He might have said more, but then he glanced after the crowd, now
moving down the road. Ahead of them a gang of blacks could be seen
through the torchlight, carrying bundles of cane in from the field and
stacking them in piles near the new mill, situated atop a slight rise.
A group of white indentured workers was also moving cane toward the
mill from somewhere beyond the range of the torchlight, whipping
forward a team of oxen pulling a large two-wheeled cart stacked with
bundles. She noticed Winston seemed in no great hurry, and instead
appeared to be listening absently to the planters.
"Would you believe this is the very same cane we brought from Brazil?"
Briggs was pointing toward a half-cut field adjacent to the road. "I
planted October a year ago, just before the autumn rains. It's been
sixteen months almost to the day, just like the Dutchmen said." He
turned back to the crowd of planters. "The indentures weeded and dunged
it, but I figured the Africans would be best for cutting it, and I was
right. Born field workers. They'll be a godsend if they can be trained
to run the sugarworks." He lowered his voice. "This is the last we'll
need of these idling white indentures."
They were now approaching the mill, which was situated inside a new
thatched-roof building. Intended for crushing the cane and extracting
the juice, it would be powered by two large white oxen shipped down
specially from Rhode Island.
The mill was a mechanism of three vertical brass rollers, each
approximately a foot in diameter, that were cogged together with teeth
around their top and bottom. A large round beam was secured through the
middle of the central roller and attached to two long sweeps that
extended outward to a circular pathway intended for the draft animals.
When the sweeps were moved, the beam would rotate and with it the
rollers.
"We just finished installing the rollers tonight. There was no chance
to test it. But I explained the operation to the indentures. We'll see
if they can remember."
An ox had been harnessed to each of the two sweeps; as Briggs
approached he signaled the servants to whip them forward. The men
nodded and lashed out at the animals, who snorted, tossed their heads,
then began to trudge in a circular path around the mill. Immediately
the central roller began to turn, rotating the outer rollers against it
by way of its cogs. As the rollers groaned into movement, several of
the indentures backed away and studied them nervously.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Briggs yelled at the two men standing
nearest the mill, holding the first bundles of cane. "Go ahead and try
feeding it through."
One of the men moved gingerly toward the grinding rollers and reached
out, at arm's length, to feed a small bundle consisting of a half dozen
stalks of cane into the side rotating away from him. There was a loud
crackle as the bundle began to gradually disappear between the rollers.
As the crushed cane stalks emerged on the rear side of the mill, a
second indenture seized the flattened bundle and fed it back through
the pair of rollers turning in the opposite direction. In moments a
trickle of pale sap began sliding down the sides of the rollers and
dripping into a narrow trough that led through the wall and down the
incline toward the boiling house.
Briggs walked over to the trough and examined the running sap in
silence. Then he dipped in a finger and took it to his lips. He savored
it for a moment, looked up, triumph in his eyes, and motioned the other
men forward.
"Have a taste. It's the sweetest nectar there could ever be." As the
planters gathered around the trough sampling the first cane juice,
indentures continued feeding a steady progression of cane bundles
between the rollers. While the planters stood watching, the trough
began to flow.
"It works, by Christ." Marlott emitted a whoop and dipped in for a
second taste. "The first English sugar mill in all the world."
"We've just witnessed that grand historic moment, Miss Bedford."
Winston turned back to her, his voice sardonic. "In a little more time,
these wonderful sugarmills will probably cover Barbados. Together with
the slaves needed to cut the cane for them. I'd wager that in a few
years' time there'll be more Africans here than English. What we've
just witnessed is not the beginning of the great English Caribbees, but
the first step toward what'll one day be the great African Caribbees. I
suggest we take time to savor it well."
His voice was drowned in the cheer rising up from the cluster of
planters around Briggs. They had moved on down the incline now and were
standing next to the boiling house, watching as the sap began to
collect in a tank. Briggs scrutinized the tank a moment longer, then
turned to the group. "This is where the sap's tempered with wet ashes
just before it's boiled. That's how the Portugals do it. From here it
runs through that trough,"--he indicated a second flow, now starting--
"directly into the first kettle in the boiling house." He paused and
gestured Farrell to bring the flasks forward. "I propose we take time
to fortify ourselves against the heat before going in."
"Shall we proceed?" Winston was pointing down the hill. Then he
laughed. "Or would you like some liquor first?"
"Please." She pushed past him and headed down the incline. They reached
the door of the boiling house well before the planters, who were
lingering at the tank, passing the flask. Winston ducked his head at
the doorway and they passed through a wide archway and into a thatched-
roof enclosure containing a long, waist-high furnace of Dutch brick. In
the back, visible only from the light of the open furnace door, were
two figures: Briggs' new Yoruba slave Atiba and his Portuguese
mistress, Serina.
Katherine, who had almost forgotten how beautiful the mulatto was,
found herself slightly relieved that Serina was dressed in perfect
modesty. She wore a full-length white shift, against which her flawless
olive skin fairly glowed in the torchlight. As they entered, she was
speaking animatedly with Atiba while bending over to demonstrate how to
feed dry cane tops into the small openings along the side of the
furnace. When she spotted them, however, she pulled suddenly erect and
fell silent, halting in mid-sentence.
The heat in the room momentarily took away Katherine's breath, causing
her to stand in startled disorientation. It was only then that she
realized Hugh Winston was pulling at her sleeve. Something in the scene
apparently had taken him completely by surprise.
Then she realized what it was. Serina had been speaking to the tall,
loincloth-clad Yoruba in an alien language that sounded almost like a
blend of musical tones and stops.
Now the planters began barging through the opening, congratulating
Briggs as they clustered around the string of copper cauldrons cemented
into the top of the long furnace. Then, as the crowd watched
expectantly, a trickle of cane sap flowed down from the holding tank
and spattered into the first red-hot cauldron.
The men erupted with a cheer and whipped their hats into the air. Again
the brown flask of kill-devil was passed appreciatively. After taking a
long swallow, Briggs turned to Serina, gesturing toward Atiba as he
addressed her in pidgin Portuguese, intended to add an international
flavor to the evening.
"_Ele compreendo _?"
"_Sim. Compreendo_." She nodded, reached for a ladle, and began to
skim the first gathering of froth off the top of the boiling liquid.
Then she dumped the foam into a clay pot beside the furnace.
"She's supposed to know how fast to feed the furnaces to keep the
temperature right. And when to ladle the liquor into the next cauldron
down the row." He stepped back from the furnace, fanning himself with
his hat, and turned to the men. "According to the way the Portugals do
it in Brazil, the clarified liquor from the last cauldron in the line
here is moved to a cistern to cool for a time, then it's filled into
wooden pots and moved to the curing house."
"Is that ready too?" A husky voice came from somewhere in the crowd.
"Aye, and I've already had enough pots made to get started. We let the
molasses drain out and the sugar cure for three or four months, then we
move the pots to the knocking house, where we turn them over and tap
out a block of sugar. The top and bottom are brown sugar, what the
Portugals call _muscavado_, and the center is pure white." He reached
again for the bottle and took a deep swallow. "Twenty pence a pound in
London, when our tobacco used to clear three farthings."
"To be sure, the mill and the boiling house are the key. We'll have to
start building these all over the island." Thomas Lancaster removed his
black hat to wipe his brow, then pulled it firmly back on his head.
"And start training the Africans in their operation. No white man could
stand this heat."
"She should have this one trained in a day or so." Briggs
thumbed toward Atiba, now standing opposite the door examining the
planters. "Then we can have him train more."
"I'll venture you'd do well to watch that one particularly close."
Edward Bayes lowered his voice, speaking into his beard. "There's a
look about him."
"Aye, he's cantankerous, I'll grant you, but he's quick. He just needs
to be tamed. I've already had to flog him once, ten lashes, the first
night here, when he balked at eating loblolly mush."
"Ten, you say?" Dalby Bedford did not bother to disguise the
astonishment in his voice. "Would you not have done better to start
with five?"
"Are you lecturing me now on how to best break in my Africans?" Briggs
glared. "I paid for them, sir. They're my property, to manage as I best
see fit."
Nicholas Whittington murmured his assent, and others concurred.
"As you say, gentlemen. But you've got three more Dutch slavers due
within a fortnight. I understand they're supposed to be shipping
Barbados a full three thousand this year alone." Bedford looked about
the room with a concerned expression. "That'll be just a start, if
sugar production expands the way it seems it will. It might be well if
we had the Assembly pass Acts for ordering and governing these slaves."
"Damn your Assembly. We already have laws for property on Barbados."
Again the other planters voiced their agreement. Bedford stood
listening, then lifted his hand for quiet. Katherine found herself
wishing he would be as blunt with them as Winston had been. Sometimes
the governor's good manners got in the way, something that hardly
seemed to trouble Hugh Winston.
"I tell you this is no light matter. No man in this room knows how to
manage all these Africans. What Englishman has ever been responsible
for twenty, thirty, nay perhaps even a hundred slaves? They've to be
clothed in some manner, fed, paired for offspring. And religion, sir?
Some of the Quakers we've let settle in Bridgetown are already starting
to say your blacks should be baptized and taught Christianity."
"You can't be suggesting it? If we let them be made Christians, where
would it end?" Briggs examined him in disbelief. "You'd have laws, sir,
Acts of your Assembly. Well there's the place to start. I hold the
first law should be to fine and set in the stocks any of these so-
called Quakers caught trying to teach our blacks Christianity. We'll
not stand for it."
Katherine saw Serina's features tense and her eyes harden, but she said
nothing, merely continued to skim the foam from the boiling surface of
the cauldron.
"The Spaniards and Portugals teach the Catholic faith to their
Negroes," Bedford continued evenly.
"And there you have the difference. They're not English. They're
Papists." Briggs paused as he studied the flow of cane sap entering the
cauldron from the holding tank, still dripping slowly from the lead
spout. "By the looks of it, it could be flowing faster." He studied it
a moment longer, then turned toward the door. "The mill. Maybe that's
the answer. What if we doubled the size of the cane bundles?"
Katherine watched the planters trail after Briggs, out the doorway and
into the night, still passing the flask of kill-devil.
"What do you think, Captain? Should an African be made a Christian?"
"Theology's not my specialty, Miss Bedford." He walked past her. "Tell
me first if you think a Puritan's one." He was moving toward Serina,
who stood silently skimming the top of the first cauldron, now a
vigorous boil. She glanced up once and examined him, then returned her
eyes to the froth. Katherine just managed to catch a few words as he
began speaking to her quietly in fluent Portuguese, as though to guard
against any of the planters accidentally overhearing.
"Senhora, how is it you know the language of the Africans?"
She looked up for a moment without speaking, her eyes disdainful. "I'm
a slave too, as you well know, senhor." Then she turned and continued
with the ladle.
"But you're a Portugal."
"And never forget that. I am not one of these _preto_." She spat out
the Portuguese word for Negro.
Atiba continued methodically shoving cane tops into the roaring mouth
of the furnace.
"But you were speaking to him just now in his own language. I
recognized it."
"He asked a question, and I answered him, that's all."
"Then you do know his language? How?"
"I know many things." She fixed his eyes, continuing in Portuguese.
"Perhaps it surprises you Ingles that a _mulata _can speak at all. I
also know how to read, something half the _branco _rubbish who were in
this room tonight probably cannot do."
Katherine knew only a smattering of Portuguese, but she caught the part
about some of the _branco_, the whites, not being able to read. She
smiled to think there was probably much truth in that. Certainly almost
none of the white indentures could. Further, she suspected that many of
the planters had never bothered to learn either.
"I know you were educated in Brazil." Winston was pressing Serina
relentlessly. "I was trying to ask you how you know the language of
this African?"
She paused, her face a blend of haughtiness and regret. She started to
speak, then stopped herself.
"Won't you tell me?"
She turned back, as though speaking to the cauldron. "My mother was
Yoruba."
"Is that how you learned?" His voice was skeptical.
"I was taught also by a _babalawo_, a Yoruba priest, in Brazil."
"What's she saying?" Katherine moved next to him, shielding her eyes
from the heat.
"_Desculpe_, senhora, excuse me." Winston quickly moved forward,
continuing in Portuguese as he motioned toward Katherine. "This is . .
."
"I know perfectly well who Miss Bedford is." Serina interrupted him,
still in Portuguese.
Katherine stared at her, not catching the foreign words. "Is she
talking about me?"
"She said her mother was a Yoruba." Winston moved between them. "And
she said something about a priest."
"Is she some sort of priest? Is that what she said?"
"No." Serina's English answer was quick and curt, then she said
something else to Winston, in Portuguese.
"She said she was not, though the women of her mother's family have
practiced divination for many generations."
"Divination?" Katherine studied him, puzzled. Then she turned back to
Serina,"What do you mean by that?"
Serina was looking at her now, for the first time. "Divination is the
way the Yoruba people ask their gods to tell the future."
"How exactly do they go about doing such a thing?"
"Many ways." She turned back to the cauldron.
Winston stood in the silence for a moment, then turned to Katherine. "I
think one of the ways is with shells. In Brazil I once saw a Yoruba
diviner shaking a tray with small sea-shells in it."
Serina glanced back, now speaking English. "I see you are an Ingles who
bothers to try and understand other peoples. One of the few I've ever
met. _Felicitacao_, senhor, my compliments. Yes, that is one of the
ways, and the most sacred to a Yoruba. It's called the divination of
the sixteen cowrie shells. A Yoruba diviner foretells the will of the
gods from how the shells lie in a tray after it has been shaken--by how
many lie with the slotted side up. It's the way the gods talk to him."
"Who are these gods they speak to?" Katherine found herself challenged
by the mulatto's haughtiness.