The sky above the Thames is grey and cold but refuses to give up its rain. Grey and dried up like her, Zilpha thinks, although by now the laudanum has worn off and she has a solid meal in her, so her step, though aimless, is strong and sure. She walks along the bank wearing a plain dress dyed in mourning black, so modest as to be nearly shapeless, clothing to be left alone in. It works: the men of London pay her no mind. She is not the first woman to walk the water's edge alone and contemplate the veil between life and death.
She turns southwest towards the waning sun. Thinking of Africa, what must have been done to him over there.
Those ten years I lived a sheltered life. Whatever little indignities I went through, they cannot compare to what he has suffered...
She doesn't believe it.
She needs James here: to speak to her, to explain her to herself. She loves him now more than she ever did. It is not enough.
The dead want her. They are down in the water, waiting. They terrify her less than the wants within her own soul. She does not hear the cries of her son among them...in her mind he is still a crying infant, always. Her dear baby boy. Once in her anguish she had prayed God never to have a girl.
The skies have gone dark now. But she does not need light to see, she never did.
No more than she ever needed new china or a husband. Tomorrow morning is Sunday, she'll miss church too.
He had told her to thank her God. But what is God? Another man. The foul stinking breath of a fat priest. Yet the other way lies Deviltry and madness. A gift, James said. The voices of the dead…their power.
Their father, in his madness, used to light fires.
She takes a flint and a sack of kindling from the hearth and walks along the foreshore until she finds a suitably secluded spot.
James…the waters still connect us…
…
Openness. Spaciousness. The soft rustle of waves, the gentle creaking sound of wood on rope. A darkness she fumbles through, hesitant and half-blind. The delicious coolness of sea air in her nostrils, that smell which she has always equated with freedom. At the bow of the ship, his form, standing tall and watchful. Magnificent. Godlike. She might push him into the water, if she had flesh.
And then she pulls back and sees the wooden boards of the ship's side, a name—The Good Hope—and a date painted on them, bobbing in and out of the black depths. And she knows that she has broken in.
She returns to her brother, still standing at the bow ramrod-straight, but his head tilted ever so slightly, his eyes alert in a different way, he sees her.
"You are dead," he whispers softly, barely more than a breath.
"Do you want me to be?" she whispers back into his ear. She licks the side of his neck, tastes the sting of salt there, feels his head begin to turn…
And then she is sitting by a fire on aching haunches, breathing in smoke, shivering madly despite the heat—because of the heat.
The next morning she makes some inquiries at the docks. The men tell her nothing, the boys copy the men and tell her nothing, but the whores prove more willing. Especially after she slips them a few coins. Yes, The Good Hope is a ship. Yes milady, it left from this harbor. When? Oh, a couple days ago, I'd say. Bound for where? Now how would a girl like me know that? Bursts of laughter. Another whore, young and cheerfully pretty despite a missing front tooth, chimes in: wasn't that the day we had that great commotion with the redcoats? The king's men said they were looking for some traitor… Zilpha turns away quickly, her heart pounding. She walks back home and tears through her late husband's files, the records of the ships his company insured. The Good Hope is not among them.
The singing in her blood will not stop. She forces herself to swallow down some toast and tea, then falls into an exhausted stupor for perhaps an hour. Wakes up to the sound of screaming, a ring of coal-dark faces. Murderer, they tell her. Still exhausted, she closes her eyes again. The faces remain. Moonlight and torchlight glint off their accusing eyes as she looks at them, dumbly. She has no words for them.
When she opens her eyes her dead husband's face is there. He says the same thing.
"You tried to murder me first," she tells him calmly, and gets up to make herself a proper supper.