Dawnlands, page 38
“You eat children?” Johnnie asked horrified.
“We eat sugar. And sugar eats them. We eat up the children of Africa.”
Johnnie waited in case he said more, but Samuel Peabody was fast asleep. Johnnie went to the parlor door and opened it. Mr. Peabody’s black slave woman was sleeping, propped up against the doorjamb. She leapt to her feet, rubbing her eyes, when she felt the door move. She saw Johnnie standing in the doorway.
“He’s asleep.”
She nodded and turned to go towards the kitchen to fetch slaves to lift the big white drunk man into bed.
“He invited me to the plantation. Will he remember that? And then he was unhappy,” Johnnie told her.
“He’ll remember he asked you,” Bonny told him. “He’ll forget he cried.”
“He cries often?”
She shrugged. “Why not?” she asked him. “Shouldn’t he?”
* * *
Mr. Peabody returned to his home the next day but left an invitation for Johnny to visit in a scrawled note.
What a night of it! Look forward to seeing you at Peabody Plantation. In St. Thomas’s Parish, anybody will tell you where. Come anytime.
Samuel Peabody (Gent.)
PEABODY PLANTATION, WINTER 1687
Dora Peabody was delighted to have a houseguest to break up the monotony of her days, and even more pleased by the gift that Johnnie brought: some little cakes of scented soap from Venice. She sat with the men as they drank the last of the wine after the long extravagant dinner, and only went to bed when Samuel said that they would have a bowl of punch as a nightcap.
“Good night,” she said, giving her hand to Johnnie. “It’s such a pleasure… Such a…” She was nearly as drunk as her husband. Bonny came in silently, and helped her to bed. Johnnie and Samuel took their seats in his library, two comfortable chairs before the empty cedarwood shelves.
“M’ father-in-law’s library,” Samuel said, seeing Johnnie looking at the echoing space. “Took all the books when he went back to England, and I’m not much of a man for reading.”
Johnnie accepted a glass of punch. “Me neither. I never went to college.”
“I read law for a term,” Samuel reminisced. “But I’d no real use for it. I always knew that I’d come out here, or the Americas. Second son, you see—nothing left to me but a good name. I knew that I’d always find someone who wanted a good old name to attach to new dirty money. A true match,” he said. “A true love match: old name, new money.”
“How many slaves d’you have here?” Johnnie asked, trying to turn the conversation towards Rowan. The thought that she might be somewhere on the plantation, nearby, made his head spin as much as the drink.
“About two hundred,” Mr. Peabody said thoughtfully. “Overseer counts them every day so he knows exactly.”
“Two hundred?”
“Give or take. Mind!” He raised a fat finger at Johnnie. “I didn’t buy them all,” he said owlishly. “Most of them came with the land, part of her dowry.” The stubby finger jabbed upwards in the direction of Dora Peabody’s bedroom. “But so many of ’em died off. I had to buy a few, about a score, and about half a dozen white servants. I like a few white servants to keep the place safe. Even the scrapings of the poorhouse, whatever. Even rebels. Even Irish. You’ve got to have enough white men to hold the blacks down. You always have to keep that in mind.” He blinked at Johnnie as if he might have argued. “We’ve put angry natives into an empty country,” he said. “Madness. There was nobody here when we first came here. Think of that? Virgin land. But now we’re as surrounded as badly as any New Englander, overwhelmed by savages. We’ve imported our enemies.”
“It’s not a risk, buying English rebels?” Johnnie prompted.
“They don’t last,” he complained. “They can’t stand the fieldwork, and half of them have no trade. And they die of the heat. Or they wander off and get lost. Just last year I had one out looking for Dora’s little dog. Did he come back as he’d promised?”
“Did he?” Johnnie prompted when it seemed that Samuel Peabody had fallen asleep.
“No!” he said with a start. “Didn’t find his way to my neighbors, didn’t stroll off to Bridge. Vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Drowned?” Johnnie suggested.
“Only if he went all the way to the headland and fell off into the sea,” Samuel pointed out. “Didn’t drown in the pond, for sure. Not deep enough. Only the black women drown in there when they tie themselves to the anvil and haul it from the farrier’s.”
“What was his name?” Johnnie asked.
Samuel Peabody scowled with the effort of remembering. “I bought him off the Rebecca,” he said.
Johnnie felt himself grow cold in the heat of the library.
“Young lad, lean as a lop.”
“Off the Rebecca?”
“Aye. Would’ve been one of the rebels. Said he was just a servant following his master. But they all say that.”
“What was his name?” Johnnie repeated.
“Ferryman.” Samuel found the name with quiet triumph and did not notice that Johnnie had clutched the arms of his chair and was staring at him, as he searched for the Christian name.
“Ned Ferryman.”
“You’re quite sure?”
Mr. Peabody had drifted off; he came to with a jolt. “Sure? That he’s dead? Oh yes. If he didn’t break his neck in a fall or die of heatstroke, he couldn’t live here. Nothing but cane! Nothing to eat!”
“You’ve made a desert,” Johnnie said. “And filled it with enemies.”
“Ha! Ha! Y’know that’s very true. Yes, we have.”
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, SPRING 1687
Ned and Alinor, returning to the tidelands for the second summer, saw the little terns settling on their nests of pebbles, hovering over the waters, and welcomed the first swallows swooping in and out of the Priory stables where they had nested for generations. They walked through the herb garden, and Ned laughed as Alinor threatened him with comfrey soup.
“No, I’m well,” he told her. “I swear I don’t need it. You’ve made me well again.”
She smiled. “It was your own stubbornness. I prayed for you and fed you, but it was you that grabbed the side of the bed and heaved yourself up, and took another step every day.”
He had a lopsided smile now. “I’m well enough to take ship,” he told her.
“Back to New England?”
He shook his head. “Barbados.”
He saw her hesitate. “What is it?” he said flatly. “Tell me! Has he found her?”
She hesitated. “Sit down.”
“If it’s bad news, tell me now!”
She pressed him into the seat at the end of the path.
“Tell me quickly, Alinor, is she dead?”
“I am afraid so. I am sorry, my dear.” The shock on his face was too much for her. She stood behind the seat so she should not see his face twisted with pain. She rested her hand on his rigid shoulder. “I am so sorry, Ned. I only had the letter from Alys this morning.”
“I can bear it,” he said tightly. “Sit beside me. What did he say? Exactly?”
“That he went to the plantation where she was working and they said she’d gone out looking for a stray dog and met with an accident. Her owner offered a reward for the musket she was carrying but nobody came forward, and they haven’t found it, though they searched the slaves’ huts.”
“D’you have the letter?”
She produced it from the pocket of her cape, and he looked through it. Johnnie was ordering more goods for his Bridgetown warehouse, especially light goods that were easy to ship. Fabrics and ribbons and lace. Pins and needles, embroidery scissors and silks. At the end of the order, he wrote of the loss of Rowan.
“So they didn’t look for her. Sounds like her owner just asked at his neighbors, and Johnnie just asked him.”
“I’m sorry, Ned, I think that she’s gone.”
“Do you?” he demanded, returning the letter to her as if it were valueless to him. “D’you really think so? D’you feel her death, Sister? In your heart?”
She was still for a moment, her gray eyes hazy and unseeing, as if she were listening for a silent call.
“Last midsummer, we were here,” he pressed. “On Midsummer Eve. You’ll have gone to the churchyard? You’ll have waited and watched at midnight, to see those that would die this year. Did you see her then?”
She shook her head. “No one came, thank God, though I was looking for your spirit as you were so sick, and for—” She broke off; she would not tell her brother that James Avery thought his heart was broken. “And for another. But no one came. Not you, not him, and not Rowan.”
“I won’t believe it till her body’s found,” he decided. “Alinor, this isn’t a girl who tumbles off a cliff looking for a dog, she wouldn’t drown in a lake trying to rescue it. It’s my belief she’s run away, and she’s living wild somewhere.”
“Johnnie says there’s nowhere for slaves to run, the whole island is given over to sugarcane.”
“I’ve seen her hide on the shadow of a rope,” he said, his eyes warm. “In Amsterdam, I once saw her disappear in the corner of a room. I don’t believe she’s dead. She’ll be in hiding somewhere. I’m going to her.”
“D’you think you can find her?”
“Nay! Not I! I won’t see so much as her shadow unless she allows it. Nobody will ever find her. But I’ll go there, and make a bit of a noise, and she’ll come to me if she wants.”
“But she might already be with Johnnie. She might have been hiding on the plantation and be with him now. She might be safe, and his letter on the way.”
“I don’t know what there is between her and Johnnie,” Ned said steadily. “I’ve never even seen them together, and she’s never spoken of him to me. None of my business. If she comes out of hiding and goes to him… it doesn’t matter to me, Sister. I want her to please herself. In all fairness, I know that he loves her.”
“Like you?” Alinor asked.
“No! Never. He loves her as a man loves a woman, as a young man loves a young woman, and that’s good and right for him. But I love her as if she were a star in the sky. I love her as if she were the wind blowing over the water. I don’t need to own her, I just want her to be in the sky, moving over the deep, I just want her to shine.”
REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SUMMER 1687
The carriage hired to take Matthew, Mia, and Gabrielle to the Priory brought Ned back to the warehouse on the return journey. Despite Alinor’s concern, he traveled alone and arrived on an unseasonably cold rainy day and climbed down the steps without help.
“Now here’s a grand sight,” Alys greeted him in the yard. “Look at you! Not a mark on you.”
He lifted the floppy graying fringe of hair to show her the white scar where the cannonball had struck his head. “Your ma has been basting me with arnica beeswax,” he said. “And lavender, and comfrey. I swear to you, I went to bed some nights as sweet as a pomander.”
Alys laughed. “Did she feed you nettle soup? She always fed me nettle soup if I had a fall.”
Ned smiled. “I’ve come here to escape the nettle soup. Don’t remind me of it. The stench! And that green color! And fish—I had fish for dinner every day. I am like to grow fins.”
Alys laughed and led him into the house. “Come and have some small ale after your journey—are you allowed small ale?”
They walked past the open kitchen door and Ned called a greeting to the cook, Tabs, and the maid, Susie. “I am allowed small ale, but no strong liquors,” he said. “I am allowed a glass of wine and water with my dinner. I pity those children, with her for the summer, she’s a tyrant.”
Cook came in with two glasses of small ale, and Alys sat at the parlor table and Ned at the empty hearth. “Jests aside, you are well, Uncle? You look better?”
“I am. I’m well enough to sail. I’ll take a passage to Barbados.”
Alys grimaced. “All that way on the off chance that she’s alive?”
“Gladly. I owe it to her.”
“Johnnie was very sure that she was dead.”
“That’s not a girl who gets lost in a forest.”
“Uncle Ned, I don’t want Johnnie stirred up about her all over again,” Alys told him bluntly. “He’s making a fortune there, he sent home two barrels of sugar.”
“Slavery money.”
“Profit. It’s all slavery. There’s no free labor in Barbados.”
“Alys, I wouldn’t distress you for the world, and I won’t trouble him. But it’s my duty to see she’s safe. I’ll go as soon as I can raise funds for a passage.”
“Half of London’s going out with the new governor for Jamaica—you could probably get on the frigate.”
“Who is it?”
“Christopher Monck, the treasure hunter.”
He gave a comical yelp of dismay. “Drunk Monck!” he exclaimed. “I last saw him drunk as a lord, in a little town in the west. Wouldn’t come over to our side, couldn’t lead his men. Good for nowt.”
“Did he see you?” Alys asked, immediately anxious. “Did he get your name?”
“Nay, he won’t remember me, he won’t remember anything. It wasn’t his finest hour. But I might get a place in his train.”
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, SUMMER 1687
“When I was a girl,” Alinor told Mia, Gabrielle, and Hester, “we believed that if you picked a rose on Midsummer Eve, it would stay fresh and blooming till Christmas Eve.”
The girls were in the stillroom, a tray of beeswax before them, putting honeysuckle flowers facedown into the wax to drain the perfume; the heady smell filled the room. Matthew was at the stone sink, carefully washing the flowers and putting them to dry on muslin.
“And did it?” Gabrielle asked.
Mia made a face at her. “Of course not.”
Alinor smiled. “I never picked a rose on Midsummer Eve,” she admitted, “so I don’t know.”
“Why not?” Hester asked.
“I didn’t have a rose garden then,” she said. “And I was too busy to pick roses from the hedgerows. But we could do it this year and see.”
“What other things can you do for midsummer?” Gabrielle asked.
“It’s a lot about love,” Alinor cautioned them. “So of no interest to serious girls like you.”
“Should I leave?” Matthew asked, looking up from the sink full of flowers.
“No, stay,” said Hester.
“I have no time for love,” Gabrielle told them.
“Nor I,” said Mia immediately.
“Mama says that she will decide all about it,” Hester said. “And it is indelicate for a young lady to ask. But do tell us, Grandmother!”
Alinor laughed. “My, you make me feel old!” She moved the full tray to the rack and put out another for them to put clean flowerheads into wax. “If you pick St. John’s wort and put it under your pillow without telling anyone, picking it in the morning of Midsummer Eve with the dew on it, picking it in secret, then that night you will dream of the man you will marry.”
“St. John’s wort? Do you grow it?” Hester asked.
“Little yellow flower, in the herb garden,” Gabrielle told her shortly. “Is it all love potions for girls?”
“Young men can conjure their sweethearts too,” Alinor offered.
The girls turned to Matthew. “Say you’ll try!” Mia urged him.
“What does he have to do?” Gabrielle asked.
“He has to go to the herb garden before the clock strikes twelve on Midsummer Eve,” Alinor said.
“Oh no, I would be too afraid,” Matthew told them, drying his hands. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Then he has to pick a leaf of sage for each tolling of the bell.”
Matthew rolled his eyes in a parody of terror.
Alinor laughed at him. “And then when he picks the last leaf at the last bell he turns around and his future lover is standing behind him.”
“A ghost?” Matthew quavered.
“A vision, or even the real woman.”
“Terrifying!”
“No, but really, I don’t think you should do that,” Hester cautioned him. “Because it would be too easy for someone to creep up on you—”
“I’m not going into the herb garden at midnight if someone is creeping up on me—”
“Not to attack you. But to cheat you into thinking that you were destined to marry them.”
“I’m not going to marry anyone who creeps up on me,” Matthew protested. “Mother Alinor, this isn’t going to work! It can never have worked! People would always have had to marry madwomen!”
“You could try rosemary,” Alinor said, turning to Gabrielle. “You take a plate of flour and put it under a rosemary bush on Midsummer Eve. In the morning you will find your future husband’s initials written in the flour.”
“That’s a pretty one,” Hester said.
“Could we do that?” Mia asked, her eyes shining. “Just to see, of course. Not that I believe in it!”
“But I don’t want to marry a man who goes around at midnight writing his name in plates of flour,” Gabrielle objected.
“Besides, he’ll bump into Matthew’s mad wife, creeping up on him!” Mia laughed. “Is it all pretend?”
“It’s all about looking into your own heart, and then reading whatever you want in leaves and flour and dust,” Alinor ruled.
“Grandmother, have you ever told fortunes?” Hester asked her.
Alinor’s face was grave. “No sensible woman would ever do so. Even now, it’s not safe. When it’s wrong, you’re taken for a fool; and if it comes right, then you’re taken for a witch.” In the brightness of the sweet-smelling stillroom, with the untroubled young faces before her, she spoke without a quaver in her voice. “I was wrongly accused once.”
