In late October 1793, the first letters of reply from Barnabas began to arrive. Written on stiff parchment, and sealed with a spot of blue wax, each one was addressed to Mlle. Josette duPres in bold calligraphy. Barnabas had a masterful handwriting to rival Thomas Jefferson himself. The "S" of Josette's name, in cursive, was a flamboyant sweep of the quill in perfect alignment with the lower tail of the "J", but Angelique let out a small quiet sigh to wish for him to write her name instead.
Josette snatched up the letters each time Jean-Baptiste brought them upstairs on a silver tray. She cracked the wax seal and spent all hours of the afternoon snuggled in the window seat to read them over and over by the golden light filtered in the window glass.
Later in the night, Angelique would sneak into Josette's room while she was at supper or in the parlor practicing her harpsichord. She unlatched the wood-and-leather box and opened its lid to reveal the purple velvet lining and a treasure of folded papers. One by one, she read them to herself and imagined Barnabas's deep voice reciting the words on the page.
They were not the letters of a lover, no, the narrative was like pages taken out of a journal. He described in English the town of Collinsport and the countryside of the province called Maine which was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He gave details of the family home, Collinwood, a two story manor house designed to resemble a Greek temple. He sketched in words the foundation stones being laid for a new larger mansion on a nearby hilltop. He wrote of the wild animals of the forest, the migration of Canadian geese, and the changing colors of the maple trees, "...their falling leaves as vivid as the flowers in your tropical garden."
One of many letters received in late November repeated some of the rhymes and poems that Barnabas was teaching to his little sister Sarah. "My father is not pleased that I teach her Milton. He prefers she learn aphorisms out of Poor Richard's Almanac, 'a penny saved is a penny earned,' and such. How was I ever born from such an unimaginative man, who has no appreciation for Paradise Lost? 'With thee conversing, I forget all time, all seasons, and their change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, with charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun...'"
Angelique slammed the lid of the letter box. If they were not written by his hand, she would have set fire to the whole pile. Why does he never write about me? Why does he not inquire about me at all?
#
On the third day after Christmas, in the marketplace of Fort Royal, she encountered the Obeah woman of Mount Pelée buying a live chicken in a wicker cage. She approached the crone, whom she had not seen in the several years since she was thirteen. Now Angelique had grown taller, and the Obeah woman seemed very small and hunched—a walking doll made in the image of herself.
"Auntie, may I ask of you a favor?" Her hands offered an exchange by kindly taking hold of the chicken cage and lifting the burden from the old woman's arm.
"I remember you," said the Obeah woman in a raspy voice, the sound of a sea wave scraping on sand. "You are the hungry one."
Angelique smiled in confusion. "I'm not hungry, thank you. If you'd like, I'll cook you dinner. Shall I walk you home and prepare this chicken for you?"
They strolled together the sandy path leading away from the marketplace. They left behind the chatter of bright and busy voices, the comings and goings of sailors and natives, of masters and slaves, all going about in the sunshine of a warm green day in December. Briefly her mind wandered to thoughts of Barnabas's most recent letter complaining of something called "frost" and Angelique yearned to see such a magical thing for herself.
"What do you want?" the old woman grumbled.
"Simply to ask a question. I hope you know the answer. It would help me a great deal, and I would be most grateful."
The Obeah woman grunted to ascend the slope. She still shuffled in the same twisting gait that Angelique remembered. She was still barefoot. Layers of large cotton veils wrapped her hunched body in vivid drapes of yellow, turquoise, pink, and green. A pale blue scarf bundled up her head. Now, she had to lean on a walking stick—a pole once used as a lever in a sugar press, cracked down the middle, and bound with a winding of coarse twine to make it whole once more.
"Whatever you want to know, I'm not sure I should tell you."
Angelique forced a laugh to try and lighten up the mood. She held the chicken cage in one hand and supported the old woman's elbow with the other. "I learned from my mistake! What I'm asking is a wonderful and joyous thing."
"Is it?"
"I want to know how to make a man fall in love with me."
The Obeah woman glanced her way. Though her skin was as dark as coffee, she had greenish-hazel eyes set in bloodshot amber. Her blood heritage came from half of one world and half of another, just as her knowledge straddled the realm of spirits and the realm of mortals.
"Flirt with them as you're flirting with me. You'll have no trouble."
"I've tried that, but he wasn't interested. I need something more! How can I make sure of his attention? Surely you must know a way to turn his thoughts to me."
The Obeah woman stopped in the middle of the path. "No child, that's not right. The power of vodoun is not to force your will upon others, but to guide others—and yourself—into finding a balance between the living and the dead, between craving and peace."
The chicken in the cage clucked rapidly as if agreeing with the old woman. Angelique's rage boiled over. She dumped the cage roughly on the ground.
"You speak of peace? How can I be at peace without him?"
The crone bent over, with a grunt, to pick up the chicken cage herself. "That's the right question you should have asked me."
Angelique balled her hands into fists. "Will you teach me a love spell or not?"
"No, I will not help you twist a man's heart against his choice. Remember what happened the last time you tampered with things beyond your control."
The Obeah woman left her behind. She crept up the path with effort, each step achieved with twisting her shoulder and plunking the stick into the sand. But like a turtle, step by step, she got farther and farther away. It would take hours but, eventually, she would make it home under her own power.
Angelique stood there trembling with rage. The warm winds of December swelled her thin skirts into a billowing cone around her legs. She felt herself expanding, opening her heart and mind to the awareness of loa in the trees and the ghosts of men drowned in the sea; white men and black men all drowned alike. She felt older now, and wiser, than when she had raised the zombie of Josette's mother. This aching need in her heart was different—this would be love, not death.
"I won't spend my life alone like you!" she shrieked at the old woman's back. "I will be his! Yes, I will be his!"
#
Back at home, in her little room in the servants' quarters off the back of the kitchen, Angelique sat on the hearth stone and stoked a small bright fire. She whispered to the only true friends she had left in all the world: the deep sienna eyes that blinked in between the flames.
"Will you help me?"
Of course.
"Tell me, what should I do to make Barnabas love me?"
Fashion a doll of raw clay never touched by another's hands. Get a lock of hair from your intended. Get a spiderweb that is unbroken.
Angelique searched his empty room that had been closed up since his departure. The bed sheets had been changed and aired out in the sun, but other than that, the room was nearly untouched. She got down on her hands and knees and searched the carpet, picking through the weave with her fingertips. She went to the window seat and searched the cushions and the draperies.
Frantic and trembling with desperation, she finally went to the dressing table where he had kept his comb and shaving razor during the time he was here. She held almost no hope of finding a trace of him. The toiletries had been packed up and taken away. But then, she looked closely, her eyes widening to bright green circles. She noticed under the frame of the mirror, where it was inconvenient to wipe, in a fuzz of dust was a tiny black hair.
Grinning with triumph, Angelique pressed the strand of hair into the clay doll. She had a cobweb as a pale net on a twig taken from an acacia tree. She sat on the hearth stones, at midnight, long after the other servants of the kitchen had fallen asleep. She listened to the instructions from the whispers in the flames and repeated the spell as the sexless voice told it to her. She felt the surge of warm power in her chest as her desire went into the clay. She rotated the figurine's sightless face towards herself.
"Barnabas Collins, you will love me," she murmured to the figurine in her hands. "You will desire me. You will want nothing else but to come back to me."
#
In the third week of January, in the year 1794, the coachman delivered yet another letter from Barnabas to Josette. It looked the same as all the others, addressed in the bold cursive calligraphy with a small spot of wax to seal the fold. Josette seized it off the silver tray and was about to skip off with it when Angelique caught her in the hallway.
"Mademoiselle, would it be an intrusion to ask if you would read Monsieur Barnabas's letter aloud to me?"
"Why?" Josette asked.
"His letters always seem to make you happy, and I want to know what makes you happy."
Josette's confusion melted into a broad smile. "All right, I would love to share it with you! Come!"
Together the young women sat like sisters on the patio. Warm sunny breezes stirred their coiffed hair and ruffled the lacy cuffs of Josette's sleeves as she held up the letter and read it aloud. Although it was Josette's voice, they were his words, and Angelique with eyes half closed imagined him at a writing desk with a quill in his hand and these thoughts forming in his mind.
"We had a birthday party today for my sister Sarah who is eight years old. What a delightful child she is, full of gentleness and kindness. She has a pet Spaniel that she adores, but the poor little thing has fallen ill in the cold weather. My father wants to put the dog out of its misery, but of course this sends Sarah into a fit of tears that even he can't bear. Who knew? My father actually has a heart, when it comes to her."
Not a word about me, Angelique thought bitterly. Still, he does not even inquire if I am alive or what I am doing. Does he think of me at all?
"Frost is coming early this year," Josette continued reading aloud. "The bears are already in hibernation. Squirrels are packing away their nuts. By the time this letter reaches you, my home Collinwood and the whole landscape for miles around will be buried under mounds of snow. You could never imagine such a scene. If you were to see it, perhaps you might compare it to the pristine sand dunes of your beach, if sand dunes were made of ice."
I must see what is happening now, Angelique thought as Josette's voice droned on in English. She waited anxiously all the way to the end, for Josette to read aloud down to the last words on the page. "As always, your friend, Barnabas Collins."
"Thank you, mademoiselle. That was delightful." Angelique shot to her feet. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."
"Of course." Josette reclined in the wrought-iron patio chair. She cuddled the letter close to her bosom and resumed reading it again, silently, to herself.
#
Outside the threshold of her room in the servants' quarters, Angelique picked up a pinch of dirt. She entered the dim stillness of the room and spit into the palm of her hand to make a muddy slime. From her skirt's pocket, she took out a single sheet of paper—some of Josette's letter stationery. Using the mud paste, she drew on the paper two ovals, and inside those she drew two circles, and inside those two dots.
She kindled and lit a fire in the fireplace, patiently watching it blossom and grow, slowly feeding it larger and larger sticks. When she judged it to be large enough, she tossed in her crude drawing of a pair of eyes. The paper curled. Sparkles devoured it from the corners, eating inward to the center, turning the paper black, and shriveling it into a cinder.
Angelique spoke to the cinders breaking apart and floating in the smoke. "Eyes of fire. Eyes of night. Be my eyes where I cannot go. Show me what I cannot see: my beloved. Show me Barnabas Collins."
Her mind reeled as if outdoors too long in the summer sunshine. Her sights blurred. The room where she sat faded away. Colors changed. Brightness dimmed. The plaster walls darkened, then came a-light as wood paneling covered in brocade paper.
His bedroom was in disarray. Clothes lay discarded on the floor or draped over the backs of chairs. Books were open on the table. The blue blankets of his canopy bed were tangled and crumpled. Barnabas wore stockings but no shoes. His breeches were not fastened at the knees and the tie strings dangled. His waistcoat half unbuttoned showed the puckered gathers of his blousy shirt. Without a cravat to bind his collar, his throat was exposed. His hair not combed, his jaw speckled with dark sandpaper stubble, it looked as if he had not washed in days.
He paced about restlessly. He gripped the posts of his canopy bed with both hands and stared at the empty blankets. His mouth sagged open. He hunched forward and seemed to be a man in throes of a fever. Then he pushed away from the bed and rushed to the window. There he gripped the draperies. He stared at glass panes obscured by white frost.
Angelique thrilled to see him this way. He is maddened with desire for me. Why does he not come for me?
Barnabas went to his writing table. He dipped his feathered quill into the ink well. Her mystic eyes lurked behind his shoulder to see what he started to write. My beautiful Angelique, your hair as golden as a spring morning, your eyes as green as the Caribbean Sea... Barnabas stopped writing. He violently crumpled the page and tossed the ball to the floor. He dipped his quill again. How shall I compare you to the sun or the sea, my Angelique? You are a goddess more beautiful than anything in this world... Once again, he stopped writing and crumpled the paper between his hands. Putting the quill to the paper, he wrote her name, Angelique, Angelique, again and again. He had filled half a page with it, when his attention lifted to the door.
A small girl entered. She wore a blue striped dress and knitted shawl around her shoulders. A lacy bonnet capped her long blonde hair. She carried the wooden flute that he had bought in Martinique. The little girl smiled delighted to see him. Barnabas waved her off and continued writing. His sister Sarah put the flute to her mouth—having only mystic eyes, not ears, Angelique could not hear the music.
Barnabas looked up from the paper. He flicked his hand at her more forcefully. By the movement of his jaw, he appeared to be shouting at her. The little girl broke into tears, whirled about in a flare of skirts, and dashed out of the room.
Angelique blinked to break off the sight of her faraway eyes. She took a few deep breaths to settle herself back into her own self, here, in the kitchen of Andre duPres's plantation house in Martinique.
"He has gone utterly mad with desire for me," she said to the flames.
Isn't that what you wanted?
"No," she said in a trembling voice. "No, it breaks my heart to see him this way. He is not himself."
He will come to you. He will devour you with his passions. Isn't that what you wanted?
"No," she said again, more forcefully. "I don't want him like a drunken sailor half out of his mind. I want him as he was, when he was here in the garden reading poetry or in the library reciting the plays of Shakespeare. I want him to come to me happily of his own free will, not as a living zombie."
Angelique took the little clay figurine out of her skirt's pocket and unwrapped it from the kerchief. She asked the flames, "If I destroy it, will that break the spell?"
No, it will consume his heart and mind beyond all repair, and he really will be a zombie.
She gasped and pulled back. "I couldn't do that to him! I could never do anything to harm him! Tell me, how do I break the spell?"
Are you certain this is what you wish?
"Yes, yes! Tell me!"
You must take the figurine to the seashore at dawn, and as the sun rises out of the eastern horizon, you must wash the figure in the salty waves.
Angelique sneaked out of the house just before dawn, when the birds were starting to awaken. In sandals, she trotted down the path to the shore. She found a secluded place between the white sand dunes. She knelt into the surf, her skirt getting soaked and wicking up to the waist. She put the figurine in the shallow turquoise water just as the grand crescent of glorious glowing sun rose out of the eastern horizon and dominated all the sky with its scarlet glow. The figurine washed and dissolved. Soon its shape softened and crumbled apart in her hands. Clay became as sand under the water. Angelique washed her hands of it.
#