Haggard

by Christopher Nicole

  Haggard stood up, and gave her a brief bow. 'Your servant, Miss Bolton.' He turned to the door, watched Malcolm Bolton hurrying along the path. 'Ah,' he commented. 'A plot.' His voice remained soft, gave no indication of his sudden anger.

  'Plot?' Malcolm came up to the doorway. 'I heard Addy cry out. What has happened, Addy?'

  'He . . .' Adelaide sucked air into her lungs, noisily. 'He assaulted me.'

  'He did what?’

  'Your sister is an hysterical liar,' Haggard said, speaking very evenly, although his mind had already seethed into the black rage which left him wishing to hurt, and hurt. These people had made it plain to him, often enough during their youth, that they regarded him as an ill-educated lout. While at his wedding, with Sue still on his arm, incredibly lovely, incredibly willing to love him, he had heard Adelaide Bolton whispering to her friend Annette Manning, 'What a waste of a beautiful woman. She must love money even more than us, my dear Annette.' And now she would fill those irreplaceable shoes? 'With the instincts of a whore. I will bid you goodnight.'

  He stepped past the momentarily dumbfounded young man, on to the path.

  Malcolm caught his breath. 'Stop right there,' he commanded. Haggard stopped, half turned.

  'You'll apologise, sir,' Malcolm Bolton demanded. 'On your knees, you'll apologise for those words.’

  'I have never apologised in my life,' Haggard pointed out. 'And certainly I shall never do so for speaking the truth.'

  Then you'll answer to me, John Haggard.'

  'Don't be more of a fool than your sister, Mal. Go to bed and sleep it off.'

  Once again Haggard turned, and walked towards the house.

  'Stop,' Malcolm bawled. 'Stop,' he screamed.

  Haggard ignored him, walked up the steps and into the suddenly overheated ballroom. He caught Willy Ferguson's eye, and the overseer hastily apologised to his dancing partner and hurried towards his employer.

  'I shall be going home now, Willy,' Haggard said. 'But you and the others stay to the end.'

  Willy frowned at him. 'Is something the matter?'

  'Probably not.' Haggard walked towards the head of the room, where the senior Boltons were sitting with the guests in their own age group. But he had not reached them when there was a shout from the doors to the terrace.

  'Haggard.'

  The music had just stopped, the dancers were about to leave the floor. Now they paused, and looked towards the door, and gasped in unison. Malcolm Bolton stood there, the sword which had so recently been the instrument of the wager held in his right hand, the arm itself extended to point at Haggard.

  'You'll apologise.' Malcolm's nostrils dilated. 'Or I'll kill you.'

  'With that?' Haggard inquired, softly. But the couple standing closest to him, and able to see something of the expression in his eyes, backed away.

  'Malcolm.' Papa Bolton was on his feet. 'John. What nonsense is this?'

  Malcolm Bolton came closer. 'He has insulted Addy.' 'John?' Bolton inquired, frowning.

  'He called her a liar, and a ... a whore,' Malcolm said.

  There was another gasp, and a woman pretended to faint.

  'John?' Papa Bolton's voice was an octave higher.

  'That is correct, sir,' Haggard said. 'I called your daughter a liar, because she had just told a lie, and accused her of having the instincts of a whore, because she had just revealed them.' Once again he spoke very clearly and distinctly.

  'My God,’ Papa Bolton said.

  'You'll leave this house, John Haggard,’ cried his wife. 'Do not ever come back.'

  Haggard bowed in her direction. ‘I had that in mind, Mrs. Bolton. I will bid you good-night.'

  'You . . . you'll just let him go?' Malcolm Bolton shouted. 'You'll answer to me, you lout.'

  'Don't be a fool,' Haggard said. 'I could blow out your left eye while you were still levelling your pistol.'

  'Ha,' Malcolm said. 'I doubt you are as good as you pretend, John Haggard. I'll have satisfaction, or brand you a coward from here to Jamaica.'

  Haggard gazed at him for some seconds, then shrugged. 'I will need a second,' he said, glancing around his fellow planters, and hardening his expression as he saw them turning away. He knew he was hated as much as he was envied as much as he was feared.

  'If Mr. Bolton will permit me.' Willy Ferguson gallantly stepped to the support of his master.

  'I am sure he will be delighted,' Haggard said. 'You'll inform me of the arrangements in due course, I have no doubt. You.' His hand came up, the forefinger outstretched, to point at one of the Bolton slaves. 'You've a horse in your stable called Flyaway. He belongs to me. Have him sent over to Haggard's in the morning. And have my mare saddled. Mrs. Bolton, I apologise to you for spoiling your ball. The fault was not mine.'

  He turned and walked from the room, while behind him the buzz of conversation suddenly boomed into the night.

  Haggard walked Calliope along the beaten earth road, enjoying the cool of the evening, tricorne tilted back on his head. His brain was clear; he might have been drunk when he accepted Malcolm's foolish wager, but he was sober now. And angry. It was an anger he knew well, a deep-hearted resentment which he could neither understand nor combat. Nor expect anyone else to understand. He was John Haggard. He was enormously rich, utterly healthy, had normally no more cares in the world than which of the thousands of acres he planted should be inspected on the morrow. And yet, for four years now he had seemed pursued by a malevolent fate, as if Nature, or God—he belonged to that rationalising group which doubted—had said, that man has enough, make him suffer.

  On his wedding night, five years ago, there could have been no happier man in all the world. His father had still been young and healthy, so that the burdens of plantation management lay a long way in his future; he held in his arms the loveliest girl in all the West Indies, a girl who loved him; and the American problem, then, had seemed no more than a colonial quarrel which could affect the lives of no one in Barbados.

  But that had been before Lexington and Bunker Hill, Burgoyne and Saratoga. It had been before the yellow fever epidemic which had struck down Father in the prime of his life. It had been before Sue's pregnancy, and the resulting puerperal fever. All that had happened in a single year, at the end of which he had supposed himself damned. And yet, he had continued to be Haggard, to act the part to which he had been born, because he knew no other.

  So now he must kill a man. Or be killed. The decision was his. But Malcolm Bolton was a good, if slow shot. If he was not brought down before he could aim, he would hit his target.

  It might have been better to marry the whore. But Adelaide Bolton in Sue's bed, lying in his arms? Adelaide Bolton presiding over Haggard's dinner table? Adelaide Bolton at his side for the rest of his life? He could feel the anger building in his belly. Against all women, but against Adelaide Bolton as the representative of her sex. He hated them all. Illogically, as he recognised. But they were there, strutting the streets of Bridgetown, whirling across Bolton's dance floor, engaging in their feminine conspiracies and flirtations. While Sue was dead, nothing but bones in the coffin which lay in the Haggard vault, on the hillock a mile from the Great House.

  And now, with their conspiracies, they had forced him to kill or be killed.

  Dogs barked, and the mastitis frisked about the mare, who ignored them as she knew them so well. Haggard had in fact been riding across his own land for some time, but now he was approaching the town. For Haggard's Penn was a town. Beyond the wide wooden gateway through which the moonlight streamed there was a pleasant pasture, watered by a little stream, and providing grazing for a herd of cows. The estate buildings were half a mile farther on. To the right of the drive was first the circular, many-arched sugar house, and then the boiling house, dominated by the tall, square chimney, now silent like a monument as the cane was not yet fully ripe, and beyond that the slave logies, arranged in orderly rows, each backed by its own carefully cultivated vegetable garden. To the left of the drive w
aited the houses of European staff, and the chapel, every one whitewashed and with a substantial red shingled roof to keep off the annual rainstorms brought by the hurricane winds of the early autumn.

  Farther off yet, set half a mile from the nearest other habitation, was the Great House. The Haggards had planted in Barbados for over a hundred and fifty years, coming to the islands in the very early days of the colony when the Courteens and the Willoughbys had still been debating ownership. Thus the house retained traces of its less secure heritage in the massive stone cellars which formed its foundation, loopholed as a last refuge for the family and their retainers against revolting slaves or marauding pirates. Above, the great windows and the wide opened doors gleamed with light, for Middlesex lit every candle every night for all that only the master and his infant son actually lived in the house. But every window and every door was also guarded by a thick shutter. Nowadays these acted as protection against hurricane winds, but they too suggested a stormy past.

  The gambolling dogs had alerted the watchmen, and they hurried forward to escort their master, seven of them, big black men armed with nightsticks, and happy to see their favourite white man. Whatever Haggard's dark moods, he seldom directed them at his own people.

  'Man, Mr. John, but you home early.'

  'Man, Mr. John, but it ain't midnight yet.'

  'Man, Mr. John, but them white people ain't still dancing?'

  They reached the foot of the steps leading up to the verandah, and Haggard swung himself from the saddle.

  They're still dancing,' he said. 'Abraham, I wish you to saddle up and ride into Bridgetown. Fetch me Mr. Lucas.'

  'Eh-eh? But he going be happy to come out this time, Mr. John?'

  'You tell him I want him here before dawn. Tell him it is an urgent matter.' Haggard climbed the stairs, confronted James Middlesex, his butler. It had been his father's fancy to name all the house slaves after English counties.

  'Mr. John?' Middlesex peered at him. 'I going fetch the port.'

  'Not tonight, James. The boy asleep?'

  'Oh, yes, man, Mr. John.' But Middlesex frowned. Haggard seldom inquired after his son. Enough that the boy's life had been purchased at the expense of his mother's.

  Haggard walked into the hallway. He had not bothered to replace his pumps with boots, and his feet did no more than whisper on the polished mahogany floor. But even the whisper echoed. The hall was some thirty feet deep and rose twenty feet above his head. The walls were hung with pictures of past Haggards, the stands filled with walking sticks and sporting guns, and hats; Haggard added his to the collection. To his right, archways gave into the withdrawing room, another vast area of polished floors and uncomfortable chairs and low incidental tables laden with brass ornaments. The smoking room, shrouded in netting to repel mosquitoes, lay beyond; here were the billiards table and the baize-topped card table, as well as the deep trays for cigar ash. On his left a similar archway allowed access to the dining room, equally large, but almost filled by the mahogany dining table and its accompanying sideboards, and sparkling with the array of silver trays and crystal glasses and decanters which filled the polished surfaces. Beyond the dining room were the pantries and then the kitchen, built away from the house proper to lower the risk of a disastrous fire commencing in the huge wood-fed ranges, and connected with the main building by a covered corridor.

  Immediately in front of Haggard waited the main staircase which led up to the galleries above his head, off which opened the dozen bedrooms. He walked towards this, pausing at the foot. 'John Essex,' he said.

  'Yes, sir, Mr. John.'

  All of the footmen had gathered beyond the stairs, by the red velvet curtain which allowed access to the back of the house, the offices and the rear staircase and the other entrance to the pantries. Now one of them came forward.

  'Prime my pistols and set up a target, John Essex.'

  'Yes, sir, Mr. John.'

  Haggard continued his climb, turned to his left at the top, made his way towards the nursery. Here was unfamiliar territory; he seldom saw his son other than for a good-night kiss on the forehead. He opened the door, and immediately Amelia the nurse sat up from her bed against the wall.

  'Who is there?' she demanded, blinking at the flickering candle.

  'Hush, You'll wake the boy.'

  'Eh-eh, but is the master?' Amelia inquired at large. She still counted her good fortune. Four years ago she had been a field slave, but she had been the only girl to have lost a child in the week Susan Haggard had died, and so had been brought into the house. She had ceased feeding the little boy two years ago, but her position as nurse was not in doubt; she was the only person on the entire plantation who could quell Roger Haggard's bellowing when he chose to reveal the famous Haggard temper.

  Now she threw back the coverlet, and hurried before her master to open the inner door. Conscious of her recent authority, she wore a white linen nightdress which undulated across her fat buttocks.

  Haggard stood in the doorway, looked at the cot, and the boy who lay there. In a few hours' time, he thought, he will be the last Haggard in all the world. Perhaps. I wonder what he will make of it all?

  'You want for kiss he, Mr. John?'

  Tomorrow,' Haggard said. Whenever tomorrow comes. He turned and left the room, and a sorely puzzled Amelia, and went down the stairs. The footmen still waited, marshalled by Middlesex. They could sense that this was not as other nights. For one thing, their master had returned from a ball sober.

  'Go to bed,' he said. 'All of you. But call me at five, James.'

  'Yes, sir, Mr. John.'

  But still they waited, while he went through the curtain and down the lower staircase to the cellars. Here a wide corridor allowed access to the store room, of meat and wine, of ice— brought in specially sawdust-packed containers all the way from the Labrador coast—of arms and ammunition. At the far end two cellars had been knocked together to make one large room, some twenty-five yards across. Here there was a counter immediately inside the door, on which there lay six pistols. The candles lining the wall had been lit, and at the far end there waited the wooden figure of a man. John Essex stood by the door.

  Haggard took his position at the counter. He inhaled, slowly, grasped the first pistol, raised and sighted, squeezed the trigger, laid it down and picked up the second, raised and sighted, and squeezed the trigger, and moved on to the third. The six explosions seemed to merge into one, the entire cellar became a rumbling echo shrouded in black smoke which left him coughing. As Haggard laid down the last pistol, John Essex hurried forward to examine the target.

  'Four in the chest, Mr. John. One in the shoulder. And one gone.'

  Haggard nodded. There was no one in Barbados able to improve on that accuracy. He practised every day. Not with any idea of duelling in mind. He had in fact exchanged fire but once in his life, five years ago, and then he had killed his man entirely by accident. That had been enough to give him a reputation. But practice was necessary because, for all the present tranquillity of Barbados, the obvious contentment of his slaves, in a planting society one could never tell when the contagion of revolt would spring up and spread like bush fire. Yet it was reassuring to discover that his hand was as steady as ever. Only his mind, his will, mattered now.

  He left John Essex to set up another target, climbed the stairs, met Ferguson in the hall.

  'Well?'

  'You are challenged. I chose pistols, at six.' There's an early hour. You'll call the morning briefing for five.' Ferguson frowned at him. 'You'll brief today?' Today is it? My God. Of course I'll brief today, Willy. It is a day like any other. Where is this exchange?' 'On the hill between the two plantations.' 'Reasonable. All right, Willy. Get some sleep.' 'And you?' 'Come to me at five.'

  Haggard went into the office, sat in his swivel chair before the enormous roll-topped desk in which were kept the Haggard accounts going back to the very first shipment of sugar in 1671. He leaned back, closed his eyes. Only my will, he thought. T
o take a man's life, coldly and deliberately. And a man with whom I have drunk and played polo and gambled. A friend. No, he supposed that was wrong. He had never been a friend of Malcolm Bolton's. Malcolm was too consumed with jealous ambition.

  He awoke with a start as the door opened, surprised that he had slept at all. But the air was cool with the promise of dawn.

  'Mr. Lucas does be here, Mr. John,' Middlesex said.

  'Harry. Good of you to come.' Haggard stood up, stretched his stiff arms.

  The lawyer peered at him. 'What's happened? It had better be important.'

  'It is important. I'm to fight a duel in a couple of hours.' 'A duel? My God.' Harry Lucas sat down in the one other chair in the room. 'Who with?' 'Malcolm Bolton.' 'Oh, my God. Whatever for?' 'A matter of honour.' 'Which can surely be resolved?'

  'I doubt it. Anyway, I cannot take the risk.' Haggard sat down again. 'You will be my executor.'

  'I had not anticipated the possibility so soon. The boy . . .'

  That's why you're here. You, and you alone, will control his upbringing.'

  'But . . . what of Susan's people?'

  'Jamaicans. I'll not have it. You, Harry. A governess, here, until he is eight, then England and Eton. Make no mistake now. Willy Ferguson will manage the plantation.'

  Lucas found a handkerchief to wipe sweat from his brow. 'Yes, Well, it may not happen. One exchange . . .’

  'Is usually sufficient where two good shots are involved. Don't fail me in this, Harry, or by God, I'll haunt you.'

  'I'll not fail you, John. But . . .'

  'Then let's get on with it.' Haggard opened the door, went into the hall. Ferguson was just entering the front door. 'Five o'clock?' The staff is waiting.'

  Haggard nodded, went on to the verandah. The faintest tinge of grey was diluting the black, and the air was now distinctly chill. At the foot of the steps the trestle table had been erected as usual, and the lanterns gleamed. The forty-odd bookkeepers stood around, waiting for their master.