The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (32 page)

I think that when Sinclair was at the hothouse he failed to lock up the duppies securely enough, and they escaped. Maybe they chased Victory away. Maybe they got him.

But Victory can run extremely fast, so I am hopeful that he got away and is hiding somewhere, afraid to come out.

Sophie awoke in the middle of the night with her journal digging into her cheek.

She pressed her face against the calfskin binding and breathed in its familiar smell as she listened to the noises in the house. Steps on the stairs. Hushed voices in the ballroom. Something was wrong.

Moments later, Maddy came out onto the gallery. She wore her russet walking-costume but no hat or gloves, and her hair was pinned up in a hasty knot.

Sophie asked what was wrong.

Maddy’s gaze was distracted, as if she hadn’t expected Sophie to be awake. She said, ‘You’d better sleep with Clemency for the rest of the night.’

Sophie struggled to sit up. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘I don’t want you out here on your own.’

Sophie glanced at the sprig of rosemary on her bedside table. ‘Did they find Victory?’

Maddy shook out Sophie’s slippers and dressing gown, and put them on the bed.

‘He’s all right, isn’t he? Maddy?’

Maddy sat down on the edge of the bed and placed her cold hand on Sophie’s wrist. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He isn’t. He got trapped in the hothouse and couldn’t get out. I’m afraid, Sophie – he died.’

She left a shocked and silent Sophie with Clemency, and set off down the hill for the old slave village.

On the steps, Sinclair had tried to stop her. ‘This is preposterous,’ he said, ‘there’s no need for you to go. These people do not feel as we do. You should leave that woman to her own kind.’

‘Her own kind’, said Madeleine, picking up the basket which Daphne had prepared, ‘are too frightened to go near her. And it’ll be tomorrow before any of her relations arrive.’

Sinclair compressed his lips, but to her surprise he made no further objection.

She turned to go, then brought herself up short. ‘There’s something I ought to tell you,’ she said.

‘Indeed.’

‘I sent for your brother. I thought it might help Grace.’

‘Indeed,’ he said again. ‘And no doubt sending for him was your first thought when you learned of this – occurrence.’

‘No. My first thought was for Grace.’

He ignored that. ‘Is this how you honour your promise to obey me and live a retiring life? Three days, and your promise is broken.’

‘A child is dead, Sinclair. That changes things.’

‘I do not see why. The fate of the deceased was the will of God. The will of God. If the mother accepted that, she would know peace.’

Madeleine bit back a retort. Looking at his serene and resolute countenance, she thought how he had changed over the past few days. No more twitchiness. No more incessant inspections in the looking-glass. She wondered why.

She kept to the carriageway until she reached the bottom of the hill, then found the track that branched off to the left, and followed the old aqueduct towards the slave village. It was eerily quiet. Only the slow creak of the bamboo canes, and the low ring-ring of the crickets, and an occasional grunt from Grace’s hogs. Madeleine wondered what was missing, then realized it was the birds. There never seemed to be any birds at the slave village.

In the darkness, her passage through the ruins was slow. She went past ruined slave-houses open to the sky, their walls mounded with creepers, their doorways blocked by wild mango trees like uninvited guests. She smelt stagnant water and the sweet odour of decay.

She thought of the little boy who had died. The focus of so much of his mother’s fierce, resentful pride.
These people do not feel as we do.
What a convenient lie.

As on her previous visit, it was a shock to come upon Grace’s orderly yard amid the tangled wilderness. She couldn’t see anyone about, although a glow of lamplight came from the open doorway.

In the outdoor hearth by the steps, a fire still flickered. But the old iron cooking pot had been knocked on its side, and was leaking a mess of stewed vegetables into the ashes. The yard was littered with shards of pottery. It looked as if Grace had stood on the steps and dashed down every cup and plate and yabba she possessed.

As Madeleine climbed the steps to the door, the sweet, alien smell of death hit her like a wall. Dark spots darted before her eyes. She fought the urge to retch.

The room looked as if a storm had blown through it. More shattered earthenware on the floor; and shredded lizard skins and bright, mangled feathers, and the tiny crushed skulls of birds. Grace must have destroyed her entire stock-in-trade.

The black woman crouched on the floor beside a low wooden bedstead on which lay her son. He was curled into a ball, his skin a bluish-grey, his belly marbled greenish-purple, as if the blood vessels had risen to the surface. He looked much smaller than he had in life.

Grace’s face had a similar blue-grey hue to her son’s. She wore a sheet of undyed osnaburg tied haphazardly under the arms, and a plain white headkerchief.
The head tied across
, thought Madeleine. The sign of mourning.

‘Is who dat?’ said Grace without turning round.

Madeleine set down the basket inside the door, but didn’t go in. ‘It’s Miss Maddy,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought you some things for the laying-out.’

Grace turned and looked at her. Her eyes were dry and swollen and her blink was slow, as if exhausted by grief and rage. ‘Go way, ma’am. Please. Get out a me yard.’

Madeleine hesitated. ‘Daphne packed the basket,’ she said. ‘I believe it has everything you need. Jackson’s making the coffin.’

‘Why you come to I house, ma’am? Why you bring dese tings?’

‘The helpers are too scared.’

Grace spat on the floor. ‘Frighten? Of what to frighten? Of duppy chile?’

‘Of you, I think.’

That seemed to put a little spirit into her. ‘They
should
to frighten. Who done dis, die soon. I self gwine see to dat.’ She glanced at Madeleine. ‘Tink me not tell de trute, Miss Maddy?’

Madeleine shook her head. ‘Not at all. I know you mean it.’

She was not surprised that Grace had assumed that her son’s death had been no accident. The garden boy who’d found the body had said that the hothouse door had been blocked from the outside.

But surely, looked at dispassionately, it must have been an accident. No-one would do such a thing to a child. Somehow a stone must have become dislodged, and rolled in front of the door.

But it was no use telling his mother that. She wanted blood, and who could blame her? If it were Sophie, Madeleine would want it too.

Grace gazed at her with swollen, exhausted eyes. ‘Why you not frighten too, ma’am?’

‘I’ve seen death before.’

For a moment the black woman held her gaze. Then she turned back to the body on the bed. The dismissal was clear.

But as Madeleine went down the steps and out into the yard, Grace called after her. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Yes?’

‘Evie ran off when she heard the news. If you see her, would you please tell her to come to I?’

‘Of course,’ said Madeleine.

She couldn’t find Evie in the yard, or by the aqueduct, or anywhere in the ruins. Tired of searching, she rested for a moment on a block of cut-stone.

Away from Grace’s chickens and hogs, the old village seemed even more mysteriously hushed. Only the eerie, infrequent creak of the bamboo sounded in the shadows, like a ship setting out into the dark.

It was a cool night, and damp air wafted off the stagnant aqueduct. Madeleine shivered. Above her head, an old ackee tree spread its branches. She could just make out the bright coral fruit, bleached dark grey in the darkness. According to Sophie they were poisonous until they split to reveal the glossy black seeds. ‘Jamaica poisoning’, they called it. It seemed that everywhere she looked she encountered death.

My God, she thought, what if it had been Sophie?

Jocelyn had told her that from the condition of the body, the boy must have died some time that morning. ‘It was probably thirst that killed him,’ he had said, shaking his head. No wonder Grace had smashed everything she owned.

‘I told you I heard crying,’ Clemency had said to Madeleine in her matter-of-fact way when she’d heard the news. Then she’d taken Sophie into her bed and given her the cat to hold, and reached for her excerpt book and a jar of ginger bonbons.
I told you I heard crying.

Hoofbeats on the path brought Madeleine back to the present. She turned to see Cameron reining in his mount at the entrance to Grace’s yard. The horse’s breath steamed as it threw down its head to cough.

She wondered what to do. She hadn’t planned to be here when he arrived.

The next moment she knew that was a lie. It was true that she had sent for him for Grace’s sake, but she needn’t have brought the basket down herself. That could have waited till morning, when one of Grace’s cousins from the Cockpits could have taken it.

You’re despicable, she told herself. Despicable. She got to her feet and started forward to meet him.

He was tethering his horse to the bamboo fence when she approached. When he saw her he took off his hat, and wiped his forehead on his wrist, and waited for her. It was too dark to see his expression. ‘Doshey told me what happened,’ he said. ‘But I don’t understand. He said the boy was shut in.’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘We don’t know. Some kind of accident. A stone rolled in front of the door.’

He put his hands on his hips and scanned the yard, as if the darkness might provide an answer. Then he glanced down at her. ‘You look cold.’

‘I’m all right. I came out to find Evie.’

‘I’ll find her. You’d better go back up to the house.’

She didn’t move. She said, ‘He was six years old.’

‘I know.’

‘He died within a stone’s throw of the house. Clemency heard him crying, but I didn’t believe her. I told her to be quiet, in case Grace heard and became upset.’

He put out his hand to touch her shoulder, then withdrew it.

For the first time in her adult life, she wanted to be close to a man. She wanted to put her arms round his waist and lean against him and bury her face in his chest.

Grace is allowed to do that, she thought. A flash of pure jealousy went through her.

My God, she thought, you really are despicable. You would begrudge that poor woman her only comfort, because you want him.

‘Madeleine,’ he said.

She looked up at him.

‘You did a good thing, sending for me.’

She shook her head.

‘Go on up to the house. I’ll find Evie and take her to Grace.’

Two days after the pickney was found in the hothouse, Jocelyn drove Sophie to Falmouth.

They made good speed from Fever Hill, and were already within sight of the sea: trotting along through the dappled shade of Bulletwood, with the glare of the beach just coming into view up ahead.

Jocelyn flicked the reins on the horse’s rump, and decided that his idea of cutting through to the coast road had really been rather inspired. The child needed sea air, for the iodine. It was gratifying to see a little colour coming back into her cheeks.

Above them, a flock of emerald parakeets exploded from the trees and flew away, furiously beating their stubby little wings. Sophie’s jaw dropped. ‘Those were real parrots,’ she said. Still with her mouth open, she gazed at him from beneath her sunhat.

He felt irrationally proud, as if he had conjured up the parakeets especially for her.

Madeleine would be pleased. She had approached him after breakfast as he was preparing for the magistrates’ meeting, and asked if, as a special favour, he would take the child with him into town. ‘I can’t go myself,’ she had said, and explained Sinclair’s wish that she should remain on the property.

Jocelyn had been surprised. Madeleine was not the woman to be cowed by a weaselly little fellow like Sinclair. But perhaps she had lost confidence after this dreadful business of the pickney. In that she was not alone. The whole estate still lay under a pall.

‘I’m worried about Sophie,’ she had said. ‘She won’t talk about it, but I know it’s all she thinks of. She needs distraction; something to take her out of herself.’

She needn’t have told Jocelyn, for he had already noticed the unaccustomed silence in the house. He had never known a child who loved talking as much as Sophie. And when she wasn’t talking she was singing, humming, or reading aloud to one of the pickneys, or Clemency’s cat, or that stuffed animal of which she was so fond.

Her voice had become one of the background noises of the house, like the crickets and the crows. And when it had fallen silent, Jocelyn had been surprised and a little dismayed. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that he missed it; the absence was simply disconcerting, that was all.

‘You know how she admires you,’ Madeleine had said. ‘And she’ll be no trouble. You can leave her with Mrs Herapath, or if she isn’t at home, just put her on the bench outside the courthouse; she’ll be in her element. There’s always plenty to see on market day.’

And since it was Madeleine who asked, of course Jocelyn had given in. ‘I should be delighted,’ he had said. And Madeleine had given him a wry smile, for she had known that he was lying.

The prospect of being alone with Sophie filled him with apprehension. He knew that he was not good with children. And this child alarmed him more than most. She did not at all conform to his notion of what a little girl should be.

The first time they had met, she had managed to stay silent for no more than two minutes before politely asking why bamboo grows so much bigger than other grasses, and how did the Cockpits get their name, and what is the plural of mongoose?

He had fled. He had feared for his books and his privacy, and perhaps also for himself, in some way that he did not entirely understand.

But now he was worried because she was not bombarding him with questions. She sat very straight, with her splinted leg sticking out in front and one thin hand clutching the guardrail, while the other held a book on her lap. Tucked beneath her arm was the ever-present toy donkey.