“I knew it,” Alinor said quietly.
“She got there in January, and she was sold on the quayside,” Johnnie went on. “I had this from the captain of her ship. He doesn’t tell me more than that.”
With enormous effort, Ned raised his hand.
“Take his hand,” Alinor prompted Johnnie.
Johnnie stepped forward and took the work-hardened hand in his own soft palm. He had expected his great-uncle to be as cold as death, but his hand was warm. This was a living man who would recover.
Ned’s faint grip slowly tightened.
“He’ll want to know if you’re going to her?” Alinor guessed.
“Aye, we all want to know that,” Alys said under her voice. “And some of us have an opinion.”
“I am going to her,” Johnnie told Ned. “I love her—you know that. I’m going to take some stock and set up a little shop, high-quality goods, things that the planters love: silks from our warehouse, and some chinaware, silverware, maybe even some antiquities from Venice. And Mother Alinor will give me some herbs and seeds. I’ll set up a little business and I’ll buy Rowan out of service on the plantation. I’ll buy her servitude. She can keep shop for me, till her time is up.”
The animation left Ned’s lined face. He tried to shake his head.
“Leaving your job in the Company?” his mother demanded.
“They’ll have me back, Ma. I’m getting leave, not retiring,” Johnnie said firmly. “So don’t try to persuade me.” He spoke more gently to Ned. “I won’t do anything illegal. They’re very hard on anyone helping servants escape. I’ll get her safe, but I can’t set her free. I won’t break the law. She’ll have to serve her sentence. Ten years.”
Ned was fighting to speak, his eyes still closed but his eyelids fluttering.
“Be calm, Brother. It’s the best we can do for her,” Alinor said, coming forward to give Ned the drink. She glanced at Alys. “Is there laudanum in this?”
“Two drops, as Rob said.”
Ned stirred, tried to speak, and Alinor turned to him. “Hush now. Don’t try to do too much. Here’s you spoken your first word—praise God for that—and here’s Johnnie with the best news we could have hoped for. She’s alive and he’s going to find her. Rest now.”
PEABODY PLANTATION, BARBADOS, SPRING 1686
Rowan lived her days to serve the sugar harvest, in step with the windmill that turned night and day, the thwack-thwack sound of the sails going through her brief dreams like a beating. The roar of the milling was constant, and the noise of the wagons coming from fields to mill yard and back again, feeding the mill with an endless supply of sugarcanes and bringing wood to stoke the fires hotter and hotter under the boiling kettles.
Under a huge yellow moon the slaves cut cane in the fields, slashed the top leaves, trimmed the sticks, bound them into stacks, and loaded them onto groaning donkeys and on carts drawn by paired oxen who went by moonlight down the white road back to the mill. As the harvest wore on, and the cutting gang went deeper and deeper into the fields, the journey grew longer and longer down the white stone road; even the animals were exhausted, a mule died in traces. There was no time to eat, gangs were allowed only a few hours’ sleep. Slaves staggered like dead men and women from field to their huts and out again. Whenever they stumbled, the overseer, high on his horse, would shout a warning and then his horsewhip would crack and someone would cry out in pain. The field gang cut cane all day, every day, and into most of the night. The first gang went out earliest and cut and trimmed the cane, the second gang of older and weaker slaves bundled it and loaded it on the wagons. As soon as the cane was cut, it had to be crushed into pulp, or it would dry out and the sugar at its core would be lost. Nobody could slow, nobody dared to weaken. They had to keep up with the rollers in the mill, they had to be as machines themselves—never resting and never stopping, they were ground down like cane.
The wagons unloaded at the back door of the mill, the yard men throwing stack after stack up to the platform, where the men slashed open the stack and thrust the cane into the relentless rollers that split the thick stems open and crushed them. They milled the canes through the night, each man terrified of being dragged into the rollers and losing a hand, even an arm. Draining away, below the rollers, was a brown stream of juice, running into the boiling house, where it was ladled into the copper kettles.
Smoke from the fires beneath the kettles filled the boiling house, drifted across the yard. In the tropical heat, the endless task of stoking the fire was unendurable. The youngest men and women were tasked with keeping the fires red hot, their faces wet with sweat, their hands pock-marked with burns. Above them, the sugar boilers stood over the open kettles of syrup, skimming the foam, watching the roll of the boil, ordering the pour from one kettle into another as the syrup was purified, until finally it was tested by the sugar maker, rolled between his scarred fingers, and poured into a stone cone lined with plantain leaves, to drain until it was crystallized and dry, the drained liquor collected for distilling into rum.
In the rush of harvest, even Mr. Peabody rose early and came out into the fields to watch the crop being hacked down, trimmed, and loaded; strolled into the boiling house to see the big kettles simmering, swore that it was too hot for a white man to bear, and went back to the big house. He ordered Rowan to walk with him, to learn the process so that she could draw a new design of a bigger and better rolling mill, so that she could write the letters to order new parts from England. “I’m going to make this go faster,” he promised himself. Rowan looked around at the men and women running to match the speed of the rollers, sweating to feed the fires of the boiling kettles, skimming the simmering syrup. “I am going to speed this up,” Mr. Peabody said.
AVERY HOUSE, LONDON, SPRING 1686
Avery House was going back under wraps. The holland covers were over the beautiful damask chairs in the drawing room, the chandelier in the gallery was bagged in muslin, the kitchen cupboards swept clean of anything but bottled fruit and vegetables to avoid attracting mice, and a housekeeper and her husband were retained for the light tasks of keeping the house clean, locking up safely, and guarding against fire and burglars.
James Avery, on the doorstep, watching his goods being loaded in his coach, was surprised to see his wife, Livia, stroll around the corner, richly gowned in a blue velvet outfit trimmed with fur, her maid a few steps behind her, a royal footman bringing up the rear.
“I thought I might catch you before you left,” she said carelessly to her husband. She threw a quick curious glance at the carriage. “You’re going now?”
He nodded. “As you see.”
“And the poor house all shut up again.”
“You have no use for it.”
She could not resist brushing past him to peer into the interior of the coach and saw only James’s cashbox, his writing box, and his box of medicines on the silk upholstered seats.