Highland Blessings (39 page)

If you are wondering why Bryce and his warriors weren’t wearing kilts, it is because the modern kilt as we know it only dates back to around 1725. It is similar to a skirt with pleats from the waist down to slightly below the knees.

The Great Kilt or Belted Plaid dates back to 1594. The Great Kilt was an untailored garment made of cloth gathered up into pleats by hand and secured by a wide belt. The upper half could be worn as a cloak draped over the left shoulder and secured by a clip of some sort or draped down over the belt and gathered up at the front. In cold or wet weather, they might have brought it up over the shoulders or head for protection against weather.

Before the Great Kilt or Belted Plaid, they wore a long shirt that is known as a
leine
in Gaelic and thought of as a “tunic” in English. A plaid of wool cloth would have been draped over the shoulders and around the arm and fastened by a clip. The tunic came down to the knees on a man and was much longer on a woman. Because of the length on a woman it was similar to what we think of as an English chemise.

The association of clan family-specific tartan colors and plaid designs was a late development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, much earlier family clans that lived within a region would wear similar plaids and colors because they used the same seamstresses in the area. And, of course, families that intermarried typically lived in the same region in medieval Scotland, especially in the Highlands. Most of the clan colors and design patterns associated with specific family clans probably derived from this regional practice. This is why Bryce and Akira had different plaids with different colors, since the MacKenzies and MacPhearsons didn’t live on neighboring lands.

You can learn more from my blog at: http://carolinascotsirish.blogspot.com.

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The Call of Zulina

Copyright © 2009 by Kay Marshall Strom

ISBN-13: 978-1-4267-0069-9

Published by Abingdon Press, P. O. Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202

www.abingdonpress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in
any retrieval system, posted on any website, or transmitted in any form
or by any means—digital, electronic, scanning, photocopy, recording,
or otherwise—without written permission from the publisher, except
for brief quotations in printed reviews and articles.

The persons and events portrayed in this work of fiction are the
creations of the author, and any resemblance to persons living or dead
is purely coincidental.

Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency,
Janet Kobobel Grant, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa
Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz.

Cover design by Anderson Design Group, Nashville, TN
Cover illustration by Taaron Parsons

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strom, Kay Marshall, 1943-

The call of Zulina / Kay Marshall Strom.

p. cm. -- (Grace in Africa ; bk. 1)

ISBN 978-1-4267-0069-9 (alk. paper)

1. Women--Africa, West--Fiction. 2. Slave trade--Fiction. 3. Slave insurrections--Fiction. 4. Africa, West--History--To 1884--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.T773C35 2009

813’.6--dc22

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 14 13 12 11 10 09

H
ot, dry harmattan winds swept across the African savanna and awakened the yellow-brown sand, whipping it up with wild gusts that swirled and soared high into the air. The sandy clouds that blew in with the first shards of daybreak to shroud the dawn in grit refused to release their grip, and by late afternoon a thick layer of dust coated the entire landscape. Irritated goats paused in their search for edible blades of grass to stomp and shake themselves, and the children who herded them scratched at the itchy grit in their own eyes and hair. On the road, donkeys turned their heads away from the sandy wind and refused to pull their loads. Impatient masters swiped at their own faces as they whipped at the donkeys’ flanks, but all that accomplished was to send still more billows of dust into the air.

Sand whistled through banana leaves thatched atop clusters of mud huts in villages, and it settled over the decks of ships as they rocked idly at anchor in the harbor. Even at what was mockingly called “the London house,” with its ostentatious glass windows locked tight and European bolts securing its imported doors, gritty wind found a way under and between and beneath and into.

Twenty-year-old Grace Winslow, who had claimed the plumpest of the upholstered parlor chairs for herself, shifted from one uncomfortable position to another and sighed deeply. She reached out slender fingers and brushed a newly settled layer of sand from the intricate lace trim on her new silk taffeta dress and resigned herself to the day.

“The ancestors are angry,” proclaimed Lingongo, Grace’s mother, from her imposing position beside the rattling window shutters. Silky soft
kente
cloth flowed over her in a kaleidoscope of handwoven color, framing her fierce beauty. Lingongo made a proud point of her refusal to sit on her husband’s English furniture
—
except when it was to her advantage to do so.

“Ancestors! Sech foolishness!” Joseph Winslow snorted … but only under his breath. “Wind jist be wind and nothin’ but wind.”

“Maybe the ancestors don’t want me to marry a snake,” Grace ventured.

No one could argue that the first harmattan of the season had roared through on the very day Jasper Hathaway first came to court her. He had swept through the front door and into the parlor in a blustering whirlwind of sand, his fleshy face streaked with sweat and his starched collar askew. He stayed on and on for the entire afternoon. Only when it became obvious that no one intended to invite him to eat supper with the family did he finally heft himself out of Joseph’s favorite chair and bid a reluctant farewell. When the door finally shut behind him and Grace’s father had thrown the bolt into place, Lingongo had turned to her daughter and warned, “Snake at your feet, a stick at your hand. So the wise men say. Keep a stick in your hand, Grace. You will need it with that snake at your feet.”

Surely
, Grace had thought,
that will be that
.
Never again will I have to endure such an agonizing afternoon
. And yet, at her parents’ insistence, here she sat.

“Perhaps it angers the ancestors that white men insist on settling in a country where they do not belong,” Lingongo said, her black eyes fixed hard on her husband.

But Joseph was in no mood for arguments. Not this day. So, turning to his daughter, he said, “Ye looks good, darlin’.” And he meant it too. He fairly beamed at Grace, bedecked as she was in the new dress he had personally obtained for just this occasion. The latest fashion from the shops of London, Captain Bass assured him when the captain unwrapped the package and then carefully unfolded and laid out the frock he had secured in London on Winslow’s behalf. Captain Bass said it again when he presented the shop’s bill of goods, with the price marked out and double the amount scribbled in (“To account fer all me trouble,” Bass explained).

In the end, Joseph had been forced to turn over two of his prize breeding slaves to pay for the dress. But, Joseph consoled himself, it would be well worth his investment to get a son-in-law with extensive landholdings, not to mention endless access to slaves. A son-in-law with enough wealth to flash about, to impress the entire Gold Coast of Africa and no doubt dazzle the company officers in London, too … well, such a bloke merited the calculated investment he had made in his daughter.

“Ye looks almost like a true English lass, me darlin’,” Joseph exuded. “Yes, ye very nearly does.”

Grace sighed. In her entire life, she had met only one true English lass. Charlotte Stevens was her name. And if Grace Winslow knew anything, she knew she looked nothing like Charlotte Stevens. Small and dainty, with skin so pale one could almost see through it—that was Charlotte. The she-ghost, the slaves called her. Charlotte’s hair was almost white, like an old woman’s—very thin and straight. In every way, she was the opposite of Grace. Tall and willowy, with black eyes and thick dark hair that glinted auburn in the sunlight, Grace was a silky mocha blend of her African mother and her English father.

Charlotte’s father ran a slave-trading business down the coast. Grace had never been there, although she had seen Mr. Stevens on a number of occasions when he came to see her father on business matters. Charlotte never accompanied him, though. She and her mother mostly lived in England and visited Africa only two months every other year. The few times Grace and Charlotte had occasion to be in each other’s company, Charlotte had treated Grace as though she were one of her father’s slaves. Never once had she even called Grace by her given name.

“Mr. ’Athaway—now there’s as fine an Englishman as ye could ’ope to find, Daughter,” Joseph Winslow continued. “English ’ouse ’e ’as too. Even finer’n ours, if ye kin believe it. An’ ’e ’as ’oldin’s all up and down the coast, ’e ’as
—
”

“I don’t like Mr. Hathaway,” Grace interrupted.

“You do not have to like him. You only have to marry him,” Lingongo replied. “You are a woman, Grace. Tonight, you will tell the Englishman what he wants to hear. After you are married, take what he has to give and then make your life what you want it to be.”

Grace stole a look at her father. A deep flush scorched his mottled cheeks and burned all the way up to his thinning shock of red hair. Embarrassed for him, she quickly looked away.

Outside, the wind grabbed up the aroma of Mama Muco’s cooking and swept it into the parlor. It was not the usual vegetable porridge, or even frying fish and plantains. No, this was the rich, deep fragrance of roasting meat. Forgetting his humiliation, Joseph blissfully closed his eyes and sucked in the tantalizing fragrance. A smile touched the edges of his thin, pale lips, and he murmured, “Mmmmm … good English food. That’s wot it be!”

Lingongo’s flawless cocoa face glistened with impatience and her dark eyes flashed. “Where is Mr. Hathaway?” she demanded. “He keeps us waiting on purpose!”

Grace and her parents had endured one another’s company for almost an hour by the time Jasper Hathaway finally blustered in, full of complaints and self-importance and, of course, a tremendous appetite. He talked all through dinner, not even bothering to pause as he stuffed his mouth with roasted meat, steamed sweet potatoes, and thick slices of mango.

“… so I sent detailed instructions by the next ship to London inquiring about my various and sundry holdings,” Hathaway said. Little pieces of sweet potato fell from his mouth and settled onto his blue satin waistcoat. “I should have gone myself. It is the only way to get things done right. But I do so hate the long sea journey. I am not of your kind, Joseph.”

Here he stopped his fork long enough to cast his host a look of pity.

“Aye,” Joseph said. “Sea air. ’Tis wot keeps me lungs clean and me ’ide tough!”

“No, no!” Hathaway said with a dismissive wave of his fork. “That isn’t it at all. I mean, you can be away for a year at a time and no one misses you. That is, your work in Africa does not suffer in the least in your absence. Not so with a true businessman such as myself. Why, if I were to be away so long—”

Grace stopped listening. The truth was, she had absolutely no interest in anything Mr. Hathaway had to say. And as for his demeanor, she found that absolutely disgusting. So she allowed her mind to move her away from the table and nestle her down in the mango grove, to settle her in her favorite spot where the wind rippled through the branches above her and she could lose herself in books. There, Grace could leave Africa and travel to wonderful places around the world. One day, she promised herself, she would see all those places for real—London and Paris and Lisbon and Alicante … the mysterious cities of the Orient … yes, even the New World. Oh, just to be outside her parents’ walled-in compound!