Caribbee Part 47

"You know we will need more than this." Atiba reached for the handle, turned the broken blade in the light, then slipped it into his waistband.

"That's right. What you need is to leam how to wait. This island is about to be brought to its knees by the new government of England. In a way, it's thanks to you. When the government on this island falls, something may happen about slavery, though I'm not sure what." He took down the lantern from the shrouds. "But if you start killing whites now, I can a.s.sure you you're not apt to live very long, no matter who rules."

"I will not continue to live as a slave."

"I can understand that. But you won't be using my flintlocks whilst getting yourself killed." He held the lantern above the rope ladder and gestured for Atiba to climb down into the shallow surf. "Never, ever try stealing muskets from my ship. Mark it well."

Atiba threw one leg over the gunwale and grasped a deadeye to steady himself. "I think you will help us when the time comes. You speak like a Yoruba." He slipped over the side with a splash, and vanished into the dark.

"G.o.d's blood, Cap'n, but that's a scary one." Mewes stared after him nervously. "I got the feelin' he seemed to know you."

"I've seen him a time or two before." He retrieved the musket from Katherine and handed it back to Mewes. Then he doused the lantern.

"Come on, Katy. Let's have a brandy."

"I could use two."

As they entered the companionway leading aft to the Great Cabin he called back, "By the way, John, it'd be just as well not to mention to anybody that he was here. Can I depend on you?"

"Aye, as you will."

He slipped his arm about Katherine's waist and pushed open the door of the cabin. It was musty and hot.

"I've got a feeling that African thinks he's coming back for the muskets, Katy, but I'll not have it."

"What'll you do?" She reached back and began to loosen the knot on her bodice, sensing a tiny pounding in her chest.

"I plan to see to it he gets a surprise instead." He lit the lamp, then pulled off his sweaty jerkin and tossed it into the corner. "Enough.

Let's have a taste of you." He circled his arms around her and pulled her next to him. As he kissed her, he reached back and started unlacing her bodice. Then he whispered in her ear.

"Welcome back aboard."

Chapter Thirteen

With every step Jeremy took, the wooded trail leading inland from Oistins Bay felt more perilous, more alien. Why did the rows of stumps, once so familiar, no longer seem right? Why had he forgotten the spots in the path where the puddles never dried between rains, only congealed to turgid glue? He had ridden it horseback many a time, but now as he trudged up the slope, his boots still wet from the surf, he found he could remember almost nothing at all. This dark tangle of palms and bramble could scarcely be the direction home.

But the way home it was. The upland plantation of Anthony Walrond was a wooded, hundred and eighty acre tract that lay one mile inland from the settlement around Oistins Bay--itself a haphazard collection of clapboard taverns and hewn-log tobacco sheds on the southern, windward side of the island. The small harbor at Oistins was host to an occasional Dutch frigate or a small merchant vessel from Virginia or New England, but there was not enough tobacco or cotton to justify a major landing. It was, however, the ideal place to run a small shallop ash.o.r.e from a ship of the fleet.

He reached a familiar arch of palms and turned right, starting the long climb along the weed-clogged path between the trees that led up to the house. As he gripped his flintlock and listened to the warbling of night birds and the menacing clatter of land crabs, he reflected sadly that he was the only man on Barbados who knew precisely what lay in store. He had received a full briefing from the admiral of the fleet aboard the _Rainbowe_. What would Anthony do when he heard?

He tried to sort out once more what had happened, beginning with that evening, now only two days past, when Admiral Calvert had pa.s.sed him the first tankard. . . .

"If I may presume to say, it's a genuine honor to share a cup with you, Master Walrond." Calvert's dark eyes had seemed to burn with determination as he eased back into his sea chair and absently adjusted his long white cuffs. He'd been wearing a black doublet with wide white epaulettes and a pristine bib collar, all fairly crackling with starch.

"And to finally have a word with a man of breeding from this infernal settlement."

Jeremy remembered taking a gingerly sip of the brandy, hoping perhaps it might somehow ease the pain of his humiliation. Still ringing in his ears were the screams of dying men, the volleys of musket fire, the curses of the Roundhead infantry in the longboat. But the liquor only served to sharpen his horrifying memory of the man he had killed less than an hour before, his finger on the trigger of the ornate flintlock now resting so innocently on the oak table between them.

"The question we all have to ask ourselves is how long this d.a.m.nable state of affairs can be allowed to go on. Englishmen killing their own kind." Calvert had posed the question more to the air than to the others in the room. Colonel Morris, his face still smeared with powder smoke, had shifted his glance back and forth between them and said nothing. He clearly was impatient at being summoned to the Great Cabin when there were wounded to attend. Why, Jeremy had found himself wondering, was Morris present at all? Where was the brash vice admiral, the man who had wanted him imprisoned below decks? What was the hidden threat behind Calvert's too-cordial smiles? But the admiral betrayed nothing as he continued. "The Civil War is over, may Almighty G.o.d forgive us for it, and I say it's past time we started healing the wounds."

Jeremy had listened as the silence once more settled around them. For the first time he'd become aware of the creaking of the boards as the _Rainbowe _groaned at anchor. After so much death, he'd found himself thinking, you begin to notice the quietness more. Your senses are honed. Could it be even creatures of the field are the same; does the lowly hare feel life more exquisitely when, hounds baying on its scent, it hovers quivering in the gra.s.s?

He wondered what he would do if the musket on the table were primed and in his hands. Would he raise it up and destroy this man who had come to conquer the last safe place on earth left for him? As he tried to still the painful throb in his temples, Calvert continued.

"I'm a plain-speaking seaman, Master Walrond, nothing more. Though my father served in your late king's court, watching his Catholic queen prance amongst her half-dressed Jezebels, I never had any part of it.

But I've seen dead men enough whose spilled blood is on that king's head, for all his curls and silks."

Calvert had suddenly seemed to remember himself and rose to pour a tankard for Morris. He took another sip from his own, then turned back.

"And there's apt to be more killing now, here in the Americas, before this affair's finished. But to what purpose, sirrah? I ask you. We both know the island can't hold out forever. We've got her bottled now with this blockade, and the bottle's corked. What's more, I know for a fact you're all but out of meat and bread, whilst we've made free with all the victuals these interloping Hollanders in Carlisle Bay kindly had waiting to supply us. So my men'll be feasting on capon and port whilst your planters are starving, with nothing in the larder save tobacco and cane. You've never troubled to grow enough edibles here, since you could always buy from these Hollanders, and now it's going to be your downfall." Calvert's eyes had flashed grimly in the lantern light. When Morris had stirred, as though to speak, he'd silenced the commander with a brisk wave of his hand, then continued.

"But we're not planning just to wait and watch, that I can promise you.

Colonel Morris here will tell you he's not going to sleep easy till this island is his. At the break of day he'll commence his first sh.e.l.ling, right here at Jamestown where he's spiked the ordnance.

You'll see that spot, breastwork and the rest, turned to rubble by nightfall tomorrow. No, Colonel Morris is not of my mind; he's not a country angler who'd sit and wait for his line to bob. He's a man who'll wade in and take his perch with both hands." Calvert had sighed and risen to open the windows at the stern. Cool air washed over them, bringing with it the moans of wounded men from the deck above. Jeremy noted the windows had been severely damaged by cannon fire and temporarily repaired with wood rather than leaded gla.s.s. Calvert listened glumly for a moment, then shoved the windows closed and turned back. "But what's the point of it, Master Walrond, by all that's holy?"

"You'll never take Barbados, blockade or no." Jeremy had tried to meet the glare in Calvert's eyes. "We'll never surrender to Cromwell and this rabble army."

"Ah, but take you we will, sir, or I'm not a Christian. The only question is when." He had paused to frown. "And how? Am I to be forced to humble this place till there's nothing left, to sh.e.l.l her ports, burn her crops? I daresay you're not fully aware what's in store for this island. But it's time somebody heard, and listened. I came here with peace in mind, praying your governor and a.s.sembly would have the sense to recognize the Commonwealth. If I was met with defiance, my orders were to bring Barbados to its knees, man and boy. To see every pocket of resistance ferreted out. More than that, you'd best know I'll not be staying here forever. There'll be others to follow, and that young stalwart you met out on decks, my vice admiral, may well claim the only way to keep the island cooperative is to install a permanent garrison. Believe me when I tell you he'd as soon hang a royalist as bag a partridge. Think on that, what it's apt to be like here if you force me to give him free rein."

Jeremy had felt Calvert's eyes bore into him. "But, Master Walrond, I think Barbados, the Americas, deserve better." He glanced toward Morris. "And I'll warrant our commander here feels much the same.

Neither of us wants fire and sword for this place. Nor, I feel safe in thinking, does anyone on this island. But someone here has got to understand our purpose and harken to reason, or it's going to be d.a.m.nation for your settlement and for the rest of the Americas."

"Then that's what it'll be, if you think you've got the means to attempt it." Jeremy had pulled himself upright in the chair. "But you try landing on this island again and we'll meet you on the beaches with twice the men you've got, just like tonight."

"But why be so foolhardy, lad? I'll grant there're those on this island who have no brief for the Commonwealth, well and good, but know this-- all we need from the Americas is cooperation, plain as that; we don't ask servitude." He lowered his voice. "In G.o.d's name, sir, this island need merely put an end to its rebellious talk, agree to recognize Parliament, and we can dispense with any more bloodletting."

Then Calvert had proceeded to outline a new offer. Its terms were more generous--he'd hammered home time and again--than anyone on the island had any cause to expect. The point he had emphasized most strongly was that Jeremy Walrond stood at the watershed of history. On one side was war, starvation, ignominy; on the other, moderation. And a new future.

Ahead the log gables of the Walrond plantation house rose out of the darkness. On his left, through the trees, were the thatched lean-to's of the indentures. A scattering of smoky fires told him some of the servants or their women were still about, frying corn mush for supper.

The indentures' few remaining turkeys and pigs were penned now and the pathway was mostly quiet. The only sounds came from clouds of stinging gnats, those pernicious merrywings whose bite could raise a welt for a whole day, their tiny bugles sending a chorus through the dark. In the evening stillness the faint stench of rotting corn husks wafted from a pile in which pigs rooted behind the indentures' quarters, while the more pungent odor of human wastes emanated from the small vegetable patches farther back.

He heard occasional voices in the dark, curses from the men and the Irish singsong of women, but no one in the indenture compound saw or heard him pa.s.s. Ahead the half-shuttered windows of the plantation house glimmered with the light of candles. It meant, he realized with relief, that Anthony was home, that he'd lit the pewter candelabra hanging over their pine dining table.

He stopped for a moment to think and to catch his breath, then moved on past the front portico, toward the servants' entrance at the rear of the house. There was good reason not to announce his arrival publicly.

What he had to say was for Anthony, and Anthony alone.

As he pa.s.sed one of the windows he could just make out a figure seated at the table, tankard in hand. The man wore a white kerchief around his neck and a doublet of brown silk, puffed at the shoulders. His dark brown hat rested next to him on the table, its white plume glistening in the dull light.

As he pushed on, he noticed that the chimney of the log cookroom in back of the house gave off no smoke, meaning Anthony's servants had already been dismissed for the night.

Good. The time could not have been better.

Ahead now, just at the corner, was the back doorway. It

was ajar and unlatched; as usual the help had been careless as they crept away with meat sc.r.a.ps from Anthony's table to season their own bland meal.