His sweet, reasonable tone was as infuriating as his calm, and Janine needed all of her self-control to keep from shouting or screaming. Jeremy would die, and there seemed to be nothing that she could do to help him. Certainly a show of continued opposition would get her nowhere and might even result in her imprisonment. She was virtually a prisoner now in this remote hide-out of savages, where she herself was being forced to dress like a savage, and she would need all of her wits and all of her cunning if she was to be of any assistance to Jeremy.
"I do not believe in your gods. Commander," she said slowly, "and I have no faith in the powers of your Obeah. But I will do as you ask and I will not interfere."
"You are wiser than you know, mademoiselle. And you will not regret your decision. Just as surely as Master Stone was taken from Death Island and brought to this secret place, so will he recover. And if you are tempted to think of the Maroons as pagans, remember that Reverend Pennywell, a most pious and devout believer in your Christian God, was the man who made possible the marvelous rescue of Master Stone from the petty tyrants who would have killed him. Perhaps all of us believe in the same God, don't you agree? Is it not possible that we may simply call Him by different names and worship Him in different ways?"
Chapter Twelve
MYRA, the woman of Arnold Rifle-Shoot and mother of his three children, had once been an exceptionally attractive woman. No more than thirty-two or thirty-three years of age, she still showed vestiges of prettiness, and although her figure had coarsened and thickened, she remained supple and graceful. English-born, she could both read and write, and despite more than a trace of London's East End in her accent, her demeanor was ladylike.
It was she who either assumed or was assigned the responsibility for showing Janine Groliere around the Maroon settlement, and the French-English girl drew considerable comfort from the presence of the older woman. The mere fact that Myra was white and English and that she was totally without self-consciousness in appearing half naked before others gave Janine the courage to adopt an air of increasing sang-froid. Shortly after dawn Myra had arrived at the cottage where Janine was housed and had immediately taken the girl off to her own home, a spacious and airy dwelling of six rooms. There Janine had breakfasted with Myra, Arnold, and their three boisterous sons on a meal consisting of slices of papaya melon and a porridge made from a local wild bean known as the gunga pea.
Immediately after the meal Arnold had disappeared to conduct a target-practice session with musket, bow and arrow, and machete, attendance at which, he had explained, was compulsory for all the young men of the community. The children had departed, too, and Janine was amazed to discover that they had gone to school. As she and Myra lingered over gourds of thick, rich cocoa she learned many things about the unique world of the Maroons that astonished her.
Myra explained that all fugitives were welcome here, no matter what their crimes, provided they swore to obey the laws of the Maroon elders, to be loyal to the Crown of England though not to its local representatives, be they civil or military, and to do the will of the commander and his assistant. The majority of the people in the village were second- and third-generation Maroons, but each month saw a steady stream of new arrivals, the majority of them escaped Negro slaves, Arawak Indians who had been taken into captivity and had managed to slip away, and white indentured servants, both male and female, who found life intolerable on the isolated plantations where the owners and their overseers were laws unto themselves.
Each Maroon was given a plot of land to cultivate for himself and his family, and each was given some additional occupation that would benefit the community as a whole. A former indentured man who had spent two years during his earlier life as a student at Cambridge University was the schoolmaster; an ex-boucanier who had served half a lifetime before the mast supervised the making of dugouts and canoes; an elderly Negress who had been chief seamstress in one of Port Royal's fancier bordellos was in charge of the making of clothes.
Every man was required to give over some portion of his time for training in the arts of war. However, the Maroons were a pacific people and fought only in self-defense. They were so strong and well organized that they had nothing to fear from the roving bands of Arawak who lived in the deep interior, and their only enemies were royal government representatives and their soldiers. Punitive expeditions were sent into the hills every few years, but the majority of these attacks were formal, feeble gestures, and the Maroons had never suffered a major defeat.
It was true, Myra said, that some forty years previous there had been government spies in the Maroon camp and it had been necessary to move the community deeper into the mountains; since then the village had never been seriously molested. Arnold, as the second man of the Maroons, was charged with the responsibility of maintaining security, but in the past ten years he had lost no more than twenty of his followers, these in small skirmishes. Myra hinted that there were outposts between the village and Port Royal and that communications were maintained between these stations by drumbeaters who had learned their trade in Africa. But Arnold's woman had been rather vague on this topic, perhaps deliberately so, and when she had answered several questions evasively, Janine wisely changed the subject.
The Maroon women, like women everywhere, kept their homes, cooked, and cared for their children. A man and woman were considered to be married when they appeared before the commander and swore they would be faithful and true to each other. Once such a "marriage ceremony" had been performed, it was considered binding for life, and when a couple was caught in improper dalliance, the man was executed and the woman banished from the Land of the Maroons.
Myra knew nothing of Janine's background and hence assumed that the girl had come to the village as a permanent settler. When assured with considerable vehemence that the opposite was true, the older woman's thick reddish-brown brows rose high on her tanned and freckled forehead, and she made the flat statement that never within the span of her memory had any female found mere temporary refuge with the Maroons; when a woman came here, she stayed. She added, almost lightly, that it was a law in the community that no woman could remain single for more than two years from the date of her arrival. If she was unable to choose a husband for herself in that time, she was given to the man who made the best case for himself before the commander. It had rarely been necessary to invoke this law, Myra concluded laughingly.
Now, in late morning, after an examination of the farms and the communal slaughterhouse, the spinning and cloth-cutting room, the arsenal and the hall used by the elders for their solemn deliberations, they were en route to the school. Janine found herself fascinated by this unusual experiment in living, and she eagerly drank in all that she saw.
Despite her repeated inquiries, Myra had given her no information on Jeremy and had seemed more than a little uneasy when he was mentioned. Janine was as determined to help him as she had been during her interview with the commander the preceding evening, but she knew she had given herself a task that would be next to impossible to accomplish, for a lone female could do very little to rescue a very sick man from those who seemed determined to force him to undergo some sort of pagan ritual.
Myra seemed so kind, so sympathetic, that Janine had several times been tempted to confide in her and to enlist her support. But she decided to bide her time and to make sure of her ground before asking for assistance. As the woman of the second most important individual in the Land of the Maroons, Myra might well report to Arnold any attempt to secure her aid, and in that case Janine would either be watched constantly or would be actually imprisoned while the barbaric ceremonies took place. Although almost sure that these kind people would do her no permanent harm or injury, she was equally certain that they would allow nothing to interfere with the performance of the rites that the commander had mentioned.