Edward started to protest, and then thought better of it. 'Aye,' he said. 'You are entitled to be bitter, Wapisiane. Time is our best course.'
Wapisiane stood up, looked down on the white man. 'Edward,' he said. And once again the finger travelled across his throat, but this time very slowly. Then he was gone into the forest.
The fire blazed over the Indian village. Additional dry wood had been brought from the forest, and the smoke from the funeral pyre billowed high into the air, up and ever up, for with the rising of the sun the breeze had dropped, and there was nothing to disperse the smoke. And so it rose, in a long column, hundreds of feet into the air, certainly visible from Nevis and Antigua and Montserrat, and perhaps even farther away than that, a signal of the catastrophe which had happened on Merwar's Hope.
Farther down the beach, the white people prepared to bury the first of them to die on the island. They moved in silence, still burdened by the guilt of what they had clone. For how long, how many years, would they carry that weight around their necks?
The grave had been dug by the Irish labourers, who now gathered in a whispering group by the houses, their habitual jollity quite forgotten. The Irish women were also grouped, gazing at their husbands with new eyes; they had not suspected that the fathers of their children would be men of blood. Rebecca stood by herself, dressed, at her husband's command, in her best gown, the one she had worn to the feast, not a week ago, beneath the broad-brimmed hat which she used to keep the sun from her complexion. It was a man's hat, and served several purposes. Today it kept the tears and the horror which vied for supremacy in her face from being revealed to the crowd. Sarah stood beside her, fingers clutching her mother's skirt. Both women shook, but this day it might easily have been emotion rather than the fever which was their habitual companion.
Philip and Edward stood together, close by the grave, and in front of the assembled Frenchmen. Like their mother, the boys had put on what they could find in the way of decent clothing. Edward's shoulders had not been covered in months, and the material felt uncomfortable against his skin. He listened to his father reading the service, in slow and sonorous tones. But Father had spoken no service over Tegramond. He had hurried away from that funeral. He glanced at his brother. Philip had not been present at the massacre, and he watched his father with admiration. Father was a man of steel. And Philip admired steel.
As no doubt did Monsieur Belain, wearing all the lace he could muster, and with his garters dripping jewels of silken splendour from each knee. Monsieur Galante affected a more fitting black. But then, Monsieur Galante never wore anything else. And Hal Ashton? He stood by himself, at the foot of the grave. Of them all, saving perhaps Tom, he had been closest to Ralph Berwicke. They had lived next door to each other for several years, and had laughed together, when there had been anything to laugh at, and drunk together, when there had been anything to drink, and, to their discredit, despaired together whenever there had been the slightest reason to do so. Now, despite his promise to Tom, he suddenly looked the oldest man present.
Tom closed his Bible, and nodded. The burial party withdrew their ropes, and picked up their spades. Tom remained standing at the head of the grave while the first shovelfuls of earth were thrown onto the silent body wrapped in its hammock. Then he moved forward, to stand in the midst of his people.
'Ralph left a will,' he said. 'Which he entrusted into my keeping.' Slowly he unrolled the parchment. ‘It is very brief He says, to my oldest friend and faithful employer, Thomas Warner, gentleman, King's Lieutenant in the Caribee Isles, I leave my new hat, that it may shelter him from the tropical sun. All other of my effects that may be worth having I leave to my other old friend, Henry Ashton, Esquire.' He looked up. ‘It is a good hat. And we have lost a faithful supporter.' He hesitated, staring into their faces, one to the other, slowly, hurrying only when he came to his wife and eldest son. 'This day will long be remembered in the annals of our island,' he said. 'Truly, it is not an event which any of us present may ever forget, nor would I have it so. It was a necessary event. The Sieur d'Esnambuc and myself received information that the Caribs, grown afraid of our too rapidly increasing numbers, had resolved to strike when we slept this coming night, and massacre us, saving perhaps only those they kept for the stake. We chose to anticipate that horror. We are white men and women, and we are Christians. We have a duty, to ourselves, our wives and families, to our descendants, to hold this land, and to preserve our portion in it. It will be said that we acted without honour. I will say to you that we acted wisely. There can be no honour in fighting savages. There is seldom much honour of any sort to be gained in war. I speak now as a soldier, and I have seen my share of bloodshed and suffering. The Sieur d'Esnambuc and myself could not risk the lives of a single one of you, for we are responsible for all of those lives. Thus we acted as we did. But I say this to you. A deed like ours today were indeed criminal, and wasted, and horrible, should we ever discard the fruits we seek. There must be no more enmity on this island, no more bloodshed. Let it be our claim that heat and old age are the only causes of death amongst us, as they were the causes of the death of my friend here. Let this colony grow, and let Frenchman and Englishman live in harmony, here. And let this island be the most fertile, as its inhabitants must be the most envied, of any in the world. Thus may we justify our actions for all eternity. For as the Bible truly tells us, out of evil may yet come great good.'
He paused, but he had already lost their attention. They gazed not at him, but past him to the left, in twos and threes, and then in increasing numbers, until every head faced the forest, above which the smoke rose in a long column of memory.
Yarico stood there, her hands hanging at her sides, her hair a black shawl on her neck.
'Mon Dieu,' Belain muttered. ‘I had forgot the princess.' -
They watched her move, slowly, down the beach. Then one of the Frenchmen gave a yell and they surged forward, reaching for her with hands still hungry in their lust.
'Avast there,' Ashton bellowed.
'Wait,' Tom shouted.
'Arretez-vous,' Belain bawled.
Edward drew the undischarged pistol from his belt and fired it into the air. The report brought them up, and they looked over their shoulders, their leader's fingers already at the girl's breast.
'There will be no more of that,' Tom said. 'Of these women, you may take your pick. You will have to draw lots, to be sure, but it is the only way. I'll have no promiscuity. One woman, one man.'
Belain translated for him, and then glanced at him. 'You include the princess in that, Captain Warner?'
The girl had ignored the men who would have attacked her, and had continued to walk forward. Now she was only a few feet away.
'She must make her own choice,' Tom said. 'She has that right, for the service she has rendered us, for the great loss she has suffered.' He gazed at her. 'Yarico,' he said. 'You must take a man. And live by our laws, now. And be sure of our respect and honour.'
She smiled. Or did she merely show her teeth? Edward watched her in fascination as she approached. Approached? But she ignored him, went up to Tom Warner, and held his hand.
'War-nah,' she said. ‘Yarico.'
Tom flushed, although he was obviously flattered. 'You mistake the situation, my dear,' he said. ‘I already have a woman. Rebecca.'
Yarico glanced at the white woman with total scorn. ‘War-nah,' she said again. 'Yarico.' She interlocked her fingers and held them to her belly, and then slowly carried them away from her to her arm's length. 'War-nah. Yarico. Son.'
7
The Revolution
There will be a headstone,' Tom Warner said. ‘I would have you bring marble from England, John. I will give you an inscription.'
John Jefferson fanned himself with the hat he had originally removed out of respect. ‘It will be my pleasure, Tom. But she scarce needs one. This entire hill shall be her monument. You see it, almost before you see the island itself, at least when approaching from th
e west. The first lady of Merwar's Hope could scarce wish a better memorial.'
The first lady,' Tom said. 'When she died, John, she was the only lady on Merwar's Hope.'
'No doubt. You'd not say that now. She'd have been proud to see thus sight.' Jefferson walked from the grave, across the smoothed earth of the courtyard, past the two great cannon which stared westward over the Caribbean Sea, and rested his hand on the earthen breastworks as he looked down from the fortress at Sandy Point. This was his third visit. He recalled the eager, almost desperate faces which had greeted his first arrival, and the equal hunger for news and food and reassurance which had met his second, two years ago. The colony had been struggling then, and no doubt the trouble with the Caribs had taken its toll of spirit as well as ambition. This was something he meant to investigate. So many rumours had filtered back to England, not all of them believable. But now... Sandy Point was no longer merely a settlement. It was not even merely a village. He looked down on a street, stretching back from the beach, unpaved and dusty, to be sure, but none the less a street, lined with houses on either side. These too were in the main modest, but curtains fluttered at the windows, and lines of washing in the back yards, and there were other, larger buildings: Jarring's General Store, half way up the right hand block, with its overhanging porch which was a refuge for thirsty planters on a hot day, and close by, the church, with its bell tower rising above all others; it faced the courthouse—this and the solid, window-less gaolhouse beside it were evidences that there was more lawlessness than religion as yet, but also evidences that Tom Warner and his officers were capable of dealing with it. The gaolhouse was seldom empty, although its inmates were mainly the Irish labourers who worked hard, driven to it by the lashes of their employers, and drank and fought amongst each other with equal spirit.
Set at the inland end of the town, where the land rose slightly, was the Governor's House. This was the only two-storeyed dwelling on the island, or at any rate, in Sandy Point. Its floors were fronted by a huge porch, really a continuation of the sloping roof, extending outwards and held in place by six great pillars, small tree trunks in themselves, to give the seaward facing windows shelter at once from sun and rain. The others, like all the houses in the town, were protected by shutters, but these were only needed when the hurricane winds blew, and this was seldom enough. The Governor's House was a suitably imposing building; it required suitably imposing inmates. Something else to be investigated.
But the town was only an aspect of Merwar's Hope. The corn fields and tobacco fields spreading away on either side, the ships riding to their anchors in Old Road, these, too, were no more than aspects of the current prosperity which shrouded the island. Its future lay in the manner in which it had pushed its tentacles farther inland. Hal Ashton had been one of those who had taken advantage of Tom's law that any man who had proved his worth by three years of labour for the community could go and claim himself a plantation removed from the town. Hal now lived and farmed tobacco five miles up the coast, with his own two-storeyed house and his own fields of corn; he had never married, but he maintained a thriving establishment, with half a dozen Irish labourers and three serving girls, and two overseers to look after the whole; a small colony in itself. Even more independent was Tony Hilton's plantation on the windward coast, where he held sway with his beautiful, silent, red-haired wife. Hilton did not welcome visitors, and indeed it was a full day's journey through the forest and the mountain passes from Sandy Point to the other side. But even Hilton acknowledged the authority of the King's Lieutenant.
Jefferson glanced at his friend. 'Aye,' he said again. 'She would have been proud.'
‘I doubt that,' Tom said. 'Once....' he sighed. "You'll dine with me, of course, John.'
‘I was but waiting for your invitation, Tom.' He followed the Governor down the steep slope. 'You do not mount a permanent guard in your fortress?"
Tom shook his head. "We should see an enemy fleet approaching long before they could come within range, and have all the time we need to man our defences. But there are no such things as fleets in the Leewards.'
'Aye. There is too much bloodshed in Europe for even the most vicious stomach; they say that Germany is reduced to nothing better than a desert. And the French? You'll have heard our countries are again at war, even if our queen does come from Paris?"
'Harriman told me things were shaping that way. But in Europe. Here we have a treaty with them," Tom said over his shoulder. 'But truly, John, I wonder what Belain was at. They lay around the place for a year, and then, their ship repaired, they sailed for home."
'All of them?"
Tom shrugged. 'There are some half a dozen, eking out a precarious existence amongst the crabs and the fishes. I have seen no tobacco planted."
'Yet they were useful, once,' Jefferson observed.
They were half way down the hill, a good place to pause for a rest. Tom took two rolled leaves from the pocket of his coat, and bent low to escape the breeze as he scraped his flint against his tinderbox. 'Our prosperity. The greatest comfort a man may know."
‘I'd not argue with that." Jefferson drew the scented smoke into his lungs, expelled it again with a long sigh. 'You'll not find a gentleman in England without his pipe or his leaf. If he would be a gentleman.'
'England,' Tom said, and glanced at his friend. "You'll have been hearing rumours, John. Thus these guarded investigations.'
'When Harriman returned he spoke much rubbish.'
Tom nodded. 'Or much truth. I would know what they say of me in Whitehall.'
"You are very well regarded there, Tom. When you are regarded at all. No doubt you have also heard rumours.'
'Only what you tell me now. But Harriman at least informed me that His Majesty is not in the least like his father, and this can mean nothing but good.'
'You think so?’ Jefferson got up, walked to the edge of the path, and looked down on the town once again. ‘I wish I knew. His Majesty is the most blameless of men, the most affable, too, in his private life. And yet . . . you know that Buckingham is dead?"
'Steenie? Great God.' Tom flicked ash from his leaf. ‘I’d not whisper this to any man, but you, John, but I cannot regard that either as bad for the nation.'
'You think so? He was at least a nobleman born, an instrument the King could use for the channelling of popular hatred and discontent. As indeed he was used, and thus murdered.'
'Murdered?’
'Struck down as he would have sailed for La Rochelle. But now ... now the King turns to men like Strafford.'
‘I do not know the name.'
'You knew him better as Tom Wentworth.'
‘Wentworth? But he was one of King James' most virulent opponents.'
Jefferson nodded. 'Now he has changed his tune and his coat, and incurred much odium in so doing. The rumour abroad when I left England was that soon the King will again dissolve Parliament, and there are no plans for calling a new one. Yet he is as much in debt as ever, and contemplates war, with Scotland as well as with France, and with God knows who else, in the cause of his religious principles. England is a sorry place, Tom, and if taxes are to be collected at sword point it will become sorrier.'
'Which but makes me realize the more how fortunate I am that three thousand miles lie between me and that Stuart Court.'
Three thousand miles,' Jefferson repeated, slowly. 'A great distance. But not quite far enough.'
Tom frowned at him. 'You've something to say which sticks in your gullet?'
Jefferson sighed. 'Your grant... ‘
'You'll not say it is revoked?'
'Revoked, no. Taken over. Debts, you'll understand, on the part of Warwick. The entire Caribee Isles have been leased to the Earl of Carlisle.'
'Hay? I remember Hay. Aye. We have had our differences. And yet, you say, the entire Caribee Isles? Where will he find a colony to equal Merwar's Hope, save for a few beachcombers in Barbados? Where will he find the colonists to equal mine? He'll not play fast and loose
with me. I have the King's own appointment as Lieutenant, and the right to appoint my successor.'
'All true. But the King, I say again, is deep in debt. Too deep for comfort, and certainly too deep for scruple. The transfer was a costly business, for Master Hay. And so he obtained a slight addition to the lease. That of taxing the colonies for his own benefit.'
Tom's head turned, slowly. 'He'd impose a tax on Merwar's Hope? In what sum?'
'He spoke of a hundred pound a year.'
'A hundred pound? Is the man mad? Where will the colony support such a sum, at this time?'
‘I am but a messenger in this matter, Tom. I grieve for the situation. I told him, it but invites discontent amongst the colonists. I beseeched him, to be patient and give you time to grow. But he is adamant. Your next crop, the crop that I take home with me, will be subject to this tax, and so will all others.'
'By God,' Tom said. 'How rapidly a dream can dissolve into air. By God. This Hay must take me for less than a man.'
'You'll not resist, Tom. That were madness.'
'You'd have me submit, without question? You think we are without our problems here? You dunk these men down there would see their profits dissipated to keep some lord in his satins and laces, and his whores in their beds? By God. We'd best go down. This is a matter for consideration.'
‘If I might offer advice,' Jefferson said, and waited. But Tom was on his feet again, and making his way down the hill.
They reached the beach, from where a dock had been built out into the still waters of the roadstead, to allow boats to disembark without the necessity of their passengers becoming wet from the knees down. Yet here the sea was too shallow to allow ocean-going vessels to approach the shore, and the ships must need lie at anchor in the deeper waters of Old Road, and ply their trade to and fro by pinnace. They were at it now, unloading their cargoes, greeted by a large crowd of colonists, men, women and children, some just standing and staring, others hard at work under the supervision of William Jarring. Amongst them were mingled both the mastiffs and the goats, growling and frisking, apparently quite accustomed to each other's company.
Caribee Page 22