The mirror cracked from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shallot.
(Tennyson)
-1834
Two weeks before her wedding day Hannah Hamilton got suddenly ill with a mysterious sickness that left her so weak, she couldn't get out of bed. The doctor gave her medication but couldn't say what was wrong except that it must be a tropical disease, for what else could it be?
Lydia kept vigilance at her sister's bed during the days. She was haunted by the horror of her sister not marrying and the Hamilton lineage dying. Lydia was 25, six years older than Hannah. She didn't consider herself marriageable. No man had ever courted her. Beautiful Hannah had had a line of suitors before she settled on Philip James. Philip was the youngest of three boys and would inherit little if any of his father's large estate in Westmoreland. Marriage into the Hamilton family would be a financial coup. His and Hannah's children would inherit the estate and so carry on the family lineage. Now this terrible illness has affected her. Lydia prayed frequently for her recovery, and despaired continuously that she might be better again. In her worst despairs, Lydia wondered whether the misfortunes of her family were not because of that French Mulatto woman from San Dominique.
Appoline had come to the island with a French planter escaping the revolution in San Dominique. She was a very young girl at the time, a teenager, it was said, and it was suspected that she might have been the planter's child. However, when the French planter was moving on to Louisiana to settle with friends over there, he sold Appoline to Hamilton, though she was a free woman. She became Hamilton's mistress. He treated her kindly till she tried to shoot him one night when she caught him with a young slave girl; then he banished her to the fields. She never forgave him for it and swore vengeance.
Lydia had heard talk that Appoline worked evil and could conjure spirits from the dead and make them serve her purposes. Lydia was wary of the superstition of the slaves. Yet she had seen the inexplicable and heard strange things. That woman Appoline had been very strange.
Thinking of that evil woman got Lydia depressed. She needed a change. She pulled on a red cord built in the wall by Hannah's bed to summon Daisy.
'I think I'll have dinner with my father today, Daisy,' she said to the young slave girl. 'Please stay with Miss Hannah till I return.'
Daisy looked down at the wasted girl in the bed. Hannah was asleep, sweating under a covering. Her face was wan and crumply, and the bones protruded on her once beautiful face. Daisy shook her head sorrowfully. 'Is like one time when likkle Donnie did tek sick sudden. Mother Foreye give him a special tea to drink. Him get better quick-quick. Mother Foreye can heal anybody.
Lydia remembered the African woman for her lullaby songs and her skill at brewing medicinal teas that calmed Lydia's mother's nerves. When Appoline, the French Mulatto woman, became her mother's maid, she stopped Mother Foreye from brewing teas. The woman brewed her own kind of teas which she forced Mrs. Hamilton to drink. Lydia blamed her for her mother's death, though Mrs. Hamilton died of pneumonia.
In her own room, Lydia examined herself in the tall mirror. Her face was thin and sunken, and her skin was like crinkled onion paper. She looked almost as wasted as Hannah. With anxiety, she tugged at another cord to summon Emogene. The girl was Appoline's daughter. Lydia heard that Emogene had the same evil gift as her mother andthat many of the slaves were afraid of her. Lydia hated Emogene, mostly because she was her half-sister. For some unexplained reason their father had given instructions that she must not be mistreated, though she was treated like any of the other house slaves.
'Miss Lydia?'
A thrill of fear shivered down Lydia's spine. The husky voice was like the old feared one, except there was no strange accent. Lydia glared at the girl standing at the open door. A look of defiance came back at her from onyx eyes that were hard with watchfulness. Emogene was a strange girl. She never said anything unless you talked to her. She was just 15, but dark and mysterious as a night without moon.
'You must knock and wait for me to allow you into my room, Emogene,' Lydia snapped.
Emogene curled her thin lips and bowed in a parody of servitude, 'Yes, Miss Lydia.' Her voice was full of mockery.
'Prepare me a hot bath. I need my hair washed, and lay fresh clothes for me. I am having dinner with my father.' Lydia emphasized 'my' father.
She turned her back on Emogene, tugging at her dress angrily, annoyed at herself for the fear that was in her. It was Emogene who should fear her.
Emogene smiled scornfully at the onion skin back. She withdrew from the room as soundlessly as she had entered it.
Lydia had a luxurious soak in a bath filled with salts and perfumed soap. Emogene massaged her scalped till it tickled. Afterwards, she brushed the dull hair until it shone and pinned it up in an intriguing style. She dressed Lydia in a blue-skirted dress with a striped bodice. Lydia felt fresh and pampered. She looked at herself in the tall mirror. A stranger with a quizzical expression on a pretty face stared back at her.
Lydia stared at the familiarity of the stranger. It was with shock she realized that the dress was one of Hannah's. The hairstyle was the way Hannah did her hair on special occasions. More shocking was how much weight she had lost: Hannah's clothes could fit her big frame. She didn't know whether to be happy or tocry.
'Miss Lydia, Massa Philip is here.' Emogene came in the room again without knocking.
'Oh! Is he?' Lydia turned in confusion. She deliriously sprayed cologne all over her. 'Emogene, tell Rachel to give you that special brandy I asked her to put away. It's Philip's favourite. Hurry, girl!'
Lydia looked at herself in the mirror once more. Could it be that Emogene had an insight that Philip was coming and had made her up deliberately? It didn't matter; Lydia felt beautiful. Bolstered by confidence in her beauty she swept down the magnificent mahogany staircase to greet her prospective brother-in-law.
- Carole Whyte
