Cuffee’s face turned ugly and thunderous.
“That’s an insulting suggestion. But I don’t have to answer it, because as you’re quite well aware it isn’t even any of your business.”
“Nevertheless, I have to ask it,” Farnham persisted quietly. “And I could only put one interpretation on your refusal to answer.”
Cuffee’s big fist clenched and lifted a little from his side, and the Saint balanced himself imperceptibly on the balls of his feet and triggered his muscles for lightning movement, but Farnham stared up at the Colonel unblinkingly. The fist slowly lowered again, but the congestion remained in Cuffee’s contorted features.
“You go too far,” he said harshly. “This is exactly the kind of meddling I intend to put a stop to. I am obliged to declare you persona non grata. Do you know what that means?”
“In diplomatic circles, it would mean I was to be kicked out of the country.”
“Precisely.”
“Do you mean immediately?”
Cuffee hesitated for a second, and it was as if a mask slid over his face, smoothing out the grimace of fury and leaving only a glint of cunning in his eyes.
“No. It’s late now for you to be starting back. Stay the night, if you can find a place to sleep. Let your friend look around, and make the most of it. He’s the last visitor we shall admit for a long time. Since you’re here, I shall give you a formal reply to take back to your Governor tomorrow. And I may also give you proof that the Maroons are behind me.”
He turned on his heel and strode back towards his elite guard, his adjutant following him, leaving the Saint and David Farnham standing alone under the darkening sky.
4
“Well,” Farnham said stoically, “at least I think I know where we can get a bed.”
The house that he led them to was one of the better ones, as evidenced by the white paint that gleamed through the dusk as they approached. Yellow lights glowed behind the windows, but the porch was dark, and on it the figure of a black man in dark clothes, standing motionless, was almost invisible until they were within speaking distance.
Farnham said affably, “Good evening, Robertson.”
The man said, without moving, “Good evenin’, sah.”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?”
The man’s shoes creaked as he shifted his weight. He said, after a pause, “No, sah. Better you go back dung de hill, sah. I’ gettin’ late.”
“That’s all right, we’re not going back till tomorrow.”
“Better you go tonight, sah. De Colonel don’ wan’ nobody from outside comin’ ’ere.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Farnham said impatiently. “You were Colonel yourself once, the first time I came here. You know the Colonel can’t stop anyone seeing his friends. And I want you to meet a friend of mine—Mr Templar.”
“Yes, sah. How you do, Mr Templar, sah. But is bes’ you go dung de hill—”
The door behind him was flung open, and the shape of another man was framed in it.
“Did someone say ‘Mr Templar?’ Is that you, sah—the Saint?”
“Yes, Johnny,” Simon said.
The man who had stood on the porch was almost bowled over in the rush as Johnny plunged past him, grabbed Simon’s hand, and hustled him and Farnham into the house. Robertson followed them rather quickly, shutting the door behind them. As the lamplight revealed him, he was a very old man, and he twisted his thin gnarled fingers together feverishly.
“I don’ wan’ no trouble here,” he mumbled.
“I don’t want to make any,” said the Saint. “But Johnny’s the lad from New York I was telling you about, Dave.”
“Pleased to meet you, Johnny,” Farnham said, putting out his hand. “I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you.”
“Colonel Robertson is a great-uncle of mine,” Johnny explained. He turned to another white-haired old negro who sat in a rocking chair in the corner. “And this is a sort of older cousin, Commander Reid.”
“I’ve met the Commander,” Farnham said, with another cordial handshake.
He sat down at the bare oilcloth-covered table and tapped the dottle from his burned-out pipe into a saucer which served as ashtray.
“And now, for heaven’s sake,” he said, “will one of you tell me what’s got into everybody around here?”
“We don’ wan’ no trouble,” Robertson repeated, wringing his hands mechanically.
“Goin’ be lotsa change roun’ here,” said the Commander.
“Things are real bad, Mr Templar,” Johnny said. “I found that out already. And ever since I found out, I’ve been wondering whether I could find you on the island, or if you’d really come here like you said you might on the plane.”
“Dis Missah Templar is a fren’ o’ yours, Johnny?” asked the Commander, rocking busily.
Johnny looked at both the two older negroes.
“He’s a wonderful guy. In America, almost everyone knows him. He does things about people like Cuffee. If anyone can help us, he can.”
“I’m just a visitor,” Simon said tactfully. “Mr Farnham’s the Government man.”
A stout elderly woman came out of the partly screened-off kitchen and began to distribute plates laden with steaming rice and what looked like a sort of brown stew around the table. Farnham greeted her cordially as Mrs Robertson, and she smiled politely and went back for more plates, without speaking, for in the councils of the older Maroons a woman’s views are not asked for.
“Please, you must both eat with us,” Johnny said. “And we’d be honored to have you sleep here.”
Robertson shuffled to the table and sat down, looking helpless and lonely, but the Commander pushed back his rocker and stepped across with decisive vigor.
“Okay, Johnny,” he said heartily. “You’ fren’, and Missah Farnham is my fren’. All o’ we is fren’ly here. Dem help us, all okay.”
The dollop of stew on the rice was made from goat, Simon decided, strongly seasoned and flavored in part with curry. There were tough elements in it, but it was very tasty, and he discovered that his appetite had developed uncritical proportions while his mind was occupied with other things.
“You’re an intelligent young man, Johnny,” Farnham said across the table. “What’s your version of all this nonsense?”
“It isn’t nonsense, Mr Farnham, sah. This fellow Cuffee’s a Communist organizer. I know. I’ve heard fellows up in the States who talked just like him. From what I could find out, he got himself a following pretty quick. It seems there’s been some others like him here before, only white people, but talkin’ the same way, so he didn’t have to start out cold. But being a Maroon himself, he got a lot more attention. He had plenty of material to work with. I don’t want to say anything against the Government myself, sah, I’m sure they’ve tried to do what they can for us, but it’s a pretty hard life up here, just for a man to scratch enough from the ground to feed himself and his family. The people go down to the market an’ talk to other people workin’ outside, an’ the young men go to Kingston an’ see how there are other people no different, colored people I mean, who are livin’ so much better, an’ they talk to ones who have joined the unions, an’ they all come back an’ talk.”
“The wave of the future,” Farnham said heavily. “And they want it all at once.”
“Yes, sah. It takes education to be patient, an’ patience to get education. An’ it takes a lot of both to know why Cuffee’s way won’t really solve anything.”
Cuffee, they learned, had organized the cadre of malcontents with swift efficiency. The disappearance of the most recently installed Colonel had provided such a fortunate vacancy that it was obviously suspect, but Johnny could only quote some of the dark rumors that had been muttered around the village of Accompong. About the handling of the latest election, however, his account was confirmed by Robertson and the Commander. Cuffee had made an inflammatory speech proposing his own leadership, while his bravos shouted
down the arguments of the older conservative group. Two of the most stubborn skeptics had been beaten up. Cuffee’s young bullies operated the polls and announced the result.
“But they aren’t an army,” Farnham said. “At least, not what I saw. Can those two dozen ruffians really terrorize the whole community?”
“Hasn’t the same thing happened in bigger countries, but in a not very different proportion?” Simon reminded him.
“Besides,” Johnny said, “there’s more than what you saw. Cuffee’s got them out now, roundin’ up Maroons from all over for a big meeting tomorrow, where he’s goin’ to tell ’em what the new system’s goin’ to be.”
There was evidently some connection between this and Cuffee’s sudden decision to let them stay overnight, and Farnham and the Saint exchanged glances.
“Just what is his platform?” Farnham asked.
“I dunno, sah. But from what I hear, I think it’s something about how all the colored people in Jamaica should have the same rights as the Maroons, an’ we should let all of ’em join us who want to, and enlarge our boundaries till there’s room for all of ’em.”
“And eventually they end up with the whole island,” Farnham said grimly. “Yes, that’s clear enough.” He looked suddenly very tired. “I’m afraid this turns out to be a bit out of my department. I suppose I’ll just have to report it all to the Governor, and let Government decide what to do.”
“Government should be able to take care of it,” Simon remarked. “A few soldiers, or even policemen—”
“You’re forgetting the Treaty.”
The Saint had finished his plate. He lighted a cigarette thoughtfully.
“Well, where do I stand?” he inquired. “I don’t like Mr Cuffee on principle, and I didn’t sign any treaty.”
He was aware of a transient spark in Robertson’s dull eyes, and that for a moment the Commander paused in his energetic chomping, but most of all of the intent eagerness of Johnny.
“No,” Farnham said firmly. “You’re only a visitor. I know your methods, and they just won’t go here. This situation is ticklish enough already. Don’t make it any more complicated.”
“You’re the boss,” said the Saint, but he knew that Johnny was still looking at him.
David Farnham could not responsibly have taken any other attitude, but his enforced correctness cast an inevitable dampener over the discussion. They went to bed not long afterwards, after much repetition and no progress, and Simon sympathetically refrained from further argument when they were alone. The iron bedsteads were not luxurious, but the rough-dried sheets were fresh and clean, and the Saint never allowed vain extrapolations to interfere with his rest. A few seconds after his head settled on the pillow, he was in a dreamless sleep.
He awoke to a light touch on his shoulder, instantly, without a movement or even a perceptible change in his breathing. Relaxing one eyelid just enough to give him a minimum slit to peek through, he saw Johnny’s face bending over him in the first grayness of dawn, and opened both eyes.
Johnny put a finger to his lips and made a beckoning sign.
The Saint nodded, and slithered over the edge of the bed as silently as the uncooperative springs would let him. The hearty rhythm of Farnham’s snoring did not change, and Johnny was already a shadow gliding through the door. A few moments later the Saint, in shirt and trousers and carrying his sandals, joined him outside.
A little way up the path from the house, in shadows made darker by the paling sky, a group of five men stood waiting. As Johnny and Simon joined them, Simon saw that Robertson and the Commander were two of them. The other three were of similar age. There were no introductions. Johnny seemed to have been appointed spokesman.
“We talked for a long time after you went to bed,” he said. “I told them a lot about you. They think you might be able to help us. They want to show you the Peace Cave. That’s where the Treaty is supposed to have been signed. I haven’t even seen it myself. But they seem to think it’s important, I don’t know why. Will you go?”
“Of course,” said the Saint, with a strange sensation in his spine.
5
They set off at once.
Nobody talked, and before long the Saint himself was grateful to be spared the effort of conversation. Even in such good condition as he always was, he was glad to save his breath for locomotion. The trail wound up innumerable steep hills and down an identical number of declivities, through arching forest and over the slippery rocks and muck of little streams. The sun came up, scorching in the open, brewing invisible steam in the deceptive shade. Simon had to marvel at the driving pace set by the Commander in the lead and uncomplainingly maintained by the other old men.
In the full light, he saw that one of them carried a bottle of rum, one carried an old oil lantern, and one had a cardboard mailing tube which was the twin of the tube that Cuffee’s aide had carried. The significance of that last item puzzled him profoundly, but he managed to restrain himself from asking questions. The first rule of the whole mysterious expedition seemed to be that he should place himself blindly in their hands, and he had decided to do nothing that might upset the procedure.
They made one stop, in a grove of coconut palms. The Commander picked up a couple of fallen nuts from the ground, shook them, and threw them away. He looked up at the clusters of nuts overhead and pointed with the machete which he had carried all the way.
“Go get we some water coconut, Johnny,” he said. “See if you still a good Maroon.”
Johnny grinned, took off his shoes and socks, and scrambled up a tree with what Simon would have rated as remarkable agility, but which convulsed the rest of the party with good-natured laughter. The Commander deftly whacked off the tops of the nuts which Johnny threw down and passed the first one to Simon.
They sat in the shade and sipped the cool mild-tasting water from the nuts, and bummed cigarettes from the Saint, but the bottle of rum was not touched. Presently the Commander stood up, flourished his machete like a cavalry officer, and led them on.
It was nearing noon when the trail turned down around a small valley and twisted past a shoulder of exposed rock and more or less massive boulders. Later Simon was to learn that they were actually only about two miles from the village, and that the long hike had only been contrived as a kind of preliminary ordeal to test him. He could see the path winding up again beyond, and wondered if it was ever going to reach a destination, but the Commander halted at the rocky point and the rest of the safari gathered around him.
“Now we reach de Peace Cave,” said the Commander, and waved his machete. “Open de door!”
The first men to scramble up rolled aside one of the smaller stones, disclosing an opening little more than two feet square. The man with the lantern lighted it and crawled in first, on his hands and knees. Others followed. The Commander urged Simon upwards.
“Okay, Gaston,” said the Saint philosophically.
The tunnel was barely large enough for him to wriggle through on all fours, but he was glad to find it only about four yards long. He squirmed out into a low vaulted cave where the lantern revealed the men who had gone ahead perched on any seats they could find on the unevenly bouldered floor. The roof was too low for him to stand up without stooping, and after Johnny and the Commander had followed him in it seemed as if the number in the party had been calculated by an instinctive sardine-packer, for it would have been almost impossible to squeeze one more adult in.
“Dis de Peace Cave,” said the Commander, standing in the center with his shoulders seeming to hold up the rock over them. “Here de Maroon dem shoot de soldiers dat come after dem. Look.”
He pointed back through the tunnel, and Simon saw the trail that had brought them down into the valley framed like a brilliantly lighted picture at the end of it.
“Now look down here,” said the Commander.
He turned the Saint around with strong bony fingers, guiding him between two men who made way and pushing him down into
a crevice at the back of the cave. There was just enough room there for a man to lie down, and at the end was a natural embrasure that looked straight up another fifty yards of the trail where it went on to climb the slope behind.
And as if he had lain there himself all those generations ago, Simon could see the soldiers in their red coats and bright equipment, probably with flags flying and bugles playing, marching in brave formation down the open path according to the manuals of gentlemanly manoeuvre of their day, sitting ducks for desperate guerrillas with an instinct for taking cover and no absurd inhibitions about chivalrous warfare.
“From dere dem shoot de soldiers dat come dat way,” said the Commander, as Simon clambered back out of the shallow hole. “Bang, bang!”
He made shooting pantomime, holding his machete like an imaginary musket, and roared with laughter.
“I can see why your people were never beaten,” Simon said to Johnny, who had been down into the hole for a look himself.
The Commander squinted at him with shrewd bright eyes.
“You proud to be a Maroon?”
“I certainly would be. Your fathers won their freedom the hard way.”
The Commander pressed him down on to a rock with a hand on his shoulder.
“Sit down,” he said, and sat beside him. “Where de rum?”
The bottle was produced and opened.
“Hold out yo’ hands,” said the Commander.
Simon did so, awkwardly, not knowing what they should be positioned for. The Commander turned them palm upwards for him and poured rum into the palms.
“Wash yo’ face.”
The Commander set the example, pouring rum into his own hands and rubbing it over his face and around his neck and up into his hair.
“Very good,” said the Commander, beaming. “Nice, cold.”
Following suit, the Saint found that it was indeed a cooling and refreshing, if somewhat odorous, substitute for cologne. The bottle passed around the circle for everyone to enjoy a similar external application. Then the Commander grabbed it and handed it to the Saint.
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 10