The Lazarus Curse (14 page)

T
he slaves huddled around the hearth in the scullery. The hour was late and the dinner pots and plates had been washed and put away. The fires in the dining room and drawing room had been doused and the doors locked. Their duties done, Mistress Bradshaw had persuaded Mr. Mason to allow the Negroes the privilege of warming themselves because of the unusually cold weather. Some of the white servants were playing cards around the kitchen table. The maids were sewing or gossiping.

“Surely, Mr. Mason, you do not want any more of them dying?” the cook had argued, appealing to his practical nature rather than his humanity.

Venus had also put pressure on him. Being the housekeeper, she had her own room, with her own fire, but she always sided with Cook in trying to ease the slaves’ burden. So they sat with glowing faces around the dying embers. They did not want to talk about how they had each arrived in slavery; how some of them were born into captivity, while others had endured the horrors of the journey from Africa. They had heard the stories so many times, of the wars and the Arab traders and the long treks to the coast. They knew of the families torn apart by the white men in their big ships. Only Homer, Hercules (the eldest), and Ezra, who was a skilled carpenter, remembered anything of their homelands. The others—Cato, Patience, and Phibbah—had been born into captivity, but they still seemed hungry for the stories, even though they had heard many of them before.

“My father was a fisherman,” recalled Homer, looking into the flames. “We used to catch fish as big as a man in the lake. We never lacked food.”

Hercules smiled and shrugged. “Until the Ashanti came and defeated us.”

“And sold you to the white men,” butted in Phibbah.

“That’s right, child,” continued Homer. “They took us to a castle and locked us in their dungeon, before loading us like cattle onto ships.” He shook his head. “What I wouldn’t give to go back home, to sit under the shade of a sweet dika tree, and watch the sun go down over Mount Afadjato.”

Cato gave him an odd look. “Maybe you can.”

“What you mean?”

He shrugged. “Why is it that we are still kept in chains? Do you not see our African brothers and sisters all around you in the street?” he asked.

“I see them,” barked Hercules, “and I see them begging. I see them cold and without shoes on their feet.”

“But at least their feet are free!” cried Cato. “At least they can run and not be chased and whipped!” He lifted his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “Do you not see? In England there are others like us who do not belong to a master. They are not property. They are human beings.” He sank his hand into his breeches’ pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. On it was large writing and a picture of a Negro man in chains. The others drew closer to inspect it.

“What is it?” asked Phibbah.

Cato brandished it like a silk handkerchief. “It is called a handbill and it is being passed ’round in some of the taverns.”

Reaching into his pocket once more, he pulled out another two pieces of paper, exactly the same. Phibbah snatched one and inspected it.

“What does it say?” asked Homer. He could not read. None of them could.

“It calls for all slaves to be free,” cried Cato.

“Who calls?” snapped Hercules, sounding a note of caution.

By now Cato’s eyes were ablaze. “There is talk,” he replied.

“What talk?” Homer challenged.

“There is a way for us to be free, back home, in Africa.”

Homer snatched the paper and studied the drawing of one of their kind, on his knees, his manacled hands together in supplication as if begging for mercy.

“Where you get this?” he asked.

“Where our free black brothers meet, at an inn called the Crown.” Cato’s eyes were as bright as the Caribbean sun at noontide.

Phibbah had never seen him so animated. There was something odd in his manner; a fire that was burning inside him she had not encountered before. He had the zeal of a white preacher she sometimes saw in the market square, exhorting his audience to repent of their sins and turn to god, their white god. She saw him slide a sideways look at her, as if he realized that she knew something was about to happen, something big and frightening that might change their lives. His expression was that of an excited hound that had been digging in the dirt. What had he found? A bone of hope to chew upon, perhaps? He had discovered more than this trifling piece of paper with words on, surely? Did he dream of escape? She thought of her own plan. Should she tell him of the obeah in return for his secret? If he knew that, thanks to her, Mistress Carfax would be dead soon, then perhaps he would take her with him if he was going to break for freedom? She resolved to ask Cato the next time they were alone.

Venus slid through the silence of Samuel Carfax’s bedroom, watching the mound beneath the blankets move up and down with each breath. Laying a cold hand on his shoulder, she stirred him with her touch. He opened his eyes, registered her face in the glimmer of the fire’s embers, and smiled.

“I did not think you would come tonight,” he told her softly. In the half-light she saw his naked head peeping out from the coverlet, smooth as a hard-boiled egg without its wig. Her touch moved him quickly into wakefulness and he turned onto his back. There was lust in his hands as he reached for one of the ribbons on her nightgown and began toying with it like a string on a lute.

She stayed his fingers and started undoing the ribbons herself. “Do I ever let you down?” she asked in a voice as smooth as velvet.

She did not tell him the reason for her lateness, that she was passing the scullery and had caught a fragment of conversation between the slaves that had held her attention. Such was her interest that it had caused her to stand silently with her ear to the door, listening to their talk for a full twenty minutes. She climbed into bed beside him and began warming her hands on his hot body.

“No,” he replied as he felt her icy fingertips caress his thigh. “You never let me down.”

M
istress Finesilver woke Thomas with a message that morning. Through the fog of his returning consciousness he heard her say there was a carriage waiting to take him to the Carfax household.

“Who is ill?” he asked, pulling back his bedsheets.

“I do not know, sir,” she replied, drawing the blind. “Only that it is urgent.”

From the way the carriage clattered at high speed through the streets and along the river road, Thomas assumed some kind of terrible calamity had befallen the Carfaxes. Indeed, when the door was opened to him he heard a loud commotion coming from upstairs. He was therefore more than a little surprised to be ushered into the study, where he found Samuel Carfax seated at the desk, poring over some sort of ledger. He eased up his portly frame when Mason announced the doctor and strode over to greet him. As he did so, Thomas clearly heard a woman shouting, screaming even, and her cries were punctuated by a dog’s howls. The noise was growing louder.

Thomas regarded Carfax quizzically, expecting some sort of explanation. When it came, it was not what he had anticipated. The plantation owner shrugged almost apologetically.

“My wife . . .” he began. “She . . .” He was not given the chance to finish his sentence. At that moment Cordelia Carfax burst into the room, carrying Fino under her arm.

“He’s blind! My baby is blind!” she wailed, clutching the whimpering canine. Her mouth was twisted and tears gushed down her cheeks as she thrust the animal into her husband’s arms.

“Calm yourself, my dear,” urged Carfax, suddenly landed with the distressed dog. He lifted it away from his torso, outstretching his arms, as if the creature were a bundle of foul-smelling rags. It was pawing pathetically at its flat muzzle.

Mistress Carfax, her face crumpled and puffy, leered at Thomas.

“Well, are you just going to stand there, Dr. Silkstone? Can you not see my dog is in anguish?”

Thomas stepped forward. Up until this moment, his only dealings with animals had been pegging them out for dissection, and with Franklin, his rat. He had never been asked to examine a sick dog before and was a little reticent to do so now.

“For pity’s sake, take it, will you!” cried Carfax, anxious to be rid of the furry burden, plonking it into Thomas’s arms.

Lifting the pug over to the hearth to take advantage of the light, the doctor could see that it was suffering badly. Its lids were closed and swollen and tears had gathered in the fur beneath its eyes. But it was its strong scent that struck Thomas. He sniffed at it and, much to his bewilderment, smelled roses.

“I need water,” he called, but his order was lost in Mistress Carfax’s shrieking. “Water, if you please,” he repeated, only louder.

Heeding the request, Samuel Carfax tugged at the servant’s bell.

Thomas pulled out a wad of gauze from his open case and began dabbing the creature’s face. “I’d say that this little fellow has something caustic in his eyes,” he said.

“Caustic?” echoed Mistress Carfax, tearing herself away from her husband’s embrace. “Does that mean poison?”

“It could mean any manner of substance, madam,” replied Thomas, as Samuel Carfax ordered a pitcher of water from Mason. “But from the smell of it, I surmise that substance is perfume.”

Mistress Carfax gasped. “Perfume!” she repeated.

Thomas nodded. “Rosewater?”

Another gasp issued from the distressed woman as she thought of her silver scent bottle on her dressing table. “But how?” she asked.

Or rather who?
thought Thomas. He said nothing of his suspicions, but instructed that the dog’s eyes be regularly washed with cool, boiled water for the next few hours.

He left Cordelia Carfax billing and cooing over Fino, while Venus emerged to show him to his waiting carriage. Tall and poised, she led him into the hallway, where a footman waited with his topcoat. As he slipped his arm into a sleeve Thomas looked outside onto the back lawns. Squinting against the winter sunlight, his gaze snagged on what appeared to be two gravestones, side by side, at the bottom of the narrow plot.

He pointed to them. “Forgive me, those headstones, there?” he asked the housekeeper. “They belong to slaves?”

Venus also looked out. When she saw what Thomas was pointing at, she clicked her tongue as if chiding a white man’s ignorance.

“Those belong to the missa’s old dogs,” she told him coolly. “Slaves do not have headstones, Dr. Silkstone.”

As the carriage returned him home, Thomas pondered on the Carfax household and how it must be riven with hatred and mistrust. He had sluiced the dog’s eyes and did not believe any lasting damage had been done, but someone had intended that the creature should be permanently blinded, presumably to wound Mistress Carfax indirectly. He suspected that the dog was the child she had never had—he was not aware of any offspring—and she lavished more love on it than on any human being, including her husband. Moreover, she treated her slaves worse than stray dogs. He had witnessed, with his own eyes, the woman’s indifference to the death of the Negro boy and her anger when the girl had mourned so publicly. He’d wager that one of those poor, wretched slaves had poured perfume into the dog’s eyes to vent their festering and impotent hatred of their mistress. Of course it was reprehensible to injure a defenseless creature, but it was a soft target, and its suffering was clearly felt vicariously by its owner.

So engrossed in his own thoughts was Thomas during the carriage ride back to Hollen Street that he became oblivious to all that was going on around him. In particular, he had no notion that he was being observed as he alighted outside his home. Two gentlemen sat inside another carriage parked opposite. They watched Thomas dismiss the driver and walk up the steps before instructing their own driver to move off.

J
osiah Dalrymple had business to conduct with Samuel Carfax. He duly arrived at the latter’s villa at the appointed time, attended by his trusted slave Jeremiah. As his business was of a private nature, however, he told Jeremiah to wait downstairs in the servants’ quarters, where he was duly dispatched by Mason the butler.

In the kitchen, Cook was standing by the range, stirring the stockpot. She turned, huffed, and said Jeremiah could sit and wait on the bench by the table. Mr. Roberts, mending a broken dish, however, had different ideas. As soon as the butler was out of sight he ordered Jeremiah stand.

“You!”

The slave looked up.

“There’s no place for you black scum here.” He spat the words as if they were poison.

Cook looked up, bobbed a glance at the slave, then at his tormentor.

“He’ll do no harm here,” she countered.

Angered by the cook’s defense, Roberts stood his ground.

“I am not wanting to look at his dirty black face,” he sneered, then turning to a confused Jeremiah, he barked: “Wait in the boot room.” Heading for the door, he gestured to the slave to follow.

A few paces along the narrow passage, they came to another door. Roberts opened it.

“Get in,” he ordered.

Jeremiah hesitated. It was not something he usually did when commanded by a white man, but, after a moment, he did as he was bade, walking into a tiny, dark room with only the smallest of windows to let in light. It was cold and smelled musty. The walls were lined with shelves for boots and hooks for riding crops and whips that he suspected were not used on horses at all. There were the familiar sticks, too, that had small paddles on the end that his master used to hit balls around for pleasure.

“You shall stay here until your master is ready for you,” said Roberts, and with that he shut the door, locking it behind him.

Left alone in the murky darkness, Jeremiah walked over to the corner and sat himself down, rolling his body into a ball for warmth, and resting his head on his folded arms. This is how he must have fallen asleep, for it was how he found himself when he was wakened by the sound of the key in the lock. His head shot up to see a woman, swiftly followed by a man, as they blustered into the darkness of the room. He froze. They did not know he was there.

In the murky light he watched them move like shadow puppets, heard their panting, then their words.

“You should not have come here,” said the woman.

“But we have business.” The man lunged toward her, planting kisses on her neck. “Your lord and master is engaged upstairs.”

“It is dangerous,” she protested.

“You love the danger!” He laughed. “You have more for me?”

She pushed him away slightly. “There will be another very soon. A fine Coromantee male.”

“Excellent,” came the reply. Jeremiah heard the man’s breathing thicken before he pushed the woman up against the wall. “My reputation is not the only thing that is growing.”

The rustle of silk was heard and the grunting began. The woman let out an odd cry, somewhere twixt pleasure and pain, he a great roar. Then it was over and silence.

Jeremiah held his breath, willing them to leave as quickly as they had come, but in their exertions the couple must have knocked a shelf and a boot came tumbling down, narrowly missing him. As it clattered to the floor, he saw both their heads turn his way. Then the woman gasped.

“There’s someone there!”

“What?”

The man instinctively grabbed the nearest weapon to hand, a golf stick, and launched himself into the darkness.

“A slave!” he cried, seeing the whites of Jeremiah’s eyes, and he lifted the club to strike.

Jeremiah leapt up and headed for the open door, but before he could reach it, the man brought down the club on his back, striking him hard. A scream of pain tore through the darkness and he stumbled. His hands flew up to protect his head, but the man confronted him, raining another blow, this time on his skull. He felt the blood gush from a wound, but could see just enough to know that his attacker was about to strike again. Managing to scramble into the passage, he fled to the back door, shouldered it open and found himself outside. He staggered along a path and into the garden, leaving a trail of blood on the snow in his wake. There was a side gate. It was not locked. He glanced back. There were footsteps. He knew he could not return.

Later that night, in the solitary gloom of his own bedroom, Thomas began to read Dr. John Perrick’s letters by candlelight. The small fire in his grate had long since died and he gathered the blankets from his bed and wrapped them around him. In the poor light he sat squinting at the closely written text of the correspondence between man and wife. He was not completely at ease doing so. He felt like a voyeur or an intruder. There were obviously passages which were of a private nature and he skimmed over these quickly. What was of the utmost interest were the excerpts that dealt with the adventures of the expedition members and at least he trusted that these, addressed as they were to his spouse, would not be as graphic as Dr. Welton’s observations.

The letters did, indeed, prove a mine of helpful and intriguing information and threw up many pharmacological secrets, known only to the island’s natives. With a journal open on his desk, Thomas made copious notes, adding his own deliberations every now and then. There were descriptions of various plants that were the basis of good physic. Aloe vera was mentioned prominently and, indeed, there was a recipe for the relief of fever which used it as the main ingredient, while garden balsam, it was said, was good for both colds and colic in babes.

Yet there were other, more sinister, entries, like Perrick’s impression of Kingston on his arrival.
It pains me to say that I am glad you are not with me to see this port, my dear, for it is no place for a lady. Bewildered Negro men, women, and children, all with chains about their necks, are dispatched at markets to their owners as traders sell pots and pans in Spittle Fields.

His candle now burned low, Thomas rubbed his strained eyes and decided to retire to his bed, although he knew he would not rest easy. Matthew Bartlett’s murder had unsettled him and the mistreatment of their slaves by Carfax and his wife had disturbed him. These notes and letters opened the window even wider onto a world of savagery and inhumanity. It had always been there for him to see, but he had never taken the time to observe it. Now, like the botfly larva he had removed from the arm of Samuel Carfax, it was rearing its hideous head. Perhaps it was because he found it too terrible to contemplate that he had chosen to ignore it before. Now that it had made itself known to him, he could no longer brush it aside. He heard the watchman cry three o’clock before he finally fell asleep.