“Woman, find forgiveness. You can’t beat the Brits at the game they’ve made.”
The shawl I’d pulled over her slipped. She looked peaceful, like she slept.
“Mrs. Helena was the kindest of souls, ma’am. The planters know how to hurt our women. When I was a boy, they made me choose our girls for their parties. Helping you and her is redemption.”
The holy deacon couldn’t be guilty of things he was forced to do as a child in service of a horrid system. The paperwork she kept with her was as a marriage contract with my father’s signature. Gladstone’s too but he sold my sister like she was nothing. She was born free. He had no right.
If I had left Felton earlier, Helena wouldn’t have been ruined by Gladstone. While our father lived, he protected us, all three daughters. When he passed, I should’ve been here to keep Helena safe.
Quamina pinned his gaze forward to the road. “We go.” Once I’d climbed aboard the dray, he started it up a hill. The rising sun showed thatched roofs of huts on provision grounds of the plantations, a distant wooden church, then fancier houses. Demerara was a dichotomy of resources and wealth for some, and lack for so many.
I’d said goodbye to the colony before. I’d kissed the reddish-brown beach sand and waved at the evergreen palms. Silly me, a jacaranda’s purple bloom had fallen on my head. The stinky scent made Felton and I laugh. How could something so pretty smell so bad?
Watching my nephew stir, I rocked him in my arms. “He needs to feed. Can’t lose him, too.”
“My Enna,” Quamina said, “she’ll do it. When you get to London, you free my sister.”
“She’s free now, soon as we are away from Demerara. And she’ll be my sister now, part of my new family.”
Everyone was safe from slavers once they stepped on English soil. That’s why I had wanted to get Helena there. That would fix her and Noah’s status.
Killing Gladstone would fix everything else.
Looking up, I saw Quamina’s deep brown face filling with a frown. The smart man saw the anger building in me.
Felton said he could see all my emotions in my reddening cheeks.
Guess that wasn’t a lie.
“You will keep going, Lady Gantry? Helena and Enna will be found missing from the Elizabeth Ann Plantation as soon as morning chores are called.”
“Yes, Quamina. I promise.”
The dray edged closer to the beach.
Silence, except for tiger herons’ throaty chirps, made my pulse race. I kept looking for a torch or dogs chasing us, or a hungry jaguarete.
The dray hit a bump.
The babe in my arms jostled. His pink puckered lips pursed to cry.
Yet, no sound.
Noah was too weak. He needed milk.
“The sea. I see the boat. Almost there,” Quamina said, whispering, as if he’d prayed.
Sunlight bounced and shimmered upon the water, the brown and white foam, I wanted to shout and clap my hands when I caught a glimpse of the smugglers boat in the distance.
Soon the trees fell away. The blinding sunrise filled my eyes.
I smelled the salt of the water, maybe a cooking crab.
Forgot how hungry I was.
“This canoe will take you out to the open waters,” Quamina pointed to a sleek thing honed from a gommier tree.
“Helena, we made it. We . . .”
