Sir Thomas’s purchase consisted of a woman and her four children: boys between the ages of five and thirteen, and while he was making arrangements with his steward for their journey to Morant, a man dressed in the dreary garments of the self-consciously righteous tapped him on the arm and said:
‘Friend, have you bought the father of these children too?’
Modyford did not like being called friend, and he disliked even more to be hammered very hard on his forearm by the rigid middle finger of a total stranger, but his good manners were fool-proof.
‘No, sir, I have not,’ he said.
‘And do you consider that it is God’s will that this woman should be parted from the dear partner of her joys and sorrows? From the man to whom, by God’s grace, she has borne so many pledges of affection?’
The Governor turned to the woman and spoke to her in Spanish, and as she listened her brown face became irradiated with delight. She replied in a torrent of Spanish that was punctuated every now and then with a catch of laughter as her amusement welled up to choke her words. And as she finished she put her head back and opened her wide, magnificent mouth and let the laughter have full sway.
‘What does she say?’ asked the authority on God’s will.
‘She says that all the boys had different fathers, and that she has never been able with any certainty to state who was the father of any one of the four.’
‘Deplorable, deplorable,’ said the stranger, casting the woman a look of loathing and taking himself away from her polluted neighbourhood with all the speed the crowded place would allow.
‘The worst of reformers,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘is that they make so many mistakes in the particular that they get no credit for the general.’
‘Did your Excellency really need these slaves?’ asked Morgan, who had himself bought his first three field-hands for Morgan’s Valley. ‘Gossip says you have far more than you need and that they eat you out of house and estates.’
‘I could not resist that family: they gave me such pleasure to look upon. It is true, of course, that I have more than I have work for, and that being so I have taken a great liberty while you were away. I have sent some of the idle ones over to clear the land in Morgan’s Valley so that it should be ready for you. They have also transported the materials for the house, and cut up wood for fencing. I hope very much that you do not think I have been interfering or officious. It seemed a pity to let my fellows grow fat and lazy when there was something useful to do on the island.’
Morgan could find no words. What Modyford had done represented almost a year’s work with the few slaves he could afford.
Sir Thomas cast him a quizzical glance and said: ‘I hope I have not deprived you of pleasure that you were saving up for yourself? The clearing of your own land?’
‘You have done me a great kindness, sir. I do not know how to thank you.’
‘I can tell you how. Come out to Morant with me this evening and spend Sunday with us. My daughter Mary keeps house for me until my wife arrives, and there will be no one there but George Nedham, the young man she is going to marry.’
Even if Morgan’s heart had not been overflowing with gratitude, an invitation from the King’s Representative is not to be greeted with some such phrase as: ‘Forgive me, but I want to see my cousin.’ So Morgan rode out to Morant that evening to spend the week-end with the Governor.
But there proved to be company, after all, on Sunday.
‘Dear me!’ said the Governor, eyeing the two approaching riders over his eleven-o’clock glass of madeira, ‘I had quite forgotten that Elizabeth was coming over today to choose the black boy I promised her.’ And he put down the glass and led the slightly suspicious Morgan down the steps to meet his cousin, who was being convoyed by Barley Sugar. Henry was enormously gratified to see the rush of colour to Elizabeth’s face as she caught sight of him, and no wise dashed to see the look of fury that succeeded it. No woman could suffer that physical betrayal and not be furious. But she greeted him in cousinly fashion and complimented him on the achievement of Santa Catalina, and seemed to bear him no malice for that momentary tide of colour. It appeared that she knew all about the progress at Morgan’s Valley, and they discussed it together, she and Henry and the Governor, as they walked down to the steward’s house to see the slaves before they were branded; and as once on that previous occasion, when they had explored the virgin valley, there was a sense of companionship between them, so that it seemed as if she and Henry had known each other since childhood.
The boys, gathered in the steward’s office for Elizabeth to choose among them, consisted of the four young brothers from Santa Catalina and two Indian children who had been found starving after the Spaniards had laid waste their village near Cape Gallinas. Elizabeth considered them at her leisure, delighting in the choosing as a child might with dolls.
‘Which would you have, Harry?’ she asked, a little to his surprise.
‘The one like Chakka,’ he said, indicating the younger of the two Indian children.
‘Who is Chakka?’
‘A Campeche Indian who did me a good turn once.’
‘Then I’ll take the one like Chakka,’ she said. ‘It would be a pity to take one of the brothers, anyhow, wouldn’t it? They make such a nice set!’
Arrangements were made for the boy to ride on Barley Sugar’s saddle when they went home in the evening, and they left the steward to his little silver instrument and his spirits of wine. But a child’s yell brought them back, and there was the remaining Indian boy in a panic. He had never seen a branding-iron before, and to his terror of being hurt was added the superstitious fear of magic. The almost invisible flame and the thin little silver rod were more terrifying than any known horror, and the eyes were starting out of his head.
Before anyone could do anything about it, the eldest negro boy capered forward, pushed him scornfully to one side, and bared his chest with a swagger. The other three negro children were making wild fun of the Wretched craven, roaring with laughter and imitating his terror in unkind caricature. They had seen this process often, and knew that it did not hurt; and they had all the scorn of cosmopolitans for a country cousin.
The steward rubbed the boy’s skin with sweet oil, heated the brand in the spirit-flame, and touched the boy with it, and there was the T.M. of the Governor’s ownership on his chest. The boy regarded it proudly, as the retainer of a great noble might his badge, and the other negro children fought for the honour of being next.
And suddenly Henry said: ‘If your Excellency does not particularly want the Indian boy, perhaps you would let me buy him from you.’
‘No, I don’t want him; but are you sure that you do? I bought him only so as not to separate him from the boy from his village.’
It was on the tip of Henry’s tongue to say: ‘That is why I want to buy him too,’ but he remembered in time that Elizabeth was still only his cousin.
‘I really should like very much to have him,’ he said. ‘How much do you want for him?’
‘One English rose from Morgan’s Valley to be delivered to Morant on the first day of May every year.’ He cocked an eye at Henry, and added: ‘If Jamaica is going to be English, the establishment of a few traditions is greatly desirable.’
He took the boy by the shoulder and moved him forward to face Henry. ‘I give you to this man,’ he said slowly to the boy.
The boy did not understand the words, but he understood the gesture. He looked for a long, searching moment at Morgan, and then the panic left his eyes. There was silence in the crowded little room while they watched him. They had half expected him to accept his new ownership with some sort of obeisance, slave-wise. But he accepted it in a fashion much more moving. He walked over and stood close beside Henry, side by side with him and a little in the rear; as one taking shelter under a tree. And Henry, unexpectedly touched, dropped his hand in a rallying gesture on the black straight hair.
‘Well,’ Modyford said, ‘now that we have
settled that, let us go and eat dinner.’
Dinner was the long, leisurely, enormous meal that the English considered necessary for life in the tropics; and the talk was the immemorial talk of the colonial English: how Charles was doing at school and how soon he would be coming ‘out’ to take his place in the making of Jamaica; how little ‘they’ understood the needs of the new colony; how irreconcilable were the two main cliques in English Jamaica, and how odd it was that the original Commonwealth settlers should, when released from their strictness, be so much more debauched than any of their Royalist successors. Henry sat in the shadows and watched Elizabeth, and planned for the day when she should sit at the other end of his own table. He liked her fire and her directness, her almost boy-like frankness, her inability to trade on her own femininity, and he compared her unfavourably with Mary Modyford, who was all a soft glow in her lover’s presence. Women had glowed for him, too, but he had not wanted to marry them; to spend his life with them; to have them as mother of his children. His cousin Elizabeth gave him not only excitement but the companionship that was dearer and much more rare. She was not woman, she was one person and unique. She was, quite simply, Elizabeth. Irreplaceable. And he must marry her at the earliest possible moment.
He noticed that she was a great favourite with the Governor, and wondered again whether Modyford had remembered quite well that Elizabeth was coming over to Modyford this Sunday, and whether his invitation was merely a way of furthering his suit. This suspicion was almost confirmed when Sir Thomas said: ‘I had looked forward to riding back to Port Royal with you tomorrow morning, Harry, but if you go tonight instead, you could escort your cousin part of the way home, since your roads lie together so far.’
So Henry and Elizabeth rode side by side under the trees in the cool of the evening, not hurrying, and greatly content in each other’s company. And Barley Sugar rode behind and instructed the Indian boy in the English names of things.
‘Dat a tree,’ said Barley Sugar.
‘Dattatree,’ noted the boy obediently.
‘I suppose dattas must be a cross between dates and bananas,’ Elizabeth commented. ‘The poor little wretch must be very confused.’
‘What are you going to call him?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it. What are you going to call yours?’
‘Let us call them by two related names. You know. Castor and Pollux. Hengist and Horsa. Flotsam and Jetsam.’
‘Romulus and Remus. Let us call them Romulus and Remus. I’ll have Remus and save myself a syllable. Who was Chakka, Harry?’
‘An Indian who could throw a rope over a given mark.’
There was silence for a moment, and then Elizabeth burst out:
‘I wish men would not put off women when they ask questions! If I had been a man you would have told me all about Chakka!’
‘But, Bet,’ he said, using her little name for the first time, ‘I would have told you if I had thought that you would be interested!’
‘Yes,’ she said, flaring. ‘That is just what I am pointing out. “A man who could throw ropes, little girl; you wouldn’t be interested.” What am I supposed to be interested in? Still-room concoctions and poultices and betrothals and calvings, and embroidery and hair-washing and—’
The mention of hair-washing, which her subconscious had thrown up for her tongue to use, suddenly reminded her. She stopped in full flight, and then, being Elizabeth, began to laugh. She laughed so that she rocked in the saddle, alight with self-mockery and the sheer absurdity of things.
Henry had a wild longing to reach over and pick her from the saddle and hold her in his arms while the laughter sobbed up from her mouth as he kissed her. Instead he put his hand on her rein, lightly, and said: ‘Bet, my dearest dear, there is no one in the world I would sooner tell my stories to than you.’
‘Then tell me about Chakka.’
So he told her about the Indian whose throwing of the grapnel had helped him to take the Fortune, and decided that when he went over to see Anna Petronilla he would once more make suit for Elizabeth; less surprisingly this time, and with more to recommend him as a suitor. Anna Petronilla would not be insensible to the added prestige that came from the retaking of Santa Catalina, nor to the practical fact of Morgan’s Valley and the house that was being built there.
8
Henry married his cousin three months later; and to mark the last day of his bachelor life the Governor gave a dinner for him at Kingshouse. The dinner began at four o’clock, and by seven was well under way. It was the most magnificent feast that Kingshouse had witnessed since the occupation, and the guests noticed and noted. It was so, was it, that Modyford rated his young friend Morgan; the rarest dishes and the best plate? They considered the guest of honour, and wondered whether he was going to settle down as a planter or stick to the sea. There was no antagonism in their regard, for it was an exclusive and friendly party. The only unrejoicing member was Colonel Thomas Lynch, who had been Modyford’s predecessor in the Governorship; and Henry, watching Lynch’s efforts at conviviality, could not make up his mind whether Modyford’s inclusion of him was due to policy or to Modyford’s own brand of gentle malice.
By eight o’clock they had finished eating and had begun the serious business of drinking. Rob Byndloss, the husband of kind, blob-of-butter Anna, was already a little drunk, and announced at intervals to anyone who would listen: ‘No one in the world, sir, will ever make me wear a wig. Never, sir.’ It having lately become known in Jamaica that it had become the fashion ‘at home’ to supplement one’s own curls with artificial hair.
Henry Archbould, Anna Petronilla’s adviser and stand-by, sat somnolent and owl-like, staring at the reflection of the candles in his wine. His only contribution to the conversation in the last hour had been to say that if it was true that women’s skirts were to be worn shorter, then it was a deplorable thing. It would deprive man of one of the most delightful moments of his every-day life: the moment when a woman lifted her skirt and one saw her ankle. No marriage bed, opined Henry, nor any drab’s couch afforded so exquisite a moment as that afforded by the glimpse of a forbidden ankle.
The guest of honour listened to the talk with half his mind, and with the other half thought of tomorrow, when he would marry Elizabeth in the only church on the island. St Katherine’s at St Yago de la Vega had been the Spanish cathedral, and had now been restored in some measure from the ruin that the Commonwealth troops had made of it in their anti-Popish zeal. It was appropriate that they should be married in Spanish Town, and not at Port Royal, for the Morgans’ first home had been there, and Edward in his will had left their little house there to be a parsonage for the new church. Indeed, kind Mr Hauser, who was going to marry them tomorrow, had relet the upper floor of the house to them so that they might have a town dwelling as well as the rather primitive delights of Morgan’s Valley.
Henry found Spanish Town and its inland airs static and dead after the dancing air of the Port, always full of the sea’s reflection. It was so like the Spaniards, he thought, to have an inland capital. No Englishman would think of a capital city divorced from the sea. Was defence always in their minds? Was defence a natural, instinctive thing with them, and not a sign of their degeneracy at all? Were they losing their place in the sun because of this innate leaning to defence, and not being defensive because they were losing their place?
That made him think again of Santa Catalina, and of Mansfield. He did not like to think of Mansfield. The old man had gone away sorrowful because the Spaniards still had great possessions and Henry would not come with him to relieve them of some more. When Henry pointed out that any captain would be proud to sail under his command, that he had his choice of captains, Mansfield had said: ‘Aah, they are all mere herrings in a barrel! They can sail and they can fight, but can they think? No! They can not! But you and I, Harry, you and I. Between us we could take America from the Spaniards. Take all America from them.’
But for the moment Henry’s mind was o
n shore. He had not been able to think of sea business while Elizabeth was still not his. The island swarmed with single men looking for wives, and Henry, though vain, was not conceited. He rated himself no higher as a suitor than any one of the well-to-do young planters who came out to risk their future in the new colony. He had to make sure of Elizabeth before he went to sea again.
In which his reaction was curiously like his bride’s.
‘Do you love him. Bet?’ Johanna had asked, lolling on their mutual bed and watching her sister try on a new bodice.
‘I don’t know whether it is love or not,’ Elizabeth said, soberly. ‘I do not want very much to get married, but I cannot bear the thought of his being married to anyone else. So I do not have much choice.’
Her reaction to his formal proposal had been to say: ‘You know, Harry, I do not want to be married to anyone, but I like Morgan’s Valley very much, and I think it is worth being married for.’
When he ventured to hope that she liked him, too, in some measure, she said: ‘Oh, yes; of course I do!’ and added: ‘I like to watch you.’
With which cryptic utterance he had to be content.
But now that he had made sure of Elizabeth, and tomorrow they were being married, he had leisure to think of Mansfield, and to be sorry that he had not been more patient with the old man’s babblings about Maracaibo. For three solid weeks, in season and out, Mansfield had talked Maracaibo to him. When Henry, trying to head him off, had pointed out that the French had sacked the place already, he had said: ‘Aah, who ever heard of the French tidying up a job properly! And in Maracaibo there is no end to it, anyhow. The gold runs out of a man’s boots there.’ And later, faced with the blank wall of Henry’s determination to remain on shore, he said: ‘You are not thinking of turning planter, are you, Harry?’
The Privateer Page 13