L'Etranger: Chapter Four

Reget had seemed very surprised at my request for him to escort me to dinner. He awkwardly lent his arm out, and I had tentatively placed my hand upon it, and together we had made our way to the dining room, which was as vast and luxurious as any in Paris. Waxing candles shone their yellow light all around the room so that it bounced sharply from the Chinese drapes to the painted wallpaper to the gold gilded frames of the paintings. The candles were like fireflies.

"Madamoiselle!" Blanchelande exclaimed with an overly deep bow. I swallowed, curtsying back. "I see you have met Reget."

"Yes," I said, turning to him ", yes, I have."

"He was the mulatto I was telling you about."

"Right.". Blanchelande made a quick movement to a chair at the far side of the table and pulled it out, inviting me to sit, and I did, wondering why I had been offered such a solitary position at such a long table. Blanchlande sat down at the head of the table, just a foot or so from me, and Reget followed suit but sat at the opposite head of the table so that he was far removed from us.

"Perhaps we should talk business," Blanchelande said affirmatively.

"Yes." I nodded, half happy to think that I was about to be told what I was actually meant to do here.

"We are here to rule," Blanchelande said, looking assertively forward as if he had suddenly begun addressing an audience.

"Then what are they here to do?" Reget said calmly.

"Who?" Blanchelande replied as if he had just been woken up from such a great trance, a religious vision almost.

"The people that are enslaved."

"They are here to be cared for by us."

"Ha!" Reget tipped his head back. "Cared for? Mothers care for babies by holding them before bed. That is care. Care is not – "he broke off, possibly realising that this conversation (which he had probably had a hundred, thousand times) was futile with this audience. "Okay, Blanchelande. There is no point in us talking about this."

"Yes." Blanchelande nodded, eating.

"So, how do we rule?" I asked.

"By caring for them," Blanchelande replied.

"Okay, but how do we do that?"

"Well, I do it be drafting legislation to sent to France about our great colony and by upholding the Code Noir."

"What is that?" I smiled, noting his definite emphasised use of the first person, singular pronoun.

"Nothing for you to worry about." Blanchelande smiled, "But, you know, Madamoiselle, I would very much like to get to know you better, but I think it better to do it in private."

"Hint taken," Reget said calmly, yet with definite anger. "I'll take my food to my chambers."

"I assure you, there is no need for that – "I said hastily but was cut off.

"No, no, it's fine," Reget said, standing up and leaving.

"I should retire, myself," I said.

"But, my dear, there is no need for that."

"I'm exhausted from my day. I should like to sleep in a bed not upon the wide, wide sea tonight."

"Of course, perhaps another night. Sleep well, Elodie."

"And you, Blanchelande." I smiled, standing and curtseying before leaving. I truly am one of the most dishonest people I know, for the real reason, I had desired nothing more than to retire was not that I found Blanchelande's opinions or treatment of Reget distasteful, nor that he reminded me of France, which he undeniably did, it was that he reminded me of Le Roche and being his marionette bride. She was not a girl I had been for a while now, and the thought of returning to panicked me more than a little, for I had been without civilised life for a long time now.

"Wait!" Blanchelande said, "Take this." He smiled, picking up a lit candelabra from Reget's end of the dining table and passing it to me. "The nights in Saint Domingue are dark."

"Thank you." I smiled, taking it and nodding slightly again. I reached it out in front of me and began the climb up the crimson carpeted stairs towards my chambers. And my chambers did seem dark, and I was most grateful for the warm light the waxy candles expelled, for they were the only light for me in the unquiet darkness. It was a decent light to read by, and as sleep certainly did not come easily to me, I decided to reread a little of one of the many old French manuscripts I had brought with me on my journey across the sea. The first leather-bound book with my hand came to in my trunk was Dangerous Liaisons, the very copy I had been gifted by a who at the time I had known only as The Marquis. He gifted it to me when I was thirteen years old, having bought it on the dark streets of Paris. He said it reminded him of me. God knows how, for at the time (the summer of 1784, as I recall), I was almost as innocent as Thierry. But nevertheless, I sat down to read it once again.

I suppose that in the illusory candlelight, I must have fallen to sleep, for I was plagued by the most bizarre of dreams, at first, before I remembered where I had seen my dream before. I woke up in a daze, slumped over the table in the centre of the chamber, the candelabra still flickering its sepulchral shadow across the pages of the novel, which yellowed with antiquity. My dream had taken me from my chamber to the past; it had placed me for a few moments in my life at seventeen years old at a masquerade in Versailles. It had been the New Years Eve Ball for the start of 1789, as I recall, and I had been dressed in miles of Venetian cream fabric almost the colour of champagne and had my ringlets all fixed perfectly, a little mask in my hand. Le Roche had asked me to dance, and I, as any young Parisian girl who desired a higher place for herself in society than what she would have been afforded naturally by birth, agreed graciously, looking to the floor a little as he asked. Thierry had been melancholy, for I had had to cut off a waltz with him on the chessboard floor at the Marquis's request to crush a cup of wine with him. He had passed me the wine, and my hand had missed it, allowing the claret to cascade down my dress and stain the silk crimson. That had been the dress I had put on that dead girl I had found and hung in my chamber back in Paris. That had been my last ball at Versailles. That waltz was a death dance. How could we – my parents, Le Roche and Thierry - possibly have known that our world was ending? A world that began its decline with that claret staining my dress the colour that just months later would run through the streets of our city.

Author Notes: This is now published and available to buy https://www.lulu.com/shop/m-danielson-kaslik/letranger/ebook/product-wjnvww.html?q=L%27Etranger&page=1&pageSize=4

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