by Jan Needle
Mather smiled with satisfaction.
“Nay, sir. The army is my purlieu; I am colonel of militia here.” He nodded. “That is another thing. All of us must serve the island in some way, it is a first necessity. Your naval skills would serve you there as well. Discipline, control, and the use of firearms! You would be a planter born!”
Holt asked a question that he thought he knew the answer to. He found this whole society bizarre.
“Sir, may I inquire… I take it black men cannot serve in this militia? It is entirely designed to keep the black man… in his place?”
Mather’s smile grew broader.
“No indeed, sir, you are wrong. We do have negers under arms, both trusted men and free, and good soldiers they make too, a few of ’em. ’Tis the uniform they like, just like the peasant of whatever creed or colour. A bit of scarlet, maybe a bit of braid – and a cutlass and dirk as well. Most satisfactory.”
Holt tried to hide surprise.
“And Irish, I suppose? You have a lot of them out here.”
“Not Irish, no. We cannot trust the Papists, sir, there is a history in the Caribbean of them siding with the French. St. Kitts, Bermuda, Barbados – wherever trouble comes the Papists will turn coat. It is a constant worry for us. We do not give them arms, or let them carry them, indeed.”
“In any way,” put in Dodds, “why bother with the second best? If you treat a black slave right, he’ll be as loyal as a beaten dog. By treating right I mean you work him till he cannot lift a hand against you, and if he does, you whip him till he bleeds.” He turned to the officers, leering. “Best thing about the black man is,” he said, “he’s black. You see a black you know he’s black, and treat accordingly. And if he runs, he’s got nowhere to hide except among the other blacks, and they’re all slaves ditto, so he can be found. They’re better far than white jail-trash, in that way. You don’t even have to brand ’em like a beef.”
The young women that Sam and Will turned to sometimes as a relief from views like these were rarely any better, was the painful truth. They saw slavery as normal, and the masters “breeding off ’em” something unpleasant but inevitable. In the night time coversatons – often far from sober – when the formal dining had been done, Sam and Will heard things they scarce believed.
“Ah,” hallooed red-haired Charlie Tennant, one of the wilder bloods. “It’s like stags in England, rutting. Black maids enjoy the hunt, and our duty is to knob ’em when we can. Black buggers don’t breed much among each other, God knows why, and shelling out fer new ’uns is the road to ruin. So fucking them’s a double benefit, if you’ll pardon salty language. Obvious.”
The young men cheered, including Kaye it must be said, and Miss Siddleham’s disapproval was at best half-hearted.
“You are like rutting boars,” she said. “What would you say if some poor white woman fell with child by a drunken slave-man? Would you applaud the coffee-coloured by-blow then?” And Charlie Tennant whooped.
“That filthy English slut the Suttons lost,” he said. “She mates with blacks. She threw herself on one when they were burning him, and is to bear his bastard child, ’tis said. Nay, ’tis certain, I heard it from Seth Sutton. She’d mate with any of ’em, Seth told me, but she wouldn’t have a white man no how.”
“Aye,” said others. “That’s what I heard as well. And her so soon from England. And they say she’s almost pretty; for a slut. And she’s run off to the hills to breed up little black boys. Her name, they say, is Deborah.”
Marianne gazed curiously at Bentley, for Slack Dick had hinted at some connection with this maid of infamy, although he had – from a growing sense of fellow-feeling for his juniors, perhaps – been very circumspect, indeed abstruse. Despite Will’s down-turned eyes, however, she could not resist a question on the point.
“My father mentioned, sir,” she started. “I do believe… did you not know the maid in London or somewhere?”
Will remembered with great clarity that Deb’s name and his had been conjoined in the Assembly building some weeks before, and was sick with shame that he might deny her now. But Holt stepped in to turn it gracefully, and raise a laugh.
“Nay,” he said. “That was some other slut called Deborah. London is full of them, you cannot step a hundred feet in Cheapside without falling face downward on a Deb. Two a penny, I promise you Miss Siddleham, you ask our Captain there. Two a penny, five a groat, a gayhouse for a florin!”
Kaye joined in the laughter, while Will felt cold steel sink deep into his guts. The faces all around him, flushed with drink and jollity, made him want to… what? He did not know. And if she was with child, then what again? He truly did not know.
There was a ball there some days later, although not a formal one, and for Will and Sam it said everything about this lost society. It was in honour of the Jacqueline (only four of whose company received an invitation) because Kaye had announced that she was finally to sail. The oldsters were invited more or less on sufferance, but it was a young affair, and by the standards of the metropolis, an offense to nature and decorum. At one in the morning Sir Nathaniel was taken ill, his nurse announced to roars of interest or indifference, and then the grand dame, the butler, the daughters, and finally the sons found it impossible to penetrate the chaos and get the guests to leave. Not to put too sharp a point on it, it was a drunken rout.
Neither Will nor Sam was very sober when they climbed on board the Jacqueline alongside an inner harbour quay, but both of them were glad indeed to be afloat once more. Better still was the prospect that next day, or even this, they would be sailing clear of this pestilential spot.
They were talking in low tones, Sam smoking a pipe of sweet tobacco, when a lightweight cart clattered to the quiet ship and they recognised the bulk of London Jack. They had seen no sight of him throughout the evening, and they imagined that he was murdered with the drink. Till he jumped down, flipped a coin to the carter, and came up the side as agile as an ape.
“Good God, John,” said Sam. “Have you been wasting time? I should have thought the only way to live through that grim night would be to hit the potion!”
Gunning sat, and screwed the heel of his hand between his eyes. His smile was all contentment.
“I leave such tricks to them as knows no better,” he said. “Why drink when there’s quim about? I have been busy all the evening.”
“Oh indeed,” said Sam. “With a high-born lady, I suppose. Like smoke you have.”
“Lady?” said Jack. “Why waste your time on milk and water? Three goes I’ve had, one black, one white and one mulatter, but none of ’em you’d call a lady. You lads’ll never learn, will you? Oh, William – something for you an’ all – I’ve found your little Deborah. Leastways, I know just where she is. Now – is that worth it, or what?”
He might as well have punched Will in the stomach. His mouth was open, but he could not speak. Gunning, with a roar of laughter, reached forward and flipped his lower jaw upwards with a crack. Then he ruffled Bentley’s hair with a giant hand.
“She’s being hunted by a wild Maroon called Captain Jacob,” he said. “He wants to marry her, or something very like it! Her whereabouts are secret as the grave, my lad – except I know them, don’t I!? Now! Let’s hear a thank’ee for old London Jack!”
But before Will had gathered himself together, Gunning became suddenly most serious.
“Ah,” he said. “One other thing. I think Sir Nat is going to know her whereabouts an’ all. I think the thing is critical, Will. It’s critical.”
Chapter Eighteen
The condition of Sir Nathaniel Siddleham was also critical, it turned out. The crisis developed through the night, and by breakfast-time every medical man in Kingston and Spanish town, save Mr Grundy who was mercifully drunk, had galloped over to give advice and medicine. Despite being bled so heavily that he resembled wrung-out flax, Sir Nat did not respond to treatment, and by midday he was dead. First the gloom of bereavement settled over the big
house, then the bright flame of vengeful fury. The clamour for reprisals against the Sutton slaves was loud indeed, but was as nothing compared with the hatred for the Spithead Nymph.
In the Jamaica way, word spread like wildfire that her whereabouts were known at last, though where the news had come from or who betrayed her was never quite pinned down. Sir Nat himself may or may not have been told – rumour insisted the news had struck the fatal blow – but by next morning the brothers knew the area, indeed the very camp, where Tomelty and her vile companions could be found. As soon as Sir Nathaniel had been sodded, it was imagined, the bloodhounds would be released to run them down.
The Jacqueline, in the way of dockyards, was nowhere near as ready as had been promised and reported, so the brothers’ assumption that Captain Kaye would join the expedition was immediately denied. Had Marianne added her weight to their hot demands Kaye would possibly have cracked, but her displays of grief were more traditional. She and her sisters followed behind Lady Siddleham so heavily encased in crepe that Sam wondered they did not expire from the heat, and after the solemnities they retired to their quarters in the house, and did not re-emerge.
The truth was that Captain Shearing, through his mouthpiece Lieutenant Jackson, advised against involvement in a way that amounted to an order. Any expedition, it was pointed out, was likely to be bloody, of dubious legality, and far better left to the island men themselves. They had bloodhounds, they had armaments, they had spies and local knowledge. All that the Navy would add would be a little pomp (which the planters would have dearly liked) and a kind of legitimacy that would in fact be spurious.
So keen were the gentry, however, that the very night of the funeral, a noisy party of the younger planters, with Ephraim Dodd and Martin Newman in tow, turned up on the quayside in two coaches and insisted that they be allowed on board. Dimnock, Dodd and Charlie Tennet crowded into the cramped cabin of the little ship, while the others stayed outside in the care of Holt and Bentley, who had no clear idea of what was going on. It was a pitch dark, moonless night but they could see that the vicious drinking that had started with the obsequies had continued, and was bidding fair to become a rout.
Dickie though, for once, had no intention of allowing his ship to become a slackers’ haven, and said so. Told that the Siddleham brothers had sent this deputation he said he disbelieved it, and there ensued a shouting match. But he was in a quandary. It was, in island terms, a tragic and a solemn day, and he recognised that these men were showing grief in their own way by berating him. Jem Taylor and Tom Hugg were told off quietly to keep the seamen all below, and to allow no reprisal or reaction under whatever provocation.
William, who turned into his cot in an agony of fear for Deborah, was still awake well after dawn when a storm of shouting broke out above him. On deck, long rays of eastern sun revealed an odd and shameful sight as it rose across the still dark waters of the harbour. Hanging from the main yardarm, lifting gently in the first ripples of the morning breeze, was a pair of ladies’ drawers, of a white and flimsy aspect, with ribbons of blue and pink.
Worse still, the watchman had not noticed them, nor any others of the Jacqueline’s people. There were dock-workers abroad, carters, drovers and fruit sellers. Once spotted, the drawers became the general attention, raising whoops, and cheers, and a throng of lookers-on. They stayed on high five minutes or less after the first sighting, but were rapidly bruited all over Kingston, then the island, as the “Drawers of Cowardice.” The young bloods of Jamaica had got their revenge.
*
Mildred had told Deborah that their camp would be betrayed, and that when the bloodhounds came they would rape, and burn, and kill. The most likely betrayer, she had said, would be Captain Jacob, because Deb had turned him down. But when the raid came she had not yet done that thing, but told him rather that her man had come as promised, and was living in Port Royal.
It had been a most strange meeting, and after it had ended, Deb had still not known what the outcome would be. Whatever else she had learned in all her dealings with men so far, she had learned that powerlessness could be a potent weapon. She threw herself completely on Captain Jacob’s mercy, and knew that if he chose to spurn her, he could use her as he wanted to, then kill her if he so desired it. She told him that the man she loved was on a Navy ship, could not aid her in any way whatever, and did not even know of her existence on the island. She asked Jacob – she did not even beg him – to reunite her with her Will or, at very least, convey to him a message.
They had moved into the woods together, with the hard-faced bodyguards almost out of sight, although keeping careful watch with weapons drawn. And when they moved back in to end the tête-à-tête, indicating by word and gesture that Tsingi, Captain Jacob, must come before the dangers multiplied, he had still not given her an answer.
“I will think,” he said. “I will talk back at my town. It is a pity that you do not want to marry me.”
At that moment she almost did. The prospect of a settlement, of peace from uncertainty, a simple pairing with a man, bade fair to overwhelm her. Captain Jacob appeared to sense this, too. He smiled into her eyes, and his smile was kindly, and spoke clearly of regret.
“I will come back,” he said. “I will do what I think is possible. Now I go.”
But when Tsingi did return, two days later, the planters’ raiding party had come before them. Black bloodhounds were the leaders, and they attacked the camp just after dark, in overwhelming numbers. The women were all around the campfire, and there were young men as well, their visitors. Toad was at the cooking pot, Mabel was playing with her son, old Dhanglli was collecting twigs – and as the bloodhounds burst in from one direction, and Tsingi and his fellows emerged from the other side, Maroons and hired killers were briefly face-to-face. The hiatus lasted for the starkest, shortest moment, then the massacre began. Tsingi and the bodyguards turned on their heels to melt back into the undergrowth, the women screamed and tried to run, the menfolk – weaponless – tried to make a fight of it.
Mabel’s baby was the first to go, spitted on a pointed stick. Mabel tried to save the body and two other bloodhounds ran her through. Toad tried to prevent three men from raping Rebekah and was thrown onto the fire, while two young men ran and two more died. In the chaotic darkness beyond the clearing the white “generals” arrived behind their scouts, and Captain Jacob blundered straight into their arms. Jeremy Siddleham, Charlie Tennet and Richard Blair all claimed credit for the fatal shot, but it was not a bitter argument. Each played an equal part, they did agree, in the beheading. His bodyguards escaped.
All in all, as a reprisal, it was a splendid night. Nine black slaves dead, and one mulatto baby which they threw into a ditch. No doubt that the death of poor Sir Nathaniel had been adequately compensated, while for other slaves who might be tempted to revolt it was a lesson learned.
The only sadness was that the Spithead Nymph had not been killed, nor even apprehended. No one would tell them when she’d left the camp, or where she’d gone to. Another woman’s name was mentioned, a woman who had once been at Alf Sutton’s holding and who had also run. Her name was Mildred, and that was the extent of the information. It was assumed that both of them were warned the raid was coming, and had run to hide together somewhere in the forests. Not so much a sadness, the young whites agreed, as a full-blown tragedy.
Chapter Nineteen
Neither Alf Sutton nor his son Seth had been invited on the reprisal raid, although the people that had run had been their slaves. Firstly, Marianne was adamant that the whore was behind the trouble so it was her family’s prerogative to avenge their father’s death, and secondly, they had plans for Sutton’s land, which made socialising hardly on the cards. By the same token, the “trophies” from the expedition came to the Siddleham estate, and graced the poles and baskets erected at the main gateway. There were severed breasts and ears and testicles, one woman’s flayed face-skin with the nostrils cut, and the head of Jacob Tsingi with his eyes p
ut out.
Captain Richard Kaye was the first Navy man to see them, and he was shocked and sickened. He was still pale when he made his hallo to his lady love, and even more put out when she laughed at him for being over-sensitive. It was the normal way, she said, what runaways expected, and what would-be runaways needed to see from time to time to keep them in their place. The assemblies on some islands paid compensation if a slave rebelled against a planter, but on Jamaica this was not so, unfortunately.
“Lah, though!” she conceded. “It would bankrupt our exchequer some years, would be my guess. Deterrence by example is the better way.”
The ladies’ drawers incident had been glossed over, if not yet forgotten, and to indicate to cynics that his reasons for refusing to help the expedition had been good, Kaye had sent the Jacqueline to sea the very next day, under command of Will and Sam, to shake down new rigging and check and trim the gear for pending service. Further, he recognised that Deb’s escape had been a sheer disgrace, and regretted fervently that it was not possible to offer further help.
The pressure grew rather than diminished as the days went by, though. Rumours spread around the Siddleham estate, picked up by planters like Mather, Hodge, Dodds, Newman and the rest, that the reprisal raid had gone a sight too far. To use human bloodhounds and armed planter-men to hunt down runaways was acceptable – although Maroons liked to claimed exclusive rights – but the death of a Maroon itself was a dangerous thing indeed. If not against the white man’s law, it was at least against the treaties, which were the product of years of slayings and reprisals. Jacob Tsingi was a captain, son of Colonel Treatyman, and a young man of whom the Windward people had had the highest hopes. There was talk of compensation, there was talk of white apologies, there was a grumbling for revenge.
Miss Marianne Siddleham, when she heard about all this, was incandescent. For a treaty man to earn his silver he had to apprehend white whores not breed with them, she declared – as Tsingi most certainly had done with Tomelty. Maroons were useful if they knew the rules, and the money they could earn was so small that only savages would be impressed by it. What’s more, Maroon or no Maroon, he was in reality just a black savage and even God would not heed his fall, which made him lower than a sparrow. And serve him right for presuming he could have such relations with a white, however debased that so-called white should be.