Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Ferrandis, for your hospitality,’ he said, his voice deep and sonorous.

  ‘Yes, well – you’re very welcome, Mr Smart.’ Katharine paused, fighting back another blush. ‘Até amanhã as they say in these parts. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She managed a brief, uncertain smile in his direction before turning on her heels and walking as regally as she could over the rough, trampled ground to the house, conscious all the way of his eyes burning into her back.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A regular, rhythmic noise, the thud of the woodcutter’s axe, woke Katharine the next day, filtering in and out of her dream as she surfaced from unconsciousness. The unsettled feeling of the night before still lingered, but was gradually soothed by the regular morning sounds of the cockerels crowing, the Indian women talking as they prepared food for their families’ breakfasts, and the little children laughing and playing. Outside her window, hummingbirds thronged around profusions of orange blossom, and patches of dappled sunlight shone a morning welcome. She rolled out of bed, dressed quickly and went outside to greet the new day.

  Rounding the corner of her house, she looked to see which of the Indians was chopping the logs; it was a least favourite task and one that rarely got done without specific orders. But it was not an Indian. The man wielding the axe, letting it fall with perfect, arcing motions, was Thomas. His chest was bare and a slick of sweat covered his back; it glistened in the sun and accentuated muscles hard as rock.

  Katharine was almost too embarrassed to look. She hadn’t a clue why he had taken it upon himself to do this chore, though was grateful that he had, as the woodpile was woefully low right now. The fires were kept constantly burning, not just for cooking, but also for drying laundry, for the heat of the flames was the only way to banish the pervasive dampness that seeped into everything. But Thomas was supposed to be a manager and above such menial labouring work. And anyway, she had been about to send him packing.

  Pausing to wipe his brow, Thomas caught sight of her watching him.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Ferrandis,’ he called, seeming perfectly at ease. ‘I saw your firewood stash was somewhat depleted, so I decided to help out. I woke so early I needed to do something, and after so many weeks sitting in a canoe, some exercise was essential.’

  Katharine moved slowly towards him, not wanting to shout across the compound. ‘That was a very kind thought, Mr Smart,’ she said, ‘but you really didn’t need to. And you can’t even have had any breakfast yet; I’ll get Rosabel to make you some.’

  Thomas smiled and stretched out his arms. ‘That would be marvellous,’ he replied. ‘I am rather hungry.’ He leant the axe against the hut wall and gathered together the last few logs he had cut, stacking them carefully inside. ‘And afterwards – perhaps you can take me through the essentials and give me a map of the estradas. I’d like to get straight out into the forest, check on whether they’re all being tapped efficiently, how much of the latex is lost during transportation or washed away in the rains. I’ve brought a prototype of a new collecting cup I picked up in Manaus that looks very promising to reduce wastage…’ Thomas tapered off, noticing Katharine’s lack of response.

  ‘Oh.’ Katharine was at a loss for words. Thomas was so interested, and knowledgeable. He’d clearly done his homework on the rubber industry and knew far more than she had imagined.

  ‘But of course,’ Thomas said, ‘you must tell me what you would most like me to do, what would be most useful. My enthusiasm gets the better of me – but it’s your business. You must instruct.’

  ‘Yes, umm, definitely,’ muttered Katharine.

  Thomas’ candour, combined with his energy and obvious capability, had taken the wind out of her sails. Maybe she had been too hasty in thinking she must dismiss him immediately. Perhaps it would be worth giving him a trial period – three or six months – and then reviewing the situation after that. Apart from anything else, he seemed to have taken it for granted that the job was his and had already set about settling into it, and Katharine didn’t think she had the heart to disabuse him of that understanding.

  And so, Thomas stayed and almost immediately proved himself indispensable, not just as an employee but also as a friend. For Katharine it was miraculous to at last have such a person in her midst. For all she trusted and relied upon Jonathan and Santiago, they were very different to her, their culture and traditions totally separate. Not only that, they had their own families, their own lives and though Katharine was never excluded from them, she could never truly be a part of them either.

  Thomas was different. He had not had many years of formal education, but he had grown up reading anything he could get his hands on – books, papers, periodicals – and was therefore conversant on world affairs, aware of people and places far removed from their Amazonian home, which often felt so remote as to be a hermitage. Though the place he had come from was as different from Clerkenwell as it possibly could be, he appeared to Katharine as her equal and her respect for him and his abilities grew by the day.

  Over the next few weeks and months, Katharine taught Thomas every aspect of the business, going over maps of the estate, explaining about how transportation was arranged and shipping organised. She told him about Mac’s cripplingly expensive terms for crossing the isthmus, as well as the payments she had had to make for the scuppered steamer, which were only just coming to an end. Thomas’ attention and interest were unwavering, his suggestions unfailingly measured and valuable. In addition to Thomas’ assiduity, for all the things about Mayhew that irritated Katharine, he had turned out to be something of a godsend, taking it upon himself to be exactly the father figure to Antonio that Katharine had envisaged. The boy doted on his uncle and didn’t display to him any of the sulks or stubbornness that he so often dealt out to Katharine. Everything seemed to be happy and harmonious, for the time being at least.

  So much so that Katharine decided to take a trip to market in a settlement about two hours by canoe upriver. It was a place that, when Katharine had first arrived at Norwood, had been nothing but a small seringueiro outpost. Over the years, as more and more people flooded into the area, it had developed into a sizeable town, even boasting a resident Spanish pharmacist who was the first to bring modern medicine to the region.

  Katharine needed to go; she had completely run out of reading material and she knew that an English gentleman who lived even further upriver would be there and would bring books and periodicals for her. Even if the magazines were two years out of date, she didn’t care. She needed words, stories, news, to keep herself from going mad. She asked Thomas if he would accompany her, telling him that as they journeyed along the river they would see much of her land and he would be able to get his bearings for when he ventured into the forest himself.

  The town was bustling, the market already in full swing when they arrived, with canoes, launches and igarités jostling for mooring space all along the waterfront. As soon as they had disembarked, Katharine and Thomas were swallowed up by the crowd, frequently being forced apart as they tried to navigate through the hordes.

  ‘What’s going on over there?’ asked Thomas, when they found themselves in slightly calmer spot for a moment. He pointed towards a pool of eager shoppers gathered around a podium. All around them was noise, people talking, children wailing, chickens clucking, goats bleating and, above it all, the auctioneer’s patter ringing out.

  Katharine had a sinking feeling in her stomach. ‘I think it’s a sl… an auction.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘slave’ in front of Thomas. Who knew what effect that word would have on him, how much he and his family, in generations past and probably still today, had suffered from the whole awful business of slavery and its aftermath?

  ‘An auction of what?’ questioned Thomas, quietly insistent.

  Katharine steeled herself. ‘I think they’re selling children. They – people, I don’t know who – they raid the tribes’ homelands and take them from th
eir mothers when they’re really small, just babies. They bring them up until they are around eight, or ten, or twelve, and then they sell them as servants, or rubber workers.’

  Katharine had heard the appalling stories, of infants torn screaming from their wailing mothers’ arms, of the brutality they often faced during their upbringing and when sold to new masters. She abhorred everything about it. But, like many nefarious practices, it was rife throughout the Amazon.

  ‘Servants.’ Thomas said the word as both a statement and an accusation. ‘People treated like animals.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Katharine, softly. ‘I hate it, too.’

  They moved closer to the podium. A small procession of boys and girls for sale moved across it. Some were frightened and crying but others looked utterly emotionless, as if they had given up caring what happened to them. Boys went for more than girls – the going rate seemed to be about £50 for a male, £40 for a girl – a lot of money in either case. Katharine shuddered at the thought of how much toil and servitude would be expected of these poor mites to make good on that level of investment.

  A small girl was pulled up onto the podium. Her hair was matted into ragged knots and her face besmirched with mud and snot. It was impossible to tell her exact age through the dirt, and she was dreadfully thin. Yet Katharine could still see that she was on the cusp of puberty, small breast buds outlined by her thin, skimpy clothing. The girl trembled, half hiding her face behind her hands until her seller grabbed them away, revealing a sad pair of eyes that glistened with unshed tears. Her expression seemed to hold within it all the pain she had endured since being separated from her family.

  Katharine’s heart ached for the child, who reminded her of little Esperanza, Mac’s servant who had not been at Lagona on her last visit but instead had vanished without trace, or of Mabel. Her heart lurched as she remembered her little sister’s face when she had bid her farewell all those years ago, how sadness and uncertainty had been etched upon it as she waved solemnly to Katharine and Anselmo’s departing train. Only Mary and Bill had gone all the way to the port at Southampton to see the couple off, so those glimpses of Mabel on the station platform had been Katharine’s last.

  It had been such a wrench to leave, and Katharine knew how Mabel had dreaded her sister’s departure. How much worse for the tiny children of the Amazon, wrested from their families, enduring such unimaginable loss and heartbreak. Katharine felt that Mabel would not survive it – and this small girl seemed to be hanging to life only by the most brittle of threads. For their mothers, too, the agony was incomprehensible. Mary would never have got over one of her children being snatched away like this. But it happened to the forest women all the time.

  The bidding for the girl was laconic, just a few hands raised to start things off. Katharine scrutinised the bidders. There was a Brazilian man she vaguely recognised as owning extensive lands about three days’ journey from Norwood, but the other two she didn’t know at all. Of these, one was staring eagerly at the child, a lascivious expression plastered onto his red and pock-marked face. Katharine felt a sudden flush of revulsion. She had seen that look before on a certain type of man and it repelled her. Her imagination saw him pawing lecherously at the girl, doing unspeakable things to her, disregarding completely her fear and cries of distress. She glanced from the man to the girl and back again and something about his leering mouth and beady eyes compelled her to action.

  ‘Thirty!’ Her hand had shot up and the bid been made before she had time to think about it.

  Thomas looked at her in astonishment. And then, seeing the anger in her gaze and the firm set of her mouth he seemed to understand what she understood and to know, without any explanation, what she was doing and why.

  As the auctioneer cast around for rival bids, Katharine also looked anxiously about her, sizing up the competition. She was reminded of why she so rarely ventured out and why she did not fraternise with the rubber community in her isolated, lawless neighbourhood. The more she saw of some of the other settlers in the area, the less she liked, so she stayed at home and left others to their sins. She had no desire to mix with men who used their money and power to buy children like they would an animal, and to use them however they pleased.

  ‘Thirty-five pounds.’ The sleazy man had made a counter bid.

  Katharine saw the look of anguish on the little girl’s face, the fear of the unknown fate that awaited her, the terror of what the future held. It was already a good price for so scrawny a girl and he seemed prepared to go higher. There could only be one reason why he was so keen to get his hands on her. Katharine would have to beat him at his own game.

  ‘Thirty-eight,’ she shouted out, making sure her voice was loud enough to be heard above the constant murmur of the crowd. She could feel Thomas beside her, silently approving.

  Katharine’s opponent faltered.

  ‘Thirty-nine,’ he called, but his tone was nowhere near as definite as it had been.

  ‘Fifty.’ Katharine injected her voice with an air of what she hoped was indisputable finality. Her bid broke all the rules of auctions, going up far too much in one jump, and the sum she had put forward was way more than anyone in their right mind would pay. But she wasn’t buying a slave to add to her collection but instead to save the child from a fate worse than death.

  The sleazy man dropped his hands to his sides, shrugged as if it was no matter, and slunk away. Katharine almost laughed. It was that easy. Cash was king. He who pays the piper calls the tune… She went to hand over the money and collect the child. Kneeling beside her in the mud, amidst all the people and the chickens and the pigs, she took the girls’ gaunt hands in hers. Her fingers were skin and bone.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Fortunata,’ muttered the girl, almost inaudibly.

  Fortunate. How horribly inappropriate, like a cruel joke, thought Katharine. She said as much to Thomas.

  ‘But you have saved her now,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I suppose so,’ responded Katharine. ‘But I can’t give her back to her parents, can I? I can’t take her back to her tribe, to her people. I don’t know who they are, or where. And it would be impossible to find out, in this vast wilderness where no one keeps records of anything. She will always have that loss in her life.’

  Fortunata’s skin was dry and mottled and her lips dreadfully chapped, and Katharine was sure she was dehydrated as well as malnourished. She offered her the water gourd but Fortunata wouldn’t drink deeply, taking only small sips when urged, casting fearful glances at Katharine as she did so as if waiting to be punished.

  Later, their business done, they ate at a small waterside restaurant. Here, Fortunata succumbed to her hunger, ravenously stuffing the food into her mouth and then promptly vomiting it all back up again. Thomas cleaned her up and soothed her crying, handling her so gently, with such tender confidence that Katharine felt her own efforts to comfort the girl clumsy and inept. He was huge and strong and could probably kill a man with his bare hands but far from being violent, or bitter about the past, he exuded kindness. Perhaps there was hope that Fortunata, too, could overcome her terrible start in life.

  A group of elderly but rowdy white men, speaking English with American accents, came in and took the table next to them. Fortunata flinched away from them. Katharine wondered what associations the child made with such people. Thomas’ demeanour had also changed, a look of utter hostility covering not only his face but also the set of his shoulders and the rigidity of his back. Katharine glanced back at the men and then at Thomas.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, quietly.

  Thomas indicated towards the group with a sneer and a flick of his head. ‘Confederados,’ he muttered, as if barely able to form the word.

  Katharine’s brow furrowed quizzically. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just know,’ stated Thomas in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘They came here to Brazil, many of them, after they lost in the civil war, unable to
accept an America without slavery. I suppose they thought that here in this inhospitable terrain their evil habits and beliefs would go unnoticed.’

  The bill paid, they headed back to the canoe. Thomas strode on ahead, his body full of animosity. Katharine wasn’t sure if the hostility was directed at her, the Confederados or her impulse purchase. He had seemed to be on her side during the auction, but since then had barely said a word in her direction.

  Fortunata fell asleep almost as soon as they were underway, and then Katharine knew she had to broach the subject with Thomas.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, gently. ‘You seem to be displeased with me and I’m not sure why.’

  Thomas let out a long hiss of air from flared nostrils. ‘Not you, Mrs Ferrandis. Not you at all.’ He paused and then flung his arm wide as if embracing the entire Amazon. ‘It’s this. Slavery, alive and kicking, when it was supposedly abolished years ago. People who cannot recognise its evil. I have lived with the consequences of the slave trade, seen its trauma in the eyes of my parents and grandparents. I thought that they would be the last, that no other peoples of the world would have to suffer the way my forebears did.’

  He looked at Fortunata, curled up in the bottom of the canoe.

  ‘But it seems the subjugation of the weak by the strong will never end. While there are oppressors, there will be the oppressed.’

  Katharine’s heart broke for Thomas, so noble and proud, but still capable of being bowed by the legacy of slavery, and for Fortunata, so innocent and vulnerable. It broke for Esperanza and all the stolen children of the Amazon. She wanted to save all three of them, to save the whole world.

  But of course, that was impossible.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  London, 1900

  At the end her first day’s work, Mabel was so tired that she almost crawled up the many flights of stairs to her attic bedroom. It was cold, with bare floorboards and a tiny window with grubby, ill-fitting panes of glass that looked out on an endless array of grey slate rooftops. The iron bedstead’s mattress was lumpy and damp, the sheet and blanket mended so often it was hard to find a square inch without darning stitches. But nevertheless, Mabel sank gratefully into bed and lay down, unable to muster the strength to undress. Huddling into the covers, pulling them tight around her, she shut her eyes and tried to squeeze back the tears.