Or was that her own way of punishing him? She would call him John when he put a ring on her finger.
‘I'd best discover what they have on their minds,' he said, and strode away from her, towards the house. He could see the horses, waiting there, each held by one of the Haggard grooms. Two horses, and two men on the verandah, being served sangaree by James Middlesex. Peter Campkin, and the Reverend Paley. Peter Campkin had married Adelaide Bolton, and since the death of old Papa Bolton was now a planter in his own right.
'Gentlemen.' He climbed the stairs. 'You'll sit down.' He did not offer his hand, nor did they offer theirs in return.
He smiled at them, and waited, while they exchanged glances.
'You'll be acquainted with the news from England,' Campkin said at last.
'What news from England, Peter? Or are the French tearing down more bastilles?'
‘I am not the slightest bit interested in what the French may do or not do, Mr. Haggard,' Campkin said. 'I am talking of this.' He held out a paper.
Haggard glanced at it, made out the names Wilberforce and Clarkson.
'Ah,' he said. 'The do-gooders. What are they at now?'
'A motion, Haggard, to abolish the trade,' Paley said.
Haggard frowned at him. 'A motion? Where?'
'Before Parliament.' Campkin said. 'To abolish the trade. What do you think of that?'
Haggard stroked his chin. He was well aware that over the past half dozen years a small party of British reformers had been steadily sniping away at the entire institution of slavery, that there was actually a Parliamentary Commission sitting to hear evidence regarding the worst excesses of the slave owners and their overseers, but he had not given it much thought. Waves of humanitarian sentiment swept Britain from time to time, like epidemics of the plague. The reformers knew very little about the realities of life on a West Indian plantation. If there were slave owners who were monsters of cruelty, he had no doubt there were squires and shipmasters and industrialists in Bristol and Liverpool and London who were also monsters of cruelty to those in their power. But not very many of them, just as most of the planters, certainly those in Barbados, realising the amount of capital they had tied up in each black man or woman, were unlikely willingly to harm them any more than they would willingly harm one of their horses.
'Well?' Paley demanded.
‘It poses several interesting conundrums,' Haggard admitted. 'Supposing the bill is made law, which is doubtful to say the least.'
'I would not be too sanguine about that,' Campkin said. This French business has set everyone by the ears. What with all the old nobility renouncing their titles and their rights to serfdom, well
'I had supposed you were not interested in the French?'
'Only in so far as they affect us.'
'What interesting conundrums?' Paley asked.
'Well, just for example, should the trade be outlawed, the value of every slave we own must be immediately doubled, as they will become a very scarce commodity.'
'By God,' Paley remarked. 'Trust you to think of that.' He snorted. 'And of course you have sufficient births amongst your thousands to take care of wastage.'
'Of course,' Haggard agreed.
4I told you,' Paley said. 'I told you we were wasting our time, Peter. This man is a selfish monster. I have never met anyone like him.'
'Mr. Haggard,' Campkin said. 'I know we have not seen eye to eye over the past ten years, and I further know that you have opted for staying out of Barbadian politics. But ten years is too long to have a feud dividing the very heart of our society, especially when there is a crisis at hand. It is our intention, sir, to place our case before the British Parliament. We have already opened negotiations with certain MPs who are prepared to speak for us on the floor of the Commons. But they must represent a united island. Every planter must subscribe his name to the brief we send them’
'And subscribe his share of the cost, no doubt."
Campkin flushed. 'Well, sir, I will not deny that there is a cost. But nothing the Master of Haggard's Penn would find the slightest heavy, and not a fraction of what we stand to lose should the trade truly be outlawed.'
Haggard pointed his finger at the young man. 'Peter, you are a liar and a hypocrite.'
'Sir?' Campkin sat up very straight.
'Strong words, Haggard,' Paley protested.
'But true enough. You know very well that the last time you attempted to present a remonstrance to the House of Commons, when that fellow Coke was hunting around these islands seeking evidence of mistreatment of slaves, your petition was thrown out because it did not contain my name. You can do nothing without Haggard's support, and you know it. Why not come out and say so?'
Campkin glanced at the parson.
'And suppose we admitted that?' Paley inquired.
‘I'd still have no truck with you.'
'You..’
'Because as usual you are creating fantasies which will probably never come to pass. You are actually encouraging these fellows. Can't you see that? So there are reformers and Quakers and abolitionists in England. Do you seriously suppose that the British Parliament is going to take any steps, any at all, to ruin Britain's most prosperous and wealthiest colonies? Would you seriously cut off your own hand, Paley, because it occasionally touches something of which you disapprove? Absolute nonsense. Unless, as I have said, we planters ourselves leap up in protest, thereby suggesting that we know we are in the wrong, at least morally.'
There,' Paley said. 'As I said. You'll get no help from John Haggard.'
He got up, and after a moment Campkin also rose. 'You will regret that attitude, sir. I am sure of it. Just as you will regret your continued antagonism to your fellow planters. There will come a time, sir, when you will need us and we shall not need you. Just as there will come a time when you will know how shallow and useless has been your life, locked away on this plantation as if it were the entire world.' He paused, and gasped, as if amazed at his own temerity. 'And you may take offence if you wish.'
Haggard waved his hand. Take him away, Paley,' he said, ‘I shall entirely stop receiving delegations from town if their sole purpose is to read me lectures. Take him away.'
The men stamped down the steps, stopped to stare at Emma, who was approaching the house with the children. Then they mounted their horses and galloped down the drive.
'Another quarrel?' she asked as she came closer.
'The quarrel was ten years ago, sweetheart. This is but a further instalment of it.'
"And I am the cause.' She allowed Amelia to replace her with the children, ascended the steps.
'You? No. no. The cause was there before I knew you existed. You are perhaps a continued irritant to the good people of Bridgetown. They are too good, that is their trouble.' He sat down, took a fresh glass of sangaree, gave it to her. drank from his own.
She sat beside him. 'I can feel their hatred, on every puff of breeze.'
He glanced at her, frowning. 'And it frightens you?'
'Yes,' she said fiercely. 'Yes, it frightens me. Should something happen to you. Mr. Haggard . . .'
'Now what is going to happen to me?' But his frown deepened. There were enough layabouts around the Bridgetown docks for an assassin to be found, should one be needed. It had never occurred to him before. Certainly it had never been something to cause him concern. He was John Haggard. Haggards lived, to the limit of their capacity, until they died, whether from old age, or yellow-fever, or a bullet, sure always that there were other Haggards waiting to continue the family, the amassment of wealth, the prosperity of the plantation. Even when he had set out to fight Malcolm Bolton he had not feared the future, for his son, had only sought to improve its security.
But now ... it occurred to him that the hatred he had incurred and was incurring would not easily be assuaged. They would hate Roger Haggard as much as they hated his father. While Emma and her children . . . undoubtedly she was right. They would tear her limb from limb. Nor would Wil
ly Ferguson be any protector. However much he pretended, and she pretended, he was the man who had rubbed pepper on her nipples. She must hate and fear him, and he must hate and fear her.
Then why not co-operate with them? If the idealistic machinations of the British Parliament could not harm him, it was just possible that they could, in the course of time, harm Roger. He had spoken the truth when he had told Campkin and Paley that he thought they were going about defending themselves in the wrong way. That did not mean that the planters should not defend themselves, under his leadership.
Did he still hate them that much?
Or was it more likely that he was afraid of his own reactions, afraid that if he set out to defend slavery, he would find that it was indefensible.
The understanding had been growing on him for ten years.
Something else that was Emma's doing, although she did not know it. He had always been inclined to ask himself questions, always vaguely afraid, and equally uncertain, although he would never admit that to anyone. He wondered, about too much. He wondered who, or what, had made the decision which had caused him to be born in the Great House and James Middlesex, for example, to be born in a slave logie. He wondered who had made the decision that Father and Susan should die, and he should live. And why. And he wondered why someone like Emma Dearborn had been sent to him, so strangely, and at so strange a time. Even more, who had sent him to her, when she had been about to die.
'Mr. Haggard?' She rested her hand on his arm.
'Aye,' he said. 'What would you have me do?'
'Me, Mr. Haggard?' Her surprise was utter.
'Supposing, of this moment, I told you you could have anything you desired in the world, go anywhere, be anything, what would you choose?'
She flushed. 'I have everything I could wish, right here, Mr. Haggard.'
'Save security.'
‘I am secure in your love, and . . .' She bit her lip.
'And while I live. But think, Emma. Let your imagination run riot. What would you have, what would you do? Suppose you are the mistress of Haggard's. Not my wife. My daughter, inheriting the plantation and everything that goes with it?'
'Oh, Mr. Haggard . . .'
Think, Emma, and tell me. You have an imagination. Use it.'
'Well . . .' She licked her lips, drank some sangaree, leaned forward, her face suddenly intense, and the more lovely for that. Too much of the time it revealed only suspicion and a smattering of fear. But now she was animated in her thoughts, in her imagination. 'I'd go to England, for a start.'
'Sell Haggard's?' Haggard pulled his nose. ' Tis the ultimate source of our wealth, even if you could find someone to pay the price.'
'I'd not sell Haggard's, Mr. Haggard. Never. But it can be managed by an attorney, surely.'
'Mm. What would you do with your life?'
'I'd go to Derbyshire, Mr. Haggard. I'd buy a manor house there, and live a civilised life.' 'Derleth Hall, I'll wager.'
She leaned back in her chair. That's something personal.'
"And what do you call a civilised life? Balls and hunts and fetes and gossip?'
They help you to understand you're alive.' 'And if you were a man?'
'Well, Mr. Haggard . . . Derleth is a county borough. It carries its own seat, and there are only a few electors. You'd not lack for something to do.'
'Parliament, by God.' He got up, walked to and fro, paused at the verandah rail to stare at his plantation. His plantation. He had never known anything else. But was the girl not right, however much of a private dream she was indulging? Had he not been thinking that very thought, with increasing force, every day for ten years, and rejecting it only because it was too great a step to contemplate? To be born, and live, and die, on Haggard's, surrounded by hatred and by criticism, could he really say, as he breathed his last, that he had lived? He was a slave owner. He had been born a slave owner, and he would die one, but could marshalling gangs of black men and women, ordering their floggings, granting them holidays, really be the beginning and end of his life? Because he hated it. The realisation came to him with a sense of shock. What heresy. But could he not do more for Haggard's, for all the West Indies, by taking his seat in the Commons, than he could ever do by stalking this verandah and defying all of Barbados? It would be an adventure, a great and glorious adventure, and he had never truly adventured. Certainly Willy Ferguson was capable of managing the plantation. And his children would grow up away from the atmosphere of hate. And it would also be a magnificent way of settling his own conscience of helping those people he despised. Let them prepare remonstrances and petitions. He would stand on the floor of the House itself to make the cause for slavery.
'I have angered you,' Emma said, softly.
'You have made me think,' Haggard said. 'I have not thought, except about you or the plantation, for too long.'
'You told me to imagine whatever I chose.'
'So I did. How soon can you undertake a sea voyage?'
'Mr. Haggard?' She scrambled to her feet. 'You wouldn't. Would you?'
'I asked you a question.'
Tomorrow. But Mr. Haggard . . .' She panted with excitement.
They'll call me a coward,' he said, half to himself. 'Who ran away because he could no longer face up to them.' 'Oh, Mr. Haggard.'
'Would you call me a coward, Emma?'
'How could 1, Mr. Haggard? You are the boldest man I have ever known.'
He put his arm round her shoulders. Suddenly he was excited as she. It occurred to him that, even with Emma to love every night, he was becoming bored.
'You aren't really going to do it, Mr. Haggard?' Her voice had sunk to a whisper.
Haggard kissed her on the ear. 'What do they call colonists who make a lot of money and return to England to live a life of ease?'
'Why . . . nabobs, Mr. Haggard.'
'Aye,' he said. 'Nabobs. Well, then, Emma Dearborn, stand back and look at your first nabob.'
CHAPTER 3
THE NABOB
'Man, but you ever see such houses?' demanded James Middlesex.
'Man, but there ain't no sun.' complained John Essex.
'Man. but what is that thing?’ cried Annie Kent.
'Man. that does be a castle,' explained Henry Suffolk.
'Man. but you ever see church like that?' Elizabeth Lancashire inquired, pointing at the dome of St. Paul's.
'Man. but it too cold,' Abraham grumbled, pulling his cloak tighter around his massive chest.
They stood together in the waist of the Yarmouth Lass as she ghosted up the Thames on the rising tide; there was just enough wind to keep her steerage way. They were excited, and happy. In the beginning they had been terrified. Although none of them had ever made the Middle Passage from Africa, they had heard sufficient tales about it from their parents and grandparents. They had been unable to convince themselves that an ocean voyage, even in the company of the Master, could be any different. They had been unable to estimate the length of time required to travel from Barbados, up the arc of islands, using the current and the trade wind, to the Bahama Passage where the westerlies could be found which would drive them across to Europe. But three days ago. when land had finally come in sight through the autumnal mists, their spirits had begun to rise.
And what of my spirits? Haggard wondered. He stood on the poop deck, Emma at his side; her two children hugged against her.
Roger preferred to stand by himself, leaning on the gunwale. He was a silent, introverted boy. On the voyage, for the first time ever. Haggard had attempted to befriend him, as well as he was able—in leaving Barbados he had turned his back on Susan, and all resentment against the child who had caused her death. Besides, the experience had been new to both of them—the handling of the ship, the care of the rigging. Captain Biddies' daily exercise in navigation, as much as the wind and the sea, had been equally fascinating. Yet Roger smiled seldom, regarded his
Besides, the experience had been new to both of them—the handling of the ship, the ca
re of the rigging, Captain Biddies' daily exercise in navigation, as much as the wind and the sea, had been equally fascinating. Yet Roger smiled seldom, regarded his father with watchful suspicion. It would take time. But there would be time, once they got to England.
And at least Emma was happy; no doubt when she had left here, in the hold of this selfsame vessel more than ten years ago, she had supposed she would not see England again. But I have never seen it before. Haggard reminded himself. And he was not impressed at this moment. The sky was grey, as it had been unfailingly grey for the past week, and the city which was opening in front of him, if far larger than anything he had imagined possible, was huddled close together and suggested dirt and disease, while the air, even on the river, was tainted with the nostril-choking stench of coal smoke and wood-smoke. Yet, like his slaves, he was happy enough to come to land. It had been his first ocean voyage as well, and John Haggard could not be allowed to show fear, or apprehension, or even concern at the odd wave slapping the hull.
But at least the heaving sea had precluded thought. Now it returned with redoubled intensity. Barbados had been amazed at the news that he was going. Thus Willy. No one had come to say goodbye, nor had anyone in the crowd gathered on the shore of the Careenage done more than stare. No doubt they thought him a coward, running away from them. Well, was he not a coward? Emma had made him so. Emma and her children and his fears for them. Or was that just male pride bubbling over? On every count this move was at once desirable and sensible. He alone of all the Barbadian planters had never been to England; his father's foolish love had robbed him of that essential youthful broadening of the mind. Certainly, as he was thirty-seven years old, it was time to put right that mistake. And again, he was Haggard. Was it not right that he should take his place upon a larger stage than the Barbadian House of Assembly? Why, who could tell what future lay before him? At the least he did not doubt his brains or his ability. So perhaps Haggard's Penn would not be quite so prosperous under an attorney as under himself. He had every confidence in Willy Ferguson, but the fact was that it was no longer essential to his well-being; to continue to regard the plantation as the fount of his wealth, he recognised, was merely to pander to family pride. The Haggard fortune was too diverse to be confined to sugar. His great grandfather, happening to be in England at the time, had delved into the murky depths of the South Adventure, and had had the sense to take his profit before that Bubble had burst so alarmingly. On such a foundation, added to the growing profits from sugar, had the Haggard millions been based. And they were millions. He kept a million pounds at interest with the Bank, and another million in consols. His plantation pulled in a yearly profit of a hundred thousand, and itself was worth another million, at the least. He had naught to fear from the future. He could be what he was, what he had always been, Haggard, do what he liked, live as he chose, for the rest of his life and still bequeath to Roger a handsome fortune. Fear and uncertainty were really childish emotions.
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