Easton (15 page)

“We must find some shelter first,” he says, looking around, knowing they will be utterly exposed by the dawn.

Jemma points to the hill on the right. There are crags and boulders and the odd piece of scrub on the general baldness.

“We might find a cave over there,” she says.

George scans the hill.

“I don’t think so,” he says.

“Yes. I know this kind of land. The value of a cave is when you cannot see it.”

Sighing and cradling the baby’s head again, she begins trudging toward the hill.

George follows.

The wind makes
odd howling noises as it enters and circles around in the cave. It seems cold here away from the open daylight, even though they are only a few feet inside the cave’s rim. A constant drip, drip, comes from the darkness behind them. Gasps and moans echo from deep within the hollow mountain too.

“We should move farther away,” says George.

The
Happy Adventure
and its sister ships are still close enough for George and Jemma to hear the sails crack in the rising wind. Despite the climb and the tramp across the marshes they haven’t come very far.

Jemma is concentrating, holding the baby next to her breast and bowing her head close. He is sucking the milk from her finger. She speaks softly as though to the baby. “No. This is our defence. They will not look for us anywhere so close. If we leave again, we’ll lose our hiding place. Here we can rest and leave no clues. If we run we’ll be exhausted and they will catch us.”

George turns and considers the dark honeycomb of the cave. Moans and low singing emanate from a mile within, it seems. This suggests long stretches of corridors and crags in which they may hide. George already knows the cave is not visible from below. So perhaps Jemma is right.

“I wonder how long they will stay and try to find us,” he says.

He turns again and gazes out into the daylight, half expecting to see Easton’s men scattered among the woods and marshes below. But there is no movement, though he can see the
Happy Adventure’s
port side beyond the cove.

“They haven’t taken down their sails yet,” he says to Jemma. “Perhaps they will leave before they know we have escaped.”

Jemma is still feeding the baby. She doesn’t answer at first. George turns and she looks up at him, sadly, he thinks. “Easton likes to check on the child almost every hour. He already knows we are gone. He probably heard us leaving.”

“Then why has he not come after us?” George asks in a whisper. Even before the words leave his lips some ill-defined instinct tells him he does not really want to know the answer.

“Because it would be too easy,” she says, her mellow voice echoing in the cave. “He would say it is bad sport.” She smiles at the baby as she continues to dab the end of her finger in its mouth. “So he gives us a start. Easton likes to think of himself as a hunter.”

“Ah, God!” he says out loud, and a sick feeling tightens his chest.
What was the purpose then in leaving if just to give Easton an excuse to hunt them down like dogs?
he thinks.
The baby cannot survive with fugitives, can it? Jemma will surely die too.

He has the sensation that his head is floating from his shoulders and rising into the air. He can almost feel a sheaf of his hair being separated from the rest and wound around a huge rusty nail. The banging of a hammer follows. The cave seems to sway for a moment, like Easton’s secret cabin. The whole thing seems inevitable; this is what will become of him, a head suspended and slowly swaying from a beam.

“Don’t worry,” Jemma says, looking up at him. She smiles, a smile surprisingly warm and unworried considering the circumstances. “We have a chance here. They may not find us.”

For the next few hours George surveys the cave, using his hands in the dark as an insect uses antennae. He decides that being able to find their way in the darkness is their best defence. Smoke would give them away in the daylight; fire would reveal their position at night. When the floor seems to give way before him, he lets a stone drop to see whether it is a precipice or merely a small dip. He gingerly climbs up a wall to discover a shelf high up near the cave’s ceiling. This must be some twenty or thirty feet from the floor. They might climb here and hide should their cave be spotted.

He works out a sure and safe path from the mouth of the cave to this spot.

Then when he is confident he would be able to find the way and lead Jemma with the baby safely, he returns once again to the mouth of the cave and sits down close to them. Together they gaze out toward the cove. Easton’s sails are now tied fast to the mast, as are those of the other ships which surround the
Happy Adventure
like patient bridesmaids awaiting a great event. The sky has cleared. Patches of infinite blue show beyond puffy white clouds and the breeze is very warm, almost stinging George’s skin with hot dust.

They hardly need to speak anymore. Fear is their bond and they can judge its ebb and flow in each other from the merest gesture. The baby is asleep, bundled up tight beside Jemma on a flat surface. He dribbles slightly and makes tiny gasping noises. His eyes are closed tight and his arms curled toward his head, fists opening and closing as though in total trust of the world into which he has been born.

Jemma suspends one of her fingers over the baby’s fist. The tiny fingers open and close upon her finger. Jemma looks up at George and smiles. Her eyes shine with a kind of joy touched with sadness. George finds himself leaning into her, capturing her warmth. She reciprocates, allowing her weight to rest upon his shoulder. His arm encircles her and he feels a pulse and vibration within him, warming him from his toes, to his temples, to the hairs on his forearm. For the second time since arriving in the tropics, he knows himself to be at a point of no return. Time is suspended. In this present oasis of peace, with the warm dusty wind blowing into the cave and the baby sleeping soundly, his worries seem to cease. He feels he must submerge in whatever experience is opening up to him. Something like fear sweeps across Jemma’s face as her palm cradles his cheek then falls to his neck. He can feel her tremble slightly.

“What about your lady?” she whispers.

He realizes she means Rosalind and merely shakes his head. He takes her hand and kisses her upturned wrist.

“I’m not...she’s not...no,” he says, not really understanding what those broken words are intended to convey, except that Rosalind belongs to another world entirely, that he knew her a hundred lifetimes ago and that the memory has long since crumbled into dust.

When daylight finally ebbs from the valley, a cathedral-like serenity descends. Crimson hues scatter the marshes and touch the boulders below, licking the mast top of the
Happy Adventure
and the painted hull of another of Easton’s vessels. The ocean beyond ripples with phosphorescence. Jemma and George are now silent, reluctant to move or to move apart. The baby, who had been crying, is now mainly silent. Jemma fed him a while ago. As soon as she finished, George went back into the inner darkness and climbed up to their hiding place, where he placed the skins of milk and water and the bread.

“We need to find a nursing mother for the baby,” Jemma mumbles gently.

George is silent, wondering how he can answer. She must know such a plan is impossible. And in any case it’s unlikely any of them will survive the night.

“How?” he eventually mutters, not moving his head in case he might awake her from whatever strange dream has overcome her.

“There are slaves on this island. There are other people here too. People who came before the slaves and before the Spanish. Some will be nursing.”

But why would some savage woman nurse a stranger’s baby, he feels like saying. But holds back. What harm can it do to hope, as long as they are able?

“Oh,” he says quietly.

“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, sitting upright.

George, surprised, turns to her and looks down at the valley in case she has seen something. But there is just stillness and shadows like before.

“Why are you sorry?”

“For taking you. You might have stayed with Easton. He could have taken you back to where you came from.”

“No, no, no,” the words roll quickly from him. “I couldn’t stay with Easton. The admiral, my admiral, wants to be on his side. He’s a politician. He thinks I’m a rash young man. And he’s right, I am.”

“But your lady and your life in England.”

“It’s over. With...Miss Grantham. I’ve seen too much to return to that world.”

“You’d feel differently if you did return.”

George sighs, wondering whether to try to continue persuading her. He stops himself because her words sound like wisdom. Is she right, after all? Would all this pass like a strange dream if he were once again lying face toward the sky in the lush meadows of Devonshire? Would piracy, cannibalism and his feelings for Jemma merely fade into the distance of a mythic past—intriguing, terrifying and beautiful, but utterly impractical for his real life.

He falls silent. Jemma squeezes his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” she whispers.

But suddenly she stiffens.

“What?” he asks.

“They’re coming,” she says.

George stares down into the darkness and sees movement—dark crawling figures, like ants, emerging onto the plateau above the beach, dozens of men in a semi-circle, radiating out toward the marshes and wooded area. They carry no torches, no warning of their presence, but move with wiry determination over the headland.

George bounds to his feet.

“We should go to the place I found and hide,” he says.

Jemma leans over and very carefully eases her hands under the baby. George bends and holds her near the elbow as she stands. She gives him a sorrowful, frightened look.

“We’ll take it very slowly,” he gasps. He half turns and walks sideways into the cave, his hand reaching and touching Jemma’s elbow all the way. They move step by step in the complete darkness. George feels for the bumps and hollows and whispers careful instructions to Jemma along the way. Soon they reach the wall they must climb. George takes the baby, who is miraculously still sleeping.

“You go first,” he says to Jemma.

“Yes,” she whispers. Then, without explaining, she begins tying the baby’s clothes around George’s neck. Her hands work quickly, making three or four knots to ensure the snug hammock will keep the baby’s weight supported. Then, when she is satisfied, George whispers into her ear the course by which she must climb. She sets off. He hears her soft gasps as she rises rapidly. Only a tiny scattering of scree falls down the rock face. And then there is silence.

“I’m up,” she whispers.

George follows very slowly, measuring his footing against memory. Halfway up a flap from the baby’s hammock snags the edge of something. He stops and frees the cloth from a little ridge of stone. The hitch was only slight and he is soon able to take the next step. But it was enough; the baby stirs. George can feel movements from within the bundle. Then a cracked little noise comes from within. George reaches the shelf, gasping slightly but being careful not to sway the hammock; the child lets out a long wail which sends an echo through the whole cave.

Jemma unties the hammock and lowers the child into her lap, hushing him gently. The crying does not stop, however, but turns into persistent, rhythmic wails punctuated by dry little coughing sounds. It is inconceivable to George that the searchers cannot hear this, even if they are on the marshes. He knows that his fear is magnifying the sound, especially in the darkness. He tells himself it is quieter than he thinks.

He cranes his neck in the direction from which they have come. Nothing is visible at all, except perhaps a hint of milky greyness, which must have filtered around the various corners of the cave. But even that could be his imagination; George thinks this may indeed be the most perfect darkness he has ever known.

George can sense Jemma rocking the baby. He can hear her fingers reaching among their things for one of the skins of milk. Gradually the baby seems to calm a little. The wails turn into short cries and snuffles. In a few more moments they die down completely. George tunes his ears to the silence, listening for any scrape or footstep that might suggest the pirates are approaching the cave. But all he hears is his own and Jemma’s breathing, and tiny soft gasps from the baby.

George shifts, trying to get more comfortable. But there is little room in which to manoeuvre and the ceiling is so low he must bend his head to move at all. Suddenly, the absurdness of it all descends on him; the fact that he is crouched upon a rugged shelf in a damp, pitch-black cave on an island in the tropics and that he is awaiting the approach of a band of pirates, whose leader wishes not only to kill them but to eat the baby they protect. The blood pulsing through his head seems to dull his senses like too much wine. Fear begins to drown in the unreality of it all.

Suddenly Jemma’s hand shoots out and grabs his ankle. George freezes and listens. There is a faint, echoing sound—a scattering of rocks and a footstep, then silence.

George feels sick. They have entered the cave already, it’s certain. What chance do they have now?

“Keep silent,” whispers Jemma.

George squeezes her hand which still rests on his ankle. But the comfort, he knows, is entirely in vain. Cold sweat creeps down his own temples. His breathing becomes shallow and rapid.

“Captain Dawson!” calls a voice, cheerful and crisp—unmistakably Easton’s. It bounces off several walls so George hears fragments of his name echo from different directions. He reaches for his sword handle. Jemma grips his ankle tighter as though begging him not to answer. No light has entered the cave and George judges from the distance of the voice that Easton is only just within the opening, looking in.

“I know you’re in here, Captain Dawson,” Easton calls in the same tone, the words echoing again. “We have enough gunpowder to blow up the cave and everybody in it. If you don’t come out we will not hesitate to use it.”