Tender Fury (38 page)

Gabby flushed. “My… husband wanted me to return to Bellefontaine with him but I had not recovered sufficiently from childbirth to hazard the journey,” lied Gabby, unwilling to divulge at this time the true status of her marriage.

Seeming to lose interest in the subject, the captain grunted out a reply that he had duties to perform and left her standing at the railing watching the shoreline recede from view. Finally, when there was nothing left to see, Gabby made her way through the people milling aimlessly on deck to the cabin she had shared with Philippe through both happy and sad times.

Each passing day found Philippe viewing Mt. Pelee with growing alarm. Since the day he had left Gabby and little Jean in St. Pierre he had been plagued with conflicting emotions. He was angry. He was sad. He was bereft. He was hurt by Gabby’s rejection, discounting his own rejection of her and his son. Afterward, he had been so distraught that he made straight for his lawyer’s office before allowing second thoughts to muddy his thinking. Then he left immediately for Bellefontaine where he plunged wholeheartedly into the arduous task of processing his newly cut cane into sugar and rum. The heat was oppressive; the air too humid, too still. A deep sense of foreboding prevailed. Even the natives went about their work as if doom’s day were near, sensing as only the superstitious can the presence of an awesome, all-powerful force.

No matter how hard Philippe tried to banish thoughts of Gabby from his mind, he found himself dreaming of her as she had been at the final parting. Her outpouring of love, her need for him had been amply demonstrated by her passionate response to their tumultuous joining. Even her words had proclaimed her love for him. Why then, when he confessed his own love, had she thrown it back at him by insisting Jean was his son?

Weren’t their love and need for one another enough? he reasoned irrationally. Perhaps, given time, he would feel differently, especially in view of the fact that Gabby might never bear another child. But it was a decision he would have had to come to himself.

Philippe wondered if the divorce papers he had signed had made Gabby happy. Certainly Marcel must have been overjoyed to learn that soon he would be able to legalize their relationship as well as openly claim his son. Philippe cursed bitterly. By all that’s right and holy Jean should be his son!

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” he exploded, causing the slaves working nearby to shake their heads sadly, knowing full well the reason for his discontent. Why did he allow anger and pride to rule his life? he wondered, casting a guilty eye around him when he realized his embittered outburst had been observed.

In a fit of despondency, Philippe had even taken a pretty mulatto to his bed. Suzette had been born on the plantation but was too young and too afraid of Amalie to flaunt herself before Philippe. But with Amalie out of the way and Philippe’s wife nowhere in sight, Suzette grew bold and displayed her ripe sixteen-year-old body before her master, promising delights he could not resist. Her skin, the color of
caf? au lait,
still held the dewy bloom of youth and her rich, black hair hung in rippling waves to the middle of her back. The night Philippe finally took her to his bed, she had teased and taunted him mercilessly, appearing from nowhere to entice him with her flashing, black velvet eyes, pushing out her breasts until they strained against her flimsy blouse. Without a word, his face set in grim lines, he had grasped Suzette by the wrist, pulling her along after him into the house, past a wide-eyed Tante Louise and into his bedroom.

Allowing neither of them time to disrobe, Philippe flung her on her back on the bed and mounted her with a violence that surprised even him. It was as if he wanted to punish her for the sins of every woman on earth. Philippe was dismayed as well as shocked to find Suzette a virgin. Immediately he became more gentle, but quickly learned Suzette wanted no gentleness. Once the initial pain of entry was past, she was like a young tigress, urging him on until he had broken through her maidenhead. Without missing a beat, Suzette gave herself up body and soul to the act she had long anticipated, saving herself for this very moment with this very man.

Philippe had to admit, although grudgingly, that Suzette had entered his life at a time when he feared for his sanity. To lose himself in her sweet, young flesh had been like a balm… for a while. After the first week or two, even venting his lust upon voracious little Suzette was not enough to coax him from his doldrums. She had been no more than a pleasurable diversion, unable to completely fill the void left by Gabby. There were times he even longed for Jean’s soft downy head nestled in the crook of his arm.

On the morning Gabby and Jean boarded the
Windward,
Philippe stood in the fields of cut cane beyond the house, eyes focused on Pelee, his heart in his mouth. The dull glow at the neck of the crater grew redder by the minute, the spewing of ash and rock a continuing process now; a sooty mist blocked out the sun casting the world below into dim shadows. He could plainly see white-hot fingers of lava splaying downward from the cone.

The awesome sight inspired fear in Philippe’s breast. With sinking hear the realized that Gabby and Jean lay in the direct path of Pelee’s lava flow! Suddenly he was possessed by a conviction that in only a matter of hours the mountain would blow apart. St. Pierre, the only town in its path of destruction, would disappear in a sea of molten lava! Never once did he consider that the flow could take a different direction, that it could destroy Bellefontaine. Irrationally, it was at that moment when the possibility existed that neither Gabby nor her son would survive Mt. Pelee that Philippe came to a momentous decision.

Mounting his horse, he rode at breakneck speed through the stubble of cane back toward the house. Once in his room he threw together a change of clothes and shaving gear and, calling to Gerard, left instructions for his overseer.

Philippe was barely beyond the banana groves when it happened. It struck with hurricane force, a scaring wind that swept down from the mountain. His horse reared in terror and Philippe fought desperately to control him and keep his seat. The banana trees around him bent nearly to the ground and he could feel the heat generated by the wind burning his body. As quickly as it came it was gone. With a wary eye on the mountain Philippe coaxed his mount on with gentle words.

Suddenly the glow at the neck of Pelee was spreading above him as a blinding, red ball blossomed out of the side of the crater. The volcano exploded, and exploded, and exploded, and the ground beneath him rocked with each new shock. Black smoke spewed up from the throat of the volcano and the entire side of the mountain flew away. A white cloud shot with flame burst out of the gaping hole in the volcano’s side and hurled downward toward the sea.

Philippe stood frozen in his tracks, immobilized by terror, staring slack-jawed as the steaming flow of lava sweeping down the bed of the Roxelaine River raced directly for St. Pierre. Even as Philippe urged his courageous horse forward he knew that nothing or no one could survive once that tremendous flow of lava reached the city. But still he could not turn back. He plunged headlong into the gloom, seeing neither the gravel roadbed of the Trace nor the fallen away sides of ravines, for the darkness had obliterated the sun with the first eruption. He traveled in absolute silence, an unnatural silence for not even the normal sounds of birds or animals could be heard.

Suddenly, his horse lunged, and he felt himself lurch wildly into space. He was falling over the edge of a ravine, drifting, turning, nearly dreamlike, hurtling slowly downward. Philippe heard his horse scream in fright. He felt like screaming himself. Then he hit the water.

When he tried to move, there was a sharp throbbing in his head. The heat was unbearable and he wanted a drink of water. Hearing the rush of water, he reached out, felt rough, jagged rocks. Memory came rushing back with startling clarity. Rising on an elbow he saw that somehow he had reached the rocks after his fall into the river. Looking up he realized that he had fallen over twenty-five feet and he was amazed at the miracle of his survival. Another miracle made itself known when, looking around to get his bearings, he spied his horse on the opposite side of the river calmly grazing at a clump of grass.

Waiting a few moments until his head stopped spinning, Philippe stood up, stepped to the edge of the water and threw himself in. The only way he knew of reaching St. Pierre in time to save Gabby and his son was on horseback. He began to swim against the current with long, hard strokes. Though not wide, the river had been swollen by recent storms and Philippe struggled hard against the undertow. But he was a strong swimmer and, given his superior strength and determination, he finally reached the other side only a little downstream from his horse. Choking for breath a minute or two, he pulled himself up onto the bank where he lay gulping huge lungsful of air before scarring off toward his mount.

Making his way back to the road, Philippe found it strewn with ashes so hot he could feel the heat of them through the soles of his boots. The trees around him were no longer green and the breadfruit limbs lay on the ground broken by mud and ash, their leaves stripped bare. With each turn Philippe strained for a glimpse of St. Pierre, but could see nothing of the e city. And when he came to the tiny, picturesque village upriver of St. Pierre his heart sank with dread. What had been a beautiful little village where a small mountain stream met the Roxelaine River now lay stripped of all but four or five houses. The rest was a chaos of broken tiles, twisted iron and scorched remains of furniture. Trees had been uprooted, even stone and cement houses had been demolished.

At this point Philippe began to meet vacant-eyed refugees, their hair and faces begrimed with a thick coating of ash. Their clothing was no better. Philippe searched each face carefully before turning away in bitter disappointment. When he tried to question them, they only stumbled past, not answering. Finally, one bleak face turned back when Philippe cried out, “What happened in St. Pierre? Did the lava reach the city?”

“No, not lava,” the man answered, his eyes bleak and lined with ash.

Philippe felt a great weight lift from his shoulders. “Thank
le bon dieu
the lava didn’t reach the city,” he breathed in an outpouring of relief.

“A cloud of steam. Monsieur,” the man clarified. “There is nothing left of St. Pierre.”

Philippe fought for control. “What about survivors other than yourselves? A woman, young, beautiful, with a child.”

“I saw many such as you describe’ Monsieur. All dead.”

Philippe did not stop him when he turned and continued up the trail after his companions, his hollow eyes filled with horrors enough to last a lifetime.

Suddenly the man stopped, looking back over his shoulder at Philippe. “Turn back! You won’t be able to get near the city. Whoever you have there is sure to be gone!”

But Philippe would not be deterred. Face grim, body taut, he forced his horse onward. Gabby and his son had to be alive! When at last he came to the city, he knew why the man on the road tried to dissuade him. The destruction was almost beyond belief.

Plantations and cane fields were sheets of flames around the city, and every ship that had the misfortune of still being in the harbor was aflame. After a cursory inventory Philippe saw that none of the burning ships belonged to him. The shore was a tangle of wreckage and carnage, afloat with dead bodies. St. Pierre was a wasteland of devastation. The city still blazed, the stench of burning wood and flesh overpowering.

The first corpses to meet Philippe’s eyes, their bodies bloated, skin blistered and blackened, caused him to retch. But he pushed onward until his horse would go no farther. Abandoning his mount, Philippe continued on foot. It wasn’t long before he realized the city would have to cool down before he could begin his search for Gabby. Retreating to the outskirts of the city Philippe began his seemingly interminable wait.

It was two days before the smoldering ruins of St. Pierre had cooled enough for him to enter. Making his way through the all but obliterated streets, he went first to the place where Marcel lived. Nothing remained to show where the townhouse once had been. Tier after tier of broken walls lay all around him. The roads were blocked by corpses of people who had fled into the streets to die in agony. Philippe poked around in a disheartened manner among the bodies but after a while gave up in despair. His only hope now was that somehow Marcel had gotten Gabby and Jean out of the city in time.

Though his eyes stung from the acrid smoke and intense heat he went on scanning the destruction for familiar landmarks. Gone were the twin towers of the cathedral, vanished was the military hospital but for one wall. Most incredible of all was that not even the walls of the fortress were standing.

Philippe wandered over the city, finally finding himself at the harbor. He was surprised to see a ship anchored off shore and a long boat pulling away loaded with marines. He waited until they reached shore. Then he learned that the
Windward,
his own ship, reached Fort-de-France with news of the destruction and a ship had been dispatched along with a column of marines to search for survivors. Philippe joined the search. The rest of that day and the next the rescuers fanned the city for survivors. They had set up a hospital of sorts against the lone wall of the military hospital and by the second day a disappointing number of people were lined up beneath it, most of them dying. On the second day, Philippe was surprised to see the sun appear through the haze of the smoking mountain. The top of Pelee’s crater had been blown away and the denuded slope below gave mute evidence of the mountain’s destructive power. The lush jungle had become a gray, furrowed desert of ash and mud. And the Roxelaine valley a corridor along which death and destruction had flowed into the city of St. Pierre. Although nothing but ash, stone, scalding steam had reached the town, the devastation had been complete and unbelievable.

On that same day Philippe found himself before the ruins of a house whose remaining front entrance he barely recognized. After staring intently at it several minutes, he turned away to continue his search. A moan, soft as a whisper caught his attention. He retraced his steps, listened again, and again the sound, raspy, yet recognizable as human. Galvanized into action, Philippe moved toward the sound, sought and found what he was looking for beneath a broken section of wall. A woman, hardly recognizable as such, alive, barely. Her body was blackened, her face a twisted mass of pain. The fact that she was alive and conscious at all was a miracle. Philippe bent over the woman’s battered body and she opened her eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, was thick and choked, but Philippe had no doubt that the agonizing mewing sound coming from the dying woman belonged to Amalie.