Dawnlands, page 36
Alinor had a twinkle of laughter in her eyes. “Ah, Rob, she’s a rarity! I should hate her; but I can’t. She just arrived all smiles, and brought a great dressed turkey from London that’s too big to cook for tonight, and a caddy of the queen’s own tea. She chattered away to the girls in Italian, and was sweet as sugar to me and Ned.”
“I can’t stand to see her!” he burst out.
His mother looked at him. “It’s her son’s house. She got it for him.”
“You should never have let her come to the wharf. This is what comes of having anything to do with her!”
“Nay, this is what comes of raising Matthew as our own. We always knew she might come back for him. We knew she was a woman who would stoop to anything. That’s the risk we took for love of Matthew.” She stole a quick measuring look at his angry face. “Have you told Julia anything at all about her?”
“Only that she caused trouble for me in Venice, years ago. I told her father, the Alderman, all about it when we drew up the marriage contract—told him that I had been tricked by Livia into an invalid marriage. He told me to say nothing about it. Not to anyone, not even Julia. He said Julia would only be upset by it, and it was old history, and I should forget it.”
“Should you tell her now?” she asked.
“Ma, I can’t now,” he said, as frank as a boy. “She looks down on me as it is. I’m not going to tell her that Livia tricked me, and then Alys. I’m not going to tell her that Livia cuckolded me, and had me locked up, that I could have died but for Sarah coming for me—” He broke off, his face dark with anger.
She put her hand on his. “Son, if you’re not going to speak of it to Julia, then don’t think of it. Livia’s not going to bring it up! Not now that she’s Lady Avery, gracing the court and so close to the queen. We’ll all do what your father-in-law, Alderman Johnson, advised: forget the past.”
He turned to the window to stare out at the rose garden and the flutter of falling petals from late roses. “Sarah will never forgive us for letting her girls near Livia.”
“Sarah’d understand that we can’t stop Livia coming to see her son in the house that she got him,” Alinor said steadily. “And anyway—she’s not staying. We just have to get through dinner, and through breakfast tomorrow, and then she’ll go. I think she just came for curiosity, to see the girls with Matthew.”
“Hester is to have nothing to do with her.”
Alinor smiled and put her hands over his. “She’ll see her at dinner and that’s all. Probably never see her again in her life. You do what your father-in-law said: forget the past.”
DEEP CAVE, BARBADOS, AUTUMN 1686
The two women and the little boy reached the spring water cave as the sun was rising. For the first time in years, Rowan faced the rising sun and said her prayers in a soft chorus with other voices. She splashed the water on her face and breast and heard the others beside her washing too. For a moment, she was back in the Quinnehtukqut River with her mother and her grandmother, her sisters and her brothers, the people from her village with a sense of herself as one of a community, not a single individual like a lonely white man. Then she came back to herself and these two who had survived, and showed Caskwadadas the cleft in the rock, the dry cave behind it, and the gallery behind that.
“I think there are many caves, and many ways through the rock,” she said quietly, her voice echoing in the dry still air.
Wómpatuck’s eyes were bright with excitement, shining in the darkness of the cave. “Can I go and explore?” he asked.
“Not till we tie a twine around you, so that you can find your way back,” Caskwadadas said. “And no farther than this cave, till we know our way round.”
“There are steep cliffs,” Rowan warned. “And a quicksand.”
“A quicksand in the cave!” He was thrilled.
“All the safer for us,” Caskwadadas said. “If we can find a hiding place behind the quicksand, we could never be taken.”
“I know. But first we have to find some food. I’ve eaten nothing for two nights.”
Caskwadadas fished into a pocket and pulled out some pone bread wrapped in plantain leaves. “I saved this from my dinner. You share it with the boy. And then we’ll go deep into the caves and sleep till dusk. They’ll be looking for us today, but the next day or the day after they’ll give up. They’ll go first to the nearby farms. Most runaways hide in the slave houses and then go to Bridge and try to get on a ship.”
Rowan took a tiny piece of dry bread and ate it slowly, sipping the spring water from the palm of her hand as she ate. “People get on board a ship and get home?”
Caskwadadas nodded. “Very few. Usually they are found. But somehow, we have to get back to our lands. We can’t stay here in hiding forever.”
“We go home?” Rowan whispered as if it were a promise.
“We go home,” the older woman answered. “Now: you sleep, I’ll watch. Then the boy can take his turn to watch.”
“He won’t fall asleep?”
“He was born one of the People,” Caskwadadas said. “He won’t fall asleep.”
* * *
Caskwadadas was right. The Peabodys decided that the new servant must have had an accident looking for the dog. They squabbled briefly about whether he should have been sent out at all, and Mr. Peabody ordered a search party to shout and listen for Rowan at the upper part of the creek, where it brushed against the cane fields, and Dora Peabody said they should look in the cane fields for the pug, as he was far more valuable than an indentured servant.
Mr. Peabody rode to the neighboring plantation to tell them of the runaways—a slave and her boy—and stayed for a grand dinner; but no one searched the little creek near the house, and would not have dreamed of hacking their way through to the deeper forest. The overseers could not ride their horses on the tiny wandering tracks, and they would not dismount and walk in the blistering heat. They could not send slaves without an overseer, for fear of them running off or plunging to their death over the cliffs, and the woman they called “Kitonckquêi” and her son were not worth more than a day’s absence from the fields, which were growing high and needed constant weeding.
The overseer swore that the mother and son had just run off, as Indians were always running off to die in the forest. “They’ll get lost and starve to death,” he assured Mr. Peabody as he rested in his chair in the shade after dinner.
“Forest has got fruit trees, hasn’t it?” Mr. Peabody demanded irritably. “They can eat them?”
“Half of them are poisonous, and you can’t live off berries and nuts,” the man from Bristol told the man from London.
“True.” Mr. Peabody was pleased at the thought. “She’ll starve to death out there and her brat with her. Serve them right.”
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1686
Julia, in a dream of snobbish delight, ate dinner with the best friend of the Queen of England, and found, as they drank tea together after dinner, that they shared an extraordinary number of opinions, likes, and dislikes. Encouraged by Livia’s smiling interest, Julia told her about her childhood home in Cheapside in the City, her father’s membership of the Goldsmiths’ Company, and the development of his business, which was now lending money so far afield that they were issuing their own receipts for deposits in London, which could be cashed in the West Indies, and taking in monies there that could be drawn on in London by returning planters.
Livia was fascinated; but said that she, herself, knew nothing about business. She said that although trade in the City was a very good beginning for a family, she could not bear to live on a wharf.
“The noise!” Julia shuddered. “I try to visit only on a Sunday when it is quiet.”
“Yes, but then you have to attend St. Olave’s Church,” Livia whispered with a smile.
Julia widened her eyes to show her disdain for the wharfingers’ parish church. “Oh, I know! The sermons! The vicar is halfway to being a dissenter.”
“I go to the queen’s chapel,” Livia told her.
“I’ve heard it is very beautiful?” Julia asked longingly.
Livia threw up her hands in a pretty gesture. “The paintings! The music! But you must hear the choir. You could bring Hester.”
“I don’t think Dr. Reekie would…” Julia knew that Rob would not like his daughter to attend a Roman Catholic church. But the temptation of the court was too much for her. “We should be delighted. Delighted!”
“I’ll write you a note,” Livia promised. “Are you attending a drawing room this season?”
Julia’s family had never had an invitation. “Hester is too young as yet,” she said quickly. “I want her a little older before she goes out in society.” She hesitated. “So wealthy an inheritance can be a burden…” she hinted.
“You are your father’s only heir?” Livia asked acutely. Her dark eyes strayed across the parlor, where Rob and Matthew were playing Game of Goose, bending over the board with the three girls. Mia’s laugh rang out, and she slapped Matthew’s hand away from her winnings.
“Exactly,” Julia confided. “As Hester is ours. I shall have a puzzle when I plan her marriage. I know no young man whose fortune is her equal.”
“I can advise you,” Livia offered. “I know everyone. And with no daughter of my own, I shall take an interest.”
Julia was briefly silent, awed by the prospect opening before her.
“And she is a little lame?” Livia mentioned quietly.
“It’s nothing!” Julia was quick to assure her. “She wears a brace at night only till she is fully grown. Her foot will come straight, we are assured of it. And it’s not…” She could not find a polite euphemism. “It’s not in the blood.” She flushed. She wanted to say that it would not be passed on to any future noble children; but she saw a reassuring nod from Livia and realized that the older woman completely understood.
“And anyway, a generous dowry would compensate…” Livia smoothed over the moment.
“And your son, Matthew?” Julia asked brightly. “Such a promising young man! Has he nearly finished his studies? Will he be attending court?”
“Of course, I expect him to receive some sort of post, at court or abroad. He has this house, Fairmere, but a young man needs his own house in town. He’s in chambers in Lincoln’s Inn at the moment.”
“Avery House?” Julia ventured.
Livia smiled. “Of course: Avery House in time.”
Prospects of social rise shimmered like a mirage before Julia. “They’re very young yet,” she said irrelevantly.
“Both of them, far too young to think of marriage!” Livia smiled, equally insincere. “But it’s natural for a good mother to look ahead.”
“Yes,” Julia agreed. “Indeed, yes.”
* * *
It did not occur to Julia that night to ask why such a devoted mother as Livia had left her son at Reekie Wharf. It was not until after a night filled with dreams of the queen’s drawing room, and Hester with her club foot magically straightened, walking without a limp down the aisle of the queen’s chapel, marrying into the aristocracy, that she asked her husband to give her a moment before he went down for breakfast. Julia had a tray with her breakfast cup of chocolate and some pastries on her bedside table; she gestured that Rob should sit in a little chair opposite her bed.
“I have to go down,” he said unwillingly.
“I just want to know how Lady Avery came to know your family,” she said.
He had expected the question sooner or later. “You know that she trusted Matthew with them when he was just a baby? She didn’t want to take him to Yorkshire.”
“They were not his wet nurses?” Julia was horrified at the thought. “They did not actually…?”
“No, no. She came to the wharf when she first came to London. She had their direction from me. You know that we knew each other in Venice. Her husband, the Signor Fiori, was my patient.”
“Oh, Venice,” Julia said vaguely. “But was there not some trouble between you?”
“A disagreement,” he said. “Very bad. But she went to them anyway. She didn’t tell them what she had… how she had offended me.”
Julia was not interested in Rob’s past. “So she stayed at the wharf before her marriage to Sir James Avery?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Ma and Alys took such a liking to Matthew, he was a tiny baby then, that when she wanted to leave him with them for the first months of her marriage, they kept him; and then he just stayed on. She visited once, I think; she paid for his keep and his education. Sir James was his manucaptor at Lincoln’s Inn.”
“His what?”
“His patron, his guarantor. He is his stepfather.”
“Sir James acknowledges him as his stepson?”
“Yes, as you see. And she got a royal favor—Matthew chose the house that he wanted.”
“And who is his father?”
Rob checked in his smooth explanation. “She took the name of Picci, and now Matthew spells it the English way: Peachey,” he said awkwardly.
“His father was a Venetian prince?”
“Her first husband was Signor Fiori.” He evaded the question, but she did not notice.
“And anyway, as the queen’s companion…” she said vaguely.
“We will not befriend her,” he said shortly.
“My dear, we could not!” she explained. “Any invitation would have to come from her, from the palace.”
* * *
“My dear friend, I am so pleased to you have met you.” Livia advanced on Julia with her silk-gloved hands held out. “It’s been such a delight! But I promised Her Majesty my prompt return.”
“Of course,” Julia said. “We should not detain you.”
“But you must stay as long as you like, and you can safely leave Hester here with her grandmother.” Livia waved vaguely at the garden and the woods beyond the drive. “She will like it, I am sure.”
“We will,” Julia said. “Hester is very fond of nature.”
“And I will visit you in London,” Livia promised her.
“Please do—you have our address?”
“Matthew can bring me.”
“Oh yes! Do come with Matthew,” Julia urged her. “The dear children…”
The carriage door was open. “Hired,” Livia said darkly. “Sir James has our own carriage in Yorkshire. I so rarely need one, living in the palace.”
“We are going to set up our own carriage. I keep asking…”
Alinor came down the stairs, in a dark navy dress, leaning on Gabrielle’s arm, as Matthew came through the garden door with Hester and Mia to say good-bye to his mother.
“Be a good host to your foster family!” Livia told him. “We must repay them for all the kindness they have shown you in the past. Now kiss me good-bye.”
Warily, Matthew approached his mother and bent his head so she could kiss him on the forehead. She kept hold of his arm, so he led her to the carriage. “Good-bye,” she said, climbing the steps. Her dark assessing gaze swept over Alinor and Julia, and the three dazzled girls. She kissed Matthew again, on both his cheeks. “Such a pleasure!” she said gaily. “I am so sorry to leave.”
The footman put up the steps and Matthew closed the door of the coach. The Nobildonna dropped the glass of the window to wave to them. As if under a spell, they all smiled and waved back, until the carriage had gone down the drive, around the slow curve to the gates, and was out of sight.
DEEP CAVE, BARBADOS, AUTUMN 1686
With meticulous care, never leaving so much as a footprint or a bent twig to show their passing, Caskwadadas, Rowan, and Wómpatuck hunted, gathered, fished, and trapped, going to and from the spring water cave at dawn and dusk every day, sleeping through the day with one of them on watch, coming out in the darkness of night when they puzzled over the mixture of stars: those they knew, and those that sat on the horizon and were strange to them. Occasionally, they heard a gang of slaves carrying casks of sugar up and down the arduous paths, farther down the creek, at one of the flatter parts where the assingoes could trace a winding path down the slope, and the slaves could creep over the rocks on sore feet. No one ever came to their part of the creek where the steep cliffs made passing impossible, and the thick jungle hid them from the fields above.
Both the spring water cave and the quicksand cave emerged in the cliff face on stone, and so it was easy to leave no marks at the entrance. If the planters had hunted with dogs, they might have tracked them; but there were no foxhounds or staghounds or even bloodhounds on Barbados, and the gang which went out after runaway slaves with their half-wild dogs worked out of Bridge and never came near the creeks. The English were afraid of the wild, and so convinced that the heart of the island was an impenetrable jungle, crowded with strange trees with poisonous fruit, that they left it alone.
There was much that was familiar to the little family. They gathered pitch pine to make torches for light inside the cave, just as they would at home. They ate fruit that grew wild in the forest: cherry, soursop, papaya, prickly pear, and golden apple. They dug the roots of the cassava, crushed and drained and dried it to make pone. They caught land crabs, and fish in the river, and netted doves, they ate nuts and roots, and big cockroaches, and broke into the big colonies of ants for food. Within weeks Wómpatuck had filled out and was stronger, his skin glowing, his hair glossy, and his mother and Rowan were thriving.
In the daytime they stayed in the shelter of the cave. They used the time to slowly penetrate the cave system, to discover the galleries leading from one cave to another, roped up with vines from the weeping fig trees, their way illuminated by the flickering light of candlewood. They found their way through the rock to the quicksand cave, and beyond it to more caves. They laid a bridge of canes and palms across the quicksand to get across, and then they sank rocks as stepping-stones, in a random pattern that lay invisible under the water, to make a hidden path that only the three of them knew.
