The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (49 page)

Didn’t I just tell you, she blazes out at him, get out a me yard!

But he just stands before her, straight and still. Not frighten. Not turn way him eye.

Sorry to trouble you, ma’am, he says, nice and polite. But Grace McFarlane the name you got?

Grace so surprise, she near forgets to stay vex. Cho! She says, with hand on hip. Where you from, boy, that you not know Grace?

I from foreign, ma’am, he says. He speaks polite, but Grace can see that he not accustom to speak polite. It costs him to try.

Where from foreign? she snaps out. From Kingston? You talk peculiar, boy!

He shakes him head. From island far way, ma’am. Ben Kelly the name I got.

He talks damn peculiar. And sounds more peculiar still when he tries talk potwah. Grace dislikes when buckra do that, for they only do it to crack a laugh – except for Cameron soldierman and Master Jocelyn, who both talk it since a boy. But this boy only does it for respect. And that all right.

She sits again on her step, and lights her pipe, and buckra boy stands and waits, full of respect. And that all right too.

She says, You walking late, puss-eye boy. This a bad place for buckra. Full a skull laughter and evilness and duppy.

Duppy? he says. That’s like a ghost, yeh?

Hn! He not frighten easy; but he
un
easy, that plain to see. He takes deep breath and says, I got a deal to do with you, ma’am.

Grace so surprise, she near to choke on her damn pipe. A deal? What sort a deal she going to do with a meagre down-class mocho like this?

She about to blaze into him again, and he sees it, but still he decides to take a chance on life, and run on with what he got to say. You know the girl Sophie? he says. The sick girl up at the busha house? Well she thinks she’s gone and lost her shadow.

Now Grace getting on for suspicious. What this buckra boy know about shadows?

Buckra boy lifts him head and says, I need for you to get it back.

Grace leans back and gives him a long, hard look. She says, You fooling me up, boy. Buckra begging after black medicine? Cho!

No, ma’am, he says, still respectful. I not fooling you up.

But Grace wants no more talk about little buckra girl. She wants no more talk at all. That fresh grave out in the yard, it staring, staring back at her. And all of a sudden her heart so full up with mourning and destroyful feeling, she about ready to burst.

Go
way
, she says. Get out a me yard.

But still he not to move. Just narrows him green eye, and says, Why won’t you help, ma’am?

Damn, but he persistent! He just about wearing her down. Grace spits in the dust and says, All right, boy. I tell you why not, and then you go. Three reason why not.

She puts out three finger and starts counting off. First reason. Catch a shadow is trouble. Hear? Myal woman – that me – got to go at night to duppy tree where shadow nailed; got to give that tree eggs and rum, got to walk round and round singing to duppies that took shadow prisoner. Got to hold up bowl of water – do it right, just right – and maybe shadow jump in. Then got to run, shadow in water, all the way back. Wet cloth, put it on child head, and get shadow back inside. All that I got to do.

Second reason, says Grace, counting off on finger. Catch shadow, cost money. Cost six shilling. You got six shilling, boy? Don’t appear to me you got six quattie. Not so?

Hn. He got no reply to that.

Third reason, she says. And best of all. Why I should help buckra child? Why I should help buckra child when my own self son dead?

By now Grace getting hot and vex, and wishing to hell this damn boy just get out a her yard.

But in her heart, she remembers that little buckra girl playing with her boy. Talking a stream, and telling him story. Making him laugh.

Too besides, that crazy child one time put hot quattie on her arm, just to discover whether buckra books tell the truth about if branding not to hurt.

So all this raises a crazy black confusion in her head till she don’t know
what
to think. But still she hardens her heart. And she snaps out at him, So now you tell Grace a thing. You tell Grace why she
should
help little buckra girl.

And buckra boy looks at her long, long, and never turns way him eye. Because, he says, I got something you want.

That so surprises Grace, she drops her damn pipe, and for first time in days she cracks a laugh. She puts her hand on her hip and looks him up and down slow, slow, and she says, Boy, you got nothing I want. In a year or two, and maybe we see about that. But not this day. Oh, no.

But buckra boy just looks at her steady with him green puss-eye, and he says, Ma’am, you’re wrong about that. You get Sophie’s shadow back, he says, and I’ll tell you who killed your boy.

Chapter Thirty-Four

She was dizzy with hunger, and the chloral was making her sick. It was becoming harder to think in straight lines.

There was something important she had to do, but she couldn’t remember what. Why was she out here, and why had she forgotten to put on her riding habit? What made her think she could tackle a jungle in her combinations?

As the sun rose, the heat became oppressive. Like an underwater swimmer she waded through the hot green shade. Bird calls echoed through the canopy. Mosquitoes whined in her ears. The crickets were deafening.

Strange how quickly the thirst had returned. Hours before, when she’d found the river, it had vanished in seconds. She had stumbled down the crumbling red banks and into the fast-flowing water, and in a few long, cool green swallows, the thirst had become a distant memory.

But then she’d forced herself back onto the track and started off again, and something had gone wrong. She’d been so absorbed in pushing through the undergrowth that she hadn’t noticed that the track was veering away from the bank – until the moment when she’d turned, and the river wasn’t there any more. She couldn’t even hear it. She was alone in the high forest, with no idea where she was.

That had been hours ago, when it was just getting light. Since then she had been walking for ever. Pushing aside enormous waxen leaves crawling with ants; blundering through great glistening webs strung across the path.

The forest was a vast, indifferent presence, waiting to see if she would survive. A cinnamon-coloured streak shot across the path, and through the ferns she caught the feral red eye of a mongoose. She was in its world, not her own.

The revolver in its pouch bumped against her thigh. Why was it still there? She remembered standing on the river bank and deciding to throw it in. After that, nothing.

Her thoughts kept slipping back into the past. She brushed away tree-ferns like the one in the photograph of Eden on the piano. As she finger-combed her hair and plaited it clumsily into a braid, she was back at Cairngowrie House, lying on the apricot silk counterpane and watching her mother plaiting the same long, dark braid. Was she Madeleine or was she Rose?

At last she reached a clearing where dragonflies and hummingbirds swam in the dusty sunlight. Beyond the clearing the forest was thinning, and on a distant slope she saw a silk-cotton tree. Its great limbs were draped with strangler fig and Spanish moss, and orchids like little darts of flame.

Was that the Tree of Life? Had she reached Eden? Had she?
And deep in the forest stands the Tree of Life, and from its branches the creepers hang down to the ground, and at night after the rains they’re speckled with fireflies, and you can smell the vanilla flowers and the sweet decay.

Behind her a branch snapped. She spun round. But the clearing was empty.

Her mind flooded with clarity. She remembered why she was here and why she was frightened. Only Sinclair knew where she was. And if he found her, it was over.

Another twig snapped. She heard the clink of a bridle, and forgot to breathe.

She drew back into the shadows at the edge of the clearing. All was still. Only the dragonflies and the hummingbirds stirred. She waited. But nobody came.

It’s all right, she told herself. There’s no-one there. It’s all right.

She stumbled out into the sunlight. Sharp, splintered light, and the rank smells of growth and decay. She made her way across the clearing to the deep shade on the other side, and stopped for breath beneath an ironwood tree. She tried to go on, but her legs wouldn’t move. Black spots darted before her eyes.

Just a little rest, she told herself. A little rest, and then you can go on.

She curled up among the ferns beneath the tree and leaned back against the trunk and shut her eyes. She took deep breaths of the warm green air. She slept.

She dreamed she was back in the Forbidden Kingdom. She was curled up in the snow, watching Cameron riding away. He had almost disappeared from sight when she saw him turn his mount’s head, and start back for her. She watched him dismount and come towards her through the long grass. ‘I knew you would come,’ she said.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you,’ said Sinclair.

With a cry she woke up.

He stood on the path about eight feet away. He looked tense and frightened, and his eyes flickered over her, then darted away.

Sweat trickled down her sides. She sank her fingers into the leaf mould, and felt a tree root beneath her hand. Something real. Something to hold on to.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you,’ he said again. Bizarrely, he sounded as if he expected to be thanked.

‘You left me,’ she said. ‘You left me in that place.’

‘I came as soon as I could.’

‘Sinclair. I was down there all night.’

He blinked. ‘I was delayed. When I reached Providence there was a message about your sister. She wanted to come home. I had to make arrangements to bring her back to Fever Hill.’

Did he truly expect her to believe that?

Behind him the clearing was weirdly peaceful. A dragonfly zoomed low over the ferns. Sinclair’s horse put down its head and cropped the grass.

She wondered why he was keeping his distance. Perhaps it’s the blood, she thought. Yes. That’s it, the blood on your hands. He doesn’t like the blood.

‘Your sister is well,’ he said, as if she had asked a question. ‘Come. I shall take you to her.’

She pressed back against the tree.

‘Come,’ he said again.

‘Why did you leave me in that place?’

‘I didn’t “leave” you.’

‘Sinclair—’

Irritably he tossed his head. ‘Why won’t you believe me? Why won’t you accept that what happened to that child was an accident?’

A cold wave washed over her. ‘You said Sophie was safe. You said—’

‘And so she is,’ he snapped. ‘You’re always so eager to believe the worst! You never believe me. I’m your husband, you
should
believe me. It’s your duty to accept what I say.’

She was hardly listening.
What happened to that child was an accident.
What did he mean? What had he done?

‘I forgot about him,’ he said tetchily. ‘That’s all. It was scarcely my fault. Why must you be so determined to tell the world?’

Her thoughts rearranged themselves in a swift, seismic falling into place. Victory in the hothouse.
I forgot about him. It was an accident.

She remembered Sophie’s silence after the little boy’s death, and Sinclair’s sudden decision to send her to Burntwood. She remembered what he had said at the sink-hole.
I can’t let you tell anyone.

It had a weird kind of logic, but it couldn’t be true. What reason could he have for killing a child? He wasn’t capable of such a thing. He wasn’t violent. He was too fastidious for that.

And yet, she thought with a sudden sense of cold, he doesn’t need to be violent for it to be true. All he needs is to have rolled a stone in front of a door and walked away. And he’s good at walking away. You already know that.

She knew then that it was true. She had been wrong about him. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

‘Enough of this nonsense,’ he snapped. He put out his hand. ‘Come with me at once.’

She drew her legs closer beneath her, and as she did so, the revolver in its pouch nudged her side.

Until then she had forgotten about it. But now in a heartbeat she took in its weight against her hip, and the fern brushing her calf, and the dappled sunlight on the path, and the oozing patches on Sinclair’s throat where he had rubbed them raw. She took in the fact that she was alone with a man who had taken a life, and who perceived her as a threat; the fact that she had a weapon, and that she was going to have to use it.
Well, Maddy, we’ll just have to do it on our own.

I can’t, she thought. I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Yes you can, came the reply inside her head. You’re a Durrant. This is what Durrants do. It’s in your blood.

No-one will blame you for it. He left you to die, didn’t he? He left a child to die, too.

And if you do it, everything falls into place. Sophie is safe, and you are free.

All this raced through her mind in the seconds while he waited on the path.

She slid her hand into the pouch, and her fingers closed on the smooth, warm steel. With a sense of disbelief she drew out the revolver and pointed it at him.

At any other time his astonishment would have been comical. His blue eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. He looked like an actor in a music-hall comedy.

With her back against the tree she struggled to her feet. She was shaking so much that she had to grasp the revolver in both hands to keep it steady. Am I holding it right? she thought. What do I do if I need to shoot? Just point and pull the trigger? Is that what I do? Is it?

‘Turn round,’ she said as levelly as she could, ‘and go back the way you came. Walk. I’m taking the horse.’

He looked from her to the revolver, and back again. He seemed more vexed than alarmed. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? Give that to me at once.’

‘Do as I say.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going to—’

‘I mean it, Sinclair.’

Please believe me, she told him silently. Please don’t see how terrified I am. Because this isn’t a bluff. I really could use this thing.