The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (6 page)

She asks the woman if Pad’s sickness is contagious. “It’s the yellow,” Mrs. Sue tells her. “Mosquito.”

Charlotte lies beside Pad and tries to sooth his delirious mutterings. He’d been her lover for more than a year. She’d turned her back on her own family to run away with him. The voyage had been tough on the pair—instead of being the handsome, affable man who ran the household, he’d been nervous, easily defeated by judgmental glares from the other passengers. But once on shore, she’d assumed his confidence would return and with it, the emotionally powerful bond of their illicit relationship.

Desperate, she lifts her head to his ear and whispers, “Don’t
leave me, Pad. I’m carrying your child.” She watches his face for a response, but there is no sign.

The medicine woman returns with a concoction of juices and tells a frantic Charlotte to wait outside in the soaking rain and the suffocating heat. There’s no sound from the cottage. The morning rain lets up, the men in the field cleave the cane, the women tend to their children and Charlotte waits and waits. Then the door to the cottage opens; the old woman pulls the kerchief from her face and says, “I regrets to inform ye miss, your man is dead.”

T
wo of Lutz’s men bury Pad Willisams the next morning in a pit at considerable distance from the plantation.

Charlotte picks herself up from the stoop and walks slowly to the house. She can’t stay here. Going home is not an option. She’s unmarried and by her calculation four months’ pregnant. So shocked by the events of the last twenty-four hours, she hasn’t even shed a tear and can hardly put thoughts and actions together. She’d suspected in mid-April that the passionate, furtive nights with Pad has resulted in a child but decided not to think about it until they were far away from her father’s house. She wonders if Lutz will now see her as a potential new addition to his collection of concubines.

When she gets to the office, he looks up.

“The accounts for the sugar cane must be made ready. Commodore Walker arrived with the high tide in Kingston four days ago. His cargo is off-loaded, except for what he brings to me.”

Charlotte says nothing.

“His business with the governor is conducted, and he intends to collect his new shipment from me personally.”

She sees through his vanity, his suggestion that the commodore had singled him out as more valuable than other managers.

Charlotte goes to her table and begins to enter the numbers and description of the cargo to be dispatched to the commodore’s company. She allows her eyes to flick to Lutz and catches him staring at her. The particulars of the shipment suggest a transaction the size of a prize for Lutz.

T
HE FIELDS ARE A BUSTLE
of workers cutting cane and bundling it with twine, rolling barrels of molasses and rum from the warehouse and lugging sacks of spices to the wagons that will carry the order to the wharf. Bully overseers, whips at the ready, urge them to move faster. In the scant ten days since she has been here, it is clear that there are slaves and indentured servants who work this land. The servants live in this village, but the slaves are kept apart in hovels on the other side of the plantation, marched to the fields in long lineups at dawn and back again at dark. She knows from Pad’s reports that they are beaten, tormented and intimidated for the slightest provocation, but when she commented on their treatment to Lutz he’d told her to mind her own business. She hates the place. The grotty shacks the workers live in, the sooty fires they cook at, the hopelessness and the dawn-to-dusk labour are not what she thought a life in the West Indies would entail. Maybe the sprawling mansions she’d seen above the town when they docked would better suit her.

But for the moment, she only needs to enter the numbers of bundles and the date they are placed on the wagon.
July 17
,
she writes, but the words that play in front of her eyes are
the day after Pad died
. She’s caught in a surge of memories. Pad, so exotic in the household that he controlled. Her pathetic mother relied on him for everything. Her father often took him into his study to discuss the business of the day. Had she stayed away from him, none of this would have happened. Pad may have …

“Have you finished?” Lutz interrupts her meditation.

“Soon,” she replies.

“You can stay here and work for me,” he says.

She decides not to reply.

“Or you can be a wife to a man in the town. You’re a comely woman, and will attract a gentleman of position.” Charlotte has a flashing thought of another respectable Englishman with concubines and remains silent. The stay in Jamaica has left her feeling powerless and consequently vulnerable, not a condition she is accustomed to. She wants to bolt from this hot, fetid, disease-ridden island and find a place to be anonymous. But where could that be?

L
UTZ ANNOUNCES
his intention of going to the dock himself. Three other plantation men—all white—have gathered in his office, waiting for instruction.

“There’ll be no talk of yellow fever,” Lutz growls. “Nor any manner of invitation to bring the man back here.”

One of the younger men flips his hand in a nervous gesture.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Lutz, but I for one am happy to go. No need for you to trouble yourself, sir.”

Lutz makes an expression of mock horror.

“You’ll go, will you, Peterson?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll go in my stead, will you?”

“Yes, sir. If I can be of help, sir.”

Lutz lowers his voice. “Who asked you to do anything but what you’re told?”

Peterson shrinks back and Charlotte puts down her quill.

“The Commodore George Walker is as gallant a sea captain and as notorious an English privateer as this ocean has seen in many a lifetime. He’s fought the Greek and fought the Turk and fought the Spanish dog—fought pirates off every coast between here and the Mediterranean, which, Peterson, is a
sea far away.”
Lutz’s face is reddened with the passion of his admiration. “Commodore Walker sends his ships here for their cargos—molasses and rum—because he himself has much important business elsewhere. But
this
time, Commodore Walker—
the
Commodore Walker—is making the voyage himself. Why is he doing so? On account of
my
crop—
that’s
his reason. And I can tell you gentlemen in strictest confidence that Commodore Walker means to take on a portion of the cane and try his hand at the
sugar-refining business
. And I doubt not but that he will do
very well!”

He pauses to allow the enormity of his words to sink into his subordinates’ minds. Charlotte, on the other hand, wonders why a man who could be represented in such a light might make business with Lutz. Walker, a captain of merchant vessels out of London, might be a man not unlike her own father: stern, shrewd, unforgiving.

In fact, she wonders if he could possibly be acquainted with her father. Lutz says Walker operates a trading post in a place called Nepisiguit in British North America. The outpost was financed first by one Hugh Baillie and now by a John Schollbred, both from London. Charlotte is certain she’s heard both those
names before and wonders if they are financiers who visited her father at their home. Lutz explains, “The trading post is in the middle of nowhere, the vast northeast where winter consumes much of the year—but people say it is well-finished and flourishing on a trade of fur and timber.”

The middle of nowhere, Charlotte imagines, an undiscovered place where a woman can shed the past and seek obscurity—perhaps. But what of the cold and wild beasts Captain Skinner had described.

“Tell me more about this Nepisiguit,” she asks Lutz, who is willing to oblige.

“It’s a tough-minded breed of men who settle in those parts. They fight the climate all the year—to prevent freezing to death in the winter and starving to death when the food runs out. It’s not a place I would frequent. But there are opportunities in that northern land. There’s money to be made and land to be had. I reckon there are shiploads of dissidents and eccentrics who seek their fortune in that desolate wilderness.”

“I want to go with you to the docks to meet your Commodore Walker,” Charlotte announces. The scheming Lutz conjures up the scene—an attractive, young British widow by his side like his own bit of bounty when he offers his salutation to the commodore. “You will be welcome,” he tells her.

The rest of the day is filled with hurried preparations. The sugar cane is loaded on the wagons, along with the molasses and rum barrels. She understands from the women in the house that it is unusual to ship raw cane. But the details interest her not in the least. The warehouses are readied for the fine lumber Walker promised Lutz he would bring; beauteous pieces of wood Lutz can sell in town for a fine price. “This will be a grand trade,” Lutz tells Charlotte.

The trade will be more than lumber and cane, she thinks. Although another voyage by sea is a loathsome concept, the greater concern is making sure she sails away with the commodore.

Back in the cottage at nightfall, Charlotte considers her plan. Should she tell the commodore the truth? That she ran away from her father’s home, that she was not married, that she’s pregnant? No, that would be folly. He’d leave her behind to wallow in the pitiful condition she’d found herself in. The widow Willisams, bereft after leaving the hearth of her kin to come to the colony with her new husband to serve the King—that would be better. She could tell him the northern clime he comes from is more to her liking, or is there more she can offer? Reading and writing are skills that won the favour of Lutz. Could that be employed again? And her father, how will he factor into this bargain? If he is known to Walker, her plan could be foiled. Charlotte lies down on the bed covered with musty straw and considers her next step. The combination of grief, fatigue and the need for secrecy and cleverness overcome her and the next thing she knows, it’s dawn. She decides the course she will take. The trunk that was hardly unpacked is secured for moving when the time is right. The incoming tide will bring her salvation.

S
HE SETTLES
on the carriage bench beside the repulsive Lutz for the ride to the dock. The distance is shorter than what she recalls from her journey just eleven days ago. The horses move unwillingly in the morning heat. Charlotte wishes she had a parasol to shield her face and shade her body. She lifts her shawl over her head, trying not to disturb the pins and combs she’s arranged in her hair. The dock comes into sight, the vagabonds are there as before, masters shouting orders. And out in the
channel she sees a ship anchored in the turquoise waters beyond the dock where the wagons wait.

There is a flurry of activity. A small craft has been lowered to the water from the schooner. It rows slowly to the pier, and when it is secured a man dressed in the plumes of a naval officer steps out in the company of other, clearly subordinate men. Even as Lutz’s face is contorted with warring expressions of greed and awe, Charlotte’s face remains a mask. Behind it, her heart sinks. Commodore George Walker is an old man. What else had she imagined? She’d imagined, as she now realizes, that she might cast a spell and make a young heart beat fast enough to spirit her away from this sweltering stew. The commodore and his party advance toward them, and even at ten yards Charlotte sees the sort of seasoned features that suggest their owner’s ample powers of insight into her own shallow scheming.

The introductions are formal. Lutz dances from foot to foot in ill-disguised eagerness. Charlotte is introduced as his assistant. A mercy, she thinks, and better than whore, which I shall probably be if I don’t get away from here.

Walker is styled by his aide as Commodore George Walker, Esquire, Late Commander of the Royal Family Privateers, Justice of the Peace for the County of Halifax in the Province of Nova Scotia and proprietor of Nepisiguit. He is a man of moderate height with fine, ruddy features, blue eyes and thick white hair. Charlotte drops a half-curtsy and nods her head. As though she is suddenly transported into the presence of her own family, her shame is intense. Walker shows little concern for her and she tries to melt into invisibility. As the party walks the length of the docks, pausing here and there to make observations and comments on the facilities, the main topic is the cargo and the need to offload and reload without delay.

Charlotte is absorbed in her own lament about the opportunity she sees slipping away. She hadn’t been listening to the discourse between the two men so when she hears her name she’s jolted back to attention.

“Mrs. Willisams?” It is the aide. “Might the commodore then have the pleasure of your company at dinner?”

She looks at the man with astonishment and sees that Walker and Lutz have walked on ahead.

“Dinner?”

“This evening. At Harper House.”

“Of course,” she replies. “Please inform the commodore that nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

The young man returns to the main party, and Charlotte hurries to join them. They then walk to the carriage that would carry the commodore and Lutz to the commodore’s lodgings. The wagon that is to take Charlotte back to the plantation draws up. At this moment, Commodore Walker breaks off and approaches her.

“Mrs. Willisams,” he says, “I wish to express my deepest condolences.” His voice is surprisingly light and pleasantly tinted with his Scots brogue.

“Thank you, commodore.”

“And thank
you
for consenting to join us this evening. I regret that Mr. Lutz will not be able to be there.”

“How unfortunate.”

Her heart is racing, her mind spinning. The wagon bounces along the rain-rutted path. What was at work in Lutz’s porcine brain? Did he imagine she would give herself to him in return for passage? Curious, because he might easily—however regrettably—have anticipated obtaining such favours if she was trapped here.