Susan stared at her plate.
'She'd been kissing Edward,' Sarah said. 'Hadn't you, Sue? Like this.' She pursed her lips and thrust them forward.
'Be quiet, child,' Mama snapped, and looked at Tom.
'Aye,' Father said. 'Be quiet. You'll not bear a grudge, Susan.'
Susan's head raised, for the first time. There were tear stains on her cheeks.
'Say so, girl,' Father commanded. ‘I'll not bear a grudge, Mr Warner’
Edward tried to attract her attention by staring at her. But she would not look at him.
'Well, then,' Father said. ‘It's done.' He stood up. 'You'll join me in a leaf, Edward.'
There was condescension. They were all adults together, now, provided they stopped being adults whenever he so commanded. Edward's anger rose, kept his resolve at fever pitch. He retired early, to the hammock in the room he shared with Philip and Sarah. They were already abed, and soon asleep. But he had to wait for the others, to listen to every last creak. At last he fell asleep himself, to awaken with a start only a few minutes later. The house was still, the village quiet, the only sound the ever present soughing of the breeze through the trees, and the never ending rumble of the surf.
He lowered his feet from his hammock, slowly, cautiously, touched the floor, and stood up. He had deliberately undressed in his most careless fashion, left his breeches under the hammock. These he dragged on, but did not bother with shoes. He seldom wore them anyway, and he would not need them where he was going.
He picked up his sword and crossed the floor, listening to the snoring from Sarah's hammock. She seemed to breathe less than to wheeze, and she was six years old. Pity the man who married her, and spent the rest of his life listening to her gasp. Carefully he pulled the door open, watching the hammocks behind him, motionless in the gloom. He would never see them again. Did he care? They were strangers to him, milksops from a milksop society, their inadequacy revealed in the paleness of their skins. No, he would not miss them.
He stood in the little hall, listening, and hearing nothing. Well, then, Mama? He would never see her again, either. But he was deliberately escaping, Mama. And with Susan at his side he would have no time to think of other women, other limbs, other breasts, other lips.
Susan slept in the front room, which meant that she was compelled to stow and rehang her hammock with each day and night. But at least here she was alone. Cautiously he crossed the room, anxious about a board which had creaked during dinner. But this time there was no sound. He stood by the hammock, his eyes accustomed to the darkness now, and looked down at her. Her hair drifted over the side, seemed almost to touch the floor. She was on her back, her face upturned.
He bent lower, and her whisper reached him. ‘If ye touch me, Master Edward, I shall scream.'
He knelt beside her. He was so close he could smell her; even her scent held endless promise. 'Listen. Will you come with me?'
Now at last she moved, to turn her body so that she could face him. 'Come with yer’
'We shall leave this place. This island. I have thought it out. The Caribs keep no night watch, and their canoes are on the beach. We will take one, and paddle across to Nevis, It is only a few miles, and the Indians say it is uninhabited. They will never find us.'
‘Ye're mad,' she asserted. 'What would we live on?’
There are fish, and coconuts. Same as here. I would take weapons. Father's pistols are right by the door.'
'Such a step takes courage,' she said. ‘I doubt ye possess so much, Edward. Ye'd not defy your father.'
'Will you not trust me?'
‘With my life? It amounts to that, whether we succeed or not.'
‘I'd give my life for you, Susan. I swear it But allow me the chance.'
She smiled; he felt her breath on his face, and he could see the flash of her teeth. 'Ye're a passionate devil, Edward Warner. And all ye really want is to pull these tits. Here boy, help yourself.' She leaned out of the hammock and her breasts touched his face; he realized with a thrill of amazement that she was naked beneath the blanket. He seized her shoulders, crushed his face into the soft flesh, felt the erect nipples seep into his mouth, heard the beat of her heart only an inch away. 'God,' she whispered. 'Ye have a way with ye, boy.'
But he was pushing her away. He did not know why. Except that he hated Father and every human being on the colony. On the island. Save this one. ‘I want you as my wife,' he said. ‘I want all of you. Will you come?'
She waited, for the longest moment he had ever known. Then she threw back the blanket, chopped her feet to the floor. He was alone with a naked, beautiful white woman, for the second time in his life. He felt a tremendous surge of energy and manhood within him. But it was not merely sexual. Here was an enormous responsibility, placed on his shoulders. An enormous honour, placed in his keeping. To protect that he could assail the world.
It was a time to do. As she reached for her shift, he tiptoed across the room to stick a brace of pistols in his belt, and hang the pouch with the bullets and powder over his shoulder. Aye, he thought. The world.
He led her through the jungle paths he knew so well, navigating himself by the moon. Often he held her hand to help her over an outcrop; the touch of her sent his heart pounding and his mind soaring. They spoke little. In the strangest way, where down to yesterday he had been master and she servant, now in a matter of hours they had become old friends. Intimate friends, although he had hardly touched her.
But their progress was slow, and soon enough he felt the shift in the breeze which heralded dawn. He stopped. 'We'll not make Nevis before daybreak,' he said.
She waited, for him to decide to go back. What would she do then, he wondered? They could not regain their hammocks before daybreak, either.
‘If we go farther into the forest,' he said. ‘We can lie there the day. It will be better, indeed. For they will not suppose us to be so close.' He bit his lip as she did not reply. ‘It'll mean going hungry, but just for one day. And then tomorrow night, when they have abandoned the search, we may resume our way without difficulty.'
'We'll not go hungry.' She also carried a bag over her shoulder, and from it took a cheese. ‘I thought our journey might well be delayed. But the concealment must lie in your care. I know naught of this forest.'
Yet she was not afraid of it, or if she was, she did not reveal it. He left the shore and struck inland, using the mass of Mount Misery, for such was the name the white men had given to the central hill, as a guide. They plunged into ever thicker trees, ever more close-packed bushes; had he not by now been certain there were no snakes on the island he would have been afraid himself. They forded tumbling streams and waded cooling pools, climbing all the while, as the sky lightened and the sun, huge and round and red, came peeping above the eastern horizon, bouncing from all the mountain peaks of the Leewards before reaching Merwar's Hope, the last of them all.
'Here,' he said, coming across a fern-filled hollow. 'Here we will be safe. They will not come this far to look for us.'
Susan flopped on to her face, and lay there on the damp grass, breathing slowly, muscles still twitching with exhaustion. ‘I have not been so weary for years,' she said. 'But so... so clean, as well. Because I have not been so free, for years.'
He knelt beside her. He was as exhausted, surely. But he remained excited by her nearness. And now there could be no going back. The village would have been awakened by now, and their departure would have been noticed. There would be a great deal of excitement on the beach. Now it was the pair of them, against the world. As he had wanted.
He touched her, gently, taking her thick hair and drawing it through his fingers, arranging it so that it lay evenly on her back.
‘I must sleep,' she whispered. ‘I must sleep. When I awaken, Edward, dear Edward....'
'When you awaken,' he said. There must be no forcing of this girl. No antagonizing. No differences between them. They must be as one, now and always.
He moved away, sat agai
nst a tree, watched her as he ate some of the cheese. He was tired, certainly, but still too excited to sleep. And just to look at her was to watch a dream come true. For soon she turned, on her side towards him, pillowed on the soft ferns, one knee drawn up, her arms extended in front of her and then clasped, drawing her breasts together, glowing white globes which thrust upwards from the tattered shift. All his, now. All his.
He slept, and awoke, to watch her again. For she too had awakened, and taken herself into the forest with a modesty he had not expected; Yarico had never done more than spread her legs as she felt the need. But now he could watch the flaming hair moving through the ferns, without hearing the rest of her.
She parted the bushes, looked down at him. 'What time is it?’
'Not yet noon.'
A bead of sweat trickled out from her hair and rolled down her temple. Even her sweat was different to Yarico's. 'Do ye wish me, then?' she asked.
His throat was dry. He had to lick his lips. 'Are you not hungry?'
'Afterwards,' she said. ‘I should like to know, now, that we can love, Edward.'
'Yes,' he said, and felt the blood rushing into his face.
She lifted the shift over her head, half turned away from him, spread it on the ground, stooping, her back to him. All he had ever dreamed of. All any man had ever dreamed of, except for the thinnness. She had none of Mother's voluptuousness. The legs were endlessly long, endlessly straight, smoothly muscled. The buttocks were small, and tight; they controlled the equally tight muscles of the flat belly. Even the thighs were slender as a boy's, and the hair was scanty, however thick. The breasts were smaller than he had supposed, but yet they surged, standing away from her chest as if scarce belonging to her, only just beginning to sag from their own weight, with nipples long and pointed like a poking finger. And the whole was shrouded in the white skin, all lightly dusted with the pale brown freckles, firm textured and amazingly dry, where Mama had been moist to the touch.
He moved behind her, caught her round the waist as Yarico had taught him, hands sliding up her breasts while he brought his body against hers. She uttered a little shriek, and kicked him, twisting her body to and fro, striking behind her with her elbows. He let her go and fell backwards, sitting on the ferns to stare up at her in dismay. 'Susan?'
She panted, on her knees, turning slowly to face him. 'Are ye a monster?’
'A ... did you not want me?'
‘I wanted ye, Edward. But not up the arse. I'm Christian, no matter what may have happened to me.'
'Up the... no,' he protested. ‘I did not mean that. Sue, dearest Sue, I but sought to make an entry.' He leaned forward to take her hands, so obviously upset that her gaze softened.
'Ye claimed experience,' she muttered. ‘I believed ye.' 'Tell me,' he begged. ‘I have no knowledge of white girls." Her frown was back. 'Ye've been with an Indian? Mounted her like a dog?’ ‘It is their way.'
'Christ,' she said. 'Oh Christ, what have I done?' She looked down at her body, as if seeing it for the first time.
‘I am the same man,' he said. ‘If you would educate me, Susan, I shall submit with pleasure.'
'A savage,' she said. 'Ye've entered a heathen savage. Aye, they call ye Caribee.' She pulled her hands free. 'Ye must allow me time, Edward. Not long. I swear it. But ye must let me accept ye as ye are, not as I had imagined.'
'You thought me an innocent boy,' he said, and gasped in honor at the face.
She had picked up her shift. 'Aye. With a backyard tumble to your credit.' She glanced at him, saw his expression, and following his gaze. They were surrounded by faces, brown and amused, interested and delighted. Successful faces. As how else could they be? This was their forest. The white people were no more than intruders.
'Oh, Christ have mercy on me,' Susan whispered.
'Be merciful to her, Tom, I beg of you,' Rebecca whispered. They stood in front of the entire colony, in front of the village, looking down the sweep of the beach as the Caribs drove their two captives towards Sandy Point. Edward's and Susan's wrists were bound behind them, and they stumbled over the sand, heads bowed as the Indians kicked them and prodded them; Susan's hair clouded across her face and hid her tears.
'Merciful,' Tom muttered. ‘I dare not be, sweetheart. I would, believe me. But these people, understand how they watch me. How they wait, to see the temper of Warner justice, whether weak or strong.' His throat was dry. Be merciful, she said. Perhaps that would not, after all, be difficult. Did he fear a single one of the colonists? He could truthfully say not. He had measured them all, their abilities and their ineptness, their strengths and their weaknesses, and he knew that against them he could call out the resources of Tegramond and his savages, whenever he wished.
But that was not quite true. He did fear one white person on this island. And that boy was now approaching him, bound and humiliated. There would be a reckoning there, one day, and that reckoning would not be abated by love. Only by strength, and determination. And in the end, by fear.
And then, the girl. Oh, Christ, the girl. She was close now, staggering towards him. Sweat drenched her body, rolled from her hair in a steady stream. Her shift was caught against her flesh at breast and thigh and groin. He had never seen a woman quite so perfectly made. But she was an Irish whore. This thought had crossed his mind too often. It had crossed his mind when Rebecca had first elected to have her in their house. He had thought then, what a blameless life you have led, Tom Warner. What woman have you ever sought, what woman, have you ever considered, save your wife; if not Sarah, then Rebecca. But of late the zest had gone from Rebecca's love-making. The eager woman who had worked her body against his that morning in the Tower no longer existed. Was it fear of another pregnancy? According to Jane Warner she had all but died. Or was it, despite all her assurances, a deep seated resentment against his having left her? He often wondered how Rebecca, not yet forty, strongly built and passionate by nature, had spent those three years. With Sarah at her breast she would have been more beautiful, more passionate than ever; he remembered the nursing mother of Edward and Philip.
The prisoners stood before him, feet sinking into the soft sand, breath rasping, sweat staining their faces. The Caribs piled the sword and pistols in front of them.
Tom gazed at his son. "You'll answer a charge of deserting the colony, and larceny.'
'Larceny, Father,' Edward said. 'There is no law against deserting the colony.'
'The boy speaks the truth, Tom,' Berwicke pointed out. 'But this is an omission on our part that were best remedied.'
'Aye,' Tom said. ‘I'm assuming the girl led you, boy.'
'No, sir,' Edward declared. ‘It was my doing. We meant no harm, sir. We wished only to marry. And as that was impossible here, we sought another, less restricted land.'
Tom turned to the girl. After several attempts she had succeeded in tossing the cloud of red hair from her face; only a few strands remained, past which the grey eyes looked with their usual clarity. Those eyes, those lips, that body, possessed by Edward. How he hated her. Hated with all the intensity of a savage jealousy. Hated with the anger of a man who must at all costs remain the disinterested judge.
'Have you no words?' he demanded. 'You were on the beach, when the articles were read. For absconding the colony, four dozen lashes.’
'No,' Rebecca cried.
'Be quiet, woman.'
He watched Susan's nostrils dilate as she breathed. ‘Ye'd find it easier to cut my throat,' she said quietly. 'But not so enjoyable, maybe.'
She defied him. She had identified the desire in him. Perhaps she had always known it, in the way he had looked at her.
'Four dozen lashes were too much for a woman, Tom,' Ashton whispered. 'She'd not survive. And if she did, she'd be good for nothing.'
'You'd start sentencing on physical appearances, Hal?'
'You've no right to punish her at all, sir,' Edward said. 'She is no longer an indentured servant, as I have taken her as my wife.'
Tom stepped forward, whipped the back of his hand across the boy's face. Edward took the blow with a jerk of his head, but kept his feet. ‘I'm Governor here, by God,' Tom said. ‘I'm the King's Lieutenant. You'd do well to remember that.' He raised his voice. 'All of you. I act for the King, in his name. My son has reminded me that we suffer from serious omissions here, as regards law. I had hoped that such laws would not be necessary, but as they are, why, by God, we shall set to work this afternoon to draw up a code to manage our conduct. But the girl is a confessed absconder and for the servants there are laws enough. She'll receive four dozen lashes.'
'Tom,' Rebecca screamed. 'You cannot.'
'Get away, woman,' Tom shouted, freeing his arm with a jerk. He moved so violently that she staggered. Then she regained her balance, gazed at her husband for a moment, and went into their house. Sarah ran behind her, coughing and sneezing. Philip remained standing in the porch, staring at his father and brother with wide eyes.
Susan's mouth slowly opened, as if she would have spoken. Now she slowly closed it again. There were pink spots in her cheeks.
‘It shall be done now,' Tom said, feeling the resolution seeping away from his mind. 'Mr Jarring, you'll see to it.'
"Yes, sir, Captain Warner,' Jarring cried in delight, and signalled two of his friends to follow him. 'We'll fetch stakes from the bush.'
'Four dozen lashes, Tom?" Berwicke whispered.
'She's a sturdy wench,' Tom said. 'You're bemused by her pretty face, Ralph. She's nothing but a whore from the bogs of Killarney. I doubt Jarring will mark her back.'
'By God, sir,' Edward said. ‘You harm this girl, and I'll... I’ll kill you.'
'Beware, boy,' Tom said. 'That is nothing less than treason, to threaten the King's Lieutenant. I'll have order here, by God. She'll be punished and you'll watch it, sir. We'll see if your belly has grown stronger with age.'
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