Island Queen

by Vanessa Riley

  She looked small. They turned her, prodding her forward like livestock.

  Everything in me hurt anew.

  “Twenty.” That voice sounded like Cells.

  More bids came. He wasn’t the top bidder anymore.

  Had he given up?

  In my heart, I tried to hold on to hope. I pulled Mamaí’s rosary from my pocket. I begged that Cells for once would be a man I could trust.

  Montserrat 1770: Finding Favor

  The breeze, the steady afternoon breeze, swept over the Marketplace. I sat with my heart in my throat watching my sister be sold off.

  “Fifty pounds!”

  That voice was Cells’s. He hadn’t given up.

  But then another bid fifty-five.

  The numbers dueled. It finally stopped with Cells calling out seventy-six pounds.

  That was all my money plus more. Sixteen pounds I did not have, that was the difference in keeping my sister.

  Cells had won, and he led Kitty by her tied ropes from the Marketplace. When they crossed the road and stood by the carriage, he put his coat on her, then lifted my sister to me.

  My friend climbed into the driver’s seat. I put my hand on his arm. I stared into his gentle pale eyes.

  He put my palm to the seat. “It’s not safe.”

  The man snapped his reins and made the beast move.

  I untied my sister and hummed to her.

  She didn’t sing back. I stopped too.

  It was a long silent drive before we made it to Cells’s house. Kitty jumped when he tried to help her down.

  “I have you, Kitty. It’s me, Dolly. I’ll protect you.”

  She looked at me with soulless eyes.

  “Inside, Dorothy. It’s not safe. I need to hear the rest of your plan.”

  Muscles aching, maybe ripping, I struggled but carried my swallow into his house.

  “Take her to the small bedroom down the hall. Get her cleaned up. You clean up too. I can’t stand to see you like this.”

  He walked away.

  Part of me felt horrible for making him choose. Part of me hoped this might help him stay out of the lukewarm spittle the priest preached about.

  Hobbling all the way, I fetched water from the pump room and gathered towels.

  I took away Cells’s stained jacket and mopped at the rope burns on her wrists. “I’m here, Kitty.”

  When I cleaned her cuts, I noticed a discharge near her thighs.

  Kitty’s terror had been complete. She’d suffered so. Mamaí had put the valerian tincture in my sack. I wondered about giving Kitty some of that root to sleep, but I wouldn’t trap her in a nightmare. I might take some, once I knew we were safe. I was used to the terror that filled my lids.

  “Dorothy,” Cells called from the hall.

  I kissed Kitty’s brow. “You’re safe now, sister. You’re safe. I’m in the hall.”

  She sobbed. “I want to be safe. I want . . . Never safe again.”

  Kitty’s death grip on my hand churned up those tears I thought I’d spent. I pried her fingers free. “Just be a minute.”

  My sister pulled her head into the blanket, and I walked away with my heart under my feet, trampled under my sandals.

  “Yes.” I leaned back against the door.

  Cells put his hand on his hips. “Dolly, as long as Nicholas is alive, he’ll hunt you. You did leave him alive?”

  My body started trembling. “Yes. I hit Nicholas, burnt up his things. Once his head’s not thick, he’ll figure things out. Oh, goodness. He’ll be here. Where else would I go?”

  Cells’s lips opened, then pressed closed.

  “I’ll be in the stocks and sold. I don’t have any more money to give you to buy me. I owe you sixteen pounds for Kitty.”

  “You owe me nothing. I just repaid that favor long ago with interest.”

  Cells clasped my shoulder right on a bruise. I yelped and clasped my mouth.

  “That bastard.”

  “I don’t care about him. I have to get Kitty away from here.”

  Cells did care. He looked like I felt inside, how I wanted to set Pa’s owl house ablaze just to watch Nicholas die.

  “He always wins. Cells, you’ve done enough. I should go to Mamaí, tell her my sister is safe, and wait to be hauled away.”

  He blocked my path. “No. You just freed your sister. And you own Kitty. You just gave me the money like a buyer’s agent.”

  The thoughtful look in Cells’s eyes gave him away. He had a plan. I wondered if it were the same as mine. Who would be brave enough to say it?

  He thumbed his lips and left the begging to me.

  “Take us to Demerara. Cells, take us, Kitty and me, now.”

  “You want me to help you run? Runaway slaves could be killed if they are caught. I could lose a lot, too.”

  “I’ll be killed if I stay. Nicholas has already put a gun to my head. And last night he showed me again how he’ll treat his chattel.”

  I lifted my blouse and exposed my bruised stomach, the cuts to my breasts. “Nicholas did this.”

  Cells closed his eyes. “Put your clothes back on. Go clean yourself.”

  “The brute will kill me. Or I’ll kill him. That God you keep praying to wouldn’t want me to murder.”

  “You can’t be selective about faith, Dolly.”

  “And you can’t be selective about right and wrong. Take us to Demerara. I’ll work for you twice as hard to pay you back.”

  He started to his study. “I’m crafting a bill of sale to account for the money you gave me for Kitty.”

  “Who’s going to award the purchase of an enslaved person to another one?” I clasped my fingers like a prayer. “Please. Nicholas will find a way to punish you if he figures out you bought Kitty for me.”

  Something crept across Cells’s face that didn’t quite look like guilt. Maybe it was a realization that Nicholas would make things difficult for him.

  “Help us or take me back to Nicholas. Watch him beat me until I submit. Watch him press his knees—”

  Cells clamped my mouth. “Stop. I beg of you, stop.”

  “What is your God telling you to do? To walk away or take me and Kitty to safety? Nicholas knows where to find me. The only man I trust is here.”

  Cells paced. “He knows I see your pa in passing, that I’ve done deals with Kirwan. Maybe I can tell him that his father and I agreed on your sale to me. But what about leaving your mother and your baby?”

  “Mamaí will keep Lizzy until everything is safe.”

  “I have some thinking to do. Please go wash. I don’t want that stench of Kirwan in my house.”

  He pushed past me and went into the hall.

  I went back to Kitty. I washed my bruises, scrubbed everything Nicholas touched.

  I didn’t know if I’d ever remove his scent. From my sack, I put on a fresh tunic, then crawled onto the bed.

  When I put my arms about Kitty, she cried. I hummed to her until she slept.

  Closing my eyes, I hoped the next face I saw was Cells’s, standing in the doorway telling me he’d do what was right and take us to Demerara.

  Part Two

  My Living

  Learning to love me was hard.

  Demerara 1771: New Role

  The windows of the Hermitage were fantastic, the ones in Cells’s study more so. I put my cloth to the louvered shutter, dusting it as part of my housekeeping routine. The slats moved as I brushed them, allowing more light, more views of the distant river. The Demerari River stirred brown and white, allowing flat-bottomed boats to transport goods to the mainland of the colony. Some of those goods looked like me, black and scared, just no pregnant belly.

  Tapping down the Demerara shutters, I closed the sash window, then swiped at the glasses, twelve rectangular pieces separating me from the outside. Never touched such, was never close enough to put my fingers to them. Pa’s owl house just had shutters. Mamaí’s hut . . . I’d have to call what we had a hole in a mud plaster wall. Our
shutters were just worn boards that shielded us from the rain.

  Putting my forehead against a pane, I felt the strength of it, cold and distant from the streaks of the lawn exposed by the louvers. The land—trimmed with white hibiscus and thin wisps of fever grass—looked like I’d fallen into one of those books Pa read. In my dreaming head, I imagined this. Here at the Hermitage, Cells’s Hermitage, I could go outside and smell the sweet honey of the flowers and hear the hummingbird’s song as he nipped at diamond petals.

  Mamaí would love to grow plants here.

  Tears streamed. My insides wept, too, for my mother, my Lizzy. How could I enjoy being safe and protected in Demerara when they were trapped on Pa’s plantation?

  “Dolly?”

  I startled and hit the glass a little.

  Black tricorn hat in hand, a new low one with short sides, Cells stood at the door. He had on his beige sporting coat and dark pantaloons. That was his dress for exploring the colony, all the untamed land of this new world. Not sure how he’d succeed in the stifling heat all covered up.

  “Dolly, are you all right?”

  Moving from the window, I shifted my swollen belly. “Did you need something, sir?”

  “We haven’t been talking much. Very little since you and Kitty came to the Hermitage.”

  “Just moving a little slow. I think I slept wrong.”

  He came inside, his eyes squinting, looking gray like the day. “Didn’t know there was a right or wrong way to sleep.”

  Not ready to hear another lecture or to pretend the tension between us wasn’t my fault, I turned to the window and adjusted the velvet curtains.

  “Lots of clouds, sir. It’s going to rain. Make sure you keep that hat on tight. I know how you love your hats.”

  He moved behind me to his polished walnut desk and swiped the surface. “No dust, even when you are at the uncomfortable stage of your confinement.”

  “Of course. I don’t want you to find me lacking. More lacking.”

  “I don’t, Dolly. We’ve spoken of sordid things in the past. We needn’t say more.”

  There was judgment in his tone, and it stoked my temper. I had been reckless when Kitty and I first came to the colony. The moment I knew I had another of Nicholas’s babes in me, I went a little crazed. I spent days working hard at Cells’s plantation, then danced nightly at the mulatto balls with sailors. At the brothels by the shore, I sold my worthless body.

  It wasn’t smart.

  It earned money, which I needed for manumission. But truthfully, it was a punishment to my spirit. I didn’t see me as good. Cells would never see me that way either.

  Sighing, forcing guilt out of my lungs, I rolled up my dusting cloth. “I’m almost done in here.”

  “Maybe I should stay at the Hermitage today. You might need me later.”

  “What? I don’t need no one. Definitely no watcher.”

  He rubbed his neck, and I regretted my words.

  The gnawing pain to my back drew me from his gaze to the papers on his desk. Things had become awkward between us. He acted like my father when we first arrived, fretting over my sorrow and moods. Then he tried brotherly advice when my temper flared or I was caught leaving the Hermitage.

  Now I was too big to slip away.

  What was left for us? Nothing but employer and maid.

  “Are you in pain, Dolly?”

  “No.” I tweaked his pile of parchments. His invoices and political letters seemed a safer place to put my attention. “I don’t need special favors or anything. I’m trying to do better.”

  “You can be more at ease. Rest. I’ve more servants. My land here is thriving, much better than Montserrat. I knew it.”

  “More servants? Enslaved or free?”

  He laid his coat on the chair, then carefully placed his hat on the desk. “I hire what’s necessary. I always have.”

  That was his justification to own people? “I suppose you have to hire out often with all the settlers building up Demerara.”

  “Labor is in demand. The farther inland more so. This place will be a boon.”

  “And the status of owning land and people, that’s power. Something an ambitious man needs.”

  “Nothing wrong with ambition. I remember you had ambition, too.”

  Had.

  Did Nicholas beat it out of me? I hid night terrors from Kitty. My sister was a shell, quiet, barely there. I wasn’t much better. Fear of seeing Nicholas’s ugly face, that he’d jump from the shadows with slave catchers, should make me cautious, should lodge into my chest and make me settle.

  But I couldn’t be still. That’s when the memories, the death masks came at me the worst. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Dolly—”

  My fisted hand slammed the papers I’d stacked. “I had dreams, but I’m disqualified because of my mistakes. I whored. I did anything to forget the feel of him.”

  The blank look in his hazel eyes forced his lips to a line. He stepped closer. “You still have the world waiting for you. You’re a little girl put in a woman’s circumstances.”

  “Is that how you see me? I thought you said I was brave.”

  “You are that. Bold and daring, but sulking because I disagree with your choices shows your age.”

  “Almost fifteen, about to be a mother again, I’m old.” I gasped from the needle-sharp pressure hitting my spine. “Maybe you’re the child. You’re mad at the things I’ve done. You can’t forgive me.”

  He hovered, and I stayed in his shadow, unafraid. Cells wasn’t Nicholas. He’d never strike me for saying my piece.

  “There’s a difference between disappointed and mad.”

  “Seems you get the luxury of that distinction.”

  Cells’s sigh sounded exhausted. He moved to the grand window, tugging off his riding gloves. “I hate inclement weather.”

  “You mean bad weather?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad weather keeps your family from coming from Barbados.”

  His stare met mine, but his face was half fire, half hailstorm. “I built this house and rebuilt the one in Montserrat. But the Cells of Europe don’t think it’s good enough. My aunts in Barbados are too old to travel.”

  “Pity.”

  Now his gaze was full fire. “None required.”

  “I keep saying things wrong. You must miss your family like I miss Mamaí and Lizzy. Like I miss you.”

  “Me?” He tilted his head my direction then looked down. “I’m right here.”

  “We’re at odds. I miss the friend I had in Montserrat.”

  He pressed his lips together, then shifted in his glossed black boots. “The one you couldn’t rely upon. I think those were your words.”

  “Words of that little girl you’re mad at? If you listened to her again, she’d tell you she was sorry.”

  He reached for my hand. I winced a little, but it was the pain in my back, not him. “I remember her being rightfully angry.”

  “She wants forgiveness. Forgiveness for drawing you into things you didn’t want a part of. Forgiveness for going to the brothels, for acting wild, for being full of rage.”

  “It’s done, Dolly.”

  “I’ve stopped going to the docks and can’t huckster with this big belly.” Agony, sharp and searing, hit my spine. I bent, bunching up my snug green pull skirt. “Sorry.”

  Cells slid one arm about my back, like he knew my knees would give way.

  I fell against him.

  “You’re having pain, labor pains, Dolly.”

  “If I die, don’t be haunted by my death mask.”

  “Don’t believe in those things. Good Catholic boys don’t. I’m still your friend. I’m helping. This baby’s coming.”

  Cells scooped me up. “Polk! Mrs. Randolph.”

  His steward didn’t answer. Nor did the fussy chef, Mrs. Randolph.

  “Haven’t seen them, Cells.” My voice was a sad whimper.

  My water burst. This didn’t feel like the last birth,
but I hadn’t fought Nicholas as hard as I had in Pa’s study.

  “Where’s Mrs. Randolph? Polk!” He carried me to my room.

  My sister sat on the bed stitching a baby blanket. Her eyes were like saucers.

  “Kitty,” Cells said, “do you know where Polk or Mrs. Randolph is?”

  She shook her head.

  Cells strengthened his hold as every muscle in my body clenched. “Go get Polk for your sister.”

  Kitty didn’t move.

  “Please, sis.” I moaned. This was hard for her. Poor Kitty stayed in this room. Fear kept her there, but I needed her to go, ’cause I might die. “Be brave for me.”

  My sister nudged forward, then ran.

  Cells set me on my feet, but I leaned firmly against him with his arms about my middle. “I’m going to have to be a midwife today if Mrs. Randolph’s not here.”

  “Oh, no you’re not.”

  “We have to get that baby out. Who else?”

  There was no one else. People died if the baby didn’t turn. I’d seen that in the sick house.

  I cried and Cells held me tighter.

  “I don’t want to die with dreams stuck in me.”

  “Dolly, you and this baby will be fine. You hear me? Now wiggle. That’s how the Egyptians birth, especially their queens.”

  “Wiggle?”

  “Make those hips work. I’ve seen you dancing as you dust.”

  My tears turned to laughs, and I held Cells like he was mine and this baby was his.

  “I’m not going anywhere, girl.”

  Polk, the biggest, brownest bald-headed man I’d ever seen came into the room. “Massa Cells, what’s going on? Oh, Lort. She’s going to blow.”

  “I need you to find Mrs. Randolph, or you and I and Kitty are delivering this baby.”

  “No. I’ll wiggle this one out first before I be showing you two anything.”

  Polk started laughing and slapping his foot. “She’s out in the plantation. She left half an hour ago.”

  “Kitty, bring the sharpest knife from the kitchen. Polk, take the carriage and scoop Mrs. Randolph up and bring her here. If the baby can’t wait, I’ll use a chair and help that baby find the way. Matter of fact, go get one now.”