Chameleon in a Mirror

by Ruth Nestvold

  Caesar's voice rose dramatically. “Will you, I ask, suffer the lash at such hands?” There was an almost imperceptible moment of silence, in which his voice seemed to echo back from the wall of the jungle along the edges of the clearing. Then the spell was over, and Caesar's audience arose in an irregular, dark wave.

  “No!”

  Clemene took up the bow and arrows, a gift from an Indian trader, and turned to the father of her child, impatient to carry out their plan of escape. “Come. The others await.”

  “Is that all you would take?” Caesar asked.

  “We must travel fast if we are to flee the colorless ones,” Clemene said shortly. Caesar nodded.

  When they arrived at the dark clearing where the others were gathered, Clemene's courage almost failed her. The slaves of Parham had little in the way of possessions, but what they had, they brought. Blankets, pots, clothing, all were knotted together and slung over backs and hips. And then there were the small children and the babies, whimpering at being dragged out of their beds. Clemene's hand sought her rounding belly. However this adventure ended, she swore that her child would not be born in slavery.

  Tuscan arrived with the raiding party, leading two mules with fully laden supply carts.

  “I see you were successful?” Caesar said with a grin.

  Tuscan grinned back. “No problem. The beasts at least are our friends.”

  With the moon full and the Indian guide Tiguamy leading them, Clemene had hoped they would be able to move quickly. But not only were they burdened by too much baggage, they also had the density of the jungle to compete with. They had to hack away the vegetation before them as they marched, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Tiguamy showed them how to wield the evil-looking machete, up and down and back and forth, slicing through undergrowth and bushes, but it was hard work. By dawn they had only covered half the distance they'd hoped. The advance guard was tired; the children were tired; those burdened with them were tired.

  Clemene sat down next to the stump of what only minutes before had been a tree and gazed the way they had come; it was a small, uneven door through the jungle, but it was a door nonetheless. And it was open.

  “Oh, look Mr. Scot! What is that delightful creature?”

  “I believe it is a marmoset, Miss Johnson.”

  “Where?” Stephen came tumbling through the underbrush on the side of the trail, and the small animal fled.

  “Accursed brat! You scared it!” Aphra scolded playfully. Stephen grinned as she took his arm and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Scot watched with a bemused smile. Aphra looked barely older than her fifteen-year-old brother, and the way she behaved only reinforced the impression. She was constantly teasing to go on some exploratory jaunt, ready for any prank or adventure, more like a young girl than a mature woman of twenty-two.

  Aphra caught the intimate look and glanced away. Will Scot was being much too obvious — and not obvious enough. He was not courting her openly, like a man seeking a wife; it was seduction, pure and simple. She was slowly coming to fear that she'd made a mistake, but she couldn't help it; she loved being with him, loved his humor and his knowing touch.

  They strolled on towards the grove at the top of the rise while Stephen dashed ahead to the cliff overlooking the river. It was a bit misleading to call it a grove; it was nearly half the length of the Mall in London, a long walk shaded from the fierce rays of the sun by lemon and orange trees as big as English oaks. It was Aphra's favorite spot on the plantation. The cool air coming up from the river, perfumed by the scent of the trees, made it pleasant here no matter how hot the day.

  “The fruit appears to be ripe,” Will Scot said, taking Aphra's arm gently and drawing it through his own. “Would you care for some?”

  “I don't mind if I do,” Aphra said with a smile.

  “What would you prefer, an orange or a banana?”

  “I think I would like a banana. Oranges are to be had in every theater in London.”

  Will moved toward a cluster of bananas visible just behind a lemon tree but started back. “No bananas today, I fear. I thought I saw a snake.”

  “So you would go back on your offer?” Aphra asked with playful indignation. “'Tis hardly behavior appropriate for one with the presumed dedication of Celladon.”

  “Then if I must brave snakes for a piece of fruit for my fair Astrea, I shall do so,” Scot said, offering to make his way through the trees.

  Aphra shuddered and grabbed hold of his arm again. “I will forego the fruit for today. We must stay to the middle of the path.”

  “Regrettable,” Will said, caressing her hand lightly.

  At the sound of rustling leaves, they started apart.

  “Stephen, be careful, there are snakes here!” Aphra called.

  “Snakes? Where? Are they poisonous?” Stephen asked as he entered the grove.

  “Mr. Scot says they are, so I would prefer if you would leave them in peace.”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “Shush,” Aphra admonished him.

  Suddenly Stephen seemed to remember the reason he had come and gestured wildly in the direction of the river. “There's a boat coming!”

  “I wonder who it might be?” Aphra and Will followed Stephen to the edge of the rock.

  “Treffry, most like,” Will Scot commented, examining the barge coming from across the river. He frowned. “And all is not well.” He pointed to the old guns, rusty with age and disuse, which several of the men in the boat carried.

  Aphra stared down at the barge anxiously. “What could be amiss?”

  The militia of the colony caught up with the fugitives on the third day. When it was obvious that they would have to turn and fight, Caesar tried to force Clemene to stay behind with the women and children, but she took the bow under her arm and slung the arrows over her shoulder and gave him a look that made him both fearful and proud.

  As the motley militia came into view, Clemene recognized the strutting figure of deputy governor Byam, the low forehead and small, light eyes; eyes without a soul. Taking one of the poisoned arrows the Indians had given her, she took careful aim. The arrow hit Byam in the shoulder and he stumbled back. Before he fell, those light eyes found her in the ranks of the slaves, watched how she lowered the bow. Clemene did not flinch under his gaze. She read her death there, but perhaps the short-headed one would yet be the first to die.

  Clemene's wish was not to come true. With only a handful of them able to fight, the escaped slaves were soon captured. Byam's Indian mistress sucked the poison out of his wound, and Caesar and Tuscan were whipped until their bones showed through the flesh. Afterwards, the welts were rubbed with pepper. As a breeding female and doubly valuable, Clemene was locked away at Parham where she could do no harm to herself or others. When Byam and his council decided Caesar should be hanged as a lesson to the other slaves, Treffry threw the so-called council off the plantation, declaring that Willoughby's lands, as the seat of the Lord Governor, were exempt from their crude attempts at law-making.

  “How is he?” Aphra asked as Treffry led her through the house, Will Scot and Colonel Martin at their heels. She and her family had only just returned from the Colonel's plantation upriver where they'd fled at news of the uprising. The men had tried to dissuade her from visiting Caesar, but she was adamant.

  Treffry shrugged. “Better than to be expected, I suppose. But he is not well, Miss Johnson.”

  Treffry threw open the door to the guest room, and Aphra hurried in with a flurry of skirts. Dropping to her knees beside the bed, she took Caesar's large, fine hands in her own small white ones.

  “Caesar,” she whispered, “what did they do to you?”

  Caesar's eyes fluttered open, and an incongruous smile played around his full lips. “They whipped me, Mistress.”

  Aphra swallowed. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  “Let me take my revenge.” Every word seemed to be an effort, but he uttered each with peculiar
emphasis.

  Colonel Martin stepped forward. “We cannot let you do that, Caesar.”

  “Perhaps you cannot let me, but you cannot stop me either, unless you deliver me to Byam.”

  “You have a wife and child to think of,” Colonel Martin reminded him.

  “That I do.” A flicker of life entered Caesar's eyes. “What news of her?”

  “Byam locked her up, but I threw him out and had her freed,” Treffry said.

  “If for nothing else, for that I must be avenged on your two-faced governor,” Caesar insisted with effort.

  “He is not our governor,” Aphra protested. “Lord Willoughby never would have done anything like this.” She did not see the way the men behind her looked at each other.

  “Because you would have stopped him, Mistress?” Caesar said quietly.

  Aphra was too sick at heart to pay any attention to the sarcasm. “Oh, Caesar, I wish I had not been so faint-hearted and left, but we were sick with fear that the slaves would come at night and cut all our throats.”

  “You were in no danger,” he said flatly.

  “I should have stayed.”

  “Why? You never could have done what you promised.”

  “My influence with the Lord Governor is great ...” Aphra began, but Caesar turned his head away. Aphra suddenly felt herself on the edge of tears.

  After an uncomfortable pause, Caesar spoke to the wall. “You too are white, and as faithless as the rest. Though no people profess so much, none perform so little. I counted you friend.”

  Aphra felt faint, as if all the blood had drained from her body. “I would have helped if I could.”

  Caesar turned back to her. “But you could not. It does not matter. For a white person, you are loyal. Others are more faithless than you. Would you see what Byam's faithlessness has done to me, Great Mistress?” Caesar asked, heavy irony in his old form of address for her.

  “No, Caesar, don't,” Scot protested, but Caesar ignored him. Turning on his side, he pulled the loose shirt up from his back to reveal festering wounds crisscrossing his back like the scribblings of a child. The smell was almost as unpleasant as the sight.

  Aphra gagged and put her hand to her mouth, running from the room and out of the house with Scot close behind. Outside, she leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, her eyes closed. Scot caught up with her and laid one hand on the wall near her face, leaning into her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “This time,” Aphra replied, opening her eyes.

  “Caesar never should have shown you his wounds.”

  She looked at him directly. “'Tis as much your fault as his.”

  Scot shook his head. “How? I did nothing.”

  “My nausea. It is also your fault,” she insisted deliberately.

  She watched as a flicker of realization replaced the blank look in his eyes, but before she could determine his reaction, a veil seemed to fall in front of his soul. “Are you with child?” he whispered.

  “I do not know yet for sure.” She took another deep breath. “We have passage for the next boat back to England in two weeks, my mother and Stephen and I. Frances plans to stay — Captain Riede has asked her to marry him.”

  She thought she caught a brief expression of relief before he disciplined his features again. “I will follow you,” Scot said quickly.

  Aphra looked at him without a word and turned her head away.

  Caesar and Clemene wandered down a path bright with tropical flowers and birds, arm in arm. Caesar's gait was still slow and stiff, but he had recovered more quickly than expected.

  “It is not a future I want to see,” Clemene said.

  “What would you have me do?” Caesar protested. “For the sake of my honor, I cannot allow this disgrace to go unpunished. Byam must be killed.”

  “Of course you must try to avenge your honor. But I would not be there, whether you succeed or not.”

  “And what of our child?”

  “It is not a future for our child either.”

  “We have already attempted flight. They watch us constantly now.”

  Clemene pulled out a dagger she had concealed in her skirt. “Here,” she said, the hilt extended to him.

  Caesar looked at the dagger and then at Clemene. “What should I do with this?”

  “It is not a future I want to see,” she repeated.

  He stared at her, horror dawning in his eyes.

  It was the smell of death that finally led them to Caesar. He had covered Clemene's body with leaves and flowers, all except her face, and now he sat on the ground next to her and held vigil, oblivious to the smell. When Byam's men came upon him, he started up, his eyes wild, so dizzy with grief and hunger he could barely stand. He was an easy catch.

  Byam was very happy to make a lesson of Caesar to the other slaves. After the murder of his own wife, who also happened to be valuable property, not even Treffry could save him. Byam had Caesar taken down river to his own plantation near Toorarica for a public execution. First they cut off his genitals and threw them in a fire built up in front of him. Next came his ears and nose. They hacked off one arm and then the other, and finally Caesar's noble head fell to his chest, the pipe he had held clenched between his teeth dropping to the ground.

  “Take care of mother and Stephen,” Frances said, embracing Aphra briefly. It was raining, a warm, constant rain, and it wouldn't do to stand around on the dock.

  Aphra nodded. She looked from Frances to horse-faced Captain Riede at her sister's side and gave him her hand. He bowed over it stiffly. Despite the situation Aphra found herself in, she would not willingly make the trade Frances was making. But Scot was nowhere to be seen, and Aphra, sick in body and heart, found herself daily less inclined to believe he would follow — and more and more sure he'd left her a memento of himself. Perhaps she should be glad he'd at least had the decency to send his excuses, claiming business reasons. That way she did not have to search the wet dock of Paramaribo for a face which would not be there.

  Aphra clambered inelegantly into the longboat after her mother and brother, without Will Scot's hand to assist her this time. As they pushed off, her heart seemed to lurch with the bobbing of the boat. She watched the coast of Surinam recede. Nothing, she had achieved nothing. And now all she had left was the fruit of her pen and the fruit of her love, one in her bodice and one in her belly. The poem she would have given Will had he shown up for their departure, but the other would most likely change her life irrevocably. Could she hide it long enough to flee, go somewhere to bear the child in secret? Her woman's body had betrayed her, but she was determined not to let circumstances break her or her pride. She had a plan: with the play in her baggage she would go to the theaters. The Restoration had opened the way for women actors, why not for women playwrights?

  Frances had witnessed Caesar's execution and Aphra thought of how her sister had described his death, how he kept his nobility of spirit to the end. She would keep Caesar in mind, and she would not falter.

  William Byam dipped his pen in the inkwell again and decided to conclude his letter with a piece of gossip which Sir Robert would appreciate: “I need not enlarge but to advise you of the sympathetical passion of the Grand Shepherd Celladon who is fled after Astrea, being resolved to espouse all distress or felicities of fortune with her. But the more certain cause of his flight was a regiment of protests to the number of 1000 pounds sterling drawn up against him. And he being a tender gentleman and unable to keep the field hath betaken himself to the other element as fleeting as himself, but whether for certain I cannot yet resolve you.”

  Byam was glad he'd had no business dealings with Scot; clearly those who had would never see their money this side of hell. It was unlikely Scot would fulfill the promises he had made to his fair shepherdess either. Scot had the devil's own luck. The departure of his lady-love was certainly a convenient excuse when it became clear that he too must leave the colony. But England was the last place that o
ne would go. Surinam was well rid of him.

  Byam grinned and signed his name with a flourish.

  14

  The stage how loosely does Astrea tread,

  Who fairly puts all characters to bed.

  Alexander Pope, Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace Imitated

  * * *

  London, present day

  * * *

  Billie pulled out her wallet to pay for the fish and chips and accepted the bundle with a little thrill. Fleeing the college for a cholesterol bomb was a necessary therapeutic move; she needed to accustom herself to her own time again, the noise and speed and lights and grease. Seventeenth century London was hectic too, but it was still a comprehensible size. Contemporary London was not. Billie had lived here for over a year, and she barely knew the place.

  She inhaled the well-loved scent of salt and vinegar, glad to be away from the symposium for a while. She was still seething from the tone of Richard's paper, and it was more than just the betrayal of her own work. Billie knew Aphra now, knew she'd been in Surinam just from the way she talked about the colonies. Of course, that didn't mean she hadn't made anything up. But even if Oroonoko had all been a pack of lies, Richard's paper was still a personal slap in the face.

  Billie sat down on a bench and bit into the fish, crispy on the outside, flaky-tender on the inside. There had been a lot of fish served in Aphra's household, but much of it was carp, which Billie discovered to her surprise that she didn't much care for. Not that she ever would have mentioned her dislike. Aphra had been amazingly generous in putting her up. If only Billie hadn't been so desperate to leave the seventeenth century, had found a way to say good-bye. Perhaps next time she could come up with a good story as to why she had to leave.