Black Dawn

by Christopher Nicole

  Dick turned, watched the black people trailing up the hill. Even after sixteen years and at a distance he could make out the giant figure of Absolom.

  'Mr Harris,' he shouted. 'Mr Barker. To me.'

  The grave was only half dug. The two lawyers dropped their spades and ran back to the house.

  'Inside, Cartarette, Mama.' There was no arguing with the bite in his tone. The two women hurried inside. 'Mr Harris, Mr Barker, your muskets, if you please.' He himself stood at the head of the outer steps, watched the men coming towards him. He tucked his thumbs into his belt where the butts of his pistols were close to hand. But he possessed only two bullets. He took a long breath. 'Good morning, Absolom. Remember me?'

  They stopped, about thirty yards away. He estimated there were perhaps fifty of them. But the rest, numbering more than a thousand, were watching from a distance.

  'You is Mr Dick?' Absolom asked. 'Them boys saying you done change.'

  'I am Mr Dick,' Dick said. 'I am come back to live here. I shall not go again. Mr Tony will not be back.'

  Absolom and Jeremiah exchanged glances, looked at their fellows.

  'And the mistress?' someone asked.

  'If you mean Mr Tony's wife, she will not be back either,' Dick said.

  Absolom came forward, alone. 'A boy done come,' he said. 'But an hour gone. He saying all Jamaica in arms. He saying the day is here, to kill all the white folk, to burn all the plantation, to make Jamaica a free country for us black people, just like Haiti.' He pointed, at where Josh had swung. 'He saying now the reverend man done dead, there ain't nothing more to be done with the white people.'

  He paused for breath.

  'Is that man still here?' Dick asked.

  'He gone for to raise the next plantation. But he saying them boys marching. He saying there does be thousand and thousand, and they getting musket and thing. He saying they ain't stopping until they taking Kingston itself. He saying we got for join with him. He saying they going be here this afternoon.'

  'It is afternoon now,' Dick said.

  'They going be here soon.'

  'You listen, man, Mr Dick,' Jeremiah said.

  The faint howl of the conches could be heard, wailing in the hills. And behind that, a deep roar, like a turbulent sea. Or an army of marching men.

  How it made his blood tingle.

  'Why are you telling me this?' Dick asked. 'Why are you not already murdering me and my people, and taking our weapons?'

  Jeremiah looked embarrassed, glanced at Absolom.

  'Man, Mr Dick, sir, we ain't got no grudge with you. You did treat us right when you here,' Absolom said. 'But you must see we got for go with them boys. So what I am saying to you is, mount up and ride back out. Get down to Kingston and take ship, and take them white people with you, or they's all going to get chop up.'

  'You want to do this?' Dick asked. 'You want to fight? Be sure a great number of you will be killed. Be sure that your women and children will starve. Be sure that there will be many white soldiers to fight you. I have lived sixteen years in Haiti. I have fought with Christophe and Boyer. I have seen people die, and people starve. In Haiti, it was necessary. Here it is not necessary. Listen to me. There has been an election in England. A new government is in power and that government is dedicated to freeing slaves. You will be free men, within five years. I promise you that. I promise you more. Remain faithful to me, and you will be free men sooner than that. Go to war with these revolutionaries, and you will be killed. You will be hunted into the mountains, and you will starve. If you are caught you will be hanged.'

  Absolom and Jeremiah exchanged glances. 'Man, Mr Dick, we knowing what you say, but we got for . . .'

  'Why?'

  'Man, Mr Dick, them boys coming. Thousand and thousand.'

  'They have to pass here,' Dick said. 'They cannot leave Hilltop in our hands. They must take this house, before they can go down to Kingston.'

  'Man, Mr Dick, sir, then they going burn this house, and they going kill everybody what ain't joining up with them.'

  'With thirty men I will hold this house against an army,' Dick said.

  'Thirty men?' Absolom looked around him as if expecting them to materialize out of the ground.

  'You pick them, Absolom. Thirty men, who will be prepared to fight and if need be to die. For their freedom. Because that will be your reward.'

  Absolom licked his lips.

  'And what about them others?' Jeremiah asked. 'There is no room in here, and I have weapons for only thirty. Send your people into the canefields. Tell them to go far from the village, and hide there. Tell them to take food, and some buckets of water, and to stay there until the battle is over.'

  'Man,' Jeremiah said. 'We all going get kill.'

  'You are going to get killed for sure, if you rebel,’ Dick said. 'I am giving you a chance to live. I am giving you a chance to let your women and your children live, as well.' He pointed at Absolom. 'Thirty men, Absolom. The best you have. I want them here in half an hour. Melchior, get back on your coach and ride for town. Tell the Governor what has happened, and that we are defending the House. Tell him I reckon we can hold for twenty-four hours. Hurry man.'

  He went inside.

  'Will they light?' Suzanne asked. 'Against their fellows?' 'They'll fight,' Dick said.

  'But those men know nothing of weapons,' Cartarette said.

  'Neither do the men who will attack us,' Dick said. 'And we will have firearms. A noise, at the least.' He smiled at her. 'No dragoons, sweetheart. But men with a dream. They'll fight.'

  It rained at three o'clock. This was usual for the time of year. The clouds swung low over the Great House, and the steady patter of water cascaded off the roof, trickled along the gutters, filled the fresh water vats which were situated at each corner of the building. The teeming water made a mist which clouded the hills around the valley, obscured even the village, left the factory chimney a shadow. And shut in the Great House behind a wall of sound. The noise of the conch shells died, as did the rumble of people.

  There was little conversation inside the house. Boscawen carried round food, and the men ate at their posts. Absolom had picked well, and the thirty slaves were big and strong and eager. And embarrassed, to find themselves actually inside the Great House. The furniture, the piano and the tables and the chairs, had been pushed against the inner walls and covered with dust sheets. The men knelt or sat, two to each window, ten to a side; Harris commanded the south face, Barker the east; Dick himself commanded the north and west faces, from where the insurgents were expected. He had recruited an additional ten of the most alert women, to help Suzanne and Cartarette with the loading. They had rehearsed and seemed reasonably proficient. As he had sixty muskets, with adequate service he hoped to maintain a fairly consistent fire. So, then, he was defending Hilltop, the first Hilton ever to do so. And against people he wished only to help. But there was no other way. He had discovered much to admire in Haiti. But there had been even more to hate and fear, forty years after the blacks had taken their freedom by force. If these people could be made to wait, for just a little while, to receive their freedom as a human right, the tragedies might be avoided, the triumphs still achieved.

  But how ironic that he must kill, where he wanted only peace.

  He walked the verandahs, talking to his men, reminding them of his instructions, of the orders he would give them. Looking over the canefields meant nothing, now. Every moment the insurgents delayed increased the house's chance of survival.

  And at dusk, when Boscawen served supper, they still had not come.

  'Tell me of 1791,' Cartarette said. 'Why?' Suzanne asked. 'It was terrible.' 'I would like to know.'

  Suzanne sighed. 'There were forty men in the house. But the blacks would not be stopped. They swarmed up the patios, broke down the door. It was really very quick. Do you remember anything of it, Dick?'

  'I remember Aunt Georgiana screaming,' Dick said, and walked to the window. All the shutters had been clo
sed, save one, facing north. Outside it was already dark.

  'This time,' he said, 'if they get inside, you must kill yourselves. I may not be able to get to you.'

  'I will not kill myself,' Cartarette said.

  'Mama . . .'

  'Nor will I permit your mother to murder me, Dick.'

  His turn to sigh. 'Aye. Well. . .' he had expected nothing different. Not from Cartarette. He did not even suppose she would scream, when they cut her body. But that thought made him sweat, made him fume with impotent rage. It must not happen. And only he could stop it. Unless the military came. But the troopers had more than enough to do.

  The air cooled, the night grew darker, some of the men slept. Dick watched the clock. At midnight he almost made himself believe they had, after all, been bypassed.

  Suzanne went upstairs to bed. Cartarette slept in a chair. Dick watched her face in the glimmering candlelight. When she slept she regained her youth, was again the girl who had been his slave. Who Gislane had tied to the lovebed. A woman to love.

  His head jerked. There was again sound, seeping through the morning. The wailing of a conch shell, but close at hand.

  He closed the shutter, bolted it. Suzanne came down the stairs. Cartarette sat up. 'You'll take to the cellar if the house burns,' he said. 'And make your move the moment you hear a door break. Promise me.'

  The women hesitated, looking at each other.

  'We promise, Dick.'

  'Aye, you've children, Cartarette. Remember them. And you have a husband, Mama. Remember him.' He walked round the walls. 'They are close. Check your priming. No man is to go outside, and no man is to show himself more than enough to fire his weapon. They will not know how many we have inside, what they have to beat. Remember what I have told you. Point the musket at their bellies, and squeeze the trigger. The ladies will load for you.'

  The slaves fingered their weapons in bewilderment.

  Dick went into the front hall, found Harris. Between them they opened the door.

  'What is your plan?' Harris breathed deeply.

  'To hold.'

  'You have done this before?'

  Dick shook his head. 'My family has. Our history is nothing but holding. But we have made mistakes. Our plantation Green Grove in Antigua, was overrun by Caribs, a hundred and fifty years ago. Christopher Hilton made the mistake of trying to gain the maximum fire power. He assembled his men on the front verandah. His first volley halted the Indians, but before he could reload, his men were scattered and the house was taken. My uncle-in-law, Louis Corbeau, made the same mistake in St Domingue, in 1791. We will sit behind our windows, and sit and sit.'

  'They will destroy your plantation,' Harris said. 'They will do that anyway.' Dick pointed. Flames flickered in the canefields.

  How many? He levelled his telescope; the nearest field was over a mile away. Hundreds? Thousands? He caught the glint of steel. But only machetes.

  Flames clouded the sky. Cartarette stood beside him, her fingers tight on his arm. She knew the worst that could happen to a woman, should the house be overrun. Or did she consider him the worst that could happen? He had not raised the question of her happiness since that night on the boat.

  People were pouring out of the burning canefields. Many men, dark-skinned and dark-faced. They flooded towards the slave village, and paused there, giving shrill shouts and yells, punctuated with peals of near hysterical laughter. They could not believe what they were doing. In their hearts, they knew they were committing suicide.

  'Inside,' he commanded, and they obeyed. Cartarette gave his arm a last squeeze and withdrew to the drawing room. Dick walked up and down behind his men crouching at the loop-holed shutters in the dining room, and beyond, in the kitchen. The kitchen, built away from the main building to reduce the risk of fire, formed a salient. It was the most vulnerable part of the house, a relatively small area which could be assailed from three sides at once. Here he had seven men, and here Suzanne would act as loader.

  He stooped to a loophole, looked down the hillside. Flames began to issue from the village. They had got over their surprise at discovering it empty. And men were coming up the bill, pausing at the white town, to break down doors and rampage through houses, to destroy the church. They were revolting in the name of a Baptist parson; they regarded the established church as their enemy. The factory would be next. This day's damage would take half of next year's crop to put right; this year there would be no crop at all.

  The noise was loud now, shrieking voices, loud laughter, the crashings and hangings of a hundred homes being destroyed. Cartarette's fingers were back on his shoulders. 'Why do they not come?'

  He straightened. 'You aren't afraid?'

  'Oh, aye. I'm afraid,' she said. 'Yesterday there seemed so much to live for.'

  'There is more today. They'll soon be here. Do not let these people see your fear.'

  She gave a grimace, and returned to the drawing room. Dick looked through the loophole once again, watched the flames in the factory. They were burning the roof, because they could not burn the machinery. A pall of smoke lay over the town, mingled with the smoke drifting down from the canefields; he could not see it in the dark, but he could smell it. Come dawn, Hilltop would be marked for miles, by the smoke drifting over it. But how many plantations would be similarly marked?

  The first man came up the hill. He walked confidently, wearing only cotton drawers, swinging a cutlass, holding a bottle from which he drank from time to time. The village and the town was deserted. No doubt the house was similarly empty, even if the shutters were closed.

  Others came behind him. But he was a good way in front. Time. There was the essence. How to make them withdraw for another hour.

  Dick stood up. 'No man fires until I tell him to,' he called. 'I will see to that one.'

  He walked through the hall, boots dull on the parquet floor. He opened the front door, signalled Boscawen to stand close, to shut it again at a signal.

  He took a long breath, stepped on to the verandah. He remembered the morning before he had assaulted the frontier post, and found Cartarette. Then he had wondered what it must feel like, to watch death and destruction approaching, to know there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He had wondered, then, if he would be afraid, if he would truly be a brave man, until he had known that experience.

  And here it was. And he was not afraid. Only preoccupied, with all the things that must be done, with the importance of this first shot.

  The man stopped, twenty feet from the steps, gazed at the white man.

  'Throw down your machete,' Dick called. 'Tell your friends to surrender. Or they will die.'

  The slave looked past Dick at the opened door, the darkened hallway. His head turned, left and right. Dick could read the thoughts passing through his brains as if they were printed. No horses, no people that he could see. A white man, but the town was empty. Just one white man.

  The slave turned his head to look over his shoulder. His friends were coming closer, and more and more people were moving up the hill. The town burned merrily now; the crash of the factory roof as it fell in boomed across the morning.

  'Aiiieeeee,' screamed the slave, and ran at the steps. It occurred to Dick that he must have sounded just like that, when leading his cavalry into the charge. But his thought, and the black man's scream, were already history. His arm was levelled, the pistol was kicking against his fingers, black smoke was eddying into his face. The man had reached the steps when the ball struck him square in the chest, at a range of eight feet. His head went back and both arms went up. The machete arced through the air behind him. His chest exploded into red, and he hit the earth with his shoulder blades.

  The crowd moving up the hill checked. But it would only be for an instant. Dick stepped inside, and Boscawen slammed the door. Dick dropped the heavy bolts into place, looked back at the house, the tense faces; Cartarette, standing in the centre of the drawing room, a musket in each hand. Suzanne, looking through from the pantry,
Barker and Harris, staring at him. Of them all, only he had ever killed in battle. Only he and Cartarette and Suzanne had ever been under fire.

  'Hold,' he said. 'And wait.' He stood by the front door, watched the black army swarming up the hill, spreading out as they ran to cover the house from every angle, forming a gigantic enveloping movement.

  'Present,' he shouted. 'But hold.'

  There was an explosion from the drawing room.

  'Hold, God damn you,' he yelled. 'Change your weapon. Reload, Cartarette, Reload. Hold.'

  The black men reached the top, panting now, waving their cutlasses; they had all been at the rum. A man climbed over the verandah rail, screaming at the wooden shutters, for the first time noticing that every loophole contained a musket barrel. Now he was joined by his fellows. The verandah was full, and creaking. The first man banged at the front door. At this range a blind man could not miss.

  'Fire,' Dick screamed. 'Change your weapons.'

  The entire house shook. The crash of the explosions whanged around his ears, and he was surrounded in a seemingly solid cloud of powder smoke, turning his face and hands as black as his assailants. Yet even the noise of the explosions was drowned by the unearthly screams from outside.

  'Present,' Dick bawled, the noise ringing in his ears. He left the door, and ran round the house. 'Present,' he bawled, slapping men on the shoulders to bring them back to their, senses. 'Present.'

  The fresh muskets went back through the loopholes. Cartarette and her aides were already gathering the used weapons, cramming ball down the barrels, thudding away with their rods, while her titian hair tumbled about her ears; it too was streaked with black powder.

  Dick stooped by a loophole, gazed at a scene of destruction not even his experienced eyes could remember. Men lay dead and dying all over the verandah; blood ran into hollows and dripped under the rail. Those left were still standing, dazed, one or two already edging back. 'Fire,' Dick shouted again.