August 17, 1788.
As the Carib chief approached, the slaves went running. He stood in the laneway in his loose shirt made of old flour sacks, his long hair blowing in the wind. Mother stood to greet him.
It was a windy morning, without mosquitoes. The leaves of the gum tree fluttered onto the ground.
I could overhear little, understand nothing. He spoke to Mother in his language, an ancient tongue beyond my understanding, and my mother answered him in kind, slowly and with some effort. He turned and left, the back of his shirt stained with sweat.
I went down to the verandah.
“There’s a storm coming.” Mother stood looking out toward Morne Croc-Souris.
“Does he always come?”
“Once before he came.” She turned toward the sucrerie. “Before the big storm.”
The big storm. Seventeen-sixty-six. I was only three at the time, yet even now, when a wind rises, a sick feeling comes over me. All through my childhood, I’d heard stories of the wind that had blown our house away, the rain that drowned an entire town, the wave that swallowed a hundred ships whole, not even a shoe washed up on the shore.
“We must see to the shutters,” Mother said.
The morning hours turned frantic. The field-gang was called in, thehouse-slaves alerted, the children in the garden crew located, the animals put back in their stalls.
After the midday meal, the air thickened. The wind howled. A wood bucket on the verandah clattered across the stones. Drops of rain splashed hard against the shutters. A chicken screeched, caught in the rising gale.
We descended into the stone basement, the air heavy with the odour of rotting potatoes. I was sickened for a moment entering that dark room—the room in which I had been kept as a girl, the room of my imprisonment. The bed was still there. The three-legged table was gone. I reached up to make sure the shutters were tightly fastened.
Sylvester carried Manette down the narrow steps, let her down gently on the bed. She looked around dreamily. Mother put the pug dog down and arranged the bedclothes over her. Mimi and I sat on a straw mat, our backs against the rough stone wall. Da Gertrude squeezed in beside me, trying to hold on to Hortense, who nevertheless wiggled free to chase a lizard. Father squatted by the door drinking pétépié from a bottle, his cane by his side.
Everyone was crowding in, the house-slaves and their children in with us, the slave-master and the field slaves in the other basement room.
A blast of wind rattled the window. The slaves in the other room began to chant.
“I want to go in there,” Hortense said.
“What happened to the lizard?”
“He lost his tail and ran away. I want to find Max.”
“See if Max can come in here.” I wanted Hortense near me.
“You’re letting Hortense go in there?” Mother had her Bible open on her lap. The chanting in the other room had grown louder. Someone had started beating on a drum. “I wish they’d stop,” she sighed, closing her eyes.
“She’s gone to find a friend. She’ll be back.”
Mother started to say something but then there was a terrible roaring sound. The roof beam above us cracked. Mother clutched her cross.
I looked over at Da Gertrude. Her upper lip was beaded with sweat. I thought of the dark nights I had trembled in her arms, suckled her milk, slept in her bed. When I was an infant she’d protected me from the ants that had infested our island, swarming the hills and valleys, consumingeverything in their path. She’d held me during every storm, singing prayers to the howling winds. I took her hand.
“So now it is you who comforts me,” she said.
We emerged at dawn, squinting against the sun, faint from terror and constant prayer. Four chickens were perched in an uprooted orange tree. Deep cracks had been etched in the earth, like a network of snakes. Everywhere a thick carpet of torn trees and bushes—even the giant kapok tree had fallen, crashing across a river now raging with debris. The devastation was everywhere, pink and pure in the early morning light.
Hortense began to cry. “My cricket cage!”
“Hush,” I said. We had survived.
Later.
We spent all this day picking through splinters. The slave huts have been destroyed. There has been considerable damage to the stables and the crushing hut as well. The stone kitchen shack only suffered two broken windows and a deluge of water. Two horses, nine cows and a goat are missing. The sow was badly injured and had to be slaughtered, so weak she did not even squeal.
August 19.
We’ve received word from Fort-Royal. The roof of Uncle Tascher’s house was blown off and the furniture ruined. But no one hurt, thank God.
September 14.
Mail—at last.
July 16, 1788—Fontainebleau
Darling!
Two weeks after you set sail we had a dreadful hailstorm—in July, the hottest month of the year! Imagine. Really, we begin to think France is being visited by a destroying angel.* The ice stones were so big they killed birds and ripped the branches off the oak trees in the Luxembourg gardens. My servants are blaming the priests, for ineffective influence.
My darling pixie of a granddaughter Émilie, quite tall for seven, continues to thrive. I had Eugène over the other day as well—the two are a charm for the vapours.
A million kisses, your loving Aunt Fanny
July 18, 1788—Fontainebleau
Dear Rose,
We’ve been busy attending to finance and health. It is maddening how much time these two matters consume. Fortunately, with respect to health at least, I am beginning to make progress. A doctor suggested I take purgatives and clysters, followed by Peruvian bark. I am following his program with excellent results. I am enclosing three ounces of this bark at a cost often livres, which I will add to your father’s account. I urge you to get Joseph (and your sister?) to take it. As well, restrain him from consuming milk foods and salt meat—not to mention spirits.
The situation here worsens.… there was a dreadful ice storm which destroyed the crops, just when everyone had been praying for grain. No doubt this is God’s punishment for the riots in Paris. My chambermaid’s brother vows he saw King Henry IV’s statue bleeding.
Do not neglect to say your prayers—morning and night—as well as your hours. Have you talked to your father regarding the accounts? We anxiously await news.
Your loving Aunt Désirée
July 5, 1788—Paris
Dear Rose,
A quick note (I have a meeting to attend)—I have decided to enter the realm of politics. It is a labour I do willingly; my country needs me.
Your husband, Alexandre Beauharnais
Note—Eugène is well.
Sunday
Chère Maman,
Ice came out of the sky. Are you coming home yet?
A thousand kisses, Eugène
January 29, 1789.
A talk with Mother, regarding the accounts. She is reluctant to bring in anyone from outside.
“What can be the harm?” I insisted. Father wasn’t able, Mother was unwilling and I had no experience, much less knowledge.
“Our only problem is your father’s debts,” she said. “His vice.”
But at last she relented. She has agreed to allow me to consult with Monsieur de Couvray, an accountant of merit in Fort-Royal.
Monday, February 16.
I have been reviewing the accounts in preparation for my trip to Fort-Royal. There are a number of mysteries. Father was blustery at first, refusing to respond to my questions, accusing me of ignorance. Gently, I persisted, pointing out discrepancies. At last he broke down. Much of the money had gone to cover gambling debts—but not all. Some covered mistakes he had made managing the plantation. It was the blunders he was ashamed to admit, not the gambling losses—the “debts of honour” he insists are a result of courage, not weakness. “It takes strength to play deep,” he said, “to risk one’s fortune on the turn of a card.” (I refrained from pointing out that it had not been his fortune he’d put at risk.)
In spite of his disclosures, there was a sizeable portion left unexplained. “There must be more, Father.”
He confessed: four years ago he’d had an amourette with a sewing-woman in Rivière Salée. The woman had given birth. He was beholden to look after her.
I didn’t know what to say. “Did she give you a son?” I asked finally. He’d always wanted a son.
“Another daughter.”
I had a half-sister.*
“She’s almost three, cute.”
“Does Mother know?”
Father nodded. “Your mother is a saint,” he said.
Tuesday, March 17—Fort-Royal.
Hortense, Mimi and I arrived in Fort-Royal shortly before noon, splattered with mud. Hortense and I changed before joining my aunt and uncle for the midday meal. After, my aunt excused herself, “for my beauty nap,” she said. Then Hortense and her cousins were dispatched with their nannies on an outing to the shore, giving me an opportunity to talk privately with my uncle.
I took a sheet of paper from my basket. “There are two individuals I would like to consult while I am here. Perhaps you could tell me how they might be reached.”
Uncle Tascher studied the names, twisting the point of his enormous moustache. “Monsieur de Couvray? It is likely that I will see him this very evening, at the Masonic meeting. If you like, I could set up a meeting.”
“Excellent.” The palms of my hands were damp. “And the other …?” I asked.
“Monsieur William Browder?” Uncle Tascher looked up. “An English name—I recall seeing it somewhere. Oh, yes—Captain Browder. He’s enlisted in the navy, I believe, as a translator if I’m not mistaken. I can’t imagine what benefit consulting him would be.”
“His family used to be our neighbours,” I said, my voice tight. “There’s a field that has always been shared for grazing, a common—until now, that is. The current tenants have claimed it entirely for their own use.”
“But surely this is a matter for the courts.”
“A costly procedure, although perhaps a necessary one. In any case, I will require documents, information—”
A butler with silver hoops in his ears came to the door, nodded to Uncle Tascher, and disappeared.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Uncle Tascher said, rising. “My presence is required at Government House.” He handed the paper back to me. “My secretary, Monsieur Dufriche, will be able to tell you how Captain Browder may be reached.”
I retired to my room. The chambermaid, a girl with dirty hands and an unpleasant odour, helped me take off my dress. My petticoats were damp from the heat. I asked the girl to return in an hour and stretched out under the canopy of gauze netting. A gold cross hung from the bedcurtains.
Forgive me, I prayed.
* Fanny is plagiarizing, something she was known to do with regularity. The statement about the destroying angel was in fact made by the great economist Mirabeau.
* Marie-Josephine Benaguette, “Fifine,” born March 17, 1786, to Marie-Louise Benaguette. Eventually Rose’s mother took the girl into her own home and in 1806 Rose, as Empress, provided her with a dowry of sixty thousand livres.