Page 132 of Dawnlands

“You’re quite sure?”

Mr. Peabody had drifted off; he came to with a jolt. “Sure? That he’s dead? Oh yes. If he didn’t break his neck in a fall or die of heatstroke, he couldn’t live here. Nothing but cane! Nothing to eat!”

“You’ve made a desert,” Johnnie said. “And filled it with enemies.”

“Ha! Ha! Y’know that’s very true. Yes, we have.”

FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, SPRING 1687

Ned and Alinor, returning to the tidelands for the second summer, saw the little terns settling on their nests of pebbles, hovering over the waters, and welcomed the first swallows swooping in and out of the Priory stables where they had nested for generations. They walked through the herb garden, and Ned laughed as Alinor threatened him with comfrey soup.

“No, I’m well,” he told her. “I swear I don’t need it. You’ve made me well again.”

She smiled. “It was your own stubbornness. I prayed for you and fed you, but it was you that grabbed the side of the bed and heaved yourself up, and took another step every day.”

He had a lopsided smile now. “I’m well enough to take ship,” he told her.

“Back to New England?”

He shook his head. “Barbados.”

He saw her hesitate. “What is it?” he said flatly. “Tell me! Has he found her?”

She hesitated. “Sit down.”

“If it’s bad news, tell me now!”

She pressed him into the seat at the end of the path.

“Tell me quickly, Alinor, is she dead?”

“I am afraid so. I am sorry, my dear.” The shock on his face was too much for her. She stood behind the seat so she should not see his facetwisted with pain. She rested her hand on his rigid shoulder. “I am so sorry, Ned. I only had the letter from Alys this morning.”

“I can bear it,” he said tightly. “Sit beside me. What did he say? Exactly?”

“That he went to the plantation where she was working and they said she’d gone out looking for a stray dog and met with an accident. Her owner offered a reward for the musket she was carrying but nobody came forward, and they haven’t found it, though they searched the slaves’ huts.”

“D’you have the letter?”

She produced it from the pocket of her cape, and he looked through it. Johnnie was ordering more goods for his Bridgetown warehouse, especially light goods that were easy to ship. Fabrics and ribbons and lace. Pins and needles, embroidery scissors and silks. At the end of the order, he wrote of the loss of Rowan.

“So they didn’t look for her. Sounds like her owner just asked at his neighbors, and Johnnie just asked him.”

“I’m sorry, Ned, I think that she’s gone.”

“Do you?” he demanded, returning the letter to her as if it were valueless to him. “D’you really think so? D’you feel her death, Sister? In your heart?”

She was still for a moment, her gray eyes hazy and unseeing, as if she were listening for a silent call.

“Last midsummer, we were here,” he pressed. “On Midsummer Eve. You’ll have gone to the churchyard? You’ll have waited and watched at midnight, to see those that would die this year. Did you see her then?”

She shook her head. “No one came, thank God, though I was looking for your spirit as you were so sick, and for—” She broke off; she would not tell her brother that James Avery thought his heart was broken. “And for another. But no one came. Not you, not him, and not Rowan.”

“I won’t believe it till her body’s found,” he decided. “Alinor, this isn’t a girl who tumbles off a cliff looking for a dog, she wouldn’t drown in a lake trying to rescue it. It’s my belief she’s run away, and she’s living wild somewhere.”

“Johnnie says there’s nowhere for slaves to run, the whole island is given over to sugarcane.”

“I’ve seen her hide on the shadow of a rope,” he said, his eyes warm. “In Amsterdam, I once saw her disappear in the corner of a room. I don’t believe she’s dead. She’ll be in hiding somewhere. I’m going to her.”