The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise Page 11

  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.

  21

  THE FIRST THING to assail us was the heat.

  As soon as we entered the narrow tunnel, its ceiling barely high enough to permit us to walk without stooping, the temperature rose, and continued to rise the further we went. Sweat coursed down my face and my hand, holding Selene’s, was soon slippery.

  We were underneath the burning cane fields. I imagined that the very ground over our heads was burning, the heat penetrating into the soil and parching it until it crackled. I tried not to think about what would happen should the ceiling of the tunnel give way, trapping us. Or of what would happen if smoke choked the tunnel, suffocating us.

  Selene walked slowly, dragging her feet, head down, moaning, her moans rising to loud cries when pains clenched her belly and she had to stop. At times we seemed barely to crawl along at a snail’s pace, making my heart race from fear. To calm myself I tried to calculate how far it was to the church in the village, but though I had walked the distance many times above ground and knew every twist and turn of the path through the fields, I could not calculate how far it actually was, or how long the tunnel must be.

  We had not gone far before I smelled the smoke. Sweet, cloying cane-smoke, the scent so strong it distracted me and made me nearly drop the sputtering torch.

  The choking smoke drove Selene to the edge of hysteria. Coughing, crying, she tossed her head violently from side to side and shouted that she could not go on.

  I did the only thing I could think of, to make her go on.

  “Snakes!” I yelled. “There are snakes in this tunnel!”

  With a pitiful shriek Selene stumbled forward, her refusal to move forgotten.

  The smell remained overpowering, but the air did not thicken further and we breathed, panting, as we continued along, our eyes on the uneven ground, watching for slithering forms and hissing tongues.

  Selene was pausing more and more frequently and crying out in pain.

  “She’s coming near her time,” Euphemia whispered to me. “Those babies are going to be born long before we get to Fort-Royal.”

  By the time we reached the last length of tunnel, and could glimpse a door in the wall ahead of us, we knew that Selene’s hour had arrived. She slumped down, exhausted, while we pounded on the door.

  We heard footsteps, then a voice. Father Herault’s voice.

  “Who knocks?”

  “Rose Tascher, father,” I said, using the name by which he had known me most of my life. “I have my daughter and two others with me. One of my companions is in labor.”

  We heard the heavy lock slide back and the door swung open. The scent of incense replaced
the lingering odor of burning cane. We were in the dark crypt of the church, where my grandfather des Sannois was buried, and my dear grandmother Catherine, and my two sisters, and a host of other Grands Blancs. The cold stone coffins gleamed softly in the torchlight.

  “What of the others at Les Trois-Ilets?” Father Herault asked. “Is anyone injured?”

  “We left mother and Aunt Rosette safe in the root cellar of the mill. I don’t know where father is. As for the slaves—” I could not finish the sentence. I simply did not know.

  “Your father and his overseer were here. They have gone to gather the militias. Your uncle has been captured by the rebels. They hold Fort-Royal.”

  Father Herault brought embroidered kneeling cushions from the sanctuary and we laid Selene down on these. She had begun to make animal sounds, low curdled cries that stuck in her throat, then burst forth in explosions of agony

  Euphemia put her small statue of the Red Goddess in Selene’s hand and she clutched it. I told Hortense to wait in the sanctuary and say her prayers for Selene.

  “Ibo women drop their babies right where they are working, between the rows of cane, don’t they?” I asked Euphemia after Hortense had gone. “They don’t always need a midwife.”

  “And many of them die,” was her blunt retort.

  I remembered my own childbirths, how the accoucheur kept a fastidious distance from the bed while I, lying prone but writhing and contorting my body with each fresh pain, longed for him to do something—anything—that would shorten my labor. It seemed to me that the African way was better.

  “Let’s try to get her up,” I said to Euphemia. “Let her crouch.”

  After many protests from the wailing Selene we helped her into a crouching position, putting the pillows below her.

  Her pains were coming rapidly now, succeeding each other in prolonged waves of agony. Euphemia was muttering an African prayer. Father Herault, whether out of decency or squeamishness I couldn’t have said, had left the room.

  “Now, Selene, you must press down hard when you feel the next pain. Yes, I know how much it hurts. I have had two babies myself. Yes, I know you want to die. Every woman thinks that way when she is in labor.”

  I went on talking to Selene in an encouraging way, hoping to distract her from the acuteness of her suffering.

  “Press down, press down,” I urged, and from the tight clenching of her teeth I could tell she was doing her best, weak though she was, to obey me. Water spewed out from between her legs, warm water that smelled faintly of brine.

  She gasped, sobbed and screamed—but as she screamed a small dark head emerged.

  “Press again, harder, harder,” I yelled, as much from excitement as urgency.

  Euphemia caught the falling child and dipped it in the basin of holy water—the only water available—to bathe it.

  “You have a daughter, Selene,” I told her. “She is the color of cocoa.”

  In a few moments the pains resumed, and this time, after the exhausted Selene had given the last of her effort, a baby boy was born.

  But unlike the baby girl, the boy did not cry or move his tiny legs. His lips were blue, his eyes closed.

  Neither Euphemia nor I had the courage to tell Selene that her little son was dead. But it did not matter. Nothing mattered any more, for Selene’s exertions had cost her her life. She slid to the floor, gave a last pathetic gasp, and died.

  FEELING UTTERLY SPENT, bereft, as if hollowed out inside, I stared down at Selene’s lifeless body, then at her little daughter. Euphemia had rinsed her off in the basin and was wrapping her in a length of linen torn from her own petticoat. Like Euphemia herself, this little girl was my half-sister. My own flesh and blood. Yet she was motherless, and I knew my father would not want her. He had always said he was cursed with daughters. My mother, I knew equally well, would do everything in her power to prevent Selene’s child from being raised in her house.

  I reached out and took the infant from Euphemia.

  “Coco,” I said aloud, almost without thinking, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I had heard the familiar formula repeated so often, I knew it by heart. Now if this child dies, I thought, she will at least avoid the pains of hell.

  There was a deafening crash in the sanctuary above us. I heard a child scream.

  “Hortense!” I thought, and started for the stairs that led upward to the sanctuary, the infant Coco in my arms.

  But before I had taken more than a step or two I heard the savage, gleeful whoops and cries of men on a rampage. Thumps and crashes, the sound of glass shattering and furnishings being thrown down. And the sickening scream of a man in pain.

  The invaders swept down into the crypt, driving Father Herault before them with the sharp points of their knives. He was injured. He had been struck on the head. Blood dripped down his forehead and on his full cheeks, and stained his worn black cassock.

  “Maman, maman!” Hortense came running down the steps, past the bleeding priest, and dove into the folds of my skirts. Holding the baby in the crook of my arm, I pressed my trembling daughter against my legs with my free hand, in a vain effort to shield her from the fearsome scene.

  Euphemia and I backed up against the wall of the crypt, ignoring Selene’s body which lay neglected nearby

  I thought, they are going to kill us all. Then dread blotted out all thought.

  Father Herault stumbled and fell. Almost as soon as he struck the stone floor the mob of crazed men was on him. Knives pierced his body again and again, his blood gushing forth in a dozen thin streams. With an inhuman cry one of the madmen severed his head, and held it aloft with a gleaming smile of triumph.

  My stomach heaved, my senses disordered by the horror I was witness to. I saw knives, I smelled blood, I was aware of cruel hands reaching toward me—yet before the hands could touch me a shot rang out, clear and sharp.

  A musket shot. Then another.

  More men were rushing down into the crypt. Grands Blancs this time. There was fighting, shouting. I clutched the children. I could hardly draw breath, I was so frightened.

  All around me, men were yelling and cursing. There were groans and cries of anguish, blows being struck and the commotion of a brawl.

  I felt someone seize my arm.

  “Come at once, madame. I will take you and the children to safety.”

  The voice was that of a Grand Blanc, speaking the Creole tongue. Speaking firmly, with authority. I had to trust that voice.

  “Gerard de Sevigne at your service, madame. From the Les Plages militia. Please come quickly.”

  I was led through the crowd of brawling men to the upper part of the church and then outside, where dozens of horsemen and many carts and wagons were assembled.

  Dawn was breaking. In the early morning light I saw many Africans, manacled, being led away. I supposed that they were the rebels that had come to Les Trois-Ilets and set the fields of cane on fire.

  I asked my rescuer, Gerard de Sevigne, where my father was, and was told that he had gone to Fort-Royal with the local militia.

  “Those of us from Les Plages have been given the task of finding the remaining marauders and rounding them up. We have no way of knowing how many of them there are, or where they are. So we have been searching every plantation and settlement. It’s lucky we came across you when we did.”

  He beckoned to another militiaman and asked him to bring one of the trophies seized from the rebels the previous evening.

  It was a long wooden pole surmounted by a bright yellow banner. In the center of the banner was a crude painted depiction of a whiteskinned infant skewered on the point of a sword.

  I clutched Coco, who began to cry—the shrill, high-pitched cry of a newborn.

  But Coco is brown, I thought. Not white. Surely she is safe, even in the arms of a white woman like me.

  “Yeyette!” Euphemia was brought up from the crypt by another militiaman, and embraced me and the children.
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  Seeing her, I was quite overcome. All of a sudden the strains and exertions of the long fearsome night rolled over me and left me limp. I remember being led to a hard cot and given food and drink. Then I fell into a troubled, dream-filled sleep.

  22

  IT WAS DONOVAN WHO WOKE ME. He put his lips close to my ear and spoke tenderly, softly, as he did when we were alone.

  “Come, you can’t stay here,” he said. “You’ve got to get off the island. There is a ship in the harbor. The Sensible. You have a friend aboard, from what I hear. Commander Scipion du Roure. He is taking many Grands Blancs to France.”

  Donovan had ridden to the village with others in the Les Plages militia. Gerard de Sevigne had told him about my escape from Les Trois-Ilets and the fighting in the church crypt. Hearing Scipion’s name I felt a pang of nostalgia.

  “I cannot go without Hortense. And Euphemia.”

  “There will be room for them as well. I will insist on it.”

  “And—” I started to say, “And Coco,” then stopped. Selene’s baby was not my child, yet I felt an attachment to her. I could not leave her.

  Donovan read my thoughts.

  “While you were sleeping Euphemia found a wetnurse for the little girl. A young girl with a baby of her own. She is going on board the Sensible.” “And you, Donovan?” He kissed me.

  “I must stay on here, to do what I can to prevent more bloodshed.” His jaw tightened. “We cannot give in to chaos.”

  I clung to him. “But I don’t want you to be hurt. And I don’t want to leave you.”

  He is flesh of my flesh, I thought. He and I are joined. Fused. I need the closeness of him.

  He hugged me fiercely. “Quickly. Gather your things.”

  Fort-Royal was under bombardment and as Donovan drove us along the narrow streets of the town toward the waterfront we were surrounded by the continual pop and crack of musketfire and the booming of guns. The forts on the heights above the town had been seized by the rebels and were being commanded by the Friends of Liberty. My Uncle Robert had been kidnapped. I knew nothing about my aunt or my cousins.