Free Pirates! by Celia Rees Page B

that led to the mainland. The ground dropped away sharply on either side of the road, shelving down to strips of white sand. On one side, the pale green Caribbean curled in long low lines of surf; on the other, the waters of the lagoon lay blue and still. The horses pulling our carriage were high-stepping and skittish. Suddenly, one shied, swerving from something that lay in our path, causing the other to rear. The carriage lurched and we veered perilously close to the crumbling edge of the road. I clung to my seat, fearing that we might end up in the ditch, while Thomas fought to right us and to control the panicked animals. I peered over the edge of the carriage, wondering what had caused us to come so close to mishap. At first, I thought that a twisted pile of wood had fallen from a passing cart. Then I saw that the sticks were moving, jerking in a strange random way. There must have been some dreadful accident. I started up in horror, marvelling at the cruelty of anyone who could just drive on and leave a living creature broken in the road.
    The creature lying there was so coated in sand and dust, the shape so contorted that I could not see exactly what it might be. Too large for a dog, but too small for a donkey. I shouted to Thomas that we must stop. He showed no signs of hearing, so I tugged his sleeve. When he still did not respond, I tapped him sharply on the back. He winced and turned round, pulling the horses to a halt.
    ‘What is it, Miss?’
    ‘It’s still alive,’ I indicated the heap by the side of the road. ‘We must stop and help.’
    He shook his head.
    ‘No, Miss.’
    He raised his whip while I stared back. What I’d taken at first for a thing inanimate, and then for an injured animal, was a human being. What I’d seen as hanks of twine, or a halter, or collar, were scraps and rags of clothing. This was a woman. Half skeleton already. Her skin dull, greyish under a powdering of fine white sand.
    I was fumbling to open the door of the carriage, wondering if she were still alive, if we might help her, but Thomas reached back and pulled it closed.
    ‘She’s old. She’ll die soon,’ he said with a shrug, indicating that any efforts we might make on her behalf would be wasted. ‘Refuse slaves, they’re good for nothing.’
    He pointed with his whip to where others lay tumbled in the ditch, then past the narrow fringe of grass and scrub to the margins of the lagoon. Dark shapes littered the beach like flotsam cast up by the sea. I could detect no movement. They lay like driftwood logs drying in the sun. He shrugged again and shook his head, his dark eyes bleak and empty. What was the point of saving one, when there were so many?
    He turned away from me and whipped up the horses. This was my first sight of the cruelty that lay at the heart of this place that Broom called paradise, eating away at it, day by day, with a voracious appetite that would never be sated, like some hideous worm. The effect on me was profound. I stared back at the woman until she was just a tiny mound, a speck of black on the bone-white ground. I stared until my eyes ached and the heat shimmering up from the sun-baked track took her away.

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    Chapter 10
    Thomas drove the horses at a good pace along mile after mile of dusty red road. To the right was forest, with moss and vines draping it, and beyond that lay the sea. To the left the land was cultivated.
    ‘All this here? Belongs to your father,’ Thomas remarked, waving his whip in a great arc that took in a vast plain that sloped up from the road to the distant mist-shrouded mountains.
    The land had been divided into fields of chequer-board exactness. The cane was being cut and rough stubble stretched away, just as it might in England at harvest time, except the stalks were knee high and thicker than a man’s arm. The effect was strange, as if these were the acres of some farming giant. The uncut cane stood much taller than a man, dwarfing the figures swarming among the