But there were moving shadows. Shadows which could only be caused by flames.
'Christalmighty,' he shouted, and sprang from the hammock in a single bound, running for the door as he scooped his pants from the floor. And pausing there in horror.
The church blazed, flames shooting out from the opened doorway, already licking their way through the roof. The wood crackled, and occasionally a shower of sparks shot into the air and landed perilously close to the cottage.
'Oh, my God,' Sue gasped at his shoulder. Behind her Tony began to wail as his parents' agitation communicated itself to him.
'Undone,' Tom Coke cried. 'We are undone.'
'By God, or by men?' Matt shouted, and ran across the yard. Now he realized there were people, gathered on the edge of the fence, staring at the flames and at him. Black people, mostly. No doubt some of them had been in the congregation this afternoon.
He faced them, arms spread wide. 'Help me,' he shouted. 'This house belongs to the Lord. Will you not help me?'
They stared at him as he approached, and muttered amongst themselves.
'Abraham,' Matt shouted. 'You helped me build that church. Will you stand there and watch it burn?'
'Man, Mr. Matthew,' Abraham said. 'Them boys done say if we seen on that land again we going to get beat up.'
'Them boys?' Matt shouted. 'What boys? You, Orlando, did you see someone here?'
‘I can't say nothing, Mr. Matthew,' Orlando said. 'Man, I got wife and child.'
'Oh, Christ in heaven.' He turned and ran towards the tremendous heat of the blazing chapel. But there was nothing to be done. There would have been nothing to be done, now, even if every man in the crowd had run forward to help. The flames had too secure a hold. He could do no more than watch and wait.
Coke stood beside him, and in time knelt beside him as well, as their legs grew weary. Suzanne was there too, Tony in her arms. And the Negroes also stayed. They had listened to his words, and they had found comfort in them, and even some hope. Now they waited, to see what he would make of this. What his Lord would make of this, perhaps.
In time the heat died, as the roof fell in and the last of the wood was consumed. The night grew chill as dawn approached. Then it was very dark, for a few hours, until the black became grey, and the dawn breeze swept down from the Blue Mountains, and the cocks began to crow. Matt stretched, and raised his head, and wondered if he had actually slept, kneeling there. Coke was still at his side. Sue was sitting on the porch of the cottage, Tony in her arms, leaning against an upright. He thought she was asleep.
The church had entirely disappeared in a mound of still smoking ash. Matt turned his head, slowly, and painfully; he seemed to have doubled his age and discovered every rheumatic possible, in a single night. He looked at the fence, and found that the negroes had gone, melted away into the dawn. In their place there waited a single horse, and its rider.
Slowly Matt pushed himself to his feet. 'Have you come to gloat?'
'I wish to learn if you have come to your senses,' Robert said.
'Senses?' Matt demanded. 'By Christ in heaven, Robert. Did I suppose you had anything to do with this, I would tear your head from your shoulders and feed it to the dogs.'
'Then suppose,' Robert said. 'It was the only way I knew to save you from a criminal charge. Perhaps from hanging. You spoke treason yesterday morning, by all accounts.'
'By Christ,' Matt said again, and started forward.
'Stop.' Sue ran across the yard. 'Are you mad?'
'Did you not hear him?'
'You'll quarrel,' she said. 'I can hardly suppose the pair of you ever doing much else. But you'll not fight, Matt. That would be to put too great a burden on my loyalties.'
Matt stood close to the fence, fists clenched with anger. 'I'll build again, Robert. Will you burn again?'
'That depends on what you use your building for.' Robert was looking at Sue. 'Is this how you propose to spend the rest of your life? Scrounging in a dirt yard, with your belly hanging out. Is this what I gave you money for?'
'You gave me the money, Robert. It is mine to spend as I wish. Just as my life is mine to spend as I wish. And you'd do well to remember that the next house you burn well may contain me. And your nephews.'
'By God,' he said. 'Cursed, I am. Cursed.' He half wheeled his horse, then checked it, and felt in his pocket. 'I have a letter for you. From Georgiana.'
He leaned across the fence, and Suzanne took the envelope. 'Does she add her strictures to yours? It would hardly become her.'
'She lacks that much sense,' he said. 'Your friend Corbeau will be returning to Jamaica in the New Year, Matt. By God, but it has taken him long enough. It seems his plantation had not prospered sufficiently to satisfy him during his imprisonment here with us, and it was necessary for him to undertake a lengthy business journey. Where he does not specify, but I assume it was to France. However, his affairs are now in order, and he will be back. No doubt he will visit you...' he looked around the little plot of land, growing more and more derelict in appearance as the sun rose. 'Your estate. Who knows, he may even be able to talk some sense into you.'
'And Georgy writes to tell me this?' Sue inquired. 'By no means,' Robert said. 'You have there an invitation to a wedding.'
'For me alone.' Sue sat on the front porch of the little house and bounced Tony on her knee. ‘I’ll not attend.'
'She is your only sister,' Matt pointed out.
'Come February, and I shall be nursing, anyway,' she muttered. 'And she wishes me as her maid of honour. Good God Almighty, does she mean to insult all Jamaica?'
Matt grinned. 'Oh, she has spirit. You must grant her that. And you'll attend, Sue. I would not have you cut yourself off from Georgy on my account. I am quite capable of looking after the boys for a weekend. I'll have Tom to help me. Why, by then we'll have our new church.'
'You'll build again?' Coke still stared at the blackened ruin.
'Of course I shall. We shall. Do you not intend to help me?'
'I suppose we must,' Coke said, half to himself. 'Perhaps, if we left Jamaica, and sought some less censorious isle ... after your sister's wedding, of course, Sue.'
'We shall not leave Jamaica,' Matt insisted. 'We shall build again right here. We must. The Negroes will wait to discover who is strongest, the God of Whom we tell them, or the anger of the plantocracy. We must leave them in no doubt.'
'And suppose it is already proved?' Coke demanded. 'And can but be reiterated.'
Matt frowned on him. 'For a parson you have a surprisingly short supply of faith.'
‘I do not know,' Coke said. ‘I cannot understand. If indeed He blesses our work, why did He permit this to happen? Why does He permit all the enormities which surround us to happen? Is there not at least a possibility that your brother is right? That all the planters and the slave-traders are right? That God has ordained mankind shall be divided. By heaven, Matt, I seem to remember you preaching a very similar sermon at me one day at sea.'
'And realized since I was wrong,' Matt said.
'So how can you be sure that you are not wrong now?'
'Oh, for Christ's sake.' Matt got up, stalked down the steps. 'I shall not change again, Tom. This I swear to you. And you shall not either. And we shall build ourselves a new church, only this one shall be a fortress, and we shall bolt and lock the door except when one of us can oversee it. And I shall buy myself a pair of pistols, and then, then, by heaven, we shall see.' .
'And that is Christianity?'
'I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Lord thy God is a God of wrath,' Matt declared.
'And you see yourself as His chosen instrument,' Sue said, very quietly.
He rounded on them. 'Is it not possible that I am? Have events not conspired, quite without any ambition on my part, to pluck me from the very apex of the plantocracy and set me down here on this barren place? Has God not made stranger selections? Has ...' he stared past them and round the corner of the cottage. 'An incendiary
, by heaven. Come to see the effect of his work.'
He ran round the house, but the white man who had been standing there did not move.
'You mistake the situation, Mr. Hilton,' he said. 'I was amongst your congregation, yesterday morning.'
Matt frowned at him; he was short and sallow, and had a nervous twitch in his right eye. 'And decided then to offer your services to my brother,' he growled.
'No, sir, I swear it. I all but decided then to approach you with a view to offering my assistance. But my courage failed me.'
'What sort of assistance would you offer, friend?' Coke inquired.
'At least invite the gentleman to join us,' Sue suggested. 'You no doubt know our names, sir. We are ignorant of yours.'
'Charles Manton, Mistress Huys.' He came round the building hesitantly, his hat held between his hands.
'And how are you employed, Mr. Manton?' she asked.
'I am ... at least, I was, an overseer, Mistress Huys. Now I am unemployed.'
'There you have it,' Matt said bitterly. 'Should we attract no more prosperous specimen than this then are we lost indeed.'
'You'd work for us?' Coke asked.
Manton stood before the porch, licked his lips, glanced from one to the other. 'I'd know your purpose.'
'Why, to teach the Negro to recognize his humanity,' Coke said. 'And to teach him to believe in God.'
'There is a generality, sir,' Manton said. 'I recall, as a boy in Lancashire, watching the authorities constructing a reservoir. It would contain sufficient water for all, they said. And as such must necessarily be in the public good. And sir, no one could argue against that. But it was no more than a dream, saving the use of gunpowder to blast the rock, and pick-axes to cut out trenches, and determination, that to achieve a beneficial result for mankind it was necessary to indulge a great deal of force.'
'I would prefer it if parables were left to the Bible,' Sue suggested.
'Well, Mistress Huys, gentlemen, I would say that you can accomplish neither of the objectives you mention without first of all conquering the resistance of the plantocracy. Your own brother, Mistress Huys, has claimed the credit for burning your church. And has threatened to do so again and again if it is used for what he and his colleagues might consider seditious preaching. Will you spend the rest of your lives as builders?'
'May I say, sir,' Coke observed, 'that I began my mission in these parts by attempting to appeal to the better natures of the planters, and met nothing but abuse.'
'Better natures?' Manton demanded. 'Sir, you are either too much of a Christian or too much of a fool.'
'And you are a planter yourself, of course,' Matt said. 'I wonder what made you abandon your course? Or were you merely dismissed for some fault and now seek to take your revenge?'
'You were also a planter, Mr. Hilton. I have heard it said you became nauseated with the obligations of your profession.' He glanced at Sue. 'And were perhaps encouraged by a personal tragedy.'
'That's common knowledge,' Matt said.
'Well, then sir, you must agree with me. You cannot improve the lot of the black man while the white man opposes you with money, with men, and with no fear of violence. You must first defeat him, and then you may do as you please. Hear me out, sir. You know as well as I that there is a growing body of opinion in Great Britain which abhors the very suggestion of slavery, and yet is very little aware of the actual horrors which a slave may have to endure.'
'It is that body of opinion which dispatched me here, sir,' Coke said.
'Indeed. And are you not also aware that there is in existence in these very islands a series of laws designed to remove the possibility that any planter may carelessly murder a slave, or mutilate him, for that matter?'
'Oh, you are an amusing fellow,' Matt said. 'What, would you have me arraign a planter on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm? He has but to retort that the slave in question was mutinous or absconding. Even supposing we could find a court to try him.'
'I agree, sir,' Manton said. 'In the past the law has been a dead letter, because the plantocracy has administered it in respect of themselves. Yet, sir, as you should know better than I, times are changing. The plantocracy cannot help but be aware of the tide of public opinion in England, and even supposing they assume they can ride out that tide, there are men in power in these islands who think differently, who are very inclined to take note of English opinion.'
'General Campbell?' Sue demanded. 'You are dreaming.'
'Perhaps not General Campbell, Mistress Huys. But he is not the only governor in the West Indies.' Manton licked his lips. 'And even he, gentlemen, would have to listen could you produce incontrovertible proof that a planter was using not even brutal force, but quite inhuman methods in the treatment of his slaves.'
'Oh, aye,' Matt said bitterly. 'Incontrovertible proof, you say.'
'Supposing, sir, you were to discover an overseer who would testify against a late master?' ‘You?'
'You asked me why I abandoned my position, sir. It is because even I, and I have spent my adult life managing slaves, I admit it freely, became sickened by what I saw, by what I was forced to undertake.'
'Such as what?' Coke asked.
'Well, sir, the planter for whom I worked was not always so, although his wife was never less than a tyrant. Why, gentlemen, I have seen one of her maidservants pinned to the wall by a knife through each ear, and left there to hang. Is that reasonable punishment? But if times were then bad, sir, why, they became worse. This man of whom I speak gained possession of a splendid treasure, and was then forced to sell his prize, and this had a most terrible effect on his character. He began to outdo his wife in demoniac endeavour. If Mistress Huys will excuse me, I have seen him line up three men and use his stick deliberately to beat their members until they possessed no more than withered stumps; I have seen him assault a hapless girl with red pepper until no natural function was permitted to her, so badly was she swollen; and once at grinding, sir, when a cup of wine was brought to him from the house and a slave inadvertently jogged his arm and caused him to spill the liquid on himself, why, sir, I saw that unhappy black picked up and dipped in a cauldron of molten molasses. It was that day I abandoned my place.'
'Good God,' Coke said.
'Are you sure you are not spewing the contents of a diseased imagination?' Sue demanded.
'I will swear to what I have said, on any oath you care to name.'
'And before a magistrate?' Coke asked.
'If I could be sure of protection. Which is why I am here. It has occurred to me that a man who would be that vicious would not hesitate to attempt murder should it suit him, even of a white man.'
'Protection,' Sue said. 'Aye, we would grant you what we can.'
Matt continued to frown, and his expression was forbidding. 'This man of whom you speak, he lives in Jamaica?' 'No, sir. I am from Nevis.' 'Hodge,' Sue said.
'I have heard rumours,' Coke agreed. 'But never so specific a charge. Nor so horrible a one.'
'Hodge,' Matt muttered. 'Hodge,' he shouted, and leapt forward to seize Manton by the shirt front. 'Now I know why you came to me.'
'Yes, sir, Mr. Hilton.' Manton glanced at Sue.
'Then where is she, man? Where?' He shook the little man like a rat.
'God alone knows, Mr. Hilton,' Manton gasped. 'She was sold to a Dutchman, and taken to the mainland.' To a Dutchman?'
'So she was the prize he gained, and lost,' Sue muttered. 'You said he was forced to it?' 'By Mr. Robert Hilton.'
Slowly Matt's fingers relaxed, releasing the shirt front, and then clenching again. 'And you held me back, this morning.'
'I would do so again now, Matt. He acted as he thought best. And if anything Manton tells us is true, he did the girl a kindness.'
'To a Dutchman? On the mainland? Have you any idea?' She seized his arm. 'Three years ago, Matt. You can only avenge her.'
'I intend to. I'll begin with pistols.'
'To fight Robert? He will kil
l you. Are you that much of a fool? Can you not see that Manton is right? You cannot help or rescue Gislane now, and if you truly wish to take part in a liberating or even ameliorating movement you have no right to bring something so great and so worthwhile down to a personal level. But here you are fortunate. You wish to bring down the plantocracy itself? Begin with Hodge, and satisfy both yourself and your principles at the same time.'
Matt stared at her.
'Oh, she is right, Matt,' Coke said. 'And do not suppose it will be the easier task. Indeed, you may find the way much more thorny than merely to challenge your cousin.'
'Hodge,' Matt muttered. A man he had never seen. But a man with whom he shared a terrible memory. 'You'll stand by your story, Mr. Manton? Write it out and sign it under oath?' 'I'm your man, Mr. Hilton. Come what may.'
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