The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (103 page)

‘But what about Belle?’

‘There’s a party of field-hands coming up behind you, d’you see it? I’ll ride over now and get them to unhitch their horse, and send a man up the road to Mr Lawe, quick as he can, to tell him that Belle’s gone missing.’

She opened her mouth to protest, but he talked her down. ‘Miss Clemmy, a man on a horse will get there a whole lot faster than you ever could in your pony-trap. Now you’ve got to
promise
me that you’ll turn round and go back. If you don’t promise, I can’t leave you on your own and go back to my brother and sisters.’

She gazed up at him with worried, china-blue eyes. ‘Of course I promise. But are you sure that you’re doing the right thing?’

‘What?’ he snapped, impatient to be off.

She gestured towards Bellevue. ‘I mean, for
you
. I should hate for you to make the wrong choice all over again.’

He reined in and brought Partisan about. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, you seem to think that Sophie might be in some kind of danger,’ she said in her gentle, devastating way. ‘So going back to the ox-wagon might be the wrong choice. Mightn’t it?’

Partisan was angrily tossing his head, and when Ben glanced down he saw that he’d been unconsciously sawing at the reins. It took an effort of will to loosen his grip. ‘Sophie’, he said quietly, ‘is in no kind of danger. She’ll be fine. Now please, Miss Clemmy, turn round and go back to town.’

Sophie will be fine, he told himself again, as he dug in his heels and headed up the road towards the field-hands. She’ll turn back when she sees the fire. She isn’t completely mad.

Chapter Thirty-Three

How bizarre, thought Sophie as she cantered through Greendale Wood, that you chose this of all days to go and see Maddy at Falmouth.

It was supposed to have been an opportunity to meet her sister on neutral ground, and re-establish some kind of contact. Instead here she was crashing through a wood with a cane-fire somewhere behind her, on her way to Eden.

Eden. She still didn’t want to think about it. Perhaps something would happen to prevent her getting there. Perhaps she’d catch up with Belle on the way, or learn from someone on the road that she’d already been found, and taken back to town. She hated herself for such cowardice, but she couldn’t stop praying for something like that to happen.

Nothing did. She clattered across Greendale Bridge, then turned Frolic south and started along the track towards Bethlehem. The cane-pieces were eerily deserted, the black ash softly falling. Ash this far east? But surely Clemency had said that the fire had started at Waytes Valley? That was miles away.

She didn’t want to think about what it meant – or about what might be happening elsewhere. ‘Fever Hill all ablaze, Missy Sophie,’ the boy on the road had said.
Fever Hill ablaze.
So where was Ben?

And what about Cameron? And
Belle
?

She didn’t meet anyone on the road until about a quarter of a mile from Bethlehem, when she rounded a bend and came upon a small party of men with bills over their shoulders, heading south at a tireless lope.

They told her they were from Simonstown, on their way to lend a hand. None of them had seen Belle, or even heard that she was missing. But they’d heard tell that the whole of Orange Grove had been given up to the fire, and that Master Cameron was burning a firebreak in a great north–south line, to protect the house and the eastern cane-pieces and the Maputah works.

If it could be finished in time, the firebreak would stretch from Greendale Wood in the north, all the way past the crossroads in the south. And if it held, then the fire would have nowhere to go except south into the hills. ‘Master Camron fixing to
push
that fire south,’ said the eldest man, ‘south inna the bush. And when it reach there, it burn itself out in the bare rockstones, if it please Master God.’

‘Where’s Master Cameron now?’ she said. ‘D’you know?’

He shook his head. ‘Maybe down at Romilly? Maybe further north? But it don’t necessary for you to go on, Missy Sophie. You better turn back now, too much smokes up ahead. And not to frighten about Missy Belle. She soon going safe, for Master Camron go find her quick-time.’

She bit her lip. In the distance up ahead she could see the roof of Bethlehem chapel pushing above the trees. Three miles beyond that lay Eden great house. The man was probably right: she should turn round now, and go back to town. She certainly wanted to. And in all probability, Cameron would find Belle without any help from her. He’d probably found her already, and sent her off in disgrace to her mother.

But what if he hadn’t? What if the news that she was missing hadn’t even got through?

There didn’t seem to be any way out. If she turned back now and something happened to Belle, she’d never forgive herself.

She wished the men luck, and told them to keep an eye out for Belle. Then she gathered the reins and put Frolic into a canter towards Bethlehem.

When she reached the village she found it deserted. She slowed to a trot, and crossed the silent clearing in front of the chapel. She passed the old clinic – long since abandoned by Dr Mallory – and the breadfruit tree under which, seven years before, a young groom had stooped to examine a five-year-old’s beloved toy zebra.

‘Belle?’ she shouted. Her voice echoed eerily from house to house. But no-one came out. Not even a dog. All she could hear was the insidious whisper of falling ash.

She trotted to the edge of the village and reined in at Tom Gully, the shallow stream which marked the boundary between Bethlehem and Eden land. Frolic put down her head to drink.

Sophie was thirsty too, but she knew that she couldn’t drink. Her throat was too tight to swallow. No more than a yard away, on the other side of this shallow ribbon of rusty brown water, lay Eden.

It’s only land, she told herself as her heart began to thud. There’s no
need
to feel like this.

It didn’t work.

The mare finished drinking and shook her head, scattering droplets.

You’re just a miserable coward, Sophie told herself. Belle needs you. How can you even hesitate?

She glanced over her shoulder at the deserted village. Then she looked ahead to the track that led to the works at Maputah, and on to Eden great house. Then she took a deep breath and put the mare forward across the stream.

Nothing is real any more, she thought, as she cantered up to the house. She felt as if she were trapped in a dream: as if she were the only one left alive.

From force of habit, she rode round the side of the house and into the garden, where she dismounted and tethered Frolic at the bottom of the steps. It all looked achingly familiar, and eerily untouched by the catastrophe which threatened to sweep it away.

‘Belle?’ she called.

No answer.

The garden was just the same as she remembered. The same scarlet hibiscus and greenish-gold tree-ferns; the same spiky royal palms and white bougainvillaea. And down by the sliding river, the same great banks of torch ginger and scarlet heliconia, and the nodding plumes of the giant bamboo, which would ferry the fire across the river in a heartbeat if Cameron’s firebreak didn’t hold.

Everything was weirdly peaceful, and alive with birds. She caught the emerald flash of a doctorbird; the smoky blur of a bluequit. She heard the rapid
zizizi
of sugarbirds in the hibiscus, and the high-pitched trill of a grassquit. At Eden life was going on in terrifying innocence of the fire about to sweep it away. It was almost as if there was no fire. Except for the black ash, softly falling.

She turned and ran up the steps.

‘Belle?’ Her voice echoed in the empty house.

Everywhere she looked she saw traces of lives interrupted. A maid’s coconut-fibre broom discarded on the tiles. A copy of the
Daily Gleaner
tossed across the tartan cushions on the sofa.

Quickly she checked the bedrooms, in case Belle was hiding, and afraid to come out. The spare room and the nursery were empty. Feeling horribly intrusive, she ran into Cameron’s and Madeleine’s room. It too was empty – but it felt unsettlingly as if someone had only just left. The bird-feeder at the open door was gently rocking. One of Cameron’s shirts lay crumpled on the floor.

She was turning to go when a group of photographs on the bedside table caught her eye. There were three of them, in a little tortoiseshell cluster beside a yellow-backed novel and a lacquered ring-stand that she remembered giving Madeleine for her birthday years before.

The first photograph was of an eight-year-old Belle, scowling into the camera, with Spot firmly gripped beneath her chin.

The second was of Fraser. He wore his beloved sailor suit, and he was hatless, his curly hair a pale halo around his eager little face. He was standing proudly behind Abigail the mastiff, with one small hand on her massive black head and the other on her back, as if he was about to climb aboard and ride her like a pony.

He used to do it, too, Sophie remembered. And when he fell off, Abigail would nose him to his feet and chase him round and round the house, wagging her tail and pretend-biting him, while he squealed with delight.

Grief welled up in her throat and lodged there like a piece of meat.

She dragged her eyes away from Fraser to the third photograph. With a jolt she recognized herself. She hadn’t expected that. Since Fraser’s death, Madeleine could hardly look her in the eye. And yet here was her photograph on Madeleine’s bedside table.

Madeleine had taken it seven years ago, on the day of the Historical Society picnic. In the photograph Sophie stood beneath a tree-fern, looking painfully self-conscious in her unflattering pale green dress.

That picnic. She remembered the drive back to Eden with Ben. He hadn’t spoken a word all the way to Romilly, and then she’d forced him to talk, and they’d had a row.

She pressed her hands to her mouth. First Fraser. Then Ben. Not
now
. There wasn’t time.

She ran out onto the steps at the back of the house, and stood irresolute, not knowing which way to turn. Clemency had said that Belle had gone off on a ‘secret mission into the hills’. But where?

Would she really have gone to the cave at Turnaround, as Clemency believed? That seemed unlikely, given that coming across Evie in the cave had given Belle the fright of her life.

So what about somewhere closer to home? Where would a child with a morbid streak go on a ‘secret mission’?

She was debating this when a flicker of movement in the undergrowth caught her eye.

There it was again: something pale in the dense greenery of the slope. It had only been a flicker, but something about it made her catch her breath. For a moment – just a moment – she thought she’d glimpsed a child’s fair head.

Not possible, she told herself, feeling suddenly cold. There are no fair-haired children at Eden. Not any more.

‘Belle?’ she called. In the stillness her voice sounded shaky and scared. She cleared her throat. ‘Fraser?’

Crows exploded from the trees in a flurry of wings. When they’d gone there was a taut, listening stillness. It was as if the trees, and the very house itself, had tensed when she’d said the name.

She moistened her lips and forced herself to stay calm. Think of Belle, concentrate on Belle. Where would she go on a secret mission?

Fraser was buried quite close to the house, only a short way up the slope. From where she stood, she could see the path: a narrow but well-worn track disappearing into a shadowy green jungle of sweetwoods and breadfruit trees and huge-leaved philodendron.

Could Belle be up there?

She never seems to
play
with her dolls
, Madeleine had said once.
She just holds funerals for them.

A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She couldn’t go up there. No, no, no. Not to the grave.

Oh, it’s beautiful, Sophie
, Clemency had assured her.
Maddy’s made it into a little secret garden. She’s planted all sorts of flowers. She told me once that after he died, she just wanted to make things grow. That was all she could bear to do. Just make things grow.

Again Sophie caught that pale flicker of movement. Her mouth went dry.
No
. It was just a bird. Or a yellowsnake, or – or something. Not the gentle, grey-eyed, fair-haired little boy who had died in her arms seven years before.

Again she called for Belle. Again that taut, listening stillness. A stillness broken only by the lazy fluttering of ash.

She drew a deep breath and ran up the track to the Burying-place.

It really was just as beautiful as Clemency had said. A small oval clearing enclosed by tree-ferns and wild almond and cinnamon trees, and planted with a dazzling profusion of flowers. She saw powder-blue plumbago and jasmine and hibiscus; the subtle mauves and greenish whites of orchids, and the brilliant cobalt and orange of strelitzia, Fraser’s favourites.

In the midst of it stood a small, plain white barrel tomb with a stark inscription:

Fraser Jocelyn Lawe

1897–1903

Finally, after all these years, she was standing by his grave.

She watched a flake of black ash float down and settle on the marble. Tentatively, she put out her hand and brushed it off. The stone felt smooth and cool. Not terrifying at all, but strangely comforting.

‘I’m so sorry, Fraser my darling,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.’

She looked about her, and stooped and broke off a sprig of orchids, and laid them on the marble. And as she did so, something inside her lifted and broke free.

Now at last she understood what had compelled Ben to bring his dead out to Jamaica. He had decided to stop running from them. He had invited them back.

She squared her shoulders and wiped her eyes with her fingers. Then she began to make a search of the clearing. But she could find no sign that Belle had been here. No ritual herbs. No cut limes or other anti-duppy measures such as a child might be able to muster.