Kit realized he would not hold his people here. 'Aye,' he said. 'Withdraw, lads, into the house. We'll fire from shelter. In you go, Marguerite, for God's sake.'
She still stared at the Caribs, as if she would destroy them by the very venom of her hate. But now she moved for the door, and at the sight Indian Warner pointed his sword at the house, and yelled an order.
The Caribs surged forward in a long peal of angry inhumanity. The overseers, getting to their feet to withdraw into the doorway, stared at their foes for a fraction of a second, and then uttered a howl of their own. But this one was of fear, and their muskets hit the floor in unison as they crowded through the doorway, wailing their terror. Desperately Kit ran behind them, thrusting men aside as he reached the door itself, finding it blocked by a body. But this was immediately dragged aside. Kit looked up, stared at George Frederick.
'You should be in the cellar,' he said.
'You give me a sword, Captin,' George Frederick said. ‘I’s fighting with you.'
The door boomed shut as the first Carib reached the verandah, and bolts thudded into place. But still the morning was hideous with the whoops of the red men outside, with the terrified screams of the white men within. For they had continued on their way, to the pantry, and there had wrenched open the trap to the cellar, and were pouring down the stone steps with all the haste they could manage.
'By Christ.' Kit drew his sword, and ran across the dining-room. 'You'll return,' he shouted. He straddled the stairway, elbowing Burn out of the way. 'I'll run through the last man up.'
A musket butt slammed his skull, and he fell forward, on to his hands and knees. He crouched there, shaking his head, and was kicked in the ribs, to go rolling across the floor. Dimly he heard Marguerite's voice, shouting desperate commands, then she was behind him, raising his head. 'Kit,' she gasped. 'Kit?'
'Go with them,' he muttered. 'For Christ's sake, go with them.'
'And you,' she said. 'Come on, Kit. Up, for God's sake.'
He struggled to his knees, and listened to the clang of the trap. He flung himself across the floor, battered on the inches-thick wood. 'Open up,' he yelled. 'Open up. Your mistress is out here.'
She knelt beside him, panting, tearing at the wood with her fingers, striking it with her closed fists. 'The curs,' she moaned. 'The filthy curs.'
Glass shattered behind them, and the whooping filled the entire house. Kit grasped his sword, turned round, and faced Indian Warner.
Easy enough to recognize, certainly, for all his nakedness. Tall; far taller than his half-brother, and thin, with ribs showing against the smooth pale brown of his flesh, but heavily muscled too, at thigh and bicep and shoulder. But it was the face which was unmistakable, the features softly rounded, so unlike the sharpness of the more typical red men about him. But the roundness was tempered with the Warner steel, and the eyes, a pair of blue stars in the surrounding darkness, stared at Marguerite as though she were a scorpion. And directed the right hand, extended to full length, and ending in a pistol.
'You'll drop your sword,' he said. 'Or shall I shoot her in the belly?'
'She is your niece,' Kit said. 'Do you not know that?'
Indian Warner smiled. His lips seemed to ripple away from the sharpened teeth. 'Oh, indeed, my niece,' he said. 'I know that, white man. I know that.'
'Kill him,' Marguerite whispered. 'Kill him now. Let us die together. Kill him, Kit, as you love me.'
But the moment's hesitation had been a moment too long. Already hands were scrabbling at Kit's shoulders, other red bodies clouding between himself and the chieftain. And there were red hands on Marguerite's body as well. The sword fell to the floor.
'She is right, white man,' Indian Warner said. 'You could have killed me then. And you would have suffered no more than you suffer now. But she must watch.' He gave an order in his own language, and Kit was half thrust, half carried across the dining-room and to the foot of the stairs. Here the banisters were almost as high as a man, and against these he was placed. Rawhide cords were produced, and his arms carried behind his back and the wrists secured. Another cord went round his neck, and was made fast to the banisters, and another round his waist, so that he was held upright, and was yet unable to move. He gasped for breath, and attempted to face his tormentors without flinching. But he knew now what they intended. He could remember Susan's stories clearly enough.
The knives were already out, and he closed his eyes. But the time was not yet. They were merely stripping the clothes from his body, the very boots from his feet, all with exquisite care, to leave not a scratch on his flesh. For that privilege must lie with the cacique. Slowly he inhaled, and allowed the air to hiss through his nostrils, and wanted to weep. For suddenly he looked at Marguerite, held in front of him.
'Oh, God,' she whispered. 'Oh, God.'
Indian Warner stood at her shoulder, his fingers thrust into her hair, so that as he chose he could bend her head back to make her eyes stare into his. And now he chose. 'You love him, this man of yours?'
'Oh, God,' she said. 'Your fight is with me. With mine. He is no part of it.'
'Has he not shared your body, shared your love, shared your hate? Will you not partake of his body now?'
Her mouth sagged open as she stared up at him, her head pulled so far back Kit could see the convulsions of her throat.
'Then hate me,' he said. 'Let her go. Do the Warners make war upon women?'
The blue eyes seemed to impale him, and the woman's hair was slowly released. 'Love,' Indian Warner said. 'A loving couple. There is a rare sight. You would die for each other.
Then you shall, die for each other.' He smiled at Kit. 'For how may a white man die, how may a gentleman die, how may a planter die, white man, more cruelly than in watching his wife violated before his own eyes? Answer me that, white man.'
'You'd rape your own niece?' Kit demanded.
'Niece.' The hands were back at her hair, twisting her face this way and that. 'I'd not touch her body, save with a burning brand. That I shall do. But that you shall not see. Your vision, your last vision, white man, will be that of your woman enjoying the embraces of another. For you will enjoy it, sweet Marguerite.' Again the tug, and the flop of her mouth as she gasped for breath. Tom Warner smiled down at her. 'Fetch me that black fellow we found by the door.'
Three of the Indians brought a struggling George Frederick across the room. 'I ain't done nothing, suh,' he said. 'I ain't done nothing. You know I ain't no planter, suh.'
'I know that, black man,' Tom Warner said. 'I know that you are a slave. I was a slave once, black man. I have known the lash.' Again the savage tug. 'Her father gave me the lash, with his own hands. So now you will take your revenge.' The orders were given in Indian, and the fingers released Marguerite's hair.
Those fingers, but there were too many others. For just an instant her head came forward, and she stared at Kit, and then she was on the floor at his feet, as Susan had once been, on the floor of her own house. But how kind, how gentle, how humane, were the Spaniards by comparison with these naked warriors? And in only seconds she was as naked as they, spread-eagled on the floor, a red man kneeling on each wrist and each ankle, her breasts inflating as she gasped for breath, her belly fluttering in its pelvic cage, the muscles of her thighs twisting as she stared at her uncle. Yet she had spoken not a word, uttered not a cry. Her eyes spoke for her.
'Take her,' Indian Warner commanded. 'Take her, black man, until your loins can do no more.'
'She?' George Frederick's voice went up an octave. 'Oh, no, suh, no, suh. Not the mistress, suh. I ain't going harm the mistress, suh. Oh, no, suh, I can't do that.'
'Take her,' Tom Warner commanded. 'And you shall live.
I give you my word on that. You shall return with us to Dominica, not as a slave, but as a member of my people. You shall have honours heaped upon your head. Refuse me this, and you shall die, but slowly, and your blood will yet drip upon that body you fear to touch. Choose.'
Geo
rge Frederick stared at the chieftain, and his eyes slowly dropped to the trembling body at his feet. For the moment he was ruled by fear, of the future no less than of the past, and was thus less than a man. But as Marguerite continued to fight her captors, and got one leg free, to kick in the air, and half roll on her side, to dominate even the horror of the morning with white buttock and brown hair, fear diminished beneath an irresistible lust.
'You got for see, mistress,' he said. 'I can't just die so, mistress.'
Marguerite's gaze had turned from her uncle to her slave, and George Frederick closed his eyes. Kit wished also to close his eyes, and yet he too was impaled upon the hate emanating from the slight white glory which was his dearest possession. And so he stared, while the Caribs whooped their amusement, and Tom Warner smiled. Kit stared, not at the black upon white, not at the eyes, not at the rigidly clamped mouth, but instead at the right hand, held immobile by the red foot on her wrist, but still clenched and clenched, and clenched, so that before George Frederick lay still there was a trickle of blood rolling across the hand to drip on to the floor, and her fingers were thrust so deeply into her palm that it was difficult to see how they could ever be released.
Tom Warner smiled. 'Now, white man,' he said. 'Now, you are dead, in your mind. Or would you like to follow your slave, for the last time, before I take your manhood, and then your life?'
'Truly must you have suffered, friend, to have so far forgotten your true stature,' Kit said.
Tom Warner frowned at him. 'You are a man of some courage, white man. No doubt it takes courage, to bed with that she-viper. Your name?'
'Christopher Hilton.'
The frown deepened. 'Hilton?' A look of almost pain crossed his features. 'You are called Kit?'
'By my friends.'
The chieftain gazed at him for several seconds, and then spoke in Indian, without taking his eyes from Kit's face. One of the braves ran from the room. The others sliced through the rawhide ropes holding their prisoner.
'Susan's grandson?'
Kit rubbed his wrists. 'By Christ,' he said. 'You remember her?'
'In my life,' Tom Warner said. 'But three white people showed me kindness. My brother Edward, his wife Aline, and Susan Hilton. Now all are dead. I do not ask your forgiveness, Kit.' He looked at the couple on the floor, for George Frederick still lay there, perhaps afraid to release her, now that his passion was spent and he understood the enormity of his crime. 'But I would have you understand. She is my niece. Aye. Her father is my brother. Yet did he send my mother and me to the slave compound, and have us in the fields, my mother, who had cared for him like a mother when Rebecca died. And when we faltered, he himself used the whip. Only a Warner may flog a Warner, were his words.'
'You escaped,' Kit said.
'Aye,' Tom Warner said. 'And waited. For twenty years I waited. To deal with him, and his brood. He has escaped me this time. But she ..." he turned as feet clumped on the verandah. 'I have found your friend, Jean.'
Jean DuCasse hurried in, panting, sweat soaking his shirt. His head was bound in a bandanna, and he carried a cutlass. He had put on weight, and had allowed his moustache to grow and droop beside his mouth. 'Kit.' He frowned at his naked friend. 'Mon Dieu.'
'I discovered in time,' Tom Warner said.
'In time.' Kit seized George Frederick's shoulder, threw him away from Marguerite, dropped to his knees. She said not a word, and her fists were still clenched.
'Kit,' Jean said. 'Ill met, after too long. I knew you were a planter, but not the name of your estate. I should have guessed.'
'Aye.' Kit smoothed the hair from her forehead; it was matted with sweat, and there was sweat on her face as well. But no tears in her eyes.
A tablecloth fell on her shoulders. Hastily Kit wrapped it round her, and gazed across her at his friend.
'You'll take my hand, Kit. I would not have had it so.'
Kit hesitated, and then thrust out his hand. Jean squeezed it. 'And you, madam? Do you remember me?'
Marguerite's head turned. 'I remember you, Monsieur DuCasse. I shall, remember you.'
'I would not have had it so,' Jean said again. 'It is war, and a savage war. No doubt my time will come. But they shall not burn your house. This I swear. Nor will they take your blacks.'
'Leave me only that one.' Marguerite's voice was hardly more than a whisper, but George Frederick, crouching six feet away from her, jerked his head, and stared at them with wide eyes.
'You cannot, suh,' he screamed. 'You cannot leave me, suh.'
'Leave him,' Marguerite said. 'Or take my curse.'
Jean sighed. 'Then must I accept both, madam. You will murder him, for a crime he was forced to? Then are both Kit and I deserving of a far worse fate.'
'Leave him,' Marguerite said.
'No,' Tom Warner said. 'I leave you your life. I had not intended that. Be grateful, bitch.'
Kit stood up. 'Can there not be an end to hating, Mr Warner? You have done my wife a mortal injury. I understand, that her father ..." he hesitated, glancing at her. 'Her father did you and your mother nothing less. Can there not be satisfaction?'
Tom Warner pointed at the slight figure on the floor. 'She lives,' he said, 'because she is your wife. I pity you, Kit Hilton. You know not where you rest your head of a night. As she is Philip's blood, so does she reek with his venom. Had my braves sliced the skin from your bones, you could scarce have suffered more than you will suffer, tied to that reptilian creature. I shall not see you again, Kit. Will you take my hand?'
Kit looked down at the proffered fingers. Christ, to end emotion, to do what mattered. If one could tell, what mattered. 'Perhaps,' he said. 'When we meet again. If that should happen.'
Indian Warner looked into his eyes, then nodded, and gave his orders. And left the room, his braves at his heels.
Jean hesitated in the doorway. ' 'Tis your government you must blame for this, Kit,' he said. 'Benbow needs more ships in these waters. Then must DuCasse meet his end. Until then, why, DuCasse must injure the English wherever he can. But not Kit Hilton. Nor his wife.' He bowed to Marguerite. 'I am truly sorry, madam. Had I the power to accomplish one miracle, I would command time to turn back, for but a scant half hour. I would beg you to believe that.' He gazed at George Frederick. 'You'd best run behind me, fellow.'
Marguerite crawled across the floor to the door, the tablecloth forgotten. 'Bring him back,' she whispered. 'Bring him back, Kit. Take who you need, what you need. Bring that bastard back.'
'We are all bastards,' Kit said.
Her head started to turn, and then checked. The house echoed to shouted questions from the cellar.
'Our heroes,' she said. 'The Indians would have fired the house, Kit. Why do you not, and leave them to perish of suffocation?'
'Your own children are down there.'
She got to her feet. Slowly she inflated her lungs until her belly swelled and her breasts stood away from her chest, then she released it again, and her body sagged. 'Then no doubt you should release them,' she said, and climbed the stairs.
Kit knelt by the trap. 'Open up. It is done,' he said. They stared at him in amazement; he had forgotten he was naked. 'They have gone,' he said, and followed Marguerite up the stairs, closed the bedroom door behind him.
She lay on her belly across the bed. Perhaps now she wept. But he knew better than to expect that. 'I am in a unique position,' she said. How steady was her voice. 'For me. My situation is beyond my experience, or my comprehension. What does one do, Kit, with a woman, after she has been raped, by a slave?'
'One loves her the more. For her courage.'
'And could you bear to touch me?'
He crawled on to the bed beside her, kissed the nape of her
neck, parting the matted hair with his tongue. 'Should you wish it, I would enter you now.'
She rolled away from him, sat up at the foot of the bed, legs dangling, back held to him. 'No. No, no, no, no, no, no.'
'The stigma is in your mind.'
'Of course.' She got up, walked to the window, gazed at the smouldering fields, inhaled the crisp smell of the burned cane.
'It will rise again. Everything will rise again. Had they burned this house, it too would rise again,' Kit said. 'Had they slaughtered your slaves, they would have been replaced. Had they murdered your children, I would have given you others.'
'And had they torn the flesh from your bones, before my eyes?'
'Then would you have secured for yourself another, more able, more virile husband.'
At last she turned. How beautiful she was, through all the marks on her body, through all the agony on her face. Or did the agony itself, and the knowledge of how it was gained, add to her beauty? To her desirability? For how perverse is the mind of man.
'No, not more virile,' she whispered. 'Do you not fear that this may also have happened to Lilian?'
'It has not,' he said. 'They had no means of storming St John's. But had it happened, Meg, I would pray she would have borne it with as much fortitude.'
Marguerite crossed the room, looked out of the other window, at the slaves milling about in the village. 'Poor creatures,' she said. 'Had they but an ounce of vigour in their gut they would have used their temporary freedom to murder us all. And I have had one of their black tools inside my body. Christ, had I a knife.'
He held her shoulders, brought her back against him. 'You'll not give way now, Meg.'
She turned, in his arms. 'Then say you'll avenge me, Kit. Bring me back that slave. I want no more.' She smiled, and it was a terrible sight. 'No. I set my sights too low. Bring me back Tom Warner as well, Kit. Bring them back alive. With men at your back, that were not difficult, for Kit Hilton.'
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