HF - 03 - The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

  Once this work had been properly commenced, Kit could leave it to Passmore and attend to the factory. For the previous six weeks this had been in preparation, with grease and polish, to take away the rust and the faults which would have accumulated during the growing season. Now it had been put to work. The selected slaves, great strong young fellows, had mounted the treadmill, the signal had been given, the whips had seared their backs, and the huge wheel had started its ponderous turn, rumbling as it did so, setting into motion the rollers and the crushers by a spindle and gear-box, to spread the creaking grind across the morning.

  Then it had been time to light the fires. Special fuel had been stored for this purpose over the previous weeks, dried wood and straw. By now the first of Passmore's cartloads were already rumbling down the track from the canefields, heaped with cut stalks, already turning from green to yellow, still showing the scorch marks from the fire; the casualties, despatched from the battlefield, where the dreadful work of execution went on and on and on.

  The carts were drawn by mules bred especially for this purpose, up to the raised ground behind the factory, where the giant shutes awaited. Here also there waited another regiment of slaves, controlled and marshalled by Allingham, the second overseer, and armed with spades and pitchforks. These dug into the cane stalks and tumbled them down the shute, smoothed to a treacherous perfection, into the first of the rollers, this one a system of interlocking iron teeth, which seized the cane and crackled it into firewood. This dreadful sound rose even above the whine of the treadmill and the gears, while every so often a stalk escaped, to fall over the side and arrest the process with an almost human scream of tortured metal. To discourage this were four picked hands, for time was not to be lost repairing machinery during grinding. Here was a dangerous job, and Kit could still remember, at his first grinding, the truly human scream which had followed the disappearance of old Charles Arthur's hand and forearm, his fingers caught by the ceaselessly rolling drums.

  That poor fellow had died from loss of blood and shock. But then, would he not have been disposed of as useless, anyway?

  And soon forgotten, as the mangled cane was thrown out the far side, on to another shute, being forced through another set of rollers, these no more than drums, touching each other as they rotated, which seized the shattered stalks and compressed them, causing the first drops of the precious white liquid which would eventually be sugar to drip into the gutters beneath.

  But still the cane's ordeal was unfinished, for there was yet another shute, and yet a third set of rollers to be negotiated, these so close and fine that their squealing creak against each other dominated all other sounds inside the factory. Here the last of the juice was squeezed free, and the stalks were left no more than wisps of useless wood.

  Yet not so useless that they could still not be used. A sugar plantation produced its own fuel, its own energy, wherever possible. Beneath the last of the rollers was an immense pit, into which the stalks fell. But here again was a platoon of slaves with pitchforks and spades, for off the side of the pit there led a single channel, to the fires, and in this gully there were carts and sweating labourers. The stalks were loaded on to the carts, and carried along this surely accurate replica of hell to the great furnaces, and there consumed, for once the fires were started they would feed on anything combustible, even still-damp fibres.

  This truly was the end of their journey, until they were belched forth to darken the sky as black smoke. But the juice had only just begun its travels. The gutters from beneath the rollers and crushers ran down to the vats, huge iron tubs set exactly over the never cooling furnaces beneath. Here the liquid bubbled and leapt, a witch's brew, constantly being combed through with nets at the end of long sticks held by the factory hands. Beyond were more gutters, more cauldrons, more furnaces, and not until Reed, the factory overseer, was satisfied was the cane juice allowed to flow off into the cooling vats. These were also set over a pit, and these had perforated bottoms. For as the liquid cooled, while the precious crystals would cling to the sides of the vats, the still molten molasses would slip through the sieves and into the fresh vats waiting beneath.

  The manufacture, storage, and bunging of the hogsheads was a separate industry in itself, employing another horde of slaves under the supervision of Webster, the carpenter. And always there were the book-keepers, commanded by their head, Burn, a dapper little fellow who wore spectacles, and was never to be discovered without a note pad in one hand and a pencil in the other, listing, evaluating, checking.

  Nor was even the complete hogshead the end of the process, for the molasses in turn were drawn off down yet other gutters to yet other vats, and these were kept simmering, while the additives were carefully measured, for Green Grove, like every sugar plantation, manufactured its own rum. Here waited the chemist, Norton, a happy fellow who had to spend most of his day tasting the slowly fermenting liquid; there was more red in his nose than ever came from the sun.

  But perhaps Norton was symptomatic of the whole, because, remarkably, grinding was a happy time. There was not a soul on the plantation, from Kit himself down to the smallest Negro boy or girl able to drag at the bagasse, who did not work harder in this month than throughout the rest of the year taken together. And yet, the change from the unending field labour, the making and mending of roads, the back-breaking weeding, the repairs to houses, was itself pleasant, and during the grinding season there was no daily punishment parade. The whips cracked ceaselessly, and the men and women worked until they dropped, but they knew better than to attempt any insubordination or obvious slackness, for the ships were coming, and would be in St John's on the appointed days to load, and the life of a slave, often valuable enough as part of the estate's assets, became trivial if set against any damage to the crop.

  From the smallest, to Kit himself. He stood by the vats, gazing at the bubbling liquid, while the heat from the fires rose around him. Surely, when he went to hell, because planters no less than buccaneers must be destined for hell and he was now astride both professions, he would find it positively cool. And scarcely less demoniac. He would only hope that he found it no less exciting.

  He found all of planting exciting. He wondered if, like Morgan, his people had really been farmers before politics and economics had driven them across the sea. The Warners had certainly farmed. So perhaps much of his happiness came from the obvious delight he could see on Marguerite's face, in her entire demeanour, as she watched the crop grow, as she inspected every little ratoon, the name given to the shoots cut from the older plants, which were in turn replanted to provide each successive crop. And then, the climax of grinding.

  He watched her coming towards him. Was this the magnificent creature he had first loved on the hill in Tortuga, and in whose slender white arms he renewed his love night after night? She wore only a muslin gown, without a petticoat or a stocking, with no more than a single chemise beneath, and this was more sweat-soaked than the gown itself. They folded themselves together, and wrapped themselves around her legs and her thighs and her shoulders, clung to her breasts, left her all but naked to every gaze. Her hair was invisible, piled on top of her head and lost to sight beneath a bandanna which was itself concealed beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat. Yet sweat dribbled out from the kerchief, and furrowed its way down those smooth cheeks to hang from that pointed, determined chin.

  Her fingers were black with dust and grease and dirt. Dirt smudged her face, streaked the skirt of her gown. But she laughed as she approached, and signalled George Frederick forward; if the house servants played no part in the actual grinding, it was their duty to care for their master and mistress. George Frederick carried the inevitable tray of iced sangaree, from which Marguerite now took two glasses, one to hand to her husband. 'The thousand,' she shouted above the grind of the machinery. 'Burn has totalled a thousand hogsheads. By Christ, but we have never reached the thousand before.'

  He drank, and felt the chill liquid tracing every vein in his body. 'I
promised.'

  'And you deliver what you promise.' She stood close to him, put both arms around his naked waist, as filled with sweat as her own, and hugged him. 'Aye. That you do. Did I not love you, Kit. Did I hate the very ground on which you walk, then I would still be happy that I chose you to manage my estate. Every year, without exception, the crop has grown, and grown, and grown. But a thousand ... if we add every plantation on this island together, I'd wager we shall not find that total. When Papa hears of this, he will go green.' Once again she hugged him. 'Come to the house. We shall celebrate.'

  Which they did, often enough. It was part of their life, to find causes for celebration. Often enough, their mutual happiness embraced the entire island. For Marguerite, having spent four years as the wife of a man old enough to be her father, and another year as a widow, considered that she had very nearly been cheated of her true deserts as a woman. Now Green Grove Great House was often enough a blaze of light and laughter and music, and dancing and love-making and scandal, over which she presided with the conscious grace of being superior to everything she overlooked. And with an indulgent eye, as well, to every young woman, such as Mary Chester, a perennial flirt, who sidled up to Kit and invited his arms around her waist. There was no waist around which his arm would stay, save hers. She was the victor. She had claimed her prize on the first morning of their married life, and renewed her claim, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

  As a woman, she gratified his every whim, no doubt because whatever he desired appealed to her also. She revelled in his strength and his vitality and his enthusiasm; she loved to indulge in all aspects of her personality. Naked she would sit on his shoulders and make him carry her round their bedroom, her strong slender legs clinging to his neck. Daintily she would lie on his chest, her own body but a whisper against his own muscular frame, and squirm him into endless sexual endeavour. Arrogantly would she hold his arm as they descended the great staircase to greet their guests, or as they rode through St John's to a levee at the Ice House, or an auction at the slave warehouse. And primly would she sit at his side as he delivered judgement or offered an opinion. No one, least of all Kit, could doubt that she was Marguerite Hilton, the Lady of Green Grove. But beyond that, no one could doubt that she was, and content to be, Mrs Christopher Hilton.

  And devotedly did she accept her pregnancies, and their results. Anthony had all but cost her life, or so it had seemed at the time, although Haines the surgeon had been content even when her cries had filled the house, and Kit, pacing the verandah, had gazed down on the anxious slaves, who without command from their master, had yet assembled at the foot of the hill.

  Praying for her survival? Or praying for her death?

  But Anthony was a fine, strapping boy, at eight able to fire a pistol and wield a sword to some effect.

  'Is that your determination, then?' Marguerite chided. 'To make him into a soldier?' But always her criticism was softened by that unforgettable smile. 'I agree, dearest. A man should be a soldier first, and whatever else he chooses, after."

  And what of a woman, he wondered. But Rebecca was only four, separated from her brother by two miscarriages, each as disturbing as a full birth, each calculated to cause ill temper and disgust, and each, happily, forgotten with the passage of time.

  So then, once he had dreamed, and perhaps, without intending or understanding, had even prayed. Once he had thought himself the most miserable and corrupt of men, the most bestial. No doubt, he was still, but if that was the case, and he had sold his soul to the devil, then hell was a long time in coming to claim him, and the interval was sweeter than ever a man had known.

  Yet retribution was there, always waiting. It had already overtaken those of Morgan's men who had sought to comb the beaches of Port Royal, much as it had overtaken Port Royal itself; he could remember the horror with which they had heard of the earthquake which had sent that city of sin to the bottom of the harbour he had known so well, and carried thousands of men and women with it. Jackman and Relain, and Morgan's corpse? Poor old Harry Morgan, who had died of cirrhosis of the liver almost as soon as he had taken up his post as Deputy Governor of Jamaica. Who could tell. It had not caught Tom Modyford, who had remained in England as a landed gentleman. And it had not yet caught Kit Hilton.

  So, what do you think, Kit Hilton, he wondered, as he watched the smoke columns rise into the sky. Of the slaves, miserable fools, who would attempt to run away? Some of them. But then, he could pass on from those unhappy souls to the laughter of the couples in the mating compound, to the inexhaustible fascination of watching the sinuous black bodies coupling and sliding, one against the other. So reality returned in the walks through the sick house, in the occasional ghastly journey across the water. Never had he landed there; it was enough to back oars in the shallows and thrust the unfortunate black over the side. Always were the lepers gathered to wait for the new arrival. Strange people. He suspected that his own resort, on learning that he must literally rot before his own eyes, would be a spasm of madness followed by suicide. Yet these offered no sound, no signs of resentment and no attempts at violence. So perhaps the brain rotted first.

  And always there was the escape, back up the hill, horse flogged at a furious gallop, for he rode as well as Marguerite now, to return to her arms, to the ice-cold glasses of sangaree, to the sound of her fingers running softly over the keys of her spinet, the lilt of her voice, for she sang quite beautifully, to the laughter of the children.

  And where was the young man who had stormed up to Goodwood to challenge a governor, or who had boasted his ideals to Agrippa and Lilian Christianssen? Why, he had grown older, and there was all that need be said. He played cards with the Deputy Governor now, and they did no more than smile at each other's shortcomings, while again Marguerite played and Celestine Warner smiled at them all, and looked happier than for years. He rode into town with head held high, and should a face peer out at him from the warehouse, then he would raise his hat, were it a woman, and smile courteously enough should it be a man.

  What would he do should the man come out of the doorway of the warehouse and greet him? Why, he would rein his horse and pass the time of day, pleasantly enough, congratulate him on his marriage—to which the Hiltons had been invited but which Marguerite had decided they should not attend—and ask after his family. A friend was a friend, no matter the colour of his skin. He had simply realized that the world went on its way, regardless of man's efforts, and that a man must do the best he can while the universe, and the affairs of the universe, went spinning around him. Slavery was a fact of life, and slavery operated on fear. All in all, as he had early discovered, there was less fear on Green Grove than on any other plantation in the island. In the Leewards. And going on Agrippa's own experience, in the entire Caribee Isles. A man who would attempt to tilt against the world, to stop it in its headlong career, or even to alter the course of that career, was a fool, or at the best an immature boy.

  So then, was Agrippa a fool? And Lilian Christianssen? For there was the reason they seldom were at the windows to wave at him, and would never dream of speaking with him on the street. They counted him one of the plantocracy, and one could not be a planter and a Quaker at the same time. Not in this world.

  But were they, in their goodness and the purity of their ambitions, doing any more for the slaves than he was? He could take much of the credit for Green Grove's peace on his own shoulders. His overseers feared him as much as they feared their mistress, and for that reason were they less inclined to give rein to their own desires and their own rages. And the blacks could at least expect fairness; savage fairness should they transgress the laws laid down by their mistress and supported by the right arm of her husband, but none the less, the law applied to all. The transportation of Martha Louise across the water had proved that to them.

  And how long ago was that? Nine years? Surely she was dead, by now. But none knew, who lived and who died across the water. And none dare ask.<
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  Oh, indeed, the Hiltons had much to celebrate. But the best of all celebrations were those they enjoyed by themselves, with Anthony marshalling his tin soldiers in the centre of the drawing-room floor, with Henry Morgan always to the fore, but not yet the tallest and best set up of the models; that place was reserved for Captain Hilton, marching at his commander's elbow, while the rest followed behind, eternally and interminably assaulting the hassock which was Panama City. Amongst these others was Jean DuCasse. His was not an unfamiliar name, in the Leewards, as England and France had found a more fruitful war was to be fought between themselves. Now he commanded a buccaneer fleet himself, which only last year had ravaged the north coast of Jamaica. A successful raid, carried out with a fleet of five ships. Perhaps in time he would equal the fame of Morgan himself.

  Kit wondered if Jean, careering around the Caribbean at the head of his veteran freebooters, ever spared a thought for the successful Antiguan planter, Kit Hilton, the man who had been with him at Panama?

  On the far side of the room Rebecca played with her dolls, a strange collection, some home-made, bits of wool on the ends of sticks which represented arms and legs and bodies, others imported from Holland via the enormous warehouses of St Eustatius. She seldom joined her brother in his games; they fought whenever they intended to do anything together. But they were both happy and healthy children.