by Sarah Lark
Now, however, they reacted with a joyful shout when they discovered Nora and the others on the roof of the distillery. They readily tried to guide the raft in their direction. Doug pulled them in by one of the improvised oars.
“Where are you coming from? Did Peter send you?”
“Kwadwo?” Nora added and tried to cover her nakedness.
During the storm, she hadn’t wasted a thought on her bare legs, but now she and Doug saw the grins on the boys’ faces. Doug took off his wet, torn shirt and handed it to her.
The two boys nodded. “Should see how it looks in village. And say backra where we are before he cut off all foot because of running away,” Joe said.
“So, you’ve all found a place in the barn?” Nora was pleased.
Billy raised his hands. “Don’t know, Missis,” he answered.
“Many, yes. But no one knows about house niggers. And Harry missing, Emma missing, Toby missing—”
“Oh, no!”
Nora sighed. Toby and the field slave Emma, who often shared a hut with Toby, were both devout Christians. They had probably followed the reverend, in order to perhaps nab a blessing from him. “Then Mr. Truman’s entire troop, Missis. The backra sent them to dig trenches so water don’t run into the houses—”
Doug touched his forehead. “Of course,” he sighed. “I tried to reason with him, but they actually thought that if they dig a few drainage ditches before a hurricane, they would be salvaging something. If the men hadn’t had such good luck, then they would all be dead—”
Ruth was getting worked up on the roof. “All of the niggers are alive!” she said. “All the blacks. But Sam, my little Sam …”
Joe and Billy looked at each other with uncertainty. Nora finally took the initiative.
“Will we all fit on this raft?” she asked. “And how possible do you think it is to steer it, Doug?”
Doug thought it quite possible, as long as other boards could be found floating past them. If they all rowed, he said, they would be able to move against a light current and could land somewhere beyond the house. Ruth took no notice of Doug’s words. She continued complaining and insulting the blacks. Nora then needed all of her strength to pull her on to the raft and keep her calm. She only managed, however, with the help of Billy and Joe. Ruth’s fear of touching the blacks seemed to be so great, that she spent the entire boat ride whimpering in the middle of the raft. Sally held little Mary tight as the men led their life raft south against the current. Eventually, they were past the house. The cat was the first to jump onto dry land. It had immediately fled to Billy’s arms, when it recognized the stable boy.
“Is Bessie, stable cat!” the young black man explained. “Catches mice good … but I didn’t know she could swim, too.”
Nora watched the cat run toward the stables and frowned. “And I always thought that it was a stupid saying about cats having nine lives,” she mumbled. “But one should simply not lose hope. Perhaps others have also made it.”
In the evening, the water had drained away enough that they could take stock. Harry, Toby, Annie, and Emma were dead, as well as four men from Truman’s work team. The others, including Akwasi, had been able to save themselves by swimming and — with a great deal of luck — finding trees or roofs where they could wait it out, like Nora and Doug had. They were all strong, young fellows who didn’t give up so easily. Truman himself also survived. Aside from Sally and Annie, all of the house staff had arrived in the kitchen early enough, and somehow the storm and the flood wave hadn’t reach all the way to the house — it stopped just short of it, which Reverend Stevens attributed to God’s influence. The fact that it hadn’t been enough to save the lives of the two really devout slaves — Toby and Emma had in fact gone to follow the reverend — he didn’t register at all. He reacted calmly to the news of his son’s death and comforted his wife a bit by praying with her.
Nora brought the young woman to bed and then prepared her a large herbal infusion to help calm her nerves. She would have liked to leave it to Adwea, but Ruth had already responded to the sight of the black women with a fit of hysterics.
“It would be best to consult a baarm madda — in case she is pregnant again — she was being sick earlier. If she lost another child now—” Nora shared her concerns with Máanu, who continued to be as stubbornly quiet as ever. “But if she doesn’t want … tell me, would it be possible to get something to eat? I am starving— — if I don’t fall asleep first.”
Máanu bowed slightly, a gesture that made her mistress angry, as she knew quite well. “You’d better get moving, in a half an hour they’ll start serving in the dining room.”
“What’ll be served?” Nora asked. “You mean … here … the world collapsed, we have nine dead to mourn, but we … but he … but my husband is having dinner served like any other day?”
Máanu curtsied. “One dead, Missis. The others are only slaves. In addition, also four dead oxen, Missis. The backra is very angry, he will have the drivers whipped because they didn’t bring the animals in from the paddock.”
Nora rubbed her forehead. “Máanu, I wish you stop,” she muttered. “At least today. But well, if you really must, help me dress and do something with my hair. It has to be washed; it’s quite filthy and feels like straw from the dirty water. But no, wait; I don’t expect you to lug the water here now, Máanu. Just tie it up.”
Máanu brushed large quantities of red dust from Nora’s hair and then pinned it to the back of her head. Nonetheless, it looked dull and unkempt. Nora shuddered at the sight of herself in the mirror. She was pale, her eyes lay deep in their sockets, and her cheeks seemed sunken in. Nora considered resorting to makeup, but then she decided otherwise. She just looked as exhausted and tired as she felt. And no one should dare reproach her for that.
Máanu held her tongue and didn’t provoke her mistress any further. She laid out a simple, dark housedress and a matching black shawl for her. Nora was then appropriately dressed for the occasion. Doug sat on the stairs and looked equally as exhausted. His blond hair looked red, as he didn’t have anyone brush the dust out of it for him.
“You’ll have to wash it tomorrow, or else everyone will think you’re an Irishman,” Nora made a weak attempt at a joke.
Doug smiled at her. “We can go to the sea together and rinse out all of the dirt,” he remarked. “Now that I know you can swim …”
Nora blushed. “I can’t take pleasure in water at the moment — not even the sea and the beach,” she said. “And now this dinner. Do you not also find it … eerie?”
Doug made a dismissive gesture. “If the reverend so much as says grace and thanks God for our salvation, I will scream.”
Of course, Doug did not scream, but instead endured the reverend’s short, earnest prayer for the souls of the dead with composure. Afterwards, he lunged at the food with the same ravenous hunger as Nora. None of them were disturbed by the disapproving face of the reverend. The only one who was talkative at the dinner was Elias, who now had finally understood what his son had been trying to tell him for weeks.
“That damned Hollister! His plantation is hardly damaged, I saw it. And our slave quarters are completely gone — but he will pay me for that and the casualties. Eight slaves, five of them field niggers in their best years! And two oxen! This expert from England is also going to hear it …” Elias loudly went on and drank one glass of rum after another. He also didn’t seem to be hungry. “Let alone what it will cost to rebuild everything. The distillery is also gone …”
Doug and Nora let him rage on, but then excused themselves right after eating, and the reverend did the same. He wanted to see his wife again and say a few more prayers for their son together. Nora noticed that he hardly even made a remark about his little daughter being saved. He probably would have preferred it if Mary had been taken.
Elias then also stood up and called Adwea, who came to clear the table, but he wanted something else.
“Addy … have a nightcap brou
ght up for me later!”
Nora noticed that Adwea went stiff.
“Tonight, Backra?” the slave asked. “Master, please … girl is dead tired—”
“Of course tonight!” Elias snapped. “If I meant tomorrow, I would have said tomorrow!”
Adwea cast a glance at her master that scared Nora. Had she seen the same spark of hatred that she so often noticed in Máanu’s eyes?
“Certainly, master. As Backra command …”
Nora laboriously climbed the stairs — everything hurt and it would surely be worse the next morning. She wondered a bit about Adwea. As the cook, Máanu’s mother had a privileged position in the house, but she was not arrogant. So, why didn’t she just bring Elias the rum punch herself, if Mansah and Sally were already asleep? Nora thought briefly about going quickly to the kitchen herself, getting the drink, and bringing it to her husband. But that would probably give him funny ideas, and she would not have been able to endure laying with Elias tonight. So, she went upstairs — and met Doug in front of her rooms.
“I want to hold you in my arms again,” he explained in a whisper. “Nora, we were so close today …”
Nora nodded. She was too tired for flirting and anyway, tonight she wanted Doug’s comfort. Nora sighed. “Yes, I would like to be held again. Before we … before we forget again.”
She snuggled up in Doug’s arms and felt his strength and protection once again. They were taking a huge risk, but Nora had never felt as safe as she did against Doug’s broad chest.
CHAPTER 4
Nora had grown accustomed to looking out to the sea first thing in the morning and happily taking in the strip of blue behind the rich green of the forest. But the following morning, all she could see from the strip of jungle between the garden and the beach were the tops of the sturdiest trees sticking out from the reddish-brown water. The land was still flooded up to the foot of the hill on which the main house of Cascarilla Gardens stood. The slave quarters, or what was left of them, must have been completely underwater. Even the garden was a sad sight. The storm had uprooted a large portion of the trees and the rain had washed away most of the flowerbeds. Even Nora’s beloved pavilion was badly damaged. With a hint of humor, Nora thought of how it looked about as battered as she felt. Every muscle rebelled against her plan to get up and get dressed. She would have preferred to go right back to bed. But a long, hard day of work and grief lay ahead of her.
Máanu dutifully arrived to help her wash her hair and dress, but seemed almost more obstinate than usual. She didn’t answer Nora’s questions.
“How is the reverend? And his wife?” Nora eventually asked after their houseguests. Máanu would have to answer that question.
“The woman is crying,” Máanu explained, “and wants to get up and look for the child. She says that an angel came to her in the night and said that he is still alive—”
“That’s not possible,” Nora said.
Máanu shrugged again. “But she believes it. The reverend asked the backra to send out a search team for the body. Now twenty niggers are looking for it—”
“But that is madness,” Nora asserted.
It could still be dangerous to go into the areas that had been flooded on the previous day. The ground would be soft and muddy everywhere. There could easily be landslides, especially on the embankments.
But then she paused. There was no use in complaining, Reverend Stevens and his wife certainly would not leave until the child had been found. To that end, she might even have put a team at their disposal — just to get rid of the houseguests.
“Reverend Stevens can hold a service this morning,” she then said. “It doesn’t really help anything, but we have to bury the dead—”
Máanu smiled a contorted, wicked smile. “The slave cemetery is underwater,” she said.
Nora felt like she was going to explode. “Then a new one will have to be set up!” she said. “And we should also think about another location for the slave quarters. The old one is underwater after every storm, if I understand correctly. So it would make sense to rebuild them above the house.”
“Backra Doug already quarreled about it with Backra Elias this morning,” Máanu remarked.
Nora sighed. She could easily imagine how it transpired.
The mood at breakfast was tense, as expected. Doug had suggested that the new slave quarters be built near the stables. There, only a single field of sugar cane that had just been planted would have to be moved. They could pull out the seedlings and replant them within a few days.
Nevertheless, Elias rejected the idea, probably because it came from his son. Nora decided to play the merchant’s daughter card once again.
“Of course, it was a practical location, where the slave village was until now,” she first agreed with Elias. “And also close to the kitchen entrance and the farm buildings … It would be a bit further from the stables …”
“But—” Doug wanted to argue that that hardly played a role, but Nora glared at him to keep quiet.
“But think about the costs,” she calmly continued speaking. “The time and money it will cost you now to rebuild the quarters—”
“Hollister will pay for that!” Elias barked.
He seemed overtired and in a bad mood that morning. “Maybe. But what if it happens again next year? Then he will blame you for not having moved the huts. And besides, the slave quarters have been damaged in practically every other hurricane, haven’t they? New repairs every year. I don’t think that it is worth it, Elias. The only alternative would be to build dams and ditches like Hollister and to drain the slave quarters.”
“But that costs a fortune!” Elias exclaimed. “The chap from England—”
“You should just calculate it when you have time,” Nora said pleasantly. “You don’t have to decide today. Just about the cemetery …”
The morning after the hurricane was rainy, but it was warm again, nonetheless. The corpses laid out in the stables had to be buried. Elias was finally persuaded to allow a new slave cemetery be set up behind the stables — the first step towards a new slave village being built beside it. Doug and Nora looked at each other with relief.
“Right next to the animal cemetery, Missis?” Máanu remarked, when Nora told her of the Elias’s decision.
For the first time in her life, Nora had the desire to hit a servant.
The reverend finally held his funeral service and Nora looked after Ruth while she sobbed. The men who had gone looking for the dead child had still not returned. Nora hoped at least that none of them were close friends of the deceased who would have wanted to attend the ceremony. Maybe Kwadwo would hold his own secret ceremony anyway. The Obeah man was part of the search party — and he was actually the one who found the dead baby in the early afternoon. Nora didn’t ask whether he did it with or without the help of the spirits.
Ruth broke down again at the sight of the little corpse — a journey home was completely out of the question. The reverend retired with his wife in order to pray, after which Nora offered them tea with St. John’s wart and calming cascarilla syrup. Then she looked after the, luckily, minor injuries that a few of the slaves had incurred during their struggle against the floods. Only Akwasi had severe bruising, since he had clung to a tree, against which the wind had thrown another. Nora sent Máanu to rub him down with camphor and healing ointments and both of them looked at her as if she had demanded a mutual whipping. It wasn’t the first time that Nora wondered what had happened between them and if it could possibly have something to do with her experience with Akwasi on the Obeah night. But Akwasi couldn’t have been so stupid as to tell the maid! And she didn’t see how Máanu could have learned it some other way.
Meanwhile, Doug organized the temporary accommodations for the slaves. No matter where they were to be eventually rebuilt, they first needed somewhere to stay, especially since it was continuously raining again. Eventually, he decided on sections of the stables and the barn as the temporary shelter — a
lways with the risk that his father would revoke any of his decisions in the evening. Elias was not present, as he had ridden to Kingston right after the funeral service to “deal with” Hollister.
“It could be that he won’t come back today,” Doug said nonchalantly to Nora, as they had stew together with the slaves that afternoon. A temporary slave kitchen would also have to also be organized. For the time being, Adwea and the cooks from the slave quarters cooked in the utility rooms of the house, but the kitchen garden was too small to feed 250 people. “The road to Kingston is surely at least partly flooded, if not destroyed.”
Nora blushed. She saw his expression and could read the question between the lines.
“But Elias might turn back,” she said, irresolutely. “And besides … we still have the Stevens’ in the house … and the blacks are sleeping in the kitchen. I cannot—”
She didn’t know if she couldn’t or didn’t want to, but she was certainly too exhausted on that day to make any kind of decision. Of course, she thought of Doug constantly, even though she didn’t want to. But if she really gave into her desires — if she admitted that she had begun to love him — then it would have consequences that no one could anticipate. And anyway if she gave herself to him, it would be like a wedding night. And that should not happen this way, not scheming and secretive and full of fear.
Nora thought again about the dreams she had shared with Simon. The hut on the beach … and knew that his spirit still hadn’t set her free.
Doug nodded. Perhaps he would have continued trying to persuade her, but then McAllister approached with new problems. The overseers’ houses at the edge of the slave settlement had naturally also been washed away. And his men, as foreman McAllister explained, would under no circumstances sleep in some barn with the slaves. Doing such a thing, they would ultimately be risking being murdered in their sleep. They either had to be given accommodations in the house or another solution needed be found.
Doug eventually dealt to the matter. There had to be suitable space somewhere in the farm buildings …
