"Now give me the pistol," I asked.
He did not want to let go of the weapon; he explained that he did not mean to use it against Gambo because he was our only means of salvation. I do not remember very well how we got organized, but within a few minutes he was armed with two additional pistols and had collected his gold from the office while I gave the children laudanum from one of Dona Eugenia's blue vials we had kept. They were knocked out, and I was afraid I had given them too much. I didn't worry about the field slaves-tomorrow would be their first day of freedom-but in those attacks the fate of the domestics was usually as atrocious as that of the masters. Gambo decided to warn Tante Mathilde. The cook had provided him an advantage of several hours when he'd run away and had been punished for it; now it was up to him to return the favor. Within a half hour, when we were far enough away, she could gather the domestics and go mix in with the field slaves. I tied Maurice to his father's back, handed two packets of provisions to Gambo, and strapped on Rosette. The master thought it was madness to leave on foot-we could take horses from the stable-but according to Gambo that would attract the vigilantes, and the route we were going to follow was not for horses. We crossed the patio in the shadows of buildings, stayed away from the coconut palm avenue, where there was a guard, and started toward the cane fields. The hideous long-tailed rats that infest the fields scurried ahead of us. The master hesitated; Gambo put his knife to his throat but did not kill him because I held his arm. We needed him to protect the children. This I reminded him.
We plunged into the spine-chilling hiss of the cane blown by the wind, with its whistling and knife-clickings, demons hidden in the tall stalks, snakes, scorpions, a labyrinth in which sounds are distorted and distances curl and twist and a person can get lost forever and even if he yells and yells never be found. For that reason the fields are divided into carres, or blocks, and are always cut from the edges toward the center. One of Cambray's punishments consisted of leaving a slave in the fields at night and at dawn loosing the dogs after him. I do not know how Gambo led us through, maybe by instinct or perhaps from experience stealing at other plantations. We walked in a line, close together so as not to get lost, protecting ourselves as we could from the knife-edged leaves, until finally, after quite some time, we left the plantation and entered the jungle. We walked for hours, but made little progress. At dawn we could clearly see the orange sky of the fire at Saint-Lazare and were choked by the biting, sweetish smoke carried on the wind. The sleeping children weighed like stones on our backs. Erzulie, mother loa, come to our aid.
I have always gone about with bare feet, but I was not accustomed to that terrain, and my feet were bleeding. I was falling with fatigue; in contrast my master, twenty years older than I, walked without stopping, with Maurice's weight on his back. Finally Gambo, the youngest and strongest of our three, said we must rest. He helped us untie the children and we laid them on a pile of leaves after poking it with a stick to frighten off snakes. Gambo wanted the master's pistols, but Valmorain convinced him that they were more useful in his hands since Gambo knew nothing about such weapons. They made a pact that Gambo would carry one and the master two. We were near the swamps, and light barely shone through the leaves. The air was like hot water. The mud could swallow a man in two minutes, but Gambo did not seem disturbed. He found a pool; we drank, wet our clothing and that of the children, who were still sleeping hard; we shared some bread from the provisions, and rested a bit.
Soon Gambo started us out again, and the master, who had never taken orders in his life, obeyed without a word. The swamps were not a quagmire as I had imagined, but dirty, stagnant water and foul-smelling vapors. The ground was mud. I thought about Dona Eugenia, who would rather have fallen into the rebels' hands than pass through that dense fog of mosquitoes; fortunately, she was already in the Christians' heaven. Gambo knew the trail, but it wasn't easy to follow him carrying the weight of the children. Erzulie, loa of water, come to our aid. Gambo undid the tignon around my head, wrapped my feet in leaves, and bound them with the cloth. The master was wearing tall boots, and Gambo believed that the fangs of jungle creatures would not penetrate the soles of his feet. We went on.
Maurice was the first to wake, when we were still in the swamp, and he was frightened. When Rosette woke up, I put her to my breast awhile, still walking on, and she went back to sleep. We walked the entire day and reached Bois Cayman, where there was no danger of sinking into mud, but where we could be attacked. There Gambo had seen the beginning of the rebellion, when my godmother, mounted by Ogoun, sometimes called Ogu-Fer, called for war and named the chiefs. This Gambo told me. Since that time Tante Rose had gone from camp to camp healing people, celebrating services for the loas, and seeing into the future; she was feared and respected by all, fulfilling the destiny marked in her z'etoile. She had counseled Gambo to find a place under Toussaint's wing because he would be king when the war ended. Gambo had asked her if then we would be free, and she assured him we would, but first all the whites would have to be killed, including newborn babies, and there would be so much blood on the earth that ears of corn would grow red.
I gave more drops to the children and made them comfortable among the roots of a large tree. Gambo feared the packs of wild dogs more than humans or spirits, but we did not dare light a fire to keep them at a distance. We left the master with the children and the three loaded pistols, sure that he would not leave Maurice's side, while Gambo and I went a little way away to do what we wanted to do. Hatred deformed the master's face when I got up to follow Gambo, but he said nothing. I was afraid of what would happen to me later because I know the cruelty of whites at the hour of revenge, and that hour would come to me sooner or later. I was exhausted and sore from carrying Rosette, but the only thing I wanted was to put my arms around Gambo. At that moment nothing else mattered. Erzulie, loa of pleasure, allow this night to go on forever. This is how I remember it.
Fugitives
The rebels fell upon Saint-Lazare at that imprecise hour when night begins to recede, moments before the work bell rang to wake the workers. At first the attack was a resplendent comet's tail, points of light moving rapidly: the torches. The cane fields hid the human figures, but when they began to emerge from the thick vegetation it could be seen that they were hundreds. One of the guards was able to get to the bell, but twenty hands brandishing knives reduced him to an unrecognizable pulp. The dry cane burned first, then its heat set fire to the rest, and in less than twenty minutes the conflagration covered all the fields and advanced toward the big house. The flames leaped in all directions, so high and so powerful that the firebreak of the patios could not stop them. To the clamor of the fire was added the deafening shouting of the attackers and the lugubrious howls of the conch shells blowing to announce war. The men ran naked, or barely covered by shreds of clothing, armed with machetes, chains, knives, poles, bayonets, and muskets with no balls, which were held like cudgels. Many were smeared with soot, others were in a trance or drunk, but within the disorder was a single goaclass="underline" destroy. The field slaves, intermingled with the domestics, who had been warned in time by the cook, abandoned their cabins and participated in that saturnalia of revenge and devastation. At first some hesitated, fearing the uncontainable violence of the rebels and the inevitable retaliation of the master, but they no longer had a choice. If they took one step back they would perish.