by Stacy Gregg
In the cottage we stood dripping and shivering on the rug while Annie dug out some yard clothes for us. “Get dressed,” Annie said. “Get yo’ selve under the blankets and I gonna make us all a hot brew o’ tea.”
For the next few hours the whole cottage shook so much I truly believed we were going to be lifted up off the ground. Mom and I spent most of that time huddled on the sofa, listening to every screech and crack. Annie kept on pottering about the place, unable to stay still. She was humming away and if I hadn’t known better I would have thought she was enjoying herself. But I knew Annie hummed like this when she was anxious, to hide the nerves that knotted in her belly.
“Will the horses be all right out there?” I asked.
“Sure dey will,” Annie said softly. “You did good, Beatriz. You did real good, getting them home.”
I looked over at Mom, expecting to see her looking angry. But she had tears in her eyes.
“Beatriz,” she said. “I’m sorry I never listened. About the horses.”
“It’s OK,” I said.
“And I’m sorry about your dad. I should never have told you. Not like that…”
“No,” I shook my head. “I knew what he was, but I pretended, you know? I guess I have to stop pretending now.”
I looked out through the storm shutters. The wind was still howling. The rain was coming down in sheets.
“Will the Phaedra be all right in this?” I asked.
Mom smiled ruefully. “No, probably not. The weather was cutting up pretty rough in the bay when I left. I drove her as close to the shore as I could get and then waded in from there. I managed to get her anchored, but the waves were big and she’s a tiny boat. I don’t know how she’ll hold up when the hurricane peaks.”
“What about all your work stuff?”
Mom looked wistful. “It’s all back on the Phaedra.”
Mom pulled me closer and put her arm round me.
“It’ll be OK, Beatriz,” Mom said. “Everything that matters to me is right here.”
And we sat there in silence, the three of us, and listened to the storm and drank our gumbo-limbo tea.
After the Storm
My name is Beatriz Ortega and this will be my last diary entry…
We all survived that night – Me, Mom, Annie and the horses. The weather reports afterwards called the storm a force nine gale – the worst hurricane to ever hit Great Abaco island.
At Marsh Harbour, the windows were smashed all the way down the main street and the dive shop had its roof taken clean off.
The whole second floor of Wally’s got destroyed when a massive palm tree fell on it. Luckily no one was hurt. Oh, and the kiosk down at the marina isn’t there any more. It was totally flattened.
The coastal areas, like the Bonefish Marshes, were devastated. The hurricane tore apart everything in its path. Sand dunes were disintegrated. Trees were uprooted and flung about like matchsticks.
Mom always says that even though I was wrong to disobey her that day, I did the right thing. She’s glad I saved the horses and she’s never blamed me for what happened to the Phaedra.
The storm must have swept the Phaedra off her anchor. Mom thinks she probably struck the reef and got broken up and sank. I think of her sometimes, my old home, submerged in the bay alongside Felipa Molina’s lost caravel.
When the Phaedra went down Mom lost all her jellyfish equipment, but she’d pocketed her flash drive and managed to finish the research paper she’d been working on. When the university published her jellyfish report a few months later it was big news in marine biology circles. Mom got loads of job offers. Most of them involved going out and living at sea again, but the one Mom accepted took us home, back to Florida, which is where we live now.
I’ve been settling into life here, although it feels a little strange at times to be on dry land and stay in one place.
My first day at high school, I was pretty scared. I mean, hello, home-schooler for three years and suddenly I’m in a school with six hundred other kids? But guess who was in my class on the first day? Kristen Adams. Annie was right about her too, because she’s been a really good friend ever since I got back. We laugh about how we used to play horses together and sometimes she comes with me when I have riding lessons.
I go every week to the local stables – sometimes twice a week. Mom says maybe now we’re back and all settled in she might even buy me a horse. Buy me a horse. That sounds weird, right? I mean, I never bought the Duchess. She had simply been mine from the moment we met. She was wild, but she belonged to me – and I belonged to her too. And even now, she still owns my heart in the way no other horse ever will.
When we left Great Abaco I tried to convince Annie to start using email. But Annie is stubborn.
“Mercy no, Bee-a-trizz,” she told me. “There’s too much talkin’ in de world already. If you really got sometink to say, pick up de pen an’ paper an’ write it to me.”
So I sent Annie letters telling her about me and school and the stables and life in Florida, but I didn’t hear anything back. Months went by, almost a year maybe. Then in February, just as the spring weather was turning warm, I got a letter with a postmark from the Bahamas. It wasn’t much longer than an email. Or even a tweet.
The Duchess is having herself a foal. Annie wrote. Due any day now. Come back to the island – you need to be here.
This time we didn’t sail into Great Abaco – we flew in on a five-seater Cessna. Mom came with me. She and Annie had got quite close after the storm. And I think she wanted to see the Duchess’s foal every bit as much as I did.
We hired bicycles at the hotel. There wasn’t much use in taking a car if you were trying to get to Annie’s. As we rode through the rutted dirt tracks into the jungle I felt the weight of the books in my backpack thumping up and down against my spine.
“Bee-a-trizz!” Annie was on the porch waiting to greet us. I guess the good thing about being an old person is that you never really look much older, because Annie looked exactly the same as the last time I had seen her.
“I got a girl who been a dyin’ fa to meet you,” she smiled. “Come with me.”
Annie got on the tractor and beckoned me to take my old position sitting up on her wheel arch.
“Are you coming?” I asked Mom.
“No.” She shook her head. “Not just yet. You two go on ahead.”
And so we set off, me and Annie, just like that first day when she found me and pulled me out of the mud hole, heading off through the jungle.
We found the Duchess and her filly out by the Bonefish Marshes. They were grazing together right at the very edge of the herd. The filly kept straying off and I watched the Duchess follow after her, acting real casual so that the filly never noticed, always guiding her back towards the safety of the herd.
“She’s a good mama,” Annie confirmed. “She’s raising that filly just right.”
At the sight of the tractor the Duchess didn’t raise the alarm to the herd. She simply lowered her neck back down to graze. Then I called out to her, and suddenly she raised her head and looked at us, her ears pricked.
“Look! She still know you, Bee-a-trizz!” Annie smiled. “She still know you.”
The Duchess broke into a trot towards us, the filly keeping pace alongside her, looking wide-eyed. I had to laugh at the way the little filly held her head aloft. She had that same proud look as her mom. All high and mighty, like she knew that she was descended from royalty.
And she was like a mirror image of her mother too – a Medicine Hat with perfect markings, the brown bonnet over the ears and the splash of colour on her rump and a shield at her chest.
When they reached us, the Duchess stood a little way back and Annie gestured for me to step forward on my own. I took a few steps, nervous at first, and then I couldn’t help it. I ran the rest of the way and threw my arms round her neck, hugging her tight.
“Hey, Duchess.” I breathed in her warm scent. “Did you miss me?”
/> The Duchess nuzzled at my hair, her velvet muzzle tickling my neck. I let her go and turned my attention to her foal, who was sniffing inquisitively at the hem of my shirt.
“Hello, little one.” I reached out to stroke her white face. “Nice to meet you. I’m an old friend of your mama’s.”
We stayed at Annie’s place that night. She and Mom must have drunk a gallon of tea as they stayed up and talked. We ate okra and shrimp gumbo for dinner and Mom and I slept on the sofa under Annie’s soft blue blanket.
I woke up a little before dawn and dressed as quietly as I could so as not to wake Mom and Annie. On the porch I pulled on my shoes and then I dug through my backpack to make sure I had both of the diaries packed in there.
Felipa’s diary was even more weathered now after everything it had been through. The pages were well thumbed too. I must have read the whole thing at least a dozen times. The final pages that Felipa wrote after the shipwreck were the ones I reread the most and I knew the words off by heart.
After the storm had passed, Felipa had salvaged as much as she could from the wreckage of the caravel. Some of the cargo had washed up on the shore. Other pieces she managed to retrieve by swimming out into the bay and dragging them back to the beach. One of the things she rescued from the waves was the ship’s chest, containing the last of her personal possessions – her diary and her velvet gown.
I can no longer write the date on my entries, Felipa writes…
For I no longer know what day it is. I have ridden Cara all over the island and I am satisfied that it is quite deserted. So I have no one to speak to. This diary is my only conversation and the horses my only companions.
I am not lonely. When I had friends they disappointed me, and when I lived with men they revolted me. All except Juan – but I must accept that he is lost to me forever. If I am to spend the rest of my days here with the herd and my beloved Cara, I shall be quite happy.
In my travels around the island I have found the perfect place for us. There is a tree in a pretty clearing with broad branches that is the ideal place to make camp. I have built myself a thatched roof by entwining palm leaves in the branches and making walls and a floor from the leaves. The days are hot here but the nights are not cold and it is enough to shelter me. Sometimes Cara will come inside my thatched hut at night and we sleep together, curled up on the floor. It reminds me of being in the stables together at the Alhambra.
But here there are no fences like there were in Spain. The mares and stallions roam the island and eat the marsh grasses and the vines. Cara is their leader, of course. She still allows me to ride her and sometimes I will fling myself on her back and go galloping down the beach just for the sheer joy of feeling the wind in my face and the speed of her powerful strides beneath me.
I think of Spain at those moments too. I remember the ride on the road to Cadiz to catch Admiral Columbus with the message from the Queen. Cara was the fastest horse in the Queen’s stables. She was groomed and fed and braided and dressed in the finest livery. Now she lives rough and unfettered with the sun bleaching her coat and the tussock knotting her mane like a ragamuffin. All the same, there is still a sense of nobility about her. She knows she is special.
I have noticed for a while that Cara’s belly is swelling. I thought at first that she was getting fat on the marsh grass, but now I realise she is pregnant. Soon she will have her first foal. I hope it will bear the same markings as Cara – the white face and the shield on her chest – the mark of the protector…
The final diary entry from Felipa appears just a few pages later. These are the last words she writes:
I saw a boat yesterday. I sat on the beach and watched the sails in the distance, and after a long while I could see that it was coming closer.
I considered what to do and decided that I would not run and hide.
I went back to my shelter at the tree and from the ship’s chest I pulled out my old velvet gown. It had been such a long while since I had worn it. How queer it felt to fasten tight the corset against my chest! It took me forever to thread the ribbons.
Once I was dressed I undid my braids and let my long dark hair fall loose over my shoulders. For wasn’t I the queen of my own land now? Did I not deserve to be dressed as such?
And so I watched and I waited as the boat anchored in the cove. I could only see one sailor aboard the vessel and I watched with intrigue as he lowered a rowing boat over the side and made for the shore. His face was shaded by one of those wide-brimmed hats that the boatswain had worn on our voyage from Spain, and as he came towards me I knew there was something very familiar about him. I thought I must be imagining it, but as the boat drew to shore and I could see his face at last, I knew it to be true. It was Juan!
I ran down the beach to meet him and even before I was in his arms I was sobbing. “You found me!” I kept saying over and over again. “How did you ever find me?”
“Because I never gave up looking,” Juan said. And he told me the whole story, about almost being captured by the sailors when he went to take the stallions that night, how he had hidden and waited for them to move on, but as he did so, someone must have noticed that the other horses were gone and raised the alarm. He saw the mob of sailors armed with torches and realised he could not get back to the jetty without being captured.
“When I heard that you had got away it gave me hope,” Juan said. “I had to believe that you were out there somewhere and I never gave up hope that you were alive. So I combed the oceans to find you.”
The search had taken him almost a year, across countless islands from Hispaniola to here.
“When I left Spain I wanted to see the world – and I’ve seen so much, Felipa,” he said. “Now I plan to return, to go home, and I want you to come with me.”
“You mean Spain? But I cannot leave! Cara is about to foal – and we could not carry enough food on your ship for the horses. They would never survive the journey.”
Juan shook his head. “I don’t mean the horses, Felipa. They are wild now. They have made their home here. I mean you. Just you and me.”
“But…” I began to speak, but before I could continue Juan had dropped to one knee and clasped my hand in his own.
“Felipa,” Juan said, “from the moment I met you I have known that I would be unable to live without you. I have risked my life for you and sailed the oceans to find you. There is no life for us here. I am on bended knee asking you to marry me. Come away with me and return to Spain!”
I did not know what to do. I knew in my heart that I loved Juan. But to say farewell to Cara?
“I need to think,” I said.
Juan’s face fell.
“I understand,” he replied. “But when dawn breaks, I will be leaving. If you love me too then you will come with me.”
I hardly slept that night. When I did, my dreams were feverish – I was drowning and I could see Cara coming for me, lifting me up on her back above the waves and taking me to safety. But this time when we emerged from the surf and I lay gasping on the sand she raised her head up to the breeze and then she galloped on without me.
And then I opened my eyes and saw Juan was lying beside me. I shook him gently by the shoulder.
“Wake up,” I said. “I have made up my mind.”
I will not describe how much it breaks my heart as I write these final words. I have decided to go with Juan and I know it is the right thing to do, but it means saying goodbye to my beloved Cara. After all we have been through together, it is like leaving a piece of my soul behind.
Juan says that in Spain we shall start a new chapter in our lives. And so it seems fitting to leave this, my old life, behind. I have carved a hole in the trunk of the tree that I have made my home for all these months. It is large enough to serve as a treasure trove for my diary. For in truth, it is not my diary to keep. It is the story of Cara and it should stay here with her, just as a piece of my heart will forever. She is my Cara Blanca, my dearest, and I will love her always…
/>
If you’re going to give the diary back, you should give it to the tree. That was what Annie said to me once. And so there I was back on Great Abaco, and I knew that the time had come for me to return Felipa’s diary to the place it came from.
As I walked through the jungle and saw the sun rise through the canopy of the trees above me, I felt a certainty, just as Felipa did when she wrapped her diary in her old sailor shirt over five hundred years ago and nestled it inside the Jumbie tree.
The hole that Felipa carved into the trunk is much higher up now than it was way back then and I had to climb up to reach it. I carefully pushed Felipa’s diary in as deep as it would go. Then I pulled my own diary out of my backpack, wrapping it in an old T-shirt before I placed it inside the tree.
Felipa’s diary and mine, side by side. They sit there and wait. Ready for the next guardians of the Medicine Hat to find.
It was fate that brought me here to tell my story. And now fate has given the power of the obeah to the next generation. If you are reading this book, then it means that my diary is in good hands.
Be the guardian of the words, just as I was.
My horses belong to you now.
Epilogue
The Abaco Barb – the rarest horse in the world
How did a wild herd of Spanish horses wind up on a small island in the Bahamas?
No one is certain, but the most convincing theory is that a small herd of Spanish horses travelled with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage, surviving a shipwreck to establish a herd on Great Abaco Island.
DNA tests have proven that the horses on Great Abaco have incredibly pure bloodlines that can be traced directly to fifteenth-century Spain.
Many of the historical facts in this novel are true. The real Queen Isabella did change her mind and send a rider after Columbus to give him the good news on the road to Cadiz. She also ordered the mass expulsion of the Jews, and the torture and death of the Conversos in the Spanish Inquisition that was led by Tomas de Torquemada. The black plague was greatly feared in 1493, especially in the city of Barcelona where it was spread by fleas borne on rats.
