Page 43 of A Fire in Their Hearts

E VERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE plantation, from the blacksmith to the cook, knows that Drummond rapes me whenever he wishes.

Only Calum doesn’t. I’ve delayed telling him to let him get stronger, but I can’t risk leaving this any longer because news that will break his heart has to come from me.

Today is Sunday so I’ve suggested we walk together.

Most of his back has healed from the whipping, although he will forever bear those marks. Now I’m about to add to the scars in his mind and I still don’t know how to tell him.

‘Your limp isn’t any better,’ I say.

He nods. ‘My own fault. I should have followed Rory’s advice and got Naomi to look at my heel when he told me to. It’s hard to believe that so small an insect can make you lame.’

‘And your back?’

‘Getting better. McKinnon wants me in the fields tomorrow. I can’t keep doing work around the compound with the old men.’

We continue in silence. There’s nobody about as everyone is at the beach.

‘Calum .?.?. there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

‘Well, you can tell me anything.’

Not this. Not this.

My words come out slowly, as if each one is a sentence and deserves a pause. ‘Shortly after it was discovered I’m a woman, Drummond started taking me to his bed.’

He stops to stare at me, not immediately understanding what I’m saying. Then he lets out such a terrible keening sound that my spine feels as though it’s turned to ice. Sinking slowly to his knee, he covers his face with his hands.

‘Nooo! Nooo! Nooo!’

I’ve never seen or heard him like this, not as a child or even when his father was hanged, never. I kneel and take him in my arms, but he’s inconsolable.

‘I should have protected you!’

Now words pour out of me. ‘Calum, you were gravely wounded and ill. Nobody could have stopped him. Not even Samuel could have prevented this. The other young women are often raped by Drummond. It was always going to happen to me once he knew I was a woman.’

‘I promised to protect you!’

‘I know, my love. I know. But sometimes we can’t keep our promises, no matter how much we try. Drummond is too powerful.’

‘You’ll never be the same again.’

‘I’m still your Violet, still the sister who helped bring you up, still married to your brother.’

I try to give comfort, but his words are like daggers to my heart, for he is right .?.?. I will never be the person I was before we came to Barbados. That Violet is gone forever.

*?*?*

By the time Calum and I return to the compound most of the others have come back from the shore.

Many of them are gathered around the large open entrance into the barn and they stare inside, silent and still.

Rory is standing with Joseph and upon seeing us, he comes over before we’ve reached the building.

‘This time it’s Josiah,’ says Rory, his face grim.

Another slave has hanged themselves.

‘Josiah!’ I cry. ‘Oh, no. He once cut three sugar canes and laid them at my feet so that I wouldn’t be punished for being slow.’

‘He was a decent man, a kind man,’ says Rory. ‘And here comes the mad bastard who killed him.’

Drummond and McKinnon stride towards the barn, obviously having just been made aware of the latest death. We move nearer to hear. Drummond glances inside, but it’s no more than to confirm the identity of the person.

‘How can people be so selfish?’ he shouts angrily. ‘I do so much for you all and this is how I get repaid. Where’s your loyalty? Where’s your gratitude? Now I’ll have to buy another one.’

Slaves and servants stare at the ground and try to back away without drawing attention to themselves, but they can’t actually leave while Drummond is speaking so we’re all of us stuck. He’s becoming almost speechless with rage and it’s clear he’s been drinking.

‘Mister McKinnon!’

Drummond is shouting but the overseer is only a few feet away.

‘Yes, Mister Drummond.’

‘I want his head stuck on a spike at the main entrance!’

‘Vicious, evil bastard,’ whispers Rory.

Most slaves believe that the body has to be buried whole for the journey to the afterlife. This is the only way that Drummond can punish a dead person, while also instilling even more terror into the living.

Calum takes my hand and holds it tight.

*?*?*

As we move further into summer, the heat becomes fierce.

Calum’s fair skin is burnt without mercy, despite the large hat he now wears.

I no longer bind my chest but I’ve continued to wear the linen shirt and drawers worn by men in order to protect my own skin and because I refuse to walk around bare-breasted.

No one has commented, which I suspect is due to the fact that I’m considered Drummond’s personal property and nobody else’s.

There’s a rhythm to the plantation, and the cruel beatings, whippings and back-breaking work are a part of that rhythm as much as the bell, loblolly and rats.

So we fight the withes and rodents, dig trenches to plant new canes and cut those that are ready, while the horses and oxen go round and round in the millhouse, unable to leave the madness behind them no matter how far they walk, as the cane juice is squeezed and boiled and cleared in a never-ending process of inhumanity that is beyond understanding or describing and so often beyond endurance.

I don’t see as much of Calum now that I sleep and work with the women and one day early in July I hurry to catch up with him as everyone heads back from the fields. He’s alone, hunched and walking with the air of a condemned man on his way to the gallows.

‘Calum,’ I say upon reaching him. He doesn’t respond, which is so utterly unnatural that I’m momentarily lost for words. ‘Calum?’ He continues walking without acknowledging my presence. In the end I grab his arm and force him to stop.

‘Calum! What’s happened?’

Then I see his face and it’s a face I don’t know. If the Devil himself had visited Calum during the night I wouldn’t have expected him to look more changed. ‘Dear God, what’s happened to you?’

He’s holding back tears of despair, but his expression also shows enormous anger, fear and something else I can’t place.

It’s as if many different conflicting emotions are fighting for dominance of his features and the result is a battlefield of confusion and .

.?. what? Then I realise. Calum is haunted .

He’s so different to the person I know that it frightens me.

‘Never ask.’ There is such pain in his eyes, and his voice. ‘Never ask.’

Without speaking further, he pulls his arm free and walks on, leaving me to stare at his back, overcome with shock and a terrible sense of loneliness and loss.

*?*?*

It’s one evening a couple of weeks later when Calum hunts me out and almost drags me away from everyone else so that we can be alone. We haven’t spoken without others around us since the strange conversation we had when he had changed so dramatically overnight.

‘We have to leave, Violet. We have to get away soon. I can’t stay here any more and neither can you.’

To escape Drummond is what I want so desperately, and although confused by this sudden urgency I readily agree.

‘All right. Whatever the risk, we’ll go together, Calum. I’m done with being good at waiting.’

The next evening we sit with Rory after the evening meal, far enough from anyone else not to be overheard but not so isolated that we appear as if we’ve deliberately sought privacy.

As a woman I’m not supposed to be with the men at this time of day, yet I walk a path in this strange place that has no footprints other than my own.

Everyone knows I’m a woman but I’ve lived as a man and with the men, so no one has ever made a comment when I’ve joined Calum, Alan or the others.

‘You’re thinking of escaping,’ says Rory, after we’ve been sitting for a while in silence.

‘How do you know?’ asks Calum, eyeing the Irishman warily.

‘Christ Almighty, I’ve been here long enough to spot the signs. You want information about the island.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but this puts you in danger.’

‘I’m willing to take the risk, though I’ve got to warn you how little chance there is of success. If you’re caught, the length of your forced indentured servitude is likely to be extended by years.’

‘We don’t even know how long it is now,’ says Calum.

‘Why did you try to get away, Rory?’ I ask.

He hesitates at answering. ‘Something happened. It was pure instinct and stupid beyond belief.’

‘Where can someone escape to on an island?’ says Calum.

‘Unless you can smuggle yourself on board a ship or steal a boat, there’s only one place to consider.

Over the years slaves and servants have made for an area of high ground in the middle of Barbados that’s so inaccessible it’s impossible to grow anything other than the trees that already exist in large numbers. ’

‘Don’t the authorities hunt people?’

‘In the early days they tried, but those who had liberated themselves were so few in number they could easily hide. Now there are so many it would take a small army to capture them and the cost to the plantation owners would be too great. It’s all about investment and return and as recaptured slaves are generally hanged, the whole exercise would be pointless, apart from trying to deter others. ’

‘Yet their freedom gives hope?’

‘It’s a burden that the owners are forced to endure. If you succeed in reaching this territory, then you’ll gain your freedom from the plantation but you’ll be trapped in those woods for the rest of your life.’

Calum and I look at each other.

‘We have to do it .?.?. or die trying,’ he says eventually.