Drums of Darkness

An Astrological Gothic Novel: Leo

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

Copyright © 1976 by Marion Zimmer Bradley Horoscope Copyright © 1976 by Random House, Ina

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-7974 ISBN 0-345-25108-3-125

Muted in Canada.

First Edition: August, 1976

Note

To the best of my knowledge and belief there is not, in Haiti or elsewhere, a village named Cap Dominique; and the events detailed as historical and having occurred during the slave revolts there (although similar events must have been commonplace) never took place outside the imagination of the author. As for the names used in the novel, while they may be and probably are the names of some real people somewhere on this populous earth, I am not acquainted with any such people, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no events similar to those detailed in this book ever happened to my characters’ coincidental namesakes, or, it should hardly be necessary to say, to anyone else.

—MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

Horoscope

by Sydney Omarr

LEO: Mardee Haskell Born: August 6, 1945, 3 A.M., Denver, Colorado

Mardee almost died during childbirth, which is indicated by Saturn close to the Moon and nearly on her Cancer Ascendant. The trauma of almost being deprived of breath, of the life force itself, has left its mark— although she doesn’t show it. She seems, to some, to be overly possessive, somewhat selfish, and demanding of stage-center. Her astrologer knows better, and delineates a different story.

Mardee is voluptuous, has hypnotic eyes, is creative, artistic, temperamental, has a melodious voice, tends to put on weight, and indulges herself—eating, collecting art objects and antiques… She has had more than one serious affair of the heart, and has had a broken marriage.

Some, who perhaps are envious, claim that Mardee hoards: possessions and people. She may not project an image of austerity, but the Cancer emphasis (Ascendant, Moon and Saturn) does drive her to save for a rainy day and to have supplies on hand: water and food, with the Leo flash adding caviar and champagne to the larder.

Generally Mardee is gentle, but she will fight when she feels the cause is right. She is persuasive, used to getting her way; is a “selfish lover” in that she waits for her senses to be stimulated, yet does not feel it necessary to do the same for her partner. Mardee knows what she is doing, hates herself at times for being “spoiled,” but nevertheless resents anyone else’s suggesting it.

Her mother is gentle, just, lovely, a Libran. Her father was aggressive and almost constantly at odds with his daughter’s motives, actions, and intentions. Yet he usually granted Mardee the right and permission to do what she liked, no matter how reluctant he was to do so.

Our heroine is a muckraker. Mars, significator of her Tenth, is in her Twelfth Sector in Gemini (Uranus is also in that zodiacal sign), depicting one who gains access to secrets exorcizes fears, doubts, pulls away cheesecloth at a fake stance, adores being backstage, loves to be considered a woman of mystery, collects confidential memos, creates scenarios—some of which are valid and create a dangerous atmosphere for her.

In, 1973, she is engulfed in mystery—there are secret rites and Mardee is, willingly or not, right in the middle of them. A rumor could quite possibly be spread about her (according to her planetary transits, cycle). At first, Mardee could be amused; then she would be terrified— and properly so. She could be the object of a search. Those confidential memos and scenarios seem startlingly enough, to be transformed into hard, albeit bizarre, realities. The utilization of Mardee’s compelling voice and her hypnotic eyes could play major roles in extricating herself from what appears to be certain capture or destruction.

Gemini, Libra, and Scorpio persons play important roles in her life. She has collected something which— for some sect or cult members—appears to be sacred. If only she knew what it was, she probably would give it up—willingly or otherwise.

Mardee is basically conservative, enjoys a show but detests theatrics. She is usually cool, calm, and restrained on the outside; but inwardly she is a cauldron, seething, curious, and bursting with life. Mardee is a manipulator, but her motives are good—she feels omnipotent in the sense that she knows that she can pull strings to get the best results for all concerned. And, amazingly, she is frequently right.

Mardee can be dramatic if the situation calls for it, and can resolve the current dilemma with a flourish— actually giving herself up in a blaze of glory, providing evidence which eradicates superstition in one way, encourages belief in the supernatural in another.

An argument between Mardee and her mother begins this extraordinary story ms Mardee is about to depart for Haiti—land of her ancestry, land of voodoo.

One

Outside the window it was raining that hard autumn sleet. Mardee Haskell clutched the letter in the pocket of her jeans and thought of the warm bright sun of Haiti, the drums and dances and flowers of a tropical island.

“Haiti!” her mother said angrily. “Why should you want to go to Haiti? You’ve never been there. There’s nothing for you there!”

Mardee tried to keep her voice light. “Isn’t that a good reason for going? That makes it more of an adventure!”

“Adventure!” Marie-Claire Haskell’s voice smoldered with contempt “There is nothing there but poverty, ignorance, superstition! And evil—evil everywhere!”

Mardee turned back to the sleet, gray outside the window. September. Winter coming on. Dirty snow in the New York streets; and the endless rounds of casting offices.

And here was a chance to skip this winter in what somebody living in Kansas had laughingly named Fun City!

“Mother, I don’t understand you. Your own mother’s sister-—and she’s old, and she’s sick, and she needs you. She owns this enormous estate …”’ Mardee looked around the cramped apartment, scrubbed clean but still dingy, like most New York apartments. Her mother’s aunt owned an estate in Haiti so old, so beautiful, so steeped in history that Sebastian Wright—the Sebastian Wright of a dozen Academy Award-winning films— had leased house and grounds for his next epic. Mardee had never guessed that this lay in her mother’s background; Marie-Claire Haskell had spoken only once of Haiti, and then briefly.

“I don’t understand. She wants our help while the film people are on the estate, someone to act as hostess. And you’ve always been so strong on family, Mother!”

“The day I met your father, Marie-Louise, I became a member of his family. That is the only family I have; for them I will do whatever I can and give whatever I have. But Emilie Thibaud is not a good woman. She has not a good heart.” Imperceptibly, the French accent she had never lost crept back into the older woman’s voice. “Cap Dominique is an evil place. I will never go back. Nor should you, petite.”

Mardee shrugged. “There’s a free plane ticket in it, and a winter in the tropics. What have I to lose?”

But she knew what her mother was going to say, and hardened herself against the words before Marie-Claire said them.

“You have Ted to lose,” said her mother, low-voiced. “You know he will be there until the very last day when the decree is made final, waiting and hoping you will come back.”

Mardee turned her back. The sleet had turned into cold, pouring rain. She said into it, “He can wait till hell freezes over.”

“Marie-Louise! Turn around and look at me, girl!”

Mardee turned, seeing with dismay that there were tears in her mother’s eyes. “Cherie … are you really going to throw that man away? He loves you.”

Mardee had sworn to herself that she would not argue about this again. What was the use? But she said through an angry lump in her throat, “Loves me. Yes. So much that he wants to lock me up in a box and let me rot there! He wants some dumb bunny to mend his clothes and teach drama at the high school and take a year off now and then to have kids …”

“Every man wants that,” said her mother, her voice shaking. “You think you can throw that away? You think any career in the world is worth a man like Ted? He wouldn’t mind you having a career—”

“Oh, no, he just said he felt like a pimp handing around his favorite hooker when he saw me on the stage, that’s how much he doesn’t mind me having a career!” She clutched feverishly at the letter in her pocket, trying to think of tropical sun, calypso drums, jasmine in the air, anything but Ted’s face when he had thrown that at her. Escape. That letter meant escape, and she was going to take it.

“And so for a play that didn’t run four months, you walked out on Ted, and wrecked your marriage for a career that might never amount to anything?” Her mother shook her head in angry wonder. “Ted wouldn’t mind you having a decent career. What’s wrong with teaching drama? Something that would fit in with his career. Ted’s got a future, Marie-Louise, you could be proud of him someday. Just thirty-five, and a full professor. He’s going somewhere!”

“I can’t spend my life being proud of Ted and pretending that makes up for having nothing to be proud of in my own life. I want my own career, not a share of Ted’s!”

Her mother lifted her chin proudly. “I had a career, and a good one, but I was proud to be your father’s wife and your mother!”

“Can’t you see it’s different? You had a nice, proper, ladylike career. Teaching.” She stared again into the pouring rain. “I’m not going to talk about Ted or my marriage any more. It’s finished. I can’t tie my life in knots because it would make you so happy to see me married to a successful man!”

“I feel I am to blame,” Marie-Claire Haskell said heavily. “If I had not let you stay here, you would have had to go back when the play closed—”

“No. I’d have slept in the streets before I went back to Ted, and you knew it.” Mardee pulled the letter with the colorful foreign stamp from her pocket. Escape. An honorable way out. “She says we should wire her what flight we’re on and she’ll have us met in Port-au-Prince.” The very name conjured up exotic visions. “You will come, won’t you, Mother?”

“No, I will not.” Mardee knew from childhood the stubborn set of those shoulders. “I told Tante Emilie when I went away that I would never return. Jamais. C’est fini!”

Mardee gauged her mother’s disturbance by the lapse into French. “But, Mother, why, why spend a winter in New York when you could spend it in the Caribbean?”

“Here I am my own woman! I told her I would never return, never, and now, after all these years, she tries to lure me back, to tempt you with her promises, her wealth … It is evil! It is useless, I will not go, I will resist her!” It was such a torrent of rapid French that Mardee had trouble following it.

“But what do you mean, Mother? She’s an old, sick woman, we’re her only living relatives—how can you say no to her?”

“You don’t fool me,” her mother said, in rapid, angry French, “what is Emilie Thibaud to you? It is the famous producer, this Sebastian Wright, who draws you as the moth to the flame! You think when he sees you he will take you up, discover you, you will become one big star—no?”

Mardee felt a flush rise in her cheeks. Was there any harm in finding out what a great director wanted in a leading lady? Was it so bad to want to know an important man in the theater personally? Sebastian Wright had sent many young actresses into meteoric orbits of fame and fortune. But would he even know that Mardee was an actress? She would be there as her great-aunt’s hostess. No more.

“Mother, Great-aunt Emilie has offered us a free trip to Haiti, and a chance to be genuinely useful to her. How long has it been since you had a vacation?”

“Such a vacation I do not need,” Marie-Claire countered, “nor you. You wish to be an actress, Marie-Louise—Mardee.” She said the stage name deliberately. “Very well, then, be an actress. What happens if you take three months now, away from your contacts and your rounds? Is this how a professional actress behaves, doing nothing to further her career for three months in the theater season?”

Mardee knew that she was right, but the fall productions were already cast, and she hadn’t even been considered; only twice had she been asked to read for a part. She explained this; it would be nothing but modeling jobs anyway till after Christmas. At least in Haiti she had the chance of one professional contact: Sebastian Wright.

“But it is evil beyond words, Marie-Louise. Haiti is an evil place! You must not go! I tell you, you must not go! It is dangerous for you, Marie-Louise, you are of the blood—no!” Marie-Claire broke off abruptly, turning her back. When she spoke again, she had recovered her composure. “I have advised you. Your great-aunt is not a good woman, and Cap Dominique is an evil place.”

“But how can you talk this way? What do you mean, It is dangerous, you are of the blood . . . Mother, you’re from Haiti!”

“Haiti is not a bad place to be from—the farther from, the better. Emilie Thibaud is not a good woman, she has not a good heart. But you are not a child, Marie-Louise, and you have made it clear that my advice is not welcome. If you must go, then you must go. But I will have no part in it And I will say no more to one who will not listen.”

She walked out of the room. Mardee watched her, frowning. It is dangerous. You are of the blood. What could she possibly have meant by that?

Nothing. Morbid nonsense. Superstition. I won’t miss out on this chance because she’s superstitious! Mardee conjured up again a bright vision of tropical sun, flowers, drums and exotic dances, but she found nonetheless that some of her mother’s disquiet lingered. What was she so afraid of?

The cold rain was still falling three days later when the jet took off from Kennedy, climbing swiftly through the clouds to sunshine. Resolutely Mardee put it all behind her: her mother’s angry, sullen silence, the call from Ted the night before—everything. She would have three months in Haiti to relax, to rest, to think about her life and her career and decide what she would do about them. She remembered a printed maxim she had seen in the airport gift shop: TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Looking into the brilliant sunshine outside, as if she were already in the tropics, she felt that way.

The plane was just about half full. Most of the passengers were women, middle-aged and expensively dressed. Mardee looked enviously at their clothes. At this time of year most New York shops were filled with winter clothes, except for the cruise shops of expensive department stores far beyond Mardee’s frugal budget Even after turning in Tante Emilie’s first-class ticket for one in tourist class—and luxury-loving Mardee had almost rebelled at the necessity of that—there was only the barest margin for a summer wardrobe, and she would buy that in Haiti, not in expensive New York cruise shops!

Across the aisle a young man leafed through a magazine, frowned, and laid it aside. Mardee held up the copy of Time the stewardess had given her and leaned across to say, “I’ve already read this one, if you’d care to trade …”

He held it up, smiling. It was not in a plastic airline cover. “If you’re really interested …”

It was a glossy, highly technical photography journal. Mardee laughed. “I’m afraid it would be way, way over my head. I can just manage to load an Instamatic!”

He grinned. He had, Mardee thought, a most pleasant grin.

“It’s over my head too. I can use a camera—I worked on a newspaper for a while—but all this technical stuff is-beyond my depth. It’s not what I hoped it would be. I don’t even know if there is a magazine for what I need.”

“What kind do you need?” Mardee asked, but a stewardess bustled down the aisle, thrust a menu card into her hand, and asked if she wanted a cocktail before lunch. Mardee refused, and the stewardess moved on.

The young man leaned over and said, “The aisle’s going to be crammed with drink carts and lunch carts pretty soon. Mind if I slide over and sit with you?”

He unfolded long legs and slid into the seat next to hers. He was not, Mardee thought, particularly handsome, but his teeth were white and even, and his irregular features good-natured. His hair was crisp, clipped close against his scalp. He was, she noticed, the only man on the plane who was not wearing a suit and tie. Most of Ted’s friends wouldn’t be seen outside their own bedrooms without jacket and tie. Yet he wasn’t a longhaired, unkempt bohemian, either; his denim jacket and embroidered jeans were very neat, and only a little shabby. He looked comfortably nonconformist, and completely at ease.

He waved the glossy photography journal in disgust. “It’s mostly about how to shop for gadgets or your next camera. I was hoping to find some advice on how to line up illustrations, camera angles, and so on, for a book I’m doing. I found out just before takeoff that the cameraman who was supposed to come with me has a sick kid and can’t join me for ten days, maybe not at all. I can handle a camera, but I don’t kid myself I could handle a serious documentary, and I’m all the more sure now, after reading this.” He smacked the magazine down on the seat.

“You’re doing a book? You’re a writer?”

“Journalist. There’s a difference.” He grinned. “All you need to call yourself a writer is a typewriter from a hock shop and a poem accepted four years ago by the Texas Poultry Panders’ Quarterly. A journalist usually has done some work.”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“Neither did I. I just made it up. The thing is, when I tell people I’m a writer, they always ask something like ‘Oh, have you ever been published?’ Which is like asking the guy who calls himself a plumber if he knows by which end to take hold of a monkey wrench.”

Mardee smiled with fellow feeling. “I get that too. Some women call themselves actresses because they’ve been in a few plays in drama school or in a church drama-club production. I hate to say what I am.”

He looked at her carefully. “I suppose I ought to know your face. But I never get to the theater or movies—I’m either off on field work or stuck behind a typewriter writing it up, or zonked catching up on my sleep. If I turn on the TV nights, to relax after I’m in bed, it acts just like a sleeping pill.”

Mardee chuckled. “Well, it beats sleeping pills. If you ever decide to kick the habit, no withdrawal symptoms!”

“There is that. What have you done in the theater, then?”

He really seemed interested, so she told him about the four years as a contract player and a dancer in Hollywood, the small part in the revival of Detective Story in San Francisco, the nearly four months on Broadway as Jessica in Folly Garden.

“Tough luck,” he sympathized. “I heard that was a good play, but I missed it. My friend who used to get me press passes was out of town.”

The stewardess came and took their orders for lunch, and he said; “Taking a vacation in Haiti?”

She laughed. “Do I look like the kind of woman who takes vacations at this time of year? No, I’m going to keep house for my great-aunt. She has a houseful of people, and she’s not well …” She realized she was talking very freely to a young man whose name she did not even know. Well, people did that on planes, but all the same … “I’m Mardee Haskell,” she volunteered.

“Mardee. What a strange—unusual—name.”

“It was originally Marie-Louise,” she confessed, “but a numerologist told me that was all wrong for me, and I’d never have any luck till I changed it. So she helped me find a stage name that was just right, and right away I got my first break, so it must have the right vibrations after all.”

He looked startled. “Do you believe in all that stuff—astrology, numerology?”

“I don’t know whether I do or not, but it’s for sure I got lucky just about the time I went to court and had it legally changed.” Ted had never understood that, either—her refusal to use his name, her insistence on a separate phone-book listing under her stage name. She refused to think about Ted. “Maybe I just wanted a good excuse to change my name.”

“Speaking of names, I’m Brian Dawes. And I had a good reason for asking if you were superstitious. I’m doing a book on the new Haiti, and when you say Haiti, people think of—what do you think of?”

“Calypso dances,” Mardee said. “Voodoo. Zombies. Slave revolts and witch doctors.”

Brian made a face. “You see? But Haiti isn’t like that any more, and I want to tell people what it is like.”

He looked angry and disgusted, and Mardee said hastily, “Look, Brian, I really don’t know anything about Haiti.”

“And that proves my point. All the sensational, morbid stuff has kept the Western world from taking Haiti seriously. A black republic in the Western Hemisphere, the only one outside Africa.”

“Has Haiti really changed so much?” Her mother had said it was an evil place …

“No. I don’t think it’s changed at all. But the journalists who went there were white, and couldn’t take black politics and enterprise very seriously. And voodoo and zombies made better copy than stories about malaria research and the fact that Haiti could grow as much coffee as Brazil does.”

“You’re saying it was a conspiracy, then, to keep people from taking Haiti seriously?”

“That does sound paranoid, doesn’t it? No, but historically it’s been the style for the world press to promote the idea that those poor, ignorant, superstitious blacks couldn’t have a republic that wasn’t a joke. If they stopped printing garbage about voodoo and zombies, somebody might have to look at Haiti and see what’s going on there … But I’m making a speech. Forgive me while I fold up my soapbox. Never have lunch on a soapbox.”

The waitress put trays of hot food in front of them.

“Looks good,” Brian said.

“It is good,” said Mardee, tasting.

They settled down to eat in companionable silence. Finally Mardee sighed, wiping up the last crumb of chocolate from the excellent pastry.

Brian said, “I like to see a woman eat When I heard you were an actress, I was afraid you were one of those young women who pick at a lettuce leaf and make me feel like a greedy slob.”

Mardee laughed. “I do love good food. I’ve never had to worry about my figure, though I suppose if I started lapping up the booze I would. What’s the food like in Haiti?”

“Well, it’s no place for a dieter, that’s for sure. Mostly French cuisine, with tropical specialties, ninety kinds of fruit—and coffee that’s spoiled me for this stuff,” he added, pushing away the cup the stewardess had brought “And if you’re a dancer, you’ll want to see all the dances: the calypso, the merengue, the limbo, all the dances from Africa.”

“I hope to,” Mardee said, “but my great-aunt’s place is outside Port-au-Prince.”

“You’re lucky, then. Judging Haiti by Port-au-Prince is like judging the United States by West Hollywood. I’ll have to spend time in Port-au-Prince working on my book, but I want to get into the interior too.”

“You know Haiti well?”

“Pretty well. I came down to do a story on malaria control four years ago, and just kept coming back somehow.”

The waitress came to take their trays, and Mardee returned to the earlier part of their conversation. “Do you mean it was all just—just sensationalism? Weren’t there any zombies? Isn’t voodoo real?”

Mardee sensed that he did not want to talk about this, but she felt she had to know. Why had Marie-Claire called Haiti an evil place? Why had she left it at nineteen, never to return, to tremble with dread at the thought?

“Zombies? I don’t know,” Brian said. “I never saw one, never met anyone who said he’d seen one, but almost everyone says they knew a man who knew somebody who bad seen one. And somebody took the stories about them seriously enough to write it into Haitian law. It’s illegal to give anyone a drug which will make him into a zombie, or even to employ a zombie.”

Mardee stared at him. “Seriously, Brian? Is there really a law like that?”

“Seriously. The law is on the books, though I don’t think anyone’s been prosecuted for it for decades. I don’t think zombies were revived corpses or anything. But there must have been something. Strip away all the Sunday-supplement rot, and what you get is a drug that destroys brain function, makes people into vegetables. For an unscrupulous plantation owner who needs a lot of field hands doing completely unskilled labor, a zombie—or a feebleminded black man with his brain out of gear—is the perfect employee. He does his work, he doesn’t waste time talking, all he needs is a bowl of some kind of food and a place to lie down at night, and he never, never joins a union or asks for a raise. He may not actually be a corpse, but he might as well be. I know factory owners who would like to find a drug like that.” For a moment he looked grim.

“And voodoo, Brian? Is that a lie too?”

“Voudoun,” said Brian, giving it the French pronunciation. “That’s real enough, it’s the old African religion, surviving … It’s mostly shows for the tourists now. Maybe in the interior a few ignorant peasants still run to the local witch doctor when anything goes wrong with their crops or their sex life. But you get that right up in Spanish Harlem if you’re looking for it. You get it anywhere you have uneducated people. Nobody takes it seriously any more.”

Mardee was not so sure, but Brian was so uncompromisingly against superstition that she could not press the point The stewardess was handing around headsets for the movie, and they settled back to watch it.

It was an epic about mountains and the mystique of the ski enthusiast. The subject did not interest Mardee. She was about to ask the stewardess for a magazine instead, when she noticed a credit line: PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY SEBASTIAN WRIGHT.

Intrigued, she sat Tip to watch. The star was a young woman she had known slightly during her years as a contract player in Hollywood. If he can get a performance like this out of Lorna Patten, she thought, Sebastian Wright is a genius all right!

She thought that perhaps she could visit the set where they were filming and watch ‘him work. There was always something to be learned from such a renowned director.

Brian had dropped asleep almost as soon as the film came on. As it wound to a predictable close, he stretched, yawned, and shook himself with rueful amazement.

“Damn! I did it again, and I promised myself that this time I was going to stay awake and keep you company. I lose more girls that way!”

“You didn’t miss much,” Mardee told him. Her admiration for the acting and direction did not extend to the script,! which had been dull. It occurred to her that she had laughed more with Brian than she had done with anyone else for a long time.

The plane was descending now, and the captain’s voice had come on to announce that they were over the city of Port-au-Prince and would be landing in a few minutes. As Brian slid back into his assigned seat to collect a camera bag and a portable typewriter, Mardee realized that in a few minutes the plane would land, and she would never see him again.

A man who made her laugh—and he had to be someone she met on a plane! She never met men like him in New York! Most of the? men she met were actors, madly in love with their own faces in the mirror, or chorus boys totally uninterested in any woman except as a dance partner, or lecherous types looking for a little free fun. And when she met a nice, sincere, friendly man who made her laugh, and had ideas, too, he was just somebody in the next seat on a plane!

Then she thought, But after all, that’s one of the things Women’s liberation is all about: Women don’t have to wait for men to call them any morel As passengers began to crowd into the aisle, Brian reached toward her, and she stretched out a hand.

“Brian, where are you staying in Port-au-Prince? I know you’ll be busy, and so will I, but you seem to know so much about the island. I’d love to see some of it with you, if you have time to show me, and if Tante Emilie can spare me.”

His face broke into a wide smile. “Bless you, Mar-dee. I was trying to get up nerve enough to ask if I could see you without sounding like the kind of guy who picks up lonely women. This is the hotel where I’D be staying, for a day or so anyway.” He handed her a card. “Where does your great-aunt live?”

“It’s near a little village called Cap Dominique,” Mardee said.

He whistled. “That’s way out in the country! Look, how are you getting out there? There’s no bus service out that way, and the only way to get out that far is to rent a donkey! I have a friend in Port-au-Prince”—he slid, camera and typewriter under his arm, into the seat they had shared, to let by crowding, impatient passengers heading for the rear door—”and he has a car of sorts—very much of sorts, but the critter runs, and that’s all you can ask on these roads. How about I call Tom and borrow the critter and run you out there?”

“That would be such fun,” Mardee said regretfully, “but she told me in her telegram that she would send someone to meet the plane. But I will call you, Brian, I promise.” She picked up her handbag, oddly reluctant to say good-bye. They stood together in the aisle, his hand lightly on her elbow.

“What is your great-aunt’s name?”

“Emilie Thibaud,” Mardee said.

Brian’s jaw dropped. He gulped audibly and said, “Good God!”

Mardee blinked, puzzled by his reaction. “I’ve never met her, and my mother never told me much about her family. Is she—is she notorious or something?”

“Oh, good heavens, not that. Perfectly respectable, a Catholic laywoman, gives to the Church, all that— Mardee, see here, don’t you even know that old Madame Thibaud is probably the richest woman on the island? Most of the great estates are owned now by American capital, or corporations, but Maison Dominique is one of the oldest plantations on Haiti Mardee, I had no idea—”

Mardee shook her head in confusion. “This is all news to me! I think I need you for a guide!”

Brian laughed uneasily. “Well, ni call you. But you’d better warn your great-aunt. I doubt if she’s going to expect an ordinary working stiff with a typewriter to come calling.”

“Brian, don’t be ridiculous,” she said warmly, taking his hand, and after a moment, hesitantly, he grinned.

The stewardess chirped, “Have a nice vacation,” and they emerged into the sunlight.

Sunlight. Even the sun itself, for a blinding moment, seemed to be a new sun, a new quality. Mardee seldom wore sunglasses—they had always seemed a cliche’ out of Hollywood—but here in the tropical light of Haiti she felt they were purely functional. Brian, she noticed, had already taken a pair from his pocket and tacked them behind his ears.

Mardee squeezed her eyes against glare and fumbled for her footing on the steps of the plane. The hot asphalt burned through her shoe soles. She would need some thinner dresses, and wondered if Brian knew any good places to shop. Mardee smiled at herself as she realized that she was already taking it for granted they would meet again.

Before she reached the door saying BAGGAGE CLAIM in three languages, a tall man came toward her.

“Marie-Louise Haskell?”

She bunked, realizing that this must be someone sent by her great-aunt to meet her. “I use the name Mar-dee” she said, “but yes, that is my name.”

“Mardee,” he said, smiling, and extended his hand. “I am Sebastian Wright.”

He had come to meet her? Confused, Mardee took the hand he held out to her, feeling the hard grip of muscular fingers, noting the contrast of her dark hand with his, which was very white and untanned. He was a big man, towering over her like a giant tree; he must have been seven feet tall, with a great upstanding shock of white hair and a lean, strongly boned face. His eyes, set deep in bony sockets, held the glint of ice. She let go of his hand. Her own felt cold.

Mardee had thought, from the letter, that her great-aunt wanted her help in preparing for the guests. But they were apparently already at Maison Dominique.

Sebastian Wright tucked Mardee’s hand under his arm. “My car is just outside.”

Inside the terminal, blinded by the relative darkness after the dazzle outside, she looked around for Brian, but he had already disappeared. Well, the card with the name of his hotel was tucked inside her handbag. She let Sebastian guide her through the terminal and into the sunshine again.

“How many bags have you? Did you bring a maid?”

Mardee said, blinking, “No.” Into what kind of world had she come?

“Madame, I believe, still lives in the days when a young woman did not travel unchaperoned.” He signaled to a porter, and the bag she had carried onto the plane and her luggage checks were swept away from her. Two large cars were drawn up in the no-parking zone just outside the terminal. One was stenciled MAISON DOMINIQUE. Mardee moved toward it; Wright’s hand on her arm drew her gently past it

“That one’s for the hired help,” he said, with an offhand gesture at the Cadillac. “They’ll bring along your luggage—and your maid, if you’d had one. This is my car.” With a hand resting tightly on her shoulder, Wright guided her toward a sleek, pale-gray shape she recognized, incredulously, as a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. She had never actually seen one before. English-style, it had right-hand drive; it felt disorienting to climb into what felt like the driver’s seat and watch Sebastian Wright bending over the gear levers. Mardee sank into the fawn-soft leather upholstery, thinking in wry amusement, Lordy me, all this for Captain Haskell’s little girl! Her second thought was: And Mother left all this and never looked back!

Never looked back. Not once.

Wright was slowly disentangling himself from the airport traffic, the complex of taxis, cars, delivery trucks, and other vehicles. He said, without looking at her, “I hope you are not too tired after your flight, Mardee.”

“Not at all, Mr. Wright.”

“Sebastian, please,” he insisted. “I am glad to hear it. Madame has planned a little dinner in your honor, and actually we see little of Madame.”

“Madame—my great-aunt?”

“Yes. Actually, she reminds me a great deal of a Romanoff duchess I once met in New York many years ago. True royalty, even to the very faint French accent.”

“French—I thought the Romanoffs were Russians.”

Sebastian Wright’s smile made her feel gauche and uneducated. “True. But in the days before the Russian Revolution, every Russian noblewoman spoke French—usually much better than she did her native tongue. I fear you young people have little sense of history.” He went on, easily, “Madame is the soul of hospitality, she has put much of her house at our disposal, but she herself—like royalty—remains aloof much of the time, so that we who are her guests actually see very little of her. The privilege of dining with Madame is inestimable. Her chef was once employed, I believe, by one of the great hotels in Martinique.”

Mardee was glad that she had brought evening clothes—though they might not be suitable for this kind of affair! Firmly she reminded herself: Great-aunt Emi-lie sent for me to keep house for her, not to be a social ornament at her dinner table! Anyhow, what did it matter what she wore for this white man? Oh, yes, he was being gracious, but for all his deference to Madame, she, Mardee, was just one more of the hired help.

She wished he could have seen her as Jessica in Folly Garden, then rebuked herself. She wasn’t here as an actress, and the sooner she made up her mind to it, the better!

“My great-aunt sent for me because she was in ill health, but she did not go into details. What is wrong with her?”

“Madame has always seemed to be in excellent health for a woman of her advanced age,” Wright said. ‘Ter-haps, like many elderly ladies, she is somewhat of a hypochondriac. Or perhaps she simply wished for the company of a young relative.”

But, Mardee wondered, would she have gone to the trouble and expense of getting her here just for that? And then she was doubtful again. For the trouble, her aunt had hordes of servants; as for the expense—she was beginning to suspect that to her aunt the expense would have meant no more than, to Mardee, the cost of an ice-cream pop. Her great-aunt could have afforded to bring her—and her mother too—here on no more than a momentary whim.

But what motive could she possibly have had? After all these years she tries to lure you back with her wealth … Impatiently Mardee dismissed the memory of Marie-Claire Haskell’s words.

They were free of the airport traffic now, moving through narrow streets lined with grubby shacks, tarpaper and salvaged wood clumsily nailed together, roofs of corrugated tin or even thatch, ragged children, half naked, clustering in the dry grass of the yards. Mardee blinked in dismay, and reminded herself firmly not to judge any country by the fringe-area slums of its biggest city. And indeed, in a few minutes the big car was flashing along a long, green, tree-shaded boulevard, lined with palatial houses and large public buildings.

“Mardee,” Sebastian Wright said. “I had heard your name was Marie-Louise”

“Yes; I took Mardee as a stage name.”

“A stage name?” The bushy white eyebrows were raised in what Mardee told herself firmly was only polite interest. She said noncommittally, “I went on the stage as a dancer, in my teens, and hyphenated names don’t look too good on theater programs.”

“Mardee Haskell,” Sebastian repeated, his high forehead ridged slightly. “I seem to remember . . , wait a minute. Have you ever been on stage in the legitimate theater? In San Francisco, yes—a revival of Detective Story. Yes—you had the part of the teen-age delinquent, the part Julie Harris played in the film—right? I saw about half of that performance. I was thinking of signing one of the men for a small part in Snowfire”— that was the ski epic she had seen on the plane—”but he was impossible, so I stayed only a little while. I remember seeing your name in the program, and I was interested in what you were doing, but you were too young for Snowfire.”

Mardee blinked. “You have an astonishing memory, Mr. Wright.” At his faint frown, she amended quickly, “Sebastian.”

“I never forget a face, a performance, or an insult,” he said, smiling. “I have a kind of mental file of every role I have ever seen, played by every actor I have seen—and every actress.” But he said no more, and Mardee felt vaguely dissatisfied. He had remembered her performance, yes but he had made it clear that he remembered every performance!

They were out of the city, and the Rolls was traveling, more slowly now, along a dirt road leading through green countryside, between fields of some unknown plant. “Sugar cane,” Sebastian said, following her glance. “It grows along the coast. The coffee plantations are in the hills in the interior, where it is cooler.”

Down the straight rows dark figures moved, clad in cotton shirts, colorful cotton dresses. Seeing one of the figures straighten, stare at the passing Rolls, and mop at a kerchiefed forehead, Mardee was suddenly and almost guiltily aware of the air-conditioned comfort of the luxury car.

“Have we far to go?”

“About … I’m still shaky about the relationship between miles and kilometers, but I think it’s about twenty miles into the interior, and the roads are very bad. Of course, that explains why Cap Dominique is so much as it was a hundred years ago, and so suitable for our film. Where the roads are better, everything has been modernized.” The car was crawling along now at a snail’s pace over a road whose cuts could only be minimized, not entirely smoothed, by the cushioning of the car. They went through small villages of tarpaper shacks and small frame houses, some roofed with corrugated metal, some with what looked like tin cans nailed together. There were ragged barefoot children and chickens that scattered in squawking clouds before the car. It could have been a village in Africa.

In Haiti, Mardee remembered, there had been slavery for only a few years, before the revolt that had made it a republic. It was no wonder that more of the African culture had been retained here.

The light dimmed somewhat, and Mardee, disoriented by the long flight, peered out to see if the sun was setting, but it was only thick clouds, covering the sun. She sank back in her seat

“Tired?” Sebastian asked. “The sun will tire you very quickly here, until you are used to it. You are in the tropics here, you understand. Our first days of filming two cameramen collapsed with sunstroke, and there were several cases of heat exhaustion. I’ve had to give orders that everyone wear dark glasses and sun hats unless they are actually on camera, and take salt tablets. Even in the mountains here, where it can get quite cold, the sun is fierce, and the glare worse.”

Mardee found it hard to imagine it could ever get cold here, and said so. “I read a little about the film you are making, but it was only the usual newspaper piece about an epic. May I ask what it’s about?”

“Have you read Rory Kilbride’s novel Black Emperort No? Well, it’s about the slave revolt of Haiti, and the black emperor, Henri-Christophe, who ruled for a few years before Haiti became a Republic.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Haitian history,” Mardee confessed.

“It’s one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the New World. You do know, I suppose, that if Napoleon hadn’t failed—he tried twice, and failed both tunes—to establish a foothold in Haiti, the map of the United States would have been different. It was his failure in Haiti, or so most historians think, which made him give up his idea of a New World empire and sell the territory known as the Louisiana Purchase, and this is what made it possible for our country to spread from ocean to ocean.” His grin was magnetic. “It may not have been the most important thing ever to happen to America, but it certainly made a difference. I’m surprised you don’t know more Haitian history—your mother was born here, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, but she left it very young, and I got out of school before they started putting Black History into the curriculum.”

“Your great-aunt was most interested in the theme of the film,” Sebastian said. “I saw Maison Dominique quite by accident, and knew this was the perfect location—so much of the country has been built over or modernized. I petitioned Madame to allow me to make the film here. At first she was very scornful of any offer I might make, and of course I could not put it on a commercial footing with a woman of Madame’s great wealth. Finally I flew down here and begged her to allow me to visit her in person; at last she consented to see me, and when she heard the theme of the film she was most gracious. As I told you, she has put a wing of the house at our disposal, saving us the extreme difficulty of coming out from Port-au-Prince every day.”

“Has there ever been a major movie about Haiti?”

“Not since The Comedians. When I announced I was doing an epic about the revolution here, every black actor and actress of any note wanted to be in it. Donna Royce and Paul Barry are playing leading parts, and Kip Tybalt went to considerable trouble to get out of a contract he had already signed, because he felt this film was important to him as a black actor.”

“Kip Tybalt?” Mardee was incredulous. “But he’s white!”

“I had thought so myself,” Sebastian said. “As he put it, no one asked him and he didn’t volunteer any information. And, of course, after his second film he could have been a Vulcan out of Star Trek and no one would have cared. But he was born in Haiti, he says, and this is his way of telling the world.” He stretched cautiously; the space behind the wheel, luxuriously large as it was, was still cramped for the enormous man. “I’m not interested in Tybalt’s political statements, of course, but it was a lucky break for me—he’s one of the best actors around, and great box office too.”

Mardee could imagine. She herself had always thought of the famous Kip Tybalt as the handsomest white actor in Hollywood; now, confusingly, she was having to revise her preconceptions.

Clouds were rolling in now swiftly from the west, covering the sky. The Rolls bumped and jostled on the rutted, muddy roads, slowing to a crawl between trees, and tangled multicolored flowering vines whose identity Mardee could not guess. From somewhere, very faintly, Mardee heard the sound of a drum in the gathering dark: an African drum, incessant, muffled, compelling. She closed her eyes to listen better; it seemed the drum was speaking to her in some language she could not—yet—understand.

Sebastian misunderstood the gesture. “Tired? Not much farther. This village is Cap Dominique, which is less than half a mile from Madame’s front door, and was at one time part of the original plantation, and here”—the Rolls swept around a long,” curving drive— “is the Maison Dominique. Welcome home, Mardee.”

It was very dark now, with intermittent flashes of lightning from the low, luridly lit sunset clouds. Occasional drops of heavy rain fell, like a brooding menace. By one flash Mardee saw the enormous, long, white-pillared front of Maison Dominique,

But—Good heavens, it’s a palace! was her first thought. Mardee had never expected anything like this. A large house, yes, a fine house, but this? Or perhaps it was simply the sinister lightning which came and went, or the memory of Marie-Claire’s It is an evil place . . .

Sebastian handed her out of the car; behind her the other car drove up, and a chauffeur ceremoniously handed out her luggage. Selfconsciously she found herself wondering what they thought of the shabby suitcases.

There was a great flash of lightning, and a clap of thunder seemed to split the sky apart. Mardee set her foot on the lowest step, and was suddenly overcome by a strange reluctance. I don’t want to go in there, she thought, then, with unexpected panic, I’m not supposed to go in there . . . There was a curious, waterfall-like roaring in her ears, or was it only an echo of the drum she still heard faintly, somewhere? She rubbed her eyes, fighting panic. What’s the matter with me?

Then, with a rush and a rattle of rain, the storm broke, and Sebastian grasped her elbow firmly, hurrying her up the steps. On the top step she recoiled, with a shock that threw her back into Sebastian’s arms. He too recoiled, and for a moment they both lost their balance; it seemed briefly that a threatening form barred the doorway, brandishing a raised weapon. She gasped in fright, and Sebastian steadied her around the waist

“What was it?” Sebastian’s voice was unsteady too.

“Only a shadow,” Mardee said, for the figure was gone—or, rather, had dissolved itself into Sebastian’s shadow, wavering in the light of a kerosene lantern, held by someone inside the doorway.

“Thank God you saw it too. I thought there was a man there with a gun—talk about being scared by my own shadow!” His laughter was high and edgy with relief. He was still holding her around the waist; selfconsciously, Mardee moved away.

“Of course, this place is supposed to be haunted,” Sebastian went on, talking rapidly to hide the fact that he had really been frightened. “Of course, they say that about any house in the New World that’s over a hundred years old … You’re not afraid of ghosts, are you, Mardee?”

“It would be awfully easy to believe in ghosts here, wouldn’t it?” She said shakily. Sebastian’s hand on her arm, they went through the door and into Maison Dominique.

Two

Sebastian told Mardee that the movie people were all housed in the other wing. He turned her over to a soft-voiced gentlemanly butler in a dark suit, who reminded Mardee of her childhood by calling her Mamzelle in softly accented French and took her and her suitcases firmly in hand. He conducted her through dark-paneled corridors, softly carpeted underfoot and up a flight of stairs that—again—reminded her of something in a movie set, to the door of a suite of rooms.

“Madame is resting, Mamzelle. She begs that you will excuse her, and join her and her guests at dinner.”

He set her bags down and went away. A small woman in a dark dress and white apron came through the doorway at the back.

“Mamzelle Marie-Louise?”

Mardee wondered how long it was going to take her to get used to that.

“My name is Flew, Mamzelle. Madame sent me to wait on you when she heard you had brought no personal maid. She says that if for any reason these rooms are not satisfactory you must tell me, or Robert”—she gave the name the soft French pronunciation, Robair—”and others will be put at your disposal.”

Mardee supposed Robert was the dignified butler. Fleur went on, “Madame thought you might like these rooms, because they were those of your mother when she was a young girl at Maison Dominique.”

She paused as if expecting an answer. Mardee said, “That was very kind of her.” So this was where Marie-Claire Thibaud had grown to womanhood! They were rooms for a girl, yes, a jeune fille, and to Mardee’s sophisticated eyes they seemed old-fashioned, even childish; but they were lovely and elegant—the walls were painted a cool cream color; the windows were hung with muslin and cool, elegant looped blue silk; the furniture was white with gilt trim. Decorations and furniture might have “come from a museum—or from a French palace before the Revolution. Princess Marie Antoinette might have grown to her fate in such rooms! The bed was hung with white curtains; after a moment Mardee realized the looped white folds were mosquito netting. She was in the tropics now! There was an enormous armoire, or clothes-cupboard, a dressing table with billowy white skirts, and in one corner an ancient prie-dieu, with a heavy, dark-wood crucifix.

This last item brought Mardee up in shock. Her mother was a Catholic, of course; Mardee herself had been brought up in the Church, though she had long ceased to practice her religion. She had occasionally accompanied her mother to Mass, until her divorce had made that pretense impossible.

Mardee thought now, with her first serious qualm about this visit, that Brian had spoken of her great-aunt as a devout Catholic laywoman, and he didn’t even know her. Would her unknown great-aunt expect her to be a pious, practicing Catholic?

Well, that would simply have to be settled later. She went to explore the luxurious bathroom, evidently designed in the last century, with elegant marble fixtures and hot and cold taps in the form of dolphins. The commode flushed with an ancient pull-chain, and the flow of water was loud and rusty, but the water in the basin flowed gratifyingly hot, and the high tub on clawed feet was fit for Queen Victoria herself.

When Mardee returned to the bedroom Fleur was stowing the meager contents of her suitcases in the huge armoire. Mardee sat on the high bed with its looped netting, watching Fleur padding around in her soft slippers, shaking the wrinkles from her clothing, stowing them on silk-padded hangers.

“I will run you a cool bath, Mamzelle. And if you will tell me which gown you choose for tonight, I will have it ready and beautiful while you refresh yourself.”

Part of Mardee was overwhelmed by all this luxury, after a childhood spent in military quarters, and a young womanhood in the straitened circumstances of a struggling actress. But some deeper part of herself accepted it as her due and felt faint resentment against her mother. I should have been brought up to all this! What made Mother leave it?

Well, for now she would enjoy this fairy-tale environment to the full! She lay for a long time in the elegant tub, soaking in scented water, looking at the elaborate molding of the ceiling, with its carved plaster cupids and angels. Fleur had laid out a robe for her, and Mar-dee put it on and lay on the bed, watching the little woman pressing dresses with a bulky old-fashioned iron. She felt tired and detached, as if this were actually a strange dream and she were still on the plane dreaming an elaborate fantasy of what she would find at her great-aunt’s.

The powerful personality of Sebastian Wright lingered in her mind. How had he seen her? As the niece of the richest black woman in Haiti, the niece of his hostess? As a small-part actress who wanted to attract his attention? As a desirable woman to be conquered, attracted, exploited?

Fleur had laid the contents of her dress pockets on the bedside table. Among them she saw, and picked up, the card with Brian’s scribbled address and the name of his hotel. She would call him tomorrow. He was fun, and handsome-and a lot more in her class than Sebastian Wright was! There was no reason to think Sebastian’s gallantry was anything but a desire to make a good impression on his hostess, the powerful mistress of Maison Dominique.

Brian. He was presentable, certainly—her great-aunt could hardly object to a respectable journalist writing a book on the new Haiti. And he made her laugh. She could guess how he would laugh at the elegant old-world glamour of this suite, of this house! And how he would laugh at the idea that it was haunted!

“Will you choose a gown for dinner, Mamzelle?”

Mardee had brought three evening gowns. Beautiful clothes were her weakness; she knew-that she spent far too much on them. She had a flowered-silk caftan in autumn-leaf colors; a flame-red sequined gown from her days as a dancer, cut as low as decency allowed, which clung to her like a second skin; and the romantic white-and-gold dance frock which she had worn in the second act of Folly Garden.

Her first impulse was to choose the sequined red gown—It’ll knock them dead!—then, remembering Sebastian’s eyes following her, she blushed.

“The white-and-gold gown, I think.” It had struck her, when she bought it, as too youthfully demure, too innocent for a woman her age. A gown for the naive debutante she had played in Folly Garden, A dress for an ingenue.

A dress to match this room. And her Great-aunt Emilie was an old woman. The red dress would probably strike her as being less man proper. She could wear it when she went dancing with Brian in Port-au-Prince, but for dining with an octogenarian great-aunt, the white dress was the most suitable.

In this heat pantyhose seemed impossible; she skinned into bikini panties, slid bare feet into the gold sandals that matched the gown. Her nylon robe clung unpleasantly. Fleur said as Mardee took it off, “In this climate, Mamzelle, a cotton robe-de-chambre is more suitable.”

“I’ll try to buy one in a few days.” Everyone Mardee had seen in this climate was wearing cotton, and no wonder! Fleur helped her into the white organza gown and fastened it at the back. Mardee sat down at the dressing table to do her hair. Fleur came up behind her and silently held out her hand for Mardee’s comb and brush. When Mardee hesitated she said, “I am expert coiffeuse, Mamzelle, my mother was Madame’s own maid and taught me all she knew. She was trained at a salon in Paris.”

Mardee laughed as she yielded them. “You’ll spoil me, Fleur!” She watched in the mirror as the narrow, knotted dark hands moved on her hair. “Have you been with Madame, my aunt, for long?”

“All my life, Mamzelle, and my mother before me. Your mother and I played together as little girls.” For the first time her voice took on a spark of personal interest. “I was hoping to see her again, Mamzelle, but of course, one understands she would be unwilling to return here, after—” She broke off, with a small gasp.

“Fleur, I have never known why my mother left Haiti. Will you tell me?”

“It is not for me to gossip about the personal affairs of the family of my employers,” Fleur said, with gentle, inflexible dignity. “I hope Madame Marie-Claire is well and happy. I heard she had married an American.”

“Yes, though my father has been dead now for ten years. She is the Dean of Women at a small college for women in New York City.”

“Marie-Claire, headmistress of a college!” Fleur repeated. Mardee wondered what memories crossed that unreadable face. This woman had known her mother, grown up with her, knew what had driven her from Haiti at nineteen, knew what made her wring her hands with dread at the mere thought of returning. But she would not tell.

Fleur stepped back to display Mardee’s hair, artfully arranged to show the poise of her small head on her shoulders, the curve of her slender throat. She fastened small gold earrings in the pierced earlobes and said, “Mamzelle is beautiful, more beautiful than any of the blancs of the cinema.”

Now that the moment was actually upon her, Mardee felt nervous and reluctant. She hesitated, saying, “Fleur, do you think my great-aunt will approve of me?”

“I think so, Mamzelle. You are the image of Marie-Claire as a young girl,” Fleur said, and Mardee was astonished. Her plain, work-worn mother, in the drab clothing of a schoolteacher—had she ever been beautiful, the cherished daughter of the very rich? Again a faint resentment stiffened her backbone, as she went down the long, curving stairs.

After making one or two wrong turns, Mardee discovered the grand salon. It looked like a movie set, with a long table of dark wood, set with polished silver and crystal, lighted overhead by glittering chandeliers with teardrop glass dangles. Candlelight flickered everywhere, from the chandeliers, from the sideboards, from sconces by the windows. The storm was over, but lightning flickered faintly outside, filling the room with shadows. At the far end of the room, at the end of the long table, an old woman sat alone, wearing a dark dress. She raised a narrow hand and beckoned.

“Come here, child,” she said in French, and as Mar-dee complied, “You are very pretty. I would know you anywhere for Marie-Claire’s daughter. I am Emilie Thibaud. You may call me Tante Emilie, if you wish.”

Mardee came toward her slowly. She said, mastering her French carefully, “How are you, Tante Emilie?”

“I am well, as usual. Why did Marie-Claire not return with you?”

Mardee looked down into the wrinkled face, lined like a prune above the frill of spotless lace at the neck. She said slowly, hearing her mother’s words of rejection echoing loud in her mind, and knowing that she could not voice them here, “She—she could not leave—she could not obtain a leave of absence from her work.”

“Her work?” It was a tiny sniff of contempt, straight from the “Romanoff duchess” Sebastian had called her. “Pray tell me, what is this work she finds so much more important, all these years, than making terms with her—her family?”

But she doesn’t want to make terms, Madame, she said you were not a good woman, you had not a good heart . . . Mardee said slowly, “She is the Dean of Women at a junior college for women.”

“Marie-Claire, headmistress of a women’s college!” Almost the same words Fleur had spoken, but Fleur had said them with admiration; Emilie Thibaud spoke them with stinging contempt. Defensively Mardee said,

“In America it is not easy for a black woman to find work which is important and significant.”

“Then she should not live in a country of that sort,” Madame said shortly. “Well, I let her know that she was welcome to return, she has always been welcome to return, so let us have done with her. Your French is excellent, Marie-Louise.”

“My father was in the Air Force; he was stationed in France until I was twelve years old. He had met my mother in France just after the war.”

“A military man? So. And how old are you, Marie-Louise? Marie-Claire did not see fit to advise me when you were born; I had to find out through other sources.”

“Twenty-six, Madame.”

“And you are not yet married?”

She’s a devout Catholic. She wouldn’t approve of the divorce, Mardee thought. Come to think of it, Ted wasn’t a Catholic, so she wouldn’t approve of the marriage either. She said, “No,” and left it at that.

“Come, sit beside me, ma chere, our guests will be here in a moment. M’sieur Wright—I suppose he told you something of the film they are making here?”

“He told me it was about the history of Haiti, yes.”

“About the Revolution. This plantation has stood since then, it was one of the few great houses”—she actually used the word chateaux—”which has stood occupied since then and has never been allowed to fall into ruin. Your ancestors, cherie, black and white, have lived here since 1781, when Sebastien Thibaud built Maison Dominique here for his family. He, and they, were massacred here in the slave revolt of 1791, when the plantation owners and many of the affranchis, the freed people of color, were murdered most savagely. Sebastien Thibaud’s white wife and children were murdered on these grounds, but he had also an affranchie wife who had borne him children, and it was her sons who inherited Maison Dominique. So our family began in scandal and bastardy, like many others,” she said, smiling tightly, “but since then there has been none, we are good Catholics. Have you ever heard, ma chere, that in Haiti one definition of the nobility is a person who can claim that his ancestors were legally married for five generations?”

“Murdered—on these grounds?” Mardee’s voice must have shown her horror.

“You do not know how vicious these men were, petite, or you would understand the savagery with which the blacks rose up to exterminate them all. It was only due to coincidence and good fortune, and the protection of some man powerful among the revolutionaries, that Sebastien Thibaud’s affranchie wife was allowed to live. The peasants and slaves of that day were vicious brutes, too, worse than their white masters.” Her mouth was taut with distaste. “Even now they tell one another ridiculous and blasphemous tales that the Maison is haunted, and give one another charms to drive away the mart-—the ghost of the owner—in spite of the best the priest can do. They are very ignorant, but I fry to do my duty as a Christian by having the best of them educated. I hope you are a good Catholic, Marie-Louise, and free from superstition.”

“I don’t think I’m particularly superstitious.”

The old woman patted her hand. Her fingers, heavy with rings, were soft as withered rose petals, and Mar-dee wondered if this woman had ever done even the lightest manual work. She thought, almost resentfully, of her mother’s work-worn hands, roughened with housework and hardship.

“C’est ban. But here are our guests, ma chere.”

As the old butler ushered them into the room, Madame said, “You have met M’sieur Wright.”

Sebastian bowed over Madame Thibaud’s hand. “Madame, this is a pleasure.”

“My pleasure, M’sieur,” she said in excellent English, with only the faintest of French accents. “Kindly seat yourselves. I would like to present to all of you my petite-niece, Marie-Louise Haskell.” She had a little trouble—not much—with the surname. “Will you not present your other guests, M’sieur Wright?”

She added in an undertone to Mardee, “Of course, actors and actresses are un peu declasse, but, having received M’sieur Wright, I must of necessity accept his colleagues.”

Sebastian Wright presented Paul Barry, a dark-brown, crop-haired, heavyset man she remembered having seen in a popular sensational black horror film. He bowed deferentially to Madame and held out his hand to Mardee.

“Donna Royce, who will be the star of our film,” Sebastian said, and Mardee looked into the charming, almost feline face of the best-known black woman star of the American theater. She touched Mardee’s fingers lightly, condescendingly.

“Margaret Sandifer.”

The famous character actress was a white woman in her middle years. She said to Tante Emilie, “How kind of you, Madame, to open your lovely house and grounds to our film,” and added to Mardee, “What a lovely gown, and how cool you look in this tropical heat!” Mardee guessed, from the cool, regal dignity with which she spoke, that this was the actress who was to play Napoleon’s sister-in-law, and that she was already beginning, as actresses do, to keep to her role even in hours off-camera.

“Kip Tybalt.”

He bowed over Madame’s fingertips in Continental fashion. Then Mardee, breathless, raised her eyes to the famous profile, and felt the warm pressure of his hand. Talk about glamour, she thought. When she had been a contract player, doing bit parts at his own studio, he had never even seen her, never given her a polite hello. Now he was taking her hand, giving her the famous smile. She was more on guard than she had been with Sebastian; she had known enough actors to know how little masculine charm meant when turned on someone it was important to impress. But he seemed even handsomer than on the screen. He was not a big man, little taller than Mardee herself. Sebastian towered over him like a giant redwood over a young sapling. But he was broad-shouldered and well-muscle’d, moving with a dancer’s grace. His hands were long and beautiful.

Sebastian, who seemed to be doing the honors at her great-aunt’s request, placed her between himself and Tybalt Donna Royce was across the table, and Mardee saw her possessive glance at Sebastian.

I’ve heard that most of the stars he discovers become his mistresses. Sometimes he even marries them for a while. But, she thought in confusion, Donna Royce was a big enough star that she wouldn’t need to! Or was Sebastian so vain that he couldn’t survive without making a conquest of his current film star?

There was one more guest, a dark-faced, soft-spoken man in a clerical collar. He took Mardee’s hand in a soft, limp grasp. Tante Emilie introduced ‘him as Pere Etienne, pastor of Cap Dominique.

Robert served them from dishes kept hot on a sideboard and magically replenished, it seemed, by faceless shadows slipping in and out beyond the focus of the chandelier. There was some kind of meat barbecued in a delicious sauce, there were oddly colored beans, yams with a strong smell of rich dark molasses, wafer-thin disks of shining pink ham, fruits of unfamiliar shape and fragrance.

Kip Tybalt murmured to her, “The Haitian cuisine— it is new to you? It is a superb combination of French tradition and Caribbean specialties.”

“It is delicious.” It was not easy for Mardee to keep her sense of perspective. She had always thought of Kip Tybalt as the handsomest white man on the screen. Now he was sitting beside her, talking commonplaces of the table. And he was not, after all, a white man, but one of her own race. He looked ten years younger than he looked on the screen; Mardee imagined he was about her own age. His career, after all, had been brief, and his rise to fame meteoric. His second film had brought him the coveted Oscar. Now he had given up a contract sure to bring him another, to star in this film about Haiti—in a way sure to emphasize his black identity. Was it a political statement, as Sebastian had called it? Or was it for the artistic satisfaction of working with Sebastian Wright? You could never tell with actors.

Donna smiled across the table at Mardee.

“Sebastian”—her voice purred on the sound of his name—”tells me you have been on the stage, Mardee. What have you done? I don’t seem to know the name.”

Mardee smiled. “I’d be far more surprised if you did. In the movies I played a dozen small parts, each more insignificant than the last. Harem dancers, walk-ons, one-liners in crowd scenes. Last year I played Jessica in Potty Garden, but it ran only four months.”

“Bad luck,” Margaret Sandifer said sincerely, “but when I was a kid in vaudeville—I’d hate to say how many years ago—w& had a saying: The better the play, the shorter the run. If it runs five years, you can be absolutely positive it’s no good.” Her laugh was low and pleasant. “Folly Garden closed so soon that it must have had some artistic merit after all.”

Paul Barry chuckled and said, “What a pity there’s no way to pay the rent with artistic successes! I saw Folly Garden during the run, being, as we say in the profession, between engagements, and having a friend who got me a night’s work ushering now and then. I thought it was damn good—excuse me,” he amended, with a glance from Tante Emilie to the priest, “extremely good. And you, Miss Haskell—or may I say Mardee, since we’re all colleagues here—were one of the best things about it. I saw the reviews.”

“Why, thank you,” Mardee said, smiling.

“Reviews go by opposites,” Margaret Sandifer said. “If a play gets rave reviews from the critics, the public will stay away in droves; if the critics murder it, the box office will sell out every night.”

Sebastian laughed. “What a cynical old trouper you try to sound, Maggie!”

Donna purred, “How brave of you, Miss Sandifer, to admit you are old enough to remember vaudeville! By the time I was old enough to remember, it was all gone.”

“There’s a certain age,” Margaret said, “at which age is an asset for an actress, as with fine violins, or wine. Of course, if one tends to continue playing romantic leads after thirty-five, it doesn’t do to let anyone know how old you are, but I began playing character parts at thirty, so I never had to hide my age.” She smiled sweetly and added, “I would rather admit to being sixty-two and have everyone remark on how well-preserved I am than claim to be thirty-nine and have people speculating about how many face lifts I have had.”

“You can’t tell me you’re sixty-two, Maggie,” Paul Barry said.

Margaret chuckled. “As a matter of fact, son, I’m sixty-seven, but don’t tell Actors Equity!”

Donna Royce said, quickly changing the subject—so quickly that Mardee wondered how old Donna was— “You use the name Mardee? How pretty!”

“I did think Marie-Louise was a bit too long on a theater program,” Mardee said, as she had said to Sebastian. At her great-aunt’s table, and before her priest, she wasn’t going to explain about the numerologist!

“People do give girls the most atrocious names, don’t they?” Donna asked. She was, Mardee thought, one of the most beautiful women she had ever met, but the gold lame” gown was cut low, to display the well-known cleavage, and Pere Etienne, next to her, seemed not to know which way to look; while Tante Emilie, at the head of the table, raised her eyebrows faintly but perceptibly every time she looked in Donna’s direction. Mar-dee was suddenly glad she had worn the modest white-and-gold frock. It might seem too demure for a worldly woman in her twenties, but it could not offend her elderly aunt and hostess, or a village priest.

Was she being too hard on Donna Royce? Why should the woman change her ways for an elderly lady who still lived in Victorian days? Then she hardened her heart. The gold gown was split all the way to the thighs, giving an excellent view of Donna’s long legs; it would have been considered daring even in Las Vegas.

And you can’t tell me an actress like Donna Royce doesn’t have a dozen dresses she could wear to tea with the Pope! This must have been intentional.

“Mardee is charming, and suits you,” said Kip Tybalt. “Donna, do you go around telling people what they put on your birth certificate? I bet it’s some horror like Beulah Mae!”

“What’s on my birth certificate is a secret between me and my mama,” Donna said, laughing. “Mothers ought to stop and think how the names they give then-daughters will look in public places!”

“Women’s liberation should definitely take that one up,” Mardee agreed, turning to Kip again. “I assume your name is a stage name, then? Tybalt—as in Shakespeare?”

“How clever of you to spot it,” he said good-naturedly.

Tante Emilie, toying with her food at the head of the table, said in her dry, rustling voice, “There are more important considerations in giving a name than this. Marie-Louise is a good Catholic name, a saint’s name. Mardee—that is nothing at all!”

“I’m sure you’re right, Madame,” Margaret Sandifer said, “but for the stage one chooses a name which is pleasing to the eye and ear. I was born Grace Gertrude, and Margaret suits me better and looks better. And better Sandifer than Van Bleigenberg!”

“Heavens preserve us, Maggie!” Sebastian chuckled. “I’m not surprised you changed it!”

The old woman at the table did not smile. She said, “No one could object to Margaret, Madame. But Donna is not a Christian name at all. Is it, perhaps, feminine of Donald? Or a version of Diana, which is pagan and not Christian at all?”

Donna Royce smiled uneasily and murmured, “I’m afraid I haven’t any idea, Madame.”

The priest said, trying to make peace, “You forget, Madame, Protestants do not require that a child’s name be that of a saint, as good Catholics do. Miss Royce is not, I believe, a Catholic?”

“No way, Reverend,” she said, “but my daddy was a Baptist preacher, and he baptized lots of kids with names no saint ever had. He said God knew then-names even if the Catholic Church didn’t—no offense, Reverend.”

“None taken,” the priest said gently. “It is a defensible and even a pleasing belief, if not one I find myself able to share.”

“Well, we all have our own beliefs—-” Kip began, but the old woman interrupted again.

“As for you, M’sieur Tybalt, I fear that to me Kip sounds like a name for a dog—not for a man, even for an actor!”

Her voice was scornful, but Kip was unruffled.

“Why, Madame, my baptismal name would satisfy Pere Etienne himself. It is Christophe, but no one in the American cinema could pronounce it properly, and my agent suggested Kip as being simpler than Chris, and more easily remembered.”

“Christophe.” She narrowed her eyelids at him. “You speak the name like a Frenchman, M’sieur.”

“French is my native language, Madame.”

The room fell briefly silent as the soft-footed Robert moved behind them, removing plates.

“Robert, bring brandy for the gentlemen.”

There was silence. Sebastian sipped the pale liquid and murmured appreciatively. Somewhere, through the silence, it seemed to Mardee that she could hear soft rhythm again, vibration. The drums she had heard be-fore, somewhere …

Through the heat of the room she could feel chills slowly icing her blood. Strange drums, calling with all insistent rhythm …

“Drums,” said Donna Royce, as they moved from the table into the candlelit shadows. “Are they voodoo drums?”

Madame Thibaud laughed. “Mais non, Mamzellle Royce, they are drums in Cap Dominique. Some poof family is having a bamboche, a celebration, a birthday or feast day. Drums are for dancing, nothing more than that.”

Margaret Sandifer said, “But how disappointing! I wanted to hear the voodoo drums they talk about.”

Pere Etienne, displeased, said severely, “There is no such thing as voudoun, Madame Sandifer. It is a lie invented to injure my people, no more.”

Kip frowned and seemed about to speak; then he fell silent. Brian, Mardee thought, had said almost the same. And yet the drums seemed to beat in her blood, with a mysterious rhythm, throbbing, calling to her … Mardee clung to a piece of furniture, telling herself not to be fanciful.

“You will hear drums everywhere in Haiti,” the priest was saying. “The drums are our natural music, brought from Africa with the slaves two hundred years ago and preserved here intact.”

Sebastian said, “Like the old folk music of Scotland and the Hebrides. You can’t find it anywhere now in the British Isles, but folk musicians have found it preserved in Nova Scotia and Appalachia.”

“Exactly so, M’sieur Wright. Even in the daytime you will hear it,” the priest said. “Tourists who hear the booming of drums in the hills imagine all kinds of evil things and people the sound in their mind with evil and blasphemous legends, but the truth is, like most truths, very simple: a coumbite or a coup de main—you would say in English, a work brigade—gathering to work in the fields. Even in your industrialized nations, they find that factory workers work better for music piped into then: factories, and Africans knew this years and years before the Industrial Revolution, that men work best to their own music.”

“Is that what the drums are doing now, Father?” asked Sebastian.

“At this hour, M’sieur? No, some poor family in Dominique, as Madame said, is having a bamboche, a party, drinking clairin—our local rum—and diverting themselves with dancing to the drums. Every man, woman, and child in Haiti plays the drums after a fashion. It is their music, and this is their time to enjoy them. They live a hard life, my poor people.”

Mardee shut her eyes against the insistent rhythm. Only some poor black family like the ones she had seen on the road, in one of the ramshackle huts, cooking a chicken, having a birthday or feast day … ridiculous to feel they throbbed in her blood with some mysterious call! I am of Haitian blood, African blood. The drums speak to me . . . easier, yes, and saner to believe that,

The drams seemed to have faded out, but she seemed to hear their rhythm inside her head, inside her mind … No. What she heard now was Kip Tybalt’s fingers in a delicate tapping rhythm on the bare wood of the mahogany table. Kip saw her eyes on him, started, laughed, and clenched his long, slim fingers into a tight fist. “Sorry,” he said, laughing again. “Habit. I started out as a bongo drummer in a band.” He thrust his hand into his pocket, but Mardee had the queer impression that his whole body was tense and throbbing with the rhythm.

Tante Emilie said, “M’sieur is French?”

“Haitian, Madame,” Kip said.

“And your family name, M’sieur?”

“Not dissimilar to your own, Madame—Thibault, instead of Thibaud. I believe it is one of the more common names in the French islands.”

“True, M’sieur. It is even possible that we are somehow remotely related,” she said graciously, and Mardee smiled. Madame might consider actors déclassé’, but she was by no means immune to Kip Tybalt’s charm. Kip Tybalt—Christophe Thibault.

Mardee went to the window and stood there, pressing her aching forehead against the pane. Suddenly she felt so tired that she could hardly stand upright. She fancied again that she could hear the drums throbbing somewhere out there, under the mysterious moon …

Behind her Kip said softly, “You hear them too. They are still out there, you know.”

She forced herself to straighten, to discipline her tired face into a smile. “But Pere Etienne has warned us that there is nothing mysterious about them.”

Kip was close behind her; she could see their two faces, their two bodies, reflected together in the antique glass, as if they were embracing. She could feel the warmth of him in the darkness. He said very softly, “Perhaps the good priest does not know everything, ma belle.” The touch of his hand on her arm seemed to go through her whole body like hot iron. Damn the man anyhow, he’s an actor, turning on the charm. He even turned it on Tante Emilie. Of course he’s attractive and sexy—it’s his business to be! But Mardee felt breathless, uncomfortable. Why did she feel, through the light touch of his hand, as if the drums were still beating around them both, beating in his blood as they beat in her own … ?

Kip said, staling past her into the darkness, “Perhaps it is only the night which seems to give them so much magic and mystery.” He was not, now, speaking to Mardee at all; he seemed rather to speak into the night itself, or to something within himself. He said, so low that she had to strain to hear him, “There is something magic in the sound of drums. Perhaps they are the oldest form of human communication. Perhaps man’s earliest ancestors, somewhere in Africa, millions of years ago, even before speech came to them, imitated the sounds of the night: the thunder, the booming calls of the great apes who shared their jungles, beating with stones and hollow logs and anything eke they could find. Perhaps that is why we all react to drums that way, they are in the very blood of the human race.” He smiled at her then, and their eyes met in the black glass mirror of the window. “Or perhaps the magic is in the human mind, and has nothing to do with the drums themselves.”

“I wish the drums were nearer,” Donna said behind them. “They’d be great to dance to! There’s no dance music here, and they say all the nightclubs in Port-au-Prince are jammed with American tourists!”

Her prosaic voice abruptly broke the spell weaving between them. Mardee moved a little away from Kip as Madame Thibaud suggested graciously, “If it would please you, perhaps we could have the drummers from Cap Dominique come here some evening to display their skill. They would be pleased to play for dancing, would they not, Pere Etienne?”

“They would indeed, Madame, and it would be giving them a chance to earn a little money for the poor luxuries which are so hard to come by here, a new suit, a pair of shoes—for a few gourdes, Mamzelle Royce, they would play all night for your dancing pleasure.”

“Can we have them over some night?” coaxed Donna Royce, clinging to Sebastian’s arm.

Sebastian said with grave courtesy, “If it can be arranged, Father, I would be happy to compensate them well for their efforts.” He smiled at Donna, tucking her hand beneath his arm in an equally possessive gesture. “Anything to keep my leading lady happy.”

Suddenly Mardee was exhausted. She put her fingers against her lips to smother a yawn, but Madame noticed.

“You are tired. You have had a long day, ma chere.”

Sebastian quickly took up his cue. “And we are all working people, Madame, we must be up at daybreak if we are not to be hopelessly behind schedule.”

She gave him the tips of her fingers, and he bowed over them. Then Mardee was alone with Tante Emilie, saying good night to the priest. He bowed also, thanking Madame for an excellent dinner, and took his leave.

“A pleasant evening, cherie, and I am glad to have you here,” the old woman said. “I feel strange among these blancs and Americans, and I am glad to have someone of my own family, someone of the blood, near to me. Did you enjoy yourself, petite?”

“It was a lovely evening, Tante Emilie. I have never known anything like this house—so luxurious …”

“It is your home, Marie-Louise, and your heritage. I will not soon forgive Marie-Claire that she has kept you from me all these years. It is not kindness, »wr chere. Not every old woman has, at the end of her life, a little one of her own people to be with her … I am very old, Marie-Louise, too old for all this, I want to be able, when people say to me, Madame must see to this, to be-able to say again to them, Go to Mamzelle, she will attend to it.” She leaned over and brushed Mardee’s cheeks with her withered lips, soft as some tropical flower-petal. “I am very tired, p’tite, will you pour me a glass of wine?”

Mardee, moving to the table, discovered that the noiseless servants had removed the dishes and all traces of the dinner; only the brandy decanter remained, its cut glass winking like jewels in the candlelight. Mardee said, “They have taken it away. May I bring you some brandy, Tante Emilie?”

The old woman looked scandalized. “I, drink brandy? It is not a lady’s drink, Marie-Louise!”

“I only thought you looked so tired, Tante Emilie—”

“A few drops, no more.” She looked at the delicate balloon-shaped glass almost guiltily as she put her lips to the rim. “Will you ring that bell, cherie?”

It sounded softly, a long way off, and after a few minutes a huge, gaunt giantess of a woman, coal black, came into the room. She looked with a frown at the fragile glass in Tante Emilie’s hand, and the old woman quickly put it from her. She said fretfully, “I am very tired, Fifine. Take me to bed. Bon nuit, Marie-Louise.”

“Good night, Tante Emilie. Good night, Fifine.”

The giantess glowered at Mardee and muttered something in creole. Leaning heavily on the huge woman, the old woman tottered from the room, and Mardee, watching, realized for the first time how very old and fragile her great-aunt was.

It was somehow an illusion the old woman created: a magic, a glamour in the old, strict sense of the word. The accent, the dress, the manner … a duchess of the ancien regime.

But when she’s alone it slips a little, because she’s so very old, so very feeble. And it was this harmless old woman that Marie-Claire had feared, had called evil?

Robert glided on noiseless feet into the room. “Will there be anything else tonight, Mamzelle?”

“Nothing, thank you, Robert. Madame has gone to bed with Fifine. I am going up now.”

“Shall I lock the house and make all ready for the night, Mamzelle?”

This is what Tante Emilie had meant. That when the servants and the people came to Madame for orders, she should be able to say to them, Mamzelle will attend to it. She said to the old butler, who was obviously waiting for orders, “Yes, lock the house as usual, make all secure, Robert.”

“Anything else, Mamzelle?”

“No, thank you.”. Suddenly Mardee realized what he was waiting for. “That is all. Good night, Robert.”

And so, Mardee thought as she went up the stairs to her room, Emilie Thibaud had had none of the evil vague motives Marie-Claire had ascribed to her, none at all. She was simply old and feeble, and needed her, truly needed someone of her own family, to help run -this great house, look after the servants.

And I am her only living relative. She chided herself for being mercenary, but the thought would not go away.

Fleur had waited up, bravely concealing her yawns, to unfasten the white and gold dress and hang it in the armoire. But when Mardee had sent her away to her own bed, she could not sleep. It seemed that she could still hear the insistent rhythms of the drums through the silence of the great house, a sound just at the edge of her hearing, more a vibration than a noise. She lay awake for hours, straining either to hear it or to make sure it was not there, and finally got up and started looking around the room for something to read. But there was nothing in the room except a French prayer book.

There must be something to read downstairs. A house this size must surely have a library, and even if all of Tante Emilie’s books were in French, they would certainly be more interesting than the prayer book. She drew a robe over her nightgown and went quietly down the stairs. The halls seemed so wide and empty that for a moment she was frightened. Should she be wandering around like this in a strange house?

But Tante Emilie had said, It is your own home, Marie-Louise, and Mardee resolved to take her at her word.

Somehow, at the foot of the stairs, she took a wrong turn, and before long she was hopelessly lost in a long corridor she had never seen before. When she came out into a large room, for a moment she thought she was in the grand salon, for there was a long table down the center of Hie room. But there was no chandelier, and at one end there was a fireplace, burnt down to dull coals, and a dark figure standing before the fire.

Mardee realized that she must have somehow blundered into the other wing, where the movie people were housed. She turned to leave as quietly as she had come in, but then the dark figure leaning against, the mantelpiece straightened, looked around, and saw her.

“Mardee! Is something wrong?” And she recognized Kip’s voice.

“Nothing except my sense of direction,” said Mardee with an uneasy laugh. “I came down to try to find a book to read, and somehow got lost. Tante Emilie should have drawn me a map!”

“It is a confusing house,” Kip said. “Once I blundered upstairs into some rooms near your great-aunt’s, and her maid looked at me as if I were taking a quite unwarranted liberty—which, of course, I was, unintentionally.” He had taken off his coat and tie, and wore a white T-shirt, which made him look considerably younger and less sophisticated. “I could not sleep, although all the rest of the cast and the camera crew are in their beds.” His laugh was faint, deprecating. “I fancied I heard the drums again somewhere, and they kept me awake.”

“You too?”

“I too am Haitian, and there was a time when I— when I used to play the drums, although I left my village when I was no more than a boy. But shall I show you how to get back to the grand salon?”

“Please do. I’m scared to death of blundering into the servants’ quarters and having Robert take me for a burglar and come after me with a shotgun or something!”

He laughed. “There are no thieves in Haiti, ma belle. Oh, perhaps in Port-au-Prince, where there are rich tourists to be robbed, but not in the villages. But come, I can also show you where the library is. I too have made use of it on occasion, though I fear all the books are in French.” He picked up a candle from the mantelpiece and held it to the dying fire. She noticed that he was barefoot. He walked back along the hall with her.

“See, here is where you took the wrong turn. There”—he pointed—”is the grand salon, and here the library. It runs rather heavily to Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo—do you care for the poetry of Ronsard, or for Marcel Proust?” He scanned the shelves by candlelight. “You do read French, I hope. There are not many English books here, I have found.”

“I went to school in France.”

“Your parents lived in France?”

“No. I was born in Denver, but my father was an Air Force captain, and after the war my father was stationed in France. I went to school in Marseilles, and also in Normandy, until I was twelve.”

He turned around and smiled at her. “So you too came to the States as a stranger? Then you can know how I felt when I went there.”

“I did indeed—I was the only black girl in my school for years, and with a French accent, too,” Mardee said, making a rueful face. “I flunk that was when I decided to be an actress, hearing my mother’s struggle to lose her accent and realizing that you could have not one voice but a dozen if you wished.”

“I can understand that only too well,” Kip said. His face was shadowed and thoughtful in the candlelight. He had none of the debonair charm he had assumed earlier in the evening; he looked young and harried. “I was a drummer and a dancer in Martinique, and I was offered a small part in an American film. I did not even speak French, I spoke Creole, the patois of Haiti. I learned English quickly, but I did not even speak the language well enough at first to realize that they thought me a white man—it was not that I was trying to deceive anyone.” He looked troubled. He laughed then, suddenly, selfconsciously, turning to the shelves. “Some other day, perhaps, I will tell you all the story of my life—this is not the time. Is that thunder again?”

“Those dancers are going to get mighty wet,” Mardee said, listening. Was the drumming still going on?

“Oh, they will be inside by now, I should imagine. Here, next to Proust, are the novels of Colette. Le Ble en Herbe, Claudine en Menage, La Vagabonds … They were considered quite scandalous when your great-aunt was a jeune fille, of course, but now they are suitable reading even for schoolgirls. She must have been fairly broad-minded when she was young, though … What will you have?”

“I’ve read La Vagabonde in English, I’ll try it in French,” Mardee said, and took the thin volume. He came back with her along the corridor.

“Don’t get lost again. Straight up that stair … Mais, comment—” Kip broke off. “Regardez.”

The door was standing wide open, unbolted. Mardee frowned and said, “On Madame’s orders I told Robert to lock up for the night.”

“And so he did, Mardee, for I saw him making his rounds.”

“I thought you said there were no thieves in Haiti!” Mardee said sharply. “Will you shut and lock it, then, Kip?”

Kip hesitated, then said, “Forgive me, it’s none of my business, but I wouldn’t, Mardee. Old Robert probably has a petite amie in the village, or he slipped out to have a dance with the drums. Leave it, Mardee, why trouble the old fellow? I’m sure that’s all it is, really.”

“You really think—”

“I’m sure of it,” Kip said, and she laughed.

“Well, I would never have known if I hadn’t come down, and Robert probably thought that what Mamzelle didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Might as well let the old man get back in unnoticed.”

He held out his hand to her, and she paused a moment on the steps to give him hers. “Good night, Mar-dee. I hope you can sleep now.”

“I’m sure I will. Although perhaps I should have taken a volume of Proust to make sure of it!”

He chuckled, a low, delightful sound in the darkness. He said, “It is Ronsard whom I find the true cure for insomnia. I think perhaps I shall take a volume to my bed with me. Ronsard is, perhaps, better than no one— though not much better,” he added.

“Good night, Kip,” Mardee said, and went up the stairs. This time she found her room without much trouble, climbed into bed, and opened La Vagabonde. But now she had no desire to read. The drums, at last, were silent. She lay thinking of the crowded day past. Sebastian Wright. Kip, and his handsome face bent on her as he called her ma belle. And then, with a sense almost of guilt, she remembered Brian.

Two interesting men in one day! She picked up Brian’s card, slipped it as a marker into La Vagabonde, and put out the light, staring into the dark with a smile. She thought of Kip’s magnetic smile, and told herself firmly, Quit it, Mardee. The marts an actor, turning on the charm. But tonight Kip had seemed more sincere, younger, more real.

Come on, she admonished herself. Brian was really her kind of man. She thought, as she drifted off to sleep, I’ll call him tomorrow.

The drums had started again. She fell into sleep, hearing them. Were they beckoning to her?

Three

Mardee slept late, and she woke with bright sun flooding in, and Fleur moving on soft slippers around the room.

“I have brought your coffee, Mamzelle.”

The coffee was black and extremely strong, reminding Mardee of the fierce French coffee of her childhood. There were unfamiliar tropical fruits piled on a platter, and hot, crisp little croissants. Mardee ate and drank with a good appetite, then rummaged for the card with the addresses and number of Brian’s hotel. Now that she had seen for herself the palatial surroundings of Maison Dominique, she could understand why he had been a little unwilling to make the first overtures.

“I would like to make a telephone call, Fleur. Where is the telephone?” Then, remembering the candlelit dining room last night, she asked with sudden misgivings, “I suppose there is a telephone?”

“But certainly, Mamzelle,” Fleur reassured her, “there is the most modem of instruments in the great hallway downstairs. Robert will be happy to show Mamzelle the instrument and its habitation.”

The “habitation” of the telephone was a dark, elegantly paneled little room underneath the great front stairs, and Mardee had to smile to herself at the “most modern of instruments,” which was an antique high-cradled telephone of the kind just being rediscovered in New York as elegant camp; but when she reached the hotel switchboard, Brian’s voice came booming through the tinny old phone with a reassuringly modern sound.

“Mardee! So nice to hear from you! I told myself not to count on a call, once you started hobnobbing with the great, so this is about the nicest surprise I can imagine! When am I going to see you?”

“Not today, I’m afraid. It’s already noon, and I’m afraid my great-aunt may have plans for me this afternoon. But any other morning would do. I need to do some shopping in Port-au-Prince, the clothes I brought are for an ordinary northern summer, not the tropics. Do you know of any place where I could find the things I need?”

“Dozens,” he said equably, “and shopping is a great way to see a new town.”

“Did you ever find out when your cameraman can join you?”

Brian seemed pleased that she had remembered. “I spent a small fortune on long-distance yesterday, trying to find out. Until he gets here I’m pretty much at loose ends, but that’s the way I work anyhow—I wander around soaking up atmosphere, then sit down and write it out of my system. And I’d love to have some company for the wandering and the soaking. Suppose I borrow the critter and pick you up tomorrow. We’ll do your shopping, and I’ll take you to see some of the sights,”

“I’ll have to check with Tante Emilie,” she cautioned, “but unless I phone you back before dinnertime, let’s count on it.”

“Fine. Is ten too early for you?”

When Mardee returned to her room, Fleur handed her a note from Sebastian Wright, with an invitation to join them that afternoon for the filming of the crowd scenes in Cap Dominique. It was addressed to Madame Thibaud, but Fleur explained.

“Madame finds herself un peu souffrante, but she suggested Mamzelle might wish to see the event. She asks that you divert yourself as you please, this way or otherwise, and join her at the dinner hour.”

“But if Madame is ill, should I stay nearby?”

“Mais emphatically non, Mamzelle,” Fleur told her. “Madame was very definite that -she needs nothing and you should entertain yourself as you desire. It is only a slight malaise …I believe she did not sleep well because of the storm.”

And the drums, Mardee thought. She too, as well as Kip, had been kept awake late by them. She looked at the note, where Sebastian had apologized for the hour, in the hottest part of the day, but the exigencies of the script made it essential to film at that time; if the ladies chose to join him, they must be carefully protected against the sun.

“I need some sunglasses, Fleur. Is there anywhere I can get them?”

“I fear Mamzelle will have to wait until we can send to Port-au-Prince; the car goes daily to purchase household necessities, but it had gone this morning before Mamzelle was awake.” She looked doubtful. “There are, perhaps, a few pairs in the little shop in Cap Dominique where the workmen make their purchases, but nothing for a lady like Mamzelle.”

Mardee laughed. “Sunglasses are sunglasses, Fleur. Is there someone who can send for them, or can I walk to Cap Dominique?”

“In this heat, Mamzelle? Do not for a minute consider it!” She sounded scandalized. “My Henri will fetch them for Mamzelle.”

She disappeared and returned, a short time later, trailed by a very small barefoot boy in ragged cotton jeans. “He will run to Cap Dominique and fetch a pair of sunglasses.”

The child—he looked about ten—bowed to Mardee shyly, murmuring something unintelligible.

“Speak French,” Fleur chided, “Mamzelle cannot understand creole, and what would the good Father say to you?”

“Your son, Fleur?”

“My youngest, Mamzelle, and a rascal. Be off with you, now,” she admonished, and the boy ran off; Mar-dee saw him from the window a few minutes later, scampering off in the direction of Cap Dominique. She said anxiously, “He shouldn’t run too hard and tire himself in this heat!”

“That one, he thrives in the sun like a salamander, Mamzelle. I send him for lessons to the Father; if he will remember to speak French, he will learn to read and write and make something of himself.” The woman’s tired smile was proud. “He will not be a good-for-nothing working in the canefields or the coffee plantations, like his brothers.”

Mardee thought of her own father, who had so repeatedly urged her to make the most of her schooling. And yet Mother came from this kind of background, and never told us! The contrast struck her, hard and painfully. Air Force Captain Zachary Haskell had achieved his ambition—he had come miles and miles from his Alabama childhood—but he was a poor man’s son, and he had reared Mardee to take it for granted that she would work for a living.

Little Henri came from poverty that would have made Zachary Haskell’s childhood look like luxury. Haiti, land of contrasts—too many contrasts! Fleur had a good job by Haitian standards, working for one of the richest women in Haiti, yet her son was barefoot and ragged, and she worried that she might not be able to keep him out of the canefields. Mardee struggled with a bitter sense of injustice—how did she deserve it? And with an even stranger thought: If she had grown up here, in what Tante Emilie called her heritage, she would take it for granted and never see the injustice that she should be so rich and Fleur so poor.

Irritably Mardee silenced her democratic conscience. Tante Emilie wasn’t exploiting anyone. She was giving work to poor Haitian people who would otherwise starve on their small farms. She paid them well.

Sure, she pays them well. So well that in a country riddled with hookworm, Fleur can’t keep shoes on her ten-year-old son!

Then she thought, Oh, nonsense, I never knew a ten-year-old who would wear shoes unless he was forced to, She turned to Fleur, who was quietly making up the room.

“Did you hear the drums in the night, Fleur?”

“Drums, Mamzelle?” But there was a flicker in the woman’s eyes, belying the innocent question.

“Drums. They went on all night.”

“Mamzelle must have been dreaming,” said Fleur firmly. “I heard only the storm.”

And indeed, in the morning quiet of Maison Dominique, with no sound but soft outdoor cluckings of birds and hens somewhere, it was hard to believe in the drums that had throbbed and beat in her blood last night.

“Oh, but there -were drums, Mamzelle,” small Henri said as he came into the room, a parcel in his hand. “The drums went on all night, indeed, and they said that le gros Wane walked again in the storm, defying—”

“Tais-toi!” Fleur snapped. “Be quiet, naughty one, I will not hear that wicked gossip!”

So there had been drums—it had not been her dreams or her imagination! Mardee said, “Who was playing the drums, Henri? And who, or what, is le gros blanc?”

“Be quiet,” Fleur snapped again, following it with a whole torrent of abuse in creole. “The Father has forbidden you to listen to or to repeat ghost stories!”

“Don’t scold him, Fleur, I asked him,” Mardee said. “I’m interested—”

“It is blasphemy and nonsense,” Fleur said severely. “If everyone who died in that dark and bloody time walked the ground here, cursing, Haiti would be nothing but a land of ghosts.”

Henri twisted away from her. He said, with injured dignity, “But I do not speak of ghosts, but of the drums. They went on all night, playing to the morts, and to ce diab’, and they say that the white mamdoi appeared to dance to the drums and to call down—”

“Be silent, be silent, you wretched one!” Fleur, in a towering rage, slapped the child till he rocked on his feet. “Where are Mamzelle’s sunglasses, or have you forgotten them for this idle and blasphemous nonsense?”

Whimpering, rubbing his bruised cheek, Henri fished them out. Mardee took them, feeling distressed that her questioning had brought punishment on the child. She had given him a five-dollar bill, assured that American money would be accepted. He poured what seemed like a mountain of change into her hand; the Haitian gourde, she remembered from a tourist leaflet on the plane, came five or six to the dollar. She handed him some of the coins.

“For you, Henri, with my thanks.”

“Mamzelle is too generous.” Fleur still looked stiff and angry. “If Mamzelle wishes to give him half gourde or a gourde—”

“No, indeed. He went a long way in the hot sun. I insist.” It was all the apology she could make for the questions which had gotten him so severely slapped. But why should Fleur be so upset? Every old house had some ghost story, and usually it was treated with a tolerant shrug. Mardee vaguely remembered reading somewhere that a momaloi was a voodoo priestess, but of course Pere Etienne said there was no such thing. She pressed the money into his hand. Henri looked at his mother for permission; she nodded grudgingly at last, and he ran away, his eyes shining.

Fleur said, “Mamzelle is too good to my naughty boy.”

Then, in a flood, the words poured from her.

“Mamzelle, you have a good heart! You are Marie-Claire’s daughter, and you must be good! You should not stay here in this evil place! You should go away at once, back to the States! At once, Mamzelle! It is dangerous for you!”

Mardee stood staring at her. “What do you mean, Fleur? I have only just come, and my great-aunt needs me!”

“That one, she needs no one and nothing, Mamzelle! Mamzelle, I beg of you, for the love of Marie-Claire, who was my friend when we were little children, I entreat you, go away, Mamzelle! It is dangerous for you here! Mamzelle is of the blood—”

There was a rapping on the door. Fleur swallowed the words into silence, with a beseeching look at Mar-dee. She opened the door, to see the soft-spoken old butler, Robert. Mardee wondered if he had overheard. But his face was blank, impassive.

“M’sieur Wright is downstairs, if Mamzelle is ready to join him.”

Mardee followed Robert, glancing uneasily at Fleur, whose face had gone slack and dull, as if with fear. Is she going to get into trouble over this? she wondered. What could she have meant?

In the lower hallway, Sebastian’s voice brought Mar-dee out of the world of superstition and strange warnings into the familiar professional world of theater and actors she knew so well.

“I see you managed to get some sunglasses. Good, that sun is really fierce. We’re starting to shoot the crowd scenes in Cap Dominique today, and instead of importing extras, we offered anyone in the area a chance to-work as an extra in these scenes. Here, come along,” he added, escorting her to the car. “I am sorry Madame did not feel well enough to join us, but”—his hand lingered on hers with a little extra pressure—”it’s a pleasure to have you to myself, too.”

Mardee blushed, thinking, I’ve been a sucker for older men since I had a crush on my history teacher in high school. But it wouldn’t be smart to take this one seriously! He’s only flirting; the Royce woman has him hooked, roped, and hogtied. I can’t compete with that— and I’m not sure I want to!

“Penny for your thoughts,” Sebastian said, settling into the back seat beside her and signaling the chauffeur to drive away.

“Inflation prices,” Mardee said, smiling. “They’re not worth that much.”

Cap Dominique was only about half a mile away; very quickly the big car roiled into the main street of the small town. Actually, the main street was the only street there was—a widened stretch of the narrow dirt road, with half a dozen frame houses, a small general store, a slightly smaller shop painted white and marked APOTHECAIRE, and a store selling chicken feed. At one end of the street, near the gas station with its colorful pump, was an array of heavy trucks, from which cameras and equipment were being unloaded by quick-moving, efficient crews, and a large house trader stenciled WRIGHT PRODUCTIONS.

“Portable dressing rooms,” Sebastian said. “Wardrobe women and makeup crews are getting the cast ready. And down there …” He pointed. Under the trees, long benches had been set up, and makeup men and women were working on what looked like a hundred men, women, and children. “The whole town of Cap Dominique, and some of the workers from the hills, is down there being turned into slaves and freed Negroes from the days of the Revolution.”

He walked with Mardee to the area which had been roped off. Just outside it, a pile of Coca-Cola signs had been stacked, and Mardee chuckled at how little was needed to obliterate the twentieth century in Cap Dominique. She said so, and Sebastian nodded. “That’s what made it perfect for the film. All we needed were costumes, and even they haven’t changed all that much. Men’s shirts have more buttons, and the men wear khaki army pants and blue jeans that don’t fade so fast. And the women’s dresses were a little longer—not much; I haven’t seen a really short skirt except in Port-au-Prince.” He gestured to a group of women and girls, barefoot, dressed in faded and ragged ankle-length cotton print dresses. “Any one of those women could wear what she has on for the film anywhere in rural Haiti, and no one would notice. The main difference is in the colors. In those days it was easier to tell the poor from the rich just by how bright their clothes were. Now we have aniline dyes, and things don’t fade, but in those days you could pretty well tell how old a man’s clothes were and judge his income by how long it had been since he had a new shirt.”

Mardee asked, “How did you get them to fade that way in these days?”

“I had a crew working on it for months,” Sebastian said. “I ordered bolts and bolts of cheap cotton cloth dyed with the old-fashioned dyes they used back then— they sold for a penny or so a yard, all over the world, in those days they were the preferred trade goods. Then I had wardrobe make up the clothes in a lot of stock sizes and run them through washing machines, so we have all kinds of ‘color levels. Notice that the kids’ clothes are the most faded of all, because people used to cut clothes down for children, but not till after they’d been worn for months by their first owners.” He smiled engagingly and said, “I’d like to stay and talk to you, but the camera crews are ready for me. You can see everything from here.”

There were some folding aluminum chairs under the trees, and Mardee saw Kip Tybalt, in an open-collared, faded shirt and faded breeches. He was barefoot. Paul Barry was standing beside him, wearing a dark frock coat and trousers, lace at his wrists and ruffles and frills at his neck, high boots to his knees. Both men greeted Mardee with smiles of welcome.

“How in hell—excuse me—how did they ever manage not to melt in these kind of clothes?” Paul demanded. He mopped cautiously at his forehead. A makeup man rushed up, clucked at him, mopped him with a sponge, and brushed dark powder over him again. Kip laughed.

“I imagine they just melted,” he said good-naturedly. “Cheer up, Paul, you’re the governor of the colony, and with all that gold lace, a little sweat doesn’t matter that much.” He looked up, smiling. “You look nice and cool, Mardee. Here, come into the shade.”

Paul Barry said, “I suppose this is how Wright gets his reputation for authenticity. But right now I’m thinking wishfully of a nice air-conditioned back lot at Universal-International, with Coke machines and buckets and buckets of ice. Not to mention a dressing room with a fan! It’s okay for you, Kip, you’re supposed to be a freed slave, you can go around barefoot with your collar open!”

Kip laughed. “Oh, I’ve put in my time. Wright at least won’t make you put on that powdered wig until you’re on camera! The last historical film I made, I remember standing around with every wig and ruffle in place—oh, sure, my standin was under the lights, but I was on set waiting—for an hour or so every day, waiting for the star, who always turned up late. Even,” he added, “as with our dear, dear Donna!” He cast a grim look at the dressing room. “If she would get herself out here, instead of treating us to some temperament—” - Paul shrugged. “I’ve known worse than Donna. She still has a few manners left. I could mention a few names who sound great at the box office, but on a lot everybody groans when they hear them.” He mentioned the names. “Sure, it’s gone to Donna’s head a little, finding herself going to premieres and fancy nightclubs with Sebastian, and all the gossip columnists bribing her makeup girl to find out who she’s sleeping with. But she’ll settle down.”

“She’s had time enough to do that,” Kip grumbled. “And I’d appreciate a little professional courtesy! Why the devil Sebastian lets her get away with it—”

Paul Barry grinned. “You know that as well as I do.”

Kip shrugged. “Mardee, I’m surprised Sebastian didn’t suggest—it might have amused you to put on a costume and walk on in the crowd. Guests on the lot usually get a kick out of it, and when we’re working in a place like this, nobody’s going to go screaming down to Central Casting about you taking a day’s work away from a union member— Good God, look who’s here! Marie Antoinette, I presume?”

“Hardly,” Margaret Sandifer protested. Her hair was dressed high on her head; she wore an elaborate seventeenth-century gown of silvery-blue brocade. She was gasping a little. “How did people breathe in these tight bodices?”

“Maybe they didn’t,” Kip said, “that’s probably why they went out of style, and good riddance. Maggie, you look resplendent!”

The character actress smiled. “Provided I don’t wilt like a lettuce leaf before I get on camera!”

Paul Barry said, “I was just wishing we were all in a nice air-conditioned studio in Hollywood. But I suppose that wouldn’t be sufficiently authentic for his nibs!”

“Authentic be damned!” Margaret laughed. “The attraction of spectaculars filmed on location in Haiti—or Egypt, or Madagascar or Kathmandu—has nothing to do with authenticity. It has to do with the very simple fact that Hollywood extras in the union get—what is it now?—sixty dollars a day. And what’s Sebastian paying this bunch?”

“Ten gourdes apiece,” Kip admitted. “Just over two bucks.”

“Exploitation,” Paul Barry remarked.

“Exploitation be damned!” Kip protested. “It’s twice the going rate in the coffee plantations. Not to mention that it’s between harvests, and there’s no work for anybody. So these people won’t miss quite so many meals between one crop and the next, and some of the kids will get shoes. Everything’s relative. In Hollywood Wright would be a cheap crook, blacklisted by the unions; here he’s a public benefactor, spreading around the blessings of capitalism.”

Ragged children were crowding, pushed by assistant directors speaking French through megaphones, into the streets of Cap Dominique. An ancient coach, brightly painted with the lilies of France on the door, with a coachman in powdered wig on the box, rolled along the street, kicking up clouds of dust.

“Get that coach out of here!” someone yelled. “Wait till the sprinkling cart’s been through to lay the dust! Hey, Mr. Wright, come tell them bastards to get off the street!”

Margaret said, “A back lot at International would certainly be quieter!” She raised eight yards of brocade skirt to look ruefully at a silver slipper with a high red heel. “That wretched shoe still pinches. I had them loosen it twice, and still I hope they don’t make me walk far on it!”

Kip turned. He said ironically, “And here, at long last, our star condescends to come among us, complete with entourage.”

Mardee saw Donna coming from the trailer, makeup woman behind her with an armful of sponges, towels, and makeup bottles, a wardrobe woman trailing behind.

Margaret said, “We’re all going to need that stuff if we don’t get rolling here.” She turned her wrist in an automatic gesture, then laughed at herself.

“Seventeenth-century costume and I still try to check my watch!”

“Eighteenth,” said Kip, “and who cares, so long as you don’t do it on camera! Have you a watch, Mar-dee?”

She checked. “Half past three”

“So much for starting on time.” Kip glanced apprehensively to the south, where a bank of cloud was slowly piling up along the horizon. “What is holding Sebastian up? Can’t they get that wretched coach rolling, or what?”

Donna came up to them, looking sullen. She said to Margaret, “Some people have all the pull with wardrobe! Look at what you’re wearing—and look what I’ve got on!” She indicated the long faded, ragged cotton print gown she was wearing, cut very low in the neck.

Margaret said, “My dear girl—”

“And don’t you call me girl, white lady!”

Paul gasped with shock. Kip said, “Hey Donna—” but Margaret raised aristocratic eyebrows, cool and unruffled.

“My dear Miss Royce, I really do apologize for forgetting your color for a moment, and speaking to you as I would speak to any colleague!”

“Come off it, Donna,” Kip said, “there’s no color line in this movie unless you put one there. This is Haiti, not Harlem. So get the chip off your shoulder.” His smile was magnetic. “What’s bothering you?”

“Wardrobe’s treating me like the ugly duckling around here. Look at this mess I’ve got to wear! I’m going to complain to Sebastian!”

“My dear,” Margaret said gently. “Have you studied the script carefully? Quite apart from all other considerations, the very simplicity of your frock is a matter of character. In this outfit I look like a dressed-up hag, and that, of course, is what I am. The idea is that you, or Angelique, is supposed to be beautiful enough to shine forth even through rags.”

Donna still looked sullen. She turned crossly to Mar-dee. “What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Wright invited me—and my aunt—to watch the crowd scenes.” Mardee felt defensive, but secretly realized that Donna’s hostility was a kind of compliment. If she was really insignificant, Donna would have ignored her, as she ignored the hovering makeup woman with her clutter of sponges and towels.

Sebastian came toward them through the crowds which, choreographed by the assistant directors, were beginning to take their places in the street. Mardee moved unobtrusively back out of the way. She found herself feeling a curious regret that she was not actually working but was merely a guest on the lot, invited as a courtesy to the hostess.

Sebastian frowned at Donna. “Who put you into that thing? The neck’s a good four inches too low. Why didn’t you give them hell about it?”

She curled her pretty lip. “They tried to put it up to here”—she drew a contemptuous finger across her throat—”and some kind of kerchief on top of it. I told them the hell with that, this isn’t a picture about the witch hunts in Puritan Salem!”

Sebastian’s smile was good-natured. “Hey, I’m running this show, sweetheart.” He gestured to the wardrobe woman. “Too low-cut. Nobody but a poule would have gone out like that in those days.”

Donna said crossly, “I like it the way it is. What’s a poule, anyhow?”

“A whore, darling,” Sebastian said, and to the wardrobe woman he said, “Bring it up about four inches.”

Donna frowned, tapping one foot angrily as the woman began fussing around with scissors and thread, snipping the tucks sewn into neck and bust. “Everybody but me looks good in this scene, and I look like something off the city dump! You worrying about the Legion of Decency or something?”

“Worrying about you, Donna,” Sebastian said gently. “Angelique is supposed to be a good girl, a respectable peasant woman. You don’t want to look like the town trollop hunting for a fast roll in the hay, do you?”

Donna scowled angrily. She caught the wardrobe woman’s hand to stop her as she started to sew up the dress. “I don’t want to look like a nun, either! Don’t I have anything to say about it, anyhow? I like it the way it is!”

The woman backed off, glancing at Sebastian for instructions.

“Goddamn it, Donna,” Sebastian exploded, “if I were you I’d think twice before advertising it all over the screen that your only talents are hung out five inches in front of your chest!”

Donna gasped, covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears. She cried noisily, like a child, in great gulping sobs. Sebastian stood looking at her in angry dismay.

“Sweetheart,” he said gently at last. “I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t talk to me!” Donna wept. “Go away!”

“Donna—love, don’t cry, I only meant I wanted you to look like a lady—”

She turned her back on him and ran toward the trailer, snatching up her clumsy skirts in her hands, sobbing. Sebastian followed slowly, and Mardee saw him banging on die trailer door.

“Donna! Darling, let me in! Sweetheart, please, just let me talk to you—”

Kip’s eyes Were full of laughter. He said to Mardee, “Don’t take it so seriously. Just a lover’s quarrel.” He shrugged off Margaret’s chiding frown and said, “If they don’t want the whole world to know about it, they should do their fighting in private.” He started to mop his head, grimaced, and summoned a makeup man with his towel. “I don’t care about Sebastian’s love life, or Donna’s either. But I get mad as hell when it means I have to stand out here and broil all afternoon!”

An assistant director walked toward them. He said “Will you people move those chairs over in front of that other bunch of trees? We have to turn the coach around. Mr. Tybalt—”

“I don’t mind moving,” Kip said, “but I’m not going to move any chairs, and that’s that. Get one of your men to move it. No, Paul”—he gestured to the other man—”don’t you move yours, either!”

The man raised his eyebrows. “How a little success goes to an actor’s head!”

“Success be damned,” Kip said. “I’m in costume, and I don’t want to get sweaty.” His grin was good-natured. “Anyway, what are you paying your prop men for?”

The assistant director frowned and said, “Strictly speaking, those chairs aren’t props. I could get in trouble with the union asking them to move an actor’s personal effects.”

Mardee laughed out loud. “This is idiotic,” she said. She reached out and picked up Kip’s lightweight folding chair in one hand and Margaret’s in the other. “Where do you want them?”

The director told her, then did a double take. “Who are you? There aren’t supposed to be any unauthorized guests—”

“She’s not unauthorized,” said Sebastian, striding back from the trailer. “I invited her. Mardee, for heaven’s sake, you don’t have to move those things!” He grabbed up the remaining chair and hoisted them to the new locations. “What’s wrong with you people, letting a guest on the lot do this?”

Mardee laughed. “I don’t mind. I’m not working, I don’t have a costume to mess up, and I won’t get in trouble with the union. Consider it the hospitality of Maison Dominique!”

“Sebastian, when are we going to get rolling? We’re all slowly melting down. A little manly sweat adds authenticity, but this is ridiculous!” Kip said.

“Right. Did they move the coach? We’ll start as soon as Donna’s makeup is okay.” Sebastian walked away. The assistant directors began to move among the crowds of extras, dividing them into small groups and positioning them along the street. Mardee could hear fragments of the instructions.

“You three there, walk slowly down the street. Talk to each in creole . . . doesn’t matter what you say, the sound track won’t pick it up; just look natural. When the coach comes through, you look up and run like hell to get out of the way. Ready, Miss Sandifer?”

Margaret was carefully helped into the coach, stage-hands supporting her so she would not trip on her enormously wide skirt and high heels. A makeup man fussed with Paul’s powdered wig.

Mardee heard the assistant director say, “Just look out the window without any interest at all. These people are nothing to you. Animals. Less.”

The actor nodded in comprehension. Stagehands helped him into the coach. Sebastian turned to Kip. “Where’s the kid you found for that bit? You know him—I can’t recognize all these people yet.”

Kip scanned the crowd and beckoned. A skinny barefoot boy ran out from the small crowd of giggling children in ragged, faded costumes, and Mardee recognized Henri, Fleur’s youngest son. He grinned at Kip and poured out an excited flood of creole.

Sebastian asked, “He understands what we want him to do?”

“Oh, yes.” Kip spoke to Henri, and the small boy nodded seriously.

“Okay, we’re ready. When the coach comes down the street, he’s to try to dash in front of it, slip and fall, and lie there like he thought it was going right over him. Tell him not to be scared, I’ve got my best stunt driver on the box, the horses won’t come within six feet of him. But I want him to look scared to hell, like he thought sure he was going right under their feet—see?”

Kip relayed the information, and Sebastian nodded.

“Let’s roll, then.”

Kip said, “I’ll walk out with him and make sure he understands, just in case Jerry”—he pointed to the assistant director—”gets a brainstorm.”

Sebastian smiled in heartfelt gratitude. “That’s good of you, Kip. It’s rough not being able to speak the kid’s language, but I wanted a real kid, not some bratty child actor.”

Kip walked into the street, his hand resting on Henri’s shoulder as if they were old friends. Yet Kip had refused to budge a chair weighing four ounces, for fear of disarranging his costume!

The coach began to rumble down the street again. When Mardee was sure Sebastian had forgotten her existence, he said, “Nice-looking kid. Kip found him for me. I hate child actors, as a rule. I have a theory that good looks in children are nothing more nor less than a look of intelligence, and if you get a kid bright enough to do what you tell him, he’s going to look fine on the screen. So I use local kids any tune I possibly can. Ordinary child actors from Hollywood are just—” He broke off abruptly. “Good. Here’s Donna. Look, I want you in the crowd—no, back there—look, behind that woman in the red sash. All but hidden.”

Donna looked sullen. Her feet were bare, her bosom modestly concealed by a kerchief. Without the sequins, the cleavage, the glamour, Donna was beautiful, but Mardee found herself wondering again how old the woman really was.

“Now, when Kip starts haranguing the crowd, you shove forward—understand? Shove right through all these people, come to the front, right next to the coach. We’ll get a shot of Paul looking at you—horny, you understand?—but don’t you look at him, you keep your eyes on Kip, you’re afraid he’s going to get in trouble—”

Donna nodded. She had become serious and professional, no longer a woman quarreling with her lover but an actress listening intelligently to her director.

Mardee thought, I can learn a lot by watching these people. A chance to watch Sebastian Wright working was like a master class in technique. The business with Donna was rehearsed half a dozen tunes, until it was done to Sebastian’s liking—and he was a meticulous perfectionist Finally they began to film the scene. She watched the familiar business with the chalked take number and scene number, tedious repeats and retakes. Henri’s business went off quickly and well, and Kip came back to the shade, joining Mardee, saying, “It’s a real experience working with Wright.”

“I can see that,” Mardee said.

“I’ve learned more from him than from any other three directors,” Kip told her.

Henri was lounging in the shade near them. Mardee said, “You know Henri?”

“Mais naturellement. He is the youngest son of my eldest sister.”

Mardee blinked. “Fleur is your sister?”

“None other.” He smiled with the delightful sense of a shared secret. “I was born in Cap Dominique. Naturally, I rely on you, Mardee, not to share this secret with Madame. She would never consent to receive me as a guest—the son of a servant!”

“I won’t tell, of course,” Mardee said; then, thinking of Fleur’s daik-cafe-au-lait color, she said, “I don’t think anyone would know.”

He shook his head. “Fleur and I had different fathers. I do not know who my father was—possibly a sailor from one of the ships stationed here during the war. Probably a blanc—almost certainly, I would say, when I look at myself in the mirror. And because I am also of course, a bastard, Fleur does not approve of me. Nor does my poor old maman, who has become in her old age almost as pious a Catholic as Fleur and Madame. They always considered me a rogue and a disgrace, and so, of course, I acted like one. Only my old grandmere, who was a bocor, an herb doctoress—” He broke off to look uneasily at the sky. The fierce quality of the sunlight had altered as thick clouds began to pile up in the southwestern corner of the sky, and he whistled in consternation.

“Look at that! Sebastian’s going to be mad as hell! If Donna hadn’t held us up, we’d have had this whole thing in the can hours ago.” And indeed, Sebastian was striding toward them, his face like theivery thunderclouds above them.

“Kip, let’s move!”

“I’m waiting for you, Sebastian.” He too had forgotten Mardee, intent on his work again. What had he been going to say about his grandmother?

Sebastian gestured at the thick, anvil-shaped clouds. “I like that symbol of the clouds gathering over the French aristocracy. But it would mean retakes on Donna. Get out there and get started, okay?”

The heavy coach rumbled once again down the street. Kip shoved aside a man in the crowd and leaped into the dirt road ahead of the coach. And before lie had spoken a word Mardee was astonished at the change in him. From the quiet, amusing, diffident man who had been making bantering conversation with her, suddenly he was transformed into the exciting, sensual star she had seen on the screen. He even seemed taller, more muscular.

She had seen this transition before, of course; had felt it in herself, that moment when you suddenly pull the mask of someone else over your head, cease to be yourself and become Jessica, or a teen-age delinquent, or Ophelia, or a slave leader urging your fellow slaves to revolt. But it never ceased to amaze her; she watched with fascination as Kip leaped into the road, raised his arm, and shook his fist She could feel the rage he projected in that simple gesture.

“Tyrants!” he shouted. “Your day will come—” and he broke off, his face collapsing into helpless laughter.

Someone yelled, “Cut!”

Sebastian shouted, “What the hell happened?” and strode out into the road beside Kip. He looked angry. Kip was struggling to control his facial muscles.

“Sebastian, I told you I couldn’t say that line with my face straight! I tried, damn it, I really did, but—good God, try it yourself!” He burlesqued, mimicking in a high falsetto, “Tyrants, your day will come,” and collapsed again. “It’s no good,” he said at last, doubled over. “Grand Dieu—it sounds like some—some subtitle from an old Doug Fairbanks film! Tyrants!” He gestured helplessly, tears of laughter running down his face, “Sebastian, I’m sorry. I tried, but—”

“Look here, Kip—”

“I know. You’re the director. But it just isn’t going to work. There’s no way, no way in the world, that you can say that line seriously and have it work on the screen, not in 1973. Try it yourself.”

“I see your point,” Sebastian said at last, his lips moving as he silently mouthed the line. “It didn’t look silly in the script, though.”

“Forget the script, Sebastian. That’s writing, it’s to be read—you take it in through your eyes. Your writer’s thinking about how the words look on the paper, and that’s fine for him. But when I say it, it comes out funny. Comical. I have to have something that will sound good when I say it—something I can feel natural about shouting at the top of my lungs.”

Sebastian frowned, thinking that over. “I’m not trying to come down hard on you, Kip, you know that. You know what you can put over and what you can’t. But what can you put over? This is a period piece, after all. You don’t want to sound like some hippie radical yelling revolutionary slogans, either.”

Kip nodded slowly, frowning. “Look, suppose I yell something like How long is this going to go on? Just cut the whole first speech and start there, then you cut to Donna if you want to, then start the next speech right away. Cut that line about a day coming soon, and just go on with the next line, you know what I mean, You will not always be able to ignore our misery, blah blah blah—you know the place I’m talking about …”

Sebastian bit his lip, thinking it over. “We can try it that way. If that doesn’t work, well have to get Cappy on it”

“Right,” Kip said, “but let me try this one first.”

Sebastian gestured to the man waiting with the retake board, nodded to the assistant director, and walked out of camera range. Again the leap, the clenched fist, shaken to the heavens.

“How long—”

A clap of thunder drowned out his words. Sebastian swore.

“Damnation! Cut!”

“Want another take?”

Sebastian glared at the lowering sky. A few thick drops of rain were splattering into the dusty street. He shook his head.

“No use. Light’s gone, anyhow. Get the coach and the costumes inside before everything gets soaked, and call everybody for eleven tomorrow. Kip, can you get together with Cappy at nine in the morning?”

“Sure thing.”

The makeup and wardrobe people were swarming around the extras. The rain was still only faint, scattered droplets, but the muttering of thunder seemed to fill the air. Donna Royce came through the crowd, and Sebastian strode up to her, scowling.

“Damn it, Donna, you’ve done it again, cost us a whole day’s shooting over some stupid fuss! Do this again, one more time, and I’ll pack you off on the first plane out of here and wire Eartha Kitt to ask if she wants this part! And don’t start bawling again! We’ve had that one already today!”

“Why pick on me? Kip held us up longer than I did, hassling over his lines that way!”

“Kip is an actor,” Sebastian retorted, “He was working for the best possible performance he could give. But this damn stupid argument about how much of your breasts you can show! You know perfectly well that when it’s a matter of artistry or performance, I’ll go with an actor all the way. Your ego trips are something else!”

“You go to hell!” Donna shouted. “Don’t you come around trying to tell me—” but Sebastian had turned his back on her and walked away. Mardee felt intensely embarrassed, both for Donna and for herself. She tried to slip away into the dispersing crowd, but Sebastian caught up with her.

“After this, it might be a little embarrassing to ride back in the studio car with the cast. I’m going to duck it myself. How would you like to walk back across the old estate? I love this countryside, and I enjoy—I don’t know—just walking through it, to get the feel of the place.”

Was he using her to make Donna jealous? And did she want to cooperate with that? Or, Mardee wondered, -was it simply that it must be a relief to him to have sympathetic company after a trying day, the company of someone wholly uninvolved with the film and the tensions among the cast?

“Thanks, I’d like that.”

They turned their backs on the clustering workers, the makeup and wardrobe people, extras, the prop men struggling with the coach. The darkening sky made it hard to see; Mardee took off her sunglasses and put them in her pocket.

They walked silently along a narrow path, leaving Cap Dominique behind. As they turned into a tree-lined road, Sebastian said, “I suppose you wonder why I wanted to make a film about Haiti.”

“Not at all, it’s a fascinating idea.”

“But not, perhaps, quite what you would expect from a white producer?” he probed.

She said honestly, “I don’t think I ever thought about that.”

“I know I’m on the defensive about it,” Sebastian admitted, “because I’ve gotten a lot of static about it. Even your great-aunt couldn’t understand why I wanted to make a historical film about Haiti, and I didn’t know how to explain it. I still don’t.”

He looked at the tropical trees which lined the path, a breathtaking glint of color as a brilliant bird suddenly flew low in front of them. “I came here after a bout of pneumonia four years ago. You could say I fell in love with the place—the scenery, the sounds, the faces, the drums—the magic, if you will,” he said with a deprecating grin, “the glamour. The people’s voices, the bird songs, the flowers—I can’t begin to tell you. The sound of drums in the night, the smells in the market. I knew I’d never be content until I had it all down on film, for people to see it and love it the way I loved it.” He was silent for a moment. “Does this sound like the biggest con in captivity? About half the people I talk to think I’ve flipped my lid!”

Mardee said in a low voice, “No, I think I know what you mean. This place would get hold of anybody.”

They walked quietly in the dimming light. “Haiti had become an obsession with me. But I wanted to do more than a travelogue. I wanted, at first, to make a film about voodoo—I’d read Seabrook’s The Magic Island. That had a tremendous appeal for me.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“I couldn’t get the backing. No matter how I tried to put it up to anybody in the business, they started thinking along monster-movie lines, cheap science-fiction horror stuff: Frankenstein Meets the Zombies—that sort of thing.” He made a wry face. “I’m a long way from being broke, but I’m a long way from having the kind of capital I’d have needed to back the kind of film I wanted. Then I got hold of Rory Kilbride’s novel Black Emperor—I think I told you about that. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew I could get a good script out of it, so I did a quick treatment of it myself, put an option on the book, and managed to get the backing. I put Dane Gapwell on the script, and came down here to scout out locations and such.”

He looked absorbed, intense. Mardee thought, He’s in love with the place, with his film, with the whole idea of Haiti For a moment it seemed, in the gathering storm clouds, that she could hear again the distant drums somewhere—or was it only the distant mutter of thunder?

“It’s going to be the film of the century,” he said, then added with a laugh, “False modesty isn’t one of my vices either, as you can plainly see.”

They had come to a clearing in the trees. Sebastian pointed and said, “All this land, so Pere Etienne told me—he showed me around when first I came here— belonged at one time to the old plantation. I am not sure how much of it is still in the hands of your great-aunt’s family. I filmed some scenes in the canefields when I first came here, putting the people into costume and getting some views of the old distillery. I don’t know if I can use it, but I felt I had to have it.” He pointed to a heap of ruins. “This was the old cane-crushing mill; it was burned, I understand, in the Revolution. There is another now, on the far side of Cap Dominique.”

“This all belonged to Tante Emilie’s ancestors?” Sebastian nodded. “She told me a part of the story the first night I spoke with her. It seems that when the original French owner of the plantation came here, before the Revolution, he brought his white wife and children. But, like many whites in slave-holding days, he had also a black mistress, a placee, and several children by her. I gather that was not at all uncommon in those days.”

“No, I shouldn’t think so …”

Sebastian frowned, standing still and looking into the distance. He said, after a long time, slowly, “The story seems to have taken an incredible hold on me. From the time I first came to Haiti, I was sure it was something like this that I would find, and I feel it a tragedy that I had already contracted to do the Kilbride novel. This is so much more realistic …” His voice trailed off. Finally he said, “Oh, well—I suppose your great-aunt would think it an impertinence if I were to try to use her family history.”

“You were going to tell me what this family history was,” Mardee reminded him.

He started slightly, as if for a moment he had forgotten she was there. “Oh. Yes. Well. When the Revolution came, the slaves murdered the white wife and children of the French planter; murdered him too, I, believe, though I’m not sure about that. And I suppose his black mistress—I guess one could call her a morganatic wife—would have been murdered too, with her children. The revolting slaves, during the Revolution, treated the blacks who sided with their white masters, the mulattoes and the freed Negroes, just as savagely as they treated the whites. But somehow, no one knows how, this particular black woman and her sons escaped. There is a tradition that she had a lover, or a brother, among the leaders of the Revolution, and that is how their lives were spared. They ended by hanging on to Maison Dominique, and they have kept it all these years. And so”—he shrugged—”they are among the oldest of the black nobility of Haiti.”

He had stopped, turning to look at Mardee; now, selfconsciously, he began to move on, saying, “It is really getting dark now. And I’m afraid there is going to be rain.”

They walked side by side along the path. Abruptly Mardee turned.

“What a dear little house!” she said.

It was a small, ancient stone cottage. The windows were boarded up, and obviously had been for many years, but although trailing vines of bougainvillea had grown across the front, it had been built to last, and the walls and roof were intact But a stone house, here? It had a curiously European look. Mardee stood looking at it, gripped, for some reason, by curiosity and an odd thrill of some unknown emotion which, after a moment, she identified as—as fear. Recognition, and fear. She said, and realized that she was whispering, “Why isn’t anyone living here?”

“It was built for her,” Sebastian said. His voice had an odd, faraway sound, as if, Mardee thought, she was hearing it through several layers of thick, muffling air. Or was it only the heavy air of the oncoming storm? “Who would live in it now, after that?”

Mardee looked up at him, almost fearfully. She had never realized quite how tall he was, or what a harsh, cruel line his jaw made. She bunked, and it seemed to her that somewhere in the air was a strange, high humming, as if all other sound had been suspended. She turned away from him and began to walk quickly toward the little house. Under her feet were the tumbled ruins of old flagstones, now awry and uneven, leading to the front door. Through the eerie, singing silence Sebastian moved behind her, and Mardee felt a sudden panic grip at her throat. Automatically she put out her hand to the door, felt a doorknob under her fingers, tarnished silver . . How do I know it is silver? . . . and twisted.

There was a sudden appalling crash of thunder and a bolt of lightning that seemed to split the sky apart, revealing half-seen visions of some terrible place beyond … Then there was a sudden, drenching flood of rain. Sebastian seized Mardee and drew her under the projecting eaves of the door. She twisted frantically, and the door swung inward. She wrenched away from him, her heart pounding. Through the thunder there was still that strange, eerie humming sound. Everything around them seemed very still and quiet, even though the half-heard drum and splatter of the showering rain went on.

With one part of her brain she had expected dirt, damp, spiders. But the place was weathertight and dry, and there was little dost She drew a deep breath of wonder. The place was large and beautifully proportioned, with hardwood floor underfoot, and at a far end a stone fireplace, with blue-and-white tiles from Delft laid in all around the mantel. The hearthstone, too, was blue-and-white Delft tile.

Sebastian whispered, “That is priceless,” but Mardee did not hear. She went to the fireplace in a dreamlike awareness and stood quietly with her hands touching the tiles. The rain roared outside, but the sound seemed to come through layers of silence. She found herself wondering, What on earth is happening to me? Sebastian spoke, but she had forgotten his existence. The doorways were covered with molding that had once been gilded; now it was blackened with ancient smoke. Mardee said, half to herself, “The kitchen is through there, and the bedroom. And the old marble table is still there, in the bay window.” She moved to it, through a dream, laying her hands tenderly on the old, grimy marble.

He had had it made for her. He had brought her all these lovely things, to prove to her that he loved and valued her no less than he loved his white wife and the children from France. She must have sat here in the window waiting for him, in this lovely little place he had prepared for her, just out of sight of the great house . . .

Sebastian had followed her to the window. He laid his hands over hers, and Mardee looked down at his pale fingers over her own dark ones with a curious mixture of revulsion and fascination. Just like that. The contrast. But she felt paralyzed, unable to draw them away.

She must have been my ancestor. My great-great— many-times-great-—grandmother. A child, the child of slaves. Or perhaps born under the free skies of Africa, brought here in terror and rape and dread, in humiliation and horror. And then, taken from her own people and brought here by the white man, who owned her, body and mind and soul …

Did she love him or hate Mm, this strange man who loved her, cherished her, surrounded her with beautiful things, brought her to this beautiful place of her very own, when he could have had her for a handful of sweets or a few bright trinkets?

Mardee felt tears stinging her eyes. She was still disoriented, out of focus, unresisting when Sebastian took her by the shoulders and gently turned her around to face him. He spoke to her, but she had some difficulty understanding the words. She was not quite sure what language he was speaking, but she thought he whispered, “Do not cry. You are safe here, and no one will harm you.”

She felt his arms as they went around her, felt her head tilted back under his kiss, his mouth against her own, probing hers, his arms tightening, trying to force some response from her unresisting body …

The door opened; a shadow fell across them, and Mardee broke away abruptly, with a cry of terror. The humming sound dissolved into thunder and drumming rain, and Kip Tybalt stood staring at them in embarrassment and consternation.

Mardee stood with her hands covering her mouth, shaking to her very toenails. Kip said slowly, “I thought you must have sheltered here from the rain. I had the studio car come back for you—Mardee, are you all right?”

Mardee was breathing raggedly, with the shock of her sudden return to the present. Abruptly she realized that her cry of fright had given a very strange impression. Kip was looking at Sebastian with raised eyebrows. Did he seriously think Sebastian had been attacking her? Or did he think he had interrupted clandestine lovemaking? The silence stretched; Mardee fought a mad conviction that she ought to spring forward, throw herself between them, keep them apart … She said shakily, “You scared me, coming in like that, Kip. I thought—I thought—” Suddenly, in terror, she realized just what she had thought. “I thought you had a gun!” She laughed weakly. “This place must be getting to me!”

Kip said nothing, only held out his hand, revealing the flashlight he was carrying. She felt herself wilting. It was too dark to see, but she could imagine the contempt in his eyes. The unsuccessful actress making a play for the famous director who had quarreled with his star. The man of her own race looking with scathing contempt on the mercenary opportunist trying to cross the invisible line for her own advantage.

Mardee could not speak or defend herself. To do so would be to take the accusation seriously.

Sebastian put an arm around her firmly. He said, “All right now, Mardee? She was feeling faint—it’s dusty and hot in here. Is there something we can put over our heads while we make a dash for the car?”

Kip shrugged. “I guess you’ll just have to run for it.”

They must have looked at her like this, the other slaves: with hatred and contempt, at the woman who had compromised with their enemy, who shared the bed of their owner, who bore his children. The slaves killed the mulattoes, too, and the freed blacks . . .

Mardee wanted to cry out, It isn’t what you think! But shame held her silent By the time she reached the studio car after that brief dash through the rain, she was soaked through to the skin, but it didn’t seem to matter. She sat between Kip and Sebastian, in a daze. Sebastian laid his hand on hers, but she drew it selfconsciously away.

She was shivering. Deliberately, trying to shake off the spell, she told herself that it did not matter. This was not 1773, but 1973. She was an adult woman, her own mistress, and sufficiently worldly-wise that being surprised in an embrace, even with a man she did not really know all that well, was nothing to make her cringe with shame. It had been no more than a moment of shared sympathy, an impulse born of a moment when they had shared the strange, romantic story of the small stone house. She brushed aside the nagging memory of the eerie quiet, the way in which Sebastian had changed—it was the light, she told herself, the state she was in. She looked sideways, in the darkness of the car, at Sebastian: tall, smiling, debonair, very much a man of this century. It had been some Mad of bizarre waking daydream, no more than that.

And yet for a moment she had been afraid of him, had come into his arms unprotesting, undesiring, afraid to pull away from his kiss …

But by the time the studio car drew up in front of Maison Dominique, Mardee had recovered some of her poise and perspective. It had been a weird, imaginative mood, no more, born of her intense identification, for a moment or so, with her ancestor, that young woman two hundred years dead, that child of slaves who had ended as mistress of Maison Dominique. She didn’t owe Kip Tybalt any explanations of her conduct! She wanted his respect and his liking, but if she could lose them on such slender grounds as this, they weren’t worth having.

Robert greeted her in the hall, his eyebrows raised in shock at the sight of her soaked dress, her hair in wisps about her face. She forced herself to speak lightly.

“There’s a lot of weather out there, Robert,” she said, “I’m going right up to change. Please send Fleur to me at once.”

How quickly, Mardee thought, one fell into luxury! Her second day, and already she took it for granted that the butler would send up her maid to help with her wet things and run her bath. This could all too easily become a habit!

Robert was shaking his head.

“C’est impossible, je regrette … I will send Melanie to Mamzelle; she is willing, if not as experienced as Fleur. Also, if you permit the liberty, I will send Mamzelle a hot ram drink so that she will not take a chill.”

“That sounds good,” Mardee said, aware that she was shivering and cold to the bone. “But what’s happened to Fleur? Is she with Madame?”

Robert said woodenly, “No, Mamzelle, I believe that a member of Flour’s family is ill and she has returned to her village to nurse him.”

“Oh, what a shame!” Her first thought was of little Henri. “But I saw Henri in Cap Dominique this afternoon, and he seemed well—”

“I really could not say, Mamzelle.” His face was closed and unrevealing. She thought: He heard me talking with Fleur, heard her urging me to go away. I’ll bet he sent Fleur away for talking out of turn. But while she was thinking of a way to charge him with it, he said, “If Mamzelle will forgive me, she should not risk a chill by standing here in damp clothing.”

Reproved, Mardee went to her room, got out of her dripping pantsuit, and began to run herself a hot bath. It was annoying; she really had not too many clothes with her, and had looked forward to having Fleur attend at once to this outfit. Before she was out of the tub, the promised Melanie arrived, a teen-age girl in an ill-fitting maid’s uniform which looked wrong on her, as if she had been hastily shoved into it. She was round-faced, and so round-bodied that Mardee suspected that in a few years she would be frankly fat. She had none of Fleur’s deft precision, but moved with an untidy shamble, and her fingernails were not quite clean. However, she had brought the hot rum drink, and Mardee sipped it gratefully, feeling its warmth spreading through her. But when Mardee directed the girl’s attention to the sopping pantsuit on the floor, Melanie only said doubtfully, scooping it up with clumsy hands, that she would take it down to the kitchen and see what could be done. She obviously knew a good deal less about it than Mar-dee did herself, and after she had gone away Mardee was wishing that she had washed it out herself in the bathroom, dealt with the stains herself, and pressed it on Fleur’s small ironing board. But with servants in the house, would that be quite the correct thing to do? Mar-dee wasn’t sure.

She finished the rum drink, thought idly that if Melanie had returned she would have asked for another, and sat down at the dressing table to deal with her hair, which was curling and frizzing up in the hot dampness. Here too she missed Fleur, but Mardee was a professional actress and had learned to deal professionally with her own hair under any and all conditions. She set to work.

It was not simple—rain and heat always made, a mess of her hair—and she was still struggling with it when she heard a knock on the door.

She supposed it was Melanie, who had not yet learned the skill of a maid’s quiet entrances and exits, and called, a little impatiently, “The door’s open. Did you find someone who could handle the suit?”

But it was not Melanie’s sulky young voice that answered, “No, I want to talk to you.”, Mardee turned, confused, to see Donna Royce in the doorway.

Surprised, and feeling very much at a disadvantage-struggling with untidy hair in a welter of combs and curling rods and conditioning lotions—Mardee got up from her dressing table. She said, “Excuse me, I thought it was my maid. Won’t you come in, Miss Royce?”

Her mind played, almost regretfully, with the only line that would really have fit this occasion. She had always wanted to say, scornfully, To what do I owe the honor of this visit? If it had been Margaret Sandifer, now, she could have said it and they would have giggled together over it. Kip, too, would have seen the joke, and she wondered sadly if they would ever again share this kind of joke. But Donna? Donna would have concluded that Mardee was making fun of her. So she said only, “Please do sit down, Miss Royce. Shall I send for a drink?”

She hadn’t the faintest idea what Donna Royce wanted of her. She hadn’t been friendly enough for this kind of cozy visit before suppertime. But whatever she wanted, under Tante Emilie’s roof Mardee was the Royce woman’s hostess, and she would show her the same kind of hospitality her great-aunt would have shown.

Donna continued to stand. “This won’t take long, and you can skip the phony politeness, Marie-Louise, or Mardee, or whatever you call yourself!”

Mardee thought, Well, if you take that attitude, it ought to be Miss Haskell, oughtn’t it? But she knew that Donna’s affecting to forget her name was a put-down, and not even a very subtle one. For some reason the Royce woman had taken a dislike to her. “What is it, Miss Royce?”

“And you can cut out the Miss Royce bit too, I’m not that much older than you are,” Donna said savagely. “I came to say just one thing: You lay off Sebastian Wright!”

Mardee, shocked, found that the only retort that sprang at once to her mind was both flippant and vulgar, but she couldn’t say that to Donna either, not even as a joke. “There’s nothing to lay off, believe me. Sebastian has no interest 5n me, and I assure you”—but she was not sure herself—”I have none in him. And anyway—”

“He digs me, all right,” Donna said angrily, and Mardee restrained the impulse to say, How nice for you. The things she was carefully not saying to Donna Royce, she thought with a caustic twinge of regret, would make quite a conversation!

So she said carefully, aware that she did not make a very impressive sight with her hair sticking out, uncombed, in all directions around her head, “Miss Royce—Donna—I’m sure you must be making some kind of mistake. Sebastian is polite to me because I’m the niece of his hostess, and I’m quite sure that’s all it is. You have no reason to be jealous.”

“Who said I was jealous?” Donna demanded.

“You can’t have it both ways! If you’re not, why are you here warning me off?” Mardee snapped.

Donna put her face up to her hands and began to cry. Mardee looked at her in dismay; then, troubled, and suddenly sorry for this aging, insecure woman, she put an arm round Donna’s shoulders.

“What makes you think Sebastian has the slightest interest in me?”

“You think I don’t know him by now? You think I couldn’t tell, when you and he came out of that little cabin place, what you were up to?” Donna demanded, struggling with sobs.

“But—” Even now Mardee could not explain the impulse that had driven her into Sebastian’s arms. She said firmly, trying to dismiss the memory of Sebastian’s mouth on hers, “I was hysterical, the place frightened me. He was trying to calm me down, that’s all. Good God, Donna, Sebastian’s old enough to be my grandfather!”

Not till she heard the words did she realize that they were true, that she was trying to convince herself as well. Donna said, snuffling, “You think that matters in this business?”

“Maybe not,” Mardee said, pressured beyond endurance, “but I’m not any old man’s darling, anyhow not when the old man’s white! Anyhow, I’ve got a man of my own, what makes you think I need yours, or would have him as a gift? If he really is yours, that is!”

Donna looked sharply at her. “You married or something?”

“As it happens, yes,” Mardee said, and realized that it was true: The divorce wouldn’t be final for ten days yet, even though Ted didn’t even know where she was. “But I’m not working at it. This is a man I met on the plane coming down here, and I’m going to see him tomorrow—I’ll even introduce you. He’s young, and he’s black, and he’s right outside this damn silly business anyhow,” she concluded gratefully, thinking of Brian’s common-sense attitudes. “You think I don’t know better than to get mixed up with an actor?”

Donna looked at her in such a way that again Mar-dee was wrung by compassion for the woman. “You really mean that?”

“I really mean it,” Mardee said gently, “and I think you were”—looking into Donna’s wet eyes, she amended you were a damn fool to doubt it into a more courteous—”you were very silly to worry about it for a minute.”

As suddenly as she had come, Donna Royce turned on her heel and left the room, and Mardee found herself as wrung with exhaustion as when she had first stepped in out of the rain.

This whole business was getting too complicated. Mardee realized that she would be very, very glad to see Brian in the morning.

Four

At ten the next morning she awaited Brian in the enormous front hall, her enthusiasm undampened by the heavy rain that streamed down windows and panes. She wondered lightheartedly how the retakes of the crowd scenes, called for eleven this morning, could possibly be done now, and when Sebastian came through the hallway she put the question.

“I sent word to call it off,” he told her, and Mardee noticed, halfway between relief and regret, that his tone was no more than distantly courteous. She regretted the few minutes of intimacy, when she had seen Sebastian as romantic, idealistic, borne up by intense enthusiasms, but she knew, rationally, that she did not want to entangle herself with any white man, no matter how rich or powerful. And, unlike her slave ancestress who had lived in that little stone house and waited for the man who loved her and surrounded her with his gifts, Mar-dee had a choice.

So she said only, with equally cool courtesy, “Isn’t there any chance it will clear off?”

“Oh, yes, it’s sure to clear by eleven, but the ground will be too wet and muddy for shooting. So I’ve given the crew a holiday. Most of us are going to Port-au-Prince to see something of civilization, and I came to ask if you would care to join us.” He felt compelled to add quickly, “The studio bus is taking in about two dozen of the technical people, cameramen and so forth, and Donna and I are going in the Rolls, which means there will be plenty of room in the studio limousine.

Paul and Margaret are going in for some shopping, but I know they’d like to have your company.”

He was making it definite that it wasn’t a personal invitation; also, he seemed to be delicately underlining that he and Donna had made up their quarrel overnight. Mardee could guess how. It was a positive pleasure to say lightheartedly, “No, thank you, I have a friend coming this morning; he should be here any minute. Thank you anyway.”

Was it her imagination that he looked disappointed? “Well, remember that you’re welcome any time. It’s so isolated here that we share ride facilities as a matter of course. I trust Madame is well?”

“I have not seen her this morning, but I have no reason to think she is otherwise.” Mardee remembered Tante Emilie’s words last night when she had asked if she could be spared today for shopping and sightseeing. The old woman had quizzed her at length, though politely, about Brian. You met him on the plane? A journalist? Do you mean one of those dreadful people who write sensational stories about voudoun and zombies and such horrors? He is not a blanc, is he, ma chere? But when Mardee had described Brian’s book, Tante Emilie had been impressed, and cordial.

“Go by all means, cherie, and enjoy yourself. You must see something of our beautiful island, even though I cannot escort you myself. And bring the young man back with you for dinner here.” Mardee supposed the invitation had been prompted by the old woman’s protective desire to get a glimpse of her niece’s acquaintance, and verify his respectable character for herself. It also occurred to her that this might be Tante Emilie’s way of subtly testing Mardee herself—was her acquaintance such a man as she would willingly present to her family? Well, Brian certainly met these criteria, or any other, and she had accepted at once on his behalf.

Sebastian peered through the rain-fogged pane. “That is certainly your friend,” he surmised. Mardee looked out. The small, battered, and extremely ancient Volkwagen “bug” which chugged and limped into the muddy drive could only be the car Brian had described as the “critter.” Even Robert had a politely restrained air of scorn as he took Brian’s dripping raincoat. Mar-dee had hardly remembered how young Brian looked, or how shabby, but she told herself firmly not to let a butler’s snobbery affect her.

“Brian! I’m so glad you got here; I’m told the roads are dreadful, especially in the rain!”

“Dreadful is definitely an understatement,” he said, taking her hands and smiling. “I’m seriously thinking about teaching the critter to swim! Gads, what a place this is! I wondered when I drove up if I’d gotten into the National Art Museum by mistake! And this is your grandmother’s ancestral home?”

“My grandmother’s sister,” she corrected.

Brian shrugged. “Same difference. Come to think of it, I hear in Port-au-Prince that Emilie Thibaud is one of Haiti’s most valuable antiques, and if the place which holds a valuable national antique is a National Art Museum, I got it right first time, didn’t he? How’s the old dear holding up under all this rain?”

Mardee laughed. It was so good to see Brian, with his forthright irreverence and unfailing ability to make her laugh. After the supercharged atmosphere of the last few days”, Brian was like a welcome sea breeze blowing away the fog. “Brian, you really are impossible!”

“Well, you’ll just have to learn to believe in six impossible things before breakfast, then,” he said blithely; then, sobering, he added, “Hey-no disrespect intended to your elderly relative, by the way. I’m just feeling a little outclassed, that’s all. I’m just a working stiff, you know, and al this grandeur’s a little beyond me.”

And, Mardee thought, making jokes to cover up that he really is overawed and uncomfortable. “It is a bit much, isn’t it, this place? I felt the same way at first—-like some barefoot down-home country girl walking into a palace!”

“Will I meet your great-aunt? I put on the most respectable working clothes I owned, but I don’t even own a suit and a tie—people don’t in my circles.” He said it cheerfully, but he did look worried, and Mardee was eager to put bun at his ease.

“I’m sure it won’t matter to her what you wear, Brian. She wants you to come back with me for dinner tonight.”

“I sure picked one heck of a day for sightseeing, didn’t I? The critter managed to wade through the mud out here, but it’s touch-and-go whether I can get it started again. Dampness does funny things to motors— especially this one!”

“Come and have coffee while it dries out,” she invited. “It’s supposed to clear by noon, or so Sebastian told me.” As she said his name she noticed that he was still lingering in the hall. Why hadn’t he gone back to his part of the house? She introduced the two men.

Brian declined her offer of coffee. “That Haitian coffee is powerful stuff. I find if I drink more than one-cup a day, I feel as if I’d gotten hopped up on something! The coffee you get in the U.S.A. is a kiddies’ brew; you tend to forget coffee was originally regarded as a powerful drug.” He chuckled. “And since I may have to wrestle the critter two out of three falls to get her going again, I suggest we get started.”

“The critter,” however, absolutely refused to start After listening to it chug helplessly, again and again, for a minute or two, and die away again, Brian swore softly to himself.

“I picked a heck of a day and a heck of a car, didn’t I, Mardee? Maybe I ought to try that coffee after all, while we find out if it’s going to dry off—it’s fine when it’s dry—or whether I have to phone for a tow truck.”

“Don’t worry about it, Brian. I’m sure there must be a car on the estate that Tante Emilie would let me use. Robert would know.” But before they could get out, Sebastian came up to them.

“Car trouble?” he asked genially. “Why not leave your car to dry out, and go in the limousine with Paul and Margaret”

Brian hesitated. “I really ought to get in touch with Tom about it. I borrowed this car from a friend—”

Sebastian chuckled. “I hope his friendship holds up better than his car!”

Donna Royce, snuggled in an expensive pale silk raincoat, joined Sebastian and gave Mardee the coolest of nods, and they went off toward Sebastian’s silver Rolls. Brian looked doubtfully at Mardee. “Would you rather go in the studio car instead of waiting for the critter to dry out?”

“I really think I would. It would give us more time.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said gallantly, but as they climbed into the waiting Cadillac, she noticed that he looked a little disappointed. Had he really looked forward so much to having her to himself?

She had looked forward to it too, but some renegade part of herself persisted an preferring the luxury of the studio car to the dilapidated “critter.” She liked the idea of stepping out of the car stenciled WRIGHT PRODUCTIONS, as if she were also one of the stars. She thought, I’m a vain, selfish, spoiled woman!

Yet it was fun to introduce Brian to Paul Barry and Margaret. They gave ban the cordial reception which working actors, not yet spoiled by a surfeit of publicity, invariably give to the working press.

“Are you with a newspaper, Mr. Dawes?” Paul Barry asked.

“Brian,” he replied, “and no, I’m not—the slaves have been freed, remember,” he added with a grin, “but full-time newspaper work is the nearest tiling mat’s still legal! No, I’m writing a book on the new Haiti.”

Margaret asked, “Can you ever understand the new Haiti without understanding the t»ld Haiti?”

Brian took the question seriously, as it demanded. “No, I don’t think you can ever understand any part of the world apart from its history. Nothing in Haiti would ever make sense unless you understand that it began as a slave culture, a slave colony which revolted and took back its African culture, the one stolen from the slaves. Haiti is probably the nearest thing in the New World to a genuine African culture.”

Margaret asked, “How do you account for the French influence, then? If it is truly an African culture—”

“I didn’t say it was an African culture,” Brian rebuked her gently. “I said it is the nearest thing to such a culture in the Western Hemisphere, because it reaffirmed its African nature more quickly than any other part of the Caribbean. But any culture retains traces of its conquerors. There’s a strong British influence in New England, for instance, an everything from their public schools to their cooking. However, I’m focusing on the New Haiti instead of the old Haiti for a reason. It’s all too easy to take Haiti’s history, which is bloody and filled with tyranny and rebellion, and use that as an excuse for not taking modern Haiti seriously. Which is like using the Civil War as an excuse to throw the United States out of the United Nations!”

Mardee asked Paul Barry, “Isn’t Kip Tybalt coming into town today?” She had not realized, until she put the question, how hesitant she was about meeting him again. Did he really despise her?

Paul shook his head. “Kip stayed for a story conference with the scriptwriter—and his own dramatic coach. You remember the scene he had trouble with? He said he was going to spend die day figuring out something he could put over with a straight face.”

“Oh.” Mardee felt relief washing through her whole body, and was shocked at herself. Why should it matter to me so much what Christophe Thibault thinks of me? she asked herself, and did not for a moment remember that she had used his real name and not his stage name. She was silent as the car surged through the drowning, junglelike rain, swaying and clunking over the unpaved roads and past the deserted, soggy canefields.

Paul said, “It’s hard to remember that only yesterday we were all standing around melting in the sun!”

“And it will be just as hot again this afternoon,” Brian replied. “It must have been the Haitian climate for which they invented that old proverb.”

“What? Everybody complains about the weather and nobody does anything about it?”

“No.” Brian laughed. ” ‘If you don’t like the weather, stick around a few minutes—it’ll change’!”

The inside of the car was all laughing and banter, but Mardee was silent, brooding on what she had learned about herself. Did she really want Kip to be in love with her? Was she really so spoiled and selfish that she wanted him to admire her, because he was handsome and a famous star?

No. I just can’t bear to have him think I was leading Sebastian on. Donna thought so too. Mardee felt again the scalding embarrassment as she remembered Donna warning her away from Sebastian.

I’d have thought Donna would be interested in Kip instead. He’s much better-looking. And equally famous. And younger. . .

“You’re awfully quiet, Mardee,” Brian said, and she remembered her manners. It was shockingly impolite to sit and daydream about one man when you were out with another! Recalling herself, she joined in their talk. Paul and Margaret were planning to see some of the tourist sights, but when they asked Mardee her plans she smiled and ‘said, “I don’t know, it’s up to Brian,” and felt him squeeze her arm.

Brian’s worth any dozen actors you could name!

They were coming into the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, and Mardee began to notice the shocking contrasts: beautiful homes covered with the characteristic gingerbread—carved wooden lace on three-and four-story Victorian houses—then incredibly squalid districts of tarpaper shacks and tumbledown frame cottages with bare, beaten-mud yards and small kitchen gardens, wet chickens and occasional goats huddling under rickety coops.

Abruptly, as if someone beyond the sky had turned off a gigantic spigot, the rain stopped. A few minutes later the sun came out, and thinning wisps of cloud revealed a sky so deep and intensely blue that it seemed unbelievable that only minutes before the sky had been filled with pouring rain.

Contrasts, Mardee thought, contrasts everywhere. Contrasts in the weather. Contrasts between rich and poor.

Contrasts in me . . .

The studio car let them out, at Brian’s request, on a downtown street, and Brian looked at her with a whimsical grin as the Cadillac drove away, threading its way slowly through crowds, pushcarts, donkey carts, and automobiles.

“Alone at last,” he said, turning to her and seizing her hands.

“Oh, Brian, I’m sorry—did you really want to wait for the critter?”

He laughed, indicating the crowds around them. The sudden sunshine seemed to have brought out the entire population of Port-au-Prince. “When I want to get you alone—for my own nefarious purposes,” he added with a faked leer, “I won’t pick the main street of Port-au-Prince for the occasion! Come along, Mardee, let’s get your shopping done, and we’ll have the rest of the day to see the sights.”

Looking into his round, cheerful face, Mardee resolved to put everything and everyone else out of her mind and enjoy this day in Brian’s company. She tucked her hand into his arm.

“My great-aunt’s chambermaid informs me that in this climate, nothing is possible for wear except a cotton robe-de-chambre. In plain English that’s a bathrobe, Brian, and I’ve already found out that nylon’s impossible next to the skin. Where can I find some cotton things?”

“I don’t know all that much about women’s lingerie, and I doubt I’d admit it if I did,” Brian said, “but there’s always Woolworth’s.”

“In Port-au-Prince?”

“There’s one in every other big city in the world. I remember going into one in Hong Kong once.”

Mardee said firmly, “I didn’t come to a tropical island to do my shopping in Woolworth’s!”

“You’ll never make a proper tourist,” Brian informed her gravely. “The minute you get outside the continental U.S.A., you’re supposed to spend your whole trip hunting for a place where you can get hamburgers or a good steak instead of those nasty foreign meals, and a place where you can buy the same kind of toothpaste you use at home. Didn’t you know?”

“But what’s the point in going anywhere then—” Mardee broke off, laughing. “Brian, you’re kidding!”

“I am not. I was in Mexico City once, for the paper, and I went on a tour: pyramids, Aztec ruins, mementos of the conquistadors, glorious old Spanish cathedrals, the whole bit. And every time we made a stop, the guide would tell us a little about the place and then ask ‘Any questions?’ And every time—every damn time, Mardee, I swear I’m not making this up, every time— some fat lady tourist would pipe up, ‘Yaas. Where can I get a Coca-Cola?’”

Mardee laughed, appalled and amused. “Did he answer her?”

“Only the first three times, but she never got tired of asking. Listen, Mardee, let me call my pal on the paper here and ask him where his wife buys her clothes.” Then he stopped, hesitant “Or maybe—maybe it won’t be good enough for you. I mean, maybe your aunt wants you to have the kind of things that go with that big fancy place of hers, and the kind of place where Tom’s wife buys her clothes—”

“I’m a working girl,” said Mardee firmly, “and it sounds just about right to me. If Tante Emilie doesn’t like the kind of clothes I can afford, so much the worse for her!”

Brian looked relieved, and went off to make the call. They wound up in a small boutique, where a brisk Frenchwoman admired Mardee’s complexion and brought out a variety of lovely cotton robes and, while Brian hovered modestly at the outer edge of the shop, cotton underclothes as well. Mardee bought two or three of the robes and a variety of underclothing suitable to the climate; then, tempted, bought a bright yellow cotton dress with a pattern of sunflowers and, being admonished by the Frenchwoman to show it to “Monsieur,” slipped out of her polyester pantsuit and into the cool cotton with considerable relief. Brian’s eyes lighted When he saw her.

“Now nobody could ever mistake you for a tourist! Come along, we’ll get you a straw hat in the market, and start seeing the town.”

His gaiety was infectious; Mardee followed him, laughing. The Frenchwoman chirped as they left, “Bonjour, M’sieur, Madame,” and Brian suddenly stopped and caught her hands, looking into her eyes.

“You know,” he said softly, “she thought we were married.”

“I know,” Mardee said, and felt herself coloring pleasantly.

“Sort of a nice sound. Maybe I ought to get used to it,” he said, and gave her a smile: a different kind of smile, quite alien to his usual cocky grin. Mardee lowered her eyes, and Brian raised one hand and gently touched her cheek. “Maybe you ought to get used to it too,” he said, but before the moment of seriousness could stretch into embarrassment, he drew a long breath and said, “First, that straw hat.”

For the rest of her life, it was that day with Brian she remembered best. Later, when the shadow closed down, and through the memory of the horror that came later, she could always exorcise the memory by thinking of that day in the sun, while Brian showed her his Haiti, old and new. He borrowed a car from one of the ubiquitous friends a newspaperman can dig up quickly everywhere, and drove her to Cap Haitien, where the old stone fortress brooded over cliffs and ocean; where the half-mad emperor, Henri-Christophe, had awaited the mob that deposed him, cheating them at the last by firing his gold bullet into his head.

“He’s one of the reasons I’m having trouble,” Brian said. “Remembering him, people find it hard to take a black royal personage seriously. He was off his nut, of course. But the average white reader says, ‘What can you expect of a black ex-slave who tries to make himself an emperor?’ and jumps to conclusions. Nobody takes black presidents seriously.”

“Well, they’ve had some awfully crummy ones down here, haven’t they? The old dictator who just died— Duvalier—”

“Papa Doc? He was a tyrant, yes. But the people loved him, for some reason.”

“Yes,” Mardee said seriously, “but doesn’t every dictator justify himself some way or other? I’ve heard people praise Mussolini because he made the trains run on time. Is there ever any excuse for a dictator?”

“I don’t know, Mardee. The people here don’t seem to care all that much about democratic institutions and elections and representative government. I wonder if anyone ever does, really. Mostly people want a peaceful life, and not to be bothered with government”

“That sounds like the old racist argument,” Mardee accused him. “What you’re really saying is “These people aren’t ready for self-government.’ “

“No,” Brian said, gazing up at the heights of the enormous, brooding stone pile above them, monument to the ambition of the mad ex-slave. “Old Henri-Christophe tried to drive his people, and they weren’t having any, and rebelled. Marechal Petion—he was the other great ex-slave leader—didn’t do anything much for his people, except let them exist cheerfully as they wanted to live. He didn’t force them to accomplish anything, except the bare minimum to keep themselves alive. He didn’t build any monuments to his rule. But his people loved him. Maybe it’s not democracy people don’t want; maybe what they don’t want is competition, the big rat race, the drive for success-with-a-capital-S. That seems to be something the Western Europeans invented, the white culture, and they’ve been trying to force it on the world ever since. Maybe a day is coming when it will just die out, and be remembered as a kind of temporary insanity of history. Who needs castles and armies and empires and the space race? Maybe the important thing for humanity is to He in the sun and drink rum and dance to the drums, and if the white culture wants to call us lazy and hedonistic, why not just say that the world got along for thousands of years this way, without worries or atom bombs.” “Do you seriously think that, Brian?” “I don’t know what I think.” Brian turned his back on the ancient citadel and began to walk down to where they had left the car. “I honestly don’t know. There must be something to that philosophy, or why do so many millions of tourists flock down here to enjoy even a little of it secondhand? And yet there’s the other side: hookworm, illiteracy, poverty entrenched because there are so many people who want to hang on to what they have instead of sharing it. And yet I’m not a Communist or an anarchist. I can make good use of a car and a camera, and I’m willing to work damned hard to get them! And I don’t like to hear people make snide remarks about decadent bourgeois, either!” He laughed and said, “Maybe that’s why I’m a writer. I want to live more lives than one, and see which one works best.”

Mardee felt stimulated, challenged by this new, serious Brian. She discovered that she liked him as well as the one who could make her laugh. “Do you think acting is a completely frivolous profession, then?”

He shook his head, leaning against the car. “By no means. It’s another way of living more lives than one, I guess, and showing them to people to make them think.”

“Even comedies like Folly Garden?”

“Sure. Nothing that stimulates the imagination can be bad. Schools and social institutions today seem to be dedicated to strangling imagination in its cradle. They call it adjusting a kid’s mind to reality, or something. But plays—and movies, and comic strips, and science fiction—all those things make me think of grass growing up through sidewalks and cracking the cement. The cement around people’s minds. The human mind is made up of imagination, and fantasy, and inspiration, or we might as well be laboratory rats running around mazes, or old Pavlov’s dogs salivating to the sound of a bell!”

His gentle vehemence was endearing. Mardee smiled and said, “Some behavioral psychologists would say that’s all we are.”

“The more fools they,” Brian said, and opened the car door. “Let’s be decadent and frivolous and go sit in the sun and drink rum and listen to the drums. Let’s eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we go back to work!”

As they drove down the cliff road, leaving the mad emperor’s citadel behind, Mardee looked back for a moment, and wished she had not. A brooding shadow lay across the dark cliffs, and for a moment it seemed to Mardee that she was looking back, through a long, dark tunnel, into the violent and bloody past of Haiti. Again she heard the high, strange humming in her ears, as if time had stopped for a moment and all the sounds of the day had been cut out, as if she were not quite herself … Suddenly frightened, she slid closer to Brian on the seat, slipping her arm through his. He turned a little and smiled at her. He was warm, he was today; there was nothing of the dark, frightening past about him.

“I’d put my arm around you, but on this kind of road it’s definitely two hands on the wheel!” He sighed ruefully. “Sometimes I wish I was a teen-ager again. They drive with one hand on the wheel and one around their girl, and never worry about the damn road!”

Mardee laughed, feeling the cold alienation of the past slide off her without leaving a mark. “You attend to your driving,” she admonished him. “I’ll take the will for the deed. I’m not a teen-ager either. Tell me about your book, Brian—how is it coming? Did you manage to dig up a cameraman to do your photographs?”

“Dig one up? My dear Mardee, didn’t I tell you it was still illegal to employ a zombie?” He laughed, and the last remnants of the chill of the past vanished in hilarity. “No, but tomorrow I’m going to interview a man who’s opening a new sugar factory, a cooperative of small local cane growers, and has discovered a new process which can mean cheaper rum, and work for more people here.”

“Wait a minute, wait—a sugar factory for cheaper rum? Do they make rum from sugar?”

“From sugar cane,” he explained. “The basis of rum is molasses—that dark sweet stuff you used to eat on your pancakes for Sunday breakfast.”

She said gaily, “Remember, I grew up in France. I missed out on a lot of things there, like pancakes for breakfast; over there they’re called crepes, and they’re strictly for dessert. Ill never forget my shock when I first tasted the American kind!”

“If you were brought up on French cooking, you’ll like the place I’m going to take you for lunch,” he promised.

They ate a long, late lunch in an outdoor cafe under hanging vines of jasmine, sipping rum drinks and listening to the drummers who had come to entertain the tourists. As Brian had promised, the food was excellent, and he himself was full of amusing stories about his travels as a correspondent for his paper.

“I’ve always wanted to travel like that,” she said at last, but he shook his head, suddenly serious.

“It sounds like fun, yes. But only afterward. At the time it’s just living out of a suitcase, and picking up any kind of meal you can find while you’re waiting for your next plane. Now I want to do the kind of writing you can do in one place for a while. Settle down, get to know some people who aren’t here today and gone tomorrow. I think I’ve been a rolling stone too long, and it’s time I started to think about gathering a little moss.”

“Where are you thinking of settling down, then? In the States?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I think I’ve had it with the rat race. Here, maybe. I like the climate, and you can live without too much money, and exciting things may be happening here. I’m not sure. It depends.’ On a lot of things,” he said, and retreated into silence.

The smell of jasmine, the compelling rhythms of the drums, coming to them across the open square, somehow sent Mardee’s mind drifting back to the night she had first heard the drums, felt their compelling call through her mind and body. She grew restless, and welcomed it when Brian, suddenly starting out of his reverie, said, “We’re supposed to meet the studio car in about an hour. Would you like to spend that time in the Iron Market? It’s a place where the tourists go, but you can see a little of the real Haiti there too.”

“The Iron Market? Do they sell anything but iron?”

“You really are appallingly ignorant,” Brian said. As she stood up, he brushed her cheek with a light kiss. “What am I going to do with you? Educate you, I guess. Come along and see—it’s the biggest of the outdoor markets in Port-au-Prince.”

For an hour they poked through the bazaar, while Mardee admired the chandeliers made from old condensed-milk cans elaborately pierced and filigreed, stalls of wood carvings, fishnets, candles and cheap, garish saints’ statues, as well as the usual tourist clutter of picture postcards, sunglasses, stained-glass lamps, and street artists doing quick charcoal and pastel sketches. Small barefoot children, some of them as young as five or six, came up to Mardee offering trinkets for sale: paper flowers, necklaces of sweet-smelling seeds and beans, wood carvings. They looked ragged and, most of them, pathetically thin. The prices they offered were so trivial, and the children so earnest and dismayed when she tried halfheartedly to shoo them away, that she ended by buying handfuls of the stuff for a few pennies each. At least, she told herself, the carvings and coffee-bean necklaces would make amusing souvenirs, and the paper flowers, at these prices, could simply be dumped into a trash can somewhere.

Brian finally chased the children away in fluent Creole, scolding her cheerfully for being such a soft touch.

“I know, but, Brian, they look hungry, really thin and hungry, and it’s only a few pennies,” she protested. “All this stuff I bought, it doesn’t add up to a dollar, even!”

“I know,” he admitted, “they sort of get to me too.”

“I wish the people in Harlem, who think they are poor, could see the way these people have to live down here!”

“That’s one way to look at it, On the other hand, these kids have fresh air and sunlight, and nobody pushes them into schools built like prisons, or bullies them to learn things they haven’t any use for, or tells them they aren’t capable of learning anything, or scolds them because they don’t have any ambition to grow up and get rich. Nobody makes them defensive about being black—here, the blancs are the despised minority. No white cops to hassle them, no juvenile gangs, not much juvenile delinquency. Maybe they go hungry now and then, but even the poorest of them can grow yams and keep a few chickens. I’d have traded what I had when I was a kid for what they’ve got.”

He touched the handfuls of coffee-bean necklaces, the cheap wood carvings, the paper flowers. “They couldn’t do this in Harlem, either. The few cents they carry home to Martian, here, will help pay for a good supper. In Harlem the child-labor laws would keep them off the streets and on welfare, and if a young girl in Harlem goes hungry she has nothing to sell except herself, and there’s always some pimp around to help her do it”

Brian looked grim for a moment, men smiled and said, “Look, here’s a drum stall. Did you ever see so many drums?”

There were giant drums as tall as Brian himself, called conga drums, and the tiny, paired bongos; he showed her a kind of serrated gourd called guiray, and the mamcas, gourds rattled on sticks, which she had thought a Mexican instrument. Some of the drums were made of converted oilcans, some of wood or polished gourds; others were elaborately decorated and trimmed with paintings, flowers, and even feathers. “These,” he told her, “are imitations of voodoo drums, for the tourists. I gather the real ones are even fancier.”

They drifted on, looking at everything from bone china to cheap American plastic. At one edge of the market a drum band had begun a kind of improvised concert. Four ragged men, barefoot, in blue work shirts and tattered straw hats, were playing a guitar and three drums. A hat was spread in front of them, into which tourists now and then threw a coin or two. Mardee could not see that they were making much money, but their enthusiasm was contagious. Little children had begun to dance between the stalls, and Mardee found herself caught up again into the drum spell.

Kip had said, The drums are in our blood. Was it true, after all? The drums made her want to dance, as women had danced to the drums in the days when they were slaves. Only on Sundays, then, were they free to play their drums and sing the old songs brought from Africa, treasured in the hearts of slaves … Mardee shook her head, impatient, aware that she was drifting under the dark spell again. She tried to fasten her attention on a particularly ugly set of plastic dishes with Donald Duck on them. They looked as out of place as a mop in a field of orchids. But it anchored her firmly to the modern world, to today…

And even so, under the compelling sound of the drums, it seemed that for a moment the present day faded, the market faded around her, and she was standing among thronging men and women in the faded clothing of the past, crowded around the stalls which had stood on these same spaces for more than two hundred years. The drums were the same, and they were the only sound she could hear; the dust was thick on her bare feet…

“Mardee,” Brian said anxiously at her elbow. “Are you all right? Is the sun getting to you? Would you like to go and sit down in the shade until the car comes?” Firmly recalling herself to the present day, Mardee said, “Of course not I may not get in to Port-au-Prince again for some time, and I don’t want to miss anything! What a lot of silver chains and necklaces over there! Let’s go and look at them.”

“Of course.” Brian led the way toward the display she had chosen. But Mardee’s mind insisted on another moment of compulsive return. That young woman, her ancestress—had she come to this market once in a while, once a year, perhaps, at Carnival, and what had she bought with the few hoarded coins of an affranchie, a freedwoman? What had attracted her eyes?

“I’m sorry, Brian,” she said, shaking herself violently loose again from these compulsive thoughts. “What did you say? My mind was wandering.”

“I said, I’d like to buy you a little souvenir of today; I’ve had more fun than I’ve had in a long time. Do you like any of these little silver chains, or the beads? These cat’s-eyes would look pretty with that yellow frock of yours.”

“Oh, no, Brian, you mustn’t,” she protested. But he insisted, with that gaiety which seemed, more than anything else, a part of his personality.

“I want to. Who knows …” He fingered one of the silver chains. “Maybe it’s a basic male instinct—to put chains on a woman.”

“Brian!” Mardee protested, really shocked. Then she saw the laughter in his eyes. “All right, then, if you want to give me something, one of those pretty seed necklaces.”

“I can afford something better than that kind of rubbish,” he said, and she could see that she had offended him. “The bugs will eat them up and the dampness rot them—they won’t last till you get back to the mainland. I was thinking of something pretty, something you could keep as a souvenir. To remember today, as long as you want to.”

Touched by his seriousness, she tucked her hand under his arm again. “Brian, I don’t need anything to remember today. I won’t forget. But I’d love to have something for a souvenir. It was a wonderful day, you know.”

Had the jreedwoman who lived in the little stone house scorned the gifts of her black lover, comparing them to those of the white man who had bought her? Mardee blinked, shaking her head a little, looking at Brian in his jeans and denim jacket, his mirrored sunglasses balanced on his nose. His sturdy, modem self. There was no way in the world to associate him with ancient tragedies, morbid fantasies about the past. He was wholesome and modern and real.

“I do love pretty things, Brian. Thank you.”

He put an arm around her shoulder. “Just pick out the one you Eke best, but don’t butt in when I start bargaining for it. I know the knack of bargaining, and tourists always get suckered into paying too much.”

Mardee rummaged in the heap of necklaces and chains on the counter.

Then her eye fell on an oddly shaped pendant of red stone. She did not know enough about jewels to be certain whether it was garnet or carnelian. Unerringly her hand went out to clasp it, and she realized it was not on a silver chain, but on a string of small beads—faience or ceramic—with slightly larger beads at intervals.

There was something about it which vaguely reminded her of a rosary, but without a crucifix or any inserted religious medals. The camelian pendant was roughly carved into a shape she could not at once identify.

“I like this one,” she said, bringing it up, fascinated, to study the red beads.

Brian frowned critically, “Victorian trash.”

“It’s older than Victorian,” she said, “and I think it’s beautiful.” She examined the little carved figure—she was almost sure now that it was a human figure. “It’s like the Venus of Willendorf. Or maybe an antique Madonna.”

Brian laughed incredulously. “That thing a Madonna? Don’t be blasphemous, Mardee!”

She insisted, “It could very well be an African version of a Madonna. Brian, I like it. I love it. This is the one I want, really.”

“It’s grotesque,” Brian said, wrinkling his nose at it. “It’s worse—it’s quaint. It’s the kind of thing the lady tourists buy in Tanganyika or somewhere as examples of Native Art, or that kind of junk.” He looked at her with a faint smile. “Wouldn’t you rather have that beautiful silver cross with the alexandrite I saw you coveting?”

But her stubbornness was roused now. “I really do like this one better,” she coaxed. “It seems to belong to the old market somehow, and Haiti. And it’s my birth-stone, Brian.”

“You’re a stubborn woman,” he said, gently touching her cheek, “but if that’s the one you want, Mardee, that’s the one you shall have.”

Mardee listened while he bargained for it, in Creole so fluent that she could barely follow it. At one point he flung it contemptuously down and began to walk away. She opened her mouth to protest—she was shocked to realize how much she wanted this odd little trinket—but then she saw that his eyes were gleaming with mischief, and she knew it was ail part of the game. A minute or two later he put down some money—quite a small sum after all—and picked up the chain with its dangling red charm. He put it around Mardee’s neck

She started to protest, “No, it’s not a necklace, it’s to hang on the wall,” and stopped herself. Brian had bought it for her as a necklace. She would wear it. But in her mind was a perfectly clear picture of herself in the little stone cottage, the necklace in her hand, moving to the hook beside the blue-and-white-tiled fire place, hanging it there so that the sun caught its rays and spread crimson lights through the room … She caught herself back from the obsession. Brian kissed the tip of her nose, and she smiled up at him.

“Thank you so much, Brian. It’s lovely.”

But it would be interesting, she thought, to know if there really is a hook beside the fireplace there, and if the light would fall on it in just that way. . .

“There’s the studio car,” said Brian, pointing. “I do hope your great-aunt won’t be offended because I don’t dress for dinner!”

She took his hand. “I’m sure she won’t be, Brian.”

The ride back to Cap Dominique was quiet and subdued. Mardee sat with her eyes closed, leaning against Brian, reacting to the sun and the fatigue of a long day with the beginning of a headache. Paul and Margaret and Brian talked about their day on Port-au-Prince. Margaret had taken a boat tour around the harbor of Port-au-Prince with, as she put it, seven thousand shrieking female tourists; Paul had spent the day, he said, sampling all the rum in Haiti and all the different things they could think of to mix with it. He wasn’t precisely drunk, but he was certainly cheerful.

“What did you two do?” Margaret asked, and Brian told them.

“That’s where they have that enormous thing like a castle? We saw it from the water. I can’t imagine why Sebastian doesn’t film a scene or two there—-I’ve never seen such an impressive place,” Margaret said.

Paul chuckled good-naturedly. “You haven’t done your homework, Maggie. That place was built after the Revolution.”

“But I thought one of the freed slaves built it—the one who made himself an emperor or a king or something.”

“That came afterward,” Paul said. “He built it to defend Haiti against the French. He was convinced they’d come back and attack the island, so he built it—they say over a hundred lives were lost in the building. Only the French never came, and the freed slaves revolted, or re-revolted, or something, so lie shot himself.”

Brian laughed. “All this talk about the revolting slaves makes me think of the old cartoon. You know the one; someone rushes up to the king and shouts, ‘Sire, the peasants are revolting! The peasants are revolting!’ And the King lifts an eyebrow and says, ‘Yes. Very.’”

Margaret exploded in laughter. ‘I’ll try that one on Sebastian next time we shoot a crowd scene!”

It was growing dark when they pulled up in front of Maison Dominique. Just ahead of them the silver Rolls was drawn up, and Sebastian, his white shock of hair a luminous blur in the half light, was handing Donna out of the car. Mardee thought: With that white hair he looks like a ghost, like le gros Wane himself. Sebastian saw the Cadillac and walked toward them.

“Mardee, Brian. Enjoy your day?”

“Thanks for the ride,” Brian said.

“Any time,” Sebastian said negligently, and Mardee found herself irrationally annoyed. It had been her outing and Brian’s; she resented Sebastian’s assumption of responsibility, as if they had been his guests. That man has an ego big enough for seven!

“Come along and have drinks with us,” Sebastian offered. “It’s some time till dinner—Madame observes a Continental dinner hour.”

Mardee would have refused, but Brian had already said, “Thank you very much, sir.” She wondered if he was trying to please her, or if he was simply anxious to meet the famous—and glamourous—Donna Royce. Now, if she objected, it would sound as if she were afraid of the competition!

Five

She gave her packages to Robert, asking him to send them to her room, and went with Brian to the other wing, which Madame Thibaud had placed at the disposal of her guests. She recognized it as the room where she had talked to Kip on her first night here. There was a huge fire blazing on the hearth, and Margaret, laying her parcels on the long table, turned to the servant in the room,

“A fire in summer, Jean-France?”

He said to broken English, “Is very damp, Madame, the fire to dry the furniture so damp do not get in the woods. And a fire is pleasant in darkness, non, Madame?”

They all unloaded collections of souvenirs and parcels. Margaret, too, had bought too many of the paper flowers and coffee-bean necklaces from the child vendors, and Donna was carrying one of the feathered and decorated drums.

Kip came in, yawning and stretching. Margaret said, “You should have come along, Kip.”

“Port-au-Prince is no novelty to me, Maggie, cherie. Anyhow, I spent the day working.”

“Good God,” Sebastian said. “You could have had the day off like everybody else, Kip. I’m no slave-driver!”

“Actually, I enjoyed ft,” Kip said. “Cappy and I worked all morning—I think we have that speech licked now—and I spent the afternoon reading. I don’t have much time for that these days. Hello, Mardee,” he added with a smile, and Mardee felt the sigh of relief all the way down to her toes. For some reason she had expected—or feared—that Kip would still look on her with contempt.

But, no doubt, he had seen Sebastian go off with Donna this morning. She introduced Brian, and the actor was pleasantly cordial, asking intelligent questions about Brian’s book. Donna, too, seemed eager to display politeness. She asked Mardee, “Did you spend the day shopping too?”

“Yes, I bought some of the same kind of thing Margaret did. The children were so solemn and so hungry-looking that I couldn’t resist. And I bought some suitable things for this climate—nylon nightgowns and robes are impossible here, aren’t they?”

“It really is a problem here, isn’t it,” Donna agreed, and they chatted about clothes for a few moments, till Brian and Kip joined them, and Mardee remembered her keepsake. She drew it out from around her neck, saying, “Brian found this for me in the market.”

Margaret craned her neck to see. “What a pretty stone! A garnet?” “Carnelian, I think.”

Donna narrowed her eyelids. “It’s—quaint,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “What an ugly little image!”

“The word is ethnic, Miss Royce,” said Brian, laughing. “What sort of quaint souvenir did you find in the market?”

Donna picked up the feathered and decorated drum. “I’m going to hang it on the wall in my Beverly Hills apartment and decorate around it.”

Kip smiled good-naturedly. “It’s a tourist imitation, of course. But it ought to make a stunning conversation piece for the Hollywood types who think the world is bounded at one edge by Palm Beach and on the other by Las Vegas.” He picked up the drum, tapping it gently with his long, slim, tanned fingers. It had a sweet, mellow tone.

“You got a good one. How much did they charge you for this one, Donna?”

“I can’t figure out Haitian money. I guess something like forty, fifty dollars American.”

“That’s too much for a piece of tourist trash. You should have had one of the local people to help you bargain. On the other hand, it has a very nice tone, it’s very well put together.” He turned it over, examining the twisted cords which held the dyed skin to the painted wooden barrel of the drum. Suddenly he started, frowned, carried the drum to the lamp, and stood there, examining some small mark on its side. Mardee heard him exclaim under his breath, “Grarn’ Maitrer

Kip turned up the lamp, setting his drink down. He turned the drum over, inspecting it thoroughly. He fingered the feathers, hesitant, then sighed and set it gingerly down on a chair, as if he were afraid to touch it

“Do you know what you have here, Donna?”

“You called it tourist trash.”

“I was wrong—terribly wrong. It is, of course, the original that tourist drums are made up to resemble. It is a boula—a ritually consecrated voudoun drum, used in their ceremonies.” He looked sickly pale. “Where did you get Ms?”

She was frowning at Mm, confused. “I bought it at the dram stall in the market. They had a couple dozen like it. This had a few more fancy feathers, that’s all, and I liked the colors. It’s just a fancy drum, that’s all.”

Kip shook his head, regretfully. “It is not. Probably it is a part of the collection of some old houngan, and after he died his family, not knowing what it is, sold it for a few gourdes, and somehow it came to the stall of the drum seller, and he did not recognize it for what it is either.” He looked deeply agitated. “It must be returned at once, Donna. We should try to find out who made it, or to what ‘oumphor it belongs.”

Donna stared at him, her pretty mouth open. “You’re crazy or something, Kip! Stop putting me on!”

Margaret said, “Didn’t the priest tell us the other night that there was no such thing as voodoo, that it was a lie the white people had made up against his people?”

“He was wrong about this, I know more than he. Look here, Donna—”

She snatched up the drum defiantly. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, in the flat tone so different from her mellow stage voice. “I bought it and I’m going to keep it. If it’s real, so much the better! I can just see my friends when I tell them it’s a real voodoo drum!”

Kip looked dismayed. “Donna, you cannot mean it! Do you not realize this is a sacred religious object, consecrated to the loa—the voodoo gods, or at least their saints?”

She shrugged. “You think I care for that kind of mumbo jumbo? That’s no good Christian religion, even!”

“Donna, I beg of you—do not talk that way,” Kip implored. “It is a very real, very living religion. In this part of the world, it is the religion of the people, their living contact with the world unseen—”

“Heathen stuff,” she said, unconvinced. “What’s their religion to me? I’m just a good Christian.”

“Mais, man Dieu!” At this point Kip lost control of his English.

Sebastian said lightly, trying to break the tension, “I never knew you were superstitious, Kip, but I’m sure Donna doesn’t want to offend your religious prejudices, or profane anyone’s religion. What should be done with the drum, Kip?”

“It really should be ritually cleansed, and rededicated, and returned to its own particular loa.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” repeated Donna, angry and stubborn. “I bought it, and I paid for it, and I’m going to keep it!”

Kip’s hands were clenched into tight fists. Only Mar-dee, standing forgotten at the edge of the group and outside the confrontation, could see the effort he was making to hold his temper. “Listen to me, Donna. Ill buy you any drum in the market, your own choice—no limit on price. Have one made to order and decorated for you if you choose. Let me take this one and make sure it gets back to whoever owns it Drums like this— they just aren’t ordinary drums at all, and that’s all there is to it.”

“But this is mine,” Donna said implacably, “and I don’t want any other. Lay off, Kip, it won’t get you anywhere.”

Kip turned to Sebastian, pleading, “Can you do something with her? This is blasphemy, you know. This particular drum has been ritually consecrated and baptized; it has”—he stopped, wet his lips, and said, with difficulty—”it is believed, by everyone, to have a soul.”

Sebastian said, after a moment, “Come on, Donna. He’s made you a fair offer. You bought the drum as a tourist decoration, and Kip’s offered you one. We have to keep our star happy, don’t we?”

Donna looked sullen and angry; Mardee realized that Sebastian had made a tactical mistake by referring to Kip, rather than Donna, as the star. “How come you’re taking his side? And how come he knows all this stuff? You aren’t a voodoo priest or something, are you, Kip?”

He said, with an uneasy laugh, “Do I look like one?”

No one, Mardee thought, could look less involved with the dark secrets of the past than Kip Tybalt. In faultless evening clothes, barbered and tailored and manicured to perfection, he was the sophisticated cosmopolitan.

“But I am Haitian, you know,” he said, “and these things are very real to everyone here. I would not willingly see the religion of my grandmother profaned. I shall be eternally grateful to you, Donna, if you allow me to redeem this one.”

Her nod of agreement was sullen. Sebastian’s eyes were gleaming. He said, “I had no idea you knew anything about this, Kip. I wish I’d known when Cappy was working on the script. Look, do you know anyone who’s really involved with voodoo these days? I suppose they have to practice it on the sly, but I’d love to film their ceremonies…”

Mardee saw Kip clench his fists until the knuckles went pale. “Those who are seriously involved with voudoun would consider it an obscene blasphemy to have their rites filmed. I do not—now—know anyone who could even give permission for me to be present, let alone a —forgive me, Sebastian—a blanc.”

Sebastian’s laugh was uneasy. “I suppose it’s only fair I should be on the receiving end of race prejudice for once. But surely there have been whites in voodoo. And—forgive me, Kip, but you look as white as I do.”

Kip’s laugh was as uneasy as Sebastian’s own. “I was made very aware of that, believe me, when I was a child.”

Mardee said, realizing that the tension was growing again, “If we are going to have drinks before dinner, Sebastian …”

The older man, to her great relief, recalled his duties as host “Let me send for those drinks. Is there anyone here who would rather have Scotch, or sherry? Or does everyone want rum?”

Paul asked for Scotch, Brian and Kip for rum. Sebastian looked meaningfully at Donna until she sulkily asked for sherry, and Mardee said, “I’ll join you. One more of those powerful rum drinks and I’ll never stay awake through supper!”

The conversation broadened into the general. Brian told Sebastian something about his book, and was invited to watch a day’s filming. “Is there any feeling among the blacks in Cap Dominique that you—a white man—are degrading them by raking up some of the darkest chapters in Haitian history?”

“I don’t think so,” Sebastian said after careful thought “No one has protested to me. Possibly the fact that I am using black actors of international reputation in leading parts has something to do with it. Also, it is a serious film. If I were making some trashy horror film, or a bedroom comedy to be filled in with a lot of exotic native dances, and so forth, they might resent it. They might have let me do it because they needed the fees I would pay for the locations and the extras, but they would have resented it. As it is—I think, at least I hope—they know I Jove Haiti, and I am trying to show the world some of its beauty and its—its quality.” He turned to include Kip, saying, “This is why I don’t feel it would be profanation to film a voodoo ceremony, just trying to help the people get rid of their superstitious preconceptions and false ideas, to show them what is genuine, and reverent, and beautiful.”

Kip said slowly, “I think I see what you mean, Sebastian. But truly, I do not—now—know how to find what you want.”

Brian said, “I’ve been asking around too, Wright, and —no offense, sir—it’s a little easier for me to find out things here. I did find two things. I found a church where voodoo saints are honored alongside the regular Catholic saints. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone where; they said the priest who allowed it might find himself excommunicated. The second is—I got an invitation to a voodoo ceremony which is staged, now and then—”

“Merde!” Kip said rudely. “In Paris, they will invite you to a Satanic Mass, too, on the Place Pigalle, and charge you five thousand francs for what you could see in any bouge for a quarter of that!”

“Good God, no,” Brian protested. “What kind of greenhorn do you think I am? This isn’t some kind of indecent exhibition, this is a historical society which very seriously stages the ceremonies and dances as a kind of—of historical pageant. It’s not real, of course, but it’s probably the closest thing to it that an outsider could find. I’m going to put it in my book, but I haven’t been able to dig up—” With a glance at Mardee, he amended, laughingly, “To locate a cameraman. It’s done on some kind of university grant, and if you wanted to film it, Wright, I’m sure they’d be pleased and honored.”

“Ill make a deal with you, Dawes,” Sebastian said. “Get me an invitation to that, and I’ll loan you one of my own cameramen, or give you your pick of any frames you want, for your book. Okay?”

Brian’s face lighted. “That would be great.”

Drinks came. Mardee, sipping her sherry, welcomed the break. Brian, moving toward her, said, “You’ve certainly got yourself in with a fantastic crowd!”

She tilted her glass at bun gaily. “That’s show biz for you.”

“I like Wright He’s sincere, and I think he means what he says about wanting people to see Haiti the way he does.”

“I like him too,” Mardee admitted. “Although I think he’s just fallen so much in love with Haiti that this is why he’s fallen for Donna, and why he’s been flirting with me. We’re just part of the spell Haiti’s cast on him.”

“Do you really think he’s that much of a romantic?” Brian sounded skeptical.

“Yes, I do.” Mardee recalled how he had talked to her on their walk through the estate; the way in which he had brought out the beauty of ice and rainbow snow and furious competition in the ski epic she had seen on the plane. She remembered, too, what the press had had to say about his intense romance at that time with an International Olympic skating champion. “He’s very intense’, he gets totally wrapped up in what he’s doing at the moment.”

“And probably forgets it just as quickly,” Brian said, glancing at Donna Royce, clinging possessively to Sebastian’s arm.

Mardee thought: Brian’s right, and if Donna’s seriously in love with him, I’m sorry for her. When the spell wears off, when the movie’s finished, he’ll go on to the next enthusiasm, without ever looking back. She remembered Donna’s ravaged face as the older woman warned her away from Sebastian. Why should I waste any sympathy on her?

Brian, following her thoughts, said, “He’s like the composer Puccini. He was always in love with some woman or other, mostly the singers who sang in his operas. And when his wife complained to him about his love affairs, he told her: It is not any woman I am in love with, certainly not any singer. It is Manon and Mimi and Tosca that I love, and for a little while these women are my creations …” He broke off. “Hey— how much has Barry had to drink, anyhow?”

Mardee had thought that Paul Barry’s boasting about sampling all the ram in Haiti was a joke, for he had seemed reasonably sober, but either the latest drink had been one too many, or the switch from rum to Scotch had muddled him. He was bending over Donna’s forgotten drum, talking loudly and drunkenly.

“If a drum has a soul—hey, listen to this, folks— shouldn’ we pour a libation to it, like those old Greek gods? I did that in a movie once. Can’t pour a libation to a voodoo drum in Scotch. Kip, you’ve got rum, let me have it.” He snatched up Kip’s glass and splashed the surface of the drum with the fragrant Haitian rum.

“Inna name—name of a god un—unknown,” he burlesqued, his face solemn and exaggerated.

Kip, his face congested with rage, grabbed Paul by the shoulders and dragged him away. “Is the devil in you, man? What is this you do?”

“Come off it,” said Brian, thrusting himself between Paul and the angry, outraged Kip, “he’s drunk, Tybalt, he doesn’t mean anything. Lay off, Paul, you’re making a jackass of yourself.”

He shoved Paul Barry down on a sofa, where Paul muttered, “No ‘fense, no ‘feme, Kip,” and promptly passed out

Mardee, trying to smooth things over, said, “Kip, it was just a joke. A joke in atrocious taste, but just the same no more than a joke.” She picked up the glass Kip had knocked out of Paul’s hand and said, “Let me get you another drink.”

Kip shook his head, pale and shaking. “I think there has been too much drinking,” he said. His Creole accent was suddenly very thick. “Blaspheme de salaud d’iv-rogne!”

Brian said angrily, ‘This is superstitious rot, Tybalt, this is why people all over the world can’t take Haiti seriously. Are you as much of a superstitious halfwit as you sound, or are you drunk yourself?”

Fighting to control his voice, and not succeeding too well, Kip said, “You do not know of what you speak, Dawes. It is all very well to speak of such things pour rire in a tourist resort in Port-au-Prince. It is a different matter here in Cap Dominique, on the very ground …” His voice failed him again, and he turned away, walking to the fireplace and staring into the flames.

Mardee watched him, distressed and, to her own surprise, annoyed with Brian for the way he had spoken to Kip.

Kip picked up the drum and cradled it gently under his arm. Mardee had the bizarre sense that he was trying to apologize to it. He began tapping the drum very softly with his fingertips; so softly that if Mardee had not been watching, she would not have noticed any sound. His fingers, slim and delicate, moved almost noiselessly, laying out a compelling rhythm.

She exchanged a look with Brian, each silently asking the other, Now what?

Mardee could almost hear it now, less a sound from an external source than something arising of itself, deep in her bones; in her blood. The sound grew and began to creep insidiously through the room. Mardee knew now that she was hearing it, that it was a real sound and not something inside herself, a compelling call… She noticed that Donna, standing by the fireplace, had begun to sway rhythmically to the drumbeat, but Mardee did not realize she was doing the same thing herself. But she saw Brian, then Sebastian and Margaret, begin to move to the sound as it filled the room and grew louder.

Then Donna, caught up in the sound, began first a simple swaying, then a rhythmic stamping, pounding her heels on the floor. Sebastian grabbed her hands, and they were dancing. Mardee flung back her head and felt Brian catch at her hands and draw her out into the room, losing herself in the dance.

The drum. The sound of the drum. There was nothing in the room now, nothing in the world, but the drum and its rhythm, beating in her blood, her body moving without volition to the compelling sound. A vagrant, startled fragment of Mardee’s consciousness persisted somewhere at the back of her mind, asking, Why are we all dancing like this? But it no longer mattered. Nothing mattered now but die sound filling her ears, her mind, her body. As she danced the room spun away and Mar-dee was dancing somewhere in darkness, timeless, possessed, dark images from a past she had never consciously known in this life rising before her and spinning in her mind to the endless, soundless, consciousless sound of the drum, the drum, the dram . . „ naked forms chanting under a great moon, fires blazing through darkness, other drums rising to join in the sound…

She could see Kip through the swaying haze that fogged her mind as she danced, but the man Kip was gone and there was nothing there but a darkness, a force from which a strange, compelling mask with gleaming eyes emerged, distorted, unreal…

Mardee thought, in sadden fright, This is mad, we are all mad, this is a kind of insanity … She saw Sebastian, his shock of white hair tossing madly as he spun and stamped. Brian was laughing, a kind of absurd gaiety penetrating the madness. Donna’s arms were flung out; she had kicked her high-heeled shoes into the corner of the room and was dancing barefoot, heir hair flying around her face. Margaret’s gray hair had come out of its knot and was streaming raggedly over her shoulders as she whirled, awkwardly, with the stiff steps of an aging woman. Kip was dancing too, the drum under his arm, his face contorted and blank, his arms and’ fingers moving in a frenzy. Mardee felt terror clutching at her. We are mad, we are all mad, somehow we must stop this…

But though she tried, with spasmodic effort, to keep her feet still, her body persisted in moving wildly to the dance. She felt sudden panic. I can’t stop, none of us can stop, we will dance here until we die of exhaustion … Fragments of memory jogged randomly in her mind: the dancing madness of the Middle Ages, the fairy tale of the red shoes in which Karen must dance and dance until doomsday in punishment for her blasphemy, the cow in Mary Popping dancing with the star on her horn, dancing, dancing forever…

Oh, God, help us all… I’ve got to stop … Terror clutched at her as she realized she could not stop, could not hold feet and body motionless for even an instant while the drum beat out its incessant whirling rhythm, a rhythm that swept away time and space, so that they danced in a dark dream and went on dancing…

“Arretez!”

It was a high, shrill shriek of command. The drumbeats faltered and died.

Mardee, gasping in shock and dismay, swayed against some piece of furniture with a crash, and clung there, gasping, looking up at Tante Emilie, her lined face drawn with outrage. One by one they reeled to a stop, bracing themselves against any handy support. In the guilty, shocked silence, Margaret chirped inadequately, “well, goodness gracious, what got into us all?”

Kip was leaning against the fireplace. His collar was hanging open, his face dripping with sweat. He looked pitiably at Tante Emilie, but he could not speak, though he twice opened his mouth and closed it again.

The old woman’s voice quivered with indignation.

“I will not have this—this orgy beneath my roof! Marie-Louise!” Her eyes, relentless, swung to Mardee. “Why did you permit this—this carnival?”

Kip found his voice. “Madame,” he said, his breath still coming loud, “Madame, your great-niece is not in any manner to blame, it was I—”

Donna Royce looked about for her shoes and slipped her feet carelessly into them. Her voice sounded childish, but, of them all, only she had the self-possession to speak.

“Madame Thibaud, I’m awful sorry we disturbed you. Kip started to play, and then we just started dancing, that’s all. We didn’t mean to, the drum music just sounded like dancing, I guess. We wouldn’t have disturbed you for the world. I’m really sorry.” Quickly, she assumed the role of Sebastian’s hostess.

“May I offer you a glass of sherry, Madame? It’s not in a class with yours, of course, but still, we’re all having a drink before dinner …” Calmly she went to the decanter, poured a glassful, and offered it to the angry old woman. Mardee, still shaking, found herself grateful for Donna’s brazen calm.

Tante Emilie took the offered glass; there was no alternative except a kind of discourtesy of which a woman of her class would have been almost physically incapable. And, having done so, there was no way to retreat gracefully from the position Donna had established: that the old woman’s guests had simply committed a rather minor discourtesy, playing a drum too loudly for an impromptu dance, and had to apologize.

Tante Emilie sniffed a little, but she sipped at the sherry. Kip had turned away, in such a way, Mardee noticed, as to shelter the drum somewhat with his body from Tante Emilie’s eyes. Then, with a movement of careful clumsiness, he allowed the drum to fall—or did he fling it deliberately?—directly into the very center of the blazing fire.

The ancient wood flared up briefly, and for a moment the shape remained, an incandescent glow. Then it was gone. Kip, in the blink of an eye, was the polished, cosmopolitan actor again. He bowed and said in his perfect French, “Madame, I infinitely regret that our impromptu amusements should have disturbed your repose. Be assured that nothing of the kind will happen again.”

Mardee found herself clutching at Brian’s hands. Would Tante Emilie accept it like that? What else could she do? She could hardly throw them all out of her house.

What had happened to them? It had been a kind of possession … but even as she framed the thought Mardee realized she was beginning to doubt the reality of what had happened. She remembered having had absurd fantasies about dancing madness, but they were gone like the memory of some ridiculous dream remembered in daylight.

Kip played the drum, and we just felt like dancing. An absurdly inadequate explanation for what had happened—but what other explanation was there? Now even the drum was gone, and the dark fantasies vanished like mist. Margaret was surreptitiously patting her gray hair into place. Sebastian covertly togged at his disordered tie. Tante Emilie was calmly sipping her sherry, and Mardee wondered if the overpowering rage had ever been there, or if she had fantasized that too.

Taking up the social necessities of the moment, she took Brian’s hand and led him to Madame Thibaud.

“Tante Emilie, this is Brian Dawes.”

The old woman’s face was blank, impassive, as if she were wondering whether to accept the surfaces or to demand explanations which would never be given and would make no sense if they were. Then she sighed deeply, thrust out her frail, knotted fingers, and smiled.

“I understand that you have been showing my great-niece some of the sights of our so beautiful island, M’sieur, and that you are writing a book about the things which have been accomplished in our modern Haiti. You must tell me more about it over our dinner, which, I am assured, is ready for us in our dining room.” She offered her arm to Brian with regal assurance. Her dark, imperious eyes briefly passed around the room, acknowledging and discarding the aliens from the film company.

“I wish you all a very good night.”

Again, Mardee saw the “Romanoff duchess” Sebastian had called her. She followed as Brian escorted her aunt from the room, wondering uneasily if any of it had ever happened, or if the whole thing had been born of a little too much Haitian sun, a good deal too much Haitian rum, and Kip Tybalt’s overactive imagination.

But the drums still seemed to sound, willfully, in her pulse …

Tante Emilie’s chef had outdone himself—the service, the wine, the food, were all truly luxurious—but Mardee, her whole being still somehow throbbing to the memory of the sound of the drums, merely toyed with her food. She listened, with growing restlessness, to Brian’s talk of his book, and of the things he hoped to accomplish by bringing the new Haiti to the attention of the modern world. He talked composedly of universal literacy, of new methods of cane harvesting, of the labor organizers who were working for decent wages for canefield and coffee-plantation workers, of sugar production for direct competition with the Cuban monopolies.

Tante Emilie listened with interest, asking intelligent questions, but when the meal ended, he refused her excellent brandy. “Thank you, Madame, but I have to drive back to Port-au-Prince, and I don’t think that driving and drinking, on these roads, mix very well.”

“Most commendable caution.” Madame Thibaud’s withered lips drew back in a smile. “I have asked Leon—one of our gardeners who is an expert mfaanicien—to look at your little car. He assures me that it will run competently now.”

“You are most kind, Madame.” Brian rose and bowed. “If I may, I would like a word with him before I go.” Mardee suspected he meant to give the helpful Leon a generous tip. He excused himself—promising to return and say good night to Mardee—and Tante Emi-lie turned to Mardee, smiling.

“I approve of your young man, Marie-Louise. He will make you an excellent husband. I hope you are serious about him.”

Mardee blinked in amazement and indignation. “Tante Emilie, I hardly know the man! Certainty he is a fine man, but I’m not thinking about marriage yet!”

Madame Thibaud said, reprovingly, “But it is high time you began to think about marriage seriously, Marie-Louise. You are, after all, not a jeune fille, you are nearing thirty, and you must remember,” she added gently, “that I have no other close relatives. I would like to know there would be children to follow me, some day, at Cap Dominique. I did not marry, but it was not my choice, and sometimes, I regret …” She must have seen Mardee’s face harden, for she stopped, gently raising a soft hand to stroke the younger woman’s cheek.

“Well, well, we will discuss it another time, p’tite. Go and say good night to your young friend, and beg him to excuse me. I am very tired,” she added fretfully. “Ring for Fifine, Marie-Louise, I want her to take me to bed.”

Mardee obeyed, and when Fifine had taken her great-aunt away, she went out on the wide veranda to await Brian’s return. He came up the steps and stood beside her, sighing.

“Mardee, it was a beautiful day. Thank you so much.”

“Thank you, Brian,” she said fervently. “I feel as if I’d begun to know Haiti, just a little, through you.”

“I hope it is only a beginning,” he said softly. “I’m seeing it all new, again, through your eyes.” He put his arms around her, hesitantly. “Mardee—”

For a moment she relaxed into his embrace, feeling the sheltering strength of his arms. Then, suddenly selfconscious, she thought of Tante Emilie’s tranquil comment, He will make you an excellent husband. I hope you are serious about him. For a moment she was rigid in his embrace; then, as his mouth found hers, she thought, with a fragmentary awareness, Well, why not? It’s silly to turn off what I feel for Brian just because Tante Emilie approves of him!

She let herself cling to him and gave herself up to his kiss, discovering with a pleased surprise that she was responding to Mm. Not since she had stormed out of Ted’s apartment—at that time it had been hers, too— the day of their final quarrel, had any man roused her even for a moment.

Not even Kip? her mind persisted in demanding, but she shut it off harshly: Kip. He’s an actor. Any woman who gets involved with an actor is asking for trouble. Her arms tightened around Brian with an intensity that surprised—and delighted—the man.

But why, at that moment, should she hear again the intense, compelling rhythm that had throbbed in her blood, her bones … ? “Brian,” she said, holding herself away from him a little, “did you hear anything?”

He was silent for a moment, listening. “No, I guess not. For a minute I thought I heard drums again. Damnedest thing. Well, maybe I did. You hear drums everywhere in Haiti. That was the damnedest thing tonight. Mass hypnosis, I guess you’d Call it Something like that.”

Mardee shivered. She didn’t want to think about it any more, so she put up her arms to Brian and kissed him again.

At last, his face rueful in the half light of the veranda, he let her go. “If I don’t tear myself away now, I won’t be able to go at all,” he said, sighing. Mardee felt suddenly cold and lonely without his arms around her. “When can I see you again, Mardee?”

She said softly, “Any time, Brian. Any time at all.”

He kissed her again, but lightly this time, on the forehead. “Take care. I hate to go and leave you in this madhouse! Who knows what may happen?”

“I thought you liked Wright.”

“I do, and—if you’ll excuse my being cynical for a moment—he’s a good contact for anyone in the media. That’s why I’m setting up this historical-society voodoo thing for him. I don’t mind in the least laying an obligation on him. Besides”—he grinned—”it gives me a good excuse to see you again.”

Mardee gave him both her hands and said softly, “You don’t need an excuse, Brian. Believe me.”

His arms closed around her again, and through the hot intensity of the night, the scent of flowers around them, she gave herself up to his kiss.

Tante Emilie may not know it, she thought, but she’s got her wish. I’m serious about Brian, a lot more serious than I want her to know!

But in her body, in her blood, the drums kept up their throbbing. Were they really there at all, or was it only the pounding of her heart? Sighing, she drew away from Brian.

“You’d better go. It’s a long drive on these roads, and it’s very late.”

“Yes, and I can see that butler of your great-aunt’s, just inside the door, carefully not looking this way, waiting for you to give the order to put out the cat and lock up the house. Mustn’t keep the old-fellow waiting.” He gave her hands a final squeeze and whispered, “Next time I’ll find a place where I can kiss you without all of Madame Thibaud’s servants lining up to witness the show. As I said this morning, this place might as well be the National Art Museum. Good night, darling.”

Mardee was glad for his flippancy as she went inside the house, watching as the red taillights of the “critter” gradually disappeared. At last, feeling disconsolate, she went back into the great hall and gave the order the patient Robert was obviously waiting for, to lock up the house and go to bed.

He speaks to me now in the same tone he speaks to Madame, she thought. And she said tonight, I am her only close relative, and she wanted to see children—my children—after her at Maison Dominique.

It was a pleasant thought that she might live here always, with Brian, in the Haiti she was coming to love. She thought about that as she went up the stairs to her room. To live here, perhaps, mistress of Maison Dominique, with Brian and the children she might some day have. She had decided a long time ago that children and a stage career would never mix. It had been one of the things she and Ted could never agree on, one of the major stresses breaking their marriage. But it would be quite different, bringing up children here—in Maison Dominique…

Melanie was drowsing in a chair near the window; she woke and yawned resentfully as Mardee came in. Mardee, feeling guilty for no good reason, told her she could manage for herself tonight, and sent her to bed. Undressing, and glad to be free of Melanie’s sullen company (how she missed the cheerful, capable Fleur!), she noticed that her purchase of that day had been brought up and put into her dresser drawers. She slipped out of the yellow-and-brown sunflower-print frock, and felt a weight on her neck, and remembered, for the first time in hours, the bead necklace-necklace?—with the carnelian Madonna on the end.

She took it off and studied it, almost sure it was some land of rosary. Holding it in her hands, cradling the odd coolness of the carved stone, she wondered where it had come from, why she had felt so oddly drawn to it. It had seemed, somehow, almost familiar. Familiar, as the little stone cottage built for her remote ancestress had seemed familiar. It would be funny, wouldn’t it, if in some former life I had lived in that little stone cottage, and owned this unusual string of beads…

Melanie had laid out one of the new nightgowns and a flowered cotton dressing gown, but Mardee ignored them. She looked about for the hook on which the rosary belonged, but, not seeing it, she slipped naked into bed, holding the string of beads in her hand. Without really knowing what she was doing, she crossed herself, whispered, “En tes mains, Gran’ Mmtresse . . .” and fell into a heavy, exhausted sleep.

… Mardee thought she woke, hearing drums, a strange sense of urgency beating in her blood. She pushed back the mosquito netting. The room was filled with a strange, lurid moonlight, and she looked around without comprehension.

She was alone. What was she doing here? Me had forgotten her again. She must go, go quickly to her own place, before she was discovered and punished again.

She got out of bed, feeling about with her bare feet for slippers that were not there. She drew a robe quickly around her naked body, fumbling with the unfamilar buttons. Silently, hardly daring to breathe, she stole down the stairs, down the corridor, toward the familiar side door which was always left unbolted on nights like this. No, it was not bolted now. She slipped past it and out into the hot, fragrant tropical night

She could hear the drums now, clearly; the sound fired her blood with frenzy, but the priest had been very definite. Such things were not for her, on peril of her immortal soul

Defiantly she clutched the rosary in her hands, and whispered, like an invocation, “Gran’ Mattresse . . .”

That was no sin. She was the Holy Mother—sweet and pure and a loving Mother to all sinful mankind. The other priest had explained that carefully. When they spoke to Her as Marie, the Sainte Vierge, she was the Mother of the blancs, but when they called upon Her as Maitresse Erzulie, she was the loving protectress of white and black alike, and of those who were neither and belonged to neither… those like herself …

She clutched it tight in the darkness, clinging to it for protection. She moved silently, her heart seeming to pound almost louder than the call of the drums, and then, by one of those curious dream-telescoping transitions, she was on the very steps of the little house, her very own place, the, one He had said should always be hers, despite every blanc in Saint-Domingue … She slipped the latch and went inside. In the dark, moving securely, she found the hook and hung the rosary there, where it would look down and bless her at every moment of the day and night. She was confused for a moment at the emptiness and silence of the room. How long had she been away? How had He dared to take her into the Great House? But these things were too distant to trouble her now. She sank cross-legged to the floor, letting the distant drum music flood through her heart and mind.

Would he come tonight? He did not always come, he could not. Sometimes she thought, though she was not much given to introspection, that this was why she loved him, the man of her own kind, no more free than she was herself. She sat there, a long time, silent, with the patience she had learned through long years of waiting. She knew he would come if he could. And if he could not, she knew why: He was about that mysterious and frightening business which, he had promised, would some day make it possible for them to be together always. He had not told her much about it. She did not want to know.

But no one came; here in the little house was only silence, strange emptiness, the rustle of leaves beyond the window, and the drums, the drums…

Mardee woke, blinking in surprise. What a strange dream, what a very strange dream! In the dream she had been her own slave ancestress, stealing out at night to meet her black lover, with whom she deceived the powerful blanc who owned them both … A dream? In shock, Mardee realized she was not in bed in her luxurious room in Maison Dominique. The last thing she remembered was slipping naked between the cool sheets, hearing distant drums and wondering if they were real. Now her new cotton robe was buttoned crookedly about her nude body. She was barefoot, she was not in the house at all. Wildly Mardee looked around the bare room, the tiled fireplace of the little stone cottage. In terror, Mardee scrambled to her feet, thinking in panic of spiders, snakes, poisonous insects. She reminded herself sternly that the people who lived here went barefoot by choice, or necessity, and evidently had no fear of snakes or bugs.

But how had she come here? Remembering her dream, trying clumsily to pick reality out of dream memories already fading, she could only conclude that she had been sleepwalking. The first thing to do was to get herself back to Maison Dominique before she was missed and someone raised an alarm which might damage her reputation—not to mention frightening Tante Emilie out of her wits!

But who would believe that she would sleepwalk, accurately, through unknown parts of the estate, to a little house which she had seen only once before, and to which she did not, in waking life, even know the way? Of course, she had been there once with Sebastian, when they sheltered from the rain.

Mardee got up, fumbling in the darkness; the room which had been so familiar in the dream was suddenly strange to her, an empty, confusing, echoing space. The rosary was hanging on the hook by the fireplace, where she remembered putting it in the dream. Strange—in the dream, she had known exactly what it was and what significance it had. Mardee took it down and put it around her neck again, shivering. One other thing from the dream had been real: There were drums out there, drums in the night, their compelling rhythm building to a frenzy.

She slipped out into the night again. It was dark, and starless, thick clouds drifted across the sky. The brilliant moonlight, then, had been only a part of the dream. Her naked toes cringed from the blades of grass and damp earth under her feet.

The sound of drums was all around her. Try as she might to tell herself that they were simply some poor family in Cap Dominique, drinking rum and entertaining themselves with their own music, she could no longer make herself believe it. Not after hearing Kip, today, play the drums. She told herself fiercely that whatever the drums were, they had nothing, nothing, nothing to do with her. Now the only thing was to get back to her room in Maison Dominique. She turned, trying to orient herself, to see in which direction the great house lay. She saw a faint light and began swiftly to walk in that direction, trying to ignore the sound of the drums that roared and pounded with a frantic call.

It’s nothing to do with me.

It’s nothing to do with me.

She turned again, trying to locate herself, and saw the lights. That was where the mysterious drumming originated! Somehow she had taken a wrong turning, and now she found herself at the end of the long street in Cap Dominique, outside a large bare building, she had seen the day of the filming. But then it had been boarded up, shuttered, deserted. Now the doors were swinging wide, and lights streamed from every opened window.

There—inside there—was the source of the mysterious drumming! And yet the streets of Cap Dominique were empty and dark. Not a dog barked, not a chicken clucked anywhere. She passed the church, the small house next to it where Pere Etienne lived. Did he know what his flock was up to, and turn a blind eye? Or was he truly ignorant? Mardee crept to the door of the building, hiding in the shadows, and peered inside.

The first thing she saw was the dais with the three drummers. One drum was taller than a man; a ragged young black was standing on a box to play it. The others were smaller, one the size of a symphony orchestra’s kettledrum, the third about the size of the one Kip had played tonight. All three drummers were total strangers.

Kneeling in the center of the room was a man in a white robe, stenciled with designs Mardee could not identify. At the very center of the open space was a pillar around which coiled a giant snake—no, Mardee realized, even as she recoiled in terror, a very realistically carved and painted one. The kneeling man was sprinkling colored powder through his fingers, sifting it into elaborate designs. The drumming went on, insistent, compelling, and the masses of people crowded into the room suddenly struck up a low, monotonous chant, as compelling as the drums. At first Mardee could not make out a single syllable; but as it was repeated, over and over, with numbing insistence, she began to make out a few words:

Damballa Wedo! Cote ou ye! Damballa Wedo! Cote ou ye ! Papa Legba, commande!

Legba, commands! Commande-yo!

Again and again these few words were repeated, with a chilling, brain-numbing strength. Mardee clung to the door post, feeling that otherwise she must rush inside, rush inside, and—and do what? She could not even guess. And the brain-pounding chant went on and on:

Damballa! Where are you? Damballa! Where are you? Papa Legba, command us! Legba, command us! Give us commands!

The kneeling man on the floor had finished the decoration, elaborate, many-colored designs which grew, under his thin sifting fingers, into flowering trees of color. He rose, grasped a strangely formed wand, and cried out in a dialect of Creole which contained—Mardee supposed—so many African words that she could understand none of it; he might as well have been speaking in tongues, and, for all she knew to the contrary, he was.

At the back three women, in white dresses, came dancing through the doorway, bearing baskets of flowers. From her hiding place Mardee recognized one figure: Fifine. There was no one else so tall, and those grim, hideous features were unmistakable. What, in God’s name, would Tante Emilie think if she knew her own maid was sneaking out at night to dance in secret voodoo ceremonies? What would the priest think? Mardee had long ceased to practice her religion, but now she discovered, in shock and dread, that she was crossing herself, and whispering words automatically from her childhood:

“Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum . . .”

She swallowed hard, forced herself to stop, forced her teeth not to chatter. Now the drums raised themselves to a wild shout; the chanting grew to a berserk noise, then stopped dead. Into the sudden silence came a small, fragile, white-gowned figure, dancing giddily in ecstatic zeal. She spun and kicked up skinny legs, exposing thin stringy old haunches, and called out to them, merrily, in creole of which Mardee could not understand a single word. And then Mardee, in shock and horror, recognized the faded, wrinkled features of Madame Thibaud!

It was Tante Emilie! But how changed! The last hint of the “Romanoff duchess” was gone in this crudely jigging, kicking, shouting old woman, in her white voodoo robes, calling out in patois. Mardee’s shock and horror created a gasping moan, but no one heard, for the drums had taken up their wild rhythm again. But the paralysis which held her there was broken; Mardee found herself able to move, and she fled, gasping, terrified, forgetting her bare feet, catching her ankles twice in vines that brought her crashing down full length, to lie there sobbing until she somehow got strength to scramble up and run on. At last she saw Maison Dominique looming over her, dark and lightless, wavering like a nightmare. She somehow slipped through the unbolted side door … no wonder she, sleepwalking, had found an unbolted door! Did all of Tante Emilie’s servants slip out at night to dance some unhallowed voodoo rites in the village? She was too numb, too dizzy and shaking, to manage the bolts. Shaking, she crept up the stairs, slipped into the bathroom to wash her feet, filthied by the bare ground, and fell into her bed.

Had it all been a sleepwalker’s dream? Already memory was beginning to numb her, to fog what had happened, and Mardee fell, exhausted, into sleep. Had any of it happened at all?

Six

Mardee woke late, and for a confused moment, looking around her quiet bedroom, she remembered nothing but bad dreams. The memory flooded back, overpowering her like the sun streaming in the window.

Some of it, at least, had been true. The cotton dressing gown, bought fresh and new yesterday in Port-au-Prince, lay on the floor, crumpled, bedraggled and filthy. But had any of the rest of it been true?

She might have walked in her sleep. But certainly she had not stolen, as a slave, from this house to meet a secret lover. That part, at least, had been a confused dream. But had the rest of it been a dream too? She could not—she could not believe the grotesque picture of Tante Emilie creeping out at night to dance at ceremonies whose very idea outraged her in the daytime. Not unless the old woman were an accomplished actress—or a multiple personality worthy of being written up as a psychiatrist’s most bizarre case history!

Most likely, sleepwalking, she had dreamed it all, from confused memories of the day before. The mad emperor who had built a mighty citadel and been stormed and driven to suicide by his own subjects; Kip playing on the voodoo drum, working them all up to a dancing madness, a mass hallucination—or had that, too, been one of her confused dreams? Mardee put her hands to her head, suddenly frightened. She didn’t know, any more, what was true and what was not!

She welcomed the harsh smell of coffee, brought by the clumsy Melanie, with fruit and rolls. Melanie had slopped the coffee into the saucer, and the cream had slopped over on the rolls, so that one of them was already soggy, but it didn’t matter. Mardee drank the coffee black, hoping it would clear her head. She welcomed Melanie’s very inefficiency, as the young girl went around picking up discarded clothing, looking only briefly at the filthy dressing gown before tossing it into a heap of soiled laundry. Melanie’s eyes looked heavy-lidded and drowsy, and Mardee wondered if the young girl had been among the women dancing in the old shuttered building in Cap Dominique. So many of the faces had been in shadows. Or had none of it ever happened at all? How could she ever find out? Did she want to find out?

Trying to banish ghosts and memories, she dressed and went downstairs, but at the sight of Robert in the lower hall, the memory surged up again. Had he been the kneeling man who sprinkled colored powder through his fingertips, making brilliant and obscure designs on the floor of the strange temple where the serpent twined about a pillar? She felt she could not bear never to know. How could she look into face after face, day after day, always asking herself: Is this one of the faces I saw, that night, dancing or drumming there? Robert seemed uneasy under her close scrutiny. “Mamzelle wishes … ?”

“Yes,” she said; this at least was clearly her duty. Whether or not Robert, or any other of the servants, sneaked out to hold voodoo rites in the night, twice now Mardee had found an unbolted door after Robert had supposedly locked up the house. She said, “Robert, are you certain you locked up the house carefully last night before you went to bed?”

“Mais certainement Mamzelle.” “Then,” she said, “someone makes a habit of unlocking the door afterward. Last night, the little door from the side hall”—she pointed—”was unbolted, and standing partially open.”

Something flickered in his face, but so briefly that Mardee wondered, afterward, if she had seen it at all.

Or was it simply shock, that she could so accuse him of neglecting his duty?

“But, Mamzelle,” he said, “c’est impossible, quoi.”

A flat denial, then. But Mardee stood her ground. “I saw it myself, Robert. And so did M’sieur Tybalt.”

“And did Mamzelle lock it again?” A polite, noncommittal inquiry, to which he obviously knew the answer. Mardee said, “No. I felt someone might have had business out of doors, and I did not wish to imprison him in the night air.”

Robert met her eyes blandly. “When I came downstairs this morning, Mamzelle, the door was locked and bolted as usual.”

“Then you have no explanation, Robert, for my finding the door unlocked?”

His face was smooth and unreadable, his tone so polite that she could not take offense. “Is it possible that Mamzelle was dreaming?”

The audacity of that took her breath away. She opened her mouth for a tart rejoinder, then was struck again by her own uncertainties. She had certainly dreamed some of it. Yes, she thought wretchedly, it is very possible that Mamzelle dreamed the whole damned thing. Had she ever left her bed at all last night? She gave up, and said, “Be sure it doesn’t happen again, Robert. Is Madame awake yet?”

“Fifine informs me that Madame is very tired and will keep to her bed today,” he said. Mardee wondered: Tired from too much dancing? But she could not ask that, either.

Would she ever know the truth? And what could she do about it if she did? Suppose Tante Emilie actually was in the habit of sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to listen to voodoo drums, sing curious and obscene creole chants to obscure African deities, and dance grotesque dances? What business was it of Mardee’s? It was a free country, and the old lady was—grimly Mardee paraphrased an old saying—free, black, and eighty-one. It wasn’t against any laws she knew about. In any case, Mardee was not a policewoman, and had not been invited here to meddle in her great-aunt’s religious practices. Tante Emilie might indeed be an old hypocrite, crying out in righteous indignation when Kip played a voodoo drum and her guests danced, only to slip away and dance to them herself that same night. But, even so, that was a matter for the old lady and her confessor.

And I might have dreamed it all, anyhow . . .

It seemed even more unlikely that night, when she sat at table with her great-aunt, fragile, dainty as a pre-Revolutionary aristocrat. Jewels winked on her fingers and glinted from the folds of lace at her throat; every gesture proclaimed the great lady. Mardee, watching her, decided it had been a sick, disgusting dream. The only thing was to put the whole thing right out of her mind.

And in the days following, it seemed, indeed, that it had been a dream. Mardee still had moments of looking curiously at some face in her aunt’s household, wondering if this face had been one she had seen there, in the curious temple beneath the painted serpent … but after all, any face might turn up in a dream, even the face of a stranger seen only once. And she had other things to occupy her mind, for day by day Tante Emilie seemed to fade, to grow more fragile. Mardee expressed concern, and begged her to send for a doctor, but the old woman smiled and patted her cheek.

“No doctor can cure old age, cherie.”

One day, however, Tante Emilie sent for a lawyer and was closeted with him for a long time; after this the lawyer sent for Mardee and required her to sign certain documents, and Mardee discovered that she had her aunt’s power of attorney, and that it was now her responsibility to order supplies for the household, to give orders for repairs and maintenance on Maison Dominique itself, and to pay the small army of servants— chambermaids, cleaning women, laundresses, cooks, under-cooks, and gardeners—who kept the estate run-rung. She had had no idea it was such a complicated business to run a household; her only experience had been the small flat she had shared during her brief marriage to Ted. She had never felt the slightest talent for domestic affairs, but she accepted it as a challenge and even began to enjoy the sense of power it gave her. She began to learn something about the business of the canefields, the sugar plantation which Tante Emilie still owned and ran—not, the lawyer said, because she had much interest in making more money, but in order that Maison Dominique might, as it had done all these years, continue to give employment to the men and women of the neighboring villages. The lawyer’s attitude was a mixture of deference and firm advice; it was obvious that he regarded her as her aunt’s lawful and logical heiress.

Brian called her every day, and drove out, two or three times a week, to dine with Mardee and her aunt. He was working hard now on his book, and seemed to spend enormous amounts of time locked into his hotel room with his typewriter, interrupting these spurts of work with field trips. He took Mardee along on some of these: a parade in Petionville, where dozens of groups of uniformed school children celebrated universal literacy; an unproved agricultural collective which had developed competitive marketing of coffee; the new Art Museum, featuring many paintings by the famous primitive Hector Hyppolite, who had been, Brian informed her, a voodoo priest by profession. He said this as calmly as he would have told her the man had been a plumber or dentist, and Mardee almost broke down then and told him about her strange sleepwalking dream—or had it been real after all? But Brian looked so calm, so rational, that Mardee could not imagine how to broach the subject without sounding mad.

The end of this period of calm came early one afternoon, when Mardee was summoned to the front hall to greet Brian, who had come early, and for once uninvited. He accepted her invitation to have coffee with her in the big downstairs breakfast room.

“What brings you here, Brian? I thought you were working hard to finish up the chapter on agricultural collectives.”

“I was,” he admitted, “but I’m playing hooky today.” He waved away the cream she offered, sipping his coffee black, and bit with gusto into a roll. “Your great-aunt’s cook certainly beats the one at my hotel! He bakes his croissants with the leftover scraps from the leather market. These are straight from Cloud Nine! Actually, love, I came to see Sebastian. He invited me to watch a day’s filming, and I’ve set up that deal I was talking about with Mm. Do you know what he’s doing today?”

“I’m not sure,” Mardee admitted. “Yesterday they finished the retakes on the crowd scenes, some stunt work and the rioting which will be spliced into the scenes of Port-au-Prince being burned down—it was called Saint-Domingue then, of course. The actual burning will be done with tabletop models—I gather there’s a special-effects man working on it in Hollywood right now—but the riots are being filmed live, here.”

“Well, far be it from me to interfere with the burning of Saint-Domingue,” Brian said, “but I would like to see him.”

“I’ll ask if he’s able to come—” She broke off as Robert entered with a stack of letters in his hand. He laid them before her, and she said, “Will you ask if M’sieur Wright will join us for a few moments, if he is free, Robert?”

“Certainly, Mamzelle,” he said, and went.

Mardee glanced at the stack of mail and started to lay it aside. Brian said, “Don’t mind me, go ahead and open your mail!”

“It probably isn’t anything important,” Mardee said, tearing open one which bore Marie-Claire Haskell’s familiar handwriting. “My mother’s sent me a press clipping of a revival of Folly Garden. Some critic compared my Jessica with Pauline James’s in the revival and said a white woman simply wasn’t right in the part after— listen to this, Brian!— ‘after the glowing and authoritative performance of Mardee Haskell, who created the role so superbly on Broadway last winter.’”

“Let me see it,” Brian said, laughing. “I wish I’d seen that. Glowing, yes. Authoritative? Sounds like a funny adjective to apply to you.”

Mardee chuckled. “That’s a critic for you,” she said, and slit the second envelope, a legal-sized one with the return address of a lawyer. She stared at the contents for so long that Brian looked up and said, in quick concern, “Bad news, Mardee?”

“No,” she said numbly, “good news, I suppose. My divorce is final. This is just a copy of the decree.”

“I didn’t know you were married,” he said, reaching out a hand, closing his strong fingers over hers.

“I’m not, now.” She stared again at the legal form, which stated that the divorce decree between Theodore Matlock and Marie-Louise Haskell had been granted on grounds of incompatibility. “It’s just—it seems so final, somehow. I can’t help feeling that it has nothing to do with me, that Ted and I were two other people—” She broke off, shaking her head, and put the legal form back in the envelope. ‘Tante Emilie doesn’t know I was married. We weren’t married in the Church, and to her it wouldn’t be legal,”

“I won’t tell her.” Brian was still holding her hands in his; after a moment he raised them, one after another, to his lips, kissing them gently. “Did you love him very much, Mardee?”

Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t think I ever loved him at all. I loved what I thought he was, and I think he loved what he thought I was. But neither of us ever really knew the other one at all. No, I didn’t love him, not really.”

“I’m glad,” Brian said, suddenly raising his eyes and looking straight into hers, “because if you had, I’d have felt that I had to wait to say some things to you that I want very much to say. But not just now, not with Sebastian likely to walk La here any minute. I wanted to tell you about that,” he added, with a quick and deliberate change of mood. “I’ve set up that business he was interested in—the first night I came out here for drinks, remember, he said he would be interested in a staged voodoo ceremony. I got permission for him to bring anyone in the film crew who wants to come. It’s a historical reenactment, and I gather they go to considerable lengths to be authentic. I told the professor that Sebastian’s movie was a serious attempt to reenact a period of Haitian history, and they were quite thrilled. I want you to come too.”

“I’m not sure I want to see it. Remember Kip and Donna and that accursed voodoo drum?”

He laughed. “Don’t be superstitious, darling! Tybalt’s an actor, he likes to dramatize himself, he got us all worked up too.” Looking into Brian’s laughing, matter-of-fact face, Mardee was suddenly ashamed of all her dark fantasies and fears.

“In modern Haiti,” Brian said didactically, “voodoo is no more real than Dracula on the Late Show! This is done by some African-folklore society, on a grant from one of the big Midwestern universities, and I gather from reading their handouts that it’s all very serious and sober and reverent. I don’t think even Kip Tybalt would be offended by it. It’s probably just about as dull as a Christmas pageant of the shepherds and the angels in your parochial school—you did have one, didn’t you? I always got stuck to be one of the angels, with the cutest crepe-paper wings!” He grinned at her, a droll, absurd grin. “That was the beginning and end of any idea I ever had of a stage career. -Remind me to tell you of how my halo got stuck one time. Anyway, I can guarantee not a single shudder. The only danger you might have to face is being’ bored into a coma, and being swept out of the hall afterward with the popcorn.”

Mardee laughed. She thought, I always feel like laughing, when I’m with Brian! “H it’s all that dull, why would anyone bother?”

She could almost hear the shrug in his voice. “Search me! But old Wright was all steamed up about wanting to see some voodoo, and I promised him I’d dig up the nearest thing I could to the real thing.” He laughed. “At least he didn’t ask me to dig up any zombies!”

They were still laughing when Sebastian came into the room. He accepted Mardee’s offer of coffee, saying he had been in too much of a hurry to breakfast with the film crew, and shook Brian’s hand.

Brian told him what he had arranged, and Sebastian looked exhilarated. “But this is marvelous! Tomorrow night? Then you must both be our guests at dinner before the ceremony.” He named one of the most notable restaurants in Port-au-Prince. Brian glanced at Mar-dee; she nodded, and he accepted for them both. After a moment Sebastian said hesitantly, “I would be happy to include Madame in the invitation, Mardee, but I have serious doubts as to whether she would approve. Remember how angry and indignant she was at Kip’s drumming, and how definite the priest was on that score. I don’t want to offend her religious prejudices.”

Mardee remembered, like a bizarre nightmare, the dream in which she had seen her great-aunt capering grotesquely to the sound of the voodoo drums, calling out in bawdy Creole—no. No. That had never happened, surely it was only a dream…

“She is growing very old and feeble, Sebastian. She never accepts invitations now. She told me the other day that she has not left Maison Dominique in ten years.”

Sebastian looked relieved, although he expressed polite regrets about Madame’s failing health. “But you must come, Mardee, as our hostess.”

“I will, unless Tante Emilie should need me,” she promised. “I always go up to her after breakfast, to see what especially needs to be done, or if she has any particular plans.” She rose, leaving Brian and Sebastian at the table, saying, “I will speak to her now, Sebastian, and then I can be more definite.”

This conference with Tante Emilie was a daily ritual. In theory they conferred about the day’s meals, and any servant who might need special instructions, but increasingly now, each day, Madame Thibaud had ended by saying with a tired smile “Arrange it all as you think best, ma petite.”

She found Madame still in bed, despite the lateness of the hour, her silver coffee service still on her bedside table. She was nibbling listlessly at some fruit. She listened politely to Mardee’s accounts of a few household affairs. Then Mardee said, “Tante Emilie, Brian and I have been invited to dine with Sebastian Wright and the members of the cast in Port-au-Prince tomorrow night.

before going on to a—to an entertainment there. Will you very much mind dining alone that evening?”

“Tomorrow?” Tante Emilie asked, and for a moment Mardee almost hoped that Madame would command her presence here instead. Despite Brian’s reassurances, she was still extremely unwilling to involve herself in these dark fantasies out of Haiti’s past But Madame Thibaud smiled, the death’s-head grin which seemed, day by day, to give more prominence to the old woman’s skull.

“To be sure, cherie, go and enjoy yourself. And be certain to give my kindest remembrances to your friend Brian.” She used the word ami, and Mardee remembered that it could also mean lover. She blushed, and Tante Emilie patted her hand.

“He is a very fine young man, Marie-Louise, you must not keep him waiting too long.” Suddenly she looked exhausted, and settled back on her pillow. Mar-dee bent to kiss the old woman’s cheek, and slipped out of the room.

While she was upstairs, Brian had been invited to watch the day’s filming, and he was discussing it interestedly with Sebastian. Brian took it for granted that she would accompany them, and Mardee agreed, though hesitantly. There was, after all, nothing she needed to do here. The house, with its small army of servants, virtually ran itself. After a moment she identified, with some amusement, the cause of her disquiet.

I don’t want Donna Royce to think I’m making a play for Sebastian again! But, after all, what better way to dispel that notion than to turn up on the lot with a man of her own in tow? She took Brian’s hand, almost defiantly, as they walked out to the studio car.

Margaret greeted her cordially, and Kip’s smile made her breath catch. She thought, angry at herself, An actor, turning on the charm! Brian is worth a dozen of him!

He said softly, while Sebastian was showing Brian what they were doing with the crowded extras, “You have been avoiding us, ma belle. Why?”

She smiled at him and said lightly, “Don’t be silly!

After all, I’m a working girl, and Tante Emilie has needed me.”

He lowered his voice. “Has Donna been—catty to you?”

“No, really, everyone has been charming, but my great-aunt’s health is failing, and I have wanted to stay near her.” She changed the subject quickly. “What are you doing here, with all these extras?”

He pointed to some wooden barricades that had been built up across the street. “Just crowd scenes, to be spliced into the special effects being done in Hollywood. A stunt double I have never seen will do the dangerous leaps and the elaborate scenes of danger; he will do them in a duplicate of this lot, built for Hollywood. But I must make the scenes with the crowds, and the close-ups where they will splice my face into the routines of danger he is doing.” He smiled wryly. “I suppose that is fame and fortune. Always before I have done my own stunt work, but Sebastian has told me that the insurance people will not permit it now, for if I scratch my famous face or twist my important ankles then the whole schedule comes to a halt” He grimaced. “It still seems to me something less than honest I am still, I suppose, a boy from the villages of Haiti at heart.”

All Mardee could say to him was a flippant, casual “Well, that’s show business,” and he quirked up his eyebrow again.

“How well I know. I suppose it is the price I pay, but it is a strange business, ours, Marie-Louise—” He broke off with a rueful laugh. He said, “I cannot remember the other name. Once I thought I had learned to speak good English, but here, hearing cradle always, I become again Christophe and not Kip.”

“I don’t mind,” she said; on his lips Marie-Louise sounded quite natural. A makeup man summoned him, and he laughed again. “Now I must go to have my face made up with blood which they were afraid I would get in truth if I did my own stunt scenes. Will I see you afterward, at this affair Sebastian is arranging? It is a travesty, but Sebastian is very eager that I shall come.”

“I’ll be there,” she promised, and he went off with the makeup man.

The filming today was tedious and repetitive, one take after another of the crowds surging through narrow wooden doors and climbing barricades, takes of doors going down before the crowds, close-up after close-up of Kip’s face, angry, excited, streaming with blood, urging on his followers. After a time Mardee lost interest and moved away down the -street of Cap Dominique. Small Henri was watching from the rails of a low wooden fence, at some distance from the scene of the filming, and she remembered that he was the son of Kip’s sister. It was not surprising that he should have come to watch his famous relative. She walked toward him, and he recognized her with a little bobbing bow.

“Mamzelle is still wearing the sunglasses I fetched for her,” he said delightedly. “Did you know that I was in the cinema, Mamzelle?”

“Yes, I saw you.”

“I would be there today, but there are no children wanted for these scenes of the war,” he said. “Look, I have new shoes from Port-au-Prince.” He stuck out a foot, encased in a bright red American sneaker. “I bought them myself, with my own money from working in the film, and I have bought a milk goat, so that Ma-man will always have milk for her coffee.”

“I am sure that your mother is proud of you,” she said kindly.

Henri pointed at Sebastian, who was talking to Kip. At this distance their words were inaudible. Kip was a dreadful sight, his face apparently streaming blood, but Henri said importantly, “Mamzelle must not be frightened, it is not blood but cosmgtique. Does Mamzelle know what they say about le gros blanc?”

The idiom meant, she knew, only the white boss, the big white man. She said indulgently, “What do they say, Henri?”

“They say he is le gros blanc returned, in truth, that he has come back to take off the curse from Cap Dominique. In the war, Mamzelle, a thousand years ago or so”—Mardee remembered that time had no reality to children, sad two hundred years, to them, might be a thousand or a million—”le gros blanc, the old monsieur from France who was killed by the slaves, they say that he cursed the countryside here, that he would walk the ground cursing, until another blanc ruled at Maison Dominique. And now they say that M’sieur Sebastien”—he gave it the French pronunciation—”has come again to take off the curse. Is Mamzelle going to marry le gros blanc?”

Mardee burst out laughing. “No indeed, Henri.”

He tilted his head and looked up at her, quizzically. “Why not, Mamzelle? He is rich, and then he would remain at Maison Dominique and would take off the curse forever.”

Her laughter was uneasy. “That is not why people get married, petit gosse. And Maman was very angry at you for telling ghost stories, was she not? I do not think I should listen to them, should I?”

He hung his head, scraping his new sneaker on the fence. She thought of Fleur, who had left them so suddenly. She suspected that Robert had sent Henri’s mother away because he had overheard her warning Mardee that it was dangerous here, that she should not stay. But she missed Flour’s competence, her cheerful company, and Melanie was far from satisfactory. Tante Emilie had placed Mardee virtually in charge of Maison Dominique—certainly her authority extended far enough to cover reengaging the personal maid she preferred! If Robert did not approve, that was his affair. She glanced at the camera crew. Brian was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching with apparent absorption as the ragged crowd surged, for at least the tenth time, through the now splintery doorway.

Mardee said with sudden resolution, “Will you show me where you live, Henri? I should like to talk to your mother. Don’t worry,” she added with a smile, “I shall not tell her that you have been naughty and repeated ghost stories to me against Pere Etienne’s orders!”

He grinned shyly at her. “La-bas,” he said, pointing. “If Mamzelle will walk down the other way from the cinema crew, and turn to her right beside the church, she will find a house with purple flowers on a trellis and a small white milk goat tied so she cannot nibble Ma-man’s flowers. Does Mamzelle wish me to show her the way?” he offered, but looked wistfully back at the site of the filming.

Mardee shook her head. “I can find my way. Stay and watch, if you will,” she said, and Henri climbed happily back to his vantage post on the fence.

Mardee walked in the direction he had indicated. The street of Cap Dominique was deserted; even the single small shop had closed its doors. She supposed that the whole population of Cap Dominique was on holiday, either working as extras in the film or watching the unexpected excitement. At the far end of the long street she saw the building, tightly shuttered and boarded, where she had seen—or dreamed that she had seen—the lights and the curious rites, the night of her sleepwalking, and her dream … if it had been a dream. She stared at the boarded windows, wondering if, on opening the door, she would see the center post, the wonderfully lifelike carved serpent, the brilliant paintings on the walls, the remains of the colored designs on the dirt floor … Tentatively she put a hand on the latch, but it was tightly shut and bolted. Of course. What had she expected? If the place was a voodoo temple, of course it would be kept locked against intruders or accidental profanation. And if it was an innocent storage building or warehouse, it would be locked up against thieves … But then, Kip had told her that there were no thieves in the villages. Maybe whoever owned the place had less faith in his fellow man than did Christophe Thibault!

Mardee walked around to the back door, where she had seen the women enter. Feeling foolish, she put out her hand to that door, looking around uneasily to see if she was observed. There was no one in the street but a stray goat or two, and a few scratching chickens. She laid her hand on the latch.

It gave, and she opened the door.

The place was empty. Bare, clean, and dark, light shut out by the boarded windows, it was wholly empty.

There was a center post supporting the roof, yes. But it was a plain wood beam, with no sign or carving or painted serpent. The walls were plain whitewash, with no sign of colorful paintings. The floor was beaten earth, swept perfectly clean and flat.

So it had been a dream, then, no more than a dream. And she was trespassing where she had no business to be. She went out into the street, sighing with relief, under the calm scrutiny of the goats and chickens.

A dream … or she had stepped back in time, to a voodoo temple which had—perhaps—been on this site two hundred years ago? But in the dream she had peopled it with those who lived now at Maison Dominique. A dream, a silly, superstitious dream, no more.

Firmly dismissing it from her mind, Mardee took the turn at the church and quickly found the house with the trellis of purple flowers. A small black-and-white goat was indeed tethered at one edge of the yard; there was a small garden patch, with tomatoes, hot chili peppers, and other vegetables she did not recognize, growing in neat rows. She knew she had reached the right place when she saw Fleur stooping over the rows of tomatoes, pulling weeds from the neatly tended rows. She was barefoot, wearing a pink-and-white cotton dress and a print kerchief twisted around her head. Mardee watched her without speaking for a moment, conscious that she was being intrusive. Fleur might, after all, have left of her free will, giving illness in her family as a polite, face-saving excuse.

The woman looked up, saying with a faint gasp of shock, “Mamzelle!”

Mardee came to the gate, and Fleur straightened up slowly, some green leaves in her hand. She went toward the gate and fed the leaves to the small goat.

“I was in the village, and I spoke to Henri. He told me he had bought a milk goat with his own money from the film”

Fleur smiled faintly, with pride. “He is a good boy.” Absent-mindedly she pulled a few more leaves and fed them to the goat.

“I came to see if you could come back to work at Maison Dominique, Fleur. The maid I have been given is not competent. Robert said you had left us to nurse someone in your family who is ill, so I have come to see if there is anything to be done. I would like to have you as my maid.” She felt awkward.

Fleur’s smile slid off. “Gran’ Dieu, Mamzelle, you should go away at once!”

Mardee felt shocked and upset. “Away from here? Away from your house, Fleur?”

“Mamzelle,” Fleur said awkwardly, her dark face stubborn, “I am at your service, my house is yours, mats je vous en prie, you must go away from here. Away from Cap Dominique, away from the island, back to the States, Mamzelle. I beg you, Mamzelle, your mother was my friend when we were children, I beg you for your mother’s sake to go away at once!”

Mardee was shocked and bewildered at the vehemence in Fleur’s voice. “Why, Fleur, how can I do that? My great-aunt is old, she is failing day by day, she needs me—”

“That one, she needs no one and nothing, Mamzelle. For Madame, it is between her and the good God. But for you—Mamzelle, will you not listen to me? It is dangerous for you here!”

“What is all this, Fleur?” Mardee said impatiently. “You started to say something like this before, and then you went away—”

“Out, Mamzelle, I tried to warn you, and Robert, he heard, and sent me away from where I have been and my mother before me—all our lives—”

“But I want you to come back, Fleur,” Mardee begged. “Don’t worry about Robert, I will speak to him. But won’t you tell me what you mean? How could it be dangerous for me?”

“You are of the blood, Mamzelle. I can say no more.” She looked around anxiously, and Mardee sensed that even here, in the open street of Cap Dominique, in the blazing sun, the little nanny goat poking an inquisitive head at her knees, Fleur was frightened. She was actually shivering.

“Good heavens, Fleur, doesn’t your priest tell you not to be superstitious? You scolded Henri for telling ghost stories, have you been listening to them yourself? Don’t tell me you believe in curses and marts and all that?”

Fleur shuddered visibly. She said, in a low voice of entreaty, “Mamzelle, do not speak of such things, even in jest!”

Mardee sighed in resignation. Trying to recapture the common-sense part of the conversation, she said, “Won’t you come back to work for us, Fleur? You said yourself, you have served our family for a long time.”

“I cannot, Mamzelle, truly I cannot, I can never enter that house again.”

Mardee frowned, shaking her head. “Fleur, you were my mother’s friend. For her sake, then, will you explain all this to me?”

“Mais … did Marie-Claire tell you nothing, then?” Fleur hesitated, visibly unsure. “Then it is not for me to take such a liberty. The best thing you could possibly do, Mamzelle, would be to go back to the States and ask her yourself. Perhaps, now you have seen, she would be willing to say more, but it is not for me …” She moved away slowly.

“Fleur—” The woman did not turn or look at her. She went into the small frame house and closed the door. Mardee stood in the street, feeling rebuffed and dismayed. The gap between Fleur and herself was foolish, based on a class difference which had ceased to exist decades ago. Yet it was there, and she could do nothing to cross it. She felt it more strongly than she had ever felt any color line. She and Fleur were both black women; there should not be such a difference. In the States there would not have been such a difference.

But this was not die States. This was Haiti, and there was nothing she could do to change it. Mardee walked slowly back down the deserted street, watched only by the small goat.

Seven

“I wish we were going dancing instead,” Brian murmured.

Mardee herself felt a strange ambivalence. She was curious, eager to see for herself what was actually behind the sensational stories she had heard of voodoo. Sebastian had done the thing in style, commanding the finest meal to be had in the best restaurant in Port-au-Prince, but for Mardee it had been uncomfortable. Sebastian had tried to maneuver it so that Mardee Was next to him, and Donna had—with almost equal subtlety, but not quite enough—interposed herself. Donna was drinking too much—in a ladylike fashion, but still too much. She had refused an aperitif for a double Martini, and had had it refilled twice during the meal. Mardee was nervously afraid that before the evening ended there would be unpleasantness.

Why, she wondered, was Sebastian doing this? H he wanted to show his displeasure with Donna, why should he drag Mardee into it? And yet—she couldn’t help it—it was flattering. She faced it: She enjoyed being pursued by Sebastian Wright, the famous producer. She would never have gone out of her way to attract his attention, but she was enjoying it just the same!

Donna had heard Brian’s remark and took it up at once.

“Now, there’s an idea,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Why don’t we go dancing and skip all this voodoo rubbish? Voodoo!” Her voice was thinned with scorn. “Who needs it!”

“I do.” Sebastian’s voice was suave and almost deadly. “You are, of course, perfectly welcome to stay here and dance if you wish. I will have the limousine call for you at whatever hour you desire, to return to Maison Dominique alone.”

“I’m tempted.” Donna pouted. “Let’s vote on it! How many of you would rather stay here an’—an’ dance with me, and let Sebastian go to his old voodoo ceremony all by himself!”

Mardee wondered: Does she knew what she is doing to herself? Is she that sure of Sebastian? Or is she testing her power over him?

There was an uneasy silence. Kip said, “Come, Donna, Sebastian is our host and is entitled to his plans—”

Donna tossed her pretty head. “I didn’t ask you to stay and dance!” She looked across the table and purred, “Brian, wouldn’t you rather stay here and dance with me?”

Without a doubt, Donna Royce was one of the most beautiful women in the world. Mardee wondered if there was any man who could resist that kind of direct pitch. Brian looked at Donna, a wistful, almost hungry look. “I can’t think of any man alive who wouldn’t rather dance with you, Miss Royce—”

“Donna,” she purred, with her captivating smile.

He could not take his eyes off her. “Donna—you know I would. But I arranged this, I have to be there. It’s business.”

“Business!” She pouted, and Mardee thought, Not more than one woman in a hundred actually looks prettier when she’s sulking!

Donna reached out to Brian as they left the table. “You’re sympathetic,” she murmured, “and both of us would rather be dancing. Let’s stick together, shall we?”

Brian took her arm as they moved toward the two limousines which were to take their party to the hall of the folklore society. He seemed to be in a daze. Typical man, Mardee thought in irritation, somebody with a pretty face moves in and he’s helpless! Mardee was glad to see Kip moving toward her. He said, with his charming smile, “Our gracious leading lady has, as usual, arranged things to suit herself without consulting prior claims, I see. It is no wonder that our Donna feels no need to learn about witchcraft—she has no need of it to attract every man in her vicinity!”

“And are you immune, then?” she bantered.

” “Familiarity breeds …‘“He left the quotation unfinished. “I have, perhaps, seen too much of feminine beauty in Hollywood. Beauty, with nothing to complete it, is eventually dull.” He offered her his arm.

Sebastian, who had delayed to give a generous tip to the waiters, moved toward them and said, in his overbearing way, “Splendid, Mardee, now I can have you to myself this evening!”

Sh& looked up, smiling, suddenly very sure of herself. He was her host, she did not want to offend him, but she was not going to let him have everything his own way, either. Gaily, she offered him one arm and Kip the other. She said, “Who could possibly choose between you? I am lucky enough to have you both this evening!”

“Quelte tact, man Dieu!” Kip murmured, laughing, but Sebastian did not hear. Mardee felt elated, aware of the envious looks of the guests in the hotel lobby as they went toward the waiting limousines. She knew she was looking her best, in the orange-and-gold flowered silk caftan, between the famous producer and the handsomest film star of the century. Donna may be a beauty, she thought with secret elation, but I’ve got the handsomest men—both of them! Even the other men in the party, gathered together in bachelor solidarity—the cameramen, the scriptwriter, two or three of the technical crew, Paul Barry seemed to gather into a stag line through which she passed, followed by admiring glances. Later, when she stepped out of Sebastian’s Rolls before the watching eyes in the street, she suddenly knew, This is what it would be like to be a star, escorted to premieres … For one night, she was actually upstaging Donna Royce!

This, she thought, will teach Donna to attach my men …

Seats had been placed all around the edges of the large, square hall. Brian found a seat beside Donna. Donna was again wearing the gold gown slit almost indecently up one thigh; it showed nearly all there was to show of Donna, and even Mardee, with the wrong hormones to appreciate the display to the full—as Brian was obviously doing—found herself reluctantly admiring the woman’s beauty, as she might have admired a perfect painting or sculpture. Sebastian’s face was like a thundercloud, and Mardee was grateful for Kip close beside her, for his arm linked through hers.

The walls were bare and painted white, but all around them, from the molding halfway to the top, cloth tapestries were suspended, with paintings of the kind Mardee had heard called “primitives.” They were representations, in bright, crude colors, of what seemed to be thronging ghosts and spirits. There were designs among them reminiscent of the paintings on Donna’s drum. At the center was a carved pillar, with a banner from it with a coiling serpent in brilliant colors. All around the hall was a multitude of silk flags with elaborate designs. She supposed each of them had some religious significance. The hall was silent, except for the rustling feet of the spectators. Kip shifted his weight restlessly. Mardee remembered the day when he had pleaded with Donna against the profanation of the drum. This certainly meant a great deal to him. Was he worried at the thought that this too might be a form of profanation? He had called it the religion of his grandmother.

Kip murmured in an undertone, “They have gone to some trouble to try to recapture the atmosphere of the ‘oumphor, the temple of voudoun. The silk flags are each constructed to represent a mystere—that one, for instance, the green-and-white, represents Saint James, riding on his white horse. Later they will be carried around the ‘oumphor, to confer their psychic power on the worshippers.”

“They are very beautiful,” Mardee murmured.

He nodded. “In the old days, there were worshippers who would impoverish themselves to provide the most beautiful and luxurious drapeaux, the finest perfumes and ornaments for their temple.”

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said a quiet voice, and Mardee raised her eyes to see a stout, bespectacled man in a dark business suit. “I am Professor Anton Rigby of the Institute of African-Haitian studies, and we are pleased to welcome you this evening to this reenactment of a voudoun ceremony of the Rada rite. Fire regulations make it necessary to request that there be no smoking in the hall, and we request that no flash-camera photographs be taken during the ceremony. Before we begin, I would like to familiarize you with the ritual equipment. The hall has been decorated in the manner of a houtnfort, or peristyle. Notice the central post, which is dedicated to Damballa, the serpent god, who opens the way for all the other gods. The paintings around the peristyle—” With a long pointer he went around the hall, explaining one after another. Mardee followed the lecture, with about as much interest as she would have given the narrator at a travelogue.

“The small ship carved of wood and leather which hangs from the ceiling is the Sacred Boat, dedicated to Erzulie Freda, who in the pantheon of voudoun represents the Virgin Mary and is also the Goddess of the Moon—”

Mardee frowned, touching the necklace of red beads she wore beneath the neck of her frock. Erzulie, Where had she heard that name before? Somewhere, surely …

A soft sound of drumming began. An invisible hand drew a curtain aside, revealing a dais behind the professor, where three men, in white suits with crimson sashes wound around their waists, were playing three drums of varying sizes. Professor Rigby’s voice droned on, telling them that each drum was ritually consecrated and baptized. The largest drum was called maman, and was related to the chromosphere (Whatever that is, Mardee thought); the second one was known, rationally, as the seconde, and was related to the photosphere; and the smallest was called boula, and was related to the solar nucleus. Kip was listening with an air of polite interest. Sebastian leaning forward, straining to catch every word. Brian and Donna, at the far side of the hall, were holding hands and not listening at all.

“The mystere of the drums is called Papa Hourfthor, and all of the musical instruments form a coherent whole of invocation—” Professor Rigby went on, and Mardee wished he would be silent and let them listen to the drums. She tried to focus on their sound and filter out his intruding voice, telling them that the part of the houngan, or presiding priest, would be enacted tonight by Professor Pierre Raphael of the Institute, that the ritual wand he carried was called an assort, and that other participants in the ceremony were members of the Institute of African-Haitian Folklore Studies. He talked a little about the university research grant which supported their studies. Then, mercifully, he was silent, and another man—another professor, she supposed— draped in long white robes, came forward. The sound of the drums grew louder, filling the hall with their compelling rhythms. At the center of the hall, beneath the post with the serpent banner, he knelt and began sifting colored powder through his fingers, drawing an elaborate design on the floor. As he knelt, almost motionless except for his quick-moving fingers, swirling colorful designs, adding more and more colors with his little bags of powder, Mardee felt a slow prickle of ice creeping up her spine, her upper arms rising with gooseflesh.

She had seen this, just this, in her bizarre dream . . .

She might have guessed that there would be drums. .She might have reasonably imagined, or deduced, that the walls would be covered with banners and paintings of a religious nature. But—if it had been a dream—how could she have guessed that the officiating priest would kneel and draw designs on the floor of the temple, which Kip had called ‘oumphor and the professor had made into hownfort? She felt sucessive waves of chill racing up her spine as Professor Rigby’s dull voice told them that the ritual patterns being made on the floor were called vevts, and that each separate symbol had a special relationship to one of the loa, or voodoo saints, sometimes known as gods … Her teeth were chattering. She welcomed the warmth of Kip’s arm through hers. It was the only warmth anywhere. The drums, like waves of sound, seemed actually in time with the chills shaking her.

A door at the back opened, and a group of women, all very neatly dressed in white dresses, and each carrying a candle or a torch, danced in, in slow procession, winding all around the hall, lighting torches in fixed brackets all around the hall, until it was blazing with light. The white-robed houngan continued his swirling patterns of color. The women, finished with the torchlighting, passed the torches to the back. Mardee was concentrating on the stage business now, clinging to her fading sense of reality.

Had that night been real, then? Any of it? All of it?

The drum music heightened to a frenzy. The women were carrying the ritual flags around the hall now, ceremoniously dipping them in respect as they passed the central post with its serpent banner. The pseudo-houngan on the floor had finished with his veves; they covered a good half of the floor space, to the very feet of the chairs where the spectators were sitting. Kip held Mardee’s arm tightly against his body. Sebastian was leaning forward, his mouth a little open, his eyes avid with interest.

The white-robed houngan rose and took up the as-son, making mystical gestures with it. The women burst out singing, an odd, monotonous chant:

O bon Legba, ouvre le barriere— O bon Legba, ouvre le barriere—

The chant went on and on, and again Mardee felt the slow icy prickles enfolding her. Legba, open the gateway! Legba, open the gateway! It was not the same chant. Not the same at all. But the name was the same. Legba.

Some of it must have been real, then. . .

Professor Rigby’s voice intoned gracelessly over the chant, “This is an invocation to Legba, one of the major spirits, to open the gates to the spirit world …”

Mardee was grateful for the prosaic narration. It helped reassure her that she was not crouching unseen outside that little building in Cap Dominique, watching the unbelievable.

But I looked there, yesterday. It was empty, clean . ..

The drums had started again. Somewhere a flashbulb popped, exploding brilliant light around the room. Mar-dee felt Kip twitch, shaken by its impact On her other side Sebastian reached for her hand, his grip tight and excited. Mardee’s head was swimming. For some reason she remembered her dream, the dream in which she had been her own black ancestress, the freed slave who had been bought, freed, bribed with beautiful things, and yet had stolen out at night to meet a black lover of her own … Mardee shut her eyes, feeling dizzy. They had begun another song, in such a corrupt dialect of Creole that Mardee could not distinguish a single word. The professor was explaining it, but she felt too sick and shaken to listen.

There were more chants. There were long cradle prayers to a variety of saints, both Catholic and voudoun. And always, always, there were the drums, in counterpoint, working together and separately, in shifting, subtle, rhythm. Mardee had never heard such drumming. Her arm held tight against Kip’s body, it seemed that the drumming was moving through them both, binding them together … Was this an illusion too? The drums pleaded, called, commanded … They were speaking to her, demanding an answer…

There was a long colloquy in creole. Mardee felt Kip’s arm tighten in hers, rigid as death. A white-robed acolyte brought in a chicken: a plain, red-feathered rooster, struggling a little under the man’s arm. The houngan took the chicken between his hands, making ritual signs over it. He set it down in the very center of one of the veves, an ornate foliated pattern of red and blue leaves. It remained motionless, and Mardee remembered a carnival trick she had once been shown for hypnotizing a chicken so that it would remain completely still and not move at all. It was perfectly simple, she reminded herself, not magical at all … but the deathly stillness of the creature made her shiver.

The drums cried death. The drams cried sacrifice. The houngan was fingering a knife. Mardee closed her eyes, shuddering. There was a great flutter and squawk—and someone shot off a flashbulb.

Mardee felt Kip twitch as if stifling laughter. His eyes met hers for a moment, reflecting the glimmer of a smile. Two of the acolytes were doing something with a bowl and the chicken’s blood, and another great chant had broken out, but the spell had been broken.

Professor Rigby presided over the final chants and drummings and torchlight circlings of the hall with perfumes and flag wavings. He thanked them all for coming, and reminded them that donations to the African-Haitian Institute were always welcome. Sebastian drew a long, released sigh and went over to speak with the professor as the hall’s audience began to drain out. Mardee stood beside Kip, still clinging to his hand. She was no longer trembling, but she felt sick.

Brian and Donna came toward them. Brian’s eyes sought Mardee’s with an inquiring, apologetic glance. Donna wrinkled her nose in disgust, and said “Yecch! Talk about gross!”

Sebastian was striding toward them. “I asked permission to film it next time. He said he would be quite pleased.”

“Your curiosity is satisfied, Sebastian?” Kip’s French accent sounded very strong.

“I was disappointed,” Sebastian said slowly. “It seemed—unreal somehow, There was a moment of power, just before the blood sacrifice. But then, that flashbulb …” He shrugged. He turned to the women and asked, “What did you think?”

Donna made an expressive grimace. “I knew I’d rather stay and dance. If voodoo is long gone, I’d say good riddance!”

Sebastian’s face contorted with something like pain. “And yet I had the feeling there might have been something … something very powerful. If it had been done the right way. Kip, you know what I mean, don’t you? Mardee?” Mardee swallowed. “The drumming, that was real, that was the best part. And even so—if the professor had kept his mouth shut …” She frowned, trying to decide what had made it suddenly unreal. “Kip’s drumming was better, the other night. It was real to Kip. This was a—a performance.”

Brian said quietly, “I warned you, of course, that this was only a reenactment.”

Sebastian said impatiently, “It’s left me more frustrated than ever.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Good God, Dawes, I wasn’t blaming you, I’m not that ungrateful! But it just showed me how much more there could have been!” He shook his head, his shock of white hair flying about his face. “Ill never be content now until I manage to see the real thing!”

“God forbid,” Donna said, “this was a lot closer to the real thing than I care to see. Like the kid said about penguins, it told me a lot more about voodoo than I ever wanted to know.”

Sebastian ignored her. His features were tense with frustration. Mardee thought, This is the core of his obsession, the very heart of his love affair with Haiti. He said, “Kip, you know about these things, Could you stage a reenactment more authentic than this?”

“Perhaps, but I would not,” Kip said. “It is not to play with, this. The Professor’s performance, eh bien, bon, it is not working with power, there is no—no consecration, and it is good that there is not. Strange things can happen—”

“Are you talking about psychic power, then, Kip?”

“No, it’s a power more subtle—the power that the— the unseen things stir up in the hearts and minds of the people who participate. That is the magic of the voudoun,” Kip said, fumbling for words. “The—the passions and the frenzies which it rouses in the minds of those who hear and see and take part. You cannot get into this for curiosity, Sebastian!”

“It is not curiosity,” said Sebastian, and his features were drawn as if in pain. “I have to know! Tell me what was wrong about this, Kip! You know—don’t you?”

Kip looked unhappy and trapped. He swore softly under his breath. “Not here,” he said, looking around the emptying hall.

“In the car, then.” Sebastian went off through the chill night air to find the car and driver in the street.

Kip shut his eyes. He looked miserable. He said to Mardee, his voice shaking, “What can I do? It is not idle curiosity, I know he is sincere. And yet…”

She said, wrung by his unhappiness, “If you don’t want to tell him, Kip, no one can make you! Tell him it’s a matter of religion.”

“If I felt it was idle curiosity, if I thought him only eager to exploit it, I would do exactly that,” Kip said, his voice trembling, “yet I recognize what is genuine in him. I cannot describe it, the need to know the reality, the search—I feel it is not right to deny him that. And what he said is true—that he can help to remove the old, the evil beliefs and superstitions …”

Mardee said, very gently, “Kip, how do you know so much about it?”

They were alone in the street. Brian and Donna had vanished into the other car; Sebastian had gone in quest of the Rolls. “I told you—I am a bastard. My mother— she became a pious Catholic. I always reminded her of her—of her one mistake, the one time, as they say in creole, when her foot slipped. My grandmere, she was a bocor, an herb doctoress. She was also a mambo—a priestess of voudoun. When I was a boy, it seemed she was the only one who cared for me. She taught me all she knew. It was her dearest wish that I should be a houngan—and then she died, and I returned to live with my mother, and she had all of my grandmere’s things burned. I was fifteen, I was already hounsi-canzo—an initiate, half changed, as they say. But my mother, and Fleur, and the priest, all together, they convinced me it was evil. They made me feel I had been seduced by an old woman’s dreams. I felt—I don’t know how to tell you, Mardee—the most terrible revulsion for the whole thing!”

Under the dun street lights, he looked pale and drawn. “I left the island. I worked my way on a ship to Martinique, I became a drummer, then a dancer, at last an actor. I thought I had forgotten.”

His hands went out to Mardee, as if in appeal. In quick sympathy, she clasped them in her own.

“I have not forgotten,” he said, very low. “I am of the blood. This is my world, Mardee, however far I may have come. I cannot forget! Gran’ Maitre—it is still very real to me, the unseen world!”

He put his arms around her, not tightly, but so they stood close together, his forehead just touching hers, his lips so lightly in contact with hers that it was not even a kiss.

“It is still there, still real to me … not this tonight, it is a nonsense, it is to laugh … but what this has roused in me, in my heart, in my blood. I think the other day, when Donna bought that accursed drum, it was sent to me, to remind me of what I was, what I am, that I will never be free—”

“Kip—Christophe—no,” Mardee entreated, feeling the trembling that took him, head to foot. “That is only the past, the future is for you to choose—”

“I am not sure,” he said despairingly. “Gran’ Dieu, why did I ever come back?”

Sebastian strode toward them. “The car will be here in a minute.” His face darkened as he saw them standing close together, but he said only, as they slowly moved apart, “Kip, I’ve got to know, I’ve got to get it into the film. People have got to know that it can be real. Real, not like that thing we saw tonight—you know what a blasphemy it was.”

“You are right, Sebastien. It is an insult to the memory of my grandmother’s religion that some men should think that this—this is all there is to the voudoun.”

“Then you’ll help me to find the real thing?” Sebastian demanded, his eyes blazing with excitement.

Kip said, clutching Mardee’s hand so lightly that it hurt her, “Very well, Sebastien. I will try. I can promise nothing—it has been years—but I will try.”

Eight

With her coffee and rolls the next morning, Melanie brought Mardee a note from Sebastian, inviting her to watch the retakes of the crowd scenes which had been interrupted her first day by rain and thunder.

Mardee was in a strange mood. She put on her prettiest dress, fastened tiny ruby earrings in her pierced lobes, and went down to join them. If she thought of Brian, it was only momentarily, with a flicker of contempt from last night. I never thought he was dumb enough to take Donna seriously! At the back of her mind there was a touch of wounded vanity, too. If Brian Dawes was the kind to go sniffing around after some famous actress whose talents were in her cleavage, two could play that game!

Once again the streets of Cap Dominique had been transformed into the site of a slave revolt. Men, women, and children in the faded dress of slaves crowded the streets. Sebastian was at the far end of the street, his shock of white hair standing head and shoulders above the crowd.

Paul and Margaret were being helped into the coach, but Kip was waiting for his takes, and she saw Henri at his side, chattering in Creole. Somehow it warmed her that he did not reject his small nephew, even though he was the child of one of Madame’s servants. He came quickly toward her and took her hands warmly between his own. His look said that he would rather kiss her, but that before the watching crowds it was neither the tune nor the place. The delight in his voice as he said, “I’m glad you came,” was a promise.

I always told myself I’d never get involved with an actor. What’s happened to me?

Henri made his little bow and asked, “Is Mamzelle also in the great cinema?”

She shook her head, laughing. “Not in this one.”

“A pity,” Kip said, raising his eyebrows. “Somehow I think you might pay more attention to your work than Mamzelle Donna., Again she has exercised a star’s privilege to keep the rest of the cast waiting.”

Mardee was too happy and elated this morning to be catty about Donna. “Sebastian was angry enough the last time to do something drastic. I hope Donna knows how far she can go.”

Henri said, in his broken English, “He comes, le gros blanc …”

Kip chuckled. “I wonder how Sebastian would react if he knew that all these folk here regard him as the fulfillment of an old prophecy.”

Mardee remembered what Henri had said the day she had spoken to Fleur. “Oh, surely it’s only the children—”

“Not entirely. Remember, the story is an old one, I heard it myself as a child here. Le gros blanc . . . they say he cursed them as he died, and made an engagement, a magical pact with one of the mysteres, that he would walk here, cursing the land, until he came again to rule. And now there is a blanc here again, a big white boss in charge of everything, so what could be simpler? He is le gros blanc come again in person, come back to lay the curse, and all is well now and forever. Eh bien, you see!”

Mardee laughed. “It does seem obvious, doesn’t it? I think Sebastian might even be pleased at the notion.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Kip said, as Sebastian strode up to them. He looked angry and impatient.

“Where the bloody hell is Donna, anyway?”

“I haven’t seen her, Sebastian. She wasn’t with the crew in the limousine, or in the dressing rooms. Maybe she overslept.”

“Until eleven thirty?” Sebastian frowned, consulting his watch. “All right, Kip, well take your harangue and get her shots afterward.” He beckoned one of the minor functionaries and said, “Send the Rolls back for Miss Royce, and request her to honor us with her company some time before noon.” His mouth was set in a hard line, but it melted as he swung around to greet Mardee.

“What a pleasure to see you! Kip—where’s your makeup man? There’s a smudge on the corner of your chin.” The man came with his sponges and towels and busied himself rearranging Kip’s appearance. Sebastian watched with half an eye, saying, “I wish I could think of a way to get a voodoo sequence into this film. I asked Gappy to come up tomorrow and talk it over. If voodoo was so much a part of the life of the slaves, it’s hardly honest to leave it out of the film. And think of what we could do with a sequence of drumming …” He was silent, thinking. “Maybe we could work in a sequence where Kip plays the drums.”

“I’m sure the African-Haitian Folklore people would be glad to supply you with consultants,” Mardee murmured.

Sebastian wrinkled his nose scornfully. “I suppose they’re doing their best, but I won’t accept anything that’s not completely real, not for this film … Kip, can we get some footage of you playing the drams?”

“It is for you to say, Sebastian. Look, Donna is with us.”

Donna was slowly coming toward them. She looked pale and drawn; Mardee wondered if she had a hangover after the drinking she had done last night She was wearing street clothes: skin-tight white slacks and a thin blouse and a broad-brimmed sun hat. Sebastian swung around to look at her, and Mardee flinched. She had read the expression “his face grew black with rage,” but this was the first time she had seen it. Sebastian’s face contorted, grew congested, almost purplish with his wrath.

“Why the hell aren’t you in costume and makeup?”

“Because I’m not working today, that’s why! I’m sick.”

“Hung over?” he demanded, his face darkening.

“Sick,” Donna said stubbornly. “And I’m not going to work today, and you know what’s wrong with me as well as I do!”

“Damn you, Donna,” he said, unconscious of spectators, “you might have told me before I put out a call for the whole crew!”

“That’s your problem,” she said indifferently, and began to turn away. He caught her by the shoulders. He said something under his breath; she wrenched away with a mocking laugh.

“Looks like you got your troubles, big boy!”

His face was set in a hard, deadly line. He said in a low voice to Donna, “You are not going to cost us another day’s shooting like this. Get the hell into the trailer and get your costume, and if you’re out here in ten minutes, I’ll say no more. I mean it, Donna. Don’t you push me any further.”

“You go to hell,” Donna said, tossing her pretty head and laughing. “You can’t talk that way to me. You know why I’m not working today, and just what you can do about it. Nothing, big boy—nothing!”

Sebastian took one step toward Donna, and another. Mardee thought that if Sebastian had turned that look on her, she would have turned and run. But Donna stood her ground, laughing.

“You’re bluffing, Sebastian. Just go to hell, why don’t you?”

Does she know what she is doing? Mardee wondered, but for a moment it seemed that she had stopped Sebastian. He lowered his hands, which had been lifted as if to take hold of Donna roughly again, or to hit her. He stood perfectly still for a long moment.

Then, slowly, he said, “Okay, Donna, you asked for it, you pushed your luck just a little too far. Get oft the set. You’re fired.”

“Fired?” She bunked, still laughing, and Mardee realized that the woman did not yet realize the depth and seriousness of Sebastian’s rage. “Hell, you can’t do that, quit your bluffing!”

The congested purple had slowly drained from Sebastian’s face, leaving it dead white. He said, in a low, deadly voice, “The day there’s anything, anything, I can’t do at Wright films, I’ll close the shop down and retire. As of two minutes ago, Miss Royce, you became an ex-employee of Wright Productions, and you are trespassing on the lot. Now get the hell out of here!” Donna did not move, and he said, quietly, but with deadly menace, “Don’t make me have them pick you up and carry you off the set, Donna. Please.”

Her face slowly crumpled as she realized that he meant every word. She turned, still defiant, and said, “Well see about that. You can’t do this. I’ve got legal rights—.”

“Fine, you have your lawyers get in touch with mine,” he said, and turned his back on her. Donna looked hesitantly at his turned-away shoulders, and Mardee could see her inwardly debating an appeal, a capitulation, a plea—but they all knew it was too late. Sebastian had hardened into fury.

Donna looked at Mardee and said spitefully, “You did this, didn’t you?” But she walked away before Mar-dee could answer.

Sebastian turned back to Kip and Mardee in satisfaction. “Damn her, I’ve been wanting ‘to do that for days now! She went just that one step too far! Are you as relieved as I am, Kip?”

Kip looked dismayed. “For God’s sake, Sebastian, I know Donna is maddening, but to do this halfway through the film? What are we going to do for Angelique? Why don’t you think it over a little, give everybody a chance to cool down? You’ve thrown a scare into her, she’ll certainly behave now!”

Sebastian shook his head. “It’s a lot too late for that. She was all wrong, anyhow. She never understood the Haitian mystique, the special feel of this place. She belongs in a nightclub in Las Vegas! Fortunately, it will be no trouble to find the perfect replacement. Mar-dee”—he swung around to her, and he was smiling— “you know what I want. Will you star in the greatest of the Wright films ever?”

Mardee blinked, her breath draining out of her.

When she could speak again she said, “You’re not serious, Sebastian!”

He came and took her by the shoulders. On the lot the action had stopped; everyone watching Sebastian. He said, bending over her, “I was never more serious in my life. You—you are part of Haiti, you are Haiti— together, you and I, we will make the greatest film ever made, the one that will show all the beauty and reality of this different world—Mardee, you will! You must!” His face was so close to hers that she could smell his warm breath. “Since last night—I couldn’t sleep, I stayed awake, thinking it over, getting in touch with a whole new concept of this film. I need an invisible truth, a living reality—Mardee, I can’t do it without you!” His voice wavered with his intensity. “You are Haiti, you are the very soul of what I want to do … Say you’ll help me, Mardee! I need you so much …”

His face was contorted. Mardee knew suddenly, inside herself, This isn’t personal at all. It isn’t me he wants, it’s just part of his obsession, his love affair with Haiti. . .

Yet it was almost unendurably tempting. To star in a Sebastian Wright film …

And to prove to Donna that she had been right all along. Mardee, too, could hear Marie-Claire Haskell’s mocking voice: What is Emilie Thibaud to you? It is the famous producer, this Sebastian Wright, who draws you as the moth to the flame …

She drew gently away from his hands. “Sebastian, I understand what you’re trying to say. But I can’t possibly make a big decision like this on the spur of the moment. I have to think about it, I have to talk to my great-aunt about it. Can I”—her voice suddenly shook—”can I talk to you about it tonight? After I’ve had a chance to—to realize that it’s real?”

Reluctantly he let her go. “As long as you really need. But not too long, I hope. I’d rather wait for you than send for someone who isn’t real, who won’t be right.” He drew a deep breath, straightened up. “Kip, don’t you think Mardee’s more right for Angelique than Donna could ever have been?”

Kip looked at Mardee entreatingly. “I don’t know anything about Mardee as—as an actress. It’s no secret that Donna and I never got along. Mardee would certainly be easier to work with. But as an actress—”

“I know what kind of actress she is,” Sebastian said, and Mardee remembered, in sudden wonder, yes, he had seen her, once. And what had it been that he said? That he never forgot a performance, a face, or an insult … Donna was finding that out too late.

“Kip, we’ll do your speech today, and the crowds around the coach, and shoot around Angelique for a day or two, until Mardee gives us an answer and we can arrange all the business details. Be ready in five minutes, all right?” He strode away toward the camera crews, suddenly all business again.

Mardee stood, shaking, wondering if she was dreaming. Kip reached for her hands and said, on a shaking, indrawn breath, “I can’t possibly compete with Sebastian, Mardee.”

Shaken, frightened, Mardee let him pull her close. What had happened in her life, what had changed so suddenly? She whispered, “You’ll never have to, Christophe.”

He whispered, his face close to hers, “Je faitne.”

She said, through a lump in her throat, “I know, Christophe.” And then—surely this was a bizarre dream in which everything was permitted and nothing needed to be consistent, or make sense—”I love you, too.”

Sebastian had swung around, and was watching them from a distance, and suddenly, without knowing why, Mardee was afraid. Why? What can he do to us? But Sebastian only spoke to an assistant director, who said through his loudspeaker equipment, “Mr. Tybalt, ready on the set, please.”

He started, and gently freed her hands from his. “Later, chine,” and Mardee watched him hurrying away, slight, dark, delicate, moving with the grace of a dancer.

This can’t be real. It’s Brian I love, Brian . . . What’s happening to me? And yet she watched Kip moving away, and her heart was in turmoil, an upheaval she had never known, never guessed possible. She knew she could not stand here watching him, or everything that was in her heart would be too clear to everyone. She turned away and went quickly back along the path to Maison Dominique.

It’s like magic. Witchcraft.

Voodoo?

She passed the little stone house where her black ancestress had lived, where, half remembering, she had walked in her sleep one night. It seemed very long ago. On an impulse, she put her hand to the tarnished silver knob and went inside. She stood with her hands against the blue-and-white tiles of the fireplace, and deliberately let her mind drift, inviting the strange, dreamlike consciousness that she had felt before … here, in the marketplace, once or twice with Sebastian.

She too was torn, between the white mart who owned her body, who had bought her, and the man of her own race. What was her name? What was she really like, that woman?

But the dream awareness evaded her; today, with the brilliant sun flooding through the dusty glass, it was only an old stone house, nostalgic but empty, free of ghosts. Mardee went out, closing the door behind her, and went back to Maison Dominique.

Late that afternoon, Robert knocked lightly on her door. Standing in her doorway, he said, “Mamzelle, Madame is ill. She asks you to dine alone this night, and to forgive her.”

Suddenly, Mardee was alarmed. “Have you sent for a doctor, Robert?”

“Madame will not hear of it, Mamzelle.”

“What ails her, Robert? Do you know?”

The old man looked weary, grieved. Mardee had felt there was something sinister about the suave little butler; now he seemed old, and pitiable. She thought, He really loves Madame too; she is the center of everyone’s life here.

“Mamzelle, she is jatiguee … epuisee pour la vie. There is no doctor who can cure that, Mamzelle.”

She is weary, exhausted by life . . . Mardee said, distressed, “I will go and see her, Robert,” and he smiled and said quietly, “The sight of you will do her good, Mamzelle. You are all that she has in this world.”

Mardee felt a twinge of guilt. She had come here for a vacation, a chance to meet Sebastian Wright. Now she had fulfilled her secret ambition, and, faced with the knowledge that Madame was probably readying herself to die, she was wrung and distressed. She had begun to love the old woman. As she went toward Tante Emilie’s apartment, she felt tears swimming dangerously near the surface.

What’s happening to me lately? Why am I so emotional?

In Madame’s room the curtains had been drawn, and the old woman’s smile, in shadow, was more like a death’s-head than ever.

“Bonjour, petite. How pretty you are today, almost as if you were in love …”

There was indeed something of the witch about Tante Emilie! Or did the difference in Mardee actually show, was it visible to the eye? She bent to kiss the withered cheek.

“Tante Emilie, let me send for a doctor. If there is none in the village, surely there must be someone in Port-au-Prince—”

The old woman waved that aside with a feeble gesture. “I will have none of the doctors from the great hospital, to shame me—” At Mardee’s look of amazement she broke off and said fretfully, “My mind wanders these days—for old age there is no cure, Marie-Louise. Come, sit here, tell me what is happening. Did you have a good time at your fine entertainment at Port-au-Prince?” But her eyes rested keenly on Mardee’s face, and Mardee had the uncanny sense that the old woman knew just what kind of entertainment it had been. But how could she?

“It was a dull evening, Tante Emilie, a visit to a folklore society. All things considered, I think most of us would rather have gone dancing.”

“Eh bien, it is so with young people. And today, how have you diverted yourself, p’tite?”

Now she knew she must tell Madame at once. But why did she have the bizarre sense that Madame already knew, that the dark intense eyes in the skull-like face were waiting for her news … ? “Sebastian Wright has— has become dissatisfied with Donna Royce’s performance. He has discharged her and asked me to take her place in the film.”

Tante Emilie showed no sign of surprise. She nodded slowly, confirming Mardee’s eerie sense that somehow she had known.

“Donna Royce … this was the very vulgar woman in the indecent frock? I wondered at the time how M’sieur Wright, who appears a man of taste and sensibility, could have chosen that one for his star. It is possible, of course, that she was his mistress,” the old woman mused.

She’s a witch all right. . . Then Mardee told herself not to be silly, Donna wasn’t precisely subtle, and it must have been common gossip among the servants.

“Tante Emilie, I had not told you I was an actress, I knew that you considered actors and actresses déclassé—”

“Do you think I did not know, Marie-Louise? When Marie-Claire failed to inform me of your birth, ma chere, I resorted to other kinds of information—my world is larger than you know,” said Madame, and Mardee wondered bemusedly if the old woman was talking about clairvoyance or private detectives. “To be sure, cherie, you must take part in this film. It is what I wanted for you, and now, you see, all things have arranged themselves… c’est un mystere…”

“I must speak to Brian, ask what he thinks—”

“Brian.” The woman swept him away with a shrug. “He is not for you, p’tite.”

“Tante Emilie, I thought you liked him, you said he would make me a fine husband.”

“Out, so I said … but there is more than that, it is more important than you think, it is the reason I sent for you here.” Her eyes seemed glazed and wandered, not fixing themselves on Mardee at all. “You do not know … you are of the blood, and yet I have not told yon, I shall do so at the proper time … not yet…”

“Tante Emilie, what do you mean?”

The old woman patted the air close beside her. “Come here, sit by me, cherie,” and Mardee knew with a chill of fear that the old woman could not see her. Frightened, she said, “Tante Emilie, you must let me call a doctor,” but Madame Thibaud, her eyes blank and watering, did not hear either.

“We are a family under a curse, p’tite . . . For two hundred years we have lain under the shadow of le gros blanc ... .He swore he would return … Every one of us has made an engagement too, we protect ourselves, but when will it ever end? It could all have ended, but Marie-Claire … Perhaps she was wise to leave, but now it is all for you to do, I am old, old … You will not go, you will not leave us now, Marie-Louise?”

The old woman sat bolt upright in her bed, her va-.cant face drawn, and Mardee, pitying the madwoman her aunt had become—was this why Tante Emilie kept to her room so much?—said tenderly, “I won’t leave you, Tante Emilie.”

“And you must not marry that negre, Brian. He is good, but it would begin everything again … I had it in mind for you to marry M’sieur Sebastien, but he is too old for you, p’tite. And then when the other told me his name … Christophe Thibault … and he is a blanc . . . He too is a descendant of le gros blanc, as we are, Marie-Louise, and if you marry him, Maison Dominique will again be in the hands of a blanc, and there is an end forever to the curse of the blood …”

Mardee started to say, “But Kip isn’t a blanc …” and realized that to Tante Emilie’s clouded brain it was all the same. And one thing was true. Thibaud, Thibault, it was all the same name. Christophe Thibault, like herself, was a descendant of the old Frenchman who had, hundreds of years ago, fathered children by his white wife and by his affranchie black mistress. He was their distant relative, then.

“You must marry him, Marie-Louise … You shall love him, tout s’arrangera, I shall see to it, but you shall marry him…”

Gently, trying to calm the old woman with the touch, she leaned forward and kissed her. “Don’t trouble yourself, Tante Emilie. Who knows, perhaps one day I shall marry Christophe after all.” The old woman heard her, and lay quietly smiling.

But what of Brian? she wondered, and the thought left her desolate.

Nine

That evening, Robert brought her a message:

“M’sieur Sebastian wishes to speak with you at some hour of your convenience tonight, Mamzelle.”

“Ask him to dine with me here.” Sebastian wanted her answer, wanted to discuss the business details with her. Intuition told her to meet him here, on her own ground, as chatelaine of Maison Dominique, his equal, his hostess. Robert looked perturbed, and she said sharply in French, “What are you waiting for? Carry my message to him at once!”

“Certainement, Mamzelle,” he said, and went. She heard him mutter something about le gros blanc, and wondered irritably if she would never be free of this kind of superstitious rubbish. Had Tante Emilie’s madness affected everyone on the place?

Surely no one could associate Sebastian—courtly, cosmopolitan, bowing over her hand as he had bowed over Tante Emilie’s the first evening—with superstition, with some hoodoo mart of local legend!

“We were disappointed that you did not stay to watch the filming, Mardee. Kip gave the performance of his life!”

“I am sorry,” she said, with sincere regret.

“So was he. And so am I,” he said, his eyes fixed on her, and she was suddenly sorry she had put on the low-cut red dress with sequins. She had not worn it, and had put it on tonight to dine alone,, when her great-aunt was not there to be offended. When she sent the invitation to Sebastian she had forgotten—or had she? Had she unconsciously wanted him to see that she was no less beautiful and sexy than Donna herself? She had, after all, had plenty of time to change into something less provocative!

“I’m really grateful for this invitation, Mardee. As you can imagine, things are a little awkward on the other side. Donna—you know how spiteful she can be, she insists this is your doing—”

“I feel that in a sense she’s right, Sebastian. After all, it’s natural she should feel bitter toward me. In her place I know I would hate whoever was replacing me.”

“I think that’s the tiling I admire most about you, Mardee, your ability to put yourself in another person’s place. Can you put yourself in mine, then, and know how deathly sick I am of Donna’s whims and vapors, her airs and temperament? Of the way she has taken advantage—she did not begin this after you came here, you know. Ask Kip, if you like, how often she has cost us a day’s shooting.” He was pale and angry. “This film is more important to me than anything eke I have ever done, and when she began to endanger that, it was more than time for her to go.”

Mardee could understand that too, yet her heart somehow ached for Donna’s loss. Donna, insecure, proud, had felt compelled to test Sebastian’s love again and again, and at last she had snapped the fragile illusion which was all that held Sebastian to her. She was glad to change the subject.

“Robert, I think, is trying to tell us our dinner is on the table. Let us see what Madame’s chef has prepared! To such an artiste one does not presume to order meals, one accepts his creations.”

Robert, to Mardee’s relief, had set their places close together at a corner of the enormous banquet table. She had had absurd visions of herself at one end and Sebastian at the other, and of their having to shout at each other all along its length, or send semaphore signals … If it were Brian I’d tell him that and we could laugh together over it. Would she even see Brian again? After last night, when he had abandoned her for Donna, and the way in which she had, all too obviously, consoled herself by Kip’s attentions, he might not even call again. She was surprised to find that the thought left an aching void.

Robert served them, hovering, Some delicious combination of rice and tiny shrimp. Of course, she thought, this is what they’re imitating when they call some concoction Shrimp Creole This is the original.

When they had finished the Shrimp Creole, the salad, and the delicious chocolate mousse, Sebastian said, “And now, don’t keep me in suspense any longer, Mar-dee. You are going to help me in this, aren’t you? With you, it will be the greatest film of my career!”

“Sebastian, are you sure you want to do this? I’m an unknown, you know. Don’t you need someone who’s— who’s more box office?”

He shook his head arrogantly. “You wouldn’t be the first unknown I’d made into a star. As for big names— well, Kip can have the star billing, it’s enough of a draw. Did you talk to Madame?”

“I tried to. But I’m afraid she’s getting senile; she hardly seemed to understand what I said.”

“At least, then, she had no insuperable objections!” Deeply tempted as she was, Mardee was still enough of a professional to say, “You know I can’t talk business with you, Sebastian. You’ll have to get in touch with my New York agent—”

He laughed. “Who is your agent? Lonnie Cameron, isn’t it?” he said, surprising her. “He used to send me talent when I was doing my first few productions off-Broadway, after the war—Hitler’s war. I keep forgetting that to your generation, the war was Korea or even Vietnam. Lonnie’s a good guy. He’ll get you what’s fair, and he won’t hold me up. I won’t argue with him too much, I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to make this film with you as Angelique.”

She said lightly, “You shouldn’t let me know that, should you?”

“I trust you,” he said, and reached for her hands. “This film will be the high point of my career, it will make us all famous—”

“You’re supposed to say those things after the brandy, Sebastian.” She gestured to Robert to pour it.

Sebastian touched her glass with his own, saying, “To the future.”

She repeated his words before placing her lips to the rim. Moving noiselessly, Robert and his shadowy assistants cleared the room. She rose, carrying her glass in her hand, and went to the window. She had stood there on her first night in this house, and listened to the drums. Kip had come up behind her, called her ma belle . . . There were drums in the night again out there, a soft, compelling call.

Sebastian said softly, “I had a long talk with Cappy today. I’m beginning to have a whole new concept of the film. What I saw last night—it was ridiculous, a travesty of the real thing, but, God, how it whetted my appetite for what is real! I feel I’ve been waiting all my life for this, as if all my early films were just a way of giving me the experience to do justice to this one!” His eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Magic—sorcery—the power of the unknown.” He drained the brandy as if it had been ice water, and poured himself another.

“Listen, Mardee, listen to the drams out there, trying to tell me everything about the unseen world they speak to—”

She said slowly, infected by his intensity, “I felt that way about them from the very first night I came here.”

He leaned close to her. “But they never spoke to me, not until the night you came here. I was in love with Haiti, yes, with all the mystery and romance, but when you came it was as if—as if a light had been turned on, an electric current. I am not a superstititious man, Mar-dee, but if I were I would say that fate sent me to wait for you here, to be made ready for the drama of my life, and when you came the curtain would go up—”

The brandy he had drunk was beginning to have some effect on him; Mardee knew, and was annoyed with herself, that she had in some way invited this by wearing the extremely provocative dress, and asking him to dine with her alone. It would have been easy enough to invite Kip too, or even Margaret. She could handle Sebastian, but she hoped she would not have to hurt his pride. She moved a little out of reach.

“How does Kip feel about his new co-star?”

“As excited as I am. And he’s agreed to help me find out something about the real voodoo rites—he’s gone to the village tonight to make a start.”

Poor Kip. How he hates it. She remembered the near-desperation in his face, his helpless reluctance.

“Listen to the drums,” Sebastian said. “Let’s go outside to hear them better.”

Robert was waiting in the front hall. “M’sieu is leaving?”

Mardee said, “No, M’sieur and I will walk a little out of doors.”

“It is very bad, to walk in the night air, Mamzelle must not—”

Mardee laughed. “Mamzelle must not walk in the night air and Mamzelle must not walk in the heat of the sun. Is Mamzelle to spend her whole life indoors?”

He bowed, but he looked troubled, and Mardee thought, He doesn’t want me to go out there, he’s afraid of what I might see or hear. Maybe I should go right down there, now that I know I’m wide awake, and see what there really is to see. If it’s a family having a— what’s their creole word—a bamboche, they’ll invite me in and be honored to entertain Madame’s niece. And if it’s not . . . But she found she did not want to think about that.

The moon was full and high, a plump newly minted silver dollar in the dark sky. The drums were all around them in the night. The grass was damp. Mardee stumbled in her high-heeled sandals, and Sebastian took her arm.

“Listen to the drums,” Sebastian said softly. “Imagine the sound of drums coming at you in a darkened theater, not a single glimmer on the screen, just the sound of drums. Then, by little flashes, like torchlight, you begin to see the edges of the drums, and dark shapes, crimson-edged by firelight. But no lights yet, just shapes and shadows, and the drums, and a hint of motion … and then, suddenly, in the darkness, against the drums, glowing letters. Sebastian Wright Presents—Kip Tybalt and Mardee Haskell, in—” He broke off, grasping hard at her arm. “Can’t you see it?”

“It sounds wonderful,” she said softly, but the sound of her name, conjoined with Kip’s, had sent her into a strange, dark daydream, and although Sebastian went on, describing the film, she hardly heard. She listened kindly, making sympathetic noises at what seemed appropriate times, but her thoughts were not with him. Mardee raised her eyes and saw that instead of moving toward Cap Dominique and the drums, they had somehow together come again to the little stone cottage where her ancestress, the black affranchie, had lived.

She must have done this … listened kindly to one man who loved her, desired her, talking to her of faraway things that meant nothing, while her mind and heart were all athrob with longing for another … They stood in the full flooding moonlight before the little house, and it seemed to her that Sebastian’s eyes gleamed in the dark like a cat’s. He put his arms around her. She stood for a moment against him, passive, in a dream of the past; then, as his grip grew more urgent, more importunate, ice water flooded her veins. She seized his hands angrily in hers, wrenching them away. She heard her own voice tremble as she said, “That’s not part of the bargain, Sebastian!”

The moon flooded his face, and by its light Mardee saw, with a thrill of fear, a face she had never seen before. She knew, with a sickening certainty that went bone-deep, that this was not the Sebastian she knew, but a man keep in a dream of the past, lost in it … Out of that nightmare consciousness she heard him say, in a voice she had never heard before, “How dare you? You are mine, mine to do with as I will—”

Sainte Vierge, what shall I do, what shall I do, how can I bring him out of this! Mardee hardly realized she was thinking in the language of her childhood, hardly knew whether she was herself or her ancestress … She held on to herself, to the twentieth century, trying to force down the memory of her centuries-dead forebear. She thought quickly as his arms closed hard about her and his mouth came down urgently on her own. She slid from his arms, jerking her head back, and said, in the hardest and most prosaic tone she could muster, “If this is supposed to be the price for starring in your spectacular, Mr. Wright, I’m afraid I’m not interested. All actresses aren’t for sale, even black ones.”

It was like a cold shower; she saw it strike him, felt his face struggle between savage anger and a sudden, terrifying doubt. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was the Sebastian she knew again, shaking his head in confused contrition.

“Oh, God, Mardee, I can’t imagine what came over me—”

The drums had stopped. His breathing sounded loud in the silence, and his words tumbled over one another in apology. “I swear I didn’t—I was just—just carried away—Mardee, please forgive me—oh, God, Mardee, don’t look at me like that—”

To her furious embarrassment, he actually fell to his knees before her in the flooding moonlight. “I must have gone crazy for a minute, I don’t know what I was thinking of—please forgive me—”

Was this, Mardee wondered, one of the reasons women sometimes gave themselves to men they did not love? The sense of power, the knowledge that the men were helpless in their hands? Was this, then, What her black ancestress had felt about the man who had owned her and nevertheless, in a sense, had been her captive?

“Get up, Sebastian, don’t be silly. You’ve had a little top much of Tante Emilie’s brandy, that’s all. Or maybe this place just has some kind of weird effect on us. Last time we came here, remember, I started crying all over you. Of course I’ll forgive you!”

He scrambled to his feet. “This place has some kind of effect on me, that’s for sure! For God’s sake, Mardee, don’t think I was trying to take advantage of a professional relationship. Good God, woman, you’re beautiful, you’re desirable, but you’re also the woman I want to star in this film, and I wouldn’t endanger that by making an unwelcome pass! There’s no woman in the world worth that!”

“I think we’d better walk back toward Maison Dominique,” and as they retraced their steps, Mardee thought about the strange changes she had seen in Sebastian’s face. For a moment he had not been Sebastian at all. But who had he been? Le gros blanc? She shuddered at the thought—and at the implication.

Yet his apology had been sincere, and as they began to see the lights of the great house he expanded on it.

“You are very beautiful, Mardee. But I’m not one of those directors who make passes at their stars. Good God, that was corny thirty years ago! The part is yours if you’ll take it, it would be yours even if you’d slapped me down as I deserve for acting that way! I wouldn’t have blamed you a bit!” His smile was deprecating. “Yes, there’s been some gossip, and of course the newspapers blow it up out of all proportion—I do fall in love with my leading ladies sometimes. And—” He wet his lips and said with difficulty, “Mardee, will you believe me if I tell you this is the first time in my life that I ever—ever—made a pass where it was … distinctly unwelcome? Normally I wait till I get—get unmistakable signals from the woman involved. That’s the truth.”

Or you think it’s the truth, she said to herself. There would probably not be many women who would turn down a pass from Sebastian Wright. He was not only the biggest name in films, but he was—she gave him his due—a handsome, sensual, attractive man. She wondered at herself, newly aware of just how attractive he was. Had it been pride? Did she want the distinction of being the only woman to turn down Sebastian Wright?

She held out her hands, saying, “Forget it, Sebastian. After all”—she smiled—”it’s a compliment, not an insult. Friends?”

He raised her hands gently to his lips.

“Friends, Mardee.”

When Sebastian had gone away, Mardee lingered in the lower hall, too restless to try to sleep. She knew she would lie awake for hours, tossing, prey to restless dreams. Robert came, and she told him to lock up and go away to bed, but even after he had gone, she lingered. After a time it occurred to her that she was waiting—but for what?

She felt oddly alone. She thought of going to the telephone to call Marie-Claire Haskell in New York, tell her mother about Sebastian’s offer to star in the film. But Marie-Claire had taunted her with wanting just this. And who else was there to call? Brian? He would be asleep, or working at his typewriter.

She raised her head, thinking the drumbeats had begun again … no. It was someone knocking at the enormous front door. At this hour? Mardee went and said, through the door, “Who is it?”

“Mardee? C’est Christophe.”

She felt the jolt of adrenalin and the race of her heart and commanded herself to be sensible. “I can’t open this door, it’s too heavy. Come around to the side door.”

As she had guessed it would be, the bolt was drawn back, the door unlocked. Well, old Robert’s nocturnal amours were no business of hers, and there were no thieves or muggers in Cap Dominique. She opened the door, and Kip, pale and drawn, came in. At the Sight of the distress in his face, she asked no questions; she held out her arms and he came directly into them, holding her with a dazed, blind appeal. She stood locked to him, her mouth surrendering to his, everything but this blurring in her mind.

Finally it was she who stirred and sighed.

“Darling, come inside, let me shut the door. Kip, what is it, love, what’s wrong? Let me give you some brandy.”

He took a sip or two hastily, as if he needed its strength, then sipped more slowly, holding the glass in shaking fingers. She put him into a chair and sat on the arm. He finished the brandy, set the glass down, and laid his face against her shoulder. She waited, and at last, with a long, shuddering sigh, he raised his head.

“Gran’ Maitre—how these things take hold of you!

It was as if I had left yesterday, not fifteen years ago … I knew there must be an ‘oumphor in the village. That first night, I recognized the drumming, if not the drummer. It was not hard to find them; I know all the words, after all, the signs of recognition. I had only to make sure the priest did not see me, or my sister … I had to keep clear of her house.”

He was silent so long that Mardee prompted, “You did find what you were looking for …”

“Oh, yes.” He sighed, a long sigh. “There were old people who remembered my grandmere, recognized me—I had been her confiance, her acolyte, you would say, even though I had not taken the asson. I can give Sebastian what he wants.”

She put her arms round him. “You don’t want to do this, do you, Christophe?”

He shook his head. “No. It is a wise saying, that of your American author—that you cannot go home again.”

“Then why don’t you tell him to go to hell, Kip?”

He closed his eyes, saying, with a weary smile, “I suppose I am simply not the kind of man who can tell anyone to go to hell. Sebastian is a good friend. I think he would be a bad enemy … and there is more. It seemed important to me to do this, to proclaim my own ancestry, not to try to pass as a white man any more. But I burned my bridges. My old manager washed his hands of me, and now my fortunes are tied to Sebastian’s success—and his good will.”

Mardee wished she could infuse Kip with a little of her own determination and strength. They were both dependent on Sebastian; this could be a dangerous vulnerability. Maybe I too should tell Sebastian to go to hell!

“Don’t you want to make this film, Christophe?”

“God help me, yes, I do. How Sebastian can make one share his dreams! It will be a great film. No actor alive—certainly no black actor—could pass up this chance. How could I possibly deny him what he needs to make it great?”

“I can understand that,” she said in a low voice. She too sensed that her destiny was somehow bound up with Sebastian’s dreams.

“It is more real to me than ever. Now, with you a part of it.” Their lips met in a long Mss, and for a time it seemed to Mardee that all confusion slid away. This was real. Everything else was confused, dark, secret as the rhythm of the drums she still seemed to hear somewhere … or was it only the drumming of the blood in her veins, the racing of her heart? Had it ever been anything but this? She let Kip draw her close again, until even the sound of the drums was silent…

Later—a long tune later, when the wheels of the world had begun to turn again—Mardee asked him, “You say that you can help give Sebastian what he wants. What is it that frightens you so, Christophe? Is it only that you’re afraid of being drawn into it again yourself?”

“Not only that,” he said, hesitating. “Sebastian is so fanatical. It could be dangerous for him, a blanc. I was born in Haiti, I know what I am doing. But he…”

“Darling, isn’t that just prejudice? Surely there have been other white men who have learned about voodoo without danger—”

“I wish I could think so. I do not understand his motives, not completely; I do not think”—he said it reluctantly—”that I will ever understand any blanc, though I lived as one for years. I am afraid of Sebastian, Mardee, and afraid of what he will do if he learns about—about us.”

This made her angry. “Sebastian has no claim on me!” Deep in her heart, concealed even from herself, a tiny flame of scorn blazed. She loved Kip, but she was dismayed at his weakness. She realized she had really wanted him to defy Sebastian … to stand between me and Sebastian…

She shook herself back to reality. What mad thought was this? Ruthlessly, she scorned herself: What a fool I am! Wanting to be dominated by a strong man who will sweep me off my feet … Does any woman today really want this? Nonsense! She leaned over and gave her lover a long, apologetic kiss. He put up his hands, cupping her face; she caught the long, slender fingers in her own and kissed them.

He smiled and asked softly, “What’s that for?”

“Because I love you,” she whispered, and only to herself added, In spite of everything . . .

He stirred lazily and murmured, “I should go, cherie. Your reputation—”

She chuckled. “Do you think I care what Robert, or that imbecile Melanie, thinks of me?”

“No, but I do,” he said gently. “This is your world now too, my darling. You must care, at least a little.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She sighed and kissed him again, but when she took him to the side door, letting him go with a long, reluctant kiss, the door was still unbolted. Robert had not returned, and whatever nocturnal business had called him out was still unfinished.

Well, Mardee thought, smiling to herself as she closed the door after her lover, I won’t be curious about Robert’s love life if he won’t be curious about mine!

Ten

Madame Thibaud kept to her bed for several days, and when she reappeared she seemed frailer than before, as if a single puff of the tropical wind would snuff her out like a candle.

For Mardee these were days of frantic excitement. Brian drove out several times in the “critter,” but found her so enmeshed in long-distance conversations with her agent, contracts to sign, the whirlwind of having Donna’s costumes adapted to fit her, that she had little time for him. After shooting had actually started on the rewritten script, he drove out one evening to bring her a copy of a New York newspaper he had bought at a hotel in Port-au-Prince.

“You’re big news, a feature story on the theater page,” he said, handing it to her, folded back. “Donna Royce replaced by Mardee Haskell in Wright epic in Haiti.”

She seized it, read it through with delight, then saw his by-line on the story. “Oh, Brian—did you do this?”

“Right. I do cover stories now and then, when there’s news here. It’s how I pay the rent, you’ll have to get used to it. I’ve got some money saved, but the syndicate’s news services do pay well, and I’m a stringer for half a dozen papers in the States. Has Donna gone back to the mainland?”

Mardee shook her head, reluctant to speak about that. “I haven’t any interest in Sebastian Wright’s love life, and that’s his problem!”

“Still, it’s hard on Donna, his ex-star, and his ex-mistress too, I gather.”

Mardee said, with waspish emphasis, “I noticed you took an interest that night at the folklore society!”

He reached for her hands and said, “Don’t be silly, darling. Donna’s beautiful, certainly. But she’s not my type. I’m not getting on your back about Sebastian—or Kip Tybalt—and he’s certainly a lot better-looking than I am. Do I have to be jealous of him?”

Mardee felt a twinge of shaken guilt. Was she in love with Kip? Or was it a teen-age infatuation, something that would pass like a dream? She said, and her voice shook, “One reason my first marriage broke up was— my husband said he felt like a pimp, watching me on the stage making love to other men.” Even now, that memory was unendurable.

He put his arm around her and said gently, “Don’t you worry about that, love. I’m not jealous of any actor with a handsome face. Tybalt seems like a nice guy, too. And I know you’re so wrapped up in this film it’s hard for you to think of anything else right now.” He kissed her, a hard kiss that left her breathless and shaken. “But when the time comes, don’t forget, I’ve got some very important things to say to you. Right now, go ahead and enjoy the excitement. Have you seen the new script yet? Tell me all about it, why don’t you?”

She said, seizing the chance to lessen their intensity, “Why don’t you come and talk to Sebastian about it? There might even be a story in it somewhere.”

“Good idea,” he said, and found himself invited to have dinner with Sebastian and the scriptwriter and talk about it. Brian had never written fiction (“Except,” he said, “for one hungry winter when I couldn’t get work and paid the rent writing pornography, but that’s a whole other story”), but he had a keen intelligence, and listened to the new story line with interest.

It still incorporated much of the old material, but gave an entirely new slant to the film. According to the new treatment worked out by Sebastian and the scriptwriter, Capwell, the ex-slave who had made himself emperor had won his power through his collaboration with the invisible world of the voodoo gods, and had, in the end, lost the favor of his people and been driven to madness and suicide because he had abandoned the unseen world which lay behind his power.

Brian was moved by the power of the script—Dane Capwell had given him a copy to look through—but he still frowned, uncertain, tapping the mimeographed pages against the table.

“How historically accurate is all this stuff?” “Probably not very,” Sebastian admitted, “although we know so little of Henri-Christophe’s life that we have no way of knowing precisely what lay behind his motivations. And this is the kind of powerful story we need.”

Brian frowned. “This is one of the things I’ve been trying to fight in my work: the kind of sensationalism which lets the world overlook the real truth about Haiti. I thought you were all fired up to show people what was real about Haiti.”

“But can’t you see?” Sebastian protested, “there are some things truer than the dead facts? As an artist— and filmmaking is an art—I have to deal with emotional truths, the inner realities behind the facts. The artist is in the business of making new myths for the world to live by.”

Brian frowned skeptically. “Why not just tell it the way it is—or in this case, the way it was?”

“There is something more important than the way it was,” Sebastian said, with an eloquence that moved them both, against their will, “and that’s to tell it in a way that will inspire people, and make them think, and feel, and hope, and dream, and try to make a better world than the real one. That’s what art is all about— anyway, it’s what everything I do is all about. Giving men dreams to live by.”

Brian nodded slowly, and Mardee remembered what he had said to her the day they stood in the shadow of Henri-Christophe’s citadel. The human mind is made up of imagination, and fantasy, and inspiration, or we might as well be laboratory rats running around mazes.

He said to Sebastian seriously, “I guess there’s a whole lot in what you’re saying.”

That night, when he took leave of her, he stood for a long moment after their good-night kiss, just holding her, looking down at her in the brilliant waning moonlight. They were on the long veranda, and scent of jasmine was everywhere around them in the tropical night. At last he said softly, “I love you, Mardee. But now I know why you’re so caught up in this film, and why you haven’t any time for me.”

“Oh, Brian,” she protested, and he silenced her, his lips on hers. “I know it’s more important to you, right now, than I am. You wouldn’t be the person you are if it wasn’t And that’s one reason why I love you.”

“Brian, I’m so glad you can understand that, so glad—”

“I love you, Mardee,” he repeated. “And what’s more, I know you’re the kind of woman who’ll be able to understand that sometime what I’m working on is going to be more important to me than any woman. It’s important to me that it will go both ways, like that. I’d love you if you weren’t an actress—but I’d love you in a different way.” He kissed her again, on the eyelids. “I love the idea that-you’re going to be part of this beautiful thing Sebastian is doing. We’ve got lots of time for the rest.”

She drew a long sigh of content, and for the first time since Ted Matlock had flung his taunts at her, she felt free and happy. Here was a man who could accept her for what she was, who did not always demand that she put him first.

Somehow, although she did not ask him, she felt that there was something in him that could even understand, and sympathize, with the way in which Kip was part of the dream. As the days went on and she began to feel herself into the part of Angelique, the woman who had loved the ex-slave who was to become Haiti’s first emperor, and to die so tragically as he reached the height of his power, Mardee surrendered herself to the dream and the glamour. Even while she sensed the actor’s technique, the artistry behind the character, she grew closer still to the gentle, vulnerable, sensitive man behind the actor. They were rarely alone, but in the rare moments when they were, she knew it was the same with her.

Some actresses say they always fall in love with their leading num. It’s never happened to me before. She sensed it had never happened to Kip before, either.

I wonder what he would say if he knew that Tante Emilie wants me to marry him . . .

She was present on the set the night Sebastian filmed him drumming, as he had done that night when the magic of Donna’s drum possessed them all. She found herself wondering if it was the power of that magic, that possession, that had first fired Sebastian with his new dream for what this film was to become, with the portrait of his emperor as a kind of priest of the hidden world, ruler of men, but the slave of his own dark gods … but as she watched Slip drumming, she was frightened.

It’s too real to Kip. Too real to Sebastian, too …

She herself was in no such danger. Her own part was a beautiful and a compelling one, a part as any actress would desire, but it contained no such mythic reality. It might make her famous; it probably would. But those who understood such things would know that this was Kip’s film, the greatest landmark of his career. He was a great actor, but in this role he would be remembered for the rest of his life; he would make history. The Academy Award he was sure to get would be only the smallest part of the artistic accomplishment of this film. He would never equal it. And everyone on the set knew it, and treated him with awe, comparing him, in secret talk among themselves, to Olivier as Hamlet, to Orson Welles, to the greatest actors past and present.

The shooting raced. Only a few scenes remained to be filmed when, one morning, Mardee came into the trailer which served the cast as portable dressing rooms, to hear angry voices from Kip’s cubicle. She knocked, and he told her to come in. He was sitting before his makeup mirror, but there was no makeup man present. Sebastian was standing behind him, his face grim and angry.

“You’re evading, Kip. You promised, and I’ll hold you to it.”

Kip swung his chair around. He was wearing the gold-laced uniform he wore for some of the final scenes. “How can I persuade you that you don’t need it? You’ve got a reality in this film, an artistry that’s—you said it yourself—more important than plain facts. Seeing the real thing at this point would only confuse you.”

“But it’s the very knowledge of the reality which creates the art to transcend it,” Sebastian argued. “I can’t go much further without seeing the real tiling. Damn it, Kip, I’m not going to argue aesthetics with you! You promised!”

The man lowered his head. He sounded trapped and desperate. “Sebastian—my friend—if it didn’t matter so much to you, it would not frighten me so much. It could be dangerous to you.”

Sebastian glared with angry contempt. “Of all the flimsy excuses I ever heard, that one is, the least worthy of you!”

Kip sprang to his feet, and the two men faced each other, Kip tense as an angry cat poised to spring, Sebastian towering over him, immense in the cramped quarters of the dressing room. Mardee felt a frightening, familiar clutch of terror. Why did she feel compelled to spring forward, throw herself bodily between the angry men? Again she was gripped with the terror of Mja vu, the sense that somewhere, sometime, she could not remember when, this had all happened before, that they had faced each other like this, ready to spring at each other’s throats and fight to the death—and which of them did she want to protect? She could not keep back a cry.

“Don’t, oh, don’t! Kip—Sebastian—what’s wrong?”

Sebastian said scathingly, “Our expert on voodoo has copped out.”

“I’m not taking that!” Kip’s voice was savage. “Can’t you understand that this is dangerous? You wouldn’t be the first blanc to get in deeper than he thought, into the world of voudoun.”

“Flimsy excuses!” Sebastian jeered.

“If you would go into this as a spectator, without demanding that you be a part of it, Sebastian,” Kip pleaded.

“You think I am afraid?”,

“The man who approaches a mystere without being afraid is a fool, and worse. But if you are still determined to go through with this madness—”

“If you can deliver—yes!”

“On your own head be it, then,” Kip flung at him, in a rage. “Tomorrow night, then!”

Sebastian’s rage was suddenly gone; he stared at Kip in wonder and awe. “You really mean it?”

Slowly, exhausted, Kip nodded, exhaling with a long sigh. “I will not be responsible, whatever happens, Sebastian.”

Now that he had been given his own way, Sebastian was all friendliness again. “Don’t worry about that, Kip. I’ll be grateful to you as long as I live!”

Kip smiled bleakly, but he didn’t answer. When Sebastian had gone away, he turned to Mardee, shaking his head in distress. “I should never have made him such a promise. I must have been mad.”

“Christophe—my dearest—what are you afraid of?”

“Possession.” At her incredulous look he said quietly, “This is the essence of voudoun, that he who approaches the god, the loa, is possessed by him. Our gods are not images in a church, Mardee, to hang on the wall and pray to if you feel like it. They are real and they embody themselves in the mind and body and spirit of their worshipper. They cannot be commanded. They come as they will.”

Mardee felt ice flood her veins at the quiet, matter-of-fact way in which he spoke. She whispered, “Christophe—have you been possessed?”

“Of course—I was hounsi-canzo—initiate.” He looked wretched. “I will not risk it again. I know how to—how to fight it off when it is not the right time. Sebastian—he welcomes it, and for him the way may lie open to—to madness. For him, perhaps, there could be no return. He does not know.”

She put her arms around him, eager to comfort. “Sebastian is a grown man. He has a right to take his own risks.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He kissed her, but the dread in his face did not soften. At last he said in a whisper, quoting, “Woe to him through whom offenses come. For it must needs be that offenses come . . . but woe to him through whom the offense cometh . . . Mardee, I don’t want to take the responsibility for this! I don’t!”

It is dangerous for you. You are of the blood. With a curious flare of intuition, Mardee knew this was what her mother had meant As she dressed herself in the innocent white gown of her first night here, she wondered if there had ever been a time when Marie-Claire robed herself in white for such a ceremony. What else could have driven her mother from the island, never to return, if not the mysterious terror of the loa?

She dispelled the dread with another memory. Kip had said, or implied, that it was dangerous for Sebastian because he was not of the blood. It could not work both ways. And Kip was not afraid for himself. It was, for him, something known: something to be approached with reverence, and awe, but still, something he had known since he was a boy.

Mardee herself was afraid, irrationally terrified. It was all mixed up with. Hollywood’s version of black magic, voodoo witch doctors, zombies. To dispel this she held firmly to the memory of the African-Haitian Folklore Institute and their reenacrment. It was a religious ceremony, a church service, no more, no less, with hymns and ceremonial rites and incense and candlelight and a real, not a symbolic, blood sacrifice. Nothing to be afraid of. Certainly nothing so evil that it could imperil her soul. She could understand Flour’s revulsion: Fleur was a devout Catholic to whom all other religions were the work of the devil. But Mardee need not share that fear. It was a different religion, that was all. As for the mysterious descent of the gods, or loa, well—she would believe that when and if she saw it happen!

The door between the two parts of the house was standing ajar in the lower hall, and she heard behind the door, to her surprise and dismay, the husky, entreating voice of Donna Royce.

“Sebastian, I just want to talk to you for a minute—”

“Don’t you ever give up, Donna?” His voice was filled with angry contempt “I told you I’ll look after everything, but I want you out of here. It’s over. You can move to a hotel in Port-au-Prince, or use your plane ticket back to the States. You’re not short of money. What the hell do you think you’ll gain by staying here?”

“You know what I want,” she wailed. ‘I love you!”

He swore at her, a gutter obscenity that made Mar-dee, listening, cringe. “No more of that. I want you out of here, and I want you out now.”

“It’s that girl, that Mardee!” Mardee had. never heard so much venom in a human voice. “She did this—”

“Don’t be any more of a damn fool than you are, Donna. You did it to yourself, and you know it. Now look, I haven’t got the time for this, and if you’re going to do anything about the fix you’re in, you haven’t got all that much time either. I want you to get the hell out— tonight!”

“Sebastian,” she begged.

“None of that, damn you to hell!” There was a scuffling sound beyond the door, and she heard Donna cry out in pain. Then Sebastian’s voice, low and venomous:

“Donna, if you try that again, you will be sorry you were ever born. And if you’re still here when I get back, it will be the sorriest night of your life. Damn you, let me go!”

Mardee shrank back against the wall as the door was thrust open and Sebastian strode through. He did not see her, and she was grateful for that She stood in the hall when he had gone outside, shaking. She had known Sebastian had a violent temper, but this brutality took her breath away.

Kip came through the lower hall. She stepped from the shadows and clutched at his arm.

“What is it, Mardee? You’re shaking!”

“Sebastian—I heard him with Donna—”

“I heard. It is a bad thing, that,” he said quietly. “She will not go, and she is resolved you are to blame.”

“I wouldn’t blame her if she was sticking pins in my image!”

He looked at her in consternation, saying, “Hush, hush, ma chere, not even as a joke you must never say such things, not here!”

“Christophe,” she whispered, “this is real to you, isn’t it?”

“More than you can ever know.” He turned and took her face in his hands. “This is what I am, Mardee, this is the world from which I came. I can renounce it. When this is over, we can go away from Haiti, you and I, and never return, if you like. But for now—this is what I am, it is real to me.”

She stood close to him, her face upturned to his. “If it is real for you, Christophe, I want it to be real for me too. My love—I want to share in what you are, even if it is only this once.”

“Gran’ Dieu—Mardee—my beloved,” he whispered, and his arms enfolded her in an embrace that hurt. “Everything I am—everything that I have, everything that I shall ever be …”

He ran his fingers down her face, lingering at her throat, and his fingers touched the necklace she had tucked into the front of the white frock and drew it out. His fingers explored with shock the crude lump of the carved image. “Mais—what is this Mardee?”

Mardee herself could not explain the impulse which had made her put it on. She said, fumbling, “I—I had a dream about it once. It seemed to have—to have something to do with it-—”

“But—I thought you knew nothing of the mysteres— do you know what this is?”

“I don’t. Kip, is it something sacrilegious, should I take it off?” At that moment, Brian’s gift meant little to her.

He closed his long fingers reverently around the small carved lump of red stone. “Sacrilegious? Gran’ Dieu—no! It is a rosary, beloved, a rosary consecrated to Erzulie, who is the—the Holiest One, the Great Mother, the—the Sainte Vierge. Only She knows how it came to you, ma bien aimee, but I can think of nothing more suitable.” He raised it and touched it for a mo-meat to his lips. “If anything could safeguard you, it is this. May She bless us, then.” He thrust the little rosary into her frock, between her breasts; his fingers lingered there for a moment to caress her, and he bent to kiss her again, passionately, for a moment, before he broke away, saying, “We must go. We cannot keep them waiting … those who wait.”

Eleven

It was the wooden building which she had seen, shuttered and closed up and empty, on the outskirts of Cap Dominique. Of course. She had known it would be. Whatever she had seen that night—sleepwalking half-dream, clairvoyant vision—there had been something real about it.

The snake—a realistic carved and jointed one—was coiled again about the center post; silken flags, banners and sacred paintings lined the wall. Along another wall were the drummers with their drums; the man-tall ma-man, the smaller seconde, the small one which Kip had told her was properly called boula or cata. They had already begun their throbbing music, and Mardee felt the drumming take her, seize on her, go deep into her mind and blood.

Sebastian’s eyes were half closed; he too was swept away into the drumming. The building was filling slowly with men and women, shabbily dressed but clean and neat as any churchgoing crowd. All the women were in white. It seemed to Mardee that the whole population of Cap Dominique, and some of the people from the outlying farms, must be here tonight How in the world could the priest remain ignorant of this? Or was he?

Some of them looked curiously at Sebastian: the tall white man, barefoot and wearing white shut and white canvas trousers. They looked at Mardee too, but without so much curiosity.

It is dangerous for you. You are of the blood . . .

But what danger could there be?

A door opened; between two women carrying torches, the houngan strode in, carrying the ritual wand, the assort, which Mardee now knew was the vertebrae and skull of a snake. She saw, without surprise, that the houngan was Robert, the little butler. Of course. One of the women bearing torches was her own maid, Melanie. She glanced at Mardee with a strange, proud grin.

Of course. They expect ft. I am one of them now.

The drumming held her captive; she was moving to it, not much, just enough to imprison her, to turn away conscious thought. Later she remembered the crimson-and-blue leaflike designs that Robert swirled on the floor, the powders trickling through his swift fingers with great flourishes, the veve growing like a giant flower of monstrous and beautiful growth under those skillful hands. His face was smoothed out, impersonal, dreamlike. Mardee knew he did not see her; he was looking in her direction, but she was sure he did not see anything in this world at all.

Through the door at the back came two more women, bearing velvet flags embroidered with glittering paillettes. Between them, walking backward, leading them, a long antique saber in his hand, was a man: slender, lithe, moving in an elaborate dance, turning in circles as the women followed. Man and sword seemed to move as one, twisting, progressing with a smooth, rippling movement Until he passed her, Mardee did not realize that the dancing man was Christophe Thibault.

Around the hall went the sword and the banners, dipping ritually before every painting, saluting the houngan and the veves, then circling the center post, around and around, slowly at first, then faster and faster, dipping again and again in salute as he passed the drums. Mardee felt dazed by the bells and drums, the shaking of the ritual instruments. Christophe bending to kiss the centerpost; then the great crashing chant breaking out, the chant she had heard in her dream. Dream?

Damballa Wedo! Cote ou ye!

Damballa Wedo! Cote ou ye! Papa Legba! Commande . . .

On and on went the chant, hypnotizing, endless. Chant followed chant, and Mardee, numbed, could no longer follow them. She clutched at the cold beads round her neck. Kip was somewhere in this dizzying melange of sight and sound. Her head throbbed so that she no longer knew where she was, or why. Fires were lighted, and the room began to waver and ripple through smoke and the scent of incense or perfume. Here and there someone, caught up by the drums and the chanting, would stagger up from his or her place and reel into a dance, staggering, blundering, jerking, but somehow never coming near the fires, never bumping into anything or anyone. Dazed, disoriented, Mar-dee saw among the dancers a tall blanc with an upstanding shock of white hair, reeling and staggering among the dancers. She thought, It is he, le gros blanc …

… He is mad, and the mad are sacred, but a time will come when even this will not protect him … I do not love him, I do not even hate him, I do not belong to him, but he does not know it yet . . . Mardee blinked herself awake. Had she slept, to the soul-shattering noise of the drums? She could see Sebastian among the dancers, his head thrown back, and something looking out of his eyes that she had seen before… something that was not the Sebastian Wright she knew.

She had seen it twice, now, at the little stone house … Was it this Kip had feared for him?

The drums altered again, subtly. The doors at the back opened, and through them, dancing, garlanded, came three women. One was a stranger, small and fat One was the gaunt giantess, Fifine. But it was before the third, hung with necklaces and garlands, that the houngan and acolytes fell back, bowing in deep reverence as before a God. She heard around her the whispered word mambo. This was the high priestess, the possessed, the goddess … Mardee saw, without surprise, the frail, skinny body, the skull-like grin, of Madame Thibaud. But Tante Emilie was altered beyond measure. Her frail form seemed to move with obsessional energy as she danced, making ritual gestures of blessing. One by one they went to their knees before her, and Mardee in her turn went down, feeling a deep shudder take her.

This woman was not Tante Emilie … Split personality? Possession by a god? Something was in that body, overshadowing the personality of Madame Thibaud … Her whole body prickled with the approach of the supernatural.

The nuonbo called out, in a voice both familiar and unfamiliar, but the language was creole, and Mardee could not understand a word. Ice flooded down her spine. She felt she must get up’, run away in terror, but her shaking knees could never support her. The god in human form, the loa, the mambo, Tante Emilie … whatever it was … paused above her. Mardee bowed down to the ground and clutched the rosary around her neck. She heard a susurrating sound, a whisper like a rustle of leaves.

“Ce diab’ ay& . . .”

Kip had told her that in creole the word diab’ did not mean the same as the French diable, devil. It could mean any kind of force, a spirit, a power, a saint, a ghost … -She gasped in terror and waited. It seemed hours, days, years before she felt that the Power had moved away, withdrawn from her. Not knowing what she did, she whispered half aloud, beneath the sound of drums, “Erzulie—Grarn’ Maitresse …” and knew that she had never known before what real fear was like.

It was gone. Mardee knew she was crying. Then the Thing, the Power which had taken over toe body of Tante Emilie, cried out:

“Regarde! Regarde-ye! C’e’ le gros blanc,” and spun, pointing at Sebastian. One by one, the dancing quieted, the dancers coming to a stop all around Sebastian, who stood still, his white hair falling over his face, his forehead beaded with sweat

And then, in a voice that seemed to reach into Mardee’s chest and squeeze gelid fingers around her pounding heart, the Thing spoke—in English! It was an old voice, rusty, completely unlike Tante Emilie’s: a man’s harsh, deep baritone.

“To him who asks, is given,” it said. “You have asked … le gros blanc you were, le gros blanc you are, le gros blanc you shall be until the last day of your wretched life … She is pregnant the other, and you have driven her with your brutality even to the sin of despair, and she is dying. And as once you drove the woman of your own world to despair and death, so it shall be again, but this time it will not be your worthless life they will take from you!”

The Thing in Tante Emilie’s body burst into a great, hoarse, guffawing man’s laugh.

“Look, then, and wonder! It is le gros blanc who was to come and take away the curse from this place …”

There was a gasp, and a cry of horror. Before their eyes the Thing trembled, as if struck by lightning. It reeled, trembled, and crashed down, Ml length, with a shrill cry.

The drums stopped. The silence in the houmfort was like death. Lying where the god-shadowed Thing had been was only a frail little old woman; the overshadowing presence was gone; Mardee ran forward and knelt by her side. It was Tante Emilie herself now, frail, dignified, confused. She said weakly, in a whisper, “How did I come here?” She looked up pathetically toward Mardee.

“Marie-Charlotte,” she whispered, “Take me home.”

Mardee took the old Woman in her arms. Madame stared wildly around the houmfort. She whimpered, “But this has all happened before, and Marie-Charlotte is dead … Marie-Claire, is it you? Have you come back to me after all these years, ma fille? Have you come back to forgive me, my child?”

Sobbing, Mardee clasped the old woman to her heart. She Whispered through her tears, “I have come back— Maman.”

And then, against her breast, she felt that the old heart had stopped beating, and that Emilie Thibaud lay dead in her arms.

Twelve

Every door and window of Maison Dominique streamed with light. The drums had become a funeral march, honoring the woman who had been their mistress, their priestess, for so long. Robert had carried her back, still in his ritual robes.

“Where shall we lay her—Madame?”

After a moment Mardee realized it was she who was being addressed. Maison Dominique was hers now. It was a frightening thought

“In her own room.” She led the way, the gaunt Fifine weeping behind her. From somewhere, Fleur had come. Drawn by the drums? Knowing without being told? It did not matter now.

“Mamzelle,” Fleur said, “I will prepare her for her grave. None of these heathen must touch her.” She crossed herself. She was crying too; Mardee noticed it with a corner of her awareness. “Let me send for Pere Etienne.”

Mardee sought in the crowd for Kip, pale and shocked, still in his ritual robes. “Should I? The priest—”

“Send for him,” Kip said quietly, “he will know that there is no limit to the mercy of God.”

Pere Etienne came, crossing the old woman’s hands on her breast, bending over her, murmuring softly in Latin. When he had gone away, Fleur looked comforted.

“He gave her conditional absolution. Only God can know the state of her soul, and He is merciful.”

Mardee had dropped into a chair, shocked and exhausted. Kip had brought her brandy. Fleur was explaining, though the words did not make sense.

“It was a madness that seized upon her, this. She believed, at times, that le gros blanc had cursed their line. Not M’sieur Wright, Mamzelle, but the old Frenchman from whom we are all descended … yes, Christophe and I, too,” she added, looking sadly at her half-brother. Kip went to Fleur and put his arm around her; she resisted a moment, then, sighing, stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Always, always, since Madame was a young woman, so our mother told me, and our grandmere . . . this madness seized her, and she had the blasphemous notion that only so could she protect us against the mart—it was our grandmere who corrupted her, as later she corrupted Christophe.”

Kip said quietly, “I do not feel I was corrupted, ma soeur.”

“N’importe … Now and again, when Madame Emilie had been drinking, she would—would forget her true religion, and forget her place, and join them in the ‘ownphor … and there were other things she did … It was not her fault; she was not herself.”

Not herself. Mardee could believe that; it was a clear-cut case of multiple personality, the kind made famous by the book and movie Three Faces of Eve. One a great lady, the “Romanoff duchess.” The other a voodoo priestess, a mambo.

“She thought I was Marie-Claire … called me ma fille.”

Fleur nodded sadly. “Marie-Claire learned the truth, Mamzelle, and it drove her away. Always, since she was a child, Marie-Claire thought herself the child of Madame Emilie’s sister, Marie-Charlotte. Madame Emilie— she was Mamzelle Emilie, really, but after her child was born …” She fumbled in explanation. “Marie-Charlotte and her husband were childless, you see, and they let it be believed that Marie-Claire was their child. But when Marie-Claire knew, she could not forgive …”

Poor Mother, Mardee thought. Proud of her family and heritage, and then to learn that she was herself illegitimate, child of a madwoman, probably conceived in madness after some such rite as this, her father unknown … no wonder she would not return. Yet Mardee could not find it in her heart to condemn utterly the woman who had been, she now knew, her grandmother. The world had changed. A frightful scandal, to be concealed to death, in Tante Emilie’s day. Even when Marie-Claire was a girl, a tragedy which could drive a young woman from her home, never to return. But now? The world had changed. Mardee did not find it dreadful at all, except for the human suffering it had caused. Someday, perhaps, even Marie-Claire would come to know that

And Tante Emilie—No, not my aunt, my grandmother—had died happy, thinking Marie-Claire had returned to forgive her.

Abruptly, Sebastian burst into the room, shouting, “Mardee!”

She turned shocked eyes on him. Kip rose angrily:

“In the name of God! Sebastian, there has been a death in the family, what are you thinking of, to break in here like this?”

Sebastian swallowed hard. He was as white as his shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but—I have to use the telephone, we need a doctor, an ambulance—it’s Donna, she’s taken sleeping pills, I think she’s dying.”

“Sacre’-Dieu,” Kip said, half aloud. “Ill call the ambulance, Sebastian, well have to get one from Port-au-Prince …” He turned and ran down the stairs.

Sebastian said hoarsely, “I swear, even when I knew Donna was pregnant, I didn’t think that was anything so much in this day and age …”

Mardee felt the chill, as of ice water flowing down her back. Again she heard the harsh, gross, male voice, coming from Tante Emilie’s lips: You have driven her with your brutality even to the sin of despair, and she is dying …

Sebastian came toward her and held out his hands; she recoiled from him. She said coldly, “You’d better go and stay with Donna, Sebastian.””

He slumped, his face contorted and pale, and went.

That night seemed endless. After a long time Mardee heard sirens and went down on the steps to watch the ambulance trying to turn in the drive, to watch the blanketed body of Donna Royce taken inside. Alive or dead, she did not know. Sebastian, pale and silent, went with the ambulance. Mardee felt wrung with pity.

I didn’t want him, Donna. I wish I could have made you believe that!

Kip looked ill and shattered. Most of that night she sat with him in the great salon, and while she clung to his hand she did not know which of them was giving comfort to the other, which demanding it. Once she said, “Christophe—what was it that spoke through Tante Emilie, tonight?”

His voice was dull, dazed. “I am not sure, but I think it was Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead … one of the greatest of the loa.”

Mardee shuddered and fell silent.

During the long hours of that night, hearing the distant drums which had become a funeral march for the dead, Mardee’s mind swam into a strange half dream: the memory which had come for her, the deja vu. She was her own ancestress, the affranchie woman … her rival was dead, and now le gros blanc would come for her and make her mistress in her rival’s place … and yet she longed for her lover … and then Mardee would rouse a little, and feel Kip’s hand in hers, and know that the hour was not yet upon them …

After an endless time, the dawn began to creep, grayish and pale, through the long windows. Robert came and drew the blinds down, as befitting the house where there had been a death.

“Will Madame have some breakfast? Will M’sieur take something?” He had gotten rid of his ritual robes and was back in his dark butler’s suit again. Tante Emi-lie hadn’t been the only split personality around!

“I think coffee would only keep me awake, Robert Christophe?” She looked at Kip, who was still wearing the robes of the houtnfort. He looked gray, exhausted, and tenderness overwhelmed her. She was so much the stronger. It was her duty to protect him, to shelter him from all the harshness of life. She shook her head to clear it of the strange deja vu. When had she felt like this before? It maddened her not to remember.

He shook his head. “No, no, I couldn’t eat.”

“You can’t do anything here, darling. Go and sleep.”

“I’ll stay with you, love,” he protested. “The others must be told that Madame is dead, and that Sebastian has gone with Donna in the ambulance. But you must rest, Mardee. Leave everything here to me.”

Deathly weary, almost unable to stand, Mardee let Kip draw her close and kiss her tenderly. She went slowly up the stairs.

Fleur met her on the landing. “I have prepared Madame for her burial, Mamzelle. Will you come and say good-bye to her?”

In her room, Emilie Thibaud’s body lay as if asleep on her silk counterpane. Fleur had washed her, removed the smeared paints and colours of ritual, clothed her in her dark dress with the frill of lace at her throat. A Romanoff duchess lay dead … Mardee bent and kissed the cold lips. Fleur was weeping, but Mardee’s throat was too tight for tears. She swayed, suddenly faint, and Fleur said compassionately “Come, p’tite.” She had forgotten the formal Mamzelle. She took Mar-dee to her room, got her out of the stained and bedraggled white gown, ran her a bath, lifted her gently out of it, and put her into her nightgown, She got Mardee into bed and drew the curtains, and Mardee, dazed and exhausted, closed her eyes.

Her last conscious thought was, It’s all over.

There was nothing to tell her that the real horror was yet to come.

She dreamed. She dreamed that she woke again in the Great House, known that he had brought her here. It was wrong, unseemly, when the mistress lay dead; she must go at once to her own place. She drew a robe around herself and went quietly out into the twilight hall. One door was closed; she clutched the rosary around her neck, whispering a prayer, but she was not afraid. The dead woman had been a Christian, and they did not walk like other marts. She bore no malice to her rival. The dead woman had had power, and the name of wife. But she herself had been loved …

The hallway was empty, the blinds drawn, as was decent where there had been a death. Moving like a wraith, she went across the lawn, in the darkening sunset, and went softly to her own place.

He had talked madly, saying now she should be mistress of the Great House, but that could never be. A time was coming when there would be no blancs here, and once, so her lover had told her, there had been talk that any woman belonging to the blancs would die too.

She fumbled for tinder to light her fire, but nothing seemed to be in its accustomed place here; the little house was dark, cold and empty as a habitation of ghosts. Had the revolt begun? Was everybody already dead? No, for someone was coming …

Mardee woke abruptly, to find herself standing in her nightgown on the dusty hearth of the little stone house which had once belonged to the placte mistress of the plantation owner, and Sebastian Wright was coming through the door.

Still dazed by her dream—sleepwalking again?—she stared at him, not knowing whether he was Sebastian Wright or le gros blanc. Were they condemned to play out some ancient tragedy? Was she herself a ghost, or her own ancestress?

“She’s dead,” Sebastian said harshly. “Dead! I stopped wanting her a long time ago, but she couldn’t believe it—”

She repeated in a whisper, “Dead,” and such was her confusion that she did not know whether he spoke of Donna or of the wife of the old plantation owner.

“Now, now, it is for you and I to find a life together … Come quickly, they must not find us here!” In the twilight his face was ugly, pale, a white man’s face, a ghost, a stranger. “Quickly, there is death all around us! They killed me once, but they will not do it again. Look, what I have here—” He pulled it from the pocket of the clothes he was wearing, and then, looking down at the gun, Mardee was suddenly wide awake and herself again, back in the twentieth century.

But Sebastian’s face, looking down at her, was not the familiar, civilized face of the film producer. It was the face of a stranger, gross, dissolute; title face of a man who must, Mardee realized with horror, have been two hundred years dead! This was le gros blanc, the one who had been her own remote ancestor, haunted or mad or under a spell, so that he believed she was the black mistress for whom he had built this house …

“Sebastian!” she said harshly. “Mr. Wright, wake up, put away that gun! Are you out of your mind?”

She had spoken in English. He replied in French, low, almost babbling. “What are you talking about? Don’t you know that they are looking for me? I have killed her.” His voice sank, and he laughed, low and horribly. “But they are killing everyone, I will say it was they who killed her, and now I am free of her, and you and I will go away together …”

His voice was a low, eerie chuckle, and Mardee remembered the loa … as once you drove the woman of your own world to despair and death—had le gros blanc, then, murdered his white wife, hoping to blame it on the rebellious slaves, so that he would be free to escape to France with his black mistress? Was this the dreadful secret of the curse, and had Sebastian’s guilt over Donna, and his responsibility for her death—for she must be dead—opened the way for this monstrous possession? Kip had warned him: for Sebastian there might be no way to return …

How could she bring him out of this? She could think of only one way to do it. She drew her hand back and slapped him, hard, across the face.

His face congested, grew black with rage. For a moment she thought he would turn the gun on her; instead, he thrust it into his pocket and seized her roughly.

“You don’t treat me like that, you bitch,” he raved. “You’re mine, and I will show you who is master—”

She struggled, weakly, but with one hand he ripped-her thin nightgown down the front, pushed her back against the mantelpiece. Now Mardee was really frightened. Was it rape he intended, or murder? She shrieked, struggling frantically, as he forced her back, pushed her down on the floor, knelt over her. She heard her own screams echoing in her ears.

The door burst open behind them, and Kip burst in. He tore Sebastian away from her. “Damn you, leave her alone, you filthy bland.” Such was the violence of his attack that he actually hurled Sebastian to the ground. He bent over Mardee, looking with horror at the ruin of her gown. “Mais, man Dieu—has he harmed you, cherie?” He helped her gently to her feet. Stunned, shaken by deja vu again—this had happened before, surely this was happening again—she leaned against him, and two levels of time overlapped dizzyingly in her brain. On one level she knew perfectly well who she was and what was happening, that she had come here, sleepwalking, that her director had suddenly gone insane and tried to rape her, that she had been rescued by her co-star …

And yet, through some deeper reality, she was that faraway freedwoman whose maddened black lover had burst in to free her from the hated embraces of the white man who owned her, who owned all of them, who was now to pay for his crimes and the crimes of all the other white men . . . Who was she? Who were they? Terror clutched at her.

She knew, all the blancs must die. But he had been kind to her, he had showered her with lovely things, he had loved her in his own way … and now her lover would turn on him and kill him, and take the dying curse which would pursue them all through the years … Not knowing who she was or what time she was living in, she clutched at Kip’s arm. “Don’t kill him,” she begged.

“Kill him? Cherie, are you mad? But you must come—look, you are half naked, pauvre fille, quelle sa-laud—”

Frightened, shamed, she clutched the wreck of her . gown around her body. Kip propelled her gently toward the door. “I’ll come back and deal with Sebastian later. Just now—”

Behind Kip, in the darkness of the room, Sebastian rose to his knees. “You devils killed me once,” he raved, “but not this time, this time I am armed!”

In sudden terror, she screamed.

“Look out, Christophe—he’s got a gun!”

The roar of the pistol filled the little house like a crash of thunder. It struck Kip full in the chest; he staggered back and fell, sprawled, a crimson stain spreading on his chest, and his eyes already glazing in death. Mar-dee thought she heard him try to speak, but then the life went out of his eyes, and he lay still, his dead eyes staring up at the dusty ceiling.

“He’s dead!” she gasped, staring in horror at Sebastian, but as he rose and lurched toward her, his face still gross and contorted, panic seized her, and she ran madly, stumbling and screaming, sobbing wildly for help. She ran up the steps of Maison Dominique, shrieking for Robert, for Fleur, for anyone—but there was nothing there, no one. Where was everyone? Then she heard the muffled drums, and knew: They were burying Madame Thibaud, on her own estate. And she was not there, her granddaughter …

She blundered into the little closet under the stairs. Somehow she must find help … She had to dial twice before her fumbling fingers would respond, but she finally got the hotel, and a moment later Brian’s concerned voice came through the phone.

“Mardee? What’s wrong, darling?”

“Oh, Brian—Brian—Tante Emilie is dead, and Sebastian—Sebastian is mad, he killed him—”

Brian gasped at the other end of the line. “Killed who?”

“Christophe—Kip Tybalt—”

“My God,” Brian said, on a harsh indrawn breath. “Darling, what’s happening out there?”

“Everything—everything—Sebastian, he’s . mad, he murdered Kip—”

“Hold on,” Brian said, “Darling, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes—”

She heard herself say, in a burst of hysterical laughter, “Don’t run the critter into the ditch!”

“Critter be damned!” Brian banged the phone.

She sat on the front steps, huddling her torn nightgown around her, unwilling to stay inside the dark house where her grandmother had lain dead, where all her kinfolk had been born and died all these dark and bloody years. The ghost is laid, she thought, after two hundred years le gros blanc has come again.

And this time he was not murdered, he murdered the other … Mad fears spun in her mind. Will we all come again in another two hundred years, will we have to play this all out again? Who -will kill then, who will be killed? Her teeth were chattering.

Tante Emilie’s last words, through the loa who had possessed her, Baron Samedi or another … and le gros blanc you shall be till the last day of your wretched life … The loa had spoken truth. Sebastian would never be himself again. Kip was dead. Kip—he had told her something, once, of men possessed by a mort, who were locked in the local insane asylum, unless some houngan could discover what the possessing ghost wanted and set the man free … but for Sebastian, there would be no such freedom someday. In the civilized hospital to which they would take him, no houngan would ever come, knowing what ailed him …

Sirens wailed, and an ambulance swung into the drive. Brian jumped down, followed by two men in hospital coats. He ran to Mardee, holding her hard.

“Darling—”

“Oh, Brian!” She clung to him in terror, and, through the terror, rejoiced in his strength. He was here. He had come. He loved her …

“I brought doctors with straitjackets and things,” he said. “Wright’s a little too big for me to handle single-handed. And you told me he had a gun.”

“Did he attack you, Mamzelle?” asked one of the men from the ambulance. He looked with detached pity at her torn nightgown. She blushed, and Brian stripped off his denim jacket and put it around her.

“Yes,” she murmured, “he was trying to rape me. I think he thought I was—was someone else …” Struggling for control, she said, “I’ll show you where he is. But be careful—-“

“We are accustomed to handling deranged people, Mamzelle,” one of the doctors said politely.

Slowly, her feet almost refusing to move, she walked for the last time down the path to the little stone cottage where Kip lay dead and Sebastian still crouched over his dead body. As they approached he bellowed, “Not this time! You black devils won’t get me this time!” and a shot whizzed through the trees. One of the ambulance men cried out and clutched at his arm.

It was only a scratch, it was hardly bleeding, but it made them draw back. Sebastian shouted, “I got your damned leader, and now I’ll get all of you!”

Suddenly Mardee knew what she must do. She was deathly afraid, but she knew no one else could do it. She walked past the doctors.

“Sebastien,” she called, giving it the French pronunciation.

“Mamzelle, non—” One of the men seized her from behind.

“Laissez-moi passer,” she said, “I know he won’t hurt me.” She walked straight through the door of the stone cottage. Sebastian Wright still knelt over Kip’s body, hunched, muttering.

“Sebastien,” she said in French. “It is time to go.”

His eyes were vacant. He looked up, muttering, “They will kill us …”

“Non,” she said gently, “these are loyal men who have come to—to take you to a safe place. They will help you …” She had started to say, as she knew, now, she had done before, They will help you to escape; but she could not lie to him now. Had she—or her remote ancestress—betrayed her white master to his death? “They will take you to a safe place and no one will hurt you. Give me the gun, mon gros.”

Meekly he laid it in her hand. She felt its weight and coldness with a shock. He raised his head, his white hair gleaming like frost in the darkness, but she could not see his face.

“And will you come with me, Brigitte?” he asked, in that voice that was and was not the voice of the Sebastian she had known. She held out her hand to him, her throat thick with tears.

“I will come outside with you,” she promised.

She blinked in the light of the flashlight lantern one of the men was holding.

“I think he will go with you now, without a fight.” She handed the gun to one of the doctors. “Go with the men, man gros blanc,” she said, her voice breaking, tears streaming freely down her cheeks.

They came and took his arms, and he went with them, his white head hanging. She could not see his face, but as he went past her he said, “Brigitte,” with terrible yearning. He reached for her; they tightened their grip on him. She said, her throat tight with tears, “Don’t hurt him—please don’t hurt him.” And as they thrust him into the ambulance, wrestling now with straps and retainers, she heard his cry again, torn through his throat, “Brigitte!” and broke into terrible sobbing. She fell beside Kip’s body and gave way to her grief.

After a long time she felt Brian lift her up and take her away. He said soberly, “What a tragedy! So young, and so handsome, and such a fine actor. I liked him a lot, what little I saw of him. You were a little in love with him, weren’t you, Mardee?”

She nodded without speaking. She could never explain to Brian, or anyone else, what it had been with Kip Tybalt. Had it been real, or a spell cast on her by the handsomest man she had ever known, and their shared work in the film, or … or the emotion of a woman two hundred years dead, longing for the lover of her own race, rebelling against the white man who had owned more of her than she had ever known until she saw him destroyed before her eyes?

Leave it at that. Once Sebastian had said there were some realities that went deeper, with more inner truth, than the real facts. For enormous realities, there would be no words. Something in her heart would forever belong to Christophe Thibault, and forever mourn him, but, except for the brief formal words she would speak at an inquest some day, she would never again speak his name. “Yes,” she said, “I was a little in love with him.”

The real tragedy was not Kip Tybalt. He had died at the height of his career, nobly and tragically, protecting his co-star from threatened rape by a madman. He would be mourned, and remembered.

The real tragedy was the film that Sebastian would never make, the vision of Haiti that no one, now, would ever share or see. And he could not even be mourned as dead. He would be locked away and forgotten; forgotten years before, someday, the empty thing that had once been Sebastian Wright would finally die, locked in a ward for incurables somewhere … It was for that, not for Kip, that she was weeping, but there was no way to tell Brian this. Brian—or anyone else.

“There, there, my love,” he whispered, holding her close. “You’ve still got me. And I’m going to get you out of here as soon as I can.”

She realized he did not even know that Maison Dominique belonged to her. And he did not care. He never would. He was there with her, rich or poor, and he would stay.

“Come on”—he gestured at the sun-flooded windows of Maison Dominique—”the sun’s coming up. There’s a lot to do today, and you’d better tell me what the hell has been going on here, anyhow!”

A long time later, over the black coffee that a sobered Robert had found for them, when everything that could be explained had been explained, Brian had still one question.

“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “if her name really was Brigitte—the black slave woman who inherited the place. I don’t believe in possession, or anything like it. I know perfectly well that old Wright just went off his head. But I do wonder if her name was Brigitte …”

Mardee did not answer. With the memory of that last, lost cry of “Brigitte!” echoing desolately in her mind, she was sure; she had felt the shock of recognition down to her very soul. But there would never be any proof; nothing but her own inner certainty. When Brian said, “I guess nobody will ever know,” she said nothing.

When her white lover was slain at her feet … did Brigitte feel like this? Or had she resolved all her loves and hates at last? She lived many years at Maison Dominique, with her sons … the sons of her white lover and her black. Ruling, where she had been a slave. How many ghosts had shared Maison Dominique with her? And had she feared them … or welcomed them?

Mardee drew a long breath and pushed away the silver coffee service.

“I’ve got to call Mother in New York.” Perhaps, after so many years of exile, Marie-Claire could forgive and come home. She would drop the lie of Tante Emi-lie, she would say simply, in French: Maman, ta mere estmorte …

But it was still very early. Marie-Claire would be sleeping. She said to Brian, “You’d better phone in the story. You’ve got newspaper connections here, and your friends will never forgive you if someone else gets the story first.”

“My God,” he said startled, “I’d forgotten, but it is news! Donna Royce dead—Kip Tybalt dead— Sebastian in the hospital—the richest black woman in Haiti dead—” He broke off in chagrin, pulled her quickly against him. “It’s got to be love,” he said, and gave her a quick kiss, “When a newspaperman forgets to phone in a story this size, it’s love, aft* right.”

“Brian, you’re impossible,” she said through sudden tears.

“Well, there’s still time before breakfast,” he retorted, then bent and kissed her again, gently, misunderstanding the tears. “I’ll handle it so there’s no family scandal, love. After all, it’s my family too, now. I’ll handle the newspapermen for you.”

And even through her tears, she smiled. Someday, this would be over. Someday, she would recover. And someday he would even make her laugh again.

Astrological Note

Mardee Haskell has the beauty, elegance, extravagance, and luxurious tastes of her sign—together with the typical Leo faults of a mercenary turn of mind and a tendency to dominate anyone within her orbit. Even the colors with which she surrounds herself—red, orange, yellow (even when she wears a simple white dress, it must be trimmed with gold)—proclaim the fiery child of the Sun. Venus rising in Leo gives her a flamboyance which will make her immediately noticeable everywhere. It is not really surprising that she puts the more famous Donna Royce immediately into the shade. Donna is an Aries, and for Mardee she represents the immediate thrust, the drive of competition, the spur to bring Mardee out of even temporary self-effacement.

But Mardee is not the typical Leo. With Mars and Uranus in Gemini, she is to some degree a woman in conflict with herself and in search of an identity. Cancer rising makes her impulsive, generous to a fault, always able to put herself in the other person’s place. She has no true sense of black identity, thinking of herself mostly as a human being whose skin happens to be black, rather than as “a black woman”; her Cancer rising also makes her hypersensitive to stereotypes, so that she resents being pigeonholed. She also has an extraordinary tact for the frequently arrogant Leo; her childhood in France, a Libra country, has helped along the tact and kindliness of the rising Cancer.

Mardee is and will always be hung up on older men, particularly those who are in a position to offer her the luxury which her Leo soul craves, or to advance her driving ambition. Sebastian Wright is a proud, passionate Scorpio; Mardee is sensually and romantically attracted to him. But, as in all such cases, there is an immediate contest of wills to see which will dominate. And like all women with a prominent Saturn in their charts, Mardee is too intensely practical and too introspective to submit herself to Sebastian’s powerful will. Any love affair between them would be a constant battle between Sebastian’s domineering nature and Mardee’s complete inability to submit herself to anyone. The Moon in Aries, in Mardee’s chart, goes along with inordinate imagination and a powerful creative impulse; it is no wonder that she catches fire from Sebastian’s romantic dream.

But Mardee is a potential superstar; and any man who intended to be a permanence in her life would have to accept that without question. Not for Mardee is the path of the hearth fire and the home. Of all the three men with whom she becomes entangled, only Brian— the pliant, easygoing, frivolous, and charming Libra— could tolerate this in a woman. Brian will not mind being dominated, within limits, because he is not personally ambitious, and Mardee’s career will not threaten his self-image. He will always be able to get around her anger by making her laugh, and will often get his own way with her by sheer charm. There will never be any direct conflict of wills; the Libra man gets his way, not by demanding it, but by bending with the wind. He is probably the only man she has ever met who can coax or tease Mardee into doing anything she does not want to do. Sebastian rouses all her Leo instincts to do battle; with Brian, she never knows she is doing battle until she discovers she has been charmed into letting him have his way.

Mardee, of course, like all Leos, does everything a bit larger than life, and in the grand manner. But this tendency to exaggeration nearly destroys her. The occult has a fatal fascination for her. Her hard-headed and Saturnian tendency to skepticism would be easily breached; vanity, not superstition, might lead her to substitute “Mardee” for “Marie-Louise,” but the discovery that it coincides with her first real break would cause her to become vulnerable to the occult and invisible world. Practical as she is, she would quickly succumb to the fascination of the hidden side of the universe. And this brings her under the influence of voodoo—and of Sebastian, the Scorpio, tied by invisible chains to the unseen.

During the period of this book the planet Saturn, just leaving a square to Mardee’s mid-heaven, provokes what seem to be setbacks in all directions: conflict with parents, damage to her career, the breakup of her first marriage, the professional disappointment of the closing of her first Broadway play. The prominence of Saturn between August and December, 1973, indicates struggle, and an involvement with an older man both professionally and personally. The Neptune transit makes the incursion of the supernatural, at this time, almost inevitable.

Sebastian, like all Scorpio men, is strongly attracted on every level to the occult. Sensual, romantic, powerful, he can pamper her love of elegance and luxury, and offer satisfaction to her driving ambition. But it is Sebastian’s strong attraction to the occult which, in the end, destroys him. He is a perfectionist, worrying endlessly about technical details; and while he has great professional patience, he has no sympathy with any ego trips—except his own. (He is incapable of love; sexuality and his own passionately romantic imagination take the place of love for Sebastian, and as long as Donna Royce is part of that dream, she takes her place in his obsessions and becomes part of them. By opposing her Aries vanity and insecurity against his powerful will, she loses Mm and destroys herself.) Sebastian’s will and drive, his ability to become totally absorbed by what captivates him at the moment, also holds seeds of destruction for him. He is not content to know the surface of Haiti; no Scorpio is ever content with surfaces. He must penetrate its deepest mysteries. And so he gives it a fatal hold on his mind. Insanity is always a threat for this obsessed Scorpio, and so he falls prey to the ancient tragedy.

Into this explosive mixture comes Christophe Thibault: Kip Tybalt, the Gemini, the man divided, in total conflict between his black heritage and his white, seeking to reject the past of bastardy, disgrace, voodoo … and yet inevitably drawn back, like all Gemini natives, to his own deepest sources. He can neither live with his past nor wholly reject it. Between Leo and Gemini is an ambivalent fascination, the conflict of two powerful artists. Libra, like Gemini, is an Air sign. Brian, the calm Libra, supplies the oxygen, the breath of life to keep the Leo fire burning in Mardee; but the explosive, volatile, changeable Kip fans the fire into a frenzy. Mardee is fascinated, overwhelmed; her own Mars in Gemini, and the natal Uranus which is a key to her own hidden, psychic side, are close to Kip’s natal sun, indicating a powerful, though temporary passion. It is her imagination which reacts to Kip, even more than the Mars that is always the key to a woman’s sexual passion.

And yet Kip and Mardee are doomed to frustration. Her whole mind and heart are captivated by his imagination, his intensity, and the cry to her past—the ancient tragedy which binds them. Kip is no leader of men; like all Gemini actors, he can give a very good imitation of one, but in himself he is too indecisive, too easily swayed by imagination, too weak. Mardee would have wounded him continually, tried to dominate him—an impossible task with the elusive Gemini, who is never quite where anyone expects him to be. Kip and Mardee would have quarreled constantly, and she would have hurt him unendurably, would have destroyed him; as, in a sense, she did destroy him, by drawing him into the conflict with Sebastian.

Brian is her true mate, possessing the strength and pliancy to compensate for her weaknesses, the inner strength not to feel threatened by her ambition or her career. He is the only possible mate for a Leo “superstar.” At times, she will find him dull; she is likely to be unfaithful to him, or faithful only after her own fashion. Yet he will always remain the one permanence in her life, because, in his own pliant way—easygoing as he is—he is stronger than she. No man alive can make a Leo “happy ever after”; happiness, for a Leo, is something which can never be vested in any man, but must come from within, from personal and professional accomplishment on her own.

Brian will come as close as any man could. And he will make her laugh.

Icy Alaska is the setting for Cave of the Moaning Wind by Jean DeWeese, in the Virgo Zodiac Gothic. When a young woman is called from beyond the grave to answer an ancient plea for help, it takes all of her Virgoan tenacity to survive. Don’t miss Cave of the Moaning Wind, coming in September from Ballantine Books.