Day I, Story III

‘With your permission, Lady Ouiser, I will now entertain the assembled company with a tale of disguise. But whereas Anne of Swabia disguised her rank¹, and Georges de la Toussaint disguised his sex for nefarious purposes, my subject is a woman who disguised her color and affinity for no purpose other than the regard of people whom she admired.’

‘Tell your story, dear Oura the Shepherdess,’ Ouiser said.

This story, as I said, happened some years ago in the Indies². It so happened that a couple was sent there, having offended the King and Queen of Spain over some pretended injustice, and they were sent to the island of Batata³, in the land of the True Cross⁴.

Having abandoned all hope of ever returning to Spain with their blackened names⁵, they made a cabin there and eventually came to regard the peaceful Batata people as friends. The Batata, in return, welcomed them and treated them with kind hearts.

They had a daughter, whom I am told was named Mary, but whom I will call Rachelle, for she was thought pretty but was a lowly lady.

This Rachelle, finding the ways of the Indians more suitable than the religious convictions of her heretic parents⁶⁷, quickly found their society more amenable than that of her family. She wore their clothes, spoke their language, ate their food and prayed to their god, a sun god of great dark skin and fierce warrior habitude⁸. She married a man of these people and even had a son, but found the marriage intolerable. In time she returned to the house of her poor parents and, savaging them all the while⁹ and making grand and incredible claims that they had done evil to her, continued nonetheless to reside with them.

Years passed and the lady grew ever more friendly with the Indians. She told them she had several ancestors born in the other world and that they were Batata royalty. This lie won her a seat in their assembly¹⁰. At once she won their favor and did many things for them, and for a time even taught their young ones.

As the assembly was separated by the Ocean Sea¹¹ from the other Indians of the place, no one really knew what to make of this woman, nor was any white person other than her parents found there to reclaim her. Eventually, however, a Spaniard was marooned on Batata Island¹² and found Rachelle and her parents, who sheltered him.

Then he saw the lady standing with nary a stitch of clothing¹³ on her and said: ‘You are a white woman, but you have adopted the ways and manners of a people not your own.’

Then her parents explained that she truly was no Batata and that, furthermore, she was from Spain like them.

So then the man asked Rachelle again: ‘Are you a white woman or an Indian?’

She replied: ‘I understand not the question put to me.’

The Spaniard, who spoke the Batata language with some fluency, then went to speak with the assembled Indians at the other end of the island and explained the incongruity¹⁴. The Batata were alarmed that a white woman had been in their midst.

Rachelle went to meet with them, but was subjected to embarrassing questions. She left the place and went elsewhere, still telling other peoples she met that she was a Batata woman of noble rank, despite her fair skin and hair.

She settled with the Manioc people on the mainland¹⁵ under a new name, began selling necklaces and called herself a rude name in the tongue of that people, who enjoyed her company nonetheless. She even took to braiding hair and adorning the bodies of Manioc people with beautiful designs. Her aged parents soon died and were left unburied. As Spain would not have them, and the Batata people were unwilling also, they were consumed by birds.

Then the story came to the Manioc people, who promptly told her to leave their presence. Rachelle then sojourned into obscurity¹⁶, and no one has heard of her since.

The entire company was shocked by Oura’s rhetorical magnificence¹⁷ and lauded her storytelling ability, before launching into a discussion of how it was that Oura had even been allowed to read and write in the first place.

Then Arbonne rose to speak.

‘My dear Oura, your prowess in telling stories is surely a gift from Heaven. Some people are great at telling stories in such a manner, and indeed the world is better for their books. But I know of two ladies who were so insistent on winning fame for storytelling that they abandoned their reason and, worst of all, their own creativity to achieve that end.’