57
PROMISED LAND
“It’s persecution!” Jamie said indignantly. He stood behind me, looking over the rail of the Artemis. Kingston Harbor stretched to our left, glowing like liquid sapphires in the morning light, the town above half-sunk in jungle green, cubes of yellowed ivory and pink rose-quartz in a lush setting of emerald and malachite. And on the cerulean bosom of the water below floated the majestic sight of a great three-masted ship, furled canvas white as gull wings, gun decks proud and brass gleaming in the sun. His Majesty’s man-of-war Porpoise.
“The filthy boat’s pursuing me,” he said, glaring at it as we sailed past at a discreet distance, well outside the harbor mouth. “Everywhere I go, there it is again!”
I laughed, though in truth, the sight of the Porpoise made me slightly nervous, too.
“I don’t suppose it’s personal,” I told him. “Captain Leonard did say they were bound for Jamaica.”
“Aye, but why would they no head straight to Antigua, where the naval barracks and the navy shipyards are, and them in such straits as ye left them?” He shaded his eyes, peering at the Porpoise. Even at this distance, small figures were visible in the rigging, making repairs.
“They had to come here first,” I explained. “They were carrying a new governor for the colony.” I felt an absurd urge to duck below the rail, though I knew that even Jamie’s red hair would be indistinguishable at this distance.
“Aye? I wonder who’s that?” Jamie spoke absently; we were no more than an hour away from arrival at Jared’s plantation on Sugar Bay, and I knew his mind was busy with plans for finding Young Ian.
“A chap named Grey,” I said, turning away from the rail. “Nice man; I met him on the ship, just briefly.”
“Grey?” Startled, Jamie looked down at me. “Not Lord John Grey, by chance?”
“Yes, that was his name? Why?” I glanced up at him, curious. He was staring at the Porpoise with renewed interest.
“Why?” He heard me when I repeated the question a second time, and glanced down at me, smiling. “Oh. It’s only that I ken Lord John; he’s a friend of mine.”
“Really?” I was no more than mildly surprised. Jamie’s friends had once included the French minister of finance and Charles Stuart, as well as Scottish beggars and French pickpockets. I supposed it was not remarkable that he should now count English aristocrats among his acquaintance, as well as Highland smugglers and Irish seacooks.
“Well, that’s luck,” I said. “Or at least I suppose it is. Where do you know Lord John from?”
“He was the Governor of Ardsmuir prison,” he replied, surprising me after all. His eyes were still fixed on the Porpoise, narrowed in speculation.
“And he’s a friend of yours?” I shook my head. “I’ll never understand men.”
He turned and smiled at me, taking his attention at last from the English ship.
“Well, friends are where ye find them, Sassenach,” he said. He squinted toward the shore, shading his eyes with his hand. “Let us hope this Mrs. Abernathy proves to be one.”
* * *
As we rounded the tip of the headland, a lithe black figure materialized next to the rail. Now clothed in spare seaman’s clothes, with his scars hidden, Ishmael looked less like a slave and a good deal more like a pirate. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much of what he had told us was the truth.
“I be leavin’ now,” he announced abruptly.
Jamie lifted one eyebrow and glanced over the rail, into the soft blue depths.
“Dinna let me prevent ye,” he said politely. “But would ye not rather have a boat?”
Something that might have been humor flickered briefly in the black man’s eyes, but didn’t disturb the severe outlines of his face.
“You say you put me ashore where I want, I be tellin’ you ’bout those boys,” he said. He nodded toward the island, where a riotous growth of jungle spilled down the slope of a hill to meet its own green shadow in the shallow water. “That be where I want.”
Jamie looked thoughtfully from the uninhabited shore to Ishmael, and then nodded.
“I’ll have a boat lowered.” He turned to go to the cabin. “I promised ye gold as well, no?”
“Don’t be wantin’ gold, mon.” Ishmael’s tone, as well as his words, stopped Jamie in his tracks. He looked at the black man with interest, mingled with a certain reserve.
“Ye’ll have something else in mind?”
Ishmael jerked his head in a short nod. He didn’t seem outwardly nervous, but I noticed the faint gleam of sweat on his temples, despite the mild noon breeze.
“I be wantin’ that one-arm nigger.” He stared boldly at Jamie as he spoke, but there was a diffidence under the confident facade.
“Temeraire?” I blurted out in astonishment. “Why?”
Ishmael flicked a glance at me, but addressed his words to Jamie, half-bold, half-cajoling.
“He ain’t no good to you, mon; can’t be doin’ field work or ship work neither, ain’t got but one arm.”
Jamie didn’t reply directly, but stared at Ishmael for a moment. Then he turned and called for Fergus to bring up the one-armed slave.
Temeraire, brought up on deck, stood expressionless as a block of wood, barely blinking in the sun. He too had been provided with seaman’s clothes, but he lacked Ishmael’s raffish elegance in them. He looked like a stump upon which someone had spread out washing to dry.
“This man wants you to go with him, to the island there,” Jamie said to Temeraire, in slow, careful French. “Do you want to do this thing?”
Temeraire did blink at that, and a brief look of startlement widened his eyes. I supposed that no one had asked him what he wanted in many years—if ever. He glanced warily from Jamie to Ishmael and back again, but didn’t say anything.
Jamie tried again.
“You do not have to go with this man,” he assured the slave. “You may come with us, and we will take care of you. No one will hurt you. But you can go with him, if you like.”
Still the slave hesitated, eyes flicking right and left, clearly startled and disturbed by the unexpected choice. It was Ishmael who decided the matter. He said something, in a strange tongue full of liquid vowels and syllables that repeated like a drumbeat.
Temeraire let out a gasp, fell to his knees, and pressed his forehead to the deck at Ishmael’s feet. Everyone on deck stared at him, then looked at Ishmael, who stood with arms folded with a sort of wary defiance.
“He be goin’ with me,” he said.
And so it was. Picard rowed the two blacks ashore in the dinghy, and left them on the rocks at the edge of the jungle, supplied with a small bag of provisions, each equipped with a knife.
“Why there?” I wondered aloud, watching the two small figures make their way slowly up the wooded slope. “There aren’t any towns nearby, are there? Or any plantations?” To the eye, the shore presented an unbroken expanse of jungle.
“Oh, there are plantations,” Lawrence assured me. “Far up in the hills; that’s where they grow the coffee and indigo—the sugarcane grows better near the coast.” He squinted toward the shore, where the two dark figures had disappeared. “It is more likely that they have gone to join a band of Maroons, though,” he said.
“There are Maroons on Jamaica as well as on Hispaniola?” Fergus asked, interested.
Lawrence smiled, a little grimly.
“There are Maroons wherever there are slaves, my friend,” he said. “There are always men who prefer to take the chance of dying like animals, rather than live as captives.”
Jamie turned his head sharply to look at Lawrence, but said nothing.
* * *
Jared’s plantation at Sugar Bay was called Blue Mountain House, presumably for the sake of the low, hazy peak that rose inland a mile behind it, blue with pines and distance. The house itself was set near the shore, in the shallow curve of the bay. In fact, the veranda that ran along one side of the house overhung a small lagoon, the building set on sturdy silvered-wood pilings that rose from the water, crusted with a spongy growth of tunicates and mussels and the fine green seaweed called mermaid’s hair.
We were expected; Jared had sent a letter by a ship that left Le Havre a week before the Artemis. Owing to our delay on Hispaniola, the letter had arrived nearly a month in advance of ourselves, and the overseer and his wife—a portly, comfortable Scottish couple named MacIvers—were relieved to see us.
“I thought surely the winter storms had got ye,” Kenneth MacIver said for the fourth time, shaking his head. He was bald, the top of his head scaly and freckled from long years’ exposure to the tropic sun. His wife was a plump, genial, grandmotherly soul—who, I realized to my shock, was roughly five years younger than myself. She herded Marsali and me off for a quick wash, brush, and nap before supper, while Fergus and Jamie went with Mr. MacIver to direct the partial unloading of the Artemis’s cargo and the disposition of her crew.
I was more than willing to go; while my arm had healed sufficiently to need no more than a light bandage, it had prevented me from bathing in the sea as was my usual habit. After a week aboard the Artemis, unbathed, I looked forward to fresh water and clean sheets with a longing that was almost hunger.
I had no landlegs yet; the worn wooden floorboards of the plantation house gave the disconcerting illusion of seeming to rise and fall beneath my feet, and I staggered down the hallway after Mrs. MacIver, bumping into walls.
The house had an actual bathtub in a small porch; wooden, but filled—mirabile dictu!—with hot water, by the good offices of two black slave women who heated kettles over a fire in the yard and carried them in. I should have felt much too guilty at this exploitation to enjoy my bath, but I didn’t. I wallowed luxuriously, scrubbing the salt and grime from my skin with a loofah sponge and lathering my hair with a shampoo made from chamomile, geranium oil, fat-soap shavings, and the yolk of an egg, graciously supplied by Mrs. MacIver.
Smelling sweet, shiny-haired, and languid with warmth, I collapsed gratefully into the bed I was given. I had time only to think how delightful it was to stretch out at full length, before I fell asleep.
When I woke, the shadows of dusk were gathering on the veranda outside the open French doors of my bedroom, and Jamie lay naked beside me, hands folded on his belly, breathing deep and slow.
He felt me stir, and opened his eyes. He smiled sleepily and reaching up a hand, pulled me down to his mouth. He had had a bath, too; he smelled of soap and cedar needles. I kissed him at length, slowly and thoroughly, running my tongue across the wide curve of his lip, finding his tongue with mine in a soft, dark joust of greeting and invitation.
I broke loose, finally, and came up for air. The room was filled with a wavering green light, reflections from the lagoon outside, as though the room itself were underwater. The air was at once warm and fresh, smelling of sea and rain, with tiny currents of breeze that caressed the skin.
“Ye smell sweet, Sassenach,” he murmured, voice husky with sleep. He smiled, reaching up to twine his fingers into my hair. “Come here to me, curly-wig.”
Freed from pins and freshly washed, my hair was clouding over my shoulders in a perfect explosion of Medusa-like curls. I reached up to smooth it back, but he tugged gently, bending me forward so the veil of brown and gold and silver fell loose over his face.
I kissed him, half-smothered in clouds of hair, and lowered myself to lie on top of him, letting the fullness of my breasts squash gently against his chest. He moved slightly, rubbing, and sighed with pleasure.
His hands cupped my buttocks, trying to move me upward enough to enter me.
“Not bloody yet,” I whispered. I pressed my hips down, rolling them, enjoying the feel of the silky stiffness trapped beneath my belly. He made a small breathless sound.
“We haven’t had room or time to make love properly in months,” I told him. “So we’re taking our time about it now, right?”
“Ye take me at something of a disadvantage, Sassenach,” he murmured into my hair. He squirmed under me, pressing upward urgently. “Ye dinna think we could take our time next time?”
“No, we couldn’t,” I said firmly. “Now. Slow. Don’t move.”
He made a sort of rumbling noise in his throat, but sighed and relaxed, letting his hands fall away to the sides. I squirmed lower on his body, making him inhale sharply, and set my mouth on his nipple.
I ran my tongue delicately round the tiny nub, making it stand up stiff, enjoying the coarse feel of the curly auburn hairs that surrounded it. I felt him tense under me, and put my hands on his upper arms to hold him still while I went on with it, biting gently, sucking and flicking with my tongue.
A few minutes later, I raised my head, brushed my hair back with one hand, and asked, “What’s that you’re saying?”
He opened one eye.
“The rosary,” he informed me. “It’s the only way I’m going to stand it.” He closed his eyes and resumed murmuring in Latin. “Ave Maria, gratia plena…”
I snorted and went to work on the other one.
“You’re losing your place,” I said, next time I came up for air. “You’ve said the Lord’s Prayer three times in a row.”
“I’m surprised to hear I’m still makin’ any sense at all.” His eyes were closed, and a dew of moisture gleamed on his cheekbones. He moved his hips with increasing restiveness. “Now?”
“Not yet.” I dipped my head lower and seized by impulse, went Pffft! into his navel. He convulsed, and taken by surprise, emitted a noise that could only be described as a giggle.
“Don’t do that!” he said.
“Will if I want to,” I said, and did it again. “You sound just like Bree,” I told him. “I used to do that to her when she was a baby; she loved it.”
“Well, I’m no a wee bairn, if ye hadna noticed the difference,” he said a little testily. “If ye must do that, at least try it a bit lower, aye?”
I did.
“You don’t have any hair at all at the tops of your thighs,” I said, admiring the smooth white skin there. “Why is that, do you think?”
“The cow licked it all off last time she milked me,” he said between his teeth. “For God’s sake, Sassenach!”
I laughed, and returned to my work. At last I stopped and raised myself on my elbows.
“I think you’ve had enough,” I said, brushing hair out of my eyes. “You haven’t said anything but ‘Jesus Christ’ over and over again for the last few minutes.”
Given the cue, he surged upward, and flipped me onto my back, pinning me with the solid weight of his body.
“You’re going to live to regret this, Sassenach,” he said with a grim satisfaction.
I grinned at him, unrepentant.
“Am I?”
He looked down at me, eyes narrowed. “Take my time, was it? You’ll beg for it, before I’ve done wi’ ye.”
I tugged experimentally at my wrists, held tight in his grasp, and wriggled slightly under him with anticipation.
“Ooh, mercy,” I said. “You beast.”
He snorted briefly, and bent his head to the curve of my breast, white as pearl in the dim green water-light.
I closed my eyes and lay back against the pillows.
“Pater noster, qui es in coelis…” I whispered.
We were very late to supper.
* * *
Jamie lost no time over supper in asking about Mrs. Abernathy of Rose Hall.
“Abernathy?” MacIver frowned, tapping his knife on the table to assist thought. “Aye, seems I’ve heard the name, though I canna just charge my memory.”
“Och, ye ken Abernathy’s fine,” his wife interrupted, pausing in her instructions to a servant for the preparation of the hot pudding. “It’s that place up the Yallahs River, in the mountains. Cane, mostly, but a wee bit of coffee, too.”
“Oh, aye, to be sure!” her husband exclaimed. “What a memory ye’ve got, Rosie!” He beamed fondly at his wife.
“Well, I might not ha’ brought it to mind mysel’,” she said modestly, “only as how that minister over to New Grace kirk last week was askin’ after Mrs. Abernathy, too.”
“What minister is this, ma’am?” Jamie asked, taking a split roast chicken from the huge platter presented to him by a black servant.
“Such a fine braw appetite as ye have, Mr. Fraser!” Mrs. MacIver exclaimed admiringly, seeing his loaded plate. “It’s the island air does it, I expect.”
The tips of Jamie’s ears turned pink.
“I expect it is,” he said, carefully not looking at me. “This minister…?”
“Och, aye. Campbell, his name was, Archie Campbell.” I started, and she glanced quizzically at me. “You’ll know him?”
I shook my head, swallowing a pickled mushroom. “I’ve met him once, in Edinburgh.”
“Oh. Well, he’s come to be a missionary, and bring the heathen blacks to the salvation of Our Lord Jesus.” She spoke with admiration, and glared at her husband when he snorted. “Now, ye’ll no be makin’ your Papist remarks, Kenny! The Reverend Campbell’s a fine holy man, and a great scholar, forbye. I’m Free Church myself,” she said, leaning toward me confidingly. “My parents disowned me when I wed Kenny, but I told them I was sure he’d come to see the light sooner or later.”
“A lot later,” her husband remarked, spooning jam onto his plate. He grinned at his wife, who sniffed and returned to her story.
“So, ’twas on account of the Reverend’s bein’ a great scholar that Mrs. Abernathy had written him, whilst he was still in Edinburgh, to ask him questions. And now that he’s come here, he had it in mind to go and see her. Though after all Myra Dalrymple and the Reverend Davis telt him, I should be surprised he’d set foot on her place,” she added primly.
Kenny MacIver grunted, motioning to a servant in the doorway with another huge platter.
“I wouldna put a great deal of stock in anything the Reverend Davis says, myself,” he said. “The man’s too godly to shit. But Myra Dalrymple’s a sensible woman. Ouch!” He snatched back the fingers his wife had just cracked with a spoon, and sucked them.
“What did Miss Dalrymple have to say of Mrs. Abernathy?” Jamie inquired, hastily intervening before full-scale marital warfare could break out.
Mrs. MacIver’s color was high, but she smoothed the frown from her brow as she turned to answer him.
“Well, a great deal of it was no more than ill-natured gossip,” she admitted. “The sorts of things folk will always say about a woman as lives alone. That she’s owerfond of the company of her men-slaves, aye?”
“But there was the talk when her husband died,” Kenny interrupted. He slid several small, rainbow-striped fish off the platter the stooping servant held for him. “I mind it well, now I come to think on the name.”
Barnabas Abernathy had come from Scotland, and had purchased Rose Hall five years before. He had run the place decently, turning a small profit in sugar and coffee, causing no comment among his neighbors. Then, two years ago, he had married a woman no one knew, bringing her home from a trip to Guadeloupe.
“And six months later, he was dead,” Mrs. MacIver concluded with grim relish.
“And the talk is that Mrs. Abernathy had something to do with it?” Having some idea of the plethora of tropical parasites and diseases that attacked Europeans in the West Indies, I was inclined to doubt it, myself. Barnabas Abernathy could easily have died of anything from malaria to elephantiasis, but Rosie MacIver was right—folk were partial to ill-natured gossip.
“Poison,” Rosie said, low-voiced, with a quick glance at the door to the kitchen. “The doctor who saw him said so. Mind, it could ha’ been the slave-women. There was talk about Barnabas and his female slaves, and it’s more common than folk like to say for a plantation cook-girl to be slipping something into the stew, but—” She broke off as another servant came in, carrying a cut-glass relish pot. Everyone was silent as the woman placed it on the table and left, curtsying to her mistress.
“You needn’t worry,” Mrs. MacIver said reassuringly, seeing me look after the woman. “We’ve a boy who tastes everything, before it’s served. It’s all quite safe.”
I swallowed the mouthful of fish I had taken, with some difficulty.
“Did the Reverend Campbell go to see Mrs. Abernathy, then?” Jamie put in.
Rosie took the distraction gratefully. She shook her head, agitating the lace ruffles on her cap.
“No, I’m sure not, for ’twas the very next day there was the stramash about his sister.”
In the excitement of tracking Ian and the Bruja, I had nearly forgotten Margaret Jane Campbell.
“What happened to his sister?” I asked, curious.
“Why, she’s disappeared!” Mrs. MacIver’s blue eyes went wide with importance. Blue Mountain House was remote, some ten miles out of Kingston by land, and our presence provided an unparalleled opportunity for gossip.
“What?” Fergus had been addressing himself to his plate with singleminded devotion, but now looked up, blinking. “Disappeared? Where?”
“The whole island’s talking of it,” Kenny put in, snatching the conversational ball from his wife. “Seems the Reverend had a woman engaged as abigail to his sister, but the woman died of a fever on the voyage.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” I felt a real pang for Nellie Cowden, with her broad, pleasant face.
“Aye.” Kenny nodded offhandedly. “Well, and so the Reverend found a place for his sister to lodge. Feebleminded, I understand?” He lifted a brow at me.
“Something like that.”
“Aye, well, the lass seemed quiet and biddable, and Mrs. Forrest, who had the house where she lodged, would take her to sit on the veranda in the cool part of the day. So Tuesday last, a boy comes to say as Mrs. Forrest is wanted quicklike to come to her sister, who’s having a child. And Mrs. Forrest got flustered and went straight off, forgetting Miss Campbell on the veranda. And when she thought of it, and sent someone back to see—why Miss Campbell was gone. And not a smell of her since, in spite of the Reverend raising heaven and earth, ye might say.” MacIver rocked back on his chair, puffing out his sun-mottled cheeks.
Mrs. MacIver wagged her head, tsking mournfully.
“Myra Dalrymple told the Reverend as how he should go to the Governor for help to find her,” she said. “But the Governor’s scarce settled, and not yet ready to receive anyone. He’s having a great reception this coming Thursday, for to meet all the important folk o’ the island. Myra said as the Reverend must go, and speak to the Governor there, but he’s no of a mind to do that, it bein’ such a worldly occasion, aye?”
“A reception?” Jamie set down his spoon, looking at Mrs. MacIver with interest. “Is it by invitation, d’ye know?”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Anyone may come as likes to, or so I’ve heard.”
“Is that so?” Jamie glanced at me, smiling. “What d’ye think, Sassenach—would ye care to step out wi’ me at the Governor’s Residence?”
I stared at him in astonishment. I should have thought that the last thing he would wish to do was show himself in public. I was also surprised that he would let anything at all stop his visiting Rose Hall at the earliest opportunity.
“It’s a good opportunity to ask about Ian, no?” he explained. “After all, he might not be at Rose Hall, but someplace else on the island.”
“Well, aside from the fact that I’ve nothing to wear…” I temporized, trying to figure out what he was really up to.
“Och, that’s no trouble,” Rosie MacIver assured me. “I’ve one of the cleverest sempstresses on the island; she’ll have ye tricked out in no time.”
Jamie was nodding thoughtfully. He smiled, eyes slanting as he looked at me over the candle flame.
“Violet silk, I think,” he said. He plucked the bones delicately from his fish and set them aside. “And as for the other—dinna fash, Sassenach. I’ve something in mind. You’ll see.”