Chapter 1
“I don’t want t’ ‘ear another word from ye about dyin’, Camille, not another bloody word!
I know yer feelin’ poorly, but y’ve already come through the worst o’ the fever.
I’d swear on me father’s black ‘eart that y’ll be enjoyin’ some fresh air and sunshine on the deck by week’s end.
Now give yer Susanna Guthrie a smile, or I’ll joost take m’self straight back t’ Bristol! ”
“And how will you do that?” Camille Cary asked, forcing a smile as she swallowed painfully. She inclined her head upon the sweat-damp pillow and watched Susanna soak a linen cloth in a basin of cool water. “Swim?”
“Aye, either that or I’ll catch a ride on a dolphin, I will! Or a spoutin’ whale. Joost watch me!”
Susanna was rewarded with a soft laugh, the first she’d heard from Camille in several days, but it quickly became a hacking cough.
She set the basin upon the gently swaying planked floor and moved to the head of the narrow bed, where she lifted and supported her young mistress’s quaking shoulders and back until the spasm passed.
Then she helped Camille to lie down, tucking the blanket around her too-thin frame.
“Better?” Susanna asked, feeling guilty that she had inadvertently brought on another coughing spell. She had only wanted to lighten the mood in this stuffy, dank-smelling cabin. Anything to get Camille’s mind off her illness!
Camille nodded weakly, a ghost of a smile upon her pale, cracked lips.
“Dearest Susanna. You’ve always known how to make me laugh.
I can never keep a straight face when you talk like you did when we first found you in London.
I would have thought after all these years, and Aunt Melicent’s constant insistence that you speak proper English, that you’d have forgotten how. ”
Susanna shrugged lightly as she wrung out the cloth and pulled her chair nearer the bed. “I guess some things you just never forget.”
Camille’s feverish eyes met Susanna’s as the damp cloth covered her forehead. “Speaking of forgetting, you never said how Captain Keyes is feeling today. Is he better?”
Susanna concentrated upon wringing out another cloth. “Oh, yes, doing quite well,” she lied, sparing Camille again from the true horror that gripped the Charming Nancy.
Five weeks out of Bristol a terrible pestilence had struck the huge vessel, and within a fortnight it had become a floating death ship.
There weren’t enough provisions to turn back to England, and even if that had been possible, they were already closer to the colonies.
Flushed with the fever and barely able to stand, Captain Samuel Keyes had ordered his men to sail with all haste to Yorktown, Virginia.
Now the grizzled captain was dead, buried at sea just that morning along with three more crew members and a half dozen passengers, two children among them.
Susanna had watched silently on the top deck as the shrouded mummylike figures had plummeted into the choppy gray sea with scarcely a prayer to guide them into the hereafter, the ship’s parson having died late last week.
She couldn’t blame what remained of the frightened crew for not performing some semblance of a burial service. They simply wished to rid the ship as quickly as possible of any diseased corpses.
So she had mumbled a prayer, for the dead who were finally free of their earthly suffering; for her dear Camille, that she would grow well again and healthy; and for herself, that she might be spared the killing fever.
Then she had returned to their cabin with the day’s ration of thin barley soup and stale bread, wishing Camille hadn’t been so generous in sharing with the ship’s cook the extra food supplies Lady Redmayne had insisted they bring with them for the long voyage.
That was just like Camille. Generous and caring to a fault, yet so shy she had hardly left the cabin until she heard that a little boy down the passageway had taken sick.
Offering what medicines she possessed and all of her gentle comfort, Camille had sat up with the distraught parents through the night, only returning to the cabin at dawn with the sad news that the child had died.
The next day, she had been struck with the fever, and she hadn’t risen from her bed since.
That had been almost ten days ago. Susanna didn’t have the heart to tell her that the boy’s parents had also sickened and died during that time, an ominous misfortune upon which she didn’t wish to dwell.
Oh, why, why wasn’t Camille getting any better?
“Susanna.”
She lifted her head at the sound of the beloved voice that had grown so feeble, only a whisper of its former melodic strength, and she immediately felt her cheeks begin to burn. Camille was staring at her so intently she could swear her closest friend could see right into her soul.
“Captain Keyes is dead, isn’t he?”
Susanna knew any further attempt to lie would be futile. She nodded, wondering what she had done to give herself away.
Sighing, Camille glanced at the wall. “It’s just as well.”
Susanna was shocked. “It’s not like you to say such things, Camille Cary. The captain was a longtime friend of your family. He knew both your parents and your grandfather. Why, he braved late-winter seas to bring you the news about your father.”
“I know, I know, and I can only hope that heaven will forgive me for saying it,” Camille murmured.
She clutched Susanna’s arm with a hand so pale that the thin blue veins stood out in sharp relief against her white skin.
“We must talk, Susanna. I’ve been thinking about something since last night.
Something important. I couldn’t sleep because of it.
But you mustn’t tease me as you did a few moments ago when I tried to tell you. This is serious.”
“All right, no more teasing,” Susanna agreed, sensing she had failed to divert Camille’s attention from her suffering. “Now, what’s so important that it’s robbing you of precious sleep?”
Camille’s gaze grew almost pleading. “I know you won’t want to hear this, Susanna, but you must listen to me.
If something happens to me, if—if I die, I want you to go to Virginia in my place as Camille Cary and accept my inheritance.
I want you to accept Briarwood, my father’s tobacco plantation, as your own. ”
Susanna stared at her incredulously, so stunned she didn’t know what to say.
Finally, gathering together her frayed emotions, she said with quiet vehemence, “Nothing’s going to happen to you.
I won’t let it! In a few days you’ll be feeling better, then everything will go on just as before.
When we reach Virginia, you’ll find a husband, just as your father wanted you to, and you’ll settle down happily at Briarwood and raise lots of children, just as you always wanted to—”
“Perhaps,” Camille interrupted softly, squeezing Susanna’s arm.
Tears welled in her eyes and tumbled down hollow, wasted cheeks.
“But if I don’t get better, promise me that you will do as I ask.
You’ve been like a true sister to me, Susanna Guthrie, and a truer friend.
My only friend. I want to know that you’re well provided for.
You’ve already been dealt more than your share of unhappiness.
I don’t want to worry that you might find yourself in as terrible a situation as you knew in London. You deserve so much more.”
Deeply touched, Susanna opened her mouth to protest, but she was silenced by a weak flutter of her mistress’s hand.
“No, listen to me, Susanna. There’s another reason and, I admit, it’s a selfish one.
If you refuse, Aunt Melicent will inherit Briarwood, and she has sworn never to set foot in the colonies.
She’ll sell the plantation without ever having seen it, and then everything my father and grandfather worked so hard to build out of the wilderness will be lost. I can’t allow that to happen!
Briarwood meant so much to them. It means so much to me.
Cary sweat and blood are in that soil, my family’s hopes and dreams.”
Camille drew a ragged breath. “Aunt Melicent never had a good thing to say about Virginia. No, not even once. You heard her protests when I received Papa’s letter just after Christmas, saying it was time I wed and summoning me home by autumn.
Then Captain Keyes brought word in April about Papa’s death, and I decided to accept his kind offer of escort and leave England even sooner than she had expected… ”
Camille grew silent, grieving for a father she had rarely seen but whom she had loved dearly.
Aye, Susanna thought, Lady Redmayne had never minced words about Virginia, calling it a cursed and barbarous place peopled by savage Indians, traitors to the Crown, and the dregs of England’s society.
Yet Susanna had never understood the baroness’s intense dislike for a place she had never visited until Camille had told her the full story.
Lady Redmayne had never forgiven her adventurous brother, Camille’s grandfather, for selling their family estate in England so he might start a new life in America.
Then when Camille’s mother, Constance, and two older brothers had died of a strange malady known only to the colonies, the baroness’s low opinion of Virginia had been forever sealed.
Susanna shook her head, becoming angry with herself. None of this mattered. Camille was going to get better, and that was that!
“Even if something did happen to you, which it won’t,” Susanna objected with characteristic stubbornness, clasping Camille’s chilled hands tightly, as if she could will some of her own strength and warmth into them, “such a farfetched plan would never work.”
“It will,” Camille insisted. “I wouldn’t have suggested it to you if I had any doubts. We’re almost the same age and we look so much alike, Susanna—you know that, though you’re by far the prettier one.”
“Camille…”