Island Queen

by Vanessa Riley

  His lips pressed to a line, then he nodded accepting my final truth.

  I clasped his shoulders at the blue sash that anchored him. “You have control, William. You’re sane. Temper your drink. Limit things to the best champagne, and you’ll have no more troubles.”

  He looked at me, maybe through me. Maybe he saw the pain I tried to hide. I wasn’t fine leaving what was between us.

  His thumb twisted one of my curls. He drew me close. “I’d hoped to rely upon you as my guide, my muse.”

  Four months away helped me regain my strength, but I couldn’t be a wick for someone else’s candle. I was flame. I had to remember that. “You’re a survivor, William. So am I.”

  I slipped beneath his jacket to be next to the soft silk of his waistcoat.

  His hold tightened and his mouth sampled the arch of my neck. “You smell of coconut and nutmeg, a hint of sweet sage—a perfect nosegay for me.”

  He collected me in his arms. “You’re not leaving me tonight. I’m not thinking of tomorrow.”

  I spun in arms that wanted me. This was the dance I was made for, him circling me, stripping away my new silks, satins, and doubts.

  Warming each other in the slow allemande we’d agreed upon, a prince of England and an island queen found the perfect embrace.

  One moment we were upright, kissing like fools, the next the world went topsy-turvy. The humming of our bodies—the giving and receiving of love—was in my ears, drilling into my heart, tying our souls in an everlasting knot.

  I sheltered in his arms. He buried himself in my embrace. I was his safe harbor. He was mine too.

  In my heart, I’d keep this peace. William was woven into the fabric of my lids. Tomorrow and every day forward, I’d forever see him in those moments of weakness, knowing his love was the path not chosen.

  Dominica 1789: My Return

  I’d returned from my six-month journey to the other side of the sea refreshed and a little scared. How would my family react? Would they trust me again?

  Sitting on my sofa in my town house, I watched Eliza toddle around the room, walking with her head up. I had missed her first steps. She’d just turned one and was so much bigger.

  Frances sat at my feet. My four-year-old was mad at me. So was my sister Kitty. She hadn’t come down. Didn’t look at her presents. Only Mamaí and Edward were in good spirits.

  My son sat next to me, reading me the notes from Mr. Bates. Bates kept collecting fees on my behalf. All my contracts were in place.

  One could say my absence was unnoticed.

  Not sure how to accept that other than to praise Mamaí. She kept everything good.

  “Papa Cells visited us a lot while you were gone.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Edward, how do you feel about that?”

  “It was nice, like at the Hermitage, Mama. He wants me to write him.”

  My sweet boy feared I wouldn’t let him have a piece of his father. I hugged him, pulled him tight in my arms. “Of course you can. I want you to.”

  I took a bundle and placed it in his lap. “This is for you.”

  His grip was tentative, like it would be taken away.

  Clasping his fingers, I caught his gaze. “You didn’t think I’d come back?”

  He nodded. “People don’t sometimes.”

  My heart broke. “The next time I see the world or go anywhere, I’ll take you with me, all of you. No more splitting up.”

  My son’s smile blossomed. It radiated as he opened the wrapped parcel, tearing away the cloth and paper stuffing to expose a black tricorn, a low one like Cells’s exploring hat. My son tossed it on his head, hugged my neck, then jumped up and down.

  Again, I held him. I’d never seen him this happy, and if looking like his father and wearing this hat gave him this much joy, then that was fine.

  Eliza bumped into my knee. I scooped her up and put her in my lap, then turned to Frances. “Come on, Frances, forgive me.”

  She poked out her lips. She held out her defiant chin, that cleft showing. Maybe Cells taking more interest in Edward might be beneficial for all the girls.

  Well, that was a better way to think of it than him wreaking havoc on my family.

  “Mama,” Edward said, “Charlotte sent a letter.”

  My girl. Married to the love of her life.

  Edward’s happy face turned sad. His eyes squinted. “Mama, she’s in trouble. She wants her papers before she’s tossed in jail.”

  “What!” I took up the squiggles and saw danger. “I have to get to her. I have to—”

  Edward frowned and Frances’s expression turned so sour I thought she’d gotten into Mamaí’s teas.

  “I meant we’re all going. All of us are going to Grenada to make sure Charlotte is safe. All of us.”

  My young children gathered about me. I hugged them with my heart, but my stomach stewed. My Charlotte was in danger and it had to be those Fédons’ fault.

  Grenada 1789: My Daughter

  The cool air, the light north wind from the bay, chased sleep from my eyes. I had to get ahead of the rain. I patted the horse I’d leased and climbed into the dray, ready to head for the hills to Belvedere Estates. The arrangements for this visit to Grenada were made quickly. Mr. Bates contracted lodging for me and took a longer lease than I wanted. His judgment might prove right. Being near Charlotte for more than a month would ensure she wasn’t without support. It would also give me time to convince her to return to Roseau if these Fédons couldn’t protect her.

  A tall fellow pointed at me. He stood on the other side of the thin street, near a building no taller than a coconut tree. Grenada’s architecture was so different than Dominica’s.

  “Miss Dolly, that is you.”

  Caught. And by one of Joseph Thomas’s loud business associates, John Garraway. Resisting the urge to flee, I pasted on Mamaí’s distant smile. “Yes.”

  “Miss Dolly.” He waved his chewed-up straw.

  “Yes, Mr. Garraway.”

  “I’d heard some talk about you being in Grenada. Here for a visit?”

  “Business, sir. How are you?”

  “Business, you say.” He tugged on his sagging jacket. “Thomas said you were an enterprising woman. Does he know you are here?”

  Well, the man wasn’t living in Thomas’s pockets or he’d know Thomas and I ended more than a year ago.

  “I’m in a hurry, Mr. Garraway. An appointment. Do take care.”

  He tipped his hat, and I took up the reins.

  Then his fingers fastened to the side of the dray. “Well, Miss Dolly, I hope you have a good day. Hope your business lasts longer. Thomas will be back soon. I know he’ll want to see you.”

  My smile fell away. “You have a good day, Mr. Garraway.”

  Snapping my wrist, I forced my horse to move. It took two hours of empty trail before I simmered down. The quiet of the forest blanketed me. Ferns offered a canopy. Moss and dried mud carpeted everything.

  Rising slowly, the dray climbed the next hill. The air here was thinner and sweet. Red beak-shaped flowers lined the road, but so did large sugar plantations, on the left and right.

  Like I sat in Pa’s dray and tried my hardest not to see the terror, I was there again and couldn’t not see the misery.

  I missed none of it. The sight of half-naked souls toiling in woods famous for chiggers made my stomach rip into pieces. I stared down at my fisted hands. I couldn’t look up again until there were no more plantations, till the right side had become good again.

  At the top of the mountain trail I scanned the valley below.

  Plowed fields.

  Endless parcels of land sectioned with cane sprouted to the sun.

  Then I saw black and brown men in shoes and straw hats that looked like thatched roofs. This was Belvedere Estates, Charlotte’s new home.

  My heart fell and slammed into my gut. Holy Father, let the coloreds not be as bad as the whites. Let whips not be used. Le
t punishments have no teeth.

  If not for Charlotte, I’d turn around and pretend I didn’t see this, how free colored fell into the ways of owning folks just like the whites.

  Hitching with hiccups, I held my breath and counted.

  Then I let myself forget. Like I had in Montserrat, I stopped seeing the fields. I focused my strength on Charlotte and the house with green shutters.

  My daughter must’ve seen me. She came running at top speed. As soon as I climbed down, her arms locked about me.

  “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

  How long we stood draped in the other’s embrace, I wasn’t sure.

  But I knew this was where I was needed, not London.

  “Mama, the whites here. They’re hateful. They keep trying to tear us down. They’ll enslave us.”

  I pulled away a little but put my palms to her chin. “What have the whites done?”

  She clasped her palms about her high-waisted cotton gown. “They are demanding papers of all free coloreds. If you can’t prove your manumission or birthright in time, the governor will sell you.”

  Charlotte had grown up as Cells’s, the daughter of a rich rum maker. She’d worshiped and danced with whites. What had happened to make my child fear them?

  “Explain, girl.”

  “They put many of the coloreds’ wives in jail. Mary Rose, Julien’s wife, she was a week away from being sold.”

  I pulled my daughter against me. The pounding in my chest must speak for me. I’d let no one, no one white or colored hurt her. “I have a copy of your papers. You’re safe.”

  “Miss Dolly, good to see you.” Charlotte’s husband came out onto the porch; clinging to his billowing linen sleeve was a young woman in a bright gold tunic and plantain-green pull skirt. I loved her fine hair plaited and pinned under her crown, a turban of red and palm green.

  “Miss Dolly,” Jean-Joseph said, “this is my sister-in-law, Julien’s wife, Rose. Mary Rose Fédon.”

  Offering Charlotte a handkerchief, I nodded at the woman and extended my arm.

  She gripped it. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Kirwan.”

  “Good to meet you, Rose. It’s Dolly.”

  Her eyes were bright and her chin raised and noble. Hard to believe this woman had been jailed for weeks and survived. My poor sister had been changed forever in a day.

  “Yes, ma’am.” She turned back to Jean-Joseph. “You don’t have to walk me back.”

  “No, Rose. My brother wouldn’t want any Fédon women unprotected, not now.”

  Colored wives being jailed? My pulse jittered. A few minutes alone with Charlotte would tell me if I needed to give up my new lease and steal my daughter away from Grenada.

  Grenada 1789: My Decision

  Charlotte seated me in the comfortable sea-blue parlor of her home. She set a tray of guava leaf tea and sliced mammee apples on the small bamboo table by my chair. These apples were the sweetest, silkiest things I’d ever tasted, better than what I remembered from Montserrat.

  She opened her papers and mouthed the word manumit.

  Her face eased; the tight grip on my heart did, too.

  “Tell me now before your husband returns. Fédon . . . he good to you?”

  My girl blinked with her fine dark eyes, a blush settled onto her cheeks. “Yes. Why would you think not?”

  The outer door banged. My son-in-law popped his head inside. His brown skin held more of a tan than I recalled. He must be hands-on with his fields. Perhaps he was a “good” planter if that truly was a thing.

  “Ma’am,” he said to me, but his gaze locked on Charlotte.

  He went to her, the approach like a dance, slow, intense, then whirled her around like he hadn’t seen her in ages.

  My fears about their marriage all but disappeared. “Why was your sister-in-law targeted, Fédon?”

  Jean-Joseph sat in the chair beside me. “My brother and I are not silent. We want the right to participate in the governing body. It’s not permitted because we’re colored and Catholic.”

  “Mama, we had to do another wedding, an Anglican service for the council to accept our marriage.”

  This made no sense. Two weddings? Having to carry papers? “Why?”

  “How do you explain a system that’s prejudiced against our worship? And I don’t need to say much about skin, do I, Miss Kirwan?”

  He didn’t.

  In London, Black and white freely worked the docks and the fields together. Many colored souls had jobs in Town and in the shops Mrs. Kitty and I visited.

  Yet it was not hard to see the sneers, the fluttering of fans my dark flesh caused until my coins silenced them. Would there ever be a place where nothing but talents and love mattered?

  Jean-Joseph heaved a heavy breath. “Because Julien had started to organize the Catholics, Rose was targeted. They’ll hurt our women if we do not stay lower than them. What better way to strike terror than to attack our hearts?”

  He unclenched his hand and closed his eyes for a moment. “If not for Dr. Hay, Rose would have been sold into slavery. She’s a proud Carib. Never been a slave.”

  The natural pink of Charlotte’s apple cheeks paled. “Mama, I don’t know how I’d survive being locked in a jail. Poor Rose.”

  I stared at her. I hadn’t told her of the evils of what had been done to me or Kitty or the souls lost to boilers and the sick house of Pa’s plantation, none of the evil of the left side of his land. I’d stopped my mind from seeing it. I refused to speak of the horrors. I’d cleaned the sick house floor so often. Couldn’t smell peppermint without thinking of death.

  Maybe I should’ve explained more, told more of my story.

  Instead, I whispered dreams. I showed her stars, not the bits of broken glass behind my smile.

  Now she might be too fragile to listen.

  Jean-Joseph stood, slapped his palms to his tan breeches. “No more sadness in my house. Let me tell you of Belvedere’s harvests.”

  The man smiled and began rattling off numbers of acres and seedlings. His conversation was easy. Seemed to me that Charlotte and this plantation were Fédon’s dream.

  “Miss Dolly, you saw the fields. What did you think?”

  “The fields. Seem . . . seem big. You’ll have a good haul of cane.”

  “Julien will build our own boiler. Then we can process our sugar ourselves. We’ll be self-sufficient. This will keep my wife safe. She can depend on me.”

  I nodded, hoping it would be this way, but I doubted if any man truly knew what it meant for a woman to depend upon them.

  My decision was fixed. I’d stay in Grenada and make it safe. Charlotte would see Kirwan women could survive anything.

  Grenada 1789: My Rights

  From the high point of Blaize Street, I could peer down at the horseshoe bay and scan the coconut-colored sand that led to the black stone walkway of the promontory. This made Grenada seem old and settled.

  Maybe that was why it was so hard here, they were all stuck in old thinking.

  White planters and white merchants of the city didn’t respect anything that wasn’t pale, British, Anglican, or male.

  I lost on all accounts. I was wonderfully colored, happily Catholic, and very much a woman.

  The roar of the sea called to me. In Roseau, I could go to the water or walk beside the river in comfort.

  Not here.

  Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to the sea. If not for Charlotte needing to be with her husband, I’d take everyone to London and begin anew.

  I’d made the wrong choice, but I’d have to live with it. Mrs. Kitty Clarke wrote me that my prince had found another Dorothy to love, a Miss Dorothea Bland, an Irish songstress.

  That was the thing about choices, they haunted like death masks. Forcing a smile, I entered my new shop.

  Mamaí came from the storeroom, arms full, looking me up and down. “You’re in deep thought.”

  She would know a false smile, wouldn’t she? I took pots from her hands.
“Thinking of Roseau.”

  “Dolly, I never asked what happened on your adventure.”

  “Saw wonderful things. Stores with big glass windows, full of the goods I’d only ever seen in newsprint or dreams. I want more tables. I want . . . door.”

  A face pressed into the opening, one I’d hoped to see later when I was more settled.

  Joseph Thomas.

  Turning my back wouldn’t make him go away, wouldn’t make me unsee him.

  “Doll, may I come in?” He stared at me, but I didn’t move.

  Mamaí ushered him inside. “We’re not open yet, but come in, Mr. Thomas.”

  He crossed my threshold. His hair was a little shorter but still full enough for it to be caught by a ribbon. He rolled a wide-brimmed tricorn in his palms. Same dusty boots. “Doll Kirwan, you look good.”

  With a nod, I moved to my shelving where Mamaí’s blankets hung. “How can we help you?”

  He bit his lip and shuffled in his jacket and pulled out papers. “I came to offer free legal work.”

  “Mr. Bates handles all my documents. I don’t need you.”

  He held out the paper. “You need this. I do too.”

  If this was the contract he’d been preparing that Mr. Lionel mentioned, the man was a fool. “Don’t embarrass yourself. You need to leave.”

  “My daughter needs her papers. Grenada can be a dangerous place without paperwork showing you’ve been manumitted or born free.”

  Mamaí dashed toward our stockroom. “You two . . . talk.”

  She disappeared.

  A breath released from Thomas as if my mother’s antic proved him right, that we shared a child. He gave me the paper. The squiggles had my name and his and Eliza’s. “What is it? I’m not selling you my daughter. Definitely not giving her to you.”

  He gripped his open shirt collar. “Doll, I need to protect her and you. I want to see her.”

  Rolling up the papers, I moved to the door that should have glass and flung it open. “I’ll have my solicitor review this. You can go.”