Katherine held on to the mizzenmast shrouds, shielding her eyes against
the glitter of sun on the bay, and looked at Hugh Winston. He was
wearing the identical shabby leather jerkin and canvas breeches she
remembered from that first morning, along with the same pair of pistols
shoved into his belt. He certainly made no effort to present a
dignified appearance. Also, the afternoon light made you notice even
more the odd scar across one weathered cheek. What would he be like as
a lover? Probably nothing so genteel as Anthony Walrond.
Good God, she thought, what would Anthony, and poor Jeremy, say if they
learned I came down here to the _Defiance_, actually sought out this
man they hate so much. They'd probably threaten to break off marriage
negotiations, out of spite.
But if something's not done, she told herself, none of that's going to
matter anyway. If the rumor from London is true, then Barbados is going
to be turned upside down. Hugh Winston can help us, no matter what you
choose to think of him.
She reflected on Winston's insulting manner and puzzled why she had
actually half looked forward to seeing him again. He certainly had none
of Anthony's breeding, yet there was something magnetic about a man so
rough and careless. Still, God knows, finding him a little more
interesting than most of the dreary planters on this island scarcely
meant much.
Was he, she found herself wondering, at all attracted to her?
Possibly. If he thought on it at all, he'd see their common ground. She
finally realized he despised the Puritans and their slaves as much as
she did. And, like her, he was alone. It was a bond between them,
whether he knew it now or not. . . .
Then all at once she felt the fear again, that tightness under her
bodice she had pushed away no more than half an hour past, when her
mare had reached the rim of the hill, the last curve of the rutted dirt
road leading down to the bay. She'd reined in Coral, still not sure she
had the courage to go and see Winston. While her mare pawed and tugged
at the traces, she took a deep breath and watched as a gust of wind
sent the blood-red blossoms from a grove of cordia trees fleeing across
the road. Then she'd noticed the rush of scented air off the sea, the
wide vista of Carlisle Bay spreading out below, the sky full of tiny
colored birds flitting through the azure afternoon.
Yes, she'd told herself, it's worth fighting for, worth jeopardizing
everything for. Even worth going begging to Hugh Winston for. It's my
home.
"Do you ever miss England, living out here in the Caribbees?" She tried
to hold her voice nonchalant, with a lilt intended to suggest that none
of his answers mattered all that much. Though the afternoon heat was
sweltering, she had deliberately put on her most feminine riding dress-
-a billowing skirt tucked up the side to reveal a ruffle of petticoat
and a bodice with sleeves slashed to display the silk smock beneath.
She'd even had the servants iron it specially. Anthony always noticed
it, and Winston had too, though he was trying to pretend otherwise.
"I remember England less and less." He sipped from his tankard--he had
ordered a flask of sack brought up from the Great Cabin just after she
came aboard--and seemed to be studying the sun's reflection in its
amber contents. "The Americas are my home now, for better or worse.
England doesn't really exist for me anymore."
She looked at him and decided Jeremy had been right; the truth was he'd
probably be hanged if he returned.
He paused a moment, then continued, "And you, Miss Bedford, have you
been back?"
"Not since we left, when I was ten. We went first to Bermuda, where
father served for two years as governor and chief officer for the
Sommers Island Company. Then we came down here. I don't really even
think of England much anymore. I feel I'm a part of the Americas now
too." She shaded her face against the sun with one hand and noticed a
bead of sweat trickling down her back, along the laces of her bodice.
"In truth, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see England again."
"I'd just as soon never see it again." He rose and strolled across the
deck, toward the steering house. Then he settled his tankard on the
binnacle and began to loosen the line securing the whipstaff, a long
lever used for controlling the rudder. "Do you really want to stay
aboard while I take her out?"
"You've done it every day this week, just around sunset. I've watched
you from the hill, and wondered why." She casually adjusted her bodice,
to better emphasize the plump fullness of her breasts, then suddenly
felt a surge of dismay with herself, that she would consider resorting
to tawdry female tricks. But desperate times brought out desperate
measures. "Besides, you've got the only frigate in the bay now that's
not Dutch, and I thought I'd like to see the island from offshore. I
sometimes forget how beautiful it is."
"Then you'd best take a good, long look, Miss Bedford," he replied
matter-of-factly. "It's never going to be the same again, not after
sugar takes over."
"Katherine. You can call me Katherine." She tried to mask the
tenseness--no, the humiliation--in her voice. "I'm sufficiently
compromised just being down here; there's scarcely any point in
ceremony."
"Then Katherine it is, Miss Bedford." Again scarcely a glimmer of
notice as he busied himself coiling the line. But she saw John Mewes
raise his heavy eyebrows as he mounted the quarterdeck companionway,
his wide belly rolling with each labored step. Winston seemed to ignore
the quartermaster as he continued, "Since you've been watching, then I
suppose you know what to expect. We're going to tack her out of the
harbor, over to the edge of those reefs just off Lookout Point. Then
we'll come about and take her up the west side of the island, north all
the way up to Speightstown. It's apt to be at least an hour. Don't say
you weren't warned."
Perfect, she thought. Just the time I'll need.
"You seem to know these waters well." It was rhetorical, just to keep
him talking. Hugh Winston had sailed up the coast every evening for a
week, regardless of the wind or state of the sea. He obviously
understood the shoreline of Barbados better than anyone on the island.
That was one of the reasons she was here. "You sail out every day."
"Part of my final preparations, Miss Bedford . . . Katherine." He
turned to the quartermaster. "John."
"Aye." Mewes had been loitering by the steeringhouse, trying to stay in
the shade as he eyed the opened flask of sack. Winston had not offered
him a tankard.
"Weigh anchor. I want to close-haul that new main course one more time,
then try a starboard tack."
"Aye, as you will." He strode gruffly to the quarterdeck railing and
bellowed orders forward to the bow. The quiet was broken by a slow
rattle as several shirtless seamen began to haul in the cable with the
winch. They chattered in a medley of languages--French, Portuguese,
English, Dutch.
She watched as the anchor broke through the waves and was hoisted onto
the deck. Next Mewes yelled orders aloft. Moments later the mainsail
dropped and began to blossom in the breeze. The _Defiance _heeled
slowly into the wind, then began to edge past the line of Dutch
merchantmen anchored along the near shoreline.
Winston studied the sail for a few moments. "What do you think, John?
She looks to be holding her luff well enough."
"I never liked it, Cap'n. I've made that plain from the first. So I'm
thinkin' the same as always. You've taken a fore-and-aft rigged
brigantine, one of the handiest under Christian sail, and turned her
into a square-rigger. We'll not have the handling we've got with the
running rigging."
Mewes spat toward the railing and shoved past Katherine, still
astonished that Winston had allowed her to come aboard, governor's
daughter or no. It's ill luck, he told himself. A fair looker, that
I'll grant you, but if it's doxies we'd be taking aboard now, I can
think of plenty who'd be fitter company. He glanced at the white mare
tethered by the shore, wishing she were back astride it and gone. Half
the time you see her, the wench is riding like a man, not sidesaddle
like a woman was meant to.
"If we're going to make Jamaica harbor without raising the Spaniards'
militia, we'll have to keep short sail." Winston calmly dismissed his
objections. "That means standing rigging only. No tops'ls or royals."
"Aye, and she'll handle like a gaff-sailed lugger."
"Just for the approach. While we land the men. We'll keep her rigged
like always for the voyage over." He maneuvered the whipstaff to start
bringing the stern about, sending a groan through the hull. "She seems
to work well enough so far. We need to know exactly how many points off
the wind we can take her. I'd guess about five, maybe six, but we've
got to find out now."
He turned back to Katherine and caught her eyes. They held something--
what was it? Almost an invitation? But that's not why she's here, he
told himself. This woman's got a purpose in mind, all right. Except
it's not you. Whatever it is, though, the looks of her'd almost make
you wonder if she's quite so set on marrying some stiff royalist as she
thinks she is?
Don't be a fool. The last thing you need to be thinking about now is a
woman. Given the news, there's apt to be big trouble ahead here, and
soon. You've got to be gone.
"So perhaps you'd care to tell me . . . Katherine, to what I owe the
pleasure of this afternoon's visit. I'd venture you've probably seen
the western coast of this island a few hundred times before, entirely
without my aid."
"I was wondering if you'd heard what's happened in London?" She held on
to the shrouds, the spider-web of ropes that secured the mast, and
braced herself against the roll of the ship as the _Defiance_ eased
broadside to the sun. Along the curving shoreline a string of Dutch
merchantmen were riding at anchor, all three-masted fluyts, their fore
and main masts steeped far apart to allow room for a capacious hatch.
In the five weeks that had passed since the _Zeelander _put in with the
first cargo of Africans, four more slavers had arrived. They were
anchored across the bay now, their round sterns glistening against the
water as the afternoon light caught the gilding on their high, narrow
after-structure. Riding in the midst of them was the _Rotterdam_, just
put in from London. The sight of that small Dutch merchantman had
brought back her fear. It also renewed her resolve.
"You mean about King Charles? I heard, probably before you did." He was
watching her tanned face, and secretly admiring her courage. She seemed
to be taking the situation calmly. "I was working down here yesterday
when the _Rotterdam _put in."
"Then I'd like your version. What exactly did you hear?"
"Probably what everybody else heard. They brought word England's new
'Rump' Parliament, that mob of bloodthirsty Puritans installed by
Cromwell's army, has locked King Charles in the Tower, with full
intentions to chop off his head. They also delivered the story that
Parliament has declared Barbados a nest of rebels, since your Assembly
has never recognized the Commonwealth. Virginia and Bermuda also made
that select list of outcasts." He glanced toward the bow, then tested
the steering lever. "So, Miss Katherine Bedford, I'd say the Americas
are about to see those stormy times we talked about once. Only it's a
gale out of England, not here." He turned and yelled forward, "John,
reef the foresail as we double the Point. Then prepare to take her hard
about to starboard."
She watched as he shoved the steering lever to port, flipping the
rudder to maneuver around the reefs at the edge of the bay, then
reached for his pewter tankard, its sides dark with grease. And she
tried to stifle her renewed disgust with him, his obvious unconcern, as
she watched him drink. Maybe it really was all a game to him. Maybe
nothing could make him care a damn after all. In the silence that
followed, the creaks of the weathered planking along the deck grew
louder, more plaintive.
"Given some of that may be true, Captain, what do you think will happen
now?"
"Just call me Hugh. I presume I can enjoy my fair share of Barbados'
democracy. While it lasts." He shrugged. "Since you asked, I'll tell
you. I think it means the end of everything we know about the Americas.
Breathe the air of independence while you still can. Maybe you didn't
hear the other story going around the harbor here. The Dutchmen are
claiming that after Parliament gets around to beheading the king, it
plans to take over all the patents granted by the Crown. It's
supposedly considering a new law called a 'Navigation Act,' which is
going to decree that only English bottoms can trade with the American
settlements. No Hollanders. That means the end of free trade. There's
even talk in London that a fleet of warships may head this way to
enforce it."
"I've heard that too. It sounds like nothing more than a Thames rumor."
"Did you know that right now all the Dutchmen here are lading as fast
as they can, hoping they can put to sea before they're blockaded, or
sunk, by a score of armed English men-of-war?"
"Nobody in the Assembly thinks Cromwell would go that
far."
"Well, the Dutchmen do. Whatever else you might say, a Hollander's
about the last man I'd call a fool. I can tell you Carlisle Bay is a
convocation of nervous Netherlanders right now." He squinted against
the sun. "And I'll pass along something else, Katherine. They're not
the only ones. I'd just as soon be at sea myself, with my men."
She examined him, her eyes ironic. "So I take it while you're not
afraid to stand up to the Council, men with pistols practically at your
head, you're still worried about some navy halfway around the world."
"The difference is that the Council owed me money." He smiled wanly.
"With England, it's more like the other way around."
"That's not the real reason, is it?"
"All right, how's this? For all we know, their navy may not be halfway
around the world anymore." He glanced at the sun, then checked the sail
again. "It's no state secret I'm not Mother England's favorite son. The
less I see of the English navy, the happier I'll be."
"What'll you do if a fleet arrives while you're still here?"
"I'll worry about it then." He turned back. "A better question might be
what does Barbados plan to do if a fleet arrives to blockade you and
force you into line." His voice grew sober. "I'd say this island faces
a difficult choice. If Parliament goes ahead and does away with the
king, the way some of its hotheads reportedly want to, then there'll no
longer be any legal protection for you at all. Word of this new sugar
project has already gotten back to London, you can be sure. I'd suspect
the Puritans who've taken over Parliament want the American colonies
because they'd like a piece of Barbados' sudden new fortune for
themselves. New taxes for Commons and new trade for English shippers.
Now that
you're about to be rich here, your years of being ignored are over." He
lifted the tankard and took another drink of sack. "So what are you
going to do? Submit? Or declare war on Parliament and fight the English
navy?"
"If everybody here pulls together, we can resist them."
"With what?" He turned and pointed toward the small stone fortress atop
Lookout Point. The hill stood rocky and remote above the blue
Caribbean. "Not with that breastwork, you won't. I doubt a single gun
up there's ever been set and fired. What's more, I'd be surprised if
there're more than a dozen trained gunners on the whole of the island,
since the royalist refugees here were mostly officers back home. The
way things stand now, you don't have a chance."
"Then we'll have to learn to fight, won't we?" She tried to catch his
eye. "I suppose you know something about gunnery."
"Gunners are most effective when they've got some ordnance to use." He
glanced back, then thumbed toward the Point. "What's in place up
there?"
"I think there're about a dozen cannon. And there're maybe that many
more at the Jamestown breastwork. So the leeward coast is protected.
There's also a breastwork at Oistins Bay, on the south." She paused,
studying his profile against the sun. An image rose up unbidden of him
commanding a battery of guns, her at his side. It was preposterous yet
exhilarating. "Those are the places an invasion would come, aren't
they?"
"They're the only sections of shoreline where the surf's light enough
for a troop ship to put in."
"Then we've got a line of defense. Don't you think it's enough?"
"No." He spoke quietly. "You don't have the heavy ordnance to stop a
landing. All you can hope to do without more guns is just try and slow
it down a bit."
"But assuming that's true, where would we get more cannon? Especially
now?" This was the moment she'd been dreading. Of course their ordnance
was inadequate. She already knew everything he'd been saying. There was
only one place to get more guns. They both realized where.
"Well, you've got a problem, Katherine." He smiled lightly, just to let
her know he was on to her scheme, then looked away, toward the
shoreline. On their right now the island was a mantle of deep,
seemingly eternal green reaching down almost to the water's edge, and
beyond that, up the rise of the first hill, were dull-colored
scatterings of plantation houses. The _Defiance _was making way
smoothly now, northward, holding just a few hundred yards off the
white, sandy shore. "You know, I'm always struck by what a puny little
place Barbados is." He pointed toward a small cluster of clapboard
houses half hidden among the palms along the shore. "If you put to sea,
like we are now, you can practically see the whole island, north to
south."
She glanced at the palm-lined coast, then back. "What are you trying to
say?"
"That gathering of shacks we're passing over there is the grand city of
Jamestown." He seemed to ignore the question as he thumbed to
starboard. "Which I seem to recall is the location of that famous tree
everybody here likes to brag about so much."
Jamestown was where stood the massive oak into whose bark had been
carved the inscription "James, King of E.," and the date 1625. That was
the year an English captain named John Powell accidentally put in at an
empty, forested Caribbean island and decided to claim it for his king.
"That tree proclaims this island belongs to the king of England. Well,
no more. The king's finished. So tell me, who does it belong to now?"
"I'll tell you who it doesn't belong to. Cromwell and the English
Parliament." She watched the passing shoreline, and tried to imagine
what it would be like if her dream came true. If Barbados could make
the stand that would change the Americas permanently.
When she'd awakened this morning, birds singing and the island sun
streaming through the jalousies, she'd suddenly been struck with a
grand thought, a revolutionary idea. She had ignored the servants'
pleas that she wait for breakfast and ordered Coral saddled
immediately. Then she'd headed inland, through the moss-floored forests
whose towering ironwood and oak trees still defied the settlers' axes.
Amidst the vines and orchids she'd convinced herself the idea was
right.
What if all the English in the New World united? Declared their
independence?
During her lifetime there had been a vast migration to the Americas,
two out of every hundred in England. She had never seen the settlement
in "New England," the one at Plymouth on the Massachusetts Bay, but she
knew it was an outpost of Puritans who claimed the Anglican Church
smacked too much of "popery." The New Englanders had always hated King
Charles for his supposed Catholic sympathies, so there was no chance
they'd do anything except applaud the fanatics in England who had
toppled the monarchy.
But the settlements around the Chesapeake were different. Virginia was
founded because of profit, not prayer books. Its planters had formed
their own Assembly in 1621, the first in the Americas, and they were a
spirited breed who would not give in easily to domination by England's
new dictatorship. There was also a settlement on Bermuda, several
thousand planters who had their own Assembly too; and word had just
come they had voted to banish all Puritans from the island, in
retaliation against Cromwell.
Hugh Winston, who thought he knew everything, didn't know that Bermuda
had already sent a secret envoy to Dalby Bedford proposing Barbados
join with them and form an alliance with Virginia and the other islands
of the Caribbees to resist the English Parliament. Bermuda wanted the
American colonies to stand firm for the restoration of the monarchy.
The Barbados Assembly appeared to be leaning in that direction too,
though they still hoped they could somehow avoid a confrontation.
But that was wrong, shed realized this morning. So very wrong. Don't
they see what we really should do? This is our chance. We should simply
declare the richest settlements in the Americas--Virginia, Barbados,
St. Christopher, Nevis, Bermuda--independent of England. A new nation.
It was an idea she'd not yet dared suggest to Dalby Bedford, who would
likely consider it close to sedition. And she certainly couldn't tell a
royalist like Anthony. He'd only fight for the monarchy. But why, she
asked herself, do we need some faraway king here in the Americas? We
could, we should, be our own masters.
First, however, we've got to show Cromwell and his illegal Parliament
that they can't intimidate the American settlements. If Barbados can
stand up to them, then maybe the idea of independence will have a
chance.
"I came today to ask if you'd help us stand and fight. If we have to."
She listened to her own voice and knew it was strong and firm.
He stood silent for a moment, staring at her. Then he spoke, almost a
whisper above the wind. "Who exactly is it wants me to help fight
England? The Assembly?"
"No. I do."
"That's what I thought." He shook his head in disbelief, or was it
dismay, and turned to check the whipstaff. When he glanced back, his
eyes were skeptical. "I'll wager nobody knows you came down here. Am I
correct?"
"I didn't exactly make an announcement about it."
"And that low-cut bodice and pretty smile? Is that just part of your
negotiations?"
"I thought it mightn't hurt." She looked him squarely in the eye.
"God Almighty. What you'd do for this place! I pity Cromwell and his
Roundheads." He sobered. "I don't mind telling you I'm glad at least
one person here realizes this island can't defend itself as things
stand now. You'd damned sure better start trying to do something." He
examined her, puzzled. "But why come to me?"
She knew the answer. Hugh Winston was the only person she knew who
hated England enough to declare independence. He already had. "You seem
to know a lot about guns and gunnery." She moved closer and noticed
absently that he smelled strongly of seawater, leather, and sweat. "Did
I hear you say you had an idea where we could get more cannon, to help
strengthen our breastworks?"
"So we're back to business. I might have expected." He rubbed
petulantly at his scar. "No, I didn't say, though we both know where
you might. From those Dutchmen in the harbor. Every merchantman in
Carlisle Bay has guns. You could offer to buy them. Or just take them.
But whatever you do, don't dally too long. One sighting of English sail
and they'll put to sea like those flying fish around the island."
"How about the cannon on the _Defiance_? How many do you have?"
"I have a few." He laughed, then reflected with pride on his first-
class gun deck. Twenty-two demi-culverin, nine-pounders and all brass
so they wouldn't overheat. He'd trained his gunners personally, every
man, and he'd shot his way out of more than one harbor over the past
five years. His ordnance could be run out in a matter of minutes,
primed and ready. "Naturally you're welcome to them. All you'll have to
do is kill me first."
"I hope it doesn't come to that."
"So do I." He studied the position of the waning sun for a moment, then
yelled forward for the men to hoist the staysail. Next he gestured
toward Mewes. "John, take the whipstaff a while and tell me what you
think of the feel of her. I'd guess the best we can do is six points
off the wind, the way I said."
"Aye." Mewes hadn't understood what all the talk had
been about, but he hoped the captain was getting the best of the doxy.
"I can tell you right now this new rigging of yours makes a handy
little frigate work like a damn'd five-hundred-ton galleon."
"Just try taking her about." He glanced at the shoreline. They were
coming in sight of Speightstown, the settlement at the north tip of the
island. "Let's see if we can tack around back south and make it into
the bay."
"But would you at least help us if we were blockaded?" She realized she
was praying he would say yes.
"Katherine, what's this island ever done for me? Besides, right now
I've got all I can manage just trying to get the hell out of here. I
can't afford to get caught up in your little quarrel with the
Commonwealth." He looked at her. "Every time I've done an errand for
Barbados, it's always come back to plague me."
"So you don't care what happens here." She felt her disappointment
surge. It had all been for nothing, and damned to him. "I suppose I had
a somewhat higher opinion of you, Captain Winston. I see I was wrong."
"I've got my own plan for the Caribbean. And that means a lot more to
me than who rules Barbados and its slaves."
"Then I'm sorry I bothered asking at all."
"I've got a suggestion for you though." Winston's voice suddenly
flooded with anger. "Why don't you ask your gentleman fiance, Anthony
Walrond, to help? From what I hear, he was the royalist hero of the
Civil War."
"He doesn't have a gun deck full of cannon." She wanted to spit in
Winston's smug face.
"But he's got you, Katherine, doesn't he?" He felt an unwanted pang at
the realization. He was beginning to like this woman more than he
wanted to. She had brass. "Though as long as you're here anyway, why
don't we at least toast the sunset? And the free Americas that're about
to vanish into history." He abruptly kissed heron the cheek, watched as
she flushed in anger, then turned and yelled to a seaman just entering
the companionway aft, "Fetch up another flask of sack."
Benjamin Briggs stood in the open doorway of the curing-house,
listening to the "sweee" call of the long-tailed flycatchers as they
flitted through the groves of macaw palms. The long silence of dusk was
settling over the sugarworks as the indentures and the slaves trudged
wearily toward their thatched huts for the evening dish of loblolly
mush. Down the hill, toward the shore, vagrant bats had begun to dart
through the shadows.
In the west the setting sun had become a fiery disk at the edge of the
sea's far horizon. He watched with interest as a single sail cut across
the sun's lower rim. It was Hugh Winston's _Defiance_, rigged in a
curious new mode. He studied it a moment, puzzling, then turned back to
examine the darkening interior of the curing house.
Long racks, holding wooden cones of curing sugar, extended the length
of one wall. He thought about the cones for a time, watching the slow
drip of molasses into the tray beneath and wondering if it mightn't pay
to start making them from clay, which would be cheaper and easier to
shape. Though the Africans seemed to understand working clay--they'd
been using it for their huts--he knew that only whites could be allowed
to make the cones. The skilled trades on Barbados must always be
forbidden to blacks, whose tasks had to be forever kept repetitive,
mind-numbing. The Africans could never be allowed to perfect a craft.
It could well lead to economic leverage and, potentially, resistance to
slavery and the end of cheap labor.
He glanced back toward the darkening horizon, but now Winston's frigate
had passed from view, behind the trees. Winston was no better than a
thieving rogue, bred for gallows-bait, but you had to admire him a
trifle nonetheless. He was one of the few men around who truly
understood the need for risk here in the Americas. The man who never
chanced what he had gained in order to realize more would never
prosper. In the Americas a natural aristocracy was rising up, one not
of birth but of boldness.
Boldness would be called for tonight, but he was ready. He had done
what had to be done all his life.
The first time was when he was thirty-one, a tobacco importer in
Bristol with an auburn-haired wife named Mary and two blue-eyed
daughters, a man pleased with himself and with life. Then one chance-
filled afternoon he had discovered, in a quick succession of surprise
and confession, that Mary had a lover. The matter of another man would
not have vexed him unduly, but the fact that her gallant was his own
business partner did.
The next day he sold his share of the firm, settled with his creditors,
and hired a coach for London. He had never seen Bristol again. Or Mary
and his daughters.
In London there was talk that a syndicate of investors led by Sir
William Courteen was recruiting a band of pioneers to try and establish
a new settlement on an empty island in the Caribbees, for which they
had just received a proprietary patent from the king. Though Benjamin
Briggs had never heard of Barbados, he joined the expedition. He had no
family connections, no position, and only a few hundred pounds. But he
had the boldness to go where no Englishman had ever ventured.
Eighty of them arrived in the spring of 1627, on the William and John,
with scarcely any tools, only to discover that the entire island was a
rain forest, thick and overgrown. Nor had anyone expected the harsh
sunshine, day in and day out. They all would have starved from
inexperience had not the Dutch helped them procure a band of Arawak
Indians from Surinam, who brought along seeds to grow plantains and
corn, and cassava root for bread. The Indians also taught the
cultivation of cotton and tobacco, cash crops. Perhaps just as
importantly, they showed the new adventurers from London how to make a
suspended bed they called a hammock, in order to sleep up above the
island's biting ants, and how to use smoky fires to drive off the
swarms of mosquitoes that appeared each night. Yet, help
notwithstanding, many of those first English settlers died from
exposure and disease by the end of the year. Benjamin Briggs was one of
the survivors. Later, he had vowed never to forget those years, and
never to taste defeat.
The sun was almost gone now, throwing its last, long shadows through
the open thatchwork of the curing-house walls, laying a pattern against
the hard earthen floor. He looked down at his calloused hands, the
speckle of light and shade against the weathered skin, and thought of
all the labors he had set them to.
The first three years those hands had wielded an axe, clearing land,
and then they had shaped themselves to the handle of a hoe, as he and
his five new indentures set about planting indigo. And those hands had
stayed penniless when his indigo crops were washed away two years
running by the autumn storms the Carib Indians called _huracan_. Next
he had set them to cotton. In five years he had recouped the losses
from the indigo and acquired more land, but he was still at the edge of
starvation, in a cabin of split logs almost a decade after coming out
to the Caribbees.
He looked again at his hands, thinking how they had borrowed heavily
from lenders in London, the money just enough to finance a switch from
cotton to tobacco. It fared a trifle better, but still scarcely
recovered its costs.
Though he had managed to accumulate more and more acres of island land
over the years, from neighbors less prudent, he now had only a moderate
fortune to show for all his labor. He'd actually considered giving up
on the Americas and returning to London, to resume the import trade.
But always he remembered his vow, so instead he borrowed again, this
time from the Dutchmen, and risked it all one last time. On sugar.
He scraped a layer from the top of one of the molds and rubbed the tan
granules between his fingers, telling himself that now, at last, his
hands had something to show for the two long decades of callouses,
blisters, emptiness.
He tasted the rich sweetness on a horned thumb and its savor was that
of the Americas. The New World where every man started as an equal.
Now a new spirit had swept England. The king was dethroned, the
hereditary House of Lords abolished. The people had risen up . . . and,
though you'd never have expected it, new risk had risen up with them.
The American settlements were suddenly flooded with the men England had
repudiated. Banished aristocrats like the Walronds, who'd bought their
way into Barbados and who would doubtless like nothing better than to
reforge the chains of class privilege in the New World.
Most ironic of all, these men had at their disposal the new democratic
institutions of the Americas. They would clamor in the Assembly of
Barbados for the island to reject the governance of the English
Parliament, hoping thereby to hasten its downfall and lead to the
restoration of the monarchy. Worse, the Assembly, that reed in the
winds of rhetoric, would doubtless acquiesce.
Regardless of what you thought of Cromwell, to resist Parliament now
would be to swim against the tide. And to invite war. The needful
business of consolidating the small tracts on Barbados and setting the
island wholesale to sugar would be disrupted and forestalled, perhaps
forever.
Why had it come down to this, he asked himself again. Now, of all
times. When the fruits of long labor seemed almost in hand. When you
could finally taste the comforts of life--a proper house, rich food, a
woman to ease the nights.
He had never considered taking another wife. Once had been enough. But
he had always arranged to have a comely Irish girl about the house, to
save the trouble and expense of visiting Bridgetown for an evening.
A prudent man bought an indentured wench with the same careful eye hed
acquire a breeding mare. A lusty-looking one might cost a few shillings
more, but it was money well invested, your one compensation for all the
misery.
The first was years ago, when he bought a red-headed one straight off a
ship from London, not guessing till he got her home that he'd been
swindled; she had a sure case of the pox, the French disease. Her
previous career, it then came out, included Bridewell Prison and the
taverns of Turnbull Street. He sent her straight to the fields and
three months later carefully bought another, this one Irish and
seventeen. She had served out her time, five years, and then gone to
work at a tavern in Bridgetown. He had never seen her since, and didn't
care to, but after that he always kept one about, sending her on to the
fields and buying a replacement when he wearied of her.
That was before the voyage down to Pernambuco. Brazil had been an
education, in more ways than one. You had to grant the Papists knew a
thing or so about the good life. They had bred up a sensuous Latin
creation: the _mulata_. He tried one at a tavern, and immediately
decided the time had come to acquire the best. He had worked hard, he
told himself; he had earned it.
There was no such thing as a _mulata _indenture in Pernambuco, so he'd
paid the extra cost for a slave. And he was still cursing himself for
his poor judgment. Haughtiness in a servant was nothing new. In the
past he'd learned you could easily thrash it out of them, even the
Irish ones. This _mulata_, though, somehow had the idea she was gifted
by God to a special station, complete with high-born Latin airs. The
plan to be finally rid of her was already in motion.
She had come from Pernambuco with the first cane, and she would be sold
in Bridgetown with the first sugar. He already had a prospective buyer,
with an opening offer of eighty pounds.