The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (71 page)

Chapter Thirteen

It’s twenty-four hours since Evie told him, but it feels like a month.

He can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t even ride like he used to. When he takes out Viking – a big clean-limbed chestnut that he ought to be itching to put through his paces – he just lets the horse wander wherever he likes.

He hasn’t felt this bad since Robbie died. He didn’t think he could, not with all of them gone. But now things long buried are pushing their way to the surface.

Kate’s back. She’s back.

Is she here now, as he’s riding down the Eden Road? Is she walking beside him? Gliding in and out of the shadows and the sunlight, and trailing her dead hand over the grass? Would he know it if she was?

A cane-rat darts across the road, startling him. A john crow casts a wheeling shadow. The only noises are the creak of the saddle and the stony clink of Viking’s hooves.

He keeps thinking of Kate as she was that last summer. He was only about ten, but the memory’s so sharp that he can almost see her. That coppery hair that used to crackle and spark when she brushed it. The warm, clever blue eyes.

He read once in a penny newspaper that each man kills the thing he loves. Well, it’s true for him. When he was a kid he loved his big sister, though he didn’t know it at the time. She was more of a mother than his ma. She walloped him when he nicked things, and she walloped the big boys when they beat him up. He loved her, and he killed her.

So maybe that’s why sometimes when he’s thinking of her, he gets a picture of Sophie. Because it’s a warning, only Evie got it the wrong way round. It’s not Sophie who’s going to hurt
him
. It’s him who’s going to hurt Sophie.

So all in all, it’s the right thing to do, not turning up at Romilly tomorrow. It’s for the best.

But ah God, she’ll be so hurt. She’ll think it’s because there’s something wrong with her – that she’s not pretty enough, or some bollocks about her knee. She won’t understand. And he can’t tell her. But it’s the only thing to do. It’s for the best.

He just wishes he could get her out of his head. That moment before he kissed her. Her clever, wilful face looking up at him: grave and curious and not scared, but a bit nervous, as if she was wondering how far he’d go. He’d never felt so close to another person. And the strange thing was that he didn’t mind. He didn’t get that prickly tightness in his chest. He was just falling, falling into those honey-coloured eyes.

A distant pounding of hooves jolts him back to the present. It’s some horse in a flat-out gallop over to his left, only he can’t see, on account of the trees.

Viking skitters about a bit, and Ben tells him to pack it in. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘if some crazy planter wants to take a gallop in this heat, that’s his lookout. You just thank your stars I got more sense.’

Viking snorts, and tosses his head in agreement.

They leave the trees behind and the cane-pieces open out around, and that’s when he catches sight of the crazy planter. The silly sod’s just come a cropper on a cane-track, and broken his horse’s knees.

Ben turns Viking’s head and puts him forward through the cane. ‘You all right?’ he shouts. Not that he cares much one way or the other.

The planter struggles to his feet and gives a rueful laugh. ‘Does it look as if I am?’

Ben ignores him. He jumps down and tethers Viking to a stand of cane, and walks past him to check on the horse.

It’s a nice little mare, or it was once, but now she’s only fit for the knacker’s. She’s got her head down, and she’s shaking like a leaf: foam all over her, blood streaming from her shattered knees, and the left front cannon bone’s snapped clean through. Ben can see the white bone jutting from a pulpy mess of muscle. What a sodding waste.

She smells him coming and manages a welcoming nicker, and – oh, no. No. It’s Trouble.

‘Christ Almighty,’ he snarls over his shoulder. ‘You bloody fool. Look what you done.’

Behind him the man gives an astonished laugh. ‘Steady on, old fellow. It was an accident.’

That’s when Ben turns and recognizes Master Alexander Traherne.

Master Alex recognizes him at the same moment, and goes still. The pale blue eyes flicker over him, sizing him up. Maybe he’s thinking how Ben made a fool of him over Mrs Dampiere, and what about getting his own back? But then he takes in the empty cane-pieces, with nobody to lend a hand if things get rough. So instead he just gives himself a shake and straightens his necktie.

He’s a coward, thinks Ben. That’s what it is. He’s a sodding coward. Only good for ruining horses.

‘Lend me your mount,’ says Master Alex calmly, ‘there’s a good fellow.’

Ben snorts. ‘As if I would.’

Master Alex studies him for a moment, then brushes off his hands. ‘Watch yourself, my lad. No sense in talking back to your betters. Now lend me your mount and we’ll call it quits.’

‘I’m not your lad,’ snarls Ben. ‘I never was.’

Beside him, Trouble keeps looking from one to the other, twitching her ears and trying to follow, in case they’re giving her an order.

That makes Ben feel sick. Sick and ashamed. Because this is his fault. If he hadn’t spent so much time schooling her, Master Alex would of never ridden her in the first place. She’d be just another fair-to-middling little carriage horse trotting happily along in front of Miss Sibella’s dog cart, and looking forward to a snooze and a bit of sweet hay for her supper. He done this to her. Each man kills the thing he loves.

A movement at his shoulder, and he turns to see Master Alex walking off down the track. It seems he’s given up on getting a ride home, and decided to hoof it. ‘Oi!’ shouts Ben. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

‘Home,’ calls Master Alex without turning round. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours.’

‘What about Trouble?’

‘What about her?’

‘You can’t just leave her. You got to finish her off.’

‘I’ll send a boy to do that.’

‘But that’ll take hours! Look at her. You can’t leave her in this state.’

But Master Alex just waves an irritable hand and keeps going.

Ben thinks about fetching him back, then gives it up as a bad job. It’s Trouble he’s got to think of now.

She tries to move towards him, but of course she can’t. She just lies there trembling. Watching him. Please don’t leave me, she’s asking him.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he tells her. ‘I’m not going nowhere.’

He takes out his knife and keeps it behind his back as he walks over to her, talking all the time so as not to frighten her. When he gets up close, he puts his free hand on her wet, shivering withers, and moves it gently up her neck, under her mane. She’s boiling hot and running sweat. That idiot must of ridden her like a madman. ‘All right, sweetheart,’ he murmurs. ‘Soon be over now.’ His eyes are stinging, and there’s a lump like a bit of meat in his throat, but somehow he manages to keep his voice steady. More or less.

She’s got her ears down, looking at him with her great, dark, velvety eyes. She’s trying to tell him how much it hurts. She’s telling her friend. The one she trusts to make it better.

He moves his free hand up to her forelock, then down to cover her eye. For a moment that he’ll never forget he feels the long, bristly lashes trembling under his palm. Then he raises his other hand and brings the knife up under her ear, and with a single thrust he drives it deep into her brain.

For a moment, she stiffens, then a shudder goes through her. He kneels beside her, stroking her cheek and watching the great velvet eye glazing over, and murmuring, ‘All right now,’ over and over again. The hot blood bubbles over his thighs. Black spots dart before his eyes. He feels dizzy and sick, and suddenly very, very tired.

‘What the devil d’you think you’re doing?’ says a voice.

Ben blinks. Who’s that? It’s like it’s coming from a very long way away.

‘Who gave you permission to kill my horse?’ says Master Alex, behind him.

In a daze, Ben turns and squints up at him.

Master Alex has retraced his steps, and is standing about a yard away: hands on hips, sun at his back, face dark against the glare.

‘I – I done you a favour,’ mutters Ben. ‘You left her—’

‘That’s my property. Who gave you permission?’

Wearily, Ben stands up. He glances down at the knife in his hand. How did that get there? He drops it in the dust. He’s so tired. So sodding tired. Why can’t Master Alex stop yapping?

‘I said, who gave you permission?’

‘Shut up,’ mutters Ben. His hand is sticky with blood. It’s already turning black under his fingernails. Clumsily he wipes it off on his thigh.

‘You think you’re special, don’t you?’ says Master Alex. ‘For some reason which entirely eludes me, you actually think you’re entitled to speak to your betters as if . . .’

There’s more, but Ben’s not listening. He squints into the sun, and takes a swing, and lands Master Alex a short, hard punch on the jaw.

Master Alex grunts, and goes down hard in a cloud of dust.

Ben stands over him, blinking and shaking the feeling back into his hand. ‘I told you to shut up,’ he mutters. Then he walks over to Viking and unties him, and swings up into the saddle and rides away.

‘Are you sickening for something, girl?’ says Grace McFarlane with her hands on her hips.

Evie shakes her head.

‘Cho! You working too hard. Always got your nose in that damn book.’

‘I want to find out what happens,’ mutters Evie.

Grace gives a small proud smile, and shakes her head, and squats down to poke the fire. ‘You and your damn books.’

If only she knew, thinks Evie, shifting position on the step. If only she knew what her teacheress daughter is reading.

It’s nearly supper-time, and dark in the yard. But it’s not total dark, for beyond the village Master Cameron’s burning off the cane.

They always burn off the cane at night, so that they can spot the stray sparks and stamp them out. Then, early in the morning, they start taking off the crop. It’s much easier with the trash all burnt off, but you got to work quickly, before it spoils.

Lying in bed listening to them burning off the cane is one of her best memories of when she was a pickney. The sound of the men calling to each other; the crackle and roar of the flames. She used to lie in bed and picture the men bringing to life this great hungry fire-animal – but always hemming it in, never letting it escape. She used to find cane-fires oddly reassuring.

She doesn’t tonight. Tonight everything’s wrong-side and tangle-up. She’s full of worry-head about Ben. Why did she tell him about the red-haired girl? And why did she tell him
then
, on that particular day, when she’d been keeping silent for months? Was it chance? Or was she being used by some spirit of darkness?

Everything she touches seems to go wrong. Maybe she should get right away: out of Trelawny, and all the way to foreign. To Kingston, even. Get right away and start again.

‘Evie,’ says her mother.

‘In a minute,’ she mutters. With a sense of weary compulsion she looks down at the journal.

Six years have passed since Congo Eve lost her little brother Job, and near went out of her mind with grief. Six years since Cyrus Wright caught her dancing the shay-shay with Strap, and sold him to Mr Traherne. Since then the rains have failed once, and old Master Alasdair has sent his younger son Allan to Scotland to manage the Strathnaw estate. And Master Alasdair’s oldest son, Master Lindsay, has himself fathered a son, and named him Jocelyn.

Evie has lost count of the times that her namesake has ‘gone runaway’, and been brought back and flogged. Once Congo Eve went runaway to Caledon, to see her little sister Leah matched with a Coromantee field-slave. Twice she’s fallen pregnant. Both times she has miscarried,
‘or so she said,’
wrote Cyrus Wright,
‘though I suspect her of using foul Negro potions to purge herself.’

Now it is 1824, and there has been a small revolt at Golden Grove in the neighbouring parish, savagely suppressed.
‘Several hangings & slow burnings,’
noted Cyrus Wright, who made a point of witnessing them.
‘
Cum
Congo Eve behind the trash house,
stans
,
backward.’

September 26th, 1824
Last night a hurrycane blew the thatch off the cooperage & the shingles off the Necessary House. The woods on Clairmont Hill look bare & like to the trees in England after the fall of the leaf. Congo Eve said it is an omen, but I replied that as my own house was spared, it must be a good one.

September 29th
Found her with Strap in the curing-house. He was wearing my blue Holland coat that I gave her years back, & she said was lost. I shouted at Strap & he knocked me down & fled, but I sent my Negroes & they catch’d him. If propriety had not prevented me whipping another man’s Negro, I would have done it. As they led him back to Parnassus he shouted that I would not live much longer in a whole skin. I was much put about, & had to take brandy. Congo Eve said not a word, but would only look at me.

September 30th
I have heard that Mr Traherne only had Strap flogged. Am much vex’d, for it is far too lenient. That Negro should be hanged.

November 12th
Congo Eve runaway again, to Caledon. When she was brought back, she told me with all impudence that her sister Leah has been brought to bed of a girl, named Semanthe. What of that, said I, when the whelp will be dead within the week? Not so, cried she, for this is a full Coromantee child, & not got on Leah with force by a buckra man. I said I would hear no more, but she would not be silenced, & taunted me that the child will grow powerful & strong, & will know all the arts that she & her sister can teach it.

‘Come, Evie,’ her mother says again. ‘It’s getting cold.’

Evie closes the book and stares down at the mildewed calfskin. There’s a roaring in her ears.
Semanthe, Semanthe, Semanthe.

Semanthe, the daughter of Leah. Semanthe, the blind, raggity old obeah-woman who’d appeared to Evie beneath the calabash tree when she was ten. Semanthe. Her grandmother.