“He was surprised to see you awake so early, Madame Beth, and wishes to know if you are having difficulty sleeping?”
Beth glanced at the clock, which was visible through the open doors.
“Not at all. It’s after eight, hardly early,” she said. “I wanted to enjoy the morning, before it gets really hot.”
Raymond smiled. “It’s still spring, madame. It will be much hotter soon. Or at least it will feel much hotter because we have a lot more rain from July to November, which makes the air very humid.”
Oh God, Beth thought. She was already finding the humidity unbearable. She finished her pastry and stood.
“Lead the way,” she said.
Pierre Delisle was busy writing in his ledger, but looked up as she entered his office and smiled broadly.
“Ah, Beth! You are very prompt. I hope that Raymond did not rush you. I expressly told him to assure you there was no hurry.”
Raymond, who was standing stiffly by the door, suddenly looked distinctly alarmed.
“He did assure me,” Beth lied smoothly. “But I was eager to know why you wanted to see me.”
“I have chosen a negress to be your servant,” Pierre said, gesticulating to the corner of the room, “although if you think she is unsuitable, I will find another for you.”
Beth turned to look in the direction he was pointing, where a young girl of about fourteen or so was staring at the floor, looking absolutely petrified. Beth smiled and opened her mouth to say hello.
“She is named Rosalie, and if you accept her she will be given a trial with you. She hasn’t worked as a body servant before, but Eulalie will help to train her, and if she gives you the slightest reason for dissatisfaction you must inform me immediately and I will deal with her,” Pierre continued.
“Hello Rosalie,” Beth said gently. The poor girl was shaking like a leaf.
“Curtsey to your new mistress, girl!” Pierre barked. Rosalie sank immediately into a curtsey, only managing to stand again on wobbly legs through sheer effort of will, Beth noticed. She briefly raised a pair of huge, terrified brown eyes to Beth’s, before looking at the floor again.
Beth moved forward and took the girl gently by the hand.
“I am sure we will get along very well,” she said reassuringly. “We are both new, in our different ways, and we can teach each other. You can teach me about Martinique, and I can teach you how to be a maid. It will be fun!”
“Rosalie,” Pierre said. The young girl looked up at him. “You are very lucky to have this chance to work in the house, and I am sure Madame Beth will be a good mistress to you.”
Well, I certainly won’t be dragging her from the other side of the house to pick up a handkerchief that’s two inches away from my fingers, Beth thought.
“As you know, she is new to this country and is not used to the ways of negroes,” he continued. “So I will be keeping a very close eye on you. If I see any sign that you are taking advantage of her kind nature, I will have you whipped and sent back to the field gang immediately. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Monsieur Pierre,” Rosalie whispered.
“Good. Now Raymond will show you to Madame Beth’s room. Go!” he shouted. The girl flew from the room as though shot from a cannon, Raymond closing the door quietly behind them.
The moment they were gone Beth rounded on her employer.
“It’s very kind of you to provide a servant for me, Pierre,” she said, managing with an effort to keep her voice calm, “but was it really necessary to frighten her out of her wits? I thought the poor girl was going to faint! And I might be new to the country, but I’ve had plenty of experience in dealing with servants.”
“My dear Beth,” Monsieur Delisle said in quite a different tone from that he’d used moments before, “I did not intend to insult you. Indeed it was the furthest thing from my mind. I have no doubt of your ability to keep English servants in order, but you will find the negro to be quite a different creature to that you are used to. They are like dogs, brute creatures who need to be constantly reminded who is the master. If you show them kindness, they will bite you.”
“In my experience, if you show dogs kindness they will love you for it,” Beth retorted. “But we are talking about a human being here, not a dog. I thank you for your advice, but I will train Rosalie in my own way. I will be sure to tell you if I need any help with her.”
She turned and walked out of the room quickly, before she lost her temper. What a strange man. Yesterday he had been so kind and considerate; he had told her they were all one big family! Yet today he reminded her of Lord Edward with his pomposity and contempt for servants.
Are all the people in Martinique like this? she wondered. No. The marquis had not been like this; he had been nothing but kindness for the whole ten days she had stayed in his house. But then she had not had cause to speak to him about servants. Slaves.
She stood for a moment with her eyes closed, taking in deep breaths of the hot sugar-scented air, feeling alien. And homesick. She would give almost anything to inhale a lungful of cool fresh Scottish mountain air right now.
No. It’s over. That life is finished. This is my new life now. I must remember I am penniless, and Monsieur Delisle is showing me kindness by employing me and treating me as an equal. I must become accustomed to the ways of the people if I am to fit in here. I will fit in here, she told herself fiercely. She opened her eyes and uttered a little shriek.
“I am sorry, madame,” Raymond said. He had approached silently while she’d been arguing with herself, and was standing a couple of feet away from her. “I did not wish to alarm you. Rosalie is in your rooms, and Eulalie is showing her how she must behave. I hope—” He stopped abruptly.
“What do you hope, Raymond?” Beth asked gently.
“I hope you will be kind to her, Madame Beth. She is a good girl and hard-working, but not suited for life in the fields, I think. She will do her best to please you, madame,” he said somewhat fervently.
“I will be kind to her, I promise,” Beth reassured him. “I have never been cruel to a servant, and do not intend to start now.”
Raymond smiled suddenly, displaying a set of perfect white teeth. He was very handsome when he smiled. And clearly he disliked sugar as much as she did.
“Thank you, madame,” he said. “I am very grateful.”
When Beth arrived in her rooms Eulalie was showing Rosalie how to lay out clothes. They both rose as Beth entered, and curtseyed deeply. Rosalie looked only marginally less terrified than she had in Monsieur Delisle’s office.
“Thank you, Eulalie,” Beth said. “I’m sure you have an awful lot to do, so I will take over now in showing Rosalie her duties. Could you send up some tea, please?”
“Of course, madame,” Eulalie replied. As she reached the door, Beth called her back.
“With two cups, please,” she said.
Once Eulalie had left the room, Beth motioned to Rosalie to sit down, and then took the seat opposite her.
“Have you ever tasted tea, Rosalie?” she asked.
“No, madame,” Rosalie whispered.
“Well, you are about to. And while we drink our tea I want to get to know you a little, and to tell you about myself. It’s important that you learn your duties, but it’s far more important that you know who you will be working for. Monsieur Pierre was right when he said that I’m new to the country, and that I’m not used to the ways of negroes, whatever they are. I am used to the ways of people, though, and I have trained more than one young woman to be a good maid.
“I am patient and kind, but I’m also firm. When I lived in England I had quite a few servants, and they all became my friends. I hope you and I will also become friends. Ah, here is the tea!” she said as the door opened and a young girl brought in a tray, placing it carefully on the table. She set a cup and saucer in front of Beth and then looked confused.
“The other one is for Rosalie,” Beth explained. “You can leave now. I will pour th
e tea. Now,” she continued as the thunderstruck maid left the room, “tell me about yourself.” She poured the tea into Rosalie’s cup and then pushed it in front of her. “Help yourself to sugar,” she said.
Rosalie sat, frozen. This was clearly such an alien situation to her that she had no idea what to do. Beth sighed. Carefully she placed one lump of the sugar into her cup and then stirred it with a silver teaspoon. Then she sipped it and waited. After a moment, as she had hoped, Rosalie copied her. Beth smiled.
“How old are you, Rosalie?” Beth asked.
“I’m not sure, madame,” Rosalie said. “I think I’m about fourteen.”
“Were you born here?”
“Yes, madame, I’ve lived here on Soleil all my life.”
Soleil. So she had been born on the plantation, and was therefore presumably unlikely to commit suicide if asked to do a day’s work.
“And do you live with your parents?” Beth asked.
Rosalie looked confused.
“Eulalie said I’m to stay here, madame,” she said. “I’m to sleep on the floor in case you need me in the night.”
“Why would I need…?”Beth began, then rethought. “Do you want to sleep in my room, or would you rather sleep at home? Wherever you normally sleep?”
Rosalie bit her lip and looked around the room frantically as though the answer might be found somewhere in it. She looked about to cry.
My God, Beth realised, she’s never been given a choice in anything in her life. She has no idea how to even form an opinion.
“Tell me about where you’ve lived until now,” she said instead. “I want to learn all about the plantation. I am going to ask Monsieur to show it to me, but it will help me if you tell me about it first. And then I will tell you about England, and you will see how different it is to Soleil. Have you ever met a blind person?”
“Yes, madame,” Rosalie said, perking up now she knew how to answer. “Georges went blind when he got old. He died last winter,” she added sadly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Beth said. “Did you play games when you were a child?”
“Oh yes, madame,” Rosalie said.
“This is a game, then. Pretend I am blind, and you have to tell me exactly what your house looks like. And then I’ll pretend you’re blind, and I will tell you what my house in England looked like. It will be fun, and we’ll get to know each other a little.”
Rosalie smiled, tentatively. It was a start.
“Adela’s cabin is smaller than this room,” she began. “The walls are made of wood and the roof is made from leaves, big leaves. There is a table and some stools, and a shelf where Adela keeps her pots and dishes. Adela sleeps in a hammock, but I sleep on the floor with the other children – there are ten of us. The floor is made of dirt and when it rains the water comes under the door and we get wet.”
So presumably sleeping on the floor of Beth’s room would be preferable to sleeping on the wet muddy ground. Unless…
“Is Adela your mother?” Beth asked.
“No, madame. My mother was sold when I was very small. I don’t remember her. Adela doesn’t have any children of her own, but she likes them, and she looks after the ones whose mothers have died or been sold.”
“Do you think you will be happy to sleep in my room then?” Beth asked, keeping her expression neutral with an effort. “You will be dry, at least, and I will get you a mattress so you don’t have to lie on the tiles.”
“Oh, yes, madame, I would love that!” Rosalie said happily. “It is cooler here, too!”
Later that evening, while Pierre worked in his office and Antoinette lay on the couch on the porch, snoring gently, Beth listened to the chatter of the night insects and thought about what Rosalie had revealed to her that day about plantation life as she had slowly relaxed under Beth’s gentle questioning.
The slaves lived in small cabins, ten or more to a room smaller than Beth’s bedroom. Sometimes the cabins were blown down by hurricanes and had to be rebuilt. If the hurricane was very bad and blew the whole cabin away, the slaves would have to live and sleep outside, sheltering from the daily downpours under banana leaves or anything else they could find. On every second Saturday there was no work, except at harvest time or after a hurricane, when everyone had to work very long hours. On the free Saturdays the slaves would tend their little plots where they grew food. In the evening they would tell stories, and sometimes they would play music and dance. On Sundays the priest would come and talk to them about Christ, and if they forgot the words of the creed or the Pater Noster he would beat them.
On the surface this didn’t seem such a bad way of life, until you realised that harvest lasted from January until June, and that the field gangs worked in the blazing sun, often for sixteen hours or more a day, with inadequate amounts of food. And above all, they had no choice in their lives, none at all.
It was perfectly acceptable for families to be forcibly separated, for mothers and fathers to be sold, never to see each other or their children again.
Ealasaid had told her that indentured servitude was just another word for slavery. At the time, as she had listened to her grandmother’s sketchy account of her life in the Colonies, Beth had had only a vague idea of what slavery was.
She had escaped that fate because of a privateer named Paul Marsal. But thousands of other Jacobite prisoners had not.
She needed to know exactly what she had escaped.
“I am sorry Beth, but it isn’t possible at the moment. I am far too busy with the harvest to take you on a tour,” Pierre said, gesturing to the mound of papers that littered the desk of his office.
“I understand,” Beth replied. “I wouldn’t expect you to take precious time away from your work, and I know what a busy time the harvest is – it was the same in England. But surely one of your workers could show me? Raymond or Eulalie perhaps? I am really interested to learn how sugar is made!”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I assure you. But I cannot spare anyone at this time. Sugar is not like the crops you grow in England or in France. It has to be cut at exactly the right moment in its growth, and once it is cut it must be processed immediately, or it will spoil. It is a very delicate process. But I don’t think it will interest a young lady of breeding. Antoinette has never expressed an interest in seeing it. It is very hot and dangerous work.”
“I think it sounds most fascinating, monsieur,” Beth persisted. “And you must remember I am experienced in danger.”
“Indeed you are! And it must have been a terrible ordeal for you to be captured by privateers! I would not expose you to more disagreeable sights for the world. When the harvest is over we shall go to Saint Pierre for a few days. It is really most delightful there and far more suited to a delicate lady like yourself.”
Back in her room, having been kindly but firmly dismissed, Beth fumed. Being captured by privateers was one of the best parts of the last few months, she thought, wondering what Pierre would say if he knew that her experiences over the last two years had rendered her far more suited to a privateering life than one spent sitting on a porch all day listening to Antoinette complain about the heat and her ailments. The harvest would be over soon, and then she would have to wait until next year to see how sugar was produced.
The thought of still being here next year filled her with gloom, which she impatiently pushed to one side. Her current life was far better than the one she’d been destined for on Antigua, she reminded herself. Which brought her back to one of the reasons she wanted to tour the factory – to see what she had escaped, in the hope that it would render the next months or years bearable by comparison.
She sat on her bed, and plotted.
* * *
It was still quite dark when she woke one morning a week after her conversation with Pierre. The bell had rung to call the slaves to the fields, but the house was still in silence. At the foot of the bed on a thin mattress, Rosalie was sleeping soundly. Beth had deliberately kept her awake and busy l
ate last night, inventing chores for her to tire her out in the hope that she would be able to slip from the room at dawn without waking her.
As soon as there was just enough light for her to see to dress, she donned the clothes she had told Rosalie to lay out on the chair; front-lacing stays, one petticoat and a light cotton morning dress. Antoinette would consider her half-naked but she was unlikely to rise before ten, and Beth intended to be back by then. And she didn’t really give a damn what anyone thought, anyway. She was always being told she was unused to the ways of the island; she could use that as an excuse if necessary.
Tiptoeing across the room, she opened the door, slipped out and closed it carefully and silently. She walked to the front door in her stocking feet, slipped her shoes on on the porch and then set off in the direction of the fields, where the slaves were already hard at work. As she walked she remembered the last time she had sneaked out of a house on an illicit journey. At least this time she hadn’t had to climb down a drainpipe, and she was unlikely to come across a roomful of Gaelic-speaking Jacobites. Nearly five years had passed since then. In some ways it seemed like moments, in other ways a lifetime ago.
She smiled as she remembered how terrified she’d been that night, then pushed the memory of her first meeting with Alex, Duncan and Angus to the back of her mind and focussed on the sight ahead of her as she walked toward the buildings which formed the sugar factory.
The sugar cane was much taller close up than it seemed from the house, about twice the height of a tall man. The slaves, barefoot and dressed in rags, stood in the cane, wrapped one arm round several stems, then swung their machetes and cut it close to the ground. Then they moved on to the next stems, while the children gathered it into bundles and carried it to a line of mules, where it was loaded on to them. Beth stopped to watch, fascinated by the speed and skill of the cutters.
“You should not be here, madame, it’s dangerous,” a voice came from behind her, making her jump. She turned to the owner of the voice, a slender young white man with long dark hair, dressed in breeches and a shirt that was open almost to the waist. In his hand he carried a whip, and slung over his shoulder was a musket.
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