“Is everyone aboard?” Jamie asked, stepping off the gangplank. There was a light breeze; it fluttered the dark blue ribbon that tied back the thick tail of his hair.
“Aye, sir,” said Mr. Warren, with the casual jerk of the head that passed for a salute in a merchant ship. “Shall we make sail?”
“We shall, if ye please. Thank ye, Mr. Warren.” With a small bow, Jamie passed him and came to stand beside me.
“No,” he said quietly. His face was calm, but I could feel the depths of his disappointment. Interviews the day before with the two men who dealt in white indentured labor at the slave market had provided no useful information—the Masonic planter had been a beacon of last-minute hope.
There wasn’t anything helpful to be said. I put my hand over his where it lay on the rail, and squeezed lightly. Jamie looked down and gave me a faint smile. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders, shrugging to settle his coat over them.
“Aye, well. I’ve learned something, at least. That was a Mr. Villiers, who owns a large sugar plantation here. He bought six slaves from the captain of the ship
“Three days?” I was startled. “But—the
He nodded, rubbing his cheek. He had shaved, a necessity before making public inquiries, and his skin glowed fresh and ruddy above the snowy linen of his stock.
“She did. And she arrived here on Wednesday—five days ago.”
“So she’d been somewhere else, before coming to Barbados! Do we know where?”
He shook his head.
“Villiers didna ken. He said he had spoken some time wi’ the captain of the
“Still”—he brightened slightly—“Villiers did show me the papers for the slaves he’d bought. Ye’ll have seen those for your slave?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” I said. “But yes. Were the ones you saw the same?”
“Not quite. Three o’ the papers gave no previous owner—though Villiers says they were none of them fresh from Africa; all of them have a few words of English, at least. One listed a previous owner, but the name had been scratched out; I couldna read it. The other two gave a Mrs. Abernathy of Rose Hall, Jamaica, as the previous owner.”
“Jamaica? How far—”
“I dinna ken,” he interrupted. “But Mr. Warren will know. It may be right. In any case, I think we must go to Jamaica next—if only to dispose of our cargo before we all die o’ disgust.” He wrinkled his long nose fastidiously and I laughed.
“You look like an anteater when you do that,” I told him.
The attempt to distract him was successful; the wide mouth curved upward slightly.
“Oh, aye? There’s a beastie eats ants, is there?” He did his best to respond to the teasing, turning his back on the Barbados docks. He leaned against the rail and smiled down at me. “I shouldna think they’d be verra filling.”
“I suppose it must eat a lot of them. They can’t be any worse than haggis, after all.” I took a breath before going on, and let it out quickly, coughing. “God, what’s that?”
The
I pressed my handkerchief hard over my nose and mouth. “What is it?”
“We’re passing the burning ground, mum, at the foot o’ the slave market,” Maitland explained, overhearing my question. He pointed toward the shore, where a plume of white smoke rose from behind a screen of bayberry bushes. “They burn the bodies of the slaves who don’t survive their passage from Africa,” he explained. “First they unload the living cargo, and then, as the ship is swabbed out, the bodies are removed and thrown onto the pyre here, to prevent sickness spreading into the town.”
I looked at Jamie, and found the same fear in his face that showed in my own.
“How often do they burn bodies?” I asked. “Every day?”
“Don’t know, mum, but I don’t think so. Maybe once a week?” Maitland shrugged and went on about his duties.
“We have to look,” I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, calm and clear. I didn’t feel that way.
Jamie had gone very pale. He had turned round again, and his eyes were fixed on the plume of smoke, rising thick and white from behind the palm trees.
His lips pressed tight, then, and his jaw set hard.
“Aye,” was all he said, and turned to tell Mr. Warren to put about.
