'Never been to Paris?' Angelique de Morain stared at her. 'My God.'
‘I have no doubt that Louis and I will be visiting Europe before very long,' Georgiana remarked. 'And of course then we shall go to Court.'
‘If it is still there,' said Angelique de Morain, in sepulchral tones. 'Well, I must be on my way.'
'Oh, you must at least explain your remark, madame. Tell me about this necklace.'
'It is obviously nothing you would understand, my dear child,' Angelique said. 'His Majesty, God bless him, was constrained to marry an Austrian woman, a most tactless and thoughtless princess, if I do speak treason. Her extravagance is incalculable, her ability to become involved in scandal limitless. And now, it seems, she has managed to become associated with certain known criminals, in the stealing of a diamond necklace she would wish to possess. Be sure it will but make the task of governing France that much more difficult. Ah, well, we must put our faith in Monsieur de Calonne. I was at school with his daughter, you know. A charming family. And a most competent man. I will bid you good-day, dear Georgiana. I look forward to seeing you at Morains.'
Gislane hurried forward to hold the door for her, but she only checked for a moment, to glance at the mustee. 'Have her whipped,' she said, half over her shoulder. 'Believe me, Louis will love you the more for a touch of spirit.'
The door closed behind her, but Gislane remained standing beside them.
'Pompous bitch,' Georgiana remarked.
'You matched her, madame. In spirit.'
'Yes, I did,' Georgiana agreed. 'Will my husband have returned yet?'
'No, madame. The clock has not yet struck the hour.'
Georgiana nodded, and seated herself at her escritoire. 'Did you enjoy last night, Gislane?'
'I am here to give pleasure, madame. Not receive it.'
'What nonsense. I have decided to be your friend. I think Louis is probably right, and your repeated avowal of hate is no more than a plan to preserve your identity. You see, I am quite as capable as he of thinking deeply. I think you well know that even had I not sent you back to the West Indies, and instead you had married some humdrum Englishman, or even Matt, indeed, you could never have enjoyed such luxury as you do now. He would certainly have lost his inheritance.'
Gislane remained standing by the door.
'So from this moment,' Georgiana said happily, 'you will indeed be my constant companion. My constant support. My constant love. Does that please you?'
'Of course, madame,' Gislane said.
'Because you never wish to forget, my sweet, that if Louis will presently not punish you, because, as you say, that would be to destroy you, there will certainly come a time when he will no longer care whether he destroys you or not. Have you thought of that?'
'Yes, madame.'
'And who will protect you then, but I, Gislane? All I ask in return is that you transfer your every allegiance, from Louis to me.' Georgiana began to write.
'Of course, madame.' Gislane left the door, stood by the desk.
'Good.' Georgiana finished her letter. 'Are you ever allowed to leave the plantation?' 'Of course, madame.'
Georgiana nodded. 'Then you will deliver this to the captain of a ship trading with Jamaica. Pay him well, and ask him to deliver it in Kingston. It is to my sister. You do not know her.'
Gislane took the letter. The master would prefer to know what you are writing to your family, madame.'
'Which is why I am giving the letter to you. Because be sure that if you betray me, he will tell me, and I will have you punished. I think that Madame de Morain is probably quite right, and were I to assert myself in Louis's absence, and have you whipped, he would be less angry with me for marking your skin than proud of me for my spirit. I wonder, indeed, if he does not merely seek to awaken more spirit in me. You would do well to remember that.'
Gislane gazed at her.
'Besides, I am inquiring after Matt's health. He was wounded, you know, in a duel, on my wedding day.'
Gislane's expression did not change.
'Badly wounded, I imagine,' Georgiana said. ‘I really must discover if he has recovered. So you will not betray me, Gislane. Will you?'
Gislane took the letter.
At midnight there was no sound but the whisper of the wind and the unceasing rumble of the surf. Even the mosquitoes were muted, and humanity slept. Where it could. And where it had no more urgent requirement.
There was no drum. There was never any drum, on Rio Blanco, at least never any drum audible from the house. The plantation was too enormous, the sea-breeze too unchanging. And soon there would be rain, as the clouds were swept out of the Atlantic; the night was already damp.
Gislane hurried along by the river, lost beneath the swaying shade trees. Behind her the
chateau
had faded into darkness, denoted by nothing more than the ever guttering lanterns on the verandahs. This night she had not been required. Almost she found it difficult to remember when last she had not been required, at once as a weapon between them and as a plaything for them both. But now at last Georgiana was pregnant, and Louis had taken himself to Cap Francois, in search of other pleasures. And she had been able to call for the drum.
She could hear it now, as she reached the limits of the canefields themselves. But now it was time to be herself, for a night. She knew where she was, exactly, standing by the last of the trees. She stopped, and waited for her breathing to settle. She had walked through the trees with her skirt held high to avoid the snagging branches. Now she lifted the gown over her head, carefully folded it, and placed it on the ground. She wore no shift, and for some moments stood there in the darkness and the gathering damp, naked, arms spread wide, mouth open and nostrils dilating as she breathed, hair tickling her back in the breeze, feeling the moisture gathering on her skin, raising nipple and pore, accumulating desire in her mind.
After some minutes she knelt by the tree and located the box, hidden beneath the great roots. No doubt many people knew it was there, but no one would tamper with the wardrobe of a
mamaloi,
and especially such a
mamaloi.
She opened the box, took out the blood-red robe, the blood-red turban for her head. The clothes smelt of damp and of earth, and of blood, too. It was an odour winch, inhaled in the refinement of her drawing-room in the
chateau,
would have made her retch. But it was an odour which belonged here in the darkness and the damp, which seemed to seep down her nostrils and into the very pit of her lungs, which alerted her every sense.
And now the drum was approaching, but a single beat, this, an almost military cadence, thrilling across the night. Gislane settled the robe on her shoulders, gathered her hair in a series of thick black coils on top of her head, concealed it with the turban. In the box she placed her gown, and then restored the box itself beneath the tree. Then she stepped away from the shade, and took her place in the centre of the path.
For the drum was close, and with it the people. They came up to her, and they bowed, and then reared upright again, and clapped their hands, once, twice as they passed her, and then went on their way, behind the drummer. All save one, who walked erect in their midst, lungs swelling as he breathed, height enhanced by the posturing about him, head turning neither to left nor right, drawn onwards by the throb of the drum, by the embracing power of the drug he had been fed.
There were no other animals, this night.
But now the column was all but past her, saving only those who walked behind. Here were two men, much of a size, tall and strong, so similar in build and in demeanour they might have been brothers. Gislane frowned at them, and stepped between them, joining in the chant as she did so, arching her back to bring her body forward, then rearing back and throwing her arms high into the air above her, joining their movements exactly.
'Do they come?' she whispered, even as she chanted.
'They say the time is not yet,' Boukman replied.
'Then who is this one?'
'His name is Henry. He comes from Toussaint. He bids us be patient.'
'Henri?' Gislane said.
'Henry,' said the tall young man. 'The name was given to me by my first master, in St. Kitts.'
Gislane looked at him more closely. Here was power, only thinly disguised beneath his so obvious youth; she doubted he was any older than she. And he was also English?
'Our people will not wait,' she said. 'You have heard?'
'Of your master's sport,' Henry said. 'We have heard. But the time is not yet. The prophecy has not yet been fulfilled.'
'Prophecy?' she asked.
'It was given on this very plantation,' Henry said.
'By Celeste,' Gislane said. 'But Celeste is dead. How may a
mamaloi
truly die? Where is the value of this prophecy?'
'Yet will our friends wait upon it,' Henry insisted.
'And our people?' Gislane demanded. They will not wait forever, while they are slaughtered to suit the whim of a madman. Nor will they listen to an Englishman.'
'Then call me Christophe,' Henry said. 'It is the name given to me by my new master. Yet must it be your responsibility to have them wait. If they do not, they will have us all slaughtered, and by the soldiers.'
The drummer had reached the appointed place, a clearing in the canefield, and here he halted, without ceasing his rhythmical beat. The devotees, every man and every woman a person of note in the Negro community, walked round the clearing, to form a wall of humanity, much as the Negroes in Nevis had formed a wall around the clearing on the first occasion she had attended a voodoo ceremony, and thought that she had discovered the secret of all secrets, without understanding that the slaves of Nevis, in their poverty of mind no less than imagination, had no more than aped a memory. But that was an eternity ago, and now she must persuade these people that they obeyed the dictates of their god, by patiently waiting for the day of blood. She knew how she would do this, as she had arranged this evening, the moment she had learned of Corbeau's determination to visit Cap Francois. She knew, but she was not sure she believed.
And the moment was at hand. The drugged Negro had taken his place in the centre of the clearing, sitting cross-legged immediately in the centre of a shaft of moonlight, shoulders square and head erect, body a gleaming testimony to the magnificence that can be man. On either side of him waited a young woman, each holding a palm leaf, bodies rigid with tense expectation. And the drum-beat had altered, perhaps insensibly, reaching ever deeper into the senses, summoning all the powers of belief it possessed.
So then, did she believe? Would she be able to fulfil her sacred mission, as taught her by Boukman?
She walked away from the men, and into the centre of the circle, stood next to the young man. Her head spun with the rhythm of the drum; she knew the frenzied tearing at her self-control which was coming ever closer to the surface. And the drum was getting louder.
She threw her arms to heaven, and shouted. 'Hear me, O mighty one. Hear me, O Serpent, Damballah Oueddo. Hear my prayer, and promise me deliverance for my people.' She paused, and breathed, and listened to the moaning chant which arose from around her. She filled her lungs with air. 'How long, great Agone, Master of all the Oceans of the World, must we wait? Hear me, O mighty lord. Speak to me, great Loco, Lord of the Trees. Grant me and my people thy sign of deliverance. Come to me, Gentle Ezilee, sweet
maitresse,
and take from my mind, from my body, the very last weakness.' Once again she paused, and now the chant had grown louder. And now sweat ran down her arms and body and legs as if it were raining. And once again her lungs were full. 'Come to me, O mighty Ogone Badagris. Come to my people, O Dreadful One. Lead us to war, as is thy purpose. Grant us an end to all white people. Grant us the mood of hate and cruelty, that their destruction may be known throughout the world, and forever. Grant us revenge, O Dreadful One, for the wrongs that are daily committed upon us. Grant us now a sign, my lords, that our prayers are heeded.'
She gasped, and fell to her knees, exhausted. She felt rather than saw Boukman leave the circle of devotees, knew rather than observed the machete he carried, blade honed to a razor-sharp perfection. She wanted to get up again. She wanted to scream, no, no, no, I did not mean a word of it, I do not understand what power I set in motion here, I do not know ... and now I am afraid, O Mighty Serpent. But she moved nothing, save her head, which slowly came upright, to watch Boukman before the young man, neither man even blinking his eyes, as the
hougan
threw back his head and screamed to his gods in an unknown tongue, and then whirled the cutlass around his own head, and with a single unbelievable sweep of the razor-sharp sword swept through the neck of the victim.
The head fell forward, and the machete had been dropped. Boukman caught the head, his great hands immediately smeared with blood, while the two girls hastily fanned the still upright, blood-spouting neck with vigorous anxiety; should but a speck of dirt, a single insect, settle on the tortured flesh, the sacrifice would be a failure.
She forced herself to watch. Because I am not seeing, she told herself. I am dreaming, as I surely dreamed that first night on Hodges, as I have surely dreamed ever since. But the blood spurting from the severed arteries held her spellbound.
And now Boukman was advancing again, having held the dripping head high to present it to the worshippers. Slowly he advanced, and slowly he replaced the head, carefully, exactly, while in that moment another young woman threw a large piece of red cloth over the dead man.
The dead man? Within seconds his feet began to move, and then his arms, and the throbbing of the drum had resumed command over all their senses. The young man's mask was taken away, and he was unchanged, but shuffling and posturing immediately in front of her, calling her to her feet, calling her to discard her gown, calling her to take his sex as he would take hers. And the drum was reaching a crescendo, even as she was impaled. By a dead man? She clung to his shoulders, nails tight in his flesh, as he whirled her round and round, her feet also lost from the ground, and thrust himself against her, time and again. But she scarce felt him, now, so persistent, so irresistible, was the beat of the drum. And of course it was no more than an illusion, a gigantic trick, perpetrated by the rhythm of the drum, by the mood of the worshippers. A trick in which she had been a willing assistant, their
mamaloi.
For certainly it could not be real. This thought swung through her mind time and again, as the dancing grew more frenzied, as she lost her young man and found herself with others, and in time as the drummers themselves grew exhausted and she lay beneath the trees, cradled in Boukman's arms, weeping like a babe from overstretched desire and overstretched fear. A trick, an illusion, necessary to bring these people to the pitch where they would kill, and die, and suffer, for their freedom.