Dark Shadows: Angelique’s Descent

Barnabas sat staring out the window of his room at a day that bore all the beauty of a passing storm. Heavy clouds hung low in the sky, but the light poured around them, silvering their shadows, and bright rays shone down on the earth. The air had been washed by the rain, and, when the sun finally broke, the color of the grass was a dazzling emerald green.

It was two weeks since his collapse, and he and Julia now believed that the vampire’s attack had not reversed the cure. Long days spent in bed had left him restless. He was so tense that it was impossible to sleep, and although he felt weak, he could not remain in his room for one more hour.

Julia was sitting at her desk, working on the journal. She had finally loosened a particularly thick section when she heard a knock on the door. “Yes?”

She ran to the door and opened it. “Barnabas, you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

He was propped against the doorframe, smiling, and she could see his complexion had some color.

“Oh, Julia, I’m bored. I wanted to ask whether I could go for a walk, and if you would join me. I don’t think I’ll need a wheelchair,” he joked. “Perhaps I could just lean on your shoulder.”

She blushed slightly. “What a charming idea!” she cried. “I’ll come at once.” As she was reaching for her jacket, he caught sight of the book on the table, glowing in the lamplight. He frowned at first, and when he realized what it was, he appeared quite disturbed.

“I know I did. I’m so sorry. It was selfish and stupid of me.” He stared at her, more in amazement than reproach, as she continued. “I’ve been planning to return it to you, Barnabas. I’ve been working on it. I saved as much of it as I could. But . . . the whole center part, I’m afraid, is gone, except for bits and pieces.”

He walked over to where the book lay and looked down at it as though he couldn’t believe it was there. “You read from the journal?”

“Yes . . . I must say she had a fascinating childhood. But so steeped in the supernatural—she was most definitely a witch, a trained witch, a voodoo priestess at fourteen. The parts I read were very disturbing.”

“I must admit I do. I realize it’s only a record of her experiences, but they were depraved and spiritually bereft. Still, she suffered so much, I almost feel pity for her. She never knew her father and—it was heartbreaking—her mother died a horrible death because of her. I think she tried to give up her powers and live an ordinary life.”

“Well I think it could be, yes. However, I’ve been reading it for several nights and . . . it’s had no effect on me . . . other than finding parts of it repulsive. . . .”

“Well, the truth is, Julia, I’m not at all interested in the diary anymore. I wish you had left it in the graveyard.”

“Only because I spent so many long hours drying the pages and separating them. I may have been foolish, but I wanted to return the book to you so that you would no longer be angry with me.”

“But, Julia, I was never angry with you. I am devoted to you and greatly indebted to you. Come, leave it there. Come for our walk, and let’s not mention this ridiculous diary again.”

Later that night, as was almost always the case, Barnabas found that he could not sleep. He knocked softly on Julia’s door before opening it. She was deep in slumber, and he thought better of disturbing her. Angelique’s diary lay open on her table. The shape had changed. It was thicker than before, as the pages were warped, the leather cover was blacker and heavier, but the soft moonlight coming in the window fell upon the damaged volume, imbuing it with a ghostly glow. After hesitating a moment, he took it up and, silently closing the door, returned with it to his room.

His hands were shaking as he opened the book and began to read. An odor rose from the pages, of damp mold and the sea, but almost immediately images began to form in his mind, as though he were caught in a dream.

Cesaire found Angelique, prostrate and nearly drowned, beside the grave, and led her, dazed and unresisting, back to the sail-maker’s shack. There she keened and mourned, to the very edge of madness, and only his sympathy and constant vigilance kept her from destroying herself. Her daylight hours were seared with guilt, her nightmares a tangle of ghastly visions. She had nowhere to flee, except into a drugged semiconsciousness which Cesaire induced with chamomile tea laced with tafia.

One day she seemed a bit better when she woke. She looked out the window at the new day with a pale, drawn face. She turned to him, and said, “Tell me, Cesaire, what happened at Basse Pointe?”

“Why, it has gone to the rats, gal. Everybody left—all the rebellious slaves—all dead. Plantation house deserted. People stay away, say there be roving spirits.”

So Cesaire borrowed an old horse and together they rode up into the hills, she clinging to his back. There was solace in the closeness of his taut body, sprung like steel, and she buried her face in his hair, which was soft and smelled of dried roses. She wrapped her legs around the mare and let the easy gait rock her, loosening the binds of pain that twisted through her bones.

She had never realized the forest was so lush, trees reaching into clouds, the dark undergrowth crowded with broadleaf foliage, lianas festooned with orchids, and bright heliconia arching like scarlet birds. There were buzzings and rustlings in the thick patches of ferns, and intense heat rose from fetid pools between the bloodroot trees, where the great fanned buttresses spread into the swamp.

Every so often, a patch of sky would show through, and she would glimpse Pelée rising to a ceiling of mist, the steep sides smothered in green fur, and Angelique felt a longing she did not understand—as though the mountain were calling to her.

It was queer walking through the heavy gate, which hung open, and crossing the courtyard. Cesaire had been right when he said the plantation was deserted. The fine windmill revolved slowly like a ghost ship, but it was unhitched from its gears, and the crushers were silent. Stacks of dry cane lay scattered and wasted, the soft breeze rustling their papery stalks.

As Angelique climbed the silent stairs to her old room, images flashed across her mind. Everything was the same; her books were exactly where she had left them over a year ago, lying in the dust beneath her bed, and she pulled out the journal, a few schoolbooks, and the Shakespeare.

The room behind the altar seemed smaller and dingier than she remembered, but she carefully selected a variety of healing herbs and powders in small containers and placed them in a satchel she had brought for the purpose. The book of spells was lying in the corner, covered with grime, and she left it there.

Lifting the curtain, she walked into the sanctuary. She stood for several minutes before the altar, listening to the wind whistling outside the stone walls, and the utter, implacable silence within. For the last time she said good-bye, as she had beside her mother’s grave, to all her dark powers.

“Angelique, listen to me, you must go on. What else is there but life and a new adventure? You can’t run the mill with water gone by.” Cesaire sat with her as she ate the dried fish and biscuit he had brought her.

“There is nothing for you here.” Cesaire held a paper in his hand, on which was written the name: Countess Natalie du Prés. “Look at this and think in your head. This be a good sign. A fine lady, from Paris, and you educated some, modest, and wise, just what they be wantin’.”

“Gal, everybody serve somebody. Those we care for keep us breathing, give us reasons to live.”

“You know it be my dream to go to sea, and that’s what I aim to do, gal. The pig no min’ the mud he hunker in, but the birds gots to take to the air.”

The plantation at Trinité was elegantly kept and built on a grand scale. As Angelique approached the plantation house, she was almost blinded by the sun gleaming from the red-tile roof of the verandah. It was a fine, two-storied, plaster edifice, with heavy shutters painted green. A giant wooden wheel turning in a fastrunning stream ran the mill, and the sparkling river wound through the pasture. There were four or five slaves—working in the garden, tending the fruit trees scattered across the lawns, and carting wood to the kitchen. Far off on the hillsides the cane fields carved the land into multicolored patches of mahogany, emerald, and gold.

The Countess Natalie du Prés sat in the wide parlor on a wicker chaise, sipping from a china cup. She wore a dress of crimson taffeta, and her hair hung in red ringlets. Her face was angular, with high cobra cheekbones, and she had an aquiline nose with flared nostrils. Her dark brown eyes fixed themselves disdainfully on Angelique, and she pursed her mouth when she spoke.

“‘Angelique,’ is it? But you are such a drab, uninteresting child. Why would I want to hire you? You’re obviously an ignorant peasant girl with nothing to offer. Who is your mother?”

“She is dead, Madame. She worked in the slave hospital. Her name was Cymbaline.”

“Ah, yes, I remember, tried as a witch.” Her eyebrows drew together. “Do you take after her?”

“No, of course you don’t. You’re much too ordinary for anything having to do with the occult.”

“No, no, that’s not the point. I need a girl to be tutored with my niece. You would not be at all suitable. Can you even write?”

“Are you trying to pretend you know them all? Or are you stalling because you have lied to me?”

Angelique took a breath and began softly, her voice picking up the melodious cadence as she gathered courage.

“Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made:

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,

Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell”

“Well, yes, hm-m-m-m. Although memorization is not a sign of intelligence. Imagination and perceptiveness are the hallmarks of a fine mind.”

“However, it’s impossible to find educated servants on this island. Since I am in need of a proper maid, you might be trainable. And Josette wants a companion. It’s the very devil keeping her at her lessons.”

“She’s younger than you are, and much prettier. For that she is indulged by her father. We will make a trial of it, that is all. I warn you, any sign of laziness or insolence, and you are out! You will move into the servants’ quarters, but you will join Miss Josette in the library when her tutor comes, and if you prove to be a decent scholar, who knows? I may allow you to remain.”

And so began Angelique’s long term as a lady’s maid. She lived an ordinary life, altogether uneventful, though she was comfortable and employed. Innumerable tasks occupied her from dawn until dusk, and only when she was alone in her bed at night did she have time to think of herself, of her memories and her dreams.

The countess was an exasperating employer, changeable and unpredictable, with a temper. She always demanded more than Angelique could accomplish and insisted on complete devotion to duty. Once a new requirement was met or a proficiency mastered, she took no further notice of it, but complained anew of some clumsiness or carelessness in a skill not yet achieved, her bright beady eyes darting about above her snake-skull cheekbones. She was never pleased and never complimentary. But even though she did not admit it, even to herself, she grew to depend on Angelique greatly, for she was, despite her fine airs, singularly lazy.

The countess had to be wakened at nine, with the opening of the drapes, and because she despised the hot sun, she was always bad-tempered in the morning. She wanted tea and cakes, but if the tea was too cool or too weak, or the cake too dry, she sent it back with a sharp reproof. She insisted that the silver tray be polished to perfection and the linen cloth pressed without a wrinkle. Otherwise, she would allow neither upon her bed. She complained incessantly about Martinique, “this dreary jungle festering with flowers and pestilence.”

Her morning toilet consisted of a bath, the water infused with oils, and Angelique was expected to scrub her, but not too vigorously. After the bath came her powdering and her coiffure, an elaborate invention every morning.

The Countess du Prés considered herself royalty, and her soul’s true home Versailles. Therefore, Parisian standards were the ones she followed. Even in the sticky heat of Martinique, she wore a full silk gown and petticoats, preferring to suffer the discomfort of the climate, rather than to dress, as she called it, “like a peasant.”

Once the countess was attired and her room tidied, Angelique was released to go to the library. There, Josette’s tutor would be engaged in teaching the gay but inattentive child her lessons. Poetry and language arts, music, some mathematics and geography were all presented, and Angelique found it was an easy task to set the model of an industrious student. She was fascinated by all subjects and applied herself with great energy. She especially enjoyed literature and was always disappointed when the lesson ended.

Josette, on the other hand, was more interested in playing hide-and-seek, dress-up, and make-believe. What she enjoyed most were the instructions in becoming a lady. Clothes and manners were her obsession, and she talked constantly of going to Paris and being received at court.

Still, Angelique had to admit she had charm. Her nature was warm and her incessant prattle was filled with kind remarks and bright comments on people and the world around her. She was affectionate and leaned in to touch others when she spoke to them, ensuring their constant attention, her words bubbling over like a fountain. She was gifted musically, and, despite an appalling refusal to practice, she played the pianoforte with ease, picking out the notes from memory and singing in a high, lilting voice.

As Josette loved everyone, she loved Angelique, and the feeling was returned with some reluctance. Both being in need of a companion near their own age, in time they grew close. Although the countess never allowed Angelique to forget her place, Josette was oblivious to the contrast in their stations and treated Angelique as a sister.

She was generous to a fault and would have given all her toys and clothes to her playmate had the countess allowed it. But then Josette was always receiving new baubles. Nevertheless, she was jealous of nothing, other than her own flawless complexion, which she guarded religiously from the tropical sun. She was seldom seen out of doors without a parasol, and she was like another flower in the garden when she strolled there, her red-brown curls tumbling about her shoulders and her pretty figure graceful beneath the curve of the umbrella.

Lunch was in the shade garden with the countess, and Angelique was obliged to serve. The Countess du Prés instructed Josette on the delicacies of proper decorum at table, complete with the niceties of conversation as to topic and modesty of comment. Josette’s posture was corrected every thirty seconds, and the use and handling of each piece of silverware, saucer, and cup was considered with somber attention. Angelique, in turn, was educated on the specifics of serving an aristocratic table. The countess’s intention was to prepare both girls for their proper roles in life.

In the afternoon, Josette was required to write her lessons or work at needlepoint, and Angelique’s time was given over to spotting, pressing, and mending. The care and cleaning of all of the countess’s and Josette’s clothing and bedding fell to her. If the music or dancing instructor arrived, the girls would have a lesson, Josette receiving the special attention of the young lady of the household, with Angelique serving only as an accompanist or partner.

The countess insisted that dinner be formal, even though the necessities of dressing sometimes irritated Josette’s father, André du Prés. Angelique was fond of André, who was a sturdy little man with a warm heart, if a bumbling and distracted manner. He was devoted to the management of the estate, which gave him no end of anxieties. But he managed well, and his slaves were for the most part content.

André respected the Code Noir and did not beat his slaves. He gave them good rations, days off, and plots of land for gardens. He maintained a hospital for them, and even had a tendency to forgive them when they broke his trust, treating them like naughty children. He had the sense to know he could not raise sugar without them, and all his fortune depended on them. Dancing was allowed on Sunday afternoons, and the drums were never ominous or threatening, but joyful, full of singing that lasted well into the night.

Since Josette’s mother was dead and Natalie had agreed to come to Martinique to undertake Josette’s education, André felt beholden to his sister and catered to her wishes, appearing for supper in evening jacket and waistcoat. He had wispy blond hair with heavy sideburns and a ruddy complexion, the result of hours spent riding across the plantation. His most prominent feature was a pair of twinkling blue eyes that flashed whenever he smiled or frowned, for he was both fond of wit and prone to vexation in equal measure.

Angelique did not serve at the evening meal, since there was a butler. She ate in the kitchen with the other servants. It was at dinnertime that she most felt her position. The family dined happily on Limoges porcelain with Waterford crystal, whereas the kitchen staff used wooden bowls and crockery. Angelique would close her eyes and pretend that she balanced a silver fork in her hand and her bitter cider was fine French wine in a delicate goblet.

As the months went by, Angelique struggled to keep the Dark Spirit at bay. She never again used even the simplest magic. When she was ill, she waited patiently for her own body to make her well again. If the countess was particularly annoying in her demands, Angelique pushed to the farthest corner of her mind any temptation to employ witchcraft. She was successful in the role of a servant. She followed her gifts and was eager to learn, applying herself to the lessons given by Josette’s tutors, gaining as much if not more from the experience than her young mistress.

All for what? When the countess had hired Angelique, she had called her “drab” and “uninteresting,” never dreaming what passions simmered just below the surface. And even though these passions were kept well hidden, they still flamed and made Angelique vulnerable to painful cravings. Since she had no true friends, she never revealed these feelings and was very lonely. None of the other servants were her confidantes. She kept to herself, not simply because she was too proud to associate with those she considered inferior. Even though she had laid sorcery aside, the time she had spent in Port-au-Prince made the other servants’ conversation seem trivial and vacuous.

Yet her passions must needs go somewhere, must feed and nourish some fruit. And jealousy grew in her heart like a tree with intoxicating flowers. It flourished there, watered by tears of yearning. All the while she knew, especially when she reread passages from Othello or Macbeth, that jealousy was a grievous sin, an insane root that takes the reason prisoner. But try as she might, she failed to resist its poisoning influence.

On Sundays, the family attended Mass in the chapel on the plantation, and every servant and slave was required to attend. Sometimes the service was conducted by Father Le Brot. If he noticed Angelique seated with the du Prés household, he never acknowledged her, but she could not look at his small round body and jovial countenance without feeling deep gratitude that he had tried to save her life.

Only once did she imagine he was staring down at her from the podium, and she trembled when she heard the homily for the day. It was based on the tenth and last commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, nor his wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, not his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

The priest seemed to be speaking directly to her as he continued to read from Exodus. “And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it they removed and stood afar off. . . and Moses drew near into the thick darkness where God was . . .”

Angelique had seen Pelée smoking and smelled the sulfurous vapors that rose out of coned fissures near the top of the volcano, fetid air that caused little birds to fall from the sky. The villagers always said the god was turning over in his sleep, but Angelique was afraid, for she believed in her heart the god of Pelée could only be the Evil One. The sermon seemed aimed at her that morning. How could the Father have known that Angelique had envied Josette from the very first day?

Saturday was market day and the most exciting day of the week. Angelique and the driver left in a small cart before dawn, the Atlantic thundering at the high shore where Trinité still lay sleeping. She never tired of riding down out of the hills early in the morning and always caught her breath when she saw the sea and the moon-shaped harbor of turquoise, with its necklace of pearl white sand that was Saint-Pierre. Looking back, she could see the towering amphitheater of mountains, with Pelée rising out of the forest, its head in the clouds.

Her throat tightened with anticipation as they drove into town, and all her dreams were reborn in Saint-Pierre’s steep, winding paths. The narrow streets were bright with color, and sharp angles of sunshine gleamed on the red-tile roofs.

The city had once been the haven of buccaneers and still offered its safe anchorage to trading ships from all lands. She always looked for a schooner with the American flag: a blue field with red-and-white stripes. Vessels of all sizes and shapes circled the cove, and the wharf bustled with activity. Saint-Pierre was the center of culture for Martinique, and the shop windows displayed fine jewelry, silks, leathers, and luxurious furnishings.

Angelique especially loved the huge cobbled square of Place Bertin, with its graceful fountains and elegant plantings. Her heart always soared at the sight of the handsome theater, three stories high, with seven arches formed by ionic columns in bas-relief and twin carved-stone stairways with wrought-iron railings. Often there was a troop of traveling players or a company of dancers performing, usually from France, and the posters advertising the enticements within made her mouth water.

It was therefore a thrilling day when André du Prés annuonced that he had purchased a brick house in town on a lovely treeshaded avenue. What had been a fairly staid life in the country now took on renewed promise. Arrangements for moving into town occupied the entire family for months. The first night Angelique slept in the new house she lay awake staring at the ceiling of her small downstairs room.

She was tortured by the awareness that there was so much more to life. Since she had renounced her powers, she lived with a memory of the untapped potential that lay within her. What did it matter that she had, through ingenuity and perseverance, maintained a firm discipline against sorcery, if the future held no promise? Her soul was imprisoned, and she often felt that she had never left the lonely tower room at Basse Point.

Coming to live in Saint-Pierre renewed one pastime that brought great joy to Angelique’s life. On Sunday afternoons, freed from her duties, she took to wandering up the beach beyond the harbor and swimming in the sea. She would shed her clothes and take to the reefs once more, diving into the deeper pools, exploring the mysterious horizons of the ocean floor. The coral was lovelier than ever, elk horn, finger, brain, star, and flower, rich hues of copper and ocher, mauve and maroon. She rediscovered the undertow, breathing, swirling, the current pulling and curling the fans and grasses, and the curving coral reaching up, rounded, lumps of graygreen, etched into tiny mazes.

She found a wide sandy shoal that was covered with red starfish, thousands and thousands as far as she could see, delicate pearls jeweling their pointed arms. She swam through a school of blue tang, their false eyes taunting her as they skimmed around her. She ached as she watched the creatures, lively and free, fondling and feeding in the coral, and once again she was happy there.

There was a beach at which she sometimes swam where a deep channel lay between the shore and the reef. If she wanted to reach the coral beds, she was obliged to swim across this empty space of sea, which held a strong current. The bottom fell away swiftly, and she would look down into murky water, which seemed to stretch forever, with only swirling flicks catching the sunlight near the surface. It took many long minutes to cross the channel, the blackness slowly increasing as the water grew deeper, more dark and foreboding, before the bright coral again sprang into view.

When she lay in bed at night she sometimes felt she was crossing that channel, swimming and swimming through a watery purgatory, as indiscernible depths loomed beneath her and the current tugged at her feet.