JOURNEY TO THE ISLE OF DEVILS
Gravesend,
England
November 5, 1817
Chapter 1
BEAUTIFUL MEMORIES
My return home to the West Indies began on the morning of November 5, 1817—with Mr. John Foster Barham II, my legal guardian in England, telling me to “bring your ass to anchor” so that we might start the long journey to Gravesend—before the Sir Godfrey Webster set sail. I suspected his ill temper had more to do with his inability to find a responsible woman to accompany me to Jamaica than any failing on my part to promptly sit in his landau.
First time I ever saw Mr. Barham I had just turned nine. He walked on board ship where I was playing with the other island children destined for English boarding schools. He shouted over the chaos, “Which one of you feisty little beasts is Mary Ann Finlayson?”
I looked at him, bending at the waist squinting at me: an older gentleman with penetrating black eyes, jowls and chin surrounded by pepper and salt curls, eyeglass swinging from a chain around his neck, and an immense white cravat.
He said, “Cat got your tongue, girl. “I smelled the rum on him. I wasn’t afraid. Perhaps lonely. But certainly not scared. It had been two years since my father died, five since my mother. And under the guidance of my two older brothers, I had become…well, feral.