Cold Fire

Kayleigh came in as night fell, wearing a pretty pagne, her locks brightened with ribbons. She looked exactly as she had last year: tall, robust, and if not as stunning as her brother, still she was a good-looking young woman, one who had not fully left girlhood behind. As she came closer the lines of weariness on her face became evident.



After a hesitation, she came over. “Cat Barahal. You must be feeling better.” She mopped her brow with a scrap of cloth. “Vai went out. He’d not have if he thought you were sick.”



Lucretia appeared with a cup of the cloudy ginger beer everyone here drank. “I hear a rumor the general came back today.”



Kayleigh accepted the cup with a grateful smile. “He is still in Taino country.”



“Me father said the cacica would kick him out when he came a-courting.”



“Your father is Roman, Luce. He sees the general as the enemy. Word at Warden Hall is that the cacica and the general are negotiating. That has made the Council very nervous.”



“Do you mean Camjiata?” I asked. “This cacica, would that be Prince Caonabo’s mother?”



Both girls looked at me as if I had sprouted wings and a third eye.



Kayleigh drained the cup and handed it to Lucretia. “I’ll go wash up.” She strode off.



“Have I done something to offend her?”



“Never mind she,” said Lucretia. “She do work very hard at Warden Hall.”



“What is Warden Hall?”



“Ja, maku! Yee know nothing! The wardens keep order in Expedition and enforce the law.”



I could not help but think that working as a servant at Warden Hall would be a cursed good way to eavesdrop on delicate conversations.



“So I’s just saying,” Lucretia went on, “that she is nice. Truly. Not so charming as she brother, but…I mean, all they women come around all the time. Yet he never look twice at any! Being he sister, she always that one who count with him. And now here yee come.”



“Washed up on shore like a three-days-dead fish.”



She giggled. “Yee’s so funny.”



I went back up to the room with a candle. Kayleigh had fallen asleep on the other cot, which meant I had slept on Vai’s cot last night. Tomorrow we would obviously have to discuss other sleeping arrangements. I slept soundly. When I woke the next morning, Kayleigh was gone. I didn’t know where Vai had slept.



The courtyard had a calm beauty in the soft light.



“Where are all the children?” I asked Aunty Djeneba, who was grating the white root called cassava. “Where is Lucretia?”



“At school. They finish at noon. As for yee, we shall start yee easy today. Yee said yee can sew. I have got some mending by. Usually we take it down to Tailors’ Row but it would be a quiet job for yee in the shade.”



I pulled a bench over so I could sit under the kitchen roof. We were alone in the courtyard.



She said in a low voice, “One thing first. Yee must keep that arm covered until the wound heal. Yee must never speak of what happened. Never.”



I touched my sleeve, feeling the tender wound beneath. “Vai must have seen the bite when he took my jacket off.”



“Yes, and came to me at once, exactly as he should. I went out me own self and brought in a local behique, a good man, very discreet. Only we four know.”



We four, and everyone on Salt Island, but I didn’t volunteer the information. “I know what will happen to me if the wardens track me down. But would something happen to you, Aunty?”



She paused in her grating. “It speak well of yee that yee ask, gal. I would be arrested and lose everything I own.”



“That is a terrible risk. Why take me in?”



She indicated the sewing basket and a folded stack of old clothes. “Here is a great lot of torn hems, ripped sleeves, and holes worn in elbows and knees. We people who live outside the old city have come to believe Expedition’s Council see us as these old clothes to use and throw out. If yee was the daughter of a Council family, we would hear no talk of sending yee to Salt Island.”



“My father wrote that if all are not equal before the law, then the law is worth nothing.”



“A wise man, that one who sired yee. Walk he still among the living?”



I looked away because I could say nothing.



“Seem the grief is still fresh,” she said kindly.



She returned to cutting, grating, and grinding, while I found peace in mending as she talked about how her people could trace their descent to sailors on the first fleet. She had herself married a man whose grandparents had left Celtic Brigantia to make their fortune in the markets of Expedition. Her husband had passed on a night three years ago when an owl had roosted atop the roof. Her three sons worked a fishing boat with their uncle her brother, and her only surviving daughter Brenna, the one with the Roman sweetheart, helped her run the lodging house. Uncle Joe, widower of Aunty’s sister, oversaw the part of the establishment where folk came to eat and drink.