“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I haven’t met a buccaneer yet that could ride.”
I laughed. “I have only recently become a buccaneer. I still retain my gentlemanly skills.”
This seemed to assuage him somewhat, and he took my coin, though he tested it with his teeth before nodding happily and pocketing it.
“I be named Cedric, sir. You can send someone to Byerly to ask for me, and I’ll come fetch ‘em from here when ya return, iffn’ ya wish, sir.”
I agreed to this and he hopped on his waiting mule and rode off.
Gaston was eyeing Francis’ back with trepidation. “It has been many months; perhaps we should have procured saddles.”
I scoffed. “Non, you mastered riding without when last we were here. It will return to you as naturally as walking, once you are up.”
He awarded me a disparaging look, and vaulted onto Francis’ back. The animal immediately sidestepped in response to the sudden and unfamiliar weight. To my pleasure, and Gaston’s mild chagrin, he moved with his mount and did not lose his barely-gained seat. I gave him a triumphant smile, and he rolled his eyes.
Our mounts were indeed fractious, and I quickly remedied this by allowing them to burn off their friskiness in a good run to Spanish Town. They were far more tractable when we slowed to thread our way through the traffic there. Yet we had experienced the wind in our teeth and wanted more, so we put our heels to them as soon as we had clear road ahead of us again. And thus, we made excellent time to Ithaca. We only slowed in the last league in order to cool the horses.
Ithaca did not look much like the rough land I remembered from nine months ago. It now appeared to be a proper plantation, though small. There were seemingly vast acres of thigh-high cane growing in somewhat orderly rows. It would be several feet taller than a man by this time next year, and nearly ready for harvest. At its current height, I could see the backs of the recently acquired Negro slave gang bobbing along in one area. Several white men stood about watching them.
I could not recognize the overseers at this distance, but I knew I had sailed here with them, and had once worried that they would be the ones stooped at weeding while someone threatened them with a whip. I was not amused by the irony, but saddened. I had wanted my flock of sheep to become wolves, had I not? But they had become lowly wolves, the type that could not pick on sheep of their own color, but rested their status upon men foreign to them and easily subjugated. The wolves that subjugated men of their own kind were the fearsome ones, the ones to be respected and reviled in full measure.
“All I need do is get some damn woman with a male child and all of this could be ours,” I sighed bitterly.
“Yours,” Gaston said quietly.
“Ours, since you are now English.”
I wondered if that too would be threatened if I were no longer the Viscount of Marsdale.
“I did not wish to be an Englishman,” Gaston said.
“I do not understand,” I said. “You are an exile. You are disinherited. And if you return to French soil, you are considered incompetent to even manage your own affairs. Why would you wish to be French?”
“If I am English, I feel I will be forced to become steadfast and wear wool in the tropics,” he teased.
We were nearing the compound proper, and I pulled Diablo up. Gaston stopped when he realized I had, and turned Francis about to face me.
“Are you so proud of being French?” I asked. It was not my real question, but it was one I wanted answered and a likely place to start. “Not that you should not be, I am just trying to understand.”
He nodded. “Oui, more than I expect at times. And more so, I am proud of being noble. It means much to me. Despite… everything. I cannot explain it.”
“Is that why you wish for me to maintain my title? Do you truly feel I should marry?” That was the great question I wanted an answer to. “When I once said I would walk away from it for you, you urged against it. Is this why?”
“In part,” he sighed. “I lost what was due me, and I would not have you do the same.”
“You realize that you, who suffer jealousy over my ever having touched another, would be forced to sit somewhere alone while I went and bedded another.”
He looked away, but his mien was resolved. “It would be a woman, and that will not matter so very much. She will not be my opponent in any way. You said you find pleasure in them. Why do you find this so very difficult? You can marry and bed one, and then he will give you the plantation, and we can conspire to keep the child from his clutches.”
I shook my head. “What if he demands next that I send my son to England to be properly educated, in order to remain in his good graces? I will not have him win. I cannot countenance his sitting in his damn office gloating that he has won, that he has made me behave as a proper son, and bed a woman and produce a child. This is the damned bastard who let Shane abuse me so that it might put me off men; though he swears he did not know the extent of it. That I will believe him on, only because he would have put a stop to it if he had realized his precious Shane had been committing sodomy with anyone. But Aye, he allowed me to be beaten and harassed in the name of correcting what he felt to be another defect of my character. He admitted it!”
Gaston’s eyes went hard. “You have not told me that.”
“Non, I have not. I have not wanted to remember it.”
The anger left him as quickly as it had arrived, and he slumped dejectedly. “I do not know. He cannot be allowed to have things as he wishes. Yet… I want puppies, Will. Or whatever centaurs have, colts perhaps. I wish for progeny and we cannot bear them.”
“What?” I was sure I had not heard him correctly.
“I cannot father any, as I am mad, and it is very likely a thing I could pass to another as my mother did to my sister and me; but you are not. You could have children. And they would be mine, somehow.”
I was momentarily stunned beyond the ability to speak. Never, in my wildest flights of fantasy, would I have considered such a thing. I had never wanted children. I still did not.
“I will father as many children as you wish,” I finally said. “But not for the title or…my father. Though I will do nothing to hinder that, if you truly wish for me to have it as well. But it will be on our terms, and they will be our children, and… I leave it to you to choose a mother to your liking.”
“What of the Brisket?” he asked carefully.
“We can meet her, and you can form your own opinion.” I thought that a very poor choice, as she would cause no end of complication and trouble. But perhaps it was for the best. Upon our meeting her, I was sure he would become jealous and this whole matter would pass. Resolving matters with my father would still remain; but then, perhaps, we would die while roving and be done with it. I truly did not wish to think on it any further.
There was still one thing that we needed to clarify, though. “If I die, you will live, because you will have to raise the children properly so that they do not fall into my father’s clutches.”
He thought on this before nodding soberly. “You must not die.”
“Neither must you,” I said solemnly. “Because I swear, if you die and leave me with a house full of children and a damned wife, I will follow you to Hell and drag you back.”
I set Diablo toward the compound at a canter.
Francis caught us a moment later and it became a race. Once we were at a full gallop, Gaston did an amazing and foolhardy thing. He sprang from his horse’s back and toppled me from mine, so that we rolled into the nearest cane. We came to rest with him atop me. My skin was scratched by sharp leaves, and my ribs battered by thick stalks. I thanked the Gods none of our pistols had discharged, and we had not been impaled on one of our scabbards. He grinned down at me like a fool, and I could not help but return it.
“I will never leave you,” he said.
“Nor I you. But my love, why the Devil have you not mentioned wanting children before?”
“It was a distant thing I felt I had
no hope of ever achieving,” he said seriously. “And now I have you, whose pedigree does not include madness, and who needs to marry anyway in order to do good in the world.”
He kissed me deeply, and I cared not about fathers and wives. I wanted to make him happy.
“We will consider wives,” I said.
He nodded and let me up. The pall of angst wrapped about my heart released as well; and as we rode into the compound, I felt at peace, despite this disturbing new knowledge of my life’s future course.
Ithaca now had buildings in addition to the barracks shed. Unfortunately, one of them was a high-walled stockade to house the slaves. Apparently the bondsmen were all living in little huts. The foundations for the other structures had been staked out, and the first water mill was nearing completion.
Fletcher, who was so thin I barely recognized him, approached. “Lord Marsdale! Gaston! How good it is to see you,” he said with great enthusiasm.
He was truly gaunt. His wide shoulders were thankfully not stooped, but his tunic hung loosely upon them, and his handsome face was a mass of angles and little flesh.
“Fletcher… And you,” I said carefully, “though you truly look a shade of your former self. What has happened to you?”
“I had the fever,” he said with a touch of embarrassment.
“Have you recovered?” I asked. “Should you be about?”
“In part. I no longer fever, and I have an appetite, but my strength has been slow in returning.”
Gaston sighed, and fixed Fletcher with a stern eye. “Will you follow instructions I give?”
Fletcher frowned and nodded. “Do you know of a cure?”
“Nothing as simple as a draught,” Gaston said. “We must change your diet. Are you growing any food here?”
I looked toward the garden plot Gaston and I had started clearing in the summer. It was fallow. I sighed.
“Nay, sir,” Fletcher said, “we still get proper English food. I don’t touch anything that grows here. The slaves are growing a thing or two, and Donoughy says that’s fit for them.”
“Fletcher,” I chided gently, but with mounting frustration, “a man cannot live on five-month-old salted herring, mealy flour, and wormy apples. Not well, anyway.”
He shook his head. “Pork and beef are expensive, and we have not the men to clear land for pasturage.”
His frown said much. I saw why Theodore wished for me to come here. They were stubborn sheep.
Gaston and I exchanged a look.
He turned back to Fletcher. “You let the cattle and pigs run wild, and you hunt them.”
“We can’t give the men weapons,” Fletcher said with alarm. “Donoughy says if they learn to hunt, they’ll leave.”
“And then Gaston and I will hunt them down and shoot them in the eye,” I snapped.
He recoiled at that, and I regretted it somewhat, just as I still rued shooting poor Creek.
And I supposed Donoughy’s fear was valid, especially considering how often I came around. A threat had to be seen in order to be effective. If they learned to fend for themselves, they would not stay to finish their contracts; yet if they remained here, they would die of malnourishment and other ailments. They were still no better off than the Negroes they watched.
“And you, my Lord? Have you been wounded?” Fletcher asked.
I started to tell him I was quite recovered from the wound I had suffered in August, but then I noted he was eyeing my neck with a grimace, his fingers hovering above the place where Gaston’s mark would have been on his own flesh.
“Nay, he bit me,” I sighed.
My matelot’s eyes widened with embarrassment but he stayed silent.
“Oh,” Fletcher said, and flushed. Then disapproval shuttered his face and he took a step back. Apparently he had not warmed to the ideas of sodomy or matelotage these last months, any more than he had warmed to the local food.
He remained distant until he led us to the mill, and then his pride got the best of him. He had designed the water wheel and was understandably proud. I was impressed. After having done a little of my own building, I was in awe that trees could be felled and shaped so precisely as to fit with forged iron to make a building and the workings inside. It looked to be a thing that would stand for decades and harness the river to grind tons of cane.
There would be another mill next to it, and then a boiling house, curing shed, and rum distillery. Someday, there would be a proper plantation house; and Fletcher showed us the site they had chosen for it, on the hill overlooking the river.
I conceded it would be very nice, and wondered when we would build it. Part of Theodore’s instructions included its construction, though Theodore had also procured a site in town just down the street from his. If we were to have a wife, she must be housed somewhere. I decided it would probably be best to ask her where she wished to be, since it would be her house, whoever she was. We would not dwell in it for most of the year, if I had my way. Then it occurred to me that Gaston might wish to cuddle with these heretofore-unforeseen children, much as he did with the puppies. The thought of seeing him so was pleasant, but it would necessitate living with them, and I did not think that would be pleasant at all. I had never been about an infant that it was not wailing.
On our return to the cookhouse and barracks, we passed the graveyard. I was mortified to see how many crosses sprouted there, and that I knew every name and some well. Patterson and the Jenkins brothers had passed. I counted: of the forty-one men with whom I arrived on Jamaica, twenty-three were dead within a year. And this did not count Tom, Harry, and Dickey, of which Harry had died within a month of our arrival. Men die all the time, true, but not at this appalling rate in all of Christendom; not unless there is war or pestilence. I supposed it could be said that both were constants in the West Indies. The crew of the North Wind had been cut down by half as well, but none of them had died by disease. And if nothing else, that alone would have made me thankful I had taken to the seas, despite the shipwreck. At least I had not been trapped here, near swamp vapors, eating rancid food.
I decided we would build a house for the wife in town.
As we came into the compound again, my gaze was drawn to the stockade.
“Have any of the Negroes died?” I asked Fletcher.
“Oh aye, my Lord. Ten of the fifty Mister Theodore purchased in September.”
“Why are they not buried in the graveyard?”
Fletcher was appalled. “They are not Christian, my Lord. We gave them over to their fellows and the savages let the bodies rot. Now we burn them.”
“As they are not Christian, perhaps it is their custom.”
“Only the Devil knows, my Lord,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “According to the ship’s captain, they come from five different tribes. Which is as we wanted, since that way they can’t all speak to one another to plot an escape or mutiny.”
I sighed. “Perhaps the ones who died first came from a group with customs the others were unfamiliar with. Perhaps they were not sure of your intent in giving them the body.”
“My Lord, why would you be willing to excuse them?” he asked with sincere curiosity. “You are kind to the extreme. They are ignorant savages. They are not men.”
“Then perhaps you should endeavor to instruct them. Fletcher, in the Italian cities I met a number of black Moors, and even a Nubian, who had skin every bit as dark as these Negroes, and they dressed, spoke, did business, and worshipped money and Christ much like any other man I have ever met.”
He flinched at this. “My Lord, I pray for you,” Fletcher said solemnly. “You seem determined to commit heresy and blasphemy at every turn.”
“Fletcher, should it not be heresy, if not blasphemy, to assume one knows the will of God at every turn? If God has issue with me, then that is between the two of us and not you. And does not God wish all of his good men to spread the word of His teachings? The Jesuits make quite the industry of it.”
“So you would ha
ve us minister to them?” he asked with a faint mien of guilt.
Beside me, Gaston was suppressing a smile, and I realized the direction I had stumbled in my rancor. I did not want Fletcher foisting his brand of religion upon a bunch of hapless men. I also saw that he had been considering it.
Fletcher was frowning at the stockade. “Do you truly feel they can learn the teachings of our Lord?”
“I think all men are capable of it,” I said carefully.
“Donoughy will not like it. If they become proper men then…”
“They will have to be treated as such,” I finished for him as I saw where it led. I decided that Christianity would not be in the slaves’ worst interests; on the contrary. “Fletcher, you are a man of God in your fashion, do you feel that you can attempt to instruct them?”
“They would have to learn the King’s English first,” he said as if the task were daunting.
I struggled to suppress my amusement. I was truly Satan’s snake in the garden of ignorance.
“Aye, they will,” I said with assurance. “Do you feel you can instruct them? I will tell Donoughy it is required. If he gainsays me, I shall dismiss him. And you will all learn to eat decent food, even if it kills you. God chose to put edible food on this island. How dare the lot of you turn your noses up at His bounty?”
He gave a low groan and awarded me with the chiding eye of a man bested in sparring by devious footwork he should have seen coming.
I smiled kindly. “It is all a matter of interpretation, Fletcher.”
“So you say, my Lord,” he said with a thoughtful frown. “You surely choose to see it like no other.”
We returned to the main buildings. Their original cook had died of the flux, and they now had a man named Curly, who was bald. He plied us with rum, and I availed myself of it. Gaston did not drink. Instead, he borrowed a pot in which to boil water and picked through their store of victuals to see if there was any he would allow us to eat. I understood his quest had failed when he handed me a strip of boucan from his belt pouch. I ate it without complaint.
The men began to arrive, and they were delighted to see us. Grisholm, our carpenter, still lived, as did Humboldt, the widower who had become a bondsman rather than marry. They were nearly as thin as Fletcher. Donoughy was the only one who appeared to be none the worse for ten months at Ithaca. But then, he had seasoned to the West Indies years ago. He did not appear pleased to see us; and as I knew he would wish to hear what I had to say even less, I took delight in his discomfiture and gave him hearty greeting.
Matelots Page 14