by JoAnn Wendt
The planters of Barbados crushed the insurrection in two weeks. They did so ruthlessly. A St. Lucy’s Parish planter rounded up the guilty on his plantation, locked them in a windowless hut, nailed the door shut, chopped a hole in the roof, poured in two barrels of kill-devil rum, and tossed in a torch. The hut went up with a roar, flames incinerating the rebels.
The instant the news of the insurrection reached Bridgetown, the governor dispatched troops and militia. They swept the island, hunting down escaped rebels. In all, 259 bondslaves, a dozen of them women, collected from plantations all over the island, were marched into Bridgetown in shackles, put on trial, found guilty, and condemned to death by public execution.
Drake worried about Dinny. He and Plum sent out search parties and searched themselves. Her overseer had put down the uprising on her plantation, but she’d vanished. Everyone worried that she’d been killed. Drake did not, however, waste a moment’s worry about George and Clive Crawford; and when news came that they’d been slain, Drake felt a savage satisfaction that he hadn’t realized he was capable of.
Edwinna remained his worry. She stayed shut in her room for two days. “Let her be,” Plum continued to counsel. Drake did so, but unwillingly. She’d saved his life. The least he could do was comfort her.
The uprising left the plantation in chaos for those first two days. Terrified of “boom sticks,” frightened first by the shooting and then by the armed troops and militia marching across the plantation, the Africans cowered in their huts.
Drake and Plum set to work bringing order. They sent the women out into the cane fields to resume their weeding. Everyone pitched in to clean up the mill. After three days on the grinding platform in the rain and then in the hot sun, a ton of cut cane had rotted, and stank to high heaven. It had to be shoveled off the platform, carted away, and buried.
The boiling house had suffered, too. The cane juice standing in the cisterns had spoiled, and the cisterns had to be drained and cleaned. All six of the bronze boiling kettles had suffered damage the night of the shooting, when frightened boilers had run off, leaving the sugar to boil into a hard black crust until the fires under the kettles went out by themselves. The kettles had to be taken outdoors and scoured—not a minor job. The smallest weighed a hundred pounds, the largest five hundred pounds.
The only light spot in all of this was Macaw, who plagued Drake at every opportunity for a third wife. Scouring a kettle, his seven-foot-tall ebony body folded into a squat, the wily slave grinned up at him.
“Papa! When get Macaw wife?”
“Never,” Drake snapped.
“She be this many old.” He held up ten fingers, then two.
“Over my dead body.”
“She be pity.” It boggled Drake for a second. Then he interpreted. Pretty.
“Anything else?” he asked sarcastically.
“New. Not used.”
Drake chuckled. It was a relief to chuckle after days of tension. He rubbed the back of his neck as tight muscles relaxed. “Clean that kettle, you fornicating black devil, or I’ll have Mr. Plum buy you the oldest, ugliest, most “used” wench he can find in all Bridgetown.”
The third day after the insurrection, they sent the cane cutters back into the fields, and by nine on that bright, sunny morning, Drake and Plum stood on the grinding platform and watched with satisfaction as the grinder began to rumble and squeal.
“This racket will bring Edwinna down,” Plum shouted over the noise of the grinder. And it did. A half hour later they spotted her coming down the path from Crawford Hall. In her breeches and shirt, hair blowing in the wind, she made a lovely sight. Drake wondered how he’d ever thought her plain. He didn’t wait for her to reach the mill—he loped up the path to meet her.
“Feeling better, Edwinna?”
“Yes.”
She looked so thin! Kena had told him how little she’d eaten.
“Kena said there’s been no news of Dinny.”
“No. I’m sorry.” He told her of their search efforts, then hesitated. She looked so fragile. “Your uncle and cousin. You are aware...”
She nodded, swallowed. “Kena told me. I wish I could have helped them.”
“You tried. You sent the letter. They disregarded it. They wanted no help. You couldn’t force them to accept it.”
Again she nodded, swallowed. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, comfort her, but he knew better than to touch her.
“Is someone taking care of Uncle George’s plantation? Feeding the slaves and such?”
“Yes. The governor appointed a neighboring planter to oversee the plantation until your uncle’s will is read in a London court.”
“The other planters—Lady Maud Locksley?”
“Only one planter, Rubin Vincent, was killed in the uprising. As for Lady Locksley, she’s fine.”
This was no time to tell her Lady Maud Locksley had behaved like a veritable Viking during the uprising. Snatching up a musket as if it were a feather and not a thirty-pound weight, she had marched with her overseers to the bondslave huts. She’d put her musket barrel to the throat of the first bondslave who bore an X on his forearm, demanding to know the names of the others. When he’d failed to say, she’d blown his head off.
Scared to death, the guilty had fallen to their knees, begging. She hadn’t killed them; she’d turned them over to the governor’s troops, but the incident had given every slave and bondslave on her plantation a memorable lesson.
“We have to keep searching for Dinny!” Edwinna said. Drake nodded.
They walked down the path, trade winds blowing through their hair. Drake talked to Edwinna of small, unimportant things, avoiding the larger things—Marigold, Jeremy, Jacka. A true planter, she drifted toward the noise of the grinder.
Drake stayed at her side that morning as she went about checking everything she’d neglected for the past few days. She seemed to want his company, to need it. The only time he left her, ducking out to the privy, he came back to find her looking for him with panicky eyes.
“I’m right here, Edwinna,” he said calmly. “I will stay with you. Don’t worry.”
Her eyes grew crystal bright. “Yes, please.”
When the noon bell rang, signaling the end of the morning’s work, he took her elbow and steered her up to the house. He’d told Honor to resume the usual schedule, producing midday meal for the overseers.
Edwinna felt overwhelmed when she sat at the table with the overseers. Everything seemed loud, a roaring in her ears: the voices, the noise of cutlery and plates, a chair scraping. She felt as if someone had taken her by the hair and jerked her upward, pulling every muscle taut and tight. Drake alone gave her peace. She kept her eyes on him, and when he rose in mid-meal to go to the kitchen to ask for something, her chest pounded with panic until he came back. She was glad when dinner ended and the men rose and left. She rose, too, and looked down at her plate in surprise. It was still full. She thought she’d eaten.
Drake came to her. “You had best take a nap. We’ll go down to the mill later.”
She nodded. “Where will you be?”
“Right here,” he assured her. “In the office. I’ll wait for you. Then we’ll go down to the mill together.”
“Yes.”
Drake watched her go upstairs, worrying.
“If you want my opinion,” Plum said later as the two of them sat in the office, “Edwinna is behaving normally for the first time in her life. She’s leaning on someone—you. She’s never done that before, Mr. Steel. True, she leaned on me as a child. But since she has grown up, she has leaned on no one. If she needs you, Mr. Steel, I call that healthy, not sick.”
Drake sighed and flipped a pen onto the worktable.
“What will happen to her when I go back to England? For I am going back. My life is there—my children, my business—not on this island. What will happen to her then?”
Plum eyed him. “You tell me, Mr. Steel.”
Drake shook his head. He h
ad no answer.
Edwinna seemed better in the afternoon. She even stopped in the kitchen to eat fruit before they went down to the mill. That night after they’d supped, Drake proposed they play backgammon. He’d found a board in the livery cabinet in the dining room.
“Backgammon? Why?”
“Because it’s fun.” He smiled. “You do remember how to have fun, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
They set up the board in the office because it was cool and private. The balmy trade winds wafted in through the open shutters. They played by candlelight—a shielded candle that diffused the light, sparing their eyes the glare. The board sat in light, the rest of the room lay in shadow and darkness, the atmosphere intimate, pleasant.
They played, wooden pieces clicking on the board, Drake calm, Edwinna tense. Her tension grew as they played, but her mind was not on the game. He knew where it was.
Keeping his eyes on the board, he said, “Edwinna, you had to shoot Jacka. He would have killed me and he would have killed Kena and Tutu.”
She nodded, stiff, tense, her eyes on the board.
“Of course, it’s hard. You feel guilty. God knows, I understand. I’ve never killed a man, but I feel guilty as hell about Jeremy and Marigold. A few days before the insurrection, Plum wanted to torture Jacka and Yates and a half dozen bondslaves selected at random with a red-hot iron, to find out what they knew—if anything. I wouldn’t allow him to do it. If I had, Jeremy and Marigold would be alive right now.”
She looked up, eyes bright.
“Drake, don’t think that. Please. Matthew Plum asked me too and I forbade him, too. I couldn’t let him do it. After...my father had his accident and could no longer oversee the plantation, I took over, and I vowed to myself that no one ever again would be tortured on Crawford Plantation.”
“Your father was a harsh man?”
She looked down at the board and resumed her play, swallowing several times, finding it difficult to admit. “Yes.”
They played on for a few minutes longer, then Drake gathered up the pieces, put them in the board and closed it. He looked at her gently.
“Get some rest, Edwinna.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
He snuffed the candle. They made their way through the dark house that was becoming as familiar to him as his own small house on Thames Street in London. The memory of that house was fading, perhaps because Anne no longer was in it. Without Anne, he didn’t even want the house. In fact, when he returned he intended to give it to Arthur and Verity and find some other small house near the wine shop to live in with his children.
* * * *
“Look what I found,” Drake said jubilantly, striding into Edwinna’s office the next afternoon. Sitting at her ledgers, wearing her thick magnifying spectacles, she at first failed to see what he carried in his arms, but when she heard the indignant chatter, she wrenched off her spectacles and leaped to her feet.
“Priscilla!” Drake watched with satisfaction as Priscilla bounded into Edwinna’s arms, wrapped her tiny, white-haired arms around Edwinna’s neck, and chattered up a storm, scolding, no doubt chronicling her adventures.
Edwinna’s eyes shone. It warmed his heart. She was better today, but not healed.
“Where did you find her?”
“She jumped on my back from atop the coral water drip and bit me on the ear, the little wretch.”
“Priscilla, that was naughty. I wonder why she didn’t come into the house? The windows are open, and the kitchen door always stands open.”
“She probably was frightened to come in. Jocko...”
“Yes.” She look at him tensely, then smiled at Priscilla.
“Priscilla, where have you been?” Her eyes grew dark and bruised, as if struggling against tears. She threw him an apologetic glance. “You must think me foolish, growing emotional over a monkey.”
“I would think it unnatural if you did not.”
“I was thinking of Marigold and Jeremy.” It was Priscilla they’d gone searching for that day. “That’s mostly why I’m—undone by all of this. The children…”
“I know.”
Unwilling to display tender feelings in front of him, she settled Priscilla in the crook of her arm and said in a throaty voice, “Priscilla, you are as dirty as—as Tutu when he plays in mud. I’m going to take you to the bathhouse and scrub you.”
She went out the door, and Drake suspected the bath would take a long time. Edwinna needed privacy to cry.
More good news came. Word arrived that Dinny was home, safe and sound. It seemed that on the night the rebels had slipped into her house to loot it and set it afire, Jumbo had helped his mistress climb out a second-story window. They’d run into the cane fields, heading for Crawford Plantation. Hearing gunfire there and unsure of what was happening, Dinny and Jumbo had sensibly headed north to the caves of St. Lucy’s Parish.
Edwinna insisted on visiting Dinny at once. Drake went with her. Riding over, he worried that his indiscretion with Dinny had driven a wedge into Edwinna and Dinny’s friendship. He needn’t have been concerned. Edwinna went flying into Dinny’s arms, and they embraced as lovingly as mother and daughter.
“Dinny, you’re safe.”
“Dearling! I heard about your trouble. About your Marigold and Jeremy.” Dinny threw him a glance, and Drake shook his head in warning. “Now, now, we shan’t talk about it. And of course, I’m safe. I was with my Jumbo. He kept me safe. Oh, wait until I tell you about it. He was grand, marvelous. Heroic, in fact. He fed me with fish he caught. He carried me through swamps. He killed a wild boar, and with naught but a sharp stick. Come in, dearlings, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She swept them into the house with a shout, “Jumbo, juice of orange for Mistress Edwinna, wine for Mr. Steel, and I’ve a mind to sip a wee bit o’ kill-devil.” Garbed in fresh scarlet livery, grinning, his white teeth on display in a face as black as coal, the young man jumped to do Dinny’s bidding.
When they’d had their drinks (Dinny’s “wee bit” was a full cup cheerfully tossed down in a few swallows), and after she’d mournfully showed them her burned dining chamber and its charred furniture, she sat them down and made them listen to her adventures.
Drake listened, astonished, incredulous. He didn’t believe a word of it, beyond the bare bones: Jumbo had helped her escape and they’d lived on wild fruit until they’d dared come home. With flamboyance and flair, Dinny spun them a tale of adventure that rivaled that of Sinbad the sailor. The story was absurd. Even Edwinna glanced at him, eyebrows raised. He winked at her. It was a nice moment.
But what Dinny said next stunned them.
“And that, dearlings, is why I mean to wed my Jumbo. We’re going to tie the knot this coming Sabbath, and I want you both here to witness it.”
“Dinny,” Edwinna gasped. “You can’t do that.”
“Now, dearling, hush. There’s no law against it, and my mind’s made up. Jumbo’s the husband I want, and Jumbo’s the husband I mean to have. Ain’t you, Jumbo!” Jumbo grinned at her affectionately. “And I mean to wed him proper and legal, which is why I want the two of you here when Simon Tarcher ties the knot. I don’t want nobody telling my Jumbo he ain’t my legal husband, because he will be.”
“Dinny,” Edwinna said, “you cannot marry a slave.”
“He ain’t a slave no more. Jumbo! Stick out your foot.” Obedient, Jumbo did. The silver ankle bracelet worn by manumitted slaves glittered on his ankle. “Now, I won’t hear a word against it. Jumbo’s my man. He saved my life. And as for bed?” She leaned forward confidentially. “If you took you a measuring stick, you would see he’s got him a cod a foot long.”
Drake lifted a hand for mercy. “We know. You’ve told us.”
Dinny gave them a sweet, confused look. “Ah, did I? I don’t remember.” Courteously, she added, “That is not to say the other gentlemen on this island are not well built.”
Drake drew an embarrassed breath. He wanted to c
hoke her.
“Dinny, be quiet!” Edwinna said, ruffling.
“We’ll come,” Drake said quickly, to put an end to discussion of the subject. “We’ll come to your wedding, Dinny. Edwinna and I will be glad to.”
“Dearlings. I’m so happy!”
The wedding was the most bizarre event Drake had ever witnessed. Dinny invited the whole island, and many of the island people came, including Lady Maud Locksley, who smoked and chuckled throughout the entire ceremony.
The bridegroom wore footman’s livery, a gaudy suit of silver-trimmed burgundy velvet, and never stopped grinning. The bride, who never stopped talking, was radiant in scarlet silk and freshly dyed red hair that had gone slightly purple. Jumbo grinned at her in adoration. When the marriage license and certificate of marriage had to be signed, the bride guided the bridegroom’s hand as he made his mark, a wavy J. Simon Tarcher’s white eyebrows remained inverted in an incredulous V throughout the ceremony and the noisy feast after it.
Because she truly loved Dinny, Edwinna had dressed in her best, a gown of forest green silk. Again, Drake noted that neither the style nor the color suited her. In fact, Anne, with her fashion sense, would have laughed. The thought bothered him. He didn’t want anyone laughing at Edwinna.
“You look lovely,” he told her as she sat next to him at the wedding table during the loud, riotous feast. She smiled.
“Thank you, Drake. You look very handsome.”
“Thank you.” Their eyes held intimately for a moment.
The wedding feast was a great success, if the amount of kill-devil punch consumed was any criterion, and when Jumbo, still grinning, slid from his chair onto the floor like a seal into water and passed out, Dinny trilled cheerfully, “Ain’t he sweet? Can’t drink no more than a two-year-old babe. Well, it’s certain I shan’t have much of a wedding night...”
Her eyes went speculatively around the table, and came to rest on Simon Tarcher, who instantly rose to leave, remembering a judicial function he had to tend to in Speightstown in the morning. Lady Maud Locksley bellowed with laughter and slapped her knee.
Drake and Edwinna left soon after, neither of them caring for drunken revelry. Because she rode sidesaddle in her gown, Drake helped her dismount, taking her thin waist in his hands. When he’d lifted her down, he didn’t let go. She was so slender his hands could trace the individual ribs.