“God be praised, my lady, you have returned!” Hamid’s cries had alerted the cook and the other servants. They all came running, and they also thanked God for returning their mistress safe and sound.
Sibylla greeted her servants warmly. “What a relief to see that you are all well! How did you fare during the attack? Were you at home the whole time?”
“When the French attacked, we were here, my lady, but when the Haha Berbers came, we hid in the cemetery outside the city. The Haha avoid the cemetery because they are the sons of oxen and are afraid of the djinns,” Hamid proclaimed, clearly proud of having thought to hide everyone among the graves.
“Oh, how good it feels to be back home!” Sibylla sighed.
“And the master?” inquired Hamid.
She shook her head and told them Benjamin had been killed during the bombardment of the island.
The gatekeeper immediately began to wail loudly and tear his hair. “Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rajiun . . . we belong to God and to him we return . . .”
“We should be grateful that we are still alive and that the house was not damaged by the cannons,” Sibylla said, trying to console him.
But at that, the cook threw his hands in the air. “God protected the house from the cannons, but not from the Haha. They destroyed everything! Oh, what a disaster, my lady!”
It soon became apparent that the house had not entirely been spared from the cannonballs. One had landed in the courtyard and hit Benjamin’s sundial. As Sibylla checked the damage, she discovered that the base had lifted a little, so it was now crooked. The bronze globe with the serpents’ heads was undamaged, but the Union Jack lay next to it, burned and shredded. Benjamin’s exotic carp were missing from the pond.
“The Haha stabbed them with their bayonets,” Hamid said glumly.
“And fried them,” added the cook.
The inside of the house looked as though a whirlwind had swept through. Furniture was broken, books were ripped up, clothing was torn, and toys were destroyed. The Haha had stolen everything of value. Except for the half-empty bottle of whisky in his desk, they had even broken all the bottles in Benjamin’s hoard of alcohol.
“These louts have caused more havoc than the qaid’s henchmen,” Sibylla remarked grimly.
Still, she rolled up her sleeves and, with the help of Nadira, Firyal, and Hamid, began to clean. The cook disappeared in the kitchen to prepare supper with the paltry remnants the Berbers had overlooked. Sibylla’s sons had found their marbles and were playing in the courtyard.
“Mummy! Johnny threw my prettiest marble in the hole by Daddy’s sundial and it’s gone!” Tom stood in the doorway of Sibylla’s room and wiped his tears.
“Can I not leave you two alone for half an hour?” Sibylla was kneeling in her room surrounded by piles of books. She was placing those that had survived the Hahas’ destructive frenzy on the only unbroken shelf and the damaged ones in a box—not to throw away, but to have rebound.
“It’s my very favorite!”
Sibylla sighed and followed her son to the courtyard. Johnny was lying on his stomach and peering into the hole left by the cannon. “It fell in,” he explained sadly.
“Let me have a look, darling.”
She squatted down next to him and looked into the hole. The bricks Benjamin had used for the base were mostly destroyed and the pedestal of the sundial had been lifted out of the foundation. Sibylla sighed. She had no choice but to lie on her stomach and try to fish the marble out. She reached her arm in blindly, turning over stones and digging in the earth—without success. Just as she was about to give up, she felt a hollow under the base. Several bricks had been broken here as well. She carefully felt her way into the opening and finally touched something cool, smooth, and soft: linen. It was a sack about the size of a child’s head, with something jangling inside when she pulled on it. She found the cord, opened the sack, and let her hand glide inside.
Coins, she thought, stupefied. She grasped one and carefully withdrew her arm.
“Do you have the marble, Mummy?” Tom was hopping from one foot to the other.
“No, but . . .” She opened her fist and held her breath.
“What’s that, Mummy?” Tom asked.
Johnny leaned over and declared with a frown, “That’s not Tom’s marble.”
Sibylla stared at the yellow shimmering coin on her palm. She carefully brushed away some dirt although she was already sure it was a British sovereign, an extremely valuable coin with a high gold content.
But how did a British gold sovereign get under Benjamin’s sundial? As she turned the coin over between two fingers, she tried to make sense of her discovery. The coin could not have belonged to Mr. Fisher, the previous resident, because the date on the coin was 1839, meaning it was new. It must have belonged to Benjamin, just like the others in the sack. But why was it under his sundial?
Because he did not want anyone to know about it.
She got down on the ground again and explored the hole more extensively. It was about three hands high, an arm’s length wide, and a yard deep. The entire space was filled with similarly stuffed sacks.
Now Sibylla understood why her husband had been so nervous upon hearing of the qaid’s search. Why he had insisted on knowing exactly where the henchmen had looked and how much money they had found. She now understood the reason behind his prodigality—Benjamin had become richer than he had ever dared hope and he had wanted all the world to see, even as he knew he needed to hide it. And at the same time, he had lied to and betrayed his wife mercilessly, relentlessly, to the very end. She had fought for his life and mourned his death, and he had deceived her.
When night had fallen, Sibylla returned, stealthily, like a thief in her own house.
She pulled so many sacks out of the hole that it took a large basket and several trips to carry them to her bedroom from the courtyard.
She also found a leather portfolio—stained from the soil—which contained detailed accounts of Benjamin’s appalling transactions. Sibylla learned not only how many slave journeys the Queen Charlotte had undertaken, but also how many Africans were on board each time, how many died at sea, how much her husband had paid for their provisions, who had collected bribes, and lastly, in which Caribbean ports Captain Brown had sold the slaves.
Locked in her room, by the flickering light of an oil lamp and with growing disgust, Sibylla read these accounts of horror. It was difficult to believe that, in the last three years, her own husband, the father of her children, had sold around two thousand human beings into slavery. Had she known him so little, or had he been a different person before greed changed him?