Barbara Erskine - The Ghost Tree

Once her mind was made up, they were a team again.

The family visit had not gone as well as Tom had envisaged. The Tartar , having cruised north to Pensacola, turned to patrol southwards again and finally arrived in Jamaica, anchoring off Kingston. Leaving the ship, his chest carried ashore by one of the sailors and passed on to one of his cousin’s slaves, it was with some relief that he turned his back on the sea for a while.

If he had expected a hero’s welcome from his father’s cousin, he was sadly disappointed. She turned out to be an elderly lady, comfortable in her own world, with little interest in a fourteen-year-old boy. It was a huge relief to both of them when she announced that they were expecting a visitor. ‘Dr Butt,’ she told him. ‘I think he will be better suited to entertaining you, Thomas. I fear I have no conversation for a boy your age.’ She smiled that cold austere smile that he had so quickly grown to dislike. He had hoped to find the warmth and welcome here that the word family conjured in his mind. Her next sentence was like a slap in the face. ‘He can fill in the time by teaching you till you go back to your ship.’

Dr Butt, however, turned out to be an agreeable and affable man, recently appointed to the position of physician general to the island militia, who swept the lonely boy under his wing and took him back to his own house where Tom spent a most enjoyable time, studying, drawing, exploring the island and flirting with Dr Butt’s daughters, who helped him choose a tortoise to ship home as a gift for his mama in Bath.

It was to Dr Butt that he finally confided the story of his illness. The doctor examined the medicine the slave woman had given him and he nodded, sniffing the mixture and examining the faint scars left on Tom’s body. ‘Yaws,’ he said. ‘Horrible, but not fatal. It is incredible how clever some of these African women are. Obeah women, they call themselves. They practise the magic of their own religion. Some are genuine healers with far more knowledge than many of us so-called educated doctors.’ He smiled. ‘We could learn so much from them if we only let ourselves listen.’

Tom did not mention the strange doll the woman had given him, sensing the doctor would not be so approving of that. It was tucked in the bottom of his trunk, wrapped in a neckerchief. He could feel its power, but it didn’t frighten him; on the contrary, he knew it would somehow keep his belongings safer than any padlock.

It was with genuine regret that he prepared for his recall to the ship. Having packed his trunk and dispatched his last batch of letters home, he headed back to the harbour, hoping against hope that he would not find Andrew Farquhar waiting for him.

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