Page 127 of Dawnlands

“But you must stay as long as you like, and you can safely leave Hester here with her grandmother.” Livia waved vaguely at the garden and the woods beyond the drive. “She will like it, I am sure.”

“We will,” Julia said. “Hester is very fond of nature.”

“And I will visit you in London,” Livia promised her.

“Please do—you have our address?”

“Matthew can bring me.”

“Oh yes! Do come with Matthew,” Julia urged her. “The dear children…”

The carriage door was open. “Hired,” Livia said darkly. “Sir James has our own carriage in Yorkshire. I so rarely need one, living in the palace.”

“We are going to set up our own carriage. I keep asking…”

Alinor came down the stairs, in a dark navy dress, leaning on Gabrielle’s arm, as Matthew came through the garden door with Hester and Mia to say good-bye to his mother.

“Be a good host to your foster family!” Livia told him. “We must repay them for all the kindness they have shown you in the past. Now kiss me good-bye.”

Warily, Matthew approached his mother and bent his head so she could kiss him on the forehead. She kept hold of his arm, so he led her to the carriage. “Good-bye,” she said, climbing the steps. Her dark assessing gaze swept over Alinor and Julia, and the three dazzled girls. She kissed Matthew again, on both his cheeks. “Such a pleasure!” she said gaily. “I am so sorry to leave.”

The footman put up the steps and Matthew closed the door of the coach. The Nobildonna dropped the glass of the window to wave to them. As if under a spell, they all smiled and waved back, until the carriage had gone down the drive, around the slow curve to the gates, and was out of sight.

DEEP CAVE, BARBADOS, AUTUMN 1686

With meticulous care, never leaving so much as a footprint or a bent twig to show their passing, Caskwadadas, Rowan, and Wómpatuck hunted, gathered, fished, and trapped, going to and from the springwater cave at dawn and dusk every day, sleeping through the day with one of them on watch, coming out in the darkness of night when they puzzled over the mixture of stars: those they knew, and those that sat on the horizon and were strange to them. Occasionally, they heard a gang of slaves carrying casks of sugar up and down the arduous paths, farther down the creek, at one of the flatter parts where the assingoes could trace a winding path down the slope, and the slaves could creep over the rocks on sore feet. No one ever came to their part of the creek where the steep cliffs made passing impossible, and the thick jungle hid them from the fields above.

Both the spring water cave and the quicksand cave emerged in the cliff face on stone, and so it was easy to leave no marks at the entrance. If the planters had hunted with dogs, they might have tracked them; but there were no foxhounds or staghounds or even bloodhounds on Barbados, and the gang which went out after runaway slaves with their half-wild dogs worked out of Bridge and never came near the creeks. The English were afraid of the wild, and so convinced that the heart of the island was an impenetrable jungle, crowded with strange trees with poisonous fruit, that they left it alone.

There was much that was familiar to the little family. They gathered pitch pine to make torches for light inside the cave, just as they would at home. They ate fruit that grew wild in the forest: cherry, soursop, papaya, prickly pear, and golden apple. They dug the roots of the cassava, crushed and drained and dried it to make pone. They caught land crabs, and fish in the river, and netted doves, they ate nuts and roots, and big cockroaches, and broke into the big colonies of ants for food. Within weeks Wómpatuck had filled out and was stronger, his skin glowing, his hair glossy, and his mother and Rowan were thriving.

In the daytime they stayed in the shelter of the cave. They used the time to slowly penetrate the cave system, to discover the galleries leading from one cave to another, roped up with vines from the weeping fig trees, their way illuminated by the flickering light of candlewood.They found their way through the rock to the quicksand cave, and beyond it to more caves. They laid a bridge of canes and palms across the quicksand to get across, and then they sank rocks as stepping-stones, in a random pattern that lay invisible under the water, to make a hidden path that only the three of them knew.

“If we are ever raided,” Rowan said, “we go across the quicksand to the caves beyond, and nobody could follow us.”

They went past the quicksand, deeper into the caves, paddling down a river which dropped out in a waterfall from a seashore cliff into the sea, and they climbed down the cliffs to gather seagull eggs, down to the sands to catch a turtle.

They did not fear the cold in this forest. “There’s no winter here,” Caskwadadas told Rowan. “Sometimes it rains a lot, and sometimes there is a terrible wind. But there is never snow. We’ll never wear fur here.”

“Wómpatuck is named for a snow goose, but will never see snow?” Rowan asked. “That can’t be.”

“We can’t stay here forever. Wómpatuck has to be aPinese, he has to become a man. He has to take his first deer, he has to run with the wolves and taste the snow.”

“I know,” Rowan said, looking at the boy. “I don’t forget.”

BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS, AUTUMN 1686

Johnnie had expected his arrival in Barbados to be busy; but the town of Bridge was a roar of confusion. The arrival of a ship from England was an occasion for anyone hoping for letters or a payment from home to crowd down to the stone harbor and drink in the many tippling houses and gentlemen’s clubs while waiting for the ship. By the timethe ship had anchored and the passengers and goods had been ferried by smaller boats to the quay, there were riotous arguments and fights, and a drunken welcome on the quayside.

Johnnie felt very alone amid the bustle and noise. He saw his trade goods safely into a locked warehouse, paid the duty to the harbor officials, and accepted the captain’s advice on the best hotel. A slave boy from the boardinghouse carried his bag and led the way, and Johnnie followed him along the cobbled quay, his hat pulled down to shade his eyes from the glare that bounced off the painted walls of the warehouses. He was overwhelmed by the stink of the salt-water swamp that lapped around the bridge crossing the river, and he had to hide his horror at the sight of mutilated slaves, who limped after him offering to carry his goods, or begging for charity.

To his surprise, the inn was a replica of a London boardinghouse, complete with a host swathed in a green apron in the taproom, and his wife, who showed Johnnie to a small clean room. “One of our best rooms,” she said. “And you can take it for yourself alone. You don’t have to share.”

“Thank you,” Johnnie said.

“Paying in silver or sugar or note?” she asked.

“Silver—I have no sugar.”