The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (72 page)

Congo Eve and Evie McFarlane. They’re one and the same family.

She turns and stares up at the house where she was born and raised. It’s a two-roomed house of cut-stone, and built to last. It should be. Her great-grandmother Leah put it up when she came to Fever Hill with Master Jocelyn’s young bride Miss Kitty, in 1848.

Great-grandmother Leah had been a widow by then, but she’d mortared that house herself, with red clay and molasses and powdered bones, and some special ash that she’d been keeping in a yabba for seventeen years. Ash from the ruins of Fever Hill great house, that got burnt in the Black Family Rebellion which killed her man. And when the house was built, her blind daughter Semanthe wove the roof: of good strong thatchpalm, and a spell or two, besides.

Congo Eve and Evie McFarlane. Family.

What does it mean? wonders Evie. Is it some sort of sign? Some trickified message from the spirits?

She doesn’t know. All she knows is that everything’s coming together in a wrong kind of pattern.

Her mother comes and sits beside her on the step, and stretches out her legs. Her shins are a glossy dark mahogany next to Evie’s smooth coffee-coloured skin. ‘I got something will cheer you right up,’ she says, putting up a hand and smoothing back a lock of Evie’s hair from her temple. And in the middle of her confusion, Evie is touched, for Grace McFarlane is not a caressing kind of mother.

‘That buckra boy,’ says Grace, ‘Ben Kelly, with the green puss-eye?’

Evie looks at her in alarm.

Grace cracks a smile. ‘Yesterday he punched Master Alex smack on the jaw!’

Evie’s horrified. Merciful Peace, Ben, what were you thinking?

But her mother’s slapping her thigh and chuckling, for she always did detest the Trahernes. ‘Jesum
Peace
, but they say Master Alex is
bad
vexed! He’s got a bruise the size of a john crow egg on that pretty-pretty jaw of his. And just in time for the Christmas Masquerade!’

Evie’s thoughts are teeming like black ants. Everything’s tangling together like strangler fig. She can’t see the pattern, but she can feel that it’s bad.

If she hadn’t met Master Cornelius in Bamboo Walk, she wouldn’t have gone to the clinic; and then she wouldn’t have bumped into Ben and told him about the red-haired girl; and then
he
wouldn’t have been shaken off balance and lost his temper and hit Master Alex.

And now this link with Congo Eve. This link which she can never escape.

What does it mean? And how does she stop the bad from coming?

With Christmas only a week away, the dawn air was cool, and Sophie’s breath steamed as she waited at Romilly Bridge.

It would be hot by midday, but now everything was deliciously fresh, and the colours sharp and clean. Black swallows dipped to drink at the turquoise river. She caught the saffron flash of a wild canary; the iridescent green of a doctorbird. Mauve thunbergia trailed from the trees at the edge of the clearing. A white egret flew past the emerald plumes of the giant bamboo.

Putting her hands on the parapet, she took a deep breath of the fresh, green-smelling air, and watched her horse cropping the ferns, and nearly laughed aloud. She felt scared and exhilarated, and appalled at what she was doing. Now and then a surge of elation made her heart swell till it hurt.

She’d hoped to find him waiting when she arrived. But of course, she reminded herself, it was a good six miles from Falmouth, and he wouldn’t find it easy to get away.

A noise behind her. She spun round; then gave a disappointed sigh. Only a ground-dove. She smiled, but the smile felt forced. Where was Ben?

She walked down to the riverbank and snapped off a stem of scarlet heliconia. She tossed one of the big gold-tipped claws into the sliding current. By the time you’ve thrown them all in, she told herself, he’ll be here.

He wasn’t.

Perhaps he hadn’t received her note. Perhaps Great-Aunt May had taken it into her head to change the habit of a lifetime, and go for an early morning drive.

Or perhaps, she thought with a sudden sense of falling, perhaps you’ve made a mistake. Perhaps when he kissed you it was just the impulse of the moment. After all, why should he want to see you again? He’s so good-looking, and you’re not nearly pretty enough. And you limp.

‘How do you know he isn’t after your money?’ Cameron had said with his customary bluntness the night before, when he’d asked her to take a turn with him in the garden after dinner.

‘You only say that’, she’d retorted, ‘because you don’t know him.’

‘And you do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

She did not reply. Until he’d said it, the thought of money hadn’t occurred to her. She knew that that was naive, but she also knew that it hadn’t occurred to Ben, either. They didn’t think of anything but each other. And especially, they didn’t think about the future. How could they? They didn’t have one.

She and Cameron had walked on in the blue moonlight, while Scout crashed around in the bushes, and the ratbats flitted across the stars. She glanced at Cameron smoking his cigar, but couldn’t read his mood. When he chose, he could be inscrutable.

Suddenly he stopped and ground out the cigar under his heel. ‘The thing is, Sophie,’ he said evenly, ‘I won’t have Madeleine hurt. I won’t let anyone do that. Not even you.’

She caught her breath. ‘I wouldn’t hurt Madeleine,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t ever do that.’

‘But that’s precisely what you will do if you persist in this.’

‘Cameron—’

‘You’ll cause a scandal, and that inevitably will—’

‘Why must there be a scandal?’ she said.

‘Sophie, be practical! We live in a real, imperfect world. Not the world as you might wish it to be.’

‘But if we’re ever to make it better, surely—’

‘I won’t have Madeleine hurt for a theory,’ he cut in with a firmness that made her blink.

And suddenly, as she stood there looking up into his face, she felt an overwhelming loneliness. This man before her loved her sister so much that he would do anything to keep her from harm. He would die for her if he had to. Did Ben feel like that about her? Did she feel like that about Ben? Did she really love him? Was this how love felt? How would she know? How would she
know
?

At the edge of the clearing, someone was coming. Sophie froze.

This time it wasn’t a ground-dove. It was a small boy pickney on his way to school. Barefoot, in patched but scrupulously clean calico shirt and shorts, he was kicking an unripe mango before him like a football, and whistling between his teeth.

He caught sight of Sophie and gave her a brilliant smile. ‘Morning, Missy Sophie,’ he called politely.

She forced an answering smile and returned the greeting.

When he’d gone, she watched the dust settling softly back to earth.

It was getting warmer. The rasp of the crickets was gathering strength. A mongoose emerged from a tangle of hogmeat and gave her a sharp, indifferent stare. As she watched it slip away into the ferns, something tightened in her chest.

He isn’t coming, she told herself, and the words thudded in her heart.

He isn’t coming.

One of the darkies stamps on Ben’s knee, and pain unfolds like a black flower.

Pain like that probably means it’s broken, he tells himself. So if it’s broken anyway, and if they just keep hitting you there, you’ll be all right.

But of course they don’t.

They came on him on the Arethusa Road as he was heading back from a ride: three big, silent darkies he’s never seen before. Which stands to reason. Master Alex couldn’t get the lads from Parnassus to beat up one of their own.

They came up behind him and yanked him off Viking and dragged him into a cane-piece. He managed to give one of them a good bash in the ribs and another a broken cheekbone before they brought him down. But they know what they’re about. Measured. Precise. Nothing too visible – that bash in the face was a mistake – and they don’t got coshes, which is something, as it probably means they’re not out to kill.

The blood’s salty-sweet and gritty in his mouth. He can smell their sweat and hear them grunt, but he can’t see much on account of all the blood. Still, he can see
something
– red flashes and a bit of guinea grass – and that’s good, because it means his eyes aren’t burst.

Another kick in the ribs, and this time a groan which might of been him, and another black flower flares in his side.

Happy Christmas, he thinks. He starts to laugh. Once he’s started he can’t stop. He’s heaving and gasping as they’re hitting him. He’s blowing blood-bubbles through his mouth. Happy sodding Christmas.

Did one of them mutter ‘enough’, or did he only hope they did? It’s hard to tell, as things are getting a bit floaty. Sorry, Sophie, he mumbles. It comes out as a choking moan.

Very small and clear, he gets a picture of her inside his head. Only it’s not Sophie as she is now, but when she was a kid, the first time he seen her in the Portland Road.

He grabs hold of the picture and clings on to it. Sophie in her stripy red pinafore and her black stockings, with a black velvet ribbon in her hair, and her gold-tipped eyelashes shadowing her cheek as she shows him her book. ‘It’s
Black Beauty
,’ she tells him breathlessly, ‘Maddy gave it to me for my birthday and it’s
brilliant
, I’ve read it twice already.’

Sorry, Sophie, he tells her inside his head. Sorry, love.

That’s his last thought before it goes black.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Apparently he had some kind of accident,’ said Madeleine as they were coming out of church on Christmas Day.

‘What do you mean, an accident?’ demanded Sophie. ‘When?’

Madeleine paused in the aisle to make way for a trio of old ladies who, like the church decorations, were wilting in the heat. It had been a long service, and everyone was eager for luncheon. There was a pervasive smell of Florida water and eau de Cologne, with an undertow of perspiration.

‘
When?
’ Sophie said again as they moved out onto the porch.

Madeleine opened her sun-umbrella with a snap, and scanned the throng of carriages for Cameron. He never attended services, but sometimes for her sake he collected them from St Peter’s and said a word to the rector, thereby quashing suspicions of outright heathenism. ‘Some time last week,’ said Madeleine, spotting Cameron waiting for them further up the street.

‘Last
week
? Maddy, how could you not tell me?’

‘Because it isn’t serious. He’s
fine
.’

‘Then why isn’t he here? Why did Great-Aunt May have to get someone else to drive her to church?’

‘Oh look,’ said Madeleine, ‘there’s Rebecca Traherne. Now remember, you’re going to be ill tomorrow, so don’t appear too healthy.’

They dealt with Rebecca, then Sophie resumed the attack. ‘How did you find out?’ she said as they waited beneath a cassia tree for the crowd on the pavement to thin.

‘How does one find out anything?’ said Madeleine. ‘From the servants, of course.’

Sophie chewed her lip. ‘Just how bad is it?’

‘I told you, he’s fine.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

Madeleine made no reply.

‘Maddy, if you don’t tell me everything, I shall force it out of Poppy, or Braverly, or—’

‘Oh, very well.’ She cast a quick glance about her, then said in a low voice, ‘He was found by a weeding gang a couple of miles out of town, just off the Arethusa Road. He must have fallen from his horse—’

‘Ben? He’s the best rider in Trelawny.’

‘–
anyway
,’ said Madeleine with a quelling glance, ‘they took him to Prospect because it’s nearest, and one of Grace’s cousins patched him up. Cuts and bruises, a chipped knee bone, and some bruised ribs. So you see, I do care enough to have made enquiries. But that’s all I know.’

Sophie took that in silence. Around them churchgoers chatted in little groups, and carriages departed in a haze of dust. Negro families walked by in starched Sunday best with their shoes in their hands.

Madeleine fiddled with the clasp of her reticule. Plainly she was also worried about Ben; and Sophie guessed that she hadn’t told everything she knew. But there was a stubborn set to her mouth which warned that she could only be pushed so far.

‘Is he still at Prospect?’ Sophie asked.

Madeleine shook her head. ‘I think – I think they took him to Bethlehem.’

Sophie tossed her head in frustration. It would have to be Bethlehem, just when Dr Mallory had closed the clinic for what he grimly called ‘the festivities’.

In silence they started making their way up the street to where Cameron was waiting with the carriage. Fraser sat beside his father, clutching his presents on his lap. When he caught sight of Sophie he leaped to his feet, waving so hard that he would have tumbled out of the carriage if Cameron hadn’t transferred the reins to one hand and gripped a handful of sailor suit with the other.

Just before they got within earshot, Madeleine turned to Sophie and said quickly, ‘Sophie, you
can’t
go to see him. I need you to promise me that you won’t.’

It was Sophie’s turn to look stubborn.

‘What possible good could it do?’ said Madeleine. ‘Grace and her people can look after him just as well as you could.’

‘But—’

‘Leave him alone, Sophie. Don’t make things worse for him than they already are.’

Sophie stared at her. ‘What do you mean by that?’

Madeleine looked unhappy.

‘Maddy – it was an accident, wasn’t it?’

But by then they were at the carriage, and Fraser was jumping down, brandishing his new red kite, and there was no more time to talk.

On the drive back to Eden, she debated what to do. Ben was in some sort of trouble, and he was hurt. That much she knew. And she was pretty sure that Madeleine wouldn’t tell her any more.

The question was, did he want to see her? After all, he hadn’t met her at Romilly Bridge, nor had she heard from him since. And after his accident – or whatever it was – he hadn’t sent her any kind of message.