The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (63 page)

Ben shoots Sophie a look, but she’s turned away, very composed. What’s her game? Her wrist was fine ten minutes ago when she was pouring the tea.

He scratches round for an excuse. ‘Trouble didn’t ought to be pulling a carriage in the first place,’ he tells Master Alex, ‘let alone traipsing all the way up to Eden and back.’

Master Alex raises an eyebrow. ‘I think, my lad, that you may safely leave me to make the decisions.’

‘But sir—’

‘Look to it, Kelly. And no more talk.’

For a moment, Ben meets the pale blue eyes. He can tell that Master Alex isn’t best pleased about it neither, but for some reason he’s going along with it. Maybe Sophie said a word to him about what she saw at Montpelier, to persuade him to toe the line. She’s not stupid, is Sophie.

So Ben heaves a sigh and tips his cap at Master Alex, and jumps up into the driver’s seat and stares stonily ahead.

‘Is anything wrong?’ goes Sophie to Master Alex, as cool as mint.

Out of the corner of his eye Ben sees Master Alex pull a wry face and shake his head. ‘Just a typical groom. Overprotective of the horses to the point of insolence.’ Then he hands Sophie into the phaeton, and turns to Ben. ‘Up to Eden, and look sharp. I want you back by seven.’

So now it’s been twenty minutes since they set off, and she still hasn’t said a word, but he’s buggered if he’ll be the first to speak. He didn’t ask to drive her home. And if she thinks she can make him talk just because he’s a servant, she’s got another think coming.

They turn a corner and come on a john crow in the middle of the track, gobbling up the last of a cane-rat. Trouble snorts and tosses her head, and the john crow twists its ugly red neck and hitches its wings and buggers off. Ben tells Trouble not to make a fuss, and she shakes her mane tetchily in reply.

And still Sophie don’t say a word.

They come out of Waytes Valley onto the Fever Hill Road, and that’s when he realizes that he’ll
have
to speak first, to ask her which way she wants to go. Oh, bugger.
Bugger
.

He tips his cap and turns his head sideways. ‘D’you want to go by town, miss, or cut through Fever Hill?’

‘Fever Hill,’ she replies. ‘That is, if you think you can find your way through the cane-pieces.’

He sets his teeth. He can find his way blindfold, as she must know. What’s her game? Is she needling him because he give her a time of it at Fever Hill? Well, what’s she expect? She’s grown up now, and a lady. It’s not her place to talk to grooms.

So after a quarter of a mile they turn right into the Fever Hill carriageway. They go up through the cane-pieces of Alice Grove, and past the Pond, and the old ruined sugar works that got burnt in the Rebellion; past the slave village where Evie lives, and the tumbledown aqueduct. They skirt the bottom of the hill and go past the great house stables, then across the trickle of the Green River and out into the cane-pieces of Bellevue. It’s a hot afternoon for the beginning of December, and everything’s breathless and still. Even the crickets are half asleep. All he can hear is the clip-clopping hooves and the creak of the carriage, and the blood thumping in his ears.

They reach the guango tree that marks the end of the estate, and he turns right onto the Eden Road. The land starts to climb, so he slows Trouble to a walk. Wild almond trees overhang the road, their big dark leaves casting stripy shadows in the dust. The noise of the carriage is loud. Sophie’s silence is getting on his nerves. Why don’t she say something?

They start down the slope towards the bridge over the Martha Brae, and he catches the familiar smell of greenstuff and rottenness. This time of year the river’s a sluggish, muddy green, its banks choked by creepers and those big red claw-flowers. The bridge is soft with moss, and over on the other side he can see the ruins at the edge of Eden. Only a couple more miles, he thinks with relief.

It’s a rum old place, the ruins at Romilly. Tumbledown walls tangled over with hogmeat and strangler fig. Ironwood trees and giant bamboo shutting out the light. And in among the creepers, these strange little twisted mauvy-white flowers. Evie says they’re orchids. All Ben knows is that they’ve got a thick, sweet scent that makes him think of graves.

The darkies say that years back, Romilly was some kind of slave village like the one at Fever Hill. That’s why they don’t come here, on account of all the duppies. But Ben don’t give a tinker’s cuss about duppies. When he was a lad he used to come here all the time. He used to sleep out here. Darkie ghosts? What are they to him? He’s got a packload of ghosts of his own.

‘When you get across the bridge,’ says Sophie, making him jump, ‘just pull up on the other side.’

What?
Christ. What’s she up to now?

He gives the reins a flick. ‘Very good, miss,’ he mutters.

‘After that, you may help me down.’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘And stop calling me miss.’

‘All right.’

When they’re over the bridge he pulls up. Then he jumps down to help her out. As she puts her foot on the step she stumbles, and has to steady herself on his arm. She don’t look at him, but he can tell that she’s angry with herself. She always hated that knee of hers. He wonders if it’s still giving her trouble. She don’t limp or nothing, but it looks like it buckles now and then.

He ties Trouble to a clump of giant bamboo, then stands by her head with his hand on her coarse black mane. It’s stuffy under the bamboo, and sort of muffled. Just the slow creak of the canes, and the rise and fall of the crickets, and the whisper of the river. He takes a deep breath, but still feels breathless. Where’s all the air gone?

He watches Sophie walk to the riverbank and pace up and down, her arms crossed about her waist. She’s in pale green. Floaty pale green frock, lace gloves, and a big straw hat with a pale green ribbon down her back. It’s pretty, but it don’t look right on her. Funny, that. Madeleine was born for nipped-in waists and leg-of-mutton sleeves. She’s made of curves, just like that Lillie Langtry on a postcard. But when Sophie’s all poshed up, she don’t look right. And she knows it, too. She’s too skinny and she moves too fast, like she keeps forgetting that she’s in long skirts. She can’t seem to stay still long enough to play the grand lady.

He tells hisself that she’s just some bint like all the others; just some posh bint like that slimy Mrs Dampiere. But it don’t work. It never did with Sophie.

‘I used to come here with Evie,’ she says, looking down at the river. ‘We used to give offerings of rum to the River Mistress, and make a wish. I always made the same wish. I asked the River Mistress to make sure that wherever you were, you’d be all right.’

Christ, she can talk straight when she wants to. He’d forgotten that. It gives him that hot, prickly tightness in his chest. It makes him feel trapped.

‘It looks as if the River Mistress heard me,’ she goes on, ‘although it did take rather a long time to find out.’ She turns and shoots him a look. Her face is stubborn and set. Straight dark brows drawn together in a frown; little shadowy dents at the corners of her mouth deeper than usual. He’s in for trouble, all right. ‘I know you don’t want me to talk to you,’ she says, ‘but I don’t care. I’m fed up with being told what to do. So just this once I shall do as I please, and you can’t stop me.’

She’s right about that. He can hardly put her in the dog cart if she don’t want to go, can he? And he can’t just leave her here to walk the rest of the way home – although that’s what she deserves for putting him on the spot like this.

‘Ever since I got back,’ she says, ‘everything’s been different. Eden. Maddy. My friends. You. I’ve tried to pretend it isn’t so, but what’s the use?’

So what d’you want me to do about it? he tells her silently. If you’re asking me to make you feel better, you’ve come to the wrong bloke.

She takes a couple of steps towards him, and lifts her chin. ‘Eight years ago, you disappeared. You just disappeared. Where did you go?’

He don’t reply. Why the hell should he? Why the sodding hell should he?

‘Come on, Ben, answer me.’

He turns his head to the river, then back to her. In the dappled green shade she looks like something under water. She’s got that pale, pale skin: the sort that never even gets a flush from the sun. ‘I went to Kingston,’ he says between his teeth. ‘I went to Kingston and Port Antonio and Savanna la Mar, and half a dozen other places in between. There. Now you know.’

‘But what did you do?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘How did you live? How did you survive?’

‘What d’you think? I worked.’

‘Yes, but at what?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I want to know.’

‘Well that’s a shame, because I’m not going to tell you. It’s high time we was going—’

‘No!’ she cries, stamping her foot.

A couple of ground-doves shoot up into the trees in a startled flurry. Trouble puts back her ears and looks worried.

Sophie ignores them. She’s pressing her lips together to keep them steady, and suddenly she looks very young. He almost feels sorry for her. She’s still the same old Sophie. Easily hurt, but always putting herself in the way of more hurt. Why else would she be talking to him?

‘When I was little,’ she says, ‘you helped me get better.’ She says it almost angrily: like an accusation. ‘I don’t know what you did. Perhaps it was just seeing you, and knowing I had a friend – or – or merely thinking that I did. You can pretend all you like that none of that happened, Ben Kelly, but I don’t believe that you can have forgotten everything.’

‘Well of course I haven’t forgotten,’ he snaps. ‘Forgotten? How could I sodding well forget?’ Suddenly he’s so angry that he wants to shake her. He pulls off his cap and wipes his forehead on his wrist, and takes a few paces in a circle. Then he comes back to face her and stands with his hands on his hips, glaring down at her. ‘Do you think that when I was a kid, people used to just give me things? Me? A fucking little sewer rat? Well do you?’

She blinks as if he’s hit her.

‘
Blackie the Charger
and
The Downfall of the Dervishes
,’ he goes, counting them off on his fingers. ‘Plus a whole load of soup, and that fruit on the first day, and that bag of cherries that Madeleine give Robbie one time. Of course I haven’t sodding well forgotten.’

She chews her lip, and looks down at her feet, then back to him.

‘Just because somebody don’t talk about it, it don’t mean they don’t remember. But what’s the good in raking it up? What’s the point?’

She starts to say something, but he cuts the air with his palm. ‘No. Don’t start. I know what you’re going to say.’

The dents at the corners of her mouth deepen, but this time it’s a bit of a smile. ‘No you don’t.’

‘Yes I do. You’re going to have another go at me about Montpelier. Well I’ll save you the trouble, shall I? You’re right, I was there, just like you said. So was Master Alex, and so was your sister.’

Her mouth falls open. The light brown eyes are very wide. ‘But –
why
?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why were you there? What were they—’

‘That’s enough!’ he shouts. ‘I’m not telling you no more.’

‘But—’

‘No! It don’t matter how long you go on at me, I’m not telling. I promised Madeleine I wouldn’t, and I’m not going back on that now. Not for you, not for nobody.’

There’s a silence while she takes that in. Then she turns away from him, crossing her arms about her waist. Her arms tighten. He sees her shoulder-blades jutting beneath her frock.

She turns back and looks up into his face. She’s very intent, but for once he hasn’t a clue what she’s feeling. He can see the little flakes of gold in her eyes, and the way her eyelashes are tipped with gold, so that you can’t tell how long they really are till you’re right close up. Again he gets that prickly tightness in his chest. He can’t hardly breathe.

Trouble nudges his back with her nose, and he puts a hand on her neck to tell her to give over. ‘Why can’t you just trust Madeleine?’ he says. ‘She’s only looking out for you.’

‘She’s treating me like a child.’

‘No she’s not. She’s your big sister, she’s looking out for you. You’re bloody lucky to have her.’

That makes him think of his own big sister Kate, and for a moment a horrible feeling wells up inside of him. It’s frightening. Like everything’s about to crack wide open. He has to slam the lid down hard.

Oh, he should of never let this happen. What was he thinking of? Talking to Sophie like this? It makes him angry all over again – although whether with himself or with her, he couldn’t say.

He gives himself a shake, and turns on his heel and goes over to the giant bamboo and unties the reins with a snap. ‘You said we was friends,’ he tells her over his shoulder, ‘but that’s in the past. We’re not kids no more, and we’re not friends, neither.’

‘But—’

‘Look. The only reason you can make me talk to you is because I’m a servant, and you can order me about. That’s not being friends.’

She opens her mouth to reply but he talks her down.

‘You didn’t ought to of done this,’ he says, yanking down the carriage step and jerking his head at her to climb up. ‘And don’t you ever do it again.’

‘Ben, I didn’t mean—’

‘It’s not fair, and I won’t have it. I don’t care how posh you are.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t want sorry. I just want you to promise –
promise
– that you won’t pull a trick like this again.’

She catches her lip between her teeth, and those eyebrows of hers draw together in a frown. Then she gives a curt nod. ‘Very well. I promise.’

Chapter Eight

They made the rest of the journey in awkward silence. Sophie watched Ben’s rigid back, and wondered what he was thinking. But not once did he turn round or say a word to her. He didn’t seem angry any more, but neither did he appear to think that there was anything left to say.

She wasn’t sure what had been in her mind when she’d arranged for him to drive her home – or what she’d been hoping to achieve. She felt confused and upset, but oddly elated. And she was already beginning to regret having given him that promise.