Mistress of Darkness

Matt Hilton's search for his kidnapped love Gislane took him back to the West Indies - back to the great sugar plantations of the Caribbean which he had left as a boy. Heir to the Hilton estates, he deplored the brutality of Iris fellow planters - men who had built up immense wealth and political influence and who wielded total power over their West African slaves. But now the seeds of rebellion were growing - the slaves were beginning to listen to the message of the voodoo drums and the words of the
mamaloi
foretelling the coming of a saviour

This, the sequel to CARIBEE and THE DEVIL'S OWN, is the third novel in Christopher Nicole's history of the West Indies, from the founding of the first colony to Emancipation in 1834

Also by Christopher Nicole

AMYOT'S CAY

BLOOD AMYOT

THE AMYOT CRIME

LORD OF THE GOLDEN FAN

RATOON

CARIBEE

THE DEVIL'S OWN

and published by Corgi Books

Christopher Nicole

Mistress of Darkness

CORGI
BOOKS

A DIVISION OF TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

MISTRESS OF DARKNESS

A CORGI BOOK 0 552 10517 1

Originally published in Great Britain by Cassell and Company Limited

PRINTING HISTORY

Cassell edition published 1976 Corgi edition published 1977

Copyright © Christopher Nicole 1976

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1: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade
or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise
circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

2: This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of Sale of New Books and may not be re-sold in the U.K. below the net price fixed by the publishers for the book.

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Transworld Publishers Ltd

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Ealing, London W5 5SA

Made and printed in Great Britain by

Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROPHECY

T
HE
rumble grew out of the still evening air, cascaded across the lush green fields of the sugar plantation, reached the heavy cedars of the forest beyond, some miles away, echoed upwards into the foothills of the mountains which made a backbone to the island of Hispaniola, and bounced back again to seep across the quiet ocean. The sound might have been caused by a battle, or the first threatening groan of a coming earthquake; it might have been a volcano stretching, or more prosaically, the approach of a thunderstorm. But it was no more than the procession of three dozen barouches, gigs, phaetons, bounding behind their splendid horses, on the road to Plantation Rio Blanco. Pierre Corbeau was entertaining.

The Great House itself might have been on fire, so numerous and so brilliant were the candles and tapers, rushes and lanterns, which seemed to fill every window, flickered and swayed on every verandah. The polished mahogany of the floor in the great ballroom had been scattered with powder, the huge mahogany table in the enormous dining-room groaned beneath the weight of countless dishes of food, West Indian - chicken and pork, smothered with peppers and cas-sareep, tuna fish and mackerel, caught off the coast of the plantation itself, avocado pear and eddo, sweet potato and roasted plantain - and European - sweetmeats and cheeses, best claret and finest brandies. Almost the long row of portraits of previous Corbeaux seemed to smack their lips as their severe gazes surveyed the scene beneath them.

Upstairs the bedchambers, each large enough to contain an average cottage, had been swept and polished, the beds overlaid with their ice-pink covers decorated with golden thread in the Corbeau emblem, the angrily beaked head of the hawk, the snow-white mosquito nets withdrawn and secured to the high tents, ready to be released to protect those who would sleep from the countless insects which made up the Caribbean night, but for the moment not permitted to obscure for an instant the perfection they guarded.

And everywhere, in bedchamber and on gallery, on the main staircase and in the cavern-like entry hall, in the ballroom and in the dining-room, in the study and on the verandahs, haunting the marble statues of the drive and the iron gates beyond, were the Gorbeau servants, every tall Negro - for Pierre Corbeau recruited his domestic slaves rather as his idol, Frederick the Second of Prussia, recruited his guardsmen - clad in an ice-pink coat, with gold thread at collar and cuff, white vest and breeches and stockings, and gilt-buckled black shoes, just as their female counterparts, hardly smaller, wore ice-pink gowns with the Corbeau design, in golden thread, on their bodices, and white caps.

On the front verandah, waiting to greet the first carriage, were the three people who lived in this palace, and who owned every visible object, living or lifeless, on Rio Blanco. Pierre Corbeau, in a pale blue silk coat with gold embroidery and buttons, over a flowered silk waistcoat, with dark blue breeches, white stockings, and black shoes, the whole topped by a powdered and pomaded wig dressed in what was known as the cadogan style - it was loosely curled at the back and tied with a blue ribbon - suggested nothing so much as his own name. He was above average height, but his sixty years made him stoop slightly, while his face was thin, dominated by the beak of a nose. His wife, some twenty years younger, revealed in her bloodless features the ravages of a lifetime in the tropics, the remnants of the bout of yellow fever which had once nearly killed her, the continual malarial attacks which often sent her to her bed with an ague. She wore a pink satin gown, carried away from her hips by enormous panniers embroidered in green and red silk; her wig, towering towards the ceiling, made her seem as tall as her husband, and winked with the sapphires which were her favourite stones, her malacca cane, which supported another enormous sapphire in its silver handle, reached her shoulder, and her fan was painted in the Corbeau colours of ice-pink and gold.

Louis, her only surviving son, stood behind his parents. He was twenty-two, and had but recently returned from Paris' the guests who were at this moment descending from their carriages would only remember him as a small boy, and he would remember them either as very much his elders, or as grubby playmates, whether boy or girl. Now no one could doubt that he was a man, and more, that with his father clearly growing older and weaker every day he would soon be Seigneur of Rio Blanco, owner of the greatest plantation in all St. Domlngue, grandest of
grand-blancs;
not a man arriving tonight but would see in him a rival, not a woman but would see in him either a possible lover, were she already married, or a possible husband, were she not. It was a thought at once exhilarating and a litttle daunting.

But he reminded himself that he would be a prize, even without his wealth. As tall as his father, and as slender, on his face the Corbeau nose fitted well beneath the high forehead and the wide mouth, did not entirely dominate the big chin. He had refused to wear a wig, because it was absurd in the West Indian heat, certainly, but also because it would have concealed his own hair, which du Barry, on the one occasion he had met her, had remarked was the most beautiful she had ever seen, black as night and softly lank, a perfect match for his eyes. And for this of all occasions he preferred to dress quietly, a dark green coat over a gold-coloured waistcoat, and white breeches and stockings. If the ball was in celebration of His Majesty King Louis XVI's coronation, there could be no doubt that he was the guest of honour.

The carriages were rolling to a halt before the marble steps, and the first of the bejewelled and befanned ladies was being assisted down by white-gloved Negro footmen. Pierre Corbeau's major-domo snapped his fingers, and the orchestra struck up, while the maidservants hurried forward with goblets of sangaree.

Pierre Gorbeau kissed the first hand extended towards his. 'Claire, how splendid to see you. You'll drink the health of His Majesty?'

Claire de Morain raised her glass. 'And the Austrian woman.'

'And damnation to the English.'

This last offered by her husband. But now the greetings, and the toasts, became genera], and the staircase became a long, glittering flow of people and comment, seeming the more brilliant because of the darkness with which it was surrounded.

Of varying shades. The overseers and their wives and children, whether
petit-blancs
or mulattoes, might be resentful of their betters, but still were unable to resist the temptation to gather beyond the white palings of the garden and watch the wealth from which they were forever excluded. Yet even they insensibly accumulated into two groups. The meanest of the
petit-blancs
would not allow himself to be a social acquaintance of the best mulatto, even if, under French law, any
cafe-au-lait
was born free. And the mulattoes, of course, made sure they were nowhere near the
noirs,
who formed an even vaster, and darker concourse, at the very end of the drive, from where they too, granted a holiday on this greatest of days, could stare and wonder, at beings as far above themselves, and as unaware of their existence as individuals, as was the very moon which was beginning to fill the sky and send a swathe of white light across the sea and the canefields and the forest.

And their numbers grew, constantly, as the maids and the coachmen of the guests, having discharged their immediate functions, left their carriages and joined the Rio Blanco slaves. Opportunities for meeting those from other plantations, from the towns and from the great houses of Gap Francois, were rare. Here was an opportunity for exchanging gossip, for learning what was truly happening about them, in the world, no less than in St. Domingue itself, for reuniting with someone who had shared the horrors of the Middle Passage, or who had once been a slave on one's own plantation, for perhaps again meeting a brother or a son, or even a husband, torn away for sale by the whim of his master.

And here too was an opportunity for plotting, for those who had at once the courage and the intelligence to suppose that the fact of their slavery was not an unalterable law of nature. Into the crowd sidled one of the first of the coachmen to arrive, a wizened little fellow, who walked with a limp, but who was greeted by everyone he passed with some affection. His black eyes searched the black faces in front of him until they found the one he sought, broad and strong, but angry as well, sitting on top of a bull-neck which itself rose out of a barrel-like chest and a powerful body.

'Jean-Jacques,' remarked the coachman, and walked on.

The big Negro hesitated but a moment, glancing to and fro, and then followed. The coachman was already beyond the crowd of slaves, and taking the road towards the Negro village. His visits to Rio Blanco were not to be wasted. But Jean-Jacques sweated. He was a recent arrival in Hispaniola, was not sure whom he could trust, and who would betray him to the whip, or worse, the wheel. Yet was he already a man of power amongst his people, by the very force of his character, the dominant anger of his personality. And he had been told that only the old coachman would be his equal.

Toussaint walked down the lane between the Negro huts, found the one he sought. Now the noise and the laughter and the glittering lights were far behind him, almost lost in the whisper of the trees and the soughing of the gentle wind. A dog barked in the village and then another, but fell silent again as the two black men ignored them.

'You know she will be there?' asked Jean-Jacques.

'She will be there,' Toussaint promised, and turned aside, to pause before the cane mat which made a doorway to one of the smallest of the huts, at the same time motioning his companion to be silent.