A Simple Deception

XIV

Susanna nodded and composed herself.

"My mother stayed alive," Alex said again carefully. "She did what she had to for food. She kept herself as healthy as possible, and when I came along, she protected me above anything. Infants didn't survive long. But Maman kept me alive. She kept us both alive.

"I do not remember not working. All I remember from my childhood is the shouting, the cracking sound the whips made, screams. My mother protected me from it all. She kept me safe, hidden when I needed to be, and out of the way. I was born into chains, and I was owned by a man called ..." Alex paused, as though he couldn't let the name out of his mouth. "He was always "Master" to us all. He was an evil man.

"The work was brutal, but the punishment for falling behind was even more so. We worked twelve hours, fifteen hours, sometimes whole days without rest. People died all the time. I have seen people die before my eyes from exhaustion, their ailing bodies simply giving out. It was cheaper, you see, to import more slaves then improve conditions.

"Master wasn't there all the time. He was what they would call grand blanc," Alex explained. "He spent a lot of time in France, and so his lands were looked after by the petit blancs. Those men were just as evil, if not more so. They tortured for amusement. Pulled men and women at random for a lashing. They would burn and brand people at will. The worst ... the worst I ever witnessed was ..." Alex stopped himself momentarily. "I have learned never to hit a white man," he stated, reiterating the point he had made after his assault in London. "Because in Saint-Domingue such a crime was immediate execution. I watched a man fight back, and the petit blancs buried him alive."

Susanna covered her gasp with her hand, but she could not mask her horror at such a revelation. How could she?

"It was all sanctioned," Alex continued angrily. "They wielded that Code Noir like the Bible. It was a book of rules, for how the French were to treat us. They believed the word of the king to be Gospel, that it gave them the Divine right to do whatever they pleased to us."

Something horrid told Susanna that Alex was concealing the very worst of what those men had done.

"What was worse was that the Catholic Church condoned what they were doing to us," Alex whispered. "They believed the good work the French were doing would civilise the African slaves, that it would turn them to Christianity. I struggled as a boy to believe in a God who could watch from above and do nothing while ...

"My mother prayed every night for God to forgive Master, to forgive the petit blancs. It used to infuriate me. She prayed for me, too. All the time. She prayed that I would live, and she did everything in her power to keep me safe, and to keep the white men from me."

Susanna hated to think of the sorts of things that Alex's mother would have had to do to keep him safe.

"When I was six years old, Master returned from France to control his land. The Revolution was beginning, and he sought to secure his holdings. He chose me on that day for no good reason. To assert his power. To frighten his people into submission. A petit blanc tore off the rags I was wearing, and he brought me before him. My mother screamed for me. I ... if I close my eyes, I can still hear it. She begged for me, offered them anything. But the master still smiled at me and twisted the chat à neuf queues in his hand."

Cat o' nine tails. Susanna stomach flipped as she translated it in her head. Alex had been a child, a six-year-old boy! How could this have happened?

"I didn't cry. He told me it would stop if I cried. But I wouldn't. The only reason he stopped was because he would be fined per the Code if he killed me without cause." Alex breathed heavily. "He then took my mother anyway and I didn't see her for three days. I thought she was dead. I wanted to die, too. I nearly did. I was feverish as my wounds were diseased. But she returned and she tended me as she always had. And we survived.