Joseph Knight

by James Robertson

  ‘I apologise, gentlemen,’ he said at last, but still smiling serenely. ‘It was just a thought.’

  That was James through and through: always testing, pushing, upsetting people. The Jacobite toast might have led to a fight, but the Spartacus quip, invoking the name of the rebel slave who had almost destroyed ancient Rome, was far too serious for white men to scuffle over. A stranger hearing James on that occasion might have taken him for some kind of abolitionist, or a planter with a bad conscience at least. But no, James was beyond all such considerations. That was why he could come out with such a remark – the implications did not bother him at all. It was the others, some of them anyway, who had bad consciences.

  Communication from one end of the island to the other was slow in 1760. It might take four days over land to Kingston, more in the wet season. Strange, then, to think that the Wedderburns’ slaves knew something was afoot before their masters did. Or maybe not so strange. After all, they had a network between plantations and towns – between lovers, relatives, journeying craftsmen, runners of errands, children – that the whites had no access to.

  Things were pretty slack in the days before the explosion. Slaves came and went with remarkable liberty. Some were like dogs, absenting themselves for a few days, knowing they would get a thrashing for it when they returned, but considering it worth it. Like dogs they almost scorned their punishments, severe though they were. How different, thinking back, everything was from how the planters thought it: yes, they held the slaves in bondage, yes, they controlled their lives – but under the surface, even in the unshaded light of day, it was the black population that ran the place. A hundred and sixty thousand slaves on the island, and barely sixteen thousand whites: how could it be otherwise? Nothing could function without them.

  This had been the source of John Wedderburn’s fear, that year when Tacky’s war broke out: the knowledge that at all times, every hour of every season, day and night, only a hair’s breadth separated the planters’ immense prosperity from its utter destruction.

  There were three big young men in the great gang at Glen Isla – Mungo, Cuffy and Charlie. John Wedderburn had bought them two years before and seasoned them with care, put them to work only when they were ready. They were a team, fine glistening men with an easy strength that seemed to eat up whatever task they were given. John admired them and liked to think that they admired him. Usually they were open-faced and cheerful, often singing at their work, but two weeks after Easter they appeared one morning with heads clean-shaven and mouths set tight, silent, refusing to look the Wedderburns in the eye. Sandy was at Glen Isla at the time, recuperating from one of his many bouts of sickness. John tried to coax the slaves out of their mood.

  ‘What’s the matter, Charlie? Why you shave your head?’

  ‘Me not know, massa.’

  This seemed such a foolish answer that it made John and Sandy laugh.

  ‘You not know? You did it and you don’t know why?’

  ‘Me not do it, massa.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Me do it.’ This was Mungo. ‘Then Charlie do Cuffy, Cuffy do me.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It mek mi hat fit,’ said Charlie unconvincingly, and put his wide-brimmed hat on to prove the point.

  ‘Then why no smile? What’s the matter?’

  Charlie looked at the ground. Sandy turned to the others. ‘Why is he not smiling?’

  Mungo looked at Cuffy. Cuffy half shrugged. Neither spoke.

  John said, ‘If I give him a whipping, then I’ll find out why. You want a whipping, Charlie?’

  ‘No, massa.’

  ‘Then why you not smile?’

  ‘Not feel well.’

  ‘You not feel well either, Mungo? Cuffy? You all sick?’

  Cuffy nodded his head very slowly. ‘Yes, massa, we all sick,’ he said. ‘We all sick and we all tired.’

  Sandy exchanged a glance with John and laughed. ‘Is that all?’

  Silence.

  ‘They’re just idle,’ Sandy said. There was no response.

  ‘Well, Crop Over soon come,’ John said, not wishing to prolong matters. ‘Then you all get rest. Now go to work.’

  The three men ambled off to join the rest of the gang.

  Sandy grinned at John. ‘Imbeciles.’

  ‘Aye,’ said John. ‘Let’s hope so anyway.’ He felt almost sorry for Charlie. The others seemed to be leading him on. Charlie reminded him of somebody. He couldn’t think who for a minute, until he realised that it was Sandy, always waiting for a cue, always looking for approval. John was shocked – that his own brother should have any resemblance to a black man.

  That was the day the first news filtered in from St Mary’s parish, eighty miles to the north-east. Mr Hodge rode up from Savanna in a lather, having spent the morning listening to a man who had come from the capital, Spanish Town, with the most incredible story. Hodge told it to John and Sandy on the porch of the house at Glen Isla. A few days after Easter a hundred Coromantees on two estates in St Mary had risen up, headed for Port Maria and broken into the arsenal there, killing the sentinel. Armed with guns and ammunition, they had moved from one plantation to another, firing the cane and buildings, and killing anyone, white or black, who tried to stop them. Other slaves, in groups of a dozen, twenty, thirty, had joined them. Their leader was a Gold Coast man called Tacky.

  Hodge was short on hard facts but replete with horror stories. Overseers and owners were being slaughtered by the score, their hearts cut out and eaten, their blood drunk. Loyal slaves were being horribly beaten, mutilated and dismembered, white women were being raped fifty times before having their throats slit. The merchant’s eyes popped at the thought. John Wedderburn filled him with rum.

  ‘And this Spanish Town man, he witnessed all this?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Hodge. ‘But he had it from the survivors. The whole parish is ablaze.’

  Sandy Wedderburn had turned pale. ‘And the militia?’ he asked. ‘The regular troops? Where are they? Are they not engaging them?’

  John made a calming motion with his hand.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Hodge breathlessly. ‘They are out after them now. As soon as word got to Spanish Town, the Council met in emergency session. An infantry detachment set off for St Mary’s by way of Archer’s Ridge, another was sent from Port Royal, and a third from Kingston. Martial law is declared – the militia is out too, yes, indeed. And they’ve sent for the Maroons of that district. They’re a cowardly lot but they know better than to side with the slaves.’

  ‘The Maroons are not cowards,’ Sandy said, with sudden vehemence. ‘Are they, John?’

  ‘No,’ said John, ‘they are not. You should know better, Mr Hodge.’

  The Maroons represented something difficult and contradictory in Jamaican life: blacks who were free – symbolic to the slaves, defiant of whites, but distinct from both and careful to maintain the distinction. They had fought the British to a standstill in the thirties and established their independence and freedom in the mountain areas by formal treaty. In return they had agreed not to accept runaway slaves into their towns, and to support the British in defending the island against invasion or slave rebellion.

  Hodge turned pink and swallowed more rum. ‘The fact is,’ he said sulkily, ‘that the island is turned upside down because of this Tacky and his rabble.’

  ‘I suspect there’s little to fash about,’ John said. ‘Eh, Sandy? It has taken ten days for this news to reach us. In all probability the worst of it is already over, and the ringleaders are dead or in irons.’

  Hodge was disappointed by this cool reaction. ‘But Savanna is in an uproar,’ he insisted. ‘The militia is to be called out at once, all absent slaves notified to the authorities, all landowners to report –’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ John said. ‘Where is the policy in uproar? If we panic, we’ll encourage any hotheads who might be thinking of trouble. If life goes on as normal, they will hear rumours but before t
hey know whether to act on them they will hear a certainty – that the revolt is crushed.’

  ‘I do think these are more than rumours, sir,’ Hodge said. ‘I have heard them myself. And in any event, surely a show of strength –’

  ‘Go back to Mrs Hodge,’ said John. ‘She is doubtless much exercised by what she has heard. Give her your show of strength. And our regards, sir. You should be at her side.’

  ‘Yes, yes, well, perhaps you’re right.’ Hodge brightened again at the prospect of a frantic dash home to his wife. There was something heroic in galloping to and fro. And what news he would bring of the state of unpreparedness he had found up country! The Wedderburns virtually asking to be butchered in their beds! He knocked back the last of his rum. ‘I shall set off at once. There’s an hour yet before dark.’

  Once he was gone, John turned to his brother. ‘Now, Sandy, this doesn’t alter what I’ve just said to Mr Hodge, but I want you to ride down to Bluecastle and tell James what we have heard. Leave out the hysterics, but have him see if any of his slaves are missing. I’ll do the same here. Tell him to make certain of all his guns. We’re as well to be safe as not.’

  But both plantations were quiet. For the next few weeks the rebellion touched them only in the form of more tales of thousands of slaves rampaging through the windward parishes, of Maroon hunting parties retreating under heavy fire, of British troops ambushed and cut to ribbons. The name Tacky grew like a thundercloud over these stories.

  The Westmoreland planters gathered in the last of their sugar crop against the impending rainy season. The first of the downpours turned the naked cane fields into mud. John Wedderburn was still confident, with each passing day, that the revolt would not spread to leeward. Then, in the week of Whitsun, Hodge’s lurid nightmares came true.

  Sandy was still at Glen Isla. He was making sketches of different aspects of the plantation – the house, the factory, the slave village, the gangs at work in the fields. His draughtsmanship was competent but lifeless, but John was happy to leave him to it. It would be a record of a kind, and at least gave Sandy a role that nobody else claimed. The trouble was, he believed himself much better than he was. He wanted John to sit for his portrait.

  The two Wedderburns were got out of their beds one night by a partly furious, partly frightened Phoebe. She had heard gunfire in the distance. The three of them stepped out on to the porch. Over westward, rising from the plains, a red glow fringed the edge of the hills. John sniffed. ‘What is that?’

  They all stood sniffing. Faint at first, but growing stronger every minute, a thick, rich, sweet smell. It became pungent and overwhelming. It was the smell of burning sugar.

  They sat up till morning, waiting for something to happen.

  At dawn a party of soldiers rode up to the house. Phoebe supplied them with breakfast washed down with rum and water grog. They had been out all night. Some miles away, a Captain Forrest’s slaves had risen: they had killed Forrest’s attorney and overseer while they were at their supper. Whole barns packed with barrels of sugar had been torched. Slaves from three more plantations had also taken off, looting, setting buildings alight and arming themselves with guns and machetes. A different detachment of troops had been attacked. One man had been badly chopped, two others had had narrow escapes. The soldiers drank all the grog, then their officer announced that they had to get back to Savanna, to prepare for another night on patrol.

  There was something almost comic about the way the whites took to careering around the countryside. Half of them were full of bravado, half of them of fear, and nearly all of them were drunk. Some days, Peter joined in, taking Sandy with him. Peter was in his element: he was a good horseman, and a fair marksman. Sandy was far from happy, but, urged on by Peter, he went anyway. The older brothers thought that it might do him good. He was so nervy, so frail, so easily brought down by the heat, so seldom confident in his dealings with the blacks. Perhaps dashing about with Peter would toughen him up.

  John and James remained on the plantations. Over the next day or two, it became clear that the situation was serious. Smoke drifted across their land. A dozen white people had been killed in the vicinity, and several hundred slaves were reported out. Some planters were forced to abandon their property and take refuge with neighbours. Tom Irvine’s entire workforce ransacked his house and destroyed it. He escaped into the woods and was found by militiamen next day, minus his trousers, his feet cut to ribbons. The men who brought him in thought he had gone insane. But he had not. He was simply in pain, and incandescent with rage that his slaves had ruined his life.

  At Glen Isla at this time, apart from whichever Wedderburns were present, there were only two white men left – the others had been called up by the militia. The two were Wilson, the bookkeeper, and Brownlee, who oversaw the gangs and supervised the black slave-drivers. Phoebe could also be trusted, but Jacob and Julius would be no match for the field slaves, and the house lassies could not be depended upon – they were always in an intrigue with some man or other. It seemed a very thin line of defence.

  ‘And yet we have gone for years turning our backs on men armed with knives and axes,’ John said to James, who had come up from Bluecastle to discuss the situation. ‘I’ve taken a couple of them shooting, shown them how to prime and fire a gun. We let them come and go freely enough. We are fair masters. We only punish them when they are bad. Why should they turn on us now?’

  ‘Old Underwood would say – no, not him, he’s too soft – Geordie Kinloch would say, that you have just volunteered yourself to be slaughtered. Why should they turn on us now? For the very reason that you have asked the question – your guard is down. You don’t believe them capable of rising against you? That is treating them as men like yourself. A fatal error, brother. So George Kinloch would tell you.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You know me. I have no sentiment when it comes to negers. It is a matter of economy. I’m inclined to agree with George, but I will say this: you know your own negers better than he does.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. I’m going to put it to the test. I intend to arm the best men I have here, and have them protect us and themselves from destruction.’

  James nodded. ‘Well, you’ll not be the only one. Which slaves do you have in mind?’

  ‘Mungo, Cuffy, Charlie. Some others.’

  ‘Fine boys, fine boys. But they’re still negers after all. Keep a spare loaded musket in your closet, John.’

  James headed back to Bluecastle. In the evening John summoned Brownlee, opened a bottle of rum for him, and told him his plans. Brownlee was a decent man, strict but not malicious to the slaves. He was not keen at first – thought it very risky in the current atmosphere. The entire plantation was talking about the revolt. John pressed his case. It was precisely for this reason that they had to seize the initiative. What were their options? Four white men, however well organised, could not stay awake for ever, could not fend off forty or fifty Coromantees if it came to that. Arm eight of the best slaves, divide the watch among John, Sandy, Brownlee and Wilson with two negers apiece, offer them rewards for their loyalty and remind them of the terrible punishments that would, sooner or later, be the lot of the rebels. It was the surest way to keep the place calm and undamaged and themselves alive. John Wedderburn had no intention of seeing all his industry go, like Tom Irvine’s, up in smoke. Brownlee at last agreed that he might be right.

  ‘We’ll start in the morning,’ John said. ‘My brother is due back from patrol this evening. He and I will get the guns ready. Tomorrow, have the gangs go out as usual, but we’ll bring the men we want up here to the house. I want Mungo, Cuffy and Charlie – we’ll turn their coats before they think of it themselves. I’ll write down some other names. You’ll have some ideas yourself, I expect.’

  In the end, the experiment was never tried, for two reasons. When Sandy rode in an hour later, the first story he told was of a planter over by Broughton, who had had the same idea two days be
fore. He had paraded twenty of his best slaves in front of his house, given them a speech along the lines outlined by John to Brownlee, and armed them with muskets, whereupon they had had a brief discussion among themselves, assured him they meant him no harm, thanked him for the weaponry, saluted him with a wave of their hats and marched off to join their rebel brothers. At Savanna a decree had been issued, with immediate effect, that no slaves were to be given guns, and that none was to be permitted off a plantation without a valid ticket from his master explaining the reason for his journey. Any slave found without a ticket would be taken into custody and the owner fined.

  The second reason was that, in the morning, John’s three Coromantees, and another dozen slaves, all men, were discovered to have left Glen Isla during the night.

  Brownlee and Wilson now went about their duties permanently armed. Sandy rode up the road into the hills and reported it busy with parties of mounted militia and foot soldiers, cautiously probing north towards Montego Bay. Others were escorting miserable-looking batches of captured rebels south to Savanna. Jolting laboriously in the same direction were wagons loaded with the prize possessions (and the wives and children if they had them) of shocked planters, bound for the relative safety of the town. Sandy went with the northbound troops for a few miles, saw several burnt-out planters’ houses, counted fourteen black corpses hanging from trees at the roadside. These ones had been summarily executed and strung up as a warning. Those taken prisoner could expect less merciful treatment.

  At the end of May a man-of-war was in the roadstead at Savanna, and offloaded a hundred and twenty men of His Majesty’s 49th Regiment. They joined a company of the 74th, a fairly full complement of the Westmoreland Militia, and two detachments of Maroons. Troops had also arrived to bolster the militia on the north coast, at Lucea and Montego Bay. These forces now began to move inland, sweeping the country before them, driving the rebels back into the central highlands and forests. All four Wedderburns now took turns out with the militia. It was, John thought, their duty to do so.