All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell

Author:Madison Smartt Bell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social Science, Caribbean & West Indies, Slavery, Fiction, Literary, Historical, Slave insurrections, Haiti, General, History
ISBN: 9780307472502
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2008-09-30T07:31:24.908000+00:00

NANON’S ROOM WAS A WHITEWASHED CUBBYHOLE underneath the eaves. There was a single small window, circular like a porthole on a ship, overlooking an alley beside the house. Its light passed through the fabric of her dress and outlined the rondure of her pregnancy again.

“This room is better made for lying than standing,” said Choufleur, who had to stoop under the slanting eaves.

“Do you think so?” Nanon motioned him toward the single straight-backed chair. There was a white-sheeted pallet and a small table near it, but no other furniture. Choufleur sat down, balancing the cane across his knees.

“It makes a change for you,” he said. “I would not have looked for you in such a spartan setting.”

“I am well enough here,” said Nanon, who remained standing near the window. “Or I was, until today.”

“Yes, I see that.” Choufleur pointed the cane’s tip at her midsection. “Is it his?”

“Whose?”

“You know very well what I mean.” Choufleur’s lips twisted unpleasantly around the words. “Am I to expect a bastard brother?”

“You have nothing to expect from me,” Nanon said.

Choufleur did not speak for a moment. He sat, rolling the cane on his knees. A mosquito dropped from the ceiling and whined elliptically to settle on the back of Nanon’s neck. Inattentively, she pinched it away.

“You’ve taken on his manner,” she said. “Along with his name…and his stick. It doesn’t suit you.”

“The cane, you mean?” Choufleur released the catch and exposed two inches of the sword stick blade, then shot it back into its wooden sheath. Nanon smiled, in spite of herself.

“No, the sword stick agrees with you very well,” she said. “I meant the manner. And what would he say to hear you use his name?”

“The name is mine,” said Choufleur. “I’ll be his heir. In name, in property, and all the rest.”

“Impossible.”

“I claim it,” Choufleur said. “It is my birthright. Besides, he’ll have no other. I will make this be.” He stood up, round-shouldered under the eaves, and reached to touch her face. She broke from him, turning to the window.

“You prefer white men,” Choufleur said. “To live in a white household…as a ménagère or what you will. To bear white bastard children.”

“When have you offered me your protection?” Nanon said. “You were away—you didn’t see what it’s been like. If they had not taken me in here, I’d have been killed in the streets, or worse.”

“There is no worse,” Choufleur said.

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, with a half smile. “You understand me very well.”

Nanon didn’t respond to him. She stared down at an angle through the porthole. A bare-chested slave was walking down the alley, some loaves of bread bundled under one arm and a basket of fruit balanced on his head. A green parrot perched on his left shoulder, and this somehow reminded her of the afternoon she’d encountered Doctor Hébert in the Place de Clugny.

“I brought you something,” Choufleur said softly.

Nanon looked around. In the palm of his hand was the silver snuffbox embossed with the fleur-de-lis.

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