Sea of Grey l-10

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Aye, I do recall. How close did you come?" Lewrie smiled.

  "You pay a Hindoo ryot for his work, Lewrie," Cashman confessed in a much lower voice, one that would not carry to his contemporaries and fellow planters. "You hire him. Aye, he slacks off and acts lazy and ya thrash him, and he'll take it and shrug it off, then get back to work proper. But the Cuffies, Alan… the Samboes. With them, all we have is the lash. Die off in droves from snake bites, diseases, worked t'death or starved halfway there-have t'buy more of 'em, and start all over again. We've thirty-thousand whites on Jamaica, but there're over three hundred thousand slaves, and barely ten thousand Free Black people. And there might be a total turnover every generation, do you see? And ya can't do anything t'ease the misery. Cosset your slaves, and your neighbours'll think you're weak… a 'Merry Andrew.' Go too harsh, like most of 'em do, and you get rebellion. And start fearin' what yer house slaves serve ya, do they slip poison in your food and drink! That's no way t'live, Lewrie, believe me. I thought I knew what I was gettin' into when I bought land and slaves t'work it. Knew my way round natives, d'ye see… Bengalis, Mahrattas. Muskogee or Cherokee. Hell… Irish?" he added with a grin and a shrug.

  "But it didn't work that way," Lewrie said for him, though yet mystified. It was a given, that slaves and acreage were the marks of colonial gentlemen, of success and prosperity! Yet Cashman sounded as if he'd turned his back on everything except honourable soldiering.

  "May've been the worst mistake I ever made, Lewrie, to settle out here," Cashman confessed in a mutter. "I considered America, but even with over-mountain land goin' for ten pence an acre, it requires slaves t'work it, too, 'less you settle far north, among those stiff-necked, hymn-singin' Yankees, with all their 'shalt nots.' And it's a cold damn' place, to boot! Oh, I plunged in with a will at first, and thought things were goin' hellish fine, doin' what everyone else about me did, but… first thing I did was get out of the Triangle Trade."

  Lewrie knew about that; sugar and molasses, coffee and cotton, dye-woods and indigo to American ports. Sell cargoes and invest some of the profit into rum, tobacco, hemp ropes, tar, pitch and turpentine, resin and naval stores; ship that to England and make another profit, which was partly invested in cheap trade goods, trinkets and gew-gaws, cast-off muskets and cutlasses, bolts of gaudy cloth and such to sell or trade in West Africa, where the Black chieftains and Arab traders would fetch you thousands of their own people, or those captured from other tribes, then ship "Black Ivory" on the Middle Passage to a Caribbean port to be auctioned off. Three legs of trade, three profits in one, and five hundred pounds could end up fetching four thousand!

  "Saw the wretches landed, sold off at the Vendue House," Cashman said so softly that Lewrie had to lean over his soup to hear him. "I felt… sick. Smelt the stink of a 'blackbirder,' have you? Once is enough for a lifetime. Fed me own slaves a touch better after that, I did. Shoes and new slop-clothing more'n once a year. Let 'em have an hour or two more on their vegetable plots, bought more salt meats and such? Felt I was doin' right, no matter what the neighbours thought. Salved my conscience a little, but that was all I was doin'. What my overseers did in my name, though… What's the difference?"

  "So you got more into livestock?" Alan asked.

  "Yes. Less cane, where the real misery lies, the killin' work."

  Lewrie studied Christopher Cashman-the "Kit" of his early derring-do-as he returned to spooning up his pepperpot soup before it got cold. He looked much the same as the old Cashman of his remembrance, but for more crinkles 'round his eyes and mouth, his hair now sprinkled with more salt than pepper. He was still the lean, fit, and hungry-looking rogue from the '80s, and had not battened as most men would, once success and a semblance of riches got within their grasp. His wardrobe had improved, of a certainty; Lewrie could recall shabby uniforms so faded from red to pink that one could conjure that he had bought his regimentals off a ragpicker's barrow. Now he was prosperous, tailored as natty as anything, well shod in popular Hessian boots, his sword of good quality and gleaming, his tunic heavy with real gilt lace and embroidery, his breeches, waistcoat, and shirt snowy-white and well cared for, his hair dressed neatly.

  But, Lewrie wondered, where was that "fly," sardonic rogue from those days, the one with the wry, sarcastic, or flippant comment in the face of danger or disaster?

  "You know about the Second Maroon War, I take it?" Cashman asked of a sudden, as if all that had passed between them moments before had never occurred.

  "Yes. Started in '91, didn't it?"

  "Prompted by the slave revolt in Saint Domingue," Cashman said. "Got beaten back, but broke out again in '95. I retook colours then, as a major once more. Nothing near so big or widespread as our Frogs suffer, but bad enough. 'Twas a great slaughter, e'en so. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and not a jot o' mercy. Ambush for ambush, massacre for massacre. Shut 'em down by '96, but there's still many skulkin' about. Then along comes General Maitland, who asks me to be on his staff at Port-Au-Prince. Spent a year at that, then the people here suggested raisin' another local regiment. Maitland put in a word for me, and I had the support of my neighbours, who put up the money."

  "But Kit… whyever agree t'fight rebellious French slaves, if you didn't care for fightin' your own?" Lewrie puzzled aloud.

  "In any society, Alan my old," Cashman said, leaning closer to mutter even softer, with a sardonic gleam in his eyes, "you're either on the side of the angels or you're a pariah dog. You have to sing along with the choir, nod and say 'amen' in the right places. My good name was on the line. And I didn't say I don't like fightin' slaves. They'd slaughter white folk like so many hogs in November, given the chance. They despise us, d'ye see. They despise me Act harsh, and they despise you be soft, and they take advantage. Treat 'em well, gift 'em on the holidays, and they'll fawn and slobber on yer boots to yer face, all grateful-like, then roll their eyes and snicker behind yer back, and despise you for your weakness! I'd much rather kill 'em than own 'em… any day."

  Lewrie's jaw dropped open in surprise. Is he daft? he queried himself, No, he looks and sounds as sane as… as me!

  "Servile, obsequious cringers, liars, and frauds, all of 'em," Cashman rather calmly went on, between sips of his soup and a dabbing at his mouth with a fine linen napkin. "I've an overseer runnin' things for me, for now. Once this war on Saint Domingue's done, I'll sell up, lock, stock, and barrel, and get free of this pestilential place. Sham a lingerin' fever, invent a troublin' wound… grief? Any, excuse to placate my neighbours and peers. I'll have done my bit by then, and there'll be no shame in it. Something that took too much outta me… and d'ye know what I'll do then?"

  Lewrie shook his head in the negative.

  "I'll sell off my slaves with the greatest of glee," he said, with a nasty smirk, "to the harshest masters I know, and I know most of 'em, believe you me. Those few I think were straight with me, I'll manumit and give 'em a small sum for a fresh start. But the rest.,. I'll see 'em all in a livin' hell. Then I'm shot o' this place, and off to the East Indies again, where a man with 'chink' can live like a rajah, and stuff ev'ry wench in the bibikhana ev'ry night, do I get the itch. And never have t'buy folk, ever again!"

  "Surely, you knew, goin' in…" Lewrie countered. "You were out here for years, and saw how a slave society…"

  "Ah, but it looks so dev'lish easy, goin' in, Alan," Cashman scoffed. "Sit on your balcony and watch the money grow? Play cards and dance in the parlour, with everything at yer beck and call, with nary a thought for how it's fetched. Damned beguilin' life, from the outside lookin' in, when it's other people's slaves doin' the bowin' and scrapin' to ya. Once in, though… it's a hell on all sides."

  At that moment, the pretty young mulatto serving wench arrived with a tray heaped with platters; split crab claws and legs, lobsters split and steaming, with fresh-caught pompano grilled in key-lime rob and crisp with breading; removes of fresh chickpeas and diced scallions; plump boiled carrots topped with brown sugar; and a basket pil
ed high with piping hot yeast rolls made with imported fine wheat flour!

  "Ah, Paradise!" Lewrie extolled, after his first taste of every dish, rolling his eyes in ecstacy. "And damn all Navy rations!"

  "Another thing, Alan," Cashman said after a bite of fried fish and a sip of their chilled hock, with a blissful smile on his own face. "When the time comes t'sell, a hero's lands go higher than a poltroon who didn't serve… or those of a secret Abolitionist. Ever hear of William Wilburforce or Hannah More?"

  "Aye, damn 'em," Lewrie sourly replied.

  William Wilburforce was in Parliament, Hannah More was one of those Society Women with more energy than wit; both were determined to "reform" English Society in their own mould, to tame it, gentle it, and "improve" it. And they were Church of England, not Dissenters!

  "Church of England, but they talk more like the Wesley brothers and all their leapin' Methodists," Lewrie went on, after a cleansing slosh of wine. "Spendin' all their time, and half their money, along with lots of other fools, 'bout Sunday schools, so please you, so our children don't grow up wild. Or pick up Republican ideas, and rebel like the Fleet did."

  "Somethin' t'be said for that, at least," Cashman commented.

  "Ending bear-baiting, dogfights, cockfightin', all sorts of country customs. Hell, it'll be fox huntin', next! Bad as Cromwell and his Roundhead Puritans, out t'take all joy from life. Marketin' fairs, gamblin', even morris dancin'… the heart and soul of us!"

  "I'll send them a contribution… to their Abolitionist Society," Cash-man secretly whispered. "And damn the neighbours. Now, do you imagine the reception Wilburforce and More would get, did they ever dare come out here to preach, well… they'd be strung up and hung."

  "And pray God for it!" Lewrie quickly vowed.

  "Same'd happen t'me, Alan. Or get pence to the pound when I sell up," Cashman assured him. "Did they know my true feelings on the matter. I'm not gettin' any younger, and all I have is tied up in my lands and such. I'd never have the time t'pile up the 'blunt' all over again from scratch. I was lookin' for an out, and by God, here came a chance to take colours once more and get away from the problem."

  "And so well-timed it felt dropped from Heaven?" Lewrie asked with a chuckle as he split and buttered one of those luscious rolls. "I see… 'turne, quod optanti divum promittere nemo auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ' ultro'... 'ey wot?"

  "Why, you pretentious… hound, sir!" Cashman erupted in an outburst of hearty laughter, much his old self once more. "That's about all the Latin that ever got lashed into you, isn't it? I'll lay it is!"

  "Sir, I hold commission in the King's Navy," Lewrie replied in a false haughtiness, his nose lifted top-lofty. "I am a Post-Captain, therefore eminently superior to any Redcoat. Now, how else may I make you assume the proper humility, was I not pretentious?"

  "One with crumbs on his shirt front," Cashman drolly rejoined. "Aye, by God. What the gods couldn't promise, rollin' time brought, unasked. An apt quote, I'll grant ye. Never saw that side of you up the Apalachicola. Which reminds me… how is your Muskogee 'wife,' Soft Rabbit was her name? And that bastard son she whelped?"

  "Ah, uhm!" was Lewrie's witty response.

  "I take it you're married by now, bein' a captain and all?" Cashman went on. casually enquiring. "And married well. I trust."

  "Aye, with three 'gits,' now."

  "Capital! But I wager you haven't said word one to her about your first 'wife,' now have you." Cashman most evilly grinned.

  "I like breathin'," Lewrie retorted, a tad sharpish, wondering if word of his troubles had gotten to the islands ahead of him somehow. "And what about you? Did you ever wed, Kit?" he countered.

  "The once," Cashman admitted, quickly losing his jaunty, japing air. "Out here, in '91. No children, sorry t'say, before she passed over… back in '95, just about the time the Maroon War began."

  Another reason to quit his lands? Lewrie wondered in sympathy. Another reason to take a commission?

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Kit, I…"

  "Oh, don't be," Cashman brushed off, swirling his wine aloft as if squinting at it for lees. "Prettier than the morning, she was, aye. But meaner than a snake. Raised out here, d'ye see, used to managing slaves from her cradle, and her kinfolk some of the harshest. She ran through three or four riding quirts a year, slashin' and layin' about at any servant who crossed her. Bought 'em by the half dozen, she did! Fascinatin' girl, but a beast at heart. Horse threw her, one morning. Broke her neck… snap!"

  "Dear God, but…" Lewrie gawped, appalled.

  "Towards the end, I couldn't abide the sight or sound of her," Cash-man admitted with a rueful moue and shrug. "Happened whilst I was off in the Blue Mountains, start of the Maroon War. Took colours just t'be shot o' her, too. Mean as she was, I always suspected one of our stable boys made her horse shy, perhaps some of the field hands. Left her t'die? Snapped her neck themselves, so it looked accidental? Who knows. Did me a great favour, if they did. You get used to lordin' it over slaves, you simply have to turn mean and callous. Her, I mean to say. Perhaps me, as well, but…" Be shrugged off once more, smiling disarmingly.

  "I heard such once before, I think," Lewrie said, after wiping his mouth with the napkin following a dollop of lobster and drawn butter. "Out here, come t'think on it, oh… ages ago, when I was fresh-commisioned, here in Kingston. Lady of my acquaintance… sister of a girl I was wooing? God, they were hellish rich! Anne Beauman, do you know of her? Her youngest sister, Lucy, was the one I was after. Anne said that a slave society gets callous and hard on everyone, once you get used to wallopin' the Blacks, so why not wallop every… what?"

  "The Beaumans, Alan?" Cashman told him, in answer to the gawpy look on Lewrie's face, once he'd seen the smirk on Christopher's. "Who hold great swaths of land… on Portland Bight, do they?" "They're your neighbours, of course! You do know 'em!" "Hugh Beauman and his wife Anne are my patrons in the regiment," Cashman delighted in informing him. "Made up his mind I was the man for him, and he's used to gettin' his way."

  "Aye, just as they were back in '82," Lewrie recalled. "So how is Anne? At the time, she was the most exotic-lookin' woman."

  "Ah, well… faded, sorry t'say. Island women mostly do. The climate and the sun, I expect. Shrivel up and go sour and grey much too soon. Do they not perish o' childbed fever, malaria, or the Yellow Jack." "There was another sister, Floss, I think?" "Died," Cashman coolly told him.

  "Ah, pity. Poor old thing," Lewrie said. "But Lucy! Now..'." "Mmmmmm!" Cashman agreed most heartily.

  "My first real love. On my part, at least," Lewrie confessed. "Ran into her in Venice two years ago. She'd remarried a Sir Malcolm Shockley, baronet. Richer than God. Why, richer than the Beaumans!"

  "She was still here when I bought my lands, in her first marriage," Cashman reminisced. "Aye, one of the great beauties of her time." "Unfortunately, dumber than dirt, too," Lewrie pointed out. "My dear Alan," Christopher Cashman leered back at him, "I never asked her to recite!"

  "You never!" Lewrie chortled, catching the sly meaning. Always, did have the most Philistine of tastes, she did! Lewrie assured himself, trying to picture Lucy taking up with Cashman.

  "Ah, but I did," Cashman slyly boasted. "Along with half the young swains in Jamaica, I suspect. You?"

  "Uhm… no, actually," Lewrie had to admit, "but not for want of trying, mind. She was only seventeen, back then, and chaperoned as close as a Spanish convent girl."

  "Watched like a hawk, aye," Christopher said with a knowing nod.

  " 'Twas after she wed that she took up her own household, with a young husband on the land, and her here in town. Got a ragin' hunger for it, and then no man was safe. And too rich to be scandalised, don't you know. Small world, ain't it."

  "Bad as old Mistress Betty Hillwood. My, uhm… replacement," Lewrie said with a sly boast of his own, "for when I couldn't get the leg over Lucy. Used to keep rooms uphill, the fountained court…"

  "Oh, my yes!" Cashman said with another knowing pur
r. "It is a damn' small world. Been there, too, Alan. She died, though, in '86."

  "And a hard'un," Lewrie said, sighing, and returned to a crab claw with his name on it.

  "Want to guess who the Colonel of the Regiment is, then?"

  "Hugh Beauman?" Lewrie supposed aloud.

  "Lord, no! Much too rich and involved t'be playing soldier."

  "Hold on, there was another brother…" Lewrie said, frowning as he tried to recall a name to place on a braying horse's ass.

  "Ledyard Beauman, that's the one," Cashman said with distaste.

  "Lord, that fool? That hoorawin' jackanapes?" Lewrie cried in utter surprise. "When I met him, he was still limp-wristed 'Macaroni' fashion, years after the style'd passed. 'Bout as sharp-witted as his sister Lucy, God help us. Couldn't pour pee from his boot without a footman's help!"

  "He's lost ground, since," Cashman sombrely assured him.

  "Ledyard Beauman, by God! And he's your Colonel? Is he actually capable of anything?"

  "He's been… studying, d'ye see. Tactics and such," Cashman grimly said. "Out of books, so please you. Marchin' wee lead troops 'cross his dinin' table, rattlin' on about Cannae, Hadrianopolis, and double envelopments. Caesar in Gaul, Scipio Africanus, and Hannibal? Turnin' into a perfect pest."

  "Well, I'd allow he might look crackin' fine on a charger, at a parade," Lewrie snickered some more. "Just so long as he knows his limitations… and his place."

  "Well, that's the rub, Alan," Cashman said, sighing a tad more and wriggling uneasily in his chair as if ants were inside his breeches. He unconsciously crossed his legs as if to protect his "nutmegs" from harm.

  "Lately, he's of a mind-a fervid mind-t'go over t'Saint Domingue with us, when we sail. Bring us his… insights, or so he says. How best to employ and manouevre troops and such?"