After I bathed Mistress Jenna, I brought her breakfast in from the cookhouse and food for Master van Prok's and Governor Gardelin's noonday meal. The governor had six guards standing watch outside the house. He worked on a paper as Dondo fanned him and swatted sand flies. Then he went back to his ship.
Master van Prok worked outside in the hot sun. He called the slaves down from the fields and had them gather bundles of pinguin. Pinguin has hundreds of crooked thorns that don't stick like cactus but tear your flesh. The slaves made pinguin ropes and tied them over the six windows of the house.
"Nobody will suddenly crash through a window," Master van Prok said to his wife, when he came in at dusk.
"Can't the pinguin be cut with sharp knives?" Mistress Jenna asked.
"Yes, but that takes time. It gives us a chance. We won't be surprised. We won't look up to see someone standing over us with a cane knife."
I was fanning the hot air, keeping the midges away from Mistress Jenna. At these words, a shudder ran through her body.
"I'm scared," she said.
She had been scared for weeks now. Master van Prok had heard these words many times. She was drinking a little more every day, which he did not like.
"You should go to St. Thomas," he said. "It's much safer in St. Thomas. They've had less than a dozen runaways and all have been caught and punished. You can leave with the governor when he leaves in a day or two."
She turned to me. "What do you think, Angelica?"
It was not an easy question to answer. I knew that she was in danger. All the white people were in danger. The danger grew more and more every day. I hunched my shoulders and said nothing.
"Speak up!" Master van Prok said.
"I don't know about the danger."
"You must know something."
At that moment, as the dusk deepened, the big drum at Mary Point began to talk. Another, a smaller drum, south toward Cruz Bay, broke in.
"You know the drum talk, Angelica. What are they saying?"
"The small drum says that soldiers on horses have come and gone."
"The big drum says what?"
"It's jabbering."
"Jabbering about what?"
"Nonsense."
"What kind of nonsense?"
"It's just making a noise."
This was the truth but Master van Prok got up from his hammock and paced the floor. His heavy boots on the stones drowned out the sound of the drums.
He quit pacing. "Noise. Nonsense. Huh! You're the one making a noise. You're the one talking nonsense."
He pointed a finger at me. "You're lying, Angelica. Stop the fanning."
I put the fan aside.
"Look at me," he said.
I had never looked at Master van Prok, not since the first day on the plantation when he had reached out and touched my skin. I was angry then. I had looked him straight in the eye. He slapped me and said that I was not to look at him or at his wife or at any white person. I was to look up or down or to one side, but never straight into a white per son's eyes. That was the custom on the island of St. John and the island of St. Thomas. If I ever did, I would be pinched with red-hot tongs.
Now that I had stopped fanning Mistress Jenna, she complained of the flies and the heat. Master van Prok asked her to be quiet.
"Angelica, look at me," he said.
I tried to look at him. But my eyes shifted about the room, at Dondo, at the house lizard stalking a fly, at Master van Prok's ringed finger, which he pointed at the ceiling.
"Look at me," he said, "not around the room. You have seen the room before. Look at me!"
My eyes felt heavy. I looked at the part in the middle of his wig. My eyes watered and tears ran down my cheeks. I could look no more.
He glanced at the whip that lay coiled beneath his hammock.
"Look at him, dear," Mistress Jenna said.
I lowered my eyes. I looked straight into his. It was like looking at the blazing sun.
"Good," Master van Prok said. "Now tell me what the drums talk about."
They boomed loud now that he had stopped pacing the floor. To the south a third drum had joined in.
"They talked noise and nonsense," I said. "Now they are talking about the day the revolt begins."
Mistress Jenna raised herself in the hammock and put her feet on the floor. "The day? When is that?"
"The drums don't say when."
A small gasp caught in Mistress Jenna's throat. She flung herself back in the hammock. I felt sorry for her, she looked so pale and frightened.
Master van Prok said, "Gardelin's laws, once the runaways think about them for a day or two, will cool them down. They'll think twice before they attack the plantations."
Mistress Jenna stared at the ceiling as I fanned her.
"I'll send you to St. Thomas. You'll feel better there," Master van Prok said gently.
"And leave you here alone?"
"Only for a month or two. By then the drums will be quiet and you can come home," he promised.
"A month is such a long time."
"You have been starving, Jenna, spending sleepless nights. I worry about you."
"I am worried about you, my dear Jost. I wish you could go to St. Thomas, too. But of course you can't. What awful times have befallen us."
A fourth drum, a small one over the hills to the northeast, was talking now.
Mistress Jenna asked for a drink of rum and I brought it. Kill Devil was all that we had left. She sipped it for a while. Her face brightened.
Suddenly she nudged my foot and told me to pack her things. "Four dresses for daytime," she said. "Three for evening. That is all. I plan to be quiet."
I caught my breath at the thought of leaving St. John.
"And start packing soon," she said. "We don't know when the governor will leave."
She had heard me catch my breath.
"Don't fret," she said. "You'll have more to eat on St. Thomas. You'll like that, won't you, Angelica?"
I was careful not to make her suspicious, to let her know that I would never leave St. John. They could put me in the black hole under the mill and burn me with red-hot pincers.
"I'll pack your clothes tomorrow," I said.
Past midnight, after the van Proks were asleep, Dondo followed me outside. "I heard you talking to Mistress Jenna," he said. "Did you lie when you let her know that you'd go with her?"
"Yes."
"You're not going?"
"No."
"What can you do?"
"Run."
"Where?"
"I don't know. I can't go to Mary Point. Not now. But Whistling Cay is just opposite the point and close. What do you think?"
"I was there once. Caves and places to hide in. They'd never find you."
Nero stood half-hidden in the mill doorway, watching us. Without another word, we parted.