Toussaint Louverture had been made the commander in chief of the armed forces; he reported directly to the government in France and had announced that he would reduce his troops by half so the rest could return to the plantations as free workers. That "free" was relative: they would have to complete at least three years of forced labor under military control, and in the eyes of many blacks that seemed a undisguised return to slavery. Valmorain thought of making a quick trip to Saint-Domingue to evaluate the situation himself, but Hortense sent screams of terror to the skies. She was five months pregnant and her husband could not abandon her in that state and risk his life on that accursed island, and even less sailing the high seas in the middle of hurricane season. Valmorain postponed the trip and promised her that if he recovered his property in Saint-Domingue he would put it in the hands of a manager and they would remain in Louisiana. That calmed the woman for a couple of months, but then she got it in her head that they should not have any investments in Saint-Domingue. For once, Sancho agreed with her. He had a terrible opinion of the island he'd visited a couple of times to see his sister Eugenia. He proposed the idea of selling Saint-Lazare to the first bidder, and with Hortense's help he twisted the arm of his brother-in-law, who finally yielded after weeks of indecision. That land was connected with his father, with the family name, with his youth, he said, but his arguments fell apart against the irrefutable reality that the colony was a battlefield of people of all colors mutually massacring each other.

The humble Gaspard Severin went back to Saint-Domingue, ignoring the warnings of other refugees, who kept arriving in Louisiana in a sad dribble. The news they brought was depressing, but Severin had not succeeded in adapting, and wanted to rejoin his family even though he had not been relieved of his bloody nightmares and trembling hands. He would have returned as poor as he left had Sancho Garcia del Solar not handed him a discreet sum in way of a loan, which was what he called it though both of them knew it would never be repaid. Severin carried Valmorain's authorization to sell the land to the agent. He found him at the address where he had always been though the building was new, the former having been reduced to ashes in the Le Cap fire. Among the articles stored for export that had burned in the warehouses was Eugenia Garcia del Solar's walnut and silver coffin. The old man was still conducting business, selling what little the colony produced and importing from America houses of cypress wood that arrived in pieces ready to be assembled like toys. The demand was insatiable because every skirmish among enemies ended in fire. There were no longer buyers for the things that had brought in so much money in the past: cloth, hats, ironwork, furniture, saddles, shackles, and large cauldrons for boiling molasses.

Two months after the tutor's departure, Valmorain received the agent's response: he had found a buyer for Saint-Lazare, a mulatto officer in Toussaint's army. He could pay very little, but he was the only one interested, and the agent recommended that Valmorain accept the offer because ever since the emancipation of the slaves and the civil war, no one gave anything for land. Hortense had to admit that she had been entirely wrong about the agent; he had turned out to be more honest than could be expected in such stormy times when moral compasses were spinning so madly. The agent sold the property, took his commission, and sent the rest of the payment to Valmorain.

Whiplashes

With Severin's departure, Maurice's private lessons had ended and his calvary begun in an upper-class boys' school in New Orleans, where he learned nothing but had to defend himself from the bullies who cruelly harassed him; it had not made him bolder, as his father and stepmother had hoped, only more cautious, as his uncle Sancho had feared. He started to suffer again his nightmares of the prisoners in Le Cap, and once or twice wet his bed, though no one knew but Tete, who washed the sheets on the sly. He could not even count on the solace of seeing Rosette since his father did not let him visit her in the Ursulines' convent, and forbade him to mention her in front of Hortense.

Toulouse Valmorain had awaited with exaggerated dread Hortense's meeting with Tete he didn't know that in Louisiana something that banal did not merit a scene. Among the Guizots, as in all Creole families, no one dared question the patriarch's caprices; wives endured their husbands' cavortings as long as they were discreet, and they always were. Only the legitimate wife and children mattered in this world, and in the next; it would be demeaning to waste jealousy on a slave, better to reserve it for the famous New Orleans free quadroons, who could possess a man to his last breath. But even in the case of courtesans, a well born lady feigned ignorance and held her tongue; that was how Hortense had been brought up. Her majordomo, who was left on the plantation in charge of the large domestic staff, had confirmed her suspicions about Tete.

"Monsieur Valmorain bought her when she was about nine and brought her to Saint-Domingue. She is the only concubine he's known to have, maitresse," he told her.

"And the little brat?"

"Before he married, monsieur treated her like a daughter, and young Maurice loves her like a sister."

"My stepson has a lot to learn," Hortense muttered.

It seemed to her a bad sign that her husband had resorted to complex strategies to keep that woman away for months, perhaps she still attracted him, but the day they entered the renovated and refurbished house, Hortense felt reassured. The servants welcomed them in a row, dressed in their best, with Tete at their head. Valmorain made the introductions with nervous cordiality while his wife measured the slave from top to bottom and inside to out, deciding finally that she did not pose a temptation for anyone, and less for the husband she had eating from her hand. That mulatta was three years younger than she, but she was worn by work and lack of care; her feet were callused, her breasts drooping, and her expression somber. She admitted that Tete was slim and dignified, for a slave, and had an interesting face. She lamented that her husband was so weak; the woman had been spoiled and it had gone to her head. In the days to follow, Valmorain overwhelmed Hortense with attentions, which she interpreted as an express desire to humiliate the former concubine. You don't have to bother, she thought, I will take charge of putting her in her place; but Tete gave her no motive for complaint. The house that awaited them was impeccable, with not even a memory of the clamor of hammers, the mire in the patio, the clouds of dust, the sweat of stonemasons. Everything was in its place, the fire-places clean, the curtains washed, the balconies adorned with flowers, and the rooms well aired.

At first Tete was frightened and mute as she performed her duties, but at the end of a week she began to relax; she had learned the routines and whims of her new mistress and made a great effort not to provoke her. Hortense was demanding and inflexible; once she gave an order, however irrational it might be, it had to be carried out. She noticed Tete's long, elegant hands, and set her to washing clothes, while the washerwoman idled away the day in the patio because Celestine did not want her as helper; the woman was monumentally stupid and smelled of lye. Then Hortense decided that Tete could not go to bed before she did; she was to wait, dressed, until they came home, even though she rose at dawn and had to work the whole day, stumbling from missed sleep. Valmorain argued weakly that it wasn't necessary for Tete to wait for them-the errand boy was responsible for putting out lamps and closing up the house, and she had Denise to help her out of her clothing-but Hortense insisted. She was despotic with the servants, who had to put up with her screams and slaps, but, swollen from her pregnancy and very busy with her social life, soirees, and spectacles, in addition to her health and beauty treatments, she had neither the agility nor the time to have her way with the whip, as she had at the plantation.