At the three balls the women competed in elegance, some followed by little slaves carrying their trains. Maurice and Rosette, eight and five, performed a demonstration of the waltz, the polka, and the cotillion, which justified the dance teacher's thumps with the rod and provoked exclamations of delight among the crowd. Tete heard the comment that the girl must be Spanish, the daughter of the brother-in-law, what is his name? Sancho or something like that. Rosette, dressed in white silk and black slippers, with a pink ribbon in her long hair, danced with aplomb while Maurice perspired with embarrassment in his gala outfit, counting his steps: two hops to the left, one to the right, bow and half turn, back, forward, and deep bow. Repeat. She led him, ready to disguise with a pirouette of her own inspiration her companion's bumbles. "When I grow up, I will go to balls every night, Maurice. If you want to marry me, you had better learn," she warned him in their practices.
Valmorain had acquired a majordomo for the plantation, and Tete performed the same function, impeccably, in New Orleans, thanks to her lessons in Le Cap from the handsome Zacharie. Both respected the limits of their mutual authority, and during the party had collaborated so that service would run as smooth as oil. They chose three slaves just to carry water and remove chamber pots, and a boy to clean up the foul trail left by two little dogs belonging to Mademoiselle Hortense Guizot that had fallen ill. Valmorain hired two cooks, free mulattoes, and assigned several helpers to Celestine, the house cook. Even among all of them they were barely able to prepare all the fish and shrimp, domesticated and wild birds, Creole dishes, and desserts. A calf was slaughtered, and Owen Murphy directed the outdoor roasting. Valmorain showed his guests the sugar factory, the rum distillery, and the stables, but what he exhibited with most pride were the slave quarters. Murphy had given the slaves three free days, clothing, and sweets, and afterward had them sing in honor of the Virgin Mary. Several women were moved to tears by the blacks' religious fervor. All the guests congratulated Valmorain, although more than one commented behind his back that he would be ruined by such idealism.
At first Tete did not distinguish Hortense Guizot from the other ladies, except by the picky little diarrhea plagued dogs; her instinct failed to warn her of the role that woman would play in her life. Hortense had reached twenty-nine and still was not married, not because she was ugly or poor but because the sweetheart she'd had when she was twenty-four had fallen from his horse while prancing and pirouetting to impress her, and broken his neck. It had been a rare courtship of love, not of convenience, as was usual among Creoles of high breeding. Denise, her personal slave, told Tete that Hortense was the first to come running and find him dead. "She had no chance to tell him good-bye," she added. At the end of the official mourning, Hortense's father began to look for another suitor. The young woman's name had gone from mouth to mouth because of her fiance's premature death, but she had an irreproachable past. She was tall, blond, rosy cheeked, and robust, like so many Louisiana women who ate with gusto and had little exercise. Her bodice lifted her breasts like melons, to the pleasure of masculine glances. Hortense Guizot spent those three days changing clothing every two or three hours, happy that the memory of her fiance had not followed her to the celebration. She took over the piano, singing with a soprano voice, and danced with brio till dawn, exhausting all her partners except Sancho. The woman capable of outdoing him had not been born, he said, but he admitted that Hortense was a formidable contender.
On the third day, when the barges had left with their cargo of weary visitors, musicians, servants, and lap dogs and the slaves were cleaning up the scattered trash, an agitated Owen Murphy brought the news that a band of Maroons were coming upriver, killing whites and inciting the Negroes to rebel. It was known that American Indians were sheltering runaway slaves, and others were surviving in the swamps, transformed into beings of mud, water, and green water growth, immune to mosquitoes and serpents' poisons, invisible to the eye of their pursuers, armed with rusted knives and machetes and sharpened rocks, wild with hunger and freedom. First it was heard that there were about thirty attackers, but within a few hours that number had risen to a hundred and fifty.
"Will they come here, Murphy? Do you think our blacks will join them?" Valmorain asked.
"I don't know, monsieur. They're nearby, and they can overrun us. As for our people, no one can predict how they will react."
"And why can't that be predicted? They receive every kind of consideration here-they would not be better off anywhere. Go talk with them!" exclaimed Valmorain, pacing around the drawing room, extremely perturbed.
"These things are not arranged by talking, monsieur," Murphy explained.
"This nightmare is following me! It's useless to treat the blacks well! They are all incorrigible."
"Be calm, brother-in-law," Sancho interrupted. "Nothing has happened yet. We are in Louisiana, not Saint-Domingue, where there were a half million up in arms Negroes and a handful of merciless whites."
"I must save Maurice. Get a boat ready, Murphy," Valmorain ordered. "I am going to the city immediately."
"No, not that!" yelled Sancho. "No one moves from here. We are not going to scurry away like rats. Besides, the river isn't safe; the rebelling blacks have boats. Monsieur Murphy, we are going to protect the property. Bring all the weapons you can lay hands on."
They lined up the weapons on the dining table, and Murphy's two older sons, thirteen and eleven, loaded them and then distributed them among the four whites, including Gaspard Severin, who had never pressed a trigger and could not aim with his trembling hands. Murphy looked to the slaves, locking the men in the stables and the children in the master's house; the women would not move from the cabins without their children. The majordomo and Tete took charge of the domestics, disoriented by the news. All the Louisiana slaves had heard the whites talk about the danger of an uprising, but they thought that happened only in exotic places, and could not imagine it. Tete charged two women with looking after the children, then helped the majordomo bolt the doors and windows. Celestine reacted better than expected, given her character. She had worked frenetically during the festival, quarrelsome and despotic, competing with the cooks from outside: "Lazy and impudent," she muttered, "being paid for what I am doing for free." She was soaking her feet when Tete came to tell her what was happening. "No one will be hungry," she announced, and with her helpers went into action to feed everyone.
They waited that entire day, Valmorain, Sancho, and the terrified Gaspard Severin with pistols in hand, while Murphy mounted guard in front of the stables and his sons watched the river to raise the alarm should it be necessary. Leanne Murphy calmed the women with the promise that their children were safe in the house, where they had been given cups of chocolate. At ten o'clock that night, when they were so fatigued that no one could keep on their feet, Brandan, the eldest of the Murphy boys, came on horseback with a torch in one hand and a pistol at his waist to announce that a patrol was approaching. Ten minutes later the men dismounted in front of the house. Valmorain, who by that time had relived the horrors of Saint-Lazare and Le Cap, received them with such a show of relief that Sancho was embarrassed for him. He listened to the report from the patrol and ordered bottles of his best liquor uncorked to celebrate. The crisis had passed: nineteen black rebels had been arrested, eleven were dead, and the rest would be hanged at dawn. All the others had dispersed and were probably headed to their refuges in the swamps. One of the militiamen, a redhead about eighteen years old, excited by the night of adventure and the alcohol, assured Gaspard Severin that from living so long in mud the men they hanged had feet like frogs, gills like fish, and a caiman's teeth. Several planters in the area had joined the patrols with enthusiasm for the hunt, a sport they rarely had opportunity to practice on a big scale and swearing to crush the insurgent Negroes to the last man. The losses on the white side were minimaclass="underline" a murdered overseer, a planter, three wounded patrolmen, and a horse with a broken leg. The uprising was suffocated quickly because a domestic slave had given the alarm. Tomorrow, when the rebels are hanging from their nooses, that man will be free, thought Tete.