by Sarah Lark
“So it … doesn’t seem to be so important,” Nora remarked.
Máanu snapped back. “It would also not be so important to you, Missis, if today you were married, and tomorrow, the backra sold your husband or your child.”
“But that wouldn’t be,” Nora muttered. “If you could marry according to Christian rite, then—”
“No backra allows that!” Máanu laughed. “Even if it’s done by the reverend. He won’t even baptize us. To me, it doesn’t really matter, but Toby and old Hardy, they think that they are really missing something. That their souls would be saved by it.”
“You don’t believe that?” Nora asked, stunned. Máanu had lived on the plantation since birth; she had grown up with sermons from the reverends, after all. She had to be a Christian. “Tell me you believe that prayer will save you?”
Máanu huffed. “Missis,” she then spoke harshly. “I have not been saved at all! And also not Akwasi. Prayer, Missis, doesn’t help. You’re better off trying with a curse. But that doesn’t come for free, Missis. For that you have to first steal a chicken, and if the backra notices, he’ll probably beat you to death. There are not many curses that are worth that!”
Máanu turned around and left Nora’s room without asking permission. Nora did not stop her. Her last words had sounded too hateful.
A few days passed and Nora and Máanu’s conversation seemed to have been forgotten. They often laughed together or shared harmless secrets. As such, on a particularly hot and humid day, Nora finally inquired about a bathing area. She had been dripping with sweat and staggering back towards the house after her morning visit to the slave quarters.
“Missis would like to swim?” Máanu asked, in disbelief. She didn’t seem to remember Nora previously asking after a bath.
“Well, not exactly swimming,” Nora said carefully. “But to submerge myself and properly wash with water, and not just rub clean. Have you not heard of this at all, Máanu? Do they not do it in … Africa?”
Máanu laughed. “I was never in Africa,” she reminded her mistress. “But there is a place to bathe here. And now there is surely no one there. If you really want, I will take you there.”
“By all means!” Nora said with a smile. “I long for some refreshment.”
Máanu, however, cast a doubtful glance at Nora’s delicate silk shoes before she turned onto a narrow path that led away from the slave settlement. She herself walked through the jungle barefoot, which grew increasingly dense the further the women walked away from the living quarters. At one point, Nora was disconcerted to realize that they were almost completely enclosed in the green thicket. Unknown birds let out strange shrieks when they heard the people nearby, insects buzzed around them, and behind the thick leaves and flowers of the bushes and trees, there was a rustling, as if reptiles were trying to escape. Her shoes could not hold up against the stones and vines on the way, so Nora eventually took them off and followed her slave barefoot.
“It ruins your feet,” Máanu remarked.
Nora made a dismissive gesture. “I’ll put Adwea’s healing ointment on them when we’re at home. And now I can cool them off … or is it still far?”
Máanu shook her head. “Maybe another fifty steps,” she said, and ducked under a low hanging vine. “See, it’s there!”
Nora peered through the green darkness — here, in the deep jungle, the sun didn’t shine through the canopy — and realized that the path was about to widen to a clearing. The trail had already been running parallel to a stream for a while, although because of the dense vegetation one could only hear the gurgling water, not see it. But now Nora saw a small pond fed by a waterfall. It looked as though a resourceful garden designer had cleverly constructed a well. The path led uphill for a long time, but here a sort of terrace had formed. The water came down from the mountains, collected in the lake, and flowed into the stream that supplied Cascarilla Gardens with the clearest, purest water.
“Here, Missis,” Máanu threw off her dress and presented Nora with her perfect body. Her skin and her figure were just as flawless as her face. She was slender, but sinewy, her breasts were firm, her hips had a womanly roundness, and her legs were long and shapely. The picture was only disturbed by an ugly scar on her shoulder. She had been branded. Nora felt like she would be sick.
“You too, Missis! Undress, bathe! You wanted it, Missis, now you have to participate!”
With those words, Máanu dived into the pond headfirst. Nora, who had been taught that a lady should slowly and demurely slide into the water, looked stunned when her servant came back up to the surface laughing and swam nimbly to the middle of the pond. There, she lay on her back and floated — and, to Nora’s amazement, did so without drowning.
“You can really swim!” She exclaimed, and then also peeled off her dress and undergarments.
For the first time in her life, Nora was standing completely naked in the open air. It was a superb feeling to have the wind and sun on her skin.
“Everyone can swim!” Máanu laughed. “At least every nigger.”
Nora furrowed her brow and cautiously dipped a toe in the water. It was wonderfully cool. She held her breath and slid in.
“That can’t possibly be anything to do with skin color,” she said. “How do you do it?”
Nora was ashamed of the idea, but she couldn’t help but think of a witch trial. Hadn’t it been said that only enchantresses could escape the pull of water? Fortunately, Máanu did not seem familiar with this superstition.
She swam happily over to Nora and told her to lie down in the water. With her heart pounding, Nora allowed her servant to support her and put her in the correct position.
“Now stretch out your arms and paddle a bit with your fingers. And with your feet …”
Nora let out a short cry when Máanu let her go, but then she realized that she wasn’t sinking! She let herself float for a while, until she lost her courage. She was terrified to realize that she could no longer feel the ground under her feet. Máanu pulled her into the more shallow water before she could get seriously frightened.
“Swimming, Missis,” she then explained, “is like this.” She showed her how to do it. “Don’t paddle like a dog, but instead like a frog. And don’t be scared. The pond is so small that I can quickly pull you back up if something goes wrong. And it’s also not deep — you can sink to the bottom and push yourself back up.” To Nora’s dismay, Máanu sank beside her and then immediately reappeared. “Now you try it. Try swimming. It’s not difficult!”
It actually took Nora very little time to learn to stay afloat. After that day, the two women made a habit of bathing daily after the morning visit to the slave quarters, and Nora’s swimming skills developed much more rapidly than the calluses that formed on her feet. In the first few days, she had dozens of small cuts and bruises on the soles of her feet and they were slightly inflamed. Nora sometimes had to strain to hide her limp when she came down for dinner and Elias waited for her at the foot of the stairs. After a few weeks, however, the young woman was moving almost as surely along the jungle path as her slave — and she could swim through the water like a fish.
Then she eventually dared to ask the question that had shot through her head as she took her first stroke in the water.
“This is wonderful, Máanu. Is it also possible in the sea?”
MAGIC
Jamaica
Christmas 1732 to early 1733
CHAPTER 1
Douglas Fortnam finished his voyage through Europe and immediately abandoned his studies in Oxford. While he had enjoyed the former, he had hated England from the first day of his residence there. Doug was sent to a boarding school in Banbury when he was ten years old, but he had never managed to learn to love the mother country. He dreaded the darkness of English winter and, even in midsummer, it never really got warm enough. Doug missed the bright Caribbean sun, the beaches, and the deep, blue sea. The Irish Sea didn’t measure up; he had found the English coast a disappoin
tment when he visited a classmate in Blackpool. The water had been so cold. Doug was not a coward and did not shy away from going into the water with friends at the beach in Blackpool, or even from swimming in the Thames, which seemed clean and inviting all the way up at Oxford. But the sea as he knew it, had only been found again on that trip, which he had taken against his father’s will. He could hardly tear himself away from the beaches of Spain, Italy, and Greece.
But even the warm countries weren’t really able to quiet his longing for the island he called home. Doug was disturbed by the landscapes there, which were often bleak —mountain ranges, where nothing other than a few cactus plants or tough grasses grew. Apparently, in Europe, there was only the choice between cold countries with lush greenery and warm areas that almost perfectly matched up with how he’d pictured the desert. Nowhere was there tobacco, cocoa, or sugar cane growing; nowhere was there jungle snaking all the way down to the beach; nowhere was the air so heavy with moisture, but also with the thick, sweet scent of the tropics.
Doug had extended the trip in the south as much as possible, even though his father made good on his threat to withdraw his financial support. So, Doug had helped with the grape harvest in France, mined for marble in Italy, and slaved away at an oil mill in Spain. Many of his neighbors in Jamaica or fellow students in Oxford would have surely thought all of this beneath their dignity, but Doug was happy with the bulging muscles under his skin. He had always been more of a manual worker than a thinker and at university had proved more skillful as a fencer and rower than as a student.
As such, he was now also leaving without finishing his legal studies. After the many months in the south, he could no longer bear the English countryside, the constant rain, and the cold. Doug had been away from Jamaica for fourteen years. His patience was at an end and he had long known more about the maritime and commercial law of the various nations than he would ever need for the distribution of the Fortnam sugar cane. Enough was enough, Doug wanted to go home!
He hadn’t informed his father of his plans to leave Oxford. Elias Fortnam was capable of getting on a ship back to England in order to discipline his son. In any case, Doug decided to surprise his father and new stepmother in Jamaica. And he didn’t ask his father for money either, but instead made his way to Liverpool and signed up as a sailor on a barque.
For almost three months, he fought the vermin in his bunk below deck, tediously swabbed the deck, and enjoyed breathtaking moments as he climbed around the rigging. Doug had no fear of heights and loved tests of courage — he was always the first one to climb the masts to haul the sails, with the lookout at the top in the crow’s nest being dearer to him than a muggy night inside of the ship.
When the schooner finally reached Jamaica on Christmas Day in 1732, he had acquired such a taste for life at sea, that he thought about signing up on the next ship. But as he took his first look at the shores of his homeland, he forgot the idea immediately. The white beaches in the light of the rising sun, the jungle, the mountains … here, right here, was exactly what he wanted — and force would have to be used to get him to leave the island again!
Doug’s journey ended in Kingston, and he was delighted by the lively harbor city, which had grown significantly in his years away. He had to acclimate himself once more to the sight of so many blacks, which must have increased by the thousands. His heart immediately started beating harder when he thought of Akwasi and little Máanu. He might possibly see the latter again — but where the former was concerned, he didn’t think it likely. His father had screamed at the time, intending to make an example. He would certainly have sold the boy by now. On remembering the scene, Doug felt a familiar sense of guilt. He tried to suppress it. All that was fourteen years ago. It was over.
Doug sauntered along the docks. He’d hoped to get lucky and find a ship unloading horses for sale, but all he saw were slave ships. A sedan with six carriers would be manned right away, he thought acerbically, but there is still a lack of horses in the whole region. Eventually he just asked for a dealer and negotiated a horrendous price for a small, brown stallion that had been delivered just a few days earlier. The horse came from Spain. Doug had preferred not to ask how the dealer — or the sailor from whom he had purchased it — had got a hold of the animal. The dealer demanded Doug’s entire pay, and only reluctantly gave him the saddle and bridle when Doug believably assured him that his funds were already exhausted. Doug handed his last money over to him with some concern, but then told himself that his father wouldn’t throw him out of the house. He cheerfully saddled the horse, christened it — proud of his three words of Spanish — and rode towards Spanish Town in the name of Amigo.
The stallion set off with determination, and Doug enjoyed the morning sun over the sea and the shady paths between the tobacco and sugar cane fields. He was surprised to see that they had been abandoned — normally; one couldn’t pass through here without seeing at least one group of slaves at work. But then he remembered that it was Christmas. It was the highest Christian holiday and the only day that the plantation owners traditionally let the slaves take off. Doug took it as a good omen. In fact, the miles just vanished behind them at Amigo’s brisk trot. It had not been afternoon long when he crossed the border between the Hollister and Fortnam properties, and then slowed down his horse. If he rode directly to the farm, he would spend the rest of this promising sunny day in the house. He would have to answer to his father — which he almost feared — and meet his new stepmother, a woman younger than himself. Doug could not think of a single reason Nora Reed had married his father. Probably an arrangement between Elias Fortnam and her father — the girl had to be a submissive and tiresome person if she agreed to it. She would probably take every opportunity to complain about the climate in her new homeland, the lack of society, art, and culture … Most of the planters’ wives were chronically bored and unhappy. Doug would have to listen to it soon enough.
But here was a turn off to the beach! If he rode along the narrow road that separated the Hollister and Fortnam plantations, he would come upon the jungle, and from there he should find the bay that belonged to Cascarilla Gardens. Doug longed for that beach with every fiber of his being. He had dreamed of it on countless nights, recalling over and again the hours he’d spent there with Akwasi, their games, their races, and their tussles in the sand. The sea had always been warm; the sun always shining … Doug smiled, and turned decisively. He would see his father soon enough. Now he would first return home to his beach.
Doug reached the bay along the eastern end and could hardly believe his luck. He felt as if he had just left it the day before. No, there was nothing, absolutely nothing like it in Europe! No sand as white, no jungle as green, no sea as blue. Doug felt an urgent need to let out his joy. He let Amigo gallop onward and the little stallion seemed to share his enthusiasm. With great strides, he plowed through the sand — but then he suddenly perked up his ears and stopped abruptly, nearly throwing Doug from his saddle.
He followed the stallion’s eyes and saw another horse tied to a mangrove tree near the middle of the cove. Doug might not have noticed it at all, as the heavy branches and foliage almost hid it, but the stallion had naturally smelled it and now approached with his head adventurously held high. A mare, no question about it. And an extraordinarily beautiful one, at that! Doug registered the long legs of the animal in astonishment — the unmistakable silhouette of a racehorse.
Amigo continued ahead quickly, but a gut feeling made Doug grab the reins. “No, boy, we’ll stop here first and stay discreet in the background,” he whispered to him, and steered him away from the beach into the jungle.
He actively forbade his horse to neigh, so he could keep from being noticed, which almost felt a bit childish. He and Akwasi used to always play “natives and pirates” or “planters and Maroons,” but pirates didn’t travel by horse and Maroons didn’t tie their animals on the beach. The free blacks were known for lightning quick actions — they would overrun a farm
, kill the planter, and usually also the house slaves, looting and clearing away just as quickly as they came. The field slaves of a plantation often joined them, as a Maroon attack was the surest possibility of escape. However, it rarely happened, and almost never on this beach or this close to the city.
Nonetheless, Doug watched the horse anxiously. A moment later, something happened in the underbrush near the animal. To Doug’s utter amazement, a woman stepped out of the thicket. Calm, purposeful, self-confident, and completely naked! His first thought was that a slave had used her day off to bathe in the sea, but he dismissed the idea immediately. This woman didn’t have the stature of an Ashanti or Baoulé, she was distinctly smaller, very petite — and she was clearly not black. A mulatto? A slave with a lot of white blood? But the horse in the jungle almost certainly belonged to the young woman, and what Creole could possess such a valuable animal?
And then — Doug could hardly believe his eyes — he saw it very clearly. The being that approached the water and threw herself into the waves without any hesitation was a white woman! And not one of those sweet children of nature that he had met in southern Europe. This woman was not one of the peasant girls who worked on the field alongside their fathers with bare arms, and legs, and tanned faces, who jumped into a river or a pond at the edge of a village after the day’s work.
The woman in the water had pure white skin and must have usually worn long-sleeved dresses and protected her face from the Caribbean sun. Doug watched with fascination, as she swam fearlessly far out into the middle of the bay and then lay on her back and let herself float. Doug was curious about her face. The girl had to swim ashore eventually, and he would wait for her. He saw a slender, beautiful face with full lips that curled upwards into a smile. Her cheeks were slightly flushed from the exertion, and he couldn’t make out the color of her eyes against the light. The girl lifted her arms, collected her hair at the back of her head, and wrung it out — a gesture that Doug knew from slave girls. Naturally, it wasn’t appropriate to be watching her from a hiding place, but he could not turn away from the sight of her small, firm breasts. Her waist was so narrow that he thought he could wrap his hands all the way around it, and her hips were gently rounded. She was a perfect beauty.