“Oh God!” she exclaimed. “How clumsy of me!”
Mr Brown was doing a little dance, his dark eyes narrowed with anger. Curtly, he excused himself and stalked off in the direction of his bedroom.
“You! Hetty! Bring me cold water, a lot of water,” he called over his shoulder, and the girl ran to do his bidding.
It was just before dawn when Alex stumbled over Hetty, lying on the veranda. No longer in the dress, the girl was shivering in a stained linen shift, arms hugged protectively round her waist. When Alex tried to touch her, she shied away.
“I’m sorry, missus, sorry, so sorry,” the girl mumbled through a badly swollen mouth, and struggled to stand.
“Jesus,” Alex said, and once again tried to touch her.
Hetty backed away. “It was me own fault. The massa be right angry wi’ me for not doin’ as he says.” She gulped back on a sob. “I…” Agilely, she got round Alex and made for the safety of the cookhouse.
“It is none of your concern,” Mr Brown snapped when Alex confronted him over breakfast. At least he was limping – too bad she hadn’t scalded his penis.
“She’s a child!”
“She’s my property,” Mr Brown said, “and I’ll do with her as I see fit—”
“Bastard!”
“…just as I will with your precious nephew.” He bowed and left her to consider that particular little threat alone.
After supper that evening, it was as if their previous conversation had never taken place. Instead, Mr Brown went on about how difficult it was to live so far away from what little cultured society was to be found in Barbados.
“Shortly, I hope to install a wife here with me,” he said, smiling in the direction of Hetty – yet again in the pink dress – who tried to smile back. “I’m of an age to wish for sons to carry on my line.”
“No major loss to humanity if that doesn’t happen,” Alex muttered in an undertone. He gave her the creeps, this strange man, one moment all cultivation and polish, the next a cruel boor.
“I hope for a wife with whom I can share my passion for everything French,” Mr Brown went on, smiling dreamily into the smoke that hovered round him. He drew heavily on his pipe for some moments. “Yes. It would be most pleasing should she speak French, like my sainted mother did.”
“Marijke Hendrijks doesn’t speak French,” Matthew said, still seated by the chessboard.
“Marijke Hendrijks?” Mr Brown lowered his pipe to look at him. “How do you know her?”
“I’ve met her,” Matthew said, “and her father.”
“Oh yes…well, you would, wouldn’t you? Klaas being the harbourmaster and all that,” Mr Brown said.
“A very nice girl,” Alex put in. “She deserves a nice, loving husband.” Not like you, she thought, throwing Brown a challenging glance.
For an instant, Sassafras Brown met her eyes, brows lowered threateningly. But he didn’t reply. Instead, he sucked at his pipe, sending up a veil of smoke between him and his guests.
“I think he’s insane,” Alex confided to Matthew once they were back in their room. “He’s too erratic. One moment he’s the perfect, courteous gentleman, the next he’s a beast who abuses a child of twelve or so. She doesn’t even have breasts yet!”
“Mmm,” Matthew replied, throwing himself to lie flat on the bed. “He didn’t like it, did he, that we know Klaas and Marijke.”
“No,” Alex said, “and he’s quite right to be worried. Since we’ve been here, it’s been the same every night: he takes a woman to bed, and they stumble out hurt in the morning. Of course I’ll tell Klaas!” She pummelled at her pillows and slid down to lie beside him. “God, I hate this place!”
“Aye.” Matthew frowned up at the ceiling and rolled out of bed, returning with his dirk and one of his pistols that he slid in under the pillow.
In the middle of the night, Alex woke to a draught, and saw the door close quietly. Beside her, Matthew was wide awake, a cautionary hand on her arm. Oh God, the planter had been standing there, looking in on them! Alex sat up, shivering in bed. Neither of them slept any more that night.
*
Matthew won the chess game the next day. For a moment, he just sat, staring at the board, before looking at Alex.
“Pack,” he said. “We leave within the hour.”
“Surely you don’t mean to set out now, this late in the day?” Mr Brown asked, surprisingly unperturbed by his loss.
“Aye, we do,” Matthew said.
“Ah,” Mr Brown said, and there was a ghost of a smile on his face as he moved over to his desk where the document transferring Charlie’s contract was already drawn up. Brown set his name to it, gestured for Matthew to sign it, and wrote out a receipt for the twenty pounds Matthew paid over. “I’ll have the overseer bring your nephew,” he said, and left the room.
*
Charlie didn’t understand. He’d been woken at dawn and led to work, and no matter what he did, he did it wrong. The ditch was too shallow, it was too crooked, he was digging too slow, and the whip came down time and time again on his bare back. He was set to dig yet another ditch, and he made an effort to dig straight and neat, and still the overseer yelled at him, and he was beaten yet again. He begged for them to stop, and when they started him on a third ditch, he made an even greater effort, and he dug and dug, and the ditch was very straight. But not quite, as the overseer pointed out, and Charlie squealed when they used a cane instead of a whip.
“Please,” he bawled, “please don’t hurt me anymore.” Mercifully, they stopped, leading him off in the direction of the yard. He could scarcely walk, but he managed to stand when he was told to, and he blinked because someone was calling him Charlie, and no one had done that since the day last September when his father had called after him in Taunton.
He had no idea who the big man before him might be, but the woman beside him, she looked familiar, and with a jolt he realised she looked like his mam – brown-haired where Mam had hair like black silk, but eyes as blue, if a few shades darker.
“Mam?” he quavered, even if he knew she wasn’t – not unless he was dead and this was a heavenly angel.
“No,” the woman replied, and put a hand on his forearm. “I’m your aunt.”
Charlie licked his lips. Aunt? Why were they here? He swayed with the effort of keeping upright, and could vaguely make out that the tall man that he supposed must be his uncle was yelling at Mr Brown. Charlie cringed at Brown’s angry reply. Please, don’t hurt me, he thought, and closed his eyes in expectation of a new blow. Someone was kneeling by his feet, and he screamed when the chisel skinned the inner side of his foot, and then the fetters were off, and Charlie Graham suddenly realised he was still alive.
The woman helped him into a clean shirt, but said she had no breeches for him. “This stays here,” she said, and he was hugely embarrassed at having her hands on him as she undid the grimy clout and dropped it to the ground.
“I haven’t washed…” he said in a weak explanation at the stink of himself.
“Well, we forgot to tell you we were coming, didn’t we?” she said and Charlie managed a weak twitching of the lips. His uncle came over and without a word carried Charlie over to the horse.
“You ride,” he said, and Charlie smiled at his accent. It reminded him of Jacob, the towheaded cousin that he’d met six years ago. He didn’t protest at his uncle’s suggestion because his foot hurt something awful, and he didn’t think he’d make it down the lane unaided. He was leaving! The ground was moving beneath the horse’s hooves, and his head was spinning with hunger, fear and incomprehension, but this much he grasped: he would die somewhere else, not here.
*
“Kill them,” Brown told the overseer. “Hunt them down and kill them and throw their remains into the wilderness or the sea.” He almost giggled at the elegance of it all. Graham probably thought he had outplayed him, when in fact he, Sassafras Brown, had outwitted the tall Scot. And now it was all happening just as he’d
planned. Yes, he would say, wrinkling his brow in concern, yes, he had met the Grahams. He had even sold them their nephew and waved them off on their return trip to Bridgetown. He watched the odd little cavalcade drop out of sight and turned to his man.
“Wait until dark,” he said, “and if you want to have the woman first…” He felt a slight tightening of his balls and looked around to where Hetty was waiting. Goddamn the Graham woman for sticking her long nose into what was no concern of hers! And he could only imagine what would happen to his prospective wedding should she get the opportunity to tell Hendrijks what she’d seen. No, he couldn’t let that happen. Marijke Hendrijks would make him a perfect wife, young enough to mould to his tastes and so very, very pretty. And, on top of that, rich. If half of what the rumours said was true, she was easily the richest girl on the island. Oh yes, little Marijke was meant to be his, and if the Grahams had to die for that to happen, so be it. He jerked his head in the direction of the house, and Hetty obediently hurried inside. “I’ll be waiting to hear how things went when you come back.”
The overseer just nodded.
*
“He’s done that on purpose,” Alex said, indicating the faint lines of blood that had seeped through Charlie’s shirt. “And that,” she added, indicating the lacerated ankle. “It smells of a trap, somehow.”
Matthew frowned, tightening his grip on the reins. “He let me win, he wanted me to win. That’s why he had the contract ready.” He patted at the front of his shirt where the legal document transferring ownership of Charlie rested against his chest. Alex stumbled, and he grabbed her hand. “They’ll find us ready, not unsuspecting and asleep.”
“And they have flintlocks and we have…” She waited for him to fill in.
“…a sword, two loaded pistols and two dirks.”
“Whoopee.” At least it would be dark, and that would make the muskets pretty useless. “Retirement,” she sighed and dabbed at her sweaty face, “and you know what? Definitely not in bloody Florida or somewhere hot.”
“Retirement,” he smiled, “but not yet.”
“No,” she said. “So, all for one—”
“—and one for all,” Charlie filled in weakly, and the three Grahams actually laughed. Probably due to a well-developed appreciation of the macabre, Alex reflected as she shoved the fear that was clawing its way up her throat back to lie grumbling in her gut.
Chapter 31
By the time Matthew found a campsite he felt adequate, it was well into the night, their slow progress lit by a heavy yellow moon and the rustic torch Alex was holding.
“Good.” Matthew inspected thorny thickets that stood like a castle wall behind them before helping the semi-conscious Charlie off the horse. The poor boy was so weak it had been all he could do to remain astride, propped by Matthew or Alex. He needed a rest, and so, truth be told, did Alex after well over six hours of walking in this suffocating heat. She grimaced: and how coincidental that Mr bloody Brown had no horses to lend them – or so he said – thereby forcing them to walk.
“Only one direction of attack,” Matthew said, and Alex felt her mouth go dry. She threw a look at Charlie who had collapsed into himself, wrapped in both her and Matthew’s cloaks to stop him from shivering. No help at all from there, and what on earth could she and Matthew do against a determined band of four or five men?
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you think he’ll send his men after us?”
“Marijke,” Matthew said. “Too fat a catch to risk losing.”
Matthew built a small fire, they heaved Charlie even further into the protective circle of thorns, and Alex helped Matthew fashion two humps out of branches and leaves just to the side of the fire.
“They’ll call that bluff soon enough,” Alex said.
“Aye, but by the time they do…” Matthew levelled his pistol and mimed pressing the trigger. He tried to hand one of the pistols to Alex but she shook her head.
“I’m a lousy shot, and I suspect an even worse one in the pitch-dark.” She crouched down beside him, leaning into his comforting warmth. “I’m scared.”
“So am I,” Matthew said into her hair. All around them, the unfamiliar jungle rustled, small things scurried into the circle of weak light that surrounded their fire and were swallowed up on the other side, and Alex shifted even closer.
They came when the moon had sunk well below the fringe of trees. The horse whickered, and Matthew was on his feet in one fluid motion, helping Alex up.
“Where?” she whispered in his ear. “I can’t see a thing!”
“Listen,” he replied in a murmur, and tilted his head to the north, just off the path they’d walked down on a few hours earlier. A rustling, a snapping twig, the regular sound of controlled breathing…
Alex stood on tiptoe, straining her eyes in an effort to see. There! Something lighter than the surrounding woods floated disconcertingly through the trees. A face – several faces, and they were at least five.
The men approached the fire cautiously. The leader shoved his sword into one of the little humps and cursed. Matthew fired his pistol. One of the men hollered and clutched at his backside before taking off the way he’d come. Someone raised an axe as if to bring it down on Charlie’s defenceless head, and Matthew fired his second pistol. The man with the axe fell in slow motion into the fire, sending showers of sparks into the air. He screamed, someone pulled him free, and a bleary-eyed Charlie struggled to sit, his face skeletal in the faint light.
A torch was lit, and in the sudden flare of light, Alex saw that behind the white men were two blacks, making the total seven. Two were out of commission, and now Matthew was out in the clearing, wielding his sword to force the overseer back. A shot went off, whizzed by Alex’s head to bury itself in the tree behind her, and then the overseer was using his musket as a club in a furious attempt to keep Matthew at bay.
Alex heard strange high-pitched noises, and, with surprise, realised they came from her as she rushed across the clearing to defend the helpless and bemused Charlie from yet another attack. One of the men had pinned him to the ground, his hands round Charlie’s neck. Charlie gargled and kicked, his arms flailing weakly.
“Shit!” Alex sank her knife into the shoulder of the man. Jesus, it hurt! The shock of blade on bone made her fingers tingle, but at least the man before her folded together. She rolled him off Charlie and wheeled, trying to find her man in the dark.
Matthew was having problems. The overseer and one of his assistants were slowly forcing him back, calling loudly for someone called Tom to come and help them. Tom, it seemed, was the man who had Alex’s knife firmly embedded in his back, so all he did was groan. But out of the corner of her eye, Alex saw another man close in on Matthew from his side.
“Watch out!” Alex launched herself at this new assailant, grunting when her foot connected with something soft. She swung again, and karate skills she hadn’t used actively for very many years came back to her, flowing from the brainstem down her spine and out into her limbs. She bunched up her skirts and whirled, her foot coming up to hit the man squarely in the chest. He sort of melted to the ground, a boneless heap of flesh that landed with a soft moan, and she turned, panting, back to her husband.
A torch held high glinted on the dull steel of Matthew’s sword as he lunged, swiping viciously at the legs of his opponents. The overseer hopped away, cursing loudly. Someone levelled a gun, Matthew’s blade whistled through the air, and the pistol spun away, a scream echoing through the heavy black night. Something flew through the darkness, hit Matthew, and down he went.
“No!” Alex rushed towards him, and for a few minutes she couldn’t see more than a flurry of limbs. Matthew swore, and he was up again, still with his sword in hand, still alive. The overseer grabbed at Alex, and instinctively she chopped at his arm, following up with an elbow in the direction of his face. It made him howl, the bastard. She yanked herself free and retreated to stand over Charlie’s prostrate body while Matthew drove the last of
them off. One last lunge and he had the torch, holding it aloft for a second before dousing it against the damp ground.
It was eerily silent. They found each other by touch, his left hand groped for hers, and they stood still in the tropical night. The cicadas resumed their chirping, bushes began to rustle, and with a small sound Matthew sat down, having first assured himself that the man that had toppled into the fire was dead. To the far right, the man called Tom was crawling feebly in the direction he had come.
“Are you alright, lass?”
“I think so. Well, my bladder is about to burst.” She shifted a bit closer to him. “And you?”
“Ah,” he groaned, “I won’t be able to raise my arm tomorrow. It’s a long time since I had to engage in swordplay such as this.”
“Tell me about it. I think I’ve sprained my hip.”
“Your hip?” Matthew laughed softly. “How is that?”
“I kicked one of them. He’s still here, somewhere.” She squinted into the dark, now not as absolute as before, and made out a huddled shape some yards away. “I hope he isn’t dead.” In response, the heap uttered a guttural sound. “Oh, good.” She just had to pee, and stood up on shaking legs. “I’ll be right back.”
“Stay close.”
Alex clambered over Charlie, and squatted where she still could see the pale square of Matthew’s shirt.
“At least we’re still in possession of a full-bodied white slave,” she said.
“Aye,” Matthew replied morosely, “but the horse is gone.” He reloaded his pistols and helped Charlie to stand. “We must get started. We must be out of here before they come back.”
“Come back?” Alex was too tired for this.
“Aye, come back. They haven’t finished, have they?”
“But…” She pointed at the dead man and his two wounded companions.
“There’s more where they came from,” Matthew said.
Great, absolutely fabulous. Black hairy things with a lot of legs settled themselves in her gut and her knees.
Whither Thou Goest (The Graham Saga Book 7) Page 26