Sugar Money

by Jane Harris

  Twice that night, the rumble of hooves behind me broke into my reveries and I had to leave the road quick-sharp, slip into the shadows. First time, a fat planter laggered along on his mule; the second, a group of men rode past with purpose, though whether they were hunting for me or Céleste, or simply on their way to one of the eastern towns, I could not say. At last, the road began to curve north-east and soon after, between two distant hill, I caught a glimpse of the sea, the sheen on its surface made steel-bright by the stars. Here was the far side of the island. I had to wade through a fast-flowing river and thereafter, the highway swerved inland for a while, then I came to another creek. I remembered what Cléophas had said about three rivers, the third one, muddy. Sure enough, a stretch further on, where the road took a sharp turn inland, I came to a little dirty creek, and a gap in the trees on the coast side, not much more than a goat track. Here, I turned off the highway. The track ran level at first then veered left down a steep slope, deep into scraggy woodland. I stumble down the bumpy path and soon arrived in an area of shrubs and palm growing in a wide bay between low hills. Beyond the trees, I could hear the soft rhythm of the waves. I walked toward the sea and out onto a narrow strip of sand.

  A yawl had moored up out in the cove. From what I could tell, it was The Daisy. No movement on board but perhaps they were asleep. To the right of the boat lay a wooded islet, a small black mound against the stars. Looking at it, I supputed I might be able to peer down from its summit into the yawl, provided the sea was shallow enough to wade out. With this in mind, I pick my way along the black rocks to the narrowest strait between shore and island. There is scarce any tide in the Caribees but the water was at its highest level and in the dark I had trouble judging its depth. Deciding to wait a few hours until the ocean receded and the light improved, I found a dry spot among the roots of a great tree and settle down to wait.

  I must have nodded off because when I awoke some hours later the tide had gone out somewise and the sky had turned from milky silver to pale lemon. Now, I could see the reef and rocks surrounding the islet, black below the green shallows. I stepped into the water and began to feel my way out, one slippery step at a time, over slimy submerge rocks and jagged coral that bit into my feet. I reach the little island and scramble up through the dirt and bushes from one rocky outcrop to another, all the way to the summit. There, below me, sat The Daisy, about twenty feet away, moored in a deeper channel of water, the skiff tied to her stern. In the dim light, I peer down into her hull and saw the peeny figure of Descartes curled up in the stern. Cléophas lay amidships, wrap like a slug in a blanket. No Bianco. Most likely, he was keeping watch on the bigger boat, The Alcyon, further out to sea or along the coast.

  Something about seeing Father Cléophas there gave me pause. In my mind eye, I could picture my cows, Victorine and the rest. I imagined what it would be like to be back in Martinique, alone, no Emile in the world. And then I pictured Céleste, struggling through the wilderness of the high forest, supporting the mound of her stomach with her hands, making her way to the mountains of the interior.

  Without warning, Descartes rolled over and sat up. He took a sleepy glance at the shore and, having reassured himself that no troops had camped there, waiting to pounce, he scratched himself and gazed out at the faint light dawning on the horizon. Presently, when he looked up and saw me standing atop the islet, staring down at him, his mouth fell open. Quick-sharp – to stop him calling out – I put my finger to my lips and motion for him to be quiet. He blinked a few times and then slowly nodded.

  I mouthed to him: ‘Céleste?’ and gestured to indicate a big belly, then pointed to the ground beneath my feet as much to say ‘Has she been here?’

  Boy shook his head: ‘No.’ He raised his hands with a shrug of his shoulders, telling me: ‘Who knows?’ Then he gestured at the mountains, with another shrug.

  For a time, I stood there on the little summit, undecided, feeling the grit and stones beneath my feet. Descartes gaze back at me, wondering what I might do. After a moment, I raise my hand in farewell. The boy gave me a nod and raised his.

  I turned and clambered down the islet in silence and then, piece and piece, made my way back to the shallows. The water felt warmer now. Either I had grown use to the teeth of the coral or I chanced upon a less arduous route to dry land. Once ashore, I scrambled along the greasy black rocks. All the while, Descartes sat upright in the stern of The Daisy, watching me. When I reach the narrow strip of sand, he raised his hand again in farewell and I raise mine. I walked along the sea-strand and hid myself in among a mangrove swamp from where I could still see The Daisy. Some time later, the Father roused himself from sleep and spoke to the boy. The murmur of their low voices floated to me across the water. They kept an eye on the shore as the sun rose higher in the sky. Only when it seem certain that no slave would arrive to join them, did Cléophas raise the canvas then he lifted anchor and they set sail toward the open sea.

  I watched until they were only a dot on the horizon. Then I retrace my steps through the scrubland in the bay and on up the track. Once I regained the empty highway, I walked along it for a short while then turned inland, into the trees. Far in the distance, early cloud rose up behind the mountains, like billowing smoke. I set a course across country toward the highest peaks. The sky had begun to turn lavender. Soon, it would be another hot morning.

  A Note from the Editor of this Narrative

  JANUARY 25TH, 1902

  Although the narrative ends there, I feel honour-bound to relate what little else is known of its author. The original of this manuscript, along with associated letters and papers, came into my possession last year when my neighbour, Miss Amelia Conder, gave them to me shortly before her death. Miss Conder first discovered the documents some twenty years ago, while attempting to catalogue the contents of the library in her parental home, following the death of her mother. The papers were found inside an unmarked box. Initially, Miss Conder failed to see much significance in these pages and simply stored them away. At the time, she was grieving and also overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the documentation left behind by her deceased parents; a fact that is entirely understandable when one learns that her father was Josiah Conder, the author, editor and noted abolitionist, who had died in 1855, leaving behind a vast personal archive.

  Close examination of the letters in the box suggests that the widow of Thomas Pringle – another noted writer and abolitionist – had sent the documents to Miss Conder’s father. As you may know, Pringle brought to public attention the story of a former slave, Mary Prince, and presumably had intended to do the same with this narrative. Apparently, illness prevented him from working on the manu script and, after he died, his widow gave it to Conder in the hope that he might undertake the translation. Miss Conder only found time to sort through her father’s archive last year when – perhaps with some awareness of her own mortality – she began to put her affairs in order. It was then that she rediscovered the manuscript. Having glanced through its pages, she later confided that she had thought immediately of me, her neighbour.

  Miss Conder and I had more than a passing acquaintance ever since, a decade previously, I had succeeded in coaxing Snowflake, her parakeet, off the roof of my porch and back into his cage. Subsequently, we became friends; inasmuch as a schoolmaster in early middle age and a lady well advanced in years can be so described. I teach languages at our nearby Dulwich College and Miss Conder was aware that, in my spare time, I had been attempting to write a novel on the subject of Fédon’s Rebellion in Grenada: a nugget of history that has always fascinated me because my great-great-grandfather was killed in that conflict. Miss Conder passed the papers on to me since it was her impression that the memoir delineated events of that era in the Windward Islands. At first, upon realising that the documents have no bearing whatsoever on Fédon, I was discouraged. However, as I read on, my disappointment was replaced by excitement.

  In a covering letter to Josiah Conder, the widow Pringle explaine
d that the manuscript had been brought to her husband in the October of 1812 by a polite half-caste gentleman of middle age who introduced himself as Mr Dove. When questioned, the visitor confided that his late mother (formerly a slave) had been employed for several decades as housekeeper at a great house in Suffolk. Dove himself still worked at the same establishment as chief steward. He explained that following the death of the elderly head gardener, the manuscript had been discovered amongst the old man’s belongings. This gardener, a mulatto, had also been a slave and was an old friend of the visitor’s mother.

  Alas, the widow Pringle does not record the ensuing conversation in full, but from what she does write, it would appear that the wealthy master of the great house in Suffolk – Captain Dove – had once presided over a merchant ship that plied a trade between Bristol and the rest of the world. On one of these voyages, en route from Tobago to Jamaica, his crew had spied a skiff drifting along without purpose, somewhere north-west of Trinidad. The occupants – a Negro woman and a young mulatto man – were slumped, motionless, at the oars. The crew took them for dead but when the skiff was brought alongside, signs of life were detected. Not only that but – in the stern, beneath an awning constructed from the woman’s petticoat – a small half-caste boy was discovered. The three castaways were lifted aboard and questioned by Captain Dove once they had recovered. Only the young man could speak English. He called himself Lucien; the Negro woman’s name was Céleste. Lucien was reluctant to communicate at first but when the captain explained that he traded exclusively in goods – his present cargo, an assortment of glass window-panes and wrought-iron balconies – and that, furthermore, he was a firm abolitionist, the young man became more forthcoming. Apparently, after living in hiding for several years in the mountains of Grenada, the fugitives had set out some ten days previously in an attempt to reach Trinidad where they believed they might live freely, due to what they had heard was a more moderate Spanish regime in that island.

  Initially, the captain was uncertain what to do with these runaways but, over the ensuing voyage to Jamaica, after spending much time in their company, he grew rather fond of them and, when his boat docked in Kingston to off-load a consignment of balconies, he kept the fugitives hidden in his cabin. Thereafter, they returned with him to England, to his home in Suffolk, where he gave them paid employment. Céleste became nurse to his young daughters, while the captain hired the young mulatto to work alongside him on his ship, which he did for over a decade. Ultimately, Lucien left the sea to work on the captain’s Suffolk estate, first as a ground keeper and ultimately as head gardener. Mrs Pringle was a keen horticulturalist, which might explain another detail that she mentions: apparently, Lucien (who never married) achieved great success in growing flamboyant Grenadilla plants and avocados in a glasshouse, much to the delight of the captain who enjoyed nothing better than to show off these exotic vines and fruits to visitors.

  It would seem that Céleste brought up her son, the little half-caste boy, alongside the children of the great house. The boy progressed from the position of footman to butler and thence to steward. Over the years, Pringle’s visitor confided, the captain had come to treat him like the son he never had, even giving him his surname – Dove. Here, apparently, Pringle asked his visitor – this Mr Dove – for his Christian name, and was told that Céleste, his mother, had named him Emile.

  A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

  The original account is written throughout in the same neat copperplate hand, yet in a mixture of languages, with some parts rendered entirely in French and others in English, while the whole is broken up with numerous passages in what I have learned is a kind of early French Creole or kréyòl. My sense is that the author was fluent in all three tongues to the extent that – carried away by the telling of his tale – he sometimes forgot which language he was writing in. As far as the Creole was concerned, I was initially at a loss. However, I have been fortunate enough to strike up an enjoyable correspondence with Mr Lafcadio Hearn, now a resident of Tokyo, who lived for two years in Martinique and has written most engagingly about the French West Indies. With his assistance, I completed my translation. I have retained a smattering of the Creole patois to give a flavour of it to those readers who may be unfamiliar with its cadences; it is a tongue rather like French in some respects, and rather unlike it in others. For the most part, I have honoured the author’s rhythms and grammatical quirks and have undertaken only modest changes to the original, where a degree of modernisation seemed appropriate.

  Of course, the genre of slave narratives, so popular fifty years ago, arose partly as a response to the notion that Negroes could not write. Indubitably, there are those who will claim that such a fully-formed literary work as this manuscript could not have been authored by a self-educated former slave. I simply point those readers towards other accomplished slave accounts, such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or Linda Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. One element that marks this account as unique is that it does not attempt to record the author’s entire history from birth into slavery, and on into freedom, but focuses instead on a short period: just a few weeks in December 1765. Presumably, at one time, the author intended to seek publication, but the reasons why he never did so remain unclear.

  Edward A. Nichols

  86 London Road, Forest Hill, London.

  Afterword

  BY JANE HARRIS

  Here are some historical facts upon which Sugar Money, the novel, is based.

  Please be aware – this Afterword is full of spoilers.

  In 1738, the French Colonial Government in Grenada built a hospital overlooking the main town of Fort Royal (now known as St George’s). By 1742, the hospital had been handed over to the care of a band of mendicant monks or friars: the Brothers of Charity of the Order of St John of God – les Frères de la Charité – who had been running a hospital in the neighbouring island of Martinique for almost a hundred years. The friars looked after the sick but, in order to fund their charitable works, they also ran plantations alongside their hospitals – plantations which relied on the labour of enslaved people. The poverty-stricken friars took out loans in order to purchase these slaves, some of whom they trained as nurses to work alongside them in the hospital. The rest of the slaves were set to toil on the plantations, growing indigo and sugar cane.

  By the mid-1750s, it became clear that the superior of the Grenada hospital – one Father Damien Pillon – was more interested in making money from his sugar factory than in caring for the sick. He survived several challenges to his rule until his own death in 1760. Soon thereafter, the French authorities resumed control of the hospital and the few remaining, inexperienced friars were sent back to Martinique, leaving behind all their possessions – including the enslaved people. Subsequently, the British invaded Grenada in 1763 and took over the hospital.

  In August 1765, one of the mendicant friars – Father Cléophas – travelled from Martinique to Grenada and attempted to persuade the enslaved people who worked at the hospital to return with him to Martinique. However, the British authorities soon got wind of his intentions. They sent him packing and he was obliged to go back to Martinique empty-handed. Determined to succeed, Cléophas hired a ‘mulatto’ slave from the Dominican friars in Martinique and sent him to Grenada with instructions to round up the enslaved people and take them to the bay at Petit Havre (now known as Halifax Harbour) from where a waiting boat would carry them to Martinique. Conditions must have been grim under British rule because – despite the terrible risks involved – the slaves agreed to go with him.

  However, the plot was discovered and troops were dispatched in pursuit of the escapees. The soldiers recaptured the majority of the runaways and arrested the mulatto, but although eleven slaves did manage to escape to Martinique, the British insisted that they be returned immediately to Grenada. The recaptured slaves unanimously pleaded that the mulatto had persuaded them to es
cape by assuring them that he had the English Governor’s consent to take them. In the end, the mulatto was condemned and hanged, the only person executed. He protested to his last breath that he had only done the duty of a slave by obeying his masters. An inquiry into the incident showed that Father Cléophas had himself ‘debauched’ a couple of the runaways. However, no friar was ever apprehended, charged or punished for ‘theft’ of the hospital slaves.

  The decision to execute the poor hired man was unpopular in Grenada and contributed to the discontent, both of the free French who remained on the island under British rule, and of the Grenadian enslaved. Indeed, the evident growing hostility among the slave population led to the proposal, in 1766, of a bill entitled ‘For the Better Government of the Slaves etc.’ This bill was intended to legislate for Grenadian planters to be more humane in their treatment of enslaved people. Alas, the bill failed to pass and, just one year later, in 1767, the slaves did indeed revolt. Troops from the garrison quashed the rebellion and several slaves were killed. Thereafter, estate owners who had used violence against their mutinous slaves lived in fear of being massacred. The execution of the revolt’s ringleaders only increased hostility to the British among Grenadian slaves and the free French. In the aftermath, the British did tone down their harsh regime somewhat but their unpopularity continued, as evidenced by the Fédon rebellion of 1795: a failed uprising against British rule in Grenada, predominantly led by free mixed-race French-speakers, the purpose of which was to abolish slavery and return power to the French.