Love at Sea Page 13

  The house was built out of mellow, golden stone that, carefully cut and marked for ease in building, had been sent out from England as ship's ballast. The exterior was a heavy, square Georgian style with deep-set windows, a balustraded open terrace, and arched openings that formed an arcade around the lower floor.

  A flight of stone steps led up to the second, or main floor where a pair of great mahogany doors stood thrown back. Inside was a spacious hall of typical Jamaican design. Laid out in the shape of a cross, it ran the entire length and breadth of the house in order to funnel every breath of air through this main reception area. The floors in this hall were polished to a dazzling gloss on which lay Persian rugs in vibrant, glowing colors. Antiques of obvious quality and costliness sat around the room; William and Mary chairs, a Chippendale mirror, a Louis XV table. An eighteenth-century chandelier of crystal and French ormolu hung from the twenty-foot-ceiling, and a matching candelabra sat on a side table. The carved woodwork was of Jamaican mahogany, and on the walls was brocade wall cloth in a design of green and gold palm trees for a flavor that was both tropical and of the Far East. The remaining rooms of the second floor were done in the same taste and style. And in them all, in the entire house, there was not a sign of that structure so important in less-tropical climates, a fireplace.

  Beyond the reception area was a stair hall where a magnificent staircase ascended to the bedrooms on the third floor. It was here that the tale of Rose Hall and its white witch was unfolded.

  The house was built in the decade between 1770 and 1780 by John Palmer after his marriage to a much-wed widow, Rosa Kelly Fanning Ash Witter. The union consolidated his own holdings with hers, which included the acreage where Rose Hall was eventually built. In due course, the Palmers died, and after some twenty years of neglect and absentee ownership, a nephew of John Palmer, named John Rose Palmer, inherited. In 1820, this young man married Annee May Robertson, the child of an English couple who had made their home on the island of Haiti. Befriended by a woman who was a voodoo priestess, the young girl was initiated into the mysteries of this ancient African sorcery, taught the ways of creating fear, of practicing black magic and manipulating the death wish. On the death of her parents and the priestess, Annee traveled to Jamaica where at the age of eighteen she met and married John Rose Palmer.

  She was a woman of great beauty, but ungovernable temper, who flew into sudden excesses of rage during which she had her slaves whipped and was said to conjure up visions of doom and ghostly apparitions of the living dead. The slaves of Rose Hall lived in fear of her. And then her husband died. She said he drank himself to death; the slaves whispered that he was poisoned. She married again. Her second husband went insane, she declared; the slaves said he was stabbed. Once again she took a husband. She claimed he beat her, that he had married her for her money. He disappeared. The slaves told of a strangling ordered by the mistress of the house and carried out by a voodoo priest, a practitioner of obeah who was also her lover.

  Time passed. Annee Palmer ran Rose Hall plantation, now consisting of more than five thousand acres, with only the help of a series of overseers of brutal disposition. They came and went so quickly none could be sure whether they left of their own accord, or whether they were carried out lifeless in the dark of night. Then came a young intelligent overseer, a man fresh from England. Annee, at the age of twenty-nine, fell in love for the first time. The man took a slave girl as his mistress, the daughter of the obeah priest. In a jealous rage, Annee had the girl killed. It was a mistake, for only the priest was not afraid of her. In revenge, the voodoo priest crept into the bedroom of the white witch one midnight and strangled Annee Palmer.

  With great matter-of-factness, the young girl who was acting as guide for Nikolaos and Maura pointed out the bedroom where each of the husbands had met their doom, and also the chamber where the mistress of the house had been killed. It seemed that so much violent death should have left its mark, and perhaps there had been some sign before Rose Hall had fallen into ruin, before its restoration. Now the rooms were quiet and serene, echoing only to their quiet treads and the measured step of the member of the Jamaican police who followed them from one treasure-filled room to another. The trade winds lifted a curtain, revealing a view of the sea at every turn, or riffled the pages of a book, but there were no ghosts.

  Chapter 9

  “It's a fabulous place,” Maura said as Nikolaos swung the sports car onto the drive once more, heading away from Rose Hall. “You have to admire the people who gave their time and money to restore it."

  “John Rollins and his wife?"

  “And all the others, the architect who helped plan it and the historians who gathered the information needed to make it authentic, not just to its period, but to the original."

  “They certainly did an excellent job, no expense spared."

  “I can't think of a more fascinating or worthwhile thing to do with surplus money, if I had such a thing."

  “No? What of wintering on the Côte d'Azur or at St. Moritz, or summering where the latest whim leads the beautiful people?"

  “I like travel, I won't deny that; still I don't feel any inclination to hang onto the coattails of any particular group."

  “Or have them trailing along behind you?"

  “You mean become the leader of the pack? Even worse,” she said emphatically. “I prefer things a little quieter, without the need to worry about who is ahead, or behind."

  “You might like the island where I live, then. It's quiet, even isolated, and has several ruins."

  “Something older than Rose Hall I would imagine?"

  “What's left of a house from the Turkish occupation in the sixteenth century, also one or two temples,” he said in agreement. “My favorite is one dedicated to Poseidon."

  Poseidon, god of the sea. Maura sent him a sparkling look. “Very appropriate."

  “I thought so,” he agreed.

  “I somehow doubt such things lend themselves to restoration."

  “Not really, though there is much to be learned from studying them."

  The longing to see this island in Greece with its ancient, fallen-down temples was so acute it was like an ache inside her. “I—is your house like Rose Hall?"

  “In some ways, yes. It overlooks the sea, the Aegean, and is built of stone with the rooms open to every breeze. But the land is not so fertile. Instead of sugar cane, we grow olives; instead of cows, goats. There are no tropical plants, but the anemones blow in the wind and the slopes of the hills are purple and orange with wild iris and mountain poppies."

  There was a timbre in his voice she had not heard before. “You must love it very much."

  “It is my home.” He hesitated, as if he would add something more, then pressed his lips together.

  Maura turned her head quickly to look out the window. They had turned onto the main highway. They were passing a group of palm trees standing alone in a grassy strip of land between the road and the white sand of the shoreline. Four in number, the palms had been pointed out from the windows of Rose Hall by their guide. They represented, according to local superstition, the spirits of Annee Palmer and the three men who had been her husbands before their untimely deaths.

  “Look there,” Maura said, “the palm trees."

  Nikolaos gave a brief nod.

  “Do you suppose she was really guilty of killing all those people?"

  “What do you think?” he asked, sending her a quick glance.

  “I'm not sure. The story has been so surrounded with legends. For instance, the tales of her supernatural powers, her ability to cause death by telling someone they would die, or to turn herself into a ‘rolling calf,’ the giant hog with red eyes that warns of death, that was supposed to have been seen all over the island the night she died."

  “It wasn't the guide who told us that; it was the bus driver we met in the garden."

  “But how much of the details of what happened must have come from just that kind of source? Rose Hall
was much more remote from the town then than it is now, and the people on the place more superstitious."

  “That may be true, but it's hard to explain away so many convenient deaths."

  “We were given the names of only three men, her husbands. The names of the others, if they were ever known, have been lost. You have to remember that it was an unhealthy time. The first Mrs. Palmer, the widow who married the John Palmer who built the house, had survived three other husbands also, but nobody is calling her a murderess today."

  “You don't think women capable of such cruelty and malice?"

  “I wouldn't say that; they are human, after all. Then, there is another case similar to this that is famous in New Orleans history. A Madame Delphine La Laurie was forced to leave the city before the Civil War because of the discovery of the cruelties she practiced against her slaves."

  “A female Simon Legree?"

  “You could say so, though for some reason the idea of it in a woman affects people with more horror."

  “You are supposed to be the gentler sex."

  “Yes, but only in the human animal. In all others —"

  “I know. ‘The female of the species is deadlier than the male.’”

  Maura slanted him a glance from the corner of her eye. “I would think, considering your opinion of women, that you would be inclined to agree."

  “What do you know of my opinion of women?"

  “I am going by your attitude toward me when we met—and a few things your grandmother has let fall,” she answered, on the defensive.

  “My grandmother can only guess at my feelings. As for you personally, I think you must realize my—attitude is not the same."

  The temptation to explore his last statement was strong, but Maura resisted it. It might mean something, then again, it might not. On the whole, she preferred not to risk disappointment. She said, “For Annee Palmer, I suppose the most likely explanation is that she was insane."

  “More than likely. Freud wasn't even born then; little was known about madness. For a person of wealth and position, living in some isolation from society, there would be few curbs on behavior that became outrageous."

  “The isolation and the power of life and death that wealth brought in those days might even have been contributing factors."

  He lifted a brow. “Would such things have driven you insane?"

  “I don't honestly think so, but who can say?"

  “I can assure you none of the Vassos family has ever committed such excesses, and we have endured the remoteness of island living for several generations."

  “No skeletons in the closet? Not one?” she inquired, her lips curving in a smile.

  “Ah, well. The marriage of my parents you know of; my mother hated the island. Then there was a great-aunt, long dead, I assure you, who kept goats in her room. There was another Vassos several generations back who was a privateer during the Napoleonic wars, and a great-grandfather who joined the Klepts, the mountain brigands of Greece who fought so fiercely during the Greek War of Independence of 1820. He was beheaded by the Turks, but that is a matter of pride, not of infamy."

  “The Greek War of Independence—that was the war Lord Byron fought in, wasn't it?"

  “So you do know something of Greek history,” he said, giving her an approving glance. “I don't believe Byron fought, but he came and gave his support, and helped by his writings to make it a cause in England. Political struggles have always attracted poets and authors and artists, perhaps because such people have always been open to new and radical ideas."

  “Byron, Keats, and Shelley, the romantic poets, are Aunt Maggie's favorites still. For years, she has wanted to travel to Greece and retrace the route Byron took before his death, but some other place has always caused her to be side-tracked."

  “She would find much in my country to write about in her books. She must come, and you also."

  It was not quite an invitation, and yet there was a note in his voice that seemed to hint at something more than mere politeness.

  “I would like that,” Maura said quietly.

  He made no reply. They drove in silence. Maura glanced out the window toward the sea. It seemed a darker blue than moments before, the effect, she discovered, of a band of clouds drifting across the sun. Before she could remove her sunglasses, however, the cloud had passed and the day was bright and clear again.

  Abruptly Nikolaos spoke. “Did you bring a suit?"

  “A swimsuit, yes."

  “Good. We won't have to go all the way back into town to buy one."

  He swung the car off the road onto a sandy track. They bumped over ruts and low, grass-covered dunes, stopping just short of the beach. Before them lay a small cove that was protected from view of the sea by a jut of land on which grew a half dozen palm trees, and from the road by the rolling dunes.

  The rental car was equipped with air conditioning. As they stepped from its cool interior, the heat of the day, now advancing toward noon, hit them like a blow. There was a sultry feeling in the air that even the constant breeze off the water could not banish. By contrast, the Caribbean, with its shades of aqua and turquoise moving gently over white sands, looked fresh and inviting.

  Nikolaos began to unbutton his shirt and tug it from his trousers. Maura averted her gaze. To cover her sudden confusion, she began to undress also, pulling her top off over her head, stepping out of her slacks and sandals. When she looked up, Nikolaos was moving away from her, toward the water. He stopped with his back to her, facing the sea with his hands on his hips. The sun poured down on him, turning the muscled flatness of his torso to bronze, sliding over his brief tan suit, gilding the columns of his legs to give him the look of a newly cast statue. Adding to the illusion was the rigidity of his stance that seemed to suggest that he was no more at ease than she was. Maura put her clothing on the seat of the car and moved slowly to stand beside him.

  “It looks safe enough; no jellyfish, sea urchins, or sharks,” he said.

  “How reassuring you are!” She scanned the water, so clear the ripples in the sand on the sea bottom could be plainly seen.

  “Isn't there a saying in English: ‘look before you leap'?"

  “Excellent advice, as long as it doesn't paralyze you so that you never leap at all."

  They plunged in, breasting the waves that rolled into shore. Nikolaos's strong arms cleaved the salt water with the sure and powerful strokes of one for whom the sea is a natural environment. Making a wide circle around her, he came back to report that he had found no undercurrents. Maura could not keep up with him, but she enjoyed the buoyancy of the sea, as she moved lazily up and down, and the pleasure of letting the waves sweep her into shore when she ventured too far out.

  Tiring, they searched for shells in the calmer waters of the cove, and watched the schools of flashing fish that darted here and there, sometimes coming close enough to nibble at their feet and legs. For a time, they followed the progress of a dark mass of small silver fish swimming in the shallows near the water's edge. Behind them was a school of larger fish, from a foot to eighteen inches long, while behind those followed three or four groupers, their dark backs heaving above the water as they leaped and dove.

  The exercise awakened Maura's appetite. It was with appreciation that she saw the foam chest Nikolaos brought from the trunk of the car. On ice inside was a selection of sliced meats and salads such as had been served the night before on the ship, along with crusty rolls, a container of water, a selection of fruit, and a bottle of chilled white wine.

  Together, they spread a paper tablecloth on the sand in the moving shade of the palms and set out the food.

  Maura sent Nikolaos a quick glance as she opened various containers and ladled food onto disposable plates while he opened the wine.

  “I can't imagine when you found the time to rent a car, much less arrange all this."

  “A call on the ship's radio to a rental agency, a message to the kitchen; it wasn't difficult. I had plenty of time
while you were eating breakfast."

  “If that remark is meant to remind me that I overslept —” she began.

  “Since I know better, that was not the purpose at all."

  “What?” She stopped with a spoon of potato salad suspended in the air.

  “Your steward informed me there was a light in your room well in advance of the hour you finally entered the dining room."

  “You asked the steward to spy on me?"

  “It sometimes helps to know these things. Don't cloud the issue with counter accusations. Why did you avoid having breakfast with me?” He had filled the plastic wine glasses. Now he set the bottle in its plastic cooler.

  She gave him a cold look. Dumping the potato salad on his plate, she pushed it into his hand. “I may as well tell you the truth."

  “I would prefer it."

  “I didn't particularly feel like discussing Alexandros, or his appearance on deck last night."

  “And you thought I would?” There was grim incredulity in his voice.

  “You would have required some explanation, as you are doing now. It comes to the same thing."

  “You may be right,” he said slowly. “Tell me, why did you not wish to discuss Alexandros?"

  “I didn't want to hear a lecture about the way I was encouraging him."