TUESDAY: Knotwork

BY DEIDRA WHITT LOVEGREN

Copyright is held by the author.

MASTER RICHARD proved to be cruel to every man and beast upon Greenwood’s grounds. One would think that the riches of the Caribbean might bring more tranquility to his plantation, but with every coin pressed into his palm from the triangular trade, Master Richard grew more severe.

Greenwood sat high on a bluff overlooking the swirling indigos of Montego Bay. Master Richard’s eyes were the same cold blue. In his lavish Jamaican villa, rare books crowded the library, oil paintings lined the hallways, and harpsichords filled the pretty parlors. Master Richard paid large sums of money for his daughters to be tutored in French and his wife to be dressed in rich satins and thick wools. He seldom saw them, as his daughters were quarrelsome and his wife fond of laudanum in late afternoons.

Master Richard kept to his study, where ledgers and maps competed for shelving, topped with slave auction notices and dispatches from the Royal Navy. His window overlooked a back courtyard where overseers punished those who slowed production, but little seemed to satisfy the man, whether in yield or in ledger.

After a particularly violent thunderstorm, the sun nosed through billowy clouds and the sodden ground steamed. His slaves returned to chop sugarcane in the fields, their singing threading through Greenwood’s silent halls. Master Richard watched them by the window, saw their white teeth flashing, their camaraderie, their ease in the world. A gnawing pit in his heart ached, for no one cheered him in greeting. Even the hounds scurried away, toenails clacking, at his thick-booted approach.

Master Richard took notice of a pretty young slave, dressed in daffodil yellow, newly acquired from the Gold Coast. She chatted and laughed with the other women, her joy entirely unguarded.

How can she be happy? The other girls he’d summoned for his pleasure were often dour things. Seldom can miserable men properly puzzle things out. Master Richard decided her good nature was primarily due to her beauty.

He rang a bell. An old servant appeared.

“Which one is that?” Master Richard inquired, pointing toward the courtyard.

“Ngozi,” the old servant said. “Now she is called Grace.”

She was far too lovely to be in the fields. The master cleared his throat. “Bring her here. I need a housemaid for my suites.”

“Yes, sir,” the old servant replied, his shoulders sagging as he left the room.

The year passed. Ngozi hid her pregnancy, an easy thing to do after falling out of Master Richard’s favour. She was used to hard labour, but finding herself alone in a closet, she bit into a linen cloth to muffle her groans.

“Dear child,” she whispered. “I cannot cry out. Please come quickly…”

She grimaced as the contractions increased.

“Come, love. The world is here.” She rubbed her belly, pushing down and down.

At that, the child came forth in a rush of blood and water. A trusting hand reached up to touch his mother’s face.

“Your eyes are like the sea,” she murmured. “Perhaps you’ll be the captain of a great ship one day.”

The baby matched her smile while she tended to the cord that had joined them.

“Well, my son, if you’re to be a sailor, I’ll show you your first knot.”

Kofi toddled after his mother in the fields and fetched billhooks and water gourds for the workers. He was seldom seen without a smile, for Ngozi taught him to love the chittering mockingbirds, the delicious ackee, and the fragrant orchids.

He grew into a fine boy and cut cane, singing along with the others under the sun:

         O sugarcane, you’re ripe again—

         Hold it steady, one more row!

On a thick-aired day in July, Ngozi spotted Master Richard’s horse-drawn carriage at the edge of the field. The old servant’s eyes were more grave than usual.

“Is it time for Kingston already?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

The old servant nodded, his eyes wet.

She gathered Kofi into her arms. How easy it was for Master Richard to sell off his embarrassment to merchant ships!

“Kofi,” she began. “You are going on an adventure.”

“Will you come with me?”

“I cannot.” Ngozi swallowed hard, then pointed toward the bay. “But you will live on the sea and see wonderful things. Then you will come home to tell me your tales.”

And because mothers cannot leave their sons without giving them gifts, she tore a length of her daffodil yellow dress and knotted a plait, carefully tying it on his thin wrist.

“Will it be a good adventure?” he asked, blue eyes wide.

She kissed the top of his head. “If you decide it is.”

In Caribbean ports, there were two kinds of ship captains: those who neglected their crewmen and those who abused them. Kofi found most captains were both, and he vowed to become neither.

In the captain’s quarters, he sheepishly stood, head bowed, behind the Master-at-Arms.

“He’s been filchin’ provisions for the cabin boys again, sir. He says they was starvin’.” The Master-at-Arms tut-tutted.

The captain of the HMS Artemis glared at Kofi. “Hardtack’s not good enough for yer belly? I doubt this creature would survive a keelhauling, Flynn. Perhaps he needs a good flogging.” The captain drained his rum.

Kofi stepped forward to refill the captain’s tankard, a courtesy rewarded by a blow, knocking him to the floor.

“Impertinent lad.” The captain poured the liquor himself. “Maroon him on yonder isle. Leave him to his fate.”

Kofi marvelled at the coastline while being rowed ashore.

“Ye’ll have a jug o’ water to make a go of it,” the crewman explained, almost as an apology.

“Do I get a pistol, too?” the boy asked.

“Nah, mate, but I can sling ye a bit o’ rope.” The crewman neatly spooled a coil for him with a few deft turns of his hand.

“My mother ties beautiful knots.” Kofi held up his wrist, the yellow plait still secure.

“That is a motherhood enchantment, indeed. See here, lad. These are three sailor knots to help you get along.” His hands worked rapidly. “When you loosen the first knot, it’ll bring ye fair winds. The second will fetch ye a proper catch. But don’t be loosening the third unless ye want to stir up a right nasty squall.”

Kofi’s smile dimmed as it dawned on him that he would shortly be alone on a rocky atoll.

The crewman rustled his hair. “Chin up, lad. Shippin’ lanes are busy this time o’ year. Someone’ll scoop ye up.”

The jolly boat withdrew.

Kofi slung the small sack of provisions over his shoulder and walked. His nimble fingers traced the loops of the three intricate knots in the crewman’s rope.

He needed shelter.

He scanned the terrain as his thin leather boots crunched and skittered with each step along the shore. Its barrenness was made more desolate with the dark green skies churning over his head, but then he spied a narrow cove and picked his way down an embankment before the hard rain fell.

Something wriggled in a fissure, caught between two weathered crags.

An eel? That would make a good supper!

Upon closer inspection, he found the undulating body had double rows of suckers, iridescent skin, and a steel grappling hook sunk into its flesh. It changed colours — white, yellow, orange — while struggling to free itself from the cleft, to no avail. Worse, the hook in one of its tentacles held it fast.

Black waters arose. The creature thrashed harder.

“I need fair weather to save it,” Kofi said aloud.

He pulled the crewman’s rope from his pocket and began to untie the first knot. It was particularly tricky, but he remembered his mother’s hands.

The knot disentangled, and the torrent ceased. Radiant sunbeams turned sea spray into a kaleidoscope of jewels.

“It’s so beautiful,” Kofi whispered to the clouds.

With the waters calm, he swam in the lagoon, grasped the end of the creature’s wounded tentacle, and freed it from both the barb and crevice.

The sinuous arm slithered out of the boy’s hands, gently squeezed Kofi’s wrist near the yellow plait, then disappeared into the blue.

The next morning, Kofi awoke to an octopus peeping at him from the lagoon.

“Hullo,” he said.

The octopus blinked its slit-like pupil, then arose from the water to unfurl its injured tentacle, free from the grappling hook.

“You are better!” The boy smiled. “Are you fishing today?” He rubbed his stomach to quell its growling. “Perhaps you and I should share a meal.”

The octopus tilted its head.

“We need a proper catch.” Kofi started on the rope’s second knot. After he finished the last loop, an enormous school of cod flooded into the lagoon.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, wading ankle-deep in water thick as porridge. “We will eat like English lords!”

Kofi’s companion pivoted and vanished into the deep.

By the time he had caught a few fish, the octopus returned, followed by an octopus four times Kofi’s height. Its eyes glowed like lanterns. It had a barnacle-encrusted beak and eight monstrous arms with suckers the size of barrel heads.

Kofi motioned for his friends to eat their fill. The larger one crunched a dozen cod at a time, while the smaller juggled fish in the air before taking enormous bites.

“What pirates you would make,” he mused, before an idea struck him like a rogue wave. “My friends,” he asked, the corners of his mouth curling. “How’d you like a good adventure?”

Packet ships regularly brought London newspapers to Jamaica, proof that narratives take their time to cross an ocean and lose none of their confidence along the way. The old servant delivered them on a silver tray to Master Richard in the study the moment they hit Greenwood’s docks.

The Gazette led with slave revolts. Nearby plantations had been burnt in an attempt to change the status quo. Master Richard ran his finger down the column of sugar prices, secure in the knowledge that his new overseers dutifully punished malcontents for their actions. He nearly finished every word on the page when an article stopped him cold.

The HMS Artemis had been lost. Reports suggested the crew had mutinied, but the former captain spoke of a leviathan that came from the depths to strangle crewmen in their hammocks. A young boy with sky-lit eyes had taken command of the ship, his hands steady at the wheel. He’d stormed harbours throughout the Caribbean, liberating slaves from transports and sinking tobacco shipments. Worse, he had amassed loyal crewmen who wore yellow plaits about their wrists.

Master Richard read the last paragraph several times, sure that his eyes had deceived him. The commandeered ship, the newspaper claimed, traveled swiftly through the Caribbean with impunity — flanked by kraken.

Impossible.

Still, he found himself at the window, staring down into the courtyard, deep in thought.

Like orange-and-black butterflies overwintering along the Spanish Main, Kofi couldn’t resist the intrinsic desire to return to his origins. He approached Greenwood from the sea.

The villa looked much smaller than it had when he was a boy.

“Wait here, my friends,” he instructed the crew. “I have business with the master of this plantation. When I return, others will join us.”

Kofi’s men lowered a cutter into the water. Kofi climbed aboard, and tangles of tentacles lightly knotted about the craft and spirited him through the blue.

Kofi’s ever-present smile faded the closer he came to the villa. Workers in the fields were silent, the air heavy with songs unsung. Only the swinging of machetes could be heard as he approached.

“Where is Ngozi?” Kofi asked a servant girl, but she shied away.

He wandered through the lanes, each doorway and water pump a faint recollection of childhood. The servant’s quarters. The stables. The pathway to the Big House. His heart beat heavily in his chest, faster and faster, for the other slaves did not meet his eye.

“Ngozi!” he called as he passed by the kitchens, the water pump, the shanties.

Kofi pushed open the courtyard gate to find death hanging among the flowering trees. Among the purpled faces, he recognized a dress in daffodil yellow.

Wordlessly, he unleashed the cutlass from his sash. Its single-edge blade glinted in the sun. He cut his mother’s body down, a crude coiled slipknot gripping her throat.

Had it been tied more artfully, Ngozi would have suffered far less.

Kofi lifted his eyes to the villa, to the window above, where a similar pair of eyes widened.

The curtains drew shut.

Kofi burst through the study door, the old servant who had given him the key close behind. He laid his mother’s body on an upholstered settee.

“You!” Master Richard demanded. “Why are you here?”

“To kill you,” Kofi replied, “but that would not make my mother proud. Hers was a generous soul. See what your men have done!”

“You cannot…” Master Richard gibbered. He flattened himself against the wainscoting.

Kofi grasped his father by the cravat and pulled the frightened man close. “What can I not do?”

Master Richard touched Kofi’s face, both familiar and foreign all at once.

Kofi pulled the crewman’s rope out of his pocket and untied the third knot.

A dark rumbling started from the bay. In moments, angry clouds clustered over Greenwood.

Jagged lightning rendered Master Richard visible only in profile.

“Your mother—” Master Richard began.

Kofi went very still. He had his father’s eyes and his mother’s heart, and he knew at that moment which one he intended to keep.

“Do not speak of her again,” Kofi replied.

Master Richard opened his mouth, but the window overlooking the courtyard shattered into a thousand fragments, bloodying him from head to boot.

The squall worsened by the minute.

A torrent swept in, soddening Master Richard’s ledgers, numbers melting, forming a pool of black ink on the fine carpet. As the villa groaned inward, wood shingles peeled off, board by board. Its tiled floors cracked, giving way to a sinkhole as the rainfall dissolved the limestone beneath.

Twin vortices careened through the villa’s corridors. Rare books, fine paintings, and musical instruments disappeared into its deadly cone.

“Boy!” Master Richard yelled, gripping Kofi’s arm. “Do you mean to kill me?”

“No.” Kofi knocked him to the floor. “If I killed you, then I’d become you.”

He gathered his mother’s body, took the old servant by the hand, and departed the shambles of Greenwood for good.

Ngozi was buried at sea, as was fitting.

Her son told the crew about her good life and how she taught him to smile through sun and rain.

“She wore yellow,” Kofi said, “because yellow is the colour of light, and our world is here.”

He lowered his mother’s body, shrouded in the finest golden linen, into the welcoming sea. As he watched her descend, he unknotted the yellow plait from around his wrist and let it follow her down.

Two kraken bore Ngozi gently to the ocean floor, to be buried like treasure.

***

Deidra Whitt Lovegren frequently competes in international writing contests. Her published works include The Medicine Girl, The Medicine Woman, and 21 Conversations — a collection of dialogue-only short stories. The Lady of the Match, an anthology of her work translated into Arabic, debuted at the 2024 Cairo International Book Fair. Throughout her career, Deidra has taught English and composition at every level, from preschool to college. She currently lives in Virginia with her husband of 30 years, their three sons, and two rescue cats.