Dawnlands, page 29
When she said, “Thank you,” grateful for their patience, they did not reply. They looked away from her, even when they rested beside her. They were so silent that she thought they did not speak English, but then she heard one say quietly to another, “He’ll not live long,” and she realized that they saw her as a ghost—half dead already.
Every time she rose to her feet after a rest, she thought of the turtle who struggles so hard on land, who will get trapped by a stone and baffled by shifting sand, but in deep water is as smooth and easy as a swimming bird. She called on the spirit of the turtle to walk with her, to loan her his indomitable courage and his blindness to defeat. When they doused her, she thought of the cool water of the morning prayer, and that this land—where the sun was so bright in the afternoon would be cool and beautiful in the dawn—and that perhaps she would be able to rise early, to pray to her Grandfather Sun, perhaps she would be on the east of an easterly island, and a child of the Dawnlands again.
Then the man gently twitched the rope at her sore wrists, and she walked behind him, her eyes on the white road and the pale color of the soles of his bare feet, the scars left by the manacles of his enslavement, and she walked on.
As the road climbed higher, they came to plantations where harvest was starting—weeks of frantic work to cut a year and a half of growth. One cutting gang was working beside the road, and as Rowan and the slaves trudged by, they could see the ripe canes tumbling down, an overseer seated high on a horse, a whip coiled at his side, and men and the strongest women hacking frantically at the cane with broad flat blades, the second gang coming behind them, gathering up the canes, and dragging and carrying them to the cart at a half run. The carter stood on top of the load and caught and stacked canes with desperate haste. They had been working since dawn. Rowan could tell from the dark stains of sweat on turban and gown that they were beyond exhaustion, on the edge of collapse, but the overseer watched them and shouted if anyone seemed to be slowing, cursing them, swearing that this field would be cut and milled in a day, before it dried, or he would see them whipped.
A cart rumbled past them, pulled by oxen, each chewing a leaf-top of cane, with the driver shouting to them to get out of the road, he could not be delayed for a moment! On every hill, rising above the cane, Rowan could see the sails of endless windmills turning and turning, as if even the wind was enslaved. Hanging over every plantation was the haze from the fires in the boiling house, stinging smoke tainted with the sickly sweetness of boiling sugar. To Rowan, stumbling behind a slave, hearing the bitter working chant from the harvesting gang in the deep crop behind her, they were the sounds and smells of hell.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1686
There was a tremendous scene between the king and queen, when the king’s confessor knelt to him begging him to give up his adulterous affair, and the queen stood by her oath to leave him if Catherine Sedley was not dismissed from court. Furious at being cornered, torn between love for his mistress and the demands of his marriage vows, the king collapsed into penitent tears and the new Countess of Dorchester, Catherine Sedley, started an interminable process of her long farewell.
The queen and her ladies found that the Sedley woman could not be persuaded to go until a suitable destination was found for her. Firstly, she refused to go to France for fear, she said, of being kidnapped into a convent.
“As if they would want her,” Livia said disdainfully.
Similarly, she could not go to Portugal or Spain. She pointed to the arrival of the Huguenot Protestants from France, terrified refugees, fleeing into exile for their faith. “I can’t go to a papist country!” she told everyone. “It’s to send me to my death.”
“Perfect!” Livia whispered.
Someone suggested Holland, and at once she wanted letters of introduction so that she would be received at the court of William of Orange and his wife, Princess Mary of England.
“As though I would put her in my stepdaughter’s court!” the queen said.
Then the newly minted countess took to her bed and announced that her distress had caused a miscarriage, she had lost the king’s child. It had been a boy, she was certain. God had blessed her with a half-royal prince, and if she had not been cruelly persecuted and separated from the baby’s father, she would have presented him with a son.
Livia came into the queen’s chapel to find Mary Beatrice on her knees. Her pale face was twisted in pain. “Did God give her the king’s child?” she demanded. “Would He do such a cruel thing? Has He turned His countenance from me?”
Ahead of them was the glorious altar, carved in wood and painted in gold. Above them were radiant windows, streaming with colors that dappled the priceless marble floor with color. Only the queen was pale in the joyous brightness of her chapel. Livia knelt beside her.
“Probably lying,” Livia said cheerfully. “Just refusing to leave, one excuse after another.”
“He’ll never make her leave if she’s ill,” the queen predicted. “And if she goes on saying she has lost a Protestant heir, the whole country will be on her side.”
“A Protestant bastard. And dead, anyway.”
“They’d prefer a Protestant bastard!” the queen exclaimed. “They wanted Monmouth instead of us.”
“Well, he’s dead too,” Livia said ruthlessly.
* * *
Catherine Sedley finally left court, in a procession as grand as any royal princess. Four full-sized coaches harnessed with teams of horses drew up outside the palace. Streams of servants with endless bags and baggage loaded the carriages and climbed in themselves. Her entire household, from her chamberlain to her lowliest maid, all had to accompany the royal mistress, all of them had to travel in the grandest of style. Finally, Catherine herself, heavily veiled and wrapped in priceless furs, got into the first carriage. They put up the steps, shut the door, the footmen swung up behind, the coachman cracked his whip, the six bay horses strained at the harness, and at last, with a rumble of wheels as loud as the crack of doom, the woman was gone.
Mary Beatrice did not watch from a window with Livia. She lay in her beautiful bed, the thick embroidered curtains drawn around her, the room in an early dusk because she could not stand the light. The rumble of wheels penetrated the deep silence of her room, and she could hear the shouts of well-wishers calling the countess to come back soon.
“Has she gone?”
Livia came from the window, where she had been spying on the ostentatious farewell. “She’s gone. You’ve won. There’s every reason for you to be happy.”
Mary Beatrice raised herself up on one arm and looked at her only friend at court. Her dark eyes were huge in her pale face, violet shadows from sleeplessness smudged on her cheeks. “Do I look happy?” she asked.
PEABODY PLANTATION, BARBADOS, WINTER 1686
Rowan’s first days at Peabody Plantation were taken up with learning her way around the house and grounds, and identifying who people were, and what threat they posed to her. Most were black enslaved men and women; there were very few children. They watched her out of the corners of their dark eyes, as a new and unknown threat to them. They avoided her as if she were cursed, and never spoke to her, flinching if she spoke to them. Rowan realized that her caramel skin and her dark straight hair identified her as one of the owners, the kidnappers, the killers—to be avoided at all times.
She was housed with other white indentured servants, many of them Irish, captured or shipped from the prisons of Dublin. Their house was nothing more than a one-room cottage, built of rough blocks of coral, quarried from the steep cliffs of the creek, thatched with the leaves of plantains. The floor was tamped-down earth; the men slept on beds of sugarcane leaves and ate from a common pot of loblolly stew made from boiled maize and root vegetables, occasionally enriched with a slice or two of meat from the big house, or fish they had caught. They relieved themselves against the outside wall of the hut, and every now and then ordered a slave to dig a pit for their dirt. They washed rarely, slept almost naked for the heat, and wore broad hats and tattered shirts and breeches to work. They insisted on wearing shoes, however ill fitting, telling Rowan that there were worms that would eat into your feet and leave you lame for life.
After the first night in the fetid cottage with the snoring, exhausted men, Rowan, terrified of them discovering she was a woman, was determined to get away from the stink, the certainty of a fight, and the threat of rape.
The slave huts were worse built than the servants’ cottages—plank walls and a leaf roof—but better managed. Black couples lived together as husband and wife, in their self-built hut. The single women lived in one larger hut, and the single men lived in another in a compound some distance from the main house. They all grew vegetables and fruit to eat and to sell, and they kept their huts scrupulously clean. They built and managed a hospital hut to nurse a constant stream of sick slaves: dying from overwork or infected with wounds from a beating or a branding. Once a week the slave quarters were searched from roof to floor for weapons or stolen goods; every so often an enslaved girl would disappear from her sleeping hut and come back bloodstained and tearstained and mute, raped by the white men servants, by the overseer, or by Mr. Peabody himself. Occasionally, there would be a public whipping for some offense, or the blacksmith might be ordered to brand someone, or wound them. Rowan realized that the white masters ruled by the constant threat of terrible violence.
If Rowan could have moved in with the women slaves, she would have done so, but by passing as a white male servant at arrival, she was now forced to live with the white men. There was privilege attached to this—as a white servant she could beat a black woman without fear of punishment—but she could not speak to them or eat with them, and she would never be allowed to live with them.
The first day that Mr. Peabody recovered from his drunken bout in Bridge, he sent for Rowan.
“You gotta come to the big house,” the black maid told Rowan, finding her sharpening the blades of the sugarcane billhooks. “Come quick. He don’ like waiting.”
Rowan went as fast as she could, hobbling on sore feet up the stone path from the servants’ cottages to the walled garden. Mr. Peabody was in the shade of a great tree, its enormous trunk swelling behind him, its canopy casting a welcome shadow over him, a long cool drink of rum punch in his hand.
Rowan stood before him and pulled off her hat.
“You said you can read?” He tossed a newssheet to her. It was an old London Gazette.
She took it up and squinted at the travel-stained paper:
“ ‘Right truly and right well-beloved cousin and counselor, right trusty and right well-beloved counselor, right trusty and entirely beloved—’ ”
“Skip that bit! Skip it!” Mr. Peabody grunted irritably. “Go down. Read on.”
“ ‘We greet you well. Whereas by our letter of the twenty-first day of August last past, we were graciously pleased to inform you of our designs in order to the ease of our Roman Catholic…’ ”
“Same as usual then, more comfort for papists. I see you can read. Who taught you?”
“My mistress, Alinor Reekie. I was a clerk at the Reekie warehouse, I noted the goods in and out,” Rowan lied, wondering what service would earn her a bed inside the house, away from the men. “I worked as a house servant too,” she said. “In the kitchen and serving. I helped the cook.”
He laughed abruptly. “You want your feet under my table!” he accused her.
“I’m going to die out here,” she told him frankly. “And you’ll lose the money you paid for me.”
“If you want soft living, you should’ve thought of that before you turned traitor.”
She bowed her head. “I’m not a thief.” She knew they feared theft, second only to rebellion. “And I can fire a musket. I can serve in the militia against the slaves.”
“ ’Cause you fired one for that damned traitor, Monmouth!”
“No. Never. I was captured by accident on an errand.”
He thought for a moment. “You’ll work as hard as a slave in the house as you would in the field, don’t think you’ll get off lightly. You’ll clean and wash and wait on me, you’ll run with messages, you’ll write my letters. You’ll be up at dawn to serve my breakfast and you’ll clear up after I’ve gone to bed.”
Rowan nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And you’ll guard the house and grounds. Every other night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Harvest is starting, and I’ll need white men to oversee the gangs. Can you do that?”
Rowan thought that she was about to sink lower than she had ever been: a white man, sharing in white violence. “Yes, sir.”
“Go into the house and tell Cook to find you some half-decent clothes. And get a wash, you stink. You can serve dinner, and if you’re any good, I’ll have you as a servant: a footman.”
Rowan bowed and headed for the house. It was built with the same coral stone as all the other buildings but edged and trimmed with a handsome deep red brick. It was a grand two-story house with a gable over the two upstairs windows, surrounded by formal gardens, standing high above the low-roofed slave huts and outbuildings. It was pretty: neat as a doll’s house, looking over a long green vista of fields. Rowan knew not to enter through the front door but went around the side to find a backyard, and outbuildings: bathhouses, a necessary house, a bakery and a kitchen, shaded by the canopy of a huge broad-trunked tree which slumped, fat and comforting, in the center of the yard.
Behind the house was a working yard: a smithy, the sprawling sugar factory shady and quiet now before the start of harvest, and over them all a squat windmill, with the sails idle. It was like a little English estate transported under burning sun, nightmarishly changed into a place of torture. Through it all, through every sunlit vista, there was the stench of slavery, of fearful sweat, of bruised and bleeding flesh, of grief.
The smell of roasting meat drifted into the yard, making her stomach grip with hunger and her dry mouth water. She followed the haunting scent to the open door of the stone-built building opposite the main house, across the yard. The black woman cook was basting a hog on a spit turned by a tiny black child, his eyes squinted against the unbearable heat of the fire, his hands and arms scarred from earlier burnings from the spitting fat.
“I’m to have half-decent clothes, and wash. I’m to serve dinner,” Rowan said, looking away from the little boy.
The cook looked up. “Yes, sir,” she said.
“Where can I wash?”
She pointed to the bathhouse on one side of the yard. “In there.”
“And clothes?”
“I get them for you.” She poured a ladle of fat over the crispy skin and spoke quickly and fiercely to the exhausted child who nodded and turned the spit. She went in the back door of the house and came out with a pair of baggy sailor’s trousers and a clean linen shirt. “Here.”
“Whose are these?” Rowan asked, taking them.
“The last one. He dead.”
Rowan nodded and crossed the yard, relieved to find the little bathhouse had a door that latched shut, a tap, and even some lye soap and a rough towel. She felt safe to undress, wash her body and her hair, forcing herself not to scratch the itch of lice on the nape of her neck. She checked her feet for chigger worms, toweled herself dry, and pulled on the clean clothes. She had never thought that she would enjoy dressing as a white man, but the smell of sun-dried linen made her think longingly of laundering for Ned, and sleeping in clean sheets. She wrapped her baggy linen shirt closely around her skinny body and buttoned it up to the neck. She rolled up the trousers at the waistband and tied the cord tight so that it sat on her hips. She stepped into ill-fitting shoes.
Back at the kitchen Cook was hurrying to prepare an extraordinary array of dishes for just two people: the Master and Mrs. Peabody. There was stewed saltfish arranged on a trencher with fruit, there were thick slices of the roast pork and crackling with roasted potatoes and boiled carrots, there was a chicken pie, and as Rowan watched, she drew a dish of creamed eggs from the oven. “Go! Go!” she said, waving Rowan towards the door. “Take it while it’s hot!”
Rowan seized the roast pork tray and stepped into the blinding sunlight and went quickly across the yard and into the big house. The dining room was down a short corridor to her left—at the front of the house—and as she put the dish on the table, the front door opened and Mr. Peabody came in the house and took his seat at the head of the table, mopping his sweating face.
“More punch,” he ordered, putting his glass down at his place.
A black woman slave who had been laying the table ladled the drink from the cooler on the sideboard, and turned back to the sideboard to open a bottle of ratafia and one of Madeira.
“Pour it! Pour it!” Mr. Peabody snapped.
Rowan went quickly out of the room to fetch more dishes as Mr. Peabody flicked out a napkin of the finest damask and tucked it in his neckcloth, under his chin. In the kitchen Rowan picked up the pie and the vegetables on solid silver salvers and hurried back to the dining room.
A lady was coming slowly down the stairs, in a white gown of heavy silk with a silk stole thrown over her bare shoulders, diamond earrings in her ears, and thick diamond bracelets on her arms. She completely ignored Rowan, who fell back from the doorway and drew back her chair. She sat without a word of thanks, but she widened her eyes at her husband.
