“Hispaniola. ’Tis in the Caribbean Sea, to the south of our country.”
“Aye. See John, our Hannah forgets naught. Well, the man has sanctuary here as well but is in a thundering tirrit at the state of things. And the unfortunate souls be bearing the brunt of his ill will. I said to Talon that we might shelter them here.”
“The slave owners, Father?” John fairly shouts.
“Nay. His slaves.” Father stands. “Should there be no dwelling for them, as there shan’t be, I fear. John, we need—”
“Could we help them run away, Father?” I ask, the idea of it just there, bright and large.
“Hannah,” John says, “art thou forgetting that law?”
And now I do remember. The Fugitive Slave Act. It was passed in February of this year by our new Congress in Philadelphia. Even though our country’s Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal and have inalienable Rights, many of those who signed this wonderful document turned around and wrote a law that condones slavery! Are we already snarled in hypocrisy as a nation? Father worries that we indeed are.
“These be French slaves,” Father is saying. “So any law of ours may not apply to them. But now let us have a moment of quiet before we see to our tasks.”
I close my eyes and a scene shapes itself around me, a grove of young maples, my favorite summer place, at home. At my feet, long thin blades of grass, curving over last year’s leaves, brown and crumpled. I sit on a rock ledge and just look. The green all about gladdens my heart. So, too, the shade. The whisper of wind. My face grows warm, and my hands. I breathe in the grove’s sweetness and my heart slows.
After Father and John leave, I fill a pot with stew and a basket with bread and sweet butter and prepare to carry these things to my two families, the La Roques and the Aversilles, who have been fortunate to have won, in a lottery, cabins for themselves.
As I hurry toward the new cabins, I shiver with cold and the strangeness of it all. Nobles, here. Slaves. And soon, the Queen of France.
Looking through the low door, I can only gasp. Our maison is merely a single room! Hardly even that—a mere storeroom! Still, warmth flows outward from the fire on the hearth, and so, compressing our redingotes about our traveling gowns, we dare to enter, Maman first.
Inside, we take in the rude furnishings. Gateleg table against one log wall. Candleholder and candle upon the table. Three wooden, utterly plain chairs. A peculiar small bed against the opposite wall. A bench with a high back near the fireplace. Black iron utensils to either side of the raised hearth, with wood stacked on the left. One unglazed window open to the darkness gathering outside. As workers carry in our three barrels and two trunks, Maman and I must press against one another to make room for them. When they leave, I set Sylvette down on the plank floor. At once she jumps upon the bench and sits trembling before the fire.
“We cannot stay here,” I say. “We must have something better than this.”
“Ah, but at least it is warm,” Papa says, maneuvering around us to get to the hearth. There, he removes his wet cape and drapes it over the back of the bench. “We are fortunate, are we not, my ladies? Tonight the formidable Madame de Sevigny has only the boughs once attached to these logs.”
“Perfectly appropriate, given her disloyalty,” I say. “Reveling in Florentine’s ignoble joke about our family crest! Poles, indeed. Still, you did bring it upon us by insisting upon poling the boat, Papa, when you needn’t have. It served only to humiliate us.”
“I am sorry, my Eugenie.”
“Why did you, Papa?”
“For the selfish pleasure of it, I am afraid. It relieved me, for a while at least, of the burden of thought.”
“While we had to bear the burden of their cruel words. How dare they, after all we have lost!”
“Ah, Eugenie, let us leave petty grievances behind. We have experienced too many grievous ones, have we not? They make all else insignificant.”
Papa’s play on words—grievances, grievous—cheers him. “This land inspires largeness, I think,” he goes on.
“Tell that to Talon,” Maman says, “when you see him concerning this hut, for he must do better than this. Also, please tell him that we require more candles and a lamp.”
“And Papa,” I add, “where is my bed? Tell him, please, that a bed for me must be brought here at once. If there is no other place for us to stay tonight, at least I must not sleep upon the floor, surely.”
“Ah, chérie—”
“Papa, this is more wretched than any peasant’s hut. At least they have something resembling beds.”
I am somewhat sorry to harass him so. He is sitting before the fire, his eyes nearly shut.
“I will see about it,” he says. “After dinner.”
“And we can well imagine what that will be. I shall not eat it. Nor will I sleep on this so-called floor. In fact, I would prefer traveling all the way back to Philadelphia and risking the rebel sympathizers and yellow fever rather than remain here.”
“Eugenie,” Papa begins, but he then pauses as if thinking. Soon he is slumped against one narrow corner of the bench, dozing.
Our poor luck holds. The girl who so rudely spoke to us before first being addressed is to be one of our servants. I look down at the food she has served and anticipate being repelled, as in so many American taverns and hostelries. But to my surprise, the meat looks like meat. The carrots and potatoes, too, are identifiable. And the ragoût offers a fragrant aroma. Cinnamon, perhaps. To mask rancidity, no doubt. Still, I offer a merci, which is an invitation for her to speak, but now she remains silent.
Maman tells her not to stand there like some mule, for heaven’s sake. “Curtsy!”
She remains motionless, her face quite scarlet. But after a moment she abruptly turns and leaves.
“Maman, when she comes tomorrow, we shall instruct her. Please do not be upset. She at least looks like a proper servant. Perhaps the curtsy is not an American custom.”
“Well, it should be, here. This is a French settlement, where our etiquette must prevail. Mon Dieu, if the Queen were here . . . You are right. We shall instruct the girl, Eugenie, for the Queen’s sake as well as our own. Clearly, this is a savage land, one that we must civilize.”
“Far better to just leave!” I look about the room again in lingering disbelief. The Comtesse de Sevigny’s harp takes up the back wall. The harpsichord Papa purchased for us in Philadelphia rests upended in a corner. Our two barrels, shoved into another corner at the foot of the bed, will have to serve as our wardrobe closet. Either that or our trunks. Intolerable! Most distressing, however, is that there is no salle de bain, but merely a wooden stand with a bowl and ewer upon it. And only two covered chamber pots. How humiliating. Papa shall have to request another. We do not even have a table for our toilet in the morning, or a mirror. All this Papa promises to discuss with the marquis. And too, the matter of the slaves being here, which we cannot tolerate.
Now Papa says, “My dear family. I have a surprise for you!”
He goes to one of the barrels in the corner, tips himself into it, rather like a duck bobbing for something in a pond, and retrieves a bottle of wine from our château. He’d wrapped it, he said, in one of our featherbeds.
Something very near joy burns