The Witching Hour (60 page)

I was seated at her behest. Darkness came fast around us, and the lanterns strung here and there burned bright and yellow, and the house itself gave forth an even greater dazzle of light.

“Tell me how I shall begin, madam,” I said. “I am your servant. How would you hear it?”

“Straight out,” she answered, her eyes fixing on me again. She sat composed, turned slightly towards me, her hands in her lap.

“She did not die in the flames. She threw herself from the church tower, and died when she struck the stones.”

“Ah, thank God!” she whispered. “To hear it from human lips.”

I pondered these words for a moment. Did she mean the spirit Lasher had already told her this, and she had not believed it? She was most dejected and I was not sure I should say more.

Yet I continued. “A great storm hit Montcleve,” I said, “called down by your mother. Your brothers died. So did the old Comtesse.”

She said nothing, but looked straight forward, heavy with sadness, and perhaps despair. Girlish she looked, not a woman at all.

I continued, only now I took several steps backwards in my account and told her how I had come to the town, how I had met with her mother, and all the things which her mother had said to me about the spirit Lasher, that he had caused the death of the Comte, unbeknownst to Deborah, and how she had upbraided him for this, and what the spirit had said to her in his defense. And how Deborah would have her know and be warned.

Her face grew dark as she listened; still she looked away from me. I explained what I thought was the meaning of her mother’s warnings, and then what were my thoughts on this spirit and how no magician had ever written of a spirit that could learn.

Still she did not move or speak. Her face was so dark now she seemed in a pure rage. Finally, when I sought to resume on this subject, saying that I knew something of spirits, she interrupted me: “Don’t speak of this anymore,” she said. “And never speak of it to anyone here.”

“No, I would not,” I hastened to answer. I proceeded to explain what followed my meeting with Deborah, and then to describe the day of her death in great detail, leaving out only that I had thrown Louvier from the roof. I said merely that he had died.

But here she turned to me, and with a dark smile she asked:

“How died, Petyr van Abel? Did you not push him off the roof?”

Her smile was cold and full of anger, though I did not know whether it was against me or all that had taken place. It did seem that she was defending her daimon, that she felt I had insulted him, and this was her loyalty, for surely he had told her what I had done. But I do not know if I am right in this conjecture. I know only that to think she knew of my crime frightened me a little, and perhaps more than I cared to say.

I didn’t answer her question. She fell silent for a long time. It seemed she would cry but then she did not. Finally:

“They believed I deserted my mother,” she whispered. “You know I did not!”

“I know this, madam,” I said to her. “Your mother sent you here.”

“Ordered me to leave!” she said, imploring me. “Ordered me.” She stopped only to catch her breath. “ ‘Go, Charlotte,’ she said, ‘for if I must see you die before me or with me, my life is nothing. I will not have you here, Charlotte. If I am burnt I cannot bear it that you should see it, or suffer the same.’ And so I did what she told me to do.” Her mouth gave that little twist again, that pout, and it seemed again she would cry. But she ground her teeth, and widened her eyes, considering all of it, and then fell into her anger again.

“I loved your mother,” I said to her.

“Aye, I know that you did,” she said. “They turned against her, her husband and my brothers.”

I noticed that she did not speak of this man as her father, but I said nothing. I did not know whether I should ever say anything on this account or not.

“What can I say to soothe your heart?” I asked her. “They are punished. They do not enjoy the life which they took from Deborah.”

“Ah, you put it well.” And here she smiled bitterly at me,
and she bit her lip, and her little face looked so tender and so soft to me, so like something which could be hurt, that I leant over and kissed her and this she allowed, with her eyes downcast.

She seemed puzzled. And so was I, for I had found it so indescribably sweet to kiss her, to catch the scent of her skin and to be so near her breasts, that I was in a state of pure consternation actually. At once I said that I wished to talk of this spirit again, for it seemed my only salvation was the business at hand. “I must make known to you my thoughts on this spirit, on the dangers of this thing. Surely you know how I came to know your mother. Did she not tell you the whole tale?”

“You try my patience,” she said suddenly.

I looked at her and saw her anger again.

“How so?”

“You know things that I would not have you know.”

“What did your mother tell you?” I asked. “It was I who rescued her from Donnelaith.”

She considered my words, but her anger did not cool. “Answer me this,” she said. “Do you know how her mother came to summon her daimon, as you call him!”

“From the book the witch judge showed her, she took her idea. She learnt it all from the witch judge, for before that she was the cunning woman and the midwife, as are so many, and nothing more.”

“Oh, she might have been more, much more. We are all more than we seem. We only learn what we must. To think what I have become here, since I left my mother’s house. And listen to what I say, it was my mother’s house. It was her gold which furnished it and put the carpets on the stone floors, and the wood in the fireplaces.”

“The townsfolk talked of that,” I said. “That the Comte had nothing but his title before he met her.”

“Aye, and debts. But that is all past now. He is dead. And I know that you have told me all that my mother said. You have told me the truth. I only wonder that I want to tell you what you do not know, and cannot guess. And I think on what my mother told me of you, of how she could confess anything to you.”

“I’m glad she said this of me. I never betrayed her to anyone.”

“Except to your order. Your Talamasca.”

“Ah, but that was never betrayal.”

She turned away from me.

“My dearest Charlotte,” I said to her. “I loved your mother, as I told you. I begged her to beware of the spirit and the spirit’s
power. I do not say I predicted what happened to her. I did not. But I was afraid for her. I was afraid of her ambition to use the spirit for her ends—”

“I don’t want to hear any more.” She was in a rage again.

“What would you have me do?” I asked.

She thought, but not apparently on my question, and then she said: “I will never suffer what my mother suffered, or her mother before her.”

“I pray not. I have come across the sea to … ”

“No, but your warnings and your presence have nothing to do with it. I will not suffer those things. There was something sad in my mother, sad and broken inside, which had never healed from girlhood.”

“I understand.”

“I have no such wound. I was a woman here before these horrors befell her. I have seen other horrors and you will see them tonight when you look upon my husband. There isn’t a physician in all the world who can cure him. And no cunning woman either. And I have but one healthy son by him, and that is not enough.”

I sighed.

“But come, we’ll talk more,” she said.

“Yes, please, we must.”

“They are waiting for us now.” She stood up, and I with her. “Say nothing about my mother in front of the others. Say nothing. You have come to see me … ”

“Because I am a merchant and would set up in Port-au-Prince, and want your advice on it.”

She gave a weary nod to that. “The less you say,” she said, “the better.” She turned away and started towards the steps.

“Charlotte, please don’t close your heart to me,” I said to her, and tried to take her hand.

She stiffened against me, and then assuming a false smile, very sweet and very calm, she led me up the short steps to the main floor of the house.

I was miserable as you can imagine. What was I to make of her strange words? And she herself baffled me for she seemed at one moment child and at another old woman. I could not say that she had even considered my warnings, or rather the very warnings that Deborah had implored me to give. Had I added too much of my own advice to it?

“Madame Fontenay,” I said as we reached the top of the short stairs and the door to the main floor. “We must talk some more. I have your promise?”

“When my husband is put to bed,” she said, “we will be
alone.” She allowed her gaze to linger on me as she pronounced this last phrase, and I fear a blush rose to my face as I looked at her, and I saw the high color in her rounded cheeks also, and then the little stretch of her lower lip and her playful smile.

We entered a central hallway, very spacious, though nothing on the order of a French château, mind you, but with much fancy plasterwork, and a fine chandelier all ablaze with pure wax candles, and a door open at the far end to the rear porch, beyond which I could just make out the edge of a cliff where the lanterns hung from the tree branches as they did from those in the front garden, and very slowly I realized that the roar I heard was not wind but the gentle sound of the sea.

The supper room, which we entered to our right, gave an even greater view of the cliffs and the black water beyond them which I saw as I followed Charlotte, for this room was the entire width of the house. A bit of light still played upon the water or I would not have been able to make it out. The roar filled this room most delightfully and the breeze was moist and warm.

As for the room itself it was splendid, every European accoutrement having been brought to bear upon the colonial simplicity. The table was draped in the finest linen, and laid with the heaviest and most elegantly carved plate.

Not anywhere in Europe have I seen finer silver; the candelabra were heavy and well embossed with designs. Each place had its lace-trimmed napkin, and the chairs themselves were well upholstered with the finest velvet, replete with fringes, and above the table, a great square wooden fan hung from a hinge, moved back and forth by means of a rope, threaded through hooks across the ceiling and down the wall, at the end of which, in the far corner, sat a small African child.

What with the fan and all the many doors open to the porch, the room had a coolness and a sweet fragrance to it, and was most inviting, though the candle flames did fight for their lives. No sooner had I been seated at the chair to the left of the head of the table, than numerous slaves entered, all finely dressed in European silks and lace, and began to set the table with platters. And at the same time, the young husband of whom I had heard so much appeared.

He was upright, and did slide his feet along the floor, but his entire weight was supported by the large, heavily muscled black man who had an arm about his waist. As for his arms, they seemed as weak as his legs, with the wrists bent, and the fingers hanging limp. Yet he was a handsome young man.

Before the advance of this illness, he must have cut a likely figure at Versailles where he won his bride. And in well-fitted
princely clothes, and with his fingers covered with jeweled rings, and with his head adorned with an enormous and beautiful Parisian wig, he did look very fine indeed. His eyes were of a piercing gray, and his mouth very broad and narrow, and his chin very strong.

Once settled in the chair, he struggled as it were to move himself backwards for more comfort, and when he failed to accomplish his aim, the powerful slave moved him and then placed the chair as the master wanted it, and then took his place at the master’s back.

Charlotte had now taken her place not at the end of the table, but at her husband’s right, just opposite my place, so that she might feed and assist her husband. And two other persons came, the brothers, I was soon to discover, Pierre and André, both of them besotted and full of dull slurred drunken humor, and four ladies, fancily dressed, two young and two old, cousins, it seemed, and permanent residents of this house, the old ones being silent except for occasional confused questions as they were both hard of hearing and a little decrepit, the young ones past their prime but lively of mind and well-bred.

Just before we were served, a doctor appeared, having just ridden over from a neighboring plantation—a rather old and befuddled fellow dressed in somber black as was I, and he was at once invited to join the company and sat down and began to drink the wine in great gulps.

That composed the company, each of us with a slave behind his chair, to reach forward and to serve our plates from the platters before us, and to fill our wineglasses if we drank so much as a sip.

The young husband spoke most pleasantly to me, and it was at once perfectly clear that his mind was wholly unaffected by his illness, and that he still had an appetite for good food, which was fed to him both by Charlotte and by Reginald, Charlotte taking the spoon in hand, and Reginald breaking the bread. Indeed the man had a desire for living, that was plain enough. He remarked that the wine was excellent and that he approved of it, and talking in a polite way with all the company, consumed two bowls of soup.

The food was highly spiced and very delicious, the soup being a seafood stew filled with much pepper, and the meats being garnished with fried yams and fried bananas and much rice and beans and other delicious things.

All the while everyone conversed with vigor except for the old women, who seemed nevertheless to be amused and content.

Charlotte spoke of the weather and the business of the plantation,
and how her husband must ride out with her to see the crops tomorrow, and how the young slave girl bought last winter was now coming along well with her sewing, and so forth and so on. This chatter was in French for the most part, and the young husband was spirited in his response, breaking off to ask me many polite questions as to the conditions of my voyage, and my liking of Port-au-Prince, and how long I would be staying with them, and other polite remarks as to the friendliness of the country, and how they had prospered at Maye Faire and meant to buy the adjacent plantation as soon as the owner, a drunken gambler, could be persuaded to sell.