"Caribbee" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoover Thomas)

Chapter Five

Katherine held on to the mizzenmast shrouds, shielding her eyes against the glitter of sun on the bay, and looked at Hugh Winston. He was wearing the identical shabby leather jerkin and canvas breeches she remembered from that first morning, along with the same pair of pistols shoved into his belt. He certainly made no effort to present a dignified appearance. Also, the afternoon light made you notice even more the odd scar across one weathered cheek. What would he be like as a lover? Probably nothing so genteel as Anthony Walrond.

Good God, she thought, what would Anthony, and poor Jeremy, say if they learned I came down here to the Defiance, actually sought out this man they hate so much. They’d probably threaten to break off marriage negotiations, out of spite.

But if something's not done, she told herself, none of that's going to matter anyway. If the rumor from London is true, then Barbados is going to be turned upside down. Hugh Winston can help us, no matter what you choose to think of him.

She reflected on Winston's insulting manner and puzzled why she had actually half looked forward to seeing him again. He certainly had none of Anthony's breeding, yet there was something magnetic about a man so rough and careless. Still, God knows, finding him a little more interesting than most of the dreary planters on this island scarcely meant much.

Was he, she found herself wondering, at all attracted to her?

Possibly. If he thought on it at all, he'd see their common ground. She finally realized he despised the Puritans and their slaves as much as she did. And, like her, he was alone. It was a bond between them, whether he knew it now or not…

Then all at once she felt the fear again, that tightness under her bodice she had pushed away no more than half an hour past, when her mare had reached the rim of the hill, the last curve of the rutted dirt road leading down to the bay. She'd reined in Coral, still not sure she had the courage to go and see Winston. While her mare pawed and tugged at the traces, she took a deep breath and watched as a gust of wind sent the blood-red blossoms from a grove of cordia trees fleeing across the road. Then she'd noticed the rush of scented air off the sea, the wide vista of Carlisle Bay spreading out below, the sky full of tiny colored birds flitting through the azure afternoon.

Yes, she'd told herself, it's worth fighting for, worth jeopardizing everything for. Even worth going begging to Hugh Winston for. It's my home.

"Do you ever miss England, living out here in the Caribbees?" She tried to hold her voice nonchalant, with a lilt intended to suggest that none of his answers mattered all that much. Though the afternoon heat was sweltering, she had deliberately put on her most feminine riding dress-a billowing skirt tucked up the side to reveal a ruffle of petticoat and a bodice with sleeves slashed to display the silk smock beneath. She'd even had the servants iron it specially. Anthony always noticed it, and Winston had too, though he was trying to pretend otherwise.

"I remember England less and less." He sipped from his tankard-he had ordered a flask of sack brought up from the Great Cabin just after she came aboard-and seemed to be studying the sun's reflection in its amber contents. "The Americas are my home now, for better or worse. England doesn't really exist for me anymore."

She looked at him and decided Jeremy had been right; the truth was he'd probably be hanged if he returned.

He paused a moment, then continued, "And you, Miss Bedford, have you been back?"

"Not since we left, when I was ten. We went first to Bermuda, where father served for two years as governor and chief officer for the Sommers Island Company. Then we came down here. I don't really even think of England much anymore. I feel I'm a part of the Americas now too." She shaded her face against the sun with one hand and noticed a bead of sweat trickling down her back, along the laces of her bodice. "In truth, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see England again."

"I'd just as soon never see it again." He rose and strolled across the deck, toward the steering house. Then he settled his tankard on the binnacle and began to loosen the line securing the whipstaff, a long lever used for controlling the rudder. "Do you really want to stay aboard while I take her out?"

"You've done it every day this week, just around sunset. I've watched you from the hill, and wondered why." She casually adjusted her bodice, to better emphasize the plump fullness of her breasts, then suddenly felt a surge of dismay with herself, that she would consider resorting to tawdry female tricks. But desperate times brought out desperate measures. "Besides, you've got the only frigate in the bay now that's not Dutch, and I thought I'd like to see the island from offshore. I sometimes forget how beautiful it is."

"Then you'd best take a good, long look, Miss Bedford," he replied matter-of-factly. "It's never going to be the same again, not after sugar takes over."

"Katherine. You can call me Katherine." She tried to mask the tenseness-no, the humiliation-in her voice. "I'm sufficiently compromised just being down here; there's scarcely any point in ceremony."

"Then Katherine it is, Miss Bedford." Again scarcely a glimmer of notice as he busied himself coiling the line. But she saw John Mewes raise his heavy eyebrows as he mounted the quarterdeck companionway, his wide belly rolling with each labored step. Winston seemed to ignore the quartermaster as he continued, "Since you've been watching, then I suppose you know what to expect. We're going to tack her out of the harbor, over to the edge of those reefs just off Lookout Point. Then we'll come about and take her up the west side of the island, north all the way up to Speightstown. It's apt to be at least an hour. Don't say you weren't warned."

Perfect, she thought. Just the time I'll need.

"You seem to know these waters well." It was rhetorical, just to keep him talking. Hugh Winston had sailed up the coast every evening for a week, regardless of the wind or state of the sea. He obviously understood the shoreline of Barbados better than anyone on the island. That was one of the reasons she was here. "You sail out every day."

"Part of my final preparations, Miss Bedford… Katherine." He turned to the quartermaster. "John."

"Aye." Mewes had been loitering by the steeringhouse, trying to stay in the shade as he eyed the opened flask of sack. Winston had not offered him a tankard.

"Weigh anchor. I want to close-haul that new main course one more time, then try a starboard tack."

"Aye, as you will." He strode gruffly to the quarterdeck railing and bellowed orders forward to the bow. The quiet was broken by a slow rattle as several shirtless seamen began to haul in the cable with the winch. They chattered in a medley of languages-French, Portuguese, English, Dutch.

She watched as the anchor broke through the waves and was hoisted onto the deck. Next Mewes yelled orders aloft. Moments later the mainsail dropped and began to blossom in the breeze. The Defiance heeled slowly into the wind, then began to edge past the line of Dutch merchantmen anchored along the near shoreline.

Winston studied the sail for a few moments. "What do you think, John? She looks to be holding her luff well enough."

"I never liked it, Cap'n. I've made that plain from the first. So I'm thinkin' the same as always. You've taken a fore-and-aft rigged brigantine, one of the handiest under Christian sail, and turned her into a square-rigger. We'll not have the handling we've got with the running rigging."

Mewes spat toward the railing and shoved past Katherine, still astonished that Winston had allowed her to come aboard, governor's daughter or no. It's ill luck, he told himself. A fair looker, that I'll grant you, but if it's doxies we'd be taking aboard now, I can think of plenty who'd be fitter company. He glanced at the white mare tethered by the shore, wishing she were back astride it and gone. Half the time you see her, the wench is riding like a man, not sidesaddle like a woman was meant to.

"If we're going to make Jamaica harbor without raising the Spaniards' militia, we'll have to keep short sail." Winston calmly dismissed his objections. "That means standing rigging only. No tops'ls or royals."

"Aye, and she'll handle like a gaff-sailed lugger."

"Just for the approach. While we land the men. We'll keep her rigged like always for the voyage over." He maneuvered the whipstaff to start bringing the stern about, sending a groan through the hull. "She seems to work well enough so far. We need to know exactly how many points off the wind we can take her. I'd guess about five, maybe six, but we've got to find out now."

He turned back to Katherine and caught her eyes. They held something-what was it? Almost an invitation? But that's not why she's here, he told himself. This woman's got a purpose in mind, all right. Except it's not you. Whatever it is, though, the looks of her’d almost make you wonder if she's quite so set on marrying some stiff royalist as she thinks she is?

Don't be a fool. The last thing you need to be thinking about now is a woman. Given the news, there's apt to be big trouble ahead here, and soon. You've got to be gone.

"So perhaps you'd care to tell me… Katherine, to what I owe the pleasure of this afternoon's visit. I'd venture you've probably seen the western coast of this island a few hundred times before, entirely without my aid."

"I was wondering if you'd heard what's happened in London?" She held on to the shrouds, the spider-web of ropes that secured the mast, and braced herself against the roll of the ship as the Defiance eased broadside to the sun. Along the curving shoreline a string of Dutch merchantmen were riding at anchor, all three-masted fluyts, their fore and main masts steeped far apart to allow room for a capacious hatch. In the five weeks that had passed since the Zeelander put in with the first cargo of Africans, four more slavers had arrived. They were anchored across the bay now, their round sterns glistening against the water as the afternoon light caught the gilding on their high, narrow after-structure. Riding in the midst of them was the Rotterdam, just put in from London. The sight of that small Dutch merchantman had brought back her fear. It also renewed her resolve.

"You mean about King Charles? I heard, probably before you did." He was watching her tanned face, and secretly admiring her courage. She seemed to be taking the situation calmly. "I was working down here yesterday when the Rotterdam put in."

"Then I'd like your version. What exactly did you hear?"

"Probably what everybody else heard. They brought word England's new 'Rump' Parliament, that mob of bloodthirsty Puritans installed by Cromwell's army, has locked King Charles in the Tower, with full intentions to chop off his head. They also delivered the story that Parliament has declared Barbados a nest of rebels, since your Assembly has never recognized the Commonwealth. Virginia and Bermuda also made that select list of outcasts." He glanced toward the bow, then tested the steering lever. "So, Miss Katherine Bedford, I'd say the Americas are about to see those stormy times we talked about once. Only it's a gale out of England, not here." He turned and yelled forward, "John, reef the foresail as we double the Point. Then prepare to take her hard about to starboard."

She watched as he shoved the steering lever to port, flipping the rudder to maneuver around the reefs at the edge of the bay, then reached for his pewter tankard, its sides dark with grease. And she tried to stifle her renewed disgust with him, his obvious unconcern, as she watched him drink. Maybe it really was all a game to him. Maybe nothing could make him care a damn after all. In the silence that followed, the creaks of the weathered planking along the deck grew louder, more plaintive.

"Given some of that may be true, Captain, what do you think will happen now?"

"Just call me Hugh. I presume I can enjoy my fair share of Barbados' democracy. While it lasts." He shrugged. "Since you asked, I'll tell you. I think it means the end of everything we know about the Americas. Breathe the air of independence while you still can. Maybe you didn't hear the other story going around the harbor here. The Dutchmen are claiming that after Parliament gets around to beheading the king, it plans to take over all the patents granted by the Crown. It's supposedly considering a new law called a 'Navigation Act,' which is going to decree that only English bottoms can trade with the American settlements. No Hollanders. That means the end of free trade. There's even talk in London that a fleet of warships may head this way to enforce it."

"I've heard that too. It sounds like nothing more than a Thames rumor."

"Did you know that right now all the Dutchmen here are lading as fast as they can, hoping they can put to sea before they're blockaded, or sunk, by a score of armed English men-of-war?"

"Nobody in the Assembly thinks Cromwell would go that far."

"Well, the Dutchmen do. Whatever else you might say, a Hollander's about the last man I'd call a fool. I can tell you Carlisle Bay is a convocation of nervous Netherlanders right now." He squinted against the sun. "And I'll pass along something else, Katherine. They're not the only ones. I'd just as soon be at sea myself, with my men."

She examined him, her eyes ironic. "So I take it while you're not afraid to stand up to the Council, men with pistols practically at your head, you're still worried about some navy halfway around the world."

"The difference is that the Council owed me money." He smiled wanly. "With England, it's more like the other way around."

"That's not the real reason, is it?"

"All right, how's this? For all we know, their navy may not be halfway around the world anymore." He glanced at the sun, then checked the sail again. "It's no state secret I'm not Mother England's favorite son. The less I see of the English navy, the happier I'll be."

"What'll you do if a fleet arrives while you're still here?"

"I'll worry about it then." He turned back. "A better question might be what does Barbados plan to do if a fleet arrives to blockade you and force you into line." His voice grew sober. "I'd say this island faces a difficult choice. If Parliament goes ahead and does away with the king, the way some of its hotheads reportedly want to, then there'll no longer be any legal protection for you at all. Word of this new sugar project has already gotten back to London, you can be sure. I'd suspect the Puritans who've taken over Parliament want the American colonies because they'd like a piece of Barbados' sudden new fortune for themselves. New taxes for Commons and new trade for English shippers. Now that you're about to be rich here, your years of being ignored are over." He lifted the tankard and took another drink of sack. "So what are you going to do? Submit? Or declare war on Parliament and fight the English navy?"

"If everybody here pulls together, we can resist them."

"With what?" He turned and pointed toward the small stone fortress atop Lookout Point. The hill stood rocky and remote above the blue Caribbean. "Not with that breastwork, you won't. I doubt a single gun up there's ever been set and fired. What's more, I'd be surprised if there're more than a dozen trained gunners on the whole of the island, since the royalist refugees here were mostly officers back home. The way things stand now, you don't have a chance."

"Then we'll have to learn to fight, won't we?" She tried to catch his eye. "I suppose you know something about gunnery."

"Gunners are most effective when they've got some ordnance to use." He glanced back, then thumbed toward the Point. "What's in place up there?"

"I think there're about a dozen cannon. And there're maybe that many more at the Jamestown breastwork. So the leeward coast is protected. There's also a breastwork at Oistins Bay, on the south." She paused, studying his profile against the sun. An image rose up unbidden of him commanding a battery of guns, her at his side. It was preposterous yet exhilarating. "Those are the places an invasion would come, aren't they?"

"They're the only sections of shoreline where the surf's light enough for a troop ship to put in."

"Then we've got a line of defense. Don't you think it's enough?"

"No." He spoke quietly. "You don't have the heavy ordnance to stop a landing. All you can hope to do without more guns is just try and slow it down a bit."

"But assuming that's true, where would we get more cannon? Especially now?" This was the moment she'd been dreading. Of course their ordnance was inadequate. She already knew everything he'd been saying. There was only one place to get more guns. They both realized where.

"Well, you've got a problem, Katherine." He smiled lightly, just to let her know he was on to her scheme, then looked away, toward the shoreline. On their right now the island was a mantle of deep, seemingly eternal green reaching down almost to the water's edge, and beyond that, up the rise of the first hill, were dull-colored scatterings of plantation houses. The Defiance was making way smoothly now, northward, holding just a few hundred yards off the white, sandy shore. "You know, I'm always struck by what a puny little place Barbados is." He pointed toward a small cluster of clapboard houses half hidden among the palms along the shore. "If you put to sea, like we are now, you can practically see the whole island, north to south."

She glanced at the palm-lined coast, then back. "What are you trying to say?"

"That gathering of shacks we're passing over there is the grand city of Jamestown." He seemed to ignore the question as he thumbed to starboard. "Which I seem to recall is the location of that famous tree everybody here likes to brag about so much."

Jamestown was where stood the massive oak into whose bark had been carved the inscription "James, King of E.," and the date 1625. That was the year an English captain named John Powell accidentally put in at an empty, forested Caribbean island and decided to claim it for his king.

"That tree proclaims this island belongs to the king of England. Well, no more. The king's finished. So tell me, who does it belong to now?"

"I'll tell you who it doesn't belong to. Cromwell and the English Parliament." She watched the passing shoreline, and tried to imagine what it would be like if her dream came true. If Barbados could make the stand that would change the Americas permanently.

When she'd awakened this morning, birds singing and the island sun streaming through the jalousies, she'd suddenly been struck with a grand thought, a revolutionary idea. She had ignored the servants' pleas that she wait for breakfast and ordered Coral saddled immediately. Then she'd headed inland, through the moss-floored forests whose towering ironwood and oak trees still defied the settlers' axes. Amidst the vines and orchids she'd convinced herself the idea was right.

What if all the English in the New World united? Declared their independence?

During her lifetime there had been a vast migration to the Americas, two out of every hundred in England. She had never seen the settlement in "New England," the one at Plymouth on the Massachusetts Bay, but she knew it was an outpost of Puritans who claimed the Anglican Church smacked too much of "popery." The New Englanders had always hated King Charles for his supposed Catholic sympathies, so there was no chance they'd do anything except applaud the fanatics in England who had toppled the monarchy.

But the settlements around the Chesapeake were different. Virginia was founded because of profit, not prayer books. Its planters had formed their own Assembly in 1621, the first in the Americas, and they were a spirited breed who would not give in easily to domination by England's new dictatorship. There was also a settlement on Bermuda, several thousand planters who had their own Assembly too; and word had just come they had voted to banish all Puritans from the island, in retaliation against Cromwell.

Hugh Winston, who thought he knew everything, didn't know that Bermuda had already sent a secret envoy to Dalby Bedford proposing Barbados join with them and form an alliance with Virginia and the other islands of the Caribbees to resist the English Parliament. Bermuda wanted the American colonies to stand firm for the restoration of the monarchy. The Barbados Assembly appeared to be leaning in that direction too, though they still hoped they could somehow avoid a confrontation.

But that was wrong, shed realized this morning. So very wrong. Don't they see what we really should do? This is our chance. We should simply declare the richest settlements in the Americas-Virginia, Barbados, St. Christopher, Nevis, Bermuda-independent of England. A new nation.

It was an idea she'd not yet dared suggest to Dalby Bedford, who would likely consider it close to sedition. And she certainly couldn't tell a royalist like Anthony. He'd only fight for the monarchy. But why, she asked herself, do we need some faraway king here in the Americas? We could, we should, be our own masters.

First, however, we've got to show Cromwell and his illegal Parliament that they can't intimidate the American settlements. If Barbados can stand up to them, then maybe the idea of independence will have a chance.

"I came today to ask if you'd help us stand and fight. If we have to." She listened to her own voice and knew it was strong and firm.

He stood silent for a moment, staring at her. Then he spoke, almost a whisper above the wind. "Who exactly is it wants me to help fight England? The Assembly?"

"No. I do."

"That's what I thought." He shook his head in disbelief, or was it dismay, and turned to check the whipstaff. When he glanced back, his eyes were skeptical. "I'll wager nobody knows you came down here. Am I correct?"

"I didn't exactly make an announcement about it."

"And that low-cut bodice and pretty smile? Is that just part of your negotiations?"

"I thought it mightn't hurt." She looked him squarely in the eye.

"God Almighty. What you'd do for this place! I pity Cromwell and his Roundheads." He sobered. "I don't mind telling you I'm glad at least one person here realizes this island can't defend itself as things stand now. You'd damned sure better start trying to do something." He examined her, puzzled. "But why come to me?"

She knew the answer. Hugh Winston was the only person she knew who hated England enough to declare independence. He already had. "You seem to know a lot about guns and gunnery." She moved closer and noticed absently that he smelled strongly of seawater, leather, and sweat. "Did I hear you say you had an idea where we could get more cannon, to help strengthen our breastworks?"

"So we're back to business. I might have expected." He rubbed petulantly at his scar. "No, I didn't say, though we both know where you might. From those Dutchmen in the harbor. Every merchantman in Carlisle Bay has guns. You could offer to buy them. Or just take them. But whatever you do, don't dally too long. One sighting of English sail and they'll put to sea like those flying fish around the island."

"How about the cannon on the Defiance? How many do you have?"

"I have a few." He laughed, then reflected with pride on his first-class gun deck. Twenty-two demi-culverin, nine- pounders and all brass so they wouldn't overheat. He'd trained his gunners personally, every man, and he'd shot his way out of more than one harbor over the past five years. His ordnance could be run out in a matter of minutes, primed and ready. "Naturally you're welcome to them. All you'll have to do is kill me first."

"I hope it doesn't come to that."

"So do I." He studied the position of the waning sun for a moment, then yelled forward for the men to hoist the staysail. Next he gestured toward Mewes. "John, take the whipstaff a while and tell me what you think of the feel of her. I'd guess the best we can do is six points off the wind, the way I said."

"Aye." Mewes hadn't understood what all the talk had been about, but he hoped the captain was getting the best of the doxy. "I can tell you right now this new rigging of yours makes a handy little frigate work like a damn’d five-hundred- ton galleon."

"Just try taking her about." He glanced at the shoreline. They were coming in sight of Speightstown, the settlement at the north tip of the island. "Let's see if we can tack around back south and make it into the bay."

"But would you at least help us if we were blockaded?" She realized she was praying he would say yes.

"Katherine, what's this island ever done for me? Besides, right now I've got all I can manage just trying to get the hell out of here. I can't afford to get caught up in your little quarrel with the Commonwealth." He looked at her. "Every time I've done an errand for Barbados, it's always come back to plague me."

"So you don't care what happens here." She felt her disappointment surge. It had all been for nothing, and damned to him. "I suppose I had a somewhat higher opinion of you, Captain Winston. I see I was wrong."

"I've got my own plan for the Caribbean. And that means a lot more to me than who rules Barbados and its slaves."

"Then I'm sorry I bothered asking at all."

"I've got a suggestion for you though." Winston's voice suddenly flooded with anger. "Why don't you ask your gentleman fiance, Anthony Walrond, to help? From what I hear, he was the royalist hero of the Civil War."

"He doesn't have a gun deck full of cannon." She wanted to spit in Winston's smug face.

"But he's got you, Katherine, doesn't he?" He felt an unwanted pang at the realization. He was beginning to like this woman more than he wanted to. She had brass. "Though as long as you're here anyway, why don't we at least toast the sunset? And the free Americas that're about to vanish into history." He abruptly kissed heron the cheek, watched as she flushed in anger, then turned and yelled to a seaman just entering the companionway aft, "Fetch up another flask of sack."

Benjamin Briggs stood in the open doorway of the curing- house, listening to the "sweee" call of the long-tailed flycatchers as they flitted through the groves of macaw palms. The long silence of dusk was settling over the sugarworks as the indentures and the slaves trudged wearily toward their thatched huts for the evening dish of loblolly mush. Down the hill, toward the shore, vagrant bats had begun to dart through the shadows.

In the west the setting sun had become a fiery disk at the edge of the sea's far horizon. He watched with interest as a single sail cut across the sun's lower rim. It was Hugh Winston's Defiance, rigged in a curious new mode. He studied it a moment, puzzling, then turned back to examine the darkening interior of the curing house.

Long racks, holding wooden cones of curing sugar, extended the length of one wall. He thought about the cones for a time, watching the slow drip of molasses into the tray beneath and wondering if it mightn't pay to start making them from clay, which would be cheaper and easier to shape. Though the Africans seemed to understand working clay- they'd been using it for their huts-he knew that only whites could be allowed to make the cones. The skilled trades on Barbados must always be forbidden to blacks, whose tasks had to be forever kept repetitive, mind-numbing. The Africans could never be allowed to perfect a craft. It could well lead to economic leverage and, potentially, resistance to slavery and the end of cheap labor.

He glanced back toward the darkening horizon, but now Winston's frigate had passed from view, behind the trees. Winston was no better than a thieving rogue, bred for gallows-bait, but you had to admire him a trifle nonetheless. He was one of the few men around who truly understood the need for risk here in the Americas. The man who never chanced what he had gained in order to realize more would never prosper. In the Americas a natural aristocracy was rising up, one not of birth but of boldness.

Boldness would be called for tonight, but he was ready. He had done what had to be done all his life.

The first time was when he was thirty-one, a tobacco importer in Bristol with an auburn-haired wife named Mary and two blue-eyed daughters, a man pleased with himself and with life. Then one chance-filled afternoon he had discovered, in a quick succession of surprise and confession, that Mary had a lover. The matter of another man would not have vexed him unduly, but the fact that her gallant was his own business partner did.

The next day he sold his share of the firm, settled with his creditors, and hired a coach for London. He had never seen Bristol again. Or Mary and his daughters.

In London there was talk that a syndicate of investors led by Sir William Courteen was recruiting a band of pioneers to try and establish a new settlement on an empty island in the Caribbees, for which they had just received a proprietary patent from the king. Though Benjamin Briggs had never heard of Barbados, he joined the expedition. He had no family connections, no position, and only a few hundred pounds. But he had the boldness to go where no Englishman had ever ventured.

Eighty of them arrived in the spring of 1627, on the William and John, with scarcely any tools, only to discover that the entire island was a rain forest, thick and overgrown. Nor had anyone expected the harsh sunshine, day in and day out. They all would have starved from inexperience had not the Dutch helped them procure a band of Arawak Indians from Surinam, who brought along seeds to grow plantains and corn, and cassava root for bread. The Indians also taught the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, cash crops. Perhaps just as importantly, they showed the new adventurers from London how to make a suspended bed they called a hammock, in order to sleep up above the island's biting ants, and how to use smoky fires to drive off the swarms of mosquitoes that appeared each night. Yet, help notwithstanding, many of those first English settlers died from exposure and disease by the end of the year. Benjamin Briggs was one of the survivors. Later, he had vowed never to forget those years, and never to taste defeat.

The sun was almost gone now, throwing its last, long shadows through the open thatchwork of the curing-house walls, laying a pattern against the hard earthen floor. He looked down at his calloused hands, the speckle of light and shade against the weathered skin, and thought of all the labors he had set them to.

The first three years those hands had wielded an axe, clearing land, and then they had shaped themselves to the handle of a hoe, as he and his five new indentures set about planting indigo. And those hands had stayed penniless when his indigo crops were washed away two years running by the autumn storms the Carib Indians called huracan. Next he had set them to cotton. In five years he had recouped the losses from the indigo and acquired more land, but he was still at the edge of starvation, in a cabin of split logs almost a decade after coming out to the Caribbees.

He looked again at his hands, thinking how they had borrowed heavily from lenders in London, the money just enough to finance a switch from cotton to tobacco. It fared a trifle better, but still scarcely recovered its costs.

Though he had managed to accumulate more and more acres of island land over the years, from neighbors less prudent, he now had only a moderate fortune to show for all his labor. He'd actually considered giving up on the Americas and returning to London, to resume the import trade. But always he remembered his vow, so instead he borrowed again, this time from the Dutchmen, and risked it all one last time. On sugar.

He scraped a layer from the top of one of the molds and rubbed the tan granules between his fingers, telling himself that now, at last, his hands had something to show for the two long decades of callouses, blisters, emptiness.

He tasted the rich sweetness on a horned thumb and its savor was that of the Americas. The New World where every man started as an equal.

Now a new spirit had swept England. The king was dethroned, the hereditary House of Lords abolished. The people had risen up… and, though you’d never have expected it, new risk had risen up with them. The American settlements were suddenly flooded with the men England had repudiated. Banished aristocrats like the Walronds, who'd bought their way into Barbados and who would doubtless like nothing better than to reforge the chains of class privilege in the New World.

Most ironic of all, these men had at their disposal the new democratic institutions of the Americas. They would clamor in the Assembly of Barbados for the island to reject the governance of the English Parliament, hoping thereby to hasten its downfall and lead to the restoration of the monarchy. Worse, the Assembly, that reed in the winds of rhetoric, would doubtless acquiesce.

Regardless of what you thought of Cromwell, to resist Parliament now would be to swim against the tide. And to invite war. The needful business of consolidating the small tracts on Barbados and setting the island wholesale to sugar would be disrupted and forestalled, perhaps forever.

Why had it come down to this, he asked himself again. Now, of all times. When the fruits of long labor seemed almost in hand. When you could finally taste the comforts of life-a proper house, rich food, a woman to ease the nights.

He had never considered taking another wife. Once had been enough. But he had always arranged to have a comely Irish girl about the house, to save the trouble and expense of visiting Bridgetown for an evening.

A prudent man bought an indentured wench with the same careful eye hed acquire a breeding mare. A lusty-looking one might cost a few shillings more, but it was money well invested, your one compensation for all the misery.

The first was years ago, when he bought a red-headed one straight off a ship from London, not guessing till he got her home that he’d been swindled; she had a sure case of the pox, the French disease. Her previous career, it then came out, included Bridewell Prison and the taverns of Turnbull Street. He sent her straight to the fields and three months later carefully bought another, this one Irish and seventeen. She had served out her time, five years, and then gone to work at a tavern in Bridgetown. He had never seen her since, and didn't care to, but after that he always kept one about, sending her on to the fields and buying a replacement when he wearied of her.

That was before the voyage down to Pernambuco. Brazil had been an education, in more ways than one. You had to grant the Papists knew a thing or so about the good life. They had bred up a sensuous Latin creation: the mulata. He tried one at a tavern, and immediately decided the time had come to acquire the best. He had worked hard, he told himself; he had earned it.

There was no such thing as a mulata indenture in Pernambuco, so he'd paid the extra cost for a slave. And he was still cursing himself for his poor judgment. Haughtiness in a servant was nothing new. In the past he'd learned you could easily thrash it out of them, even the Irish ones. This mulata, though, somehow had the idea she was gifted by God to a special station, complete with high-born Latin airs. The plan to be finally rid of her was already in motion.

She had come from Pernambuco with the first cane, and she would be sold in Bridgetown with the first sugar. He already had a prospective buyer, with an opening offer of eighty pounds.

He'd even hinted to Hugh Winston that she could be taken as part payment for the sight drafts, but Winston had refused the bait. It was men and provisions, he insisted, nothing else.

Winston. May God damn his eyes…

Footsteps sounded along the gravel pathway and he turned to examine the line of planters approaching through the dusk, all wearing dark hats and colorless doublets. As he watched them puffing up the rise of the hill, he found himself calculating how much of the arable land on the island was now controlled by himself and these eleven other members of the Council. Tom Lancaster owned twelve hundred acres of the rolling acres in St. George's parish; Nicholas Whittington had over a thousand of the best land in Christ's Church parish; Edward Bayes, who had ridden down from his new plantation house on the northern tip of the island, owned over nine hundred acres; John lynes had amassed a third of the arable coastal land on the eastern, windward side of the island. The holdings of the others were smaller, but together they easily owned the major share of the good cane land on Barbados. What they needed now was the rest.

"Your servant, sir." The planters nodded in chorus as they filed into the darkened curing house. Every man had ridden alone, and Briggs had ordered his own servants to keep clear of the curing house for the evening.

"God in heaven, this much already." Bayes emitted a low whistle and rubbed his jowls as he surveyed the long rows of sugar molds. "You've got a fortune in this very room, sir. If this all turns out to be sugar, and not just pots of molasses like before."

"It'll be white sugar or I'll answer for it, and it'll be fine as any Portugal could make." Briggs walked to the corner of the room, returning with two flasks of kill-devil and a tray of tankards. "The question now, gentlemen, is whether we'll ever see it sold."

"I don't follow you, sir." Whittington reached for a brown flask and began pouring himself a tankard. "As soon as we've all got a batch cured, we'll market it to the Dutchmen. Or we'll ship it to London ourselves."

"I suppose you've heard the rumor working now amongst the Dutchmen? That there might be an embargo?"

"Aye, but it's no more than a rumor. There'll be no embargo, I promise you. It'd be too costly."

"It's not just a rumor. There was a letter from my London broker in the mail packet that came yesterday on the Rotterdam. He saw fit to include this." Briggs produced a thin roll of paper. "It's a copy he had made of the Act prepared in the Council of State, ready to be sent straight to Commons for a vote." He passed the paper to Whittington, who un-scrolled it and squinted through the half-light. Briggs paused a moment, then continued, "The Act would embargo all shipping into and out of Barbados till our Assembly has moved to recognize the Commonwealth. Cromwell was so sure it'd be passed he was already pulling together a fleet of warships to send out and enforce it. Word has't the fleet will be headed by the Rainbowe, which was the king's flagship before Cromwell took it. Fifty guns."

A disbelieving silence enveloped the darkened room.

"And you say this Act was set to pass in Parliament?" Whittington looked up and recovered his voice.

"It'd already been reported from the Council of State. And the letter was four weeks old. More'n likely it's already law. The Rainbowe could well be sailing at the head of a fleet right now as we talk."

"If Cromwell does that, we're as good as on our knees." Tynes rubbed his neck and took a sip from his tankard. "What do you propose we can do?"

"As I see it, there're but two choices." Briggs motioned for the men to sit on a row of empty kegs he had provided. "The first is to lie back and do nothing, in which case the royalists will probably see to it that the Assembly here votes to defy Commons and declare for Charles II."

"Which means we'll be at war with England, God help us." Lancaster removed his hat to wipe his dusty brow.

"Aye. A war, incidentally, which would force Cromwell to send the army to subdue the island, if he hasn't already. He'd probably post troops to try and invade us, like some people are saying. Which means the Assembly would doubtless call up every able-bodied man on the island to fight. All the militia, and the indentures. Letting the cane rot in the fields, if it's not burned to cinders by then."

"Good Jesus." Whittington's face seemed increasingly haggard in the waning light. "That could well set us back years."

"Aye, and who knows what would happen with the indentures and the slaves? Who'll be able to watch over them? If we have to put the island on a war footing, it could endanger the lives of every free man here. God knows we're outnumbered by all the Irish Papists and the Africans."

"Aye, the more indentures and slaves you've got, the more precarious your situation." Lancaster's glazed eyes passed down the row of sugar molds as he thought about the feeble security of his own clapboard house. He also remembered ruefully that he owned only three usable muskets.

"Well, gentlemen, our other choice is to face up to the situation and come to terms with Parliament. It's a bitter draught, I'll grant you, but it'll save us from anarchy, and maybe an uprising."

"The Assembly'll never declare for the Commonwealth. The royalist sympathizers hold a majority." Whittington's face darkened. "Which means there's nothing to be done save ready for war."

"There's still a hope. We can do something about the Assembly." Briggs turned to Tynes, a small, tanned planter with hard eyes. "How many men do you have in your regiment?"

"There're thirty officers, and maybe two hundred men."

"How long to raise them?"

"Raise them, sir?" He looked at Briggs, uncomprehending. "To what purpose? They're militia, to defend us against attack by the Spaniards."

"It's not the Spaniards we've to worry about now. I think we can agree there's a clear and present danger nearer to hand." Briggs looked around him. "I say the standing Assembly of Barbados no longer represents the best interests of this island. For any number of reasons."

"Is there a limit on their term?" Lancaster looked at him questioningly. "I don't remember the law."

"We're not adjudicating law now, gentlemen. We're discussing the future of the island. We're facing war. But beyond that, it's time we talked about running Barbados the way it should be, along economic principles. There'll be prosperity, you can count on it, but only if we've got a free hand to make some changes." He took a drink, then set down his tankard.

"What do you mean?" Lancaster looked at him.

"Well sir, the main problem now is that we've got an Assembly here that's sympathetic to the small freeholders. Not surprisingly, since thanks to Dalby Bedford every man here with five acres can vote. Our good governor saw to that when he drew up the voting parishes. Five acres. They're not the kind who should be in charge of governing this settlement now. I know it and so does every man in this room."

"All the same, they were elected."

"That was before sugar. Think about it. These small freeholders on the Assembly don't understand this island wasn't settled just so we'd have a batch of five-acre gardens. God's blood, I cleared a thousand acres myself. I figured that someday I'd know why I was doing it. Well, now I do."

"What are you driving at?" Bayes squinted past the rows of sugar cones.

"Well, examine the situation. This island could be the finest sugar plantation in the world. The Dutchmen already claim it's better than Brazil. But the land here's got to be assembled and put to efficient use. If we can consolidate the holdings of these small freeholders, we can make this island the richest spot on earth. The Assembly doesn't understand that. They'd go to war rather than try and make some prosperity here."

"What are you proposing we do about it?" Lancaster interjected warily.

"What if we took action, in the interests of the island?" Briggs lowered his voice. "We can't let the Assembly vote against the Commonwealth and call down the navy on our heads. They've got to be stopped."

"But how do we manage it?" Tynes' voice was uneasy.

"We take preventive action." He looked around the room. "Gentlemen, I say it'd be to the benefit of all the free Englishmen on Barbados if we took the governor under our protection for the time being, which would serve to close down the Assembly while we try and talk sense with Parliament."

"We'd be taking the law into our own hands." Tynes shifted uncomfortably.

"It's a question of whose law you mean. According to the thinking of the English Parliament, this Assembly has no legal standing anyway, since they've yet to recognize the rule of Commons. We'd just be implementing what's already been decided."

"I grant you this island would be wise not to antagonize Cromwell and Parliament just now." Whittington searched the faces around him. "And if the Assembly won't take a prudent course, then…"

"What we're talking about here amounts to overturning the sitting governor, and closing down the Assembly." Lancaster's voice came through the gloom. "We've not the actual authority, even if Parliament has…"

"We've got something more, sir." Briggs met his troubled gaze. "An obligation. To protect the future of the island."

What we need now, he told himself, is responsible leadership. If the Council can deliver up the island, the quid pro quo from Cromwell will have to be acting authority to govern Barbados. Parliament has no brief for the Assembly here, which fits nicely with the need to be done with it anyway.

The irony of it! Only if Barbados surrenders do we have a chance to realize some prosperity. If we stand and fight, we're sure to lose eventually, and then none of us will have any say in what comes after.

And in the long run it'll be best for every man here, rich and poor. When there's wealth-as there's sure to be if we can start evicting these freeholders and convert the island over to efficient sugar plantations-everybody benefits. The wealth will trickle down, like the molasses out of these sugar cones, even to the undeserving. It's the way things have to be in the Americas if we're ever to make a go of it.

But one step at a time. First we square the matter of Bedford and the Assembly.

"But have we got the men?" Lancaster settled his tankard on a keg and looked up hesitantly.

"With the militia we already have under our command, I'd say we've got sympathetic officers, since they're all men with sizable sugar acreage. On the other hand, it'd probably not be wise to try calling up any of the small freeholders and freemen. So to get the numbers we'll be wanting, I'd say we'll just have to use our indentures as the need arises."

"You've named a difficulty there." Whittington took a deep breath. "Remember the transfer over to Winston takes place day after tomorrow. That's going to leave every man here short. After that I'll have no more than half a dozen Christians on my plantation. All the rest are Africans."

"Aye, he'll have the pick of my indentures as well," Lancaster added, his voice troubled.

"He'll just have to wait." Briggs emptied his tankard and reached for the flask. "We'll postpone the transfer till this thing's settled. And let Winston try to do about it what he will."