by Barbara Wood
Brigitte set her hairbrush down and gazed wistfully at the piece of jewelry she had worn for the party: a stunning brooch of white gold with a blue crystal at its center surrounded by diamonds and sapphires. The Star of Cathay, that had been so full of romantic promise back in her naive youth.
The Star of Cathay was supposed to bring love and romance into the life of the wearer. Hadn’t the gypsy foretold as much? And it had delivered…for a while. On Brigitte’s wedding night—Henri (the man who now snored on the bed) had been a magnificent lover, and seventeen-year-old Brigitte had thought she had died and gone to heaven. But now, twenty years and seven children later, she had all but given up on ever knowing true passion again. Henri was a good man, but he no longer had fire in him. And Brigitte yearned for fire.
Too restless to sleep, she rose and went to the doors that opened onto a balcony off the bedroom. Stepping out into the tropical night redolent with the perfumes of frangipani and mimosa, she closed her eyes and pictured him—not Henri but the dark-eyed stranger, tall and noble, of aristocratic features and bearing, impeccably dressed, expert swordsman and roguish lover. He would appear suddenly, unexpectedly, when she was in her garden, or watching the exotic fish in the lagoon, materializing out of the sultry day like the storm clouds that came upon the island swiftly and darkly, drench Martinique with a torrid shower, then dissipate, move on and be only a memory. He was like that. And his lovemaking was like a tropical storm—fierce, steamy, irresistible. The mere thought of him sent tremors through her body.
Unfortunately, he didn’t exist.
Brigitte thought she would go insane if she never experienced romance and passion again. But how was it ever to happen? It was unthinkable that she should enter into an affair with one of the local colonists. She had her reputation, and her husband’s, to think of. And as there was no one else, she had resorted to a fantasy lover, a devilish gentleman of her imagination whose name changed according to her mood and the story. Usually he was French, perhaps called Pierre or Jacques, and he came to the island just for one day, meeting her in the grotto where they made passionate love all afternoon, and as he sailed away he promised someday to return, a promise that fed her soul and kept her alive.
Her fantasies served not only to bring love into her life, but to recapture her youth as well, for in them Brigitte was young and slender and beautiful again, turning men’s heads as she had done long ago. Unfortunately, although these fantasies gave her pleasure, they also riddled her with guilt. Brigitte was a good Catholic and believed, as the priests preached, that a sinful deed committed in the heart was as good as being committed in the flesh. Having lustful thoughts outside the bounds of marriage was a sin. If she imagined making love to one of the colonists, then it would be adultery. But was it adultery if the lover did not exist?
She set her eyes to the distant horizon, identifiable only by its absence of stars. Brilliant night sky above, black forbidding ocean below. And beyond…Paris. Four thousand miles away, where her friends, family, and children lived in a world so different from the West Indies that they might as well live on the moon.
Brigitte wished she could have gone with her children. She didn’t miss the cold or the crowding of Paris, but she longed for the cultural and social life. Born into nobility, she had known the company of kings and queens and the finest of French society. She missed the plays of Molie`re and Racine, and the spectacles of La Comédie Francaise, those glorious days when the Sun King lavished money on the arts. But what plays were being staged now? Who was the latest wit? What were the ladies wearing at court? The colonists on Martinique relied on mail from home for all their news, and sometimes it came late or not at all, due to the vagaries of the seas, weather, and pirates. Three years ago they had learned that their great king, Louis XIV, was dead—and had been dead for two years! Now his great-grandson, Louis XV, a boy of ten, was on the French throne.
A night breeze came up, stirring palm fronds and the giant leaves of banana plants, ruffling the muslin folds of Brigitte’s peignoir. As the breeze brushed her bare skin like a lover’s sigh, she felt her ache deepen. And it frightened her. She felt weak and vulnerable. Sending the children away was something all the colonists did, to make sure they grew up as ladies and gentlemen. So Brigitte had sent her lively brood to her sister in Paris for proper schooling in deportment and etiquette. But now that she had done it, she missed them greatly. She had too much time, sunlight, tropical perfumes, and balmy tradewinds on her hands. Henri had the sugarcane fields, the refinery, and the rum distillery to distract him. But with the children gone, and servants to take care of everything else, what else was there for a lady of these islands to do? Brigitte was an avid reader but even that pastime, of late, was reflecting her growing discontent, for her taste ran to pairs of tragic lovers: two French like herself, Heloise and Abelard; two Italians, young but no less tragic, Romeo and Juliet; two English, of long ago, Tristram and Isolde; and a Roman soldier and a Greek queen, Antony and Cleopatra. She devoured these sad, romantic tales as her friends devoured luscious fruits and rum. There was no better sadness, she thought, than sweet sadness. In her private fantasy, she and her lover must live apart, and the delicious ache it conveyed to her heart kept her sighing through sultry afternoons.
She tried to convince herself that dreams were so much more satisfying than reality. Besides, dreams were safe whereas reality could be fraught with peril. Despite Martinique being a tropical Eden, it had its dangers—from sudden, destructive storms, from Mt. Pelée threatening to erupt, from fevers and exotic diseases, and from that worst of dangers: pirates. Only this evening at dinner, when the talk wasn’t about the cost of rum and slaves, the conversation had turned to pirates and, lately, one in particular—an English dog named Christopher Kent. One of her guests, a pineapple grower, had suffered a loss to Kent just days earlier when Kent’s schooner, Bold Ranger, attacked the man’s merchant vessel, boarded her, threw the crew overboard and made off with a fortune in gold coin. No one knew what Kent looked like, although the few survivors of his attacks had said he was very tall and looked like the devil.
The night suddenly exploded with shouts from the slave quarters—men wagering on mongoose-and-snake fights. Like the whispering tradewinds and rustling palms, it was the sound of the island calling to her. It made Brigitte think of the native people who had lived here long ago, the Indians with their drums and nakedness, living as God had created them, like Adam and Eve. Their spirits were still here—in the trees and streams and mist-shrouded mountain peaks. New primitives were here now, too, from Africa; more naked people with drums, who filled the nights with their primeval beat and rhythms, chanting and dancing in the firelight.
The air felt heavy, reminding Brigitte that this was the start of hurricane season. She went back inside, closed the double doors, and then went to her vanity table to restore the Star of Cathay to its locked box. The blue crystal had, over the years, become symbolic of the blue seas that surrounded her, the blue sky that covered her. And when she looked into its diamond-dust heart she saw fire and passion. Her passion. Trapped, struggling to get free.
She went to the bed and pulled off her husband’s boots. Henri was smiling in his sleep. She sighed again. He wasn’t a bad man, just an unconscious one. As she slipped between the sheets next to him, she closed her eyes and, although her secret fantasies riddled her with guilt, she once again conjured up the image of him, her fantasy lover. When she drifted off to sleep she began to dream, and in the dream he reached for her.
Henri Bellefontaine was not unaware of his wife’s recent discontent. After all, she no longer had the children to occupy her time. Henri, on the other hand, had the plantation to run. Bellefontaine grew sugar and exported rum, with side interests in the growing and exporting of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, which were in great demand in Europe for use in cooking, perfumes, and medicines. Therefore Henri Bellefontaine was very rich, but he was also very busy. But what did Brigitte have? Fancying himself a loving an
d attentive husband, but mistaking entirely the cause of her frequent sighs and restlessness (homesickness, he thought, and missing their children), he had come up with what he thought was the perfect remedy.
He bought her a telescope.
It stood on a special rooftop platform, a handsome brass spyglass imported from Holland, fixed to a tripod with a complete 360-degree view of the island and beyond. Henri congratulated himself on his brilliance. Brigitte would no longer feel so remote and isolated for the lens brought the world to her fingertips: the horizon, with France—and their children—just over its edge; islands closer in (patches of emerald green floating on hyacinth blue); Martinique’s busy harbors and waterfront settlements with ships coming and going; and finally the seawalls and battlements, narrow lanes and alleyways, and rooftops rising in layers into the hills.
The gesture had touched Brigitte, for Henri was a dear man and his heart was in the right place. And it wasn’t as though he had brought her to the most godforsaken place on earth. After all, Martinique was the cultural center of the French Antilles, a rich, aristocratic island famous for its gracious living as well as for its lush, tropical vegetation, deep gorges, and towering cliffs. Their own home was a magnificent plantation perched on a spur on the slopes of Mt. Pelée, a volcano that periodically shot up steam and made the ground rumble, as if to remind the humans below of their mortality. The house was designed in typical Creole style with the main rooms on the bottom floor and the bedrooms upstairs. Surrounding it were green lawns like fabulous carpets, bordered by palm trees whose fronds rustled in the tradewinds. Brigitte loved her tropical home, and she loved Martinique. Nobody knew for certain why the island was named so. Some said it was derived from an Indian name that meant “flowers,” some said it was named for St. Martin. But Brigitte Bellefontaine, with her romantic heart, believed that when Columbus discovered it and found the island so fantastically beautiful, he named it for a woman he secretly loved.
It had become Brigitte’s habit to climb daily to her special rooftop aerie at sunset, her favorite time of the day when work ceased and the evening entertainments began; a time also when changes came over the Caribbean, the luminous sky giving way to a black, star-splashed firmament. Brigitte would give instructions to her kitchen slaves for the evening meal, then she would take a long, languorous bath, put on her underclothes and petticoats, slip into her gauzy peignoir and climb to the roof to watch the sun make its spectacular exit from the world.
As she sipped a small glass of rum, Brigitte kept her eye to the spyglass, sweeping the sea and the bay, the mountains and the clouds, the small fishing villages, and she thought of the coming evening. There would be no guests tonight as it was Sunday. It would be just her and Henri. Would he stay with her, or would the island and its seductions call to him, in the form of gambling in Saint-Pierre? When Henri woke that morning to realize he had fallen asleep before fulfilling his promise, he had been repentant. “Ma chere! Ma puce! I am not worthy of thee.” Then he had given her a peck on the cheek and, dressed in his riding clothes, had headed out to inspect the sugarcane fields.
Brigitte saw lights going on in the harbor town, doorways being flung open to the sunset, little boats bringing hungry visitors from anchored ships. She could almost hear the music and laughter, smell the cooking aromas, see the smiles of the people. Circling the glass away from the settlement, she scanned the rich green mountain peaks and ridges rising and falling like ocean waves, tropical jungles ranging in every hue of green known to the human eye. And now to the east, away from the crimson sky, to the quiet, windward side of the island with its pristine beaches and lime-green lagoons and hidden coves—
She stopped. Masts? Furled sails?
She focused the lens, bringing the ship into clarity, and peered hard. It had to be an American schooner, judging by the two masts and narrow hull, and the fact that it had to have a shallow draft to be able to navigate through shoal waters and into such a tiny cove.
Brigitte frowned. Why was it anchored there?
She moved the glass slightly, up the main mast, along spars and rigging until she saw the flag.
A pirate ship! There was no mistaking the ensign, what the French wryly called the joli rouge—“pretty red”—and the English, the Jolly Roger. Usually they featured skulls and crossbones; this one was designed with a cutlass dripping blood.
“Mon Dieu!” Brigitte whispered. She knew what ship it was—Bold Ranger—belonging to the bloodthirsty Christopher Kent. She could see no crew on board.
She began to tremble. Where were they? She had heard of Kent’s method—to strike swiftly and brutally. To attack and ravish and be gone before the victims could defend themselves.
Frantically she peered through the glass, scanning the hills between the cove and the plantation, a distance of two miles. Henri and his men were somewhere in all that green, inspecting the sugarcane crop, but she could not find them.
Christopher Kent was every colonist’s nightmare. He was one of those buccaneers who did not restrict himself to attacking ships, but made bold attacks on land as well. All plantation owners kept their fortunes hidden somewhere on their estates. It was the only way of guaranteeing its security. Kent knew this. He would come in the night, catch the hapless victims unaware and force them to divulge the location of their gold. Usually by torture.
“Please God,” she whispered with a mouth gone suddenly dry. “Let them not be coming this way.”
And then she saw them—pirates, making their way up the hillside, prodding overseers and slaves through the sugarcane fields. Henri, knocked from his horse—
“Colette, fetch my musket!” She knew she couldn’t hit anything at this range, but perhaps she could fire warning shots. She wondered if the soldiers at the fortress were aware of the pirates. She doubted it. The church bells would be clanging out a warning, and cannons would be firing. Kent had crept up along the windward side of the island and sneaked into the small cove. Two ridges hid the plateau where Bellefontaine sprawled on many acres. The pirates could strike, do their lethal work silently and swiftly, and depart like ghosts, leaving only corpses and a smoldering ruin. It would be at least a day before the soldiers knew what had happened, and by then Kent’s ship would be far out to sea.
“What is it, madame?” the young black woman said breathlessly as she came up the narrow stairway, clumsily handling the long firearm. Colette was a third-generation African slave. She had been born on Martinique, as had her mother, but her grandmother had been brought from Africa along with thousands of others to work the sugar and tobacco fields for the French colonists.
“Send Hercule to the fortress,” Brigitte began, trying to site the pirates without the aid of the glass. But the sun had finally dipped below the horizon and the light was dying. “Tell him to run, Colette! Tell him there are pirates—”
And then, through the glass, she saw him, Christopher Kent, a tall, forbidding figure dressed all in black. He wore tight breeches and a long coat, the shining gold buttons of his waistcoat flashing in the final rays of the sun. His face was shaded by the broad brim of his tricorn hat, a generous white plume ruffling in the breeze. When he turned and his face came partially into the light, she realized with a shock that he made her think of the phantom lover of her fantasies.
Brigitte’s mind worked rapidly. The fortress was ten miles away, over mountainous terrain, and night would fall, plunging jungle and trails into utter blackness long before a runner could even get a good start. The pirates had lit torches, which now burned brightly in the descending dusk, and the flames were making steady snakelike progress up the hill.
Taking a last look at Kent through the glass—he was barely visible now in the swiftly dying day, a phantom figure striding through lush vegetation, like a conqueror—Brigitte said, “Never mind,” and set the musket aside.
“But madame,” Colette wailed. “Pirates! We must warn everyone!”
“Hush,” Brigitte said as she made her way back down the stairs
and into her bedroom. “Tell no one, Colette!” The situation suddenly called for another strategy. But it also required a cool head.
She possessed one beautiful gown that she had never worn. It had come with her from France twenty years ago, a very special dress that she had planned to wear when they celebrated the king’s birthday. But she had gotten pregnant during the voyage to Martinique and after the birth of that first child, she hadn’t been able to fit into the gown. She had gotten pregnant again and the cycle continued until she had given up ever wearing the gown. And anyway, there was a new king now, one whom she didn’t even know.
The silk overdress was a dazzling summer pink, the stomacher embroidered in rich scarlet and cardinal hues, with the underskirt a contrasting sun-yellow, as was the fashion back then, when gowns were meant to blind and colors were to be as shocking and contrasting as possible. It looked very much like a tropical sunset: the gold sun blazing against a blushing sky. She had had the waist let out after the birth of her seventh child so that it finally fit (with help from a tight corset) but by then the gown was hopelessly out of date. Such an elaborate, ponderous style had gone out of fashion upon the death of Louis XIV. How could she possibly wear it? And so the gown had become a symbol, of faded youth and missed opportunities, and just the sight of it reminded her of young passions and stolen kisses in summer gardens.
Her heart pounded as she lifted the gown from its storage chest and gave orders to a very flustered Colette. It was difficult to hurry with such a complicated outfit—the corsets and skirts and panniers, and all the lacings and hooks, and with Colette so terrified she was ready to bolt. Brigitte herself was gripped with fear, but she kept Kent’s image in the forefront of her mind—a dark, menacing figure. As she held her breath while Colette tightened the last of the laces, Brigitte did a rapid mental calculation: the pirates would be at the edge of the distillery now. The road from there to the main house was half a mile.