Mistress of Darkness (21 page)

He reined as he approached the road, and saw the trap. It contained a single figure, in a rose-coloured gown with an enormous white hat. And this day, as it was Sunday, she had come straight from church; as this day, it being Sunday, he had supposed it safe to leave the house while they were at service, and make his way to the beach.

A touch of his heels, and the horse approached the trap. 'Am I spied upon all the time?'

'Are you angry, all the time?'

'No doubt I am,' he agreed.

She smiled; she possessed an utterly entrancing smile, which raced away from her mouth, spreading to the dimples in her cheeks, expanding her nostrils, reaching up to send slivers of light into her normally cool eyes. Perhaps she did not need to laugh.

'Then I too must be honest. Of course you are spied upon, all the time. Can you imagine what Robert would say were we to let you escape us?' She patted the seat beside her. 'Would you like to drive? Caesar becomes awfully hard on my arms.'

Matt hesitated, then dismounted, and tethered his horse to the back of the vehicle. 'And where is Dirk?'

A faint shrug. 'Taking a glass of punch with Meinheer Schotter.'

'As usual.' He climbed up to sit beside her, inhaled the musk of her perfume.

'As usual,' she said gravely.

She was studying him, and it was impossible to decide the expression in her eyes, the thought in her brain. Except that no doubt she was amused at his feeble squirmings, his indecisive actions, his inability to do more than flutter his wings, like a trapped butterfly. But perhaps, if she could hurt him by her very presence, he could retaliate.

'It seems to me,' he remarked, 'that the only time you really see you husband is in your bed. Or do you see him even then?'

'You were going to drive me home,' she suggested, and waited for him to flick the whip. 'I imagine he finds me dull.'

'There is a remarkable thought.'

Again the faint shrug. 'I do not like to drink myself insensible. I am unable to reminisce sadly or happily about Holland. And I am an unlucky, as well as an incompetent, card player. The fault is obviously mine; by now no doubt I should have been totally preoccupied with the business of motherhood.'

Was she baiting him? The road debouched from the cliff path and the town was below them. 'So then, are you also totally dull in bed?'

This time he did succeed in inducing a faint flush. Yet she would still not take offence. 'In his letter, Robert suggested that part of your problem was a complete ignorance on that subject.'

'Oh, indeed,' he agreed. 'Which makes me, in Robert's eyes, at the least, a totally dull fellow.' He smiled at her. 'We share then, our dullness, Sue.'

She pointed, at the heavy black cloud chasing them down the hillside. 'You'd best hurry. I'd not like this gown to get wet.'

He whipped the horses into a trot, and they scattered gravel as they charged up the drive. The yardboy waited for the reins and Suzanne got down by herself, ran up the stairs as the first drop of rain began to fall. 'My congratulations, sir.'

He took off his hat, threw it on the chair. The midday rain was almost the principal event of his day; it not only cooled the air, it blanketed the senses, in its dull, rhythmical pattern of sound.

Suzanne frowned at his silence, and then smiled at Augustus. 'We shall dine now, Augustus. The master will be staying at Meinheer Schotter's.'

He sat, as ever, on her right hand; they ate boiled fish, with eddoes and yams, and drank sangaree, red wine to which brandy and various fruits had been added, and finished their meal with halved sapodillas. West Indian meals had less than half the content and thus consumed less than half the time, of an English dinner, but this was not merely because delicacies were in short supply; the appetite itself was not so demanding in the unending heat, while strong liquor in the morning was liable to render a man totally unfit for business for the rest of the day.

As indeed were even a few goblets of sangaree. He stretched, and yawned. They had not spoken at all; the rain drummed on the roof, and on the ground outside, with a deafening consistency. 'I had hoped for a letter from Jamaica,' Suzanne said, half to herself. 'But there has been no wind for days.' She smiled at him. 'We must be patient. All life is a matter of being patient.'

He got up, held her chair for her. 'Until it becomes a matter of waiting for death.'

'Sombre words, for a lad of twenty, who will soon be twenty-one. I imagine, when you attain your majority,

Robert will be content to allow you to go your own way. Providing of course you reveal some sense by then.'

She was already on her way up the stairs. He followed, gazing at her shoes. 'Perhaps, when I achieve my majority, I shall no longer be prepared to be afraid of Robert. It puzzles me why you and Dirk should be. What power can he possess over you?'

She waited for him on the landing. 'I merely suppose him to be acting in your best interests, Matt. Given time, you also will come to that conclusion, I have no doubt. If you do not propose to at all, why wait until you are twenty one.'

'I am endeavouring not to.'

'And we are endeavouring to save you from yourself.' She opened her bedroom door, turned her head to look at him. 'I would like to think you will eventually come to your senses.'

'I love the girl, Sue. Perhaps you have no concept of that. Perhaps you have never been allowed to love. You'll not pretend you can love Dirk.'

Now at last he had penetrated her reserve; she flushed. But would not speak.

'If you did love him,' Matt said, 'you'd have become that mother, of which you spoke.' Now why, he wondered. Why pursue the matter? Why keep her standing here, embarrassing her, and surely, in time, angering her. Except that he had never seen Sue angry. He could not envisage the possibility.

'Love has nothing to do with childbirth,' she said, and surprisingly, her colour had faded. 'As you point out, Matt, he lies on my belly as he chooses, and would do so whether I was bound hand and foot, did the mood take him. The fault lies either in him or in me.'

And still she waited, where she might have ended the conversation and closed the door. And still the rain drummed on the roof, immediately above their heads now, enclosing them in a cocoon of sound from which the servants and the rest of the house were excluded. Save that they could be overlooked from the bottom of the stairs. And still he did not know why he also waited. But, oh yes, he knew, without knowing whether he really wished it, whether he would know how to go about it, whether he dare contemplate the consequences.

'But you do not love him,' he insisted, with the inanity of youth.

Her face seemed to close. 'Dirk is my husband, to whom I swore certain oaths, Matt. Now I would retire.'

The door started to close. But she
had
waited, for a while. To see what he intended? Or if he intended?

She looked down at his foot, blocking the entrance. Had she been Georgiana, now, he thought, there was no problem. But had she been Georgiana, the problem would not have arisen. And yet, she was Georgiana's sister. She raised her head, and the pink was again gathering in her cheeks.

'I lie there,' he said. 'Every night. And listen. I can do nothing else.'

'And dream of the coloured girl?' Her voice was so soft he hardly heard the words.

'In the beginning. Now ...' he sighed. 'Perhaps dreams need some physical substance on which to exist.'

Her gaze was the steadiest he had ever known, seeming to be penetrating his skull, to be reaching down to his very heart. 'And no doubt they will feed upon that which is nearest.'

'I do not know,' he said. 'I ...' slowly he extended his hand, touched her cheek, allowed it to rest on her shoulder. 'As Robert truly says, I know so little, of these matters. I only know that I have two reasons for wishing to escape this place.'

She did not even seem to blink. But she stepped backwards, and he went with her, and the door swung quietly to behind his back. He had only been in here once before. It was the largest of the bedrooms, and contained a great deal of the comfortable, functional furniture which was the mark of this house. But he was aware only of the giant fourposter, close behind her.

'But if you do not leave me now,' she said, 'you must stay. Forever, Matt. I am not to satisfy an idle urge. I had not even supposed that I would ever be an adulteress. If you encourage me to such crime, you must share my guilt forever.' She gazed at him, her mouth slightly parted. And then she closed her own fingers round his wrist, lifted his hand from her shoulder, and rested it on her breast. 'But I, too, have dreamed.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SLAVE

W
ITH
a tumultuous roar which sent a cloud of rust scattering across the pale green of the water, the
Antelope's
anchor plunged to the bottom of the shallow bay; a moment later the ship once more came to rest. After six weeks, Gislanc thought. The stillness seemed uncanny. But immediately a boat was despatched for the shore, to inform the authorities of the cargo.

She stood on the poop deck and watched the Negroes being brought up from below. They chattered amongst themselves in sudden high good humour, the horrors of the voyage forgotten at this fresh proof that they were not, after all, doomed to sail across an endless ocean until the last one of them had died of heat and starvation. But indeed their spirits had begun to rise two days ago, when the mountain tops of Dominica had been followed by the cloud of Guadeloupe and then the clustering peaks of the British Leewards. She had gazed at the distant shores of Antigua last evening; there the Hiltons and the Warners had come to greatness, just as the next island on the horizon, visible only as the enormous skyward-pointing lava finger of Mount Misery, had been St. Kitts, site of the original Warner settlement, a century and a half in the past. She had wondered then why she did not throw herself over the side, and swim and swim and swim. And drown and drown and drown, even were she not eaten by sharks.

'Well glory be to that,' Runner remarked. ‘I feel I can breathe.' For in the last two days they had twice altered course to avoid suspicious-looking sails which might have been French men-of-war or Yankee privateers. 'I've a mind

to unload the entire cargo here, if I can find a buyer, rather than risk the passage to Jamaica. You'll dress yourself, girl.'

Gislane watched the slaves, clustering the deck, guarded by a party of armed sailors. It was simple enough to identify Dinshad, even had he not turned his head to find her. 'And why do you not take me with you to Kingston, Runner?' she asked. 'I will guarantee you twice as much as you were already paid, as your reward from the Hiltons.'

Runner grinned at her. 'You're an innocent child, Gislane, and that's a fact. The Hiltons won't be rescuing you, girl. And even if they would, I told you, I must trade in these parts again. So I'll keep my part of the bargain. Now get yourself dressed.'

He had already made her stand beneath the hose with the blacks; the drying salt clung to her flesh with constant irritation. Now she abandoned her shift altogether, wore only her petticoat and gown, and felt positively uncomfortable to be restrained by clothes after so many months. And what else did she feel? Why, nothing at all. It was merely a matter of waiting; she had not expected Runner to be persuaded to carry her on to Jamaica. So, there was James Hodge to be anticipated. She remembered him only vaguely, could recall neither his features nor his voice. But he was undoubtedly a man, who would wish exactly the things Runner and Penny had wished. And she knew by now how to accommodate such men; she merely needed to lie on her back with her legs apart. Then he would not hurt her, and then she could prepare her escape. Jamaica might be a long and dangerous two days distant, but Antigua remained hull down on the eastern horizon, and St. Kitts was scarce five miles away.

Survival; there was the key. She even combed her hair with her fingers; it remained soaked and stiff from its wash. And regretted the absence of her bonnet. It must have fallen off during that terrible journey from London to Bristol, and she had thought nothing of it, until now.

Runner appeared in the companionway. 'We're in luck,' he said. 'Penny's back, with news that Hodge is in town. And most other planters too. They must have come running when they heard we was dropping anchor. I'll get rid of you now, and advertise my wares a little.'

Gislane gave him a curtsey; she was almost light-hearted at the prospect of leaving this hellship. 'And will I please my new master, Mr. Runner?'

The captain winked at her. 'Oh, aye, you'll do that all right, me darling. Come on, now.'

She went on deck. Still the blacks waited, a huge mass in the waist of the ship. And still Dinshad stared at her. She wanted to wave, but dared not. She would doubtless not see him again. And they had touched each other but once, her head against his chest. Yet they had communicated more than their names. They had allowed their thoughts to mingle, and if she sought freedom, no less did he. But he was too clearly a slave, and freedom for Dinshad must lie at the end of a rope. There was a disheartening thought.

And for Gislane Nicholson? Or should she now once again call herself Gislane Hodge?

She went down the rope ladder, swaying against the side of the ship, Runner close above her. She sat in the transom of the boat as it pulled for the shore, gazed at the island where she had been born. Nevis was unforgettable, hardly more than a huge mountain rising steeply from the sea for a height of nearly four thousand feet. Charleston huddled at the foot of this immense extinct volcano, in the shelter of the only bay the island boasted, and the plantations, limited to occasional valleys in the steep mountainside, had never the opportunity to grow to the size of those in St. Kitts and Antigua, much less compare with Jamaica or the vast French holdings in St. Domingue, the half of the island of Hispaniola the buccaneers had appropriated from Spain.