On and on, deeper and deeper. The sound of the drums grew. I shivered, despite the warm humid air clamped like a blanket.
Abruptly, my guide stopped. “Here.” He handed me the horn lantern. “Go on yourself now.”
“What? Wait!” I glanced to where he gestured. Darkness. Was this a trap?
I turned to ask Antoine to stay. He’d disappeared.
Frogs played their noisy chorus. Insects whined in my ears. Overlain on this music was the rumbling of drums. The solitude was daunting.
Except I wasn’t alone. There was a figure ahead in the mist, I now realized, waiting for me.
I raised the lantern. This new companion looked slight, poised more than planted, meaning more likely a woman than a man. Cecile? Her figure seemed too young, so maybe just a guide. I stepped off toward this new apparition.
She waited until I came near and then without a word led me deeper into the swamp, elusive before I could make out her features. The water we threaded past was opaque, still as a well. Roots climbed out of mud like frozen snakes. The dank smell was as heavy as the blood of birth.
Yes, it was a woman, her grace over uneven ground uncanny and her speed outstripping mine. Her hood topped a loose shift of pale cotton, and while it initially made her shapeless I now saw the swing of shoulder and hip. There was something about the flow of her, natural like mist, water, clouds, the curl of a wave, that convinced me she must not just be beautiful, but beautiful in some ethereal, unworldly, impossibly perfect way. I hurried to catch up to confirm this magic, and yet she seemed to float effortlessly ahead of me, receding like a rainbow. I knew that if she left me, I’d be utterly lost.
She pulled me like filings to a magnet.
Now I was sure I was hearing the pounding of drums from deep within the swamp. I was going, I guessed, to some kind of religious or political ceremony, similar perhaps to the one in Boukman Wood that had initiated this revolution. Lightly this woodland sprite led me toward the noise, slowing if I needed to catch up, floating out of reach if I came too near. I was sweating with excitement and apprehension. Who was she?
What you seek, suddenly echoed in my brain.
We came to a clearing, a small barren island of damp ground in a swampy wilderness. In the middle was a small hut of thatch and sticks from which a single candle glowed. My guide stopped at the far edge of this isle. She pointed at the dim hut. Clearly I was to enter. Would she follow? But no, she dissolved into shadow, and I felt intense disappointment. I was left to enter on my own.
Hesitantly I stepped forward, set aside my lantern, and stooped, poking my head into the hut as nervously as if putting it under the guillotine blade.
The structure was as primitive as my mental picture of Africa, its dome a weave of fronds and rushes. The floor was dirt. The candle burned on a small altar just one foot high, covered with a red-checkered cloth so I couldn’t see whether it was made of wood or rock. A goblet in the middle of this tabernacle held what appeared to be clear water, and four smooth river stones held down the cloth at the corners. On one side of the goblet was a human skull, and on the other a scattering of flowers. There was also a little heap of seashells.
Well, it was exotic, but there was actually nothing more ominous about this collection than the display in a Masonic Lodge. Certainly I didn’t feel the kind of religious menace I’d experienced with the Egyptian Rite.
“The symbol for Ezili Danto is the red-checkered heart.”
I looked into the hut’s shadows. Against the opposite wall floated the illuminated face of an aged crone, her skin leather-colored in the candlelight. Her age was not evident in the creasing of her face-in fact, her countenance seemed remarkably smooth, if mottled-but her long years were betrayed in the wispiness of her gray hair and eyes sunk like stones in dough, their depths holding wisdom that comes only from time and hard experience. Her parted lips showed the tip of her tongue, as if testing the air for scent like a serpent. This, I guessed, was Cecile Fatiman, the famed mambo of revolution.
“I’m something of a student of religious symbolism. My wife more so. And the flowers?”
“Ezili’s. She is flower herself.”
“The water?”
“Purity of life. The stones anchor the four directions.” Cecile’s voice signified approval; she liked my curiosity.
“And the shells?”
“Cast to divine the future. To see your coming, Ethan Gage.”
I crouched in the entrance, not certain what I was supposed to do.
“You didn’t bring your sorceress wife with you,” she continued in her husky French. It was half reprimand and half question. “The shells talked of her as well.”
“She was taken from me by an evil Frenchman.”
“And now you come to us, the white who needs the blacks.”
“Yes. I’m seeking information to win back my son as well. The same information can help you.”
“You mean my people.”
“The revolutionaries of Haiti. You are Cecile, yes?”
“But of course. Sit.” She gestured to a spot near the entry. The hut was no bigger than a small tent. I crowded in and crossed my legs. Sitting, my head almost brushed the rush dome. The candle was red as blood, the wax melting down the edges of the altar like rivulets of lava.
“Can you help me?” I asked.
“Perhaps the loa can help you. You know what loa are?”
“Gods, or spirits.”
“They speak to believers.”
“Then I will try to believe. I’m not as good at it as my wife.”
“The loa speak through the power that animates all true religions. Do you know what that power is, seeker?”
“Faith?”
“Love.”
The hardest thing to earn, and give. I was silent.
“Only love has the power to ward off evil. Without it, we are damned. Now. Drink this.” She handed me a wooden bowl filled with cool liquid that smelled rancid. “It will help you listen and see.”
“What is it?”
“Wisdom, white man. Drink.”
I sipped, confirming its bitterness. I hesitated.
“Do you think wisdom should be sweet?” she asked.
What you seek. I shrugged and downed it all, almost gagging. What choice did I have? There was no point in poisoning me; they could kill me in a thousand simpler ways. They might drug me, but for what? So I swallowed, gasping, its taste of bitter vines, cobwebs, and grave liners.
I grimaced and handed the bowl back.
She laughed softly. Half her teeth were gone.
“Are you really more than a hundred years old?” I asked, fighting back bile.
“A slave has no name of her own, a slave has no birth of her own. A slave just is. So I count my age from what I remember the French say went on in the world as I grew. Yes, I see more and remember more than anyone. I go back a century, maybe more.” She laughed softly again.
My stomach lurched, and settled. I began to feel drunk, but in a very odd way. My body tingled, not unpleasantly but unnaturally, and the candlelight oscillated. Yes, drugs. I would see loa, all right. Was that the intention?
“I’m looking for stories about a treasure you may know about, but only to share after using it to win my family back.” I had to work to sustain my concentration. “If you help me, your people can keep the loot before the British or French get it. You can build your country. And I will help you take Cap-Francois from Rochambeau.”
“What treasure?”
“Montezuma’s.”
She smiled. “If I knew of treasure, wouldn’t I have it by now?” She cackled at her own joke. Her face seemed to melt and reform in the candlelight. I saw now that she was a round woman, well fed, swathed neck to ankle in a
