Beyond the Savage Sea Page 13

  * * * *

  Drake felt the excitement in the air, too. He arose early— well before the six o’clock bell. When yesterday came surging back, he felt a stab of guilt. His interlude with Dinny had not been worth wronging Edwinna. In bed Dinny had been as cheerful and experienced as a courtesan, but the physical satisfaction had been fleeting—gone in an hour. He wished he’d never set eyes on her.

  He went downstairs to look for Edwinna and found her already out, which meant she’d gone trotting off into the darkness, a thing they’d agreed she would not do, in light of the Jacka problem.

  So he left the house at a run. Kena, who was devoted to Edwinna and who could be counted on to be awake if Edwinna was awake, told him she’d gone to field number twelve to test the cane. He ran down the rutted, uneven cane path in the murky gray of predawn, cane towering over him, swaying in the wind. Anyone could be hiding there. Anything could happen. Something scuttled across the path. The red, feral eyes of a cane rat flashed at him, then vanished as the animal scurried into the cane.

  When he reached the harvest field, marked by its tall bamboo pole with a red flag fluttering high above the cane, he found no one there. But she’d been there. A freshly cut cane stalk lay on the path.

  He ran all the way to the mill and, breathless, found her where he should have looked in the first place—in the boiling house with Alvis Nansellock. He was relieved, but with the worry gone, quashed, anger welled up. She’d scared him.

  As he entered the echoing, barnlike structure, his footfalls left no doubt as to the state of his temper. Nansellock quickly found something else to do and somewhere else to do it, but Edwinna went on checking a sugar pot, her back to him.

  “Do you know that I have been running all over this plantation searching for you?” he demanded. “We agreed you would not go off alone in the dark. We agreed you would let me escort you.”

  She turned around and hit him. He took a step back in astonishment. She hit him again, eyes afire with harvest tension and fury. These were not slaps, but hard blows to his chest with the flat of her strong hand. He caught her wrist.

  “Edwinna!”

  She blazed at him. “You and your fine talk about commitment, fidelity! How dare you go to Dinny’s? How dare you make sport of me in that way? Don’t you know the whole plantation knows of it, and likely the whole island?”

  He flushed. His guilt deepened. He hadn’t thought of the humiliation he might cause her. She struggled to free her wrist. He held it tightly. Guilty or not, he didn’t want to be battered to death.

  “Edwinna, I was at Dinny’s by accident. I got lost in the cane. By the time I rode out of it I found myself at her house. She invited me in to dine and I did so.”

  She wrenched her wrist free and rubbed it, then gave him a scorching look. “Did you sleep with her?”

  He riffled a hand through his hair and looked away. There was no point in lying. She would find out later and be doubly hurt. He didn’t want that.

  “Yes. But that was an accident, too—one that will not be repeated. You have my word.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  If he could have looked ahead and known this would wound her, he would have run like a rabbit the instant he’d spied Dinny’s red hair bobbing about in her yard. Jealousy burned in Edwinna’s eyes. He was taken aback. He hadn’t expected that. It gave him hope.

  “You have every right not to believe me. I will have to prove myself. And I intend to. Edwinna...I’m sorry I hurt you. I apologize.”

  She glowered at him, indecisive.

  “Oh, do go away, Drake. Just go. I’m busy.” She turned and went on with the work she’d been doing, checking and stacking sugar pots. He worked beside her.

  “Edwinna, we’ve enough worries with a possible bondslave uprising. Let’s put this behind us and be friends. Give me work to do. Let me help you with harvest.”

  “It isn’t necessary for you to work!”

  “It is to me. I am accustomed to work. I hate idleness.”

  “You’re a wine merchant. What do you know about sugar—nothing.”

  She was so damned blunt.

  “I’m not without intelligence. I can learn,”

  She looked dubious, jealous, angry.

  “Do you think you can learn sugar?” she challenged.

  “Easily!”

  * * * *

  Easily? Drake ate the word a hundred times a day during his first week of learning sugar. It proved to be a brutal taskmaster. Plum put him in charge of the cane cutting, which was backbreaking, dangerous toil for the slaves who did it. They had to stoop all day, working their way down the endless rows of cane, swinging their bill-cane knives, blisters rising in their calloused palms. David Alleyne treated their hands in the field with ointments and mercifully prescribed a dram of kill-devil rum at the close of each workday.

  Harvest proved to be an orgy of work, such as Drake had never in his wildest dreams imagined. The rumble of the grinder echoed night and day. The gate bell clamored in emergency at least once every night, and because Edwinna rose up from her bed, Drake doggedly rose, too. He tried to prove himself to her, but he despaired of ever succeeding.

  Matthew Plum saw what was going on between them and grew downright irritated with Edwinna’s attitude toward Drake, her unwillingness to include him in business matters. He took her to task for it.

  “Edwinna, Drake should be consulted,” he chided in her plantation office one day after the midday meal as she sat with her head in her hands, overwhelmed by the latest financial blow. Her London sugar factor had raised his commission charge from five percent to seven. “Drake is a merchant, Edwinna. He knows London, he understands business. He could advise you.”

  “I don’t want him interfering in Crawford Plantation business.”

  “He is your husband.”

  “In name only!”

  Plum sat back and looked at her gently. Ah, he thought. So there’s the rub. There is no bed in this marriage. He’d suspected as much. He’d heard the foolish rumors about Dinny Fraser. They should be discounted. Dinny seduced everyone. A man hadn’t a chance. But even before that, Edwinna hadn’t the look of a bride. Drake hadn’t the look of a happy bridegroom.

  Yet, if ever two people were a match, it was Drake and Edwinna. Both were private and deep — they thought deeply, felt deeply. Both were passionately dedicated to their chosen work — Edwinna to her plantation, Drake to his wine business.

  “Nevertheless, Drake should be included in plantation decisions. I insist.”

  She took a ledger and began entering yesterday’s harvest figures, which she’d compiled at midday meal from the overseers’ reports.

  “No! He cares nothing for Crawford Plantation.”

  “Caring comes with responsibility, Edwinna. Give him responsibility and he will care.”

  “There is no point in it. He will leave when his year is up and he will not come back. I know he will not.”

  So, he thought. She doesn’t want him to go. She is falling in love with Him.

  “He might come back. If he thought he had a nice wife to come back to.”

  “This is not a love match, Mr. Plum,” she said scornfully. “You know I wed him only to save my plantation.”

  “Nevertheless you should let Drake help you.”

  “I don’t need him. I have you.”

  He crossed one leg upon the other, sat back, and carefully considered his words.

  “I will not always be here for you, Edwinna.”

  Her head shot up and her eyes widened.

  “You are not ill again?”

  “Nay. I’m fit as a fiddle. But I’m getting older, Edwinna. As a man gets older, his thoughts turn more and more to home. I have lived in Barbados twenty years, most of them on Crawford Plantation. But each year the yen to see England again grows a bit stronger.” He twinkled at her. “I’ve even a yen to see my wife. And who knows, after all these years she may have a yen to see me. It might be pleasant for
my wife and me to spend our sunset years together, sitting on the stoop of our cottage in Leeds, watching our grandchildren play at our feet. I’m not saying I will go this year or next year, or even the year after. However, the day will come when I will go.”

  She looked utterly shocked. “But...I count on you. I have always depended on you.”

  “Then you should not. Count on your husband. Depend on him. It is the proper order of things.”

  “My—earliest memories are of you. You, carrying me all around the plantation, letting me ride on your saddle, cutting small pieces of cane for me so I could pretend to plant and grow my own cane field. I never thought you would ever leave. It never occurred to me.”

  “Well, I will leave!”

  Now she was truly alarmed. She looked about the room in a distracted fashion, more distressed over this news than that of her dastardly London sugar factor raising the price of his commission.

  “Edwinna,” Plum said calmly. “Let Drake into your life. He will prove worthy. I am certain of it.”

  * * * *

  Boots shucked, Drake was lying on the bed catching a noon rest before the next round of cane cutting resumed, when he heard Edwinna’s step on the stair. He glanced at the doorway. To his surprise, she didn’t pass by, but stopped.

  “Drake? I—that is, Mr. Plum and I wondered if you would come down to the office and help us with a business problem.

  ‘He sat up with alacrity and hauled on his boots, surprised.

  “Gladly. If it’s in the area of my competence.”

  “It is. It concerns our London sugar factor.” They discussed the problem on the way down the stairs, crossing through the dining chamber where Priscilla and Jocko were blatantly robbing the fruit bowl.

  “I presume it isn’t a simple matter of dismissing your sugar factor and hiring another?”

  “No. Crawford Plantation is deeply in debt to him. You see, a sugar factor extends credit until harvest comes in. In the meantime, he orders and sends the supplies we need— tools, clothing, bondslaves, parts for the mill, food—”

  “And charges another five percent for that.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much is your total indebtedness?”

  “About four thousand pounds sterling.”

  Drake gave a low whistle. “How did it get so high?”

  “My...father was a trifle careless in business matters.”

  He glanced at her. A trifle? Four thousand pounds was not a trifle. Peter Crawford had left his plantation in a financial mess.

  “Do you think you can advise us?”

  “That would be rash without studying the ledgers. But I will do one thing immediately. I’ll write my brother-in-law Arthur to inquire at London banks about a loan to cover what you owe your sugar factor. The loan likely will cost you less by one or two percent than what you are paying him. Arthur can also inquire about hiring a new sugar factor. There are good ones to be found in London who will work for less than five percent. As for the ledgers, I’ll study them in the evenings, if you’ll sit with me and explain entries.”

  “Yes, of course I will.”

  Matthew Plum smiled to himself as the pair came into the office talking earnestly. Edwinna was flushed. Drake’s eyes shone with interest. Plum rather doubted the interest had anything to do with a sugar factor.

  * * * *

  Drake couldn’t account for Edwinna’s new willingness to admit him into the center of plantation business, but he was grateful for it. He was a man who needed responsibility.

  Without it, he was like a fish out of water. Sharing the sugar factor problem and also remaining alert for any bondslave trouble, he and Edwinna drew a little closer. Sometimes, working late at night by candlelight in her office, they would glance up at the same moment and, surprised by it, smile; and he would think that going to bed with her might be possible. But that was a false hope. If his hand even brushed hers in passing her a quill pen, she grew tense. He didn’t understand her.

  Harvest went on relentlessly. The work never stopped. The only respite came late Saturday afternoon when the boiling fires were allowed to go out in preparation for the Sabbath. By law no planter could make sugar on the Sabbath. The strident grinding ceased. Peace descended, and the sudden shock of it almost deafened the ear.

  Enjoying themselves, the slaves plunged into the cattle pond to bathe and swim and play. If the week’s work had gone well and Plum was pleased with them, he provided a duck for their sport. They all had a merry time—except for the duck, Drake noted wryly.

  Plum clipped the duck’s wings to prevent it flying and tossed it into the cattle pond. Swimmers would vie to capture it. For all of their brawn and strength, the men rarely won this contest. Usually, one of the quick, slender maidens carried the duck home to her stewpot.

  These afternoons were lovely. As the sun slanted into the Caribbean, coating the cane fields with a wash of gold, the slaves lined up at the provisions storehouse to receive their week’s supply of food. Drake found it a beautiful sight to watch the firm-breasted maidens glide off into the sunset with their provisions balanced gracefully on their heads. It was also stirring and put him into a sweat.

  By tradition, the black male slaves had the right to come into the planter’s front hall on Saturday night to receive their allotment of rum, which they shared with their wives. The “papa” of the plantation dispensed the rum by his own hand, and that meant Drake did it. The rum tradition was one Edwinna despised, but he saw the sense of it. If he were enslaved, he too would want to get drunk every Saturday night, giving not a thought to Sunday’s headache.

  “You should not have given David Alleyne permission to take Kena walking,” Edwinna said sharply.

  Drake looked up, curious. They were alone in the dining chamber sharing midday meal on the Sabbath after Drake had spent the morning granting slave tickets and reading the obligatory Sabbath prayers to the bondslaves, who were required by law to gather for prayer each Sabbath morning. Praying over the likes of Jacka, Hastings, Yates? A joke.

  Granted her ticket, Kena had left with a joyful David. Planning a long walk, they’d left Tutu behind. He perched happily in Drake’s lap, chomping the bread sops Drake fed him. He used to feed Katherine this way.

  “Why shouldn’t David take Kena walking?”

  “Because I don’t like it, that’s why. It’s not safe. He— he might hurt her.”

  Drake went on feeding Tutu, but in his mind’s eye he was seeing a little girl running through the night, sobbing, her wrist broken.

  “Edwinna,” he said gently, “David Alleyne would never hurt Kena. I think you know that. He is one of the most decent young men I’ve ever met.”

  She backed off from her extreme position, but insisted, “Nevertheless, I do not want Kena leaving the plantation with him. In the future, please do not grant permission.”

  “And if Kena insists?” He popped a bread sop dipped in honey into Tutu’s open mouth. Tutu chewed and grinned.

  “She won’t. She listens to me.”

  Tutu had had enough. He scrambled down and ran to Edwinna, his bare feet pattering on the floor. Edwinna picked him up and kissed him. He settled in her lap for exactly thirty seconds, then wriggled down and ran off to play. Drake resumed his own eating.

  “Where did they go? Where did he take her?” she demanded.

  He failed to understand this.

  “I did not think it necessary to put David on the rack and torture the information out of him.”

  “Don’t make sport of it, Drake,” she warned.

  He looked at her, amazed. “I’m not. I just do not understand this over-concern for Kena, this protectiveness. Has something happened to her before?”

  “I just don’t want her with David Alleyne.”

  “Why not?”

  Heated, agitated, she ate her food, then put her spoon down. She looked up fiercely.

  “She is my sister, that’s why!” Then, more quietly, “My half-sister. My father sir
ed her on a black slave.”

  Drake sat back in his chair. He was speechless, stunned. He shouldn’t have been. He’d lived in Barbados long enough to know that planters commonly forced themselves upon their slave women. Most of them kept black mistresses—even the planters whose English wives lived in Barbados. He should have guessed. Kena was devoted to Edwinna, and Edwinna to Kena.

  He shook his head, scarcely knowing what to say.

  “Then, Tutu...”

  “My nephew.”

  He was at a loss for words.

  “It is not so surprising,” Edwinna said bitterly, “men being what they are.”

  He took a deep breath. “And what are men, Edwinna? Tell me. I’d like to know. Since the day I came here, I have done my best to repay you for saving my life. I’ve worked for you. I have tried to befriend you. I have offered, with a sincere heart, to be a husband to you, though God knows we are ill-matched. Yet you reject my every overture. So tell me, exactly. I would like to know. What are men?”

  Her eyes filled with bitterness, as if at some memory he could not even guess at.

  “Animals.”

  It was enough. With a single smooth movement, he folded his napkin, pushed back his chair, and rose. He headed for the door. Her voice followed him.

  “Where are you going?”

  He paused in the doorway and looked at her. He was beginning to understand what made her the way she was, but that didn’t mean he had to forgive her or even like her. She crossed the bounds far too often.

  “I’m going to eat in the kitchen. Far be it from me to force you to eat with an animal.”

  His footsteps rang through the dining chamber, and then he was gone. Edwinna sat and forced herself to finish her meal, her chest constricting. How could she say such a terrible thing to Drake? It was terrible, but true.

  The food was suddenly tasteless without Drake sitting at the table, sharing it. She reminded herself she preferred dining alone. She’d dined alone most of her life. She liked it. A tear spilled down her cheek.