Chapter 7: The Fort
He did not pass out.
Around midday he was replaced with another young soldier carrying another tray and another bottle that were both shoved through the bars to join this morning’s tray. I didn’t touch this one either. Accepting food from Andrews felt too close to accepting his proposals right now, and this was not the time or place to start a marriage.
The food taunted me.
I was getting hungrier…and there was a mouthwatering smell coming from a pastry. No. Best not cave yet. I put the food aside. They wouldn’t keep me in here much longer, and I’d be able to return the whole lot to Andrews with a clean conscience.
A new guard arrived around sundown with a new tray. I wasn’t feeling like making trouble at the moment. I watched the sun crawl across the stone floor and threw my shoe at the rats who dared to peek out of cracks and sniff the aroma from my trays of abandoned food. The guard jumped every time my shoe hit the wall. His discomfort eased my irritation, so I looked around for loose rocks that would make a louder noise.
Footsteps echoed down the hall and attracted both of our attention. A woman’s voice sounded from under the door, and I sat up straighter. The door opened, and another young guard escorted my dear friend inside.
“Mary!” I exclaimed and went to the bars to meet her.
“When you didn’t show up for a few days, I concluded you must be here. Dom is watching the boat.” Her eyes flitted to the guards, and I saw her words filter through carefully curated layers, layers that kept her safe from men like her husband and these guards.
“I owe you so much.” I didn’t know how she made it in here, but I’d be sure she was well compensated for her lies and efforts.
“Yes.” She looked askance at the guard again before continuing. “Anyone I should contact for you? Andrews?”
“No.” I’d sort Andrews out myself later. I was surprised he hadn’t come by the ship already and talked with Mary.
What I needed was to get the sale of the guns and powder started. Mary could handle that for sure. “If you could get word to my dear father, though. He’s a whaler on the south shore, he must be worried sick about me. I’ll be fine, but his heart is weak, you know.”
“I know. Does he have any resources?” Mary played along without skipping a beat.
“Some. I’m sure it’ll never be enough to get me out, but any little bit helps.” The guard was clocking my every word. These damn fresh-off-the-boat recruits were so annoying. Give me a jaded pervert any day over a wide-eyed greenstick Boy Scout.
“I’ll make sure he eats tonight.” Mary was the picture of a caring and devoted friend.
“Oh, and do you have a paper with you? I’d like to write a note for the lady I’m traveling with.” The thought just occurred to me that Mary could also get word to Izzy. My friend pulled a scrap of paper from a fold in her skirt as well as an old charcoal pencil I’d gifted her a few journeys back. I put the paper up to the wall and scrawled a short note.
Lady Isabelle,
I’ve been detained but you shouldn’t fear that I’ll be restored to you. We will be back on the seas shortly. Do not unpack too much of your trunk. Do not wander too far. I’ll be along to get you soonest.
Your obedient servant,
Capt. Anne
Who knew what Izzy would make of the old-style language, but hopefully she’d get the gist. I was imprisoned but fine. I’d be out as soon as I could get one of these guards distracted long enough to escape. Stay put. I was coming to get her, and we’d be out of here.
Mary folded the paper into her skirt again and bade me to stay out of trouble so that I would be released, instead of hung, and would therefore be able to pay her. I beamed at my friend and assured her I would. Of course, if they did kill me, she could keep all the profits herself.
I would buy Mary a whole island if I could.
Either way, I’d make sure she came out of this journey better than she was when I arrived. Her young guard escorted her away, and I was left playing the staring game with my own guard.
This sucked.
The sun set.
The guard changed after another hour, and I realized that I wasn’t going anywhere for the time being. I put my hat over my eyes and slept. An added benefit of the enforced inactivity was that my wounds finally started to heal now that I wasn’t taxing them with rowing and running and Andrews.
Still…I’d rather not be here. I flexed my shoulder and did my best to stretch and make the floor more comfortable.
At least I could hear the ocean.
Damn guard still didn’t sleep.
“Hey.” I tried to strike up conversation with him. “You ever been to the colonies?” This guard looked a little older than the others.
The boy hesitated a moment. He was surely under orders not to speak with prisoners but we were both bored.
“I was headed to Maryland when my ship foundered,” he answered.
“I know Maryland. Where were you going?”
“Kent Island. I have an older brother working at the gristmill there.”
“I know Kent Island.” Mom ordered special bottles from the distillery there, and when I was a kid, we’d had a few field trips to the old colonial sites that were still standing. I probably saw this poor brother’s gravestone.
Ghosts. All ghosts. My fingers itched towards a bottle. For the first time since their delivery, I wished for a drink. I closed my eyes. It would be good to get as much sleep as possible while I was here. Once back on my ship I planned to push us hard and fast across the ocean, and that involved forsaking REM cycles for weeks on end.
I’m not sure I ever fell asleep. It was at most that alpha kind of sleep where I was keenly aware of the ocean and the moon and the pain from my still-healing wounds but where my mind drifted across the years, moonlight briefly illuminating waves of memory throughout the night.
****
“Paul and James came to me with the offer last week.” Andrews, his face young, clean and unlined, looked at me across the fire. “Both farms are failing, and their friends at Virginia Company are getting replaced. The Somers Isles Company isn’t interested in extending any credit. It’s a good offer, and we have the money – you have the money,” he amended, and I scoffed. He and I both knew my funds were his funds. We were in this together. “Still,” he sobered, “I don’t know if I can work that much land. Ansel’s gone, you spend weeks at sea. There isn’t much in the way of skilled labor out here. I’m nervous about expanding if the land is going to lie fallow.”
“You’ve barely got five acres to your name here. You make good use of it—”
His turn to scoff. “It’d be nothing without you.”
“Okay, we make good use of it. Imagine what we could do with more.” The fire danced as we both contemplated the future. “Are both James and Paul going back to England? Would they stay on as extra hands?”
“Perhaps.”
“How were they working the land before?” I stoked the fire and watched the ashes drift skyward.
“They bought a few slaves. James has two, Paul one.”
“No. I won’t be a party to that.”
“You and I are doing fine on our own.” He grinned that wildcat grin at me. He loved that it was the two of us against the world. I did too. “We can afford to hire out seasonally. I think I’ll turn them down.”
“Let’s take a look at their farms together tomorrow. It can’t hurt.”
We were unprepared for their desperation.
****
The land abutted our western border, ten acres in one plot, sixteen the other. It would more than triple our holdings. Paul and James were both interested in staying on and proffered that they would like to start a distillery on the premises. If we could grow it, they could turn it into alcohol. I walked the grounds while the men discussed features of the soil. Andrews would give me the land report later. I wanted to take a look at the shore.
“He listens to you?” The voice was pleasant and deep and accented from Africa, likely one of the coastal countries along the Gulf of Guinea. The woman appeared from the same trail I’d just exited. This must be James’ enslaved woman. Had she followed me? “Men do not listen to women.” Her eyebrow went up on that last part. I wasn’t attired as a woman here ought to be. I had decided this morning I wasn’t going to traipse across fallow farmland in petticoats for a sale we were likely to turn down.
“Andrews is smart. He’s a good partner.”
“He is your husband?”
“Not yet.” I sensed a proposal coming. He was established and gaining success. We spent every moment possible together. If he asked, I intended to accept.
“Will you be buying this land?”
“I don’t think so. The parcel includes you and the other men. I won’t hold anyone in bondage.”
“Myself and the other men will be sold and sold cheaply if you and Mr. Andrews decline. I’d prefer not to experience that again.”
“I don’t buy people.”
“Do you help them?”
“Not really.” My sister was the one who helped people. Best I could do was not make anyone’s life worse. “What’s your name?”
“Helene. And yours?”
“Anne.” The woman stared at me without blinking. There was power in her. She wanted control of her own destiny and who could blame her?
“Anne, I can do more than cook bad meals for bad men.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I can be more than this.” She gestured broadly to her position in the world. “But not if I’m sold to ignorant men who do not value me.” She had me there. I knew that feeling all too well.
“I’ll cut our offer by a third. Extend the length of their contract. I can also take you where you want to go. I have a ship. I’m a good captain—”
“If I ever go on the sea again, it will be too soon.” She balked at my offer.
“Then what do you want?”
“A partner.” Helene was determined to make this deal and to make it with me. We both looked over to the men, currently pointing to aspects of the land and trees and rocks. They were mere facades this day; this deal would be made between Helene and me if it were going to be made at all.
“You want to partner with me?” I asked. Clarification was important here.
“Yes. Will you work with me?
“Yes.”
We gave her the first house. Andrews and I moved into the almost-finished mansion. I liked her a lot.
****
It was not my name on the grave next to Andrews.
Up till now I’d done most of the driving on the island. I let Mom drive us home after the graveyard. Then I found my way straight to a bar. Mom and Izzy wanted every beach they could find. Myself, I wanted darkness and to drown myself in the bottom of every glass handed to me.
“Anne, get up.” My mother rebuked me as she opened the curtains and the sun burned across my eyes. “You can’t lie in this hotel room all day. Are you sick?”
Even if I was sick, she intended to get my ass up and moving and be part and parcel of this vacation she’d meticulously planned. My life was over. He’d chosen her, not me. What did I have to live for anyway? What did it matter if I smiled in pictures or ate dinner or felt sunshine ever again?
“Up!” My mother had lost patience. I shoved my feet into shoes and dragged my ass to whatever meal it was time for.
I would go back to him; we had business left to accomplish. But I could never marry him, I could never call him mine. He was hers. I was a thief and an interloper.
****
“Amelia and Josephine are Helene’s girls. Beri is Angelica’s. Sofia is Yvonne’s,” Andrews confessed across the pillow from me, his face glowing with pride over his daughters. “They are all mine. Nanette, I – I didn’t understand. You were gone. You’d never gotten with child. I didn’t realize…I was so surprised. Helene is expecting another.”
“Congratulations.” My heart ached, but I was happy he finally had his children.
“Do you ever think that you might be a mother someday? If we tried—”
“I will never be a mother. You know this.”
“Come home. I need you there. I want you there.”
“Do they?”
“Please. Come home.”
