“I don’t want to hear any more.” She was in a rage again.
“What would you have me do?” I asked.
She thought, but not apparently on my question, and then she said: “I will never suffer what my mother suffered, or her mother before her.”
“I pray not. I have come across the sea to … ”
“No, but your warnings and your presence have nothing to do with it. I will not suffer those things. There was something sad in my mother, sad and broken inside, which had never healed from girlhood.”
“I understand.”
“I have no such wound. I was a woman here before these horrors befell her. I have seen other horrors and you will see them tonight when you look upon my husband. There isn’t a physician in all the world who can cure him. And no cunning woman either. And I have but one healthy son by him, and that is not enough.”
I sighed.
“But come, we’ll talk more,” she said.
“Yes, please, we must.”
“They are waiting for us now.” She stood up, and I with her. “Say nothing about my mother in front of the others. Say nothing. You have come to see me … ”
“Because I am a merchant and would set up in Port-au-Prince, and want your advice on it.”
She gave a weary nod to that. “The less you say,” she said, “the better.” She turned away and started towards the steps.
“Charlotte, please don’t close your heart to me,” I said to her, and tried to take her hand.
She stiffened against me, and then assuming a false smile, very sweet and very calm, she led me up the short steps to the main floor of the house.
I was miserable as you can imagine. What was I to make of her strange words? And she herself baffled me for she seemed at one moment child and at another old woman. I could not say that she had even considered my warnings, or rather the very warnings that Deborah had implored me to give. Had I added too much of my own advice to it?
“Madame Fontenay,” I said as we reached the top of the short stairs and the door to the main floor. “We must talk some more. I have your promise?”
“When my husband is put to bed,” she said, “we will be alone.” She allowed her gaze to linger on me as she pronounced this last phrase, and I fear a blush rose to my face as I looked at her, and I saw the high color in her rounded cheeks also, and then the little stretch of her lower lip and her playful smile.
We entered a central hallway, very spacious, though nothing on the order of a French chateau, mind you, but with much fancy plasterwork, and a fine chandelier all ablaze with pure wax candles, and a door open at the far end to the rear porch, beyond which I could just make out the edge of a cliff where the lanterns hung from the tree branches as they did from those in the front garden, and very slowly I realized that the roar I heard was not wind but the gentle sound of the sea.
The supper room, which we entered to our right, gave an even greater view of the cliffs and the black water beyond them which I saw as I followed Charlotte, for this room was the entire width of the house. A bit of light still played upon the water or I would not have been able to make it out. The roar filled this room most delightfully and the breeze was moist and warm.
As for the room itself it was splendid, every European accoutrement having been brought to bear upon the colonial simplicity. The table was draped in the finest linen, and laid with the heaviest and most elegantly carved plate.
Not anywhere in Europe have I seen finer silver; the candelabra were heavy and well embossed with designs. Each place had its lace-trimmed napkin, and the chairs themselves were well upholstered with the finest velvet, replete with fringes, and above the table, a great square wooden fan hung from a hinge, moved back and forth by means of a rope, threaded through hooks across the ceiling and down the wall, at the end of which, in the far corner, sat a small African child.
What with the fan and all the many doors open to the porch, the room had a coolness and a sweet fragrance to it, and was most inviting, though the candle flames did fight for their lives. No sooner had I been seated at the chair to the left of the head of the table, than numerous slaves entered, all finely dressed in European silks and lace, and began to set the table with platters. And at the same time, the young husband of whom I had heard so much appeared.
He was upright, and did slide his feet along the floor, but his entire weight was supported by the large, heavily muscled black man who had an arm about his waist. As for his arms, they seemed as weak as his legs, with the wrists bent, and the fingers hanging limp. Yet he was a handsome young man.
Before the advance of this illness, he must have cut a likely figure at Versailles where he won his bride. And in well-fitted princely clothes, and with his fingers covered with jeweled rings, and with his head adorned with an enormous and beautiful Parisian wig, he did look very fine indeed. His eyes were of a piercing gray, and his mouth very broad and narrow, and his chin very strong.
Once settled in the chair, he struggled as it were to move himself backwards for more comfort, and when he failed to accomplish his aim, the powerful slave moved him and then placed the chair as the master wanted it, and then took his place at the master’s back.
Charlotte had now taken her place not at the end of the table, but at her husband’s right, just opposite my place, so that she might feed and assist her husband. And two other persons came, the brothers, I was soon to discover, Pierre and Andre, both of them besotted and full of dull slurred drunken humor, and four ladies, fancily dressed, two young and two old, cousins, it seemed, and permanent residents of this house, the old ones being silent except for occasional confused questions as they were both hard of hearing and a little decrepit, the young ones past their prime but lively of mind and well-bred.
Just before we were served, a doctor appeared, having just ridden over from a neighboring plantation-a rather old and befuddled fellow dressed in somber black as was I, and he was at once invited to join the company and sat down and began to drink the wine in great gulps.
That composed the company, each of us with a slave behind his chair, to reach forward and to serve our plates from the platters before us, and to fill our wineglasses if we drank so much as a sip.
The young husband spoke most pleasantly to me, and it was at once perfectly clear that his mind was wholly unaffected by his illness, and that he still had an appetite for good food, which was fed to him both by Charlotte and by Reginald, Charlotte taking the spoon in hand, and Reginald breaking the bread. Indeed the man had a desire for living, that was plain enough. He remarked that the wine was excellent and that he approved of it, and talking in a polite way with all the company, consumed two bowls of soup.
The food was highly spiced and very delicious, the soup being a seafood stew filled with much pepper, and the meats being garnished with fried yams and fried bananas and much rice and beans and other delicious things.
All the while everyone conversed with vigor except for the old women, who seemed nevertheless to be amused and content.
Charlotte spoke of the weather and the business of the plantation, and how her husband must ride out with her to see the crops tomorrow, and how the young slave girl bought last winter was now coming along well with her sewing, and so forth and so on. This chatter was in French for the most part, and the young husband was spirited in his response, breaking off to ask me many polite questions as to the conditions of my voyage, and my liking of Port-au-Prince, and how long I would be staying with them, and other polite remarks as to the friendliness of the country, and how they had prospered at Maye Faire and meant to buy the adjacent plantation as soon as the owner, a drunken gambler, could be persuaded to sell.
The drunken brothers were the only ones prone to argument and several times made sneering remarks, for it seemed to the youngest, Pierre, who had none of the good looks of his ailing brother, that they had enough land and did not need the neighboring plantation, and Charlotte knew more about the business of the planter’s life than a woman should.
This was met with cheers by the loud and nasty Andre, who spilt his food all down his lace shirtfront, and ate with his mouth stuffed, and put a greasy stain from his mouth upon his glass when he drank. He was for selling all this land when their father died and going back to France.
“Do not speak of his death,” declared the eldest, the crippled Antoine. To which the others sneered.
