Caribee

by Christopher Nicole

  Colour flooded Edward's face. He had not suspected his father could enter so deep a mood. But now Jarring and his companions were back from the forest, equipped with two cut down saplings, each about six feet long. These they proceeded to embed in the sand, in front of the Governor's House, setting them four feet apart, and testing them with their own weight to make sure they would not move. A nod to the Caribs, and the Indians stood aside from their captives, yet remained in a cluster on the beach, watching the white people with great interest, no doubt wondering if they meant to eat the girl. Jarring slit the rope binding Susan's wrists, and she was marched forward, a man holding each of her arms, placed between the stakes, facing the house, and her arms extended on each side of her body, one wrist being secured to each of the uprights. Still she made no sound, but remained gazing at Tom Warner, her face composed, only her breathing a trifle laboured.

  'By God, sir,' Jarring said. 'We have no whip.'

  Tom found Iris mouth choked with saliva, as it had used to be when superintending an execution. He had to spit and swallow before he could speak. 'You've a belt, Mr Jarring. We all have belts.'

  'A happy thought,' Jarring cried.

  'No studs,' Berwicke said. 'No studs and no buckles, Mr Jarring.'

  Jarring nodded. He secured five of the belts, and these he bound together at the buckles, to leave himself with five leather thongs. 'Shall I cut her hair?'

  'No,' Susan cried. ‘I beg of ye, Mr Warner.'

  'Let one of the women bind it,' Tom said.

  ‘I’ll do it,' cried an Irish girl, running forward to grin at Susan as she gathered the long red hair into two plaits, securing each one with a string, and then hanging them in front of the tensed shoulders. 'There ye are, sweetheart,' she said. 'They'll not harm a hair of your head.'

  Which brought a gale of laughter from her companions.

  'Then there's the shift,' Jarring said, speaking very deliberately.

  'Remove it, man,' Tom shouted. 'And get on with it.'

  Jarring hesitated, then seized the material and jerked; the straps parted and it came away without resistance, to fall in a cloud of linen about her ankles. Tom could hear the sucking of breaths around him. Never had he seen such a magnificent sight; the strength in thigh and arm, for she stood with legs spread and muscles tight, waiting for the first blow; the mark of the ribs, one after the other, as her breath was similarly drawn; the spread of pale forested belly, the composure of the firm-lipped face—Edward had known all this. By Christ, he thought - All this.

  Jarring swung his arm, and the five fold crack spread across the beach and up into the trees. Susan's whole body shook, but she never moved her feet The second and the third blows followed in quick succession, and her eyes turned up, away from the watchers, to gaze at the sky. But now there were tears rolling down her cheeks.

  The fifth blow brought her mouth open, with surprising suddenness. The sixth blow had a moan escaping those parted lips, and now her feet moved, constantly, as she shuddered and stamped. At the seventh blow the rope holding her left wrist began to slip and at the eighth blow the dam broke; as blood flew from her lacerated back she screamed, and again, and again, an endless, terrible and terrifying sound, which brought the morning alive and even had Jarring hesitating. But he was swinging again, the leather straps blood wet now in the sunlight, each blow causing a fresh cascade of red drops fly into the air, each crack bringing a fresh scream from the tortured lips. But the screams were losing their pitch, just as those so sturdy legs were losing their strength. Now she hung, her ankles and her knees flaccid, suspended by her wrists, and now the ropes holding the wrists were commencing to slide down the stakes, so that with every blow she sagged lower. She was actually being flogged into the ground. You should stop it, Tom's brain cried. Stop it now, or you will create an enemy for all the rest of your life. An enemy? He watched Edward out of the corner of his eye, watched the sweat standing out on the boy's face, the hard line into which his mouth had formed.

  "You'll stop this madness, Tom Warner.'

  The voice cut across the morning, a voice strange to them for upwards of a year, so unexpected they turned in horror, thinking to see a ghost, to stare at the tall, thin man, long beard a mass of curls to match the hair which tumbled about his shoulders, yet all the hair unable to conceal the tremendous gash of a mouth. He leaned on a staff, as tall as himself, and had a bow slung from his shoulders, and beside it, a quiver of arrows. Nothing else, yet the colonists gazed at him as if he were behind the touchhole of a cannon with a glowing match.

  'Hilton?’ Ashton asked. Tony Hilton?"

  Hilton came forward, slowly, into the assembly. The Caribs were shouting and gesticulating. They were unused to having anyone creeping up on them in this fashion, but they had been too interested in the white man's sport.

  'By God,' Tom said. 'We had thought you dead.'

  ‘I am not so easily destroyed, Tom.' Hilton walked up to Jarring, still moving with great deliberation, took the bloodstained belts from his hand, and threw them on the sand. He knelt beside the girl, still now and perhaps fainted. From his belt he took his knife, gleaming sharp in the sunlight, and cut the ropes holding her wrists. She tumbled forward on to her face, without a sound, and he hastily rolled her on to her back. ‘I deserted this colony, Tom,' Hilton said. 'Would you take the flesh from my bones as well?'

  'We....' Tom licked his lips. He was conscious that Rebecca was in the doorway behind him. 'We had just realized that there was an omission in our laws.'

  'Laws?’ Hilton demanded. ‘I remember your dream, Tom, of a land where laws were unnecessary, where men were free.' He looked down at the girl. ‘I'll take this creature away from here.'

  'You'll do what?" Jarring demanded, laying his hand on Hilton's shoulder.

  A moment later he scattered sand as he stretched his length on the beach. 'No man touches me, or this girl. By Christ, Tom, you'll have to commit a murder. And be sure I'll not go alone.'

  Tom chewed his lip. But his rage was past, and with it the vicious hatred of the girl. The vicious lust to see so much unattainable beauty destroyed as well. Now he felt only the sickness, the self-hatred, the certainty that this day would leave a scar across the face of the colony which time would not heal.

  'She's an indentured servant, Tony,' Ashton observed mildly.

  'The women are available as wives, as I understand it,' Hilton said. 'You've waved this carrot in front of as for too long. I worked and fought with you, Tom Warner, when this colony was but a dream, and you promised me something like this for my reward. Now I'm claiming my right.'

  To skulk in the forest?" Tom asked.

  Hilton gazed at the girl; her eyelids were starting to flutter, and even through her unconsciousness her face was beginning to twist with pain. ‘I've made a home, on the north side, Tom. Tobacco growing was never my style. But I'll submit to the laws of the colony, play my part. You need someone on watch over there, and you could use my nets. You'll get a deal more fish on windward than ever over here. But I'll bow to your laws, and to you yourself, Tom, if you give me this girl.'

  'Let him take her, Tom,' Berwicke whispered. ' Tis certain you'll have a rebel on your hands in her, forever more. And when there is one troublemaker, be sure you'll find others, soon enough.'

  'And do I not have a say in this?' Edward demanded.

  Hilton straightened, Susan in his arms; her eyes were open, now, and she stared at him, frowning, while the pain tears still seeped away from her eyes. 'No, lad, you do not,' he said. 'She gave you her trust. You lost your right to her when you let them take you.' He walked up the sand. ‘I'll be back, with my bride. When she's in a fit state to be married.'

  Tom watched them disappear into the trees, gazed at the grinning Irish, the staring colonists, the bemused Caribs. 'So what do you gawk at?" he shouted. The girl committed a crime, and has been punished. Now a place has been found for her. The incident is closed.'

  Slowly, hesitating, muttering amongst themse
lves, the crowd broke up. Ashton glanced at Berwicke, and the two men left together, strolling down the beach deep in conversation. Only Edward remained staling at his father.

  Tom picked up the sword, turned it over before raising his head. ‘I'd best keep this. Hilton was right. You have played very little of the man this day, boy.'

  'Had I done so I'd have killed someone, and perhaps been killed myself. I had no conception that you would play the savage.'

  ‘I did what I had to do, as Governor of this colony,' Tom said. 'You'll not make these people work, and face disaster, perhaps, and rise again, by feeding them milk. As for you, boy, as you say, you would have been killed. Better that, however much the grief to your mother and I. You'll not hold your head high amongst these people, or the Indians, ever again.' He went inside. Rebecca lay in her hammock. Sarah had gone out the back. Tom threw the sword in the corner, took off his hat. 'There's not a scene I'd repeat every day of the week.'

  ‘You surprise me,' Rebecca said. Never had he heard such coldness in her tone.

  He stood above her. 'What mean you, woman?'

  Her eyes came up, gazed into his. 'You were all of dripping saliva when you saw that girl lashed. Aye, you, and every man there. I conceived myself in the midst of a pack of wolves. I'd have felt safer with the Indians.'

  He hesitated. But now was not the time for more anger, especially where she was so nearly right. 'Aye,' he said. ‘It was a time for quick and savage justice, and it made us less than men. We must discover a better means of conducting our affairs, where it is less of a spectacle. It is the spectacle that does the harm.' He sighed. 'There is so much to be done. Every day turns up another problem. Edward will remain one now for too long. Hilton has reappeared to become one. And count upon it, there will be endless others. I had no conception of what I undertook, when I landed here so confidently. Yet will we survive, and prosper, Rebecca. This land is Warner land. In time we shall seek the other islands, and they too will prosper. The Spaniards have no interest where there is no gold, and in time we shall muster sufficient numbers even to set the Caribs at naught. Do not fear the future, Rebecca. My faith in it grows with every disaster we overcome. But I thank God I shall ever have you at my side in the struggle.'

  Her head turned, away from him. 'Perhaps you will have me at your side, in the future, Mr Warner.'

  'Perhaps?’

  'Perhaps,' she said. ‘I know not now to whom I am married, a captain of the King, a kindly man, given only to just anger and legal lust, or some adventurer returned from pirating, filled with the dreams and the wild talk of Walter Raleigh, and yet entirely lacking his greatness of spirit.'

  'Woman,' Tom snapped, ‘I am not in the mood to be tried by your humour.'

  She sat up, a suddenly blazing virago. And once he had mourned her lack of fire. 'So, then, sir,' she shouted. 'Would you strap me, naked, between those stakes, and tear the flesh from my bones? Ah, you'd not have the courage for that, Tom Warner. You'd give the leather to that boy Jarring.'

  He stared at her, taken aback, his mouth opening and shutting again.

  'So leave me be,' she said. 'Give me time, to get to know this new man. I'd not anticipated more than one in my life.'

  He hesitated, and then went outside. Edward still stood on the porch, staring at the sea. Phihp scraped the sand by the door. 'Why is everyone quarrelling today, Father? Why did Susan have to bleed?’

  'Oh, hold your mouth shut, boy,' Tom said. But he had no wish to speak with anyone, this day; he could see Ashton and Berwicke returning up the beach. Angrily he stamped through the house again, and out the back, left the village and surveyed the growing tobacco in the field. His wealth. What he had always sought, and now possessed, in abundance. So let them have their tempers and think he had changed. He had brought them all this, and he would bring them more, and yet more.

  A sound had him turning, sharply. It was no more than the faintest of rustles, in the bushes by the edge of the field.

  'Who's there?' he asked.

  A moment's hesitation, and then Yarico stood up.

  6

  The River of Blood

  There she is, by God,' Jarring shouted. 'A sail. At last. A sail.' He seized the conch shell with which the watch was provided, ran to the lip of Brimstone Hill to look down on the village and the tobacco fields, and blew a long, wailing blast, which screamed on the wind across the southern half of the island. Ships were the only punctuation in the endless life of the colonists, and when the ship was delayed, morale immediately seeped away into irritation and quarrels. Thus the conch must only be blown when there could be no doubt that the sail on the horizon was standing in.

  Its wail caught every attention on the island, for the sound penetrated as far as the Carib town. The Indians gathered on the beach to gaze seaward. At the foot of the hill, work in the tobacco field ceased, and the colonists and their servants and their women gathered at the water's edge, differences forgotten at this suggestion of news from home, of fresh European food and wine, of reinforcements for the colony, of a vehicle for the removal of their tobacco.

  All of these things were necessary, Tom thought, as he stood on the porch of his house and gazed at his people. And yet the sinking of their differences was by far the most important. Would that he could have discovered a means of accomplishing this without the uncertain assistance of Jefferson's vessel. He had assumed that governing an island would be little different to commanding a regiment of foot, or the Tower of London, for that matter. He had assumed so many things. He had found the Irish labourers the simplest to deal with, as, indeed, so many of his foot soldiers in the past had been Irish vagabonds. These men understood command and the lash, and little else. Yet here again there was a difference. He could not inspire them, by standing before them and pointing his sword at the enemy. There was no enemy. There was not an Irishman living—it was impossible to imagine an Irishman living—who would not respond to such a call on his valour and aggression. To hoe another furrow, to prune another leaf, left them sullenly discontented; hence the stocks which had made their unwelcome appearance in the centre of the village, close by the whipping post. O'Reilly sat there now, as he had sat there for the previous two days. A big, cheerful young man with a shock of fair hair and a straggling beard, he considered himself their natural leader, apparently felt it necessary to assert himself, and suffer for it, every couple of months.

  Then the women. In many ways they were the most content of all. But even that was a transient phase. Their pleasure at being freed from the ship and the prison they had infested before that, at finding themselves in a tropical paradise with eager young men to love their bodies, was already dwindling. Three were mothers; three others would not be long delayed. It was more than ever necessary for Jefferson to have brought a priest with him; already two of the girls had been whipped for promiscuity. For adultery he could order a more severe punishment

  Punish, punish, punish, was that, then, to be his role? Had he exchanged the position of gaoler to the nobility merely to become gaoler to this pack of layabouts? He had punished none of the men. He was too conscious of his weakness, here. They were his colonists. They had to have arms at hand and the freedom to live their lives. So when they sought outside love he had whipped the women. He was in the presence of a force he could not command and could not otherwise control, because he lacked the strength. It should not have been so. Berwicke might by now be past physical endeavour, but Ashton remained always a powerful aid, and there should also have been Edward and Hilton; he did not doubt that they were each worth six of the colonists. But Hilton was seldom seen on the leeward coast and since he had removed her, Susan had never appeared in the village. He brought fish and coconuts, as he had promised. He acknowledged the Warners as the leaders of the colony, and no doubt, if called upon, he would lend that strong and angry right arm, that bow and that sword and that pistol to his governor. But how to summon a man ten miles away, when he might be needed in seconds?

  No,
if it came to a business of force, it would have to be Edward. If he could trust the boy. If he could trust the boy for anything, whether for him or against him. Near a year now, and he had not forgiven. He mooned the beach, did no more than his share of work in the fields, grew in height and breadth and strength with every day, until already, at seventeen, there was scarce a man would dare lift a hand against him in the entire colony—and remembered.

  As did Rebecca. Only in Rebecca's presence did Edward's face soften; only when Edward was near did Rebecca smile. But Rebecca provided a more serious cause for concern. She would have few relations with him, only those she regarded as her duty. But this was not entirely disgust, he was sure. She complained of headaches and was often hot to the touch, while she sweated in a quite unusual profusion. Her dwindling strength could be seen in the gauntness of her face and body, the great shadows which had accumulated under her eyes, the sudden streaks of white which marked her hair. She was ailing, and he knew not what caused it. As with Sarah. Her constantly running nose and her endless sneezes were more a matter of irritation than alarm, but she was none the less hardly suited to this climate.

  Of all his family, only Philip was unchangingly his, in appearance and health and support. But Philip wanted several years to manhood. He had not been forced to it like his brother.

  And did they, did the colonists, did the labourers, did his personal problems, really matter? Was not the colony, despite all, thriving, and had not the ship, after all, arrived? Were not his fears the product of his own imagination, his own guilt? Because he was guilty. He was guilty of so many crimes he dared not stop to count them. Of adultery, merely to begin with. Of breaking his own rule regarding Indian women. Of loving, where he had never loved Rebecca. Of wanting and desiring like the most profligate courtier, when he had refused all during his days at court, had even, on one unforgettable occasion, spurned the advances of Frances Howard. Then he had been a man. Now he was a... a dog. Summoned to Ins duties by his bitch, daily.