Caribee

by Christopher Nicole

  And at this moment she did not wish to speak with him. He stood next to Yarico instead. 'What do you know of Antigua?"

  'An-tigua people, pouf,' she remarked,

  'Your people have fought them?'

  'My people rule. . ..' she waved her arm. 'Until War-nah.’ ‘We think we see a break in the shoreline. Have you heard of this?’

  She shook her head. The breeze caught the heavy black hair and floated it. Edward patted Little Tom on the head and returned to the poop. The sailors were already aloft, trimming the sails, and the orders were being passed down to the helmsman. Now the little ship came as close to the wind as she could manage, heeling as she approached the shore.

  Willett closed the telescope with a snap. ' Tis a gap, all right, Mr Warner, but once we enter there we shall lose the wind, and if there should be a current we shall be at its mercy.'

  Then break out your boat and have it ready,' Edward said. ‘You can always anchor until the oars are ready to take the strain. By God, man, are you a ship's captain or a inexperienced apprentice?'

  Willett flushed, and went to the rail to give his orders. Edward remained staring at the approaching shore. Now the gap could clearly be seen; the sand and the outcrops of rocks on either side, with the ripple of surf against them, allowed in the centre a deep green gash, and the land in there was farther off. Willett, in addition to swinging out the longboat, also ordered sail to be shortened, and with the wind coming ever more onto the bow the ship slowly lost speed But there were no breakers, no heads, peering through the waters of the gap. It scarce seemed to move, indeed, a slow sway of deep water, to and fro, and beyond, a wonderland, once again of sandy beaches and outcrops of rock, but curving round to form a vast lagoon, to which access could only be gained by this one narrow entrance.

  The ship was now almost without way, and the longboat entered the water with a splash. The crew were already at their oars, and a moment later the towing warp took up the strain, while a leadsman climbed into the bows to call the depths. But there was no need, surely.

  'By God,' Willett said. ‘I have seen nothing like it. You could hide the Spanish Armada in here, in comfort and security.'

  'Aye,' Edward said. Antigua. His island. In all the group, to their knowledge, the one island with a natural harbour. And it was his.

  And once he had called himself unfortunate.

  Willett chose his spot, dropped the bower anchor in four fathoms of clear green water, onto a bed of the most perfect white sand. It reminded Edward of the interior of Susan's cave. Now they were in, there was no breeze to be felt at all. Nothing moved; the trees in their profusion on the shore, the unscarred sandy beach, the endless tree covered hills beyond, the quiet, sheltered sea. No mountains on Antigua. No hills to be called misery, no hills to be defended with brimstone. Was the island, then, defensible? It looked larger than St Kitts.

  So, then, would it be defended?

  Willett was all of a bustle, now his ship was safe. "You'll require a large armed force, to begin with,' he said. ‘I’ll give the orders. The women and the child had best remain behind until we have taught these Indians a thing or two.'

  'Your instructions from my father were to bring us here, nothing more, Mr Willett. Although I thank you for your wish to see us safe ashore, the Indians, if they are hostile, are not likely to come out and be shot at, and unless you are to stay here forever, with your guns trained on those trees, why, then, we must make some other arrangements. I shall come to an agreement with these people.'

  'As your father did with the people of St Kitts?" Willett asked. And had the grace to flush.

  'Aye,' Edward said. 'And perhaps mine shall be the more lasting. Ladies, your bundles, if you please. I will carry yours, Aline.'

  ‘I am quite capable of carrying my own belongings, Mr Warner,' she said. ‘I am sure you have a deal to do.'

  Difficult times ahead, but not to be thought of now. 'You’ll keep Tom by your side, always, Yarico,' he said.

  Tom good.' She continued to stare at the shore.

  'And what of the Caribs?'

  She shrugged. ‘If they there, they there, Ed-ward. They come.'

  'Well, we'd best give them something to come for.'

  They embarked, a nervous huddle in the centre of the longboat, while the seamen pulled to the beach. Willett himself took the tiller, but there was no surf to be navigated, and only seconds after they left the ship they grounded on the sand.

  They waited, the sailors with their oars backed, the colonists with their cloth bundles and their weapons clutched to their breasts. Edward stood up, made his way to the bow, and jumped ashore. He was fully armed and armoured, but he left his sword in his sheath. In his right hand he carried the staff of St George fluttering from its top. He walked up the sand, slowly and deliberately, raised the flag high, and then thrust the stock hard into the ground. He turned to face them.

  ‘I, Edward Warner, take possession of this land, in the name of His Majesty King Charles I of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and in the name of his Lieutenant of the Caribee Isles, Sir Thomas Warner of Framlingham. And I name this place . . .' he hesitated. All manner of grandiose titles had flitted through his mind as the ship had entered the land-locked bay. But simplicity were best. 'English Harbour. You'll disembark, if you please, ladies and gentlemen.'

  The colonists climbed out of the longboat and lifted their wives ashore, and then returned for their weapons and their goods. The pile of stuff, enough food and wine for several weeks, muskets and shot, pikes and swords, saws and hatchets, grew on the sand, but remained pitifully small.

  "I’ll not return tins night,' Willett declared. 'We shall lie at anchor until dawn, and our guns will remain loaded and directed at this forest. Bear that in mind, Mr Warner.'

  'And I thank you, Mr Willett. But I say again, we must surely make our own way here. You'll tell my father that we are safely ashore, and you will tell him more, of the wondrous harbour we have discovered. I prophesy here and now that Antigua is the future of the Caribee colony. You may tell him I said so.'

  Willett nodded, and gave orders to return to the ship.

  ‘I doubt that is wise, Mr. Warner,' Aline remarked. 'As it will but encourage your father to supersede you in the governorship.'

  'My father is a man of his word.'

  ‘Indeed?' she asked. 'But is it his word which now rules St Kitts?"

  He glanced at her, and she returned his gaze without altering her expression. His wife, by God. His bride of not yet twenty-four hours, and already setting up to be a shrew.

  He turned away from her. 'Joseph Brown, you'll see about setting up these tents. For this night well place them midway between the beach and the trees. The Indians, should they prove hostile, lack distance with their missiles. Hal Leaming, you'll take one of these young men and secure us wood for a fire. It will drive away the sandflies. Mistress Ganner, you'll see to our supper this night. And one bottle only. We are here to work, not to get drunk.'

  They stared at him. 'And you, Mr Warner?' Robert Ganner asked.

  ‘I will investigate the forest behind us, and locate fresh water. You will accompany me, madam.' 'Me?' Aline asked.

  ‘You are experienced in forests, are you not? Put your goods with the others.' He walked up the beach, not deigning to glance at them. They had volunteered to follow him, or at any rate, to escape St Kitts. The first few days here would prove what they would make of this colony. Their respect for him was based on hearsay. No doubt he would have to knock one or two heads together, beginning, he suspected, with Ganner, a short, thickset man with a thin wife—ever a bad combination. But his first priority must to be to make sure of those who stood behind him. He could not depend on Yarico alone.

  'And the Indian girl?' Harriet Ganner was flanked by the other two women.

  'Will also investigate the forest,' Edward said. 'She knows it better than any of us.'

  Yarico glanced from him to the women, and then to Ali
ne, who, skirts held in her hands, was walking up the sand behind him.

  ‘I go so,' she said, and set off in the opposite direction, little Tom as usual toddling by her side.

  Edward parted the first of the bushes, forced his way through them, extricating his feet from the clawing branches which covered the earth. Behind him Aline came crackling.

  ‘I doubt you need me, sir,' she panted. 'When last I knew a forest I was not encumbered by a gown.'

  He stopped. The beach was already lost to sight. 'Then take it off.'

  'Sir?'

  'Take it off,' he said. ‘I command you as your husband and your governor.'

  'You seek to humiliate me, sir. Those people.. ..'

  'Will not leave the beach, I assure you of that. We are as secure from their prying eyes as if we were on the moon. And I am your husband.'

  She stared at him, a flush rising out of her neck, then she slowly released the ties on the back of her gown, shrugged it free of her bodice, and lowered it past her hips.

  'And the shift,' he said.

  The flush deepened. 'Do you then, mean once again to make me lie upon the ground, Mr Warner?'

  ‘It may well come to that. I would see if you, once again, will excite me to that pitch.' As if there could be any doubt. As if he was not already as excited as a young boy. As if he had not been so for the past months.

  'And you are my husband, so I must obey, or risk a whipping.' She raised the shift over her head, threw it on the ground behind her gown. And then faced him, deliberately inflating those swelling breasts while sucking her belly flat. And watching his eyes. 'Although, sir,' she said, ‘If such a course of action would relieve your mind, then would I lie content. It is a sad thing, to be taken with hatred. To be married with hatred.'

  And how well she understood him. He hated her at the very moment that he loved her. And why? Were the two emotions indistinguishable? Hardly likely. He had known no hate with Susan. But he had always feared Yarico's love. Because he feared to be possessed, and he knew that this girl but waited to possess him, and more, knew her power? Or because she had tormented him from the first, and tormenting, had set his feet upon a path from which there was no turning?

  Or because, above everything else in life, he wanted possession of her, and not her body, which was there for the taking, but her mind, which could laugh, and in that magnificent sound raise life itself from the level of the ditch and the pasture, which was all he knew, onto the mountain peaks and the high valleys, above the clouds, and where the sun and the moon held eternal, equally magnificient sway? Possession. But possession of Aline Galante's mind was not to be had by wishing it. There was a door there, with a key in it, and he did not have the knowledge to turn it

  And yet, no doubt to her sorrow, she was no longer Aline Galante, but Aline Warner, as she knew too well. The flush had faded into a paleness which spread down to the still glowing white contours of her breasts. 'Do I then, disgust you, sir?'

  'No,' he said. 'No, I should have to be a sorry man were that possible. But as you say, here is neither the time nor the place. The wife of the Governor should lie on soft sheets, and as those are not available as yet, she should at least lie in her own tent. But as you are here with me, I would speak with you.'

  ‘You do not have to take me away secretly, and force me to inflame your passion, to speak with your wife, Mr Warner.'

  'You think so?’ He came closer, put his hand on the nape of her neck to grasp her hair and hold her, only niches from him. 'You have just proved how necessary it is, Aline. You can use words, and expressions, and even glances, in a manner that is beyond me.'

  Her eyes were wide from the pressure on her scalp, but she never flinched, nor asked him to release her.

  'So now that I am to be Governor,' he said. 'And in addition I am married, it may be possible for a sharp tongue and a more ready, and educated, wit than my own to make sport of me. I will not have it so. Those men on the beach I can handle. If need be I can destroy them. And in doing that I can frighten their women into submission. My own wife is a different matter. If it pleases you to chide me, to make fun of

  me or to ignore me, when we are alone together, that is your privilege. I will not encroach upon it, I promise you. But in public, at all times, you will be my faithful wife, and my most devoted supporter. And my most loving helpmate. Understand that, madam, or I shall indeed bring you into this forest and tie you to a tree and whip the flesh from your back.'

  His fingers relaxed. Slowly she put her hands behind her head, to straighten her hair and rub her scalp.

  ‘I understand you, Mr Warner, and as, on occasion, you frighten me more than anyone, you may be sure that I shall obey you.'

  He nodded. Then there should be no more cause of difference between us. Now get yourself dressed.'

  Still she stood there. 'And yet, sir, as we are alone, and you promised me the privilege of an independent mind hi such circumstances, I would observe that you cannot treat life, and more especially marriage, as if it were a military campaign. Indeed. I have heard it said that even the most successful military commanders rely upon the love rather than the fear of their men. How much more important must it be for the people of a country to love their leader. And where a wife finds it impossible to love her husband, then indeed they are both doomed to a lifetime of loneliness.'

  Almost could she be said to be threatening him. He chewed his lip in indecision, and was relieved by the rustling of the bushes which announced the presence of Yarico. She glanced at Aline with interest, but her mind was clearly occupied. ‘Indian come,' she said.

  'By God.' He started to follow her, checked and looked over his shoulder. 'You'll chess yourself, and approach the beach, but cautiously, Aline.'

  He hurried away from her before she could protest, reached the sand only a few seconds later, to see his colonists accumulated into a circle around their belongings and the first of the tents, weapons hi their hands, gazing at the twenty odd Caribs, men and women, who stood farther down the beach.

  'Are they peaceable?" he asked Yarico. 'An-tigua people, pouf," she said. 'You come.'

  She walked towards them, confidently enough, and he followed, with an equal show of bravado. She halted when some yards short of the group, who watched her approach while muttering amongst themselves and fingering their weapons. Yarico now stepped in front of Edward, spread her arms wide, and began to speak, loudly, and with fierce declamations, every few words turning round to point at Edward, and the ship which still lay at anchor, punctuating her sentences with the one angry pronouncement, 'War-nah . . . War-nah ... War-nah... .'

  The Caribs watched and listened, and then one of them replied, briefly, and the whole group turned and made their way back along the beach.

  'They not trouble us,' Yarico said. 'Not War-nah, who is Caribee.'

  'But well post guards, none the less.'

  She shrugged. And then smiled, and placed a finger on his chest. 'War-nah, Caribee, much feared. Much man.' How she smiled, and how she knew, how much he wanted. And indeed, why else had she come? ‘I find water,' she said. 'You come, Ed-ward? I show?' She put her head on one side.

  He looked down the beach, to where his colonists still stared at him, and beyond, to where Aline was just returning from the bushes. 'Get back to work,' he shouted. 'The Indians will not trouble us. The princess has located a spring, and would show it to me. We shall not be long.' He glanced down at her. 'Aye, sweetheart. You show me.'

  The moon dipped low over the entrance to English Harbour, cutting its brilliant silver road across the calm sea, beginning to illuminate even St Kitts in its path as it dropped towards its bed. Another dawn, soon approaching. Dawn was the most fateful time of a man's life. His life, certainly, but Edward believed it applied to all men. The dawn of a new day, of another day, of, eventually, the last day. Except for those who died in their sleep. But he did not suppose that would be his fate.

  How would he the? Cut down by some Spaniard? Or by some
rebellious colonist? Or indeed, as Father would have it, some escaping slave? Any one of those fates would be deserved. Even the thrust of a woman's knife between the ribs, a wife's knife, perhaps, urged on by jealousy and hatred. Not undeserved.

  And the other? To he in a vast bed surrounded by wife and children, and grandchildren and great grandchildren, and watch them weep, knowing that they all loved you too well? Now there was a dream.

  But dawn was the time when men stirred, and planned deeds, whether great or small, magnificent or murderous. Dawn excited him even as it frightened him.

  But he was anticipating. It wanted yet four hours to dawn, and as the moon was declining fast the utter darkness welled up out of the forest and the sea to envelope the island.

  Footsteps crunched on the sand as Robert Ganner approached. 'By God, 'tis dark, Mr Warner.'

  'So you'll keep a sharp lookout. No sleeping, Mr Ganner. I'd treat that as a military offence.'

  Til not sleep, sir.' Ganner sat down, his back against a tree, his musket across his knees. ‘I wonder any of us do that. Would you not estimate that those people we saw today constituted the entire Carib nation on this island?"

  'Possibly,' Edward said. ‘I had heard they were not numerous.'

  Then, sir, would it not be a sound idea . . . well, sir, as at this moment we have the support of Mr Willett and his sailors, and his cannon, whereas from tomorrow we shall be left to our own devices....'

  'And seeing that we Warners have already practised such a manoeuvre, with success,' Edward said.

  'Why, since you put it that bluntly, sir, yes. Surely there can be little prospect of two peoples as diverse as are we and them ever living together in peace and harmony. Which means that we must continually look to ourselves.'

  ‘I think you are wrong, Mr Gamier.' Edward stood up. ‘I think there is every prospect of the Caribs and the English living together, in peace and in harmony. I think we proved that, in St Kitts. Our action there was hasty, and undertaken through a combination of fear and ambition. My ambition can be contained by what we already have, and I am not afraid of any Carib. And I'll not have my people fearing them, either. Or hating them. You'll remember that, Mr Ganner. They but require treating as human beings to be our friends.'