‘Miss Clara. Cha. You is prettier than Miss Clara,’ came a reply from across the room. Which was very, very, very pleasing to July because Miss Clara was not dark like she and so she was pretty. Oh yes, Miss Clara was fine.
And Nimrod had plenty women in town, for Miss Hannah did talk of them, but only when Nimrod was nowhere near. One, a sour-faced woman, owned a house that had little bow-legged pickney everywhere, Miss Hannah said.
‘Mr Nimrod, how many pickney you have?’ July called out to him.
He was in the room but she could not see him. But she felt the breath he blew out on the back of her neck for he was behind her, holding up more wine. ‘Tell me,’ she said. But he just sucked long upon his teeth and began speaking about . . . he was speaking about a pony. A pony. A Shettlewood pony. His Shettlewood pony. Nimrod was speaking of his Shettlewood pony. Not even white people can own such a fine beast, he said. And he looked so serious, staring his obedient eye upon July while the other gazing upon her chest looked so comical. July could not help but giggle. And her nose did run with snot. So she wiped it upon her skirt. And July wanted to ask if she might get a ride off him—the pony. She opened her mouth to ask, but forgot what she was to say, for Nimrod said that if she was his woman she could come and visit him in town. Which was very, very, very funny, yet July could not remember why.
And Nimrod said that he would talk to her massa about making her free because he was an important black man in town, a freeman. And again he mentioned the pony. Which reminded July of a song she sang that Miss Rose had taught her about a pony. It went la, la, la, de dum, de dum. No. It went de dum, de dum, la, la. Was he holding her hand? Did Nimrod have her hand in his? They were running through the house and she could not keep up, for the walls were moving in and out.
But the bed was cold and soft. She did fall upon it and wish to sleep. But. But. It was the massa’s room. The massa’s big-big bed. No, no, no, the massa would not like her in his bed. He hated the smell of niggers. The massa would have her flogged. ‘Massa no like us in his bed,’ July told Nimrod.
And Nimrod said, ‘There be no white bakkra here—we don’ chase them from this island. Black man gon’ rule now.’ And the way he looked upon her with a sly eye was so, so, so funny.
The pillows were soft, but when July closed her eyes she began to fly. Up to the ceiling she went, then soaring down, swerving swiftly, then swooping around. ‘Me flyin’ in the room, Mr Nimrod. Me a bird.’ Only when she opened her eyes was she back upon the bed.
And there was Nimrod, resting upon one elbow saying, ‘But you is very handsome, Miss July.’
This did make her chest jump with a hiccup before she said, ‘You wan’ marry me, Mr Nimrod?’ And his look was so serious that she could do nothing but laugh, especially when Nimrod leaned over her to press his lips upon hers.
July was not woken by Nimrod snoring his foul breath into her face. Nor by the constant bucking of the cloven-hoofed donkey that was surely trapped within her head and butted and butted and butted her skull for release. No. It was the massa, John Howarth’s, voice shouting, ‘Oh, Caroline, leave me alone, for pity’s sake. You’re back now. What more is there to it?’ that startled July awake.
A feather pillow under her head, morning sunlight through shutters, a blue bowl upon a nightstand, a clock, a rug, a chest with drawers—she was still lying, trespassing, within the massa’s bed! She parted her lips to call Nimrod awake, but her mouth was as dry as a flour barrel. ‘Mr Nimrod,’ she croaked, for her voice had a devil’s gruffness. She had to shake him.
Rudely roused, his two eyes fixed her with an ill-tempered glare before he listened and heard all at one time. Then, moving fleet as a winged being, those two trespassers leaped from the bed and scurried beneath it, just as the massa flung open the door to the room yelling, ‘Caroline, please, please, have you any idea of the seriousness of what is happening here. Have you? Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . Shut up,’ then slammed the door behind him.
Two corpses could not have lain as still as Nimrod and July beneath that bed. While the massa paced the room from this side to that—his boots shedding mud across the floor, then pounding it to dust as he went back and forth, back and forth—they lay lifeless, yet keen as hunted runaways.
All the while, the massa was mumbling a lamentation of garbled words. This droning, sometimes punctured by howls of, ‘It’s intolerable,’ or ‘How could they?’ went on and on and on. July was too feared to gaze upon Nimrod when the massa suddenly stopped with his pacing, lest she detect some fright within Nimrod’s eyes at this tricky situation. The massa scraped the legs of a chair along the floor, then sat down heavily upon it, just in front of them. And Nimrod, with an almost imperceptible movement of his shoulder, managed to convey that he did not understand what the massa was doing.
Trapped within this stifling quiet, July began to fret—how long would they have to stay hid? She needed to piss water. But the massa remained still. The blazing, striped shadow from the sunlit shutters inched its way across the floor toward them. And still the massa sat—his breath sometimes heavy and weighted with sighs, sometimes shallow and quick, as if he were being chased.
A gecko scrambled over both Nimrod and July’s head. And still the massa sat. He moved his left foot a little, then he crossed one leg over the other before parting them to sit astride again. The gecko, returning, scrambled back the other way across them. And still the massa sat. And he sat.
July began to wriggle. She needed to stretch her limbs, to find air that was not heavy with the stench of Nimrod’s breath. She needed a little moisture for her parched mouth. But Nimrod, laying a hand upon her shoulder, held her firm. And their eyes, finally meeting in the anxious gloom of that cave below the bed asked each other silently, What is he doing? When can we go?
Then the massa’s mumbling began again. He was fiddling with something. There was the sound of a click and the scrape of a fingernail upon wood. Suddenly there was a flash-bang! so loud, so bright that Nimrod and July, jolted by the burst of it, both struck their heads upon the bed’s underside.
A shot! It was a shot! And the massa, felled like a pole-axed steer, clattered on to the floor. His head struck the ground an arm’s length from where July and Nimrod hid. Dirty smoke billowed from his open mouth. His eyes were wide and staring upon them with grim shock, as if he had just discovered them concealed there. But he had not. For a thick spout of blood that sprang from the back of his head spilled down his blackened face and across the floor.
CHAPTER 13
RUN! RUN! GET FAR from here. Trouble! White man’s trouble! Flee! But there was no time. For Caroline Mortimer was already within the doorway—her face pallid, her mouth slack, her breath stopped. Trapped lying beneath the bed, Nimrod’s limbs twitched with phantom running, and a fretful July still needed to piss water.
Seeing her brother lying upon the floor, Caroline decided to believe him drunk; after all it would not have been the first time. The overturned chair, the unmistakable clap of a pistol firing (for she now knew that sound well) would, she thought, have some simple explanation; as would that grey drift of gun-smoke that dimmed the room. ‘John,’ she said, almost gaily, ‘what has happened?’
But then Tam Dewar entered in upon the scene. He pushed roughly past her, then dropped to his knees next to her brother and turned his prone body over. He leaned his ear to her brother’s chest before prising the spent pistol from between his fingers. It was only when the overseer, taking her brother’s head within his hands, stared aghast at the grievous lesion—the gory blood-black crater that was once the back of his head—that Caroline Mortimer’s innocent fancy vanished. Her legs went limp beneath her. She staggered across the room to land with a hefty fall upon the bed. She did not hear the overseer declare her brother dead for she was too busy screaming, ‘Bring the doctor! Someone, someone run for the physic! Marguerite, quickly! Marguerite! Where is Marguerite? She must bring the doctor. Marguerite!’