Jeremy Walrond slid his hand down the long steel barrel of the
flintlock, letting his fingers play across the Latin motto engraved
along the top, _Ante ferit quam flamma micet_. "It strikes before the
flash is seen."
The piece had been given to him on his twelfth birthday by his brother
Anthony, and it was superb--crafted in Holland, with a fine Flemish
lock and carved ivory insets of hunting scenes in the stock. With it he
had once, in a stroke of rare luck, brought down a partridge in flight.
Now through a dismaying and improbable chain of events he must turn
this work of artistry against a fellow human being.
It was true he had been part of the royalist cause in the Civil War, a
clerk helping direct the transport of supplies, but he had never been
near enough to the lines to fire a musket. Or to have a musket fired at
him. The thought of battle brought a moistness to his palms and a dull,
hollow ache in his gut.
While the men around him in the trench--all now under his command--
reinforced their courage with a large onion-flask of homemade kill-
devil, he gazed over the newly mounded earth and out to sea, ashamed at
his relief there was as yet no flash of lantern, no telltale red dots
of burning matchcord.
The only moving lights were the darting trails of fireflies, those
strange night creatures that so terrified newcomers to the Caribbees.
In a few more moments the last of the moon, now a thin lantern, would
drop beneath the western horizon, causing the coast and the sea to be
swallowed in blackness. After that happened, he told himself, he might
see nothing more, hear nothing more, till the first musket ball slammed
home.
War, he meditated, was man's greatest folly. Excused in the name of
abstractions like "liberty" and "country" and "dignity." But what
dignity was there for those who died with a musket ball in their chest?
No beast of the earth willfully killed its own kind. Only man, who then
styled himself the noblest of God's creatures.
He loosened his hot lace collar, hoping to catch some of the on-again,
off-again breeze that had risen in the south and now swept the pungent
smell of Bridgetown's harbor up along the coast. Aside from the rattle
of militiamen's bandoliers and occasional bursts of gallows laughter,
the only sounds were night noises--the clack of foraging land crabs,
the chirps and whistles of crickets and toads, the distant batter of
surf and spray against the sand. Inland, the green hills of Barbados
towered in dark silence.
He looked out to sea once more and realized the surf was beginning to
rise, as wave after frothy wave chased up the crystalline sand of the
shore, now bleached pale in the last waning moonlight. The ships were
out there, he knew, waiting. He could almost feel their presence.
Both the trench and the breastwork were back away from the shore--back
where the sand merged with brown clay and the first groves of palms,
heralds of the hardwood thickets farther upland. Through the palms he
could barely discern the silhouettes of the gunners as they loitered
alongside the heavy ordnance, holding lighted linstocks. Fifteen cannon
were there tonight, ranging in gauge from nine to eighteen-pound shot,
shielded on the sea side by a head-high masonry wall cut with
battlements for the guns.
Though the original Jamestown gun emplacement had been built two
decades earlier, as a precaution against Spanish attack, that threat
had faded over the years, and gradually the planters of Barbados had
grown complacent. They had permitted the fort to slowly decay, its guns
to clog with rust from the salt air.
How ironic, he thought, that now an English attack, not Spanish, had
finally occasioned its first repairs. Over the past fortnight the old
cannon had been cleaned of rust and primed; and new Dutch guns, all
brass, had been hauled up by oxcart from Carlisle Bay and set in place.
Now six of these, small demi-culverin, had just been removed from the
breastwork and hauled to safety inland at first word of the invasion.
He heard the murmur of approaching voices and looked up to see two
shadowy figures moving along the dirt parapet that protected the
trench. One was tall and strode with a purposeful elegance; the other
lumbered.
"It'll be a cursed dark night once we've lost the moon, and that's when
they're apt to start launching the longboats. Damn Winston if he's not
in place by then. Are his men over where they're supposed to be?" The
hard voice of Benjamin Briggs drifted down. The silhouette that was
Anthony Walrond merely nodded silently in reply.
Jeremy rose and began climbing up the parapet, his bandolier rattling.
Anthony turned at the noise, recognized him, and motioned him forward.
"Are your men ready?"
"Yes, sir."
Anthony studied him thoughtfully a moment. "Watch yourself tonight,
lad." He paused, then looked away. "Do remember to take care."
"That I will." Jeremy broke the silence between them. "But I'm not
afraid, truly." He patted his bandolier for emphasis, causing the
charge holders to clank one against the other. He knew he owed his
assignment of the rank of ensign--which normally required holdings of
at least fifteen acres--and the leadership of a squad solely to the
influence of his older brother, who commanded the vital Jamestown
defenses by unanimous consent of the Assembly.
Jeremy's militiamen--eight in number--were all small freeholders with
rusty matchlocks and no battle experience. He had been too ashamed to
tell Anthony he didn't desire the honor of being an officer. It was
time to prove he was a Walrond.
"Jeremy, we all know fear, but we learn to rise above it. You'll make
me proud tonight, I'll lay odds." He reached and adjusted the buckle of
the shoulder strap holding Jeremy's sword. "Now have your men light
their matchcord and ready the prime on their muskets."
Jeremy gave his brother a stiff salute and passed the order into the
trench. A burning taper was handed slowly down the line of men, and
each touched it to the tip of his matchcord, then threaded the glowing
fuse through the serpentine cock of his musket. He secretly rejoiced he
had a new-style flintlock; at least there would be no lighted matchcord
to betray his own whereabouts in the dark. He stood for a moment
watching his men prepare, then glanced back at the squat outline of
Benjamin Briggs. What, he wondered, was he doing here tonight?
Briggs was gazing down at the parapet now, critically scuffing his
boots against the soft earth. "This trench of yours will do damned
little to protect these lads from cannon fire if somebody in the fleet
takes a mind to shell the breastwork. I pray to God it was worth the
time and trouble."
A crew of indentures, as well as many of Winston's new men, had worked
around-the-clock for three days digging the trench. The idea had come
from Anthony Walrond.
"I'm betting on an invasion, not an artillery duel." Anthony nodded
toward Jeremy one last time, a light farewell, then turned back to
Briggs. "An open shelling with their big ordnance would be foolhardy;
right now it's too dark to try and fire on our emplacements. Add to
that, we have word the commander in charge of the army is a Roundhead
rogue named Dick Morris. I know him all too well. He doesn't believe in
a lot of cannon fire, when a few men can achieve what he wants. He'll
just try to land enough men to overrun and disable our guns."
"Well and all, may Almighty God damn our luck that it's come down to
this. The last thing we need is war with England. But if it's fight we
must, then I say give them our all. And don't let them catch us short."
Briggs gazed past Jeremy, down the trench. "Do all these men have
enough matchrope, powder, and shot?"
Anthony felt himself nearing his limit of tolerance for civilians. All
the planter had found to do since arriving was denigrate their
readiness. "We've managed to get bandoliers, and 'the twelve apostles,'
for all the men"--he deliberately used the irreverent battlefield
nickname for the dozen charge-holders of musket powder on a standard
bandolier--"and there's plenty of matchcord, with what we got from the
Dutchmen before they were seized." He tightened his eye-patch and
surveyed the line of ragged planters and indentures marshalled down the
trench, trying to envision them under attack. The picture was
discouraging, at the very least.
How many here have ever taken musket fire, he wondered. This bunker
will likely be overrun by the first wave of Morris' infantry. God curse
Cromwell for sending him. He's tenacious as an English bulldog. And
crafty as a fox. He'll land the pick of his troops, and the minute they
open fire, it's odds this line of farmers will panic and run for those
green hills. We've got superiority of numbers, but it doesn't mean a
thing. What we need, and don't have, is nerve, experience, and most of
all, the will to fight. I'll wager not one man in ten here tonight has
all three.
"I'd like to know, sir, what's your true opinion of the plan that's
been worked out." Briggs turned to Walrond, hating the man's arrogance
and his royalist politics, yet respecting his military experience. He
had led a royalist attack at the battle of Marsten Moor that was still
remembered as one of the most daring maneuvers of the Civil War. "Do
you think we can catch their landing force in a bind, the way we're
hoping?"
Anthony moved away from the edge of the trench. "Taken all for all,
it's about the best we can do. If it succeeds, well and good, but if it
fails, we're apt to end up . . ."
Jeremy tried to hear the rest, but Anthony's voice faded into the dark
as he and Briggs moved on down the parapet.
The night was closing in again. Having drained their flask of kill-
devil, the militiamen were grumbling nervously as they waited in a line
down the trench, backs to the newly turned earth. Again the sounds of
the dark swelled up around them--the chirps and whistles, the
monotonous pendulum of surf in the distance.
War. Was it mainly waiting?
Maybe there would be no landing. How preposterous all this would seem
then. Tomorrow he would wake in his featherbed, dreaming he was back in
England, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Sense would prevail. The
fleet would hoist sail. . . .
A volley of musket fire exploded from the direction of the breastwork.
Shouts. Then clustered points of light, the tips of burning matchcord
on the infantry's muskets, suddenly appeared along the shore.
The first attackers had crept up behind the cannon and fired into the
gunners with flintlocks, so there would be no smoldering ignition match
on their muskets to betray them. Those in the second wave had somehow
masked their lighted matchcord until their longboats pulled into the
surf. Now, after the surprise attack on the gun emplacement, they were
splashing ashore, holding their muskets high.