Chapter Three: The game's afoot

It was fitting, Davida felt, that the Barbados Museum was housed in what had once been the military prison. The Bajans had achieved pride without arrogance, identity without isolation, independence without aloofness. They had turned slavery into freedom. It was in keeping with the island's character that the building which once held men captive was now the cage of history itself.

The balconied edifice had a curious character of brick such that its colour was capable of change depending on the mood of the sun. So it was that when Davida first arrived, in the youthful and maidenly rosiness of the morning, it was touched with pink; but when she emerged into the courtyard, where once soldiers and horses paraded, the bronze heat of mid-day had cooked it to a pale golden tan. Glad of her hat and glasses as she crossed a grassy sunlit space, for she burned easily, Davida sought the coolness of the shadow in the corner of two walls, beneath a slender palm. As she relaxed there, revelling in the taste and smell of the air after the stuffy confinement of yesterday's travel, she wondered if Thomas Norrington would be finding his way to the museum as well. Most of the letters he had described had placed his almost-ancestor's activities in the waters around Jamaica and Haiti, not Barbados.

It was not Thomas that Davida spotted, but the ageing gentleman who had slept out the flight in the seat beyond him. His unmistakeable, florid face was a ripe strawberry atop the crisp unbleached linen of his suit. A strange sort of balloon to be bobbing through these surroundings, Davida decided. She made no move to attract the man's attention as he bustled across the former parade-ground with neat, fussy little steps. They had not spoken through the entire flight; Davida doubted he would remember her. He vanished into the interior gloom of the building, having never once looked around or strayed from his path. Davida couldn't help wondering why he had chosen to visit the museum. His manner, even without ever having once heard him converse, gave her the impression that he would automatically disagree with anything anybody told him, including the labels for the museum exhibits.

Revived after a light lunch, Davida felt armed for the afternoon. There had been a particularly striking chart in the museum's map collection, which Davida had viewed that morning, and she was of a mind to see it again. On returning to the display, however, she was unable to find it. It was hard to miss, being particularly distinctive- not of local make but with a backing of bamboo, in Chinese fashion. It had been as fanciful a work of art as any map Davida had ever seen, a veritable feast of mingled Asian and Western imagery with strange, incomprehensible lettering, much stained and well-used by time. The most distinctive feature had been the large circular hole right in the centre. The museum's guide, however, did not recall a chart of that nature, and Davida was quite certain that anybody, having once seen it, would be unable to forget it.

Thinking that it must have been part of one of the other exhibits, Davida retraced her steps around the building. It was an exercise that left her hot, thirsty, footsore, and beginning to doubt her own memory. She hunted fruitlessly until closing time, and even then she lingered past her welcome in the gift shop. Finally she spotted a postcard of her prey in the rack near the door, which gave her renewed confidence in her recollections and dismissed her nagging uncertainty about whether she had only dreamed the chart. The girl at the cash register gave the picture a puzzled look, as though she had never seen such a thing, but was happy enough to take Davida's money for the card.

There was a security guard waiting impatiently at the exit, giving Davida and his watch significant looks. Davida hurried out apologetically, then paused as he closed up behind her. She turned to stare, frowning, at the solid wood of the door. She couldn't be entirely sure, but she was almost certain that when she had passed the postcard rack again on the way out of the door, the rest of the postcards of the chart had gone.


The Barbados night-life invited Davida to experience its specialities of calypso and rum, but she found that the travel of the previous day and the long walk around the museum had tired her. She retired to her hotel room after supper, taking her books and laptop out onto the balcony along with a single rum cocktail. She rather thought any more than one drink would send her to sleep rather too quickly. The hotel was kind enough to provide free wireless access, and she used it to send a few quick emails to friends and relatives: I'm here, I'm fine, I'm having a nice time; variations on the theme of 'wish you were here' that would not be outright lies, no mention of strange vanishing charts that they would only dismiss as her usual overactive imagination. To an old friend and fellow historian Rebecca she also mentioned the story of James Norrington, as the village Thomas had named back in England was a mere five minutes up the road from Rebecca's house.

Any further efforts at the keyboard, however, were soon abandoned in favour of gazing out to sea and sipping from her chilled glass. Swallows flashed past overhead in dizzying aerial manoeuvres, and the evocative echo of a distant steel band drifted over the water. Her book lay forgotten.

A faint noise from within her room drew her attention. A sharp, hot spurt of alarm shot through her and she rose to peer back through the open door. Too many news reports of hotel crimes rose into her mind. For one desperate moment she wondered whether she would kill herself if she tried escaping from her balcony, and concluded that she probably wouldn't although she might twist an ankle. Her moment of panic abated enough for her to take in that her room was utterly empty of anything but her own possessions and the hotel furniture, and she let out a long and calming breath. The sound must have been someone in the next room, or the corridor outside.

While she was still standing, she slipped back inside and picked up her bag from where she had left it carelessly dropped on the end of her bed. Carelessly indeed- it had spilled half its contents over the bed covers. Scooping her errant belongings back inside, she delved into the side pocket and pulled out the postcard she had purchased earlier, taking it out onto the balcony with her along with her digital camera. She passed the rest of the evening taking the best close-up of the card that she could, uploading the photograph onto the laptop, and examining the magnified result with fascination.

The Caribbean twilight finally slid into purple-tinged night, laden with the banana-smell of cut sugar-cane and the aroma of grilling fish, and filled with a strange flute-like whistling that piped musically from the palms. Davida packed her things away, closed the balcony doors behind her, and crawled into the softly enveloping arms of cool cotton bedclothes. The last thing she did before surrendering to sleep was to slip the postcard under her pillow.