HF - 03 - The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

  'You'd go amongst them now?' Kit asked in wonderment.

  'Should I not, my darling?' Her voice was low. 'It is my, our, daily duty, Kit. For even plantation owners have duties, alas.'

  Kit gazed at the slaves as they approached. Behind him the flames were roaring and the man was silent, and dead. The spectacle was over. The overseers were moving forward as well, barking their orders, and the foremen were taking their whips from their belts. The Negroes were falling into gangs with well disciplined obedience, but Kit saw to his horror that each man, and each woman, was armed with a sharp knife, almost a small sword, although it had no point and no guard to the haft. And now Marguerite was amongst them, and they stood to each side of her horse, touching their foreheads in eager humility, and averting their eyes.

  He drew level as they passed the last of the throng and gained the beaten earth of the compound itself. 'They could have torn us to pieces in seconds.'

  'I explained that to you, but a minute ago,' she said. 'Because we are we, and they are they, it will never happen. They have brains, but only to feel, and fear, not to reason. Not to aspire to anything more than the food I allow them twice a day, and the mug of rum I allow them once a week.' She reined, and George Frederick stooped to allow her to place her boot in the centre of his back as she dismounted. Kit joined her, pulling the kerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his neck and brow. Another foreman was waiting, an older man, this time, with grizzled hair and bent shoulders, and they were to inspect something Kit had not noticed before, a row of six frames set beyond the houses, placed in the ground like inverted hoops, although with square edges. From the crossbar of each of the frames there hung a naked body, and to his dismay he saw that only four of them were men; the other two were women.

  But disgust had not yet come upon him. It grew as he approached, and saw the marks on their backs, great gashes in the black skin, crimson trenches in which the blood had coagulated.

  He stared at Marguerite, and his mouth slowly opened in utter horror. Her expression had not changed; not even the faintest wrinkle marked her lip or her forehead. But she slowly pulled the glove from her right hand, and with a bared forefinger actually touched the wounds on the back of the first man. 'Enough,' she said. 'Salt.' She passed on to the next, again touching and this time even stroking the serrated flesh. 'What of him?'

  'He does curse, mistress,' the foreman said. 'He does kick and curse you.'

  'Another two dozen,' she said. The body quivered, but the man did not speak.

  'What crimes have they committed?' Kit asked.

  'Insubordination in the fields.' Marguerite was stroking the back of the third man, and commanding him to be cut down.

  Kit gazed at the blood on her hands. 'Are you not afraid?' 'Of what?' She had reached the women. 'Of... of disease?'

  Marguerite smiled. 'It is good blood, Kit. Were they diseased, they would not have been in the fields in the first place. It is also our responsibility to care for that. Take these girls down,' she told the foreman. 'No doubt they will behave in the future.'

  'Yes, mistress.' He held out a towel, and a woman waited with a basin of water. Marguerite washed and dried her hands, and then led the entourage, like an inspecting queen, it occurred to Kit, towards another hut, larger than any of the others and set a little apart from them. But then, he realized, she is a queen, here on Green Grove, and I am no more than her consort.

  The door was being opened, and they stepped into the gloom. A noisome gloom, for although the interior of the house was carefully washed with lime, and quite recently, and there was clean straw on the floor, yet the smell of human sweat and human excrement could not be excluded.

  'Is this, then, your prison house?' Kit muttered.

  'We do not have a prison house,' Marguerite said. 'The lash is sufficient for disciplinary purposes.'

  Now that his eyes were accustomed to the sudden end of the brilliant sunshine he could see that there were perhaps a score of people in here, men and women, lying on pallets on the straw, most trying to raise themselves on their elbows as their mistress came in, but several unable even to muster that much strength.

  One of the men following Marguerite ran forward with a three-cornered stool, and placed it beside the first of the sick men. Marguerite sat down, and leaned forward, over the trembling Negro, a young fellow, whose eyes rolled. 'How is it today, Peter Thomas?' she asked, her voice like a soothing zephyr of breeze.

  Peter Thomas's eyes rolled some more. 'Oh, man, mistress, it itch itch too bad.'

  'But that is good, Peter Thomas,' she said. 'It shows you are fighting the poison. I will look at it.'

  The foreman hastily knelt beside the sick man and pulled the cover away from his leg, which was swollen to twice its size. Peter Thomas screamed as the foreman seized the leg itself, and raised it, for Marguerite to feel and prod the swelling sore which was dominating the misshapen calf.

  'What happened to him?' Kit whispered.

  'He was stung by some insect in the field. I have no idea what it was. But of course he scratched the puncture, and inflammation set in.' She sighed. 'They are a careless people, of their healths no less than of my profit. But this will heal. It is good, Peter Thomas,' she said. 'You will soon be well. He may have a glass of rum, Henry William.'

  'Oh, yes, mistress,' the foreman said. 'He going like that. You hear what the mistress say, Peter Thomas? You ain't happy?'

  'I happy, mistress,' Peter Thomas muttered. 'I happy.'

  Marguerite stood up, walked on to the next patient, a woman who lay on her back, face drawn with pain.

  'Do you remember all of their names?' Kit asked.

  'I try to do so. I give them their titles myself. It is of course necessary to have two names for every one or we should soon run out. I keep a roster, of twenty-six names, from Arthur to Zebadiah, and another, from Alice to Zenobia, and merely couple two in strict rotation. This permits me to recall them with some ease, and I have not yet had to use a dead man's name. In fact, I have not yet reached Thomas as a prefix. Peter Thomas is one of my newest arrivals.'

  The stool was in place, and as she sat down the coverlet was removed. This time even Kit bent forward; the woman's thigh was enclosed between two boards, drawn tightly one in front and the other behind, and secured by rope bands which ran round the thigh itself and across the pelvis to constrict the body as much as possible.

  Marguerite was frowning as she leaned over the girl, and at the shriek of agony which drifted from the clenched lips at her touch.

  'It is not knitting,' she said.

  'No, mistress,' Henry William agreed. 'I ain't see how it going to do that.'

  Marguerite sighed, and stood up. 'A fall,' she explained to Kit. 'It really is very bad. She was a good worker.'

  'And can she not be so again?'

  'With a deformed thigh? No, I do not see that she can ever be put to useful employment again.' She was standing in the centre of the room now, Henry William attentive at her elbow. 'You'd best see to it, Henry William. This day.'

  Kit caught her arm as she would have moved on. 'You cannot mean to murder her?'

  Marguerite's head turned. 'I'd be obliged if you'd keep your voice down, my darling. These people are sick, and it would not be good for them to understand our measures. No, I am not going to murder her. I am going to put her to sleep. Believe me, she will not feel a thing.'

  'And you do not call that murder?'

  'For God's sake, Kit, how can one murder a slave? You will be speaking next of murdering horses, or cats, or dogs. Would you not shoot your horse were he to break his leg and become a useless encumbrance? And you would shoot it. Hannah Jane will never know what is happening to her.' She turned away, and was already seating herself beside the next patient, when she discovered Kit was no longer at her side. He was in fact pushing the blacks aside as he made for the door.

  'Enough,' Marguerite said, standing up again. 'I will see to the rest later.'

  The blacks part
ed, and she reached Kit as he himself gained the open air.

  'That must not happen again,' she said. 'You have a duty, to me no less than to the rest of the planting community on Antigua, never to show weakness in front of the blacks. Nor had I supposed you to possess such weakness.'

  'No doubt I have similarly misjudged,' he muttered.

  She gazed at him, her brows brought together in a frown. 'I doubt that,' she said. 'I doubt that, Kit. Come, we shall leave the sick house and attend to something more congenial.' She seized his hand. For a moment he almost shrank away from her as he recollected that but a few seconds earlier that hand had been covered with blood. But it had been washed, and was cool to the touch. And now she was leading him on, to yet another compound, set at the back of the slave village proper, and reached by a high gate, which was thrown wide as the master and mistress approached. 'Here you will find nothing but happiness, I do assure you, Kit. Here the blacks are kept at stud.'

  This time the entourage stopped at the fence, and Marguerite entered by herself, hesitating just long enough to make sure Kit was still at her shoulder. Henry William had rung the bell which waited by the gate, and from the huts there now came a score of young people, equally divided as to sex, naked and apparently delighted to see their mistress. As she seemed delighted to see them, and moved around them, apparently in no way embarrassed by their animated sexuality, speaking with them, laughing and smiling and praising, now and then stopping for a longer chat as if discussing a problem.

  Kit remained on the outside of the gathering, watching his wife, watching the naked female flanks and the thrusting male penises, feeling the blood pumping into his own arteries. This was the first morning of his married life. The first morning of an eternity of mornings, which would be spent awakening in those magnificent arms and against that magnificent body, but knowing too that within an hour he would be out here, with the punished and the sick and the productive.

  'Are they not splendid?' Marguerite demanded, returning to him. 'They will bear magnificent children.'

  'My mind is in a whirl,' he said. 'You control their mating?'

  'Of course. Supposing they are of child-bearing age.' She led him back out of the compound. 'For where would be the purpose in investing so much money in these creatures and then allowing them to bed at will, with the inevitable consequences of bearing unhealthy and certainly unwanted children? Ah, our drink.'

  George Frederick had returned from the house, bearing a tray on which there waited a jug of sangaree and two glasses. These he now filled, and Marguerite raised her own. 'This will sustain us until it is breakfast time. We will do the animal farm and the nearer canefields this morning, and ride aback proper tomorrow.'

  Their horses had also been brought forward, and now George Frederick handed his tray to Henry William so that he could assist his mistress up. Kit mounted in turn, and Marguerite smiled at the assembly. 'I am satisfied,' she said.

  They clapped their pleasure and parted to allow the two horses out of the compound. The dogs padded at their heels. Marguerite glanced at Kit. 'But I doubt you are.'

  'As I said, madam, I am overwhelmed. I have lived in a world of unbounded passion all my life. Here I find unbounded order, and control. I wonder how you manage events so to your satisfaction.'

  'It but takes thought,' she said. 'Certain it is that a woman will conceive on at least one day in every twenty-eight, even if we cannot be sure which day is the true one. So I select ten of my girls, every month, after careful inspection, and send them to that compound, along with ten young men ...'

  'Also carefully selected, no doubt,' Kit said.

  She chose to ignore his sarcasm. 'Of course, my darling. The owner of a plantation must be all things, to all things. And then they are commanded to have intercourse on every day of the month. It very seldom fails.'

  'Would it not be simpler just to let your slaves couple as they choose? As I am certain they do in any event.'

  She drew rein and checked her mount where the path came to a cross. 'They do not,' she said. 'I will cut the stem from any man who takes a child-bearing woman wantonly on Green Grove. I cannot afford more than a strictly limited number of pregnancies. True enough that these girls are uncommonly hardy, and will work until the babe drops between their legs, but I cannot risk that either. I am laying down a stock for the future, Kit. For our children. Slaves are essential, for the operating of the plantation. But they are also uncommonly expensive. And will grow more so. Now, if we can produce our own, generation after generation, why, our children and our grandchildren will depend upon nothing but themselves. But the stock, must be strong, and obedient, and healthy. This is our aim.'

  'And you will pretend that there is no fornication on this plantation save as instructed by you?'

  'Once a woman is past child-bearing, she may couple to her heart's content, and any young man may put her to good use. Girls who may bear children know well that should they do so without my permission they will be punished. And severely, I do warrant that.' But her frown was back as she studied him. 'I wonder if we have not worked enough for the first day of our married life. I think we shall leave the fields and return to the house.'

  She urged her horse up to the right-hand path, and Kit rode behind her. Christ, how confused he was. How uncertain.

  'And is what you have shown me today common practice on all the plantations in Antigua?'

  'By no means. Nor was it common practice here, until four years ago. For the most, my fellow planters allow the blacks, in whom they have invested nearly their entire fortunes, to go their own way, live and die and fornicate and drop their children with as little interference from their masters as possible. Truly are they a thoughtless society. But then, is there a society which is not?'

  'And for this they speak of you in whispers.'

  Once again she reined her horse. 'For this they feel that I am beyond their understanding. Were I a man, perhaps, with ideas to put into practice, they would be less aghast. That I am a woman, and young, and even beautiful, would you not say, but yet will go amongst my blacks, and feel their wounds, examine a male weapon, deliver, on occasion, a babe myself and cut the cord myself, this they feel is indecent, unbecoming. Would you not say they are fools? I do the same when one of my mares is in foal.'

  Kit stared at her.

  'Aye,' she said. 'You are, after all, no more than a man, Kit.

  But you are my man. We'll not forget that, either of us. Now race me to the house.'

  Her whip cracked on the rump of her horse, and it started off at a gallop. Dust flew from its heels, and her hair scattered behind her as she charged up the hill. Kit followed more slowly, keeping his hand tight on the reins. He doubted his ability to keep his seat at that speed, and besides, it was an opportunity to think. As if he dared, to think. Marguerite Warner, Marguerite Templeton, Marguerite Hilton. She was everything he had ever wanted. She was everything any man could ever have wanted. She was a walking dream, in her smell, in her confidence, in her very being.

  So then, had he supposed he was marrying a doll? A creature without thought or judgement of her own? He had never supposed that. He had wanted her as much for her spirit and her obvious intelligence as for the promise of her thighs. So then, that spirit and that intelligence was now his, had he the spirit and the intelligence to master them. But to master them he must first of all master the world of which she had made herself the mistress.

  So she was universally ... what was the word he sought? He could not be sure. Abhorred by her fellows? Hardly. They had come quickly enough to attend her wedding. Perhaps feared would be a more accurate description of the emotion she inspired, in the planters no less than in her blacks. She was feared for her ruthless certainty. She evaluated her situation, decided what must be done, and then did it, without a glance to left or to right, without hesitation, without a thought as to the possible hardship she might be inflicting.

  And he was taking her to task for that? Had she not acted always
upon such a principle, and with such determination, he would not now be riding up to the Great House, the master of Green Grove. She had defied family and convention and society in taking a buccaneer as her husband. Because she had chosen to do so. Only a fool would question her for that.

  But only a coward would not. Because why had she made that decision? There was a disturbing thought. It could not alone be centred upon his virility, for the decision had been taken long before she had accompanied him to bed.

  He was at the house, and George Frederick was hurrying down to take his bridle as he dismounted. Marguerite's horse already waited at the steps. 'The mistress says you must go to her, Captin,' George Frederick looked embarrassed. 'If you please.'

  ' 'Tis a lecture you'll be receiving, Mr Hilton,' Dutton remarked. The overseer had come round the corner of the house unobserved. 'For losing your phlegm at the execution.'

  Kit stared at him. 'Aye,' he said. 'I have something to learn about the planting business.'

  Dutton grinned. 'You'll not find a better teacher than Mrs Templeton. Ah, I must apologize, sir. I had meant Mistress Hilton, had I not?'