Chapter 1
Thirty-Three Years Earlier
Saint-Domingue, French West Indies
There are physical needs that make themselves felt more urgently in hot countries. The need to love there degenerates into a furor, and it is fortunate that in a colony like Saint-Domingue black women are found to satisfy a passion that without them could cause great devastation.
Marguerite watched in her mirror as her maid vomited into her chamber pot.
She clenched the muslin on her dressing table till her fingernails scored her palms, as though anything could dull the pang in her empty womb.
Marguerite wanted one more child, just one—there must be a way to convince Matthieu before it was too late.
She’d do better this time, nurse it herself…
Instead, God gave a child to this little mulatresse, who surely did not even want it. As soon as her baby was born, she would probably stick a needle into its brain, so its soul could fly back to Africa.
There could be no doubt now: the girl was pregnant.
This was not the first morning she’d run for the chamber pot.
Marguerite had felt a difference when the girl brushed against her to retrieve her wig or a hatpin.
For too long, Marguerite had told herself the girl was simply developing—she was what, fourteen?
“Well?” Marguerite inquired. “Who is the father?”
The mulatresse wiped her face with her apron, still looking green in spite of her dark skin. Not as dark as the pure Africans—a sort of chestnut. “I do not know, Madame.”
“What do you mean, you do not—” When the truth hit her, Marguerite almost laughed. “You mean there is more than one possibility?”
“Yes, Madame.”
The expression was true: “The mulatto’s only master is pleasure.”
The girl wobbled to her feet, bringing the chamber pot with her. She carried the noxious basin to the other end of the belvedere.
Marguerite turned her attention to her powder box and plucked off its silver lid. “I want their names,” she called, twirling the swan’s-down puff in the powder. “You do know their names?”
“Of course, Madame.” Her words grew louder as she returned. “Their names are Gabriel and Narcisse.”
Marguerite dropped the puff. Powder bloomed like a burst mushroom. She whirled around on the stool, as fast as she could fully dressed, and gaped at the girl; but such impertinence stole her voice as surely as a voodoo curse. The idea that Marguerite’s sons would fancy this little brown bitch…
The girl smirked.
Marguerite struck her hard enough to leave her palm on fire, as if she’d been stung by one of Matthieu’s bees.
Marguerite flung open the window and shouted his name.
If the girl did not respect her mistress, she would respect her master.
But everyone else had risen hours ago; the hot flashes had robbed Marguerite of sleep.
Over the shingled roof of the gallery, past the plumeria trees, Marguerite saw blue parasols, and below them, male legs. “Matthieu!”
No one answered.
Marguerite didn’t have the strength to drag the girl with her bodily, so she hurried alone through the children’s bedchambers to the other end of the belvedere—and nearly tripped over the chamber pot.
The clinging billows of her peignoir slowed her pace down the stairs, so she tore it off.
The motion pooled perspiration at the small of her back, reminding her to snatch a straw hat from the rack.
She reached the back gallery—empty, though she heard voices through the jalousies.
Without pausing to peer between the slats, she hurried down the steps into the cloying fragrance of the plumeria.
Gabriel and Narcisse stood with their backs to her in the scant shade of the parasols held aloft by their valets.
From this distance, her sons looked like half-grown cherubs, their golden curls tapering into queues.
Under her breath, Marguerite cursed the little whore, for making her come out here like this, for interrupting her toilette.
Her face was utterly naked, and in her slippers she felt as if she were wading through the thick grass.
She tied the hat’s ribbon awkwardly. The girl’s accusation was so ridiculous, Marguerite refused to sully her sons by addressing it; but she damn well intended to tell Matthieu and ensure a just punishment.
Another slave approached her sons and their valets, a woman past her prime with skin as black as pitch.
The negress carried a basketful of lemons in her only hand.
Her right sleeve was pinned and empty. The boys seemed to be waiting for her: as she neared, Gabriel called an order in Creole and pointed west.
Narcisse’s valet noticed Marguerite and shifted his parasol. Narcisse glared at the man, saw her, and laughed. “You’re redder than cochineal, Maman.”
She would address his manners later. “Where is your father?”
Gabriel glanced toward the citrus hedge. “I think he took étienne to the apiary.”
How many times had Marguerite told Matthieu she did not want their sons anywhere near his bees!
Especially an eleven-year-old! She picked up her skirts, consigned her slippers to ruin, and plowed toward the hives.
What need did they have for honey, amidst a hundred acres of sugarcane?
Why couldn’t Matthieu keep birds like their neighbor?
Marguerite would not lie awake at night fearing parakeets might turn on their master.
Ahead, she heard Matthieu whistling. He thought it calmed his little monsters.
He’d read that continence calmed them too, as if the bees could smell her on him.
He’d slept on the gallery for months now.
He preferred insects to her. Was she one of his experiments?
Was he testing how long it would take before he drove her mad?
Behind her, Narcisse yelled: “Farther!”
She knew perfectly well where the apiary was! Marguerite did not stop but glowered over her shoulder.
She realized her son was shouting at the one-armed negress. With her basket of lemons, the slave trudged closer to the cane nearly three times her height. “She must think we are terrible shots,” Narcisse complained to Gabriel, who peered into a wooden case another slave had brought them.
Marguerite gritted her teeth and kept striding toward Matthieu’s whistle. Fifteen was too young to be playing with pistols. Seventeen, too—but she had lost that debate months ago. At least her sons had found a use for the cripple.
That negress must be the latest mill worker to fall asleep feeding cane into the machine.
The cast iron grinders had crushed most of her arm along with the stalks, ruining the entire batch of juice.
Dr. Arthaud had been their guest that night.
Matthieu had urged his friend to return to his bed and not to bother with the woman—they’d just buy another—but Arthaud had revelled in the opportunity.
Marguerite halted well away from the citrus hedge, where dark bees assaulted white blossoms to Matthieu’s whistled tune.
No matter how he went on about queens and workers or the pastry scent of the hives, she would not venture any closer to that dangerous mass of life.
Did he think fire wouldn’t burn? “Matthieu Lazare!”
The whistling stopped at once. For a moment, only that unearthly buzzing filled her ears. Then étienne giggled. Matthieu called from the other side of the foliage: “Coming, my queen!”
Apian humor. It made a mockery of her. If Marguerite were truly in charge of this household…
The report of a pistol made her start, twice when it echoed against the mountains.
A whoop of pride drew her attention back to her eldest sons.
White smoke hung over Gabriel, who held his gun aloft and beamed in victory.
At a distance, the crippled negress stood with her eyes squeezed shut and her face turned away from her single extended palm.
It was empty, the remains of a lemon presumably propelled somewhere behind her into the tall green sea of cane, where anything might hide.
They should all be in Le Cap right now. No fountain, convent, or theatre could make it Paris, but the city was more tolerable than this plantation, surrounded by wild animals and negroes.
In Le Cap, Marguerite could take the children to the wax museum (how the proprietors kept the figures from melting, she’d never know) and pretend that she was back at court in the most civilized country in the world.
Finally, the beekeepers emerged from the citrus hedge, the first looking like an executioner and the second like a mourner: Matthieu in his masked hood and étienne with his straw hat draped in black crape.
Neither of them wore gloves. Marguerite rushed toward her son, who tucked his swollen thumb behind his back.
“I am all right, Maman!” étienne kept on his path toward the house. “Papa got out the stinger. It was a warning; that’s all. They don’t attack unless you’ve done something wrong.”
Marguerite cradled the boy’s hand as they walked; and she remembered what waited for them back in that house. She narrowed her eyes at Matthieu. “I told you that girl would be trouble!”
“Pardon?” He doffed his hood to reveal a shaved head gleaming with sweat.
“That little”—Marguerite thought of étienne and restrained herself—“mulatresse has gotten herself with child, and she had the audacity to accuse our sons!”
Ahead of them, another gunshot cracked. Marguerite’s attention jumped from the negress, who stood quivering with an undamaged lemon on her head, to Narcisse in his cloud of smoke. Pistol arm limp, her son scowled at the ground and muttered, “Merde.”
Marguerite stamped her foot. “You know how I feel about cursing, Narcisse!”
Looking remarkably contrite for once, he mumbled, “I couldn’t help it, Maman.”
Before Marguerite could argue, Matthieu cleared his throat as though he were about to speak; but in the end, he only stood there with the bee hood under his arm.