Caribbean: a novel Part 24

Jocular bets were made as to which of the lovely creoles would land Paul in her net, and sometimes the talk grew serious. A woman observant of island life reflected as she sat with a neighbor on a bench in the sun-filled square: 'It's such a mysterious moment. Three lives in suspension. A golden moment, really. A choice made that determines a lifetime.' The older listener, who was staring at the cargo ships preparing for the run to the offsh.o.r.e islands, nodded: 'And most often we choose wrong.'

As the first delightful days of reacquaintance pa.s.sed, the young people became aware that they must get on with their lives. The girls knew they had reached the age of bearing children; Paul knew he was eager to start a family, had, indeed, been ready that last year in Barcelonnette, so the process of choosing became more intense.

He did not cast up the comparative virtues of the two women, with points for this or that, but he was aware of the great basic differences that had existed since his earliest days with Eugenie and Solange: the former was the perfect mate, the latter a woman who exploded the heart, and when he was alone with either he was content. But as the pressure increased he tended to show sympathy for Eugenie, who had lost her father, and then preference, and when this was perceived by everyone in Point--Pitre, Solange did something she would later regret. She confronted her friends and said accusingly: 'If I'd been white ...' and she fled to her father's plantation, refusing to partic.i.p.ate in the wedding she had foreseen, nor was she present when the young couple set up housekeeping in the House of Lace.

When the excitement over Paul's choice abated, the citizens resumed serious discussion of events in France, and on one memorable evening M. Lanzerac said firmly: 'If our king is in danger, he can certainly count on our support,' and so much applause greeted this affirmation of loyalty that an informal party of Royalists was founded on the spot. Priests, plantation owners, sugar factors, men who owned trading ships in partnership with others, petty merchants, all loudly voiced their support for the king and the good old ways, while a few men of mean spirit took secret note of their names.

Each new ship arriving at Ba.s.se-Terre brought more shocking revelations about the discord that was shattering the homeland-abolition of the monarchy, installation of radical new agencies of government, war against external enemies-and finally the gruesomeness that shocked the island into sullen silence: 'King Louis has been executed. All is in turmoil.'

In the following days the French island of Guadeloupe reacted precisely as the English island of Barbados had done one hundred and forty-four years before when British revolutionaries had chopped off the head of their king: everyone in any position of dignity declared himself to be an adherent of their dead king and an opponent of radical new patterns, and no one was more committed to this lost cause than Paul and Eugenie. Because they sensed intuitively that the chaos in France must ultimately reach Guadeloupe, with disruptions that could not be defined, they decided, in preparation for the storm, to restore their friendship with Solange. So together they rode out to the plantation, where she greeted them among her wealth of flowers. 'Come back with us,' Eugenie pleaded. 'We're destined to be friends forever,' and after gathering bouquets to liven up her room in Point--Pitre, Solange saddled her horse and joined them on the return trip.

Her reappearance as a close friend of the Lanzeracs was an embarra.s.sment to no one: she loved Paul, as she had from the age of nine, but after his marriage to Eugenie she seemed to have stored that part of her former life in a closet, with every apparent intention of keeping it there. Both Paul and Eugenie realized that Solange adored him, but they agreed that so long as emotions were kept under control, no one was the loser in the present arrangement, and husband and wife took serious steps to find the beautiful Solange a husband.

In 1793, Guadeloupe was shaken by a series of disasters arriving from two different quarters. From France came the hideous news that a reign of uncontrolled terror had swept the country, with thousands being executed by a new beheading device called the guillotine after the imaginative physician who had sponsored it. From the German border came word that many nations had combined to destroy France's revolution and place a new king on the throne. Finally came the saddest news of all, Queen Marie Antoinette, a frivolous but gracious lady, had also been executed.

This shameful act intensified the emotions of the island Royalists, who held meetings at which they orated ... while spies listed new names. Paul Lanzerac, already a man of substance although only twenty-three, led the fiery orations, calling upon memories of France's greatness under her distinguished kings, but what really animated him was the arrival in the French islands of a decree announcing that any worship of G.o.d or Jesus or the Virgin Mary had been abolished in favor of what was called the Cult of Reason. There was also to be an entirely new calendar, with months named for natural phenomena like Germinal (seed month) and Thermidor (heat month) and Fructidor (fruit/harvest month). A subsidiary note reported that priests and nuns were being exterminated at a lively rate, with a suggestion that patriots in the colonies might like to conduct a similar cleansing.

When Paul heard these revolting stories his anger flared to such a pitch that he led a huge ma.s.s meeting in the plaza opposite his father's shop, at which he railed for some minutes against the a.s.sa.s.sins who had killed the king and queen and now sought to kill Jesus and the Virgin Mother, and it was in the soaring emotions of that afternoon that at least the eastern half of Guadeloupe declared itself unequivocally in support of the old system of government and religion as opposed to the new. And when Paul finished, Solange leaped to the improvised stage and declared that the women of the island felt their own devotion to the dead queen and the church.

Then, in late 1793, the few mulattoes and the many blacks out in Guadeloupe's country areas united for the first time in island history to redress the grievances under which they had long suffered-mulattoes from ostracisms, slaves from physical abuses-and they mounted such a furious attack on white citizens in the town that Paul Lanzerac cried to his cohorts: 'It's the madness of Paris come to the New World!' and he organized a tiny defense force to hold off the attackers, who, having heard what the lower cla.s.ses of Paris had achieved in their rebellion, started to burn plantations and a.s.sault their white owners. From his defense group Paul selected a cadre of hors.e.m.e.n, whom he molded into a cavalry unit which launched forays far into the countryside to save the sugar growers.

The dash of these volunteers, plus Lanzerac's excellent leadership, established a perimeter of safety inside which plantation owners could survive the attacks of the dark-skinned rebels, but during one sortie far to the eastern sh.o.r.e of the island where plantations bordered on the Atlantic, a fellow rider asked Paul: 'Did you know that Solange Vauclain has gone out to her plantation to help her father save it from burning?' When he asked his troop: 'Shall we ride back by way of the Vauclain place to rescue Solange if she's still there?' they demurred: 'No concern of ours. She's mulatto and no doubt fighting on their side.'

So the detour to help Solange was aborted, but late that night when Paul told his wife: 'I'm really frightened. She's out there and she's got to be brought in,' she replied without hesitation: 'Of course,' and she kissed him goodbye as he left to round up three volunteers to aid him on his starlit gallop eastward.

It was not a long ride, just to the safe perimeter and three miles beyond, but the last portion could prove extremely dangerous if the rebels were alert, so at the point where the riders had to leave the protection of the French guns, he cried: 'We're heading over there. Any who wish to remain, do so,' but none stayed, so with his three men behind him he made a dash for the Vauclain plantation.

It was a sharp ride over rough terrain, but they did avoid the rebels and at dawn approached the Vauclain plantation, but one of the men, knowing of Paul's affection for Solange, galloped ahead and immediately returned, right hand in the air to stop the riders: 'Don't go. It's terrible.' Brushing past him, Paul sped on to see the fearful desolation that had been wreaked upon one of Guadeloupe's finest sugar settlements. The big house had been leveled; its fine mahogany furnishings were smoldering. The owner, a just man and a fine manager, hung by his neck from a tree that he had planted.

When Paul, near fainting, started to poke among the embers to see what had happened to Solange and her mother, the others tried again to stop him, but when he heard a whimper from a chicken coop, he found the girl and her mother huddled inside, terrified lest the hors.e.m.e.n might be a second round of rebels come to finish the destruction.

When Paul saw the pitiful condition of his beautiful friend, he took her in his arms, and said that she and her mother must mount behind two of the hors.e.m.e.n for a speedy ride back to the safety of the town. He was astonished that Mme. Vauclain refused to accompany him, and when he wanted Solange to plead with her mother, the old woman snarled: 'I'm black. The Frenchmen have never wanted me. I'm with the slaves. And one day we'll drive you from the island.' She stood erect, told her daughter: 'Do as you please, but they won't want you either,' and off she strode toward the camps of the very men who had burned her plantation and killed her husband.

For a moment Solange, the daughter of a murdered father and a rebellious mother who had deserted her, looked in confusion at the man she had always loved, and felt near to collapsing. But with the same strength that her African mother had shown, she calmly shook the dust from her skirt, and then cried: 'We go!' And after Paul helped her mount and himself eased back into the saddle, she clasped him about the waist and they headed back for Point--Pitre.

Eugenie Lanzerac was not surprised when she saw her husband ride up with their dear friend mounted behind, nor was she shaken by the burning of the Vauclain plantation, the murder of its owner and the decision of the widow to join the rebels. 'These are dreadful times,' she told Solange consolingly, and in succeeding days each helped the other during shortages of provisions or attacks by the enemy. The town was in a state of siege, and on days when Paul led a detachment of his cavalry out to forage for extra food, the two women, each twenty-one and mature, stood at the doorway to their house and bade him farewell and G.o.dspeed. When he returned safely, it would have been impossible to detect which woman greeted him with greater affection or uttered the more sincere prayers.

But when one of Paul's three companions was wounded during a sortie, both Paul and Eugenie were in for a surprise when the next excursion set forth, because on the wounded man's horse rode Solange, ready for the chase east. No one, not Eugenie or Paul or the other two hors.e.m.e.n, made comment; she was a creole woman, a daughter of the island, and her people needed sustenance. When she rode back with the men in late afternoon, Eugenie helped her down from her horse and embraced her.

In the difficult days that followed, Solange rode regularly with the three men, and once as they came over a slight rise and saw a hedgerow composed of the glorious flowers of Guadeloupe, she cried: 'Paul, this is an island worth saving!' and they swore to do just that. During such forays, one of the riders, son of a sugar factor, fell obviously in love with this gallant young woman; he could not take his eyes off her golden-brown face and he spoke admiringly of her daring horsemanship. She knew well what was happening on their long rides, for he rode near her to protect her and lent her his horse when hers tired, but she could not find it in her heart to reciprocate his affection. Her attention was now, as it had ever been, on Paul Lanzerac, and after the other horseman had been rebuffed half a dozen times, he said to her one day: 'You're in love with him. Aren't you?' but she made no reply. However, on subsequent days the would-be suitor rode with the other men, and they watched as Solange and Paul galloped across the countryside, taking great risks and escaping danger primarily because they were superb riders.

One afternoon when they came home exhausted, drooping in their saddles, the waning sun on their faces, Eugenie met them at the gate and thought: They are so handsome. As if they had been made for each other. But this obvious fact did not disturb the friendship, because when Eugenie appeared that night at supper with her baby son, Jean-Baptiste, tucked in motherly fashion under her left arm while she ladled up soup with her right, Solange thought: She is so much the mistress of a home, so much the mother. And Solange's own partic.i.p.ation in this curious arrangement remained on an even keel.

Then in early 1794, when distant Paris was caught in a vortex of terror, when one after another of the b.l.o.o.d.y leaders was executed-Hebert, Chaumette, Cloots, Danton, Desmoulins, each dead with a hundred crimes on his hands, a thousand corpses-a minor terror of its own kind was about to strike Guadeloupe, but it appeared first in the guise of salvation from a most unexpected quarter.

When it seemed that the rebellious slaves and their mulatto leaders were about to overwhelm the beleaguered town, a small flotilla of ships appeared in the harbor, and a watchman shouted: 'My G.o.d! They're British!' Paul Lanzerac and two other daring men leaped into a rowboat, and ignoring the danger that they might be fired upon by the sailors, pulled right under the bow of the lead ship, and cried: 'We're Royalists! The slaves are besieging us!'

The admiral in charge of the invasion force was a man from Barbados, a Hector Oldmixon whose great-grandfather had been a Royalist in his day, though in the English cause, and he was not a man to tolerate foolishness from slaves. When Lanzerac was hauled on deck, he listened to the Frenchman's story and growled: 'There's nothing more infamous on this earth than the doctrine that n.i.g.g.e.rs have souls. Equality, sir, will be the destruction of great nations. Now, how can we best get ash.o.r.e on your island?'

Since Paul loved the daughter of a slave and appreciated the qualities mulattoes could have, he was antagonized by Oldmixon's crude dismissal of anyone with color, but could not forget that in the recent rioting, mulattoes had sided with slaves against the whites. Maybe the English rule as exemplified in nearby Barbados was correct-'White with black, a forbidden mix'-while the French willingness to accept if not encourage such liaisons might be a mistaken policy. But he could not abide Oldmixon; the man was insufferable, seeming to take delight in lording it over the French, whom he apparently despised, but he was the potential savior of the island and therefore had to be accepted.

For these tangled reasons, Paul Lanzerac, a Frenchman of such devotion to his native land that he wept when he heard of the disasters overtaking it, was constrained to help a British naval force capture both wings of the Guadeloupe b.u.t.terfly. The occupation was made without much loss of life, since at Point--Pitre, Paul and his a.s.sociates welcomed the British sailors, while at Ba.s.se-Terre the opposition was minimal. Within two weeks the island was secure.

A curious event happened when the British army units that came ash.o.r.e early in the battle marched inland from Point--Pitre to subdue the last of the slaves; when they thought they had the rebels penned into their final redoubt, they found to their astonishment that it was commanded by a ferocious woman whom spies identified as the widow of the murdered French planter Philippe Vauclain. Hearing of this preposterous affair, Admiral Oldmixon rode up on a horse provided him by Paul Lanzerac and demanded of his men: 'What in h.e.l.l goes on here?' and they explained: 'There's an old black woman in there, every time we arrange a truce because they don't have a chance ... you can see that ... she starts the fight again.'

Oldmixon was outraged. A bl.u.s.tery type to whom everything not authentically English was anathema, even his fortuitous French allies here on the island, he was not about to allow a slave woman, and an elderly one at that, to hold up his occupation of Guadeloupe, so he bellowed at his men: 'Storm that plantation and shoot the old b.i.t.c.h,' but at this moment young Lanzerac, having heard of the impa.s.se, galloped up, shouting: 'No! No!' and when he dismounted before the irate Englishmen he said: 'You can't. She's the widow of a white man and the mother of a trusted friend.'

'Whatcha sayin', Frenchie?' Oldmixon snapped, and Paul a.s.sured him that this was true. 'I'll go in and bring her out,' and laying aside all arms and extending his two hands, palms open, before him, he walked slowly toward the plantation house, saying in a pleading voice: 'I'm Solange's friend. She sent me. I'm your daughter's friend. She sent me,' and as he came nearer he thought: She's Grandmere Lanzerac come back to life ... same thing ... same courage against the English. And when at last he entered the house and saw her and the few remaining slaves ranged against the wall, their guns lowered, he repeated: 'I'm your daughter's friend. The one who rescued Solange that day.' From the window where she still stood erect, holding her own gun, she said in a low voice, speaking perfect French: 'Then you're Lanzerac? Why didn't you marry her?' He said nothing as he led her to where Admiral Oldmixon waited.

'Throw her into jail,' the Barbadian said, and despite the most fervent pleas from Paul and Eugenie and Solange when they had Oldmixon to supper that night, he persisted, because, as he said: 'She was once a slave, and she'll never forget it. Can't beat the urge for freedom out of 'em. Rebel once, rebel always.' But as the night waned, Paul noticed that Oldmixon kept his eye always on Solange, and when the Englishman left the house to return to his ship he said at the gate: 'That girl, if only she was white, what a beauty!'

During the occupation the Lanzeracs repeatedly invited Oldmixon, as leader of the superior force on the island, to dine with them. He rightly suspected that they did this mainly because he could bring rations of scarce meat for their meals, but even so, he enjoyed the companionship of intelligent people and an opportunity to refresh his considerable mastery of French. 'My goodness, you do handle the language beautifully,' he told Solange one night, and she replied: 'Small wonder, seeing that my father was from Calais.'

'Indeed! A sailor perhaps?'

'His father was. He feared the sea,' and Oldmixon said: 'So did I, but me father beat me over the head with a stool and said: "It's the navy for you, me hearty," and here I am, commander of an island which I've captured for the king.'

During his frequent visits to the Lanzeracs' he was increasingly attracted to Solange but equally determined not to surrender to the girl's pleas that her mother be released from jail: 'Sorry, my dear, but we can't run the risk of her runnin' wild again.' However, as the weeks pa.s.sed, while he became lonelier and she more attractive, he intimated that if Solange wished to move into his cabin on the ship, something might be arranged regarding her mother, and to the amazement of the Lanzeracs, he made this proposal not to Solange herself but to them. Paul considered the suggestion indecent, and as soon as Oldmixon left for his ship he told his wife so. But against her better judgment Eugenie, after putting her son to bed, sent Paul from the room and talked frankly with her companion.

'Solange, your mother will die in jail, and I want to see her freed.'

'So do I.'

'Admiral Oldmixon told us to tell you ... if you'll ... if you wanted to stay aboard his ship till the fleet leaves ...'

Solange was sitting in a chair near the fireplace when Eugenie said this, and for a long time, while light from the fire shone on her handsome face, outlining its bony structure, she said nothing. Then, laughing almost irreverently, she said: 'You know the four rules they teach us mulatto girls? First, attract a white man. Second, make him happy enough to marry you. Third, when you have a daughter by him, see that she too marries a white man. Move up, always move up, and make the family whiter.'

'But Oldmixon would never marry you,' Eugenie said, and Solange burst into laughter: 'Then we bring in the fourth rule. Take every franc the poor fool has.' But then her face grew grave and she looked long and deep into her friend's eyes. 'We never intended the rules to apply to us, did we?' she whispered. For a long time they sat together, sadly silent, until Eugenie went to join her husband.

'Solange won't be going to the admiral's ship,' and Paul replied: 'I was sure she wouldn't.'

During these momentous years when France struggled through the death throes of an ancient regime without finding a way to forge a new, the historic island of Hispaniola, where Columbus once ruled and where he was buried, was divided in curious ways-the result of a decision made almost a century earlier. The rather flat, unproductive eastern portion, Santo Domingo, was Spanish; the mountainous western part, St.-Domingue, was French. Eastern spoke Spanish, western French; eastern, whose fine, flat lands might have been expected to produce bounteous crops, yielded little, while the rough and difficult lands of the west produced the world's most valuable sugar crop; and, in some ways most important of all, Santo Domingo was populated with Spanish mulattoes, St.-Domingue with such an abundance of African slaves that at times it seemed an all-black colony.

In the still-orderly year of 1783, in a small town in the French portion of the island a barbershop of mean dimension was operated in a grudging manner by a young Frenchman who seemed designed by both birth and development to be a prototype of the world's average man, for he lacked any outstanding feature that would have distinguished him from the general mob. Victor Hugues (last name OO-geh) was then twenty-one, reputedly the son of petty merchants in Ma.r.s.eilles, but there was some confusion about this because he had an olive complexion, neither white nor mulatto but halfway between, and regardless of where he went, the rumor spread: 'Hugues is part African. His mother must have been careless, Ma.r.s.eilles being a port town and all that.'

He was of average height or slightly under, and of average weight or just a bit over. He had good teeth except for one missing on the left, a ratty type of hair of no distinct color, and a habit of staying off to one side and watching to see how an argument was proceeding, then suddenly intervening with great vigor and some skill in haranguing those opposed to the side he had arbitrarily taken. He did not read much, but he listened with the acute skill of a preying animal, and one thing was certain above all others: he was brave, always willing to flail about when debate descended into blows, and if he lost one tooth in such brawling, his opponents lost mouthfuls. He was a fearful adversary, and would allow nothing to stand in his way.

How had he wound up in a St.-Domingue barbershop? Early in his life his parents had given up trying to make anything decent of him, and he had responded by slipping down to the Ma.r.s.eilles docks and offering himself to the first ship heading anywhere. Since it was destined for Mexico, he went there, and at age seventeen was doing the waterfront work of a man. Later he drifted to various exotic ports of the Caribbean, but regardless of where he went or in what capacity, he manifested the only characteristic that made those around him take notice: early in life he had developed an insatiable hunger to be with girls, and he had taken the first one to bed when he was eleven. In the Caribbean his appet.i.te reached ravenous proportions: Mexican alley girls, a ship captain's daughter at Porto Bello, a serving girl in Jamaica, a young Englishman's newly wedded wife in Barbados, and others wherever his ship docked.

Despite this fevered activity he was not a traditional roue who treated his conquests with contempt; he adored women, respected them, and let them know that he considered them individually and as a group the best part of life; few women he had known remembered him with animosity. Yet there was a darker side to his pa.s.sion, one which could produce wildly aberrational behavior at the end of an affair, and some of his women mysteriously disappeared from the community.

His ownership of the barbershop in St.-Domingue had come about because of this combination of rhapsodic pleasure and murderous opportunism, for when he arrived in Port-au-Prince a near-penniless youth of nineteen, he chanced to fall in with a mulatto who had both a barbershop and a young wife of exquisite amber coloring. Imploring the barber to teach him the skills of that trade, he spent much time with the barber's wife and, perhaps by coincidence, just as Victor mastered the profession of cutting hair, the barber vanished and after a decent interval Hugues appropriated both the shop and the widow.

This fortuitous disappearance occurred in 1785, and for the next two years Hugues ran a profitable barbering establishment, cutting the hair of white plantation owners who ran St.-Domingue and of the few mulattoes of marked ability who a.s.sisted them. Blacks, who comprised nine-tenths of the population, were forbidden entrance to the shop, though some later testified that: 'At night, when the whites and mulattoes were not around, Victor invited any free blacks who had the money to come to a back door which led to an inner room, and there Hugues would cut their hair. He always had a great affinity for blacks, especially the former slaves, for he told me once: "They are the dispossessed of the world and merit our charity." '

He manifested this concern in dramatic fashion, for in that year he closed his barbershop, rented a large house in Port-au-Prince, and, with the help of the beautiful mulatto he had inherited, opened a first-cla.s.s brothel, employing six girls of varied color and from four different islands. His clientele was ostensibly restricted to white plantation owners and mulattoes of importance, but again, when no one was looking too closely, he opened a rear door to admit freed black men, and he continued doing so even after he had received warnings to stop, for as he told an official of the government: 'I've been in all corners of this sea ... all the islands ... and it's destined to be an area in which men and women of every color live together freely.'

Outraged by such revolutionary thought, the official dispatched a secret report to powers in the home office, which neatly summarized this dangerous man: In the capital city we have a former barber who now runs a fancy house of convenience, one Victor Hugues who says he is from Ma.r.s.eilles and claims to be of white parentage generations back, an a.s.sertion which his skin coloring might refute. He is of a rebellious and contentious nature, but what is more potentially dangerous, he advocates the rights of noirs and frequently speaks out against slavery. I recommend that you order your people to keep a close watch on this Victor Hugues.

This report reached Paris in November 1788, and a liberal spy in the office to which it was addressed made a copy for a fellow member of a private political club called the Jacobins, and it was in this oblique way that the barber-brothelkeeper came to the attention of Maximilien Franois Marie Isidore de Robespierre, a member of the French gentry and a revolutionary whose ideas were germinating at a fantastic rate.

In early 1789, when affairs in France were at a boil, Robespierre began thinking about the colonies, especially St.-Domingue, which a.s.sociates a.s.sured him was 'the greatest producer of wealth in the entire French system.' Appointing a study committee of fellow Jacobins to advise on how the colonies should be handled if a revolutionary form of government ever attained power, he suddenly remembered this barber out in St.-Domingue and sent him a message: 'Come to Paris. I require your presence on important matters.'

When Hugues arrived in June 1789 he could not locate Robespierre, but one of that leader's friends, knowing of the invitation, introduced the newcomer to a powerful philosophical club, the Societe des Amis de Noirs, whose revolutionary thinkers were delighted to find someone who had firsthand knowledge of the colonies and the problems related to slavery. Hugues was lionized, gave a series of explanatory speeches, proved himself to be at least as advanced in his practical thinking as they were in their speculative a.n.a.lyses, and marched with them on 14 July 1789 when they celebrated the fall of the Bastille. Late that night, when he finally went to bed with a young woman who had marched beside him screaming at the police, he told her in tired, almost dreamlike sentences: 'It was fated that I should come to Paris. Great things are about to happen and men like me will be needed.'

His prediction came true dramatically, for when he finally did meet Robespierre, then on his b.l.o.o.d.y ladder to ascendancy, the fiery leader embraced him almost as an equal. And when the new government which had replaced King Louis XVI, the Legislative a.s.sembly, decided to send a French army to St.-Domingue to pacify an island disturbance which threatened to interrupt the orderly flow of sugar to European markets, Hugues was asked to brief the commissioner who would be taking the troops to the island. He submitted such a perceptive oral report that the leaders of the government heard about it and marked him for preferment: 'General-Commissioner, you'll find three nations in St.-Domingue. The white French, who have all the apparent power; the mulattoes, who hope to inherit it if the French leave; and the blacks, who could possess it if they can ever organize themselves. No matter how large a French army you call in to help you, you'll never have enough soldiers if you ally yourself only with the whites. If you can arrange a union of interest between the whites and mulattoes, you might achieve ... well, at best perhaps a temporary truce.

'But if you want a long-range peace in that island which I know so intimately, it must be based fundamentally on the blacks, with concessions to both the other groups. Failing that, I see only continued revolution in the years ahead, especially when the island hears about what's happening here in France.'

The commissioner asked: 'Couldn't a union of white interest, mulattoes and a determined French army preserve peace and keep the sugar flowing?' and Hugues said impatiently: 'You'd never have an army big enough ... or healthy enough. These are hot lands, Commissioner, and fever knocks down more men than bullets do.'

The commissioner did not appreciate such advice, and after Hugues had left the room he said to an aide: 'What could you expect from a barber who runs a wh.o.r.ehouse? Probably got his ideas about black power from some African slave he'd been sleeping with.'

After this rebuff Hugues remained in shadows, living on the few coins he could scrounge from his revolutionary friends, but after January 1793, when the king was beheaded and terror began to grip the boulevards, his peculiar talents were recognized by Robespierre, who a.s.signed him the job of whipping into line the smaller towns surrounding Paris. Then the barber, reinforced by a traveling guillotine which could be disa.s.sembled and packed onto a small cart, had the opportunity of revealing a long-dormant aspect of his character: mercilessness. Showing no emotion and indulging in no personal display, this extremely ordinary man marched his grisly entourage from one little town to the next, following identical procedures, which he exhibited first in Bra.s.se, some twenty miles southwest of Paris. Accompanied only by two officials in their tricorn hats, he halted at the edge of town his entourage of cart, two carpenters and the two constables, walked slowly into the rural town of seven hundred, and without making a great fuss, demanded to see the mayor: 'Orders of the National Convention. I want everyone in your town a.s.sembled in the square immediately.' And when this order was obeyed, he indicated that local spies who had been identified long before should aid the two constables in keeping the citizens together.

Then Hugues walked slowly back to where his other men waited, signaled to them, and they brought their creaking cart drawn by two oxen into the center of the square, where he directed them in the fascinating process of rea.s.sembling their guillotine. First the two towers were brought upright, the ones that would guide the dreadful knife in its fall, then the supporting structure to keep the towers erect, then the platform on which the condemned would kneel, then the curved part into which the neck would fit and the movable piece that would hold neck and shoulders firm, and lastly the big, shining knife itself, heavy and swift and final. A test drop using a head of cabbage having satisfied Hugues that the miraculous machine was in working order, he signaled for his spies to point out the wealthiest landowner in the district and any others who might be a.s.sumed to be enemies of the new regime, and these frightened people, women among them, were immediately segregated and placed under armed guard.

Then, with a speed which seemed incredible to the terrified watchers, Hugues said, in a low voice which only a few of the watchers could hear: 'Let the accused be brought forward,' and in these opening moments of his performance he always liked it best if the most powerful representative of the old regime was dragged before him, some petty n.o.bleman who had been ostentatious in the exercise of his prerogatives or some landowner fat from the produce of his many fields. On this day he was pleased, for when he asked in his low, menacing voice: 'And who is this prisoner?' one of his spies shouted accusingly: 'The Compte Henri de Noailles!' and when Hugues continued: 'And what are the charges against him?' any impartial listener would have been aghast at the meanness and lack of specificity as the count's accusers poured forth their acc.u.mulation of petty grievances: 'He was always an enemy of the people.'

'He let his pigs roam in my garden.'

'He made us work on feast days and paid low wages.'

Raising aloft both hands to stanch the flow of charges, Hugues said in a sepulchral voice: 'He is condemned!' and the quivering wretch, too frightened to comprehend fully what was happening, was dragged by the constables to the guillotine and up its three steps to the fatal platform. There the carpenters took charge, bound his hands behind his back, forced him onto his knees, and brought his head forward so that his neck fitted into the curved portion of the block. With a noisy creaking of wood against wood, the upper bar was brought into play, pinning the neck fast. Then, slowly, one of the carpenters cranked a windla.s.s, dragging the immense slanted knife high aloft in the twin grooves of the tower. When it was in position, Hugues addressed the crowd: 'This is the punishment that overtakes all enemies of France,' and with an upraising of his right hand he signaled the carpenters to release the knife, which fell with silent swiftness onto the exposed neck and with such awful force that the head rolled away while the severed neck gushed blood.

In each small town he visited, Hugues liked to guillotine three prominent citizens on the first day; he had learned that this brought the whole area to attention and made his inquisition of the remainder easier, for each man was eager to testify against his neighbors before they testified against him. His procedures, swift and remorseless and certain, caused two different reports concerning his work to be sent to Robespierre: Hugues is a tyrant. He makes no pretense at a legal trial. He absolutely never finds innocent anyone charged hastily by locals. And he leaves behind a sense of shock which may in time work against our general aims.

But a second report represented the majority of judgment on his work in the near provinces: The great virtue of the way Hugues conducts his raids, for that is what they are, is that he works swiftly, never postures to bring attention to himself, and appears so remorseless and inevitable that he seems to speak with the authority of the entire Convention. He sweeps in and out like some inevitable storm, leaving nothing to be angry at.

He has only one weakness, but in time it could undo him. He seems to have an insatiable desire for women, and in town after town he grabs onto the first one available. He finishes his guillotine at dusk, eats a big dinner, and is in bed with some local la.s.s an hour later. It is rumored that he wins their favors by threatening them with his guillotine if they do not comply, or equally effective, threatening the neck of their husband or son. One day someone may shoot him or pierce him with a rapier.

Robespierre read these reports in September 1793, and thought: How effectively the barber gives his haircuts. I do wish I had a dozen more like him in Lyons and Nantes. These were two strongholds of Royalists where shortly an appalling number of resisters would be slain in ways far less neat and effective than those utilized by Hugues and his traveling guillotine. Ten thousand would die in Lyons in ma.s.s murders of the wildest frenzy involving all sorts of excesses, fifteen thousand in Nantes while Hugues plodded along, methodically lopping off the heads of his eight and ten, day after day, with never an uprising in protest. 'The man's a genius,' Robespierre told his a.s.sociates, and when in mid-October, Queen Marie Antoinette, that foolish, giddy thing, was to be beheaded, Hugues was invited back to Paris to partic.i.p.ate in the celebrations that followed. It was during this holiday that Robespierre intimated to him that a more important a.s.signment was in the offing. Since he did not say what, Hugues returned to his deadly travels and lovemaking, a.s.sured that his efforts toward freedom were appreciated in Paris. Then, at the close of that frightful year, came the communication he had been awaiting: Citizen Hugues, in the revered name of the Cult of Reason you are ordered to proceed immediately to the Port of Rochefort, a.s.sume command of the ships and troops a.s.sembled there and sail to our Island of Guadeloupe, where you will serve as Agent Particulier, our Commissioner in Charge, with one responsibility. See that this island remains in French hands. Your exemplary work in the environs of Paris satisfies us that you are equal to this important promotion.

Repairing at once to Rochefort, a tiny Atlantic harbor on the Atlantic between Nantes in the north and Bordeaux to the south, Hugues learned to his disgust that his supposed fleet consisted of two overage frigates, a corvette, two small vessels and two lumbering cargo ships with exactly 1,153 poorly trained farmers as troops. When he complained, the harbormaster a.s.sured him: 'Not to worry. Ship arrived last week from Guadeloupe. Island's safe in our hands. All you have to do is reinforce our ships and troops already in command.'

The harbormaster was right; so were the officers from the trading ship recently arrived from Guadeloupe, for when they left their island it was still French. What they could not know was that shortly after they sailed, Admiral Oldmixon leading a strong British force had stormed ash.o.r.e, captured the island, and dug powerful emplacements for his guns and fortifications for his thousands of hardened troops. The St.-Domingue barber and brothelkeeper was heading into a hornet's nest of which he was totally unaware.

Nevertheless, he was nervous, for a cart which he had dispatched from Paris well before he left had not yet arrived, and it looked as if he might have to sail without this precious cargo. 'Can we delay two more days?' he pleaded with the captains of his ships, but they said, properly: 'Our job is to avoid British warships. We sail as planned.' To Hugues' relief, at dawn on the last day the big cart rumbled onto the dock to deliver its seven crudely wrapped packages.

There was much speculation as to what kind of precious cargo might have warranted such concern, and the sailors who struggled to bring the items aboard made many guesses, until one farm boy, more daring than the rest, furtively tore open the end of one package and found himself facing an immense steel blade.

'Mon Dieu!' he whispered. 'A guillotine.'

It would be difficult to guess who was the more astonished that bright June day-Hugues, who found his island occupied by the enemy, or Oldmixon, who saw this ragtag armada heading his way to do battle. The odds in favor of the English were overwhelming: at sea, some twenty battle-tested ships against seven nondescripts; on land, 10,000 men against 1,153, plus control of the civil government thanks to the cooperation of Royalists like Paul Lanzerac. Of course, Oldmixon could not summon all his ships at once and many detachments of his troops were scattered among lesser islands, but the force confronting Hugues was not merely intimidating, it was terrifying.

Too uninformed on warfare to realize that he had no chance of winning, Hugues ordered his little ships to clear the harbor, which amazingly they did, whereupon he led his troops ash.o.r.e in a charge three times as valiant as Oldmixon had ever seen before, and after unbelievable heroics the Hugues forces had recaptured that half of the island. An English colonel said later: 'This French barber who had never read a book on tactics was too stupid to know he couldn't win, so he won.'

The first thing Hugues did on taking possession of Point--Pitre was to draft a report to the Convention back in Paris. In it he described himself as ten times braver than he had been, which was brave enough, and the message was so inspiring that the authorities caused it to be published in a Paris broadsheet ill.u.s.trated with a fine woodcut showing Hugues, saber in hand, leading a charge into the very muzzles of the British guns. It was ent.i.tled: SANGFROID INTRePIDE DE VICTOR HUGUES, COMMISSAIRE DU GOUVERNEMENT LA GUADELOUPE.

On 16 Floreal of the year 2 of the Revolution the brave Victor Hugues led his valiant Frenchmen against horrendous odds. Though there was no hope of victory, Hugues and his men fought like lions, but they were overwhelmed. At the moment of maximum peril an English voice was heard to shout: 'Surrender!' but the ever-brave Victor Hugues cried back immediately: 'No! We will defend ourselves to the death!' It was this admirable response that enabled the French under the gallant leadership of the masterful Victor Hugues to recapture Guadeloupe from the English invaders and return it to the Glory of France. Brave Victor Hugues!

Both English and French reporters testified that Hugues actually did these things; with his few Frenchmen he defeated an enormously superior enemy, but in one statement his admirers were wrong: he did not charge ash.o.r.e. When the battle was over he walked ash.o.r.e like some great, detached conqueror humble in victory and weighed down by his responsibilities as Agent Particulier. Retreating quickly to his anonymous look and posture, he represented to the citizens of Point--Pitre the picture of an undistinguished Frenchman of thirty-two, slightly overweight, slightly shorter than they might have expected in a conqueror, with a kind of sandy hair, pocked face, very thin legs, long arms and hooded eyes which kept darting about as if to intercept any would-be a.s.sa.s.sin.

By the time he came ash.o.r.e, Hugues was overcome by an inner determination of tremendous force to be the revolutionary governor of this precious island that had strayed so far from principles which now governed France. And the citizenry of Point--Pitre would have been terrified had they realized what the seven huge packages he had brought with him contained.

His men started unloading the packages at two in the afternoon, lugging each piece to the sunlit square in front of the House of Lace, and while this was being done Hugues was following the routine which had served him so well in the little towns around Paris. a.s.sembling the island's revolutionary spies, he inspected their lists of Royalist names, flicked them with an official tick of his right forefinger, and said: 'Arrest them all.' But before the men could go about their task, aided by armed sailors, he asked: 'And who is the banker? The richest plantation owner?' and when they were identified, he said. 'Be sure to fetch them. And who has been the most outstanding Royalist?' and when this was agreed upon among the spies, he said: 'That one we want for sure.'

At about a quarter to five that first afternoon the guillotine was placed at the center of the square, and when practice drops of the great knife proved its good working order, an awful hush fell over the crowd of watchers, for prior to this they had only heard of this monstrous machine as it operated in distant Paris and had never dreamed that it might one day appear on their island.

'You must hurry,' a local spy warned Hugues. 'There's no twilight here in the tropics. Six o'clock it's night, just like that.'

'I know, I know,' Hugues retorted, but added: 'You'll see. This will be a twilight to remember. All we need, fifteen, sixteen minutes,' and he signaled for the first batch of prisoners to be brought forward. When they were, Solange Vauclain, watching from a spot not far from Hugues, uttered such an agonized cry that he had to turn to see where it came from, and he looked into the eyes of the most dazzling woman he had seen in many months: tall, face like a Raphael Madonna, graceful even in the way she brought her two hands to her chin in horror at what she was seeing, and gifted with that rare quality that makes men hesitate and look a second time.

'Who is that one?' Hugues asked, and a mulatto, who had partic.i.p.ated in the earlier riots but who had now turned spy for the revolutionaries, whispered: 'Name's Solange. Daughter of a white planter the rebels killed and that black woman you just released from jail.'

'And why did this Solange cry out?' and the spy whispered: 'Because she grew up with those two,' and he pointed to where Paul and Eugenie Lanzerac stood among the first group to be executed, and it seems preposterous to say, but in the very instant when this cold, bloodthirsty man saw the Lanzerac woman, more desirable in her peculiar French way than even Solange, his warped mind devised a battle plan: he would have both these women.

A sailor from the ships beat out a drum roll, an a.s.sistant to Commissioner Hugues lifted a sheet of paper closer to his eyes and read: 'Plantation owner Philippe Joubert, you have stolen sugar that belonged to the people, you have mistreated your slaves, and you have declared yourself an enemy of the Revolution. You are condemned to death.' And the terrified man was dragged to the well-used platform, brought to his knees, and strapped into the neck restraint. The drum sounded, almost softly, the sun sank lower in its own swift descent, and down came the knife in its awful rush, striking the exposed neck with such a powerful slicing force that Joubert's head rolled into the street, where a sailor lifted it from the paving blocks and tossed it into a basket.

'Paul Lanzerac,' the man with the list shouted, and two sailors rushed him to the execution area. He was twenty-four that June evening, recipient of the best education that France provided, and possessor of a mind and character and the kind of precious talent that would have proved invaluable to the nation. Yet here he stood, listening to the charges against him: 'You have tried to defeat the Revolution by bringing a new and foolish king to the throne. You have mistreated slaves and you have misused public property. You are condemned to death!' And brutal hands dragged him up onto the platform and fixed the wooden frame about his shoulders.

But before the deadly knife could fall, Solange uttered another scream, broke through the ranks of sailors protecting the execution area, and sped to the guillotine, where she threw her arms about the imprisoned head and showered its lips with the kisses she had been denied during the years she had loved the prisoner. The sailors would have dragged her away contemptuously had not Victor Hugues, executioner extraordinary, held up his hand: 'Let her say farewell,' and the hushed crowd heard her cry: 'Paul, we have always loved you.' Hugues realized that these were strange words, but he also knew that she spoke for the town and all of Guadeloupe, and that since they loved this brilliant young man, it was even more imperative that he be removed with theatrical effect.

'Take her away,' he said without any ugliness in his voice, and when this was done, he gave the signal, the knife fell, and the fairest head in the islands rolled on the cobblestones.

Now came a series of sharp commands, and Eugenie Lanzerac was hauled forth, the list of crimes her dead father was supposed to have committed was read, and she was thrown down upon the boards leading to the neck restraint. But now a real dilemma developed, for Solange, numbed from watching the death of Paul Lanzerac, simply could not allow her dearest and truest friend to be executed, so she broke free, clambered onto the platform, and threw herself upon Eugenie's prostrate body with the cry: 'Take me, not her,' and she clung so tightly that she could not be dislodged and something drastic had to be done.

The mechanics working the guillotine looked at the chief executioner as if to ask: 'Shall we let the knife fall?' and Hugues, almost automatically, said: 'Stay the knife. Release them,' and the men tending the rope that would free the blade for its terrible descent asked: 'Free both of them?' and Hugues said: 'Yes.'

Before natural darkness possessed the beautiful square, moral darkness obscured the place, for in rapid-fire order the three young hors.e.m.e.n who had accompanied Paul and Solange on their excursions into the countryside were dragged to the execution block and strapped down to greet the fall of the hideous blade. By nightfall, when the five executions of the first round were completed, with the basket of heads left at the foot of the guillotine for the townsmen to see, Hugues complimented the men who had conducted the brief trials and efficient executions, issued orders for the next series on the morrow, and announced quietly, 'I'll take that one,' and he pointed to the House of Lace, from which Eugenie was summarily evicted, while her husband's executioner moved in with a young white woman who accompanied him in obedience to orders delivered by one of his a.s.sistants: 'Attend Citizen Hugues or you'll be next on his machine.'

The four years of the Hugues dictatorship, 17941798, were marked by extreme brutality, excellent statesmanship, liberal social legislation far ahead of its time, and the dictator's incessant chasing after women.

He conducted his extirpation of the upper cla.s.s rapidly and effectively. He hauled his portable guillotine into all corners of the populous eastern wing of the island, erected it at central points to which he summoned anyone with wealth, land, slaves or suspected Royalist tendencies and chopped off their heads in public displays that became something like sporting events or rural celebrations.

A hundred leaders died in this manner in the first weeks, seven hundred by the end of the first year, and finally, more than a thousand of the island's finest citizens, the ones on whom the future of Guadeloupe would have depended. All vanished, their heads in baskets, and when that mode of execution proved too c.u.mbersome, they were lined up in tens and scores and shot.

Since it was too difficult to lug the guillotine to the western wing of the gold-green b.u.t.terfly, executions there took not only the form of ma.s.s shootings but also public hangings, with the rabble cheering as their so-called betters danced wildly in the air, and there were outbursts of vengeance in which clubs and rakes and pitchforks were utilized. This half of the island also suffered an almost complete depopulation of its leaders, including priests and nuns who had represented and defended the old regime. Never did the killing wane while Hugues was Commissioner.

His l.u.s.t for savage revenge knew no rational bounds and was sometimes carried to ridiculous extremes, as with the body of General Thomas Dundas. In the months just before Hugues' arrival, when the English captured the island, the ground troops supporting Admiral Oldmixon had been commanded by a gallant officer of ill.u.s.trious reputation, Major General Thomas Dundas, scion of a Scottish family whose numerous sons had illuminated the history of both Scotland and Ireland. Among members of the family were: Baron Amesbury, Lord Arniston, Viscount Melville, let alone the many generals, lord chief justices and other honored positions that normally fall to the members of a great and distinguished family.

Major General Dundas was no military flunky, but despite his careful upbringing, or perhaps because of it, he had acquired the harrumphing, no-nonsense, teach-'em-their-place superior att.i.tude of a Scottish country gentleman. At any rate, any human being with a drop of color in his blood or skin which betrayed 'a touch of the tarbrush' was both beneath contempt and outside the law so far as Dundas was concerned. How ironic it was, therefore, that a few short months after his triumphal conquest of Guadeloupe he fell victim to a disease and died surrounded by black and mulatto nurses who did their best to cool his fevers.

He was buried in the islands, his grave marked by a small stone bearing an inscription in English which informed the world that here rested a gallant British hero, but when Victor Hugues came upon the stone following his occupation of the island, he flew into a blind fury and issued a proclamation, which said: Liberte, egalite, Droit et Fraternite. It is resolved that the body of Thomas Dundas, interred in Guadeloupe, be dug up and given as prey to the birds of the air; and upon that spot shall be erected, at the expense of the Republic, a monument having on the one side this decree and on the other an appropriate inscription.

Forthwith, the corpse of the British hero was disinterred, hung up for the birds to pluck, and then thrown into the public sewer. A stonemason from one of the French ships was brought ash.o.r.e to incise a monument which contained on one side the above condemnation and on the other these words: This ground, restored to Liberty by the valour of the Republicans, was polluted by the body of Thomas Dundas, Major General and Governor of Guadeloupe for the b.l.o.o.d.y King George the Third of England.

Hugues himself had composed the second inscription, for, as he explained to his citizens: 'All honest men deplore the cruel acts of the infamous English king.'