All Souls' Rising (10 page)

“Georges Biassou. Jeannot Bullet.” Toussaint stopped.

“Not quite a handful, even,” said Maltrot. “
C’est bien, ça
. They are sufficient?”

“They’re all strong men in their own
ateliers
,” Toussaint said, “and well known among many of the others.”

“
Bon
,” said the Sieur Maltrot, “but who’s this Dutty? I dislike the sound of an English name.”

“He was sold here from Jamaica,” Toussaint said, passing over the point that Boukman had also fought with French regiments in the American Revolutionary War.

“Ah,” said Maltrot. “I hope he is not a sorcerer, or some
mauvais sujet
. You know that little scheme of the English.”

“No, master,” said Toussaint, who also knew that the French tried to fob off whatever
hûngans
they could identify on the English. “He is not.”

Maltrot raised his eyebrows and looked up at him sharply. “I trust you don’t dabble in witchcraft yourself,” he said.

“I follow Jesus,” said Toussaint.

“Yes,” Maltrot said. “Commendable. Your master,” he nodded at Bayon de Libertat, “has told me that you know how to read.”

“I read my Bible and my Psalter,” Toussaint said.

“Naturally,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “You were coming from church, were you not, when one of our good gentlemen of Haut du Cap gave you a beating upon seeing you with a book?”

Toussaint’s hand involuntarily lifted to the bloodstains on the shoulder of his coat. He had not expected the Sieur Maltrot to have heard of this episode.

“Many times I have offered to give him another coat,” said Bayon de Libertat. “He will not have it, but insists on wearing this one year after year.”

“Oh, an eccentricity,” said Maltrot. “What do you mean by it, Toussaint?”

“A token,” Toussaint said smoothly. “A reminder of a lesson in humility I have learned.”

“
Mais comme il est raisonné!
” the Sieur Maltrot said delightedly.
How well-reasoned he is!
“Choufleur, you must give him the money at once.”

Choufleur reached into his elaborately embroidered waistcoat and drew out a leather purse closed with a drawstring. Toussaint accepted it into his palm, his nod dropping his eyes out of the other’s line of sight, though he was still looking sidelong. Choufleur wore his piebald skin like a mask, and his expression was hard to read beneath it, as if he really had two faces. All around the four men on the gallery the air was extraordinarily motionless; it felt like being submerged in warm, still water. The coins shifted in the sack with a muted ring of gold.

“A discretionary fund,” said Maltrot, smiling. “Something in case of any sudden necessity, and to keep your leaders happy, and by all means something for yourself. There will be more as needed.”

Toussaint flexed his fingers around the purse and made another hint of a bow.

“So many are convinced our slaves must be kept in ignorance,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “I myself have not fully formed an opinion. Tell me something you have read.”

Toussaint hooded his eyes, turning back verse upon verse of the psalms in his mind. Indeed there must be something in the Bible to suit any occasion or answer any inquiry. There was a line from that same psalm they would study at the cabin in three days’ time.

“My lips will be glad when they sing unto thee,” he said. “And so will my soul, whom thou hast delivered.”

“
Et comme il est sournois
,” the Sieur Maltrot said.
And how sly he is, also
. “I’m sure you’ll manage the whole affair most wonderfully.”

Chapter Six

A
RNAUD HAD BROUGHT HER
the girl as a gift, he said, a lady’s maid, a touch of luxury to color her days on the plantation more pleasantly, to heal her longing for France. She had smiled at the present, however brittly, and given the girl some name which suited this imaginary character and which she could not even remember now—Arnaud had taken to calling her Mouche, and this was the name that had stuck. Now Claudine sat before her mirror, biting her lips as she examined her bloodshot eyes, and struggled to stop herself from trembling visibly, for she had awoken shaky and nauseous. She watched Mouche, deeper in the looking-glass reflection, fumbling uselessly with the dress that she, Claudine Arnaud, meant to wear that day.

Interesting excuse for a lady’s maid, certainly, a
bossale
fresh off the boat and fresh from Africa; Claudine was to be assisted in putting on her clothes by a girl who came dressed in nothing but a gloss of palm oil and perhaps a string of cowries around her hips. To this objection her husband had replied that since the girl was unschooled, Claudine would have the opportunity to train her altogether to her own liking. That had been six or seven months ago, and in the intervening time Claudine had been able to teach Mouche to cover her own nakedness, at least some of the time, but not much more. On several occasions she had suggested that the girl was not biddable and might be better sent to the cane fields since she was young and strong. But still she hung about the house. By this time she had learned enough Creole to fetch things on demand and carry simple messages; she helped a little in the kitchen, or pulled the ropes that turned the fans.

Claudine studied her in the mirror, as the black girl fidgeted with the ribbons on the dress laid out across the just-made bed. Mouche’s underlip shoved out like a cushion, her mask of uncomprehension, and in the misty recesses of the mirror Claudine could see the whites of the girl’s eyes. Her stomach heaved, and she put her fingers across her lips and held her breath. The heat swelled into the room like fog; the white cotton shift she’d tried to sleep in was creeping with sweat where her thighs touched the chair. When the spasm passed she twisted around and snapped at the girl.

“Leave it,” she said. Mouche started, flinched at the sound of Claudine’s voice. She jerked her hand away from the ribbons as if she had touched a live coal.

“Leave it,” Claudine said. As she stood up, another wave of nausea hit her and she had to bend over, holding the back of the chair. She saw herself in this posture in the mirror, her hair hanging down in strings; she looked old, sick—she looked how she felt.

“Leave it,” she said. “I don’t feel well, just go.” She straightened up and made her way as far as the bedpost while Mouche scuttled toward the door. A bolt of pain shot through her head from one temple to the other, like a nail. “Only bring some water,” she said, as Mouche backed away. “
Et ma petite chose
.”

As Mouche scraped out, the jerks of her legs pulled her calico tight over her pregnancy. She had come in the same lot as that infanticide of whom Arnaud had lately made an example, but hers was no child of shipboard rape. She was more newly swollen…Claudine sat on the bed’s edge, swung her legs up. She lay. The pain kept a distance from her so long as she did not move her head; her stomach boiled, then subsided. She sighted down the length of her legs at her toes. It was quiet in the house except for the whisper of the slaves’ bare feet on the wooden floors and the sound of insects working, working. They would gnaw until they had carried the whole
grand’case
back to the jungle in their jaws.

Mouche carried in a tray, a carafe and two glasses; she set it down on the stool beside the bed. Claudine waved her imperiously away, and blushed with relief as soon as the girl was out of the room.
Ma petite chose
—if Arnaud had seen them bringing it to her he might well have prevented it. She raised herself on an elbow, pain ringing through her head like a shot, and drank the glass of rum in rapid birdlike sips, then poured water into the glass, thinking that perhaps her husband wouldn’t know…Her intestines clenched, snaked against themselves, abruptly as a bullwhip cracking back on its own length. She dropped back onto the bed in the spasm, her knees drawn up. After a time her belly relaxed and faintly she began to feel the glow.

The headache was not gone but she felt now that it had been wrapped in a cloud of unmilled cotton. She heard the sound of Arnaud’s boot heels mutedly crossing the gallery. She lay half in a trance, watching a long-legged spider stitching a web to close the gap between the partition wall and the ceiling above the bed’s head. Arnaud was turning about in the main room; she heard him stop at the bedroom door.

She shut her eyes as the door squealed open; in the dense humidity the wood had swelled into the floor. Without sight she could yet sense Arnaud’s eyes dispassionately stroking her from toe to head, then shifting to the carafe and the pair of glasses. Perhaps he would lift the glass she had used and smell the dregs. Instead, he left the room, dragging the door shut behind him.

A giggle—it was Mouche’s voice. Some muttering from her husband, then a higher squeal from Mouche, as if she had been pinched. Mouche was protesting, in her rudimentary Creole, and Arnaud reassuring her—
Don’t worry, she’s asleep like a dead thing
. Another titter and a sound like fabric ripping. Claudine could hear them as plainly as if they were in the room with her, though in fact they must have been two rooms away, in the cubicle used for the doctor or for whatever other infrequent guest might happen by.

Mouche giggled and tittered through the whole affair, bouncing, as Claudine could too well picture it, like a black rubber ball. Arnaud was silent, grim at the work. Of course, she was unsurprised. Often a Creole husband would defile the marriage bed itself, although of late Claudine had seldom strayed far enough from their bed for this particular insult to be probable. But certainly she had always known why the girl remained in the
grand’case
despite her near-perfect uselessness, why she had been purchased to begin with probably, and who had put the child in her belly. But to do it here and now—such carelessness could only be born of an unutterable contempt. She, Claudine, had conceived no child. Arnaud, however, had been sure to prove that this was in no way
his
fault; her husband’s face grinned back at her from every yellow brat in the yard.

A giggle and a grunt—perhaps they had only been resting, perhaps they were beginning again. Claudine bared her parched eyeballs, stared at the ceiling.
Ouais, mon homme
, she thought,
t’as ta petite chose toi aussi
. As she framed the words she almost laughed, but bile backed up in her throat instead. From the other room came a snicker, then a deep sigh, close to a moan. The sighing went on, at an even rhythm, like a saw grinding back and forth on the crying emptiness of a barrel. When finally it ceased, the noise of the insects rushed up to fill the gap like a string section in an orchestra.

Claudine dozed a little, along with the fatigued lovers, possibly. The sound of the insects still hummed at her ears, but at the same time she thought that she was dreaming, a dream of lying beside Arnaud in the next room, or in that other bed in Nantes, the great carved wooden monstrosity where he had murdered her virginity, left her stabbed and bleeding in her tenderest recess while he amused himself with the better-experienced whores of the town. But when she woke she found him standing in the doorway, looking down on her with the whetted expression he wore when some slave had particularly offended him.

It was considerably later. She knew because the color of the light had changed, a bar of sunshine had advanced in its position on the wall. Arnaud crossed his feet, propped a shoulder on the door frame.

“Will you be dressing yourself today?” he inquired. “Will you be rising at all?”

“
J’ai mal à la tête
,” Claudine murmured. She stretched out a hand and felt the dress that was crumpled partly under her.

“Indeed,” said Arnaud. “
Encore une fois…ou gueule de bois, je dirais
.”

Claudine passed over the allusion to hangover. “I can’t seem to find my maid,” she said, more acidly. She hiccuped, tasted vomit on the back of her teeth and swallowed it back. “Perhaps she’s otherwise engaged?”

Arnaud’s fruity lips pulled back against his teeth, his thinnest smile. “I’ll call her for you,” he said. “On my way out.”

Claudine swung her legs to the floor. She gathered her hair behind and twisted it, tightening the skin across her face.

“I shall be gone for quite some time,” Arnaud said. “That little errand for the Sieur Maltrot,
tu comprends
. The journey must be overland, it will take several weeks. I’ll take Orion with me but no others. No doubt you’ll manage well enough. I’ve left instructions with Isidor.”

“No doubt,” Claudine said. She reached her hand as far as the bedpost; the movement seemed steady enough. “I wish you a safe journey,” she said stiffly, peering up at him from her bloodshot eyes.

“
Eh bien, mon bijou
,” Arnaud said. “
À la rencontre
.” He smacked his palm against the tight fabric of his riding breeches, and spun out of the door frame and away.

Claudine stood up, she drank a glass of water, cleansing her throat. She did not feel so ill as she had earlier, though her head still dully hurt. She called out for Mouche and while she waited she rinsed the rheum from her eyes with a splash of water from the carafe, and changed into a fresh chemise.

The dress was still wearable despite having been slept on. She shook it out and had got partway into it by the time Mouche arrived to help her, with her multiple thumbs, to achieve the complex fastenings. Claudine sat at the mirror then, allowing Mouche to brush out her hair, though the girl was so afraid of pulling that her strokes were uselessly weak. Claudine could smell it on her skin, the sickening melony musk. Her hardened belly pressed into the chair back.

“Oh, give it up,” Claudine snapped, and grabbed the gilt-backed brush from Mouche’s hand. “I’ll take coffee on the gallery. In ten minutes.”

When Mouche had gone, Claudine arranged her own hair as best she could, not troubling much about the back. Done, she got up and wandered about the room. The idea of Arnaud’s lengthy absence rather cheered her. She opened a drawer at random and poked through a jumble of his things: tarnished brass buttons cut from a worn-out coat, a locket with some unknown infant’s portrait, a barber’s razor. She picked the razor up and touched the flat of it to the inside of her wrist. For some reason she’d expected cold, but of course the metal was as warm and sticky as the suffocating air inside the room.

Her dress had a puffed sleeve that just covered her shoulder, leaving the whole white length of her arm bare. Standing before the mirror, she touched the blunt corner of the razor to the skin just below the ribbon’s gather, and drew it swiftly all the way down to her wrist. The stroke made a faintly pink crease on her blue-marbled skin, which quickly faded to its normal pallor. She turned the razor over and set the sharp edge against the same soft spot below the sleeve, only to see how the least touch of it would feel, but she must have twitched, for without meaning to she nicked herself. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath. An infinitesimal star of blood bloomed on her inner arm, no bigger than an asterisk.

The merest scratch. She wet her finger and dabbed the place clean. For a moment she studied her arm, the network of veins below the skin that gave it its milky bluish cast. The arm seemed more fully hers than it had before. It thrilled her. The razor had a little leather case; she sheathed it and tucked it into her bosom, out of sight. In the main room, Isidor was shuffling round the furniture with a feather duster, wearing as always that cast-off coat from which the buttons had been cut, his version of a butler’s uniform. He came to attention the instant he saw her, but she passed through without noticing him, and went onto the gallery.

Presently Mouche appeared with coffee on a tray. Claudine heard Isidor whispering to her as she passed through the inner room. Perhaps he would have taken the tray, but Mouche seemed bent on performing the service herself. Claudine took her cup, stirred in her sugar. At the first sip her brows broke out in perspiration. She turned to order Mouche to work the fan, but the girl was standing too near at her elbow, or else it was through her natural inborn clumsiness that she overset the tray.

The china pot burst in a thousand shards, sending out a circular wave of coffee. In slow trickling stains, it browned a crescent of spilled sugar. Dangling the tray from one thick-fingered hand, Mouche gaped at the wreckage, at the numerous black ants that had flipped up through the floorboards and were training on the sugar spill. Claudine turned blue with fury. Her chest pulsed, the razor shifted uncomfortably between her breasts. She leaped up and seized Mouche by the ear and wrenched it, and so dragged the girl off the gallery and around the back of the house toward the barns, screaming all the while for Isidor to come quickly and to bring some cord.

Claudine held the black girl’s head twisted low, at her own waist, while she dragged her stumbling through the dust of the compound. Of course Mouche was much stronger than she, but they had played this scene together often enough before that the black girl knew her only choice was submission. At a rear window of the house popped up the sallow face of Marotte, the mulattress housekeeper. Claudine yelled again for Isidor to hurry with the cord as she hustled Mouche into the shed where Arnaud had kept his mastiff penned.

Isidor crept into the stall with a bundle of coarse twine. His flat face was prickling with an anxious sweat; Claudine could smell it. At her breathy instruction he tied Mouche’s wrists together and secured them to an iron eyelet on the wall above her head. “Tighter,” Claudine insisted. “Tighten it—” Isidor’s face pinched shut, but he pulled on the knots until Mouche’s hands began to swell.