Sugar Money

by Jane Harris

  ‘What about the ferry?’ I said. ‘The ferryman might still take you for free.’

  ‘You think that same fellow is still here? There might not even be a ferry.’

  I was considering this possibility when Emile stop short and set down his bundle. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twist of thin linen. This he unravel to reveal a few coin: one half-joe, clipped light, two sous and three deniers – about as much money as I had ever seen.

  ‘Where did you get those?’ I asked, in wonder.

  ‘Cléophas.’

  ‘Tambou!’

  ‘You should have seen his face as he put them in my hand. You might have thought he was giving me his fortune.’

  Emile stare down at the coins, an absent look in his eyes, behind them his splendidious brain no doubt whirring. Like as not, he was supputing whether we could afford to take a ferry. Then he began to bind the cloth tight around the coin such that they would jangle less in his pocket.

  ‘Sorry, bug,’ he said. ‘I can’t waste this on a ferry when we can walk there almost as quick. And that road is busy as a half-day market. Tout bagay chanje, ’ti pantalons – nothing stays the same for long in these Antilles.’

  He stuff the twist of linen in his pocket and lifted his bundle onto his shoulder. Then he strode off amongst the trees. I caught up with him in a twinkle.

  ‘Emile? Souplé? Can I carry those coin? I’ll take extra special good care of them, mwen sèmante – you have my word.’

  I leave you to imagine his reply for it is hardly printable here.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We pressed inland, keeping out of sight among the woods. At one point, we came to a highway that headed up into the hills. As we crossed over, Emile scraped a line in the muddy road with his toe.

  ‘This is the Chemin des Hauteurs,’ he said. On the far side, he patted the trunk of a tree. ‘Now we’re in the hospital estate.’

  All this country was new to me. By my reckoning, we had reached a spot only a few mile from the very place where my life began. And yet, there I was, just as lost as had I been set down a naked babe in the wilderness of Beersheba, entirely at the mercy of my brother and his superior knowledge of the island. Perhaps that is why a thrill ran through me as we came around the side of a hill and I heard the sound of rushing water.

  ‘The river St Jean,’ I cried. ‘Over there – listen.’

  Emile shook his head.

  ‘That’s the Mahots. We must cross that first. Then there’s another river just beyond it and when that joins up with the Mahots, both together, they form a bigger river and that’s the St Jean you remember – but what you hear now is the Mahots.’

  ‘They should make you a geographer,’ I said. ‘If ever we get to be freed – that would be my strong recommendation.’

  ‘You – meanwhile – will be on the stage,’ said Emile. ‘The hired buffoon.’

  He was a dry dog; you had to give him that.

  ‘Why not just cross the St Jean?’ I asked. ‘Why make us cross two rivers?’

  ‘Like I said, the St Jean is too wide and deep where they join. We should go upstream, ford them one at a time. Mahots is bad enough this season, after rain.’

  But despite all his fuss and bother we forded the Mahots easy as scratch. On the far side, we had scarce gone forty paces when we came to another river, this one narrower but fast-flowing. So far as I could tell we were somewheres in the V of land between where the two watercourses met. No path here to speak of, just mud up to the ankle.

  Emile led me into the thickest part of the woods. Then he sat me down on a fallen tree and spoke in a low voice.

  ‘You wait here with the bag, out of sight. I’ll take a look at the mill.’

  ‘What mill?’

  ‘The hospital mill.’

  ‘Will anyone we know be there?’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Might be nobody there at all.’

  ‘But – if you find someone – will you speak to them?’

  ‘Don’t talk stupidness. Nobody will see me, come or go. I only want to take a look.’

  ‘But aren’t we suppose to talk to the field hands?’

  He sighed.

  ‘We can’t go crashing in at the mill like a couple of whip-cat niggers, talking to this one and that one – you think any overseer would tolerate that? No, we need to get to the old quarters, speak to the hospital slave first – whoever is remaining. I’m only going to check if the mill is quiet, see if we can use the ford there – otherwise we’ll have to cross further up. Kompwan?’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  ‘Well, stay here until I get back.’

  He listen for a short interval then disappeared through the undergrowth, headed upstream. As you might imagine, I took a stitch at having to wait there like a pricket whiles he went ahead to scout. Why he wanted me to stay behind I knew not: any fool could sneak around just as well as him. So far as I was concern, I could conduct myself in an entirely sensible manner. He had made overmuch simmy-dimmy about those two porteuses. After all, I had only said ‘Bonjou’. Some people might argue it would look more suspicious NOT to greet two young ladies if they pass you on the road. Giving them ‘Good day’ was only polite, or so I persuaded myself as I sat there alone.

  In plus, I would have like to see the mill, for as a child I had strayed no further from the hospital than the ferry road and the plantation village. I tried to cheer myself with the thought of an imminent reunion with our old compeers, the hospital slaves: most of all, Céleste, of course, but also my childhood playferes from the hospital quarters, Vincent and his cousin Léontine. Both their mothers had died long since, and they grew up in the care of their grandmother, laundrywoman Angélique Le Vieux. Beforetimes, I used to trail around after them, trying to keep up when they ran down to the river and the plantation. Léontine was a bold child, always leading us into scrapes. She could outrun and out-climb her cousin and her sharp wits meant that she often acted as lookout for the adults from a young age. As for Vincent, some older boys might have scorned me as a whipper-snapping baby, but he always stood up for me and one time, when I fell and got coated in stinking scumber from knee to neck, he took the trouble to wash me down himself.

  Vincent and Léontine had been the best compeers of my childhood and the thought of seeing them again improved my humour somewise for, all afternoon, it had been naught but encounters with strangers and one unfamiliar place after another. I had a yearning just to see someone or someplace I recognised: the ferryman, the mouth of the St Jean, or even old Angélique, who was mainly known for chopping the heads off hens and trapping spirits in jars. In fact, I knew her soi-disant spirit were nothing but smoke from her tobacco pipe, since I had spied the old sly-boots puff and blow into her silly jars when she thought nobody could see. Back in the old days, she used to scare the britches off me, but now I would have traded every coin we had just to see her spit in a fire.

  By then, it were that tranquil hour of day in those Antilles that comes creeping before the last of the light. The forest smelt of tree sap and smoke and blossom. In less than an hour it would be dark and the tiny frog would start to pipe their night-time song. I sat so still and quiet waiting for Emile that I might have been invisible. If only he could have seen me. Why, an old iguana fail to notice me altogether and climbed a tree right before my eyes. Next came a manicou limping along just a few feet away. I lean down to whisper to him: ‘How do you do, sir?’ but he keeled right over on the spot and even when I stroked him with a long leaf he pretended to be stone kickeraboo. Well, that provided middling entertainment for a snipper-snapper such as me in those days. But as time went along and Emile fail to return, my impatience grew. I began to think it would do no harm to get the lay of the land on my own account, perhaps take a look downstream and see what could be seen before nightfall.

  Leaving the bag, I crept along through the underwood to the tongue of land at the conflux of the two waterways. Here, at last, the St Jean. I coul
d see for myself that the river flowed wide and high, a mite too frisky to cross. Above the leafy canopy, to the south, a long stretch of high ground rose up against the sky. For true, something about those heights reminded me of Hospital Hill – though I had never viewed it from so far inland. Besides, in my memory, trees shrouded the slopes, whereas this ridge had been half-cleared.

  I was puzzling my noddle about that when a movement down-stream caught my eye. There, on the opposite bank of the river, stood a bacon-face Béké of middle years, peering down into the water as if in search of fish. He wore a broad-brim cloth hat, loose shirt, faded nankeen drawers and dingy stockings. I had just noticed him when he glanced up and saw me. Slapdash, the breath quitted my body. My impulse was to scuttle for cover like a scalded cockroach except it struck me that – if I fled – his suspicion would only be arouse. Ergo, I raise my hat instead to greet him.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ says I, in English, in case he might be a Goddam: ‘How do you do? Lovely weather today, master, sir.’

  The Béké just narrowed his eyes at me. It struck me that he might be the overseer – Addison Bell – the one White had warned us about. If it were him, I was surely done for. But the man just frowned at me then turned and ambled away downstream. I watched him until he disappeared from view. He did not give the appearance of one intent on raising the alarm. Perhaps he had mistook me for a freed man since Grenada then had a few hundred such fortunate souls. Nonetheless, the incident gave me quite a jolt. My heart beat fierce and fast as a beggar with a clap-dish. So much for seeing the lay of the land: the devil to that. In haste I sped back to the thicket, arriving just as my brother reappeared.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he said.

  Well, he would go up in smoke if I told him what had happen, hence I led him to believe that I had merely step behind a tree to ‘pump ship’. After all, the Béké stranger had strolled off without a word. I told myself not to fret or foam.

  ‘There’s a dog at the mill,’ Emile said. ‘But he’s tied up asleep. No sign of anybody else. They’re stocking wood but they haven’t begun the harvest yet. We’ll have to take care – they’ve chop down half the trees up there so there’s less cover. Now – follow me and be quiet – specially near the mill. Let’s not wake the dog. I can see no sign of a watchman but someone might be lurking. Dépéché kò’w. Hurry up. Bring your wood.’

  He put his finger to his lips. His eyes were blazing, alert. I should have guess he would be twined up tight as a tourniquet now we were closing in on our destination, on Céleste. Of course, I know that now. But back then, I just felt too vex to care, all up in the snuff with him for flinging orders at me what seem like a thousand times per second.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Soon enough, we arrived at the ford, where a highway approach the river from the east. All seem tranquil until we heard the thud of hooves on the road. Emile pull me down into the rushes at the water edge and held me tight-tight. The hooves turned out to belong to a couple of Capuchin friar, one young, one old – or rather to the mangy mules upon which they sat. The elder friar was clacking away like an old babelard on the subject of nothing, whiles his youthful companion look fit to die of ennui and for that he had my fellow-feeling. The pair took their time negotiating the river but at last they trotted off on their way. When we judge them out of earshot, we left our hiding place and cross the ford. On the far side, the rutted highway followed the course of the St Jean to the sea.

  ‘Is that the River Road?’ I asked Emile. ‘The one I know?’

  ‘Correct,’ said he.

  I had never been on this exact stretch of highway, yet it was some comfort to reach a familiar landmark at last. Nonetheless, by then, Emile had grown exceeding cautious and even though the road would take us in the right direction we ran across it and onto the back of the ridge. Getting up there was a scramble but we stole along quiet as two slipper-shod snake and had soon gone high enough to look down upon the former property of our friars, les Frères de la Charité.

  The mill turned out to be not much more than a few ramshackle building: a boiling house made of rough stone with a squat chimney, the mill itself and the curing house. A massive hound lay asleep in his kennel next the woodshed. Otherwise, the courtyard seem deserted; all the machinery lay still. So often beforetime I had heard talk of this place, I must have built it up somewise in my mind. Well, it was less grand than I had imagine; in fact, the boiling house was smaller than the one we had in Martinique and from what I could see there was no distillery, just the curing house.

  Emile pointed across the yard to a low structure of iron bars and hinge planks. He put his mouth to my ear and whispered.

  ‘That’s new. Bilboes.’

  I whispered back.

  ‘I can see what they are.’

  But he persisted in explaining:

  ‘You put your feet in the holes, they keep you locked up long as they want.’

  ‘Instruments of torture,’ I replied. ‘A Caribee tour, conducted by his excellency the Prince Mandingo.’

  Emile twitched his shoulders.

  ‘You and your mouth,’ he said. ‘Annou alé. Let’s go.’

  We hurried on, keeping to higher ground where the woods gave us some small amount of cover. Further along, we could survey the wide valley all the way to the coast. Some still call the plantation land the Indigoterre des Pères though the Fathers had long gone and only cane had grown there for years, first planted by the friar themselve when sugar became a more valuable crop than indigo. Now, the cane looked lush, bright green, tall enough to be cut. I peered ahead to a bend in the river where the field hand quarters use to be, right in the midst of the cane-pieces. The dwellings seemed much as I remembered: a huddle of thatch roofs, seven timber cabins of different sizes, set together in haphazard fashion on the north side of the St Jean.

  Eventually, we came to a halt in a dense thicket of campèche. There, in the shadows beneath their branches, we were invisible. The sharp scent of the trees hung in the air. I could hear the thwack of axes chopping wood somewhere along the ridge. Voices floated across the hillside. Down near the coast, a dog was barking. Below us, the river St Jean snaked along the valley. The field hand quarters lay on the far side. Someone had built a narrow bridge across the water, a rough structure of planks just wide enough to allow one person to cross on foot. Most likely, this was so the hands could move from one part of the plantation to the other without heading up to the ford which had always been a time-waster. A few infant amused themselve on the riverbank. Behind the cabins, lay the provision ground and beyond that, prospecting the village on the low slopes opposite us, sat the cabin that housed the overseer. As we watched, an aged field hand hobble behind the huts toward the growing ground, a hoe upon his shoulder. Almost in the same moment, the chock-chock of axe blade ceased and soon a group of figures emerge from the trees and began to assemble on the road below. Evidently, the field hand had just finish work for the day. We were too far distant to recognise anyone for certain but close enough to make out that two of the women wore spike collars.

  I glanced at my brother. He studied the quarters, then looked up and down the valley, a keen expression on his face as though he were calculating something or measuring a distance – but what exact form his thoughts took I could not hazard a guess.

  ‘How are we suppose to get them all the way up-island to Petit Havre in collars?’ I asked. ‘Up and down ridges, on goat tracks, in the dark. What about the old sick ones, and the children? They’ll be too slow. We have to leave them behind. Cléophas said take the fast ones, those fit for work.’

  ‘We’re not leaving any that want to go,’ Emile said.

  He took a few step then stopped again, staring down at the village. I followed his gaze and saw a single field hand standing alone against one of the hut. For a sudden, I thought that the light was playing tricks on me. The man was bone-lean and entirely naked. He had his head press to the cabin wall, as though to eavesdrop on some conversat
ion inside. His skin gleamed strangely. He had an iron weight attach to his ankle by a chain: not enough to stop him working, but it would slow him down.

  Something about the position of his body seemed wrong, as though he stood there against his will. His head met the boards of the hut at an awkward angle, his back twisted. If he was eavesdropping, he did so in plain view, because the other field hand had begun to stream across the bridge and the man did not try to hide what he was doing, as though unable to move from that spot. In fact, he raised his hand to greet them, though it cost him some effort. It was only then that the truth of the situation dawned on me. His ear had been nail to the hut.

  My brother gave me a look, as much to say: ‘You see what they do?’

  ‘Why is his skin shining so much?’ I asked.

  ‘Molasses. I expect the overseer tarred him with it, to attract flies to bite him. Flies in the daytime; musquito by night. Send him out of his mind. Wonder how long he’s been there?’

  Indeed, the poor wretch did seem weary. His knees kept giving way as though he had nodded off but then he would jerk himself upright again.

  ‘That ear is lost, no matter what,’ said Emile. ‘Likely they will slice it off to set him free. Or pull him away from the wall, leave his flesh in shred.’

  I squeeze my own ear, glad to find it intact.

  ‘Enough,’ whispered Emile. ‘Annou alé. Follow me.’

  Toward the western end of the hill, he paused and pointed at the heights. Since I now had my bearings entirely, I knew at once what he meant: we should avoid the redoubt at the summit in case the English kept soldiers up there on guard. In peace time, the fortified position were mostly unmanned; no doubt, the redcoats would all be in town or down at the fort but, cautious as ever, my brother headed down the slope.

  Without a word, we made for a line of woods beyond which the hill had been cleared entirely. Above us, a winding path descended from the redoubt. New trenchments had been dug across the hillside all the way to the cliffs and palisades erected. A tunnel led through the battery. On the other side lay the hospital – but the last thing we wanted was to show ourselves there in the courtyard. Our true destination was the huts, uphill and downwind of the main hospital buildings.