“It will not happen.”
“August said we have to start over. I just want to go home, that’s what I want. Some bloody French pirates could kill Rafe MacAlister and take us on a big man-o’-war or a ship of the line, as they called that one they burned down with the rats and the plague, remember? And then they would take us back to Jamaica. And then we would find Ma and take up sewing. I figure since those Saracens fed us almost not at all, and the English fed us quite a bit better, well, the French do like their victuals, Ma always said, and they would have more food and sail around the other way and take us home if we asked them to and explained how we were stolen. Mostly should someone kill Rafe MacAlister, that’s the good start of it. French voyagers, I think—”
A hand jerked me from the line. “Who’s going to kill Rafe MacAlister for you, brat? I’m going to tie you to that tree there and leave you for the crows.” I looked up into Uncle Rafe’s grizzled face, aware that although I began with a whisper my voice had taken strength from my words and I had been talking loudly enough to echo in the woods around us. He held my arm with a grip that felt like he would crush my bones. He pulled a dagger and held it against my lips, sliding it up and down so that I felt a stinging, as he said, “It would be worth the ten pounds I’ll get for you, to me, to cut your throat and watch you strangle on your own blood, you little cur. Maybe I will just cut your tongue out. How would you like that? Maybe I’ll cut out your briny tongue and give you a taste of what’s been keeping your sister company. Eh?”
My mind raced. My stomach gnawed and growled as he shook me. Had Patience been given extra food? The look in his eyes told me something more, as if I were to know something unknowable. Remembering Patey’s bruised and bloody face, I shrank from him and he let go my arm. Soon as we began to move again, I sang Ma’s old charm against evil to the rhythm of my steps, my voice meant for Patey’s ears. “Gum-boo cru-ah-he na clock. Gum-boo du-he-he na’n gaul, gum-boo loo-ah-he na lock.”
Patience turned and stared at me, not watching where she walked, and my heart was moved, for she smiled! She turned and took up my song, the first part which I had forgotten, and whispered the song under her voice to the rhythm of our feet. “Ulk-ah he-en mo-lock; gun gaven-galar gluk-glock.”
I answered back with my part and she sang again, “Go-intay, go-intay, sailtay, sailtay, see-ock, see-ock, oo-ayr!” I thought of Rafe MacAlister, and chanted the ancient words under my breath until I laughed aloud. My laughter was not mirth but clinging faith in the words I said, a curse against all who might do us harm. I wished I had thought of the songs while still in the capture of the Saracens. Perhaps they would never have got us as far as the English sailors and Rafe, and we would be home already.
The path widened into a narrow road. Waist-high brambles lined both sides. If a cart had come along we would have had to stand in deep brush to let it pass. They stopped us by a well to rest. The well was below a small rock circle, under a roof so low that anyone taller than me would have to stoop to reach the cracked and useless bucket that had been left by it. We fixed our quilted petticoats as capes. “That is warmer,” I said. I thought Patey looked so haggard, so drawn, that I feared for her life.
“Why do you look at me so?” she asked.
“Something is so lost in your eyes. Your face is so terrible you make me afraid.”
“’Tis merely that you have not seen me in the light of day in so long.”
“We shall go home soon. Mayhap that old charm will work.”
“’Tis old foolishment. Ma was naught but a gentlewoman and she would never cast a spell or a charm. ’Twas a song she knew from her granny.” Patience brushed her hands along her arms under the petticoat-cape. “I doubt we shall ever see Jamaica again. I doubt I will live to see Christ’s Mass Day.”
I pressed her arms with my hands then, the same way she was doing, to give more comfort to her. “I am more afraid now than ever I was before. We must go home again. If the charm helps, it is good to remember it.”
Cora fiddled through the other women toward us. She said to me, “Little Miss Resolute, what is that shining on your sister’s back?”
I saw the shine just as she said it, too, and clasped my hands across my mouth. “Patience, turn quickly.” The cloth had worn through and showed a glint of metal with the too obvious shape of a coin printed into the linen. Our treasures!
Patience rolled it in her hand. “I shall turn it inside outside,” she said, and worked the cape over her head again.
Cora squinted and asked, “What’s you got sewn into that, Missy?”
Patience shrugged and said, “It is nary a thing,” but I heard how Cora’s voice had changed. Now on land, she had said “missy” the old slave way instead of Patey’s name.