“Not without seeing you again,” he protested. “Rowan, I’ve come all this way to see you. I can’t leave you after ten minutes.”
“You came to set me free?”
“Yes, and Johnnie did too.”
“I am free. You can tell him. There is nothing for either of you to do.”
“But I want—”
She was halfway to the window; he felt terror at the thought of losing her, but he would not lay a hand on her to make her stay. “Rowan, let me see you tomorrow. Tell me where I can find you. I beg you. Tell me where to find you.”
She shook her head. “I live in the forest. You can’t find me. No one can find me.”
“You’re alone?”
She shook her head with a little smile, and he had a pang of jealousy like a knife in his bowels. “You’re with a man?”
“Oh no, nothing like that.”
“Let me spend some time with you. I can get you some clothes and you can come and live here with me and Johnnie. He’s bought this warehouse, this is his home. You could live here. We could work something out. He thought you might run this as your business until you have finished your sentence—”
“He wants me to run a shop for slave drivers? To serve them?”
“You’d be safe here. He’d pay you. And in eight years, when your sentence expired—”
Decisively, she shook her head. “I’ll not live in a house ever again,” she said. “And I won’t wear clothes. And I surely won’t serve a man, not a white man, not a slave driver, not any man.”
“Then let me come to you.” He knew better than to catch her hand, but he was desperate that she should not just disappear into the darkness of the seashore. “Tell me where I can meet you. I’ll come alone, no one will follow me.”
She looked thoughtful. “All right. You can. Just you. You can visit the Peabody Plantation. They will invite you. They invite everyone. When you’re there, walk to the creek. Take a gun. When you’re in the forest and alone, you can shoot your gun in the air. I will meet you in the forest.”
“You will meet me?” he asked her. “You won’t fail me? How will you know where to find me?”
She laughed. “Of course I will find you in my own forest. But you must come alone, and tell no one of me, don’t even bring Johnnie.”
“I’ll have to tell him I’ve seen you.”
She shook her head. “He talks,” she said shortly. “He drinks with them and he is their friend. He’s one of them now.”
“One of them?”
“A master. A slave master.” The contempt in her voice was unmistakable.
“But he came to free you!”
“He has slaves working here. He would have me work here. A slave, like them.”
Ned hesitated, saw her glance towards the shuttered window, as if she wanted to go.
“All right! All right! I’ll say nothing. I’ll come to the Peabody Plantation as soon as I can. As soon as I can get a horse, I’ll come.”
She gave him a reassuring smile, as if she knew he was afraid he would lose her. “I will come to you,” she promised him. “I will find you in the forest.”
FAIRMERE PRIORY, SUSSEX, WINTER 1687
Alys thought that the family was riding high when their hired carriage turned in at the new stone pillars that proclaimed “Fairmere Priory,” carved in stone, a Christmas gift from the Nobildonna. Matthew, Mia, Gabrielle, and Alys’s husband, Captain Shore, were laughing and talking inside; a goose and a hamper of Christmas food were strapped on the roof, and following behind them was Rob’s carriage bringing him and Julia and Hester. The carriage was hired with good money, all the bills were paid, and there was no debt outstanding on the wharf or at the renamed Priory. Even though Johnnie was trading on credit in Barbados, Alys understood this was the new way of business, the only way to do business over such long sea miles. Johnnie traded in private bills, signed promises to pay, drawn on the Barbados agents, passed from hand to hand and countersigned. Some of these he sent to England, where Alys used them to buy goods to ship back to him in Barbados, or paid them in to Rob’s father-in-law, Alderman Johnson, the goldsmith, for safekeeping. After a lifetime of cautious accounting, keeping handfuls of coins in a strongbox in the warehouse, Alys had to trust pages of paper, signed by men whose fortune was so great, that they could trade on their name alone.
The carriages drew up at the front door. Alys climbed down and led them all into the house. She glanced at Rob as they warmedthemselves before the welcoming fire in the hall fireplace. “Strange that she’s not here,” she remarked, missing her mother.