Tangled Passion (5 page)

“If anything, and Father, I mean
anything,
happens to Ashana and/or her mother, my mother and the whole of England will read the rest of the contents of the diary from which that paper came,” he said, pointing to the paper in his father’s hand.

Longstands glanced at the paper briefly and then at his son; the boy’s voice rang over and over again in his head; it was as cold as steel in dead winter. Still frozen from shock, Longstands watched Nathan calmly walk to the door and exit the room without another word. Dumbfounded and wondering what the piece of paper in his hand could possibly contain, while still not sure if his son had actually threatened blackmail, Longstands sighed. Then his eyes returned to the paper he held. He slowly opened it and the familiarity of the page scared him; quickly laying it on his lap, he ran the palm of his right hand over it several times to straighten the creases. Then picked it up and began to read.

“
May 1787,

At first it was merely out of curiosity, just simple curiosity, not the type that caused you to engage in a heinous act but rather to behold the naked body of a beautiful slave girl; I hadn’t any intention to go beyond the looking. She was shy, initially hesitating to take off the cloth that was wrapped around her body, from just above her breast, down to her knees. But she knew why she was there and knew what she had to do so I relaxed and waited to see how long the shyness would last. After a few moments of silence the cloth loosened then slid off her body and fell to the ground as tears welled up her eyes. The body that I saw was the most amazing female body I had ever seen; her breasts stood straight like a tower. Her abdomen was flat like the surface of a bed carefully dressed, her long legs could compete with the giraffe's and her skin was smooth and silky as though doused with a bucket of chocolate. Disbelief of the angelic beauty that stood before me summoned me to my feet ordering me to examine her behind-What a sight to behold; my manhood immediately roared like a lion in sight of a prey.

I looked up at her face and at first didn’t notice the tears only the beauty; beauty that was mixed with innocence; it was a rare kind of beauty. But then I noticed the tears travelling down her cheek and quickly got myself together, cautioning myself that I had accomplished my mission; I had seen it—the body of a beautiful slave girl. Now she could leave I told myself but I failed to keep that promise, I simply couldn’t, I had bitten the bait and become powerless, it was a struggle to let her go. I wanted more, even if it meant breaking my promise; the temptation grew stronger with each second that she stood there naked; with a body too sexy to ignore, just waiting for my any demand. Soon the temptation leaned heavily on me and eventually overwhelmed me.

I beckoned her to my bed with a wave of my right hand, she hesitated for a moment then approached reluctantly, I held her in my arms speaking consolation to her even though I knew she didn’t understand any of the words that I spoke, she was tense initially and then as if she suddenly understood, she began to relax and loosen up.....”

“Nathan!” Longstands’s voice was bitter and angry, reverberating through the house like thunder. “What is wrong with you Nathan?” All he wanted to do was to lock his palms around the boy’s neck and squeeze the life out of him—“How dare you!” he barked as the paper collapsed in his palm and became crushed in his fist; his teeth gnashing at the same time. He didn’t need to read any further; he knew the rest of the story like the back of his palm. What he didn’t know was how on earth his son could have managed to lay hands on his diary—something he’d thought was lost many years ago. A sudden tornado began to brew in his head; thoughts and questions flying about like debris in a hurricane, his head and heart hurting almost immediately and the room beginning to spin at a very fast pace.

Jonah had had enough of the deafening silence from the old man and was about to quietly excuse himself. He had taken the silence to mean that the old man didn’t approve of his plan but probably didn’t want to say so. If the old man was afraid of saying anything that would hurt or discourage him, then he was going to make it easier for him by quietly leaving. He propped himself up with his left hand and had just begun dusting off the pieces of dry leaves that clung onto his khaki shorts when he heard his friend’s voice. The old man’s head remained bowed as he spoke.

“I know another route....”

Jonah swung around to face PaNene, he knew he had heard him, but he needed to confirm what he thought he heard.
Another route?
his head queried. “What?” he fired at PaNene. It sounded more like – don’t you play with my head, old man. “What did you just say, Pa?”

“After the big tamarind tree, you’d have to turn left and then take ninety-seven steps in the direction of the devil's open jaws,” the old man said very calmly and almost reluctantly.

Jonah only realized he was down on the floor after his bottom ached from the fast descent; in a blink he had returned to where he was sitting, right next to the old man. Indescribable excitement traveled up and down his spine like a wild lion locked up in a cage. PaNene finally raised his head for the first time since the conversation began and looked at the young man whom he had grown to love and trust for the eleven years since they first met straight in the eyes. “If you count correctly, at your ninety-seventh step, you should be standing in front of a big piece of rock that is shaped like a canoe. At this point, look up and you’ll realize that you are standing underneath the giant roots of a huge iroko tree. Some of the roots seem to be floating downward; you should crawl under the roots and when under, look to your left. You will see thick bushes. Behind the bushes are dead tree trunks, standing side by side—behind those trunks is the entrance into a cave that comes out on the other side of the Fort,” PaNene concluded.

“Hmm,” a gush of air escaped Jonah’s agape mouth as he heaved a sigh of relief. He wanted to say something but held back, just in case the old man hadn’t finished. But PaNene didn’t say another word. Jonah turned around and was shocked to see tears in the old man’s eyes. “You knew this all along?” he asked, pretending not to have noticed the tears.

“For seventeen years now,” PaNene replied. As if reading Jonah’s mind, he added, “Of all who knew about it, I am the only one still alive and here—the others are either dead or long gone.”

“So why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you use it? Why didn’t you try to escape?” Jonah couldn’t help but dump a heap of questions on the old man; he wanted to know why anyone who had a chance to escape the Fort wouldn’t try.

“A part of me lives in this Fort,” PaNene said in a sad tone.

“What? What part of you, what do you mean Pa? I really don’t understand,” a rattled Jonah said, heaping another round of questions at the feet of the old man.

“A part of me is in the Drakee Well so I cannot leave this Fort; this is where I will die.”

“The Drakee Well?” Jonah uttered, totally confused.

“Son, there is one thing I haven’t told you; I think now is the right time to share it with you.”

“What?” an impatient Jonah said, dying to hear what the old man could have possibly kept from him all the years they had known each other.

“She was probably the same age as Ashana and I...I was your age. She had just arrived at the Fort and her name was Neka…” the old man began, slowly embarking on the path he always dreaded, a path that forced him to relive an experience he could never banish from his memory.

Jonah adjusted his position, listening attentively to his friend painfully share the story of a woman he once loved. “She took her own life by jumping into the well because she could no longer take it.”

“She couldn’t take what anymore, Pa?” Jonah asked.

“The Massas; they took turns with her every other night,” PaNene said, counting and recounting his fingers as if he had suddenly realized he had ten of them.

“I am sorry about your pain….,” Jonah said,

“I sought for escape routes but things weren’t the same, things were really bad then; it was more difficult to escape than it is now,” PaNene said. He interrupted Jonah as if what the young man said or was about to say, was of less importance or utterly useless.

The old man had sentenced himself to a lifelong time of pain and anguish because he couldn’t discover an escape route quickly enough to escape with the woman he loved. He suffered more so because when he finally found a reliable route, he hadn’t the courage to escape with Neka, even though she begged him many times to help her out of her misery. “I was simply too scared that something worse could happen to her in the thick dark bush out there…” he asserted, as though it was important that he convinced Jonah.

“Pa….,” Jonah said, trying to console his friend, but PaNeen wasn’t listening.

“She took her life a few days after; she died because I was a coward, a coward!”

“Pa, we must retire now,” Jonah said after a moment of unsolicited silence between them had elapsed. “The sun is on its way.” He was at a loss for anything else to say; he didn’t understand how anything could be worse than living in the Fort and watching other men take turns at the woman you loved. Jonah feared that if he opened his mouth for too long, what he really thought about his friend’s act of cowardice might escape and maybe dent their relationship.

“She visits me every night,” PaNene said at the entrance to their hut.

“Who?”

“Neka.”

“She...she visits you?”

“Yes she does, she has never missed a night. You don’t believe me right….”

“Oh no! I do, ehm, I really do,” Jonah said, afraid that his face or body language had betrayed his latest conclusion about his friend’s current mental state.

“I wish you could see her, I mean meet her; she hasn’t changed a bit. She is still as young and as beautiful as she was the day she was brought to this Fort.”

“Have a good night Pa,” Jonah said, patting his old friend on the back before heading for his corner of the limited real estate offered by their tiny hut.

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If Nathan ever moved to England with the slave girl, as he’d threatened, Suzanne would not be spared an untold load of ridicule that would become her portion for the rest of her life. She’d lose her place in the elite-class club where she currently wielded influence and that was something she wasn’t willing to lose for anybody, including her son. Besides there were other plans she had in the pipeline that Nathan’s relationship with a slave girl would completely ruin, these too she couldn’t afford to mess with. As for Nathan himself, his career would be over. No such thing had ever happened before and Mrs. Longstands wasn’t about to let her family go down in history as the first. But most importantly, her plan to get Nathan to marry Victoria would be ruined forever and put her dirty little secret out in the public; ruining her marriage with Longstands and stripping her of the power she had over him.

Her marriage with Longstands was of the least importance—she could break up with him any day and not lose any sleep over it but if her secret was exposed, she’d not only lose sleep but everything else. She could say good-bye to her high society friends, would incur the wrath of her father, and become buried under a mountain of humiliation, putting Longstands in a position to do whatever he wanted with her. And if he chose to remain with her, she’d be at his mercy for the rest of her life. So far she’d been hopeful about Nathan and Victoria and so was Lancaster—Victoria’s father. “Bloody hell!” she screamed at Longstands. “I want her and her mother out of this Fort immediately!” Longstands nodded reluctantly without saying a word.

“What? So you do understand me?” she asked.

Longstands gave another nod but said nothing.

“Longstands!” she screamed again, this time louder, her body trembling with rage.

“I do understand you Suzanne!” Longstands said, rising to his feet and heading for his office.

“Yes I am fully aware that you do understand and I bloody hope you do but do you agree with me?” Suzanne demanded, hurling the words at her husband like stones at a target. But he continued to walk away without a word.

Her frustration doubled, she was about to lose her mind at her husband’s sudden development of cold feet, regarding an issue of such dire consequence. His new attitude and obvious reluctance in executing their plan had Suzanne rattled and confused. Longstands had suddenly started singing a different tune and worse still, his pitch was southwards each time she reminded him of their agreement to send Ashana and her mother away.

“They were supposed to be sent away twenty four-hours ago, Longstands,” she shouted after him, her body shivering from a cocktail of anger and fear flowing freely in her bloodstream. She yanked herself out of the chair and marched after Massa Longstands, the wooden floor screaming under her feet. She meant to find out exactly what was going on and why her husband had suddenly become reluctant to take action.

“I am talking to you Longstands! Don’t you dare walk away from me!”

“Else what!? Suzanne, else what?” Longstands replied in a daring tone before walking into his room, slamming the door shut, and securing the latch.

“Bloody fool!” she shouted, pitching the words at Longstands with great fury.

Lying on his bed, Longstands pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket; it was the eleventh page of his long lost diary, handed to him by his son earlier on. It was probably the twenty-seventh time he was pulling the paper out of his pocket and the twenty-second time he’d be reading the content. Other times he’d just pulled it out of his pocket just to make sure he still had it or to see if there was any way he could deny any relationship with the paper. But each time he scrutinized the paper, he arrived at the same conclusion—yes the writing in the page was undeniably his and yes the page really did come from his diary. But what bothered Longstands the most was that the more he read the diary entry, the more he was convinced that Nathan’s threat was one he could not afford to take lightly.