Forty Six
North Carolina
Blood loss was the major cause of death after childbirth. Tiola knew it only too well. In the right way of things, after the birth and expulsion of the placenta the uterus contracted until it was hard, like a ball. If it did not, the empty womb would be as an open wound with a flowing blood supply and nothing to stop the bleeding. The reduction of the uterus stopped the blood flow, but if it relaxed, failed to harden, there was no compression to the wound site and the mother haemorrhaged. And went on haemorrhaging until she bled to death.
Tiola padded Elizabeth-Anne with towels, but no sooner was the blood mopped up than more soaked through. As it clotted it looked like lumps of raw liver had been dumped on the bed. Tiola was covered in it, her hands, her gown, her face. Her hair. She looked like something out of a macabre theatre play, but she was not able to clean herself, not even to wipe her hands, for she was racing against time, and against Death.
She could see its pitiless shadow in the corner of the room, waiting. She was not afraid of Death – Death was benign, not evil or cruel, for every living thing had to die and move on to the next existence. It was the manner of its summons that brought the pain: the corruption of hatred that committed murder; the brutal unexpectedness of natural disasters, fire, flood, famine. And the waste of a woman dying in childbed.
No mother having gone through labour deserved to die in this way, so Tiola battled to keep her in the world of the living. She had the right to enjoy her son, and he to have a mother to love him. Too many good people had died; Tiola was not going to allow it to happen to another.
Elizabeth-Anne was conscious, Tiola had laid her flat, raised her legs, told Nicholas to hold her hand, talk to her. Keep talking to her. There had been nothing to feel inside Elizabeth-Anne, no hardening lump, only a wet, sticky mass as if Tiola was plunging her arm into a morass of mud. That at least told her the problem and she knew how to deal with it – if only she had time!
She had her hand on Elizabeth-Anne’s abdomen and was pushing it in and down, rubbing in a circular motion, hard and firm. At first it had seemed as if nothing was happening. Elizabeth-Anne was pale and faint, her body trembling and so cold, but Tiola kept rubbing, around and around and around; pressing hard, pressing firm, on and on, around and around. The bleeding continued, seeping out of the mother’s womb as if someone were wielding a pump. When Tiola pushed hard, over to the left, the blood streamed faster. She was the one operating the pump handle! Push down, blood squirted. Push down, more blood. But Tiola kept on with her hand regardless, working to stimulate the uterus to contract. Elizabeth-Anne was moaning piteously for the motion was painful, but there was nothing Tiola could do about that, except rub and rub and rub, hard and strong.
“Am I going to lose her?” Tears were streaming from Nicholas’s eyes. The baby was crying in his cot, abandoned and forgotten for the moment. The serving girl, as useless as before, stood by the door, her hand stuffed in her mouth, weeping.
And there it was! A small hard lump, the size of a shilling piece forming beneath Tiola’s pressing hand. She kept rubbing, could not stop. If she did, the uterus would relax again and all this effort would be wasted. “No,” she said to Nicholas, panting as she rubbed and pushed. “I am not going to lose her. I am not.”
The hard lump became the size of a guinea piece, was expanding, but still she kept on. The bleeding had eased, but she would have to continue for a while yet. She wiped her arm across her face, smearing more blood. Her arms were aching, her fingers stiff and she looked as if she had butchered a pig.
“Nicholas, put your hand here, do as I have been doing. Yes, press down, rub in circles.”
“But it hurts her!”
“It will hurt more if the bleeding starts again.”
Tiola lifted the crying baby, hushed him and roused his mother. If Elizabeth-Anne could feed him the flow of breast milk would help to seal the bleeding. The poor woman barely knew what she was doing, but Tiola held the child and guided his tiny mouth onto the nipple. Once he was sucking she called Nicholas to come, help his wife and child, and she took over the rubbing.
She was exhausted, her energy drained by the need to remain outwardly calm and in control while the fear and panic shot about inside her. Tiola was almost asleep, her eyelids were drooping, her hand working automatically. All she wanted was her bed…but she kept rubbing, pressing downward, going around and around. Nicholas helped his wife move the child to the other breast, a small whimper escaping the boy’s milky mouth as he protested.
“He will be a boy to be proud of,” Tiola remarked, “though I wager he will lead you a merry dance as he grows.”
And then she felt the lump reach the size of a man’s clenched fist and all the tiredness, the fatigue, the feelings of hopelessness fled. The bleeding had stopped. The womb was contracting, and when she looked into the corner of the room, Death courteously acknowledged her victory, and was gone. The relief was overwhelming. Tiola closed her eyes and made no attempt to wipe away the tears that trickled from beneath her lashes. But when she opened them again, she caught a movement in that same corner. Another shadow: one that was not neutral or benign. The squatting presence of the Dark.
Anger, the aftermath of anxiety, replenished Tiola’s flagging energy. She stretched out her arm, fingers splayed, and sent a flare of light scudding after the Malevolence, sending its unwanted presence and sniggering spite away.
As dusk settled, Tiola crawled into her bed; the blood had been washed away but her body ached with weariness. Elizabeth-Anne was safe in the care of her husband, and the newborn slept, contented. The Malevolence had gone.
~
Jesamiah
? ~
He answered her call immediately. ~
Sweetheart? You sound tired
. ~
~
I am. I nearly lost her. After all this, I nearly lost Elizabeth-Anne
. ~ She felt Jesamiah’s presence, the feel of his arms, his body pressing close. His breath, his smell.
~
But you didn’t? She is safe and well
? ~
~
Ais, mother and son are asleep
. ~
~
And so should be the midwife. Go to sleep, sweetheart. I love you
. ~
She was drifting, may have slept a minute or two. ~
Jesamiah
? ~
~
I’m still here
. ~
~
But where is here? I am afraid. The Dark is near you, I can sense it
. ~
~
I’m fine. Go to sleep. I’m where I like to be. At sea. Go to sleep
. ~
Drowsy, Tiola did not realise what he had said, did not understand his meaning. She slept, but it was a troubled sleep. She dreamed of blood. Covering her hands and soaking into her clothing. Blood seeping into the deck as Jesamiah lay dead on a ship that was not the
Sea Witch
. This was a smaller craft with torn and battered rigging that moaned in the desolate wind of the open marshes. And throughout the dream came the black presence of the Dark.
She awoke, screaming Jesamiah’s name. Screaming that Edward Teach could not be killed. Like her, his immortality was protected, except, his protection came from the hatreds and evils of the Dark.
Teach could not be killed until the Malevolence was sent from him. And no living human could do that, only an Old One of Wisdom. But Jesamiah did not know it. He was going to kill Edward Teach, Blackbeard, but had no knowledge that Teach could not be killed!
Forty Seven
Tuesday 19th November
Charles Mereno was having doubts. What if Phillipe had not been Teach’s child; had been sired by Carlos after all? Would it have made a difference? Possibly. Would it alter what he had to do now? No.
He ought to have been truthful to the Witch Woman, for she had been kind and had helped as much as she could. But then, she was under the impression that all he wanted was to explain; make amends. He had deliberately misled her. She would not have helped had she known his ultimate intention.
This ritual, this cleansing – whatever name you put upon it – was it a test? Another doubt: what if he was wrong? What if this killing that he was meant to do was not for the peace he so craved but was some foul manipulation by the Devil to damn him forever? Hah! He was already damned, so what did that matter! No, he had to believe what he had been told – even if he was as mad as Teach, and the words he had heard were those of his own insanity.
Where land became the sea, and the sea became land, where one was not the other
…he had to take the life of his begotten son. His son. The boy he had sired. The boy he had abandoned to face his own fate.
“I taught you to sail,” he pleaded to the keening wind and the roar of the sea as he stood at the tip of the Ocracoke and watched the dawn send her strands of light into the sky. “I taught you to load and fire a pistol, to use a cutlass. I ensured you could understand a sextant and chart a course. I taught you all those things a seaman needs, yet you despise me.”
He had himself been abandoned. Was that why he had not been the father he should have been? He was wrong to be bitter, for his mother had loved him and the stepfather who had given him the name of St Croix had treated him as his own. But it had hurt as a child, as a youth, being aware that his natural father had not wanted to know him.
Except, what he had believed had not been the truth. Only when Jesamiah was about to be born had Charles discovered the truth: that his father had not even known of his existence until it was too late. His mother had not told the man she had loved all her life of the son she had borne. She had not wanted to hold him to her out of obligation, condemn him to a loveless marriage – for her lover had given his heart to another. And so she had set him free. Charles’ eventual knowing of his father’s ignorance had not smoothed those years of bitterness though. And now, here he was paying the price for his own blinkered selfishness. Had he not been drunk that night when a good man was murdered and a good woman violated, had breeches been kept buttoned, he would have no need to be here, doing this. Ah, the consequences arising from one misdeed!
More thoughts. More questions.
Why had Jesamiah not read that letter? Why was he denying his father this last chance to explain? Jesamiah had always been so damned obstinate. What about when he had tried to send the boy to England, to school? It would have been an opportunity to get him away from Phillipe – but would he go? No!
Jesamiah had been a brave boy. He had never tongue-tattled, had taken punishments for things he had not done without whining. Had masked his tears and hidden his fears.
“I was so unfair to the boy,” Charles mumbled to himself. “I should have defended him. But it is too late now. Too late.”
The sky was turning blue as the sun rose. It would be a while for them to come down from the Chesapeake, for wind and tide were against them, another day yet, two?
“I wanted you to turn on Phillipe,” Charles said to the wisps of mare’s tail cloud building in the east. “I wanted you to prove to me that you could defend yourself; that you could fight back. But you did not, Jesamiah, did you? Why did you not?”
And then the answer occurred to him. Jesamiah had not had anything to prove. The proving that he was brave enough to fight back was not what he had needed. He had wanted only fairness and justice and the love of his father – and his father had denied him because he, Charles, had been afraid. It was himself, Charles Mereno, who should have done the proving!
Teach had always claimed that he had sold his soul to the Devil and Charles had readily believed it. From when he had first taken him on as a midshipman, there had been something different about the boy, and that same difference had been there in Phillipe’s eyes the day when Charles had brought Jesamiah home. It had been deeper than hatred or something born of sibling jealousy. The madness of evil?
Oh yes, Phillipe had been Blackbeard’s son, and had Jesamiah fought back he would have been destroyed. He had survived only because he had submitted. He had endured until he had gained the strength and courage to retaliate. Endured until he knew he would win.
Unlike his cowardly father, who had shut his eyes and hidden, pretended not to see; lain there, drunk, while evil was done.
Forty Eight
Wednesday 20th November
Three captains refused to accept Tiola as a passenger, on account that it was too risky to take a woman aboard. Too unlucky! Many a sailor insisted a woman would bring bad fortune to a voyage.
~
I am coming to the Ocracoke
, ~ she had told Jesamiah. ~
I have to come
. ~
~
You are not
! ~ he had answered forcefully. ~
You will stay away
. ~
She ignored him, did not bother explaining why she had to be there: because Edward Teach could not be killed by a mortal hand until the protection of the Dark was forced from him. She had resolved to walk the fifty miles to the coast when she overheard a man grumbling that Captain Odell was intending to set sail. Odell was known to be friendly with Teach, and no one trusted him.
“He’s had a job getting a crew,” she heard the sailor remark. “I for one intend to stay out the way ‘til he’s gone. I’m not getting mixed up with no piracy schemes.”
Odell was a canny man: he had a nose for business and was not afraid of following the scent. Teach could no longer come openly into Bath Town, not after what he had done. Piracy, stealing, plundering, rape – even murder was acceptable when it was strangers who suffered. But not when it was their own. Not a pretty young girl and a popular young man who had been born in North Carolina; whose savage deaths had left their respective fathers childless. Blackbeard had overstepped the mark and the tide of opinion had turned against him. Odell was from Charleston, he was not a Bath Town man and he intended to capitalise on that swing of opinion. Teach would be wanting to offload his ill-gotten cargos somewhere new and Odell intended to make his fortune by becoming the replacement middleman. All he had to do was convince Blackbeard that he needed a new partner.
Several men who should have crewed for him did not agree with his thinking, so when Captain Sam Odell left Bath Town Creek, he had several kegs of best rum in his hold and six men and a boy as crew. The boy knew little of sailing, but was willing to learn and jumped to it when told to hold this or pull on that. Men saw what they expected to see, and what they saw was a quiet lad with a beardless chin, a lanky figure and slender hands. Tiola was adept at making men see what she wanted them to see. It did not take a skill of Craft to bind her breasts, wear a boy’s breeches and shirt; braid her long hair into a queue and lower her voice to a lad’s unbroken timbre.
She would not be aboard long enough for them to discover any different, and by midday – evening if the wind slowed their passage down the Pamlico – they would be in the waters of the Ocracoke, where, somehow, she had to find a way of stopping Jesamiah getting himself killed by Teach.