This is where I was born and all around us is all I have ever known, fields of sugarcane and coffee, slaves to tend the cane fields, and then, wearing starched white linen, to bring in the roast chicken at dinner, the smell of the sea and the soil and the perfume of flowers. Throughout the night, breezes off the mountains brought the rhythm of drums from the slave quarters. Sometimes if I kept quite still I heard singing. I imagined their happy world filled with music. I wished I could join them.
By day I did my lessons in the schoolroom on the top floor where the window blinds were all that kept a girl from dreaming of a home she had never known beyond the sea, for the wind off the ocean seemed to pine for England, to mourn her like a lost promise, the way Patience weeps at night for her lost love and lost future marriage. I pressed her to tell me how she could have threatened the son of a lord with marriage if she herself had been but ten years old. She told me that the path between our house and his was a common one, but a hedge had grown at a certain shady secluded point where they had used to meet together and play. He was two years older—a vision of manliness, she said—though I pictured a boy of twelve being spindle-legged and having great flopping feet. Such keen friends they had become that they spoke to each other of promises and everlasting love, and when he told his father, that was that. She kept a lock of his hair, near black as pitch, in a box along with a little paper he had written upon with their names entwined by something rather like a crow carrying a twig although Patience says it is a dove holding a ribbon.
For me a land called England was but a magical tale of far away and long ago. My own ma and pa would tell me fancy tales they must have fashioned in their own minds about some kingdom of gold and crowns and cold such as I could never imagine, a land without mountains, without snakes or cane fields. I did not believe in those things. To me, it was make-believe just like the fairy folk, brownies, and selkies. For myself, I believe in God and a few saints and of course duppies, the sprites that live here. Pa would laugh and say treacle ran in my veins.
Uncle Rafe stood, his back to the hearth and hellfire as big as mine in his eyes. Pa looked to Patience and said, “Daughter, fetch Uncle a new plate. Son,” he said to August, “bring the tobacco box.”
“But, sir,” August said, and Pa raised his hand. He sat and opened his hands toward Rafe. Rough, broad hands that knew work. As if that were his only apology for a wayward bairn like me. After that Pa offered Rafe his new pipe and filled it himself with his best tobacco. Pa sent me to bed. As I left the room I made note that Uncle’s wig was askew and smelled bad. Pa wore no periwig, just tied his hair in a lock at the back of his neck. Boiling-sugarcane odors clung to Pa like a coat. I had thought I loathed the smell of cane, but any horse in the barn smelled better than Uncle Rafe and I knew I loved the smell of Pa.
“Pa?” I whispered.
Pa made a squint sidelong at me. A string of thought came unspoken from his face, saying, “Try to obey this time,” and, “I will explain later,” mixed with, “You are two shakes away from getting a well-deserved walloping, girl.” So I climbed the stairs to my room and listened from the doorway.
Rafe’s voice grew loud as if he meant me to hear, saying, “Cocky little oyster. That’n needs to feel a boot. I’d give her a taste of Rafe MacAlister’s hobnails.”
“She is not grown. We will discipline her, sir,” Ma said.
The air grew tight with silence and their voices lowered so I could not hear as well. I tiptoed down five steps. The sixth one always had a squeak so I stayed five from the top. I heard Rafe laughing and he said, “So, maybe you won’t have to. I’ve waited all I’m about to wait. You’ve sworn a bargain. Be she ready?”
I stretched one leg as far as I could, stepping over the noisy stair to the one below.
“By no means,” Pa’s voice said. “Patience is still a child. And she’s recently had smallpox and quinsy. You should have sent word you were coming.”
“A delicate child,” Ma added.
“I sent word before and you’d sent her on an errand to the parish convent. Our deal was your safekeeping on this island in return for a wife. You’ve no dowry for her, no legacy except for the boy, there. Two wenches who’ll be nothing but a drain on Her Majesty’s profits for the length of their lives. You’ve put me off long enough. I’ll see her home.”
“Mistress Talbot,” said Pa, in a voice he used during their most formal balls when something more needed saying, “will you speak to Miss Patience? Explain the situation.”
I knew then that more danger was afoot. When slaves had come from Benderidge Plantation, carrying forks and fence posts and wanting food, Pa had said we had a “situation.” When two boys waylaid August in Kingston, that was a situation, too, and it took him two weeks to get up from his bed. Ma nearly bumped me over in the stairway, rushing with her hand on Patience’s arm, their faces dreadful, their eyes gleaming, even in the darkness of the staircase.