60
THE SCENT OF GEMSTONES
Rose Hall was ten miles out of Kingston, up a steep and winding road of reddish dust that led into blue mountains. The road was overgrown, so narrow that we must ride in single file most of the way. I followed Jamie through the dark, sweet-scented caverns of cedar boughs, under trees nearly a hundred feet high. Huge ferns grew in the shade below, the fiddleheads nearly the size of real violin necks.
Everything was quiet, save for the calling of birds in the shrubbery—and even that fell silent as we passed. Jamie’s horse stopped dead, once, and backed up, snorting; we waited as a tiny green snake wriggled across the path and into the undergrowth. I looked after it, but could see no farther than ten feet from the edge of the road; everything beyond was cool green shadow. I half-hoped that Mr. Willoughby had come this way—no one would ever find him, in a place like this.
The Chinaman had not been found in spite of an intensive search of the town by the island militia. The special detachment of marines from the barracks on Antigua was expected to arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, every house in Kingston was shut up like a bank vault, the owners armed to the teeth.
The mood of the town was thoroughly dangerous. Like the naval officers; it was the militia colonel’s opinion that if the Chinaman were found, he would be lucky to survive long enough to be hanged.
“Be torn to pieces, I expect,” Colonel Jacobs had said as he escorted us from the Residence on the night of the murder. “Have his balls ripped off and thrust down his stinking throat, I daresay,” he added, with obvious grim satisfaction at the thought.
“I daresay,” Jamie had murmured in French, assisting me into the carriage. I knew that the question of Mr. Willoughby was still troubling him; he had been quiet and thoughtful on the ride through the mountains. And yet there was nothing we could do. If the little Chinese was innocent, we could not save him; if he was guilty, we could not give him up. The best we might hope for was that he would not be found.
And in the meantime, we had five days to find Young Ian. If he were indeed at Rose Hall, all might be well. If he were not…
* * *
A fence and small gate marked the division of the plantation from the surrounding forest. Inside, the ground had been cleared, and planted in sugarcane and coffee. Some distance from the house, on a separate rise, a large, plain, mud-daub building stood, roofed with palm thatch. Dark-skinned people were going in and out, and the faint, cloying scent of burnt sugar hung over the place.
Below the refinery—or so I assumed the building to be—stood a large sugar press. A primitive-looking affair, this consisted of a pair of huge timbers crossed in the shape of an X, set on an enormous spindle, surmounting the boxlike body of the press. Two or three men were clambering over the press, but it was not working at present; the oxen who drove it were hobbled some distance away, grazing.
“How do they ever get the sugar down from here?” I asked curiously, thinking of the narrow trail we had come up. “On mules?” I brushed cedar needles off the shoulders of my coat, making myself presentable.
“No,” Jamie answered absently. “They send it down the river on barges. The river’s just over there, down the wee pass ye can see beyond the house.” He pointed with his chin, reining up with one hand, and using the other to beat the dust of travel from the skirts of his coat.
“Ready, Sassenach?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Rose Hall was a two-storied house; long and graciously proportioned, with a roof laid in expensive slates, rather than in the sheets of tin that covered most of the planters’ residences. A long veranda ran all along one side of the house, with long windows and French doors opening on to it.
A great yellow rosebush grew by the front door, climbing on a trellis and spilling over the edge of the roof. The scent of its perfume was so heady that it made breathing difficult; or perhaps it was only excitement that made my breath come short and stick in my throat. I glanced around as we waited for the door to be answered, trying to catch a glimpse of any white-skinned figure near the sugar refinery above.
“Yes, sah?” A middle-aged slave woman opened the door, looking out curiously at us. She was wide-bodied, dressed in a white cotton smock, with a red turban wrapped round her head, and her skin was the deep, rich gold in the heart of the flowers on the trellis.
“Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm, to call upon Mrs. Abernathy, if ye please,” Jamie said politely. The woman looked rather taken aback, as though callers were not a common occurrence, but after a moment’s indecision, she nodded and stepped back, swinging the door wide.
“You be waitin’ in the salon, please, sah,” she said, in a soft lilt that made it “sallong.” “I be askin’ the mistress will she see you.”
It was a large room, long and graciously proportioned, lit by huge casement windows all down one side. At the far end of the room was the fireplace, an enormous structure with a stone overmantel and a hearth of polished slates that occupied nearly the whole wall. You could have roasted an ox in it without the slightest difficulty, and the presence of a large spit suggested that the owner of the house did so on occasion.
The slave had shown us to a wicker sofa and invited us to be seated. I sat, looking about, but Jamie strolled restlessly about the room, peering through the windows that gave a view of the cane fields below the house.
It was an odd room; comfortably furnished with wicker and rattan furniture, well-equipped with fat, soft cushions, but ornamented with small, uncommon curios. On one window ledge sat a row of silver handbells, graduated from small to large. Several squat figures of stone and terra-cotta sat together on the table by my elbow; some sort of primitive fetishes or idols.
All of them were in the shape of women, hugely pregnant, or with enormous, rounded breasts and exaggerated hips, and all with a vivid and mildly disturbing sexuality about them. It was not a prudish age, by any means, but I wouldn’t have expected to find such objects in a drawing room in any age.
Somewhat more orthodox were the Jacobite relics. A silver snuffbox, a glass flagon, a decorated fan, a large serving platter—even the large woven rug on the floor; all decorated with the square white rose of the Stuarts. That wasn’t so odd—a great many Jacobites who had fled Scotland after Culloden had come to the West Indies to seek the repair of their fortunes. I found the sight encouraging. A householder with Jacobite sympathies might be welcoming to a fellow Scot, and willing to oblige in the matter of Ian. If he’s here, a small voice in my head warned.
Steps sounded in the inner part of the house, and there was a flutter at the door by the hearth. Jamie made a small grunting sound, as though someone had hit him, and I looked up, to see the mistress of the house step into the room.
I rose to my feet, and the small silver cup I had picked up fell to the floor with a clank.
“Kept your girlish figure, I see, Claire.” Her head was tilted to one side, green eyes gleaming with amusement.
I was too paralyzed with surprise to respond aloud, but the thought drifted through my stunned mind that I couldn’t say the same for her.
Geillis Duncan had always had a voluptuous abundance of creamy bosom and a generous swell of rounded hip. While still creamy-skinned, she was considerably more abundant and generous, in every dimension visible. She wore a loose muslin gown, under which the soft, thick flesh wobbled and swayed as she moved. The delicate bones of her face had long since been submerged in swelling plumpness, but the brilliant green eyes were the same, filled with malice and humor.
I took a deep breath, and got my voice back.
“I trust you won’t take this the wrong way,” I said, sinking slowly back onto the wicker sofa, “but why aren’t you dead?”
She laughed, the silver in her voice as clear as a young girl’s.
“Think I should have been, do you? Well, you’re no the first—and I daresay you’ll not be the last to think so, either.”
Eyes creased to bright green triangles by amusement, she sank into her own chair, nodded casually to Jamie, and clapped her hands sharply to summon a servant. “Shall we have a dish of tea?” she asked me. “Do, and I’ll read the leaves in your cup for ye, after. I’ve a reputation as a reader, after all; a fine teller o’ the future, to be sure—and why not?” She laughed again, plump cheeks pinkening with mirth. If she had been as shocked by my appearance as I was at hers, she disguised it masterfully.
“Tea,” she said, to the black maidservant who appeared in response to the summons. “The special kind in the blue tin, aye? And the bittie cakes wi’ the nuts in, too.”
“You’ll take a bite?” she asked, turning back to me. “’Tis something of an occasion, after all. I did wonder,” she said, tilting her head to one side, like a gull judging the chances of snatching a fish, “whether our paths might cross again, after that day at Cranesmuir.”
My heart was beginning to slow, the shock overcome in a great wave of curiosity. I could feel the questions bubbling up by the dozens, and picked one off the top at random.
“Did you know me?” I asked. “When you met me in Cranesmuir?”
She shook her head, the strands of cream-white hair coming loose from their pins and sliding down her neck. She poked haphazardly at her knot, still surveying me with interest.
“Not at the first, no. Though sure and I thought there was a great strangeness about ye—not that I was the only one to think that. Ye didna come through the stones prepared, did ye? Not on purpose, I mean?”
I bit back the words, “Not that time,” and said instead, “No, it was an accident. You came on purpose, though—from 1967?”
She nodded, studying me intently. The thickened flesh between her brows was creased, and the crease deepened slightly as she looked at me.
“Aye—to help Prince Tearlach.” Her mouth twisted to one side, as though she tasted something bad, and quite suddenly, she turned her head and spat. The globule of saliva hit the polished wooden floor with an audible plop.
“An gealtaire salach Atailteach!” she said. “Filthy Italian coward!” Her eyes darkened and shone with no pleasant light. “Had I known, I should have made my way to Rome and killed him, while there was time. His brother Henry might ha’ been no better, though—a ballock-less, sniveling priest, that one. Not that it made a difference. After Culloden, any Stuart would be as useless as another.”
She sighed, and shifted her bulk, the rattan of the chair creaking beneath her. She waved a hand impatiently, dismissing the Stuarts.
“Still, that’s done with for now. Ye came by accident—walked through the stones near the date of a Fire Feast, did ye? That’s how it usually happens.”
“Yes,” I said, startled. “I came through on Beltane. But what do you mean, ‘usually happens’? Have you met a great many others—like…us?” I ended hesitantly.
She shook her head rather absently. “Not many.” She seemed to be pondering something, though perhaps it was only the absence of her refreshments; she picked up the silver bell and rang it violently.
“Damn that Clotilda! Like us?” she said, returning to the question at hand. “No, I haven’t. Only one besides you, that I ken. Ye could ha’ knocked me over wi’ a feather, when I saw the wee scar on your arm, and kent ye for one like myself.” She touched the great swell of her own upper arm, where the small vaccination scar lay hidden beneath the puff of white muslin. She tilted her head in that bird-like way again, surveying me with one bright green eye.
“No, when I said that’s how it usually happens, I meant, judging from the stories. Folk who disappear in fairy rings and the stone circles, I mean. They usually walk through near Beltane or Samhain; a few near the Sun Feasts—Midsummer’s Day or the winter solstice.”
“That’s what the list was!” I said suddenly, reminded of the gray notebook I had left with Roger Wakefield. “You had a list of dates and initials—nearly two hundred of them. I didn’t know what they were, but I saw that the dates were mostly in late April or early May, or near the end of October.”
“Aye, that’s right.” She nodded, eyes still fixed on me in speculation. “So ye found my wee book? Is that how ye knew to come and look for me on Craigh na Dun? It was you, no? That shouted my name, just before I stepped through the stones?”
“Gillian,” I said, and saw her pupils widen at the name that had once been hers, though her face stayed smooth. “Gillian Edgars. Yes, it was me. I didn’t know if you saw me in the dark.” I could see in memory the night-black circle of stones—and in the center, the blazing bonfire, and the figure of a slim girl standing by it, pale hair flying in the heat of the fire.
“I didn’t see ye,” she said. “’Twas only later, when I heard ye call out at the witch trial and thought I’d heard your voice before. And then, when I saw the mark on your arm…” She shrugged massively, the muslin tight across her shoulders as she settled back. “Who was with ye, that night?” she asked curiously. “There were two I saw—a bonnie dark lad, and a girl.”
She closed her eyes, concentrating, then opened them again to stare at me.
“Later on, I thought I kent her—but I couldna put a name to her, though I could swear I’d seen the face. Who was she?”
“Mistress Duncan? Or is it Mistress Abernathy, now?” Jamie interrupted, stepping forward and bowing to her formally. The first shock of her appearance was fading, but he was still pale, his cheekbones prominent under the stretched skin of his face.
She glanced at him, then looked again, as though noticing him for the first time.
“Well, and if it’s no the wee fox cub!” she said, looking amused. She looked him carefully up and down, noting every detail of his appearance with interest.
“Grown to a bonny man, have ye no?” she said. She leaned back in the chair, which creaked loudly under her weight, and squinted appraisingly at him. “You’ve the look of the MacKenzies about ye, laddie. Ye always did, but now you’re older, you’ve the look of both your uncles in your face.”
“I am sure both Dougal and Colum would be pleased ye’d remember them so well.” Jamie’s eyes were fixed on her as intently as hers on him. He had never liked her—and was unlikely to change his opinion now—but he could not afford to antagonize her; not if she had Ian here somewhere.
The arrival of the tea interrupted whatever reply she might have made. Jamie moved to my side, and sat with me on the sofa, while Geilie carefully poured the tea and handed us each a cup, behaving exactly like a conventional hostess at a tea party. As though wishing to preserve this illusion, she offered the sugar bowl and milk jug, and sat back to make light conversation.
“If ye dinna mind my asking, Mrs. Abernathy,” Jamie said, “how did ye come to this place?” Politely left unspoken was the larger question—How did you escape being burned as a witch?
She laughed, lowering her long lashes coquettishly over her eyes.
“Well, and ye’ll maybe recall I was wi’ child, back at Cranesmuir?”
“I seem to recall something of the sort.” Jamie took a sip of his tea, the tips of his ears turning slightly pink. He had cause to remember that, all right; she had torn off her clothes in the midst of the witch trial, disclosing the secret bulge that would save her life—at least temporarily.
A small pink tongue poked out and delicately skimmed the tea droplets from her upper lip.
“Have ye had children yourself?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“I have.”
“Terrible chore, isn’t it? Dragging about like a mud-caked sow, and then being ripped apart for the sake of something looks like a drowned rat.” She shook her head, making a low noise of disgust in her throat. “The beauty o’ motherhood, is it? Still, I should not complain, I suppose-the wee ratling saved my life for me. And wretched as childbirth is, it’s better than being burnt at the stake.”
“I’d suppose so,” I said, “though not having tried the latter, I couldn’t say for sure.”
Geillis choked in her tea, spraying brown droplets over the front of her dress. She mopped at them carelessly, eyeing me with amusement.
“Well, I’ve not done it either, but I’ve seen them burn, poppet. And I think perhaps even lyin’ in a muddy hole watching your belly grow is better than that.”
“They kept you in the thieves’ hole all the time?” The silver spoon was cool in my hand, but my palm grew sweaty at the memory of the thieves’ hole in Cranesmuir. I had spent three days there with Geillis Duncan, accused as a witch. How long had she stayed there?
“Three months,” she said, staring meditatively into her tea. “Three mortal months of frozen feet and crawling vermin, stinking scraps of food and the grave-smell clinging to my skin day and night.”
She looked up then, mouth twisting in bitter amusement. “But I bore the child in style, at the end. When my pains began, they took me from the hole—little chance I’d run then, aye?—and the babe was born in my own old bedroom; in the fiscal’s house.”
Her eyes were slightly clouded, and I wondered whether the liquid in her glass was entirely tea.
“I had diamond-paned windows, do ye recall? All in shades of purple and green and white—the finest house in the village.” She smiled reminiscently. “They gave me the bairn to hold, and the green light fell over his face. He looked as though he was drowned indeed. I thought he should be cold to the touch, like a corpse, but he wasn’t; he was warm. Warm as his father’s balls.” She laughed suddenly, an ugly sound.
“Why are men such fools? Ye can lead them anywhere by the cock—for a while. Then give them a son and ye have them by the balls again. But it’s all ye are to them, whether they’re coming in or going out—a cunt.”
She was leaning back in her chair. At this, she spread her thighs wide, and hoisted her glass in ironic toast above her pubic bone, squinting down across the swelling bulge of belly.
“Well, here’s to it, I say! Most powerful thing in the world. The niggers know that, at least.” She took a deep, careless swig of her drink. “They carve wee idols, all belly and cunt and breasts. Same as men do where we came from—you and I.” She squinted at me, teeth bared in amusement. “Seen the dirty mags men buy under the counters then, aye?”
The bloodshot green eyes swiveled to Jamie. “And you’ll know the pictures and the books the men pass about among themselves in Paris now, won’t ye, fox? It’s all the same.” She waved a hand and drank again, deeply. “The only difference is the niggers have the decency to worship it.”
“Verra perceptive of them,” Jamie said calmly. He was sitting back in his chair, long legs stretched out in apparent relaxation, but I could see the tension in the fingers of the hand that gripped his own cup. “And how d’ye ken the pictures men look at in Paris, Mistress—Abernathy, is it now?”
She might be tipsy, but was by no means fuddled. She looked up sharply at the tone of his voice, and gave him a twisted smile.
“Oh, Mistress Abernathy will do well enough. When I lived in Paris, I had another name—Madame Melisande Robicheaux. Like that one? I thought it a bit grand, but your uncle Dougal gave it me, so I kept it—out of sentiment.”
My free hand curled into a fist, out of sight in the folds of my skirt. I had heard of Madame Melisande, when we lived in Paris. Not a part of society, she had had some fame as a seer of the future; ladies of the court consulted her in deepest secrecy, for advice on their love lives, their investments, and their pregnancies.
“I imagine you could have told the ladies some interesting things,” I said dryly.
Her laugh this time was truly amused. “Oh, I could, indeed! Seldom did, though. Folk don’t usually pay for the truth, ye know. Sometimes, though—did ye ken that Jean-Paul Marat’s mother meant to name her bairn Rudolphe? I told her I thought Rudolphe was ill-omened. I wondered now and then about that—would he grow up a revolutionary with a name like Rudolphe, or would he take it all out in writing poems, instead? Ever think that, fox—that a name might make a difference?” Her eyes were fixed on Jamie, green glass.
“Often,” he said, and set down his cup. “It was Dougal got ye away from Cranesmuir, then?”
She nodded, stifling a small belch. “Aye. He came to take the babe—alone, for fear someone would find out he was the father, aye? I wouldna let it go, though. And when he came near to wrest it from me—why, I snatched the dirk from his belt and pressed it to the child’s throat.” A small smile of satisfaction at the memory curved her lovely lips.
“Told him I’d kill it, sure, unless he swore on his brother’s life and his own soul to get me safe away.”
“And he believed you?” I felt mildly ill at the thought of any mother holding a knife to the throat of her newborn child, even in pretense.
Her gaze swiveled back to me. “Oh, yes,” she said softly, and the smile widened. “He knew me, did Dougal.”
Sweating, even in the chill of December, and unable to take his eyes off the tiny face of his sleeping son, Dougal had agreed.
“When he leaned over me to take the child, I thought of plunging the dirk into his own throat instead,” she said, reminiscently. “But it would have been a good deal harder to get away by myself, so I didn’t.”
Jamie’s expression didn’t change, but he picked up his tea and took a deep swallow.
Dougal had summoned the locksman, John MacRae, and the church sexton, and by means of discreet bribery, insured that the hooded figure dragged on a hurdle to the pitch barrel next morning would not be that of Geillis Duncan.
“I thought they’d use straw, maybe,” she said, “but he was a cleverer man than that. Auld Grannie Joan MacKenzie had died three days before, and was meant to be burying that same afternoon. A few rocks in the coffin and the lid nailed down tight, and Bob’s your uncle, eh? A real body, fine for burning.” She laughed, and gulped the last swallow of her drink.
“Not everyone’s seen their own funeral; fewer still ha’ seen their own execution, aye?”
It had been the dead of winter, and the small grove of rowan trees outside the village stood bare, drifted with their own dead leaves, the dried red berries showing here and there on the ground like spots of blood.
It was a cloudy day, with the promise of sleet or snow, but the whole village turned out nonetheless; a witch-burning was not an event to be missed. The village priest, Father Bain, had died himself three months before, of fever brought on by a festering sore, but a new priest had been imported for the occasion from a village nearby. Perfuming his way with a censer held before him, the priest had come down the path to the grove, chanting the service for the dead. Behind him came the locksman and his two assistants, dragging the hurdle and its black-robed burden.
“I expect Grannie Joan would have been pleased,” Geilie said, white teeth gleaming at the vision. “She couldna have expected more nor four or five people to her burying—as it was, she had the whole village, and the incense and special prayers to boot!”
MacRae had untied the body and carried it, lolling, to the barrel of pitch ready waiting.
“The court granted me the mercy to be weirrit before the burning,” Geillis explained ironically. “So they expected the body to be dead—no difficulty there, if I was strangled already. The only thing anyone might ha’ seen was that Grannie Joan weighed half what I did, newly delivered as I was, but no one seemed to notice she was light in MacRae’s arms.”
“You were there?” I said.
She nodded smugly. “Oh, aye. Well muffled in a cloak—everyone was, because o’ the weather—but I wouldna have missed it.”
As the priest finished his last prayer against the evils of enchantment, MacRae had taken the pine torch from his assistant and stepped forward.
“God, omit not this woman from Thy covenant, and the many evils that she in the body committed,” he had said, and flung the fire into the pitch.
“It was faster than I thought it would be,” Geillis said, sounding mildly surprised. “A great whoosh! of fire—there was a blast of hot air and a cheer from the crowd, and naught to be seen but the flames, shooting up high enough to singe the rowan branches overhead.”
The fire had subsided within a minute, though, and the dark figure within was clear enough to be seen through the pale daylight flames. The hood and the hair had burned away with the first scorching rush, and the face itself was burned beyond recognition. A few moments more, and the clean dark shapes of the bones emerged from the melted flesh, an airy superstructure rising above the charring barrel.
“Only great empty holes where her eyes had been,” she said. The moss-green eyes turned toward me, clouded by memory. “I thought perhaps she was looking at me. But then the skull exploded, and it was all over, and folk began to come away—all except a few who stayed in hopes of picking up a bit of bone as a keepsake.”
She rose and went unsteadily to the small table near the window. She picked up the silver bell and rang it, hard.
“Aye,” she said, her back turned to us. “Childbirth is maybe easier.”
“So Dougal got ye away to France,” Jamie said. The fingers of his right hand twitched slightly. “How came ye here to the West Indies?”
“Oh, that was later,” she said carelessly. “After Culloden.” She turned then, and smiled from Jamie to me.
“And what might bring the two of ye here to this place? Surely not the pleasure of my company?”
I glanced at Jamie, seeing the slight tensing of his back as he sat up straighter. His face stayed calm, though, only his eyes bright with wariness.
“We’ve come to seek a young kinsman of mine,” he said. “My nephew, Ian Murray. We’ve some reason to think he is indentured here.”
Geilie’s pale brows rose high, making soft ridges in her forehead.
“Ian Murray?” she said, and shook her head in puzzlement. “I’ve no indentured whites at all, here. No whites, come to that. The only free man on the place is the overseer, and he’s what they call a griffone; one-quarter black.”
Unlike me, Geillis Duncan was a very good liar. Impossible to tell, from her expression of mild interest, whether she had ever heard the name Ian Murray before. But lying she was, and I knew it.
Jamie knew it, too; the expression that flashed through his eyes was not disappointment, but fury, quickly suppressed.
“Indeed?” he said politely. “And are ye not fearful, then, alone wi’ your slaves here, so far from town?”
“Oh, no. Not at all.”
She smiled broadly at him, then lifted her double chin and waggled it gently in the direction of the terrace behind him. I turned my head, and saw that the French door was filled from jamb to doorpost with an immense black man, several inches taller than Jamie, from whose rolled-up shirt sleeves protruded arms like tree trunks, knotted with muscle.
“Meet Hercules,” Geilie said, with a tiny laugh. “He has a twin brother, too.”
“Named Atlas, by chance?” I asked, with an edge to my voice.
“You guessed! Is she no the clever one, eh, fox?” She winked conspiratorially at Jamie, the rounded flesh of her cheek wobbling with the movement. The light caught her from the side as she turned her head, and I saw the red spiderwebs of tiny broken capillaries that netted her jowls.
Hercule took no note of this, or of anything else. His broad face was slack and dull, and there was no life in the deep-sunk eyes beneath the bony brow ridge. It gave me a very uneasy feeling to look at him, and not only because of his threatening size; looking at him was like passing by a haunted house, where something lurks behind blind windows.
“That will do, Hercule; ye can go back to work now.” Geilie picked up the silver bell and tinkled it gently, once. Without a word, the giant turned and lumbered off the veranda. “I have no fear o’ the slaves,” she explained. “They’re afraid o’ me, for they think I’m a witch. Verra funny, considering, is it not?” Her eyes twinkled behind little pouches of fat.
“Geilie—that man.” I hesitated, feeling ridiculous in asking such a question. “He’s not a—a zombie?”
She laughed delightedly at that, clapping her hands together.
“Christ, a zombie? Jesus, Claire!” She chortled with glee, a bright pink rising from throat to hair roots.
“Well, I’ll tell ye, he’s no verra bright,” she said at last, still gasping and wheezing. “But he’s no dead, either!” and went off into further gales of laughter.
Jamie stared at me, puzzled.
“Zombie?”
“Never mind,” I said, my face nearly as pink as Geilie’s. “How many slaves have you got here?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.
“Hee hee,” she said, winding down into giggles. “Oh, a hundred or so. It’s no such a big place. Only three hundred acres in cane, and a wee bit of coffee on the upper slopes.”
She pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her pocket and patted her damp face, sniffing a bit as she regained her composure. I could feel, rather than see, Jamie’s tension. I was sure he was as convinced as I that Geilie knew something about Ian Murray—if nothing else, she had betrayed no surprise whatever at our appearance. Someone had told her about us, and that someone could only be Ian.
The thought of threatening a woman to extract information wasn’t one that would come naturally to Jamie, but it would to me. Unfortunately, the presence of the twin pillars of Hercules had put a stop to that line of thought. The next best idea seemed to be to search the house and grounds for any trace of the boy. Three hundred acres was a fair piece of ground, but if he was on the property, he would likely be in or near the buildings—the house, the sugar refinery, or the slave quarters.
I came out of my thoughts to realize that Geilie had asked me a question.
“What’s that?”
“I said,” she repeated patiently, “that ye had a great deal of talent for the healing when I knew ye in Scotland; you’ll maybe know more now?”
“I expect I might.” I looked her over cautiously. Did she want my skill for herself? She wasn’t healthy; a glance at her mottled complexion and the dark circles beneath her eyes was enough to show that. But was she actively ill?
“Not for me,” she said, seeing my look. “Not just now, anyway. I’ve two slaves gone sick. Maybe ye’d be so kind as to look at them?”
I glanced at Jamie, who gave me the shadow of a nod. It was a chance to get into the slave quarters and look for Ian.
“I saw when we came in as ye had a bit of trouble wi’ your sugar press,” he said, rising abruptly. He gave Geilie a cool nod. “Perhaps I shall have a look at it, whilst you and my wife tend the sick.” Without waiting for an answer, he took off his coat and hung it on the peg by the door. He went out by the veranda, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, sunlight glinting on his hair.
“A handy sort, is he?” Geilie looked after him, amused. “My husband Barnabas was that sort—couldna keep his hands off any kind of machine. Or off the slave girls, either,” she added. “Come along, the sick ones are back o’ the kitchen.”
The kitchen was in a separate small building of its own, connected to the house by a breezeway covered with blooming jasmine. Walking through it was like floating through a cloud of perfume, surrounded by a hum of bees loud enough to be felt on the skin, like the low drone of a bagpipe.
“Ever been stung?” Geillis swiped casually at a low-flying furry body, batting it out of the air.
“Now and then.”
“So have I,” she said. “Any number of times, and nothing worse than a red welt on my skin to show for it. One of these wee buggers stung one o’ the kitchen slaves last spring, though, and the wench swelled up like a toad and died, right before my eyes!” She glanced at me, eyes wide and mocking. “Did wonders for my reputation, I can tell ye. The rest o’ the slaves put it about I’d witched the lass; put a spell on her to kill her for burning the sponge cake. I havena had so much as a scorched pot, since.” Shaking her head, she waved away another bee.
While appalled at her callousness, I was somewhat relieved by the story. Perhaps the other gossip I had heard at the Governor’s ball had as little foundation in fact.
I paused, looking out through the jasmine’s lacy leaves at the cane fields below. Jamie was in the clearing by the sugar press, looking up at the gigantic crossbars of the machine while a man I assumed to be the overseer pointed and explained. As I watched, he said something, gesturing, and the overseer nodded emphatically, waving his hands in voluble reply. If I didn’t find any trace of Ian in the kitchen quarters, perhaps Jamie would learn something from the overseer. Despite Geilie’s denials, every instinct I had insisted that the boy was here—somewhere.
There was no sign of him in the kitchen itself; only three or four women, kneading bread and snapping peas, who looked up curiously as we came through. I caught the eye of one young woman, and nodded and smiled at her; perhaps I would have a chance to come back and talk, later. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she bent her head at once, eyes on the bowl of peapods in her lap. I saw her steal a quick glance at me as we crossed the long room, and noticed that she balanced the bowl in front of the small bulge of an early pregnancy.
The first sick slave was in a small pantry off the kitchen itself, lying on a pallet laid under shelves stacked high with gauze-wrapped cheeses. The patient, a young man in his twenties, sat up blinking at the sudden ray of light when I opened the door.
“What’s the trouble with him?” I knelt down beside the man and touched his skin. Warm, damp, no apparent fever. He didn’t seem in any particular distress, merely blinking sleepily as I examined him.
“He has a worm.”
I glanced at Geilie in surprise. From what I had seen and heard so far in the islands, I thought it likely that at least three-quarters of the black population—and not a few of the whites—suffered from internal parasites. Nasty and debilitating as these could be, though, most were actively threatening only to the very young and the very old.
“Probably a lot more than one,” I said. I pushed the slave gently onto his back and began to palpate his stomach. The spleen was tender and slightly enlarged—also a common finding here—but I felt no suspicious masses in the abdomen that might indicate a major intestinal infestation. “He seems moderately healthy; why have you got him in here in the dark?”
As though in answer to my question, the slave suddenly wrenched himself away from my hand, let out a piercing scream, and rolled up into a ball. Rolling and unrolling himself like a yo-yo, he reached the wall and began to bang his head against it, still screaming. Then, as suddenly as the fit had come on, it passed off, and the young man sank back onto the pallet, panting heavily and soaked with sweat.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said. “What was that?”
“A loa-loa worm,” Geilie said, looking amused at my reaction. “They live in the eyeballs, just under the lining. They cross back and forth, from one eye to the other, and when they go across the bridge o’ the nose, I’m told it’s rather painful.” She nodded at the slave, still quivering slightly on his pallet.
“The dark keeps them from moving so much,” she explained. “The fellow from Andros who told me about them says ye must catch them when they’ve just come in one eye, for they’re right near the surface, and ye can lift them out with a big darning needle. If ye wait, they go deeper, and ye canna get them.” She turned back to the kitchen and shouted for a light.
“Here, I brought the needle, just in case.” She groped in the bag at her waist and drew out a square of felt, with a three-inch steel needle thrust through it, which she extended helpfully to me.
“Are you out of your mind?” I stared at her, appalled.
“No. Did ye not say ye were a good healer?” she asked reasonably.
“I am, but—” I glanced at the slave, hesitated, then took the candle one of the kitchenmaids was holding out to me.
“Bring me some brandy, and a small sharp knife,” I said. “Dip the knife—and the needle—in the brandy, then hold the tip in a flame for a moment. Let it cool, but don’t touch it.” As I spoke, I was gently pulling up one eyelid. The man’s eye looked up at me, an oddly irregular, blotched brown iris in a bloodshot sclera the yellow of heavy cream. I searched carefully, bringing the candle flame close enough to shrink the pupil, then drawing it away, but saw nothing there.
I tried the other eye, and nearly dropped the candle. Sure enough, there was a small, transparent filament, moving under the conjunctiva. I gagged slightly at the sight, but controlled myself, and reached for the freshly sterilized knife, still holding back the eyelid.
“Take him by the shoulders,” I said to Geilie. “Don’t let him move, or I may blind him.”
The surgery itself was horrifying to contemplate, but surprisingly simple to perform. I made one quick, small incision along the inside corner of the conjunctiva, lifted it slightly with the tip of the needle, and as the worm undulated lazily across the open field, I slipped the tip of the needle under the body and drew it out, neat as a loop of yarn.
Repressing a shudder of distaste, I flicked the worm away. It hit the wall with a tiny wet splat! and vanished in the shadows under the cheese.
There was no blood; after a brief debate with myself, I decided to leave it to the man’s own tear ducts to irrigate the incision. That would have to be left to heal by itself; I had no fine sutures, and the wound was small enough not to need more than a stitch or two in any case.
I tied a clean pad of cloth over the closed eye with a bandage round the head, and sat back, reasonably pleased with my first foray into tropical medicine.
“Fine,” I said, pushing back my hair. “Where’s the other one?”
The next patient was in a shed outside the kitchen, dead. I squatted next to the body, that of a middle-aged man with grizzled hair, feeling both pity and outrage.
The cause of death was more than obvious: a strangulated hernia. The loop of twisted, gangrenous bowel protruded from one side of the belly, the stretched skin over it already tinged with green, though the body itself was still nearly as warm as life. An expression of agony was fixed on the broad features, and the limbs were still contorted, giving an unfortunately accurate witness to just what sort of death it had been.
“Why did you wait?” I stood up, glaring at Geilie. “For God’s sake, you kept me drinking tea and chatting, while this was going on? He’s been dead less than an hour, but he must have been in trouble a long time since—days! Why didn’t you bring me out here at once?”
“He seemed pretty far gone this morning,” she said, not at all disturbed by my agitation. She shrugged. “I’ve seen them so before; I didna think you could do anything much. It didna seem worth hurrying.”
I choked back further recrimination. She was right; I could have operated, had I come sooner, but the chances of it doing any good were slim to nonexistent. The hernia repair was something I might have managed, even with such difficult conditions; after all, that was nothing more than pushing back the bowel protrusion and pulling the ruptured layers of abdominal muscle back together with sutures; infection was the only real danger. But once the loop of escaped intestine had twisted, so that the blood supply was cut off and the contents began to putrefy, the man was doomed.
But to allow the man to die here in this stuffy shed, alone…well, perhaps he would not have found the presence of one white woman more or less a comfort, in any case. Still, I felt an obscure sense of failure; the same I always felt in the presence of death. I wiped my hands slowly on a brandy-soaked cloth, mastering my feelings.
One to the good, one to the bad—and Ian still to be found.
“Since I’m here now, perhaps I’d best have a look at the rest of your slaves,” I suggested. “An ounce of prevention, you know.”
“Oh, they’re well enough.” Geilie waved a careless hand. “Still, if ye want to take the time, you’re welcome. Later, though; I’ve a visitor coming this afternoon, and I want to talk more with ye, first. Come back to the house, now—someone will take care o’ this.” A brief nod disposed of “this,” the slave’s contorted body. She linked her arm in mine, urging me out of the shed and back toward the kitchen with soft thrustings of her weight.
In the kitchen, I detached myself, motioning toward the pregnant slave, now on her hands and knees, scrubbing the hearthstones.
“You go along; I want to have a quick look at this girl. She looks a bit toxic to me—you don’t want her to miscarry.”
Geilie gave me a curious glance, but then shrugged.
“She’s foaled twice with no trouble, but you’re the doctor. Aye, if that’s your notion of fun, go ahead. Don’t take too long, though; that parson said he’d come at four o’clock.”
I made some pretense of examining the bewildered woman, until Geilie’s draperies had disappeared into the breezeway.
“Look,” I said. “I’m looking for a young white boy named Ian; I’m his aunt. Do you know where he might be?”
The girl—she couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen—looked startled. She blinked, and darted a glance at one of the older women, who had quit her own work and come across the room to see what was going on.
“No, ma’am,” the older woman said, shaking her head. “No white boys here. None at all.”
“No, ma’am,” the girl obediently echoed. “We don’ know nothin’ ’bout your boy.” But she hadn’t said that at first, and her eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
The older woman had been joined now by the other two kitchenmaids, coming to buttress her. I was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of bland ignorance, and no way to break through it. At the same time, I was aware of a current running among the women—a feeling of mutual warning; of wariness and secrecy. It might be only the natural reaction to the sudden appearance of a white stranger in their domain—or it might be something more.
I couldn’t take longer; Geilie would be coming back to look for me. I fumbled quickly in my pocket, and pulled out a silver florin, which I pressed into the girl’s hand.
“If you should see Ian, tell him that his uncle is here to find him.” Not waiting for an answer, I turned and hurried out of the kitchen.
I glanced down toward the sugar mill as I passed through the breezeway. The sugar press stood abandoned, the oxen grazing placidly in the long grass at the edge of the clearing. There was no sign of Jamie or the overseer; had he come back to the house?
I came through the French windows into the salon, and stopped short. Geilie sat in her wicker chair, Jamie’s coat across the arm, and the photographs of Brianna spread over her lap. She heard my step and looked up, one pale brow arched over an acid smile.
“What a pretty lassie, to be sure. What’s her name?”
“Brianna.” My lips felt stiff. I walked slowly toward her, fighting the urge to snatch the pictures from her hands and run.
“Looks a great deal like her father, doesn’t she? I thought she seemed familiar, that tall red-haired lass I saw that night on Craigh na Dun. He is her father, no?” She inclined her head toward the door where Jamie had vanished.
“Yes. Give them to me.” It made no difference; she had seen the pictures already. Still, I couldn’t stand to see her thick white fingers cupping Brianna’s face.
Her mouth twitched as though she meant to refuse, but she tapped them neatly into a square and handed them to me without demur. I held them against my chest for a moment, not knowing what to do with them, then thrust them back into the pocket of my skirt.
“Sit ye down, Claire. The coffee’s come.” She nodded toward the small table, and the chair alongside. Her eyes followed me as I moved to it, alive with calculation.
She gestured for me to pour the coffee for both of us, and took her own cup without words. We sipped silently for a few moments. The cup trembled in my hands, spilling hot liquid across my wrist. I put it down, wiping my hand on my skirt, wondering in some dim recess of my mind why I should be afraid.
“Twice,” she said suddenly. She looked at me with something akin to awe. “Sweet Christ Jesus, ye went through twice! Or no—three times, it must have been, for here ye are now.” She shook her head, marveling, never taking her bright green eyes from my face.
“How?” she asked. “How could ye do it so many times, and live?”
“I don’t know.” I saw the look of hard skepticism flash across her face, and answered it, defensively. “I don’t! I just—went.”
“Was it not the same for you?” The green eyes had narrowed into slits of concentration. “What was it like, there between? Did ye not feel the terror? And the noise, fit to split your skull and spill your brains?”
“Yes, it was like that.” I didn’t want to talk to about it; didn’t even like to think of the time-passage. I had blocked it deliberately from my mind, the roar of death and dissolution and the voices of chaos that urged me to join them.
“Did ye have blood to protect you, or stones? I wouldna think ye’d the nerve for blood—but maybe I’m wrong. For surely ye’re stronger than I thought, to have done it three times, and lived through it.”
“Blood?” I shook my head, confused. “No. Nothing. I told you—I…went. That’s all.” Then I remembered the night she had gone through the stones in 1968; the blaze of fire on Craigh na Dun, and the twisted, blackened shape in the center of that fire. “Greg Edgars,” I said. The name of her first husband. “You didn’t just kill him because he found you and tried to stop you, did you? He was—”
“The blood, aye.” She was watching me, intent. “I didna think it could be done at all, the crossing—not without the blood.” She sounded faintly amazed. “The auld ones—they always used the blood. That and the fire. They built great wicker cages, filled wi’ their captives, and set them alight in the circles. I thought that was how they opened the passage.”
My hands and my lips felt cold, and I picked up the cup to warm them. Where in the name of God was Jamie?
“And ye didna use stones, either?”
I shook my head. “What stones?”
She looked at me for a moment, debating whether to tell me. Her little pink tongue flicked over her lip, and then she nodded, deciding. With a small grunt, she heaved herself up from the chair and went toward the great hearth at the far end of the room, beckoning me to follow.
She knelt, with surprising grace for one of her figure, and pressed a greenish stone set into the mantelpiece, a foot or so above the hearth. It moved slightly, and there was a soft click! as one of the hearth slates rose smoothly out of its mortared setting.
“Spring mechanism,” Geilie explained, lifting the slate carefully and setting it aside. “A Danish fellow named Leiven from St. Croix made it for me.”
She reached into the cavity beneath and drew out a wooden box, about a foot long. There were pale brown stains on the smooth wood, and it looked swollen and split, as though it had been immersed in seawater at some time. I bit my lip hard at its appearance, and hoped my face didn’t give anything away. If I had had any doubts about Ian being here, they had vanished—for here, unless I was very much mistaken, was the silkies’ treasure. Fortunately, Geilie wasn’t looking at me, but at the box.
“I learned about the stones from an Indian—not a red Indian, a Hindoo from Calcutta,” she explained. “He came to me, looking for thornapple, and he told me about how to make medicines from the gemstones.”
I looked over my shoulder for Jamie, but there was no sign of him. Where the hell was he? Had he found Ian, somewhere on the plantation?
“Ye can get the powdered stones from a London apothecary,” she was saying, frowning slightly as she pushed at the sliding lid. “But they’re mostly poor quality, and the bhasmas doesn’t work so well. Best to have a stone at least of the second quality—what they call a nagina stone. That’s a goodish-sized stone that’s been polished. A stone of the first quality is faceted, and unflawed for preference, but most folk canna afford to burn those to ash. The ashes of the stone are the bhasmas,” she explained, turning to look up at me. “That’s what ye use in the medicines. Here, can ye pry this damn thing loose? It’s been spoilt in seawater, and the locking bit swells whenever the weather’s damp—which it is all the time, this season of the year,” she added, making a face over her shoulder at the clouds rolling in over the bay, far below.
She thrust the box into my hands and rose heavily to her feet, grunting with the effort.
It was a Chinese puzzle-box, I saw; a fairly simple one, with a small sliding panel that unlocked the main lid. The problem was that the smaller panel had swollen, sticking in its slot.
“It’s bad luck to break one,” Geilie observed, watching my attempts. “Else I’d just smash the thing and be done with it. Here, maybe this will help.” She produced a small mother-of-pearl penknife from the recesses of her gown and handed it to me, then went to the window ledge and rang another of her silver bells.
I pried gently upward with the blade of the knife. I felt it catch in the wood, and wiggled it gingerly. Little by little, the small rectangle of wood edged out of its place, until I could get hold of it between thumb and forefinger and pull it all the way loose.
“There you go,” I said, handing her back the box with some reluctance. It felt heavy, and there was an unmistakable metallic chinking as I tilted it.
“Thanks.” As she took it, the black servingmaid came in through the far door. Geilie turned to order the girl to bring a tray of fresh tarts, and I saw that she had slipped the box between the folds of her skirts, hiding it.
“Nosy creatures,” she said, frowning toward the departing maid’s back as the girl passed through the door. “One of the difficulties wi’ slaves; it’s hard to have secrets.” She put the box on the table, and pushed at the top; with a small, sharp skreek! of protest, the lid slid back.
She reached into the box and drew out her closed hand. She smiled mischievously at me, saying, “Little Jackie Horner sat in the corner, eating her Christmas pie. She put in her thumb, and pulled out a plum”—she opened her hand with a flourish—“and said ‘What a good girl am I!’”
I had been expecting them, of course, but had no difficulty in looking impressed anyway. The reality of a gem is both more immediate and more startling than its description. Six or seven of them flashed and glimmered in her palm, flaming fire and frozen ice, the gleam of blue water in the sun, and a great gold stone like the eye of a lurking tiger.
Without meaning to, I drew near enough to look down into the well of her hand, staring with fascination. “Big enough,” Jamie had described them as being, with a characteristic Scottish talent for understatement. Well, smaller than a breadbox, I supposed.
“I got them for the money, to start,” Geilie was saying, prodding the stones with satisfaction. “Because they were easier to carry than a great weight of gold or silver, I mean; I didna think then what other use they might have.”
“What, as bhasmas?” The idea of burning any of those glowing things to ash seemed a sacrilege.
“Oh, no, not these.” Her hand closed on the stones, dipped into her pocket, and back into the box for more. A small shower of liquid fire dropped into her pocket, and she patted it affectionately. “No, I’ve a lot o’ the smaller stones for that. These are for something else.”
She eyed me speculatively, then jerked her head toward the door at the end of the room.
“Come along up to my workroom,” she said. “I’ve a few things there you’ll maybe be interested to see.”
“Interested” was putting it mildly, I thought.
It was a long, light-filled room, with a counter down one side. Bunches of drying herbs hung from hooks overhead and lay on gauze-covered drying racks along the inner wall. Drawered cabinets and cupboards covered the rest of the wall space, and there was a small glass-fronted bookcase at the end of the room.
The room gave me a mild sense of déjà-vu; after a moment, I realized that it was because it strongly resembled Geilie’s workroom in the village of Cranesmuir, in the house of her first husband—no, second, I corrected myself, remember the flaming body of Greg Edgars.
“How many times have you been married?” I asked curiously. She had begun building her fortune with her second husband, procurator fiscal of the district where they lived, forging his signature in order to divert money to her own use, and then murdering him. Successful with this modus operandi, I imagined she had tried it again; she was a creature of habit, was Geilie Duncan.
She paused a moment to count up. “Oh, five, I think. Since I came here,” she added casually.
“Five?” I said, a little faintly. Not just a habit, it seemed; a positive addiction.
“A verra unhealthy atmosphere for Englishmen it is in the tropics,” she said, and smiled slyly at me. “Fevers, ulcers, festering stomachs; any little thing will carry them off.” She had evidently been mindful of her oral hygiene; her teeth were still very good.
She reached out and lightly caressed a small bottle that stood on the lowest shelf. It wasn’t labeled, but I had seen crude white arsenic before. On the whole, I was glad I hadn’t taken any food.
“Oh, you’ll be interested in this,” she said, spying a jar on an upper shelf. Grunting slightly as she stood on tiptoe, she reached it down and handed it to me.
It contained a very coarse powder, evidently a mixture of several substances, brown, yellow, and black, flecked with shreds of a semitranslucent material.
“What’s this?”
“Zombie poison,” she said, and laughed. “I thought ye’d like to see.”
“Oh?” I said coldly. “I thought you told me there was no such thing.”
“No,” she corrected, still smiling. “I told ye Hercule wasn’t dead; and he’s not.” She took the jar from me and replaced it on the shelf. “But there’s no denying that he’s a good bit more manageable if he’s had a dose of this stuff once a week, mixed with his grain.”
“What the hell is it?”
She shrugged, offhanded. “A bit of this and a bit of that. The main thing seems to be a kind of fish—a little square thing wi’ spots; verra funny-looking. Ye take the skin and dry it, and the liver as well. But there are a few other things ye put in with it—I wish I kent what,” she added.
“You don’t know what’s in it?” I stared at her. “Didn’t you make it?”
“No. I had a cook,” Geilie said, “or at least they sold him to me as a cook, but damned if I’d feel safe eating a thing he turned out of the kitchen, the sly black devil. He was a houngan, though.”
“A what?”
“Houngan is what the blacks call one of their medicine-priests; though to be quite right about it, I believe Ishmael said his sort of black called him an oniseegun, or somesuch.”
“Ishmael, hm?” I licked my dry lips. “Did he come with that name?”
“Oh, no. He had some heathen name wi’ six syllables, and the man who sold him called him ‘Jimmy’—the auctioneers call all the bucks Jimmy. I named him Ishmael, because of the story the seller told me about him.”
Ishmael had been taken from a barracoon on the Gold Coast of Africa, one of a shipment of six hundred slaves from the villages of Nigeria and Ghana, stowed between decks of the slave ship Persephone, bound for Antigua. Coming through the Caicos Passage, the Persephone had run into a sudden squall, and been run aground on Hogsty Reef, off the island of Great Inagua. The ship had broken up, with barely time for the crew to escape in the ship’s boats.
The slaves, chained and helpless betweendecks, had all drowned. All but one man who had earlier been taken from the hold to assist as a galley mate, both messboys having died of the pox en route from Africa. This man, left behind by the ship’s crew, had nonetheless survived the wreck by clinging to a cask of spirits, which floated ashore on Great Inagua two days later.
The fishermen who discovered the castaway were more interested in his means of salvation than in the slave himself. Breaking open the cask, however, they were shocked and appalled to find inside the body of a man, somewhat imperfectly preserved by the spirits in which he had been soaking.
“I wonder if they drank the crème de menthe anyway,” I murmured, having observed for myself that Mr. Overholt’s assessment of the alcoholic affinities of sailors was largely correct.
“I daresay,” said Geilie, mildly annoyed at having her story interrupted. “In any case, when I heard of it, I named him Ishmael straight off. Because of the floating coffin, aye?”
“Very clever,” I congratulated her. “Er…did they find out who the man in the cask was?”
“I don’t think so.” She shrugged carelessly. “They gave him to the Governor of Jamaica, who had him put in a glass case, wi’ fresh spirits, as a curiosity.”
“What?” I said incredulously.
“Well, not so much the man himself, but some odd fungi that were growing on him,” Geilie explained. “The Governor’s got a passion for such things. The old Governor, I mean; I hear there’s a new one, now.”
“Quite,” I said, feeling a bit queasy. I thought the ex-governor was more likely to qualify as a curiosity than the dead man, on the whole.
Her back was turned, as she pulled out drawers and rummaged through them. I took a deep breath, hoping to keep my voice casual.
“This Ishmael sounds an interesting sort; do you still have him?”
“No,” she said indifferently. “The black bastard ran off. He’s the one who made the zombie poison for me, though. Wouldn’t tell me how, no matter what I did to him,” she added, with a short, humorless laugh, and I had a sudden vivid memory of the weals across Ishmael’s back. “He said it wasn’t proper for women to make medicine, only men could do it. Or the verra auld women, once they’d quit bleeding. Hmph!”
She snorted, and reached into her pocket, pulling out a handful of stones.
“Anyway, that’s not what I brought ye up to show ye.”
Carefully, she laid five of the stones in a rough circle on the countertop. Then she took down from a shelf a thick book, bound in worn leather.
“Can ye read German?” she asked, opening it carefully.
“Not much, no,” I said. I moved closer, to look over her shoulder. Hexenhammer, it said, in a fine, handwritten script.
“Witches’ Hammer?” I asked. I raised one eyebrow. “Spells? Magic?”
The skepticism in my voice must have been obvious, for she glared at me over one shoulder.
“Look, fool,” she said. “Who are ye? Or what, rather?”
“What am I?” I said, startled.
“That’s right.” She turned and leaned against the counter, studying me through narrowed eyes. “What are ye? Or me, come to that? What are we?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again.
“That’s right,” she said softly, watching. “It’s not everyone can go through the stones, is it? Why us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “And neither do you, I’ll be bound. It doesn’t mean we’re witches, surely!”
“Doesn’t it?” She lifted one brow, and turned several pages of the book.
“Some people can leave their bodies and travel miles away,” she said, staring meditatively at the page. “Other people see them out wandering, and recognize them, and ye can bloody prove they were really tucked up safe in bed at the time. I’ve seen the records, all the eyewitness testimony. Some people have stigmata ye can see and touch—I’ve seen one. But not everybody. Only certain people.”
She turned another page. “If everyone can do it, it’s science. If only a few can, then it’s witchcraft, or superstition, or whatever you like to call it,” she said. “But it’s real.” She looked up at me, green eyes bright as a snake’s over the crumbling book. “We’re real, Claire—you and me. And special. Have ye never asked yourself why?”
I had. Any number of times. I had never gotten a reasonable answer to the question, though. Evidently, Geilie thought she had one.
She turned back to the stones she had laid on the counter, and pointed at them each in turn. “Stones of protection; amethyst, emerald, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and a male ruby.”
“A male ruby?”
“Pliny says rubies have a sex to them; who am I to argue?” she said impatiently. “The male stones are what ye use, though; the female ones don’t work.”
I suppressed the urge to ask precisely how one distinguished the sex of rubies, in favor of asking, “Work for what?”
“For the travel,” she said, glancing curiously at me. “Through the stones. They protect ye from the…whatever it is, out there.” Her eyes grew slightly shadowed at the thought of the time-passage, and I realized that she was deathly afraid of it. Little wonder; so was I.
“When did ye come? The first time?” Her eyes were intent on mine.
“From 1945,” I said slowly. “I came to 1743, if that’s what you mean.” I was reluctant to tell her too much; still, my own curiosity was overwhelming. She was right about one thing; she and I were different. I might never again have the chance to talk to another person who knew what she did. For that matter, the longer I could keep her talking, the longer Jamie would have to look for Ian.
“Hm.” She grunted in a satisfied manner. “Near enough. It’s two hundred year, in the Highland tales—when folk fall asleep on fairy duns and end up dancing all night wi’ the Auld Folk; it’s usually two hundred year later when they come back to their own place.”
“You didn’t, though. You came from 1968, but you’d been in Cranesmuir several years before I came there.”
“Five years, aye.” She nodded, abstracted. “Aye, well, that was the blood.”
“Blood?”
“The sacrifice,” she said, suddenly impatient. “It gives ye a greater range. And at least a bit of control, so ye have some notion how far ye’re going. How did ye get to and fro three times, without blood?” she demanded.
“I…just came.” The need to find out as much as I could made me add the little else I knew. “I think—I think it has something to do with being able to fix your mind on a certain person who’s in the time you go to.”
Her eyes were nearly round with interest.
“Really,” she said softly. “Think o’ that, now.” She shook her head slowly, thinking. “Hm. That might be so. Still, the stones should work as well; there’s patterns ye make, wi’ the different gems, ye ken.”
She pulled another fistful of shining stones from her pocket and spread them on the wooden surface, pawing through them.
“The protection stones are the points of the pentacle,” she explained, intent on her rummaging, “but inside that, ye lay the pattern wi’ different stones, depending which way ye mean to go, and how far. And ye lay a line of quicksilver between them, and fire it when ye speak the spells. And of course ye draw the pentacle wi’ diamond dust.”
“Of course,” I murmured, fascinated.
“Smell it?” she asked, looking up for a moment and sniffing. “Ye wouldna think stones had a scent, aye? But they do, when ye grind them to powder.”
I inhaled deeply, and did seem to find a faint, unfamiliar scent among the smell of dried herbs. It was a dry scent, pleasant but indescribable—the scent of gemstones.
She held up one stone with a small cry of triumph.
“This one! This is the one I needed; couldna find one anywhere in the islands, and finally I thought o’ the box I’d left in Scotland.” The stone she held was a black crystal of some kind; the light from the window passed through it, and yet it glittered like a piece of jet between her white fingers.
“What is it?”
“An adamant; a black diamond. The auld alchemists used them. The books say that to wear an adamant brings ye the knowledge of the joy in all things.” She laughed, a short, sharp sound, devoid of her usual girlish charm. “If anything can bring knowledge o’ joy in that passage through the stones, I want one!”
Something was beginning to dawn on me, rather belatedly. In defense of my slowness, I can only argue that I was simultaneously listening to Geilie and keeping an ear out for any sign of Jamie returning below.
“You mean to go back, then?” I asked, as casually as I could.
“I might.” A small smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Now that I’ve got the things I need. I tell ye, Claire, I wouldna risk it, without.” She stared at me, shaking her head. “Three times, wi’ no blood,” she murmured. “So it can be done.
“Well, best we go down now,” she said, suddenly brisk, sweeping the stones up and dumping them back into her pocket. “The fox will be back—Fraser is his name, is it no? I thought Clotilda said something else, but the stupid bitch likely got it wrong.”
As we made our way down the long workroom, something small and brown darted across the floor in front of me. Geilie was quick, despite her size; her small foot stamped on the centipede before I could react.
She watched the half-crushed beast wriggling on the floor for a moment, then stooped and slid a sheet of paper under it. Scooping it up, she decanted the thing thriftily into a glass jar.
“Ye dinna want to believe in witches and zombies and things that go bump in the night?” she said, with a small, sly smile at me. She nodded at the centipede, struggling round and round in frenzied, lopsided circles. “Well, legends are many-legged beasties, aye? But they generally have at least one foot on the truth.”
She took down a clear brown-glass jug and poured the liquid into the centipede’s bottle. The pungent scent of alcohol rose in the air. The centipede, washed up by the wave, kicked frantically for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the bottle, legs moving spasmodically. She corked the bottle neatly, and turned to go.
“You asked me why I thought we can pass through the stones,” I said to her back. “Do you know why, Geilie?” She glanced over her shoulder at me.
“Why, to change things,” she said, sounding surprised. “Why else? Come along; I hear your man down there.”
* * *
Whatever Jamie had been doing, it had been hard work; his shirt was dampened with sweat, and clung to his shoulders. He swung around as we entered the room, and I saw that he had been looking at the wooden puzzle-box that Geilie had left on the table. It was obvious from his expression that I had been correct in my surmise—it was the box he had found on the silkies’ isle.
“I believe I have succeeded in mending your sugar press, mistress,” he said, bowing politely to Geilie. “A matter of a cracked cylinder, which your overseer and I contrived to stuff with wedges. Still, I fear ye may be needing another soon.”
Geilie quirked her eyebrows, amused.
“Well, and I’m obliged to ye, Mr. Fraser. Can I not offer ye some refreshment after your labor?” Her hand hovered over the row of bells, but Jamie shook his head, picking up his coat from the sofa.
“I thank ye, mistress, but I fear we must take our leave. It’s quite some way back to Kingston, and we must be on our way, if we mean to reach it before dark.” His face went suddenly blank, and I knew he must have felt the pocket of his coat and realized that the photographs were missing.
He glanced quickly at me, and I gave him a brief nod, touching the side of my skirt where they lay.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, snatching up my hat, and moving toward the door with alacrity. Now that Jamie was back, I wanted nothing so much as to get quickly away from Rose Hall and its owner. Jamie hung back a moment, though.
“I wondered, Mistress Abernathy—since ye mentioned having lived in Paris for a time—whether ye might have been acquainted there wi’ a gentleman of my own acquaintance. Did ye by chance ken the Duke of Sandringham?”
She cocked her cream-blond head at him inquisitively, but as he said no more, she nodded.
“Aye, I kent him. Why?”
Jamie gave her his most charming smile. “No particular reason, mistress; only a curiosity, ye might say.”
The sky was completely overcast by the time we passed the gate, and it was clear that we weren’t going to make it back to Kingston without getting soaked. Under the circumstances, I didn’t care.
“Ye’ve got Brianna’s pictures?” was the first thing Jamie asked, reining up for a moment.
“Right here.” I patted my pocket. “Did you find any sign of Ian?”
He glanced back over his shoulder, as though fearing we might be pursued.
“I couldna get anything out of the overseer or any o’ the slaves—they’re bone-scairt of that woman, and I canna say I blame them a bit. But I know where he is.” He spoke with considerable satisfaction.
“Where? Can we sneak back and get him?” I rose slightly in my saddle, looking back; the slates of Rose Hall were all that was visible through the treetops. I would have been most reluctant to set foot on the place again for any reason—except for Ian.
“Not now.” Jamie caught at my bridle, turning the horse’s head back to the trail. “I’ll need help.”
Under the pretext of finding material to repair the damaged sugar press, Jamie had managed to see most of the plantation within a quarter-mile of the house, including a cluster of slave huts, the stables, a disused drying shed for tobacco, and the building that housed the sugar refinery. Everyplace he went, he suffered no interference beyond curious or hostile glances—except near the refinery.
“That big black bugger who came up onto the porch was sitting on the ground outside,” he said. “When I got too close to him, it made the overseer verra nervous indeed; he kept calling me away, warning me not to get too close to the fellow.”
“That sounds like a really excellent idea,” I said, shuddering slightly. “Not getting close to him, I mean. But you think he has something to do with Ian?”
“He was sitting in front of a wee door fixed into the ground, Sassenach.” Jamie guided his horse adroitly around a fallen log in the path. “It must lead to a cellar beneath the refinery.” The man had not moved an inch, in all the time that Jamie contrived to spend around the refinery. “If Ian’s there, that’s where he is.”
“I’m fairly sure he’s there, all right.” I told him quickly the details of my visit, including my brief conversation with the kitchenmaids. “But what are we going to do?” I concluded. “We can’t just leave him there! After all, we don’t know what Geillis wants with him, but it can’t be innocent, if she wouldn’t admit he was there, can it?”
“Not innocent at all,” he agreed, grim-faced. “The overseer wouldna speak to me of Ian, but he told me other things that would curl your hair, if it wasna already curled up like sheep’s wool.” He glanced at me, and a half-smile lit his face, in spite of his obvious perturbation.
“Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I should say that it’s going to rain verra soon now.”
“How observant of you,” I said sarcastically, vainly trying to tuck in the curls and tendrils that were escaping from under my hat. “The fact that the sky’s black as pitch and the air smells like lightning wouldn’t have a thing to do with your conclusions, of course.”
The leaves of the trees all round us were fluttering like tethered butterflies, as the edge of the storm rose toward us up the slope of the mountain. From the small rise where we stood, I could see the storm clouds sweep in across the bay below, with a dark curtain of rain hanging beneath it like a veil.
Jamie rose in his saddle, looking over the terrain. To my unpracticed eye, our surroundings looked like solid, impenetrable jungle, but other possibilities were visible to a man who had lived in the heather for seven years.
“We’d best find a bit of shelter while we can, Sassenach,” he said. “Follow me.”
On foot, leading the horses, we left the narrow path and pressed into the forest, following what Jamie said was a wild pigs’ trail. Within a few moments, he had found what he was looking for; a small stream that cut deep through the forest floor, with a steep bank, overgrown with ferns and dark, glossy bushes, interspersed with stands of slender saplings.
He set me to gathering ferns, each frond the length of my arm, and by the time I had returned with as many as I could carry, he had the framework of a tidy snug, formed by the arch of the bent saplings, tied to a fallen log, and covered over with branches cut from the nearby bushes. Hastily roofed with the spread ferns, it was not quite waterproof, but a great deal better than being caught in the open. Ten minutes later, we were safe inside.
There was a moment of absolute quiet as the wind on the edge of the storm passed by us. No birds chattered, no insects sang; they were as well equipped as we were to predict the rain. A few large drops fell, splattering on the foliage with an explosive sound like snapping twigs. Then the storm broke.
Caribbean rainstorms are abrupt and vigorous. None of the misty mousing about of an Edinburgh drizzle. The heavens blacken and split, dropping gallons of water within a minute. For as long as the rain lasts, speech is impossible, and a light fog rises from the ground like steam, vapor raised by the force of the raindrops striking the ground.
The rain pelted the ferns above us, and a faint mist filled the green shadows of our shelter. Between the clatter of the rain and the constant thunder that boomed among the hills, it was impossible to talk.
It wasn’t cold, but there was a leak overhead, which dripped steadily on my neck. There was no room to move away; Jamie took off his coat and wrapped it around me, then put his arm around me to wait out the storm. In spite of the terrible racket outside, I felt suddenly safe, and peaceful, relieved of the strain of the last few hours, the last few days. Ian was as good as found, and nothing could touch us, here.
I squeezed his free hand; he smiled at me, then bent and kissed me gently. He smelled fresh and earthy, scented with the sap of the branches he had cut and the smell of his own healthy sweat.
It was nearly over, I thought. We had found Ian, and God willing, would get him back safely, very soon. And then what? We would have to leave Jamaica, but there were other places, and the world was wide. There were the French colonies of Martinique and Grenada, the Dutch-held island of Eleuthera; perhaps we would even venture as far as the continent—cannibals notwithstanding. So long as I had Jamie, I was not afraid of anything.
The rain ceased as abruptly as it had started. Drops fell singly from the shrubs and trees, with a pit-a-pat drip that echoed the ringing left in my ears by the storm’s roar. A soft, fresh breeze came up the stream bed, carrying away humidity, lifting the damp curls from my neck with delicious coolness. The birds and the insects began again, quietly, and then in full voice, and the air itself seemed to dance with green life.
I stirred and sighed, pushing myself upright and shrugging off Jamie’s coat.
“You know, Geilie showed me a special stone, a black diamond called an adamant,” I said. “She said it’s a stone the alchemists used; it gives a knowledge of the joy in all things. I think there might be one under this spot.”
Jamie smiled at me.
“I shouldna be surprised at all, Sassenach,” he said. “Here, ye’ve water all down your face.”
He reached into his coat for a handkerchief, then stopped.
“Brianna’s pictures,” he said suddenly.
“Oh, I forgot.” I dug in my pocket, and handed him back the pictures. He took them and thumbed rapidly through them, stopped, then went through them again, more slowly.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“One of them’s gone,” he said quietly. I felt an inexpressible feeling of dread begin to grow in the pit of my stomach, and the joy of a moment before began to ebb away.
“Are you sure?”
“I know them as well as I know your face, Sassenach,” he said. “Aye, I’m sure. It’s the one of her by the fire.”
I remembered the picture in question well; it showed Brianna as an adult, sitting on a rock, outdoors by a campfire. Her knees were drawn up, her elbows resting on them, and she was looking directly into the camera, but with no knowledge of its presence, her face filled with firelit dreams, her hair blown back away from her face.
“Geilie must have taken it. She found the pictures in your coat while I was in the kitchen, and I took them away from her. She must have stolen it then.”
“Damn the woman!” Jamie turned sharply to look toward the road, eyes dark with anger. His hand was tight on the remaining photographs. “What does she want with it?”
“Perhaps it’s only curiosity,” I said, but the feeling of dread would not go away. “What could she do with it, after all? She isn’t likely to show it to anyone—who would come here?”
As though in answer to this question, Jamie’s head lifted suddenly, and he grasped my arm in adjuration to be still. Some distance below, a loop of the road was visible through the overgrowth, a thin ribbon of yellowish mud. Along this ribbon came a plodding figure on horseback, a man dressed in black, small and dark as an ant at this distance.
Then I remembered what Geilie had said. I’m expecting a visitor. And later, That parson said he’d come at four o’clock.
“It’s a parson, a minister of some kind,” I said. “She said she was expecting him.”
“It’s Archie Campbell, is who it is,” Jamie said, with some grimness. “What the devil—or perhaps I shouldna use that particular expression, wi’ respect to Mistress Duncan.”
“Perhaps he’s come to exorcise her,” I suggested, with a nervous laugh.
“He’s his work cut out for him, if so.” The angular figure disappeared into the trees, but it was several minutes before Jamie deemed him safely past us.
“What do you plan to do about Ian?” I asked, once we had made our way back to the path.
“I’ll need help,” he answered briskly. “I mean to come up the river with Innes and MacLeod and the rest. There’s a landing there, no great distance from the refinery. We’ll leave the boat there, go ashore and deal wi’ Hercules—and Atlas, too, if he’s a mind to be troublesome—break open the cellar, snatch Ian, and make off again. The dark o’ the moon’s in two days—I wish it could be sooner, but it will likely take that long to get a suitable boat and what arms we’ll need.”
“Using what for money?” I inquired bluntly. The expenditure for new clothes and shoes had taken a substantial portion of Jamie’s share of profit from the bat guano. What was left would feed us for several weeks, and possibly be sufficient to rent a boat for a day or two, but it wouldn’t stretch to buying large quantities of weapons.
Neither pistols nor swords were manufactured on the island; all weapons were imported from Europe and were in consequence expensive. Jamie himself had Captain Raines’s two pistols; the Scots had nothing but their fish knives and the odd cutlass—insufficient for an armed raid.
He grimaced slightly, then glanced at me sidelong.
“I must ask John for help,” he said simply. “Must I not?”
I rode silently for a moment, then nodded in acquiescence.
“I suppose you’ll have to.” I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a question of my liking; it was Ian’s life. “One thing, though, Jamie—”
“Aye, I know,” he said, resigned. “Ye mean to come with me, no?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling. “After all, what if Ian’s hurt, or sick, or—”
“Aye, ye can come!” he said, rather testily. “Only do me the one wee favor, Sassenach. Try verra hard not to be killed or cut to pieces, aye? It’s hard on a man’s sensibilities.”
“I’ll try,” I said, circumspectly. And nudging my horse closer to his, rode side by side down toward Kingston, through the dripping trees.