Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Bertha shook her head.

‘And what about Mary? Did she know that this white man — Silas’s brother — was in fact her father?’

‘Mary and I weren’t what you’d call close. A product of circumstances, more than anything else.’

Pyke remained silent and waited for her to continue.

‘What I’m trying to say is that after I left Ginger Hill, I never saw my daughter again.’ Bertha’s voice was quivering. ‘She was five years of age at the time.’

Pyke didn’t try to hide his scepticism. ‘You mean she never came looking for you and you never sent word to her about your whereabouts?’

‘Initially I was terrified about the prospect of her trying to follow me here. Silas knew Mary was my daughter and even though she was barely five at the time, he made her one of his house slaves, to keep her close. If she ever tried to run away, he would have caught and punished her, in order to punish me. So I didn’t contact her or send word to her; after a while, it became normal and, much later, even after Silas had left for England, I just thought I’d left it too long.’ Bertha dabbed her eyes, unconvincingly, Pyke thought. ‘Of course, I’d hear things about her from time to time; I always craved to hear any piece of news about her, however small or trivial.’

‘Even bad news?’ Pyke asked, still not convinced by this part of the old woman’s tale. Even taking into account the debilitating effects of slavery and its aftermath, how likely was it that a mother and daughter wouldn’t make any effort to see one another during all this time?

‘Is there any other kind of news for black folk on this island?’

‘So what did you think when you heard that your daughter had agreed to marry the son of the man you despised?’

‘What do you think I thought?’ Bertha shook her head, as though the question were a stupid one.

‘And yet you still did nothing; you didn’t write to your daughter, to try to persuade her she was making a mistake?’

‘A mistake? A rich white man who by all accounts loved her? Why on earth would I tell her not to marry him?’

‘But they’re cousins.’

For a while Bertha sat very still, her eyes tightly shut and her face composed. Then she smiled. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, sir. I’m no longer a young woman. Too much talking tires me out. I don’t wish to be rude and I’d like you to stay here in the village tonight — as our guest. But I need to rest so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

‘What if Phillip isn’t dead?’ Pyke persisted. ‘What if he lived and at some point travelled to London?’ He was thinking about the blind mudlark who’d been seen talking with Arthur Sobers on the Ratcliff Highway. Was it simply coincidence that Phillip Malvern and this man were both blind?

‘Phillip died a long time ago. I told you that already.’

‘But you don’t know that for a fact, do you?’

This time she stared at him with something approaching hostility and refused to answer the question.

‘Did you know Mary had sailed for London?’

‘I heard about it after she’d left.’

‘And what did you think?’

‘I’ve told you, I am tired and need a rest. Now I’m going to have to insist upon it.’ She went to stand up and Pyke handed her the bamboo cane.

‘Would you have supported her decision, if you’d known about it?’

This time she turned to face him. ‘You mean, would I have sent her to her death?’

‘You knew she was going to die?’

‘I’m what folk here called a myal woman. The spirits visit me. I have certain powers of intuition.’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to believe me but I foresaw that Mary would die a very long way from home.’

‘Mary had those powers, too, didn’t she?’ Pyke thought about what McQuillan had told him. ‘Do you think she foresaw her death as well?’

But Bertha had clearly had enough and, without saying another word, she began to shuffle down the hill towards her hut.

That night, the villagers ate barbecued pork, drank rum and danced to the beat of their jam-jams and kitty-katties under the stars. It was a balmy night, and as Pyke watched the revellers shake their bodies in time to the music, he thought about his conversation with the old woman, unable to reconcile the different elements of what she had told him. Did she really believe that Phillip was long dead, and had Mary been entirely ignorant of her own parentage? Later in the evening, Bertha performed what he guessed was a traditional ritual: having sprinkled powder on her volunteer and fed him rum, she stood back while her assistant, a much younger man, danced in time to the drumbeats until the volunteer fell to the ground, apparently dead. While the beat of the jam-jams and kitty-katties echoed across the mountain, Bertha sprinkled herbs on to the ‘corpse’, squeezed juice into his mouth, touched his eyes with the tips of her fingers and chanted into the air. As the ring of revellers tightened around her, and the stamping and drumming became louder, she suddenly clapped her hands together and the volunteer came back to life.

It should have been easy for Pyke to dismiss the whole spectacle as nonsense, as other white men before him had done. Generally he wasn’t a superstitious man, preferring to put his faith in the rigours of science and reason. But as he sat there taking it all in — the warm air, the strange sounds and smells, the fiery rum warming his stomach — Pyke found himself curiously affected by the spectacle. This hadn’t been a performance for him or even for those who’d participated in it but rather for family and friends who’d suffered and died during slavery, and especially for Mary Edgar, who had been buried alone and unloved in a faraway city. This was her farewell, and as the dance broke up and the revellers fell to the ground, exhausted, Pyke caught the old woman’s eye. She looked at him, puzzled at first, and then broke into a smile, as if to suggest her long-lost daughter had finally come home.

Later that night they came for him. Six or seven men crept up to his hut and pushed open the door. Pyke watched them from the trees on the other side of the clearing. Shortly afterwards they emerged from the hut, talking and gesticulating to one another. They looked around, not knowing what to do. Pyke withdrew behind the line of trees and stared up at the branches rustling overhead. Pyke didn’t doubt that, had he stayed in the hut, he would be dead by now; there was something he’d asked the old woman about, something he’d said, something he knew that made him a threat. Harper had been the same.

Earlier, before the celebration had started, he had hidden his horse a long way from the village and had already planned his escape route. He would wait for the men to disperse and then try to retrieve his mare. By that time the sun would be up and he would start the long two-day trek towards Kingston and the steamer.

Part of him wanted to have another talk with the old woman, hold a knife to her throat and force the whole truth from her. But some of the men had congregated outside her hut, and Pyke knew he wouldn’t get within fifty feet of her.

To go anywhere near her was to take a risk that he wasn’t prepared to take because, right at that moment, more than anything, Pyke wanted to take Felix in his arms and hold him. It was time to go home.

London

AUGUST 1840

Every seat in the cavernous room had been filled, which meant that Pyke had to stand at the back of the hall and could barely see, let alone hear, the figures on the stage. He moved down the aisle through the mass of bodies and eventually found a spot just to the left of the stage.

Exeter Hall was synonymous with a loosely connected group of anti-slavery, temperance and religious movements and was hosting the first Anti-Slavery Society World Convention. As Pyke surveyed the solemn faces in the crowd, listening earnestly to the sober pronouncements of the speaker, he thought about the unforgiving doctrine that many of them subscribed to — that God helped only those who helped themselves. He wanted to take each and every one of them a few streets to the north or south, to St Giles or Alsatia, and show them the conditions that many people had to endure through no fault of their own. It wasn’t their views he objected to as much as their holier-than-thou attitudes, as though God had personally selected them for his mission on earth while leaving the undeserving multitude to beg for their guidance or rot in the gutters. Emily had once tried to help other people, without a trace of the smugness and self-aggrandisement displayed by the Christian missionaries, and Pyke didn’t doubt she too would have despised most of the men in this room.