He handed me my pitcher. It didn’t rattle. The knife was gone. I had to hug the pitcher to my chest as it felt too heavy for my soft fingers. My legs were still floppy but I stood still for a second, willing strength down into them. I swayed, but stayed upright.
“Walk!” Antonio said. That’s when I recognized the accent. It was the same as the man from the boat that George Symons had arranged for us, the one that Mama had refused to travel with. The Portuguese stole me from my family. I should have listened to her. I should have known that we’d drawn all the luck we were allowed. I had been greedy.
I looked down at my feet. I had to make them move. I tilted forward until I staggered and my feet shifted to stop me falling again. Right foot, then left. Right, left. Right, left.
“Faster!” Antonio shouted.
Right, left. My back jerked, like there was a cog missing. I could hear their footsteps close behind me.
“You know the way to French Street?” the fisherman asked.
I nodded.
“Quicker! Remember we’re right behind you.”
French Street was where Jacques Francis lodged. We would walk right past the apothecary shop. Was there still a trickle of luck left? My feet stumbled over the rough paving stones. It was hard to see through the tears streaming down my cheeks. There was a chill in the air and it was still bright, but it wouldn’t be long before the sky would start to dim. I saw the apothecary shop ahead. Please, Jacques! Please be there! We passed it. The door was firmly shut, the hole in the window filled with a wad of wool. I tried to glance sideways without moving my head. I heard laughter and the slow clunk of donkey hooves and the creak of cartwheels behind us. The fisherman called out a greeting, but there was nothing more.
No one would save me. I would be taken to a boat. I would be sold.
I thought of Mama smiling as she lifted the spoon from the pot of posset. If I was never going to see her again, I wanted my last thoughts of her to be good ones. My earliest memories were of her singing, when I was frightened or when I couldn’t sleep. She would stroke my hair in time to her words. Or she’d sing when she was scouring pots or as we queued with our buckets for water. We even had a special song for when she was tugging the comb through my hair to dislodge the lice. She’d sing while we sat sewing by candlelight, when my fingers felt too numb to carry on but the work had to be completed by morning if we were to be paid. She rarely sang in English. She didn’t know many English songs. I think she made songs up sometimes, but I didn’t mind.
A tune came into my head, one I had heard her singing for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t just hear her, I could almost smell the lavender sweete bag she carried in her apron to ward off diseases. I could almost see the buttercups she entwined round her thumb to speed the healing of a knife wound. The song was Mama herself.
I didn’t know the meaning of the Portuguese words, but I knew the sounds and the tune. I started singing gently, but then as Mama became almost real beside me, my song grew in volume.
The fisherman cuffed my shoulder. “Stop that noise!”
“No,” Antonio said. “Continue. I know that song. My mama sang it to my sister. This girl is a big treasure! She will make the rich ladies happy!”
I sang harder to drown out their voices until there was another poke in my back.
“Stop!” the fisherman hissed.
We were standing outside a merchant’s house, beneath the overhang of the upper storey.
“Do you have the key?” Antonio asked.
The fisherman took one from the pocket of his breeches and passed it to Antonio.
“He needs it back before nightfall.”
“We’ll be gone by then,” Antonio said.
Antonio went ahead of me, not to the front door, but down the steps to the vault. The fisherman stayed guard at the top while Antonio fiddled with the key then pushed open the door. I looked into the heavy darkness. I could just see the sloping curves of the ceiling before I was shoved in to the black and the door slammed shut behind me.
The darkness wrapped round me like a shroud. I felt the floor beneath my feet and knew that there was a ceiling over me, but beyond that, I couldn’t work out where I was in the room, or even how big the room was. I placed my pitcher on the ground and reached out my hands, walking slowly ahead until my fingers touched a stone wall. I pressed my back against it and slid to the floor. We would be gone by nightfall, Antonio had said. Long gone. Far away from everybody I knew. I wouldn’t wish this time away. For every moment I was still in Southampton, there was a chance that someone would miss me and search for me. Perhaps if I stayed still enough, I would hear them calling my name.
I drew my knees in and sat, unmoving. I could smell a faint hint of the wine that had been stored here, but I sensed that the vault was empty now apart from me – me and whatever was scurrying in the far corners. I hugged my knees tighter. Mama would realize I was gone. She would find me. I listened and I listened, but no one called my name.
I don’t know how long I was there. I don’t know if I slept or not, because the darkness was the same whether my eyes were closed or open. The twist of the key in the lock sounded as loud as thunder after the thick silence of the
