HF - 03 - Mistress of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  'So you have, by God. So you have. No doubt you have little knowledge of what you do. Well let me tell you, sir, in this society any man who marches around the place pronouncing that all men are equal, that all men are born free, is a revolutionary. I'd expect no less of Rousseau.'

  'Nor would I, sir,' Coke said. 'He but states a truth.'

  'By God,' Robert said. 'By God.'

  'And these absurdities have brought you hurrying across the sea?' Matt inquired. 'Well, tomorrow I will take you on an inspection of the plantation. You'll find the ratoons already sprouting, and you'll find us with the best crop Green Grove has ever produced.'

  'And I'll find a parcel of mutinying blacks on my hands, no doubt, as well.'

  'No, sir, you will not,' Matt insisted. 'You'll find better discipline on Green Grove than on any plantation in Antigua.'

  'Aye? I'll believe that when I see it. In any event, there's to be a change.' Robert turned and went inside.

  Matt followed him, Sue at his side. 'Be careful, I do beg of you, sweetheart,' she whispered.

  'Change?' Matt demanded. 'What change?'

  'Lander has told me how you have dismissed all the worthwhile overseers,' Robert said. 'I have recruited some fellows for you. Charlie Benton ...'

  'By heaven,' Matt said. 'I'll not have Benton on my plantation.'

  Robert seized the decanter of port presented by the maidservant, drank from the neck. 'God give me patience. Your plantation, did you say?'

  Matt frowned at him. 'Is it not?'

  'No, sir, it is not. Green Grove is my plantation, as it has always belonged to my branch of the family. You may consult any lawyer you choose, the matter is there in black and white. That Grandmother Lilian's branch has been allowed to enjoy the living here has been because we have always counted them our surest support. Withdraw that support, and we have no more use for you.'

  Matt stared at him.

  'Is not the prosperity of a plantation a guarantee of that support, Mr. Hilton?' Coke inquired.

  'Hold your miserable tongue, sir,' Robert shouted. 'You'd best count yourself fortunate I do not take a horsewhip to you. I reckon you at least as responsible as Matt himself for this debacle.'

  'Tom came here at my invitation,' Matt said. 'And as for a debacle, be sure you bring it on yourself. I recommend for you a study of King Canute, and his problems, cousin. For be sure the tide will rise, whether you will it or no.'

  'Bah,' Robert said. ‘I’ll have none of it. These islands have prospered for a hundred years. They'll prosper for a hundred more.'

  'Properly conducted, I am sure they shall,' Matt said.

  'Then let us hear no more about it,' Robert said, and held out the decanter. 'You'll drink to Green Grove.'

  'That I will,' Matt agreed. 'Under my management, and with my methods.'

  Robert hesitated, and withdrew the decanter as Matt reached for it. 'You'll explain that.'

  'I thought I had made my position clear. I'll employ no overseers but of my own choosing.'

  'What? What? You seek to defy me?'

  'I seek to come to an understanding with you.'

  'Then understand me, God damn it.'

  'On the contrary, Robert. You must attempt to understand me.'

  'By God,' Robert shouted. 'By God.' He gazed at Suzanne, and found no comfort there. 'By God. You think I need you, by God? You'll be mistaken. Green Grove has returned a handsome profit every year, while you played at cricket in England. It will continue to do so, I have no doubt at all.'

  'You'll find this year to be a record.'

  'Maybe. Maybe. But it is an accident. The blacks have not yet understood the milksop who rules them. I put it to you plain, Matt. You'll act the planter, as I will have it, or Lander will be returned.'

  'I'll not have him on the plantation.'

  'Then you must go. Be sure of that. And mark my words...' Robert wagged his finger. 'I have been patient with you, long beyond what my commonsense dictated. Leave Green Grove now, and you leave forever. Make no mistake about that. And not only Green Grove. To my mind you cease to be a Hilton. Think on that.'

  'I have thought on that, before, Robert, and determined that it was a bribe beyond my capacity to accept. Then I was defeated by force. Now I am more ready for you. I know, sir, that you, that every planter, aspires to a station above his humanity. I'll have no part of that. But give me the opportunity, and I'll prove to you that slave-owning is yet a task for Christians. Refuse me the opportunity, and I'll have no part of it. But by heaven I'll take my part in opposition to it.'

  'You'd threaten me?' Robert shouted. 'By God, I've a mind to take my whip to you,'

  'Do that,' Matt said. 'And face the consequences.'

  'By God,' Robert said. 'Then begone. Take your belongings and leave my plantation. And take that ... that false prophet with you.'

  'Aye,' Matt agreed. He went to the stairs, and there waited. 'And Sue?'

  'Sue stays here,' Robert declared.

  Matt looked at the woman.

  'Like Robert, I should say, by God, but the pair of you turn my belly with your constant quarrelling,' Sue said, speaking as quietly as ever. 'Oh, believe me, Robert, you are right. I hold no brief for a black skin, and I have no doubt that Matt's actions and Tom's beliefs can involve us in nothing but disaster.'

  'By God,' Robert said. 'At last, a relative of mine with some sense. Sue, I forgive you everything.'

  Matt gazed at her, and she smiled at him.

  'But yet I will go with Matt,' she said. 'He is the father of my child, the landlord of my heart. So spread your hatred wide, sweet brother. It shall no doubt be returned.'

  chapter eleven

  THE MISTRESS

  The steady swish of the paddles was hypnotic, hardly less so than the regular movement of the Negroes' arms and backs, up and down, up and down, up and down. And the heat was unlike anything Corbeau could remember. Born and bred in St. Domingue, he thought he knew everything the West Indies had to offer in the way of scorching sun. But then, he had to remind himself Guyana was not the West Indies. Guyana was a place apart.

  He dared not take off his hat, even for a moment, so he tugged his shirt still more open, and mopped at his neck and chest with a silk bandanna. He looked from side to side, over the smooth brown water at the endless green of the banks, at the huge trees looming beyond. It was but nine in the morning, and the great leafy crowns, searching for light, seventy, eighty feet above the roots which gave them life, still hid the sun. But it was rising, and warming all the time. What it would be like in two hours' time did not bear consideration.

  But then, looking at the forest wall which enclosed the water of the river, he did not suppose that even the sun was the most dangerous enemy this country had to offer. That vine-twined tree-stockaded wilderness held creatures long exterminated in the islands, venomous snakes and snakes which could crush a man to a pulp, scorpions and spiders which could induce the worst of fevers, ants which would take the flesh from living bones. Nor was the water through which the bateau ploughed so quietly any safer for being brown instead of blue; already this morning he had seen a caiman basking by the shore, and the Negroes spoke of fish hardly less voracious than ants.

  Truly, Henri Ledon, the captain of his sloop, had had cause to cross himself as they had come to anchor before the old Dutch fortress of Kyk-Over-Al, lower down the river. 'A dead place, Guyana,' he had muttered. 'Inhabited only by death.'

  But the Dutch burghers had looked prosperous enough, and certainly there was enough water here, both on the ground and in the rivers and gathering in the heavy black clouds which surged across the sky, to suggest that drought was unknown. And that cane would grow in abundance here too was obvious; he had left the fort at dawn in his hired boat, and had already passed three plantations, each stretching from perhaps a mile into the bush down to the water's edge, ending in a low dock, or stelling as the Dutch called it, alongside which the punts could tie to be loaded with sugar. There was little evidence o
f luxury. The Dutch scarcely believed in fine clothes or magnificent houses. But the crop looked to have value.

  He whipped off his hat, gave his face a hasty fan, wiped his scalp, and crammed the straw on his head again. The Negro in the stern grinned. 'Soon, massa, soon,' he promised. 'Round the next bend.'

  And then, what, Corbeau wondered? He felt a quite unusual excitement at the thought of finally seeing the girl. And it was an excitement which had been growing, in the strangest way, over the months. He had begun with a plan. He envisaged a West Indian empire, Rio Blanco, Ocean View in Martinique, Green Grove in Antigua, and Hilltop in Jamaica, all owned by the Corbeaux, each managed by one of his sons. Georgiana was his. In the months he had spent on Hilltop waiting for the war to end he had renewed her devotion time and time again. She was a woman who knew only how to feel. To her, all mankind, all emotion, all ambition was wrapped up in the touch of a man's hand, and his was the hand she liked best. No doubt time would change that innocence, but before that could happen she would be his wife, to be enjoyed, to be enhanced, to be destroyed as a person, as he saw fit. She was no more than a part of the grand design.

  And the mustee was no more than another part. With her he could destroy the entire Hilton family, and leave himself unchallenged master of the West Indian plantocracy. She was a weapon to be used. Nothing more than that, surely. And yet the thought of her fascinated him, and increasingly haunted his mind as he approached her. Because she would have to be won, first, as she would live on French soil? He had won, by fair means or foul, a great number of women. The thought of it had never excited him in this fashion before.

  The trees were once again dwindling, to be replaced by more fields of cane. And as they came round a bend in the river he could see the stelling. 'Mulders, massa,' said the Negro coxswain.

  Three hours upstream from the fort, they had said, and they were right. Corbeau wiped more sweat from his face, and then knotted the wet bandanna round his neck. He set his hat more firmly on his head, and grasped the gunwales of the bateau as it came into the side of the dock. There were slaves here, waiting to take the bow rope and assist the white man ashore, and then to gossip with the men from town.

  'Your business, meinheer?' demanded a swarthy white man, wearing a filthy white cotton shirt and breeches and a straw hat, and carrying a thick leather whip.

  'Where is Mulder?' Corbeau inquired. His Dutch was poor, and his grammar worse, but he did not intend to be polite to an overseer.

  The man pered at him from bloodshot eyes. 'You're English.'

  'No, sir. I am French. I should be obliged if you'd not make that mistake again, eh? Or I will remove your ears,' Corbeau said. 'Now I will go to the house. You'll inform your master that Louis Corbeau, of Rio Blanco in St. Domingue, has come to visit him.'

  For he could see it, a low, rambling accumulation of sticks and palm thatch, hardly more than an elongated shack, and set only a few hundred yards from the water. And between it and the dock were no less than a dozen triangles, each one suspending a naked black man or woman, each back a mass of bloody grooves, a home for a thousand humming insects, each tortured mouth moaning its agony and its despair. The sound rose above even the swish of the river. Beyond, the grinding house was a primitive affair, operated mainly by water power, which was reasonable enough in view of the abundance of that energy, but clearly the machinery was better than a hundred years old. There was no flower garden, and the Negro village looked scarcely better than an encampment, while he could see no overseers' houses at all. He seemed to be stepping backwards through history, and the feeling was accentuated by the stillness and the heat, for now the sun was ascending in all its power through the last of the trees to beat full down upon the plantation.

  'Corbeau, you say? Plantation Rio Blanco?' The Dutchman was at his side, and speaking French.

  'You'll have heard the name.'

  'Oh, indeed I have, monsieur. Hans Mulder, at your service.'

  Corbeau stopped, and looked at the man again. But he was here to do business. 'Then I apologize. I had not expected to be met. You've no overseers?'

  'What use have I for overseers? This is not a large plantation. Not like Rio Blanco, eh?'

  They were passing the triangles. 'And your blacks love you that much you live here alone?'

  Mulder grinned. 'My blacks fear me that much, monsieur. With slaves it is the more effective emotion.' His feet clumped on the wood of the low steps leading to his verandah. ‘You'll take a glass of punch?'

  Corbeau nodded, and studied the shade, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the sudden removal of glare, and also enjoying the sudden increase in his heartbeat as a naked woman detached herself from the shadows and came towards them. But this girl was clearly at best a mulatto, although a young and pretty one.

  'Punch,' Mulder growled, and sat in the hammock which swung between two of the uprights, leaving the one chair, a somewhat insecure antique, for his guest.

  The girl nodded, and withdrew. Corbeau removed his hat and sat down, cautiously. 'I wonder you stand the heat, and the isolation.'

  Mulder grinned. 'I am not lonely, monsieur. I enjoy the

  isolation. But you did not come all the way to Essequibo, and all the way up this river, to pass the time of day.'

  Corbeau had long decided that his best chance of finding the girl would be to avoid dissembling. 'I seek Gislane Nicholson.'

  'Gislane ...' Mulder frowned, and glanced at the mulatto, who was back with a wooden tray and two cane tumblers of rum punch.

  'I know you bought her from Hodge, of Nevis,' Corbeau said. 'Now I wish to see her.' 'You wish?'

  Corbeau reached into the satchel which hung from his shoulder, took out a canvas bag, allowed it to clink. 'I have here five hundred gold pieces, Mulder. Should she please me.'

  'Five hundred ...' Mulder stared at him. 'Open it,' Corbeau suggested.

  The Dutchman hesitated, then reached for the bag, untied the neck. 'By Christ. For a slave girl? And you are French. You ...'

  'My purpose is my own.' Corbeau regained the bag, re-tied the cord. 'Is she here or not?'

  Mulder stood up. 'Oh, she is here. Annie, summon the girls. Fetch Gislane. Quickly now.' He went into the house, and Corbeau followed, to pause as his head brushed a drooping palm leaf which had detached itself from the prevailing thatch of the low roof. But now he could see in the gloom; there was no furniture save hammocks and an old scarred table, and the floorboards creaked with age and rot as they walked. But there were a dozen women summoned by the stroke of the gong delivered by Annie. And all of them, of varying in shades from black to yellow, were young, and naked, and afraid. They entered the room, silently, and dropped to their knees, hands clasped in front of their breasts as if in supplication.

  Mulder grinned. 'You'll see I have no lack of company, monsieur. Gislane is but my favourite. Come here, girl.' He snapped his fingers, and a woman rose from the darkness at the very back of the room. 'Gislane Nicholson.'

  She was first of all a shadow, but an incredibly white one, which but slowly took on substance as she approached. He reminded himself that she was twenty-three, and that for nearly four years she had been the object of the worst that man, or woman, could devise in personal mistreatment, and then discovered that there was no reason to find excuses for her. Her flesh was as smooth as any man could wish, and she moved as gracefully as a princess. Her breasts were heavier than he had imagined, and tended slightly to sag, but for this reason were the more compelling; they underlined her maturity, and he had not come here to find innocence. But it was a body, however alluring, which could no doubt be duplicated easily enough; even Georgiana would look like this after a year or two of married life. It was her face which kept him silently watching as she came closer, because here was beauty, unaided by personality, the intense eyes and the flickering tongue, which for instance made Suzanne Huys so attractive. Gislane Nicholson's face was utterly closed, and yet utterly beautiful, in its every feature. And her eyes, wid
e and seeming to return his stare, yet looked almost asleep; he was there, as was her master, and they were white men, so to them she must submit, and submit, and submit, but she granted them no humanity, considered them as lifeless, if as impossible of rejection, as the heat which afflicted her senses or the rain which occasionally bounced off her skin. This he knew, immediately. And immediately too, he knew what a triumph it would be were he, or any man, able to bring those eyes to life.

  And only when she stood immediately in front of him did he realize that he had not previously noticed her hair, black and thick and glossy, tumbling past her shoulders to her thighs.

  'You'll leave us,' he said to Mulder. 'And take your harem.'

  'Eh? By Christ, monsieur, she is not yet yours.'

  'Nor will she ever be, if I do not speak with her alone.'

  Mulder hesitated, then nodded. 'Away with you,' he shouted. 'Have you no work? You'll obey Monsieur Corbeau, Gislane. In everything.'