by Sarah Lark
“But surely that won’t help in a real storm,” Nora worried later, as she inspected the system during one of their shared rides. Doug shook his head. “Nothing helps in a real storm. Only fast escape.”
“But then shouldn’t we at least warn them?” Nora asked. “They really have no idea about what Hollister is doing.”
“They also probably wouldn’t understand,” Doug said, pessimistically. “Even my father hasn’t caught on! The problem is not just the water alone, but also the sudden breach — you can’t imagine how quickly it all happens. And warnings … it won’t help to say something. They need a proper plan: everyone should know exactly where to go when a storm is a threat and when it’s just a false alarm and shouldn’t be so bad. And then you can just thank the heavens and send the people back to the huts or to work. But my father would scream bloody murder if even a single hour of work is lost. And he would never agree to explain it to the blacks.”
Nora nodded wearily. “I spoke to him about it once. He said it would only generate panic—”
Doug nodded. “That’s also what he told me. And he’s not entirely wrong. Many Negroes are like children — if you scare them, they climb the nearest tree at every gust of wind. And then the overseers will bring them back down and pass out whippings. It would be a mess.”
“Not if they could organize it themselves,” Nora considered, and thought about the silent, very disciplined journey of the slaves on the Obeah night. “If we were to speak with someone such as the Obeah man?”
Doug grinned, “Do you know him?”
Shortly thereafter, they spoke with Peter.
“You don’t tell on me?”
Peter took a while to recover from the fright of being discovered. All of the blood drained from his face when Nora addressed him with his African name.
“No,” Doug said. “It makes no difference to me what gods you worship at night.”
“And I also won’t ask about a couple of missing chickens …” Nora said reluctantly, even though she had been extremely against ritual slaughter. “But you have to explain to the people that on the Hollister plantation—”
Doug shook his head slightly and quieted her with a hand gesture.
“We fear, Kwadwo,” he then said earnestly, “that Lord Hollister has angered the spirits on his plantation. During the next storm, they could rise and come through your settlement.”
“We nothing to do with Hollister,” the Obeah man said calmly. “Spirits take revenge on his nigger.”
“I’m afraid the spirits see no difference,” Doug said. Hollister’s own slave quarters were actually not even in danger. They lay inland, near his house. Since the Hollisters usually resided in Kingston, he didn’t care if the huts could be seen from the farmhouse or not. “I am really quite worried, Peter … Kwadwo. A great flood could come when the next storm rages.”
Kwadwo furrowed his brow. “What I do, Backra? Want magic? Then I need chicken …”
Doug rubbed his temples and Nora nearly laughed.
“You should just warn the people, Kwadwo. Tell them that they should not cry and pray when the storm comes, and not climb onto their roofs as usual. Not even up the trees. You have to go to the windmill — or to the house, or better, to the mill, since the water could still rise up to the house if the sea is also raging. Divide up the people; help the weak and sick, check that everyone has left the huts. Set up a fixed meeting place—”
“Tell the people they should gather if there’s any doubt,” Nora said. “Don’t store too much hay, you already know …”
Kwadwo looked at Nora searchingly. “The … Missis know a lot …” he remarked with a renewed hint of fear.
Nora rolled her eyes. “The missis knows everything,” she asserted. “I also know that this is your congregation and you are responsible for them. And that requires more than cutting the head off a chicken.”
“You’ve seen a ceremony!” Doug said with amusement, as they strolled back to the house together.
Neither of them was in any hurry because tonight the Hollisters were joining them for dinner. It would be extremely difficult for Doug to remain polite, and Elias had expressly forbidden Nora to broach the issue of the water diversion. “Don’t deny it, Nora.”
Nora nodded. “I sneaked in,” she confessed. “But I didn’t understand everything — what in heaven’s name was that about with the chickens?”
Doug laughed. “They’re sacrificial animals,” he said. “The Obeah man uses their blood to evoke the spirits and fulfill special requests. Whoever wants to curse someone or cast a love spell or some such thing brings a chicken—”
Nora furrowed her brow. “But who believes such things? It couldn’t possibly work. I mean … there would be no more backras if the slaves’ curses came true.”
Doug shrugged. “There are also no guarantees. Sometimes you find the right Duppy and on the next day, the backra’s horse gets scared, and the man falls and breaks his neck. Usually, not. But these people are patient; they give the Duppies an endless amount of time to fulfill their obligations. They still consider it a success if the backra dies five years later of some disease.”
Nora sighed. “I would prefer that no one cursed me,” she muttered. “And I’ve really tried. But—”
“No one’s cursed you,” Doug consoled her. “On the contrary, most of them adore you—”
Nora huffed. “Máanu …”
“Máanu is strange,” Doug agreed. “Very resentful, very … bitter. And I don’t know why. Nothing happened to her back then. Well, and Akwasi …”
“Why did you betray Akwasi?” burst out of Nora’s mouth.
“Why did I … what?” Doug asked, with sincere confusion. “Betray him? Who told you that?”
“You abandoned him!” Nora accused. “Máanu told me and I believe she was telling the truth. You went to England and …”
“I had no desire to go to England, Nora!” Doug vehemently exclaimed. Nora remembered that he had reacted quite angrily to a similar comment in the past. “I didn’t go on my own accord.”
“But you also didn’t fight it. And you did nothing for Akwasi. Even though he belonged to you …” she had to choke out the last words.
Doug shook his head. Then he took Nora’s hand and pulled her aside. The conversation would take longer than the short walk to the house. But his heart was pounding. Maybe this was the reason for Nora’s guardedness. He had to find out what Máanu and Akwasi had told her.
“Heavens, Nora, what should I have done?” he asked. Her hand was still in his and he hoped that she wouldn’t pull it away. “Akwasi and Máanu clearly thought that I was almighty. I was permitted everything that they were not, I got everything that I wanted, I was white—”
“You owned a slave,” Nora reminded him. “You were responsible!”
Doug rubbed his temples again and this time more forcefully than usual. “Did your father never give you a pony, Nora?” he asked emphatically. “Or a puppy? With the sincere indication that you would then be responsible for it?” Nora nodded, but also wanted to object. But Doug would not let her get a word in. He went on, aggravated. “If that horse then were to throw you off every day, or the dog were to bite, then your father would have sold the animal, no matter how tightly you clung to it—”
“Akwasi was not an animal!” Nora stated firmly.
“No, he was a child!” Doug exclaimed. “And I was also a child. I was ten years old. I couldn’t own a slave, just as you couldn’t really own a pony or puppy on your own. What should I have done, Nora, what?”
“You were ten?” Nora looked at him with surprise. “But I thought … you were sent to Oxford, to the university. I thought you were at least sixteen. Máanu—”
She broke off. No, that wasn’t right. Máanu hadn’t said anything about Doug’s age. Nora should have realized that they were both still children. She spoke of learning to read. I can’t read very well … I was still so little … Máanu was six years younger tha
n Akwasi and Doug, so she would have been ten if the boys were separated at sixteen. Nora had long been able to read by the time she was ten …
“Sixteen!” Nora and Doug had been sitting on a tree stump, but now the young man stood up and was pacing around agitatedly. “How could you believe that? My god, at sixteen we wouldn’t have been so stupid! We wouldn’t have let ourselves get caught. And if it were to come out, then we would have both run away. In the mountains, come hell or high water, to the Maroons. But … my father caught us, Nora, when I was sick. Just like Máanu, probably the same cold, except that I was in my room and Mama Adwe kept her daughter in the kitchen. Akwasi sat and read to me. Some pirate story. And it could’ve been different, if we’d known what was in store. He could have just acted as if he were pretending to read and actually just making up the story. But when my father came in and asked him, he proudly said that of course he could read and then showed him right away. And then disaster fell upon us. I was sent to a boarding school in England, on the next ship. And Akwasi … I thought father had sold him. He was brought up to be a house Negro, he would have brought in a whole pile of money. And I always consoled myself with the fact that it usually wasn’t so bad for house Negroes. But to send him to the fields … at ten years old. He must have been through something awful — it’s a real miracle that he survived it. Only — I am not to blame, Nora! I cried and screamed as much as he did! But I can’t do anything about the color of my skin. I can’t do anything about my father’s decisions. And I swear to God, Nora, since I have returned, since I’ve seen the scars on his back and since he treats me as … as if … as if I am his enemy. Every day, I think about what I could have done and how I could have helped him.” He buried his face in his hands.
Nora couldn’t help but go to him and put her arm around him.
Doug pulled her towards him. “You believe me?” he asked, quietly. Nora nodded. Of course she believed him and now she felt guilty. She had misinterpreted Máanu’s story.
“You were a child, Doug, stop blaming yourself. There was nothing you could do. This damned system is to blame, slavery. And …”
And Elias, she thought.
Nora’s husband didn’t weigh on her conscience and she also wasn’t thinking of Simon when she then gave into Doug’s tender kisses.
CHAPTER 3
If furious spirits were responsible for the onset of a storm, as Kwadwo believed, then Akwasi surely would have unleashed one when he saw Doug and Nora in an intimate embrace.
Neither Doug nor Nora had taken much notice of the team of men cutting down and dismantling two mahogany trees in the jungle near their path to the sea. Elias Fortnam had decided that the trees wouldn’t survive the next summer storm anyway and thought to sell the wood while it still had value.
Akwasi was among the slaves charged with the task. He was sitting in the crown of one of the trees in order to saw off the stronger branches before it was chopped down at the trunk. He had an excellent view of the lovers and his hatred of his old rival swelled so quickly that a hurricane would have seemed leisurely in comparison. No Duppy, no God, and no spirit could remain unmoved by such a blazing fury — but, as always, the heavenly powers stayed out of the destiny of man. Neither did lightning strike, nor did the earth open up to swallow Akwasi’s adversary.
In fact, only the overseer reacted to Akwasi’s suddenly stopping short. He shouted at the slave to get on with his work. But in the man’s imagination, he was not driving the saw through the branches of the mahogany tree, but through the flesh and bone of the man he had once considered a friend.
Nora Fortnam felt the first breath of wind on a Sunday morning while she sat next to Ruth Stevens, bored and listening to her husband’s sermon. Even the overseers and planters traditionally attended the reverend’s prayer meeting for the slaves — as all were the same before God and Jesus Christ. However, the overseers were paying more attention to whether any of the blacks were missing, as being present at the service was mandatory. And planters like Elias Fortnam kept an eye on what the reverend preached.
On that day, for example, he unctuously quoted the parable of the Good Shepherd and found ample parallels between a devoted shepherd and a virtuous sugar cane planter who cared selflessly for his slaves. Elias seemed pleased, while Doug pursed his lips. Nora saw it and tried to wink at him sympathetically, but then thought better of it. She knew that he thought her fickle, but since their kiss in the forest, she had withdrawn from him again.
Nora knew she couldn’t let it happen again. Elias had a claim to her body and Simon occupied her soul, although Doug did not need to know that.
While Ruth Stevens sang a hymn loudly and off-key, Nora silently prayed for Simon.
She always did so during the service — even if she wasn’t as focused on him of late. Recently, thoughts of Doug slipped into her silent prayers. If Nora didn’t practice strict self-restraint, and Doug also didn’t realize the madness that would come out of their burgeoning affection, they would urgently need God’s help soon!
Doug Fortnam didn’t sing along either. He had no interest in the reverend, who had just raised his hands in the blessing, or the devoted slaves who persevered on the muddy ground. Instead, he anxiously looked past the group and over at the sea. Doug was sitting across from Nora — there were chairs for the men of the plantation in the first row, while the women took their seats, a bit apart from the main event, in the shadows of an overhanging cascarilla. Perhaps it was so that the reverend’s children weren’t disruptive — Ruth Stevens had already managed to bring two into the world during her brief eighteen months in Jamaica. Ruth kept her children very separate — she even hated it if mothers like Adwea approached her children cooing to lovingly caress or tickle them. She was afraid of the blacks and wouldn’t even tolerate a black housemaid in their parsonage in Kingston. It was not possible to assign a white for the position — there were no white servants in Jamaica. Ruth complained constantly about the country she had ended up in.
“Well, you can’t complain about the heat today,” Nora said, and held her face to the wind, which was stronger and cooler than usual, blowing in from the sea.
“But it’s going to rain,” Ruth said, pessimistically. In fact, very dark clouds were gathering and rapidly approaching — so that’s what Doug was looking at. Nora tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t notice. The reverend ended his prayers as the first drops of rain fell and the wind picked up. He was keen to get into the house, where he also expected a good meal. The Fortnams were accustomed to inviting the clergyman and his family to lunch after the service, while the slaves returned to work.
Elias exchanged a few angry words with Doug as Nora watched on, wondering what they were speaking about, but she didn’t have a chance to join them. Ruth swayed as she stood up.
“I feel queasy,” she muttered. “This weather … always this heat and then suddenly …”
The young woman was right. Nora took the little one sitting on Ruth’s lap and looked around. The slaves were dispersing — they were just supposed to go back to their workstations, but no one could overlook the fact that a storm was brewing. Would it turn into the hurricane that they had so often discussed? Nora thought about their emergency plan.
Ruth groaned and rubbed her stomach. “I’m afraid I’m going to be ill!”
Adwea and the other house slaves made their way to the house, with some apparent reluctance, but the kitchen was waiting. Elias and the reverend disappeared quickly, but Doug stayed behind, arguing with the overseers — surely it was about the evacuation plans. She itched to go over, but was delayed by Ruth sighing. Nora held back the young woman’s head, while her breakfast poured out of her behind a cascarilla. The older child clung to Nora’s skirt and began to whimper while the little one cried.
“I have to nurse him,” Ruth muttered.
She could hardly stand. Nora gave up on the idea of getting them into the house before they were all completely soaked.
“Come into the
kitchen,” she pointed to the building along side of the area where they had gathered. “I have a room there where I treat the sick when it rains. You can lie down a bit and I’ll bring you something to drink.”
“The sick … Negroes?” Ruth asked, with every expression of disgust.
She must have heard of Nora’s endeavors with the slaves, but she had never broached the subject. Nora refrained from pointing out that it doesn’t rub off.
“And the overseers, as well, when one has been injured,” she pointed out.
It almost never happened, but it seemed to calm the reverend’s wife. She let Nora lead her to the open building, where food was cooked for the slaves. A few weeks earlier, Nora had insisted that a small infirmary be set up. Over time, she was becoming increasingly more skillful in mixing medicinal herbs and ointments and didn’t want to haul them — as well the bandaging materials that she had collected and other tools she had organized — to and from the slave quarters everyday. She also refused to work in the mud — it was bad enough that she was being confronted with more and more fevers, and diarrhea, since the huts were almost always underwater. The rain grew stronger as Nora took Ruth to the kitchen. Had there not been such wind, she wouldn’t have been particularly worried, but now she decided to fix Ruth up as quickly as possible; then drag her to the house by force if necessary. She remembered Doug’s warning: it would be much too dangerous to wait out the storm in the slave kitchen, even if it was built to be more like a stable than the slave huts. At this point, they were already wading through dirty, red water. It was moving so quickly … if a storm tide were to really come, they wouldn’t have more than an hour to get to safety.
So, Nora hurried into the dry kitchen and then searched for clean water to soak a cloth for Ruth. The young woman held it against her forehead and Nora gave some juice to the older child while Ruth nursed the younger one, bemoaning her lack of milk in the process. The child didn’t seem pleased and continued to fuss. Ruth moved him from one breast to the other. Nora hurried to brew her some tea and added a spoonful of cascarilla syrup, a substance made from the tree’s bark and mixed with honey, which helped with stomach trouble. It was also considered calming, so Nora put a bit of the honey on her finger and let the baby suck on it. Then she tried to bring up her concerns.
