by Sally Watson
“Yes, it is like that!” She scowled, and knew that Domino was scorning her for submitting to it. It was a novel and disagreeable sensation to be scorned for spinelessness. Jade could have thought of a number of trenchant things to say if self-justification hadn’t been against her code. She jutted her chin instead.
“Anyway, you can’t kill Uncle Augustus, because they’d just kill you,” she said sternly. “And don’t say you’d rather die, because I already know it. But that’s only as a last resort, and there are lots of other things to try first.”
The beautiful head turned slowly, dim in the pale light, challenge slitting the heavy-lashed eyes. “Hmmm?” drawled Domino. “What try first?”
Jade racked her brains. “Well—there’s Cockpit Country. That’s over in the west corner of Jamaica, and Uncle Augustus says it’s a refuge for escaped slaves and Indians. And nobody has ever been able to conquer them, because they defend themselves so well, and the country is so wild and terrible and filled with snakes and yellow fever and things. . . .”
Domino curled her full lips, clearly not much taken with the prospect. Jade saw her point. She sighed. “We’ll think of something. And if Uncle Augustus beats you, he’ll have to end up beating me too, and we might just as well grin and bear it, because it really isn’t at all practical to try to kill him.”
“Mmm,” said Domino, deeply shocked at the way pink men beat their children, and not promising anything.
It was characteristic of them both that the thought of Domino obeying Uncle Augustus never entered either head.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Stays
Jade let her horse amble between the cane fields, Joshua dutifully behind her, and wondered how it could really be November. Jamaica was as fiercely green as ever, sundrenched, ablaze with the scarlet of flower and flamingo—and swollen with slave labor. Everywhere there were swarms, rivers of chained slaves, toiling in the fields under the snap of whips. And not the little riding crops such as fathers used on rebellious children, either, but great long horse whips, cracking savagely. Jade winced at the thought.
She had been preoccupied with Domino for too long. Now that she began to look around at Jamaica, the sick hatred rose again in her, far stronger than ever. Virginia had never been anything like this! Sometimes she really wanted to kill every slave-owner in the world, even her own family!
She turned to say as much to Joshua, and was startled at the hunted look on his face, almost as if he were afraid of being snatched away and put to work with the field slaves. “What’s the matter?” she asked anxiously.
Joshua glanced over his shoulder uneasily, and then
shrugged. “Too much,” he mumbled obscurely. “This country hates man, Missy Lanie.”
Jade looked at him with sudden keenness. “You hate it, too, don’t you?” she discovered.
He nodded with another sideways glance into the hot damp green, from where came sounds of slaves at hard labor. “Masters here treat field slaves worse than animals,” he pointed out. “They’re cheaper, you see. It’s better business just to work them to death and buy new ones than to treat them decent. It’s—” He stopped and then started again. “I can understand men killing for hate, Missy Lanie; this is just not caring, and not even knowing there’s anything to care about. That scares me.”
It scared Jade, too. She shivered in the hot morning air, and felt the familiar hot urge to strike out with violence at something established and orderly and smug and impervious. She kicked at her horse—who was not without those same qualities, come to think of it—and raced along the track, Joshua behind her, until she was stopped perforce by a group of shambling, sullen slaves. Feeling more ferocious than ever, she turned again, bolted towards the shore, up the hill until she stopped on the top, breathing the clean salty wind of the sea, refreshing her eyes with the far reach of ocean before her and the graceful swoop of a large merchant ship, wings outspread, heading for Port Royal.
“I feel in a mood to be simply horribly wicked!” she told the apprehensive Joshua, and set her aggrieved horse at a full gallop for her uncle’s plantation.
She began her wickedness by charging past Dr. Hughes as he rode up the drive, and leaving him trying to control his rearing horse. Then, leaving her own horse and Joshua
in the stables, she went stalking into the house looking for more trouble.
Nor had she far to look. When she reached her bedchamber, there sat Aunt Louisa, looking stricken and accusing, Jade’s unworn stays in her lap. A tearful Fidelia and impassive Domino stood near.
“Dear Melanie!” The outrage in her voice sounded almost like Mother’s. “I’ve made Poor Fidelia tell me! Dear wicked Melanie —are you wearing stays?”
Jade could never resist a chance to be disconcerting. “If Fidelia’s told you, you needn’t ask me,” she pointed out practically. “And if you can’t tell, what difference does it make?”
Her aunt, not unnaturally, took this for plain impudence. “It makes a great deal of difference, dear Melanie,” she said, boxing Jade’s ears with a decisiveness that was very surprising indeed. “Now you’re going to put them on at once, dear, and don’t ever let me hear of your leaving them off again. I do hope God will forgive your immodesty, but I shall particularly ask Him in my prayers this evening, in case He doesn’t understand. I’m not at all sure that I understand, myself,” she confessed as a rather plaintive afterthought. “But I don’t think you’d better try to explain, dear Melanie,” she added hastily, as Jade opened her mouth to point out the simple truth that the beastly things were hot and hurt her ribs. “I really think I’d far rather not hear it. The devil might have a hand in this, and if he does, I don’t want to know anything about it. You just put them on, dear, and we won’t mention it again; and then you can come on down and have coffee with me. Your dear uncle is in his study having his with
Dr. Hughes.” And she left the room to Jade, the two slaves, and the stays.
Jade looked at the hateful things. Then she looked at Domino, who wore the expression of someone deciding that her newly-acquired English must be at fault. Surely not even pink-skins would wear a thing like that? Unless—Perhaps as an odd form of punishment? She regarded Jade with deep interest, waiting to see what she’d do next.
Jade opened her neglected sewing box and took out the shears. Then she proceeded to cut the offensive garment into separate strips of whalebone and steel, while the terrified Fidelia watched with small moans of dismay.
“Don’t be such a coward,” Jade told her impatiently. She had no use at all for weakness. “No one’s going to blame you, for goodness sake!” And with a reckless laugh she marched downstairs and presented her aunt with the remains.
Aunt Louisa eyed the strips in blank silence. Domino (who wouldn’t have missed this for worlds) watched with deep interest, and Fidelia stood quaking. Jade waited with a bland face and just the tiniest sensation of danger fluttering pleasantly between her lungs. After all, Aunt Louisa had surprised her once today.
“Dear Melanie, that was very silly,” she said plaintively. “I quite remember, of course, that your poor father warned us about your wicked behavior, but I should have thought that climbing trees and being rude to our guests and frightening Poor Dr. Hughes’ horse and being difficult about your slave were quite enough for just the short time you’ve been with us; and in any case, I’ve left out a number of other wickednesses. My poor dear Clarinda never behaved like that in all her life, and she was very pretty, besides. And now, dear Melanie, you’ll just have to go up and stay in your bedchamber until you’ve remade your stays.”
“I can’t,” Jade said simply and truthfully. Sewing was not her strong point at best, and a set of stays was quite beyond her.
Her aunt considered this point, accepted it. “Well, then, you’ll have to stay there and make slave dresses while someone else remakes the stays.”
This was fair and reasonable, and also unexpected. Jade had been prepared for almost anything from h
er twitterpated aunt, from hysterics to thumb-screws—except this. But there was one point that had to be made.
“I still won’t wear the stays, so it’s a waste of somebody’s time remaking them.”
Aunt Louisa looked flustered. “But dear Melanie, it isn’t decent not to wear them. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to receive callers, like dear Chester Quayles,” she added with a cunning that was altogether misplaced. Jade grinned like a fiend.
“Good,” she said. “He’s a bore. Anyway, I don’t expect him to call again, because I told him not to and stamped on his toes the last time he came.”
“Melanie!” bleated her outraged aunt, backing up a step and regarding her with growing dislike. Jade felt a pang of regret. She usually managed to make people dislike her, even when she didn’t want to. She couldn’t seem to help it: it was her demon that drove her. Aunt Louisa really was rather sweet, in a way—But she unquestioningly accepted all the loathsome things people did to one another, so long as it was her race and class that did it. Jade hardened her heart.
“You can send the sewing up to me,” she said curtly, and went straight-backed up the stairs, followed by a puzzled Domino, who planted herself in the middle of the room with furrowed brow.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why sew? Why not fight?” Jade, her code second nature by now, found trouble explaining it in simple words. It was so clear and obvious to her: when the tune was played and the piper came to collect, one paid without quibbling. But how to explain it to the angry-eyed Domino, who clearly considered this a spineless surrender?
“I do fight,” she objected, “but there are—rules.” It sounded lame even to her. Domino, whose only rule was no holds barred, looked as if she thought Jade afflicted with sunstroke again. Inspired, Jade appealed to the pride that possessed them both. “You didn’t fight in the slave market, did you? And you won’t fight if Uncle Augustus beats you. You’re too proud!”
“Oh,” said Domino uncertainly, and retired into baffled silence to figure out the connection.
Jade turned to stare out the window with a small sideways smile. There was a connection; she knew that. But she’d have been hard put to explain it. Let Domino puzzle over it; it would do her good.
The jacaranda trees stood brooding over the drive, the garden was vivid with butterflies and humming birds and improbable blossoms, the parrots screamed. On the hill two palms swayed, and beyond them was the sea. Wild restlessness seized Jade. It was unbearable to be cooped up like this! How many weeks since she had worn her breeches, held a rapier, climbed a tree? And when would she do these things again?
A hard-ridden horse tore up the drive, and a servant tumbled off and raced inside for Dr. Hughes. This had happened once before when he was visiting. Someone was ill, and Jade’s mind leaped to the thing most feared in the tropics: more than hurricane or earthquake, pirates or fire, or even malaria. Yellow fever! It could sweep whole cities, killing thousands. It could quite literally wipe out an entire ship’s crew, leaving the empty hulk to drift aimlessly over the seas or rot deserted in some far-off harbor.
“Yellow jack,” she predicted morbidly, not wanting it to be true, but in an odd way relishing the prospect of any excitement whatever. The three tall masts of that merchant ship, sails reefed, could just be seen where it was now anchored in harbor. “That ship’s docked with it on board, and they’ve come running for Dr. Hughes. And we’ll have to go home to Virginia, because Father made Uncle Augustus promise faithfully to send me straight home if there were even one case . . .” She grinned wryly. “And they can’t stand me there—and they’ll find you even more unbearable—so I wonder where we’ll be sent next? Domino, you aren’t even listening!”
“No,” agreed Domino, who felt no more obligation to listen than to serve or obey. She was squatting beside Jade’s box, looking at the unusual thickness of the bottom with alert and curious eyes. Now she looked up, a question forming on her lips.
Jade’s eyes widened. Why not? She leaped across the room, bolted the door, flew to the box. Presently she was teaching the fascinated African girl the rudiments of swordsmanship. It wasn’t a workout with Monsieur Maupin, but it was better than nothing; and Domino showed great promise and enthusiasm.
At the end of the lesson, Jade let her feelings and muscles loose with a wild attack against a certain offensive spot on the blue wallpaper. And at last she sprang to the bed, killed the bedpost with one neat thrust at its oaken heart, tangled herself completely in the hangings, and collapsed giggling, her hair a hot mass about her neck.
“Someone come up,” Domino announced coolly, and bestirred herself to help hurl sword and breeches back into the box and unbolt the door again. When Aunt Louisa opened the door, both girls stood demurely by the window, Jade in a shocking state of undress.
“Oh, dear Melanie, a terrible thing!” she cried distractedly. “Whatever have you been doing, child? Do make yourself decent, dear; I have such shocking news!” She sank into a chair and began fanning herself.
Jade’s eyes widened. Good gracious, was it the dreaded yellow jack, then? She hadn’t for a moment believed her own fiction.
“Do you remember poor dear Mr. Bayard? Only I shouldn’t call him dear, I suppose, should I? Because I never did like him, you know, and although one mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I have never quite understood why being dead changed anything about what folk were like when they were alive, and I find that I can’t like him a bit better now than I did yesterday. But poor Mr. Bayard, anyway.”
“Is he dead, then?” asked Jade, coming to the heart of the matter with some slight effort. “Good. He was a horrible man. Oh, and that means it couldn’t be the ship, then,” she added, infected for the moment by her aunt’s speech habits.
“What?” Aunt Louisa looked confused. “Why, it was his ship that caused it, of course, but I can’t think how you knew, dear Melanie.”
“I didn’t! I don’t!” Jade was now more than a little confused, herself. “Do please tell me what happened!” She made an impatient face.
“You see, that’s his merchant ship the Royal Trader that’s just docked, only it wasn’t supposed to be here at all, you see. Well, not alone, I mean. It was coming down from New York, and it was supposed to be met by his very largest ship, the Queen Royal, which is really quite as big and well-armed as a warship, Mr. Bayard says—or at least I mean he said, poor man, when he was alive to say it. . . .” She fell into reflection over the strange ways of life and death.
“Well, what happened?” begged Jade.
“Oh, yes.” Aunt Louisa began fanning again, agitatedly. “Yes, the Queen Royal should have met the Royal Trader and escorted her here safely, because of all that pirate-infested sea, you understand.” (She clearly had a mental picture of a sea swarming with pirate craft from horizon to horizon.) “And she did meet it, just as planned. But—” Aunt Louisa’s eyes were circular. “Dear Melanie, do you know what happened?”
“No!” said Jade with considerable restraint.
“The Queen Royal was a pirate ship! I mean, she is! She’s been captured somehow by that dreadful Calico Jack and the Brazen Female, and they stole all the cargo from the Royal Trader as well, and eight of her crew even joined them, and then the pirates sent the rest of the crew on to Jamaica in the looted ship to tell poor Mr. Bayard.” Jade giggled, totally unsympathetic.
“Oh, you wicked girl, it isn’t at all funny!” cried her aunt, outraged. “And when he heard the news, Poor Mr. Bayard foamed at the mouth and fell down dead of an apoplexy!” She tried to look grief-stricken, or at least suitably distressed.
“I’m not a bit sorry,” said Jade heartlessly. “I think the world is a whole lot better off without him, and so do you, really, so why pretend?”
Aunt Louisa looked doubtful—not so much of what her niece had said, but of the propriety of saying it. “You mustn’t say such things, dear Melanie,” she murmured. “And anyway, we ought not to rejoice in the triumph of wickedness; and you know those ter
rible pirates are a great deal more wicked than Poor Mr. Bayard ever was. Governor Lawes is perfectly furious: you know how he hates the Bonney creature; and he’s sending out a man-of-war to capture the Queen Royal back again, and bring them all back and hang them . . .” Her voice trailed away ever more dubiously. Jade had the distinct impression that her aunt entertained some doubts about the probable success of this militant venture.
She was right, too. The man-of-war returned sheepishly after a while saying that it hadn’t seen the Queen Royal at all. This was undoubtedly perfectly true. But rumor in Jamaica had it that the warship had been very careful indeed not to go anywhere near the area where that unusually large and well-armed pirate ship was known to be cruising. And Jade smiled cynically.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Lovely and Cool!”
The stays remade, Jade put them in her box and went on not wearing them; and Aunt Louisa (recognizing implacable obduracy when she saw it) was careful not to ask. It was Uncle Augustus who finally did that.
“Are you wearing your stays as your aunt told you?” he demanded one morning over his breakfast of eggs, steak, and onions.
Aunt Louisa glanced up from her own dish of fruit, and if ever a grown-up appealed to a young person to lie, Aunt Louisa did then. Jade did no such thing, of course. She stuck out that deceptively soft round chin, smiled, and shook her head.
Pale blue eyes and jade-green ones fixed themselves upon each other like a clash of swords. “I will not have disobedience in this house,” said Uncle Augustus. “Not even from your aunt, much less from you. You will go up and put on this garment, and then come down and be gracious and polite to Dr. Hughes, who comes for morning coffee.” He saw the defiance on her face, and added a warning. “Otherwise I have the slaves hold you and put it on by force, and we leave it on day and night.”