Two Empresses Read online

  Whenever I was alone, in moments of quiet, when no lover came to share my bed, I wept long into the night, lamenting my cruel selfishness. What must she have thought of me and the way I had abandoned our friendship? I never visited her, not once. I kept making excuses, and then I simply stopped writing at all when I ran out of them. Surely gossip must have reached her even in the convent, and I was too ashamed to face her, too afraid to see the condemnation, or even worse the pity, in her eyes. She must have thought I didn’t care.

  Euphemia David had been so wrong about everything! Neither of us would wear a crown except the glory of tresses that God had grown upon our heads. Visions of Aimee’s violated and bloody corpse sinking down into the depths of the sea, her long golden hair tangling in green seaweed, haunted my dreams. I wanted to pretend that she had not died at all but sailed away to some exotic distant land where she would indeed wear an empress’s jeweled crown, but I knew I was only trying to salve my guilt with childish dreams. Pirates were merciless brutes; once they laid their hands on her pure white flesh Aimee was doomed. Sometimes I had visions, both waking and sleeping, of Aimee, at turns proud and defiant with her head held high, regal as a queen, or cowering with fright, like a child, the back of her skirt soaked with the piss of sheer terror, walking the plank, then, falling, falling, into the deep blue sea from which there was no coming back, no rescue, no mercy, only death, by drowning or sharks’ teeth.

  In the end, my own fears of the unrest in the city, and grief over my lost and neglected Aimee, drove me to book my own passage on a ship bound for Martinique. I packed my clothes and jewels, sold the furniture, my gilt-edged Sèvres porcelain painted with yellow roses, silver plate, and Venetian glasses, charmed 6,000 livres out of Denis de Rougemont, wrote my darling Eugène a tender farewell, picked up Fortune, and took Hortense’s hand, and, with my maid, Rosette, in tow, we boarded a vessel with the grandiose name of Sultan.

  CHAPTER 8

  I was going home, sadder and wiser, and far worse than I had left it, the empress of nothing, a wife without a husband, a woman whose dreams had died, who bartered her charms to put baubles on her body and bread on the table for her children and was seemingly incapable of saving a sou for tomorrow. What would everyone think of me?

  The voyage passed thankfully without incident. The seas were utterly calm in comparison to my first tempestuous crossing, but my mind was in constant turmoil. Every time I lay down to sleep I was tormented by dreams of Aimee besieged by pirates wielding cutlasses and phalluses like battering rams. So many times I shattered the peace of the night with my screams; I’m sure the crew was tempted to throw me overboard so they could get a decent night’s rest. Every time we sighted another ship I was consumed by fear until the sailors reassured me that it was not the pirate vessel I dreaded coming to punish me for my cruel neglect of Aimee.

  I told my daughter tales of my carefree youth, painting her beautiful word pictures of sunshine, white sandy beaches, warm turquoise water, a plentitude of fruit and flowers and birds with plumage every color of the rainbow, and air that always smelt of sugar. Soon I was as excited as she was; Martinique was already working its magic on me. I told her about Aimee and how we had once dared hold out our palms for the voodoo queen’s scrutiny. Hortense particularly relished the old tale I had been brought up with about how the fer-de-lance always knew before any human when our volcano, Mount Pelée, was about to erupt. It was then that these serpents, who always kept to the bushes and brambles, and preferred night to day, came down from the mountain and slithered through the streets of Fort Royal in broad daylight, seeking a place of greater safety, terrifying everyone not just with their poisonous presence but also with the dire warning it carried.

  When we sailed into the harbor all my excitement perished. Hortense clutched at my hand and stared doubtfully up at me. She had been expecting paradise, and so had I, but the world of my youth had vanished like ashes on the wind. The air no longer smelled of sugar, but of carnage, charred wood, gunpowder, and dead and rotting flesh. The dangerous fever called revolution that was afflicting Paris had spread to my native land and infected the slaves. They were now seeking revenge for years of enforced servitude and torture, all the beatings, brandings, blindings, mutilations, drownings, hangings, and rapes. I still shuddered at the memory of slaves found guilty of some terrible transgression being bound, slathered head to toe with honey, and left to perish in the utmost agony atop anthills.

  A hundred bonfires turned night to day and the voodoo drums never stilled; some of the Grands Blancs had been driven mad by the constant rhythm. They were afraid to close their eyes at night for fear their nightmares would become waking reality. Some had even taken poison rather than die at the hands of their vengeful slaves.

  The heads of white men, stumps bloody and buzzing with flies, eyes stone gray and blind, adorned pikes planted at every crossroads and field of neglected sugarcane. And there were the bodies of infants, the charges of seemingly devoted black nursemaids, who had been spirited away into the jungle, then brought back speared upon swords, their little dead limbs dangling grotesquely like broken dolls.

  Some wives and daughters had also been taken away, deep into the jungle where their menfolk dared not follow, and forced into naked servitude to the black men who used to wait upon them hand and foot in their plantation houses. Sometimes their captors, like cruel plantation overseers, dressed in leather waistcoats and breeches, with gold hoops in their ears, menacingly toting machetes and whips, brought them back and tauntingly paraded them before their menfolk, who were powerless to do anything against “that vast army of black devils.” These once proud women were forced to show themselves, stark naked, covered in bruises, their heads hung low with shame, their hair cropped short so they could not cover themselves with their long tresses. Many had their pale lily-white bellies swollen great with black babies conceived in the course of rape. Their captors groped, fingered, and fondled them openly, knowing each touch wounded and disgusted their menfolk to the core. Even if they somehow got their women back they would always regard them as tainted; no one would ever be able to forget.

  I was terrified. I couldn’t rest. I felt like I had blithely led my little girl by the hand straight into a viper’s nest and urged her to take up and stroke a fer-de-lance like a pet. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run to; no place on the island was safe. All we could do was wait and hope and pray for a ship to come carry us away, and that we would be amongst the lucky exodus to make it aboard. No vessel could hold all those anxious to flee this island of terror.

  Life had become a tense and terrible waiting game—waiting for the attack we all knew was coming, waiting for a ship, for rescue, for armed or divine intervention, hoping that it would arrive in time, praying that death, if it came, would be mercifully swift, not long, drawn out, torture. I was not the only one tormented by memories of seething anthills and screams.

  At Trois-Ilets, Papa, in a posture of weary defeat, sprawled in an armchair and drank rum all day; he just couldn’t bear to face reality. Mama, ravaged by illness herself, tirelessly nursed Manette. My poor little sister had lost most of her hair and several of her teeth had fallen out. The fever had left her wizened and frail, like a little old yellow lady, instead of the pretty tomboy I remembered. The girl who had dreamed of disguising herself as a boy and going to sea to fight pirates or perhaps become one despaired of ever getting a husband now that her looks were gone at only twenty-one. The incessant drumming and fear of being murdered by their own slaves had sapped their strength and will to live. They were so listless, so empty eyed; it was almost as if the voodoo drums had cast a spell turning them all into zombies, the living, walking dead.

  No one said anything about the failure of my marriage. It turned out that Alexandre had behaved so badly—like “the most pompous ass in creation,” Papa said—flaunting his mistress and bastard son all over Fort Royal, brazenly trying to buy ill reports of my youthful follies, bedding any willing woman w
hite, yellow, or black, running up debts left and right with any merchant who would extend him credit, handing out copies of Choderlos de Laclos’s scandalous novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses and proudly proclaiming that he was the model for the profligate rake, the Vicomte de Valmont, and moaning like the world was about to end when he was laid low with a tropical fever, that practically the whole island had cheered, and there was even dancing in the streets, when he finally sailed back to France.

  When I asked about Aimee, Mama merely sighed and shook her head. She crossed herself, murmuring phrases such as “better off dead” and “a fate worse than death.” Aimee’s parents had lately died of grief; they had been buried while I was still at sea. Their hearts were so broken and battered by sorrow they could not force themselves to be strong and stay alive for the one little girl they still had left.

  Fifteen and still dressed in deepest mourning, for her parents as well as her lost sister, Marthe had gone weeping to the altar to marry the ancient Guillaume Marlet, the proud owner of Anse d’Arlet, the most prosperous coffee plantation in Martinique. Poor little girl, she didn’t know what else to do with herself. Unsophisticated and almost painfully shy, Marthe had never been alone; she’d clung to her parents and familiar home rather than follow Aimee to France. The big, wide world had seemed so frightening to Marthe; tales of the unrest in Paris terrified her and she begged her parents never to send her there. She was far too young and naïve to be burdened with managing a plantation that required a shrewd head and constant care to thrive. The day after she buried her mother and father, with a blue marble memorial stone for Aimee between them, that gnarled and age-spotted old man, burning with desire for Marthe’s tender, innocent young flesh, had come along and told her exactly what she needed to hear—that he would always be kind and loving and take care of her so that she need never want or worry about a single thing as long as she lived; even after he was gone his fortune, combined with hers, would continue to provide for her. In her position, I would have said yes too.

  When I called on her, Marthe seemed as wan, vacant eyed, and lifeless as my parents. She looked like a tiny stick-limbed doll half-reclining on her husband’s opulent gold brocade sofa in her black mourning gown; she barely seemed to have the strength to sit up. She had little to say and tears streamed from her eyes the whole awkward time. When I rose to take my leave, she pressed a miniature portrait of Aimee into my hand. It was set in a golden oval frame with a bail at the top that a ribbon or chain could be threaded through. The likeness was said to be an excellent one. There had originally been three; her parents had gone to their graves wearing theirs.

  “I thought you might like to have it since you knew her better than I,” Marthe croaked in a hoarse whisper as yet more tears seeped from her swollen red eyes.

  The portrait had been painted in Paris the year before Aimee boarded that doomed homeward-bound ship ironically named Lazarus. Golden-haired and sapphire-eyed, gowned in blue silk and white muslin and lace ruffles, with blue ribbons and white flowers in her hair, she was even more beautiful than the ghost girl who haunted my dreams. “What a waste!” I whispered every time I looked at that sweetly smiling face. Such beauty and grace lost forever! She deserved so much better than rape and a watery grave. I put the miniature portrait on a ribbon and wore it around my neck as a penance, to remind me to never again neglect anyone I loved or who was kind enough to love me.

  * * *

  I was afraid the drums and constant state of terror would drive me mad. As the days, then weeks, and months, dragged sluggishly past, the only thing that kept me strong and fighting to resist the strength-sapping languor was Hortense. I constantly reproached myself. I had thought I was doing the right thing, bringing her out of the hotbed of revolutionary fervor France had become to a world I remembered as safe and sugar sweet, only to discover that it was on fire with the same ferocious fever.

  On the humid, still night when the slaves finally attacked, I thought only of my daughter. I leapt from my bed, barefoot, clad only in my sheer muslin shift, and snatched Hortense from the cot where she was sleeping at the foot of my bed. I thought of nothing but our survival—not money, jewels, clothes, or even family.

  With Fortune barking at my heels, I ran down the stairs and out of the house, plunging boldly into the black night. I never looked back—I was afraid that fear would freeze me—not even when I heard the bloodcurdling screams and saw the hellish flicker of the scarlet flames casting dancing shadows upon the white sands of the beach and reflected in the dark sea. Shells sliced like knives through my bare feet. More than once the soft, shifting sands caused me to stumble and fall, but each time I picked up Hortense and kept going, running toward the sea where, in the distance, I could see the silhouettes of tall ships etched against the midnight sky. Warships! They were coming to save us!

  Suddenly there was a deafening crash that shook the earth beneath my feet. I fell hard as a shower of white sand and shrapnel rained down on us. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, blotting out every other sound. I feared I had been struck deaf, but it only lasted a few moments. I sat there stunned and bleeding from a myriad of tiny, fine cuts, feeling as though my skin had been rubbed with sandpaper, cradled in a crater of sand, with Hortense wailing beside me as she tried to rub the gritty sand from her eyes and Fortune whining and nudging me, begging me to take him in my arms. A cannonball had landed not even three feet from us.

  Only then did I look back. A legion of what looked like fierce black devils, clutching cutlasses, machetes, and flaming torches, was running across the beach, only the shifting sands, sucking at their feet and throwing them off balance, slowing them down. The night was alive with drumbeats and gunshots and a thousand voices—I could hear them now—chanting, shouting, wailing, and screaming. Another cannonball roared through the air and exploded nearby, raining scorching sand down on us again.

  Behind the demon army, Trois-Ilets, my childhood home, went up in flames. But I didn’t have time for tears. I’ll weep tomorrow, I told myself, as I snatched up my daughter and ran. At the water’s edge, gasping as the salt stung my torn and bloody feet, I hoisted Hortense onto my back and plunged blindly into the sea and began swimming toward the ships. Fortune paddled beside me. I feared his tiny pug legs would not be able to keep up and that I would have to watch, helplessly, as my little dog drowned. But I couldn’t stop, not even for my beloved Fortune; I couldn’t carry him and swim too.

  I heard shouting and splashing behind me. Hortense, my sweet, chubby girl, clinging to my back, was weighing me down, but I would rather drown than die at the hands of those black devils. Every inch of me was aching and weary, pain shot arrows through my limbs and back, and I longed to stop and rest . . . to catch my breath . . . just for a moment . . . but I couldn’t. I had to keep going; if I didn’t I feared I would sink like a stone and those behind us were getting closer, always closer, every moment. I had to keep going.

  A cannonball streaked through the air, high above our heads, and landed on the beach behind me. I heard the screams of dying men. Severed arms and legs landed in the water all around us. I wanted to tell Hortense to close her eyes, but it was too late; she had already seen. The ships were awake and alive, firing on the rampaging slaves. I was near enough to see men swarming like ants across their decks. Then—miracle of miracles! I knew then that there truly is a God!—a rowboat was coming toward us. Strong arms fished us from the sea. Even Fortune.

  Safe in the little boat, wrapped in a seaman’s cloak, I looked back and watched the bonfire that had once been my beautiful home. I thought of Mama, Papa, Manette, and Rosette, my secret half sister who had grown up alongside me, schooled to serve me as my maid. Had they been murdered in their beds? Or, by some miracle, had they also been saved? My ears began to ring again; then everything went dark and I felt my head slump against a strong shoulder.

  * * *

  When I awakened I was on board the battleship called Sensible. I was in an officer’s cabin, lying on his bed
, wrapped in a wool blanket, with Fortune curled up, snoring, beside me, his fur stiff with salt just like the wild, tangled mess of my hair. Beneath the blanket, I suddenly realized, I was naked save for Aimee’s sweet, serene face resting in the hollow of my throat. My face flamed as I wondered who had taken my shift from me. The door opened and I quickly sat up, hugging the blanket close around me, as a man in uniform came in and gently pressed a steaming cup of black coffee into my hands. Was he the one who had undressed me?

  “You’re safe now, Rose,” he addressed me familiarly in a voice from the past.

  Memory came flooding back—a naval uniform and a white satin ball gown lying crumpled on the beach; discarded stockings entwined like amorous snakes; warm water splashing against my naked skin as a pair of strong arms enfolded me and a pair of lips grazed my ear, whispering words of love. Below the water’s surface, his limbs entwined with mine. I felt his manly hardness against my feminine softness. I had never been so tempted to surrender to the passion.

  Lieutenant Scipion du Roure, tall, lean, and ginger haired, with skin bronzed by the sun and what was surely one of the world’s whitest and most dazzling smiles, towered over me like a sun god.

  Then I remembered the most important thing. “Hortense!” I cried, my bleary, sand-grazed eyes darting frantically about me.

  “She’s safe, with the ship’s cook,” Scipion hastened to reassure me, reaching out just in time to keep me from spilling the cup of hot coffee on my lap. “He’s a proud papa with a daughter her age, so they’re getting along just fine; he’s telling her stories and letting her help him make biscuits.”

  Relieved, I slumped weakly back against the wall, surrendering to the exhaustion that was fast overwhelming me; even with the ache still pulsing through my limbs and back, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep my eyes open. It felt like the ship was my cradle and the waves were trying to rock me to sleep.