by Jan Needle
“Mother?” said Marianne, sharply. “Disturbance? It is the Suttons, I suppose?”
The vague, untroubled smile again.
“Yes, dear,” she said. And to the Navy guests: “We are cursed with Yorkshire neighbours. There was a murder there quite recently, one of the sons who was something of a natural, if I may be so frank. I fear he did vile things to animals as well as to the blacks. No taste at all.”
Elizabeth and Lucy collapsed in giggles, and Marianne explained that the better types of neighbour had “thinned out” dramatically during the worst years of troubles with Maroons, as the visitors may have noticed.
“Which is why the governor at present is that awful little Mather,” said Lady Siddleham, brightly. “The proper man’s in England while his wife indulges in the vapours, and his deputy sadly died last week; the fevers recently have been exceeding bad. So far you have been lucky Captain, I believe? Long may it remain so.”
The toll on Biter was eleven dead already, with nearly forty ill, but Slack Dickie agreed politely with his hostess. Marianne, however, still judging the conversation as not quite comme il faut, suggested the officers might care for a stroll in the garden, to see Mama’s latest blooms and innovations. Sam and Will accompanied the younger daughters, who prattled on about the sad lack of escorts on the island, and how the life out here was enough to make one shoot oneself – a tragic round of education, recitals of the drabbest music, and formal visits to any wives and daughters who had not risked the French and sailed back to the better life at home.
“Indeed,” said Lucy, archly, “if it were not for the hanging of a nigger now and then, I think that we might die of boredom.”
They were seated in a kind of bower, with one side open to the sea, and the view was beautiful. But the girls had sensed a target, and they went in at a charge.
“If you wish to charm the ladies on this island,” said Elizabeth, “you need to treat the natives properly, you see. The blacks are not just slaves, they are our enemies. They bear the mark of Cain and live only for ingratitude. You must hate them, sirs. It is imperative.”
Will did not know what to do, or think. A picture of his own sisters slipped into his mind, little Martha and mature Lal, and he tried to imagine them speaking thus of any human being. He did not need the memory of Sweetface Savary to recognise these statements as a perfect fright.
Sam tried for lightness, but did not achieve success. He shared a glance with Bentley, and his face was tight.
“While bowing to your long experience.” he said, “I must be allowed to differ, if I may. I can’t lay claim to piety, but black men are human beings, still. Black men and women. In England some say that slavery is wrong. Is sinful.”
“Lah!” said Lucy. “And what do they know there? Black people like to be slaves, so how dare you talk of it as sin? Even men of God out here harbour no suchlike delusions, believe me, and they live in the thick of it.”
“In any way,” said Elizabeth, “in England you do not have slaves, I’ve been there so I know. Truth is, sirs, we use cruelty to be kind. If beaten and abused they flourish, if treated well they steal and cheat and run. There is nothing on earth my father would not rather do than to be sweet to them, but he truly cannot. They do not like it, sirs; that is the honest truth.”
Neither Bentley nor Holt, in honesty, had given much deep thought to slavery, but both were cast down by these girls. They knew negro sailors, they knew the Worm, they knew Black Bob. Kaye’s treatment of that small boy had caused them much discomfort, and his treatment at the vicious hands of the Lamonts had filled their hearts with rage. Elizabeth just prattled on.
“We can even kill our slaves,” she said, “and so it must be right, it is the law. We can kill them, we can…we can chop them into little pieces, they bring it on themselves. Believe you me.”
Lucy smirked.
“Dismember them,” she said. “‘That is what my sister tries to enunciate. We can dismember them. If it proves necessary.”
A vivid memory of screams, a reek of burning flesh, came into Bentley’s mind. The sweet sudden darkness of the Caribbean night filled with foreboding.
“But… why?” he asked. “Whyever in this world should –”
Lucy was irritated.
“A slave man was executed for a foul murder and the slaves rose up and ran away,” she said. “Poor father joined the hunt to bring them back to justice, and they brought him down from off his horse. Pa asked the English whore that ran with them to help him, but she was carrying the baby of a dirty slaveman dog and spat into his face. Some slaves say that whore is Nanny, now. Their witch.”
There was a short silence, then Elizabeth said, “It was a Sutton man that died, that is the only good part; Ammon Sutton was a most terrific beast. Otherwise, they would have tracked the slavemen down, I guess. Bloodhounds would have gone into the hills and slaughtered them, the English slut included. But it was only Suttons, and they cannot pay.”
“Sadly,” said Lucy, “that is not true, lieutenants. My brothers have been moving heaven since that day, payment notwithstanding, but the savages are off into the middle somewhere, and no information yet. Fie, Lizzy, how could you think we would not get revenge for Pa if there were any way? The truth is, sirs, the birds have gone to roost. It may be that we never will find out where.”
Jeremy Siddleham and his brothers did not come back from the Suttons’ place before Kaye and his fellows left, but this was not considered strange. Alf Sutton and his surviving son had entered into a regime of confrontation with their diminished crew of slaves, especially when drunk, which often led to minor riots. Alf, like an avenging angel on his huge black mule, would round them up like cattle with a long stock whip, while son Seth and their favoured drivers – slaves who had “made good” – would wade in with fists and clubs. If things got out of hand, as they had today, the Siddleham brothers would aid the Suttons with delight. They often came back bloody, and rarely sober. It was a simple pleasure.
Kaye had heard about these neighbours, and their precarious existence, while walking with his loved-one and her Ma, and showed his interest very clearly, as he reported to his friends while riding back to town. The Sutton place was running down, he told them, the family cash was low, and it was ripe for picking. Indeed, the Siddlehams were sniffing, too.
“What?” said Sam. “They go and help them sort their troubles out and all the time they look to buy it? Don’t sound very honest to my ears.”
“Bah, honest,” Kaye replied. “It is naught to do with honesty, Sam, it is the Jamaica way. But Miss Siddleham – Marianne – was even franker when her Ma weren’t there to earwig. She said I might do better than buying the Sutton place, maybe, but one advantage would be proximity to her. I would be next door! Now ain’t that passing sweet?”
“Oh, wonderful,” said Sam. “Correct me if I err, though, but you are a Navy captain; you live next door to no one, sir, except old Neptune. And anyway, what is this ‘I’? Have you forgot your sainted father? And Daniel Swift? Our brief is to reconnoitre, not to find you a country seat beside your lady love. What say you, Will? Or shall I call you Mr Silence?”
Will, indeed, had hardly spoken for an hour, and Sam knew exactly why. He had been struggling with a sort of horror, a deep pain of loss renewed and mixed with jealousy. Elizabeth had said that Deborah – rather, “the English slut” – had been carrying a slave man’s child. It might mean anything, he did not know. It might mean nothing. He was lost in pointless agony.
“What?” he said. “What lady love?”
Kaye found that funny, and gave a shout of laughter.
“Aye, be not so bloody saucy!” he told Sam. “Be not so bloody impudent or I shall strike you down to be a gunner’s monkey! But I think she is that love though, I must confess – and she says there’s money to be made. For once my Pa, it seems, has got it right! With Marianne’s guidance – Miss Siddleham, that is – I think we’ll bring it off.”
“We were me
ant,” said Bentley, forcing himself to play a part, “to be as silent as the grave. You will put me right, sir, if I should be wrong?”
“Good man,” cried Kaye. “You would shame an advocate! But rest assured, it is a secret still. I shall write my Pa this very night, or maybe in the morning. There is money to be made, friends. There’s not the slightest doubt of it.”
A black man’s child, thought William. My God, can it be true? But Deborah. I love you. I wish, I wish, I wish I knew where you might be…
Deb Tomelty, within two days, knew where Will Bentley was, because rumour from the white world to the black was fast, and subtle, and likely to be true. She had heard after the burnings that a Navy ship had landed in Port Royal from England, and in her heart – sense and logic notwithstanding – she had been certain it was his. Now she had it from her women in the woods that a fair-haired young officer, small and strong, and “with a face of suffering,” had been mentioned at the market by the Siddleham household slaves, a visitor with two other blue-clad men. She suspected the “face of suffering” had been added by Kinji off her own romantic bat, and Deb was grateful for it. But it made the shadow of Captain Jacob loom very large.
She knew where Will Bentley was. But she feared she could not get to him.
Chapter Seventeen
By the time nineteen Jacquelines had died – including Tilley, Simms, Megson, Jolley and the divers Jones and McIntosh – the epidemic had run the worst part of its course. There were still more than a dozen ill, and some of them would not recover fully it was thought, but the ship was now refloated and virtually re-rigged. In some few days she would be fit to put to sea, which meant that Kaye had a fight upon his hands. He had to turf “the cripples” off (as he put it with his usual charm), and Lieutenant Jackson, at the offices, was having none of it.
“But there is much work to be done,” said Kaye. “I have to sail with greatest expedition, and damn well you know it, sir. I cannot sail, and search, and doubtless fight with my main deck a’cluttered up with sick and dying.”
Although the argument was in its infancy, Kaye was beginning to lose his temper. Which suited Jackson admirably.
“Now Captain Kaye,” he responded, with reasoned calmness, “I cannot undertake the rank impossible, not even for a man I admire as much as I do you. Men are always ill in Kingston and Port Royal. Good God, sir, even Captain Shearing is at present indisposed. And I am in an absolute command here, naturally. I’m sorry. We do not have accommodation for your sick.”
Slack Dickie’s eyes were taking on a bulge.
“God damn it!” he said, “I must insist you find some, then! Captain Shearing was adamant I must sail west to seize those Scotch and win back the treasure they purloined. I would remind you, sir, the case is urgent. Captain Shearing fears that they might blab. That they might reveal how we sank the Santa. He said it might mean war.”
“Well, that is all quite true,” said Jackson. “It perhaps might well have been foreseen.” He was bordering on the insubordinate, so stopped that line. “But sadly, Captain, the fact remains. For the present, I can only –”
Kaye slapped his large and meaty hand down on the table, making a solid bang.
“When is Captain Shearing fit?” he demanded. “When he hears this, I swear he’ll overrule you!”
“And what, sir? Make sick men well again? Would that he could work that magic on himself. He suffers from his battle wounds. He spends days and weeks in agony,
every year. Would you have me haul him out for you?” A pause, just long enough before Dickie exploded. “I beg your pardon, sir. I overstep myself. Forgive me, I hold the captain… his suffering affects me very near.”
Kaye was defeated, and he knew it. He held out both hands, then dropped them to his sides. Will put his oar in, emollient and polite.
“Sir,” he said. “We are most sorry over Captain Shearing; please convey to him our very best. But perhaps it is possible that you might give some hint, some estimation, as to when we might transfer our men? Almost any quality of accommodation would be the equal of what they are fixed in on the Jacqueline, and we are assured the disease is well beyond the infecting stage.” He tried a minor jest, to lighten it. “Why, sir, even Surgeon Grundy has returned. We would leave him to look after them in any place that you might find, however mean and comfortless.”
“Aye,” said Kaye. “Or even better, we could take him to sea with us and drown him. Make Port Royal into a better place!”
Strangely, the ghastly old lieutenant responded with a laugh. But backing down was not on the cards, nor ever could be. He shuffled papers on the desk.
“Ah well,” he said. “I can make no promises, that’s not in my power. But I have one place – ’tis very vile, mark you. Aye, there is one… it used to be a stable block. Grundy would stay, you undertake? Mm, now that is…”
“Or go,” said Captain Kaye. “Whichever suits your pleasure, Lieutenant Jackson.” He swallowed. His pride, amongst other things. “My case is critical, sir, or I would not be so importunate. And please convey my wishes and condolences to Captain Shearing, as Lieutenant Bentley has suggested. His illness is a present pain to me. Great credit to you, that you are so extreme solicitous of his good comfort.”
He positively glowed with false sincerity, and Jackson glowed as he lapped it up. He did not believe it for a single instant, all three of them knew that, but his victory was signal, and complete. A greater-hearted man might have called enough, but Jackson liked to savour and prolong.
“Nothing quickly, mind,” he said, “and nothing certain until I have completed my inquiries. But in two days or three – no, four or five or six more likely – you have my word it shall move as quickly as may be. I would not do this for anyone, you know. It is just that Captain Shearing is most anxious that we get that treasure back. Such a pity that you lost it in the first place. Still…”
They were content with that, they had to be, though Kaye bitched bitterly as they left the Navy Offices. Had he not been in love, he implied, he would have gone and got a bottle of Madeira and a whore. Maybe he said it as a test for William, to see if he was shocked, but Will merely smiled. He understood.
That led them to a conversation neither could have ever dreamt would happen, where they skated round the pain and theme of love. Slack Dickie made it very plain that no such thing had ever come his way before, and it had thrown down his confidence in reason’s power, or that of rationality.
“Do you know,” he said, “I even feel for poor Sam now. He says he loves my skinny sister, and I know Papa confides Felicity must go to you. It’s split my sympathy! I pity you because Flip’s so awful, and I pity him because I could not bear the thought of Miss Siddleham in another feller’s arms and nor can he my sister, most of all his friend’s. And then there’s you and that pretty little whore. You cannot really love her, though, can you? She is a Spithead Nymph.”
“But I do,” said Will. His voice was brittle, but his heart was burning, and the pain was physical. A Spithead Nymph. And now a rebel’s mistress. If he did not find the truth out soon he thought that he might… what? Die? Impossible, ridiculous. But the pain was like a knife.
Kaye was studying his face, and on his own was unaccustomed gentleness. They had reached a point close to the waterfront, a vista of spectacular beauty, and Bentley could see his brash and foolish Captain had reached some human understanding. Between them was a surge of something like complicity. They stopped talking, and together watched the blue-black busy water. They shared the pain and joy of love.
That evening, there was another dinner at the Siddleham estate, that had become the focus of society for the Navy men. A crippled father notwithstanding, the sons and daughters were determined to enhance their meagre social round, which was the greatest single problem of their island life. They lived here, they had made their lives and future here, they had been born here all of them: but they longed for “home.” For the daughters, London fashion was the aching void, for
the mother, horticulture in a proper climate. The young men hated island life completely. Stink and disease and death, no easy women except slaves, nothing to do except to hunt and drink beyond all boredom.
There were some at the dinner not so vile as Ephraim Dodds and his associates, and the middle-aged planters, with Mather at their head, moved in and out of conversation with them not unpleasantly, Marianne often engineering it. The consensus was that seamen were exactly what the island needed, and historically, a fair proportion of the most successful settlers had been Navy captains. It was a question of control and discipline, the planters said, a question of planning ahead for all eventualities, and working out new pathways through disasters. Disasters such as what? Well, rebellions, wars, slave revolts, hurricanes, earthquakes, violent illness, sudden death, new laws and taxes. The government in London, frankly, did not care or sympathise – need they go on?
“We must anticipate from day to day,” said Andrew Mather. “From hour to hour, minute to minute sometimes. Each time we plant we kill the land a little so we must constantly extend. Across the sea the government hits us with booms and slumps with no warning or redress. We must know money, and markets, and capital returns, and if we go back to England for whatever reason we must find agents who will not bankrupt us. Oh it happens, sir, it happens. With regularity.”
He drank more wine, then said across the table, “What I mean, Captain, is that you men have skills. In some ways, our slaves are like your sailors – stupid, clumsy, servile, but extremely devious. If forced they can work well, but will take any opportunity to spoil or destroy. Even the ones with brains between their ears pretend that they’re incapable, and however much they smile, you know they hate you.”
Kaye whistled.
“Were you ever a sea officer, Mr Mather? That is remarkable as a picture of a tar. You must ha’ sailed for England, surely?”
