Page 118 of Dawnlands

Decisively, Caskwadadas shook her head. “Not three of us. Not without money.”

“Then how?”

Slowly, as if she hardly dared to dream of escape, she whispered: “There are caves.”

Rowan felt excitement, deep in her belly. “Caves?”

“There are caves, not far from here, many caves interlinked, very deep, and the white men don’t go in them. Some of them are high up in the cliffs of the deep creek—not the one nearby, the big one farther down. Our little river flows into it.”

“In the forest?” Rowan asked. The floor of the creeks was impenetrable, with great trees that thrust upwards, tangled with creepers blocking out the sun. The tropical birds screamed from the trees at sunrise, the animals and insects, the life of the forest buzzed and rustled and hummed as if the plantations had not made a desert of green to the very brink of every cliff top, as if the white man had never come to destroy Barbados. Rowan had gone no farther than the little creek that cut through the Peabody fields, but she had seen others: on the way from Bridge they had arduously crossed two river valleys, down one side, across the river, and slowly climbing up the other. They were too steep for horses or even mules—the road to Bridge ran around the deep creeks and central hills.

“The forest,” Caskwadadas added. “Have you been there?”

“Only to the edge of our creek by the fields. Does it join with the others?”

“I think they all flow into another and then to the sea.”

“They’re all clean water? And we could hunt? And forage?”

“It won’t be like home,” Caskwadadas warned. “I don’t think there are any deer. And the white men have eaten all the wild hogs.”

“There’s fish in the ocean and turtles and crabs and shellfish,” Rowan said. “We won’t starve.”

The two women fell silent, watching each other.

“He’ll die here,” Caskwadadas said flatly. “The black men die of overwork, and they are stronger and taller than my son will ever be. He will not survive one harvest, not two.”

“Have you seen the caves?” Rowan demanded. “We have to be sure we won’t be found.”

“I’ve never seen them. We walked here in chains and we went up and down through a little creek. I saw how thick it was then, how wild, and that was just a little creek, not deep. The white men don’t go into the big creeks at all, they can’t get through the jungle, there are no paths for them. But I’ve heard people talk of them. They say you can hide there. They say people have run away and hidden there.”

“We could go,” Rowan said.

“If we even try to go we can never come back,” Caskwadadas warned. “If they recapture us, they’ll beat us till the skin is flayed from our backs and maybe brand us. Or maybe take off our toes so we can’t run away again. They might rape me so I’m with child and can’t go. And if they discover that you’re not a white man, they’ll rape you and then kill you. We go once, and we never come back. We die before they bring us back.”

Rowan nodded at the brutal truth. There was no law against a white man killing a slave. Any one of the legal punishments would be fatal for a slight twelve-year-old boy. His mother would kill him herself, rather than return him to slavery. Rowan gritted her teeth in a grimace. “I don’t know what we should do,” she confessed.

Caskwadadas watched the younger woman, wondering if her spirit was broken, as so many had been broken. “Be brave,” she whispered. “Be brave,Squi minneash sookenon. And I will be brave too. I shall not be Kitonckquêi: a dead woman. I shall come back to life. And I shall save my son.”

“I’m one of the People,” Rowan agreed. “I was brave from birth. The white men have taught me nothing but defiance.” She nodded. “I hate this life. I would rather die trying to escape than live here forever.”

“Of course.” Caskwadadas smiled for the first time—a smile like a sunrise. “That’s why we cannot be enslaved. That’s why slavery willend, someday, for all of us. No one, whatever their color, deserves a master. We all long to be free.”

“I’ll find the caves,” Rowan promised. “I’ll get out somehow to find them and see if they’re safe.”

“Quickly,” Caskwadadas told her. “Go as soon as you can.”

FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1686

Daily, Ned was stronger, walked farther, and talked more clearly. The arrival of Matthew, Gabrielle, and Mia was a huge spur to his recovery as they chattered constantly and asked him a dozen questions a day about what life had been like on the tidelands in the old days.

“I reckon they think we were here with the Saxons,” Ned remarked to Alinor. “Mia asked me what king was on the throne when I was born, and was it Elizabeth?”

Alinor gurgled with laughter. “They’re very tactful with me. They think I live in a world of faeries and mermaids, and they don’t want to spoil it for me.”

Ned chuckled. “They asked me if you had once had a love, a great love, like from a fairy story.”

“What did you tell them?”