to the Tayloe House. His eyes widened at the sight of the lantern I carried. The storm had lessened considerably, but the wind was still tossing the rain around. Even so, the candle flame barely flickered.
He asked Mama if she’d called the storm. She allowed as she had. In response, he bowed so low he practically bent over double. I didn’t see anybody else in the hall, but other servants must’ve been lurking in the shadows. As the footman led us downstairs to the basement kitchen, their voices echoed in the stairwell: ‘Mamaloi! Mamaloi!’
Three white men moped around the kitchen table, drowning their sorrows in French brandy. One was dressed in a rumpled suit of dark broadcloth. I figured him for the butler. The perspiring, red-faced man next to him wore a white apron tied over a grease-stained shirt and trousers. He had to be the cook. The third sported an old-fashioned powdered wig and a threadbare blue and buff coat like the kind worn by officers in the Continental Army.
The mournful face underneath the wig looked old enough to have served under General Washington himself. When the old fellow’s eyes finally focused on us, he jumped to his feet and bowed. The bow wasn’t as deep as the footman’s, but it was still most respectful. Blinking like he’d been asleep, the butler pushed back his chair and did likewise.
The cook didn’t look up. He grumbled in French, ‘What are they gabbling about now?’
‘They are hailing me by my rightful title,’ Mama answered in the same tongue. ‘I am Madame Eulalie Heloise Forain Solouque, queen mother and oracle of the loa. The servants of this house are saluting me for calling the storm that put out the British fires.’
‘The fire, she is dead?’ the old officer gasped in broken English. A piebald dog lying on the floor beside his chair thumped its tail.
The cook rolled his eyes. ‘Those fires will poison the air until Monsieur Piss-ant Jemmy Madison returns, which will be never. They will burn until Judgement Day.’ He finished with a rude sound and downed another slug of brandy.
‘Then Judgement Day has come to pass,’ Mama said. ‘The fires are extinguished.’
The butler frowned at the water we were dripping on the floor. ‘Madame Eulalie? Would you be the Madame Lula Jean-Pierre mentioned?’
‘I am.’
‘Pardon my manners, Madame. Please, seat yourself. I will see to your accommodations.’
‘Don’t forget to look out a window, while you’re about,’ Mama purred as she plopped the wet bedding next to the cook’s chair.
The cook sucked in a breath. His jowls shook with outrage. But the old officer said, ‘Of a certainty, we must see this miracle. At once. Hut! Hut!’ He clapped.
‘Damn your eyes, L’Enfant,’ the cook growled in perfect English. ‘You’re not a major anymore.’
‘In the army, I am not. But major I always am. General Washington himself me elevated. I say come!’ Major L’Enfant stirred the air under the cook’s nose.
The cook grumbled, but he stood, and he followed. Everybody followed, except me.
I was done in. I sank onto the spit stool and dropped my sopping pillowcase on the brick floor. It wasn’t until I found myself leaning towards the hearth that I realised I was cold as well as wet. The dog cosied up to my leg. He was warm, too. I reached down to pet him, and I must’ve nodded off. The next thing I remember, the kitchen was full of cheering, whooping people. Even the French minister put in an appearance, looking as grand as a sultan in his long linen nightshirt and brocaded silk robe. I don’t know that Mr Minister Sérurier believed in Mama’s voudou. But the fires were out, and people’s property was safe. That was cause enough to celebrate.
The house
keeper found us dry shifts, robes and house slippers. She hustled us into the pantry to change, and rousted a chambermaid to hang our wet things in the yard once the rain quit falling. Meanwhile, in the kitchen the butler whipped up a bowl of strong rum punch.
I don’t remember much after that. I woke the next morning on a bedroll in the storeroom with Mama snoring softly beside me. The room’s window-well faced north, which kept it cool and dim long into the day. There was just enough light to see some kind soul had stuffed all our shoes with paper to keep them from shrinking.
I reckoned it was past ten. I’d never slept so late in my life. In the White House and before, when Mr President Madison was only Mr Secretary of State, there was always some task that needed doing, even on a Sunday when we were given leave to attend Mass in Georgetown. It felt wrong to lie about. I suppose I should’ve been on my knees repenting my sins of the night before. But between the fuzzy ache in my head, the bad taste in my mouth and the crick in my neck from sleeping on damp hair, I couldn’t think past finding my slippers.
I belted my borrowed robe over my borrowed shift, and headed for the privy. My hand was on the door latch before it struck me. The servants’ quarters in the White House had privies. Colonel Tayloe’s servants made do with chamber pots, like the one tucked under the table next to our bedroll. My chest clenched. The White House was nothing but a gutted husk. I felt like a husk, myself. In my whole life, I’d never been without a place.
That was Mama’s doing, as much as the British. I pushed the thought away. Done was done. I couldn’t go back to the Madisons any more than Mama could go back to New Orleans.
The notion was more than I could face on an empty stomach. The table held a pitcher of water, a basin and a cup, but nothing to eat. Why should it? The kitchen was just across the passage.
It was late enough that I didn’t think anything of the passage being empty. The servants’ hall, the housekeeper’s room and the kitchen shouldn’t have been empty, though. Since I couldn’t think of a good reason why that should be, I fortified myself with a hunk of buttered bread and a gulp of cider before climbing the stairs. It was a good thing I did.
Tales from the Vatican Vaults Page 33