Caribbee Part 39

"G.o.d's blood, I never thought it'd come to this. I was sure they'd never have the bra.s.s to try it." She pa.s.sed him the muskets. "So we'll be going to war after all. I'd wager you another shilling you'll not hold them off, darlin', save there'd be no way to collect if I won."

"All wagers are off now. This one's too hard to call." He handed one of the flintlocks to John Mewes, then c.o.c.ked the other and aimed it into the dark night air. "Ready, John?"

"Aye." Mewes c.o.c.ked the musket and aimed it at the sliver of moon on the western horizon. "Tell me again. The signal for Jamestown's one shot, a count of five, another shot, a count of ten, and then the third?"

"That's it."

"Fire when ready."

Winston squeezed the trigger and the powder pan flashed in the dark.

Five seconds later Mewes discharged the second musket, then after ten seconds Winston fired the third, the one he had just loaded.

"All right, John. Get the horses."

"Aye." Mewes disappeared around the side of the tavern, headed for the makeshift stable located at the rear.

Approximately a minute later the signal of three musket shots was repeated by militiamen in the field command post at Black Rock, on the road to Jamestown. Shortly after there again came a faint repet.i.tion of the pattern of shots, farther north. The prearranged signal was moving quickly up the coast.

Mewes emerged from the dark leading two speckled mares. He patted one on the side of her face, muttered an endearment, then pa.s.sed the reins to Winston. "I'm ready to ride."

"All right, John, I'll see you at Jamestown. Put Spurre in charge here and go up to the governor's compound to tell Bedford. If he's not there, then try the a.s.sembly Room. If they're meeting tonight, tell them to adjourn and get every man up to Jamestown, on the double. We may need them all."

Mewes bellowed instructions through the doorway. Then he seized the saddle horn of the smaller horse and pulled himself up. "Aye. I'll be up there myself soon as I can manage, depend on it."

Joan stood beside Winston, watching as he vanished into the dark. "Well now, that's most curious." She c.o.c.ked back her head and her eyes snapped in the lantern light. "I'm surprised you'd not take the opportunity to go up to His Excellency's compound yourself. Seein'

you're so well acquainted with the family these days."

"All in the line of duty."

"Duty my a.r.s.e, you wh.o.r.emaster. But you'll get what you deserve from that one, on my honor. She thinks she's royalty itself." She held the reins while he mounted. "Don't say I didn't give you a friendly warning."

"I'm warned." He vaulted into the saddle as Edwin Spurre emerged through the doorway to a.s.sume lookout duty. "Edwin, prime and ready the muskets. In case they try to attack on two fronts. Do you know the signals?"

"Aye, Cap'n." Joan handed up the reins. "G.o.dspeed. You know if you let those Puritan hypocrites take over the island, there'll be a lot of wives thinkin' they can finally close me down. Just because they've got nothing better to fret about."

"We'll win." He looked at Joan a moment and reached out to take her hand. Tonight he felt almost like he was defending the only home he had left. Now he had no ship, and Jamaica seemed farther away than ever.

He leaned over in the saddle and kissed her. She ran her arms around his neck, then drew back and pinched his cheek. "Show those Roundhead b.a.s.t.a.r.ds a thing or two about how to shoot, love. I'm counting on you, though d.a.m.ned if I know why."

"Just keep the grog under lock and key till I get back." He waved lightly, then reined the mare toward the road north.

As the horse clattered across the loose boards of the bridge, he glanced over his shoulder, up the hill toward the compound. What'll happen to Bedford and Katy, he wondered to himself, if we can't hold off the attack? It'll be the Tower and a trial for him, not a doubt.

Probably charged with leading a rebellion. And what about her . . .?

More riders were joining him now, militiamen who had been waiting for the signal. The distance to Jamestown was several miles, and they were all riding hard. None spoke, other than a simple greeting, each man thinking of the stakes. No one wanted to contemplate what would happen should they lose.

We'll win, he kept telling himself as he spurred his mare. By G.o.d, we have to.

Chapter Eleven

Jeremy Walrond slid his hand down the long steel barrel of the flintlock, letting his fingers play across the Latin motto engraved along the top, _Ante ferit quam flamma micet_. "It strikes before the flash is seen."

The piece had been given to him on his twelfth birthday by his brother Anthony, and it was superb--crafted in Holland, with a fine Flemish lock and carved ivory insets of hunting scenes in the stock. With it he had once, in a stroke of rare luck, brought down a partridge in flight.

Now through a dismaying and improbable chain of events he must turn this work of artistry against a fellow human being.

It was true he had been part of the royalist cause in the Civil War, a clerk helping direct the transport of supplies, but he had never been near enough to the lines to fire a musket. Or to have a musket fired at him. The thought of battle brought a moistness to his palms and a dull, hollow ache in his gut.

While the men around him in the trench--all now under his command-- reinforced their courage with a large onion-flask of homemade kill- devil, he gazed over the newly mounded earth and out to sea, ashamed at his relief there was as yet no flash of lantern, no telltale red dots of burning matchcord.

The only moving lights were the darting trails of fireflies, those strange night creatures that so terrified newcomers to the Caribbees.

In a few more moments the last of the moon, now a thin lantern, would drop beneath the western horizon, causing the coast and the sea to be swallowed in blackness. After that happened, he told himself, he might see nothing more, hear nothing more, till the first musket ball slammed home.

War, he meditated, was man's greatest folly. Excused in the name of abstractions like "liberty" and "country" and "dignity." But what dignity was there for those who died with a musket ball in their chest?

No beast of the earth willfully killed its own kind. Only man, who then styled himself the n.o.blest of G.o.d's creatures.

He loosened his hot lace collar, hoping to catch some of the on-again, off-again breeze that had risen in the south and now swept the pungent smell of Bridgetown's harbor up along the coast. Aside from the rattle of militiamen's bandoliers and occasional bursts of gallows laughter, the only sounds were night noises--the clack of foraging land crabs, the chirps and whistles of crickets and toads, the distant batter of surf and spray against the sand. Inland, the green hills of Barbados towered in dark silence.

He looked out to sea once more and realized the surf was beginning to rise, as wave after frothy wave chased up the crystalline sand of the sh.o.r.e, now bleached pale in the last waning moonlight. The ships were out there, he knew, waiting. He could almost feel their presence.

Both the trench and the breastwork were back away from the sh.o.r.e--back where the sand merged with brown clay and the first groves of palms, heralds of the hardwood thickets farther upland. Through the palms he could barely discern the silhouettes of the gunners as they loitered alongside the heavy ordnance, holding lighted linstocks. Fifteen cannon were there tonight, ranging in gauge from nine to eighteen-pound shot, shielded on the sea side by a head-high masonry wall cut with battlements for the guns.

Though the original Jamestown gun emplacement had been built two decades earlier, as a precaution against Spanish attack, that threat had faded over the years, and gradually the planters of Barbados had grown complacent. They had permitted the fort to slowly decay, its guns to clog with rust from the salt air.

How ironic, he thought, that now an English attack, not Spanish, had finally occasioned its first repairs. Over the past fortnight the old cannon had been cleaned of rust and primed; and new Dutch guns, all bra.s.s, had been hauled up by oxcart from Carlisle Bay and set in place.

Now six of these, small demi-culverin, had just been removed from the breastwork and hauled to safety inland at first word of the invasion.

He heard the murmur of approaching voices and looked up to see two shadowy figures moving along the dirt parapet that protected the trench. One was tall and strode with a purposeful elegance; the other lumbered.

"It'll be a cursed dark night once we've lost the moon, and that's when they're apt to start launching the longboats. d.a.m.n Winston if he's not in place by then. Are his men over where they're supposed to be?" The hard voice of Benjamin Briggs drifted down. The silhouette that was Anthony Walrond merely nodded silently in reply.

Jeremy rose and began climbing up the parapet, his bandolier rattling.

Anthony turned at the noise, recognized him, and motioned him forward.

"Are your men ready?"

"Yes, sir."

Anthony studied him thoughtfully a moment. "Watch yourself tonight, lad." He paused, then looked away. "Do remember to take care."

"That I will." Jeremy broke the silence between them. "But I'm not afraid, truly." He patted his bandolier for emphasis, causing the charge holders to clank one against the other. He knew he owed his a.s.signment of the rank of ensign--which normally required holdings of at least fifteen acres--and the leadership of a squad solely to the influence of his older brother, who commanded the vital Jamestown defenses by unanimous consent of the a.s.sembly.

Jeremy's militiamen--eight in number--were all small freeholders with rusty matchlocks and no battle experience. He had been too ashamed to tell Anthony he didn't desire the honor of being an officer. It was time to prove he was a Walrond.

"Jeremy, we all know fear, but we learn to rise above it. You'll make me proud tonight, I'll lay odds." He reached and adjusted the buckle of the shoulder strap holding Jeremy's sword. "Now have your men light their matchcord and ready the prime on their muskets."