by Bill Napier
'I can see that Harry's worried,' said Dalton. 'There must be an Internet connection here. Let's be nice to the manager and stay on-site.'
I looked out at the bending trees and the driving rain. The wind was making little waves on the pool. 'It's not jacuzzi weather. I'll head upstairs and see what the young James Ogilvie has to tell me.'
After the trial of the unfortunate Mr Rosen, we had hoped that the mysterious poisonings would stop. The apothecary had cheated the executioner in the most spectacular way possible. On the pronouncement of the verdict, he had snatched his neck rope from the soldier's grasp, leapt to the table, seized the jar of black petals and poured them into his hands, rubbing them together and smearing the black dust over his face and chest. None dared approach him as he held his hands up, wild-eyed, and we stood transfixed, wondering what would happen next. Within moments his breathing became difficult, his back arched and he fell to the ground, cracking his head, seized with a terrible spasm. His face turned purple and contorted and his limbs became stretched, as if he was being racked. Within two minutes his breathing had stopped, although his eyes were still staring horribly and he was twitching and there was so much space between his back and the floor that a dog could have walked under him. Then there was a dreadful choking noise and his body sagged to the ground, lifeless.
And with Mr Rosen's terrible death, I had a surge of relief. My conscience was relieved of the responsibility of saving an innocent man at the cost of my own life. And yet, had I spoken sooner, before the verdict had been delivered... Suffice to say that over the years I have had more than one bad dream, more than once wakened in the night with Mr Rosen's eyes staring wildly into mine, pleading and accusing.
And yet, within a week, there was another murder. A young man on sentry duty was shot in the dark. We never found the gun which fired the ball, or the finger which pulled the trigger. And within days of that, the poisonings began again.
Suspicion then fell on Joachim Ganz, the mineral man from Prague who, like Mr Rosen a Jew rather than a Christian, was treated with suspicion in any case. Mr Kendall let it be known that, when he entered Mr Ganz's room, the Jew had hastily hidden a jar containing green leaves. This I confidently believed to be a lie, but mutterings soon began amongst the colonists: Mr Ganz had been seen entering the cabin of a man who had later died. I knew now that the killings were the work of one or more of three men: Marmaduke StClair, Anthony Rowse and Abraham Kendall. And I also knew that to reveal my knowledge would be to hang myself. The game they played was not my game, nor was its outcome my concern. So I told myself, in an attempt to assuage my own guilt.
But my agonies of conscience overcame even my sense of self-preservation. One wet morning I approached Mr Harriot in his cabin and told him that I believed passionately in the innocence of Joachim Ganz, dreading that my master would interrogate me about the basis for this belief. What Mr Harriot knew or suspected I cannot say, but I am forever grateful for his discretion. He simply listened quietly, and then told me that no harm was likely to come to Joachim. Mr Ganz had shown the English how to smelt copper, desperately needed in the production of bronze for the cannon which gave their ships an edge over the iron guns of the Spaniards. Mr Ganz was a good friend of England. Mr Ganz, so Thomas Harriot told me, had made a great deal of money for persons in the Privy Council, and even on this very colony. And so it proved. The mutterings against the Jew died away.
Meantime the work of the colony went ahead. Mr Harriot has described this in his journal, which I have seen, and there is little I need add to it. I note that he expunged all mention of the attempts to destroy the colony from within. I suspect he did not want people to inquire too closely about the purpose of our expedition. We had all hoped that Joachim Ganz would discover precious stones or gold. He did find copper ore, too poor to be exploited; otherwise all he found were pebbles. And Ralph Lane, who had grandiose plans for building a fine fortress surrounded by stone bulwarks and curtains, had to settle for constructing a fort which was no more than a bank of sand and a deep ditch.
Late in August Sir Richard Grenville sailed for England, promising to return in the Easter with supplies and leaving a hundred of us behind. A feeling of depression settled on our little colony as the Tiger and the Elizabeth disappeared over the horizon, leaving us alone on the continent.
Over the next few months, Ralph Lane and Thomas Harriot mounted several expeditions into the interior. Always I had in mind the mysterious longitudem dei, the secret purpose, the iacta est alia of the English Queen. I myself accompanied Mr Harriot and Mr White on one of these expeditions. We took a rowing boat out into the big waves of the Atlantic before turning towards Chesapeake Bay. We found the land here to be fertile and the savages friendly. And although it was winter, the climate was mild and we were even able to sleep outdoors on the ground. We stayed for over a month, but when we finally returned in spring we found the colony in a bad way. The assassinations had continued. There had been much violence. The savages had become hostile and grown weary of our constant demands for food. If the purpose of the conspirators was to foment trouble and destroy the expedition, they were succeeding.
By the summer our food was gone. Even Ralph Lane's mastiffs had gone into the cooking pot. And now the savages were seeing their chance and threatening to exterminate us. Governor Lane led an expedition against them. It was a vicious and bloody business, at the end of which he brought back the head of the Indian chief, Wingina. But I suppose it gave us breathing space from their increasingly bold attacks. And within a week Captain Stafford brought us wonderful news: from the Outer Banks he had sighted a huge English fleet. Sir Francis Drake had come to our rescue with twenty-three ships: the colonists were to be taken home. It was salvation for them, but it was to prove a disaster for me.
No sooner had Sir Francis Drake anchored than a storm began to blow up. The waves beyond the Outer Banks began to grow frighteningly high. A number of longboats set sail from the fleet. We began to drag Mr White's drawings, and the chests of minerals and plants collected by us, as well as the personal belongings and chests of the gentlemen, towards the shore.
And now, sadly, discipline began to break down. The colonists, including many of the soldiers, had been barely under control these past months, Governor Lane keeping discipline only by virtue of the occasional hanging. But now, as the storm started to blow, they were overcome by fear that Drake would weigh anchor and disappear over the horizon, leaving them to starvation and the mercy of the savages who now had good reason to hate them. Drake's own sailors were so fearful of the storm that they threatened to leave the colonists behind.
Governor Lane was the first to climb aboard the waiting pinnace, followed by the other gentlemen. Their chests and trunks were on the shore, left in the charge of the sailors. I had been frantically packing belongings into the chests of Harriot, Rowse, White and the others, leaving my own secret journal to the last. But now, as the fleet masts were swaying dangerously in the growing storm, I left Mr White's cabin and ran through driving rain towards my own small hut. I had no time for my collection of pebbles and strange seashells; I pulled my straw bedding aside and picked up my journal, protecting it from the rain by putting it next to my chest. I ran out.
'Ogilvie! Over here!' Marmaduke was beckoning urgently with big sweeps of his arm. I ran to him and followed him into his hut. 'For God's sake help me with this. And be quick!' He was trying to squeeze an absurd volume of belongings into his chest. A child could have seen that it was impossible to close the lid.
I said, 'Sir! This will not do!'
'A curse on your impertinence, Ogilvie. Sit on the damned lid.' But nothing we did would close it. As the minutes passed he finally swore, threw the lid open and began to go through his clothes, picking and choosing what to leave behind. Unfortunately he seemed to wish to take everything with him. I was becoming frantic with anxiety. I cried again, 'Sir, we must move.'
'Then help me pull the damned thing.' We began to drag the chest a
cross the floor. It would scarcely move, it was so heavy. We forced the hut door against the wind. As I looked out I saw to my horror that the last rowing boat was being pushed offshore. Men were punching each other to get aboard. Already the waves were white-capped, and I was beginning to lose sight of Sir Francis's fleet through the rain.
At the sight of this, Marmaduke gave a cry of despair. He dropped the chest, pushed roughly past me and sprinted towards the boat. I followed, racing behind him with the blood thumping in my ears and my heart hammering in my chest. But it was too late. As we reached the shore the longboat was already three hundred feet out. It was being tossed by the waves and threatening to founder with the weight of men on board. One man alone remained, crying and waving, the waves sometimes going up to his neck. But the sailors were ignoring him: they had enough to do just to stay afloat. Eventually he stopped waving and stared forlornly as his salvation receded. Eventually he turned to wade ashore. It was Simon Salter.
As the last longboat headed out, I recognised one of the sailors: the Turk. He saw me too, and took his hand off an oar long enough to give me a forlorn wave. As it passed the sandbanks I could see the chests simply being heaved out. The specimens and seeds laboriously collected over the last year, the diaries, the maps and paintings, all were being tossed into the sea.
Something was happening on the Outer Banks, but at first I did not see what it was. But then, during a lull in the squall, I saw a horrifying sight. Slaves, black men and women, were being thrown over the side of one of the ships. There was fierce struggling on the deck. A cluster of rowing boats, threatened with crushing by the ship, was disgorging sailors, who were climbing up netting on its side. It seemed that the ship was being emptied of its slaves to make way for the sailors. I could see that many of the slaves were unable to swim. They formed a dense, black, frothing, drowning mass on the waves. Some hundreds had managed to struggle ashore, packed closely together on the narrow sandbank.
'How can Christians do this?' I cried to Marmaduke.
'Don't be a fool, Ogilvie. They are only slaves.'
'But they have no food and no weapons. The savages will cut them to pieces.' I knew the stories. The women were the worst, skinning prisoners while alive with sharp seashells or spreading their bowels over the ground for dogs to chew.
'Be more concerned for your own fate. This should not happen to us, not to civilised people.'
Salter had now waded ashore, water pouring from his breeches and torn shirt. He looked like a man who had been sentenced to death. He joined us and we watched in silence while the masts of Drake's great fleet swayed dangerously, fading into the rain storm and finally, one by one, disappearing from sight.
We looked at each other, wordless and aghast. Three white men - the only white men on this land - abandoned without resources on a continent filled with savages.
CHAPTER 30
At first I think it's a noise in a dream. It's a big fluffy dog scraping on a kitchen door.
Then I'm being shaken awake. Zola, her head inches from my ear. 'Harry!' She is whispering urgently. 'There's someone trying to get in.'
I'm out of bed and pulling on my trousers in a second. Precious seconds pass while I scramble for my sweatshirt in the dark, but then I find it and I'm pulling it over my head. I follow Zola barefoot to the bedroom door and listen. At first all I hear is the wind in the trees, but there it is again, the quiet, systematic scraping, like a dog trying to get in.
Dalton pads quietly along the upstairs corridor. 'I've wakened Debbie.'
'Have you called the hotel?' I ask him.
'The phone's right next to the door. And mobiles don't work here.'
I wonder briefly how Dalton knows that. I think maybe if we go to the window and yell we might scare them off. Debbie appears, fully dressed and shivering in spite of the hot night. 'Why don't we put the lights on?' she suggests in a whisper. 'Scare them off.'
I run quickly to my bedroom window. There is a big four-wheel-drive jeep at the entrance, glowing in the subdued lights from the pool and the hotel. It seems to be empty. The drop from the windowsill to the veranda below is only about ten feet. I turn back and almost collide with Debbie.
'I think they're in.' Her voice is distorted with fear.
I grab her by the arm and guide her quickly towards the window. She looks down, hesitating, and I say, 'I'll hold you.' Then she's over the windowsill and I'm holding her by the wrists and she drops. Zola follows. I turn to Dalton but he pushes me to the window and then I'm out, landing with a clumsy thud on the veranda.
A yellow flash in the dark, lighting up bushes and trees, and the roar from some gun. At first I don't even know I've been shot. I'm aware only of a sudden push on my left arm which sends me sprawling face down. I get up and risk a glance behind me, dodging as I run. Two faces at the window.
Debbie and Zola are ahead, zig-zagging along the driveway.
Now I see an alarming dark patch on my shirt sleeve. An aching numbness is beginning to spread through my arm.
I haul the jeep door open. I had thought to free-wheel the car down the steep hill but the fools have left the ignition key in the vehicle. Debbie and Zola have vanished somewhere in the trees to the left. I have no idea where Dalton is. I switch on the engine and crash into second gear, putting my bare foot hard down on the pedal. For some panicky seconds I'm driving in the dark while I struggle for the headlight switch. I'm acutely aware of the lethal drops at the edge of the road. But then there is a tunnel of light ahead of me and I'm taking the car down as fast as I dare.
A minute later the thing I'm dreading appears on the mountain behind me: headlights. They must have taken the Toyota keys. I push the jeep some more, but the hairpin bends are terrifying. Now and then, at the corners, the beams light up the tops of trees; more often they are staring out into blackness.
I have about ten minutes of this. I'm beginning to feel lightheaded and the blood, running down my arm, is making the steering wheel slippery. The Toyota is more nimble than the jeep and I reckon it will be on me in about five minutes.
The pain is starting now, from the inside out of my arm. I'm getting dizzy and I know I have to stem the flow of blood, but how can I, racing the jeep down the most dangerous road in the Caribbean?
There is a sudden, almost 180-degree bend. I slow to about fifteen miles an hour, terrified. The Jeep tilts outwards. There is a scree of boulders on the road, a mini-landslide from the recent rain; I swerve to avoid it, taking me right to the verge, but my front left tyre hits the boulder at the very moment that my right one thumps into a pothole. I feel a sense of unreality as I realise that the right wheel has gone over the edge. The jeep slowly begins to tilt, as if I am in a turning aircraft. Blackness looms up underneath me. I believe I'm about to die. I jump for the passenger door, which is now above me. The jeep is still in contact with the road but it is juddering and slewing as it tilts. It hits something and the engine stalls.
There's a metallic crunching noise as the jeep begins to go over the edge. It's a slow movement at first. I jump again for the passenger door and this time I get out, but the jeep vanishes from under my feet and I'm following it down in the dark, weightless in freefall, stomach floating inside me, arms and legs waving, down to whatever grave is waiting below.
A bird, a beautiful thing, soaring in the mountain air.
And another, and another. I suddenly become aware that they're circling me. I panic, but I can't move.
One of the vultures has landed. It's about twenty yards away. Others follow, flapping down noisily.
Now I manage to move a finger. It's enough for the moment. The food is still alive.
Something very close behind me. I force myself to move an arm. And that's it. I have no energy left. But the vultures keep their distance, for now.
I hear a male voice. It's Jamaican, and it's saying something like, 'Lawd sah!'
Through badly swollen eyes I can make out a black face peering anxiously into mine. Then there are hands
under my armpits and I'm being heaved up to a sitting position. Now the man is attempting a fireman's lift, and for the first time I see the ground around me. I have fallen about fifty feet, except that it is more of a steep tumble down to a broad, flattish piece of land. The jeep, however, has rolled beyond this flat ledge and disappeared over its edge. I catch a glimpse of banana trees and coffee bushes. Then the man is staggering under my weight towards a shack, with corrugated iron roof and veranda. A small, grey-haired woman is leaving the shack, hurrying towards us, but then all I see is rich, bush-covered ground.
Now I am being bundled into a small truck, filled with what seem to be leaves. The woman holds me upright, while the man crashes into gear. We are driving over a shallow stream and up a steep, stony slope, and then we rejoin the road. I more or less faint and recover, faint and recover.
At first there is only brilliantly lit green hillside interspersed with black shadows, but then I begin to see the roadside stalls and even a little cluster of shops with names like Tek it Eazy, Katie Rouge Kitchins and Yaso Jerk Center. More brightly painted wooden shacks: a butcher's shop, a food emporium, a post office with notices about Melodious Explorers and the dangers of diabetes. I wonder about my own life expectancy. Then suddenly we are in town and turning left past a busy bus station, and there is the St Thomas Aquinas Church and a long row of stalls, and the truck swerves right towards low, pink buildings with a notice saying: UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES HOSPITAL.
A blurred, black face, peering closely into mine.
'Yuh name?'
'Thomas Aquinas.'
'Yuh gi mi yuh name or deh wi charge mi fi murda.'
As I focus, I see I'm in a big room with a dozen or so people milling around. Some are dressed in white, others are lying on trolleys. Somebody is having a bloodstained shirt cut open: a young man, his eyes rolling in his head, and moaning loudly. Clusters of people surround him; he is connected to a baffling array of plastic pipes, wires and tubes.
