“I know your deepest wish is to find your mother’s family, but you must consider…” He paused for a long moment, until Rachel feared he was having second thoughts about telling her something important. “Please ask yourself an important question. Does your mother’s family want to be found? And, of all the young slave women who passed through the barracoon, why did your father choose your mother?”
“But…” Before Rachel could ask him another of the endless questions bubbling up in her chest, he squeezed her hand and was gone. She sighed and surveyed her spoiled hens crowded at the gate. “You lot have not earned a treat, but I’ll get you a little something before I leave for the orchard.” When she unlatched the gate and squeezed past the swarm of demanding hens, Her fat little red hen, Abile, pushed her way forward. Rachel reached down and nestled her spoiled pet into the crook of her arm and headed toward the outdoor kitchen where she stored the barrels of seeds she kept for her hens.
A half an hour later she was on her way to the orchard and trying to order the thoughts racing through her mind. What was Dr. Peregrine trying to warn her about? Did he know something he didn’t think she should know? And if so, why? Why didn’t he think she should find her mother’s family?
When she stopped to pull some recent weeds the rains had caused in the kitchen garden, another inconvenient thought struck her. What if she found them only to discover they were hundreds of miles away? How would she get there?
Her first thought, to ask Christopher for help, she dismissed immediately. He’d view her need to find her mother’s family the same way Dr. Peregrine did. He’d think she was being silly and putting herself in harm’s way for no good reason. In fact, the less he knew about her plan, the better. She suspected he would be even more vehement than Dr. Peregrine that she not plumb the dark depths of the pathways of slavers.
She abandoned the weeding after a few minutes to get out to the orchard so that she’d have plenty of time to get back before their evening meal. As frail as her father had seemed lately, she did not want to worry him unnecessarily.
Once she gained the shade of the orchard, she selected a comfortable spot beneath one of the trees bearing the ugly oranges Christopher so loved.
She put down an old tablecloth she’d brought along so that she wouldn’t stain her dress in the stunted grass and sand ground. She pulled her knees up to her chin and closed her eyes. All of the sensory images of the day kept flooding into her thoughts - the talk with Dr. Peregrine, his warnings. She feared she’d never be able to calm her mind enough to try to reach out to her mother.
She opened her eyes, frustrated and disgusted with herself, only to see a stranger sitting across from her, a woman with her hair piled high beneath a bright red and blue turban. Long, narrow braided strands of black hair interspersed with beads flowed from beneath the turban. Her dress consisted of a length of fabric wrapped round and round her body and finished with a fall of fabric securing the dress to her shoulders. Her eyes were the eyes of her mother, but the rest of the woman’s face was both vaguely familiar and unfamiliar all at once.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Rachel did not know whether or not to trust the strange woman who had appeared in the orchard, but she had to find out if she knew something about her family.
Finally, she reached out and touched the woman’s costume. “You aren’t real, are you?”
Instead of answering her question, the woman suddenly spoke out a warning. “Rachel Berry, you are in grave danger. Your father wants you back. He will tell you lies you must not believe.”
Rachel stood, her feet planted wide, and leaned over the woman, pointing a finger at her face. “Whoareyou to tell me what I must do?” In the instant she stood and demanded answers, the woman’s image disappeared, like a picture in the sand when a wave rolls in to shore and sweeps the drawing out to sea.
She rocked back on her feet, stunned. Her meditation had barely begun when the stranger appeared. And besides, two things made no sense. First of all, the woman resembled her mother only a little, around the eyes. Their noses were markedly different. Her mother’s nose had been short and flared a bit at the nostrils. The strange woman’s nose was long and narrow.
Secondly, Rachel’s eyes had been open when she’d seen the apparition. She’d been wide awake. This vision was not like the others she’d had in the past. She looked all around the orchard before fear tightened in her belly and got the better of her. She ran straight to the vicarage, never looking back. She wanted to tell her father what she’d seen, but she knew she wouldn’t. He’d never understand.
Chris watchedthe fisherman sailing in circles out in the harbor, some getting blown over, and a few of them even slamming into each other. What in the name of God would he tell the governor? Not only had he failed to teach the fishing captains to use sails to fish farther out beyond the harbor and river banks, but now he’d provided them with the means to annihilate the entire fleet.
“Captain Halloren—.” Chris froze at the familiar Irish accent calling to him from shore. He and his carpenter’s mate, Asah, had sailed one of the clumsy craft out into the thick of the circling boats in the harbor to try to bring a bit of order into the chaos now overwhelming Freetown’s fishing fleet.
A crowd of angry residents waited on shore, grumbling about the lack of fish for sale that day on the quay.
He warned Asah, of a quick jibe, nearly knocked himself overboard, and headed their boat back to shore. He jumped onto the rocks at the far end of the jetty and pulled the boat along the quay by a long line attached to the bow of the boat. When he reached an area of heavy iron rings attached to the wood planks, he tied off the boat and walked back to face what he was sure would be a verbal drubbing from Governor MacCarthy.
“St. Patrick, save us all - what’s going on out there?”
“I’m trying to demonstrate how to sail the boats now that we’ve helped them rig sails on all of them. I showed the men how to sail with the wind with some drawings in the sand, on the beach, but, um, only a few of them seem to have remembered what I showed them.”
“And you’re sure they understood what you were saying?”
Chris pursed his lips and blew out a deep breath. “Of course, or, at least I thought they did.”
“Out here there’s a lot of English mixed with Creole, there’s a whole stew of different tribal languages, and then you have to remember they’ll nod their heads and agree with anything you say so as not to betray they don’t understand a word you’re saying.” MacCarthy clapped him hard on the back.
“Never assume anything. But having said that, I’m going to assume when I come back tomorrow to check on your progress, some of these fisherman will have caught on how to sail.”
Chris’s heart sank, but he said, “Yes, sir.” Wouldn’t do to let a Regimental hero like the governor think for one moment the Royal Navy was not up to the job of teaching a few fishermen to sail.
Rachel squintedat the narrow opening while she threaded a long pull of her shorn hair through one of the large-holed needles she’d found on a search through Miriam Berry’s sewing basket.
All she had was a vague idea of making a ring for Christopher by braiding strands of her hair now that she’d threaded two of the needles and stuck them close together in the overstuffed arm of the threadbare settee in the vicarage parlor. Since he’d gifted her with the beautiful river stone, she wanted to reciprocate with something he could keep with him to think of her. She tried not to examine too closely why she wanted him to think of her when she planned to abandon their sham engagement as soon as she reached London.
She’d looped her hair through the holes and then secured the strands with sturdy knots. The last needle had a hole that was a bit smaller and was slowing her down. On her third try, she held her breath and stuck her tongue through her teeth in concentration.
Tenneh came into the room carrying a basket with more sewing for the mission clothing project. “What are you trying to do?”
