Easton (10 page)

At last she turns. Her eyes are wounded and moist. She replaces the jug on the side table.

“What do you want from me?”

The question takes him by surprise; it is so logical, and yet he is so far from having a reasonable answer.

“I want you to understand,” he says in a hoarse whisper.

“I understand that you are a fool,” she replies.

The thought flashes through his mind that he ought to be outraged—this was after all a slave calling a captain of His Majesty’s navy a fool. But it comes and goes like lightning and he realizes he is not. He is, in fact, encouraged. Her words, though scornful, are warm—almost intimate. And there is something more. She knows he will not be outraged. She has an almost effortless knowledge of his thoughts and feelings, a natural propinquity that would sound quite insane if he were to try to explain it in terms of their relative backgrounds. But it is undeniable all the same.

He stands with his head bowed for a moment. “I was indeed foolish,” he says at last.

The admission seems to disarm her and she sways away from the side table, facing him directly.

“Why do you think of us like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like dangerous people. Like savages who hurt each other.”

“I don’t anymore, really.”

She scans his face then smiles somewhat bitterly.

“Do women not give birth where you come from, Captain?”

There is more than a hint of contempt in her use of his title.

George shrugs. “I’ve just never seen it before,” he mumbles.

“You have no wife?”

“No.”

George feels a jolt inside. The answer came so quickly and was so unequivocal. And of course it is true in a strict sense, but he is promised to Rosalind and a gentleman would surely have mentioned the fact. The moment slips by. It is too late to correct it.

“You have a husband?” he blurts before he can stop himself.

She looks up at him suddenly.

“No husband.”

Her voice is drawn out and reluctant, her syllables like soft but determined hands pushing him away.

“But your companion. Your friend, she must be...” his voice trails off for a moment.

“What?” she asks, shrinking a little.

“The baby must have a father. Who is it?”

She lets out a little gasp that turns into a mirthless laugh.

“Who do you think it is, Captain?”

“Easton,” he says in a whisper.

Of course there is only one answer. And yet it is still shocking, almost unbelievable. He feels as though he has just swallowed a quart of vinegar or some other foul, unpalatable substance. The vision of Easton and the dark, naked flesh bewilders him, sending cracks through the ordered pattern that makes up his morality. And it must show on his face because the woman’s eyes are narrowing.

“Why do you look like that?” she asks accusingly.

“Because it’s too vicious, too unnatural.”

For a moment he expects her to understand the obscenity of such a union. But her expression is proud and stung. It is as though a wall is drawing up between them as they stand. Where a moment ago there was the faint tremor of understanding there is now only blankness and hurt. She sways as though to leave, but her eyes flash in determination and she stops.

“Why is it unnatural,
Captain
?” she asks almost spitting his title.

“Because...” he starts but then can’t choose from the many explanations that come into his mind, “Because of who he is, and because of who she is.”

“Who is she? Who is my sister?” The question is urgent and challenging. She leans back against the side table as though bracing herself for an insult.

“She is a slave,” he replies. He feels cornered and confused. His head is muddled as though a herd of deer were thundering through his brain. “It isn’t natural,” he adds, and then looks up to behold the candle flame reflected in her eyes.

“So Easton should only marry a lady?”

“No! No, I didn’t mean...”

“You didn’t mean,” she echoes. “I’ll tell you what you mean. You mean that Easton is too good for my sister, even though he is a murderer. That’s why you say it’s unnatural. You mean the darkness of my sister’s skin is worse than the darkest of Easton’s crimes.”

“Stop it! Stop it!” George cries raising his hands to his head. “You’re twisting it all around.” He knows his voice may be audible elsewhere on the ship, but cares less than he knows he should.

She stares back at him. Her glance is partly to the side, partly suspicious but also a little curious.

George sighs deeply. “I am worried about you and your sister, not Easton.”

He realizes with an odd sense of relief that he is telling the truth. And paradoxically, he realizes that she too was correct. The source of his disgust wasn’t Easton’s wickedness; it was the huge difference in status between them, the perversity of a nobleman taking a slave for a lover and the slave bearing his child. But his anxiety is not for Easton. It is for her.

She seems to read his honesty and her sadness returns. “You English captains,” she says shaking her head. “You want us to escape but do nothing yourselves. You are frightened of Easton, yet shower him with praise and gold.”

“I’ll help you escape if you want to,” George says suddenly with an ardor which again takes him by surprise. The tiny voice that had been lost in the storm returns now with a strangulated warning. But it is too late; he has committed himself and knows he cannot withdraw.

She returns his gaze, all the irony now slipping away.

“How?” she asks.

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll find a way.”

“Why?”

She asks the last question more faintly.

George doesn’t answer at first but, watches the candlelight flicker in her deep brown eyes and takes in her bearing, her way of standing without movement, ready to take in whatever intelligence is given to her. Then he finds he cannot answer the question, even to himself. In the oddest reversal his mind has ever known, this woman from Africa has inherited the nobility of a Greek goddess. She is Diana, a woman of courage and defiance for whose good opinion an ordinary man can scarcely bring himself to plead. She is Aphrodite, rising from the sea with blinding beauty. Visions of Rosalind scatter like leaves in the autumn wind, dispersing and—he is almost certain—tumbling far away from him, never to return.

The woman looks down for a few moments, apparently perplexed. Then, perhaps realizing he cannot answer, she gazes directly into his eyes once more. “I must go,” she says and then makes as if to leave. Then she stops, her eyebrows knitted, a slight smile showing beneath.

“You can call me Jemma,” she says softly.

Then, without another sound, she leaves.

The baby’s cries
find their way into George’s dreams.

Sometimes they issue forth from the beak of a crow hunched upon a naked branch with a grey sky rolling beyond. Sometimes the infant’s wailing is merely part of the sea’s constant roar. In one short dream Easton sits at a fine dinner table before George and uses his sword to slice through the tender, fatty flesh of a suckling pig. The two slave women stand chained to the dripping brick wall behind him, and George can do nothing to save them. Here the baby’s cry is just part of the desperation that fills the air, part of a background lament led by the moaning ocean which swells and rages beyond their sight.

George wakes drenched with sweat. The desperate little cries from far below continue stabbing the air, no longer a crow and no longer the sea. The cabin rocks very gently. There is no storm or swell. The taste of pork and wine still mingle on his tongue.

It is much warmer now. Could they be approaching the tropics already? The moonlight from the porthole floods into his cabin, giving everything a blue luminosity. The panelled wall on the left glimmers star-like and a strange silence draws his attention to the room’s details.
Something has changed
, the gentlest of creaking noises seems to whisper.
Can’t you see what it is?
another faint groan seems to add. The baby’s crying stops for a second, then starts again.

On the floor, under the shining wall, a small rectangular shape gleams brighter than the surrounding floor. George swings his feet onto the rug, stands and crosses over to see what it is. He picks it up, his hand trembling slightly. It is a sheet of paper from the Bible—the title page. The moonlight is so strong he can see the illustration quite clearly. The title of the work, the patronage of the King and the year is carved onto a tablet as though it were one of the commandments. Moses stands guard on the left side, prophet’s staff in hand, Aaron is on the right. Dazzling sunlight emanates from the Apostles and angels above.

George stares, trying to decide what it means. It must be Whitbourne reminding him of his duty. The admiral must have heard him talking with the woman, Jemma. The paper has obviously been slipped under the crack in the door.

George crosses to the tinderbox by the side table and in a few moments has the candle flickering into life. At first he doesn’t think to turn the paper over but just stares at the venerable figures under the yellow glow of the candle before him.
What a curious and potent way of sending a message!
, he thinks. And how much the message has expanded. It is not just their own skins Whitbourne is charging George with protecting here. It is no longer just strategy they are upholding, but also England and the King and, perhaps by implication, the whole of Christendom. The claim makes little sense to George, nor does the dismemberment of such a prized possession when there are so many other and more direct ways of sending such a communication.

Only while he considers this last point, does he flip the page around. There is a note, scratched rather hurriedly, on this blank side. It is clearly not Whitbourne’s writing but a hand quite unknown to him. He holds it close to the bobbing flame and reads.

Dear Captain,

You have come so far in trusting and wishing to help us, I must tell you. I do not know for sure where the meat I have been serving you is from. We have only fowl, fish, bulls and cows on board. What you have been eating is none of those things.

Please forgive if I am right, Jemma.

Please destroy this.

George stares at the note for some time. He reads it through again once, twice, then three times. He smiles to himself several times. It is a great relief that this note is not from Whitbourne and he is more than a little flattered by the concern that Jemma is displaying. But he is puzzled too, catching the details of her fears only obliquely. The meat tastes fresh and surely cannot be poisoned. He would have felt its effects by now.

Soon certain phrases are looking larger than others:
only fowl, fish, bulls and cows; none of those things
. It is the
kind
of animal, it seems, rather than the quality of the meat that seems to concern her. Does she think that the English only eat certain types and that if she has served him with wild boar or deer, this is some violent sin against tradition? He has heard that there are prohibitions against certain meats in the East. Perhaps she is afraid he has trespassed against his religion, hence her use of the Bible?

George sits down on the chair and reads over the note again.
Please forgive if I am right
. No, she has a specific suspicion. And she expects him to work out what she means. George considers the fact that Jemma can read and write, that she converses like one schooled, at the very least on a rudimentary level. He considers that, more than any of these things, there is a sharp intelligence behind this training, sharp enough at any rate to confound him with guilt and uncertainty when they are at opposite ends of an argument. This is not a woman to carry around erroneous ideas of English eating customs, not when she has been under English influence, apparently, for so many years.

An answer comes, but it is too ludicrous and too foul for serious consideration. It surfaces in the form of fizzling bubbles rising to the surface of the ocean. He remembers Lieutenant Baxter’s burial at sea, the way his corpse wrapped tightly in the flag fell like a single object even though he had been decapitated. He remembers the speed of the falling too. The corpse seemed heavier than he would have thought Baxter. He sighs, dismissing it from his mind, and reads through the note again.

Yet even on a fifth and sixth reading, this is the only explanation that seems to fit. It’s the only one that would account for the extreme anxiety, the note slipped under the door, the plea for forgiveness for serving the meat and the insistence he burn the note. The taste of the pork returns to him and his stomach jumps slightly with a hint of the violence to come. He sees Baxter’s head once more, the chalky skin and blood-dripping neck, and then remembers Easton’s calm penitence, so much more chilling since he has been made aware of the insincerity behind it. What would a man like that
not
do? The answer comes like the swell of a hurricane: there are no limits to such horror.

George tries to control his nervousness at breakfast. Jemma is working hard not looking at him, and George tries to help, acting as before—stiffening slightly as she draws close and not addressing her or catching her eye. He allows himself to feel an awkward attraction for her; Easton has almost certainly noticed this before anyway.

Easton now watches George after Jemma refills his milk.

“Not hungry today, Captain Dawson?” he asks.

George feels his lip twitch slightly. But he returns Easton’s smile.

“I think I may be rather under the weather. Perhaps the storm.”

“Ah,” laughs Easton, “the sailor’s malady—seasickness.”

Whitbourne laughs and breaks some more bread.

“Well, the storm is over, but we are soon entering the tropics. So expect lightning.”

His eyes flash in mock horror and he smiles pleasantly, as though humouring a child. Then he looks at Whitbourne. “I am sorry to have been less than social of late, but duties...” he shrugs.

“Please sir, do not worry yourself on our account,” Whitbourne replies. “Your hospitality has been lavish. Has it not, Captain Dawson?” Whitbourne nods at him with a mixture of encouragement and warning, and George knows he must back up the admiral.