“Easy now! We meant you folks no harm.” The standing man gave a limp smile and issued a nervous laugh. “We’ve no fight at all with you. T’was only them runaway darkies we was followin’ anyhows. We had no way of knowin’ they’d taken white folk prisoners.” He glanced at Tess and his eyes traced the trickles of blood that dripped from her wound as they ran down the front of her dress and clotted there in the material. “Yer Missus’ is needing a kerchief, looks like,” he nodded at William. “I’ve got just the thing in my chest pocket, if you’ll allow ….” Without waiting for permission from William, he slowly lowered his hand into the pocket of the lanyard strapped diagonally across his chest.
The dark glint of the tiny Queen Anne pistol looked nothing like the promised kerchief as the man withdrew it and in a flash, had it leveled at William. A broad toothless grin spread over the man’s face. “Now we is about even in surprises, ain’t we?”
William froze, with only his eyes flicking from Tess, who stared determinedly at her assailant still kneeling head down in front of her, and then back to the small but lethal weapon pointed directly at him. He slowly raised his eyes from the muzzle of the gun to the man’s face, and his eyebrows arched.
“Not quite.” William’s gaze never faltered as the swoosh of the machete struck the man’s ears, its blade biting into the side of his neck and slicing through. Mambo stood behind the headless body as it toppled forward, her chest heaving with the exertion of the heavy blade’s swing.
Tess’s simultaneous attack on the hunter still bowed at William’s feet attracted his attention though. Unsheathing the small dirk that had travelled all this way securely attached to her lower leg by the strength of her grandmother’s red ribbons, Tess lunged up from her squatted position and drove the blade deep into the man’s chest. The blade was minute in comparison to the machete but days of tending to fatal chest wounds aboard the Mary Jane had given Tess perfect anatomical understanding. A human heart was not hard to hit if one knew just where to aim.
Again the slave catcher’s bodies were stripped of all clothing and weapons, and their nude corpses were dragged away from the stream’s edge into the jungle’s undergrowth.
“Shouldn’t we bury them or something?” William asked.
Mambo shook her head. “De jungle spirits, dey hungry. Dey feast tonight.”
Tying a pistol and a powder horn to the sash at her waist, and slipping both the machete and a smaller dagger into leather sheaths taken from the hunters, Mambo held William and Tess in her gaze, before striking off into the foliage. She was expected to return with help to transport both Jacko and Tess to the village. She would, William knew, return with assistance for Jacko, even if she didn’t care about Tess’s or his own survival. He had seen how tenderly the woman had cared for the wounded man. Her mate, William corrected himself. Their relationship was apparent to him now. Being moved had been excruciatingly painful for Jacko, but he now lay on a bed of soft leaves gathered by Mambo. He was mercifully unconscious.
Mambo had packed his hip and leg wounds with a sticky mat of colorful crushed leaves and sap before she dressed them with strips of cloth torn from Tess’s dress. William, too, had carefully wrapped Tess’s neck wound, accepting Mambo’s offer of a poultice of the strange jungle plant mixture to lay overtop of the gaping laceration.
If only Tess hadn’t given that emerald ring to her grandmother! William despaired. Tess may still not have been fully convinced of its ability to promote healing but often enough William had watched her use it nonetheless, among the sick and injured, and incredulous as the notion of its power seemed to be, he was, by now, unable to dismiss the possibility. And the blue one–it warned her of the attack on us! She knew!
It was all so weird. The logical portion of his brain still resisted, and had done so since Tess had tried to explain the rings to him, but a deeper knowing tugged at him. How else could any of this be explained? he wondered. Maybe there was some truth seeded in all legends. Maybe we aren’t supposed to, aren’t even able to, figure it all out. His head was cramping with the doubts and questions that filled it. He sighed and decided he would probably never know how or even if, it was the rings that had worked. And really does it matter? he mused, looking down at Tess who rested quietly beside him. For now, life’s sweetest moments were also the unexpected ones.
After what seemed an eternity, Mambo returned with only two others, making it plain that Tess and William would walk. They were going to transport Jacko on a narrow stretcher constructed of thin branches woven into a fishnet. The flexibility of the device made portaging through the jungle’s maze possible where something less supple would have rendered passage impossible.
The tropical vegetation had blended into a forest of tall trees and stony crevasses when their small group traveling in single file stopped at the foot of a smooth vertical cliff. The stream they had been following seemed to gush out from the foot of its rocky face, which was dressed with a thick and tangled veil of hanging plants. Pulling this living curtain aside, the leader of the group stepped into a small opening in the rock and was swallowed up in its darkness. Those in front of William and Tess followed him.
Tess, however, stood riveted at the stream’s side, feeling quite uncertain. She stood swaying slightly, her earlier wooziness having been replaced by a general deep fatigue. She sensed William’s nearness and knew he was standing close behind her. She’d noticed that sometime during the climb, he had stuck the pistols into the belt of rope that he wore around his waist. He was directly behind her now, his presence reassuring, his muscled body warm against hers. She flushed at his touch.
“Do you have the guns ready?” she whispered over her shoulder. The uncertainty of what they were walking into unnerved her.
There was a moment of silence before William answered.
“Wouldn’t do any good,” he replied.
“Why not?”
He lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug and a soft chuckle shook in his chest. “Uh, the pistols and shot survived the seawater … but the gunpowder didn’t.” He quickly added, “But only you and I have to know that little detail.”
Tess twirled around and searched his face. “But then–back when we were attacked–it was all a ruse?”
“Well, the pistols made a good enough impression though, didn’t they? That’s all that matters.” William gave a wry smile and nodded toward the waiting aperture. “Let’s not keep our hosts waiting.”
As she stepped into the cave’s opening, Tess’s finger began to itch under her ring and she felt the odd sensation of a soft yet invisible pull around her.
One of the other rings!
Surely that was the pull that she felt. Her pulse quickened and she stumbled on through the rough tunnel, heading toward a shaft of light that glowed up ahead. William kept pace behind her, his hand remaining in light contact at her waist.
Breaking out of the tunnel’s end, and stepping into the filtered sunlight, they stood still, amazed at the sight before them. A small collection of thatched huts, barely visible in the camouflage of the surroundings, were tucked back along the perimeter of an ill-defined clearing.
They had been brought to their captives’ secret encampment. They were standing at the edge of a village of the Maroons.
The sailors’ stories burst into Tess’s thoughts. Such places were rumored to be scattered throughout the islands, founded by groups of escaped slaves whose treatment by their white owners had been so vicious that they chose to face starvation and possibly death, rather than remain in captivity. Recaptured runaways were always branded and whipped; often the males were castrated and the women brutally raped. Once in awhile one would be dismembered, or hung, or burned alive as a warning to the other slaves. Tess shook her head as if to clear it of such nightmarish images. The village’s occupants had every reason to be hostile to any white people that they encountered. Their need for revenge was raw and primal.
The Maroons’ continued survival in these villages depend
ed on complete secrecy of their whereabouts. Tess knew, now that they were here, they would not be allowed to leave alive. And the deep anger with which most of this scavenging party looked at them suggested that staying alive was not a likely option.
With fear building in her chest again, Tess began to twist her silver and gold gem studded bands, begging to be given some insight but all that she felt was the strange invisible pull. It was growing stronger.
As they were prodded down the tortuous path towards the clearing’s center, Tess lurched to a sudden stop, causing those behind her to collide in a chain reaction. She blinked in disbelief at what she saw before her. Stepping out of one of the huts, into the bright sunlit clearing, was a form so familiar that it took Tess’s breath away.
Cassie.
Tess stood shoulder to shoulder to Cassie in the doorway of one of the huts. Inside, William and Smith compared details of their escape from the ships, and their rescue, such as it was, by the scouting parties of the maroons. Neither one dwelled on the unknown fates of the missing ones–Mrs. Hanley, Mr. Lancaster, and Tommy–nor of the ones left behind–Captain Crowell from the Bloodhorn, and John Robert and Edward from the Mary Jane.
The two young men spoke quietly, both of them realizing that their own fates were no better, that in less than a day, they had gone from being prisoners of the pirates to prisoners of this band of hostile runaways. William listened calmly to the details of Smith’s recall of his and Cassie’s ordeal.
“We both was sickened with our bellies heavin’ up sea water hard, an’ not too sure we was thankful to still be alive in that condition, ya’ understand,” Smith recalled, with a wry smile. “But alive we was, with me caught by my trouser rope in between them giant sandstones just out aways, an’ her tossed up on the shore.” His face clouded as he added, “There was no sign of young Tommy.”
“Anyways, soon enough there comes these Maroons an’ they haul poor Cassie to her feet, none too gently, with her still retchin’. Served them right that she puked all over them, she did.” He grinned at the memory. “Then the woman, the one called Mambo, gets all tense when she sees Cassie’s arm. Seems that she’d spent some time with that bloody Carlos herself, an’ wouldn’t ya’ know it, she’s got his brand on her arm too, and didn’t get it in an agreeable fashion neither. When she saw that on Cassie’s arm, I could hear her holler ‘Bloodhorn!’ all the way out in the waves where I was still tied down to them stones. An’ there was no mistakin’ the hate in her voice, lemme tell ya’.
“An’ then they waded out to me, where I was gettin’ a touch worried bein’ as the tide was risin’. They sliced me free an’ hauled me in an just as I was thinkin’ this might be a piece of luck, be buggered if they don’t force me to my knees an’ was goin’ to chop my head off, execution style, I kid you not!”
“Yet here you are. What happened?” William asked.
“The man with the machete saw his back,” Cassie interjected.
“Nah,” Smith countered.
“Yes, that was what saved you,” Cassie insisted. “He saw that mesh of scars all over you and decided that you had had just as many or maybe more whippings than him. And when he hesitated in his swing, I threw myself on top.”
“And that changed his mind?” William was skeptical.
“It was what she was yellin’, as she did so,” Smith explained. “There she was, plasterin’ herself all over me an’ screamin’, ‘He helped to kill Carlos! He helped!’ An’ that was what made the difference,” he nodded and beamed at Cassie.
“You helped?” Tess was confused. She had seen Carlos die. “How?”
Smith grinned at her. “That’s exactly what Mambo asked, too.” He looked at Cassie, letting her deliver the answer.
“He brought me a candle.”
The branded woman who showed such fascination with Tess’s ring came to speak in private to Tess and Cassie. She was fluent enough in English and from her they learned that she and Cassie had shared abuse at the hands of the same despised man and that it was indeed the matching brand that ensured Cassie’s refuge here. The white sailor who had been found with Cassie, however, was another matter.
White people had to be eliminated, Mambo explained, especially any who knew of the village’s location. The continued freedom of the escaped slaves living there depended upon it and any details of the Maroons’ existence had to be kept concealed from their former white owners.
“If dey capture us, dey kill us and hang de bodies on tall posts all around till dey be rotted. All white people be silenced. We stay secret from dem.” She glanced at Cassie in an apologetic way, then reached out and palpated Cassie’s brand once again. She seemed lost in thought for a few moments before she looked up and regarded Cassie’s dark eyes with her own.
“Dis devil man. He is really dead?”
Tess and Cassie both nodded in confirmation. Their captor sighed and grasped their hands together in her own powerful grip. The silence was almost unbearable as she struggled with her decision. Then, with a lightning flick of her other hand, she slashed across their palms, splitting them open with a shard of stone. Holding their hands together, dripping with the welling blood, she commanded, “Look. Inside we are de same. All de same ….”
Her voice trailed away and a low hum vibrated in her throat. She cast a glance skyward and then continued. “Devil man dead. Den we be on de same side.” She squinted at Cassie and hissed, “Dat man wit’ you done a great favor.” Her eyes flickered between Cassie and Tess. “Maybe we let both your men live. For now.”
Four white captives. Her decision was a difficult one. She was a former member of the Ashanti of Western Africa, and now the group’s Mambo, a priestess who was skilled and knowledgeable in communing with the spirits. Astonishingly to her, Tess’s birthmark closely resembled Erzulie’s mark–Erzulie, the spirit of the powerful earth mother and one who was capable of prophesy, especially in dreams. Mambo decided that, initiated or not, Tess was clearly Erzulie’s choice, and therefore Tess’s safety was indisputable.
The young white man who had been with her at the shore was also unusual. It had not escaped Mambo’s notice that he bore webbing between his fingers. Is this a sign that he belongs to the gods of the sea? The villagers depended on the generosity of the sea’s deities to provide them with their much needed source of protein. If he is harmed, will the gods be angered? It was best not to risk it.
How is it that so many strange persons should be delivered into her care, Mambo wondered. She sighed. The gods are complicated.
The spinning rings were another matter. The rings’ gems were phenomenal in their own right, but many pieces of beautiful and priceless jewelry abounded, brought back from exotic and far-away lands to this area. These islands were, after all, home to most of the world’s treasure-seeking pirates. Pieces were bought, traded, stolen, and flaunted on a regular basis.
But these rings were unlike any others. When Cassie returned the ruby spinner to Tess, Mambo noticed that the rings clung to each other. The spinning of the rings was a quality that no others possessed. Such items were sure to be coveted; they could bring unbelievable value in trade. The conversation with Mambo had nearly come to an end before Tess had an opportunity to explain that her grandmother and companion were missing.
“I have to search for them. Even if,” she swallowed hard, “even if they have washed up on shore”
“Not possible for you to go,” Mambo flatly stated.
It was not until Tess explained that her grandmother was in possession of a third ring, also a bejeweled spinner, that Mambo reversed her decision. She agreed to send out a small, unobtrusive search party to learn of their whereabouts if they still lived.
“Dat be easy if dey be dead, harder if dey live and are hidin’, harder still if dey already been found by others,” she cautioned. “Somet’ing must be sent along, in case payment for dem is needed,” she continued, eying Tess’s rings.
For a moment Tess was torn–the rings were just beaut
iful trinkets. Perhaps all the abilities that she thought she had been given by them were only imagination and coincidence. On the other hand, she had felt their power–had seen the results with her own eyes. She couldn’t part with them–and as she nervously twisted them on her fingers, she instantly knew that she must not part with them. Yet Mambo stood, insisting on a valuable item for her grandmother’s ransom. Tess closed her eyes and quieted her rising panic. Blanking out the fear, she realized what she must do.
“I have another thing of great value,” Tess countered, tearing open the seam on the side of her bodice and reaching in. She withdrew a flattened, highly polished round plate of glass. “This can be used to show you tiny things that you didn’t know existed. I am certain that there is no other like it here,” and she dropped the microscope’s lens into Mambo’s waiting hand.
The polished disc nestled in the woman’s palm as though it had been waiting all this time to settle into such a perfect fit.
Night was falling quickly as the villagers prepared for a ceremony. A large center pole fashioned from a tree trunk had been erected, its end tamped into a deep and narrow pit dug into the earth. Drums and rattles had been strewn in a wide circle about the pole, and the women were placing offering baskets of fruits and vegetables in strategic places around those.
The ceremony took place as the moon hit her vertex in the sky. Every member of this colony participated, taking turns drumming, singing, and dancing. The drums’ sonorous voices reverberated off the cliffs’ walls and pounded against the participants’ chests, blending with the rhythm of their own life forces coursing through their bodies. The songs were sung in a foreign tongue, but the melodies and harmonies were hypnotically engaging. The shipwreck survivors felt themselves being drawn into the pageantry, compelled to dance and sing as joyously, as fervently and as unfettered as those around them.
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