The Long Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

away.
    After two weeks in Agnes’s company—where even a little light embroidery or the arranging of a vase of flowers seemed too much toil for her sister-in-law, who slept upon her daybed for so many hours of the day that Caroline began to believe that perhaps, like a bat, she was only aroused at night, Caroline was forced to admit to being bored. She even began to crave the company of Mary, her lady’s maid, who had never uttered more than three words of sense in the whole time she had been in her employ; she did, however, remain awake. But Mary was still quite sick; nursed in a darkened hut no bigger than a kennel by a large negro woman who guarded Mary’s feeble, sweating, panting body as fiercely as a dog with a bone. And as for the companionship of her brother John, he had begun to seem like a vision in the heat, for every time Caroline approached him he would simply vanish. Until one day, with the determination of a trapper, Caroline contrived to snare him upon the veranda of the house.
    ‘John, may we take a stroll around the grounds?’ she implored.
    ‘A stroll, Caroline! This is not England. In two steps the heat would claim you. No one strolls here,’ her brother replied.
    ‘A ride then, John—I still know how.’
    ‘The terrain is far too dangerous and, besides, I have no horse that could possibly take your . . .’ he said, prudently losing into a mumble the words which referred to Caroline’s robust dimensions.
    ‘Oh, John, please take me around, I wish to see my new home and understand all its workings,’ she said, her voice rising shrill enough to conjure that squeaking hinge anew.

    So, reader, let me once more draw your eye to that road through the plantation named Amity—to the gig, to the single chestnut horse and the bumpy progress being made by John Howarth and his sister Caroline who sit within. Walking along this road in the path that the gig would eventually take, was a large black slave woman. Upon her head was a straw basket filled with unruly sweet cassava roots, poised so ably she looked to be wearing an ornate hat. Her skirt, once striped yellow and black was, from its years of being drenched in a river, pounded against rock and baked in the sun, only whispering its former lustre. But the child walking at her side was attired in a dress of the same fabric and, like a draper’s sample, this miniature displayed the cloth almost in its original hues.
    The little girl halted her stride so she might better peruse a scrubby periwinkle that struggled to bloom dainty at the side of the path. She plucked the plant and waved it gently in the air in the hope that the woman might stop to look upon the purple petals. But the woman was unaware that the child no longer walked at her side. ‘Mama,’ the girl called, and as her mama turned upon hearing the cry, the girl ran to her, holding out the flower.
    The woman, bending to look upon the bloom gripped tight in her daughter’s hand, tipped her head only enough so the balance of the produce would not be disturbed. She nodded a smile upon her child, then straightened once more and walked on. But the little girl began pulling ferociously at the cloth of her mother’s skirt to arrest her progress—planting her bare feet firmly into the earth for a solid grip. Although only pulling with one hand, the skirt nevertheless began to strain, almost to ripping. The woman, slapping the child’s hands from the feeble cloth, was forced to stop to take heed of her.
    She removed the basket from her head to place it carefully upon the ground, then took the flower from the child between her finger and thumb. She lifted it to her nose before passing it under the nose of the child. Cupping her hands around her mother’s broad fingers, the girl inhaled deeply upon its scent. And as the mother began to brush the dainty petals of the flower across the cheek of the little girl, they both closed their eyes in the reverie of the soft strokes. At last the woman,