by JoAnn Wendt
Drake, Edwinna, and Matthew Plum were in the plantation office late one night when a wild, scared cry came from the backyard, just outside the kitchen door.
“It’s Marigold!” Edwinna said. Drake wrenched open the desk drawer and grabbed a pistol. Edwinna grabbed the other. They ran. The kitchen lay dim and shadowy, lighted by the usual single tallow candle. They ran through the kitchen, out the open door, and into the backyard. Eerily lighted and cast with shadows from the candle old Scipio held high overhead, the house servants bunched close together, trembling. Drake ran forward, Plum and Edwinna following. Marigold stood in the eerie candlelight, red-eyed, sobbing, her mouth open, her flat chest heaving.
At Marigold’s feet lay Jocko, his throat cut, his sweet little monkey face in repose. A bloody X had been carved on his small torso, from hairy chest to smooth belly.
Edwinna grabbed Marigold and pulled her close.
Marigold stammered, “I-I be goin’ out to the privy. I stepped on ’im.” She began to cry.
“It’s not your fault, sweetheart.” Edwinna crushed her close. Marigold buried her face in Edwinna’s breast. “Scipio, Augustus,” Drake said, “go inside and shut and bolt every storm shutter on every window.” The old slaves nodded, their eyes large and scared. A glance convinced Drake that none of the servants had had anything to do with it. They all stared in utter horror. Big, fat Honor had tears in her eyes. Jocko had been her favorite—a placid fellow who never gave her a bit of trouble. Jeremy tried to be brave, but he was only thirteen. He mashed at his eyes with a grubby fist. Drake hated to speculate on what had happened to Priscilla. “Jeremy, go inside and help Scipio and Augustus.” The boy nodded and gave him a throat-clogged, “Yes sir.”
“Everyone go inside,” Plum ordered sensibly. “No one uses the privy tonight. The doors stay locked. Use a chamber pot.”
“Where is Kena?” Edwinna demanded. “And Tutu?”
“Here, Mama.” Wide-eyed, Kena stepped out of the shadows, rocking Tutu, keeping his fuzzy little head averted from the awful sight. Edwinna reached out and hugged them. Drake and Plum shepherded everyone inside, and Edwinna sent Kena upstairs with Marigold and Tutu, to put them to bed in the safety of her own room.
Edwinna rejoined the men, pale but calm, her eyes somberly on Drake. She didn’t ask about Priscilla; larger things were at stake than a beloved pet. They went into the office to confer in private as storm shutters were banged shut all over the house. With each shutter that clunked closed, the noise of the grinder grew more distant.
“Edwinna,” Drake said tensely, “I want you to make sure that the pistols and muskets in the house are loaded. Keep them ready. Keep the doors and windows locked. Let no one in except David Alleyne. I will send him up to you. If there is any trouble, fire a musket. We’ll come at once.”
“Yes. And you?”
“Plum and I are going to take Jocko’s body down to the mill, roust the slaves and bondslaves out of their huts, and question them.”
“Can it wait until morning?”
“No.”
“Strike while the iron is hot,” Plum put in. “Mr. Steel and I agree. There’s no telling if this is a scare tactic or if it’s the start of an uprising.”
Edwinna grew paler, but nodded. Already a St. Lucy’s Parish planter had been scared into leaving his plantation and going to Bridgetown. He’d left his harvest in the hands of his overseer. “Shall we shut down the mill for tonight?” she asked sensibly. “Stop boiling and close down the grinder?”
“No,” Drake and Plum said in unison. Drake went on, “It would only prove they’d managed to scare us, whoever ‘they’ are. The question now is which of your bondslaves are trustworthy enough to be armed. What about your overseers, Plum—Nanselock, the O’Brien’s, McCarran?”
“Give ’em a keg of rum and they’ll drink themselves stupid. Let ’em spot a guinea laying in a street and they’ll not overstrain themselves seeking the owner. They’re no more criminal than that.”
“Then you say arm them.”
“Arm them.”
“Edwinna?”
“Yes. They should be armed. Their lives may be in danger, too.”
Drake looked at her with admiration. Even at a time like this, when her plantation and perhaps her own life was in danger, she had consideration for bondslaves.
“Then let’s get busy.” While Edwinna ran through the shadowy house to get toweling to wrap Jocko’s body, Drake and Plum checked shutters, carrying a candle from dark room to dark room. Drake had a private moment with Edwinna when she came running back with the bundled sheet.
“Drake, take care.”
“You, too. Look after yourself and the children.”
“I will.” She looked so numb that he took her in his arms and held her for a moment. She nestled in his embrace and he brushed her hair with his lips.
“Steady as she goes.”
“I’m all right, but I’m glad you’re here.”
“So am I. There is nowhere else I want to be at this moment. I want to help you through this mess. We’ll solve it.”
Her strong hand curved around his wrist. Then she went to prepare her firearms.
Jeremy waited at the door. He’d manfully conquered his tears, but didn’t know his dirty face was streaked with them. “I’ll go wi’ you, sir. To help find them what killed Jocko.”
“You’re needed here, Jeremy. I want you to take care of Mistress Edwinna and Marigold and the rest.”
“Ay.” He straightened proudly. “I’ll take care of ’em, sir.”
“I also have a task for you. It might be scary.”
Jeremy nodded bravely. “I’ll do ’er, sir.”
“Good. I’m going to lock the front gate and take the key with me. Mistress Edwinna has another key. When Doctor Alleyne comes to the gate and calls out and you’re certain it is he, I want you to run to the gate, unlock it, and let him in. Then lock it again and get back into the house as fast as you can. Can you do that?”
“Ay, sir,” Jeremy said emphatically. “Mr. Steel? Where d’ye think Priscilla is?” A tremor shook his voice.
“She’s a smart little thing,” Drake said gently. “She likely took off into the trees the instant she got scared. Jocko was slower, that’s all.” Jeremy nodded, swallowing.
A few minutes later, he and Plum grimly wrapped Jocko’s body and hurried down the dark path. Drake cast one last, worried look at Crawford Hall, its windows tightly shuttered.
“Don’t worry. Edwinna can shoot,” Plum said. “I taught her myself when she was but a girl.”
“But will she shoot?”
“She will. She loves Kena and Tutu mightily. She’ll protect them if she has to shoot every bondslave on the plantation.”
“Let’s hope so,” Drake said tightly.
At the millworks, they laid Jocko on the ground in torchlight and made the slaves, who shook in fright, and the bondslave convicts, who stared with hard sullen eyes, come forward one at a time to look at the body and be questioned. They raked Jacka, Yates, and Hastings with questions. The three swore they’d been asleep all evening, and Sean Valentine, whom Drake and Plum tended to trust, verified it. It was frustrating.
Drake left Jocko’s burial to a slave and returned to the house in the darkness before dawn. Moonlight lay upon the tops of the cane as beautifully as it had lain upon Carlisle Bay a month earlier, but tonight he saw only ugliness.
Kena and David Alleyne let him in—Kena with a slender finger to her lips. Everyone was asleep, including Edwinna, she said. He quietly climbed the stairs and went to Edwinna’s room. The door stood open. Marigold and Tutu slept in Edwinna’s bed. Jeremy slept on a pallet on the floor. Edwinna had nodded off sitting up in a leather armchair, legs drawn up and curled under her. Her pistol lay on a table at her elbow, her musket on the floor,
He hesitated. He’d never entered her room before. But she would want to know what had happened. He quietly went in and squatted beside her.
“Edwi
nna,” he whispered. Exhausted from her vigil, she slept on. He touched her arm. “Edwinna.”
She woke like a crazed woman, lunging away from him. “Don’t!”
Astonished, he whispered, “Edwinna. It’s Drake.”
“Don’t,” she begged. “Don’t do it to me. Don’t!”
It stunned him. “Edwinna, it’s me, Drake—Drake.” She was still asleep.
“Drake?” Her lungs pumped violently. Then, by degrees, she seemed to waken. “Drake,” she whispered, lucid. She brushed at her hair with a trembling hand.
“I wanted to tell you about our night,” he said gently. “Let’s go down to the kitchen and have Honor make us some of that strong Brazilian coffee. You look as if you could use it.”
“Yes.”
He drew her to her feet and held her lightly in his arms for a moment, his lips in her hair. Don’t do it to me. Don’t. What had she meant? He was afraid to speculate—afraid he didn’t want the answer.
Exhausted himself, he went to bed and slept until noon, then rose, washed, dressed, and went out to the fields. He and Plum had agreed they must carry on as usual. Jeremy came with him, staying so close that Drake almost tripped over him every time he turned around. The boy had been thoroughly frightened.
They were out in a freshly cut cane field with Jacka and Hastings, who were loading cut cane on the affingoes, when Jeremy remarked, “Y’know that there X, Mr. Steel? What was carved on Jocko? I seen it somewheres.”
Drake looked at him with interest. “Where?”
“I dunno. Somewheres. I can’t remember.” Drake’s interest, which had risen, waned. An X was a common signature among bondslaves who could neither read nor write. That’s where Jeremy probably had seen it. “If you remember, tell me.”
“I will, sir,” Jeremy said enthusiastically. Jacka and Hastings stared at the boy.
Two days and two nights passed without repetition of the bloody incident, but Plum, Drake, and Edwinna didn’t relax. The situation was too damned scary. They had taken the overseers into their confidence, and the men now wore muskets in slings over their backs by day, and slept nights on pallets in Plum’s small house, weapons at hand.
Tensions ran high. Although Priscilla failed to come back, Edwinna continued to hold out hope that she would. Drake thought her optimism about as futile as her hope of receiving a letter from Thomas and Harry. The strain of it all ran so deep that Edwinna grew haggard-looking and Drake worried about her.
* * * *
Trouble started unexpectedly and from a direction no one could have predicted. Washed, shorn of his sticky, juice-spattered cane field clothes, and freshly changed, Drake came down the stairs to supper in the already darkening dining chamber. The sun had just set, and with rain clouds gathering in the sky all day long, the sunset’s afterglow blazed spectacularly. He was at the window watching the end of it, appreciating the savage beauty of the island, when Edwinna came striding from the kitchen.
“Drake. Marigold and Jeremy have not come back to supper.”
“The scamps. They were told to be back before sundown. I don’t want them out after dark—not with all this going on.”
“I know. I sent Kena down to the mill works to inquire, and it seems they haven’t been seen all afternoon.”
Drake frowned. Determined to find Priscilla, the two children had been granted permission to search for her, so long as they did not set foot off the plantation and so long as they finished their daily duties first. Positive they would find her, they’d bolted through their chores by noon and had run off hand in hand.
“I’ll look for them.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. It’s going to rain. There’s no point in both of us getting soaked. They’re likely in the fruit groves. Jeremy was sure he’d find Priscilla in the fruit trees. You stay here—in case of other trouble. The house guns are loaded?” She nodded.
Out of doors, Drake took off at a lope, using what was left of daylight. Now and then an isolated raindrop spattered the ground. He glanced at the sky. It was going to pour in an hour or two.
Moving faster, he loped down a cane path through a ten-acre field of ripe cane. Now and then, a fat, heavy raindrop hit the tough cane tops with a loud crack. It sounded like a musket ball. The path emerged at the cattle pond. He ran past the pond to the fruit groves—five acres of plantain, banana, paw-paw, guava, breadfruit. Thick, impenetrable castor bean hedges fenced each fruit grove, deliberately planted to keep cattle and pigs out.
Darkness had already gathered in the groves. He stopped to catch his breath and shout their names. “Jeremy, Marigold?” Nothing. He moved on. He saw raindrops hit a silken ribbon that was caught on a castor bean hedge, and when he yanked it out of the hedge and saw that it was Marigold’s pink ribbon—the ribbon Jeremy had bought her in Bridgetown—and he grew scared.
Go back for help? No time. Wild boars sometimes roved here, attracted by the fruit. Frightened for the children, he leaped over the wooden stile into the next grove. A frustrating hour passed before he’d covered all the groves. By then the sky was black, and the rain fell steadily. His hair, his shirt, his breeches clung to his skin, cold and prickly.
It was going to be a tropical deluge. He could scarcely see through the curtain of falling rain, so he ran toward the mill, his feet slipping and sliding on the slick, muddy cane paths. He’d almost reached the mill when a barrage of gunfire split the air. For a moment he froze, disoriented in the rain, unable to tell where the shots had come from. Then he knew—the mill.
He’d brought neither pistol nor short sword. He’d been so sure he’d find the children in a matter of minutes. A second barrage of gunfire cracked in the air, again from the mill. He veered in the opposite direction, back toward the house. Edwinna! Plum and the O’Briens and Nansellock would have to defend themselves at the mill. God help them. He strained to hear the grinder over the sound of the pounding rain and couldn’t.
The gate of Crawford Hall stood open, which made his chest pound. Stormy gusts of wind could have blown the gate open if Edwinna had left it unlocked for him. The house lay dark, sensibly shuttered from the inside. He ran through the puddled yard to the front door and banged on it. It was locked. Rain drumming on the roof drowned out his banging.
He ran through the mud, past wind-whipped trees, to the back of the house. There, too, all lay dark, shuttered. Weak light from the kitchen candle outlined the seams of the shutters. The upstairs windows were dark, not even a glimpse of candle showing. He found the kitchen door bolted. He banged on it and shouted, identifying himself. “It’s Drake—let me in, Edwinna.” He waited, hunching his shoulders against the rain, water drizzling down his neck. Odd they should take so long.
Finally, the door swung inward as Scipio opened it. He plunged inside. “Get Mistress Edwinna. There’s shooting at the mill.” He shook the rain off, then looked up and into the barrel of a pistol. His heart stopped. Pointing the pistol was Jacka, arm outstretched, thin, slack hair plastered to his head, eyes gleaming.
“Come in, Mr. Steel.”
His heart surged with fear. He swept the room with a look, taking in everything in an instant. The kitchen was dim and cave-like, and beyond it the house lay dark. A candle guttered on the kitchen table, casting moving shadows. Yates stood at the fireplace, his musket barrel held to Kena’s temple. Huge-eyed, she stood absolutely still, Tutu clutched to her breast, wrapped in her shawl. Tutu began to wail. The other servants stood with backs to the wall, frozen in fear: Honor with her fat mouth open and rounded in shock, Scipio blinking, Augustus shaking. When Augustus moved, his old knees buckling, Yates swung the musket at him, then back at Kena.
Everyone gasped. Drake held his breath. A bead of water trickled down the musket butt. The powder in the pan was probably wet and wouldn’t fire. Even so, Kena, Tutu! The men hadn’t been in the house long. Rainwater still dripped from their clothes and hadn’t had a chance to puddle on the floor.
“What do you want?”
“Your life, Mr. Steel. And Mistress Edwinna’s life.”
“She’s gone.”
Jacka gave him a vicious look. In the dim candlelight Jacka’s eyes gleamed as red as a cane field rat’s eyes at night. “Search the house,” he snarled at Yates.
Honor piped up, “ ‘Tis true. Mistress Edwinna be gone ter Lady Fraser’s. Left b’fore supper.”
Drake sent her a swift look. Truth or lie? Maybe Edwinna had gone looking for Jeremy and Marigold. He’d told her to stay in the house, but it would be like her to go anyway.
Drake’s muscles tensed. Doglike, Yates waited for Jacka’s decision. Jacka threw Honor a fierce, indecisive look, then snarled at Yates, “Stay here. Keep your musket on that black bitch sister o’ Mistress Edwinna’s. She’s the one we’ll kill if anybody makes one false move. Her and her brat.” Kena was crying now and gripping Tutu, trying to cover him with her arms, protect him. Tutu wailed. “Shut up that brat,” Jacka snarled, “or I’ll have Yates shut ’im up wi’ a musket butt.” Tears flowing down her cheeks, Kena frantically patted him.
Drake trembled with the urge to spring, but the musket barrel rested on Kena’s temple. Jacka’s wet sleeve bound his pistol arm. He yanked at the sleeve with his teeth, and at that instant Drake saw it—a scar on the inside of his forearm, a perfectly carved X.
“Now, me luvs.” Jacka cast his rat eyes over the shaking servants. “Yer going to watch me kill yer master. B’cause he ain’t yer master no more. I be yer master. This be our plantation now, ours. It belongs to us bondslaves. This be our island. All over this island, bondslaves be risin’ up. Throw in yer lot wi’ us and you live. If not...” He smiled cruelly.
“I’m with yer,” Honor said promptly. Jacka growled, “Then go stand at the other wall, you fat bitch.” Honor jumped to obey—all three hundred pounds of her. Scipio and Augustus jumped, too, and cowered near Honor, shaking.
Kena stood alone, weeping, clutching Tutu.
“Kena,” Drake said quietly, his tension rising so high the blood beat in his head. “Go with Honor.” If he could get the musket barrel off her temple, he would take his chances and spring.
