He had stopped on one knee and was staring across the road with his jaw tight. “Just rest, Muse.” Then he flinched, and his breath hissed out in a high, thin keen of protest.
Jane followed his gaze and uttered her own exclamation of horror as one of the gang drivers brought his whip down. It struck a slender young man, leaving a crimson line across his dark shoulders. Blood already flowed from two previous lines. If the youth cried out, Jane could not hear it. The other field workers continued on with their tasks, stooping, twisting, and driving cane shoots into the ground. Their heads stayed bent as they worked.
The driver’s hand rose again.
“Stop him!”
“Then they will know we are here.” Vincent’s voice was as tightly controlled as she had ever heard it. “Look away, Jane.”
“I have seen a man flogged before.” The scene brought back too-sharp memories of watching through the trees as Napoleon’s men flogged her husband. She had been unable to stop them. In the silence, the arc the whip made was almost like a piece of glamour unfurling. Jane could not look away as it painted another bloody line. They could stop this. “We will find another way to leave.”
Vincent needed no further urging. He was on his feet and out of the Sphère Obscurcie’s influence as if a spring had been released. His chest expanded, and she could see the force of his bellow as all of the people in the field turned to look at him.
One of the drivers, a thickset man with shoe-leather skin beneath a tall straw hat, shouted at the field slaves and they ducked back to their labour. Vincent strode across the dusty road, coattails flaring. Even damp and disordered with heat as he was, his colour and clothing made him an incongruous part of the scene.
He stopped by the driver with the whip and held out his hand.
The driver glanced over his shoulder to a wagon that stood at the edge of the dusty field. A man uncoiled from the shadows. Slender and blonde, with a light linen coat, Mr. Pridmore took a sip from a canteen and set it upon the bench of the wagon before advancing to speak to Vincent.
Jane could not hear them, and she ground her teeth in frustration. That they were arguing was clear enough, and that the substance of their argument was the whipping was obvious as well, from the way Vincent gestured at the driver.
Meanwhile, the young man who had been whipped had dropped forward to rest upon his knees and bent elbows, head touching the ground. This was intolerable. She knew well how many months it had taken Vincent to recover from his ordeal, and that was with the attention of Lord Wellington’s personal physician. She could not imagine that Dr. Jones, no matter how much care she took, would be able to be so thorough, given the circumstances in which she had to work. Likely the man would be put back into the fields tomorrow, judging by the healing stripes on the backs and shoulders of the other men. Would she have seen the same on the women if they were not covered?
Jane’s stomach turned at the thought. Well, she knew how to nurse a man who had been flogged, and if she could do nothing else, she could at least provide some immediate relief. She reached into the blanket they had brought and pulled out her shift. It would mean doing with only one on board the ship, but their passage to Jamaica would not be long enough for that to be an inconvenience.
She forced aside the question of whether they would be allowed to continue on their way. With the Verre Obscurcie, she and Vincent could easily elude pursuit—they need only continue walking to town. It would make taking ship more complicated, but not unreasonably so. She hoped. Be that as it may, she could not sit idly by while she had power to affect things. It may not make any difference to anyone but this man, and then only as long as they remained, but if that were Vincent there …
… and it had been, once.
Jane stood, and familiar grey spots swam across her field of vision. Slapping her free hand against the trunk of the tamarind tree, Jane waited for the dizziness to pass. In only a moment, she felt steadier, so she walked out of the Sphère Obscurcie. When she stepped into the sunlight, the heat became a tangible force, pressing against her dark dress and folding the hot air around her face. She swallowed and continued on. She had reached the verge of the field before anyone was mindful of her presence.
A scrubby woman with two fat braids hanging out from under her kerchief saw Jane first. A dark scar at the corner of her mouth disfigured her deep brown complexion and twisted as she frowned at Jane. The braided woman glanced away to where Mr. Pridmore and Vincent argued.
Vincent fairly growled. “I made it very clear that I did not want to see any more whippings occur on the estate.”
“If you had stayed at the manor house, you wouldn’t have.”
“You are not a child. My intent was clear.”