by Paul Butler
“Why do you look like that?” she asks accusingly.
“Because it’s too vicious, too unnatural.”
For a moment he expects her to understand the obscenity of such a union. But her expression is proud and stung. It is as though a wall is drawing up between them as they stand. Where a moment ago there was the faint tremor of understanding there is now only blankness and hurt. She sways as though to leave, but her eyes flash in determination and she stops.
“Why is it unnatural, Captain?” she asks almost spitting his title.
“Because...” he starts but then can’t choose from the many explanations that come into his mind, “Because of who he is, and because of who she is.”
“Who is she? Who is my sister?” The question is urgent and challenging. She leans back against the side table as though bracing herself for an insult.
“She is a slave,” he replies. He feels cornered and confused. His head is muddled as though a herd of deer were thundering through his brain. “It isn’t natural,” he adds, and then looks up to behold the candle flame reflected in her eyes.
“So Easton should only marry a lady?”
“No! No, I didn’t mean...”
“You didn’t mean,” she echoes. “I’ll tell you what you mean. You mean that Easton is too good for my sister, even though he is a murderer. That’s why you say it’s unnatural. You mean the darkness of my sister’s skin is worse than the darkest of Easton’s crimes.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” George cries raising his hands to his head. “You’re twisting it all around.” He knows his voice may be audible elsewhere on the ship, but cares less than he knows he should.
She stares back at him. Her glance is partly to the side, partly suspicious but also a little curious.
George sighs deeply. “I am worried about you and your sister, not Easton.”
He realizes with an odd sense of relief that he is telling the truth. And paradoxically, he realizes that she too was correct. The source of his disgust wasn’t Easton’s wickedness; it was the huge difference in status between them, the perversity of a nobleman taking a slave for a lover and the slave bearing his child. But his anxiety is not for Easton. It is for her.
She seems to read his honesty and her sadness returns. “You English captains,” she says shaking her head. “You want us to escape but do nothing yourselves. You are frightened of Easton, yet shower him with praise and gold.”
“I’ll help you escape if you want to,” George says suddenly with an ardor which again takes him by surprise. The tiny voice that had been lost in the storm returns now with a strangulated warning. But it is too late; he has committed himself and knows he cannot withdraw.
She returns his gaze, all the irony now slipping away.
“How?” she asks.
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll find a way.”
“Why?”
She asks the last question more faintly.
George doesn’t answer at first but, watches the candlelight flicker in her deep brown eyes and takes in her bearing, her way of standing without movement, ready to take in whatever intelligence is given to her. Then he finds he cannot answer the question, even to himself. In the oddest reversal his mind has ever known, this woman from Africa has inherited the nobility of a Greek goddess. She is Diana, a woman of courage and defiance for whose good opinion an ordinary man can scarcely bring himself to plead. She is Aphrodite, rising from the sea with blinding beauty. Visions of Rosalind scatter like leaves in the autumn wind, dispersing and—he is almost certain—tumbling far away from him, never to return.
The woman looks down for a few moments, apparently perplexed. Then, perhaps realizing he cannot answer, she gazes directly into his eyes once more. “I must go,” she says and then makes as if to leave. Then she stops, her eyebrows knitted, a slight smile showing beneath.
“You can call me Jemma,” she says softly.
Then, without another sound, she leaves.
Chapter Nine
The baby’s cries find their way into George’s dreams.
Sometimes they issue forth from the beak of a crow hunched upon a naked branch with a grey sky rolling beyond. Sometimes the infant’s wailing is merely part of the sea’s constant roar. In one short dream Easton sits at a fine dinner table before George and uses his sword to slice through the tender, fatty flesh of a suckling pig. The two slave women stand chained to the dripping brick wall behind him, and George can do nothing to save them. Here the baby’s cry is just part of the desperation that fills the air, part of a background lament led by the moaning ocean which swells and rages beyond their sight.
George wakes drenched with sweat. The desperate little cries from far below continue stabbing the air, no longer a crow and no longer the sea. The cabin rocks very gently. There is no storm or swell. The taste of pork and wine still mingle on his tongue.
It is much warmer now. Could they be approaching the tropics already? The moonlight from the porthole floods into his cabin, giving everything a blue luminosity. The panelled wall on the left glimmers star-like and a strange silence draws his attention to the room’s details. Something has changed, the gentlest of creaking noises seems to whisper. Can’t you see what it is? another faint groan seems to add. The baby’s crying stops for a second, then starts again.
On the floor, under the shining wall, a small rectangular shape gleams brighter than the surrounding floor. George swings his feet onto the rug, stands and crosses over to see what it is. He picks it up, his hand trembling slightly. It is a sheet of paper from the Bible—the title page. The moonlight is so strong he can see the illustration quite clearly. The title of the work, the patronage of the King and the year is carved onto a tablet as though it were one of the commandments. Moses stands guard on the left side, prophet’s staff in hand, Aaron is on the right. Dazzling sunlight emanates from the Apostles and angels above.
George stares, trying to decide what it means. It must be Whitbourne reminding him of his duty. The admiral must have heard him talking with the woman, Jemma. The paper has obviously been slipped under the crack in the door.
George crosses to the tinderbox by the side table and in a few moments has the candle flickering into life. At first he doesn’t think to turn the paper over but just stares at the venerable figures under the yellow glow of the candle before him. What a curious and potent way of sending a message!, he thinks. And how much the message has expanded. It is not just their own skins Whitbourne is charging George with protecting here. It is no longer just strategy they are upholding, but also England and the King and, perhaps by implication, the whole of Christendom. The claim makes little sense to George, nor does the dismemberment of such a prized possession when there are so many other and more direct ways of sending such a communication.
Only while he considers this last point, does he flip the page around. There is a note, scratched rather hurriedly, on this blank side. It is clearly not Whitbourne’s writing but a hand quite unknown to him. He holds it close to the bobbing flame and reads.
Dear Captain,
You have come so far in trusting and wishing to help us, I must tell you. I do not know for sure where the meat I have been serving you is from. We have only fowl, fish, bulls and cows on board. What you have been eating is none of those things.
Please forgive if I am right, Jemma.
Please destroy this.
George stares at the note for some time. He reads it through again once, twice, then three times. He smiles to himself several times. It is a great relief that this note is not from Whitbourne and he is more than a little flattered by the concern that Jemma is displaying. But he is puzzled too, catching the details of her fears only obliquely. The meat tastes fresh and surely cannot be poisoned. He would have felt its effects by now.
Soon certain phrases are looking larger than others: only fowl, fish, bulls and cows; none of those things. It is the kind of animal, it seems, rather than the quality of the meat that seems to concern her. Does
she think that the English only eat certain types and that if she has served him with wild boar or deer, this is some violent sin against tradition? He has heard that there are prohibitions against certain meats in the East. Perhaps she is afraid he has trespassed against his religion, hence her use of the Bible?
George sits down on the chair and reads over the note again. Please forgive if I am right. No, she has a specific suspicion. And she expects him to work out what she means. George considers the fact that Jemma can read and write, that she converses like one schooled, at the very least on a rudimentary level. He considers that, more than any of these things, there is a sharp intelligence behind this training, sharp enough at any rate to confound him with guilt and uncertainty when they are at opposite ends of an argument. This is not a woman to carry around erroneous ideas of English eating customs, not when she has been under English influence, apparently, for so many years.
An answer comes, but it is too ludicrous and too foul for serious consideration. It surfaces in the form of fizzling bubbles rising to the surface of the ocean. He remembers Lieutenant Baxter’s burial at sea, the way his corpse wrapped tightly in the flag fell like a single object even though he had been decapitated. He remembers the speed of the falling too. The corpse seemed heavier than he would have thought Baxter. He sighs, dismissing it from his mind, and reads through the note again.
Yet even on a fifth and sixth reading, this is the only explanation that seems to fit. It’s the only one that would account for the extreme anxiety, the note slipped under the door, the plea for forgiveness for serving the meat and the insistence he burn the note. The taste of the pork returns to him and his stomach jumps slightly with a hint of the violence to come. He sees Baxter’s head once more, the chalky skin and blood-dripping neck, and then remembers Easton’s calm penitence, so much more chilling since he has been made aware of the insincerity behind it. What would a man like that not do? The answer comes like the swell of a hurricane: there are no limits to such horror.
George tries to control his nervousness at breakfast. Jemma is working hard not looking at him, and George tries to help, acting as before—stiffening slightly as she draws close and not addressing her or catching her eye. He allows himself to feel an awkward attraction for her; Easton has almost certainly noticed this before anyway.
Easton now watches George after Jemma refills his milk.
“Not hungry today, Captain Dawson?” he asks.
George feels his lip twitch slightly. But he returns Easton’s smile.
“I think I may be rather under the weather. Perhaps the storm.”
“Ah,” laughs Easton, “the sailor’s malady—seasickness.”
Whitbourne laughs and breaks some more bread.
“Well, the storm is over, but we are soon entering the tropics. So expect lightning.”
His eyes flash in mock horror and he smiles pleasantly, as though humouring a child. Then he looks at Whitbourne. “I am sorry to have been less than social of late, but duties...” he shrugs.
“Please sir, do not worry yourself on our account,” Whitbourne replies. “Your hospitality has been lavish. Has it not, Captain Dawson?” Whitbourne nods at him with a mixture of encouragement and warning, and George knows he must back up the admiral.
“Indeed, sir, indeed,” he says enthusiastically. “That...um...” he begins again with a slight tremble of the lip, “...that rather delicious meat we have been dining on...” He glances at Jemma who having filled Easton’s mug now instantly turns her back and retreats to the side table, her face still turned away. “It was so succulent and I am now so unused to such opulence...” George manages a hearty smile as he speaks.
The admiral unknowingly helps him by giving a quick laugh and chipping in, “Life in the northern colonies!”
“Quite,” says George. “Was it wild meat, sir? Boar perhaps?”
Easton sustains the same smile and wipes his fingers on a napkin. “It was indeed the most brutish and ignorant of animals, sir, which by the oddest of nature’s perversities yields the most gloriously tender meat.” He pauses. “You were right in your guess. A pig. One with all the faults of its breed yet young enough to be tender. I believe my cooks are now salting the remains so that we may enjoy some ham in the weeks to come.”
George nods and smiles while swirls of nausea rise in his stomach. Does Easton know that he suspects? His words, as always, communicate more than they say, and the fixedness of Easton’s smile suggests a calm defiance.
But he turns to Whitbourne as though distracted by more important thoughts. “But, Admiral, I wanted to engage you and your good captain in talk of the New-found-land. My mind always runs ahead and I find myself planning my return to the north even before accomplishing my mission in the south.”
“Of course, sir, we would be happy to tell you all you wish to know about the New-found-land,” Whitbourne answers.
George now catches Jemma’s eye. She is standing by the serving table arranging the dishes. Worry, and perhaps reproach, show on her face. It is enough to persuade him never to risk the subject of the meat again. He looks away and Jemma moves off toward the serving hatch.
Whitbourne has begun telling Easton about the planters along the coast. Easton listens attentively, his face serious and his head slightly cocked, although none of the information is entirely new.
“St. John’s, you will know, was named after the Baptist upon whose day the island was reputed to have been found,” Whitbourne says, folding a napkin and coughing slightly. The admiral’s discomfort is clear to George. He wonders what it feels like to walk the tightrope of goodwill, knowing that every detail given is helping an enemy force. “Our most bustling settlement other than this, as I think we have mentioned, is Cuper’s Cove where John Guy, an excellent man held in high esteem by the King, is overlord.”
Easton’s smile returns slowly. He picks up his mug of milk. “If he is a friend of the King, Admiral, I will tread carefully and act as his friend, as you so subtly suggest.” He takes a drink, the cup for a moment obscuring his smile.
Whitbourne clears his throat and gives a short blustering laugh.
“Of course, sir, I understand that you mean no harm to our colonies,” Whitbourne says, reddening, “I never would have implied—”
“But what of other colonies, Admiral,” Easton interrupts. “I believe I heard a former comrade, an officer of mine, has set up in a place with a most unpromising name. Is it Mosquito?”
“Indeed, an offshoot of the Cuper’s Cove colony. The old comrade to whom you refer must be Mr. Gilbert Pike.”
Easton stares for a moment, his eyes dark and glassy as though he is dreaming. Then he speaks as though suddenly roused by his own silence. “That’s the man. Gilbert Pike. And there was a young lady from a French convent who we rescued from a Dutch pirate ship. A beautiful young girl if I remember correctly. A Sheila O’Connor.”
“Yes they are married and live happily in the settlement. The lady is of high Irish birth as you may recall. She is known locally as Nagueira, which I believe is Irish for ‘the beautiful.’”
“Indeed, sir,” Easton says sighing and leaning back in his chair. “I believe it was I who first named her so.” There is an unhappy pause. “An Irish noblewoman,” Easton continues sullenly, “educated in France, living in a hovel on the shores of New-found-land. It hardly seems appropriate. Don’t you agree, Admiral?”
Whitbourne is for once speechless, at least for a moment. He shifts in his chair. “We all have to come to terms with the most grievous of changes when we leave our own shores, it’s true.” The admiral smiles pleasantly and looks at George as though for support.
“Indeed, it seems to be part of the deal,” George offers.
“Changes and hardships are one thing,” Easton responds with a sigh. “But for nobility to degrade itself is quite another.” He smiles. “But I can see that both of you are of the noblest and most understanding of natures and that you see hardship as virtue. I honour you
for it.” He gives a little bow.
The faintest sound of a baby’s cries reaches them from below.
A knock on the door of his cabin takes George by surprise. He springs up from his chair and calls “Come!” in a single reflex.
The door opens and Whitbourne enters.
“Oh, Admiral,” George says scratching his head nervously, “do come in.”
Whitbourne takes another step into the room and stares at George with penetrating eyes. “You seem disappointed,” he says.
“No, no. Why should I be?” George responds, offering Whitbourne the chair. He sits himself on the side of the bed.
Whitbourne, now seated, continues staring at him.
“Perhaps you could tell me what is going on?” he asks in neutral tones.
George shakes his head.
“Admiral, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Don’t lie, sir!” Whitbourne barks, his sudden anger taking George entirely by surprise. “Do you think I am deaf?” His voice reaches such amazing pitch and sharpness that George’s ears are singing. Then, in a more hushed tone, the admiral continues, “Do you think these walls are thick enough to erase the sounds of an argument?” Although his words are quieter, Whitbourne’s eyes show tiny blood vessels of anger.
“You mean...”
“Yes, sir, I know you have been conversing with the slave. And I have expressly told you not to do so. I have also noted the surreptitious glances you exchange even in Easton’s cabin.”
“You noticed that?” George asks, worried. If he noticed then perhaps Easton did also.
Whitbourne doesn’t answer.
“And perhaps you could explain why the title page of Easton’s Bible is missing.”
George frowns deeply and feels his face burn.