The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (42 page)

He reached a fork in the track, and reined in. Curious. She should have turned left, heading down through the hill-pastures of Turnaround, past Stony Gap, and through the cane-pieces of Glen Marnoch towards Fever Hill. Instead she had taken the right-hand track, heading south-east up a narrow path that wound into the waterless labyrinth of the Cockpits.

The Cockpits? Why? Was this some kind of broken-backed attempt to reach Eden across country? Or had she simply made the wrong choice and lost her way?

He dismounted, unhooked his water bottle from the saddle, and went to rest beneath the thorn tree that marked the parting of the tracks. The patchy shade brought some relief from the relentless heat. His head was throbbing, his mouth gritty with dust. The glare off the white rocks hurt his eyes.

He drank deeply, then moistened his handkerchief and cooled his face and neck and wrists. He glanced up the right-hand track, and saw jagged white rocks and thorn-scrub, and the towering, eerily conical hills of the Cockpits. For the first time since he had started out, he felt a flicker of real unease.

He had always hated the Cockpits. Arid, demon-haunted, fit only for blacks. It enraged him when Mrs Herapath held forth about their ‘untamed beauty – their savage and desolate allure’. What allure? They were the mouth of hell.

Still, he told himself, what of that? It’s such rough country, she’ll make slow progress. She can’t be far ahead now.

He stoppered the water bottle and remounted and kicked his horse to a trot.

The morning wore on, and the track became steeper and narrower, forcing him to slow to a walk. Twisted thorn trees clung to the slopes. Beneath them the ground was a dreary confusion of tumbled boulders and spiky wild pine and the rampant, dusty creeper the blacks called hogmeat. The crickets pulsed to the throbbing in his temples. Midges thronged the air like tiny invisible demons.

And that constant feeling of being watched. Often he twisted round in the saddle, convinced that something was observing him from the rocks. But there was never anything there; or never anything that he could see.

He wished Dr Valentine were with him. But the doctor had returned to town the previous evening to check on his surgery, and Sinclair had been alone when the housekeeper had roused him with the news that his wife had gone. Some time before dawn she had stolen the carriage-horse and gone. But how? And
why
?

It hadn’t taken him long to come up with the answer. Somehow, she had learned the truth about the pickney’s death. Perhaps her sister had told her; perhaps she had found out by some other means. It didn’t matter. The point was, she knew. And now she meant to tell the authorities, and bring him down.

He stood to lose everything. Position. Inheritance. Perhaps even his life. And all because of a Negro nobody and an hysterical woman.

‘Calm, calm,’ he whispered aloud. She can’t have told anyone yet. All you have to do is find her. Take her back. And let Dr Valentine work his magic.
Depend upon it, Mr Lawe, she will be a different woman. Obedient, well regulated
– and compliant.

Ahead of him the track led down into a rocky hollow like a small natural amphitheatre, before snaking up the other side and round the crest of the hill. The hollow was puzzlingly familiar. Nothing more than a handful of thorn and calabash trees, and a tumble of enormous boulders. The rasp of the crickets was deafening in the noonday heat.

Ah, now he remembered. Years before, he had come here on a shooting trip with his brother and the old man. He disliked hunting, but on this occasion he had bagged more than his brother, so the memory was sweet.

He put his horse cautiously forward down the rocky slope.

And wasn’t there, he wondered, something else about this place as well? Something vaguely unsettling? But what?

He was trying to remember when he rounded a spur, and came upon Madeleine.

She was sitting with her back to him beneath a calabash tree: head down, arms about her knees, as if exhausted, or taken ill. She hadn’t heard his approach, but her horse, tethered a few yards behind her, raised its head from the thistles and pricked its ears.

Mouth dry, heart pounding, Sinclair slid from the saddle and tied his horse to a thorn bush, and moved silently forward.

He had passed her horse and was no more than twenty feet away from her when she turned and saw him. He froze. For a moment they stared at one another in silence.

‘You,’ she mouthed. Her lips formed a perfect O of alarm.

She was bizarrely dressed, no doubt having seized whatever had come to hand. A wide straw hat with white silk roses round the brim; a pair of cream calfskin ankle-boots; and a wildly unsuitable morning dress of flimsy white muslin painted with little bronze leaves. When she got to her feet, he saw how she swayed. She was still drugged. Thank God.

‘Why did you run?’ he said.

She backed away. ‘After what you did? How can you ask?’

A cold weight sank within him. So now he was sure. She did know about the pickney.

He took out his handkerchief and wiped the back of his neck. ‘You must know’, he said, ‘that you cannot run from me. You have nowhere to go.’

She threw a rapid glance over her shoulder, and took another step down the slope, stumbling on the uneven ground.

He held out his hand. ‘Come. I’ll take you home. We will forget all about this.’

Like a rebellious child she thrust out her lower lip and shook her head. Her eyes had the same animal watchfulness as her sister when he’d confronted her in the gallery. Yes, he thought, she is an animal, a frightened animal. She simply needs firmness, and all will be well.

Still holding out his hand, he took a step towards her. ‘I can’t let you tell anyone,’ he said. ‘Come, now. Be reasonable.’

She took another step back and lost her footing, and fell to her knees in a clump of hogmeat. The ground sagged beneath her as if she’d gone into a ditch. ‘Sinclair . . .’ she said. She sounded surprised.

‘Come,’ he said again.

The next few seconds seemed to stretch, and he took in the details with extraordinary clarity. He saw how the earth gently folded beneath her, and crumbled and began to fall away. He saw how she grabbed at the creepers around her with both hands. He heard the vegetable snap as they gave way, and the rattle of falling pebbles, and he saw the red dust rising to envelop her.

She looked up at him, her face blank with shock. ‘Sinclair – I can’t—’ She clutched at the creepers and slid down, down, and disappeared into the choking cloud of dust.

The dust was blinding, all-enveloping. He whipped out his handkerchief and covered his mouth, and dropped to his knees and crawled towards the edge. He could hear nothing but the rattle of falling rubble and his own rasping coughs.

Through the red haze he made out a ragged hole some ten feet across, and as the dust slowly settled, he saw her at the bottom, lying in a mound of creepers and rubble. He leaned over as far as he dared. ‘Madeleine? Are you all right?’

She coughed, and sat up, still coughing, and wiping her eyes. She touched her forehead and winced, and finally nodded. ‘I – I think so. Yes.’

‘The creepers must have broken your fall.’

She sneezed. ‘What – is this place?’

‘A sink-hole, I think. Yes, it must be. I remember now. They’re everywhere around here. The creepers grow over the edge, so it’s hard to see them. We were never allowed to come here as boys.’

Still probing her forehead with her fingertips, she got unsteadily to her feet. ‘That’, she said, ‘I can understand.’ She peered up at him. ‘How am I going to get out?’

He had been wondering that himself. The walls were nearly sheer, and about eighteen feet deep. Far too deep for him to reach her by leaning over. He looked round for some creeper which might bear her weight but saw only hogmeat: as thin as knitting wool and brittle as honeysuckle.

Then an idea came to him. Sights and sounds fell away. He sat back on his heels and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

‘Sinclair?’ his wife called out.

No, he told himself. No. This is marsh-fire. A false hope sent by the Evil One to tempt the unwary.

‘Sinclair?’

Unless
, he thought. Unless it is not the Evil One who has put this into your mind. But God.

‘I didn’t push you,’ Sinclair said as he peered down at her.

‘Well I know that,’ she snapped, rubbing the bump on her forehead. Her head was pounding, and the laudanum was making her nauseous, but strangely, the shock of the fall seemed to have cleared her wits. She felt sharper than she had done in days. And furious with herself. Of all things, to fall down a sink-hole. Now there was nothing to do but wait to be rescued – by the very man she had been trying to escape.

Sinclair was still peering down at her, solemn and unblinking. He gave himself an odd little shake, as if to banish some unwelcome thought, then leaned down and extended his hand as far as he could. ‘Here,’ he said. She could hear the strain in his voice. ‘See – if you can reach.’

She reached for him on tiptoe, but his hand was a good six feet above hers. She took hold of a creeper snaking up the wall, and tried to pull herself up. She had climbed a foot or so when the creeper gave way and she fell back painfully onto the rocks. She sat up, rubbing a bruised hip. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘Do you have any rope?’

He shook his head. ‘Only my belt. And that’s not nearly long enough.’

‘What about the stirrup leathers? And the reins? Couldn’t you knot them together?’

Again he shook his head. ‘They’d never hold. And we’d have nothing to tether the horses.’

Dizzy and sick, she put her elbows on her knees and forced herself to take deep breaths. ‘Well then,’ she said, sounding a lot more robust than she felt, ‘I suppose you’d better go for help.’

Above her there was a lengthy pause. ‘Yes,’ echoed Sinclair. ‘I shall go for help.’

She looked up at him. His face was dark against the glare. ‘Come back soon,’ she said.

He nodded. Then he was gone. Soon afterwards she heard the clatter of hooves disappearing down the track.

Hot, bruised and thirsty, she found a patch of ground without too many rocks, and sat down to wait.

It must be around noon, for the sun was directly overhead, and there was no shade to be had. Thank God she still had her hat. But why hadn’t she had the sense to unearth her dust-coat from the trunk, and her riding habit, instead of this ridiculous morning dress? Already she could feel her shoulders burning through the insubstantial muslin.

After a while, a thin rind of shade appeared at the other side of the sink-hole. She crawled over to it. As she did so, something crunched softly beneath her hand. She remembered the passage on sink-holes in Sophie’s gazetteer, and wished that she hadn’t. Recalcitrant slaves tossed down here and left to die. She wondered if what had crunched beneath her hand was bones.

Don’t be absurd, she told herself. That was sixty years ago, they’d be dust by now. Besides, there are hundreds of sink-holes in the Cockpits; how do you know it was this one?

She clasped her arms about her knees, and forced the thought of dying slaves from her mind.

She had more pressing concerns. Thirst was becoming a problem. Why hadn’t she had the sense to make Sinclair throw down his water bottle? More proof – if proof were needed – that she was still affected by the drugs.

The afternoon wore on, and the rind of shade grew wider. Surely Sinclair would find someone soon? A labourer or a smallholder? Or perhaps he’d decided to ride all the way back to Providence to raise the alarm? But even so, he would be here soon. It couldn’t be more than five or six miles to Providence.

She curled up against the wall and tried to doze. Her head was still throbbing from the knock she had taken when she fell. Her thoughts were tangled and confused.

When she opened her eyes, she was alarmed to see that the shade had eaten up most of the sink-hole floor. The breeze had dropped, and the creepers at the lip of the hole had stilled. In a few hours it would start to get dark.

That was when it hit her. Sinclair wasn’t coming back.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Cameron awoke before dawn, still drunk from the night before. Abigail sensed that he was not to be trifled with, and wisely stayed at the other end of the verandah.

At breakfast he snapped at Braverly, at the stables he snapped at Moses, and on the way to Maputah he snapped at Pilate. Three days had passed since he’d left Madeleine outside the church. Three days and three nights which had brought him no answers; only more questions.

The ride to Maputah took him past some of his best cane-pieces, but the sight did nothing to lighten his mood. He had thought that by rescuing Eden he was making peace with Ainsley’s ghost. What a shameful piece of self-deception that turned out to have been.

For ten years he had scarcely given Ainsley’s children a thought. When he’d remembered them at all, it had been with a sense of distant relief. He’d done the right thing by them, hadn’t he? He’d given them half his patrimony; what more did they need?

It astonished him that he could have deceived himself for so long. And that dream. Why had he never grasped its meaning, when it was staring him in the face? Simply because he hadn’t wanted to? Was that all it took to ignore the truth?

He studied the young cane trembling in the breeze. How could he have been so
blind
? She even looked like Rose. The same rich colouring, the same dark, almond-shaped eyes. And the same extraordinary blend of candour and secretiveness and naivety. Sinclair had told him once that she was not as innocent as she seemed. Well, perhaps that was true – but surely not in the way that Sinclair had meant. She didn’t even know how to kiss.

The thought made him reach for his hip flask and take a long, burning pull of Scotch.

And to think that he had actually believed that she cared for him; that he reached something in her, as she did in him. God, he had been such a fool.

A flock of parakeets exploded from a guinep tree, and he watched them furiously beating their wings as they scudded across the sky.