Pyke returned the smile. He hated himself for putting her through this but he had to know. He’d come too far not to know.
‘Silas was standing there in front of Phillip. He’d bound his brother’s wrists and ankles to a chair.’
Pyke just nodded; his mouth was dry.
‘Silas had these enormous hands, twice the size of yours. I remember looking at them, looking at his thumbs, wondering why they were dripping with blood. At first, I thought he’d cut himself.’ She hesitated and then closed and opened her eyes. ‘Then Silas stepped aside and I saw Phillip’s face. I think I must have gasped because he looked around and he saw me. Silas, that is. All I could look at were those two thumbs, wet with Phillip’s blood. Of course, Phillip couldn’t see me. Where his eyes had been there were just two bloody slits.’
Queasy at the thought of what she’d described, Pyke waited until he thought she might be ready then asked, ‘What did you do?’
‘What did I do? What could I do? I turned and ran. I went back to my hut and gathered everything I could carry and I left Ginger Hill for the mountains. Later, I heard that Silas had offered a reward of ten pounds for my capture. After all, I was a runaway slave and in the eyes of the law I was his property. I walked for many, many days; I ate what I could find and I slept under the stars. Oddly enough it was the first time I’d ever felt free. I’d heard about this place and eventually I found it. I don’t know if Silas knew I’d made it this far or that I’ve been here for the past twenty years. In recent years I’ve tried to stop thinking about him.’
Pyke nodded but didn’t speak for a moment. ‘And did you ever see Phillip again?’
Bertha looked exhausted. ‘No. That was the last time I saw him; his eyes gouged out, tied to a chair in the counting house.’
‘And you never heard what became of him?’
Her expression hardened. ‘He’s dead,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m guessing he died shortly after Silas blinded him.’
‘But do you know this for a fact?’
‘I know it in here.’ She tapped her chest and then her head. ‘Just like Mary, his spirit has come back home as well.’ She stared at him proudly as though expecting to be challenged.
‘But this was never his home,’ Pyke said, trying to determine whether she really believed what she was saying. ‘And Phillip was a white man.’
That seemed to amuse her. ‘Phillip was white because his daddy said so; likewise Mary was black because I was black. But he was darker than some black folk and she could pass as white. Black and white doesn’t mean a thing apart from what those with money and power want them to mean.’
Pyke smiled at the truth of what she’d just said. Suddenly he knew what she’d perhaps been hinting at. ‘Phillip was Mary’s father, wasn’t he?’
‘How did you know that?’ Her voice was tense.
‘I didn’t,’ he said, trying to keep any trace of gloating from his voice. ‘At least, not until just now.’
‘You’re a clever man,’ she said, rocking back and forth in the chair. ‘Clever and arrogant. I imagine it brings its own rewards, and its hardships.’
‘Did Phillip know he was Mary’s father?’
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 rituaclass="underline" 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.