Pulling myself from the window I went to the attic staircase and moved as swiftly as I could, catlike, my ears pricked, my eyes cutting through the murk. Voices, or at least one, issued from the main room there. The door was cracked and I slid through. To my left Eugénie was telling her lover that she had all her garments, some coins, sturdy boots, her cape, and the maps, mine, the ones I had drawn, which she had studied assiduously and was sure would serve them as well as any others. Her lover did not speak, but I wondered, given how frequently Fr. Malesvaux had come and gone from west to east and back why he would need to depend on one of my maps, drawn, in any case, from my inner vision and not cartographic accuracy. He persisted in not speaking and it struck me that he might be communicating with her in another way. Papers rustled in the darkness, until I could tell he was stilling her, calming her. She asked if the horses were ready, and he conveyed to her that they were. I stepped out of the way to let them head downstairs; I was not going to betray her to the nuns, since I was sure she and her popish paramour would not get far, at least based on the maps I had drawn, and they would find that out soon enough.
Right near the door, she turned, her shoulder-slung sack swinging and nearly hitting me in the face, and asked, “How long do you think it’ll be before they discover you took all the money?” I was not surprised at this bald statement of duplicity and sin, and yet I was. Fr. Malesvaux, whatever he was or was not, had never seemed to me to be an evil man, let alone a thief. Even the Haitians at and around Valdoré had recognized this, French and ever liberal with Christian casuistry though he was.
The voice that responded to her, in a hard, somewhat stammering twang, in English, was not Fr. Malesvaux’s, however, but another’s. “Just like you told me to I put enough of it in their food they ought not figure I’m gone till midday.” It was Job White Jr. who spoke. I must admit that his presence jarred me, at least momentarily, and I was determined to find out what was going on. I commanded the lamps to come on, and they beamed with an unearthly light. Eugénie and White, ready with sacks at their sides for flight, both suppressed their urge to cry out, but did back away from me immediately.
“What are you doing up here, you black witch?” she said to me, her voice breaking just above a whisper. I was going to answer, but I could hear the hubbub from outside growing louder and closer; with a clarity I have never felt before or since I could see the crowns of the torches gathering in the town square, before they made their way up the hill. I could see them, as I looked at Eugénie and White, who both were so pale as to appear ill. Despite this Eugénie repeated her question, and then said, “We are leaving, and you cannot stop us. I’ve placed all your demonic writings, your hellish illustrations, that diary full of gibberish and nonsense, in a flour sack just inside Sr. Louis Marie’s door. We also left a letter for Job’s father, Rev. White, and for others in the town to let him know that the nuns were harboring you, and you won’t be able to say a word in your defense. Rather than wondering where I’ve gotten off to, where we are, they’ll—” I silenced her, and exited the room. The door I made sure I sealed shut. Almost as soon as she began pulling on the knob, as he began heaving his shoulder into the wood, their screams started. Downstairs there was a shuffling of feet, and startled wailing. I got to work.
The wall outside the room leading down a storey was an expanse of paint the hue of buttermilk, but, I now knew, I no longer needed it, nor the charcoal I kept in my pocket. Instead as I walked down the stairs I urged Marinette, Rochelle, Hubert, and Moor, all asleep in their quarters out back, to go immediately to the stables and ready horses and carts, which they did, each dressing as quickly as possible, each baffled for a minute that they had had the same aim until they realized its source. I thought about letting the nuns counter the Reverend and the townspeople on their own, but it was not, it seemed to me, the charitable thing to do, and although they had assisted in the maintenance of my bondage, that would endure as a cross for their consciences to bear. I roused each of them from their prayers, their default response in the face of an approaching threat, as if they had lost all command of reason, and set them to motion.
The only white girl other than Eugénie — whose screams, now echoing throughout the upstairs and building, had turned into something almost animal — remaining, Annie Lawrie, had also never been a source of torment, so I hoisted her as if she were a marionette from the corner of her bedroom into which she had barricade herself, and spurred her to aid Marinette, in the process muting her so that she could not give a single order. Not one of the nuns, not the Mother Superior, not even Sr. François Agnès, in whom I had had some semblance of confidence, had thought to ring a warning bell, so I had her do so.
At another window that looked out onto the town below I could see the flames, at the base of the hill, ascending, like a wave of gold, towards the convent. Lamp and candlelight from the room seared through the dark. It was as if I were painting and in the painting at the same time, as if the inside and outside were fusing into one rich, polysensory perspective, and I almost had to stop for a second to steady myself. The nuns, amongst whom I passed though not a single one spotted me, were grabbing crucifixes from the walls, stuffing books and papers into bags, and reciting snatches of Scripture, in French. Their rosaries they did not think to look for, thankfully, since they would not have found them; I had already collected and disassembled them over the last week, so as to have the necessary tools at my disposal. I continued forward, forcing Annie Lawrie, weeping uncontrollably, down the main stairwell, where she had stalled, and outside to the stables, where Hubert and Marinette had hitched several carts, into which Rochelle had packed enough bread, water and dried food to keep everyone fed for at least a day or two.
When I reached the Mother Superior’s room, the sack containing all my handiwork was not where Eugénie had claimed, but sitting beneath a desk. Whether she had put it there or the Mother Superior had moved it was unclear, but no matter. It was heavier than I thought it would be, but once I rifled through it I was sure that save for the maps everything I had accomplished since arriving here filled it. I hefted it over my shoulder and started to leave the room, when, glancing back, I saw Fr. Malesvaux, sitting on the edge of the bed, immobile as if stricken. I thought to leave him there, especially as in the blue of his irises and the sunburnt contours of his face I could read the pilasters and eaves of Valdoré, the crop of Nicolas de L’Écart, the fusillade of Napoléon, and L’Ouverture rotting in a forgotten cell, but I thought better of it, and stirred him such that he barreled past me, wearing only his dressing gown.
There was nothing in my own room that I needed to take with me beyond the pitcher of water and the washing bowl that sat beside Eugénie’s bed. I made my way back to the attic, stopping briefly to peer first into the back grounds, where I could see everyone seated on horses or piled into the carts, which began to take off toward the river’s oxbow, Moor’s knowledge of the area enough to save them, and then out front, where a contingent of the townspeople, their faces lit white with torchlights, were belling around in a semicircle on the front drive, chanting for the nuns to open the door and show their faces, and to bring Job White Jr., Eugénie, and me out. I thought to turn them all into a giant, writhing pyre, but that time, I knew, would come.