20

IT WAS IN THE FALL OF MY TWENTY-SIXTH YEAR, the year 1789, that the astounding news began to arrive from France. Every ship that docked at Fort-Royal brought fresh stories, word of surprising events.

First we heard that the king had sent thousands of troops into Paris, frightening everyone. Then we heard that a huge armed crowd of unemployed workers and angry radicals had marched to the old fortress of the Bastille and broken in, killing the soldiers inside. And that all the Parisians were wild with joy over this and went to tear down the walls of the old place, as if it were a strong castle and not a forgotten and disused antique of no importance.

For years there had been talk of reform. Now, it seemed, reform had arrived—and no one was in charge of it, to prevent it from going too far. We heard the remarkable news that all the nobles had given up their titles, and that Alexandre had been among the first to renounce his! I was no longer Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, but plain Rose Tascher, Citizeness Beauharnais. All male citizens were now equal in France. Throughout Paris the watchwords were “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

It sounded fine and noble—until one thought about where such a philosophy might lead. Not everyone was highminded. Not everyone was altruistic. It did not surprise me when we learned that throughout

France, thieves were ransacking the mansions of the rich, demanding equality of wealth.

News of the sudden social changes in France made the existing conflict between slaves and masters on Martinique much worse. There were many freedmen in Fort-Royal, former slaves who had received their freedom, and from among their ranks orators now arose who spoke eloquently of the rights of all slaves to be equal with their masters. There should be no more servitude, they proclaimed. No more bondage. All men ought to be free.

The immediate result was turmoil, on a scale never previously known in Martinique. (Or so Jules-sans-nez assured me, and he was said to be over ninety years old.) Field hands ran off, house slaves refused to work. The cane stood uncut, ready for harvest, rotting where it stood. Fishing-boats were idle, market stalls empty. Cattle lowed in their pens, waiting in vain to be fed and watered.

Slave riots broke out, we heard rumors of Grands Blancs being castrated and hanged, of their wives being raped and garroted. Runaway slaves were seen in the streets of Fort-Royal wearing necklaces made from the pale white ears of Grands Blancs. All across the island, slave drums could be heard, passing messages. And we had no doubt the messages meant us harm.

Day after day, night after night the tension grew until on one moonlit night the savage pounding intensified to a new level of threat. Euphemia, frowning, went to the latticed window to listen.

“They are coming,” I heard her mutter. She added more words in the Ibo tongue that I felt certain were prayers and incantations. Then she kissed the small statue of the Ibo Red Goddess that she wore around her neck and acted quickly. She picked up Hortense and, calling to me to follow, hurried with her down into the root cellar, a big, dim, cool room full of bins of sweet potatoes and tubers and casks of rum.

A half-dozen others followed us, among them Jules-sans-nez and Selene, her eyes wide with fear, her grossly swollen belly making it hard for her to descend the stairs.

“Stay down here,” Euphemia said to the rest of us, taking charge. “No matter what. Bolt the door when I go. I am going to warn the master.”

Euphemia never used the name “father,” nor did our father call her “daughter.” The social gulf between them was too great, I supposed. Though I had heard it said that my father had loved Euphemia’s mother more than any of his other mistresses—until now, that is. Until Selene.

Euphemia mounted the stairs and we bolted the door as she had told us to.

We waited, as the sounds of drumming grew more insistent and with it, a clamor of voices. Men’s voices.

Where was Donovan? I wondered. He was often away at Les Plages. Had he gone there tonight, to gather the militia?

We waited, in the dimness, tight with fear and dread. Euphemia did not return. Had she been captured? I was afraid for her.

We heard a sudden pounding on the heavy door. No one moved. The pounding grew louder.

“Let us in! Let us in!” It was a woman’s voice. A voice I recognized. It was Aunt Rosette!

Swiftly I let go of Hortense, who had been sitting on my lap.

“Aunt Rosette!” I called as I ran up the stairs. “I’m coming, Aunt Rosette!” I unbolted the door and there stood my aunt, her face smoke-blackened, her gown torn and her bare feet muddy. Beside her was my mother, equally bedraggled.

“Do you have any food?” were my mother’s only words. She was weak and hollow-eyed.

“We have eaten nothing for three days,” Aunt Rosette told me matter-of-factly. “They kept us shut in the wind-house, behind those big heavy doors. There were thousands of them, singing and clapping. It was horrible! We thought we were going to die.”

My mother had come down the stairs and was rooting in a bin of sweet potatoes. She began eating one, as ravenous as a starved dog. Rosette too came down and began to feast on the raw potatoes, both women heedless of decorum.

Through the high barred windows of the root cellar I could glimpse a lurid red light. Torches, I thought. They’re burning the cane fields! In a moment I could smell the smoke and hear the crackling of the burning cane.

A piercing shriek tore through the clamor from outside. It was Selene. She leaned against the stone wall, clutching her belly, her eyes rolling wildly. Fear had brought on her labor.

“We must get her away from here,” I said. “She can’t have her baby here.”

“Her babies, you mean,” Aunt Rosette corrected me. “Jules-sans-nez told us the midwife said she is carrying twins.”

My mother looked up from chewing on her sweet potato long enough to say, “Let her die.”

We broke open a cask of rum and tried to give some to Selene, to calm her. But she flung the wooden cup away, the dark liquid spilling out over the stone floor in a widening circle.

“The midwife,” I said. “We must get her to the African midwife in Fort-Royal.”

My mother looked up at me, her cheeks bulging.

“Rose! I forbid you to risk your safety for the sake of that slut! Who knows what mayhem there may be in Fort-Royal?”

“For her children’s sake as well, mother.” I did not need to add, “For the sake of the boys your husband has always wanted.”

“She will not need to risk her safety.” It was Euphemia’s voice. She stood at the dim and shadowy far end of the room, in an open doorway, one that I had not noticed until now. As we watched, the strong barred door swung wider, opening into a void of blackness. Euphemia was looking over at Jules-sans-nez, who nodded to her.

“The Grands Blancs know nothing of this tunnel,” she was saying. “It leads to the church in the village, to an opening under the crypt. The priest helps runaways.”

“Father Herault helps slaves to run away?”

Euphemia nodded. “He believes in the changes going on in Paris. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. He helped build the tunnel. It was only finished last month.”

She spoke rapidly, her voice loud, straining to be heard above the increasing noisy tumult from the outside that reached us through the small high windows.

Listening to Euphemia, I shook my head in amazement. Father Herault, stout and aging, who became red-faced from the slightest exertion, had helped to dig a tunnel through the earth so that our slaves could escape. Surely an astounding transformation was under way, if the priest from our village was abetting runaways. The church had always supported and defended the Grands Blancs in their mastership of slaves. Everything we had on Martinique, our whole way of life, depended on this partnership of slave owners and the church that taught slaves to obey their masters. What would father say, I wondered, when he found out about the tunnel?

Selene’s scream brought me back from these thoughts to the immediacy of the moment.

I looked over at her, her features contorted in pain, her eyes clenched shut, her hands gripping her distended belly. I knew well how intense, how agonizing and above all, how frightening the pains of labor could be. I had struggled for many hours before giving birth to each of my children, especially my dear Eugene, who seemed to hold back, unwilling to be born. And Selene was undergoing all the pain and fear in the midst of the greater terror we all felt as the flames from the cane fields cast their brilliant red light on the walls of the root cellar and the shouting outside grew louder.

I went to kneel beside her.

“Can you walk?” I asked Selene, realizing that these were the first kindly meant words I had ever addressed to her.

She nodded and Euphemia and I helped her to her feet. She did not look at us, she merely grasped our hands. We started for the open doorway, Euphemia, Selene and I, with Hortense trotting along after us.

“I want to help too, maman,” Hortense said, and I hugged her and told her she was a good and brave girl and that we would be going on an adventure.

I heard my mother and Aunt Rosette protest but did not pause to respond. Seizing the burning torch Jules-sans-nez took from the wall and handed to me, and taking a last gulp of the damp, stale air of the root cellar I plunged, fearful but daring, into the darkness of the tunnel.