Patience said, “Tell everyone they best hide in the fields. We saw a ship in the bay that looks to be—” but her words dropped off the end of the world as a cannon boomed from close by.
The bum-bum sounds repeated thrice more. Something splashed in the bay, a larger noise than a dolphin. Joseph’s and Lucy’s eyes looked the same, bright white and shining in their dark skin. I hoped they would take hold of our hands and help us get to a safe place in the fields, and keep us from the pigs, but they ran away, leaving us in the well house! As they ran their voices rang across the clearing, echoing against the circled wooden shacks, and people poured from every door. Dogs, naked children, partly clothed and even naked full-grown men and women slaves emerged and ran to the cane. The pigs squealed somewhere distant. All of life in the huts vanished into the black and rustling cane fields except two dogs. The dogs danced and barked as if they had been waiting for this night: a full moon and a frolic.
“Let us hide,” Patience said. “Come, now.”
“I am going home. I am not scared o’ Rafe MacAlister,” I said.
“Resolute! I said no.”
I started toward home. Over my shoulder I shouted, “You had best hide here with Lucy. You are not marrying Rafe and pirates do not want a little girl.”
Out of the shadows Patience screamed with a shriek of terror and it caught my feet sure as any trap. She stood at the edge of the wagon road cut between two fields. One crop brake stood almost four feet tall, the other over five feet. Slave men stood at the edge of the field, a quivering naked army of plant men waving their great sugarcane knives, threatening to hack anyone who came nearer.
A woman’s voice with a strong Dutch-African accent said, “You gone back to the big house and tarry, Missy Talbot. Gone, now. You be safess’ dere. Don’ be laying out here with us. Summa dese folks don’ speak English. Don’ knows what could happen.”
Patience ran from them and followed me. She cried as we ran, and I wondered if they had hurt her feelings, or did she cry from fear of having Rafe for a husband, or from pirates coming, or from the rocks under our thin parlor shoes? I heard a new cannon report, and this time close enough to hear the concussion of the ball against the stone walls of our house. Another cannonball crashed through part of the roof near one of the fireplaces and a great splintering of glowing cinders shot into the air.
Through a shout of men’s voices I heard Ma calling our names, and I saw her silhouetted against fire, standing alone in the front carriageway. “Daughters!” Ma said. “Go! Go, run.” For a moment Ma ran toward us then back to the house, then turned around and came at us again as if she could not make out which way portended better. “I thought you were safely away! Come. I will give you something. Come quickly.” She pulled us inside, where furniture lay tossed about. The curtains at the far wall waved in flames. Wind blew through the gap where the fireplace had stood. Pa came through the room, his arms loaded with two boxes where he kept the pistols. August followed, holding three swords. Rafe had drawn a sword and carried it aloft, and I saw two pistols pushed through the sash at his waist.
We followed Ma through a hallway to her sleeping room. There she flung open a chest and pulled out two blankets with ties fast at each top. I had seen her a-working at them and asked after them but she had not said what the purpose was, for never would we have needed such heavy covers. She shook one and set it in a ring on the floor. The sound of pistols and a crash of metal on metal seemed far away. Were Pa and August holding off twenty-two men? Might Uncle Rafe be fighting, too? If he were to save my pa, I should have to think on him much more kindly in the future.
Ma pushed Patience’s skirts up and said, “Step in this petticoat,” pointing. In less than a moment Ma had pulled it up and fixed it by the ties around Patey’s waist. “Take everything from this,” she said, pulling her fine worked-silver jewelry casket from its shelf. “Put them all in the folds here.” She plied the quilted petticoat and, as if by magic, opened pockets and duckets, pushing in rings and brooches, and in one, a string of fine pearls long as an ell, which she lifted from her own neck. In the shortest order I had ever seen, she pushed at the seams and squeezed forth threaded needles at the waiting, whipping the openings closed. She tied on Patey’s pocket, a small bag that hung at her waist, and in it put the silver-and-jeweled casket itself. It was no bigger than an egg, and disappeared into the folds.