I like the fact that nothing is wasted.
I stood, watching the pure fluid sugar rushing through the wooden gutters. One of the boilermen, whose arm I had mended the previous season, came up to me, bowed, hesitantly took my outstretched hand, and asked if Doctor was staying for the New Year’s John Canoe masquerade. I assured him that I was.
‘Dat gud ting, dat gud ting,’ he said several times, most mysteriously. We shook hands again and I wished him a good day. Only months later did I attach any significance to his words.
The blacks celebrate Christmas with an extraordinary festival pageant in masquerade. Indeed, I had found the estate already in something of a holiday mood. Looking back, I can see that the high spirits among the slaves were partly attributable to their raised hopes of freedom. The anti-slavery measures advocated by the Home Government were widely discussed and many blacks were of the opinion that the Emancipation, rather like the Second Coming, was close at hand. There was wild talk of free land for all slaves as a present from the Crown. I attended a chapel service in Montego Bay, where the Baptist preacher, a passionate young black man in a stiff white collar and brushed suit, was carried away by the radical significance of his text, which he declaimed in thrilling tones before applying himself to the knotted business of exegesis.
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians, 3: 26–28)
No one is a slave in God’s eyes. When Jesus proclaimed, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ he offered himself as the gateway to freedom. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. In Christ there is no place for the distinction between a free man and a slave. For ye are all one in Christ Jeeeeesus, he boomed.
The argument was obvious and irrefutable. Newton, who was by my side, found all this very persuasive, and ventured to demand my opinion. I did not have the heart to tell him that I was not a believer. Nor, indeed, to explain that the consequences of my atheism demanded still more radical solutions than a paradise of love in the beyond. For it is here, in the Kingdom of This World, that we shall find our salvation. Or not at all. I think of Francisco and all his contradictions. He was a devout Catholic. Yet the very fluid in his veins was that of a republican. Slavery was an invention of the tyrant Satan, who was himself enslaved by pride, envy and desire. When God made the earth He gave it freely to all men, regardless of their race and origin. For Francisco, and in this we were never divided, the abolition of slavery was a simple and inevitable thing, the justice of which did not admit of argument or discussion. All men are born free and equal to one another. And from this great truth flow all the Rights of Man. He lived at least to see the emancipation throughout the Caribbean, if not in the Americas.
How to answer Newton, whose huge, round, urgent face was now pressed close to mine?
We had sung the last hymn and were leaving the little chapel in the dust. I gestured to the people around us, who were all races, all colours, although the majority were black.
‘Well, Newton. Here are God’s people, who have knelt down before Him. If all manner of men are prepared to pray with one another, to the same God, then indeed, we are, and should be, all one in Christ Jesus.’
That remark of mine, overheard and accurately reported, almost led to a formal charge of sedition. Given what was to come.
This was a few days before Christmas. The situation at the hospital in Montego Bay was not good, but was far from disastrous. I spent the morning making notes of what was most needed in the storeroom, in terms of both linen and medicine. I checked the account books and accompanied my doctors on their ward rounds. Then I went out to buy Christmas presents for Edward’s household and for Abraham. He had requested a fine knife with a horn handle. Edward had, somewhat shamefacedly, repeated Hecuba’s desire for a petticoat with pink ribbons, so that I found myself riding back to Montpelier in the evening with a medley of weaponry, leather belts and frilly female underwear. Newton was very amused by the petticoats, lacy aprons and decorated bloomers destined for the ladies of his household. We trotted into Montpelier, still grinning at one another.
There had been a good deal of excitement in town, but no more than was usual for Christmastime.
The slaves always had a holiday at Christmas. That year the day fell upon a Sunday, but Edward, well aware of the long months of hardship, which now seemed to be past, granted Monday as well. Although this was characteristic of his generosity, it was not a universal practice among the plantation owners in the district and caused some irritation and dissent. Edward avoided adverse comment by declaring that he was severely indisposed and unable to attend the December assizes. He was a local magistrate, who usually took his responsibilities seriously. I upbraided him gently at his defection, but he defended himself.
‘Dash it, Barry. What I don’t hear them saying won’t warrant a reply. And I can get out of traipsing over to Kingston for the New Year dances. All of which I loathe. I am mobbed by dozens of matrons trying to marry me off to their affected shady daughters. You’ll vouch for my indisposition, won’t you? There’s a good fellow. And in this climate you can always be suddenly seized by the unquenchable shits.’
He settled himself more comfortably into the crumbling chaise longue.
‘And if I don’t go to the Governor’s ball I won’t have to listen to the end-of-the-worldism from all the planters resisting the abolition. It must come, you know, Barry. And soon. We will just have to negotiate a different arrangement for planting cane.’
He told me that a week before my arrival there had been trouble at the Salt Spring estate, where the slaves had turned on the attorney. Edward was sure that the man had been enjoying his little moment as the tyrant king, but the mob of slaves actually disarmed the constables who were sent to suppress the troublemakers. Edward should have been sitting on the bench to hear the full story and pass judgment.
‘The people’s heads are full of freedom, James. And we must reap the consequences. How was that Baptist preacher you went to hear yesterday? I’m told that he’s sedition incarnate and that it’s only a matter of time before they haul him out of his pulpit, along with the Jacobin missionaries who put him up to it!’
Newton must have overheard this. He was in the room, searching for the best linen and silver candlesticks with which to lay the table.
I remember the dining room with terrible clarity. The portraits of Edward’s parents over the oak sideboard and all the chairs, when not in use, standing in tiny dishes of water to save them from the white ants. The windows on that side of the house were masked with Venetian blinds, made of bamboo, which left huge bars of sun on the opposite wall. One of Edward’s English visitors, who had stayed here eight months, nursing a consumption, had painted a huge oil portrait of the estate, fastidious in its detail. Here were the barracks where the book-keepers lived, and there the overseer’s house and offices, with the hospital well placed on the breezy rise, the cattle sheds, water mill and the boiling house, shaded by coconut trees, and beyond them, the purple hills. We sat staring at the picture.
‘There isn’t a coconut tree to the right of the main gates,’ I said pedantically.
‘Yes, there was,’ said Edward. ‘It blew down after the painting was complete. Poor old Halliwell. Don’t you remember? You dealt with his hookworm. Well, he died of his consumption as soon as he got home. You need a hot dry climate for consumption, not a hot wet one.’
Edward glared gloomily at the painting for a moment, then cheered up.
‘We’ll die here, won’t we, Barry? We won’t bother sailing back to England.’
‘Very probably,’ I agreed wearily.
There was a strange quiet on the estate throughout Christmas Day, apart from the usual hymns, sung on the house steps by Edward’s little band of devotees. This was a group of his slaves, not
only the houseworkers, to whom he had been especially kind, but also others from among the fieldworkers, and they often prevailed upon him to watch them dance or to hear them sing. I observed their approach, dressed in their Sunday best, carrying their Eboe drums and two curious instruments, shaky-shekies, which were calabashes filled with pebbles, and kitty-katties, which were nothing more than a flat piece of board and two sticks with which they energetically pummel the board. The musical instruments may have been primitive, but the singing was wonderful. A young girl led them, her high, clear soprano echoing across the yard. Her companions followed in a chorus. I saw Jessica among the singers.
When the song had ended, Edward ordered drinks and cakes for his Christmas singers and we retreated inside from the heat. As I wished them all a merry Christmas and turned to go, Jessica caught my hand.
‘You stay here, Doctor?’ she asked urgently.
‘Yes. Until New Year,’ I replied. She withdrew at once, apparently relieved.
The following day was even quieter than Christmas Day had been. Even Edward remarked on the lack of drunken good cheer among his people. We heard nothing but the chickens, geese and guinea fowl engaging in the occasional raucous scuffle across the yard.
In the early dawn of 27th December the slaves rose up, formed their gangs as usual and departed into the cane fields. Most of them never came back. But we did not know this, for the overseers never returned to report their vanishing. The first sign we heard, as the light failed, was the sound of the conch shells.
Yes, the first signal was the sound of the shells, calling to one another in the first misty cool of the mountains, the shells calling across the purple slopes, the waiting, then the echo coming, damp from the ferns at the mouth of the waterfall, the shells calling and calling across the mountains. The sound is unspeakably sad, and I will never hear it again without remembering the taste of those bitter years, the tingle in my nostrils from the smell of coffee beans roasting on jute sacks in the sun, and the stench of sweet, thick, fermenting rum and the trickle of sweat streaming inside my shirt which hangs sodden against my belly.
We went down the steps in the advancing dark and saw the luminous red glow of Kensington on the Hill. This was the beacon, the signal to all the surrounding estates that the uprising had begun. From the intensity of the blaze, we realised that many of the neighbouring estates were already in flames. The light transformed the skyline. What so many of the planters had always feared had at last come to pass. Newton stood beside us in the shadows. He had clearly been converted by the Baptists on that very morning in Montego Bay, for he rose to the moment with apocalyptic fervour.
‘Di Day o’ Judgement is a’ han’, Massa,’ he cried, ‘whe’ di blessed will be clasp to Him Bosom, an’ di wikked will be cas’ into de everlastin’ fire!’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Newton,’ snapped Edward.
We could by now see the Everlasting Fires of the distant estates, blazing clearly across the hills. And coming closer. The sky was like de Loutherbourg’s famous paintings of Coalbrookedale, an inferno of smoke and flame. The house servants had vanished, and all the estate – usually so busy and so thriving, with the sound of singing and the slaves calling to their children, running footsteps, the thud of buckets at the pump and the nickering of the horses being led back to the paddocks – was silent and deserted. The buildings loomed, suspended in the red night, as if testifying, like a malignant prophecy, to their coming destruction.
Edward set up a little cache of arms on the back porch. He prepared a row of four muskets, firing off one or two into the blackness, to see if they were functioning.
I sent Newton over to the stables and told him to release all the horses, apart from my bay and Edward’s piebald mare. The animals were to be set free into the bush: cows, chickens, geese, guinea fowl and all the dogs. This was easier said than done, for I went to the chicken house myself and opened the pens. But the fowls, fluttering, gibbering and terrified, simply clustered together as far away from me as possible. I left the door open and the dim-witted creatures to their fate. The buildings were all silent and locked, the silence uncanny. I could smell the coming pall of smoke on the warming air.
One lamp burned in the infirmary. There were two men, sick with fever, abandoned in their beds, and the nurse sitting quietly in a chair, hands folded on her lap before her.
‘Good evening, Elizabeth,’ I said softly. But she was too terrified even to reply. I checked that both men were as comfortable as possible and that she had plenty of fresh water. It was unlikely that the rebels would be able to set fire to the roof. I stroked the woman’s head and then blew out the lamp.
‘Stay here,’ I whispered, ‘but don’t burn any candles or light the lamp again. You will be quite safe.’ She said nothing.
And I was by no means as confident as I pretended to be.
Edward had abandoned his musket practice and was out searching in the undergrowth by the abandoned village for Hecuba and her companions. She had been delighted with the petticoat and had even gone so far as to kiss him quickly in my presence. Now, she too had vanished.
‘Well, Barry,’ said Edward calmly, all his illnesses forgotten, ‘what are we to do? Flee the coop or wait to be butchered and roasted? Newton, bless him, is washing up the supper dishes on his own.’
I had never seen Edward so calm, relaxed and indifferent to his fate. I told him that we would do best to watch for the rest of the night, armed with muskets to face whatever came. If the estate survived the night I would set out for Montego Bay at first light. We sat down on the back porch and watched the distant infernos, as the Trelawny plantations were reduced to ashes. But we heard nothing close to us, and we saw no one.
As dawn lightened behind the fires on the morning of December 28th, I saddled the bay in silence and nodded my goodbyes to Edward and to Newton. My place was with the army and the Governor, for as soon as news of the rebellion reached Kingston, troops would have been despatched from all the ports. The small militia at Shettlewood was almost certainly already in arms. I rode away into the burning shroud of smoke at a brisk trot, leaving Newton and Edward alone, in all that empty land.
It was clear that the rebellion had been planned in advance. The conch signal indicated an intelligent conspiracy. I was aware, as soon as I left the Montpelier track and turned onto the red dirt road towards Montego Bay, that I was being watched and followed by rebels hiding in the canefields. Suddenly a group of black shadows solidified out of the murky green before me, their cutlasses gleaming. My horse started and reared, but was calmed at once by Jessica’s familiar voice. She caught the bridle and looked straight into my eyes. A young black man, whom I did not know, waved his machete in my face and sneered:
‘We wont be slaves no more. We wont lift hoe no more. We wont take flog no more. We free now! We free now!’
I did not answer him. What could I say? They had justice on their side, if not the law. What desperate longing for dignity and liberty drives a man to take up arms against his fellow men? Their very humanity had been betrayed. And now they stood before me, armed and ready for vengeance, colour for colour, blood for blood. The consequences of our cruelty now stood before us.
Jessica must have read my thoughts. She held the bay’s bridle firmly and peered up into my face.
‘Den come wid us, Doctor.’
‘I will tend the wounded of both sides, Jessica. Both sides. And I urge you to spare as many lives as possible. A man’s life lost is the only thing he can never regain.’
There was a pause as her companions looked around and away into the lightening sky. I could see the great house at Roehampton, still standing, but I could now hear howls and shouting in the distance. Jessica raised her hand quickly and the small gang of rebels parted before me.
And then I was alone on the road in the midst of the uprising, my horse snorting uneasily in the red dust.
It is in the nature of events such as these that one man has only a confused and muddled under
standing of all that has passed. That night I saw the countryside in flames, but although many people passed by me on the road, some armed, some running, some carrying torches, I continued on my way, unchallenged and unharmed.
The town was in uproar. The population had panicked. Some fled to the boats and put out to sea in terror. One man had overloaded a small fishing craft with all the worldly goods he could carry. The skiff overturned in the bay and he was drowned. His body was identified many weeks later by the cutlery hidden in his pockets, but his skull had been picked clean by the sea.
I regarded the rebellion as an inevitable consequence of slavery. The people wanted what is desired most passionately by every man or woman who is humiliated and oppressed: their freedom, and the right to live in peace on their own land. In all the pages of history there is no tale of tyranny that is not followed by the story of resistance and rebellion. The one will follow hot upon the other, as the dust rises before the wind. It seems that my political sentiments and sympathies were known in Montego Bay, as, on two occasions, I was spat at by townsfolk who ought to have known better and accused of being a white nigger.
In fact, the rebels advanced on Montpelier as soon as I had gone. I have reason to believe that this was no coincidence. The militia, which had taken a more devious route through the canefields, confronted them in the forecourt of Montpelier. They lost the day, although they managed to inflict some losses, and retreated back to Montego Bay, bringing Edward and Newton with them. The rebellion then spread into the hills, and thick smoke from the burning plantations laid a pall over the sun. All the estates along the Great River valley were set alight. The people rose up throughout the counties of Westmorland and St Elizabeth. The roads were impassable as far as Savannah la Mar, for they were in the hands of the rebels. Freedom was in the mouth of every man who held a cutlass in his hand.
Weeks later we learned that some slaves had remained loyal to their masters and defended both property and lives. In fact, there were very few direct attacks upon the whites. True, it was Christmastime and many of the owners and their families were absent from their properties. Many more slaves, not sufficiently courageous to join the rebellion but fearing reprisals against themselves, simply vanished into the bush, as Edward’s people had done.
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