Chameleon in a Mirror Read online

  Frances took Aphra's arm and drew her aside. “Do not wear your heart on your sleeve so, sister. If and when Mr. Scot marries again, it will be to a fortune. He has little to call his own and debts aplenty.”

  “How do you know?” Aphra asked sharply.

  “'Twas easy enough to find out,” Frances said with an exasperated sigh. “I put but a few discreet questions to our neighbors on the trip up the river.”

  “I can look after myself,” Aphra protested.

  “It does strike me that way. And our mother is too concerned with the death of her husband and the desertion of Lord Willoughby to look to you as she should.”

  Aphra twisted her arm out of her sister's grasp. “We are no longer in England, Frances. Things are different here.”

  Frances gave an impatient shake of her head. “'Twill hardly matter when you're left with a brat and no husband.”

  They had been in Surinam for over two months, when a trip upriver to an Indian village was proposed during one of the weekend entertainments at a neighboring plantation. Aphra was determined to take part, but she encountered serious resistance from her mother.

  “Caesar is to accompany us,” Aphra insisted. “No harm will come to Stephen or myself, I assure you, Mother.”

  “What good is a slave against Indians?” Elizabeth Johnson wailed.

  “He is an experienced soldier. And the party will be quite large.”

  Frances put her arm around their mother. “'Tis a party of eighteen, mostly colonists who have lived here for some time.”

  Aphra gave her sister a look of grateful surprise.

  “But Captain Riede said the Indians were attacking colonists again,” her mother protested.

  “Not where Aphra and Stephen will be,” Frances comforted her. “And Captain Riede will be accompanying them.”

  “Are you sure you do not want to come, Frances?” Aphra asked with a smile at the mention of the captain.

  “No, Aphra. Someone must stay here with Mother.” Despite the assistance she had just provided, the look Frances gave Aphra was anything but approving. Aphra turned on her heal and dashed out of the room to find Stephen and tell him they could take part in the expedition.

  On their original journey to St. John's Hill, Aphra had thought the scenery as wild as anything Nature had to offer — but it was nothing compared to what now met her eyes. They'd passed the last plantation three days ago, and there was no longer any sign of cultivation or civilization. The forests grew to the banks of the river on both sides, creating a dense wall of almost unnatural green, brightened by splashes of color from flowers and birds. Some of the trees looked like those in England, but many others sported leaves of unbelievable size and shape, long fingers like ferns, only thicker and wider, trailing their tips in the sluggish water.

  Will Scot joined her at the railing of the barge. “During the rainy season, such an outing would be impossible. You cannot imagine the downpours that occur.”

  Aphra dabbed at the sweat on her brow with the handkerchief she held. “Is the rainy season any cooler?”

  “Hotter.”

  “Ah, well. I assume it is never cool here?”

  Scot laughed. “No. By the way, I applaud your courage at choosing comfort over fashion,” he said, brushing a short copper curl away from her temple with one finger.

  Aphra did her best to ignore the intimate gesture. “Marry, here on the river it is pleasant enough.”

  Scot folded his arms in front of his chest and gazed at her deliberately. “So it is.”

  Aphra blushed. She'd been angry at her sister for meddling, but she found herself more careful in Scot's company since Frances warned her about his intentions. The young men she dallied with in Kent would all have married her on the spot, but a man of thirty-six who had already been married twice was beyond her range of experience. If only he weren't so witty and attractive!

  “Who has warned you about me?” Scot asked suddenly, surprising Aphra into a laugh.

  “Faith, have I no secrets?”

  “No,” he replied with a grin. “Your features betray you. You must learn to guard your feelings better. Confess, who was telling tales about me?”

  “My sister,” she admitted.

  Scot looked into Aphra's laughing dark eyes. The black feather in her cap swept down in a wide arc, forming a perfect frame for a face more pert and charming than any he'd seen in months. He needed to regain her confidence. Playful humor seemed a good strategy; already she was much more open again. “It seems I am doomed to play the role of the maligned Celladon. What sort of adventures would you have me absolve for you to prove those wrong who have slandered me?” Scot asked with just a touch of irony.

  Aphra seemed to consider for a moment and then replied with a voice that was almost strict and a face that was almost straight. “A truly faithful shepherd would resolve to espouse all distress or felicities of fortune with his lady whether she accepts his attentions or not.”

  “As you wish, my fair shepherdess.”

  “If you are my Celladon, then am I to be your Astrea?” Aphra asked archly.

  “Most assuredly you are,” Will Scot said and bowed gallantly over her hand. “The great, the fair, the incomparable Astrea.”

  Aphra's laughter reverberated across the sluggish waters of the river. “I think I like that. Astrea I will be.”

  When they arrived at the spot on the river where Captain Riede and their Indian guide said the village could be found, Aphra's dark eyes were alight with excitement, and Scot could hardly keep from staring.

  “We must be careful,” Captain Riede said with a foreign accent more pronounced than Caesar's. “Our guide says no one in this village has ever before seen the face of a white person.”

  Some of the company had second thoughts and decided to stay aboard ship, but not Aphra. “I would go ahead,” she said.

  “So would I!” Stephen chimed in.

  Aphra smiled. “Brave lad.”

  “But we do not know how these Indians will react,” Captain Riede protested.

  “You and Caesar and Mr. Scot can hide in the bushes and make sure no harm comes to us,” Aphra suggested.

  “Let her go ahead,” Scot said, earning himself a grateful smile. “If the Indians seem not friendly, one of us can fire a musket in the air. The sound would surely scare them off.”

  “Faith, you do not go without me, Mistress,” Katherine said.

  “You would venture ahead too?” Aphra asked. Katherine nodded. “Then it is resolved? I am to go ahead with my brother and my maid, and the rest of you are to stay here hidden from view.”

  “I do not think it is a good idea,” Captain Riede insisted.

  “The tribes are peaceful here,” Tiguamy, the Indian guide, said. “I doubt any harm will come to them.”

  “Go on, Aphra,” John Thurston, one of Aphra's cousins, urged. “Else we will be talking here all day and never see the savages.”

  Scot hid with Caesar and the others among some thick reeds and flowers that grew along the banks of a stream feeding the river. Aphra took her brother's hand and headed down the path without hesitation, Katherine right behind them. When the first members of the tribe noticed the three lone figures, they set up such a cry that Scot almost jumped out of hiding — until he noticed that it was a cry of astonishment. The Indians surrounded their visitors, chattering in high-pitched, excited voices, staring and pointing. Finally, one daring young man stepped forward and touched a shiny button on Stephen's jacket, and the rest came closer as well. Young Stephen wore a suit fit for a fop, decorated with a multitude of silver loops, buttons and green ribbon, but Aphra's more conservative long silk skirts and polished shoes and feathered cap attracted nearly as much attention. Scot admired the way she stood so calmly as a horde of half-naked Indians swarmed around her, taking up one petticoat and then another in wonder, staring and poking as if she were a Charing Cross freak. Aphra nudged Katherine, murmuring something to her, and then the two of them reached
under the layers of petticoats, briefly permitting a view of two pairs of shapely legs, and slipped off their garters to bestow them on their admirers. One Indian warrior promptly tied the lacy thing around his own muscular thigh, and Scot could not help but laugh out loud. The Indians turned in the direction of the sound, and the rest of the party quickly came out of hiding before the natives might feel threatened.

  At the sight of the Indian trader with Caesar, the whole tribe rushed over to him and began asking questions at once. Their guide was soon laughing with glee.

  “I would know what they say, Tiguamy,” Aphra said.

  “Madam,” the Indian replied, grinning. “They wish to know if you have sense and wit? If you can talk of affairs of life and war as they can? If you can hunt and swim and cook and eat?”

  Aphra laughed. “Assure them we can, Tiguamy.” She was flushed, and her brown eyes glowed with excitement.

  The tribe invited them for a meal, and Scot offered Aphra his arm as they entered the village. “Ah, fair Astrea, you are worth the devotion you demand. The first of your kind among these people, and the first among ours as well, I swear.”

  Aphra's color was already high, but her cheeks grew even brighter at his words. “'Tis hard to believe that we are here among men who have never seen a shoe or a garter. 'Tis so different from what we know!”

  “Would I had such a token too,” Scot said so low that only Aphra would hear him. Her hand cramped on his arm. Deliberately, Scot stopped in his tracks to stare down at her, and her eyes widened while she sucked in her breath. Excellent.

  Then Caesar stopped next to them. “You are a brave woman, Mistress,” he said with a bow. “Almost as brave as the warrior women of my tribe.”

  “And what of your warrior woman?” Aphra asked teasingly. “Did she not want to join us on this outing?”

  Caesar's dark features took on a gentle glow. “She has much reason to stay behind, as you will soon see. She was not inclined to endanger an extra life.”

  Aphra clapped her hands together in delight. “Is Clemene with child?”

  Caesar nodded.

  Will Scot watched the play of emotions on Aphra's face, only mildly discouraged that Caesar had ruined such a promising moment. Despite her age, Aphra was obviously still in many ways a green girl; she would need time, and she would get it. She was worth it.

  13

  Thou may'st do what thou wilt; but there's a difference

  (As vast as 'twixt the sun and lesser lights)

  Between thy soul and mine;

  Thou canst contented sit whole days together,

  And entertain thy lute, that dull companion,

  Till duller sleep does silence it and thee:

  But I, whose active Soul despise that drousy God,

  Can ever dare him in his height of Power.

  Aphra Behn, The Young King

  Caesar made a strangled noise in his throat, and Clemene, despite her thick waist, jumped up and began to pace with the quick grace of a wild cat. Aphra put down her manuscript, a hollow feeling in her stomach. “Is the play as bad as that?” she asked bravely. “If so, I beg forgiveness. 'Tis only an untried muse.”

  Treffry patted her shoulder. “'Tis an astounding attempt for a woman.”

  “The play is excellent, my fair Astrea,” Scot assured her. “I doubt you have offended the African prince's ears that way. Methinks instead you may have come too close to truth with your 'untried muse.' Caesar?”

  Caesar rose and put an arm around his wife, bringing her pacing to a halt. “Great Mistress,” Caesar began in his deep voice, his English already markedly improved from when he first arrived in Surinam. “You read to us of a prince in captivity and do not expect that the words will hurt? Our captivity wears upon us ever more, now that Clemene is with child. As your young king rages at enforced leisure, how much more then must we?”

  Aphra looked down at the scribbled pages in her lap, repressing the urge to crumple them into tight wads. “Forgive me my thoughtlessness. When creating Orsames I was thinking of our restored monarch, who was long a prince without a country. But I should have known the parallels might cause you pain.”

  Clemene sat down again, the expression of her face a haughty mask. Although she and Caesar now both adopted European dress for their plantation visits, the delicate pattern of birds and flowers visible on her wrists and at her throat, much more elaborate than the small birds at Caesar's temples, made a mockery of the English apparel. Clemene's appearance was irrevocably exotic, and the dress only seemed to highlight that fact with its incongruity. “Ah, but your Charles was never a slave,” she said. “He could come and go as he pleased.”

  Scot lifted one eyebrow. “Except to his own country.”

  Clemene turned her attention to him, distaste apparent on her features. She seemed to have a universal dislike of white men, which she had difficulty hiding. Aphra didn't want to think about the possible reasons for Clemene's aversion, but at the same time, she couldn't avoid it. “And to which country could our son travel?” Clemene asked. “If we cannot get away before he is born, he is the property of Lord Willoughby. While we enjoy our love and your generosity, we are throwing away his inheritance, his future. Caesar you still treat as a prince, but what of his son?” Clemene put a hand to her stomach. “He will be nothing, less than nothing, because he will not even be able to call himself his own. Caesar does not know what it is like in the fields, he was never forced to labor there, but that is what his son will be raised to.”

  Aphra sat down next to Clemene and took the other woman's dark hands in her own. “Once Lord Willoughby frees you, he will surely free your child as well.”

  Caesar gave her a hard stare. “When Lord Willoughby frees us, Mistress? And when might that be?”

  “I'm sure when the Lord Governor returns and hears of your fate, he will send you both back to your home,” Aphra assured him. “I have no little influence with the Lord. He will listen to me.”

  “When is the Lord Governor expected to return?” Caesar asked.

  Treffry shrugged. “I've had no word from him for over a month.”

  Caesar nodded and looked at Aphra again.

  “Have a little patience yet,” she said. The determined look on Caesar's face scared her. “Surely the governor will come soon.”

  “I would like to know when this 'soon' should be,” Caesar said.

  Clemene looked down at her stomach. “We cannot wait much longer.”

  One Sunday when Byam's spies were all drunk as usual on their day of rest, Caesar gathered the slaves of Parham and the neighboring plantations together. As far as their masters were concerned, it was a feast celebrating an African religious holiday which none of them could have elaborated on. Fortunately, no whites seemed to care.

  The slaves met at a clearing well away from the manor house, and there was no sign of a feast. Caesar clambered up on an empty barrel, and the other slaves turned to him expectantly. They were an odd assortment of tribes and peoples from all over Africa, forced to communicate in the language of their oppressors. Caesar looked out over the sea of faces. Most of them were little more than strangers to him, and he suspected there were few he would once have felt any affinity towards. In his own land, Clemene would have been his enemy. Even after all these months, he still found it hard to comprehend that the whites saw no differences between them, that to them, one African was like the next.

  There were many of Caesar's own language here, if not necessarily of his own tribe; many he had sold into slavery himself. He had dealt several times with the trader who tricked him into slavery before he himself had become a victim of the man's greed. But even though he had been the cause of their captivity, they still honored him as their prince. The least he could do would be to try to lead them out of the misery he had caused.

  “Friends,” Caesar called out. “Do you acknowledge me your leader?” The crowd, nearly three hundred strong, cheered with pride.

  He cut the cheering off wi
th a gesture. “Perhaps you think you do, but you cannot have a leader; you can only have a master. You are slaves, burdened with work fitter for beasts than men, fitter for senseless brutes than human souls. And this load is not for days, months or years, but for eternity. You suffer not like men, who might find a kind of glory in fortitude, but like dogs who must love the hand that beats them. Humanity is robbed from you, and you become insensible asses; nay, worse: an ass or a horse, having done his duty, can lie down to rest and rise to work again, and while he works, endure no stripes. But you must toil all week, and then, whether faulty or not, innocent or guilty, promiscuously suffer the whip from your fellow slaves until the blood trickles down your sides.”

  Caesar looked at Clemene, who nodded approvingly. She stood next to one of the few friends he'd made among the slaves, a brave warrior who went by the name of Tuscan. Like Caesar himself, he would not reveal his true name to have it tarnished by the dishonorable life he now led.

  “And is not this blood to be revenged from those tyrants who impose it?” Caesar railed. “It is not. We must endure every indignity. By what right?” He repressed the memory of the many prisoners of war he had sold into slavery himself. Slavery had always been a part of the culture he'd grown up in, but slaves in Africa were more like servants here in the new world, or so he liked to imagine. Truth was, he'd had no idea of the hell where he was sending his enemies.

  But it was best not to be plagued by self-doubt when there were hundreds to convince. “Why, my friends and fellow-sufferers, should we be slaves to an unknown people? Have they vanquished us nobly in fight? Have they won us in honorable battle? No, we are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools and cowards, and the support of rogues and renegades who have abandoned their own countries for rape, murder, theft and villainy. Shall we render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have hardly a virtue left to distinguish them from the vilest savages? A race that worships gods with principles so false, it is no wonder there are so many men of little faith who profess their worship?”