The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (107 page)

Strange, strange. Over the past few days she’d toyed with all kinds of moonshine schemes for revenge on the Trahernes. Poison. Shadow-taking. Each notion crazier than the one before. Then it had come to her in all its simplicity. What Congo Eve and Great-grandmother Leah had handed down to her – indeed, what her own mother had passed on – wasn’t just about being four-eyed and putting hand on people. It was about being her own self. Evie Quashiba McFarlane. And once she’d got that sorted out, everything else just fell into place.

Humming under her breath, she went to the cookhouse and fetched more porridge, then returned to the head of the queue. She was just getting back into the rhythm of doling it out again when the next man in line snarled things up by not moving along. ‘Go on now,’ she said without looking up.

The bowl stayed where it was.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said. ‘You want breakfast or not?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Isaac Walker, ‘I certainly do.’

She blinked.

He looked tired, and his fancy clothes were crumpled and black with soot. And he was just standing there at the head of the queue: not smiling, but looking as if he was ready to smile.

Evie’s good humour evaporated. There was something about this man which made her afraid. Something about the way he looked at her with his small, clever eyes: not as a man usually looks at a pretty woman – or not only that – but as one human being looks at another when they want to make friends.

But she didn’t want to make friends with him. She didn’t want to make friends with anyone. ‘If you want your breakfast,’ she said tartly, ‘you’d better go and eat it, Master Walker. Now move along, I’ve got work to do.’

‘I just wanted to make sure’, he said in his quiet, gentle way, ‘that you and your mother are all right.’

‘We’re fine,’ she snapped. ‘Mother’s over at Cousin Cecilia’s. That’s the second house on the right, by the breadnut tree. Why don’t you go and look in on her?’

‘No thank you,’ he said politely. ‘I came to see you.’

Her hackles rose. ‘I’m busy,’ she snapped.

‘I can see that,’ he replied.

His expression was hard to read, but he was clearly undeterred. Suddenly she wondered how many people in the past had mistaken his gentleness for weakness.

She frowned, and glanced down at the porridge in the pot, and began scraping it into a neat mound. ‘I’ll be a very, very long time,’ she said forbiddingly.

‘Take as long as you like,’ he said. ‘I can wait.’

It was an eerie experience to ride north along the Eden Road. On the right lay the fresh, rainwashed cane of Bullet Tree Piece – untouched except for a sprinkling of ash – while on the left lay the desolation of Bellevue. Life and death side by side, thought Sophie, with only a narrow strip of red road in between.

It was a horrible thought. It kept coming back to her that if things had been just a little different yesterday – if Ben had been a little slower in deciding what to do or where to go – she wouldn’t be heading up the road to see him. She’d be going to his funeral.

It was too narrow an escape for her to feel joy or even relief. She felt as if she were standing at the edge of a great black hole, leaning over and watching the bottom rushing up towards her.

She reached the gaunt, burnt-out hulk of the guango tree which marked the turnoff onto Fever Hill land, and started across the cane-pieces. She rode through acre upon acre of silent desolation. Endless ranks of burnt cane, standing like an army of blackened skeletons. Nothing moved. Her horse trod gingerly over the crisp black ground, stirring up a bitter tang of ash. A solitary john crow lifted off from the ground and wheeled away.

She found Ben a couple of miles in, by the blackened ruins of the wagon which Clemency had told her about. He was hatless, sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up, contemplating the remains. The heat of the fire must have been intense, for all that was left of the coffins was a pile of smoking cinders.

At her approach he turned and watched her, but to her surprise he didn’t get up and come towards her.

Feeling suddenly awkward, she dismounted. ‘I got your note,’ she said.

He nodded. He wore the same riding-clothes as the day before, but with a clean calico shirt, obviously borrowed. He’d washed but he hadn’t shaved, and his face looked shadowed and drawn. The cut on his cheek had dried to a crusted scab.

She stopped a few feet away from him. ‘According to Madeleine, you jumped in the river to escape the fire.’

He nodded. ‘It seemed the best thing to do.’ His voice sounded rough. She wondered if that was from the smoke or from crying. His eyes were red-rimmed, the eyelashes spiky.

She tried to imagine what it must be like to have brought the remains of one’s brother and sisters all the way from London, only to have them swept away by a cane-fire. She badly wanted to go down on her knees and put her arms round him, but something told her to keep her distance. He didn’t seem to want her here. He wouldn’t even meet her eyes.

As lightly as she could, she said, ‘Belle wants to know if you met an alligator.’

He tried to smile, but it wasn’t very successful. ‘How is she?’

‘Contrite. And she keeps telling everyone that Partisan’s a hero. This morning she made him and Muffin one of her special hot-molasses mashes, and when I left she was braiding their manes.’ She knew she was talking too much, but she couldn’t help it. He was beginning to worry her.

‘So you’re back at Eden now,’ he said.

‘Yes. Well. It’s a start.’

He nodded. ‘That’s good. It’s good that you’re back.’

‘Madeleine wants you to come and stay, until you can rebuild. So does Cameron.’

‘Do they?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think they do. Not really.’

‘You’re wrong. And Madeleine knew you wouldn’t believe me, so she wrote you a note.’ She handed it to him, and watched him get to his feet and walk a few paces away to read it. He stood there reading it for a long time. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his breast pocket. He cleared his throat. ‘Tell her thank you,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘but it’s better that I don’t.’

‘Ben, what’s wrong?’

He flicked her a glance. Then he stooped for a handful of ash, and opened his hand and watched it drift away on the breeze. ‘Look around you, Sophie. It’s all gone.’

‘But – surely you can get in at least some of the cane? And—’

‘It’s not that,’ he broke in. ‘Of course I can get in some of the cane. Of course I’ve still got money in the bank. It isn’t that.’ He paused. ‘It was the Monroe great house. Your grandfather’s house. Then it was mine, and now it’s gone.’ He glanced at the blackened remains of the coffins. ‘It’s all gone. I couldn’t save any of it.’

‘What do you
mean
? You got every single person out alive. You got me and Belle out alive.’

He did not reply. She watched him walk to the other side of the wagon and break off a fragment of charcoal and crumble it in his fingers. And at last she began to understand. This wasn’t about the destruction of the great house, or even the loss of his brother and sisters’ remains. Or rather, it wasn’t
only
about those things. He’d simply reached the end of his resources. She had always thought of him as someone with an unlimited capacity for fighting back. No matter what happened to him, he would always get up and start again, because that was who he was. Now she realized that nobody can do that; not all the time.

She followed him round to his side of the wagon. ‘Yesterday on Overlook Hill’, she began, ‘you told me that this time you were making the right choice. I didn’t know what you meant until this morning.’ She paused. ‘Clemency came to me just after breakfast. She told me about Kate. About the choice you had to make when you were a boy.’

Again he forced a smile. It was painful to see. ‘Everything I do turns to ashes.’

‘If you weren’t so exhausted, you’d know that’s absolutely not true.’

He nodded, but she could see that he didn’t believe her.

She tried a different tack. ‘You said once that you’re like your father. That you destroy the things you love. Do you still think that’s true?’

He didn’t answer at once. ‘Poor bastard,’ he said at last. ‘You know, when he died, he was only a couple of years older than I am now. He didn’t live long after Kate.’

‘Does that mean you’ve forgiven him?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Don’t you think it’s time you forgave yourself?’

He hesitated. ‘Sophie, I brought them out to be with me. I know it sounds odd, but it meant something. Now look at them. Just ashes, blown away.’

‘What’s so bad about that?’ she said with deliberate bluntness. ‘They’re out here in the sun and the fresh air. It’s a good place to be.’

He did not reply.

‘Ben . . .’ She put her hands on his shoulders and turned him round to face her. ‘Look at you. Coming out here all on your own, when you’re exhausted. When did you last get any sleep?’

He frowned.

‘Added to which, you probably haven’t eaten anything since God knows when, and you’ve just lost your home. Of course you’re feeling low.’ She put her palm against the roughness of his cheek. Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth.

He didn’t return her kiss.

‘Come back to the house,’ she said quickly, to cover her confusion. ‘I mean, come back to Eden. Have something to eat, and a proper sleep, and I promise you’ll feel better.’

He was looking down at her, still frowning. Suddenly he took a deep breath and put his arms about her, and pulled her hard against him. He held her so tightly that she could hardly breathe.

She could feel his heart racing, and the heat of his breath on her temple. She could smell his clean sharp smell of windblown grass and red dust and Ben. She put her arms round him and buried her face in his neck.

When at last they drew apart, they were both blinking back tears.

‘Whatever happens,’ he muttered between his teeth, ‘you’re not going to marry Alexander Traherne.’

It was so unexpected that she laughed. ‘What?’

‘I mean it, Sophie. He—’

‘I know! I broke it off on Boxing Day.’

He looked bemused. ‘What?’

‘At your Masquerade.’

‘But – you never told me.’

‘You never gave me the chance. You were too busy seducing Sibella.’

‘I didn’t actually seduce her—’

‘I know, I know.’ She was starting to feel happy again. Bickering was always a good sign.

‘Tell me honestly,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘Do you truly not mind about the house?’

She gave his shoulders another shake. ‘No! We’ll build another house. And next Christmas we’ll give an enormous party, and invite everyone in Trelawny. Including Great-Aunt May.’

He was watching her intently, as if he still wasn’t quite ready to believe that she was in earnest.

‘And we’ll sort the replies into three piles,’ she went on. ‘One pile for acceptances, and one for regrets, and one for “never in a million years”.’

Ben laughed.

The End

Acknowledgements and Author’s Note

As with
The Shadow Catcher
, I must thank my cousins Alec and Jacqui Henderson of Orange Valley Estate, Trelawny, Jamaica, for their help when I was researching this book, as well as my aunt, Martha Henderson.

I should also deal with a few points concerning the story itself.

The principal Jamaican families and properties featured in the book are entirely fictional, and I have taken some liberties with the local geography around Falmouth in order to accommodate the estates of Eden, Fever Hill, Burntwood and Parnassus.

As regards the
patois
of the Jamaican people, I haven’t attempted to reproduce this precisely, but have instead tried to make it more accessible to the general reader, while retaining, I hope, at least some of its colour and richness.

Michelle Paver

To find out more about Michelle Paver and her novels, visit her website at
www.michellepaver.com
.

She enchanted you with
Wolf Brother
. She chilled you to the bone with
Dark Matter
. Now, prepare to have your heart stolen away to another place and time. From the carnal pleasures of Ancient Rome to the grim battlefields of Flanders… you will live many lives, love many loves – brought to life so convincingly you will wonder where reality ends and fiction begins.