Jade (Sally Watson Family Tree Books)

by Sally Watson

  Jade paused for reflection. He could do it. And she wouldn’t be able to get it off by herself, and if Domino helped, it would precipitate all sorts of awful possibilities. At best the whole thing would be atrociously mortifying, and at worst an inglorious defeat. She narrowed her eyes at him, seething and considering.

  “Moreover,” said her uncle, pushing his luck, “I do not like your hair all up on top of your head so. It is not becoming a young girl, even though the French do it.” He clearly thought little of the French. “You will hereafter wear it as before, in the curls on your shoulders. You have finished your banana? Go then upstairs and obey me. Dr. Hughes will be here presently.”

  Jade obeyed the bit about going upstairs, Domino appearing en route from the hall where she had been shamelessly listening. Once in the bedchamber, they looked at each other, silently speculative. Domino—who knew her own courage but had grave doubts about Jade—fixed expectant eyes on her.

  “What you do now?” she challenged.

  Jade chuckled suddenly. Surrender was not in her. She was going to earn a whipping: she couldn’t help herself. And she felt in a mood to enjoy the process. Moreover, Domino was looking just faintly startled and impressed at the chuckle.

  “What you do?” she repeated hopefully.

  “Something he doesn’t expect.” She concentrated. This clash had been inevitable from the first, and she must make it a telling one. Goodness knew how it would end. “Like going downstairs wearing nothing at all. Or cutting off all my hair. . . .”

  Her eyes lighted. She hauled out her sewing box, produced the shears that had been so useful before, and— with the enthusiastic help of Domino—cropped off all her hair to within a ragged inch or so of her head.

  “Lovely and cool!” she said with satisfaction, and went downstairs to confront her relations and their guest.

  Aunt Louisa screamed and had an attack of the vapours on the spot. Dr. Hughes gaped. Uncle Augustus looked stupefied. No one had ever defied him like this before, and he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Jade watched him closely behind her mask of bland serenity, and her heart was beating rather quickly. He was an unknown quantity still, for they had never crossed swords before. She knew it was no quarter—but what she didn’t know was just how formidable an opponent he might be. Recklessly, she compounded her felony. “I’m not wearing stays, either,” she announced, brazen.

  Her uncle—now a rich beet red—found his voice. “Up!” It had an oddly thick quality, barely controlled. “To your room! I come later.”

  He was a long time coming, and it wasn’t very pleasant waiting. But she had to keep up appearances, of course, especially with Domino there, looking superior. Jade made a great show of throwing away the shorn mane of hair and then strutted over to the mirror to survey the result.

  Her eyes rounded. So did those of the girl in the mirror; otherwise Jade might almost have thought it someone else. Domino came and grinned over her shoulder as she stared. The soft, oval, feminine face of Melanie, no longer framed by all that hair, had changed its shape, become pointed, all mouth and eyes and ears and cheek bones: not in the least soft or feminine or even pretty. It was now distinctly a Jade-face, and its owner stared in shocked silence for a moment, not at all sure she liked it now that she had it.

  “You grow again?” suggested Domino slyly, reading her feelings with diabolic ease.

  Stung, Jade shook her head with more vigor than she really felt, still eying her reflection as a stranger. Then she began to laugh.

  “Mother’ll have fits! And however hard Uncle Augustus beats me, he can’t have his slaves hold me down and stick it on again.”

  “Come now,” Domino predicted, listening to the sound of Dr. Hughes’ horse departing, and heavy footsteps up the stairs.

  Jade braced herself. And her uncle stormed in flourishing his riding crop, with which he administered discipline after a fashion that earned him no respect at all. Father could do better than that! Jade had expected something far worse from this stern martinet.

  But the martinet, as it happened, was quite unnerved both by Jade’s apparent frailty and her disconcerting silence. His daughter had been a large hefty girl who always yelled and wept lustily on such occasions.

  Presently he could bear it no longer. He stopped, moved around to peer at her tearless and apparently unmoved face. “Himmel!” he said, almost plaintive. “Don’t I even hurt you, meine Nichte?”

  Jade treated him to her lopsided grin. “Yes,” she said, scorning to deny it—and also guessing shrewdly that this would baffle him more than ever. His rules admitted only two reactions to pain: one either cried and carried on, or one refused to admit that the thing hurt at all. The first was for females and cowards, the second for men. To have a fragile girl show a man’s courage and then casually admit that it hurt threw him quite off his stride.

  He finished the beating half-heartedly. She had somehow got the upper hand, and he couldn’t figure out how or why. Disgruntled, he ordered her to stay in her chamber until further orders, and left the room.

  There was silence. Domino was watching. Jade strolled over to the window and glanced out, looking bored. Domino shrugged. “Very small beating,” she observed, unimpressed.

  Small or not, it hurt quite enough. Irritated, Jade turned. “That,” she predicted, “was only the beginning. Just wait!” And her spirits sank as she realized the truth of the remark and the depressing future ahead. All very well, now and then, to establish a moral victory this way, but as a steady diet it was poison. Why did she go on fighting, with no weapons but her own stubbornness? It was stupid, hopeless, probably suicidal in one way or another. But she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t imagine giving in, any more than could Domino.

  At least there was Domino! Jade gave her a sudden brilliant smile as the door opened and a distraught Aunt Louisa came in, scolding and commiserating and armed with an ointment that was, as Jade pointed out, totally unnecessary.

  “Better save it for next time,” she suggested realistically, and produced such a storm of emotion that she had to give in and submit to treatment just to make her aunt feel better.

  That over, the day dragged out, enlivened only when Domino unexpectedly slapped her on the arm. Jade stared, too astonished even to slap back.

  “Kill he,” said Domino with satisfaction, and displayed the corpse of a mosquito.

  Jade giggled. The militant Domino’s fear of mosquitoes was so incongruous. “Don’t you have them in Africa?” she asked. “I do think you believe they’re evil spirits or something.”

  Domino nodded. “Yes. You think silly, but not. Bad devils. Make sick.”

  “Sick?” Jade shook her cropped head. It felt so light! “Nonsense. They only itch a little.”

  Domino glared. “Sometimes make sick. Very sick. Make die. Yellow-eye sickness.”

  “Yellow-eye? You don’t mean yellow fever? Yellow jack?”

  Domino indicated impatiently that she didn’t know or care what pink-faces might call it. “First very hot, hurt in head and back,” she explained. “Then not hurt, eyes yellow, get cold, soon die.”

  It was a perfect description of yellow jack. “Well, but it hasn’t got anything to do with mosquitoes, silly,” said Jade, intrigued by such superstition. Really, the ideas people had!

  “They bring,” said Domino firmly. “Bad devils ride on tooths. Bite sick people, get devils. Bite well people, devils jump off, make well people sick. My people know . . . knew.” Her face darkened as she remembered the small African city where she had grown up—now wiped out forever by a massive raid. Its arts and developing sciences were vanished, its streets and buildings and central square already being swallowed by an insatiable jungle, so that in a few years no trace would remain of a proud little civilization. A hundred years of slave-trading was already plunging Africa back into savagery; in another hundred . . .

  Jade saw her slave’s lips tighten, and she guessed at something of the unspoken misery. But she
couldn’t show pity, for Domino defied pity. She wasn’t pitiable. Her husky voice was cool and matter-of-fact when she went on.

  “My people knew this thing, killed devil-bugs. No devil-sickness except when monkeys come, bring many new devil-bugs.”

  Jade firmly subdued another giggle. “And what do the devils look like?” she challenged.

  “Not know. Very small devils, not can see.” And that was that. Domino narrowed her beautiful eyes, daring Jade to mock. “You not believe. All right, but kill devil-bug anyway,” she advised with forthright practicality. “Believing not matter if not get yellow-eye.”

  “All right,” agreed Jade, this seeming fair enough.

  But Jade slept poorly that night. It occurred to her that sooner or later Uncle Augustus would discover a perfect weapon against her—a simple, convenient weapon that would be most effective indeed. All he need do was punish Joshua and Domino for her sins—and Jade would become tractable. She’d have to! Lying rigid in her bed, she realized to the full how much easier it was to be brave for one’s self than for someone else, and how terribly vulnerable it made one, to feel responsible for another. What was she going to do?

  She spent nearly a week in her room—much of it trying to teach Domino swordplay without being heard below. Then her uncle came and announced magnanimously that he had decided to let her resume her morning rides for her health. Jade, suspecting Dr. Hughes’ hand in this, merely smiled obliquely.

  “Perhaps also I let you come down to meals and for Christmas day,” he added, grudgingly. “But not if visitors come. You are not fit to be seen, with that ugly cut-off hair, so unfeminine; and also you are not fit to associate with my guests, who are civilized people.”

  Jade had been holding her tongue with what seemed masterly prudence and self-control. This was too much. “Like Mr. Bayard?” she jeered, and at once lost her dinner privileges for another week.

  And by the time she was allowed out again (except when visitors came) Jade felt that she perfectly understood at least one reason why Anne Bonney might have burned down her father’s house.

  Still, the worst hadn’t happened. Uncle Augustus hadn’t—yet—thought to make Domino and Josh hostage for her behavior. As a matter of fact, he never would have thought of it, as he couldn’t conceive of anyone caring that much about a mere slave. But Jade didn’t know this.

  Life was not genial at the plantation as Christmas neared. Jade, constrained to unwilling prudence by her fears for Joshua and Domino, agreed to wear stays with tight-waisted gowns and in public. It meant little enough practically, since she was still incommunicado and always wore a contouche, but in principle it was distinctly a retreat. In consequence, she went around with an air of a leashed demon that made everyone uneasy. Domino sulked, making it perfectly clear what she thought of weak-spined pink-skinned girls who lowered their banners under threat. And Uncle Augustus—who had also been forced to compromise, and for the first time in his adult life—was quite awful. His blue eyes were cold, and his steel-trap mouth no longer amiable, and he took it out on everyone—including the overseers, who in turn passed it on to the hapless slaves. It was a temporary armistice in which no one could take any satisfaction, for pride smarted on both sides.

  And sooner or later Domino would receive a direct order from him, and then it would be all-out war.

  A tense Christmas passed, jovial without being happy.

  And then Dr. Hughes rode up the drive one morning with an oddly abstracted expression, and closeted himself at once with Uncle Augustus. When he had gone again— not even waiting for coffee—Jade and her aunt were summoned to the study.

  “Dr. Hughes has just diagnosed a case of yellow fever,” said Uncle Augustus. Aunt Louisa gasped and put a hand to her throat, and Jade felt her own eyes widen. “It will be a fortnight before there is another case,” he went on, expressionless. “That is the peculiar thing about this disease; it always behaves so. Dr. Hughes has a theory that this is significant, but—” He shrugged massively. “Now it is the time to send Melanie home, at once, before news leaks out and ships will refuse to carry passengers from here.”

  He looked like a man trying not to look relieved. Jade had a notion that if yellow jack hadn’t provided an excuse to send her home, Uncle Augustus would have had to invent one. Aunt Louisa, too, looked singularly resigned.

  “Oh, yes; we mustn’t keep dear Melanie in danger a moment longer! Fidelia will help Domino with your packing, dear.”

  Jade jutted her jaw at them both. Not that she was heartbroken, herself: far from it. But she was beginning to feel like a hot potato, never knowing where or when she’d be tossed next. To Father’s Lennox cousins in England? The prospect failed to appeal. She quirked her mouth wryly and said nothing.

  “We cannot go with you, Liebchen, you understand.” He was looking almost his old affable self, genuinely concerned for her welfare. “But you have two strong and loyal slaves to protect you, and your father will much prefer that I send you with them instead of letting you stay here in danger of infection. And it is very fortunate that the Pearl is back in Port Royal, for I can entrust you to the captain, and he will return you safely.”

  Jade would have preferred a different ship, just for the sake of novelty. But this was no time to quibble. “Yes, Uncle Augustus,” she said with astonishing meekness.

  His large pink face looked puzzled. “Very well, then, I go now to speak to the captain and tell him to take you on board as soon as you are ready. You will now go up and pack.”

  “Yes, Uncle Augustus,” repeated Jade, and flew upstairs.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Storm

  The Pearl sailed with the early tide two mornings later. Jade, hardly believing the suddenness of the thing, stood on deck waving to her aunt and uncle with sudden mild affection (doubtless brought on by the fact that she was safely out from their authority) while Captain Narramore warped the ship away from the quay to catch the land breeze and head out of the harbor. The water between ship and shore widened. Jade drew a long breath and heard it echoed by Josh and Domino. Horrible place! Brutalized by slavery, owners as well as owned. . . . The stench of the slave market was still in her nostrils, seeming to fill the harbor whether there was actually a slaver in port or not. But she was leaving!

  She chortled with pleasure, tilting her head back to see the crew swarm among the rigging, working all along the yards to set sail, at a dizzying height above deck and sea. Joshua, reading her thoughts easily, put a restraining hand on her arm, just in case. And Jade, reading his worry as easily, laughed—to the mystification of the only other passengers, an elderly Mr. and Mrs. Plomley, on their way back to England. The couple raised their eyebrows.

  Out of the harbor now: “Helm hard over!” roared the captain; and the Pearl came around. Past Drunken Cay and South Cay they moved, and then eastward as the land breeze filled the sails, billowing them and causing the choleric captain to bellow more orders.

  Jade gave one more rapturous look around, and then bolted for her tiny cabin in order to remove the stiffened petticoat and detestable stays. “Come on, Domino,” she laughed, staggering happily up the tilting deck. Domino came—slowly and sullenly.

  “There!” sighed Jade when she was able at last to breathe freely. “Now let’s throw them overboard.”

  No response from Domino. Jade eyed her sharply. “What’s the matter?”

  The Pearl heeled over as she came about on a northeasterly tack. Jade let her knees give to it, chortling with delight. Domino staggered against the bulkhead and looked at her with sick reproach, her superiority quenched.

  “Good heavens,” said Jade, astonished. “You’re not seasick, are you?” But another look convinced her that Domino was indeed seasick—and perhaps it was no wonder, considering that her only previous experience at sea had been the ghastly one of lying on her side amid a tight-squeezed row of other captives in the stinking ’tween-decks of a slave ship.

  Jade, all tender solicitude, didn�
��t say a word about the natural inferiority or otherwise of pink-faces. She tucked Domino into her own bed—though what Captain Narramore might have said was an interesting question—and she wiped her suffering brow. And then, there being nothing more Domino wanted but solitude and perhaps a quick death, Jade went back on deck.

  The trade winds forever blew toward the west here among these islands, through the narrow funnel between Cuba and Hispaniola, giving it its name of Windward Passage. It took a good deal of tacking to sail against it, and it also involved a good deal of rolling on some of the tacks. Jade swayed with the ship, watching alternately the activity above and the dolphins below with a joy that not even Domino’s state of misery could quench.

  “Hullo, Mistress Melanie!” It was Tom Deane, pausing in pleased recognition. “Glad you’re aboard again. Have you been ill?” He saw Jade’s bewilderment and touched a finger to the short feathery hair—a full two inches longstanding on end in the wind. “Your face looks thinner, and your hair’s cut. I didn’t know you at first.”

  Jade giggled. “No, I just cut it off myself to be wicked and because it was too hot,” she told him unrepentantly, and then wrinkled her nose as a sudden whiff of foul air struck it. “That awful slaveship smell is still with us! All the way from Jamaica!”

  Tom shook his sun-gilded head. “Not from Jamaica, Miss Melanie. Didn’t you know? The Pearl’s a slave ship more often than not. We’ve got a load from Africa now. Sorry the smell disturbs you, but you won’t get much of it on the quarterdeck. And—short hair becomes you, Mistress.” Smiling appreciatively, he made his way forward, quite oblivious to Jade’s stricken rigidity.

  She stared after him, hating him. He didn’t even see anything wrong—except the inconvenience to the nose! No one did! Was she out of her senses, after all, and the rest of the world sane? Panic shook her. It seemed all too likely. But if that were so— Then how could there be a God at all? Or divine justice? It must be that Satan ruled the world, and Christianity was just a horrible practical joke he invented for his own amusement. The world was black and ugly and wicked, and she hated everyone!