I beckoned her to my bed with a wave of my right hand, she hesitated for a moment then approached reluctantly, I held her in my arms speaking consolation to her even though I knew she didn’t understand any of the words that I spoke, she was tense initially and then as if she suddenly understood, she began to relax and loosen up.....”
“Nathan!” Longstands’s voice was bitter and angry, reverberating through the house like thunder. “What is wrong with you Nathan?” All he wanted to do was to lock his palms around the boy’s neck and squeeze the life out of him—“How dare you!” he barked as the paper collapsed in his palm and became crushed in his fist; his teeth gnashing at the same time. He didn’t need to read any further; he knew the rest of the story like the back of his palm. What he didn’t know was how on earth his son could have managed to lay hands on his diary—something he’d thought was lost many years ago. A sudden tornado began to brew in his head; thoughts and questions flying about like debris in a hurricane, his head and heart hurting almost immediately and the room beginning to spin at a very fast pace.
Jonah had had enough of the deafening silence from the old man and was about to quietly excuse himself. He had taken the silence to mean that the old man didn’t approve of his plan but probably didn’t want to say so. If the old man was afraid of saying anything that would hurt or discourage him, then he was going to make it easier for him by quietly leaving. He propped himself up with his left hand and had just begun dusting off the pieces of dry leaves that clung onto his khaki shorts when he heard his friend’s voice. The old man’s head remained bowed as he spoke.
“I know another route....”
Jonah swung around to face PaNene, he knew he had heard him, but he needed to confirm what he thought he heard. Another route? his head queried. “What?” he fired at PaNene. It sounded more like – don’t you play with my head, old man. “What did you just say, Pa?”
“After the big tamarind tree, you’d have to turn left and then take ninety-seven steps in the direction of the devil's open jaws,” the old man said very calmly and almost reluctantly.
Jonah only realized he was down on the floor after his bottom ached from the fast descent; in a blink he had returned to where he was sitting, right next to the old man. Indescribable excitement traveled up and down his spine like a wild lion locked up in a cage. PaNene finally raised his head for the first time since the conversation began and looked at the young man whom he had grown to love and trust for the eleven years since they first met straight in the eyes. “If you count correctly, at your ninety-seventh step, you should be standing in front of a big piece of rock that is shaped like a canoe. At this point, look up and you’ll realize that you are standing underneath the giant roots of a huge iroko tree. Some of the roots seem to be floating downward; you should crawl under the roots and when under, look to your left. You will see thick bushes. Behind the bushes are dead tree trunks, standing side by side—behind those trunks is the entrance into a cave that comes out on the other side of the Fort,” PaNene concluded.
“Hmm,” a gush of air escaped Jonah’s agape mouth as he heaved a sigh of relief. He wanted to say something but held back, just in case the old man hadn’t finished. But PaNene didn’t say another word. Jonah turned around and was shocked to see tears in the old man’s eyes. “You knew this all along?” he asked, pretending not to have noticed the tears.
“For seventeen years now,” PaNene replied. As if reading Jonah’s mind, he added, “Of all who knew about it, I am the only one still alive and here—the others are either dead or long gone.”
“So why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you use it? Why didn’t you try to escape?” Jonah couldn’t help but dump a heap of questions on the old man; he wanted to know why anyone who had a chance to escape the Fort wouldn’t try.
“A part of me lives in this Fort,” PaNene said in a sad tone.
“What? What part of you, what do you mean Pa? I really don’t understand,” a rattled Jonah said, heaping another round of questions at the feet of the old man.
“A part of me is in the Drakee Well so I cannot leave this Fort; this is where I will die.”
“The Drakee Well?” Jonah uttered, totally confused.
“Son, there is one thing I haven’t told you; I think now is the right time to share it with you.”
“What?” an impatient Jonah said, dying to hear what the old man could have possibly kept from him all the years they had known each other.
“She was probably the same age as Ashana and I...I was your age. She had just arrived at the Fort and her name was Neka…” the old man began, slowly embarking on the path he always dreaded, a path that forced him to relive an experience he could never banish from his memory.
Jonah adjusted his position, listening attentively to his friend painfully share the story of a woman he once loved. “She took her own life by jumping into the well because she could no longer take it.”
“She couldn’t take what anymore, Pa?” Jonah asked.
“The Massas; they took turns with her every other night,” PaNene said, counting and recounting his fingers as if he had suddenly realized he had ten of them.
“I am sorry about your pain….,” Jonah said,
“I sought for escape routes but things weren’t the same, things were really bad then; it was more difficult to escape than it is now,” PaNene said. He interrupted Jonah as if what the young man said or was about to say, was of less importance or utterly useless.
The old man had sentenced himself to a lifelong time of pain and anguish because he couldn’t discover an escape route quickly enough to escape with the woman he loved. He suffered more so because when he finally found a reliable route, he hadn’t the courage to escape with Neka, even though she begged him many times to help her out of her misery. “I was simply too scared that something worse could happen to her in the thick dark bush out there…” he asserted, as though it was important that he convinced Jonah.
“Pa….,” Jonah said, trying to console his friend, but PaNeen wasn’t listening.
“She took her life a few days after; she died because I was a coward, a coward!”
“Pa, we must retire now,” Jonah said after a moment of unsolicited silence between them had elapsed. “The sun is on its way.” He was at a loss for anything else to say; he didn’t understand how anything could be worse than living in the Fort and watching other men take turns at the woman you loved. Jonah feared that if he opened his mouth for too long, what he really thought about his friend’s act of cowardice might escape and maybe dent their relationship.
“She visits me every night,” PaNene said at the entrance to their hut.
“Who?”
“Neka.”
“She...she visits you?”
“Yes she does, she has never missed a night. You don’t believe me right….”
“Oh no! I do, ehm, I really do,” Jonah said, afraid that his face or body language had betrayed his latest conclusion about his friend’s current mental state.
“I wish you could see her, I mean meet her; she hasn’t changed a bit. She is still as young and as beautiful as she was the day she was brought to this Fort.”
“Have a good night Pa,” Jonah said, patting his old friend on the back before heading for his corner of the limited real estate offered by their tiny hut.
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Chapter Nine
M
rs. Suzanne Longstands had her hands full trying to convince a son who was not willing to listen that it was a bad idea to be with a slave girl and even worse to consider marriage with such a low-class woman. The more Nathan showed determination to be with the slave girl the more Suzanne was willing to do anything to prevent such an ‘abominable’ union from taking place. Her latest plan was to ship the slave girl and her mother to another plantation. Suzanne meant to tuck Ashana away in some remote plantation on the island and if necessary, on a different island where Nathan could never see
her again.
If Nathan ever moved to England with the slave girl, as he’d threatened, Suzanne would not be spared an untold load of ridicule that would become her portion for the rest of her life. She’d lose her place in the elite-class club where she currently wielded influence and that was something she wasn’t willing to lose for anybody, including her son. Besides there were other plans she had in the pipeline that Nathan’s relationship with a slave girl would completely ruin, these too she couldn’t afford to mess with. As for Nathan himself, his career would be over. No such thing had ever happened before and Mrs. Longstands wasn’t about to let her family go down in history as the first. But most importantly, her plan to get Nathan to marry Victoria would be ruined forever and put her dirty little secret out in the public; ruining her marriage with Longstands and stripping her of the power she had over him.
Her marriage with Longstands was of the least importance—she could break up with him any day and not lose any sleep over it but if her secret was exposed, she’d not only lose sleep but everything else. She could say good-bye to her high society friends, would incur the wrath of her father, and become buried under a mountain of humiliation, putting Longstands in a position to do whatever he wanted with her. And if he chose to remain with her, she’d be at his mercy for the rest of her life. So far she’d been hopeful about Nathan and Victoria and so was Lancaster—Victoria’s father. “Bloody hell!” she screamed at Longstands. “I want her and her mother out of this Fort immediately!” Longstands nodded reluctantly without saying a word.
“What? So you do understand me?” she asked.
Longstands gave another nod but said nothing.
“Longstands!” she screamed again, this time louder, her body trembling with rage.
“I do understand you Suzanne!” Longstands said, rising to his feet and heading for his office.
“Yes I am fully aware that you do understand and I bloody hope you do but do you agree with me?” Suzanne demanded, hurling the words at her husband like stones at a target. But he continued to walk away without a word.
Her frustration doubled, she was about to lose her mind at her husband’s sudden development of cold feet, regarding an issue of such dire consequence. His new attitude and obvious reluctance in executing their plan had Suzanne rattled and confused. Longstands had suddenly started singing a different tune and worse still, his pitch was southwards each time she reminded him of their agreement to send Ashana and her mother away.
“They were supposed to be sent away twenty four-hours ago, Longstands,” she shouted after him, her body shivering from a cocktail of anger and fear flowing freely in her bloodstream. She yanked herself out of the chair and marched after Massa Longstands, the wooden floor screaming under her feet. She meant to find out exactly what was going on and why her husband had suddenly become reluctant to take action.
“I am talking to you Longstands! Don’t you dare walk away from me!”
“Else what!? Suzanne, else what?” Longstands replied in a daring tone before walking into his room, slamming the door shut, and securing the latch.
“Bloody fool!” she shouted, pitching the words at Longstands with great fury.
Lying on his bed, Longstands pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket; it was the eleventh page of his long lost diary, handed to him by his son earlier on. It was probably the twenty-seventh time he was pulling the paper out of his pocket and the twenty-second time he’d be reading the content. Other times he’d just pulled it out of his pocket just to make sure he still had it or to see if there was any way he could deny any relationship with the paper. But each time he scrutinized the paper, he arrived at the same conclusion—yes the writing in the page was undeniably his and yes the page really did come from his diary. But what bothered Longstands the most was that the more he read the diary entry, the more he was convinced that Nathan’s threat was one he could not afford to take lightly.
“Bloody impossible!” Longstands swore, the words barely squeezing through his clenched teeth. If Nathan exposed the contents of the diary, his whole life would be ruined. Not only would he lose the plantation and all the goodies that came with running it but Suzanne’s father would go to any length to make sure he never got another job in the whole of England—not as much as a garbage disposal job. The man was a heavyweight in the political, financial, and economic sectors of England and Suzanne was his only child. He was responsible for Longstands’s career leaping from being an ordinary sergeant in the army to a captain, in a short period of time and then when there were opportunities in the West Indies, he’d asked Longstands if he was interested. In fact, Suzanne’s father was single-handedly responsible for Longstands’s wealth and high status in England; the mere mention of the man’s name opened any door for Longstands. Even the King’s door had once opened for Longstands and Lord Bernard Shillingford was behind it. His Lordship was a good man but his daughter was so spoilt and overbearing that he was willing to basically pay any man to marry her though he still loved her dearly. So when Longstands demonstrated genuine love for Suzanne, Lord Bernard was willing to move mountains for him. In fact, so far he had even gone as far as parting seas in addition to moving mountains for Longstands.
“No!” Longstands half shouted, exhaling hard. There was no way that diary was going to be made public; if Lord Bernard learnt of Longstands’s relationship with a slave girl and the possible existence of another child, he would literally extinguish Longstands.
He remembered the very first day he’d written in that diary, it was a new one —a virgin diary just like the slave girl he described in it and at the end of the day he had taken both the virginity of the slave girl and the diary. The diary contained a daily log of his secret relationship with the slave girl while he was running a plantation in St. Lucia, a different island.
After three years of bouncing from one island to the other, packing and unpacking and then repacking, Massa Longstands couldn’t find his diary and became convinced that he must have lost the diary on one of the islands. Never in his wildest imagination did it cross his mind that it might have fallen into the hands of anyone he knew. How it somehow managed to get into the hands of his own son and that the young man was now using it to blackmail him into doing something he’d have otherwise frowned upon, was something he’d already had bouts of diarrhoea trying to figure out.
“I would not hesitate to expose the diary to the whole of England, and mother of course, if you try to stop me.” Nathan’s words came back to him over and over again as if they were coming out of the walls and everything else in the room. The picture of Nathan’s face as he said those words also stuck in Longstands’s mind—cold, calm, and yet forceful. Getting out of the corner into which he’d been squeezed by his son without knocking anything down was something Longstands had spent the entire afternoon trying to figure out. One thing was certain; he could not risk the diary being exposed. Since Nathan was not one to make idle threats; something he’d made very clear from childhood—proving times without number that he’d do whatever he set his mind to do irrespective of what it took, Longstands was not about to give the young man the slightest chance to prove his seriousness.
While Longstands’s son leaned heavily on him from one side, his wife squeezed in on him from the other, leaving him standing on the border of insanity. Suzanne, just like her son, was not one to mess with; from childhood, she’d always gotten whatever she wanted. Being the only child of a filthy rich and powerful man and having lost her mother at an early age, she was spoilt to a stomach-churning point and grew up expecting the world to give her anything she demanded. The only difference was that as she grew older she was more willing to sacrifice anything to get whatever she wanted.
She was determined to make sure the union between Nathan and Ashana never took place and was willing to go to any extent and employ any weapon and strategy within her reach, to ensure she got her way. Suzanne’s only problem; one that she’d already found a way around, was that she was afrai
d to stand up to her son like she’d do with Longstands. Nathan was just as stubborn as she was and she had no power in the Fort to carry out her wish as she pleased, as long as her son wasn’t in agreement. Besides, there had been an incident back in England, which she feared Nathan must have seen, but was pretending not to have. She wasn’t sure and didn’t know how to be certain of what Nathan saw or didn’t see on that night. She’d just noticed that after that night the boy’s attitude toward her had changed but she still couldn’t say if it was because he was now a man and wanted to prove that he was grown up or if it was simply her guilt haunted her; making her see things that really weren’t there.
Suzanne’s only way to get to Nathan was through her husband; the boy loved and feared his father and listened to whatever the man said. So it was easier for Suzanne to put pressure on Longstands, who had no choice but to agree with whatever she said. Longstands would in turn put pressure on Nathan but for some reason the boy seemed to have also lost all fear and respect for his father and had for the first time ever, flatly and blatantly disregarded his father’s instructions.
“What a mess!” Longstands uttered, mentally exhausted and finally realizing the complexity of the web in which he was caught. It was his seventh walk around his quarters trying to clear his clogged head. He wanted to scream, he wanted to hit something and he was close to jumping off a cliff just trying to figure out how in the world the diary got into the hands of his son. After two additional walks around the Fort, Longstands arrived at a possibility; two years ago he had visited England, his contract running a plantation in St Lucia had come to an end and he was to begin a new contract in Jamaica. But before heading to Jamaica, he’d decided to visit his hometown in England.
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