Part 47 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+fted 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?