29 - Bequia early 1790's

DOMENICA'S TALE

Domenica was always there when she was needed, like a fluid in time her magic flowed through the centuries without control but always with purpose.

For her, Man is not an island but Mankind is a whole stretching back beyond creation in the blink of her green eyes.

On this day, 22nd January 1793, Domenica and Denis had sailed to Saint Vincent at the invitation of Vice Admiral James Seton, the then Governor of the islands. The news of the arrival of HM ships Providence and Assisant had reached the islands the previous day. The ships were laden with breadfruit and other plants from Polynesia and the East Indies, crops destined for Jamaica and the other islands with a view to providing cheap and sustainable food for the local slave population working on the plantations.

The Providence was commanded by Captain Bligh, famous for having lost HMAV Bounty to mutineers four years earlier, but Denis was especially eager to meet the two botanists on board, James Wiles and Christopher Smith, for they were bringing not only breadfruit but a whole collection of fruit trees and other plants which, Denis hoped, would include some of the medicinal plants he had known on his travels in the East.

Denis stood with his friend Dr. Anderson on the quayside in Kingstown Bay as the ships approached in the dusklight but it was the following morning that they could see the treasure on board the Providence: over one thousand two hundred specimens of all kinds. Mangoes, cocao, peppers, pomegranate (the fruit that would later give the islands their name of "The Grenadines"), guava, beetle nut, and, of particular interest to Denis, 26 samples of Jambolan from Timor, 10 of which had been raised from seed on board ship.

Denis had discovered Jambolan during his travels in India where the tree was known for its aphrodisiac virtues, but tea made from its bark had numerous medicinal applications, for the treatment of bronchitis and dysentry, while oils made from its seeds had tonic and anti-inflammatory properties.

As Denis and Dr. Anderson oversaw the offloading of the plants destined for the Saint Vincent Botanical Garden, they acknowledged the importance of this visit for all the islands. At the time there were no mangoes, nor breadfruit, and the banana crop was very limited. These visit of the aptly named Providence would change the West Indies forvere.

But there was another far greater treasure on board Her Majesty's Ship Providence: midshipman Matthew Flinders was in charge of the navigation and charts on the Providence. Captain Bligh especially appreciated the beautifully detailed astronomical charts which Flinders would meticulously draw.

Domenica held a secret which her mother had told her back in Venice on her eighteenth birthday. Her true father was not the Venetian nobleman who had raised her since childhood, but a young English doctor with whom Domenica's mother had had a fleeting but passionate relationship while visiting cousins in northern England. She had been young and her pregnancy had only manifested itself while only the return voyage to Venice, a marriage was quickly arranged to the son of a fair and gentle nobleman from Saint Erasmus and they had kept the secret every since. The English doctor's name was Flinders, could the talented midshipman of the same name be a relation?

Denis obtained Captain Bligh's permission to meet the young navigator of whom he spoke so highly: he was summoned to the botanical garden for the meeting.

"Pray, Sir, your name is unusual, could your father be, by any chance, a Doctor Flinders from Lincolnshire" but Denis already knew the response. The curly hair and fine features of the young midshipman made no doubt of his kinship with Domenica. Moreover Denis saw, in this talented young man, Jean-Marc's friend Philippe from another era far in the future, when you can see through people and time and space are the blink of an eye, these are the things that happen.

"Indeed", replied Flinders, "my father is a doctor from Donington"

"Then may I present you my wife, Domenica, she is your half sister"

Far from being shocked, Matthew Flinders looked relieved. He kissed Domenica's hand, she was crying ...not because she had found her brother but, in such moments, the past, present and future merge. She saw how her brother would circumnavigate the huge lands in the southern Pacific and give them the name of "Australia", she saw him languishing in a jail in Mauritius and how she would use her influence with the French Governor to release him, she saw a brother who would leave an undeniable heritage for future generations in his own humble way.

"When I was leaving to join the Royal Navy at the age of 15, my father took me aside and told me about a noble lady from Venice who had been, and always would be, his only true love." Flinders continued "my....our...father said that he suspected that she may have been with child when she had left with her parents to return to Venice. But I never imagined that I would find a sister, and least of all here. My mother was a 'good woman' he said but when you find such true love you must grasp it. He was full of sorrow".

Domenica spoke through her tears "the magick is all around us but it's only when you follow true love and the powers that govern the universe that true justice is found. Welcome dear brother..."

It was just two short days before the Providence sailed for Jamaica, Denis and Dr Anderson were ecstatic about the plants that they carried up to the Botanical Gardens, and Domenica wrote many long letters to her father for Matthew to take back to England. She recounted her childhood in Venice and her life in the East Indies before arriving in the Caribbean, the suffering of her mother who she now knew had reciprical sentiments for her father. The meeting with Matthew had indeed been the hand of destiny and many things from her past suddenly made sense.

In the skiff back to Bequia, they watched the Providence leave, it was a sad moment. Denis too was sad. He had a premonition: he somehow knew that his friend Louis-Auguste, King of the French, had met a violent death, as indeed he had predicted over ten years before.

Two weeks or more later, a Dr Peytavie visited them in Bequia, he had come from France with Breton sailors and, as physician and healer, he had heard of Denis' reputation back in France. Without some degree of danger, he secretly stopped in Spring Bay after nightfall and made haste to meet the famous Comte, fellow healer and free-mason.

"King Louis had a thick neck", he described the execution in La Place de la Concorde, "the guillotine did not sever his neck immediately, he let out a gasp before the blade finally cut through."

Domenica just listened, the turmoil in Europe continued and she was happy to be far away in the colonies, and even happier to understand that life and death, the past present and future, were just tiny details in the grand scheme of Nature.