Green masses of land bumping up out of the sea make islands of every shape. Most have rugged mountains that fall into
forests the colour of emeralds. Others are hilly with flat plains dotted with palm trees. The islands are surrounded by exquisite turquoise water and edged with white sandy beaches. They can see military forts and battlements on the hills and columns of smoke swirling skyward, a sign of civilized life here in the New World. The softest breeze she’s ever felt blows in Charlotte’s face.
While the captain negotiates the tricky channel toward the harbour in Jamaica, Charlotte stands at the rail chattering like a child about the wise decision they’d made. For Pad, it is a relief beyond measure. He’d used all the bravado he could muster in telling Charlotte of this place, which in truth he knew almost nothing about. But it was the only place he could think of where he and Charlotte could have a life together. From their vantage point, the island looks indeed like the Garden of Eden. As they get closer they can see the town of Kingston and beyond to great mansions perched on the surrounding hillsides. The plantations she’d heard about spill out of these estates and roll out to what looks like a bustling centre of commerce. Imposing buildings with commanding columns, presumably government houses, are decked in flags and smaller ones, perhaps trading establishments, fill in the rest of what appears to be the main thoroughfare. Between that orderly looking town centre and the dock is another reality. Crowded shanties lean against one another like broken clay pots. Every alleyway produces another angle of huts teeming with mothers and babies, hawkers selling their wares, a scene so colourful—brown skin, vibrant orange, red, green and blue clothing, trays of pink and purple fruit—the scene is like a mural that hangs in the great hall at the governor’s mansion in Sussex, back home. The port in front of them is layered with row upon row of warehouses. Soon, she thinks, they’ll quit this horrible ship and begin their lives anew.
The arrival at the dock is similar to their departure from England, save the temperature. There are dock masters shouting orders and a collection of vagabonds looking for wayward parcels that may fall into their hands. Charlotte is amused by the activity and not in the least concerned about the safekeeping of the trunk she packed clandestinely so many weeks ago. All she can focus on now is the solid land that will soon be under her feet, the glorious bath in hot water in which she can scrub the grime from her body and the fresh clothes carefully folded in the trunk that will replace the grimy ones she wears.
T
HE SHIP
is secured, the gangplank is lowered and without a backward glance Charlotte steps her way to the land she has imagined during the long weeks at sea. The passengers on board are rounded up for a tally in the passengers’ shed. Jake sends a pleading look to Charlotte as if to say, “Find me Master Frye and get me away from these men.” She can’t help him. In fact, her legs are wobbling on the terra firma so much she can hardly help herself. They move to the cargo shed and wait for their belongings, trusting the Captain Skinner to fulfill his final duty. Even though personal possessions are to be off-loaded before the cargo, they wait for hours. The sun that had been so welcome when they first got off the ship is unbearably hot. The shredded roof of the shed where they wait provides no relief. The sweat now mixing with the soiled bodice and skirts she wears is making her garments stink. She can hardly wait to cast them off.
Pad strikes up a conversation with the overseer in the shed.
“Is the Willisams family known to you?”
The overseer, a bearded man of fifty, looks at him without
expression. “There are many such families here,” he says. “Which do you seek?”
Pad hadn’t considered the possibility of a choice.
“Hire a coach to take you to the governor’s office at the centre of the town,” the overseer finally volunteers. “Ask for Camilla Willisams. She’s acquainted with most persons here.”
The road to the governor’s office passes no shanties. Charlotte cranes her neck at majestic palms, coconuts gathered overhead like string bags of giant marbles. Crimson bougainvillea bracts burst out of the bushes along the trail and mix their sweet scent with the sea air. As the distance between the couple and the
Anton
increases, so do their spirits.
The governor’s office is about to close when they arrive and ask to speak with Camilla Willisams. The woman at the front desk, whose skin is the colour of milky coffee and who projects a bland, detached air, says flatly, “Yes.” Presuming she is Camilla, Pad steps forward.
“Good day, madam. My wife and I have just arrived from England on the
Anton.”
“Sa ki non’w?” Camilla says. Pad looks perplexed.
“I think she is asking for our names,” Charlotte says.
“Willisams, ma’am. You and I share the same family name.”
“Ki sa ou vlé?” she asks, in a stern tone of voice.
Captain Skinner had said most people here spoke English as well as Creole, a mixture of English, French and Portuguese, but the woman in front of them doesn’t seem to be speaking any language they can understand. Charlotte wonders if it is possible that she wants nothing to do with them? After several more failed exchanges, it becomes clear that the Willisams name is not the ticket to welcome they had hoped for. Camilla
finally condescends to use English, and dispatches them to a village at the edge of town where she says they can find shelter with others who are unsettled.
The waiting coachman, who seems more inclined to English, suggests that the nearby village really is their best hope for accommodation. With no one to advise them otherwise, Pad and Charlotte agree.
Fields stretch out on either side of the track. The sun is dropping out of the sky and into the sea with that alarming rapidity they had observed as they’d sailed into tropical waters. It is an orange ball of flame that lights the clutches of families walking arm in arm through the fields toward home and burnishes the smoke that curls from their small houses.
“We’re likely going to a way station,” Charlotte says. “Some place where arriving passengers stay until they can make proper arrangements.” The land around them becomes brown bog, almost undefined in the fading light.
“Ow!” Charlotte swats at her neck. A moment later Pad, too, begins swatting. The air is suddenly full of flying insects that bite at every exposed bit of flesh.
“Mosquitoes,” says the driver. “Better you should cover yourselves.”
Charlotte pulls her soiled shawl from her bag and Pad lifts the collar of his shirt.
“Whoever heard of mosquitoes this big?” Charlotte wants to know.
It is pitch dark when they pull into the village, a crush of thatched shanties, fires burning in pits in front of the huts. The driver stops at what appears to be the only proper dwelling and disembarks. A European man with a drooping moustache and oversized belly stands on the doorstep and the two speak
briefly. Charlotte can see the man looking over the driver’s shoulder at her.
The driver unloads the trunk and accepts his payment in silence, then is gone.
“Welcome to Jamaica.” The man stifles a yawn. “Hurry in now, before the mossies carry you away.”
Pad drags the trunk inside and the door closes behind them. Straw mats are strewn about the floor of the main room, and are separated by curtains of cotton that hang from pegs on the beams above them, just like the dreary curtains that hung between bunks on the ship. It seems a dozen others have found their way to this house, though Charlotte recognizes none from the ship. A fire burns in the centre of the room, some smoke escaping through a hole in the roof while the rest fills the room.
“I’m Lutz,” says the man. “What is it I might do for you?”
“Sir,” says Pad, “my wife and I have just disembarked from the
Anton
, out of England.”
“England? You don’t say. Fancy that then.” Lutz gives them a broad smile that reveals two prominently absent teeth.
“We need fresh water, baths, food,” Charlotte interrupts.
“Food.” Lutz rubs the stubble on his chin. “Yes. We have food. And water. But baths”—he lets out a rolling chuckle—“We don’t see too many baths here on the plantation.”
“Would you be so kind, sir, as to tell us where we are?” asks Pad.
Lutz frowns. “In what sense do you mean, sir?”
“We’re entirely new to the island, sir.”
“Them’s sent you told you, did they not? The Raleigh Plantation is famous enough,” Lutz says. “I’m its manager and
this village serves its needs. You’ll find we ain’t got much here, but I can offer you shelter.”
“Thank you, sir,” says Pad, and he indeed feels a gratitude that almost equals his weariness.
“We get a lot come from the ships, seeking work and a life on the island. And we get many that are running from another life, one they choose to leave behind.” His eyes convey a knowing twinkle. Charlotte feels a sizzle of indignation.
“You spoke of food, sir,” she reminds him.
Lutz produces slices of bread and mugs of tea from a table by the window and suggests they sit on the bench against the wall. When they have eaten he shows them to their straw mats. Charlotte’s heart sinks now, as it had sunk a score of times in the course of that day.
“Never fear, love,” Pad whispers. “We’re only weary. Tomorrow will be a good day.”
“What did he mean, ‘those who sent us’?” Charlotte wants to know.
“In the morning, love. In the morning.”
They drag their trunk near their pallets and collapse exhausted on the straw.
T
HE SKY IS BARELY LIGHT
when Lutz begins shouting to waken the household. There is a lineup for the basin of water on the sideboard, but tea is brewing, fresh bread is baking in an outdoor oven and, mercifully, there are heaping plates of mangoes for the house full of refugees. When the others have eaten and left, Lutz takes Charlotte and Pad outside into the yard. “You can stay here if you want to work,” he says. “I need a man to help the overseer of the plantation. There is a cottage nearby. You can earn your keep with work.” He says he also needs a
person to do the accounts and inquires whether either of them can read. A huffy Charlotte tells him, “Of course I can read.” For that, he says he is willing to pay five shillings a month. Both faces must register their dismay, for Lutz tells them flatly, “Your options are not better than this. If you don’t want to stay here, you must go back to town on the cart this morning.”
With diminishing enthusiasm for the idyllic life they’d envisioned in these islands, they decide to stay at least until they can get their bearings. The pair move into the dingy one-room cottage at the edge of a field of sugar cane. Charlotte opens the trunk that contains their only possessions to find linens for their straw palette. It’s while they are settling into the cottage that Pad first complains of the swell left by the mosquitoes the night before. “They must like your taste,” Charlotte teases, relieved that her own bites are small and few. There isn’t even time to fully unpack the trunk before Lutz returns and directs Pad to the office of the overseer and tells Charlotte to come to his house to work on the account books.
The next few days are a blur of work, sleep and beating off the pests that crawl over everything in the cottage. There is no possibility to make another plan, much less unpack their belongings. Charlotte pulls a clean frock from the trunk each day and washes the one she’s worn, spreading it to dry on a bush behind the cottage. As for the clothes she sailed away in, she tossed them on the fire the very first night, creating a smudge that she hoped would at least keep the mosquitoes away.
E
ACH NIGHT BEFORE DUSK
, though the air is stifling, they stoke the fire to ward off the mosquitoes. Mattie Higgs who stays in the hut next door has told them a smoky fire works best. Each morning, they go to their respective jobs. Lutz informs
them that the harvest in the far field must be done by week’s end. Agents will collect the cane for export and the ship will depart directly. There is no time to rest.
O
N THEIR FIFTH DAY,
another morning where rain streams down ceaselessly, Pad complains that his joints are aching.
“It’s the working, I should think,” says Charlotte. “We have laid like lumps on that ship these months.”
Pad’s joints continue to torment him and two days later, he develops a fever. Charlotte presses cold cloths to his head at night. One of the women who lives with Lutz—a concubine, Charlotte assumes—advises her to pack mud on the swollen bites.
Charlotte’s worry grows to a gnawing fear. Rain continues to fall.
“No surprise, that,” one of the other women explains. “It’s the rainy season, my girl. It’s gonna rain and rain these five months.”
The deluge that had soaked the plantation that first day had seemed a welcome relief from the oppressive heat and a good wash for a dirty world. But now every single morning, the rain pelts down on the cottage for an hour or so and turns the fields into swamps and the tropical air into clouds of steam.
Pad grows worse by the hour. That night he groans in his sleep and then he vomits into the vessel beside the bed. On the ninth morning, his eyes roll in his head and he begins to shake violently. Charlotte runs to the main house.
“Mr. Lutz! Mr. Lutz!” she calls. “Please come! Pad is sick! You must help me!”
Lutz sends for a woman who, he assures Charlotte, is known for her cures, a local witch who gathers her medicines in
the woods. While they wait for the woman to arrive, he looks at Charlotte with an undertaker’s face.
“We got yellow fever here,” he says.
“What is that, sir?”
“Bad.”
“Where do you have it?”
“On this island.”
“It’s a big island with many people.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Willisams. And many dying.” He fills his pipe, regarding her as he does so. “Many widows, alone and grieving, are grateful for the support of a proper man.”
T
HE MEDICINE WOMAN
is remarkably old, wrinkly, toothless and not as high as Charlotte’s shoulder. Her name is Mrs. Sue. When she arrives at the cottage, she ties a kerchief over her face and indicates that Charlotte should do the same. Pad’s fever is raging. Charlotte spends her time running back and forth between the office where she is supposed to be working and the cottage where her man lies close to death.