The White Duchess

A Tale of the Undead

From the diary of Lucienne Ste. Martin:

Upon my return, I was changed. Three days in the cool dark with the small patter of lizard’s feet on the tiles of the roof, like rain. The open grillwork of the window let in moths at night, like birds with their enormous somber wings, their bodies heavy and indolent. They bumped against the shadows flung by the openhanded candles - those wax goddesses, so free with their light, so wanton, yet ever beneath the glory of the sun of whom they are jealous. I like the candles better now.

My brother and I first saw Lucienne at a salon given by Lady Steuben. We had made port a few days earlier, propelled out of the maw of a storm that had wrung prayers from the captain and crew alike. We were happy to see lights and gaiety. How frightening the sea had been, leaden and unappeasable, and the night like a fist slammed repeatedly against her depthless rage.

When I met Lucienne, I thought her eyes were like that night-stunned sea. There was nothing and everything in her gaze. I was reminded of the cold appraisal of a shark.

She gave her hand to Robert and said, “Welcome to our little island, Monsieur. I hope you will be happy among us.”

*****

The White Duchess was what they called the plantation. Sugar cane ate up the ground in three directions, wealth rolling up to the impenetrable humidity of the forest, and the sea lay heaving to the north. The house was low and sprawling, girt by wide verandas, the tall windows and doors open to catch the sea breeze. When our carriage pulled up on the red dirt drive, we were greeted by the scream of peacocks.

The servants gathered on the veranda. A tall brown man named Arthur handed me from the carriage with a solemn expression. None of them smiled. Robert asked if the foreman was about and Athur turned and spoke a few curt words. From the shadows at the side of the wide low stairs a skinny half-naked boy sprang up and ran toward the fields, his bare heels drumming the red earth. Without any more fanfare than that, we entered and took possession of our late uncle’s plantation.

The dusky, high-ceilinged rooms were filled with shifting light and shadows, and the white scrim of the draperies floated on the constant salt breeze. I went immediately to the room that was to be mine, so exhausted by the relentless heat of the long drive that I cared little for the pleasures of touring our new home. Though the sun had been cruel, the dim gustiness of the room seemed almost chill. The foamy drapes and bed netting billowed and writhed like fog, and I shivered.

I turned to the impassive maid. “Is it customary to keep the house so open? The hallway is positively windy, and this room seems cold.”

“The sea breeze is cleansing, Miss Ann. Blows away the sickness, the one took your uncle. Very bad on the island it was, carrying off all sorts of folk, even them that thought they was immune. The sea breeze rides it away.”

A curious turn of phrase. I had heard something of the fever that had swept the island – some tropical malaise that rendered its victims weak and delirious, and often carried them off. The few who survived were never strong again. When they passed on, the superstitious islanders drove priest-blessed nails through their eyes and tied stones to their hands and feet before entombing them in niches scratched from the walls of the sea caves. Like an unloved guest, the fever returned from time to time, and so this frightful practice was well established. I did not want to encourage such childish thinking among the servants.

“That was over a year ago, Marie. I think it will be safe to close my bedroom windows.”

Marie stared for a moment, her lips trembling on the point of speech, but in the end, she crossed to the windows and pulled the shutters close. The restless drapes stilled, the bed ceased to heave like a ship in a storm, the shadows fell senseless into the corners. I waved Marie toward the trunks to be unpacked and collapsed into the embrace of the pillowy duvet.

*****

Lucienne Ste. Martin came with the White Duchess like a minor addendum to the inheritance. Her marriage to Robert would forge an alliance between the plantation and Ste. Martin shipping. It was a business arrangement of some years’ negotiation between our uncle and Lucienne’s father, Charles Ste. Martin.

Robert had first been made aware of the possibility when he finished his university studies. Uncle’s letters had been enthusiastic, and then later, cautious. Robert had heard nothing of the match for nearly two years and had just about decided that the engagement had fallen through when news of Uncle’s death reached him, along with confirmation that both the plantation and his bride awaited him.

“Well, I’m to marry a pig in a poke,” Robert jested. “Such is the price of riches and adventure. I only hope she has a pretty face.”

He was good-natured at the prospect, having formed no attachments at home, and he turned his will to the task of building the family business – a goal much more readily within his grasp were he wedded to the Ste. Martin girl. He was admirably practical. Romance, I fear, is my weakness.

I tousled his hair. “You’re the pig in the poke, brother. Do you think a young woman wants to be the pawn of unscrupulous businessmen?”

Lucienne did not seem to mind in the least. She was dark and ethereally beautiful as a fairy tale heroine. She played the piano, danced with grace, and dressed elegantly. The three of us were in constant company at the round of engagement parties thrown by the islanders. Robert was pleased, but I felt uneasy.

The girl was charming and lively in conversation but lapsed almost into torpor when not engaged. I found myself comparing her unfavorably to a wind-up doll I had when a child. Left alone, Lucienne seemed wound down. Unlike my doll, though, there was a disturbing quality of anticipation about the girl. A sly febrile glitter seemed to light her dark eyes, yet never did it achieve the warmth of actual interest.

Nor could I find in myself any liking for her family. Rough sailors in silk waistcoats, the lot of them, and steeped in the heathen beliefs of the natives. Lucienne’s grandmother, Odette, accompanied her with the inevitability of the tide, and by turns cossetted the girl or thrust her forward like a trained seal.

One night, after supper with the mayor, our party moved to the drawing room for cards and gossip. I watched Lucienne dazzle everyone in turn, bright and spirited on Robert’s arm. But when my brother was called away to the study by his fiancé’s father to discuss matters of business, the flame that was Lucienne guttered low and acquired that nightmarish lurking quality that so troubled me.

Her brothers and uncles took no more note of her than of the furniture. They stood in a brooding knot about the fireplace drinking brandy that should have been consumed at the dining table before they joined the ladies. No such niceties were observed on the island, nor did Gerard Ste. Martin feel ashamed of the brazen and unwelcome appraisal he lavished on me.

The other ladies of the party were embroiled in a game of hearts. Lucienne stood like one asleep by the tall window that overlooked the street, and yet there was a terrible inwardly turned vivacity about her. I thought she was like the creature some in the islands called “zombie”, devoid of any will of her own and only eager for instruction. I became aware of Odette watching me as I watched her granddaughter, and I felt a frisson of guilty fear when our eyes met. Perhaps she guessed at the direction of my thoughts, for she stood and crossed to the window.

“Miss Ann,” said the harridan, “does not my pet play sweetly?”

With that, the old woman propelled the girl to the piano where Lucienne was immediately animated by the sudden regard of the ladies and commenced a lovely air. Her playing was accomplished yet lacked the verve that pleasure in the music lends.

Odette came to sit beside me on the divan, compelling me to feign a rapt attention to Lucienne’s performance. I felt my flesh cringe away from the old woman, an involuntary response of the body that I strove to master. For a long moment she said nothing, only looked at me coolly, as one takes the measure of an opponent. Then she smiled and reached out her slender claw to pat my knee.

“We will have to do something about you, Miss Ann.” She showed her yellow teeth at my gasp. “A match, of course, is what I mean. It is time you thought of marriage and left your brother’s house to be mistress of your own.”

From the diary of Lucienne Ste. Martin:

I am grateful for this existence. They could have imprisoned me by the sea, my people. They could have made me heavy and inert as a stone, denied me this wild joy. Instead, they sold me, and I will be a bride. I do not mind. I go to my fate compliant as a child, knowing what none of them can know. I am beyond them. Oh, how I have traveled!

The wedding was a modest service held at the White Duchess. The bride was radiant, though earlier I had found her standing listlessly before my vanity table, my hairbrush dangling from her white fingers. It fell to the carpet as I entered and Lucienne made no move to retrieve it, nor seemed to have noticed its fall.

“My dear, are you well?”

I took her by the arm. She came with me to the chaise and allowed me to push her down upon the tufted satin in a great rustle and froth of wedding silk and lace. She lay like a wax figure in the sheer drape of her veil, the avid eyes like windows onto living night in the stillness of her face. I drew back with the sudden shrinking notion that I looked upon a corpse.

Lucienne stirred sluggishly. “I am well, Ann. I am only a little weak. Did you know I had the fever? Not long before your uncle died, I rallied. I rallied …”

Her soft voice trailed away with the effort of speaking. I had not known, and I was shocked. Perhaps her weakened health accounted for her strangeness, and yet I did not believe it was so. Her eyes pulled at me with dark promise, but I was repelled as by some black void from which could be discerned the scuttling of beetles. Lucienne made an effort and rose upon her elbow, holding out a pale hand to me.

“Help me up, sister,” she whispered.

And I helped her, may God forgive me. I helped her to stand and finish dressing and to walk like a somnambulist to the little chapel by the library. When she saw Robert standing before the priest, waiting for her, her spine stiffened, and she bloomed before my eyes. Gone was the wilting rose of a moment before, replaced by laughing health and vitality. She fairly danced to the altar. I should have stopped them, but how? How to tell Robert, wreathed in smiles, that his bride was – what? At the very least, unwell. At worst, monstrous.

In the midst of my indecision, Odette appeared at my elbow, drawing me to the side of the room, her fingers like an icy vise.

“Come, Miss Ann,” she murmured, “let an old woman take charge of you. Who knows but that you, too, may be married one day soon?”

And so, I stood mute and miserable beside that greedy witch and watched my brother go happily to his doom.

From the diary of Lucienne Ste. Martin:

Night and candles, darkness and flame. The bridal chambers were filled with them, and with the shadows that are their children.

I knew my duty, to lie with this man, to be mistress of his house. I could never bear him children, but I could keep him bound … bound …to the sea? No. To my father’s ships, lashed tight like a furled sail, and the sugar would make them all rich. Grandmother schooled me. When the fever took me, she called me back and made me her creature. But her ways are not the only ways. And she wasn’t there, anyway, to command me in that candlelit room.

I belong to the night; it consumed me bite by bite as I journeyed back to the world. It never lets anything go, once caught. When Robert came to me, the night burst into the room – my true husband – and drank him like wine. I drank him. I left the white peignoir upon the bed and wrapped myself in shadows. Like a shadow, I have no home. Yet, like the salt wind, I will find my way in everywhere.

Oh, Robert, my dear brother! I seem to see him in the billowing curves of the drapes, there and then gone again. His eyes are so sad. Marie assures me it is only the fever, but she makes the sign against ghosts and demons when she thinks I am not looking. She is brave, to tend me so closely, even with the windows open to the stormy howling and surging of the sea that passes for the winter season here.

I like the cool of the wind now, and the lash of the rain that dashes in. The sun has forsaken us for weeks; the cane is rotting in the fields. But I am mistress here now, and I try to rise, to see to the crop and the workers dying in their simple homes. Fever. Fever rushes among us like a vampire.

Who is that in the doorway? Mr. Gerard, says my faithful Marie. That damned Ste. Martin, leering at me with his feigned concern. I’ll never marry him. His family is filling up the house, my house. Get them out! Get them out! Marie tries to soothe me, but I thrash and cry out. Oh, God. I think I’m dying.

No, no, my sweet. That voice, it is rich and dark – I know it. No, it says. You will not die, not really. Only a short rest, and then you will be married. I told you I would take charge of you.

A fathomless darkness is waiting to swallow me. Odette’s face is the last one I see before I drown.