“Alice,” he murmured in a husky voice, “why are women’s skirts so long that they drag on the ground? Terribly impractical, don’t you think?”
It was Retta who answered him from the doorway. “Sir, you mus’ go wit’ she. Build de bridge.” Slowly, she tottered across the room on her two canes to join him at the window. “You jus’ like you gran’papa. Stubborn. Hard.” The old woman shook her head.
“It’s my mother-in-law I can’t tolerate. It would be hell to spend the day with her.”
“But you do dat to show love to you wife.”
He almost flinched. “Ah, Retta, it’s so much more complicated than you know. There aren’t any easy answers these days.”
“Can be,” she insisted, then slanted a sly look up at him. “It dat Gemma Hart, hmm? I know some t’ings.”
“I can handle Gemma, but I must go to Bridgetown today to talk to her.”
“Better talkin’ to you wife. Or dat Theo man talk to she.” Retta started toward the door, pausing to add, “An’ you be smart to visit you land by Cave Bay, sir. Maybe take de map wit’ you.”
“Map? Do you mean the one Cathy found? The map my grandmother put away?” Turning in anticipation of her response, he discovered that she’d already left the library. Adam’s questions seemed to echo in the big room. Glancing down at Alice, he stroked her ears and said, “Retta is very old, you know. One never knows what year she’s living in at any given moment...”
Chapter 21
As they traveled down the rugged east coast of Barbados, Cathy realized that she was truly falling in love with her island home. The towns that were bordered by the wild Atlantic Ocean were rocky and weather-beaten and half-civilized, and she found them romantic. The views were spectacular. Hills of vivid green staggered down to meet the sapphire-hued sea. The Atlantic Ocean was thrillingly different from the Caribbean Sea on the west coast, its frothy rollers pounding at the stones and sand while overhead mounds of cottony clouds decorated a cerulean sky.
All along the coastline wound the railroad tracks, past Bathsheba with its prized Atlantis Hotel and cabbage palms and tin-roofed houses, past beaches lined with brightly painted fishing boasts, past vertical cliffs and holiday cottages with jalousie shutters pushed open to receive the ocean breeze.
“Isn’t it awfully rustic out here?” wondered Auggie.
“Savage, you mean,” Hermione exclaimed. “Even dangerous! One never knows what might lurk around the next bend in the road. That is, if you can call this collection of holes and bumps a road.”
Cathy laughed as if her mother were joking, and Theo pretended not to have heard. Before long, they caught a glimpse of the rickety-looking train. The engine was small, with an open cab, and the back cars were massed with freshly cut stalks of bright, light-green sugar cane.
“Some of the eastern plantations have had an early crop,” Theo remarked. He had stopped the buggy on the crest of a hill and pointed down to the train chugging southward below them. “They all depend on the railroad to transport their cane now. There are a couple passenger cars behind the engine.”
“How quaint,” Hermione said, her voice slightly muffled by the gauzy scarf she’d wrapped around her nose and mouth to protect herself from breathing any dust. “My dear Mr. Harrismith, although I appreciate your efforts to enlighten us, I must tell you that Auggie and I have no real interest in your island’s rattletrap railroad.”
“I am interested,” Cathy declared.
“And I am ready for lunch,” said Auggie. “Let’s move along and have a look at this Crowe’s Nest place. Don’t suppose the old pirate left any treasure for us?”
Theo snapped the reins to start the horses forward. “No, although there were rumors of treasure years ago. Crowe was said to have found a map made by Stede Bonnet himself, and no one is quite certain what happened to it, or whether the treasure was ever recovered.”
Cathy looked up, wide-eyed, while her mother repeated in querulous tones, “Stede Bonnet? Why is that name familiar to me? Was he an American?”
“No, Mrs. Parrish. Bonnet was a Barbadian brethren of the Black Flag who lived in the early 1700’s.”
“What in the name of heaven is a brethren of the Black Flag?”
Theo raised his eyebrows at her and smiled. “Why, he was a pirate! Not only that, but Stede Bonnet was a partner of Blackbeard!”
“Oh my heavens!” She brought her gloved hand to her open mouth. “Why, now I remember. Catherine’s husband was dressed as Stede Bonnet at our costume ball!”
“Really!” He glanced at Cathy. “Well, I don’t want to bore you, but I will say that Stede Bonnet, the gentleman pirate, was born the son of a Barbadian planter. He married and distinguished himself as a fine citizen, but he must have grown restless, because he bought himself a sloop, arms, and a crew, and went to sea. Eventually, he traveled to the waters near Charleston, North Carolina, and joined forces with Blackbeard. Later, they quarreled and Blackbeard betrayed him.” Theo stopped to consult a signpost, made more confusing because of the tall cane fields that made it difficult to get one’s bearings. Taking a left turn, he continued, “As the story goes, Bonnet was afraid of Blackbeard, and he hid much of his plunder from him and returned to Barbados to bury it. Then, back in Charleston, Bonnet was captured, tried, and eventually hanged. A man of refinement, he died clutching a bouquet of flowers.”
“What a fascinating story!” Cathy exclaimed. She could hardly wait to go home and take a second look at the map, and perhaps at Nathan Raveneau’s journals. There had to be a way to make Adam take the map seriously!
“All fairytales are fascinating,” sniffed Hermione.
Soon they came out of the cane fields and caught a glimpse of the ocean again, out beyond the scrubby, parched landscape. The clumps of windblown manchineel and whitewood trees were bent in half, their distorted branches pointing inland after years of furious storms. Hermione and Auggie had begun to doze until Cathy spotted the ruins of a great coral-stone manor house silhouetted romantically against the blue sky. From a distance, it was eerily evocative, like a ghostly wedding cake with two square, hollowed-out layers. The bottom was trimmed on all sides with an arcaded verandah while the second layer was a smaller square lined with small hooded windows. Of course, the windows were reduced to gaping holes now and the roof was nearly gone.
“Look!” she cried. “Isn’t it beautiful! Oh, Theo, it must be haunted.”
Behind them, Hermione was grimacing. “Simply ghastly. Must be overrun with vermin and all manner of hideous insects.”
“That’s Victoria Villa,” Theo explained. “And this is Raveneau land. The villa is very old and many would agree with you that it’s haunted.”
Soon he had navigated the buggy up a rutted, weed-choked cart track. Auggie declared that this was the perfect spot for their picnic, ghosts and vermin be damned, and Cathy was inclined to agree. It was the most stunning place she had ever been in her life. Hermione wanted to go on to Crowe’s Nest, but for once her companions dared to overrule her.
They sat on the blanket Retta had packed, on a green slope with a view of the ocean, and ate lunch. There were two bottles of tepid champagne which Cathy poured freely for her mother, hoping it would soften her mood. The food fell short of Hermione’s orders, consisting of pickled beef, prickly green soursops and clumps of sea grapes, coconut bread, cold slices of sweet potatoes, and roasted peanuts. However, the view was spectacular. Palm trees growing on the beach waved above the clifftops, and the color of the ocean beyond seemed too intense to be real. Near the shore, the water was dazzling turquoise that soon melted into a deeper sea of blazing sapphire.
“It’s as if we’re wearing magic spectacles, don’t you think?” Cathy said dreamily. Then, as she finished the last of her grapes, she scrambled to her feet. “I’m going swimming!”
Hermione scolded, “Don’t be ludicrous. I would have imagined that marriage would have calmed you down, child.”
“I have my bathing costume,” she insisted, “and just look at that water! There’s a way down to the beach from here, isn’t there, Theo?”
“Oh, yes, there are steps of a sort carved into the cliff. Do you see them over there? But it really isn’t very safe to be swimming here—”
She had already started back to the ruined villa to change, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t worry! I won’t go in beyond my waist. Besides, there’s no one around, and it will be such fun to go out in the sunshine, which I couldn’t do at Hastings Baths!”
Theo distracted Hermione and Auggie with stories about the Ocean Breeze Hotel and the Hastings Baths so that they barely noticed when Cathy passed by in her bathing costume. “You must come down to the hotel for a special lunch, Mrs. Parrish. Perhaps I can convince you that Barbados is not the heathen place you imagine.”
“More likely you’ll convince me that all men on this island are not like my so-called son-in-law. His behavior is disgraceful. I’ve never known another British aristocrat to have such deplorable manners.”