Caribbee Part 29

Futhermore, by the above said Act all foreign nations are forbidden to hold any correspondency or traffick with the inhabitants of this island; although all the inhabitants know very well how greatly we have been obliged to the Dutch for our subsistence, and how difficult it would have been for us, without their a.s.sistance, ever to have inhabited these places in the Americas, or to have brought them into order. We are still daily aware what necessary comfort they bring us, and that they do sell their commodities a great deal cheaper than our own nation will do. But this comfort would be taken from us by those whose Will would be a Law unto us. However, we declare that we will never be so unthankful to the Netherlanders for their former help and a.s.sistance as to deny or forbid them, or any other nation, the freedom of our harbors, and the protection of our Laws, by which they may continue, if they please, all freedom of commerce with us.

Therefore, we declare that whereas we would not be wanting to use all honest means for obtaining a continuance of commerce, trade, and good correspondence with our country, so we will not alienate ourselves from those old heroic virtues of true Englishmen, to prost.i.tute our freedom and privileges, to which we are born, to the will and opinion of anyone; we can not think that there are any amongst us who are so simple, or so unworthily minded, that they would not rather choose a n.o.ble death, than forsake their liberties.

The General a.s.sembly of Barbados"

_

Sir Edmond Calvert studied the long scrolled doc.u.ment in the light of the swinging ship's lantern, stroking his goatee as he read and reread the bold ink script. "Liberty" or "death."

A memorable choice of words, though one he never recalled hearing before. Would the actions of these planters be as heroic as their rhetoric?

Or could the part about a "n.o.ble death" be an oblique reference to King Charles' bravery before the executioner's axe? It had impressed all England. But how could they have heard? The king had only just been beheaded, and word could scarcely have yet reached the Barbados a.s.sembly.

One thing was clear, however: Barbados' a.s.sembly had rebelled against the Commonwealth. It had rejected the authority of Parliament and chosen to defy the Navigation Act pa.s.sed by that body to a.s.sert England's economic control of its settlements in the New World.

Wearily he settled the paper onto the table and leaned back in his sea chair, pa.s.sing his eyes around the timbered cabin and letting his gaze linger on a long painting of Oliver Cromwell hanging near the door. The visage had the intensity of a Puritan zealot, with pasty cheeks, heavy- lidded eyes, and the short, ragged hair that had earned him and all his followers the sobriquet of "Roundhead." He had finally executed the king. England belonged to Cromwell and his Puritan Parliament now, every square inch.

Calvert glanced back at the Declaration, now lying next to his sheathed sword and its wide shoulder strap. England might belong to Parliament, he told himself, but the Americas clearly didn't. The tone of the doc.u.ment revealed a stripe of independence, of courage he could not help admiring.

And now, to appease Cromwell, I've got to bludgeon them into submission. May G.o.d help me.

The admiral of the fleet was a short stocky Lincolnshire man, who wore the obligatory ensemble of England's new Puritan leadership: black doublet with wide white collar and cuffs. A trim line of gray hair circled his bald pate, and his face was dominated by a heavy nose too large for his sagging cheeks. In the dull light of the lantern his thin goatee and moustache looked like a growth of pale foliage against his sallow skin.

His father, George Calvert, had once held office in the Court of King Charles, and for that reason he had himself, many years past, received a knighthood from the monarch. But Edmond Calvert had gone to sea early, had risen through merit, and had never supported the king. In fact, he was one of the few captains who kept his ship loyal to Parliament when the navy defected to the side of Charles during the war. In recognition of that, he had been given charge of transporting Cromwell's army to Ireland, to suppress the rebellion there, and he bore the unmistakably resigned air of a man weary of wars and fighting.

The voyage out had been hard, for him as well as for the men, and already he longed to have its business over and done, to settle down to a table covered not with contentious proclamations but spilling over with rabbit pies, blood puddings, honeyed ham. Alas, it would not soon be. Not from the sound of the island's Declaration.

He lowered the wick of the lantern, darkening the shadows across the center table of the Great Cabin, and carefully rolled the doc.u.ment back into a scroll. Then he rose and moved toward the shattered windows of the stern to catch a last look at the island before it was mantled in the quick tropical night.

As he strode across the wide flooring-planks of the cabin, he carefully avoided the remaining shards of gla.s.s, mingled with gilded splinters, that lay strewn near the windows. Since all able-bodied seamen were still needed to man the pumps and patch the hull along the waterline, he had prudently postponed the repairs of his own quarters. As he looked about the cabin, he reminded himself how lucky he was to have been on the quarterdeck, away from the flying splinters, when the sh.e.l.ling began.

The first volley from the Point had scored five direct hits along the portside. One English seaman had been killed outright, and eleven others wounded, some gravely. With time only for one answering round, he had exposed the Rainbowe' s stern to a second volley from the breastwork on the Point while bringing her about and making for open sea. That had slammed into the ship's gilded p.o.o.p, destroying the ornate quartergallery just aft of the Great Cabin, together with all the leaded gla.s.s windows.

The island was considerably better prepared than he had been led to believe. Lord Cromwell, he found himself thinking, will not be pleased when he learns of the wanton damage Barbados' rebels have wreaked on the finest frigate in the English navy.

Through the ragged opening he could look out un.o.bstructed onto the rising swells of the Caribbean. A storm was brewing out to sea, to add to the political storm already underway on the island. High, dark thunderheads had risen up in the south, and already spatters of heavy tropical rain ricocheted off the shattered railing of the quartergallery. The very air seemed to almost drip with wetness. He inhaled deeply and asked himself again why he had agreed to come out to the Americas. He might just as easily have retired his command and stayed home. He had earned the rest.

Edmond Calvert had served the Puritan side in the war faithfully for a decade, and over the past five years he had been at the forefront of the fighting. In reward he had been granted the command of the boldest English military campaign in history.

Oliver Cromwell was nothing if not audacious. Having executed the king, he had now conceived a grand a.s.sault on Spain's lands in the New World.

The plan was still secret, code named Western Design: its purpose, nothing less than the seizure of Spain's richest holdings. Barbados, with its new sugar wealth, would someday be merely a small part of England's new empire in the Americas, envisioned by Cromwell as reaching from Ma.s.sachusetts to Mexico to Brazil.

But first, there was the small matter of bringing the existing settlements in the Americas back into step.

He had never been sure he had the stomach for the task. Now, after realizing the difficulties that lay ahead in subduing this one small island, he questioned whether he wanted any part of it.

He swabbed his brow, clammy in the sweltering heat, and wondered if all the islands of the Caribbees were like this.

Doubtless as bad or worse, he told himself in dismay. He had seen and experienced Barbados only for a day, but already he had concluded it was a place of fierce sun and half-tamed forest, hot and miserable, its very air almost a smoky green. There was little sign among the thatched-roof shacks along the sh.o.r.e of its reputed great wealth. Could it be the stories at home were gross exaggerations? Or deliberate lies?

It scarcely mattered now. Barbados had to be reclaimed. There was no option.

On his left lay the green hills of the island, all but obscured in sudden sheets of rain; on his right the line of English warships he had ordered positioned about the perimeter of Carlisle Bay, cannons run out and primed. He had stationed them there, in readiness, at mid-morning.

Then, the siege set, he had summoned his vice admiral and the other commanders to a council on board the _Rainbowe_.

They had dined on the last remaining capons and drawn up the terms of surrender, to be sent ash.o.r.e by longboat. The island was imprisoned and isolated. Its capitulation, they told each other, was merely a matter of time.

Except that time would work against the fleet too, he reminded himself.

Half those aboard were landsmen, a thrown-together infantry a.s.sembled by Cromwell, and the s.p.a.ces below decks were already fetid, packed with men too sick and scurvy-ravished to stir. Every day more bodies were consigned to the sea. If the island could not be made to surrender in a fortnight, two at most, he might have few men left with the strength to fight.

The Declaration told him he could forget his dream of an easy surrender. Yet he didn't have the men and arms for a frontal a.s.sault.

He knew it and he wondered how long it would take the islanders to suspect it as well. He had brought a force of some eight hundred men, but now half of them were sick and useless, while the island had a free population of over twenty thousand and a militia said to be nearly seven thousand. Worst of all, they appeared to have first-rate gunners manning their sh.o.r.e emplacements.

Barbados could not be recovered by strength of arms; it could only be frightened, or lured, back into the hands of England.

A knock sounded on the cabin door and he gruffly called permission to enter. Moments later the shadow moving toward him became James Powlett, the young vice admiral of the fleet.

"Your servant, sir." Powlett removed his hat and brushed at its white plume as he strode gingerly through the cabin, picking his way around the gla.s.s. He was tall, clean-shaven, with hard blue eyes that never quite concealed his ambition. From the start he had made it no secret he judged Edmond Calvert too indecisive for the job at hand. "Has the reply come yet? I heard the rebels sent out a longboat with a packet."

"Aye, they've replied. But I warrant the tune'll not be to your liking." Calvert gestured toward the Declaration on the table as he studied Powlett, concerned how long he could restrain the vice admiral's hot blood with cool reason. "They've chosen to defy the rule of Parliament. And they've denounced the Navigation Acts, claiming they refuse to halt their trade with the Dutchmen."

"Then we've no course but to show them how royalist rebels are treated."

"Is that what you'd have us do?" The admiral turned back to the window and stared at the rain-swept bay. "And how many men do you think we could set ash.o.r.e now? Three hundred? Four? That's all we'd be able to muster who're still strong enough to lift a musket or a pike. Whilst the island's militia lies in wait for us--G.o.d knows how many thousand- men used to this miserable heat and likely plump as partridges."

"Whatever we can muster, I'll warrant it'll be enough. They're raw planters, not soldiers." Powlett glanced at the Declaration, and decided to read it later. There were two kinds of men in the world, he often a.s.serted: those who dallied and discussed, and those who acted.

"We should ready an operation for tomorrow morning and have done with letters and declarations. All we need do is stage a diversion here in the harbor, then set men ash.o.r.e up the coast at Jamestown."

Calvert tugged at his wisp of a goatee and wondered momentarily how he could most diplomatically advise Powlett he was a hotheaded fool. Then he decided to dispense with diplomacy. "Those 'raw planters,' as you'd have them, managed to hole this flagship five times from their battery up there on the Point. So what makes you think they couldn't just as readily turn back an invasion? And if they did, what then, sir?" He watched Powlett's face harden, but he continued. "I can imagine no quicker way to jeopardize what little advantage we might have. And that advantage, sir, is they still don't know how weak we really are. We've got to conserve our strength, and try to organize our support on the island. We need to make contact with any here who'd support Parliament, and have them join with us when we land."

The question now, he thought ruefully, is how much support we actually have.

Sir Edmond Calvert, never having been convinced that beheading the lawful sovereign of England would be prudent, had opposed it from the start. Events appeared to have shown him right. Alive, King Charles had been reviled the length of the land for his arrogance and his Papist sympathies; dead, you'd think him a sovereign the equal of Elizabeth, given the way people suddenly began eulogizing him, that very same day.

His execution had made him a martyr. And if royalist sentiment was swelling in England, in the wake of his death, how much more might there be here in the Americas--now flooded with refugees loyal to the monarchy.

He watched his second-in-command slowly redden with anger as he continued, "I tell you we can only reclaim this island if it's divided.

Our job now, sir, is to reason first, and only then resort to arms. We have to make them see their interests lie with the future England can provide."

"Well, sir, if you'd choose that tack, then you can set it to the test quick enough. What about those men who've been swimming out to the ships all day, offering to be part of the invasion? I'd call that support."

"Aye, it gave me hope at first. Then I talked with some of them, and learned they're mostly indentured servants. They claimed a rumor's going round the island that we're here to set them free. For all they care, we could as well be Spaniards." Calvert sighed. "I asked some of them about defenses on the island, and learned nothing I didn't already know. So I sent them back ash.o.r.e, one and all. What we need now are fresh provisions, not more mouths to feed."

That's the biggest question, he told himself again. Who'll be starved out first: a blockaded island or a fleet of ships with scarcely enough victuals to last out another fortnight?