Revenant Eve (5 page)

Aurélie went on. “I said we all are agreed against devils, so can we now swim?” Her French accent was strong, the names Harry and Hiasinte spoken without the
h
.

“Stap me!” the blonde said, laughing. “You’ve a quick wit, Aurélie
chérie
.”

Ah!
Aurélie
. So I was right. Chalk one up for Murray.
I can do this
.

The dark one stepped into the lamp’s soft golden glow as she gave Aurélie an approving nod. She was as beautiful as her voice, with long
slanted eyes and sculpted bones that would have made Leonardo weep and think of angels. “That was well said. Remember what Nanny Hiasinte teaches about finding the place to agree.”

“I tried, Tante Mimba! Then Harry said he must be the leader, because his father is a captain of artillery. So I said, you can be leader, let us dive!”

“Well spoken,
petit chou.
”

Tante
means “aunt” in French, and I could see a strong resemblance to the girl in her; so Aurélie had a white mom and a black aunt? “You lead by telling him to lead. This is quick wit.”

Aurélie’s mom cracked a laugh. “So it is.”

Aurélie tossed her head back. “But Tante Mimba!
Maman!
Then he said we had to shuck our clothes. I said, we never have before. Why now? He said, you are too fine a gentleman, René? I said like you told me,
Maman
, I cannot take off my shirt for the coral will scratch me again, and the scratch will go bad. The shirt protects me. George said, Are we to argue all day and not find any treasure? So we went into the water. But Harry swam near me, and once he socked me on the arm. I think he wanted another fight.”

While Aurélie chattered, the two women exchanged a long look, and
Maman
stretched her hand over a heavy packet tied with narrow ribbon. It lay on a side table with a pair of heavily bound books next to one of the guttering lamps. “It is meant to be,” she murmured.

“Nanny said so this morning,” Aunt Mimba replied quietly. “The obeah was to be at noon.”

Aurélie was not listening as she inventoried the extra hits and kicks Harry had aimed her way, touching her knee and ribs and shoulder as she spoke. She finished in an injured tone, “I think the devils got into Harry, for he was always my friend.”

“It’s a devil only if nature be devilish, and there are many who will so attest,”
Maman
said. “Harry suspects there is something amiss. I thought you would have a year or two more to be a boy, so it is as well that we come to what I—”

She paused as through the window came the sound of high, mellow
tooting in a deliberate pattern. “The Abeng,”
Maman
breathed, and everyone stilled.

Abeng? Those horns were used both by slave holders and the Maroon guerrillas in
Jamaica!
I was definitely on the other side of the world from Europe. How was I supposed to get this kid to Dobrenica in order to save it?

Aunt Mimba held up three fingers as
Maman
said, “Two smaller ships, night, weather coming. Big one lying outside the cove. Would it be the Swedes? Exploring our cove, maybe?” She shook her head. “I don’t like this, Mimba.”

“Neither do I.” Aunt Mimba slung the baldric back on. “You raise the house and deal with the landing parties, Anne. I’ll take the field hands in the canoes. These ‘Swedes’ are not the only ones who can use the cover of a storm.” Her tone dropped to threat on the last words, and she dashed out.

Anne got to her feet and picked up a sword from a sideboard in a shadowy corner. “My sweet, take the small ones and lie up with your weapons. The way we drilled.” When the girl began to protest that she was big, now—she could defend herself—her mother flashed up a hand. “Only if they find you. Then strike and run, foot or knee. Just like you did on the ship. You must protect the small ones if I cannot get there at once.”

Aurélie sprang away as lightly as a deer, and I found myself bobbing after her into a confusion of shadows as darkness closed in with the building clouds. Lightning flashed. The two ships drifting into the little bay became stark black and white silhouettes.

Well, this really sucked. I had found my charge just in time for her to be attacked by pirates, and I couldn’t even pick up a weapon. How was I supposed to protect her?

More lightning. Aurélie crouched with several little kids in the lee of a rotting boat that had been overturned on a pile of mossy rocks. The bluish light revealed their intent faces and their weapons. Aurélie clutched a battered rapier in her left hand. In her right, protected by her body in a desperately dangerous way, she held a flintlock pistol, primed and ready to fire. There was no safety on that thing.

The kids stared out intently. Sand flew, grains glinting in the flare of lightning as a pair of silhouettes charged the kids’ hidey-hole, one with a dark-smeared upraised cutlass.

Out came the pistol. Aurélie squinted.
Flash!
Cutlass Guy recoiled, rocking back and forth with both hands clutched over a shattered knee, the cutlass lying in the sand.

The second pirate made a wide swipe with his weapon under the rail of the rotting boat—and met the rapier, which spun out of Aurélie’s grip. Then he let out a howl as a small boy stabbed him in the foot with a long knife. Whoosh! Orange flames shot up on one of the ships, lighting the bay. Aurélie led the kids in a low-running stream over the rocks in the other direction. They were partially obscured by the slashing rain.

Pistols flashed and silhouetted figures struggled, some falling. The fighting ended when the pirates fled down the beach to their boats, where they discovered the bottoms smashed. Some swam away. Others vanished into the darkness at either end of the cove.

Once more I heard the Abeng horn’s high toot in quick patterns that had to be code, for the kids whooped for joy, then splashed into the house.

A blink, and I was inside. Anne strode in through one of the low arches leading to the farther reaches of the house. She was wrapping a cloth around her arm and grimacing as she said, “…are the cottages clear?”

A tall, slender man with black skin and silver hair said, “Three dead, and two ran off into the jungle. We’ve posted a watch. Was that
Papillon
aflame?”

“Yes, but we took the schooner, and I’m waiting on Mimba. I hope the felucca is ours. We’ll get something for that, if Saint-Domingue isn’t in flames itself.”

“How could pirates find our cove?”

“I overheard talk on the shore, during the fight. It was Ruiz again,” Anne said, her breath hissing as she lowered herself into a chair. “Oh, my back.”

“Ruiz,
le scélérat!
” Aurélie exclaimed, running up to her mother’s
knee. “
Maman
, you are hurt!” She gazed in dismay at her mother’s bloody forearm.

“Some basilicum powder, if it isn’t spoilt, and powder of lead if it is, and I shall be well blooded if fever poisons my veins. It is nothing, child. But bide here, for I mean to talk to you before I retire, in case the fever does come on me.”

“I thought the pirate Ruiz was locked up,” Aurélie exclaimed.

“So did we all, but he must have escaped in the trouble at Saint-Domingue. This much we learned just now. He took that Swedish tobacco-ship out there, which is how he got past Port Royal.”

“But who’s in the other ships?”

“His new allies,” Anne said, hissing again. “Tie that off, will you, child?”

Aurélie knelt at her mother’s chair and swiftly tied the bandage, as she said fretfully, “I thought we were finished with pirates.”

“There will always be pirates, it comes to my mind,” Anne said. “Where there’s gold, there will be pirates to try to take it. I think Ruiz was on
Papillon
when the magazine blew, but enough of his rats got away that they might come back. We’ll be ready. ’Tis not to trouble you. Another matter lies before us.” She tapped the ribbon-tied paper with her free hand.

“What is that? A letter? Did someone write to you,
Maman?
”

“Indeed yes, a most prodigious letter, which has been waiting in Kingston this half year or more, and I didn’t know, or I would’ve gone into the city earlier. Ah, ’tis prodigious
tidings,
from no less than our great Kittredge relations in England. It seems that news reached them of your Uncle Thomas’s death and the destruction of Kittredge Plantation, and we are invited to take ship to England and live with your Uncle William Kittredge.”

“Fie! We do not want them.”

“Family is one of those treasures it would be foolish to throw away,” Anne said slowly. “I’m thinking of sending you.”

“Why? I wish to be here with you, and Tante Mimba, and Nanny Hiasinte, and Cousin Fiba. I don’t want these strangers, or their England.
I love being René, and having the boat, and exploring the coves and diving into the sunken city.”

“I know. I thought you might have these things a while longer.” Anne leaned forward, grimacing in the uncertain candlelight, and kissed her daughter smackingly on the forehead. Then her smile vanished. “But as I told you when we first changed you from Aurélie to René, ’tis the way of nature, and one day you must be a girl again. I thought ’twould wait upon our being safely established back here on Jamaica again. But there are legalities tying up the plantation that I hadn’t foreseen. And meanwhile, here’s this letter with its invitation.”

“To take me away from you? That is an evil letter.”

“This letter invites me to England as the indigent daughter of James Kittredge. ’Tis kindly meant, child. The Colonial Office received instructions via a land agent to sell the plantation. It seems my cousin William Kittredge is to inherit because my father and brother died without male heirs. I wish I’d gone into Kingston earlier, but ’tis useless to repine. And also,” Anne said with heavy irony, “if I can convince Government House that my brother left the plantation to my husband, what confounds a mere daughter of an exiled son might be encompassed by the rich widow of the Marquis de Mascarenhas. That is going to take time. You, at least, can go to safety and certain comfort.”

Memory interposed itself. I was sitting in a café with Beka Ridotski, who said,
Have you ever looked at Tony’s black eyes and wondered what ancestor is peering back at you? There is some evidence that Aurélie was not the daughter of a Spanish marquis but the illegitimate granddaughter of an exiled Englishman and a runaway slave from the Caribbean.

“There is no comfort without you, and I do not want safety,” Aurélie cried.

“Everyone wants safety.” Anne sighed. “As I said, there will always be pirates. However, this discussion must wait upon Mimba’s rejoining us, for we all must decide together. Get a meal into you first.”

Aurélie shook her head. “Grandmère Marie-Claude will not want me to go to England. She hates the English! She said always, she wished to take me to France.”

“
No
one would go to France now,” Anne said. “They would cut off your head the moment you stepped on shore, just as they no doubt have done with your Tascher and de Beauharnais relations.”

Beauharnais?
I wondered. Wasn’t that the name of Josephine’s first husband?

“What does Nanny Hiasinte say?” Aurélie asked, turning from her mother to her aunt.

There was a step behind them, and Mimba appeared. She laid her baldric on the side table, then straightened up, wincing. “Nanny has said you must come to the mountain. She has made the obeah, and you are to go.”

Aurélie sighed. “I will do whatever Nanny says.”

Anne said, “I smell pumpkin frying. Go eat.”

I
T MIGHT HAVE BEEN HALF AN HOUR LATER,
or half a day. Or even half a week in their time, though for me it felt like seconds later. I can only say for certain that it was daylight, and I bobbed along like a balloon on a string following the three figures as they walked up a narrow trail surrounded by spectacular greenery.

Saving Dobrenica required first getting answers to questions. My hopes were as high as Aurélie’s as she skipped and chattered.

White birds darted and dove at the worms washed out by the rain. Aurélie ran among the birds, arms high, as they skirled around her. Then she dashed up the narrow path, the vivid red
poinciana
, the yellow
poui
, and the extraordinary blue
lignum vitae
breaking the patterns of green. Aurélie seemed oblivious to the wild, sumptuous color on either side of her, responding only when vivid tiny shapes hummed and darted close to her—dragonflies, and hummingbirds of an amazing variety.

The two women walked more soberly, Mimba using a gentleman’s stick sword as a cane, and Anne holding her bandaged forearm close. The bright morning sun was a lot kinder to Mimba than to Anne, who looked older than she probably was, her freckled skin was so sun-damaged. But the deep lines on either side of her eyes somehow enhanced the intelligence and good humor that I saw in her expression as she trudged slowly up the trail.

My hearing was improving. I could make out the quiet
chuff chuff
of their steps on the trail, the rustle of the greenery, and the hoot and trill of unseen wildlife. The three paid little attention, pausing only when the distinctive high tootle of the Abeng horn sounded ahead or behind them. Someone was signaling as they climbed into the hills above the cove.