Winston shifted uneasily in his sleep, then bolted upright, rubbing the
slight ache of his scar as he became aware of the
distant spatter of drums. They were sporadic, but intense. Patterns
were being repeated again and again all down the coast.
He slipped from the bed and moved quietly to the slatted window, to
listen more closely. But now the drums had fallen silent. The only
sounds left in the sweltering predawn air were the cooing of wood doves
and the harsh "quark" of egrets down by the bridge, accompanied by
Joan's easy snores. He looked back and studied her face again,
realizing that time was beginning to take its toll. He also knew he
didn't care, though he figured she did, mightily.
She'd never concede he could take Jamaica. Maybe she was right. But
odds be damned. It was time to make a stand.
Jamaica. He thought about it again, his excitement swelling. Enough
cannon, and the Spaniards could never retake it, never even get a
warship into the harbor. It was perfect. A place of freedom that would
strike a blow against forced labor throughout the New World.
Not a minute too soon either. The future was clear as day. The English
settlers in the Caribbees were about to install what had to be the most
absolute system of human slavery ever seen. Admittedly, finding
sufficient men and women to work the fields had always been the biggest
impediment to developing the virgin lands of the Americas, especially
for settlements that wanted to grow money crops for export. But now
Barbados had discovered Africans. What next? If slavery proved it could
work for sugar in the Caribbees, then it probably would also be
instituted for cotton and tobacco in Virginia. Agricultural slavery had
started here, but soon it would doubtless be introduced wholesale into
North America.
Christians, perpetrating the most unspeakable crime against humanity
possible. Who knew what it would someday lead to?
He no longer asked himself why he detested slavery so much, but there
was a reason, if he'd wanted to think about it. A man was a man. Seeing
Briggs horsewhip his Yoruba was too similar to watching Ruyters flog
his seamen. He had tasted the cat-o'-nine-tails himself more than once.
In fact, whipping the Yoruba was almost worse, since a seaman could
always jump ship at the next port. But a slave, especially on a small
island like Barbados, had nowhere to go. No escape.
Not yet. But come the day Jamaica was his . . .
"Are you all right, love?" Joan had awakened and was watching him.
"I was listening to the drums. And thinking." He did not turn.
"Those damned drums. Every morning. Why don't the planters put a halt
to it?" She raised up and swabbed her face with the rough cotton sheet.
"God curse this heat."
"I'm tired of all of it. Particularly slavery."
"I fancy these Africans are not your worry. You'd best be rethinking
this daft scheme of yours with the indentures."
"That's on schedule. The Council agreed to the terms, drew up a list of
men, and I picked the ones I wanted."
"What're you thinkin' to do about ordnance?" Skepticism permeated her
groggy voice.
"I've got a batch of new flintlocks on the _Defiance_. Generously
supplied to me by Anthony Walrond's trading company." He laughed. "In
grateful appreciation for helping out that frigate of theirs that went
aground up by Nevis Island."
"I heard about that. I also hear he'd like those muskets back."
"He can see me in hell about that." He was strolling back toward the
bed, nude in the early light. She admired the hard ripple of his chest,
the long, muscular legs. "Also, I've got the boys at work making some
half-pikes. We've set up a forge down by the bay."
"And what, pray, are you expectin' to use for pikestaffs?"
"We're having to cut palm stalks." He caught her look. "I know. But
what can I do? There's no cured wood to be had on this short a notice."
"Lo, what an army you'll have." She laughed wryly. "Do you really think
all those indentures will fight?"
"For their freedom, yes." He settled onto the bed. "That's what I'm
counting on."
"Well, you're counting wrong, love. Most of them don't care a damn for
anything, except maybe drinkin' in the shade. Believe me, I know them."
"I'll give them something to fight for. It won't be like here, where
they're worked to death, then turned out to starve."
"I could tell you a few stories about human nature that might serve to
enlighten you." She stretched back and pulled up her shift to rub a
mosquito bite on her thigh. "If it was me, I'd be trying to get hold of
some of these Africans. From the scars I've seen on a few of them, I'd
say they've done their share of fighting. On my faith, they scare the
wits half out of me."
"They make me uneasy too."
"How do you mean, darlin'?"
"All these drums we've been hearing. I found out in Brazil the Yoruba
there can talk somehow with a special kind of drum they've got, one
that looks like a big hourglass. I figure those here can do it too,
only nobody realizes it. Let me tell you, Joan, there was plenty of
Yoruba talk this morning. So far, the Africans here are considerably
outnumbered, but if they start a revolt, the indentures might decide to
rise up too. Then . . ."
"Some indentures here tried a little uprising once, a couple of years
back. And about a dozen got hanged for their pains. I don't fancy
they'll try it again soon."
"Don't be so sure. Remember how the Irish indentures went over to the
Spaniards that time they attacked the English settlement up on Nevis
Island? They swam out to the Spaniards' frigates, hailed them as fellow
Papists, and then told them exactly where all the fortifications were."
"But how many of these Africans are there here now? Probably not all
that many."
"Maybe not yet. With the Dutch slavers that've come so far, I'd guess
there're no more than a couple of thousand or so. But there're more
slave ships coming every week. Who knows what'll happen when there're
three or four thousand, or more?"
"It'll not happen soon. How can it?" She slipped her arms around his
neck and drew him down next to her. "Let's talk about something else.
Tell me how you plan to take Jamaica. God's life, I still don't know
why you'd want to try doing it at all."
"You're just afraid I can't do it." He turned and kissed her, then
pulled down the top of her shift and nipped at one of her exposed
breasts. "Tell me the truth."
"Maybe I will someday. If you get back alive." She took his face in her
hands and lifted it away. "By the bye, I hear you had a fine time at
the ball. Dancin' with that jade."
"Who?"
"You know who, you whoremaster. The high and mighty Miss Bedford."
"I'd had a bit to drink. I don't precisely recall what all happened."
"Don't you now? Well, some of the Council recall that evening well
enough, you can be sure. You weren't too drunk to scare the wits out of
them with those Spanish pistols. It's the talk of the island." She
watched as he returned his mouth to her breast and began to tease the
nipple with his tongue. "Now listen to me. That little virgin's no good
for you. For one thing, I hear she's supposed to be marryin' our
leading royalist, Sir Anthony, though I swear I don't know what he sees
in her. She's probably happier ridin' her horse than being with a man.
I warrant she'd probably as soon be a man herself."
"I don't want to hear any more about Miss Bedford." He
slipped an arm beneath her and drew her up next to him. "I've got
something else in mind."
She trailed her hand down his chest to his groin. Then she smiled. "My,
but that's promisin'."
"There's always apt to be room for improvement. If you set your mind to
it."
"God knows, I've spoiled you." She leaned over and kissed his thigh,
then began to tease him with her tongue. Without a word he shifted
around and brushed the stubble of his cheeks against her loins. She was
already moist, from sweat and desire.
"God, that's why I always let you come back." She moved against him
with a tiny shudder. "When by rights I should know better. Sometimes I
think I taught you too well what pleases me."
"I know something else you like even better." He seized a plump down
pillow and stationed it in the middle of the bed, then started to reach
for her. She was assessing her handiwork admiringly. He was ready, the
way she wanted him.
"Could be." She drew herself above him. "But you can't always be havin'
everything your own way. You've got me feelin' too randy this mornin'.
So now I'm going to show you why your frustrated virgin, Miss Bedford,
fancies ridin' that horse of hers so much."
Serina was already awake before the drums started. Listening intently
to catch the soft cadence of the verses, she repeated them silently,
knowing they meant the cowrie shells had been cast.
It was madness.
Benjamin Briggs sometimes called her to his room in the mornings, but
she knew there would be no call today. He had ordered her from his bed
just after midnight, drunk and cursing about a delay at the sugar mill.
Who had cast the cowries? Was it the tall, strong one named Atiba?
Could it be he was also a Yoruba _babalawo_?
She had heard the verses for the cowries once before, years ago in
Brazil. There were thousands, which her mother had recited for her all
in one week, the entire canon. Even now she still remembered some of
them, just a few. Her mother had never admitted to anybody else she
knew the verses, since women weren't supposed to cast the cowries. The
men of the Yoruba always claimed the powers of the cowries were too
great for any save a true _babalawo_, and no woman would ever be
permitted to be that. Women were only allowed to consult the gods by
casting the four quarters of the kola nut, which only foretold daily
matters. Important affairs of state were reserved for the cowries, and
for men. But her mother had secretly learned the verses; she'd never
said how. She'd even promised to explain them one day, but that day
never came.
When she was sure the drums had finished, she rose slowly from the
sweltering pallet that served as her bed and searched the floor in the
half-dark till she felt the smooth cotton of her shift. She slipped it
on, then began brushing her long gleaming hair, proud even now that it
had always been straight, like a Portuguese _donna's_.
She slept alone in a small room next to the second-floor landing of the
back stairway, the one by the kitchen that was used by servants. When
she had finished with her hair and swirled it into a high bun,
Portuguese style, she slowly pushed open the slatted jalousies to study
the clutter of the compound. As always, she found herself comparing
this haphazard English house to the mansion she had known in Brazil, on
the large plantation outside Pernambuco.
Now it seemed a memory from another world, that dazzling white room she
had shared with her mother in the servants' compound. The day the
senhor de engenho, the master of the plantation, announced that she
would go to the black-robed Jesuits' school, instead of being put to
work in the fields like most of the other slave children, her mother
had begun to cry. For years she had thought they were tears of joy.
Then the next day her mother had started work on their room. She had
whitewashed the walls, smeared a fresh layer of hard clay on the floor,
then planted a small frangipani tree by the window. During the night
its tiny red blossoms would flood their room with a sweet, almost
cloying fragrance, so they woke every morning to a day bathed in
perfume. Years later her mother had confessed the beautiful room and
the perfume of the tree were intended to always make her want to return
there from the foul rooms of the _branco _and their priests.
She remembered those early years best. Her mother would rise before
dawn, then wake the old, gnarled Ashanti slave who was the cook for the
household, ordering the breakfast the senhor had specified the night
before. Then she would walk quietly down to the slave quarters to waken
the gang driver, who would rouse the rest of the plantation with his
bell. Next she would return to their room and brush her beautiful
_mulata _daughter's hair, to keep it always straight and shining, in
preparation for the trip to the mission school the priests had built
two miles down the road.
Serina still recalled the barefoot walk down that long, tree-lined
roadway, and her mother's command, repeated every morning, to never let
the sun touch her light skin. Later she would wander slowly back
through the searing midday heat, puzzling over the new language called
Spanish she was learning, and the strange teachings of the Christians.
The priests had taught her to read from the catechism, and to write out
the stories they told of the Catholic saints--stories her mother
demanded she repeat to her each night. She would then declare them
lies, and threaten her with a dose of the purgative physic-nut to expel
their poisons.
Her mother would sometimes stroke her soft skin and explain that the
Christians' false God must have been copied from Olorun, the Yoruba
high god and deity of the cosmos. It was well known he was the
universal spirit who had created the world, the only god who had never
lived on earth. Perhaps the Christians had somehow heard of him and
hoped to steal him for their own. He was so powerful that the other
gods were all his children--Shango, Ogun, all the Yoruba deities of the
earth and rivers and sky. The Yoruba priests had never been known to
mention a white god called Jesu.
But she had learned many things from Jesu's priests. The most important
was that she was a slave. Owned by the senhor de engenho. She was his
property, as much as his oxen and his fields of cane. That was the true
lesson of the priests. A lesson she had never forgotten.
These new saltwater Yoruba were fools. Their life and soul belonged to
the _branco _now. And only the _branco _could give it back. You could
never take it back yourself. There was nothing you could do to make
your life your own again.
She recalled a proverb of the Ashanti people. "A slave does not choose
his master."
A slave chose nothing.
She found herself thinking again of her mother. She was called Dara,
the Yoruba name meaning "beautiful." And she was beautiful, beyond
words, with soft eyes and delicate skin and high cheekbones. Her mother
Dara had told her how she had been taken to the bed of her Portuguese
owner after only a week in Brazil. He was the _senhor de engenho_, who
had sired mulata bastards from the curing house to the kitchen. They
were all still slaves, but her mother had thought her child would be
different. She thought the light-skinned girl she bore the _branco
_would be made free. And she had chosen a Yoruba name for her.
The _senhor de engenho _had decided to name her Serina, one night while
drunk.
A slave chose nothing.
Dara's mulata daughter also was not given her freedom. Instead that
daughter was taken into the master's house: taught to play the lute and
dance the galliards of Joao de Sousa
Carvalho when she was ten, given an orange petticoat and a blue silk
mantle when she was twelve, and taken to his bed the day she was
fourteen. Her own father. He had used her as his property for eight
years, then sold her to a stinking Englishman. She later learned it was
for the princely sum of a hundred pounds.
A slave chose nothing.
Still, something in the _Defiance_ of Atiba stirred her. He was bold.
And handsome, even though a _preto_. She had watched his strong body
with growing desire those two days they were together in the boiling
house. She had begun to find herself wanting to touch him, to tame his
wildness inside her. For a moment he had made her regret she had vowed
long ago never to give herself to a _preto_. She was half white, and if
ever she had a child, that child would be whiter still. To be white was
to be powerful and free. She also would make certain her child was
Christian. The Christian God was probably false, but in this world the
Christians held everything. They owned the Yoruba. The Yoruba gods of
her mother counted for nothing. Not here, not in the New World.
She smiled resignedly and thought once more of Atiba. He would have to
learn that too, for all his strength and his pride, just as she had. He
could call on Ogun to tell him the future, but that god would be
somewhere out of hearing if he tried to war against the _branco_. She
had seen it all before in Brazil. There was no escape.
A slave chose nothing.
Could he be made to understand that? Or would that powerful body one
day be hanged and quartered for leading a rebellion that could only
fail?
Unsure why she should bother, yet unable to stop herself, she turned
from the window and quietly headed down the creaking, makeshift rear
stair. Then she slipped past the kitchen door and onto the stone steps
leading out into the back of the compound. It was still quiet, with
only the occasional cackle of Irish laughter from the kitchen, whose
chimney now threaded a line of wood smoke into the morning air.
The gate opened silently and easily--the indenture left to guard it was
snoring, still clasping an empty flask--and she was out onto the
pathway leading down the hill to the new thatched huts of the slaves.
The path was quiet and gray-dark. Green lizards scurried through the
grass around her and frogs whistled among the palms, but there was no
sign the indentures were awake yet. In the distance she could hear the
low voice of Atiba, lecturing courage to his brave Yoruba warriors.
The _preto _fools.
She knew a woman would not be welcome, would be thought to "defile"
their solemn council of war. Let them have their superstitions. This
was the New World. Africa was finished for them. They weren't Yoruba
warriors now. Here they were just more _preto _slaves, for all their
posturing. Once more she was glad she had been raised a Portuguese, not
a Yoruba woman bound to honor and revere whatever vain man she had been
given to as wife.
As she neared the first hut, she stopped to look and shake her head
sadly. What would the slaves in Brazil think of these thatched hovels?
She knew. They would laugh and ridicule the backwardness of these
saltwater _preto_, who knew nothing of European ways.
Then she noticed a new drum, a small one only just finished, that had
been left out for the sun to dry. She had heard once what these special
drums were for. They were used in ceremonies, when the men and women
danced and somehow were entered and possessed by the gods. But there
were no Yoruba women on Briggs' plantation. He had not bothered to buy
any yet, since men could cut cane faster. She wanted to smile when she
realized the Yoruba men here had to cook their own food, a humiliation
probably even greater than slavery, but the smile died on her lips when
she realized the drum was just a sad relic of a people torn apart.
She examined the drum, recalling the ones she had seen in Brazil. Its
wood was reddish and the skins were tied taut with new white cords. She
smoothed her hand against her shift, then picked it up and nestled it
under her arm, feeling the coolness of the wood. She remembered the
goat skin could be tuned by squeezing the cords along the side.
Carefully she picked up the curved wooden mallet used to play it and,
gripping the drum tightly against her body, tapped it once, twice, to
test the fluctuation in pitch as she pressed the cords.
The sharp, almost human sound brought another rush of memories of
Brazil, nights when she had slipped away to the slave quarters and sat
at the feet of a powerful old_ babalawo_, an ancient Yoruba priest who
had come to be scorned by most of the newly baptized slaves. She was
too young then to know that a _mulata _did not associate with black
_preto_, that a _mulata _occupied a class apart. And above.
She had listened breathlessly night after starry night as he spun out
ancient Yoruba legends of the goddess Oshun--who he said was the
favorite wife of Shango. Then he would show her how to repeat the story
back to him using just the talking drum.
She looked toward the gathering in the far hut, thinking again of the
verses of the cowries. Holding the drum tightly, she began to play the
curved stick across the skin. The words came easily.
_A se were lo nko
_You are learning to be a fool.
_O ko ko ogbon
_You do not learn wisdom.
She laughed to herself as she watched the startled faces of the Yoruba
men emerging from the thatched hut. After a moment, she saw Atiba move
out onto the pathway to stare in her direction. She set the drum onto
the grass and stared back.
He was approaching now, and the grace of his powerful stride again
stirred something, a desire she had first felt those nights in the
boiling house. What would it be like, she wondered again, to receive a
part of his power for her own?
Though his face declared his outrage, she met his gaze with _Defiance_-
-a _mulata _need never be intimidated by a _preto_. She continued to
watch calmly as he moved directly up the path to where she stood.
Without a word he seized the drum, held it skyward for a moment, then
dashed it against a tree stump. Several of the partly healed lash marks
on his back opened from the violence of the swing. He watched in
satisfaction as the wood shattered, leaving a clutter of splinters,
cords, and skin. Then he revolved toward her.
"A _branco _woman does not touch a Yoruba drum."
Branco. She had never heard herself referred to before as "white." But
she had always wanted to. Always. Yet now . . . now he spat it out,
almost as though it meant "unclean."
"A _branco _woman may do as she pleases." She glared back at him.
"That's one of the first things you will have to learn on this island."
"I have nothing to learn from you. Soon, perhaps, you may learn from
me."
"You've only begun to learn." She felt herself turning on him,
bitterly. She could teach him more than he ever dreamed. But why?
"You'll soon find out that you're a _preto_. Perhaps you still don't
know what that means. The _branco_ rule this island. They always will.
And they own you."
"You truly are a _branco_. You may speak our tongue, but there is
nothing left of your Yoruba blood. It has long since drained away."
"As yours will soon. To water the cane on this island, if you try to
rise up against the _branco_. "
"I can refuse to submit." The hardness in his eyes aroused her. Was it
desperation? Or pride?
"And you'll die for it."
"Then I will die. If the _branco _kills me today, he cannot kill me
again tomorrow. And I will die free." He fixed her with his dark gaze,
and the three Yoruba clan marks on his cheek seemed etched in ebony.
Then he turned back toward the hut and the waiting men. "Someday soon,
perhaps, I will show you what freedom means."