* * *
I cannot say how many days I was ill, or why the fever did not kill me as it did the others. I’d strange and wandering dreams, and glimpses of Orianne tending me as I’d tended Madame. I remembered the soft murmur of Orianne’s voice, and how gentle her hands had been upon me, but mostly I’d felt nothing but heat and darkness. All I know for certain is that the voices of the sailors finally roused me.
“Be quick about it,” one sailor was saying. “Captain wants the carcasses gone at once, and I’ve no wish to be touching their poison any longer than I must.”
I was lying on my old pallet, but on a lower deck murky with shadows, and I was so weak that it took all my strength simply to open my eyes. Not far from me, two sailors were bent over another figure, trying to pull the arms free from a printed cotton jacket. To my horror, I recognized the jacket, and the woman wearing it as Orianne. Uncertain of what I was witnessing, I gasped aloud, then pressed my hand over my mouth.
But the sailor in a striped cap had heard me, and quickly turned my way.
“Hah, the little monkey’s still alive,” he said. “I thought they’d all died.”
“She looks more dead than otherwise,” said the other man. Now I could see Orianne’s face: waxy and stiff, her eyes half-closed and unseeing, her face and chest covered with the same red spots that had marked Madame. Orianne was dead, too, and I cried out with anguish and sorrow.
“None would be the wiser if we tossed the girl over the side as well,” said Striped Cap. He yanked the hoops from Orianne’s ears and the silk scarf from around her throat and stuffed them into his pocket. “Roussel would thank us. You know how he hates having this kind on board.”
“The girl belongs to Beauharnais,” the other man said. “She’s his property. Harm her and you’ll be the one to pay.”
Striped Cap didn’t answer, and together they quickly peeled away the rest of Orianne’s clothing and put it in a bag, doubtless to sell or trade at the next port. When they were done, they roughly grabbed her stiffened limbs and hauled her up the companionway. I glanced quickly around the shadows, searching for the one thing I prayed the sailors had overlooked. There it was, tucked between the beams where Orianne herself must have hidden it: her precious spice box, the greatest single treasure she could have shared with me. Knowing it was safe, I followed the sailors as best I could, stumbling weakly up the steps.
I reached the deck as the sailors were awkwardly lifting Orianne’s naked body over the rail, her long braid swinging in the wind like a black rope. The other sailors jeered lewdly, and whistled as her body finally toppled over the rail and splashed into the sea. Unlike Madame, there was no solemn service, no holy man to say prayers to ease her path into death, no fine white shroud or burial clothes.
From the rail I watched Orianne’s unclothed body sink, then rise up again, bobbing and twisting in the creamy churn of the ship’s wake. I watched as long as I could, my cheeks wet with tears. I cried not for Orianne, who now was free, but for myself, who was not.
“Eugénie!”
Startled to hear my name, I turned quickly to see Monsieur beckoning to me from the quarterdeck where he often walked beside the captain. Now he was with Père Noyer, the priest’s long cloak and robe whipping in the breeze. Quickly I wiped away my tears with my sleeve, and hurried toward the two men.
I bowed low, filled with dread. Had they, too, watched Orianne drop into the sea? Would I now be punished for being here on deck to mourn her?
“You’re the last one, Eugénie,” Monsieur said, an even-voiced proclamation. “First Estelle, then Gabriel, and now Orianne. This has been a very costly voyage for me.”
He paused and frowned down at the deck, and Père Noyer laid a hand on his arm in silent consolation. At first I marveled that Monsieur hadn’t included his wife in this grim tally, before I remembered that to him, being French, these deaths were entirely different. He had never outwardly shown much love for Madame, but she had been his wife, a white-skinned French lady. Orianne and others had been mere slaves from Pondicherry, and their deaths were the same as the loss of any other cargo that had been destroyed in the course of the voyage. They were a costly monetary loss, no more, significant enough to merit that comforting hand from the priest.
“The cook says Orianne taught you to make my curries,” he said, still not looking me in the eye. “Is that true?”
“Yes, Monsieur,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “It is the truth.”
It wasn’t, not entirely. There was so much more of cooking and curries that I hadn’t had time to learn from Orianne, and now never would. But Monsieur didn’t know that.
“Then you will take Orianne’s place, and wait upon me at table,” Monsieur said. “I will be dining as usual this afternoon with Captain Gagnon.”
“Yes, Monsieur,” I murmured. When I’d followed Orianne’s body to the deck, I’d been so weak that I’d swayed on my feet. Now purpose had given me fresh strength, and I resolved to be stronger still and prove my worth, not only to Monsieur, but for the memory of Orianne and Ammatti who’d helped make me that way.
I was alone, yes, but I’d survived. I’d come this far in my life, and I was determined to go further. I would be strong.
I was twelve.
CHAPTER 4
Belle Vallée
Saint-Domingue
1772
I’d had many months on board the Céleste to imagine the Isle de Saint-Domingue. I needed only three days to see how false those imaginings had been, and wish with all my heart that I’d been carried to any other place on earth than the sugar plantation called Belle Vallée.
I was treated like the rest of the Beauharnais belongings, and unceremoniously unloaded from the Céleste on the morning after we’d tied up in the harbor. The plantation lay some miles inland from the port city of Saint-Domingue, and four ox-drawn wagons were required to convey all the barrels, trunks, and crates. There wasn’t room for me to ride. I was expected to walk. Once again a chain was linked to my collar and thus to the back of the last wagon so I wouldn’t try to run away.
I wondered where they thought I’d run. On either side of the road were bright green walls of sugarcane, the canes and leaves towering high over my head and blocking all else from my sight. My legs were unsteady from being so long at sea, and I felt light-headed from thirst and the hot sun overhead as we climbed up the hills. Still I trudged between the ruts in the road carved by the wheels, one step after another. If I’d faltered, if I’d tried to pause, I would simply have been dragged along the road by the collar around my neck.
The sun had begun to set when at last we arrived at the plantation. Surrounded by palm trees, the main house was smaller than the Beauharnais home had been in Pondicherry, a two-story block painted white that looked more like a graceless fortress than a Frenchman’s fine estate.
I was unchained from the wagon, and sent at once to the kitchen in the back. The cook was a dark-skinned, round-faced man called Perroquet who had little use or desire for a new slave in his kitchen, especially not in the middle of preparing the first meal for the new master. Perroquet barely glanced my way, and I was soon set to work scrubbing pans. I was given no food, for slaves at Belle Vallée were fed only in the mornings and at noon. Finally Perroquet declared the day’s work was done, and I collapsed into exhausted sleep upon a grass-filled mat in one corner of the kitchen.
The next morning, Perroquet woke me by kicking my ribs.
“Lazy little bitch,” he said as a greeting. “I need you to work, not sleep. Fill this bucket at the well.”
The sky was just growing pale with dawn, yet as I stumbled sleepily from the house I could see that dozens of other people—the field slaves—were already leaving for their day’s work.
The men and women wore clothes that were little more than rags, and the children with them were naked. Despite how quickly these people moved, other men with large dogs shouted and cracked whips at them as if they were no more
than cattle to be herded. Sitting on a horse and watching was a tall Frenchman, ominously still in the middle of so much activity. This man I learned later was Malet, the plantation’s overseer, and the one man who controlled the fates of us all.
Most of the slaves moved as quickly as they could to avoid the lash and the dogs, but others were either too weak or too infirm to move faster and received merciless attention from the drivers’ whips by way of encouragement. Sunrise should be a moment of hope to mark the beginning of a new day, but the sense of despair and fear that I felt at this moment (and at every other dawn while I was in this place) fair threatened to overwhelm me.
Swiftly I looked away, and tried to concentrate on filling the bucket instead of what I’d just witnessed. None of the Beauharnais slaves in Pondicherry had ever been treated with this degree of cruelty. This could have been my life, too, if Orianne had not shown me how to use her spices. Because I had done well enough preparing Monsieur’s curry each day for the rest of the voyage, I’d been told that for the present I would work in his house, not his fields.
The French called us all Negroes, but we’d each been brought here against our will from many different places. Guinea, Senegal, Ghana, Madagascar, and others besides, and we spoke different tongues as well. The very nature of the plantation under Malet’s rule (for truly it was he, and not Monsieur, who ruled here as any monarch rules his kingdom) was to encourage distrust in one another. There were far more slaves and free blacks than white French on the island, and instilling fear and intimidation was the only way to keep those who toiled and suffered from fighting back.
For me it had begun that first day. The faded silk costume that Madame had long ago provided was taken from me, and the bundle with my other few belongings vanished as well. Instead, I was given the kind of clothing worn by all women who worked in the house: a loose-fitting jacket and petticoat, an apron, and a length of cloth to tie about my head to cover my hair. Everything was of coarse linen that had been stained and worn by other slaves before me. All that was left to me from my past was my collar, the one thing I would have gladly given up. I was seldom called by name; I was instead only another “girl,” one more Negress, no different from any other.
Although I was considered a house servant, I was told that if I erred in any way I’d be whipped and sent to the fields, and that Monsieur’s protection would last only so long. We toiled from before dawn until long after dark on the nights when Monsieur had guests to dine and play cards. Each morning I was put to work in a different way, from scrubbing floors to plucking chickens to hoeing and weeding the kitchen gardens, all things I’d never before done, and feared I’d somehow do wrong. Even while I prepared Monsieur’s curries I was forced to guard myself from the small jealous rages of the cook, Perroquet, who disliked me for being able to please our master in a way he couldn’t.
I was a constant target for his temper and for the long-handled ladle that he’d often use as a weapon to strike me. He’d endless reasons for punishing me, too: for ignorance of his wishes, for taking too long at a task, for having lighter skin, for speaking French as was done in Pondicherry and not Saint-Domingue. I tried my best to dodge his blows as I had with Madame, and because I was small and nimble, most times I did.
Yet I was also determined to learn his manner of French cooking. It wasn’t easy, for here we were forbidden to taste any of the food we prepared. To take so much as a spoonful of a sauce or soup to our lips was considered stealing, and merited a whipping. Instead, all preparations were done by sight and scent and careful measuring of spices and herbs. It was a difficult way to cook, and one that went against all my instincts. Yet I recalled Orianne’s advice, how knowing more would make me of greater value, and I studiously watched and learned and did exactly as Perroquet said. Orianne’s precious masala dabba had joined me in the kitchen, but one day those spices from Pondicherry would be exhausted, and the more I knew of other kinds of cookery, the better.
As quick as I had to be in the kitchen to avoid Perroquet’s ladle, working outside the house was far more hazardous, particularly in the kitchen garden. There were lizards and snakes hiding beneath every green leaf, and spiders called tarantulas, as large as a man’s fist and covered with fur like rats.
But the greatest menace wasn’t from the wild creatures of the island. I soon understood that all the slave women were expected to oblige any of the men at any time, for the purpose of breeding more slaves and increasing the value of the estate. I witnessed the drivers coupling roughly with women as if they both were beasts, bending them over benches or against walls, or shoving them to the ground to take them there. The women who’d dare try to fight back were still raped and then whipped. We were forced to witness their punishment as well as a cautionary deterrent.
For the first months that I was at Belle Vallée, I foolishly believed myself safe because I was a house slave. That all changed one gray morning when the air was heavy and still and clouds shrouded the tops of the mountains to the north. I’d entered the kitchen with a basket of eggs, which I expected to hand to Perroquet for a custard. I smelled the milk for the custard burning over the fire, and without a thought hurried forward to take the pot away from the coals. As I did, I saw too late that the kitchen wasn’t empty. Instead, the overseer Malet was with one of the other house slaves, a young woman not much older than I named Fleur.
Fleur had been shoved onto the edge of one of the tables with her petticoat pushed around her waist. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she braced herself against the table. Malet stood between her outstretched legs with his thumbs digging deep into the fleshy part of her thighs to keep them spread wide. His breeches were unfastened and hanging from his hips as he jerked and worked between her legs. With each thrust Malet grunted loudly, while Fleur made a sad little cry of suffering, her feet flopping awkwardly behind his back.
Young as I was, I knew what Malet was doing to her, just as I knew she’d had no choice but to let him. I fled from the room and hid behind a fence until Malet came striding from the house, still buttoning the fall on his breeches. Inside, Fleur was squatting beside the fireplace and the pan of now-scorched milk, furiously stirring it as if that would be enough to make the brown, burned flecks disappear.
“Cursed milk,” she muttered without looking up at me. Her face was flushed and her eyes furious as she stared down at the pot. “Perroquet’s going to beat me good for this.”
“But if you told him—”
“Told him what?” she demanded. “Told him what?”
I faltered. “About—about—”
“There is nothing to tell,” she said bitterly. “Perroquet knows. Whether it is Malet or Monsieur or any of the others, they are all men, and they are all the same when they have the itch. We have no say. We are nothing to them, except—except this. We must let them do what they want, else it will go much worse for us. Now break six of those eggs and begin to whip them to a froth, else Perroquet shall beat you as well.”
After that I took more notice of things I’d not seen before, or perhaps had purposefully ignored. When Monsieur invited his new friends from the town to Belle Vallée, white gentlemen who were French, English, or Dutch, the parties never included any wives, sisters, or daughters. On those nights, Fleur and others were told to put aside their ordinary clothing, and given the kind of dresses that Frenchwomen wore instead. Long after the meal was done and the cloth drawn, they remained in the front part of the house with Monsieur and the other gentlemen. I was asleep by the time they returned to the kitchen, if they returned at all. The following day, Perroquet favored them, and instead gave me the brunt of their work.
I’d always thought I’d been considered too inexperienced at service to wait upon Monsieur and his guests. Instead, I’d been simply considered too young and unattractive to be included in his entertainments.
And how had I not realized that Bette, another of the house slaves, was already with child? She worked as hard as anyone even as the swell of her belly bec
ame increasingly visible beneath her apron. She never spoke, not to anyone, and I’d wondered before if she’d all her wits. Now I wondered if she knew the name of her child’s father, or if, like me with my mother, that child would be cursed to know only his or her mother’s name, and no other.
As the weeks passed and the days grew longer, the dry season gave way to rain that reminded me of monsoons. In Saint-Domingue, the rain meant that a fresh crop of sugarcane was ripe and ready for harvest. A good harvest meant a profit for Monsieur and the rest of the Beauharnais family in France, and the fortune that he’d left India to discover.
While we slaves never profited from a good crop, we suffered from a bad one. Several years before, a great storm called a hurricane had destroyed a season’s worth of cane juice, and ruined the fields besides, while slaves had drowned, starved, and been sold away.
Not that Monsieur cared for this, any more than he cared who labored to earn his fortune. His life of ease and pleasure continued much as it had through the sugar season, while Malet and his drivers forced the Beauharnais slaves to work even harder. Because I was good at listening, I learned of how the harvest was done, more than enough to be certain I never wanted any part of it. Men harvested the tall canes in the field, using a special knife with a curving, deadly blade called a machete, while the women and children bundled the cut canes in their arms and carried them to waiting carts drawn by donkeys. This needed to be done as swiftly as possible, for once the canes were cut, the day’s heat could cause the juice to ferment and sour, and the crop was lost.
From there the canes were taken to the plantation’s sugar works, and the wind-driven mills that crushed the canes and extracted the sweet juice. The mills were dangerous places, the site of terrible accidents for men and women already exhausted by overwork. Finally the juice was boiled in huge kettle-shaped coppers and refined until it became either golden-brown molasses or crystallized sugar shaped in special molds. This, too, was work for slaves, who were believed to better withstand the great heat from the fires and boiling sugar juice.
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Page 6