Chapter 33 THE DEVIL'S RING

"Ain’t interested, sir," declared the little Cockney trader with one squinty eye.

"It is solid gold, Mr. Swallowes," retorted Stephen Raleigh, battling to best his temper. "Surely, it must interest you a little."

"Aye, but it’d be the ruination of me to 'ave such a fing in me possession, wouldn’t it? Bein’ it’s cursed and all."

"Oh, you can’t believe such an idle load of mischief," Raleigh wheedled, trying out a smile that only gave his expression a grisly cast. "A man of your sophistication."

He knew Freddy Swallowes had the sophistication of a barn rat, and less breeding; it galled Stephen Raleigh to be in the same room with the fellow, much less to have to humiliate himself pleading with him in this manner. But there was no one else.

"But there’s others does believe it, others less sophisticated than meself. Them as I might try to sell it to, was I to 'ave it off you. It’s business, i’n’it, constable? What can I do?"

"Surely, a man of your connections should have no trouble disposing of such a valuable item in a busy place like Basseterre?"

Freddy Swallowes picked up his tankard and downed the last of his rum. "Aye, but was it as easy to fence as all that, you’d 'a never 'ad to come to me. Would ye now?"

The insolent fellow rose and sauntered off as Raleigh felt his face burn with rage; fortunately, as always, it was too dark in the Old Medusa Tavern for his rage to be seen. How dare this beggarly fellow turn down any honest offer of profit, when he scarcely had the means to keep body and soul together? That damned curse. Everywhere he went, he heard the same tale. Even Captain Trent, for whom he had done so many favors, claimed he couldn’t have the golden ring aboard his ship, or his crew would mutiny on him. Extraordinary, the power of superstition on idle minds. There wasn’t a smuggler, merchant or huckster in all of Basseterre who hadn’t heard of the Devil’s Ring, and the curse of death upon whoever owned it. You’d think he’d been offering them a vial of poison instead of a valuable piece of gold. Wretched fools, the lot of them. And more the fool he, for keeping the damned thing in the first place. But there had been no talk of curses, then. It was only his due, his personal commission on his dealings with Trent. He'd only thought to put it by for a rainy day, as any prudent man might do. But it was raining now. In buckets.

When had his luck gone so sour? Fortune had smiled when he captured that darky slut, and auctioned her off for a slave in this very room, outwitting that mountebank of hers. Funny, the fellow had never dared return to make good on his threat, the posturing ape. Raleigh had broken them both, that was one victory he could still cherish. And made enough of a profit on the sale of the whore, together with a sum of money borrowed on credit from some gentlemen of business he knew, to invest in a seafaring adventure recommended to him by Captain Trent.

But the voyage failed, a merciless blow to Raleigh’s precarious finances, for even a man of his modest habits must put on some sort of display to maintain the dignity of his office. Especially a man with his eye on better offices to come. And then, struggling to recover himself from the brink of ruin, there was that wretched business with his slave, Hannibal, his only property, who had the gall to sue for his manumission. Raleigh knew he’d been cheating him all this time, how else could the beggar have come up with the money to buy himself free?

Raleigh would never have agreed to it, had he not been in such straitened circumstances himself. He inflated the purchase price, as if Hannibal had ever been worth his keep, determined to ruin the yellow dog into the bargain if he wanted his freedom that badly. But Hannibal paid the sum and his fees besides, and promptly disappeared, robbing Raleigh of the entertainment of watching his slide into degraded poverty for his precious freedom. Although he heard later from one of Trent’s cronies that Hannibal was employed as second mate on one of the fancy trading ships of that colored merchant, Jepson. The spiteful dog.

But his profit on Hannibal wasn’t enough to satisfy his creditors from that other failed venture. In fact, the interest was accruing at an alarming rate. It was extortion, all the more infamous practiced on an officer of the law, but he had entered into a contract with these fellows on the advice of that Judas, Trent; he could not now bring suit against them without looking like a prize gull. But neither could he pay them off now that he had lost his only property in Hannibal, not on his salary from the constabulary alone. If he were imprisoned for debt, he would not even have that. It would be the end of his political ambitions, all that sustained him in this wretched place. He could never endure such humiliation. And time was running short.

He did have one other asset, this golden ring. Yet everywhere he turned, he heard the same foolish talk of a curse. No one would touch it, and now Raleigh was desperate. Why else treat with a lowlife like Freddy Swallowes? He had not a single friend who might undertake this business on his behalf, no one he could trust in so delicate a matter. But there must be someone in this neighborhood, at this hour, who could be persuaded to pay for this ring, cursed or not, if only he were drunk enough. And Raleigh rose from the little table with a furious new resolve. It was no longer a mere business transaction. His entire future was at stake.

Through the cloying haze of smoking lamps and lighted pipes, he spied a prosperous-looking stranger at a table near the back door, with the weathered look of a seaman, and the bloated visage of a drunkard. A captain in search of a cargo during crop-over, no doubt, what might he not pay for a piece of gold to sell on his own account? Raleigh sidled over with his half-drunk rum bottle, and proffered it toward the fellow, who responded with a sleepy nod and offered a chair. Raleigh sat himself down.

"A seafarer, sir?" he bantered, refilling the stranger’s glass.

"I am that. And yourself?"

"A...gentleman of business. I have a cargo I believe might interest you, sir."

And as he reached into his jacket, extracted the box that held the ring and opened it, a shadow fell across the table. Raleigh’s head snapped up in irritation—and he found himself gazing into the placid face of the Deputy Provost Marshal.

"A bit out of your jurisdiction tonight, are you not, constable?" the Deputy blinked.

Raleigh might have said the same thing; when had the Deputy ever been known to appear in public after eight o’clock in the evening? And sober, besides.

"My, this is a lovely item," the Deputy observed, lifting the ring out of Raleigh’s guilty grasp.

"A...family heirloom," stammered Raleigh.

"Two 'R's," nodded the Deputy, as he examined the ring. "An extraordinary possession for an orphan raised at the charity school. Were your people Spanish, constable?" he asked, glancing at the inscription. He eyed Raleigh’s blanched expression. "I thought not," he sighed. "I confess, I found it difficult to credit Mr. Swallowes’ tale when he said he had an appointment to meet you here tonight."

Damn the fellow, Raleigh seethed to himself. An informer. So that was how he kept himself in the lean times.

The Deputy eyed him again. "Come see me in my office tomorrow morning, Mr. Raleigh."




"How does it look, sir, an officer of the law selling contraband in a public place like the Medusa?"

The Deputy Provost Marshal shook his head, his pop-eyes blinking wearily. Unaccustomed to the morning light, thought Raleigh, sitting rigidly on a chair, on the opposite side of the Deputy’s large, cluttered desk.

"I...was mistaken. Sir." Contrition was unfamiliar to Raleigh, begging more so, yet he must salvage this situation, somehow. "But it was only one item, a very small lapse as these things go," he pressed on, adopting a sportive, worldly tone, hoping the Deputy did not realize how deeply involved he was with the smugglers. "Surely more serious offenses are carried out by public officials every day."

"That may be so, but they are carried out with discretion," sighed the Deputy. "I’m afraid only the wealthy and well-placed can afford to betray the public trust with impunity. Whereas, a man in your circumstances..."

Raleigh cast down his eyes, angry that his circumstances were now the object of speculation, hiding behind the mask of humility that had served him before.

"It shall not happen again, sir."

"Oh, indeed, it cannot," agreed the Deputy. "I believe it will be best for you to leave the constabulary, Mr. Raleigh. This business is insupportable. A chief constable cannot be seen disporting himself in a tavern with criminals."

"Leave the constabulary?" Raleigh echoed, stunned. This could not be the end of his ambitions, not like this, all of his dreams going up in flames before his eyes.

"I promoted you, Stephen," the Deputy continued, surprising Raleigh with his earnestness. "I’ve become fond of you. Resign your post and I shall not take any disciplinary action against you."

Disciplinary action. Even worse than the humiliation of debtor’s prison, to be censured, publicly rebuked, like a slave, to be made an object of public ridicule.

"Resign your post," the Deputy repeated, "and you are free to go your ways."

"And do what?"

Raleigh had no income property, no exploitable skills, no well-connected friends. He was alone, without means, and in debt, besides, no better off than Irish Jimmy Reilly, for all his pains. He could hear the braying laughter of that Irishman now, mocking him. He did not notice the Deputy shuffling papers on his desk until he spoke again.

"You were once a member of the night watch, were you not? I have a notice here from off-island, a little township requesting extra manpower for its militia. Expecting some trouble, so it would seem." He blinked up again at Raleigh. "It’s not an official post, but room and board will be provided during the operation. It may be a way for a young man of your qualities to get back upon his feet. And in the circumstances I think it best if you leave St. Kitts."

He must get away from here, all right, if only to escape the laughing ghost of Irish Jimmy Reilly.

"Thank you, sir." It nearly choked him. "Where must I go?"

"The place is called Gingerland in St. George’s parish, on the island of Nevis. The Provost Marshal’s office in Charlestown is coordinating the business. Still in the early planning, it is, so take as much time as you need to settle your affairs here. I will arrange your transportation."

Transported. Like a criminal. There would not be much to settle here now that his dreams and plans were exploded in a blaze of treachery. He would not stay here now, in the smoking rubble of all his ambitions. At least off-island he would escape his creditors; he would have the last laugh on them. And he would rise again from the ash-heap they had made of his life. Somehow, he would find away to distinguish himself, and laugh in all their faces. On Nevis.


(Top: Dancing Devil, vintage print, as seen on orchardsforever.blogspot.com)

Chapter 24: SOMETHING ON ACCOUNT

Mr. Theophilus Jepson, gentleman of business, sat back in his comfortable armchair in the private apartment above his warehouse overlooking the docks of Basseterre. He had offered to pour his visitor a glass of port from the crystal decanter that occupied the small end table between them, but his offer had been graciously declined. As ever, his old friend Belair was one for getting straight to the business at hand.

"I need not tell you how grateful I was to receive your message," said Alphonse. "I had begun to think our cause was lost."

"Never give way to despair," Jepson advised. "Anything may happen. Growing up in these islands ought to have taught you that."

Alphonse had thought himself beyond any more despair until these last few days. Jack grew more haggard and ashen with each false lead that came to naught, each informant who had nothing to barter, each day that Victoria’s trail grew colder. A gaunt and withered desolation was stealing into the the limbs that had been so agile, the face that had been so alert with pleasure when Jack was playing Harlequin. The role Alphonse had duped him into playing, at such cost.

"Even so, if you have any news at all, you must consider me forever in your debt," Alphonse replied.

"Oh, come, my friend, we are beyond such petty score-keeping after all this time," Jepson chuckled. When he smiled above his glass of port, in that open-faced way, round-cheeked and merry-eyed, his curly brown hair cut short above neat side-whiskers, he looked to Alphonse very like the enterprising Bristol merchant who had sired him. Brought up in the family business when his father’s legitimate heirs proved unfit for the labor, Jepson had a nose for profit and an aptitude for delicate negotiations that rivaled that of any full-blooded Englishman in the Indies. "It’s my pleasure to return a favor to a friend. Have we not always fought on the same side in all of our battles together?"

"Against all reason," Alphonse admitted. On the petition endorsing slavery by the free people of color in Basseterre, the signature of Theophilus Jepson had been notably absent. "But I must say I find your morality somewhat aberrant among free gentlemen of your class."

"Slavery is bad for business," Jepson replied crisply. "You and I both know it. A fellow needs to earn something on his own account to take an interest in the work. Raise your laborers to the lash, and you breed a work force of sullen rebels itching for revenge, a damned reckless situation and an unprofitable one. Factor in the expense of keeping 'em all fed and clothed, and tending their sick, and your profits dwindle even further. No, the institution cannot last, and any aid we can give toward its demise shall only improve everyone’s lot in the long run." He took another sip of port and set down his glass. "I employ only free persons who earn a wage. All of them, domestics, clerks, porters, warehousemen, even the sailors on my ships, have an interest in the business, a stake in our mutual success. It is amazing what a vast and loyal network they have become. Very little occurs in Basseterre that escapes their notice. Or cannot be found out."

Alphonse straightened in his armchair. This was what he had come to hear at this late hour, in this private place.

"My people have been making discreet inquiries for days to no avail," Jepson continued. "It seemed that your friend had disappeared from the very sight of Almighty God, himself. But this morning I spoke to one of my boatman. He has a lady friend whose cousin is a slave jobbed out in private service. He often walks abroad at night along the waterfront. This fellow has a story to tell that might interest you."

"It might, if it is true. I have heard a great many stories this week that were not."

"There is nothing to be gained from lying. I have offered no reward. From what my people have gleaned since he came to us, his tale seems very plausible, indeed."

"Is the person I seek alive?" Alphonse asked quietly.

"As far as anyone knows. There is no reason to suspect otherwise."

Alphonse allowed himself to breathe again, grateful not to have to imagine Jack’s face if the answer had been different.

"Is she—?"

"More than that I cannot reveal at this moment," Jepson interrupted calmly.

Alphonse cast him a sharp glance. He knew his old ally far too well, the canny trader. Too clever by half. "Because there is a price?"

Jepson inclined his head very slightly, as if to duck the implication of Alphonse’s word. "A condition only, and a very slight one."

"What sort of a fellow bargains when a woman’s life is at stake?" Alphonse demanded. "Has he no conscience?"

"He has. That is why he came to me," Jepson replied. "But I have a conscience as well. And so do you, my friend." When Alphonse did not respond, he went on. "It is a wrong and shameful thing that has been done to your friend. But wrong and shameful things are done to people every day in these islands. I can tell you where your friend has gone. But I will need something on account."

There was nothing but still, black night out beyond the shuttered windows. A warm, conspiratorial darkness surrounded them in their two armchairs, lit only by a single lamp upon the little table between them. A dark, secretive place for striking bargains. But the shadows were alive to Alphonse. He could see Victoria’s vibrant, laughing face as she tumbled about in her Columbine patches, then he imagined her broken, bowed, and enslaved. Because of him. He saw Jack’s desolate face of these last few days, without hope, his life in ruins. Because of him.

"What must I do, Theo?"

"It is a small thing only that we ask of you," Jepson assured him. "A pledge. There are persons on the island of Nevis who may be in need of your particular skills and knowledge in the future."

Alphonse knew it was not his skill and knowledge of the juggler’s art to which Jepson referred. And he had heard enough rumors on Nevis to understand the gravity of the situation there.

"Are you not engaged to play at the Bath Hotel next season?" Jepson went on. "Never mind how I know, that is the very point of having informants. You must understand that your position as a trusted employee of the Bath Hotel, coming and going as you please, could be very useful."

In the event of a rising, or some other foolhardy action, Alphonse supposed. He saw again the flames of Whitehall, and shook his head.

"The cause of freedom needs no more martyrs," he said.

"Yet every man and woman has a right to be free," Jepson countered. "You of all people would not dispute that principle. Who are we to judge who may gamble with Fortune and who must bide their time in chains?"

"What is it you ask of me?"

"Only what any friend may ask of another. That if someone comes to you in need of assistance on Nevis, you will place yourself at their service."

Alphonse tried to shut out the shots and the screams and the acrid stench of death from Whitehall. The tentacles of riot and ruin were reaching out to engulf him again. It took all of his will to turn away from Betsy’s innocent, youthful face, and focus instead on Victoria’s face. And Jack’s. His partners and friends. Wounded and despairing, but still alive. So far.

"You have my pledge," he murmured.



"A smugglers' auction?" Jack echoed, dismayed.

"It is not so legal as the public vendue, yet the participants—"

"I know what goes on. But how did Tory fall into their hands?"

"She was delivered there." Alphonse breathed a grim sigh. "By the chief constable, himself."

Jack stared back at him. "Old mole, canst thou work i’ the earth so fast?" he muttered, almost to himself. Then he added, with chilling calm, "I’ll murder that bastard."

"Business before sport," Alphonse advised. "The high bidder was a Dutchman, who left the place with Victoria late that night. But he turned up the next day claiming he’d been waylaid and his... purchase made off with. He was known to be drunk the night before, so no one paid him any mind, supposing that his new slave simply got away from him."

"Might that not be so?" ventured Jack.

Alphonse shook his head. "Our witness saw the Dutchman and the woman leave the tavern. Because he is accustomed to hailing a boat for the Dutchman when he is in his cups, he followed them to the beach. He saw Victoria carried off by the crewmen from another ship, perhaps a rival ship. They sailed that night."

"But...why?" Jack frowned. Stealing hands to serve in ships was as old a practice as sailing itself. His own seafaring career had begun when he was knocked on the head outside a Thameside grog shop and spirited off aboard a merchant craft of such ill repute, she could not obtain a crew by any other means. But it was men who were snatched up in this manner, not women, and there had apparently been no doubt on this night of Tory's gender. Who would steal a woman in the dead of night? A slave trader, like those that still plied the Gold Coast of Africa? A procurer recruiting boat girls for the sailors at English Harbour? "Was this...rival ship some sort of slaver?" he asked Alphonse.

"I do not know. The witness believes it is another smuggling vessel, disguised as a coaster. He is acquainted with many smugglers in this neighborhood, but he knew no one from this ship, although he has seen her before."

"Does he know where she went, this ship?"

"He does not. But Mr. Jepson employs many people in the seaports and waters of this island. The ship we seek was seen sailing into the waters off of Sandy Point Town last evening. It would appear her people still have business on this island."

Jack was not at all surprised. There were dozens of private planters’ docks nestled in the reeds and scrub and hidden inlets of this coast. He and Tory had explored many of them on their first journey around St. Kitts, when he was teaching her the juggling trade. Any ship laden with goods the planters desired, that did not care to pay a call at the Custom House in Basseterre, might be kept busy for weeks along the coast, trading on her own account. It was not impossible to imagine that such a vessel might traffic in slaves.

"What does this ship look like?" he asked.

"A sloop with a single mast. Gaff-rigged and shallow draught, I was told, if that means anything to you."

"Fast, like a cutter," Jack nodded. "A smuggler, all right."

"She sometimes sails into port under Dutch colors, but not always."

Jack frowned. "That describes half the vessels in the Indies. How will I know her?"

"She flies a small pennant with a particular device. A gold circle marked with a cross under a star on a blue field." Alphonse shrugged. "It is some mariner’s symbol, perhaps?"

"It might be a compass rose, a charm for navigation. It doesn’t matter. I’ll find her." Jack got to his feet and plucked his purse out of the small litter of his few belongings on the scarred little table of their hired room, withdrawing two coins. "Have one of your people hire me a post-horse, the fastest in Basseterre," he went on, handing the coins to Alphonse. "I want it here in a quarter of an hour. And see if your friend Jepson can lend me a spyglass."

Alphonse hopped down to the floor, his face furrowed in irritation. "You know I do not ride—"

"Nor do you swim, and you sail only under protest," Jack agreed, pulling his things together. "That is why I must go on alone."

"But—"

"You have done everything you can, Alphonse. I'm grateful beyond words, but there is nothing more you can do. A good horse will get me to Sandy Point Town in three hours, much faster than a carriage. Even another ship, assuming Jepson had one to spare, would have tides and wind to contend with, getting out of Basseterre road at this hour."

"But suppose the ship you seek has gone?"

"I’ll find her again," Jack declared. "There are smugglers’ coves all over this island and I know where most of 'em are."

"Victoria might not even be aboard—"

"But someone on that ship will know where she went," said Jack, sliding his knife into his waistband with cool, expert precision.

"This is foolishness!" Alphonse insisted. "You will need my help again."

"I need your help now," Jack urged him. "Please, Alphonse. Help me. We are wasting time."

"What am I to do after you are gone?" Alphonse grumbled.

"Go back to Cybele. I will feel much better knowing Marcus and the others are under your protection."

"What shall I tell them?"

"The truth. I’ve gone after Tory. But I must do this thing alone."

Alphonse nodded.

"And tell them..." Jack paused, and saw again Marcus’ small, dark, tear-stained face, awash with guilt that he had abandoned Tory and was sending Jack off to his doom. What could he possibly say to the boy? There was nothing more to be said, only work to be done. He turned abruptly back to his things. "Tell them I wish them well," he muttered.

"You may tell them yourself. When you bring Victoria back to us."


(Top: Urban Porters, Rio de Janeiro, 1819-1826. Image Reference vista06, as shown on www.slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library)

Chapter 21: IN MEDUSA'S WEB

Boisterous laughter, fiddling, and singing erupted out of the waterfront tavern, drawing Tory along through the night shadows. She was near enough to see its fanciful wooden sign, swaying and creaking in the light breeze, a crudely carved figure of a mermaid with a head full of snakes, like the tangle of a spider's web. The Old Medusa Tavern, it was called, hard by the broad beach overlooking the bay. Sailors were notoriously loose talkers; if she was ever to find a ship to take her off this wretched island, it would be here.

It was typical of Tory’s recent fortune to find herself in Basseterre again, the last place on earth she ought to be. But the river had brought her to the southern coast, some little distance west of Basseterre, but considerably east of Old Road Town, and she didn’t think her scavenged food or her luck would last long enough for her to make her way to some friendlier town. Besides, Basseterre in crop time was the busiest port in the Leewards, and she knew the dockside area well, knew it was her best chance get back to the sea. How else would she ever find Jack again?

She had tried to close Jack out of her thoughts during her captivity; she would not conjure him up in that place to share her misery. But during the long nights on the run, and tense waiting days of her journey down the mountain, she had been able to think of nothing else. Not only the comfort of his warm, strong body, which she ached for every hour, but the solace of his companionship. And something much more—she hungered to be known, again, to be recognized for who she was. Not the prisoner, not the slave, not the runaway. So many people knew bits and pieces of her, by the patchwork motley she dressed herself in out of necessity in her erratic journey through life. But only Jack understood the whole of her. Only Jack could tether her to the truth about herself.

It was long dark by the time she'd ventured into the town and made her way through the back streets for the waterfront. She could see masts bobbing out in the open roadstead, their lights winking in the dark, but she dared not present herself to any honest captain, looking as she did, a mud-caked runaway in filthy rags with nothing of value to trade for her passage. But she might stow away aboard a vessel in secret; she’d done it before. Getting out of Basseterre was her first concern, she would worry about the rest later.

It was not impossible that she might work for her passage, female or no, once the ship’s master saw what she could do. A trader between the islands would be best, with stops in Nevis and Antigua, where she might hear news of the pantomime players. But any vessel would do, so long as it got her out of Basseterre and back on the open sea, where she could clear her wits and get a grip on herself. Then she could decide where to head next. Wherever Jack had gone.

She knew Chief Constable Raleigh patrolled the town in the daylight, but the nighttime belonged to the watch. What business would Raleigh have down by the docks in the dead of night? So she'd made her way through the shadows to the noisiest tavern, the Medusa, hoping to find out who was sailing where, and on what ships, and how soon. It should not take long to overhear what she needed to know. Anything worth hearing, she would hear there.

Tory turned down into the alleyway behind the buildings, keeping to the shadows. She felt in her dirty apron pocket for her last strip of salt fish. Remembering Alphonse’s advice about kindly kitchen women, she had gone begging last night to an old Negro woman tending a pot of cook-up at a cluster of slave cabins above the river. Tory said she was going to visit her mama in Basseterre without a ticket-of-leave, and the old cook took pity on her and gave her a small, precious ration of salt fish. It had been an easy lie to tell, and effective, for slaves often wandered off to visit their relations without their master's knowledge. Slaves accomplished a great deal, she was learning, without their masters' knowledge.

The abandoned little hut by the broken bush had grown close and sweltering in the heat of the day, but it kept Tory securely hidden until nightfall. On her second night following the river down the mountain, she found another shelter, a tiny lean-to hidden under a carpet of green moss and climbing jasmine. There were many such places hidden along the river route, if one had the wit to look: here an abandoned watchman’s hut inhabited only by spiders and lizards, there a hand-built shelter hidden behind the huge fan of a traveler’s palm, recently swept clean. She couldn't account for it. In the pirate trade, she would have called it Blesséd Providence.

She crept through the dark to the back of the tavern, where more modulated, businesslike voices hummed beneath the ongoing riot from the front. Some sort of meeting, she supposed, contrabandistas striking their bargains and getting ready to sail on the tide. She came out of the deepest shadows, crept up on the planked wooden porch to position herself closer to the jalousied windows next to the back door, where hushed voices and stripes of soft light filtered out between the slats. But the words were indistinct. She crept closer.

A sudden heavy tread shook the planks under her feet, and the door was flung open. Tory dodged backward into the dark as a cloaked figure stepped outside, but the shock of light behind him blinded her and she lost her footing. She tripped over a chicken in the dark who set up a fearful squawk, and stumbled backward into a cart in the shadows, with a thump and a rattling of traces. The man halted on the wooden porch, still framed in the light of the doorway.

"Who’s that?" he growled.

Tory wedged herself between the cart and the wall, but that damned chicken was still scrabbling about, clucking and complaining. Perhaps he would think that was all he’d heard. Any casual passer-by would let it go, the night was full of noises. But the man came out into the road, following the sound of the chicken, poking purposefully into the shadows. Some smuggler, no doubt, on the lookout for spies. Damnation. Could she possibly have any worse luck?

"You might as well come out of there," sneered a cold voice, and Tory knew her luck had turned worse. She could not run through walls or evaporate into the air. And as a hand closed on her arm and dragged her out into the pale light from the tavern door, she found herself staring into the scowling face of Chief Constable Raleigh.

"You!" gaped the constable, for an instant as shocked as she was. "What are you doing here?"

"I might ask the same of you," Tory snapped back, but the fight was already draining out of her, following the downward plunge of her heart. How could she have come this far, endured so much, only to have her last tiny scrap of hope so rudely ripped from her grasp? Which of the many gods had she so offended to deserve this punishment? But it scarcely mattered any more. Nothing mattered. Fortune had turned her wheel.

Raleigh had recovered from his surprise and was looking her up and down very keenly.

"Ye little bitch, you’ve run off, haven’t ye?" The most genuine smile Tory had ever seen him wear played across his face. "Why, there are very serious legal punishments for runaways, don’t ye know? It might be a hundred lashes. Or a branding. Or you might forfeit a foot, that would slow you down, eh? It’s all at the discretion of your owner," he leered.

Tory saw Rathbourne’s face in her mind’s eye, twisted with glee if he ever got his hands on her again, especially after he found his boots. Her legal owner, itching for his revenge. But she commanded her face to shut out all expression. She would not react.

"How I shall enjoy that particular entertainment when I take you back—" Then Raleigh paused.



Stephen Raleigh knew that damned Harlequin was still afoot, somewhere. And what of it? he argued with himself. The fellow had no legal means whatever of reclaiming his wench. But it was clear he had not found her, yet, for all his bold talk, judging from the state she was in. What could Raleigh himself do to ensure that he never did? Returning her to her owner was beginning to seem like a poor solution. These two were as slippery as shadows; that mountebank might yet help her to escape again and there would be all Raleigh’s effort wasted.

But suppose he could get rid of her for good and all tonight, even make a profit into the bargain? This harpy had humiliated him, ruined his finances, all but destroyed his career, she owed him that much. And suppose he could also guarantee that nigger-loving mountebank would never, ever see her again? Surely, that would break them both, the victory Raleigh craved above all others. That would cure their damned insolence, the pair of them. It was obscene, a white man making such a public display of his appetite for a colored wench, associating in public with Negroes, lowering himself to their level. And proud of it. The degraded fool didn’t seem to care who knew how deep he was in thrall to this...this...by God, just look at her! Covered in dried mud and tattered rags like something that had crawled out of a bog. What would make a man forfeit his dignity and betray his race to dally with such a filthy thing? He ought to give her back to him as she was, that would cure him of his affection. But a separation now, when the beggar thought he had almost recovered her again, that would teach him a lesson. His kind of behavior could not be tolerated in a decent society. Certainly not in any town run by Stephen Raleigh.

"But then, there are other punishments that might suit you better," he continued on, gazing at her again. "Not every slaveholder has a comfortable estate at his disposal. Some situations are far less...genteel. What would you say to a change of scenery? An ocean voyage, perhaps?"

The girl’s eyes rounded at him, filling with such tangible fear that Raleigh was startled—and delighted. So he had cracked her sullen mask at last, probed deeply enough to find her fatal weakness.

"Please sir, no," she gasped, her voice low and husky with terror. "Not the sea, oh please."

"'Sir,' is it? 'Oh please, sir,'" mocked the chief constable. "I’m afraid it’s a little late to be finding your manners."

Her face was growing wild with terror. The coating of mud made the effect all the more grotesque, a banshee, a gargoyle. Raleigh was hypnotized. Never, ever had he dared to hope for such complete despair.

"Send me back, whip me, chop off my foot, I don’t care!" she begged, in an utter frenzy. "But don’t put me on a ship! For the love of God, not the sea!"

His only answer was another grim smile.



Jack could not believe what the fellow had told him. He’d had a new colored wench, all right, calling herself Hecate; his book-keeper had bought her in Basseterre. But less than a month on the place, and she was gone. A damned runaway into the bargain, and he would have what she cost him out of the book-keeper’s wages, if not his hide.

That was the end of the conversation, and Jack turned away and walked back down the broad stone steps that led from the veranda to the road. He could feel the paper from Mr. Greaves inside his shirt, burning a hole in his heart. Here he had a legal document to claim Tory, or at least allow her to claim herself, and she was gone. She was a slave, a possession, how could she be gone? Why would she take such a dangerous step? Could she not have waited for him?

"You’re sure she’s not still about the place somewhere?" he asked Alphonse when they met again, further down the road, near the cook-house. Back beyond the great house, the mills were grumbling and the sugar works steaming away, turning the heavy air dank and sweet. In a little valley far below the road, there was activity in the slave cabins. It was midday, and the field hands were on their dinner hour, cooking and tending their kitchen gardens; a platoon of them had just marched off to their provision grounds. A middle-aged woman of color and a sullen girl came out of the cook-house carrying laundry baskets, to follow the wooden-sided aqueduct away from the road toward some hidden stream. Try as he might, Jack could not feel the spark of Tory’s presence anywhere in this place, yet everywhere he looked, he struggled to will her into existence. "They might be hiding her from me, if they’re so short of labor," he suggested.

"I spoke to several of the household," said Alphonse, shaking his head. "The last anyone saw of her, she had been summoned to the master’s chambers."

"The master?" echoed Jack, halting in his tracks. "That fellow Birney? If he’s lied to me—" and he spun around and took two angry steps back toward the great house.

"She never arrived," Alphonse interrupted, halting Jack again. "It was the young nephew that wanted her. The cook’s mulatto son is his valet. Tory never came to him. No one has seen her since." He shook his head again. "She’s gone, Jack. Gone these five days."

"But she can’t simply disappear," Jack protested. "Runaways... they rarely get very far, do they?" But he broke off the thought. He knew all about the dogs, the lashes, the brandings that were the fate of captured runaways; he could not seriously be hoping she were caught. But if she were not, how would he ever find her?

"Perhaps you should stay here," he told Alphonse, more briskly, trying to weave a scenario that would enclose Tory without harming her, keep her close until he could find her again. "I’ll return to town and stay near the Court House and the square. If she’s caught or taken into custody, perhaps I can intervene before she’s…" he paused, drew breath, "...hurt or punished. If she comes back here, you—"

"She may not come back," Alphonse interjected, with quiet finality. Jack blinked at him. "She may not be caught. There are... ways to get off this mountain. There are even ways to get off this island."

Jack stared at him. Alphonse returned his gaze, but there was something edgy and uncomfortable behind his black eyes.

"And go where?" Jack's voice was scarcely audible.

"Anywhere," murmured Alphonse, lowering his eyes at last, his expression grim. "She could be anywhere, by now."

Jack frowned. "How do you know this?"

Alphonse's eyes rose to his again. "Because I have helped her to escape."


(Top: The Old Medusa, by Lisa Jensen © 2010.)

Chapter 20: SHADOW PLAY

Amos Greaves went grumbling downstairs to his print shop in his dressing gown. Who could it be, this "old acquaintance" scratching at the back door at such an hour, like a brigand, upsetting his household? Refused to give a name into the bargain. His houseman was quite put out over it, would have turned the fellow off but that he let his person be searched for weapons and swore he meant no harm, only needed help. But he hid his face under a hat and kept to the shadows.

Greaves’ houseman insisted he keep his pressman, Jacob, a big, burly fellow, by his side, in case of any trouble. But men intent on mischief did not usually send servants to fetch their masters first, so at the bottom of the stairs, Greaves bade Jacob wait, lifted his small lamp higher and made his way around the silent, hulking shape of his press, and his cabinets full of metal plates and boxes of type. At the back door of his shop, he threw up the bolt, drew it open and thrust out his lamp, squinting into the dark night. A figure was waiting in the shadows.

"Mr. Greaves," said a gentlemanly voice. An English voice. "It’s very good of you to see me."

He took one step into the light and lifted the brim of his hat. Greaves blinked into a somewhat weathered face with dark, direct eyes, a familiar face he felt himself disposed to like, if only he could place it. The face of a man who had once done him a good turn.

"Jack?" whispered Greaves. "Jack, the juggling fellow."

"May I come inside?"

Greaves gestured into the dark shop with his lamp.

"Only first," and Jack nodded toward the pressman still waiting on the stairs, "send your man to bed. I come on a private matter."

"It’s all right, Jacob. You may go, now, thank you," Greaves said aloud, over his shoulder, as he ushered Jack into the shop. "I know this fellow." The door closed behind Jacob at the top of the stairs, and Greaves turned back to his visitor. "But come into the parlor, Jack, like a civilized fellow. I have an excellent madeira—"

"No, thank you, sir. I’m afraid this isn’t a social call, although I wish it was. I come on business."

"But why not come round to the front, at a decent hour?" Greaves wondered, as he led Jack to an open area at the back of the shop and set his lamp upon the make-up table. "You know my door is always open to you."

"I apologize about the hour, but it’s the sort of business that must be done in the dark," Jack replied. He set his hat on the table and gazed directly into Greaves’ curious eyes. "I am about to presume a great deal upon your good nature, Mr. Greaves. But I have nowhere else to turn."

Greaves returned that steady gaze and read something both desperately sad and chillingly resolved in those dark eyes. A look that made him ache inside because he understood it so well. The look of someone who has lost something very dear.

"Where is your charming Miss Lightfoot?" Greaves asked.

"That is the matter I've come about."



"I wish she had named me as a witness," Mr. Greaves fretted, after Jack told him the story. The kind old fellow looked every bit as distressed as Jack felt. "I should have spoken up on her behalf. It's very irregular for anyone so fair and well-spoken to be auctioned off at all. Most irregular."

"Is it?"

"Indeed, sir. Young quadroons and suchlike of any sort of breeding are often left standing on the block; remind the Creole planters too much of their own offspring. Had Miss Lightfoot only charmed the crowd, no one would have had the heart to bid on her."

Jack lowered his eyes against a bitter wave of helplessness. Tory would not have known that, of course; she would sooner spit in their eye than beg.

"But now that she is legally sold..." Mr. Greaves went on, doubtfully.

"I’m not asking you to intervene now, sir, the deed is done."

"Then what can I do to help you?"

"I need the services of a printer." Mr. Greaves nodded, and Jack went on. "Have you contracts with the township of Basseterre?"

"My boy, we are the first printing establishment on the island. We print all manner of documents for the Court House—wills, deeds, public notices, legal contracts. As well as bills, broadsheets, and pamphlets of all kinds for the private sector. As long as a thing is not downright seditious—"

"And the Court of Registrars? Do you ever print manumission papers? Certificates of freedom?"

Amos Greaves regarded him for a long, silent moment.

"I have the plates on hand," he spoke, at last. "Although I am very much afraid the trade is far more brisk in runaway notices, these days. Do I understand that you wish me to print a forgery?"

"I do," Jack replied soberly. "But not a lie. She was born free in America. She has never been a slave in her life. Until now."

He had to turn quickly away, to conceal sudden, angry tears. "I have no right to ask you this—" he muttered.

"On the life of my daughter, sir, you have every right."

"You must understand what a dangerous undertaking this is," Jack cautioned, focusing again on the business at hand.

"I understand what it is to lose someone precious," replied Mr. Greaves. "I lost the woman I loved to an enemy I could neither see nor fight. I would have done anything, risked anything, to have her back. I might have lost my daughter as well, but for you."

He slid off his stool and reached for a leather apron on a peg.

"We must work quietly, so as not to alarm my household any further. Tell me, Jack, have you ever operated a press?"



The document was drying on the table under the lamp and Greaves sat puffing thoughtfully on his pipe when Jack finally put the pen away. He had written in the names Greaves had given him of a magistrate and secretary who might have signed the thing five years ago, and were no longer in town to be questioned. But when it came time to fill in the name of the bearer, Jack balked. It seemed pointless to make it out for Hecate the slave, a creature who did not exist. She might have even changed her name again, since then. But did he dare write in "Tory Lightfoot," the name by which she had been known in the pirate trade? In the end he left it blank. He would fill in the name when he saw her again, when he knew for certain who she wanted to be.

"I wonder how the auction in question occurred without my knowledge," Mr. Greaves mused. "I never miss an auction, you know, I have so many establishments to operate, and they are constantly in need of competent labor. I am certain I should have recognized Miss Lightfoot. When do you say it was held?"

Jack felt inside his shirt and withdrew the tattered public notice Alphonse had found. Mr. Greaves frowned at it and squinted at the date.

"Why, yes, I remember now," he exclaimed, suddenly. "The damnedest piece of foolishness it was! I was up on Monkey Hill all that morning, at the Fairhaven estate, to straighten out some nonsense with the book-keeper. Blasted fellow turned up drunk as a lord, claimed to have lost his account books. You know, rotation of the field hands, who was off ill or on leave, head count of the livestock against theft, all that sort of thing, place grinds to a halt without 'em. Fellow led us a merry dance all round the place the whole morning, looking for 'em. Then they turn up pretty as you please in an old watch hut at half-past two in the afternoon, well past my dinner hour, I can assure you. Miserable waste of half the day, it was, and I despise waste."

Jack steeled himself against another useless wave of anguish. But for a foolish accident, Tory might have had a champion in the crowd on the day of her worst humiliation. "Could your people not have handled the matter?"

"Why, that was another odd thing. It was none of my people sent for me. No, an officer came round before breakfast and told me he’d heard there might be trouble on my estate, and hadn’t I better go up? Well, a man never knows what is meant by 'trouble,' it might be a runaway, or a rising, or an attack of the borer worm. Or it might be nothing at all, as it was in this case."

"But it must have been something, to alert the military," Jack frowned.

"Oh, it wasn’t an officer of the regiment, but of the local constabulary," Greaves corrected him. "The chief constable, it was. You know, that green-eyed fellow, behaves as if he’s got a ramrod up his backside."

Jack held himself very still. "I know him."

"Most thorough in his duty, or so the Deputy Provost Marshall tells me, so I supposed the fellow knew what he was about."

He knew what he was about, all right, Jack thought. This entire business must have been his doing from the start. No doubt he thought himself damned clever for the way he’d arranged it; he was probably laughing over it still. But he would not laugh much longer. And Jack sighed inside. It had been a long night already, but it was not over yet.



Stephen Raleigh was up late over his private accounts in the sitting room of his lodgings. He'd been at it until the figures swam in his head, and he still could not make it come out right. Hannibal, his only slave, was not bringing in the revenue he ought, given the expense of his upkeep. Damned rascal must be cheating me, Raleigh growled to himself, and I’ll not have it.

How could a slave bred to the boating and fishing trades fail to earn a profit in a bustling port town like Basseterre? Raleigh took such care to job him out on day-long fishing excursions, or even longer coasting voyages, when it was the business of the hirer to provide food and shelter. But Raleigh would have his reckoning; he’d cut the fellow's rations in half and double his jobs out until he showed a profit. Insolent cur, giving himself airs because of his lighter complexion. Lighter than pitch, perhaps, yet not so light as an Irish ha'penny, and worth less. All darkies were one to Raleigh, and the only way to deal with the damned—

He looked up at a sudden, odd sound, peered into the darkness beyond the candle on his writing table. Wretched dark, it was. He half-turned in his chair toward the doorway that led to his bed-chamber, and the blackness increased. Had he not left another candle burning on the nightstand by the bed? That was his usual custom. What sort of ill wind could have blown it out? Weren't the shutters closed?

He sat very still, gazing into the darkened doorway. He was overtired tonight, he might have forgotten...then something creaked. His shutters? A floorboard? Raleigh’s eyes narrowed. It had better not be that rascally Hannibal trying to sneak back into the house, after he’d been jobbed out overnight to Trent on that little business up the coast. But these rooms were on the top floor, and Hannibal would never bestir himself to climb; he was far too lazy, like all of his race. But what, then? Or who?

Raleigh stood up, grasped the candlestick, and thrust the light into every dark corner of the sitting room. Night shadows danced crazily along the walls. Through the doorway into the bed-chamber, he could swear he saw another shadow, more substantial.

"Who’s there?" he demanded.

"Only shadows," came the soft reply. "Shadows of your past."

The fine hairs chilled on the back of his neck, but he fought down his alarm. Irish Jimmy Reilly had believed in ghosts and banshees, but Stephen Raleigh would have none of them.

"Is that you, Hannibal? I swear, you’ll feel the lash for this!"

"You can’t lash out the past, constable. Although you’ll wish you could."

"Who are you? Show yourself like a man!"

There was a rustle in the shadows beyond the darkened doorway and something thumped onto the rag carpet spread over the threshold. Raleigh held out the candle, then started so violently, he nearly dropped it. A skull! He could see round, empty eye holes. No, half a skull, brown with age. Half a face...a mask. A Harlequin mask.

"You," he breathed, glancing up again into the shadows. A malicious smile tugged at his mouth. "Come after your darky slut, have ye? Well, you’re too late, mountebank. She’s far away where you’ll never find her, I’ve seen to that."

"Ah. I thought I recognized your delicate hand in this affair. Thank you for confirming it."

Irritation flared up in Raleigh’s belly, but he forced it back down. He would not give way to his anger, not again. What could this fellow do to him, after all? "If you mean to intimidate me—"

"Frightened of shadows, constable? You must have a great deal to fear in your past."

Even in the dark Raleigh felt himself turn so white with rage he thrust the candle away from his face. "You’ll get nothing from me," he spat into the darkness, his eyes darting in and out of the shadows. Damn the fellow, his voice seemed to come from a different direction every time he spoke. "I’ll never tell you where she is."

There was an eerie laugh in the dark that made his scalp crawl.

"Oh, I know where she is. I have other business with you."

"What business?"

"Your future, constable. As long as my friend is safe, you are safe. If I find she has been harmed in any way, you will answer to me. If she dies, you are a dead man."

"You are in no position to threaten me!" Raleigh exclaimed.

"In the event, I’ll be in the best possible position. A man with nothing more to lose. The same cannot be said for you, I believe."

Raleigh had returned the candlestick to the writing table; his eyes were growing more accustomed to the dark. He slipped away from the table and moved through the shadows to the doorway.

"You had better pray to whatever gods will have you that she’s well," the disembodied voice continued. "Otherwise, you’ll have your reckoning. You can’t outrun your past."

Raleigh saw a flicker of movement across the room, in the looking-glass near the bed. The fellow must be right against this wall. Raleigh eased himself around the door frame, then lunged for the shadows. "I should have killed you when I had the chance!"

But he embraced only air and shadows, stumbling against the wall as a shape flew over him toward the unshuttered window.

"Aye, but as you say, it’s too late now."

Insolent humor in the fellow’s voice, as insolent as the darkies he was so fond of. The nerve of the beggar.

"All this bother," Raleigh baited him, "for a mongrel whore—"

The blade whined so close to his ear, and struck the wooden wall behind him with such a shuddering crack, Raleigh stumbled again. Paralyzed with panic, he could not comprehend things as quickly as they happened, a knee in his back, forcing him to his own knees, a hand like iron yanking up his chin, the resonant sucking sound of the wood paneling releasing the blade above his head and the snick of steel across his throat. Dull steel, not the keen edge. The voice in his ear was a deadly whisper.

"Look to the shadows, constable. Pray you see me no more."

He was kicked flat on his face, the light went out through the doorway behind him, and there was a movement at the window. Then Stephen Raleigh was alone in the dark in his rooms.

He was on his feet in another instant, shaking with humiliation and rage. He barked his shin against the bed frame in the dark, and swore as he fumbled on the nightstand for his whistle to call the watch. He rushed to the window, flattened the shutters all the way back, stuck his head out into the night, and blew his whistle for all he was worth.


The high, piercing shriek of it startled Jack. He slipped on a roof tile, but caught himself at the edge of the roof, swung his body over the side, locked his knees round an upright post underneath and shinnied down to the balcony on the floor below Raleigh’s window. He raced to the corner of the balcony, hopped over the railing, and climbed down the flowering wooden trellis to the street.

But a shrill answering whistle sounded in the shadows just ahead; staccato footsteps told him at least two men were running toward him through a side-street. He dared not run back toward the front of the house, and risk Raleigh seeing where he went; he could only fling himself into the shadows across the street, and try to feel his way along in the dark for some welcoming crevice.

He thought he saw a blackness deeper than the wall, and heard a hiss. The footsteps pounded nearer, and Jack dove into the utter black of a narrow passage between two buildings. Small, powerful hands gripped his arm and his collar, dragging him deeper into the passage.

"I knew you would get into mischief without me," Alphonse grumbled, as Jack sank into a crouch to catch his breath. "But I never thought even you would be foolhardy enough to jeopardize our purpose here by making idle threats—"

"There was...nothing idle about 'em," Jack panted.

Two watchmen raced past their hiding place and rounded the corner for the front door of Raleigh’s lodging house.

"Forgot about the damned whistle, is all," Jack added, turning to rest his back against the wall.

"Tell me you have not placed violent hands upon an officer of the law," Alphonse prompted.

"Only one hand, to show him what I might have done. What I will do, if anything has happened to Tory."

"But now that he knows you are in Basseterre—"

"But we are shadows only, mon ami. And by tomorrow, we’ll be gone. There is no evidence that I was ever here," Jack added, patting the place in his shirt where he’d tucked in his battered mask. "And the rest I’ll leave to the chief constable’s own fear."

"Fear?" echoed Alphonse. "The man’s a jackal. Fear of what?"

"I don’t know, but he fears something. Something in his past, I saw it in his face. It doesn’t matter what it is. Anyone consumed by that much hatred must have some very deep secrets to hide. Let 'em gnaw away at him for awhile. It’ll be far worse than any vengeance I could devise."

Alphonse was looking at him in an odd way. "What an interesting crew of cut-throats you must have been," he observed, "tormenting the delicate mental states of your victims."

"Piracy is a far more honest trade. I’ve learned cruelty in the civilized world."

"You do not know what it is the constable fears?" Alphonse pressed on. "It might be useful."

"It makes no odds to me what it is." But Jack had noticed one useful thing. A glint of gold in a box on Raleigh’s nightstand, just before he blew the candle out. A gold ring, bearing a crest with two entwined 'R's.


(Top: Pressman 19th Century engraving, artist unknown. Hand-colored by Lisa Jensen.)

Chapter 19: PALE HECATE

"I shall speak to this fellow," Jack declared.

"If you must, but wait until nightfall," Alphonse advised. "It is not safe for you to be seen in the street. If the chief constable discovers you at large in his town—"

"If I find he’s had a hand in this business, he’ll see more of me than he bargained for," Jack muttered. And how could it be otherwise? There could be no one else who harbored such a grudge against Tory who also had the authority to make her vanish so completely. No sign of her had been seen here at Pugh’s tavern, where he and Alphonse had taken a tiny attic room. The landlady at Mr. Greaves’ lodging house had not seen her about the town, nor had any of the vendors at the public market who had enjoyed their Harlequinade last year.

Alphonse had turned to his friend, Mr. Theophilus Jepson. A free gentleman of color, Mr. Jepson was a trader out of Basseterre whose white father had sent him to be educated in England, to make contacts in Bristol that would further the success of the family importing and exporting enterprise. Mr. Jepson had gone himself to the Court House on a matter of business, and searched the gaol as well, but could find no one answering Tory’s description up on charges or awaiting trial.

Jack was tempted to believe Marcus had got the wrong town, but that the boy knew Basseterre so well. It broke Jack’s heart to think of that stout-hearted lad clawing his way back to Charlestown with nothing but a gold coin and his own determination. And all for naught, now that the trail had gone cold. Until today. A drummer they'd once hired for one of their Sunday performances told Alphonse he knew a fellow who might know something.

"Do not waste your breath on idle threats until we understand what 'this business' is," said Alphonse.

"You’re right. That’s why we must talk to this fellow now."

Jack was on his feet, again, but Alphonse motioned him back down. "Wait here," he sighed. "Downstairs, in an hour. Not before. I will fetch him here."

Alphonse bent over to roll his trouser cuffs up above his bare feet. He had replaced his tailored jacket and waistcoat with a tattered old shirt Cully had outgrown with the sleeves hacked short. With his wide straw hat pulled low on his head, he looked enough like a Negro boy to be ignored in a crowd. Or so they hoped.

In an hour, Jack stood in the shadows just beyond the back stairs at Pugh’s, in the alley that separated the tavern from the mercantile shop next door. A Negro youth of about twenty stood before him. He had set down his iron cook-pot, empty now, but for a few sticky yellow clumps of the corn pudding the islanders called fungee, and the half-gourd he used to ladle it out. He must have had a successful morning huckstering at the Tuesday market.

"Me auntie, her cook fo’ the gaol house," the lad explained to Jack. "T’ree days and nights, they bid her make up a special plate and one gaoler, him boast it be fo’ a special prisoner only him may see. A woman, him say. On the fourt’ day, him tell me auntie no more special plate."

Jack frowned at Alphonse.

"There was a public slave auction held on that morning," said Alphonse. "I have found the bill."

He unfolded a battered paper, yellowing and torn in the corners from its posting, and handed it to Jack. It was a public notice of slaves to be sold and let at auction, with a date over three weeks old, already. Jack scanned down the list of female names: Sarah, 14, House Servant; Sheba, Washerwoman; Queenie, used to the Nursery; Nancy, Servant and Nurse.

"But this tells us nothing," he said to Alphonse.

"There be anoder woman in the yard," the youth went on. "Her put up too late fo’ the bill. That gaoler, him boast too much, me tink he tell a tale. So me go see fo’ meself."

"You saw her?"

"Me see somebody," the youth shrugged. "Her be no much to look at, fo’ true. Tall, light-colored gal. Hair in a state o’ confusion."

"In what way?"

"Long. All the time fall out of her pins. Me auntie say long hair be too much provoking."

"Did she speak differently than the others?" Jack pressed on. "Not island? Not British?"

"Her nevah say noting but ‘no,’ but when they ask her name."

"What name did she give?" Jack was clutching the paper so tight, he was near ripping it in two.

"Why, her give a comical name, Massa," the fellow grinned. "Hecaty, or someting such. Auctioneer, him say it two times, it be so comical."

"Hecate?" Jack echoed, his voice faint. Pale Hecate, queen of the witches in Macbeth. "You’re sure? It didn’t just sound like Hecate?"

Alphonse glanced up at him. "Nothing else sounds like Hecate."

"Someting such," the huckster repeated, blandly. "Me nevah hear such a name before."

"Do you recall what happened to her?" Jack was fighting to keep the tremor out of his voice.

"Her sold up t’oder side of the mountain, St. Peter’s parish, Mas’ Birney’s place. Poor, shabby place, evahbody say. Him book-keeper buy her. Me sell fungee to him driver."



"We must go at once," Alphonse fumed, half an hour later, upstairs in their room.

"Aye, but what are we to say?" Jack countered. "I’m terribly sorry, sir, but your new slave was sold you by mistake. Hand her over like a sport, won’t you? There’s a good fellow."

"Offer him the purchase price and something extra for his trouble," Alphonse replied, with forced patience. "Never have I met a white man so reluctant to use the power of his race. It is not a wealthy place. They will take your offer."

"I cannot buy her," Jack protested. "I can’t compromise her freedom like that."

Alphonse stared at him. "You do not believe her freedom is at all compromised in being enslaved?"

"You don’t understand, Alphonse. All she has ever wanted is her freedom."

"I understand," Alphonse said quietly. "Those of us born into slavery are not any better suited to it."

"No, no, you know I didn't mean..." Jack's voice trailed off, but he tried again. "For Tory...this is her worst nightmare. When I think of her alone, possibly in chains, possibly beaten, possibly...Christ, I’ll do anything to get her out, you know that. But she will not appreciate being owned by me, don’t you see? It would always be between us, always. She would come to hate me for it."

"Then sell her back to herself." Alphonse was still exasperated, but his voice had softened. "Can you not make some arrangement later, when the danger is passed?"

"I would never hear the end of it."

"Then for the love of Almighty God, go in secret and spirit her away!"

"Steal another man’s lawful property? Hellfire, Alphonse, you’re a revolutionary after all."

"These are desperate circumstances. And I know many people on this island who will aid us."

"But that would make her a runaway in fact. With a price on her head," Jack shook his head. "The next time some overzealous constable takes it into his head to ask for her papers, it will be perfectly legal—"

He paused, staring hard at nothing. Slowly, something began to kindle in his expression. Alphonse narrowed his eyes.

"What?" he demanded.

Jack glanced at Alphonse, his dark eyes suspiciously alert.

"Whatever you are thinking, I don't like it," grumbled Alphonse.




It was close to midnight when Tory slipped away. The gentlemen had retired upstairs and the last of the supper things were being cleared away to the cook-house for the kitchen girl to wash. While the cook and the houseman were gossiping in the corner, Tory stopped at the table to nibble her share of the scraps off the plates. She folded the last of Cook’s little spice cakes, a quarter of a round of flat cassava bread, and a handful of sweet pickled peppers into a napkin she had removed while helping Pearl bundle up the table linens. She was tempted by the last of the cold pork, but meat spoiled too quickly in the islands, even overnight. This would have to be preserved in brine and boiled in a stew. It would be no use to her where she was going.

It would not be difficult to get away. She was not in chains, after all, and there were scarcely enough slaves in the household to do all the work, let alone patrol the grounds. She stuffed her napkin of food into her apron pocket and picked up Rathbourne’s grime-encrusted boots. If the others took any notice of her at all, they would think she was off blacking them, or else keeping her appointment upstairs. Nothing happened in the household that the domestic staff did not know about.

As an afterthought, she picked up the tin slops bucket, turning her face away from the bitter stench of ashes from the cookfire mixed with the contents of the household chamber pots. She carried it outside, away from the lights of the cook-house, and down some little distance to the waist-high dung heap near the kitchen garden. She had no trouble finding it in the dark; the warm, acrid, festering stench of rotting refuse, animal droppings, old cane trash, and mould and mud from the stream nearly choked her. There were many such piles around the place, on every place, the entire island in ferment, all ripening up until they were ready to be carried in leaky baskets on the heads of field hands to fertilize the newer cane-pieces.

Tory poured the contents of her bucket onto the heap. Then, grasping the bucket by the rim with both hands, she hollowed out a little depression in the crest of the heap, picked up the riding boots and plunged them deep into the squishy, yielding muck. That’s what I think of your orders, Mr. Ratbone.

She put the bucket on the ground, carefully settling the handle so it wouldn’t clank against the side, and continued walking down the slope. There were lights on in the mill and the boiling house below and behind her, where the night shift of slaves were crushing and boiling down the newly cut cane. But the still house was dark as she passed above it; rum-making would not begin until more of the sugar was cured. A few tiny lights twinkled in the slave cabins, clustered far below the still house down in the valley, but no one would be out here to interfere with her at this hour. Keeping to the shoulder of the hill, Tory followed the wooden-sided aqueduct that snaked away from the buildings and down into the welcoming dark.

It was her first time off the estate. She had no handiwork to sell, and had not been able to coax so much as a single green shoot out of her narrow allotment of provision ground, so she'd not been able to obtain a ticket-of-leave to attend the Sunday market in town. She was not even certain which town it was that the slaves paraded off to with such anticipation before dawn of a Sunday. But she knew her way to the stream, and water running down the mountain would lead her eventually to the sea.

A nearly quarter moon had risen much earlier and disappeared behind a high ridge of trees, but Tory didn't mind the dark as she made her way down to the stream and followed the soft burbling of its course. She could see why the slaves relished their Sunday escapes. It was not the expectation of riches, for few but the most industrious of them ever returned with more than a few coins, or rations of the precious salt fish that could be put away and eaten in the hungry times. No, it was the escape from master’s watchful eye that was so exhilarating.

Then the sound of the stream faded to silence. Tory tried to make her way down to the bank to follow it, but the slope had become too steep and it was too dark to see what lay below. It might be a cliff, or treacherous rocks.

The night suddenly seemed darker and less friendly. Tory turned reluctantly away from where the stream had been, and footed her way through the brushy dark until she felt some kind of trail that seemed to head in the same direction. It was very quiet now, without the comforting sound of the water, but for the hissing and clacking of the night insects, and stranger, wild-sounding noises from the forested mountain above her. Passing through more cultivated land, she dodged ripe cane stalks higher than her head, and stumbled across muddy fallow pieces. Twice, she ran into boundary fences that tore at her skin and clothing; she had to wrap her headscarf round her hand and drag open a passage to climb through.

The squat, dark shapes of outbuildings loomed ahead. She kept to the underbrush and moved as stealthily as she could. But one of them must have been a kennel; unseen dogs set to howling as she passed, lunging at their restraints. If they roused their master, if they were loosed to hunt her down, she would be torn to bits. She began to run blindly in the dark, frightened now, but no less determined. Hearing a cackle of chickens, she perceived a pinpoint of light ahead; a house or cook-house, near a coop. Still keeping to the scrub at the periphery of the cleared land, she crept closer, away from the sound of baying hounds, toward the light, hoping to draw near enough to get a better view of the landscape and still keep herself out of sight.

"Who’s there?" an angry male voice cried suddenly, just in front of her. There was a rattle of tin, the deadlights flipped open on a hand-held lantern, and she fell to the ground before the beam of light could find her. In the same instant, something snagged her by the waist, and rolled her down a short slope, into a little gully in the bush. She did not have to be told to keep still. The beam of light slowly probed the darkness overhead, fanning first one way, then back again. Tory did not breathe for an eternity, until the light began to recede and the grumbling male voice moved off.

Slowly she drew breath again. And over the drumming of her own heartbeat, she heard someone else breathing hard beside her, felt the heat of another body very near. She put out a hand to prop herself up and get her bearings—and felt feathers. The flesh beneath was warm, but unmoving. She jerked her hand away.

"Fowl no talky, Missy. Him be Quashie supper. Noting fo’ to fear now."

The masculine voice was soft, lilting, persuasive. Hands gently prodded her elbow and nudged her up into a crouch, urging her to feel her way along the slope of the shallow gully.

"No harm, Missy, no harm," her benefactor murmured. "Follow the gully. Quashie perteck you. Quashie know the way. Nevah ketchy Quashie."

The gully began to broaden and slope further downward. Somewhere below, Tory thought she heard the soft, clear, happy laughter of water.

"Is that the stream?" she whispered. "Where are we going?"

"Hist! Quashie know, but him nevah say."

Down they went, following the gully until they came out in a little clearing on the bank overlooking the water. A stream no more, but a river. This was her way off the mountain.

A deep cleft in the ridge of mountains above the river cradled the last of the quarter moon. Its sudden light seemed as bright as a bonfire, and Tory turned to face her new companion. He was a wiry young Negro, holding a dead chicken by its limp neck. He was a little taller than she, and completely naked; his slender, compact body, black as the night, glistened with more than sweat in the pale moonlight. He shone like liquid.

"Goose grease," he laughed at her astonished expression, rubbing at his own shiny forearm. "Nevah ketchy Quashie. Him always slip away."

"You do this often?"

"When Quashie must eat," he shrugged.

Tory glanced doubtfully around the shadowy bush. "Do you live out here?"

"Quashie live evahplace. Jonkanoo, him live evahplace."

Her eyes darted back to her companion. Was the fellow mad?

"Got to pickle this fowl. But Quashie roast him joint if you be hungry." He held the chicken up by its neck, suddenly sounding very rational. But Tory was not hungry for food.

"I’ve got to get off this mountain," she told him.

He nodded vigorously and pointed toward the river. "Follow water, water find the sea. Quashie hear the drums. Quashie know the way."

He crouched down and dipped his free hand in the dark, sticky mud of the bank, then bounced up again, his quick fingers streaking mud across Tory’s cheek before she could jump back.

"Covah up in mud," he told her, waving his muddy fingers at her. "Too much greasy to ketchy, like Quashie. Dark as night."

He was sounding more sane every minute. Tory dropped to her knees on the damp ground and began to smear dark mud on her arms and face. She shrugged out of Pearl’s old jacket, rolled it in the mud and eased the cold, slimy thing back on. She smeared dark mud all over her linen petticoat and apron.

"Her go in the dark, like a shadow," the fellow chanted softly, as she worked. "Hide in the day. Jonkanoo perteck you."

"Hide where?"

"Follow the river. The drums say so."

Tory cast him another sharp glance as she straightened up. "I don’t understand the drums."

The fellow clicked his tongue and shook his head. "No mattah, no mattah. Quashie, him know the way. Follow the river to the broken bush. Her must looky hard to find it."

"Find what?"

"The safe house."

The moon had already slipped below the crevice in the ridge, but Tory’s eyes had adjusted to the dark by now, and she meant to be well away from here by dawn. She fished out one, then two of the little spice cakes, and gave them to her benefactor, whose dark face lit up like a sun.

"Quashie, him feast tonight, fo’ true!" And then he was gone.

It had been a long day and night already, but Tory knew she must get off this mountain and find some port town. She must get home to Jack. Mindful of the dogs, she kept to the edge of the water, wading onto the cold gravel under the surface whenever she could, to hide her scent. She passed a little watchman’s hut on a rise overlooking the river that appeared to be unoccupied; further down, she crept past another hut above the opposite bank with a light inside. Grey dawn was glowing behind a high, forested ridge on the other side of the river when she came to a little clearing. It was not a natural clearing; the brush had been hacked away with the clean, slanted strokes, probably from the kind of cutlass the slaves used to cut cane. One single shrub remained in the small, cleared half-circle, a green, little bush whose upper third was nearly severed from its thin trunk. Its little crown of dead, browning leaves hung forlornly on one side, resting on the branches below. A broken bush.

Tory peered into the scrub beyond. Behind two tree trunks and overgrown with bramble and trailing vines, she thought she spied a wooden wall. Making her way past the clearing, through the scrub and around the trees, she found a wall with a door. Bramble covered part of it, but when she tried it, it opened inward.

With the sky beginning to lighten behind her, Tory pushed inside, into a very small, dark hut with a damp, mouldy smell. The roof sheared downward on one side, under its dense crown of thatch, but the walls were solid. A wooden latch was fastened inside the door frame to shut out intruders. There were no windows, only a slit between two of the boards in the wall facing the river, and another lookout cranny in the opposite wall, facing what Tory supposed was the nearest cane country. The most likely directions for pursuit. Between the trees and the thatch and the bramble, the little hut was scarcely visible from outside. A safe house.

Rolled up in a corner, she found primitive bedding. The canvas pallet stuffed with what felt like dried plantain leaves was as damp as everything else, but the coarse blanket rolled up inside was dry enough. She spread them out in a corner, plopped down, and wrapped the blanket around her against the pre-dawn chill. She thought about nibbling some more of her food, but she was sinking too fast into the irresistible whirlpool of sleep. The very last thought that sparked in her mind was of a far-off day in Old Road Town, when she'd overheard Alphonse speaking to a black stranger. A safe house, he had said.


(Top: Sale of a Slave, Surinam, 1839. Image Reference H016, as shown on www.slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library)

Chapter 16: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

"Slow down, Marcus," Tory laughed. "You’d think the devil himself were after you!"

"But Jack going to teach me a new ting to juggle," the boy pleaded. He had obediently pulled himself up short, but he was so agitated to be off again, he was literally hopping from one foot to the other waiting for Tory to catch up, despite the bulky satchel of props he carried.

"Well, he won’t start without you."

They had already put in a full morning of performing at the Sunday market with Alphonse, whom they had left behind in conference with some market women at a produce stall. Jack’s ribs were paining him, so Tory urged him to stay behind and rest, even though he complained he was turning into one of those creaky old fellows who predict the weather with their rheumatics. It had been a damp morning, but the afternoon had turned sunny and breezy. Climbing the road out of town, overlooking the green and purple waters of the bay under a brilliant blue sky, Tory could not blame Marcus for wanting to racket around like a mad thing. She would have done the same when she was nine years old.

"You will out outrun the four winds," her mama would laugh. "They will torment the old man in the House of the Winds fearfully to keep up with you."

"Mind, Victoria, or you’ll end up in the middle of next week," her papa would tell her soberly. Funny, she could not remember either of them ever telling her to slow down and behave like a little lady.

Marcus was about to burst out of his skin, fighting with all of his youthful energy to keep himself apace with her. Glancing at him now, Tory could scarcely recognize the ragged little scavenger she had first encountered in Old Road Town. He kept the red bandanna about him, but it no longer covered his head. His hair had grown into a short, neat cap, high on his forehead. He was still small and wiry, but he was when he was juggling, it was possible to glimpse the play of sturdy young muscles in his small arms and calves. Jack’s training was paying off. But then, Tory knew what a thorough and patient teacher he was.

"Jack is very proud of you, you know," she said, and the boy’s head swiveled around to face her, his eyes huge and hopeful.

"But me be so clumsy, sometime," he sighed.

"Aye, but guess what? Jack was a boy, once, too."

"You know him, then?"

"No," Tory smiled. "I wish I did."

Marcus’ eyes strayed up the road again, and Tory laughed. "All right, off you go. Keep to the road and run straight to the wagon..."

"Me know, Tory, me be careful!" And the child was out of sight up the hill by the time the words were out.

Perhaps Tory did know what Jack was like as a boy. She glimpsed him every time Jack and Marcus were rehearsing tricks or playing together, more like a pair of children then a tutor and his student. And for the first time, it occurred to her to wonder what Marcus would do when she and Jack returned to the sea. The boy was so attached to Jack, and who could blame him? But he would have Cybele to look after him, and—

It was a sharp, high cry, so sudden it made her jump. Then nothing. A dozen species of bird might make such a cry, or a stray monkey down from the forested mountaintop, but Tory knew it was a human cry. A child’s cry.

She was running before she knew it, up the road and around a bend bordered by high scrub and a rambling grove of dense, leafy trees and coconut palms; the cry had come from here. Marcus would have no reason to venture into this grove, he was in too great a hurry to see Jack, but the road was straight up ahead and she could see no one on it.

"Marcus?" she called, straining to hear a reply that did not come. Marcus was a playful child, but he would not play this kind of game. He was not foolish. Damn, why had she let him out of her sight? She knew about the flesh peddlers who stole Negro children to sell as slaves. She hesitated, her eyes boring into the greenery again. One step closer and she saw it, the corner of a canvas satchel on the ground, half-hidden behind the gnarled roots of an old tree.

With her heart in her throat, Tory darted into the grove, shaking her own satchel off her shoulder, fingers closing tightly round its neck. Inside were only hollow gourds and wooden balls, but they would have some impact. It was the only weapon she had to hand; there was no time to unsheath her knife.

In the next instant, she was yanked almost off her feet from behind. Her hat was knocked off and something thick and heavy closed around her face, choking off the air. Blinded, sucking in the hot, sour stench of straw and sweat, tasting hemp, she flailed her satchel out in a fierce arc, cleaving only air. Then all was blackness.



Salt brine, sour rotting wood and old tar. Tory heard the creaking of rope as she came to herself in the dark, felt the damp seeping through her clothing from the rolls of cordage over which her body was sprawled, recognized the familiar rise and roll of a swell under it all. The sea! She was aboard a ship in the sea! Her old berth in the Providence, home at last! And the rest—but it must have been a dream, all of it, the islands, the pantomime, Alphonse. Jack...

"Jack?"

She tried to sit up, but her head was throbbing. Her shoulders ached and her wrists were chafed raw, pinned behind her back. Her every breath reeked of the wet burlap still enclosing her head. A more recent memory struggled to surface in her brain.

"Marcus?" she whispered.

"Me here, but me no see noting."

The child’s voice was soft and shaking. It had been no dream and this was definitely not the Providence.

"Where are you?" she whispered again. Then she crept clumsily along on her side, over stiff tarred lines and hard surfaces and sacking, until she felt the boy’s shivering back.

"Are you all right?" she asked. He gave a small affirmative grunt, and she wrapped herself around him as best she could to comfort him for a few minutes, murmuring that everything was going to be all right. His small hands were bound behind his back as well, but she could feel his fingers were free.

"I’m going to lower my head behind you," she told him. "See if you can get a grip on this blasted hood and pull it off me."

"Me try it," the boy agreed.

He pulled out more than a few of her hairs in his eagerness, but the old hempen sack was finally wrestled off her head. The fetid air outside the sack was not much more fresh, but at least Tory could see what she was about. They were in the hold of a small vessel, a sloop or a coaster, cast on the junk pile with the rest of the refuse. There was no light in the hold, not even a stray beam from a skylight in the deck. It must be night outside. But Tory’s eyes were adjusting somewhat to the dark. She turned her back to Marcus and maneuvered the sack off his head, then had him turn around so her fingers could feel the rope around his wrists.

"Me try to get free, but the knots too big and tight," he told her.

"I know something about knots. Hold as still as you can and tell me if I hurt you."

It seemed funny that she had to close her eyes to concentrate her fingers, when it was nearly pitch-black already, but it did help. She had tied and untied every kind of sailor’s knot there was and she soon had the boy’s wrists unbound. She chanced sitting up again—her head hurt less now, or else she was too anxious to notice—and when Marcus had rubbed some of the soreness out of his wrists, he gamely went to work on the rope that bound her. It was harder work for him, but he applied himself with the same determination he always showed when Jack was teaching him a new trick, and he finally worked her hands free, as well.

They both froze when they heard a heavy tread and voices on the deck above them. The companion ladder was not far away and as the voices moved beyond it, Tory crept closer to listen. She could not make out all they said, but she heard one thing distinctly. Basseterre Road. They were putting into Basseterre.

Marcus sucked in his breath; he'd heard it, too. Tory knew Marcus could not be seen unmasked in Basseterre, where he might meet up with his old overseer. She knew of the cruel punishments for recaptured slaves who had run away. But she would not let that happen. She would not let Marcus be sold back into slavery.

"Keep as still as you can," she whispered to the boy. "We can’t let them know we’re awake, we’ll need every advantage. And it’s night, that’s another advantage. We’ll be able to see better, from being down here."

"What we going to do?" he asked, daring to sound hopeful.

"We’re going to get out of here." She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. She waited another minute, straining her ears, all her senses alert. "Hear that scraping? Feel the bump? We’re tying up to a dock." Some private smuggler’s dock, no doubt, but a dock attached to land. Not the open roadstead of Basseterre Bay, where they would have to be rowed ashore.

"Lie down," she whispered. "Lay that sack on top of your face, but make sure you can still see. All right? Hold your hands behind your back. They’ll come for us soon. We have to be ready."

There was more activity above and more thumping. Tory nestled back into the junk with one hand groping in the dark until it closed around something hard and heavy. A brick, for ballast. There was always something useful in a ship’s hold.

"When we get above, we’re going straight for the rail tied up to the dock. I’m not sure where we are in relation to the town, but can you find your way around?"

"Me come to town all the time wit’ obisha."

"Good. As soon as you’re free, run for the trees and head south into the Neck. Find the Louis family and don’t speak to another soul until you do. They can get you back across the Narrows to Nevis. Can you do that?"

"Me run farder than that, befo’," Marcus insisted.

"And here," Tory added. She slipped her hand into the split in the seam of her skirt and felt down her leg. Her knife was still there, in its sheath. She pulled out the blade and worked her fingers into the sheath until they closed around the gold coin. Then she pressed it into Marcus’ small hand. "Take this for food if the journey takes longer. It’s a Spanish dollar. Try to make it last."

"But..." there was a slight quaver in his voice now. "Where you be?"

"Right behind you," she promised. "But if we are separated for any reason, go straight home to Jack. Tell him what’s happened." She paused for another moment, listening to the activity above. "We’ll only have one chance," she went on, her voice falling even lower. "Here’s what we’re going to do…"

A hatch in the deck above was thrown open, and they heard footsteps on the upper ladder. Then the hatch into the hold was slammed up and a minute ray of lantern light washed over them, where they both lay still, their faces covered.

"Naw," shouted the fellow at the top of the ladder to his companion, above. "Still sleepin’ like babes in arms."

Tory was near enough to feel the ladder shiver under his bulk as he climbed down. Only the one man, alone. Then Marcus whimpered softly in the dark and the fellow turned in his direction. He hunkered down a little, over the child, Tory rose silently behind him, and crashed the brick down across his skull. He slumped forward with only the softest little "oh" of surprise, and Marcus squirmed out from under him, diving for the lantern to turn down the light.

Tory ripped off her skirt, nodding the boy to the base of the companion ladder to see if anyone else was coming down. She yanked at the sailor’s trousers, peeled them off him and slithered into them, tying them tightly round her own waist. Then she rolled him over to one side, dragged off his shirt and threw that on over her bodice. He had on a little knit watchcap against the night chill on the water and she pulled that on too, stuffing in swatches of her hair that had come loose from their pins. Then she crouched down and Marcus jumped up into her arms and stretched out over her shoulder. She resettled the hemp sack on top of his head. It would be too dark for anyone to notice he wasn’t wearing it.

"Can you see?" she hissed, and the boy nodded. "Tell me if anyone’s coming. And hold on."

Marcus’ weight over her shoulder and the bulky, unfamiliar clothing made it a difficult climb all the way up the companionway past the orlop to the top deck, but Tory managed it. They would have no other chance. No one approached her as she emerged on deck, so she headed amidships for the break in the rail, where the cargo would offload. Someone called to her, "The wench is still down there, eh?" and she replied with as deep and throaty an "Aye," as she could muster, and kept going.

She heard someone else starting down the hatch behind her, but they were so close now. She could see the dock itself in the lantern light from the mast, and the darkness of freedom just beyond, in the bush. Marcus tensed over her shoulder, ready to flee.

Then there was a yelp from behind them, coming up the hatch.

"Damnation, it’s Pete! Above, there! She’s loose! She’s getting away! Stop 'er, there!"

Tory ran the last few steps, wrestled Marcus off her shoulder and swung him by his armpits over the rail with all of her strength. She felt him lunge out of her grasp, across the gap between the side of the hull and the dock, and heard the satisfying thump of his body landing on wood. She leaped up onto the rail to dive down after him, but hands clawed at her waist, and before she could wriggle free, another hand grabbed her leg. The rail slammed into her ribs as she was hauled down and she heard Marcus wailing "No!" from far below her.

"Run!" she yelled at him, and the shadow that had been the boy on the dock was gone.

Hands were restraining her from all sides now. Someone pulled the cap off her head, snagging a few hairpins with it. She shook back loosened clumps of her hair and stood her ground, panting, sweating inside her ridiculous stolen clothing and glaring at her captors. Some of them were swearing, others laughing, as if it were all a game.

"Never mind," called one to the others. "It’s the female he wants, not the brat."

"Aye, and what a dainty morsel she is," sneered another, to a chorus of more laughter. He turned to the ship’s boy hovering nearby. "Run ahead, there, and tell Chief Constable Raleigh we’ve captured his prize bitch!"

Tory’s expression betrayed nothing, but inside some part of her spirit withered. Chief Constable Raleigh. She should have known.




"We have unfinished business, you and I," said Chief Constable Stephen Raleigh.

Tory had spent the night in a damp stone cell, kept entirely in the dark and sitting upright to keep off the tiny clawed feet of her overactive cellmates. The coasting crew, who had amused themselves wrestling their shipmate’s clothing off of her, had returned her skirt, but relieved her of her knife. Not that a weapon would be much use here, in the heart of the Basseterre Court House, in a little closet off the watchroom the chief constable kept as his private office.

"Am I charged?" she asked, calmly. She knew better than to show this man fear; she would not give him the satisfaction.

"Why bother the courts when we are both well aware of your crime?" Raleigh reasoned with careless authority from where he sat enthroned behind his desk. "All that remains in your punishment."

"I’m ready." Tory stood up so suddenly, she saw him actually start backwards in his chair, even though her wrists were once again bound. "Oh, I forgot," she added, "this is the way you prefer to meet your opponents." And she turned her back to him.

Tense and waiting, she heard him walk around the desk toward her. If she could needle that vein of rage in him, make him careless, throw him off his guard, she might get away. Then she felt his fingers knot in her loosened hair, and he jerked her head back.

"I have ruined men for far less insolence," the chief constable hissed behind her. "Don’t think it doesn’t tempt me, to give you what you deserve, you mongrel bitch. But I’d lose my profit if you were marked and I’m sworn to protect the investment of the township."

He turned her loose, and Tory’s heart sank a little lower. He had learned to master himself. He stalked back to his seat and Tory sat down again to face him.

"I am an officer of the law," Raleigh continued, "and there are legal remedies for vagrants."

"You know I’m not a vagrant."

"No? Then name your business in Basseterre. Show me the means by which you earn your lawful living."

"Send to Nevis, from where you had me abducted."

"Oh, that won’t be necessary. The law is already quite specific on the subject of colored females without means of support."

"I am not a runaway," Tory declared, over her pounding heart.

"Ah. You have papers, then?"

"I have no papers because I have never been a slave."

"You can prove this, of course?"

Tory was not sure how to respond. Alphonse and Cybele could produce manumission papers, but without them—

"You have reliable witnesses to testify in your behalf in Basseterre?" Raleigh suggested.

Tory’s mind raced. Jack had conjured up the formidable image of Amos Greaves once before. Had she any right to drag that kind gentleman into the middle of this turmoil? But she had no other card to play.

"I am acquainted with Mr. Greaves, the printer," she fenced.

"Ah," chirped the chief constable, lifting a pen from the inkwell and scribbling a note. "And how long have you known Mr. Greaves?"

"We met last year."

"And the year before that?" Raleigh persisted, maintaining a mask of official crispness that was somehow more chilling to Tory than his anger had been. "The law requires proof that you have been free for at least two years. Where were you the year before last?"

Aboard the Blessed Providence, Tory knew, plundering the ships of all nations. She sat stone-faced, making no reply.

"Oh, come, take your time. Surely there must be someone who will speak for you?"

Who would speak in her defense? No one in the islands knew she had been born free in Massachusetts; she had taken great pains to pass herself off as a mulatta wench. The only witnesses who knew the truth about her were a Negro dwarf of dubious repute, a mulatta fortune-teller with a brood of runaway children who were not hers, and a white vagabond with no property who dared not appear in a court of law for fear of being recognized for the pirate he had been. Runaways, all of them. She had never been anything else.

"No?" The chief constable’s smile was a nasty leer. "Well, don’t ye be worrying about it, now. we’ll find a place for you. We’ll auction you off to some worthy estate, not a fine place, perhaps, but a person in your position can’t afford to be too selective. Colored wenches are as common as dust in the road."

Auction. The word roared through Tory’s brain like a shot. Every muscle in her face strained to maintain a closed, fixed expression, empty of any emotion, but she was screaming inside. To be led away in chains to the auction block. To be sold. To be owned. Had she not heard of a waiting period for captured runaways, to see if their rightful masters reclaimed them? But what would that gain her? Another month or two in custody in another vermin-infested cell, postponing the inevitable. Even if she could smuggle some message out to Jack, and it was no certain thing that she could, he had no legal claim to her, nor any proof of her freedom that would stand in a court of law. And she would endanger him, luring him back to Basseterre where Raleigh would be waiting to take him up on some pretext, as he had taken her. She might even be the bait the chief constable hoped would yield him Jack. But she would be no party to his scheme. Whatever the cost, she would not help him to bring Jack back here. And she said nothing.

Chief Constable Raleigh finished straightening up his papers, stood up and strolled around to lean on the side of his desk.

"You’re kind is no use in the field," he observed, gazing down at her, watching her face. "But you’ll do for a kitchen wench, I should think, or a maid in the big house. You’ve a taste for white men, I know, but I’m afraid you’ll find the master and overseer too far out of your reach. But control that savage temper of yours, and assume a more becoming disposition, and you might attract some lonely book-keeper about the place who can’t afford to be too discriminating. At least until he finds out what a hellcat ye are, or abandons you for a more promising situation on some other estate. In the meantime, breed him enough light-colored whelps and he might even set you up in a little shack of your own, to lord it over the other wenches. You’d like that, wouldn’t ye, now? Mistress High and Mighty."

The false joviality had ebbed out of his voice, leaving nothing but a sneer.

"But we’ll see how long your insolence lasts under the lash and the brand."

Tory had learned enough about acting to show no response. Her only reward was Raleigh’s momentary expression of disappointment that his neat trap had not devastated her. But she was devastated inside. She could not fight her way out of this. Her freedom was over.


(Top: Tory and Marcus, by Lisa Jensen © 2010)