Information about the book
New Orleans, Louisiana, 1803
No matter how desperately she dug her heels into the sun-baked clay of the Voodoo Queen's backyard, Betsy Washington could not prevent the kitchen doorway drawing closer and closer. Fat Gerald Beauvoir had a lockdown grip on Betsy's forearm and he pulled her forward relentlessly, his thirteen-year-old shoulders already as broad as a grown man's. Two years younger than Gerald, and only a tad heavier than his well-fed baby brother, Betsy didn't stand a chance, even with one of her auntie's Fast Luck charm bags in her pocket. For Betsy Washington was a slave and could no more hex her owner's son than she could run for mayor of New Orleans.
White-eyed and lock-jawed, Betsy suddenly caught a glimpse of something serpent-like slinking through the weeds in the corner of the yard. Her already thundering heart rocketed into her throat and she abandoned all attempts to slow down. Instead, she made the last five steps to the back door in two, dragging her lifelong tormentor behind her.
After all, there were things in this world far worse than Gerald. Although Betsy suspected that Gerald didn't know that yet. If Gerald had known that the Voodoo Queen consorted with alligators and a twenty-foot python, both rumoured to live in this very backyard, he'd be back at home right now with as much of his arse hiding under his bed as he could manage. And she'd bet that an alligator would choose his soft white backside over hers any day.
Through the crack in the almost-closed back door, Betsy heard drums beating and a low moaning sound. Her nostrils flared with the caustic sizzle of black magic. She began to wonder whether she might actually prefer to face the alligator rather than the Voodoo Queen – Marie Laveau. Every black child in New Orleans knew to run if they heard Marie Laveau was coming. Run too slowly and you'd never run again – lots of missing children had last been seen around this house.
Gerald saw the sudden terror bolting helter-skelter across Betsy's eyes and, understanding nothing about the danger they were in, he smiled slowly. As she bucked and strained against him, he dug the fingers of one hand into her forearm, and with the other he pushed the door inward.
A sweetly rotten waft of wet warm air buffeted out as the door swung in. The drums beat louder. Then there was the scratchy, clattering sound of maracas scraped out across the drumbeat, like a rattlesnake, like knucklebones scattered over rock. Betsy felt the sinuous, seductive vines of dark magic reaching for her, searching, starving, insatiable.
She ripped her arm from Gerald's grip, shredding her skin under his nails as she bolted from the back step, low and fast, her bare feet stabbed at by shards of broken rock lying in wait amongst the weeds. Eyes on the back gate and vaguely aware of Gerald lumbering along behind her, Betsy sprinted for the safety of the road.
Behind her, Gerald suddenly squealed like a live crayfish dropped into a boiling pot. Betsy shuddered to a stop and closed her eyes. He'd either been caught by something or he'd hurt his soft feet on the rocks. Either way, the Voodoo Queen would find him. And that would mean that Gerald wouldn't be home for supper tonight. And if the master's son did not come home when he'd last been seen with her, Betsy Washington and the rest of her family would end up in the jailhouse. Or worse.
She spun around and opened her eyes. And snapped them closed immediately.
A snake with a tree-trunk body and shovel-sized head reared five feet high, swaying, its golden eyes fixed on Gerald's. Gerald was crying quietly, frozen, piss running down his leg, puddling at his feet.
Knowing she could do nothing to help him, Betsy tried to make her feet move, to leave this cursed place while she still could. She took one careful step backward and stopped at the whisper of movement behind her. She whipped around to face the noise.
The monster of Marie Laveau.
The ancient alligator sprawled across the path, immobile, like a demonic concrete statue, large enough to halve a horse in one bite. Suddenly, Betsy's legs took control of her paralysed body and she bolted back towards Gerald. Startled by the movement, the giant snake reared towards her and Betsy flung herself out of its path, ploughing straight into Gerald, barrelling him into movement. They sprinted back towards the kitchen doorway.
The drums were louder now, galloping in time with the thunder of her heart. Betsy reached the porch door ahead of Gerald, but, whinnying in fear, he reached out and dragged her backward, cramming himself in ahead of her. Right behind him, gasping, she stopped and blinked a moment inside the gloomy kitchen, and then instinctively scuttled for the shadows, dropping to a crouch in a nook between a table and a wardrobe.
Desperately trying to suck in air without making a sound, she watched Gerald continue towards a closed door at the back of the kitchen. She realised he thought that Marie Laveau would help him. Voodoo Queen or not, she was only a mulatto after all: not black, not white, and to a white boy that rated only a little higher than a slave.
Betsy watched him push the door inward and stuffed her fist into her mouth to smother her yelp.
Marie Laveau was mid-ceremony. The Voodoo Queen stood on her altar – a low, cloth-covered table – thighs bare and hands flung upwards towards the ceiling. To her right, a black cat watched its mistress dancing, shaking and jerking, with sweat and something darker dripping down her brown arms. To the left of the altar, cross-legged on the ground, Betsy recognised Doctor Yah Yah. The Witch Doctor. He wore a tall black hat, white paint around his black mouth and eyes, and he beat a drum with a pair of turkey leg bones. When the door opened he raised his head and Betsy shuddered, seeing only the whites of his eyeballs.
But Gerald didn't skip a beat. He just walked straight in as though he'd entered a church, and Betsy realised he'd been hoodooed. He seemed to hover across the ground towards the black wooden doll standing at the very front of the altar as Marie Laveau began to chant. The doll wore a necklace of tiny skulls and a dress painted in rough symbols and shapes; it stood almost as tall as Gerald. Grinning wildly, the Voodoo Queen squatted on the altar, reached a hand into the back of the doll, and stood. Shrieking, she raised her hands again above her head, brandishing a snake as thick as her arm. Doctor Yah Yah beat the drums in crashing waves of sound – a powerful, deafening throb. The Voodoo Queen's neck seemed to loll about on her shoulders as though broken, and she shook and writhed until, finally, with a scream that almost brought Betsy to sobs, she threw the snake through the air at Gerald.
Betsy watched the snake land where Gerald should have been. Except now there stood only a white chicken, screeching, its feathers puffed in terror.
The drumming ceased and Doctor Yah Yah sat still. He watched intently, his eyes now black as night, as Marie Laveau leapt down from her altar in a single bound, laughing loudly.
Betsy wriggled further into the shadows.
'Not for you, my pet,' the Voodoo Queen said to the snake, scooping it up as it menaced the chicken. 'This one is for my sweeties in the yard. I'll give you a rat before bed.' She kissed the snake on the mouth and it slithered back into the doll.
'Now you!' Marie Laveau turned back to the chicken. 'Out! Scoot!'
She waved a hand at the bird, which flapped and squawked, struggling to remain where it was, but moving inexorably towards the kitchen, the back door, the backyard. The Voodoo Queen capered about on the spot, giggling and mimicking its desperate struggle to stay indoors. When the bird was finally out of sight, she wiped her eyes, planted her hands on her hips and turned, staring at the spot where Betsy crouched, shivering.
'You can come out now, Betsy Washington,' the Voodoo Queen called. 'And after that you should run on home. And you can tell your Auntie Caroline that Morgan Moreau said she sure does make some powerful Fast Luck gris gris. Without that pretty good-luck pouch in your pocket you'd sure have had a different day today, girl. Come on, up and out now, little rabbit.'
Despite feeling that her legs would never hold her, Betsy found herself rising from her hiding spot when the Voodoo Queen raised her hand in the air.
'You –' Betsy said. 'You are Marie Laveau. What name did you call yourself?' Even as she spoke, Betsy was astonished that she would dare to question the Voodoo Queen, and even more amazed that she could speak at all.
'Hmm, who am I today?' said the Voodoo Queen. 'What did I say? Marie Laveau, Morgan Moreau? I have lots of names, child. Some names that would strike you down dead just to speak them. But that's neither here nor there. Now, off you run. And you really should use the front door next time.'
Doctor Yah Yah's laughter rattled along with Betsy Washington as she skidded out into the dusty street, and then it chased her, snapping at her heels until she slid, half-mad and sobbing, around the corner and out of sight of the house of the Voodoo Queen.
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