by John Jakes
1687: The Aristocrat
In the late spring of the following year, across the ocean in the royal colony of Carolina, someone else dreamed of making a fortune.
For him the ambition amounted to a lust. He had known what it was like to be rich, powerful, secure. But the security had proved an illusion, and the wealth and power had been swept away like the shining beach sand down by Charles Town when a storm tide attacked it.
Charles de Main was thirty. He and his beautiful wife, Jeanne, had been in the colony two years. Carolina itself had been settled by Europeans for only seventeen years; all of its two or three thousand white citizens were, relatively speaking, newcomers.
Among the colonists was a group of adventurers originally from Barbados. These men had settled in the village of Charles Town and had quickly assumed power under the Lords Proprietors, the English nobles who had started the colony as a financial venture. These same Barbadians had already mantled themselves in superiority.
Charles considered the Barbadians impractical fools. They dreamed of an agricultural paradise where they could grow rich raising silk, sugar, tobacco, cotton. Charles was more realistic. Carolina’s coastal lowlands were too wet for conventional farming. Its summers were pestilential; only the very hardy survived in them. Currently the colony’s prosperity—such as it was—had three sources: Pelts like those that passed through Charles’s trading station. Grazing cattle. And the kind of wealth he was just now engaged in bringing down from the back country at the point of a gun.
Indians destined for slavery.
It could not be said that Charles de Main had come to this land of coastal swamps and back country sand hills because of its physical or commercial attractions. He and Jeanne had fled here from the valley of the Loire, where Charles had been born the fourteenth duke of his line.
In his twentieth year he had married and begun to assume the management of his family’s vineyards. For a few years the life of the young couple had been idyllic, except perhaps for the troubling fact that Jeanne produced no children. But then the religious faith traditional in their families for several generations had brought their ruin.
When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the uneasy truce between French Catholics and Protestants ended. Like all the other fiercely proud Huguenots—for proud, some Frenchmen substituted the word treasonous—Charles de Main and his wife were threatened by the purges that soon ravaged their homeland. Once the terror began, it became a serious offense to attempt to leave the country. Just like hundreds of other Huguenots, however, the de Mains made plans to do exactly that.
In the village near the great round-towered Château de Main there was a certain lawyer named Emilion who practiced bigotry and thievery behind a pious expression. He knew the profits to be made in England from the sale of the château’s rich reds and tart whites. He coveted the de Main vineyards, and to get them he paid a groom to inform upon his master and mistress.
Emilion felt the de Mains might try to flee, and before long the groom saw signs of preparations. One word from him to the proper official was all it took. The night the de Mains left, their coach was no more than half a kilometer from the château when the authorities came galloping up behind it.
Charles put his arm around his frightened wife and whispered words of affection to distract her from thinking of what they would face following their arrest—the inquisition by means of which heretical Protestants were forced to recant. Another Huguenot in the neighborhood, caught while dashing to the coast, had died when the inquisitor’s blade slipped and cut off his testicles.
The young nobleman and his wife were kept in prison seventeen days. They were questioned with the aid of knives and hot irons. Neither broke; not outwardly, at least, although toward the end Jeanne alternately screamed and wept without stopping.
They would have died in the dungeon at Chalonnes had it not been for Charles’s uncle in Paris. He was a clever politician who could change his style of worship as effortlessly as he changed satin robes. He knew a few important men whose Catholic principles did not extend to their purses. Bribes were paid; a certain postern was left unlocked. Charles and Jeanne de Main escaped from Nantes in the bilge of a rickety fishing boat that almost capsized in the furious waters of the Channel.
In London other Huguenot refugees pointed them toward Carolina. The colony’s professed religious tolerance made it a likely haven for those of their faith. Months later, depressed by the heat and the arrogance he found after he crossed the ocean, the young nobleman wondered whether the journey—or life itself—was worth the effort. Charles Town was not necessarily lucky for those named Charles. Or so he thought then.
He had simplified his last name to Main to demonstrate that he was making a new start in a new land. Soon his pessimism vanished. In Carolina he was free of many of the rules that had constrained him when he bore a title. He took advantage of that.
He had survived torture—his scarred legs and chest testified to it—and he would survive poverty, too. The greedy little lawyer had stolen his lands and his château, but he would own other land and build another great house. Or his descendants would. Provided Jeanne’s body ever yielded him an heir.
Poor Jeanne. Today her gray eyes were as clear and lovely as ever. But a narrow white streak running all the way through her yellow hair betrayed her suffering in prison. So did her sweet-little-girl’s smile, and the way she hummed and laughed in response to any serious question. She recognized her husband sometimes, but she thought they were still living in France. Her mind hadn’t survived as successfully as her body.
The ruin of Jeanne’s mind hadn’t dampened her passion. But their couplings produced no children. That and his own advancing age, kept Charles sleepless many a night. At thirty a man was growing old; at forty he could say he had lived a long life.
The effort of establishing his little trading station at a ford on the Cooper River above Charles Town had changed him physically, too. He no longer resembled an aristocrat. He was still tall, and slightly stooped because of his height. But poverty, work, and strain had blurred his good looks.
His smile, once quick and gay, looked false, even cruel, when it appeared, which was seldom. Gone was any trace of a prideful bearing. He slouched on the back of the little marsh pony that labored under his weight. He had become almost a brutish parody of his former self.
Today, in fact, he hardly resembled a white man. His hair, brown as his eyes, hung to the middle of his back, tied with a scrap of red rag. His skin was as brown as that of any of the eight shackled and half-clothed human beings staggering along in a file behind him. Although the spring morning was intensely hot, Charles wore full-length trousers of deerskin and a jerkin of old, cracked leather. In his beaded belt were two loaded pistols and two knives. A musket rested across his knees. A slaver learned to be cautious and a good shot.
This was the fourth expedition Charles had made to the Cherokee towns in the foothills of the mountains. Without the occasional sale of some Indians he would have failed as a trader. The little post by the river simply didn’t bring in enough income, even though the Charles Town factors took all the furs he could collect from members of the very same tribes he raided on other occasions.
The seven men and one woman trudging in chains were all in their twenties. Handsome, brown people with wiry limbs and the most beautiful black hair he had ever seen. The girl was especially attractive, he thought. She had a fine bosom. He had earlier noticed that she stared at him frequently. No doubt her large, placid eyes concealed a desire to cut his throat.
Charles rode with his back to the captives because he had an assistant, as heavily armed as he, at the rear of the file. His helper was a hulking half-breed apparently sired by some Spaniard who had wandered up from the Floridas. He was a Yamasee Indian from the northern camps of that tribe. He had come to the trading station a year ago, already knowing a bit of French. He claimed to have no ambition other than to make war on the tribes that were hi
s enemies.
He seemed to like working for Charles. Perhaps that was because there were about thirty different tribes scattered through Carolina, and most of them preyed on all the others; hence for the half-breed, who called himself King Sebastian, vocation and avocation became one.
King Sebastian had a villainous face, and like many other Indians, he enjoyed going about in white men’s finery. Today he wore filthy breeches that had once been pink silk, a brocaded bottle-green coat that hung open to show his huge chest running with sweat, and a great frowsy turban ornamented with paste jewels.
King Sebastian relished the work he was doing. Every so often he would jog his pony up beside the captives and jab one or more in the buttocks with his musket. Usually this produced hateful glares, at which times the half-breed liked to chuckle and utter a warning, as he did now: “Careful, little brother, or I will use this fire stick to make you less than a man.”
“And you be careful,” Charles said in French, having halted his pony to let the column straggle by. The scowls and glares of the captives were unusually ferocious, he noticed. “I’d like to deliver this lot to the vendue table intact, thank you very much.”
King Sebastian resented criticism. He took out his anger on the captives, lashing a laggard with a quirt he kept at his belt. Charles reluctantly let it pass.
The vendue table was the local name for the auction block. In this case it was a secret auction block, out in the country above Charles Town. The Indian slave trade had been illegal in the colony for several years, but it was a profitable business and still common.
What made it attractive was the relatively low risk. Charles’s prisoners, for example, had been snatched at gunpoint from a melon patch at twilight. The Cherokees were both warriors and farmers. When surprised in their fields in the foothills, they could be captured with relative ease. Of course danger was never completely absent.
Few Indians died on the trek to the coast, whereas large numbers of blacks imported from Africa via Bridgetown died on the long sea passage. Further, one couldn’t get into the African trade without owning ships, or at least some capital. All Charles owned was his little outpost, his pony, and his guns.
The heat increased. Clouds of tiny insects bedeviled the procession as it wound through the sand hills. The temperature and the dark smudge of woods on the distant horizon told Charles they were approaching the low-lying coastal plain. Another night plus half a day and they should reach the station, where he reluctantly left Jeanne alone each time he went on an expedition.
He was always on edge during these trips. Today, however, he was more than alert; he was nervous. He noticed the girl watching him again. Was she awaiting an opportune moment when she could signal the men to break away? He dropped back and rode beside King Sebastian the rest of the afternoon.
That night they built a campfire, not for warmth but to keep the insects away. King Sebastian took the first turn on watch.
Charles stretched out with his weapons arranged on his chest and closed his eyes. He began to speculate drowsily about rebuilding his fortune. Somehow he must change direction. He wasn’t making any money, only keeping even. Besides, the isolation of the trading station was no good for Jeanne, even in her sorry mental state. She deserved better, and he wanted to give it to her. He loved her deeply.
However, one couldn’t avoid practical considerations. If he did manage to rebuild his estate, who would inherit it? His poor wife, to whom he had remained faithful—it was the only point of decency left in his life—was not only mad, she was barren.
He was nearly asleep when a clink of chain roused him. His eyes came open at the moment King Sebastian uttered his shout of warning.
The half-breed had fallen asleep too; that much was evident from his seated position and the frenzied way he struggled to aim his musket. The eight Indians, their ankle and wrist chains stretched to full length between them, were rushing toward their captors in a line. The girl, third from the right, was dragged along. She was the one forced to leap directly over the fire.
Terrified, Charles grabbed one of the pistols off his belly. Christ Jesus, don’t let the powder be damp from the night air. The pistol didn’t fire. He snatched up the other one.
The Cherokee at the left end of the file had armed himself with a stone. He hurled this at King Sebastian, who was trying to get to his knees and aim his musket at the same time. The half-breed dodged; the stone hit his right temple, not much of a blow, but when his musket boomed, the ball went hissing harmlessly into the dark.
The brave near Charles drove his bare foot down toward his captor’s throat—and would have smashed it if Charles hadn’t rolled onto his left side, raised his right hand, and pulled the trigger. The second pistol fired. The ball went up through the underside of the Indian’s chin and lifted part of the top of his head.
That terrible sight broke the revolt, though the fight didn’t stop immediately. Charles was forced to shoot a second Indian, and King Sebastian killed another with his musket before the other four dragged the girl and the corpses away. The hair of one of the dead men scraped through the embers, smoked, and caught fire.
Charles was trembling. He was sooty with dirt and powder, and spattered with the blood and brain from the first Indian’s head. For supper he had chewed pieces of heavily salted deer meat, which now refused to stay in his stomach.
When he returned from the brush, he found an obviously shaken King Sebastian quirting the braves who were still alive. The half-breed had removed the three dead men from the chain, but he hadn’t bothered with the keys to the cuffs. He had used his knife. Somewhere out in the dark, huge black buzzards were already pecking at the corpses.
The half-breed jerked the girl’s head up by the hair. “I think the bitch needs punishment, too.”
For a moment, gazing down at the sagging bodice of her hide dress, Charles had a clear look at her brown breasts. The sight touched him. Her breasts looked ripe and full of life. Watching King Sebastian warily, she shifted position. The dress fell in place and hid her body.
Charles caught the half-breed’s wrist in midair. In the firelight his blood-streaked face resembled a Cherokee brave’s painted for war.
“You’re the one who needs punishment,” Charles said. “You’re the one who dozed on watch.”
King Sebastian looked as if he might turn on his employer. Charles continued to stare at him. Although the girl didn’t understand the tall man’s French, she understood his meaning. She didn’t dare smile. But there was a flicker of gratitude in her eyes.
A minute passed. Another. The half-breed slapped at a gnat on his neck and looked away. And that settled it.
Except that it didn’t. The incident had profoundly shaken Charles. Even after his watch, when King Sebastian again took over, he couldn’t fall asleep. The brush with death kept reminding him of his lack of sons. Three brothers had died in infancy. One sister had disappeared over the Pyrenees at the start of the time of trouble. He was the last of his line.
When he finally fell asleep, he had strange dreams in which images of the fertile fields of the Cherokees were mixed with visions of the Indian girl’s breasts.
Early the next afternoon they reached the trading station on the Cooper, one of two rivers named for Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, who was one of the original Proprietors.
Jeanne was safe and well. She and Charles walked for half an hour on the riverbank. He kept his arm around her. She babbled childish things while they watched a white heron perch on one leg in the shallows. She deserved better than this. She deserved a fine house, the protection of servants.
In the morning he made preparations to depart for the coast. He intended to leave around noon, with the Indians and some bundles of pelts he had accumulated to trade. On the trip to the secret vendue table he would, as always, avoid the main trails where he and his human contraband might be seen.
A half hour before his departure, Jeanne came rushing into the post with excited cri
es. He could make no sense of her warnings, but King Sebastian soon appeared, looking frightened. The half-breed struggled to find the right words in French.
“Who’s coming?” Charles interrupted. “Gentlemen? Nabobs? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
The frightened Indian nodded and held up one hand with all the fingers extended. “Lot of them.” Charles’s bowels turned watery.
They rushed the slaves to the outbuilding, which was constructed of palmetto logs and cypress planks. Frantically, Charles chained the four men and the girl in one of the pony stalls while King Sebastian tied rags around their mouths. If the prisoners made any outcry, the slaving operation would be discovered and he’d be lost.
The glaring eyes of his captives told him they hoped it would happen. On Charles’s instruction, the half-breed checked all the gags a second time.
To make matters worse, the leader of the party of visitors was a member of the colony’s governing council, an elegant Englishman named Moore. He was traveling into what he termed the “demmed pestilential back country” with four Negro servants, one of whom had some skill in surveying. Moore was looking for land for a summer residence away from the fever-ridden coast.
Moore stayed three hours. Charles was in a state of barely concealed nerves the whole time. Once he heard a thump and a rattle of chain from the outbuilding, but Moore, talking at the time, did not.
When one of the servants spied chains and cuffs under his serving counter, Charles had to do some fast talking. “Took them in trade for a gun,” he lied. “From a suspicious fellow who claimed he was bound for Virginia. Last autumn, it was—”
Moore didn’t give the chains and manacles a second look. With typical arrogance the Englishman occupied himself with a stream of criticism of the weather, the primitive countryside, and the New World in general. By four, when it was slightly cooler, he and his party rode on. Charles poured a heavy drink of warm gin, swallowed it in two gulps, hugged Jeanne, and hurried to the outbuilding.