House of Rougeaux(10)

Abeje had never set foot inside the Great House before. Lise led her through the rooms and she saw all their finery, which was mostly undisturbed by the hurricane, though there were places where water had come in, and shutters covered the broken windows. Lise said part of the roof and one or two upper rooms would have to be rebuilt, but that was all. Abeje followed, climbing a staircase for the first time. Upstairs Lise knocked upon a door, which was opened by a house bondswoman called Zara. Lise ushered Abeje inside but did not follow.

The room was dark save for one lamp lit by the bedstead and a line of light coming from the window where a heavy curtain rested slightly to one side. A man stood there with his back to the room, peering outside. Abeje’s legs swayed, and bile burned in her throat.

It was Monsieur, the man who had killed her mother.

He turned around and she immediately fixed her eyes on the floor. She could not bear to look.

A woman’s voice spoke weakly, “Come forward.” Abeje raised her eyes to the bedstead. Madame sat beside it in a chair, holding the hand of the child who was sunk in a feverish sleep. She approached them and knelt down. A wave of dizziness spun Abeje around. Monsieur and Madame had three nearly-grown daughters and this was their only son, seven or eight years old. She saw his pale, damp hair, greyish skin, the rapid breathing and distended belly, and knew that he would die very soon if she did not do something.

Hatred flooded her. She dared to glance toward him. He again faced away, looking out the window. She saw in the slope of his shoulders that he had been awake the whole night before. She knew without seeing that his eyes were red, and that he feared now more than he had ever feared for anything in his life.

As Abeje struggled, she felt the presence of Anaya. In her mind’s eye there appeared several heart-shaped leaves, and she heard the familiar song. She drew a deep breath and steadied herself. She saw better now and looked at the boy. He had drunk some bad water, that was clear enough, and he wanted to live.

There was no time to go to the Grove and search for plants, no time to make tea or paste. She would have to call their spirits only. Abeje leaned forward, laid her hands on the boy’s belly, and began to sing quietly, a calling song. The threads of light danced around her fingers.

But the heat that rose from her hands did not penetrate the boy’s body easily. A heavy shadow lay between the child and herself. Abeje called on another plant, a vine with tiny thorns that behaved like an axe, severing poisons that stuck to a body. But the shadow resisted, repelling the vine’s advances.

Sweat broke over Abeje’s brow. She reached for the boy’s hand, feeling his limp fingers. Something in him needed waking. She bent to place her ear on his chest. A voice lay over the beating organ, a shrill keen that she recognized as the birth cry of his mother. Something in his birth that had made him weak, something that had not shown itself until now.

Abeje looked up at the woman, Madame, sitting helplessly at the bedside.

“Mam,” she said, “if it please, would you hold him?”

Madame assented readily, leaning forward to lift the child to her lap, who whimpered with pain. Monsieur crossed the room to assist his wife. When he withdrew Abeje stepped around the bedstead, lifted by a sudden energy that ignited her tired limbs. She saw clearly now, even with her eyes open, that a little taut string pulled the child’s heart on one end and snagged his mother’s rib on the other, and Abeje had only to pluck it out. She did this with a small movement so swift it only appeared that she stumbled over the hem of her skirt. She flung the string away and the hanging shadow dissolved.

The child’s breathing changed, becoming deep and even. Abeje pressed her ear against his back to hear his heart again; the beats came stronger. She stood and backed up a pace.

“He will be alright now.”

Madame gazed at the child in her arms, nodding absently in reply. She didn’t know if it were true.

Zara took Abeje back outside.

Walking away from the Great House Abeje took a fresh breath. The sky was clear, with the wind whipping away any traces of clouds. The palm trees bent in relief. If the boy survived, her place on the sugar estate would be all but secured, such as Adunbi’s was now.

That evening Lise and Karine came down to the Quarters carrying a whole sack of meal, a large slab of hard bacon wrapped in a cloth, and a pail of dried peas. They said the boy’s fever had broken, that he sat up and took a bowl of soup and asked for his tin soldiers. They said Madame was so overjoyed she bade them to bring the food down to Marie.

There was very little to eat in the Quarters still, and though Abeje hungered, her heart was clear. The women took the bacon and peas and divided them among the largest cooking pots, to make a thick soup. Adunbi and the others, even the children, mixed the meal with water and salt, and made cakes to cook in the coals. All ate well that night.



* * *



It was another New Year’s Day and a prosperous time for Monsieur. The great hurricane was now more than ten years past, and because there was trouble on some of the other islands in the Sea, he got a high price for his sugar. As a child Abeje thought sugar was made by mixing sugar cane with the bodies of the people, because so many died or were maimed in the sugar works. She knew now it was the dead soul of the cane. Just as salt lived in the sea, and could be drawn out, so they drew out sugar from the plants. It was a stolen spirit, and was dear to the people in France, and in other countries where they were in need of souls.