Page 55 of A Fire in Their Hearts

I HAVE A STRANGE, RESTRICTED FREEDOM that feels uncomfortable, fragile and unnatural, not that there’s anything about my life that’s natural.

Hunter and Findlay have no dealings with me, while McKinnon and I are forced to speak daily with a certain civility so that I can record matters relating to sugar production, make a note of what supplies we need to order and inform Drummond of any other items required.

The ability to move around as I wish, at least close to the big house, means that I often join Rory, Thomas and a few of the others for their midday meal.

Rory looks ill these days. I recognise very little of the person who sat with Calum and me that first night of our captivity and advised us on our new lives as indentured servants.

A terrible guilt hangs over me concerning Rory, and I cannot endure it being unacknowledged any longer.

I will speak to him about it at noon, although I dread the conversation.

First, I head to the stone-built millhouse, situated on a small rise in the land so that it sits higher than all of the other outbuildings.

Rory once described the Ingenio inside as a monster, and long before I get there I hear a sound like the grumbling of some fearful beast. In those early months I thought that this frightening noise was what Rory referred to, but I’ve since come to understand what he really meant.

The entire sugar-making process is the monster.

It turns the stalks of a plant into something that delights people throughout Europe, and it gives men who have sometimes come from poor backgrounds the wealth of kings, but if it doesn’t kill the men who work there in an accident, then it certainly shortens their lives.

I’ve tried to identify the cause of the early deaths of the men who work in the boiling-house, beyond the obvious excessive labour and desperate conditions, and I think it’s constantly breathing the obnoxious vapours coming off the copper pans.

Even strong young men seem to weaken and be more susceptible to disease and illness.

When I get to the millhouse, I stop to watch through the large open archway where the animals enter and leave.

Sometimes horses are used but at the moment there are five huge oxen fastened to the sweeps that form part of the Ingenio.

I feel sorry for them. They walk around in a circle for hours at a time, driving the main central shaft which turns a series of smaller brass and steel rollers.

It’s unforgiving, relentless work for men and beasts regardless of the temperature.

Slaves take the sugar canes passed through a hatch from the unloading platform and feed them between the rollers, while slaves on the other side catch them and feed them back through rollers revolving the other way.

The Ingenio is an extraordinary contraption of cogs and wheels, noise and power which has the sole purpose of squeezing juice from the canes.

My attention is caught by a mule as it makes its lonely way towards the platform, carrying the three bundles of cut canes that were fixed to its wooden crook back in the field that’s currently being harvested.

This is my favourite of these animals and when the men have unloaded the bundles it stands contentedly while I rub it behind an ear.

‘You’re like me, aren’t you?’ I say quietly. ‘Desperate for some kindness .?.?. for someone to hold you.’

It stares back with such huge, sad eyes.

On the nearby platform, slaves spread out the canes to quickly examine them, while others push previously checked canes through the hatch and down to those inside.

During the day they need to build up a significant pile on the platform in order to keep the process running throughout the night.

Animals are well cared for across the plantations as they are generally considered more valuable than people.

The mule and I now travel a similar path in life.

Nobody mistreats us and we’re fed and watered well, yet I see the hopelessness in those enormous eyes .

.?. the constant loneliness that is our daily journey.

As if by some silent mutual understanding the mule and I turn away from each other.

I stop to let past one of the girls carrying away an armful of pressed canes.

There are three of them doing this task and they have no more rest than the men or the beasts for the creation of crushed canes is relentless.

I watch for a while as she takes them to a heap that is more than a hundred paces away.

Like the leaves and tops cut off the canes during harvesting this will end up as feed for some of the animals, as the hay that can be produced on the island is too poor to provide any nourishment.

I don’t go to the boiling-house. On the one occasion when I went inside while the slaves were working, I fainted and had to be carried out.

Instead, I enter the quiet and cool of the curing house, the shaded stone building holding row upon row of large clay pots fitted securely within wooden frames, their precious contents silently maturing.

During the summer this is one of the few places where some respite from the fierce heat can be found and I often come in, one of only a handful of people allowed to do so apart from those bringing in newly filled pots or taking away those ready for the next stage.

With nobody knowing where I am this is my moment of power, sitting on the stone floor and remembering the life I used to have.

*?*?*

‘Rory, you don’t look well,’ I say, once we’ve eaten our meal and moved away to be by ourselves.

‘I’m all right.’

‘No, you’re not. You’ve lost a lot of weight in the last few months and you often appear to be struggling. Your cough is getting worse.’

He makes a noncommittal shrug. ‘I guess I’m not a young man any more. The field work is difficult. Hunter can threaten me as much as he wants but it won’t make any difference.’

I have to voice aloud the guilt that is consuming me. ‘You would be a free man next week if it wasn’t for me.’

‘Just one year and four days to go, and I willingly offered my help, Violet. What’s done is done and Joseph paid a much greater price. As to Calum .?.?.’

‘I think about him every day,’ I sigh.

‘Drummond must know what happened.’

‘Of course he does, but he refuses to tell me.’

We fall silent for a while. Eventually it’s Rory who speaks.

‘The day that I escaped .?.?. my wife had died that morning and McKinnon said she hadn’t been useful at anything, so it was just as well she was dead. Something in me snapped. I knocked him out with one punch and ran.’ Rory has to stop speaking until he’s over a fit of coughing.

‘I was such a fool. It was exactly what he wanted me to do because then my servitude could legally be extended. The sentences for specific acts are clearly laid out in Barbados. I got an extra year for attacking him plus three years for running away.’

‘Rory, I’m so sorry. I’ve always felt there was something between you and McKinnon that was personal.’

‘It is personal.’

‘I’m worried that you can’t survive here for another year.’

‘I’ve no choice. Perhaps they’ll give me easier tasks now that I’m no good for working in the fields. I could sit and sharpen billhooks with the elderly men, or make ropes from withes like the women.’

There’s a terrible bitterness in his voice. Unnoticed by either of us, McKinnon approaches.

‘Irish! Good news. The master has freed you.’

Rory and I stare in stunned silence. ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘Just that. As he’s such a compassionate man, he’s decided that you don’t have to work your full term. You’re a free man and should be grateful.’

‘What about my money?’

‘What money?’

‘The money that I should be given upon completion of my indentured servitude.’

‘But you won’t have completed it and Master Drummond feels that being freed a year early is more than equal to whatever you would have been owed.

Anyway, there’s no land left on Barbados for ex-servants to buy, so you can’t set yourself up here.

You’ll be better off taking a ship to somewhere like Jamaica and setting up there. ’

‘I’d have to sell my labour all over again just to make the journey!’

Rory gets up, his face red with anger, and McKinnon steps back while taking hold of his cudgel.

‘Don’t try it, Irish, you’re not the man you were.’

‘That’s why you’re letting me go! You’ve worked me until I’m broken like an old man and no use to you any more.’

I stand up and get between them. McKinnon would beat Rory senseless and enjoy it.

‘Mister McKinnon, thank you for passing on the master’s message. I suggest we meet as usual at the end of the working day and go through the relevant figures.’

‘Yes, let’s do that. Irish, you can stay until tomorrow morning, then you’re out.’

When McKinnon has left, Rory sinks to his knees, tears pouring down his face. The only other time I’ve seen him cry was when he buried my baby.

‘It’s all been for nothing. I’ve lost my wife and friends, my health, and endured these years of utter misery just to end up a vagrant, begging on the streets of Bridgetown, where they’d sooner help a dog than an Irishman.’

For the first time since I arrived on the plantation, I take Rory in my arms. There’s nothing I can say that will make any difference to his despair, for every single word he’s just said is true.

He can’t stay on the plantation and, as I hug him tightly to me, it’s impossible to see where else he can live.

*?*?*

Throughout the afternoon I try to work in the study but it’s impossible to concentrate as I’m so beset by worry and a sense that something terrible is going to occur.

When I hear the bell ring to indicate six o’clock I quickly replace the various ledgers, papers and writing implements, determined to find my friend and try to come up with some sort of a plan for his future.

The cook delays me as I go along the corridor and by the time I get outside, I can see in the distance people coming back in small groups from the fields.

I walk towards them in search of Rory. Ahead of me is the barn and as people reach it they stop to stare through the large open doorway. Everyone is stopping.

Everyone.

Then I’m running .?.?. running and screaming because I know what they’re looking at. This time it’s not a slave. Thomas is amongst the crowd and he hurries forward, catching me firmly in his arms.

‘No, Violet, no!’

‘Let me go!’

‘Rory wouldn’t want you to see this. He wouldn’t want this to be your last image of him. Please, Violet. Please don’t.’

I sink to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably. Thomas gets down on the ground and holds me tightly.

‘It’s my fault, my fault he had the extra year that broke him. My fault. I’m sorry, Rory .?.?. I’m sorry .?.?. I’m sorry.’

‘Shhh. Rory never blamed you for what Drummond did to him. It was his decision to help you, Calum and Joseph to escape. He knew the risks.’

‘Now he’s dead.’

‘And that was his decision as well. You once said that as the Crown of London was breaking up on those Orkney rocks you told Samuel it had been your decision to disguise yourself as a man in order to remain with him, and there were no regrets, even though it was expected everyone in the ship’s hold would drown. ’

It’s only hours ago that I knelt on the ground and held Rory exactly as Thomas holds me.

‘All the people I’ve ever loved are dead or lost,’ I cry.

‘Yes, but you’re not, Violet, so you must continue.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’

‘Because there is no option other than to swing in the barn and I don’t believe that’s your destiny. Neither do you, Violet, neither do you.’