The calm ended my sickness, but this means only that I read and re-read my instructions anxiously, and think on the interview with Mr. Craster.
He called me from the clerks’ office after the calculation of figures was concluded for the day. The sugar pours in to the wharfs in the Pool of London; I am tasked to concern myself with guaranteeing the payments of those plantations not situated on the main island of Jamaica, but principally in San Domingue. Our trading company is cosmopolitan, mainly dealing with the Dutch, but the French traders in the London market are more numerous since the late events in Paris. Many of the plantation owners long since left the island and returned to count their riches in the wealth of their grand apartments; many are now exiles in London, fleeing the mobs. They keep a concerned eye on their profits.
Craster had a particular ledger in his hand; I rather thought I knew which one it would be. The Cranache Plantation has the greatest acreage on that unhappy part of the island of San Domingue forty miles north of Port-au-Prince. It is a task to load the ships from that remote region, requiring many slaves, but the harvests are plenteous. Profits pour from that whole swathe of the island. Without speaking, Craster tapped at the figures I had calculated in the ledger.
“Are your calculations quite regular, Mr Fotheringham?”
I assented. I had re-calculated the figures several times, burning many a tallow after main business had been concluded, and asked of the warehouse foreman by letter whether mis-attribution of the cargo might be the cause. This was unlikely. The reduction was greater than three-quarters, large enough to cause consternation, affect profits and change the price of sugar on the exchange. Rumours circulated as to cause.
“I am a great respecter of your mathematics.” Mr Craster is a stern master, but fair, and thinks only to preserve the wealth and name of the trading company. I could see that he was not intent on blaming me, but was merely worried. “I was concerned enough to send Marshall ten days ago to make inquiries at the dock, speaking with the captain of the Queen Jane before she turned around.”
Marshall was a gruff brute of a man, Mr Craster’s agent in matters amongst the crooks that swarmed around the docks. “There is intelligence to be had, sir?” I asked.
Craster’s brow rarely furrowed in these days of wealth and plenty, but he looked vexed. “Nothing that Marshall could venture to understand. Captain Jenner would say nothing openly, but Marshall learned that he was stuck in port because the entire crew had abandoned ship, vanishing into the hovels of Rotherhithe ne’er to be seen again. Jenner was having trouble recruiting from the dock rabble, because rumours were that the ship was cursed.”
I was confused. What could curse a sugar ship? Sailors are superstitious clods, heathens to a man, but rarely principled enough to refuse a wage. Coin restores sanguinity, I have found.
“Marshall is a persistent man. He thought one of the mulatto sailors would be easy to track, particularly a huge ex-slave who ventures by the name of Philippe Nègre! Sure enough, he found him rooming behind a gin hovel off Rotherhithe Road. Sadly, he was not coherent. Nègre had drunk himself into a rage when Marshall met him, and was shouting about duppies and unnatural beasts. Later that night, he went to the trouble of filching a pistol — and shooting himself in the heart.”
I waited respectfully as Mr Craster ruminated on this matter. “Nothing about this is regular. I need to send you there.”
I pointed out that I corresponded with the docks by missive; what good was a book-keeper amongst dock-hands?
“Not the docks. San Domingue.”
I was astounded. I had never travelled beyond London in my life. This was a matter for a man of the world, with knowledge of its sinfulness; a man such as Marshall.
“Marshall has left my employ after sixteen years,” Craster said. “I sent him back to Rotherhithe to investigate further. He wrote only that Captain Jenner’s body had been recovered from the Limehouse Reach, apparently another act of self-destruction. They had dredged the body, much battered in the tides. Just yesterday, I received a letter from Marshall declaring himself done with this work and that he was returning to his family in Newcastle. I am beset with worries. Something is wrong. You must go,” he said.
A clock chimed in the back room.
“You must go,” he repeated, with a stern look.
It was sentence laden like a barque with all the debts my family owe to Mr Craster. I thought of the doors opening on the debtors’ gaol, my father emerging, blinking in the light. My labour, his reward. There was no question but that I must go.
21 Nov 1790
I was roused in the early hours by the sound of shouts on deck. Jem hammered on my door, and with great excitement pulled me up the ladders. It was remarkable: to see lightning caught in the rigging, pulsing like a spectral creature caught in fishing nets above us, as if the world were turned upside down. The sailors call this Saint Elmo’s Fire and are full of omens as to its import. We are not superstitious in our profession. But the sea makes people so. The Lascars and Negroes squabbled and gesticulated. When I stepped forward and touched the mast, I must have disturbed something of the balance of these mysterious forces. The blue flames vanished. Several men stepped back afeared, as if I had offended one of the spirits of these latitudes.
27 Nov 1790
Becalmed for two days on a glassy sea. A thrilling azure that could not be conceived in London. The water courses with life, the fish arching high. I sit Mesmerized by them. The sun is larger in the sky, a vast orb in these regions. Seeking breeze, I read my letters of instruction on the deck, worrying if the French-man Devereux would wait in Port-au-Prince for a boat long delayed. I would need a guide for the journey south. I had sought accounts of travellers, but had little time before the boat sailed and the only information I read was complaints of the terrain: the broken wheels and axles and the pressing in of the jungle.
The tedium of that second day was broken by an unnerving sight. The captain was using the cunning of his trade, pushing the stun-sails out to catch the faintest wisp of wind, for we were moving through those waters, though at a laggardly pace. I understood this movement only relatively when I saw that we were gaining on a large cargo ship that loomed on the horizon, growing visibly by the minute. Jem called out and scrambled up the mast to the lookout. He soon called that he could see a British ensign on the ship’s rigging and the anxiety amongst the crew dispersed. We are not in piratical waters, but there can be uncomfortable encounters with the French. Once the identity of the ship was secured, our sailors warmed to the prospect of hailing their brothers.
The captain had been assessing the ship, a vast engine of the Atlantic, through his eyeglass. I scanned with bare eyes but could see little movement, glimmers on the poop deck. The rigging was empty of sails; the sun caught it, glinting like restless gossameres. I was standing close to hear the captain swear an oath. He slammed the eyeglass down and began to hurl orders to pull in the sails.
When a sailor began to complain, the captain hurled vitriol at him. “Learn to obey me, you
d---d hound! It is the Brooks! Understand me, it is the Brooks!”
There was a concentration of activity and our boat halted. Still we drifted closer, wood creaking in the swell. No sound came from the cargo boat.
Jem descended the mast with his familiar dexterity, but came with saucer eyes to the captain.
“On the deck,” he began, “I see —”
“I don’t give a cuss what you see, boy! Shut your
d----d mouth! Back below!”
I turned from watching Jem scuttle like a beaten dog, and out of the corner of my eye caught the first signs of activity on the Brooks. Two men silhouetted on the deck, looking down at the water, where something heavy splashed.
“Blaggards,” one of the London sailors said, who had been watching. “Never would I work on the Brooks for all the whores in Rotherhithe.”
I saw that some of the Negro sailors turned away or busied themselves on the aft.
<
br /> “What was that? Man overboard?” I asked. The sailors on the other boat did not express agitation. They did not call or gesticulate, but stood motionless. They seemed to stare into the water for a time, hands on hips, deemed themselves satisfied, and disappeared from our view below. They had ignored our presence.
“See no evil. Speak no evil,” the Captain said, with a face of thunder.
I did not understand. Captain Forbes ordered the rudder turned and sails set. We began to pick up a little speed. It was a great oddity to me that there had been no communication between English boats traversing this vastness.
“I thought them becalmed. I wish it so. Rot in hell!” the Captain roared at the ship. They could not have heard.
As we turned, the wind shifted, and we caught the smell that came off the Brooks. It was the stench of what they carried that made me sick to the stomach, my body understanding quicker than my reason. The cargo they stow. I stayed below for two solid days, eating nothing, drinking little, and thinking, I confess, greatly ill of my master.
8 Dec 1790
After many days we are anchored off Port-au-Prince, waiting for daylight. I have been awake much of the night in dread anticipation, and calm my nerves by scratching a few words.
At length we crawled into the Caribbean Sea. At night, the intense phosphorescence of the weeds in the water is an extraordinary thing, and seems to light our way. Our wake churns the glow. The sun is an immense globe that burns the air, plummeting at dusk with the speed of damning Judgment, awful in its majesty. The dolphins that hail the boat cry up at us with plaintive human voices, quite like the sirens of the Greeks I realise, and the night waters are alive with invisible things that break the surface and menace the fancy.
The impressions of those landings on Antigua and Barbados overwhelm my capacity for adequate description. We offloaded goods and took on water at docks that teemed with thousands of people of every imaginable hue, from jet black through walnut to a reddish hue of skin I had never encountered. There are men the colour of the lightest molasses. The sailors welcomed the women as old friends on the dockside; there was some change of crew amidst the sailors, including a pilot for the treacherous tides to come. Forbes welcomed him with a stream of invective, which I gathered was a mark of admiration.
I walked on the dockside on Barbados, too timid to venture further. There were signs of a town edged around the dock, little more than tumbledown shacks, rather picturesque. I do not think I have ever been an object of the intense scrutiny such as I was subjected to by these harbour boys. They were as astonished with my pale English hue as much as I with their rainbow skins. They gibbered in a language of which I could glean nothing, except the occasional ghost of an English word, mixed with French or Spanish. I fear it will only be worse in San Domingue, where the French have allowed a bastard tongue to flourish.
These islands are mere dots of land on the Captain’s charts, yet still crammed with more souls than could ever be possible to count. Yet the people seem happy, laughing like children in paradise.
It was only once we set sail that I thought of the ledgers resting on the shelves of Craster’s office so many leagues away in Cheapside, the regular columns of figures that derive from these smudges in the ocean.
Forbes steered the boat towards Jamaica, and, when we arrived at the port of Kingston, I could discern that the British have made a start on a proper town, with wide boulevards and stone buildings and attempts to hack back the foliage that seems to burst unrestrained from every part of these islands. There is an air of purpose. I found my way to Craster’s agent’s office without difficulty as the business quarter nestles closely to the dock. Negroes thronged the street, in rags, shoeless: I envied them their artless dispositions since I was much discomfited in the heat. The office boy, a young Negro in proper dress and an excellent delivery of English, look consternated upon my explanation of my business, as if London were nothing other than a phantasm conjured by his master. The boy scrambled off to find Mr. Canevin.
This gentleman appeared to share his boy’s disconcertion, and arrived ten minutes later, disarranged in his habiliments, unshaven and barely decent. He was a fat man and his belly protruded above his breeches. I was three days late arriving, but he seemed amazed that I had made an appearance at all. It was rare, he said, for men of distinction to travel to these far-flung lands unless there was direct involvement in the estates, or on a matter of inheritance. His method of flattery was rusty. His olivaster skin, darkened and weathered by the sun, gave him an air of flummery and I did not trust him entirely.
However, when we spoke of the Jamaican concerns, it became clear that everything was kept with scrupulous regularity. I spent a day and evening there, with the books, using for my guide the annotated list of queries that Mr Craster had provided. The moths flapped around my candle as I bent over ledgers. Mr Canevin was willing to conduct me personally to the Mansfield plantation, should I wish to witness the latest methods for processing cane. It was true that this nearby plantation produced the most regular crop, the highest yields of sugar at a lower ratio of labour, for an impressive rate of return for its owners. I declined, confessing that I had merely a book-keeping interest. He looked at me oddly.
At dinner, over which Mr. Canevin exerted himself greatly, ordering his cooks to deliver a feast far beyond our capacities to imbibe even a quarter of, I revealed that the main purpose of this lengthy journey was less concerned with matters of Jamaica and more to travel on to Port-au-Prince in order to discover the problem at the Cranache Plantation.
At this, Canevin almost choked on the chicken bone upon which he was gnawing.
“You go to Cranache?” His mouth stood open.
I observed drily that he had heard of the place.
“Its fame fans across the waters. Mon Dieu!” He feigned distraction, very badly, and rang the bell for his house-boy.
“I would appreciate any intelligence, as I am there for your master and mine: Mr Craster,” I said.
He waved this away, his bluff manner quickly returning, as his house-boy pushed through the door. “The reports are contradictory, and the stories muddled.”
He ordered the boy to take away the plates and bring more rum. After the servant retreated, Canevin whispered melodramatically: “I would appreciate it if you did not speak that name in the hearing of my servants. Whatever the intelligence, it is much confused with impossible rumour.”
He spoke normally as the boy tiptoed in with a decanter: “One must be careful. These blacks have a want of development in organs of reason and truth.”
The following morning, Mr Canevin had left a note detailing an emergency over the Blue Mountains in Buff Bay, and regretted his departure before dawn.
As the houseboy served me tea, he hesitated at the door, plucked up his courage and please-begged me a question: “Is it true, Sir, that you visit the Wizard Sangatte?”
I smiled encouragement, but said I had never heard the name.
“The white bokor,” he added. It was evident I did not understand. “Who rules Cranache? They say he is very powerful.”
“The Cranache Plantation is still in the hands of the family, I understand. That is all I know.”
Dawn is breaking, and I hear the pilot calling instructions. We are to be landed at the dock of Port au Prince within the hour.
Who is Sangatte? The name is nowhere in my papers.
10 December 1790
Port-au-Prince is a tumble-down, riotous, Godless place, where the streets are cracked in two, running with torrents of people, beasts and effluent. The great houses are ruins choked by weeds. They lie empty, the old families abandoning them. The atmosphere is solely composed of violence and intrigue. You hear mutters at les blancs when you pass groups of men in the street; the natives stare in open defiance. Everyone — the mulattos too! — carries a cutlass at their waist. The French army do not have control of the capital. They have not cauterised the wound of this Parisian intoxication.
We landed with sunlight lancing off the waves and, as I had long feared, my man Devereux was nowhere to be found. Forbes vanished into the offices to make his arrival known to the harbour master and to receive instructions for the return voyage; the sailors disappeared into the crowds swirling about the harbour. Even Jem was gone, leaving me alone to wait for the agent who would conduct me.
There were many boats, so low in the water one fancied the weight of the sugar might capsize them. One of the things that I spied were rows of Negroes. They were difficult to make out in the shadows, as they sought respite from the sun under a narrow awning, hundreds it seemed, lying or seated in manacles, their bodies listless and defeated.
“You are here to make trade, Englishman?”
A greasy Frenchman, much pocked by a tropical affliction, had seen the direction of my gaze and sidled up. He was small, unshaven, and one of his arms was horribly withered.
“The boat, it arrived from the Niger delta this morning. The strong, they survive, yes?” He gestured with his good arm. “They are to be sold this afternoon, monsieur. You require service?”
I thought of spurning him, but instead asked him if he knew Devereux.
A sly grin spread across his face, the blisters along his jaw tightening. “Mon ami, Devereux is indisposed. They say it is from the same poison that took the Marquis de Rabinard and his Marquise Isabella.”
“Poison?”
He looked surprised. His grin widened: a new man, easily gulled.
“The weapon of choice amongst the insurrectionists, monsieur. It is invisible, hein? And the blame? It scatters to the wind.” He made a gesture as if broadcasting seeds. “Les blancs, they drop like flies. Faster than our friends resting over there. I am Jules de Grandin,” he said, offering his good hand. “I will take you to Devereux.”
Irregularity Page 17