Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River by Hambly Barbara

Author:Hambly, Barbara
Language: eng
Format: epub

TWELVE

The fire had started in the woodsheds. By the time January reached Kiki's small room attached to the rear of the kitchen, wind had carried burning fragments to the roofs of the cabins. “Dammit, get into line!” He heard Fourchet's snarled bellow, and the crack of whips. “Get the goddam buckets-!”

“Dear God.” Kiki's eyes were wide with shock. When he set her down to open the door she clung to the doorpost, staring back at the flames in horror.

“What do you have for burns?” January scooped her up again, carried her into the little chamber and over to the bed she had shared first with Reuben, then with Gilles. Though none of the field hands had spoken of it, the presence of the healing herbs in the basket told him she did at least some doctoring. “I'll need bandages, beeswax . . .”

“There's wax in the kitchen.” She started up from the bed and he pressed her back by her shoulder, met her eyes. “Oh, for God's sake, Ben, I've cooked dinner for twenty people five hours after I birthed a child.”

“Well, somebody else got the fire going tonight. You have sassafras? More willow bark?” He'd already gone to the hearth, thrust a stick of kindling into the banked embers, and breathed on it gently, adding more kindling as the yellow flame licked up. The brighter light showed him her medicine box beside the bed. “May I?”

She nodded, and he flipped back the lid, sniffed the tiny bundles wrapped in worn clean sheeting. “Make yourself a tea of these and take it,” he ordered, setting willow bark and briory on the bed beside her. “Then lie down and stay down. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

Bandages and herbs in his pockets, he set out for the quarters at a run.

Ajax's house, first in the line and nearest the mill, was a torch-even as January arrived the driver flung himself out of the flames, naked and gasping, with his two-year-old daughter Milly clasped to his chest. Rodney's little son lay screaming on a blanket near the cane, his mother Ancilla crouched above him, frantically pouring water over him from a gourd. The child's shrieks made a keening, hideous background to the greedy din of the fire.

Rodney's cabin was ablaze and Dan and Minerva's just beyond. It was just past midnight and most of the inhabitants of the quarters had sunk into the first depths of heavy sleep-Giselle and Emerald were running along the dirt street, pounding on doors, thrusting into dark cabins to drag their friends out of paralyzing slumber and shove them to safety. Someone had gotten to the plantation bell. It was clanging furiously, the iron racket penetrating the dreams of the unfree as no other sound could.

“Get the buckets and make a line for the river!” Fourchet was yelling. “Get the trash away from the walls!”

January slung his coat into a safe corner near the mule barn, caught up a rake, and joined the gang of

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