Black Heart of Jamaica

  Hawkins turned to his overseer. ‘Did I force the gal here, Dawlish?’

  ‘No, sir,’ the man rasped.

  ‘Of course not: he did!’ I pointed an accusing finger at the shaven-headed man beside me. ‘But you ordered him to do so.’

  ‘Changing your story already, are you? That never looks good in court. What did you see, Dawlish?’ Hawkins tapped the paper thoughtfully on the desk.

  Dawlish smirked. ‘I saw the magistrate decide on a punishment and the gal signing the deed, sir.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  This was terrifying. Something snapped inside me. Beyond reason, I acted on instinct. I whirled round and bolted for the door, making it out into the passageway.

  ‘After her!’ bellowed Hawkins.

  I don’t know what I thought to achieve by my mad dash for freedom but I couldn’t stand there and let them taunt me. Bursting out of a side door, I stumbled over a flowerbed and leapt a fence. My petticoat caught on a splinter but I ripped it free. A field of towering sugar cane lay ahead, cast into deep shadow by the lowering sun. Without hesitation, I plunged in, hoping to lose myself among the thick stalks. Foliage whipped at my face and arms. On I went. Sweat dripped down my back as I grew hot and sticky in my panicked flight. Chest heaving, I crumpled on to my hands and knees for a moment to regain my breath. Tears and dust tasted salty in my mouth. I could hear shouts behind me but no one was close enough to hear my panting.

  Then one voice rose above the others. ‘Release the dogs!’ shouted Mr Hawkins.

  And I had thought things couldn’t get worse.

  With a sob and a curse, I struggled up and began running again. If I remained on the ground, I did not know what the dogs would do to me when they tracked me down. The field gave way abruptly to another low fence. Beyond stretched a patch of scrub leading down to a cove. The sea, molten gold in the sunset, looked so peaceful as it unfurled like a bolt of silk on to the white sand – a sight completely out of step with the turbulent emotions inside me. I scrambled over the fence, making for the beach. I’d read once that dogs cannot track scent in water: it seemed better than waiting for them to pounce on me up here.

  Splash! Splash! Splash! The water drenched my skirts as I ran through the shallows. My shoes weighed me down but I had no time to remove them. Risking a glance over my shoulder, I saw two huge dogs bound down the path, arrowing towards me, baying loudly. They’d reach me in a trice. I turned away to plunge deeper into the water. Briefly knocked back by a wave, I flailed to get beyond their depth. The water was now up to my waist, now my chest. Undeterred by the sea, the dogs followed, swimming through the waves as if this was all some sort of game.

  ‘Stop there, gal!’ Hawkins and his men had reached the beach. ‘You’ve nowhere to go.’

  Too busy swimming with their paws to maul me, the dogs snapped in my direction, yelping with excitement.

  This was not an auspicious moment to learn how to swim but I was too desperate to return meekly to the sand. I struck out for deeper water.

  Orders were shouted behind me. A whistle. A wave splashed over my head and I took a mouthful of water and went under. Breaking the surface, eyes stinging, I felt utter despair. I didn’t want to drown but neither did I want to be recaptured. But the instinct to survive won out and I barely resisted when an arm caught me round the waist, dragging me the way I’d come. The slave who had been sent to fetch me now carried me back clutched to his chest. Without a word, he released me once we returned to the sand. I staggered a little but then straightened my spine, brushing my hair off my face. Water pooled at my feet as it dripped from my clothes.

  A cane prodded my stomach, and I flinched.

  ‘That was very stupid and will not go unpunished. Take her to her quarters, Dawlish.’ Hawkins then whistled to the dogs and strolled away, throwing a stick for them to catch.

  The overseer marched me to the barracks, sparing no thought for the state of my feet in my squelching shoes or the utter weariness of my body. He opened the door to my cell and pushed me inside, abandoning me there in my wet garments.

  Clearly no one was going to offer me any comfort so I would have to deal with my state as best I could. Shivering, I stripped off my dress and wrapped myself in the blanket. I wrung the gown out into the bucket then hung it up by the window to dry. Taking a drink of water from the jug, I curled up in a corner to sleep, too exhausted in body and spirit to think any more. The steady drip, drip from the hem of the gown and the whine of mosquitoes kept me company that night.

  ACT IV

  SCENE 1 – MALARIA

  I woke the next morning shaking with cold. My teeth rattled like a brace of dice in a gambler’s fist. Surely it couldn’t be this cold in my cell? I clutched my arms to my sides, trying to still the shudders that racked my body, but to no effect. I gulped down the remaining water, propping myself against the wall. I don’t know how long I remained in this position before the door opened but I sensed rather than saw Dawlish standing on the threshold. He strode across the cell, felt my forehead and swore. To my great relief, he immediately left the room, banging the door behind him.

  Time passed and the feeling of cold was replaced by feverish heat. I wished I hadn’t finished off the water for I now had a raging thirst. I closed my eyes, too tired to keep up the effort required to remain alert.

  My next visitor was a newcomer. I was drifting in and out of a fever-dream but I saw enough to know that it was a slave, carrying a bowl of water, a cloth and a pile of clean clothes. Crooning gently, she removed my damp shift and petticoat, replacing them with a blue cotton blouse and skirt like her own. Her touch was kind as she cooled my burning skin with the cloth. She dipped out of the cell for a moment and returned with a dry blanket and some fresh water. She found me mumbling the song I’d heard on my arrival.

  ‘New-come buckra,

  She get sick,

  She tak fever,

  She be die

  She be die.’

  ‘Hush now,’ she scolded gently. ‘You no die. Dat be wicked song.’

  I began to sob. Reader, I’m very rarely ill, priding myself on a sturdy constitution, but this fever was testing my strength to the limit. I needed to be strong to extricate myself from this predicament but here I was reduced to a babbling, weeping wreck.

  The fever mounted, took hold and rode me hard. The next few hours blurred into one long delirium broken only by a woman’s cool hand and a cup held to cracked lips. Her medicine was bitter, making me vomit, but it did seem to ease the bone ache for a while. I now lay on a mat, scratchy against the skin but better than the cold floor. The sweat poured off me – a sign, my nurse assured me, that my body was fighting the illness. I was too tired to care. My mind played tricks, sometimes making me think I was back in the green room in Drury Lane, or on board the Courageous or even in my comfortable bedroom in Philadelphia. Returning to consciousness always brought the returning pain of awareness of where I really was. I preferred the delusions.

  The following day, I woke to find my fever had broken. I lay for a long time, relishing the sensation of a clear head and cool skin. I slept, only rousing a whole day later feeling hungry. My kind nurse came in and saw that I was finally awake.

  ‘How be missy now?’ she asked solicitously. ‘You take malaria bad.’

  ‘Malaria?’ I’d heard many frightening tales of this swamp fever and the number of lives it had claimed.

  ‘It hide now. So how you feel?’

  ‘Much better, thank you.’

  ‘Me get you food, then tell Mister Dawlish you well.’

  A reminder of the convict-faced overseer made me shudder. ‘I wouldn’t say I was well, just better than I was.’

  Her brow puckered in sympathy. ‘Me know, missy, but if me no tell him, me get punished.’

  She returned with some broth then left me alone to eat. I guessed that might be the last I saw of her. I doubted Hawkins’ servants were allowed to convalesce waited on hand and foot. Deciding it was better I f
ound out my condition before the overseer arrived, I put my bowl aside and hauled myself to my feet. My limbs shook. I felt like a newly birthed foal struggling to stand.

  ‘About time you got up,’ Dawlish commented from the door. ‘I’ll take you to your duties. The master said to start them light until you recovered your strength.’

  I leaned my forehead against the wall. ‘How kind of him,’ I said acidly.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he growled. ‘I told you to come with me.’

  ‘I’m waiting for the ability to put one foot in front of the other.’

  Without further ado, the overseer threw me over his shoulder and strode back to the house. Dumping me beside the kitchen table, he gestured to the cook.

  ‘Keep her busy, Cookie. Mr Hawkins’ orders.’

  ‘Yessir,’ the cook said humbly.

  Once Dawlish had gone, I collapsed on to a stool, then tumbled sideways in a dead faint. I didn’t even feel my head hit the floor.

  When I came to, I found myself propped in a corner with a bowl of peas lodged in my lap. They’d already been shelled. The cook saw my eyelids flutter open. She looked familiar somehow but I couldn’t recall where I’d seen her. Not at the theatre, surely?

  ‘You keep busy with dem peas, missy,’ she ordered. ‘Keep right on shellin’ de little devils and me make us a cup of coffee.’

  Somewhat revived by her strong, sugared brew, I managed to carry the bowl to the table and took a stool beside her.

  ‘You sure look like duppy now,’ she commented, brushing a finger over my pale cheeks.

  It now came rushing back to me. So that was where I’d met her: outside the Obeah man’s hut. She had been the woman who had spotted me lurking in the bushes. But I knew better than to mention the Obeah man’s name here. She had to be able to trust that I would keep her secret.

  ‘Not quite a duppy yet, ma’am,’ I agreed, with a weak smile, ‘though I feel like one.’

  She grinned at my polite form of address. ‘No white gal ever called me dat. Mah name’s Cookie, noting else.’

  ‘Then I’m Cat, nothing else.’

  She chuckled and slipped me a pancake from the griddle on the stove, a delicious golden coin of feather-light batter.

  ‘Me goin’ to fatten you up, gal, so you don’t frighten de chillen round here.’

  I ran a hand over my ribs. ‘Thank you. I think I need it.’

  ‘You sure do, honey. Dat fever come back soon and you need strength.’

  My jaw dropped. ‘Come back!’

  ‘Malaria – he ride you for a spell, den come back to take you again, sometimes worse, sometimes better. He live with you now so you get used to him.’

  ‘You mean I’m never going to be free of it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Me know folk who have de fever all dere lives. No one knows how he come and go.’

  I munched my pancake, regretting bitterly my foolish decision to come to the West Indies. Even if I got away from Hawkins, I was now saddled with an illness that could strike at any moment. Foreign travel had sounded so exotic when read about in books; the reality was rather more uncomfortable and costly to health.

  ‘I want to go home.’ I hadn’t realized that I had spoken aloud till Cookie answered.

  ‘Me know you do, gal, but you must be good servant now. Mister Hawkins is not kind massa.’ She glanced at the door. ‘How you end up here, missy? All of us want to know why he brung you and treat you so cruel.’

  I quickly explained my past dealings with Pedro’s old master. I wasn’t reassured by her horrified looks as she realized the full extent of Hawkins’ hatred for me. Instead of commenting, she pressed another pancake in my hand.

  ‘Keep out of dat man’s way,’ she whispered. A bell rang above the door. ‘Dat be de massa wanting his coffee.’ She filled a pot and stuck her head round the door to the courtyard out back. ‘Manny, you come take massa his tray!’

  A boy bobbed into the kitchen. Cookie wiped his face clean with the edge of her apron and hustled him towards the corridor leading to the breakfast room. A few minutes later, he came back crying, coffee spilt all down his cotton shirt. With a little scream of distress, Cookie whipped the clothes off his back and pressed a cold cloth to his skin.

  ‘Massa say dat de duppy gal should bring it,’ sobbed the little boy, fortunately more shocked than scalded.

  Cookie darted me a concerned look but quickly refilled the pot. She shoved the tray into my arms.

  ‘You can do dis?’ she asked.

  I nodded, biting my lip.

  She patted my shoulder. ‘Den hurry.’ She folded the little boy into a cuddle as she watched me leave. Her expression suggested that she doubted she would see me return in one piece.

  Standing outside the door of the dining room, I debated what I should do when I saw my tormentor again. Pour the coffee over Hawkins’ head to repay him for what he’d done to that little boy? That was my favourite, if suicidal, wish. Keeping my lips firmly closed to prevent my tongue running away with me, I entered, too shivery and weak to stop the cup and saucer rattling as I crossed to the table. Plan B had been to come and go without attracting attention and this was what I was hoping to do.

  ‘Been sick, I hear?’ Hawkins’ voice cut through the air like a whiplash.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You may call me master like my other slaves.’

  I put the tray down and poured a cup with a shaking hand. A little spilled into the saucer.

  ‘Clumsy as well as feeble – I’m disappointed in my newest acquisition.’

  I still hadn’t looked at him. To do so would be to put a match to my gunpowder temper. I wiped the saucer clean with a napkin and set the cup down in front of him. He was sitting alone at a large dining table, the sideboard spread with dishes as if a dozen were to eat.

  But I bet, Reader, none of it tasted as fine as Cookie’s pancakes hot from the griddle.

  I approached him warily, as one would a snake. I was right to be cautious: he had been contemplating his next strike. As I placed the cream jug on the table, he grabbed my wrist, easily circling it with his fingers. He turned my arm over.

  ‘Not malingering then,’ he concluded. ‘What was wrong with you?’

  I stood passively, trying to ignore the fact that he was touching me and my palm was itching to slap him. ‘They say it was malaria.’

  ‘Ha!’ He flung my arm from him in disgust. ‘Damn useless female. Won’t get much work out of you if you’re sick half the time.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I muttered sarcastically.

  The cream jug sailed through the air. I ducked in time and it shattered against the door.

  ‘Watch your tongue, gal, or I’ll have it removed.’ He glared down at his coffee. ‘I drink it white – fetch some more cream.’

  I retreated to the kitchen. Cookie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘He’s in a bad mood,’ I explained as I filled a new jug.

  ‘Dat be his usual mood since he lost de other penn to de Englishman.’ Cookie stoked the fire, making the kitchen unbearably hot.

  I hurried back to the dining room, slowing only as I entered. At least it was cool in here with the breeze whispering through the louvred windows.

  ‘And two sugars!’ snapped Hawkins as I stirred in the cream.

  ‘Is that sweet enough for you, sir?’ I asked in honeyed tones as I imagined stirring arsenic into his brew.

  He took a sip then noticed my expression.

  ‘Why are you smiling? I never want to see you smile again, gal.’

  ‘Very good, sir. I will contain myself in your presence.’ Mustering all my acting powers, I pulled my face into a tragic frown. Inside part of me was still laughing that I had so many small ways of annoying him – petty revenges but ones worth taking.

  He set his cup back on the saucer. ‘What’s that expression supposed to mean?’

  ‘Sadness for my inability to appear before you with sufficient gravity . . . si
r.’ He hadn’t yet noticed that I was refusing to call him master. That was a line I had determined not to cross.

  Before he could work out if I was being insolent – and Reader, I cheerfully admit that I was – the sound of pounding hooves came from the driveway. We both looked to the window: a young man in a puce coloured coat had just ridden up the drive. When he removed his hat, I realized Billy had come to call. Never before had I been so relieved to see him: my cavalry had finally arrived.

  ‘I thought he’d be here sooner than this,’ sneered Hawkins.

  I made to run out into the hall but Hawkins barked:

  ‘Stay. You can remain here to see him.’

  He was letting me be present for the visit? Why did I not find that reassuring?

  The butler opened the door to announce the caller. ‘Mr Shepherd, massa.’

  ‘Come in, Shepherd. Do you want some coffee?’ Hawkins waved to where I stood by the tray.

  Billy paused on the threshold, his eyes sweeping over both of us, then passed the butler his hat and gloves.

  ‘I think I will,’ he replied.

  Hawkins gestured to me to serve his guest. I hesitated too long.

  ‘Pour the coffee, gal.’ He prodded me in the side with his fork. Saucer clattering, I splashed some coffee into the cup and shoved it in Billy’s direction. He took it from me with a questioning look.

  ‘What’s ’appened to you, Cat? Why are you ’ere?’

  ‘Billy, I –’

  ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t address my staff, Shepherd.’

  A muscle twitched in Billy’s cheek.

  ‘She’s skin and bone! What have you done to her?’

  ‘Nothing. She’s been ill. Fever.’

  Billy turned to me for verification and I nodded slightly.

  ‘You said she was staff. What the devil do you mean by that?’

  ‘She was picked up for vagrancy and is now an indentured servant,’ Hawkins replied briskly, delighted to have delivered this coup de grâce. ‘I can show you the deed if you wish.’

  ‘He forced me to sign, Billy!’ I said in a rush. ‘Abducted me – set his dogs on me!’