by Dudley Pope
“Well, I’m glad you are coming with me in the Griffin. I don’t know where we’re going, mind you, but I guarantee we’ll all agree before we land!”
Then he walked to the northern group, who stood sheepishly, expecting the rough edge of Yorke’s tongue. Instead he said simply: “Thank you for all you have done. Saxby will pay you what is due to you. I hope –”
“We should be paid orf in full,” snarled one man. “Four years, five pun, that’s what the paper says.”
Knowing this was one of the troublemaking trio, Yorke asked quietly: “How long have you served, then?”
“That’s not the point, I know my –”
“How long have you served?” Yorke persisted.
“Well, only three months, but I’d –”
“Three months out of four years. Well, you had the choice: you have terminated your indenture, not I, so anything paid you is a gift. Think about it.”
One of the other men whispered: “Shut yore big mouff, Wedgewood. You ’aven’t done a full day’s work yet, let alone free months!”
Yorke turned away, knowing that Saxby would soon have the Griffin loaded, and walked back to the house, where his horse was still saddled and waiting patiently in the shade of the stable. Now for the hard part, he thought to himself.
Chapter Three
Wilson’s plantation was a few miles to the south towards Bridgetown and, surrounding Valiant Fort on the coast, was part of a large sandy area that made up much of St James’s Parish. It was plain irony that the next fort south along the coast was called Royalist Fort (General Venables will soon change that, Yorke thought), but plain stupidity had led Wilson to buy the plantation in the first place.
By the time Wilson arrived on the island, there were few large estates still available, but the one that wise men left well alone was called the Bennery. The sandy soil and few trees had led Wilson to conclude that it would be easier to clear the land. This was true, of course, but once cleared, very little would grow.
Wilson listened to no advice and planted tobacco. To be sure, the Dutch would be eager to buy every leaf if the quality was good, but it had been one of the first crops planted years earlier in Barbados – and had never been a success.
Wilson’s crop had been harvested and dried, and when smoked even he had to admit its only use was to burn to windward of a hammaco at night, or in a room to keep the mosquitoes and sandflies away. Whether smoked in a pipe or rolled into a cigar, it tasted dry and earthy; there was no comparison between it and the rich tobacco being grown in one area of the Spanish Main, and up in Virginia. No English or Dutch merchant would think of buying it; even Wilson’s friends declined it as gifts.
Such a man was too stubborn and stupid to cut his losses and change to sugar or cotton. Older and wiser men suggested cotton, but Wilson again planted tobacco, producing a second crop that was, if anything, earthier.
Then, having wasted more than two years, he finally changed to cotton, an expensive crop to harvest with indentured servants, but initially even more expensive using negroes. A white servant cost only £5 and his keep for a four-year indenture, and a man as unscrupulous as Wilson usually claimed misbehaviour and extended it to five years and then finally made the man’s life such a misery that he deserted before his £5 was due, having worked four years for only his keep. White men, however, were not good at the work because of the heat, which often affected their health, but they were cheap. The negroes were good at the work, when overseers watched them and threatened them with a whip, but a good black male bought from a Dutchman cost £20 and an overseer was also needed because negroes spoke no English and had curious customs.
So Yorke understood only too well why Wilson coveted Kingsnorth, one of the largest plantations on the island, already producing steadily both sugarcane and cotton, well supplied with water from wells, with a strongly built stone estate house, and belonging to a Royalist family.
The Civil War had made Wilson (and others like him) realize that the sooner its full effects came to Barbados the better: Roundhead friends of his in England were now the proud owners of large estates which, confiscated from their Royalist owners by Parliament, were sold off to Roundheads for nominal sums, or given as rewards. Why, Wilson never tired of saying, could not the same thing be done in Barbados? It was high time Cromwell and Parliament rewarded their supporters!
The sun was now directly overhead; Yorke could see his horse’s shadow only by bending over sideways and looking beneath it. Wilson’s estate house was large and pretentious but built of clapboard which the relentless termites and white ants were already destroying, so that even from a distance one could see dark stripes where planks had slipped down, the termites having eaten away the wood holding the nails. However, Wilson made little secret of why he did not bother to have the house repaired: the one he was determined to get was built of coral stone…
By now, Yorke anticipated, Wilson should be noisily inebriated in the St Stephen’s Tavern, the largest (and shabbiest) on the waterfront overlooking the little port and generally reckoned to be the headquarters for the Parliamentarians. Years ago the island Assembly had its regular meetings there but the strict Puritans among them had complained, particularly because it was between two noisily cheerful brothels, so now the Assembly met at the governor’s house and congratulated itself on the improvement.
As the Wilson house came in sight, Ned felt the usual excitement, but now there was also an underlying fear, an apprehension. He had to leave the island with the Griffin and servants: there was no question about that. To stay risked being shipped back to England as a prisoner of State, at best as a hostage for his now absent father and brother, at worst a prisoner on his own account because he would never join the Commonwealth cause. So leaving the island – escaping in fact – was necessary if he was going to keep his freedom.
Yet leaving Barbados was not so easy. He could leave a large plantation and an estate house which had been his home for the past four years and not feel the slightest regret: the estate was the same as any other, the house had been simply accommodation, a lonely building. The island itself was so flat that it was little more than an earthen dish, albeit skirted by some remarkable beaches. But most other Caribbee islands were more beautiful, mountainous and capped by rainforests.
The reason why Barbados was difficult to leave was contained in Wilson’s house. He slid off his horse at the front door and gave the reins to a waiting servant.
“The mistress is in,” the man said, and dropping his voice asked: “Be it true that Cromwell is sending a fleet against us, sir?”
Yorke knew the man well from scores of previous visits. “Yes – or at least,” he added cautiously, “a Parliamentary fleet has left England bound for here.”
The man, Bullock, paled under the deep tan. “They took me at Edgehill and transported me; now they’re coming again. ’Ow about you, sir?”
“I hope I’ll be gone by the time they arrive.”
“The mistress, sir. My wife and I worry a deal about ’er. He gets worse every day. Once he knows there’s Cromwell’s fleet anchored ’ere, I fear for ’er life. For all our lives, once he’s got rumbullion inside him. Excuse me speaking out like this, sir; there ain’t no one else we can trust to talk to and get advice.”
Yorke saw sincerity in the man’s eyes and became aware that the wife had come out from the front door and was red-eyed from weeping. The two of them waited for him to speak; there was a silence broken only by the snuffling of the horse and the sharp song of a grackle strutting a few yards away, a long-tailed version of an English blackbird, cheeky and unconcerned. He decided to trust them because they had proved their discretion.
“I’m leaving the island with my people. We sail tomorrow – secretly. You can guess why I’ve ridden over now.”
They both nodded but a moment later the woman burst into tears
again, sobbing to herself. “But she’ll never leave him, sir; she just puts up with all his hittin’ and cussin’. It’s her being French, I suppose.”
“T’aint,” the husband said grimly. “Leastways, t’is and t’aint. She’s got nowhere else to go; that’s why she puts up with it.”
The woman wiped away the tears and looked up at Yorke, a question in her eyes.
Yorke nodded and answered it. “Yes, if she’ll agree. That’s why I’ve ridden over.”
“It’ll be no sin, sir; the sin would be for her to stay, because that man is wicked to the marrow of his bones,” the woman said. “All of us ’ere think the same, sir. If it goes on much longer ’e’ll wake up one day to find ’isself dead.”
“Hush up, Mary,” her husband said hurriedly as Yorke went into the house.
He called her name as he went through the door. She was sitting on a high stool beside the window on the west side of the room, cooled by the breeze. When she looked up and saw Ned she smiled contentedly, put down her lace and the frame and wooden bobbins and stood up.
“I did not realize it was you,” she said quietly, her voice husky, each word pronounced with the care of someone speaking a language not her own.
He reached out for her but she stepped back. “No, Edouard – the servants.”
“They are outside – I’ve just been talking to them.”
She smiled again and leaned her head forward. “In fact I was concerned for my lace. Kiss my cheek.”
He kissed her and began collecting up the bobbins.
“Put this down. I have to talk to you.”
“My lace hardly stops you talking,” she said.
“Don’t be so French and so practical.”
“Mon cher Edouard, you look so fierce and stern I do not think I want to hear what you have to say.”
She sat on the stool again. Her hair, fine ash-blonde, was combed back from her face and caught in a knot at the back, leaving long ringlets at the side that spiralled to her shoulders. She defied the Roundhead fashion of covering her hair in a scarf.
Her dress was a royal blue, made of stiff silk, the square neck cut low and edged with a fine white lace that matched the long cuffs. The front of the dress was drawn back in the current fashion to show a finely embroidered petticoat beneath. He remembered seeing her embroidering it a few weeks ago.
He liked her hair combed like this: it emphasized her profile. Her beauty was not classical; it was warmer than that. Her eyes were spaced just that much further apart than a pedantic portrait artist would specify, but would he capture the golden flecks in the grey which was always changing to reflect her mood, whether gay or sombre? And the cheekbones were high, joining a nose which the artist would say although perfectly shaped was too small. But the mouth, Ned thought for the thousandth time as he watched her securing the bobbins, was both generous and beautiful; the lips had colour and warmth; there was none of that narrowness that he saw in many women’s faces, where the lips seemed specially formed for revealing jealousy or meanness.
“There,” she said, putting the last of her lace work and the attached bobbins into a cloth bag and drawing the string closed. “For someone who has something to say, you are very quiet.”
“I’m quite content to sit and watch you.” This, said banteringly, was perfectly true, but he knew that this time he was only putting off a difficult task, something which she sensed and was obviously trying to reassure him.
“You did not go to Bridgetown?”
“No, but John Alston did and called in on his way back.”
“You had letters from England?” She spoke the words lightly, but he knew she was trying to help him.
“My father wrote.”
“Is he well?”
“He is in France with my brother.”
Her eyebrows lifted but otherwise she was motionless. “They have joined the Prince?”
“Probably, but that was not the main reason they fled.”
“What happened?”
“You understand ‘compounding’?”
“I think so. A Royalist is allowed to keep his property if he pays a large sum of money to Cromwell. To Parliament,” she corrected herself.
“Yes, but there is also…well, paying it has a…”
“A stigma? Obviously a man who ‘compounds’ is buying his safety at the price of his honour, no?”
Yorke shrugged his shoulders in the face of such logic: she had a disconcerting way of going to the centre of a problem. “Well, I think so, and apparently my father does. But other Royalist landowners, some of the most powerful, have thought otherwise.”
“They are wrong,” Aurelia said firmly. “What happens when the King returns to the throne?”
Again, Ned shrugged his shoulders. “When will that be? We will be old folk by then.”
Aurelia murmured an answer but as her face was turned away from him he asked her to repeat it, which she did, again without turning her head.
“Look at me, beloved,” Ned said, “at the moment you are talking to the birds outside.”
Then he remembered her hair had not been done in quite the usual style: it was slightly different on the right side.
“Look at me!”
She turned slightly so that he could see her eyes.
He stood up suddenly and walked over to her and, holding her gently by the shoulders, turned her so that he could see the right side of her face.
An angry, reddish-blue bruise covered the ear and part of the throat beneath it. She had tied the knot of her hair more to the right and left more ringlets dangling in an effort to hide it.
“When?” Ned demanded.
“It does not matter, chéri; it is nothing. I bruise easily – you know that.”
“What happened?”
“I angered him: it was my fault.”
“How did you anger him?”
“Oh Ned! Please, it is of no importance.”
“Tell me, my love, or I shall ask the servants.”
“You must do no such thing!”
Ned took his hands from her shoulders and turned towards the door.
“No, Ned. It was nothing. He was upset and – well, he had been drinking. He came back from the town, and supper was not ready. Yes, that was it. It made him angry. He was hungry after a busy day.”
He held her shoulders again and forced her to meet his eyes. “Why was he upset?”
“Well, he was not upset at first; he was excited. What I said made him angry, and he hit me. I do not blame him.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, it is of no importance, chéri; please forget it.”
“Was it about me?”
“No!”
She answered too quickly to be convincing. “About Kingsnorth, then?”
“Peut-être, but you give it an importance it does not have.”
Ned could now guess what had happened and picture the scene. Wilson had been down at the town yesterday and heard rumours from the captain of the William and Mary. He had heard of Penn’s fleet, and he had seen this as bringing him the chance of owning Kingsnorth within a few weeks. On his return home, drunk as usual, he had made some sneering remark to Aurelia.
He pushed her back gently so that she was again sitting on the stool, and said quietly: “I am leaving Kingsnorth tomorrow.”
She went white, then her eyes seemed to be looking up at the beams of the roof, and then she slid to the floor.
Ned was about to shout for help when he realized that she had merely fainted and, he thought angrily, that was hardly surprising considering how crudely he had given her his news. He knelt and supported her head. Two or three minutes later her eyes opened and Ned thought of holding a frightened animal and seeing its eyes.
&nb
sp; “Oh Ned, I am so sorry. I suddenly felt unwell. I – yes, help me up, I can stand.” She kicked at a petticoat caught under her heel, and a moment later was again sitting on the stool, her hands clasped.
“Breathe deeply,” he said.
After three or four minutes she said: “You were saying that you are leaving Kingsnorth tomorrow. Do you mean you are leaving the island?”
“Wilson must have told you last night that Cromwell is sending out a fleet against the Spanish. It is due any day, looking for recruits. It will send out pressgangs to force men to serve. And apart from all that, my father warns that they’ll arrest me.”
By now she was holding his hand and bending her head to hide tears.
“So I’ve asked my servants to sail with me and they are loading the Griffin with provisions.”
“They agreed to come with you?”
“Most of the men and all the women.”
“Led by the famous Martha.”
He grinned. “Martha led them all, men and women.”
“So now…now you come to say goodbye, Edouard. Or au revoir.”
“No. I’ve come to ask you to pack a few clothes in a single bag, with any little treasures you have, and be ready for me to fetch you at noon tomorrow.”
The silence in the house was so complete he could hear a beam creak from the heat of the sun. A finch perched on the window ledge, looking for sugar that Aurelia often sprinkled there. The bird found a few grains lodged in a split in the wood and pecked at them and the tapping alarmed a lizard nearby.
Finally Aurelia looked up at him, but her eyes were shut and brimming with tears. “No, my darling, I cannot come with you. I am married to another man. This you know. I cannot break my marriage vows. We have argued about that so often before.”
“But darling heart, you know why he married you! Your money paid for this plantation and much more. He has broken his marriage vows. Why, even now he is probably with that creole whore of his. And he hits you.”
“But I married him, Edouard. ‘Until death us do part’.”