The Guineaman

  The remission of the fever, coinciding as it did with Kite’s initiative in re-establishing a routine aboard the Enterprize, gave the surviving ship’s company a new lease of life. In turn this compensated for their lack of numbers in the management of the slaves. The experienced Ritchie instituted a savagely oppressive regime over the increasingly resentful male slaves, whose women urged them to rebel as the voyage dragged on and they became more and more apprehensive over their future. Many among them were not as ignorant as Kite had supposed. They understood the vastness of the ocean and that their passage was to the westward where, they had heard, there lived terrible cousins of these white men who walked the earth like great kings.

  With such stories the lançados had terrorised them as they had brought them from the stockadoes and the baracoons down the Sherbro to the waiting Guineamen.

  Chapter Eight

  The West India Merchant

  They reached Antigua four days later, dropping anchor in the harbour of St John’s on the north west coast. Here they learned the rumours of war rife on the Guinea coast were unfounded. They had been based on the assumption that the attack by a British squadron under Vice-Admiral Edward Boscawen on some French men-of-war on the Grand Banks, resulting in the capture of the Lys, the Dauphin Royal and three military transports, would lead to a declaration of war from Paris. Fog had dispersed the French fleet, and Boscawen’s attack, designed to prevent a large reinforcement of troops under the escort of Le Comte de la Motte reaching Canada, prevented neither the new Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, nor the army commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, from reaching their destination.

  Nevertheless, hostilities between the two colonising powers in North America, France in Canada and Britain in the Thirteen American Colonies along the Atlantic coast to the south, had been smouldering along the wild frontiers for some time. The first clash had come at Great Meadows on the Ohio, when a mixed force of colonial troops and Indians under a provincial major named George Washington, had skirmished with French forces. But the previous summer the British had suffered disaster and humiliation when a British column under General Braddock was ambushed on the forested banks of the the Monongahela. While hostilities had broken out in the backwoods, Boscawen’s provocative attack on the French men-of-war failed in its objective of forcing the hand of King Louis XV into an outright declaration of war. Instead, so Makepeace and Kite now learned, a diplomatic tangle among the royal courts of Europe was embroiling the whole continent in opposing armed camps. Full-blown hostilities, it was sanguinely asserted, would come sooner or later.

  But in the West Indies the remorseless workings of commerce ground on, untroubled by such considerations. Makepeace landed his slaves and they were sold at an average of nine pounds sterling, a price which furnished the Enterprize’s commander and his reduced company with a handsome profit. As for the miserable and fearful blacks, it was only now that their future became clear. Those who had not been sea-sick during the middle-passage now found the strange island swayed under their fettered feet and that the irons round their ankles were not to be removed. Instead they were cruelly branded by their new owners and vanished into the country, or were trans-shipped to other islands in the West Indies. Over a hundred were purchased by a merchant from Havana, in Cuba. Makepeace was content, his under-manned brig was incapable of touting her cargo beyond Antigua. He was keen to refit her, recruit more hands to man her for the homeward passage from among the human flotsam that accumulated on the waterfront of St John’s, and load a cargo for Liverpool before war filled the chops of the Channel with French privateers.

  In the hurly-burly of discharging the slaves, who left in a mournful, iron-bound column for the mastaba in the market, to be pulled and prodded by the plantation owners prior to purchase, Kite’s circumstances underwent a transformation. Nor was he insensible that his own fate was in a marked contrast to that of the majority of the slaves, for he had acquired slaves of his own. When the Enterprize had arrived at St John’s, Kite had made clear to Makepeace his intention of securing the person of Puella and the captain had cynically charged Kite the exorbitant price of fifteen pounds for the privilege. On the morning that the slaves were roused for transfer to the slave market, she abandoned his cabin and he had found her cowering fearfully, her arm round a boy whose features, Kite realised, suggested he was a relative of Puella’s. Kite recognised him as the victim of sodomy he had seen being abused at the beginning of the passage. Sighing he had nodded, ordering Kerr to release the boy’s leg irons and giving him into Puella’s charge while he sought the captain.

  ‘I am busy, Mr Kite,’ Makepeace said, waving him aside as he shuffled papers in his cabin. ‘You have your black whore, now indulge me and leave, I have to visit the agent and secure my homeward cargo…’

  ‘Forgive me, Captain Makepeace, but I am determined to leave the Enterprize, sir. I doubt you will have need of a surgeon on the homeward voyage.’

  ‘But I need officers. You may have Molloy’s berth, Mr Kite.’

  ‘I do not wish it, sir. Also, I wish to purchase a boy. He is, I think Puella’s brother or, perhaps cousin or nephew.’

  Makepeace looked up. ‘You are a bigger fool than I conceived possible.’ He lay the paper he had been reading from on the table and confronted Kite, his expression hard and uncompromising. ‘You may go to the devil, Kite. You will tire of the wench and the boy will only prove mischievous unless you thrash him. Sell them…’

  ‘No sir, that I cannot do. I intend giving them their freedom.’

  ‘What, so that they can starve of prostitute themselves on the waterfront?’ Makepeace shook his head at Kite’s lack of worldliness.

  ‘No, so that they can live under my protection.’

  Makepeace shook his head. ‘I will not sell you the boy. I shall save you from your own folly.’

  ‘I am entitled to two slaves,’ Kite persisted. ‘I am resolved and shall buy him in the market. Surely you would rather profit directly without the auctioneer’s fee.’

  Makepeace shook his head and regarded Kite with sudden interest. The young man who had sewn up a harlot’s arse in Liverpool had become a strong character, a man it seemed impossible to reason with, who knew his own mind. And it was odd, Makepeace thought, that the affair with the black wench had somehow strengthened this impression; quite the reverse from his intention when he had dangled her enticingly in front of Kite.

  ‘You are incorrigible…’ Makepeace’s handsome face took on a harsh expression. ‘Mr Kite, I had no idea, beyond serving my own ends, that taking you on board my ship would be the cause of her being saved from a plague of the yellow-jack but such, I must confess, to have been the case. I, no, the whole surviving ship’s company are indebted to you. But I must warn you that within every man lie the seeds of his own destruction. You remarked my own distemper; yours is a foolish and wanton compassion. Compassion is not a vice found in the British sea-services, thank God. We match our wits against a pitiless sea, against a pitiless climate and pitiless disease in a trade that better acquits itself by similarly being pitiless.’

  ‘That is why I cannot remain with you, Captain Makepeace.’

  A silence fell between the two men, broken by Makepeace who expelled air through pursed lips and shook his head. ‘You are beyond me, Kite, beyond me. Whatever brought you aboard the Enterprize in Liverpool, I cannot think. But you may find employment here, in Antigua. Do you wish me to speak to Mr Mulgrave, our agent? He is a well known West India merchant with a large establishment here.’

  ‘I should be obliged and most grateful,’ Kite paused a moment, then said, ‘I, er, I mean you will make it clear to Mr Mulgrave that I have, er, a household.’

  Makepeace, who had resumed the perusal of his papers, looked up again, raising his eyebrows. ‘A household? My word, Kite, you have more than that, you have delusions of grandeur!’ Makepeace laughed and nodded, smiling. ‘Yes, I shall speak to Mulgrave. I happen to know he is short of a clerk.’

>   ‘That is kind of you, sir.’

  ‘We shall truly be quits then.’

  ‘Truly, sir.’

  Makepeace suddenly held out his hand. ‘I cannot think that you were preserved from the yellow-jack to waste your life as a counting-house clerk, but if that is what you want… You may have the boy for the price of a man, nine pounds…’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘In that case you shame me. You may have him for seven…’

  ‘I shall pay you nine pounds, Captain Makepeace, and count myself the luckier man.’

  Makepeace pulled a face. ‘By Jupiter, Kite, you have the tongue of a preacher. In any case, you will have sufficient money from this voyage to subsist for a while on your own resources.’ Makepeace paused, then added ‘if you keep that jade poorly shod and on short commons.’

  Kite left Makepeace, uncertain of his future. The immediate responsibility of Puella and the boy had diverted his mind from the problems of his past and their long shadow on the rest of his life. The legacy of his voyage on the Enterprize and his brush with death and disease was to mark him for life, but when he left the Guineaman in Antigua, he did so with a reputation as an extraordinary and honest, if eccentric young man.

  William Kite was fortunate in finding himself employed by Joseph Mulgrave, then the leading and most influential merchant in Antigua. Mulgrave was a tall, cadaverous man whose skin had not been burned by the tropical sun, despite thirty years in the West Indies. Mulgrave avoided exposure during daylight whenever possible, but sat at his desk in a black suit more suited to the smoke of London, venturing out only after dark when his tall figure could be seen walking through the town, looking neither to right nor left, and acknowledging no-one. An unconvivial and, insofar as respectable white society was concerned, solitary bachelor, Mulgrave’s sole and absorbing passion was commerce and the amassing of capital. Aloof, dispassionate and apparently devoid of any human emotion, he was spoken of in reverential tones in the ports of the Antilles; the extent of his wealth was unknown, but rumoured to be enormous. His more accountable reputation derived from his scrupulous honesty in all his business transactions.

  On their first encounter, Kite thought he had been delivered into the presence of a forbidding man of rigid views and severe habits, who would disapprove of Puella and the boy. But Mulgrave, having coldly addressed a few questions to Kite and having clearly gained from Makepeace an insight into the young man’s character, proceeded to surprise him.

  ‘You have two young blacks under your protection, I understand, Mr Kite.’ Mulgrave asked with dispassionate candour in a deep bass. The voice was surprising for one so slender, but was, Kite was to learn in due time, the most superficial of the surprises Mr Mulgrave would spring upon him.

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Do you intend to live in some intimacy with the young woman?’

  ‘If that would not offend you, sir,’ Kite said cautiously, embarrassed and flushing.

  The ghost of a smile flickered momentarily across Mulgrave’s face and Kite saw the horizontal cicatrix of a scar that ran from the left cheekbone to the ear, the lobe of which was nicked. It added to the sinister image Makepeace presented as he formed his reply. ‘Not at all, but it would be best if you were to dwell under my own roof. I have adequate accommodation and we can better teach the two of them a smattering of English sufficient for your wants.’

  ‘That is most thoughtful of you, sir.’ Kite was only half relieved; living under the same roof as Mr Mulgrave seemed to possess little attraction.

  ‘Do you realise that consorting with a black, damns you in the eyes of many of your fellow countrymen in Antigua? The fact that they fornicate and miscegenate themselves, is a measure of their hypocrisy, but that does not alter the way they will regard an open liaison such as you have adopted. Your youth and opinions are contrary to what is regarded here as acceptable; recent arrivals may be treated like lepers, so you will not find yourself in great demand at Government House, or elsewhere, for that matter.’

  ‘I do not think that will greatly trouble me, sir.’

  ‘Well, we shall see about that in due course. But if you intend to keep her, you will burn your boats in respect of settling here. Do you understand?’ Kite nodded; the prospect of surrendering Puella at this tremulously uncertain moment in his life filled him with horror.

  ‘Now,’ went on Mulgrave, ‘pray tell me the young woman’s name.’

  ‘I have called her Puella, sir.’

  Mulgrave raised an eyebrow. ‘And the boy?’

  ‘I have not named him.’

  ‘Mmm. I like the Latin tag… Puella has a better sound to it than Puer, but we should keep the alliteration; let us call the lad Pompey.’ Again the faint trace of smile flitted across Mulgrave’s face. ‘They will both wear their leg irons until they have learned sufficient English to understand their circumstances. They may find that rather hard to bear, but it is for their own good. If they run away now and are caught out in the wild country near any of the plantations, they are like to be whipped, shot or savaged by dogs long before establishing their identity.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘You do not see, Mr Kite,’ Mulgrave said with cold finality, ‘but you will, in due course. Sometimes one must be cruel to be kind. St John’s has many free men and women of colour, it will be difficult for Puella and Pompey, but they will come to understand in time. When they speak enough English, we may strike off their fetters. Perhaps by then you will be settled in your own establishment. While you are under my roof, Mr Kite, I regret to inform you that you will find yourself keeping your own company, I am not a sociable man and I eat alone. You may chose to do the same or to teach Puella her table manners, but that is your affair. I hope you read; I have a fair library and you are welcome to make use of it. Now, to business. My senior clerk is a Mr Wentworth and his assistant has lately embarked aboard the King George, packet, intending to return to England, hence the vacant post which is now, providentially, yours. In addition to your lodging, I can defray your living expenses and provide you with a small competence. In due course other opportunities may present themselves, but that will largely depend upon your own energy.’ Mulgrave’s eyes remained fixed on Kite, who held their gaze steadily. ‘Now, Mr Kite, in return I require absolute loyalty, perfect probity and twelve hours a day of your attention. May I assume you still wish to take up my offer?’

  ‘You may, sir.’

  And so Kite settled into the large rambling house that Jospeh Mulgrave had built amid a tangle of dense thorn scrub on a hillside overlooking St John’s, where Puella and Pompey began to learn English as they worked under the tutelage of Mulgrave’s formidable housekeeper, a large, well-formed and handsome mulattess called Mistress Dorothea. Ignorant of the usual formalities of West Indian colonial society, yet seduced by its colourful manifestations on the waterfront that stretched along the quayside immediately outside the doors of Mulgrave’s counting house, Kite fell easily into a routine. For the first time since he had stumbled into the Hebblewhite’s barn, he was filled with the almost forgotten feeling of contentment. Now something like a future lay before him.

  Mr Wentworth was a red-faced, perspiring, over-weight and untidily dressed man whose appearance belied a keen intelligence and a considerable energy. Somewhat foppish in appearance and always a martyr to fashion in the tropical heat, Wentworth bore down upon the newcomer like a ship in full sail. An incorrigible talker, Kite soon learned that Wentworth possessed a driving ambition to rise socially. His origins were humble, for his father had been an indentured white, shipped out from England as a criminal and set to work on the plantations. His mother’s origins were never referred to, so Kite assumed she had most probably been a prostitute, but the child had been seen by Mulgrave playing in the streets, amid the children of free blacks, mulattoes and quadroons. Mulgrave was then a young man, newly arrived in Antigua with a livid scar on his cheek and a reputation which was soon confirmed, as a crack shot with a pistol, suggest
ing a dark and, for the ladies of the island at least, a darkly romantic past. Taking the boy up, Mulgrave made the lad his servant. It was not long before Mulgrave had bought a share in an established business and was settled in St John’s. By this time he had recognised the shrewd intelligence in his youthful valet.

  ‘One morning, to my complete astonishment,’ Wentworth explained in a curious accent, ‘Mr Mulgrave said that I was to accompany him and he took me to a tailor then resident in St John’s and out-fitted me with a gentleman’s habiliments. I already knew how to read and write and I was placed directly in the counting house. Of course,’ Wentworth said with a candid lack of modesty that Kite learned was a perverse copy of his benefactor’s absolute honesty, ‘it was not long before it was clear that I was capable of more than merely making ledger entries…’

  The disparagement of Kite’s own present task was not, Kite felt, meant as an insult. There was a degree of affectation in Wentworth that caused unintentional irony and it took Kite sometime to realise that Wentworth’s diction arose from his desire to copy Mulgrave’s cool accent in what he assumed was the enunciation of the English aristocracy. Wentworth was aware that, however he got his surname, it was that of one of England’s grand families; this set Wentworth’s mind on ascending the social ladder. One day, he made it quite plain, when he had made his own or inherited Mulgrave’s fortune, he would go to England and make his debut in what he referred to as ‘polite society’. In the mean time, the lesser ladder of Antigua’s colonial white establishment provided Mr Wentworth with a sufficient social challenge.