the task he had asked of her before the crowd assembled. July grabbed Elias to shove him forward with the map that he had requested her to hold up. As Robert Goodwin began to point at this chart, his hand once more began to shake until, again, it was hidden.
‘Well, you may all step up and look at it when I have finished addressing you. First you must ride out to these provision lands—I will allocate who is to go where—and once you arrive upon them, see that they are burned to the ground. If the crop is wet and won’t burn, then just destroy it any way you can. You may shoot any cattle or livestock, or drive them out. But do not run them into any cane fields. While those negroes are busy saving their crops and cattle, it is then we will go in and evict enough from the village to bring those obstinate ingrates back to obedience.’
Having finished his instruction, Robert Goodwin then pressed this restless group to bow their heads to join him in prayer. ‘Almighty God,’ he began, ‘who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live—grant us this day the blessing to turn the negroes of Amity back from sin, to the path of righteousness, so that they will labour once more upon this plantation, as is your divine will. Amen.’
Not long out from England . . . still a bit green . . . his dad’s a parson back home . . . believes we should be nice to niggers . . . married well—was the meagre reputation that Robert Goodwin had enjoyed with the men that stood before him. But, after finishing the devotion he lifted his head to say, ‘Be in no doubt all of you, I mean you to frighten every last one of those negroes and remove their livelihoods until they beg to work once more for me,’ respect soon puckered the mouth and brow of all who stared upon him.
CHAPTER 30
WHEN JULY HEARD, ‘MARGUERITE,’ whispered softly at her door, she at first believed it to be the wind breathing through a crevice. ‘Marguerite.’ Or perhaps the call of a night bat. ‘Marguerite, are you there?’ Or maybe even a duppy prowling the garden. She did not think it was the missus. For, since the missus had taken Robert Goodwin for her husband, she would have rather walked through the whole house than come by way of July’s dwelling. The missus would have sooner circled the entire garden than ascend the stairs over July’s home. Come, if the missus were ever forced by circumstance to pass by July’s abode, she would have neared the lime-washed wooden door of that intimate room under the house with her eyes closed tight shut and her ears blocked by her fists.
So when July opened her door, she was vexed to find her missus standing before her. The moonlight had dulled all colour, yet July knew that the grey pallor of her missus was her cheeks flushed with pink, her eyes rimmed with red. But that unwelcome plump face in the gap of her doorway—so anxious and fretful that even her blond curls shivered—soon had July saying, ‘Cha, wha’ you want? Me no have to serve you now.’
‘Come and sit with me,’ was what the missus said to her.
July sucked upon her teeth for a long while; being called Marguerite by this woman was what began the cuss, but its vent was lengthened for having this missus bid her, as if she were still her slave, to sit with her. Sit with her! Cha. The last time the missus had required July’s company she was still giggling upon the blueness of her overseer’s eyes.
Come, she had not looked upon July’s face since . . . well, since July’s pregnant belly became a bulge that none could miss. So aghast was the missus to realise July was carrying a child that she stared upon July’s face with the distress of a big-eyed puppy dog seized to be drowned. July had nearly felt pity for her as the missus staggered back away from that protrusion, desperate to escape its bitter meaning. Since that day, the missus had ceased even addressing July—she clapped, flapped, tushtushed, banged the table, flicked her fingers, waved her arms, but all in mute command.
‘Please, Marguerite, please come and sit with me.’ The missus was, without any doubt, pleading, and a bedevilling