“Aye, well. I’ve learned something, at least. That was a Mr. Villiers, who owns a large sugar plantation here. He bought six slaves from the captain of the ship Bruja, three days ago—but none of them Ian.”
“Three days?” I was startled. “But—the Bruja left Hispaniola more than two weeks ago!”
He nodded, rubbing his cheek. He had shaved, a necessity before making public inquiries, and his skin glowed fresh and ruddy above the snowy linen of his stock.
“She did. And she arrived here on Wednesday—five days ago.”
“So she’d been somewhere else, before coming to Barbados! Do we know where?”
He shook his head.
“Villiers didna ken. He said he had spoken some time wi’ the captain of the Bruja, and the man seemed verra secretive about where he’d been and what he’d been doing. Villiers thought no great thing of it, knowin’ as the Bruja has a reputation as a crook ship—and seein’ as how the captain was willing to sell the slaves for a good price.”
“Still”—he brightened slightly—“Villiers did show me the papers for the slaves he’d bought. Ye’ll have seen those for your slave?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” I said. “But yes. Were the ones you saw the same?”
“Not quite. Three o’ the papers gave no previous owner—though Villiers says they were none of them fresh from Africa; all of them have a few words of English, at least. One listed a previous owner, but the name had been scratched out; I couldna read it. The other two gave a Mrs. Abernathy of Rose Hall, Jamaica, as the previous owner.”
“Jamaica? How far—”
“I dinna ken,” he interrupted. “But Mr. Warren will know. It may be right. In any case, I think we must go to Jamaica next—if only to dispose of our cargo before we all die o’ disgust.” He wrinkled his long nose fastidiously and I laughed.
“You look like an anteater when you do that,” I told him.
The attempt to distract him was successful; the wide mouth curved upward slightly.
“Oh, aye? There’s a beastie eats ants, is there?” He did his best to respond to the teasing, turning his back on the Barbados docks. He leaned against the rail and smiled down at me. “I shouldna think they’d be verra filling.”
“I suppose it must eat a lot of them. They can’t be any worse than haggis, after all.” I took a breath before going on, and let it out quickly, coughing. “God, what’s that?”
The Artemis had by now slid free of the loading wharf and out into the harbor. As we came about into the wind, a deep, pungent smell struck the ship, a lower and more sinister note in the olfactory dockside symphony of dead barnacles, wet wood, fish, rotted seaweed, and the constant warm breath of the tropical vegetation on shore.
I pressed my handkerchief hard over my nose and mouth. “What is it?”
“We’re passing the burning ground, mum, at the foot o’ the slave market,” Maitland explained, overhearing my question. He pointed toward the shore, where a plume of white smoke rose from behind a screen of bayberry bushes. “They burn the bodies of the slaves who don’t survive their passage from Africa,” he explained. “First they unload the living cargo, and then, as the ship is swabbed out, the bodies are removed and thrown onto the pyre here, to prevent sickness spreading into the town.”
I looked at Jamie, and found the same fear in his face that showed in my own.
“How often do they burn bodies?” I asked. “Every day?”
“Don’t know, mum, but I don’t think so. Maybe once a week?” Maitland shrugged and went on about his duties.
“We have to look,” I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, calm and clear. I didn’t feel that way.
Jamie had gone very pale. He had turned round again, and his eyes were fixed on the plume of smoke, rising thick and white from behind the palm trees.
His lips pressed tight, then, and his jaw set hard.
“Aye,” was all he said, and turned to tell Mr. Warren to put about.
* * *
The keeper of the flames, a wizened little creature of indistinguishable color and accent, was vociferously shocked at the notion that a lady should enter the burning ground, but Jamie elbowed him brusquely aside. He didn’t try to prevent me following him, or turn to see that I did; he knew I would not leave him alone here.
It was a small hollow, set behind a screen of trees, convenient to a small wharf that extended into the river. Black-smeared pitch barrels and piles of dry wood stood in grim sticky clumps amid the brilliant greens of tree-ferns and dwarf poinciana. To the right, a huge pyre had been built, with a platform of wood, onto which the bodies had been thrown, dribbled with pitch.
This had been lit only a short time before; a good blaze had started at one side of the heap, but only small tongues of flame licked up from the rest. It was smoke that obscured the bodies, rolling up over the heap in a wavering thick veil that gave the outflung limbs a horrid illusion of movement.
Jamie had stopped, staring at the heap. Then he sprang onto the platform, heedless of smoke and scorching, and began jerking bodies loose, grimly pawing through the grisly remains.
A smaller heap of gray ashes and shards of pure white friable bone lay nearby. The curve of an occiput lay on top of the heap, fragile and perfect as an eggshell.
“Makee fine crop.” The soot-smeared little creature who tended the fire was at my elbow, offering information in evident hopes of reward. He—or she—pointed at the ashes. “Put on crop; makee grow-grow.”
“No, thank you,” I said faintly. The smoke obscured Jamie’s figure for a moment, and I had the terrible feeling that he had fallen, was burning in the pyre. The horrible, jolly smell of roasting meat rose on the air, and I thought I would be sick.
“Jamie!” I called. “Jamie!”
He didn’t answer, but I heard a deep, racking cough from the heart of the fire. Several long minutes later, the veil of smoke parted, and he staggered out, choking.
He made his way down the platform and stood bent over, coughing his lungs out. He was covered with an oily soot, his hands and clothes smeared with pitch. He was blind with the smoke; tears poured down his cheeks, making runnels in the soot.
I threw several coins to the keeper of the pyre, and taking Jamie by the arm, led him, blind and choking, out of the valley of death. Under the palms, he sank to his knees and threw up.
“Don’t touch me,” he gasped, when I tried to help him. He retched over and over again, but finally stopped, swaying on his knees. Then he slowly staggered to his feet.
“Don’t touch me,” he said again. His voice, roughened by smoke and sickness, was that of a stranger.
He walked to the edge of the dock, removed his coat and shoes, and dived into the water, fully clothed. I waited for a moment, then stooped and picked up the coat and shoes, holding them gingerly at arm’s length. I could see in the inner pocket the faint rectangular bulge of Brianna’s pictures.
I waited until he came back and hoisted himself out of the water, dripping. The pitch smears were still there, but most of the soot and the smell of the fire were gone. He sat on the wharf, head on his knees, breathing hard. A row of curious faces edged the Artemis’s rail above us.