by Mari Labbee
During their time in England, he would disappear for days, but she didn’t enjoy his company much, and it didn’t bother her that he left her to fend for herself. She was quite capable, and she would not be joining the drunkards. All was not lost; she managed to escape her hell on some days, spending hours in those faraway respectable neighborhoods. On those days, she would dress in her best, and though her best would never be good enough, she managed to remain invisible carrying the well-worn pocket missal she’d taken from the nuns at the asylum. Holding it plain to see on her lap, she would sit on a park bench—a missionary, taking a moment from God’s work, to all who walked by. Some even stopped to speak to her, and she would pay very close attention when they did—their speech, their demeanor, especially the women. Here in this place was the England of her imagination, where clean children played within view of their nannies, gardens overflowed with fragrant flowers, and elegant carriages carrying equally elegant passengers passed slowly by. This was the England she had read about in the asylum—the one of manners, gloved footmen, nosegays, and parasols. All day, she would sit and watch, sit and wish, sit and hate.
Shortly after setting sail from England, they had stopped somewhere far south and filled the ship’s belly with the cargo that she would be responsible for, and now some of the cargo was becoming sick.
“I don’t want any of them dying before we get there. Do you understand? Lost cargo means lost profit.” His face was so close to hers that he sprayed spittle on her, and he had gripped her arm so tight that the purple welt it left behind didn’t fade for days. He’d made it clear then that these men were her responsibility. The reason for her presence had been revealed then.
“Do whatever needs to be done to keep them alive. But keep them breathing.”
There would be no excuse for death.
Men, all kinds, every sort of rabble and riffraff, sat below decks chained together to ensure no escape attempts. And sailing now to some unknown place, on her husband’s ship, she found herself playing nursemaid to sick and wretched men, whose misery had grown tenfold since the day they sailed. It fell to her to bandage inflamed limbs and calm fevers. What did she know about nursing and medicines? Nothing—not one thing.
Hatred for her husband grew as each day ticked by. The men below jabbered in languages she had never heard. She didn’t understand any of them, and she had to slap their hands away constantly as they pulled on her skirt. The stench of disease and death greeted her every morning and hung on her at the end of every long day.
The ship had enough crates of coins and silver on board to make any voyage profitable, so why was he bothering with those men? Perhaps they were just an excuse to beat her.
And now the meager rations for the cargo of men had become almost nonexistent, and some were tenaciously hanging on to a life not worth hanging on to. She complained to her husband about this, but he only reminded her of her duties, never giving an indication of how she was supposed to carry them out without food. She was tiring of his nonsense. So it was fortunate for those poor men that she’d found a forgotten bottle of poison behind an old barrel of tallow.
It had been brought on board for the vermin, but she immediately thought of better uses for it and hid it under her skirts, smuggling it into her quarters.
Feeding those men the poison in their puny rations had been the thing to do, and the worst of them succumbed in hours. Others were strong and didn’t die for days. In a week’s time, though, a dozen had gone to heaven by way of the sea. If she could have sailed the huge ship by herself, all the others would have gone to heaven too, starting with her husband.
She endured beatings for the deaths, but it was worth it, for her day’s load was lightened considerably. After the first round of deaths, she stopped using the poison, but she would resort to using it again later, judiciously. If it were found out that hers was the hand that brought on the deaths, she would be overboard in quick order.
They barely moved in the ocean of weeds, and the wind was a little more than a phantom. Sails, usually filled and tight, flapped sloppily in the struggling wind.
The men had not shut up and were making her crazy, more so than usual, which put her in a dangerously bad mood. Her husband continued making the stupid decisions that were the hallmark of his career, ordering sails up day and night and constant watches with more men. The other idiots argued with him endlessly. She had to control herself from pushing all of them overboard where, she was sure, they would drown in agony in the tangles. And one had already done the job for her. After much talk of doing so, one of the men on board had finally thrown himself overboard, convinced that he could walk on the thick tangle. No one jumped in after him, and he was lost.
How much longer would they be marooned on this strange sea?
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The taste of seawater was in her mouth and in her nose. She was coughing, retching; there was seawater everywhere, burning and stinging. She opened her eyes just in time to see a wave come crashing down, pushing her deeper into the sand. She clawed at the grains only to feel them spilling through her fingers. Wave followed wave, drowning her until she finally crawled up onto the beach, coughing up the last of the water in her lungs. Finally, she was able to look up and survey her surroundings.
She was completely alone, on a beach so white it blinded her. But how had she gotten there? Where was she? Then she remembered.
At the week’s end, they had come out of the sea of weeds. They knew they had finally reached the edge of that strange sea when the sails suddenly snapped and filled with wind. The ship began moving again. The men had cheered, and, by God, in spite of herself, she had cheered too. That first day out of the weeds was calm and clear, but the night brought the first of the rain, followed by gales the next morning that grew worse as the day wore on. She had never lived through a storm like that. Not even in the harshest winters of her childhood could she remember anything like this storm. All any of them could do was hope that the ship would remain intact. But that would not be their fate.
For hours, she’d held fast to one of the thick columns below deck. The violently rocking ship tested the most seasoned sailors. The cabin boy, this his first voyage, had become so disabled that he skidded along the floor, nobody able to help him. She held no illusions that aid would be extended to her; it was every man out for himself, and she would do the same.
The end came very quickly. The howling wind had stopped, followed by an eerie, almost deafening silence. The air was hollow and still, and time stopped. The ship that had been rocking from side to side all night suddenly listed sharply to one side. Several horrible moments later, the list continued, and a low groan vibrated through the ship. Pops and snaps followed, and she saw the beam above them twist torturously to one side, while the beam next to it twisted in the opposite direction. The ship screamed in agony as she split in two, and then all of them were in the water.
Luck had abandoned them. Their hopes of saving the ship were dashed forever; they were plunged into the violent sea. There was no moon, and the storm had grown fiercer. She flailed in the black water, paddling through it, looking to get away from the others and for something to hold on to. Her hand slapped something hard, and she scrambled quickly onto whatever it was, clinging to it for dear life. At first, she could hear the cries of the men and hoped none of them would come near her. She was sure they would try to muscle her off her makeshift raft, but she was prepared to fight them for it. Soon, though, their voices became weaker and more distant and then faded away altogether; sometime in the night, she had passed out.
Another wave slapped her in the face. She began coughing again and struggled to get to her feet. She squinted against the bright sunlight reflecting off white sand. The beach was littered with palm trees and driftwood. Twisted fragments whitened by the sun and polished smooth by sand. At the far end, there was the remnant of what had been a small dock that sagged miserably now, missing most of its planks and mostly taken by the sea. Directly
in front of her, a hill rose up to a jungle clogged with bamboo, sea grapes, and palm trees. The broken-off piece of ship that had saved her was on the sand not too far away from where she had washed up. Except for that, and except for her, there were no signs of the ship, its crew, or its cargo.
A murmur of voices suddenly made her straighten up. She couldn’t quite tell where they came from, and she didn’t see anyone—not yet, anyway—but then movement caught her eye, and she saw them. A group of women emerged from the thick brush at the very far end of the beach near the broken pier. She lifted what was left of her tattered skirt and ran toward the jungle to hide, hoping she hadn’t been seen.
The thick foliage was as good as a wall, barring a quick escape. It might slow her down, but it would not stop her. She ran into it, determined to get away from the people on the beach. Suddenly she hit a tree and fell backward to the ground. When she looked up, she was stunned. It was not a tree. The biggest, blackest man she had ever seen stared down at her. He moved so quickly she had no time to react, and before she knew it, he had clamped a huge hand around her wrist, and began dragging her toward the beach. He yelled toward the others, waving with his free hand. She twisted and squirmed against him, trying to wrest herself out of his grip, but his thick hand remained firmly attached to her wrist. She kicked him and tried biting, but nothing affected the man, and he never even turned to look at her. The huge man kept yelling in a language she had never heard. In the distance, she saw the others coming toward them, including the women she had seen earlier and also behind them a white man on horseback.
When the man on horseback reached them, the big man spoke his gibberish as she twisted in his grip.
The man on horseback spoke to the giant in English. “Malik, you can let her loose now.”
The big man let go once he was given instructions to do so, and she rubbed her wrist where he had been holding her. Then she looked up at the man on horseback.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked.
He had an English accent and wore a shirt that had been very fine once but was just a rag now. He wore the thing carelessly, leaving it open far down to expose most of his chest. The cuffs were soiled and needed mending. The shirt, though quite worn out now, had been elegant and expensive once, she ventured. His disregard for such a lovely thing confused her. She wondered what kind of man he must be.
He sat easily in the saddle—all sinew and bronzed skin with sandy-colored hair tied back in a small tail at the nape of his neck. His brilliant blue eyes squinted down at her from a sunburned face.
“I am Alexander Percy. Do you speak English? What is your name?”
He was asking for her name.
“Isab…”
She almost gave him her true name. Quickly scanning the beach around them, she saw they were alone. Could it be she was the only survivor? Would anyone else show up to identify her? Wouldn’t they have washed up on this beach if they had survived like her?
“Indigo,” she responded.
Not a name at all, but she liked the sound of it, and it would serve to remind her. She thought of those eyes from so long ago, the eyes she knew she would see again someday, the eyes that would be sorry for taking everything from her.
The blame had always fallen on her. They never listened—they only accused. It wasn’t her fault. Dangerous, she’d overheard her father say, just before they’d sent her away. Someday she would look into those indigo eyes again and watch as the life was squeezed from them. Until then, every time someone called out to her, she would remember.
“My name is Indigo,” she said again, standing a bit taller.
The horse snorted and stomped, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Alexander’s serpentine body swayed in time with the motion.
“Indigo,” he repeated with a bemused smile.
Though she had no idea where she had ended up, she got the feeling that this place was far away from everywhere and very different from anything she had ever known.
“Our eastern and northern shores are nothing more than jagged shoals. Any captain not giving them wide berth is bound to run aground. Many wrecks, many,” Dr. Burrows said, shaking his head.
He had been educating her as he tended to her lacerations and sprained ankle. It had taken days for him to come up to Fig Field even though they had sent for him the day after they found her on the beach. So far she had learned that the sea floor around the island was littered with wrecks, and the island was little more than rough-hewn rock. Its shores were lashed from all sides by the open sea, but it was covered with a rich black soil from which sprang coconut palms, banana groves, and bamboo jungles that the residents had been attempting to tame for some time now. There were three plantations in all on the island that grew everything the English Crown might desire, and through some fortunate twist of fate, she had ended up at Fig Field, so named for the wild fig trees growing all around it. Though acres of them had been cleared away for the tobacco that was Fig Field’s cash crop, they still surrounded it. It was the island’s largest plantation and the only one on its northern side. It was also the most isolated. High in the mountains and a half day’s ride from the port town of New Quay, the plantation was cut off from the world around them.
The plantation house at Fig Field was a strange thing. It had looked like a cream-colored palace nestled against thick green jungle and shining in the sun when she first saw it looming high above as they emerged from the path that led up from the beach. Only when they came close did she see that the house was an odd array of wings, separated by breezeways and catwalks that connected the separate dwellings, making it one. She’d been given her own room in one of the wings to recuperate in from her great ordeal, and in her room now, as Dr. Burrows finished up, she looked at the patchy wall plaster. It was like that throughout the house. The damp air ate right through it, and without constant repair, the plaster simply came apart.
“Well, young lady, that should do it; quite something that you managed to survive a shipwreck with only a sprained ankle and these cuts,” he said, gesturing to her head.
“What of her memory?” Alexander asked.
He’d just shown up at her door and leaned against the frame, with one arm above him. She stared.
“Ah, well. A good blow to the head will cause amnesia. And we can see that here.” The doctor gestured in her general direction as he packed his potions and tools.
“The injuries in addition to the distress of the event will bring on forgetfulness of this magnitude.”
Alexander knew all that. The doctor had been telling them that since he’d first examined Indigo.
“But will her memories return?” Alexander asked a little impatiently.
The two men had moved away from her, and it irritated her that they were speaking as if she wasn’t there, so she coughed to remind them. Both looked over at her but quickly resumed their conversation.
“Hmm…yes, yes; in time they will be back.”
“I wish I could remember, but all I know is my name,” she interjected.
The doctor laughed. “Even that is not likely accurate.”
She frowned and glared at the doctor but then noticed Alexander watching her and quickly smiled. He would be leaving for the fields after this. She knew that. She knew his every routine.
Every morning his voice woke her, and she would hobble over to the window where she could look down and there he would be. Under the fig tree, as the sun rose over the jungle behind Fig Field. Every morning he’d meet his field manager under the same tree to go over the day’s tasks. She had no idea if he ever took notice of her looking out of that window, but even if he did, he hadn’t let on. The meetings were always over in ten minutes; ten glorious minutes of looking at him before he rode off. He wouldn’t return until late in the day, and she would always find a reason to be near the stables in the late afternoon.
Generally he wore his shoulder-length hair gathered neatly behind his neck, but it was loose now, falling to his sho
ulders, and Indigo thought he looked most handsome that way.
He and the doctor left the room, speaking in hushed tones as they often did, and she was alone again.
CHAPTER FORTY
The island inhabitants were proving an odd little bunch. A few had managed the trip up to Fig Field to meet her, the lone shipwreck survivor. They dissected her with their questions, trying to get her story: who was she, where was she from? But, alas, her memory was simply gone.
“Indigo…what a strange name,” she overheard one of the women say.
To this, the good doctor responded, “It is very likely it is not her actual name but one she remembers from somewhere. In time, though, the memories will return.”
They all played well at proper folk, but there was dirt under their fingernails, and Indigo recognized a familiar coarseness running just below the surface of learned manners. She suspected that not all of them were voluntary citizens of this tiny island, figuring they likely had more in common with her than expected. It was through them she learned Fig Field’s success could be attributed directly to Alexander, who ran the plantation with his own brand of unyielding discipline. The plantation had run through several managers before it was turned over to a young and ambitious Alexander. Many had their doubts that such a young man with little business experience and no prior management experience was a good choice. But tobacco stamped with the Fig Field insignia of double Fs facing each other with a fig juxtaposed between them had become a favorite of the Crown. The plantation was highly profitable, to the delight of investors back home.