The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

  But they looked happy enough, and sounded more so. They exuded a quality of insidious sexuality, of abandon and gaiety, increased and accentuated by the throbbing drum which seeped upwards through the night, which reached out and encompassed the white people on the verandah. But certainly they too were in a mood to be titillated. They had drunk far too much, and they were gathered to celebrate a wedding, with all that entailed and promised; in the dark corners of the verandah men stroked and squeezed women they would normally pass by with a decorous bow, and women smiled and gasped, and sought this evening's temporary escape from the prison of their homes and their husbands. Why, Kit thought, given another hour, the entire crowd will be coupling on the floor.

  Such was the power of the African drum. But it was not to be. Marguerite had drunk hardly at all, and she was on her feet, and at the sight of that dominant figure the drum stopped without warning, and the dancers too, and silence descended on the compound almost like a blanket dropped from the sky.

  'Enough,' Marguerite said. 'I have been a widow for more than a year. My bed and my body alike have wilted in their loneliness. Would you keep me longer from my husband's manhood?'

  A gale of cheering and laughter swept the night. The Negroes yelled and stamped and clapped their hands; but the drum remained silent. No one could doubt that the slaves at Green Grove were the best disciplined on the island.

  But not the planters and their wives. Kit was seized by a forest of arms and rushed up the great staircase, a path along which Marguerite, laughing and protesting, had already been carried, and into one of the spare bedrooms, where his clothes were torn from his body with scant regard for Barnee's exquisite stitching, and replaced by an embroidered silk nightshirt, to the accompaniment of loud laughter and louder lewdity, and then hustled along the gallery, while the house servants and the more faint-hearted of the guests gathered in the hall below to clap and cheer their approbation of the coming events.

  The great bedchamber was so crowded Kit doubted they would get through. But a space was cleared, and he was pushed between the laughing, cheering women, each of whom reached out to squeeze or kiss some portion of his anatomy. But at the least the enormous implications of everything that was happening were having the desired effect, and he was as hard and as anxious as any boy confronted with his first naked breast. God forbid that he should be anything less; he did not suppose this crowd would be satisfied with second hand news. Not on an evening of rum and sangaree.

  Marguerite was already ensconced beneath the sheets in the huge four poster, the covers held primly to her neck, her hair spreading across the pillows. Her smile was a delicious indication of pleasure; this was her night, and clearly she felt not a drop of embarrassment, much less nervousness. Not even when the sheets were raised to allow him in, and the men gave a roar of approval as they caught a brief glimpse of her naked body.

  And how warm she was. And damp. And eager.

  'The thrust,' they shrieked. 'We'll see the first thrust, by God.'

  Her breath was on his face, her smiling teeth but inches away. 'You'd best accommodate them, dear Kit,' she whispered. ' 'Tis certain they'll not leave us alone before.'

  He drove his body downwards. Christ, what a memory that brought back, clouding up out of his unconscious to blanket his brain with despair. But there could be no despair here. There was no risk of this quivering body sliding away into a void of empty flesh. This was his, and again, and again, for as long and as often as he could wish or accomplish.

  Her arms were tight on his back, and her voice continued to whisper in his ear. 'Stay,' she insisted. 'Stay, and thrust. Stay and thrust. And begone,' she shouted. 'It is done.'

  The noise flowed around his head, filled his ears, clouded his senses. He thrust, and kissed her neck, her eyes, her nose and her mouth, and thrust again, and discerned the noise receding, driven by the sharp voice of Celestine Warner. The groom had proved himself a man, and the bride had revealed herself to be content. Now at last was the wedding completed, and now at last could they be left in peace.

  And now at last was he exhausted, and prepared to sleep. But not to dream. A blanket descended on his mind, as he slipped from her warmth to lie on the cooler sheet, to lose himself in the oblivion of utter contentment, to awake, reluctantly, dragging his mind upwards through endless eons of drowsy sleep, to blink in the daylight, and marvel at the silence, although always there was that ripple of muted sound just beyond earshot, which told him that the plantation was also awake, and beginning its daily round.

  The bed was empty. He sat up, pushing hair from his forehead, looking around him in sudden alarm. And finding Marguerite, fully dressed in her riding habit, standing at the window gazing out at the canefields somewhat pensively, but turning as she heard the movement.

  'Sweetheart.' She came towards him, striking the small gong on the table as she did so. 'I would not disturb you earlier.'

  'My darling.' He reached for her shoulders as she sat on the bed, explored her mouth.

  A soft sound alerted them, and she released him as Martha Louise placed the tray on the table by the bed. 'Coconut milk,' Marguerite said. 'Cool and refreshing, and essential for a man on his honeymoon.'

  He drank, and indeed it tasted delicious.

  'And now,' she said. 'You must get dressed. For we must honeymoon as and when we may. There is a plantation to be managed, and I would have you play your part as soon as possible, that the people here may be in no doubt that they have a master again.'

  'Of course.' He got out of bed. ' 'Tis a responsibility I have long anticipated sharing.'

  'I will send the girls to you.' She turned, to face the still opened door as booted feet clumped on the stairs. 'Well?'

  Passmore stood there, his face flushed, his hat held in both his hands. 'He had sought the beach, Mistress Templeton.'

  Marguerite smiled. 'My name is Hilton, Passmore. I'd not have you forget that in the future. Aye, the beach. I had supposed him more intelligent. Which but proves how absurd it is to waste time in worrying. Very good, Passmore. Prepare the fire. I will attend shortly. As soon as Captain Hilton is dressed.'

  Passmore bowed, and withdrew. Kit was already reaching for his pants. 'There has been a misadventure?'

  'I had supposed so,' she said. 'But I was mistaken. I purchased a new batch of slaves but a month ago, and one of them, a buck about whom I will confess I had some doubts at the time, chose to make the excitement and the preoccupation of yesterday as an excuse to abscond from the plantation.'

  'By God,' Kit said. 'A runaway.'

  She buttoned his shirt for him. 'Every so often there is a new arrival who behaves in this fashion.'

  'And you knew this, yesterday?' He held her shoulders. 'And did not tell me?'

  'It was your wedding day.'

  'Was it not yours?'

  She smiled, and kissed him on the mouth. 'Slaves are a problem I grew up with. To you they may appear to be a problem. And as it happened, you would have been needlessly concerned. The poor savage but sought the beach, and clung there until my people found him, this morning. Now come, we must attend his execution.'

  'His ...' Kit's hands slowly fell to his side. 'His execution?'

  'Of course,' she said. 'There is only one punishment for runaways. He will be burned alive, as soon as you are dressed.'

  6

  Across the Water

  Marguerite had already left the house and was about to mount her horse when Kit caught up with her. 'You cannot mean that,' he said.

  A Negro slave held her bridle, and Maurice Peter waited to give her a knee up to her side-saddle. Her six mastiffs trotted from the house to follow her. She settled herself, reins in her left hand, and looked down at him. "What else can I mean? There is no other punishment for runaways.'

  'But ...' he grasped her stirrup. 'It is barbaric, Marguerite. I ... I had no idea of what they spoke, when they warned me that I might not find everything here to my liking. But this ...'

  She frow
ned, very slightly. 'They?'

  He waved his hand. 'Everyone. Barnee

  Her forehead cleared. "What did Barnee have to say about me, Kit?'

  He felt his cheeks burning. She was so calm, and so admonitory, as if she were a schoolmarm and he a little boy. 'He said your methods were your own.'

  'Ah,' she said. 'Indeed they are, sweet Kit.'

  'I could detect no approval in his tone. Rather the reverse.'

  She smiled. 'No doubt Barnee's approval is important to you. We will discuss my methods, you and I, my darling. But not in front of the house servants. Will you mount, and ride with me?'

  Another horse waited. Kit scrambled into the saddle, and grasped the reins with both hands. She regarded him with a critical look.

  'We will have to make you practise, I think. Nothing so earns a man respect as to sit a horse well.'

  Now he was angry. 'I assure you, madam, I need to earn respect from no man.'

  'I never doubted that for an instant, Kit. I but wished to be sure you always possessed mine.' She walked her horse in front of him, began the descent of the gradual slope towards the slave compound. She pointed, with her whip, at the houses grouped perhaps half a mile to their right. 'I have not had the chance to show you our plantation, my darling. That is the village of the white staff.'

  'I had gathered that for myself.'

  She half turned her head, then changed her mind and ignored the brusqueness in his tone. 'Have you any idea how many people live there, as you are so knowledgeable?'

  'You told me you employed thirty overseers.'

  'Only twenty overseers,' she said. 'The other ten are bookkeepers, and men with a knowledge of machinery who are required to keep the grinding house in good repair. For upon that our entire prosperity depends.' Her whip moved, a few inches, to point to the bulk of the boiling house, dominated by its huge square chimney, even larger than that which rose from the kitchen of the Great House. 'But of course,' she said, 'they have their wives and families living with them. I even employ a schoolteacher, a lady from St John's. My intention is to make Green Grove entirely self-supporting. In all, counting you and me, my darling, there are fifty-seven white people on this plantation.'

  'A sizeable number.'

  'And yet hardly sufficient.' The whip moved again, to point to the rows of barracoons at the bottom of the hill. 'When you consider that there are five hundred blacks. Now tell me, Kit, what do you think keeps them down there, and us up here? For I do assure you, it is a mistake to assume the blacks entirely lack intelligence, or the ability to count. Perhaps you imagine that it is the knowledge of your good right arm, your unerring accuracy with a pistol, your terrible prowess with a sword. But you arrived here only last month, and they have been there for twenty years and more.'

  'Now you seek to mock me.'

  'I shall never do that, Kit. I give you my word. But I must make you understand that we live in a world which is constructed upon fear, and fear alone. Those blacks fear my overseers, because they know the overseers will punish them savagely for any transgressions, but they fear me more, because they know also that my overseers are but carrying out my will. And now it is our will, Kit. There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that this is so.'

  'I understand everything you say, Marguerite. And I appreciate the reasoning behind it. I even appreciate that it may be necessary to execute runaways, although by my faith I find it hard to punish a man so terribly for behaving as I should myself. But if it is to be the case, why not hang him or shoot him or behead him? Is not the mere fact of dying awful enough? To burn a man alive ... can there be a worse fate?'

  'There can indeed,' she remarked. 'But that is reserved for the black who raises his or her hand to a white. As for burning alive, it is barbaric to be sure. But then, you see, we are not concerned with the man who is about to die. He is dead from the moment he makes the fateful decision to break out. We are concerned with the effect we must have upon the brains of those who remain behind upon this earth and more particularly upon this estate. They must hold at the forefront of their minds, for the rest of their lives, the awful spectacle, the awful sound, the awful stench, of a man they know being consumed to ashes, so that whenever the idea of escape enters their minds, they will reject it instinctively. Now come, they are ready.'

  They had reached the foot of the hill, and the entrance to the slave compound. Here the majority of the overseers were gathered, for in view of the escape there was no field work today, as yet; the white men were mounted, and armed, at once with the fearful cartwhip and with swords and pistols. In front of them, gathered in a vast concourse, dressed uniformly in white calico, drawers for the men and chemises for the women, were the slaves; their children milled about them, but these were permitted to be naked. They looked no different to the previous afternoon, save that today they were silent, and there were no smiles to be seen. They watched the overseers, and they watched their approaching mistress, and they watched too the stake erected outside their gate, made of green timber, but surrounded by carefully dried wood and leaves stacked as high as a man's knees.

  Passmore waited some distance from his fellows. Now he urged his horse closer to Marguerite's. 'It is ready, Mistress Hilton.' His eyes flickered to Kit, and then back again.

  Marguerite turned her head. 'Will you give the order, my darling?'

  He gazed at her in utter horror. 'Me? I cannot, Marguerite, I swore an oath, after Panama, that I would never again take a human life, except in defence of my own.'

  Her frown was beginning to gather, as Passmore was beginning to smile.

  'Surely you were then suffering from the pangs of conscience, my darling,' she said gently. 'Oaths should be sworn only in the clear light of sober day.'

  'None the less, it was sworn,' Kit insisted. 'And can you not make an exception, this day of all days? It is the first of your new married life. No one could possibly mistake a gesture of magnanimity as weakness this morning. Why, kings and queens are accustomed to grant an amnesty on the morrow of their coronation.'

  Marguerite looked at him for some seconds, then she said, still without taking her eyes from her husband's face, 'You may bring the prisoner out, Passmore.' She waited until the overseer was out of earshot, then she said, still speaking very softly, 'Dear, dear Kit, I do admire your humanity. But please believe me when I say that even if you meant to honour your oath, it would hardly apply to these blacks.'

  'Are they not human?' Kit demanded.

  A slight shrug of those exquisite shoulders. 'Perhaps, if we stretch the term. But I would not do so. They are certainly an inferior species. Can you doubt that? Oh, you will hold up Agrippa, of course. Then Agrippa is a human amongst the sub-humans. I would willingly hold you up, as a demigod. Yet would I not suppose you the Deity Himself. And are we not in His image created? There are classes of all things. So there is God, and His angels, and there are men, and there are blacks. Believe me, Kit, as you have studied seamanship and battle, the use of weapons and the leadership of men, I have, perforce, had to study these creatures to whom you would arrogate a humanity equal to your own. If you have a 158 fault at all, it is your own modesty, your own diminution of yourself and your species. I would correct that so slight fault. Now hear me out. You have but to ask of me. No, I would not have it so. Demand of me, Kit, and it shall be yours, of my person and of my wealth. Both are considerable. Would you have a ship, larger than any ever built? I will build it for you. Would you have a sword, made of solid gold, and yet sewn through with steel to make it a serviceable weapon? Be sure that you shall have it. Would you take the whip to my back? Be sure, that in the privacy of our bedchamber, I will bend before you, and smile while the blood flows. In return I ask only two things of you. Nay, I demand only two things of you, in exchange for the immensity I now place within your grasp. Support me in the rule of Green Grove, for upon this rock are all our powers founded. And love me, and me alone. I am sufficiently a woman, who has already been married, to understand that my b
ody may not always satisfy a true man. But love only me, Kit, no matter where you may find your comfort. Supposing I should become unable to provide it for you. Now let us, together, supervise this execution.'

  For the black man was being brought from the hut in which he had been chained, by four of the Negro foremen, heads held high as they dragged their victim forth, because they were acting for the superior being, the demi goddess, the mistress.

  The man himself scarce wasted his time in fighting them or in struggling, and he knew better than to waste his precious breath in begging for mercy. But as he was taken to the stake he stared at Marguerite, and occasionally his lips moved, silently.

  'He is cursing you,' Kit said.

  'I have been cursed before. But he left his gods behind in Africa. They will not help him here.'

  The man was at the stake, and being pressed against it while iron chains were passed around his waist and under his armpits, and secured to keep him upright. Meanwhile his drawers were removed from his thighs, to leave him naked.

  'Can you not spare him that, at the least?' Kit asked.

  'Material costs money,' Marguerite pointed out. 'Even

  calico, my darling. One makes a profit from a sugar plantation by saving wherever possible. Not by throwing one's goods away.' She raised her voice. 'You may light the fire, Mr Passmore.'

  Passmore nodded, and dismounted. The torch had already been kindled, and was held by another of the Negro foremen. Now it was handed to the overseer, and a moment later a puff of smoke rose from the pyre, accompanied by the first tongues of flame. Kit wrapped his hands tight round the reins, and felt the sweat start out on his cheeks and shoulders. But then, the morning was starting to heat as the sun rose above the eastern hilltops, out of that endless ocean from whence this man had come, and upon which he now looked for the last time.