But what if he hadn’t? What if the news that she was missing hadn’t even got through?
There didn’t seem to be any way out. If she turned back now and something happened to Belle, she’d never forgive herself.
She wished the men luck, and told them to keep an eye out for Belle. Then she gathered the reins and put Frolic into a canter towards Bethlehem.
When she reached the village she found it deserted. She slowed to a trot, and crossed the silent clearing in front of the chapel. She passed the old clinic – long since abandoned by Dr Mallory – and the breadfruit tree under which, seven years before, a young groom had stooped to examine a five-year-old’s beloved toy zebra.
‘Belle?’ she shouted. Her voice echoed eerily from house to house. But no-one came out. Not even a dog. All she could hear was the insidious whisper of falling ash.
She trotted to the edge of the village and reined in at Tom Gully, the shallow stream which marked the boundary between Bethlehem and Eden land. Frolic put down her head to drink.
Sophie was thirsty too, but she knew that she couldn’t drink. Her throat was too tight to swallow. No more than a yard away, on the other side of this shallow ribbon of rusty brown water, lay Eden.
It’s only land, she told herself as her heart began to thud. There’s no need to feel like this.
It didn’t work.
The mare finished drinking and shook her head, scattering droplets.
You’re just a miserable coward, Sophie told herself. Belle needs you. How can you even hesitate?
She glanced over her shoulder at the deserted village. Then she looked ahead to the track that led to the works at Maputah, and on to Eden great house. Then she took a deep breath and put the mare forward across the stream.
Nothing is real any more, she thought, as she cantered up to the house. She felt as if she were trapped in a dream: as if she were the only one left alive.
From force of habit, she rode round the side of the house and into the garden, where she dismounted and tethered Frolic at the bottom of the steps. It all looked achingly familiar, and eerily untouched by the catastrophe which threatened to sweep it away.
‘Belle?’ she called.
No answer.
The garden was just the same as she remembered. The same scarlet hibiscus and greenish-gold tree-ferns; the same spiky royal palms and white bougainvillaea. And down by the sliding river, the same great banks of torch ginger and scarlet heliconia, and the nodding plumes of the giant bamboo, which would ferry the fire across the river in a heartbeat if Cameron’s firebreak didn’t hold.
Everything was weirdly peaceful, and alive with birds. She caught the emerald flash of a doctorbird; the smoky blur of a bluequit. She heard the rapid zizizi of sugarbirds in the hibiscus, and the high-pitched trill of a grassquit. At Eden life was going on in terrifying innocence of the fire about to sweep it away. It was almost as if there was no fire. Except for the black ash, softly falling.
She turned and ran up the steps.
‘Belle?’ Her voice echoed in the empty house.
Everywhere she looked she saw traces of lives interrupted. A maid’s coconut-fibre broom discarded on the tiles. A copy of the Daily Gleaner tossed across the tartan cushions on the sofa.
Quickly she checked the bedrooms, in case Belle was hiding, and afraid to come out. The spare room and the nursery were empty. Feeling horribly intrusive, she ran into Cameron’s and Madeleine’s room. It too was empty – but it felt unsettlingly as if someone had only just left. The bird-feeder at the open door was gently rocking. One of Cameron’s shirts lay crumpled on the floor.
She was turning to go when a group of photographs on the bedside table caught her eye. There were three of them, in a little tortoiseshell cluster beside a yellow-backed novel and a lacquered ring-stand that she remembered giving Madeleine for her birthday years before.
The first photograph was of an eight-year-old Belle, scowling into the camera, with Spot firmly gripped beneath her chin.
The second was of Fraser. He wore his beloved sailor suit, and he was hatless, his curly hair a pale halo around his eager little face. He was standing proudly behind Abigail the mastiff, with one small hand on her massive black head and the other on her back, as if he was about to climb aboard and ride her like a pony.
He used to do it, too, Sophie remembered. And when he fell off, Abigail would nose him to his feet and chase him round and round the house, wagging her tail and pretend-biting him, while he squealed with delight.
Grief welled up in her throat and lodged there like a piece of meat.
She dragged her eyes away from Fraser to the third photograph. With a jolt she recognized herself. She hadn’t expected that. Since Fraser’s death, Madeleine could hardly look her in the eye. And yet here was her photograph on Madeleine’s bedside table.
Madeleine had taken it seven years ago, on the day of the Historical Society picnic. In the photograph Sophie stood beneath a tree-fern, looking painfully self-conscious in her unflattering pale green dress.
That picnic. She remembered the drive back to Eden with Ben. He hadn’t spoken a word all the way to Romilly, and then she’d forced him to talk, and they’d had a row.
She pressed her hands to her mouth. First Fraser. Then Ben. Not now. There wasn’t time.
She ran out onto the steps at the back of the house, and stood irresolute, not knowing which way to turn. Clemency had said that Belle had gone off on a ‘secret mission into the hills’. But where?
Would she really have gone to the cave at Turnaround, as Clemency believed? That seemed unlikely, given that coming across Evie in the cave had given Belle the fright of her life.
So what about somewhere closer to home? Where would a child with a morbid streak go on a ‘secret mission’?
She was debating this when a flicker of movement in the undergrowth caught her eye.
There it was again: something pale in the dense greenery of the slope. It had only been a flicker, but something about it made her catch her breath. For a moment – just a moment – she thought she’d glimpsed a child’s fair head.
Not possible, she told herself, feeling suddenly cold. There are no fair-haired children at Eden. Not any more.
‘Belle?’ she called. In the stillness her voice sounded shaky and scared. She cleared her throat. ‘Fraser?’
Crows exploded from the trees in a flurry of wings. When they’d gone there was a taut, listening stillness. It was as if the trees, and the very house itself, had tensed when she’d said the name.
She moistened her lips and forced herself to stay calm. Think of Belle, concentrate on Belle. Where would she go on a secret mission?
Fraser was buried quite close to the house, only a short way up the slope. From where she stood, she could see the path: a narrow but well-worn track disappearing into a shadowy green jungle of sweetwoods and breadfruit trees and huge-leaved philodendron.
Could Belle be up there?
She never seems to play with her dolls, Madeleine had said once. She just holds funerals for them.
A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She couldn’t go up there. No, no, no. Not to the grave.
Oh, it’s beautiful, Sophie, Clemency had assured her. Maddy’s made it into a little secret garden. She’s planted all sorts of flowers. She told me once that after he died, she just wanted to make things grow. That was all she could bear to do. Just make things grow.
Again Sophie caught that pale flicker of movement. Her mouth went dry. No. It was just a bird. Or a yellowsnake, or – or something. Not the gentle, grey-eyed, fair-haired little boy who had died in her arms seven years before.
Again she called for Belle. Again that taut, listening stillness. A stillness broken only by the lazy fluttering of ash.
She drew a deep breath and ran up the track to the Burying-place.
It really was just as beautiful as Clemency had said. A small oval clearing enclosed by tree-ferns and wild almond and cinnamon trees, and planted wit
h a dazzling profusion of flowers. She saw powder-blue plumbago and jasmine and hibiscus; the subtle mauves and greenish whites of orchids, and the brilliant cobalt and orange of strelitzia, Fraser’s favourites.
In the midst of it stood a small, plain white barrel tomb with a stark inscription:
Fraser Jocelyn Lawe
1897–1903
Finally, after all these years, she was standing by his grave.
She watched a flake of black ash float down and settle on the marble. Tentatively, she put out her hand and brushed it off. The stone felt smooth and cool. Not terrifying at all, but strangely comforting.
‘I’m so sorry, Fraser my darling,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.’
She looked about her, and stooped and broke off a sprig of orchids, and laid them on the marble. And as she did so, something inside her lifted and broke free.
Now at last she understood what had compelled Ben to bring his dead out to Jamaica. He had decided to stop running from them. He had invited them back.
She squared her shoulders and wiped her eyes with her fingers. Then she began to make a search of the clearing. But she could find no sign that Belle had been here. No ritual herbs. No cut limes or other anti-duppy measures such as a child might be able to muster.
And she, Sophie, should know all about that. As a child, she too had had a morbid streak. She’d lived in terror of duppy trees, and had never been without her sprig of rosemary or Madam Fate.
She froze. Duppy trees.
A snatch of conversation came back to her. Did you ask a duppy tree? Belle had asked at Parnassus, as she gazed intently at Sophie with her big dark eyes. Did you give it an offering?
Suddenly, Sophie knew. Belle’s ‘secret mission’ had nothing to do with Fraser’s grave. She’d gone to make an offering to the great duppy tree on Overlook Hill. She was up there right now.
A cold wave of dread washed over her as she realized what that meant. As she stood here beside Fraser’s grave, Cameron was somewhere to the north, hard at work with his men to burn a firebreak all the way from Greendale Wood to the crossroads and beyond. His aim was to block the fire’s eastward march, so that it had nowhere to go but south.
South to Overlook Hill.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Belle wasn’t at the duppy tree.
But she’d been there recently. Sophie was sure of it. There was a half-full bottle of proof rum propped up against the trunk, and around its neck a scarlet hair ribbon tied in a neat, crisp bow.
‘Belle?’ she shouted. ‘Belle! It’s Aunt Sophie! Where are you?’
Nothing. Ash pattered down into the undergrowth. To the north she could hear a distant roar. The roar of the fire.
Ahead of her the track wound on through the trees towards the western edge of the forest. Surely Belle wouldn’t have gone that way? But where else could she have gone? If she’d been anywhere near the track leading up from the crossroads, Sophie would have found her.
No time to think about that now. She put Frolic forwards, heading west.
It was hard going, for the path was overgrown, and she was forced to dismount and lead, stopping often to untangle the stirrups from the undergrowth, and talking to the mare to calm her. But Frolic would not be calmed, for she’d scented smoke. Her ears were flattened against her skull, and she kept tossing her head and tugging the reins, making progress agonizingly slow.
Ben, reflected Sophie, would have had the mare trotting calmly at his heels like a retriever. She pushed the thought aside. She didn’t want to think about him now. Fever Hill all ablaze, Missy Sophie. But he’ll have got out all right, she told herself. There can’t be any doubt about that.
A parrot flew over the canopy – ah-eek, ah-eek. A pulse beat in her throat. Was she imagining things, or was it getting hotter? Certainly the stink of burnt sugar was stronger, and the air was becoming hazy. And still she could find no sign that Belle had been this way. No snapped branches, no horse droppings. Nothing.
After ten minutes’ hard going she caught a glimmer of dirty white sky between the trees. She quickened her pace, dragging the reluctant Frolic after her.
She reached the edge of the forest with startling suddenness, and the stench of burnt sugar hit her like a wall. Frolic squealed and jerked back, nearly pulling Sophie off her feet.
The fire was terrifyingly close: a roaring, crackling wall of fierce-burning orange, only half a mile distant. Behind it the cane-pieces of Orange Grove had disappeared in a dirty grey pall of smoke.
Tugging Frolic after her, she picked her way between the boulders and the thorn scrub, and round the flank of the hill. Somewhere on the south-west slope was a track that wound down to the bridge at Stony Gap.
On this side of the hill, the fire wasn’t quite so close. But through the bitter blue haze she could only just make out the giant bamboo that marked the Martha Brae, little more than a mile from where she stood.
‘Belle!’ she shouted. ‘Belle!’ Her voice sounded weak and ineffectual in the roar of the fire.
‘Here!’ yelled a voice, so close that she nearly fell over.
Belle was about twenty feet below her on the track. She was filthy, her face and riding-costume covered in dust and soot. ‘Aunt Sophie, I’m really sorry!’ she cried. ‘I was trying to get round to see how far it had gone and I slipped and bumped my knee and then I tried to find another way up and sort of got lost.’
She seemed exasperated rather than frightened, and after the first shattering upsurge of relief Sophie was tempted to run down and give her a good shaking. Then she noticed that Belle’s shoulders were hunched up around her ears, her fists clenched at her sides. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, raising her voice above the roar of the fire. ‘Are you all right?’
Belle gave a tight nod. ‘What do we do now?’
Sophie licked her lips. ‘Stay where you are. I need to think.’
From where she stood, the path wound steeply down the bare western slope of the hill towards Belle. It was loose stony ground, with a steep drop on the left of about fifty feet into a thorny defile. But if they could make it down to the bottom of the hill, they might reach Stony Gap before the fire closed off their escape, and then cross to the safety of the cattle pastures on the other side of the river.
The alternative was to head back up the track and into the forest again, retracing their steps past the duppy tree, and down to the crossroads.
Every nerve in her body cried out for the primeval shelter of the forest. And yet, she thought, what if we can’t make it through in time? As she was setting out from Eden, she’d heard the shouts of Cameron’s men, hard at work burning the firebreak. There’d been no time to ride down and question them, but they hadn’t sounded that far off. What if, by the time she and Belle reached the crossroads, they found themselves cut off by the very firebreak intended to protect Eden?
Or what if they never got that far, but were overtaken by the cane-fire while they were still in the forest? With terrifying clarity she saw herself and Belle wading through the tangled undergrowth. She saw burning branches crashing down on them. The heat and smoke becoming unbearable. Overwhelming.
‘Stay where you are,’ she told Belle. ‘I’m coming down to you.’
Belle looked horrified. ‘But what about Muffin? We can’t leave her!’
‘What?’ shouted Sophie, intent on picking her way down without losing her footing. Behind her a reluctant Frolic snorted and tugged on the reins.
‘I tied her up!’ cried Belle, jumping up and down. ‘She won’t be able to get away! She’ll be burnt!’
‘No she won’t,’ said Sophie unconvincingly. She slipped on a loose stone and nearly lost her footing. A trickle of pebbles rattled and bounced down the slope and lost themselves among the boulders at the bottom. She licked her lips. The track was steeper than it looked. God, she thought, I hope this isn’t another of Aunt Sophie’s mistakes. ‘I didn’t see Muffin as I was coming up,’ she called down to Belle,
‘so she must have broken free and run away.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Belle doubtfully.
‘Absolutely.’ Again Frolic tugged on the reins.
‘Aunt Sophie—’
‘What?’ she snapped. Yet another tug on the reins. Dust and pebbles rained down on her. ‘Frolic, come on,’ she shouted without turning round.
‘Aunt Sophie!’ screamed Belle. ‘Look out!’
A rock struck her shoulder with bruising force. She glanced back just in time to see the mare going slowly down onto her knees – slowly, slowly, as if in a nightmare – then tumbling neck over crop, and sliding down the track towards her.
Ben reached the crossroads before Cameron Lawe’s men, but with not much time to spare.
He could hear them through the thickening haze of smoke, a few hundred yards to the north. The air was acrid with the stench of burnt sugar. To the west he could hear the crackling roar as the fire engulfed Orange Grove and swept towards them.
The men didn’t stop working when he rode up, nor did he expect them to. It wouldn’t be much longer before the fire reached them, and if the break didn’t hold the flames would burst through and engulf the great house, the works at Maputah, and the rest of the estate.
To his dismay, none of them had seen either Sophie or Belle. But they told him that Master Cameron was further down towards Romilly, so maybe he should ride over and talk to him in person?
No time, thought Ben as he yanked Partisan’s head round and galloped back towards the crossroads. No time to get into an argument with Cameron Lawe. Besides, Romilly was on the Eden Road, and Sophie hadn’t come that way. She’d ridden cross-country through Greendale, as he had himself.
Don’t make the wrong choice again, Miss Clemmy had told him. Why hadn’t he listened to her at once, instead of wasting time riding back to the wagon? Maybe those few minutes’ hesitation would mean the difference between finding Sophie and Belle, and – not. Maybe he’d already made the wrong choice all over again, and there was no going back. Always the wrong choice. Christ, did it never stop?
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 80
