HF - 03 - The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

  He wanted no more. He had his son and heir, to carry on the Hilton name, to inherit this magnificent house and these magnificent fields, and he had his daughter, to take after her mother, he hoped and prayed, and to be married, well—no doubt, an occasion to look forward to in the distant future. But another child, even another pregnancy, would rob him yet again of the comfort of that superb body which had so strangely come into his possession. For on these private celebratory occasions the group was completed by Marguerite and himself. They shared the settee, and watched their children. She wore her undressing-robe and lay back in his arms, while their glasses of sangaree stood waiting at their elbows.

  Her head rested on his shoulder, and every time he breathed he inhaled her perfume. She would employ no wet nurse, and had brought both her children to their first birthdays without saving herself. Yet did her breasts remain swollen to his touch, and delicious to feel. Nor was there more than the slightest stretch marks on her belly, the slightest thickening of her thighs. And she was past thirty. He had had the very best of her. But surely there was so much more to come.

  He squeezed, gently, and she nuzzled him with the back of her head. 'And are you, now, content, dearest?' she asked.

  'Should a man ever be content?'

  'No. Except on the day of his death, and few reach that climax with contentment in their hearts. But few men have accomplished so much as you, in these short years you have lived.'

  'Flatterer.'

  'My business is with facts. How else do I operate my plantation without being robbed by my own book-keepers? Shall I itemize your prowess? For let us not suppose that you began your career with even the normal drawbacks to which your name and fortune might have reduced you. In addition, you were left an orphan with no more than the clothes on your back and the brains in your head and the courage in your heart. Yet did you survive and prosper, command a squad of musketeers before Panama, and when that venture turned out badly, yet did you once again pick yourself up from the floor.'

  'Not so simply,' he smiled. 'I was dragged from the floor, by our friend Daniel.'

  'No friend, Kit,' she said, twisting her body to slide right down the settee beside him, so that her head lay on his lap and she could face him. 'Not that demon, believe me. He may be regarded as an instrument of fate, as an evil instrument, surely, but here accomplishing only good. And so you sought me once again. When I had almost despaired of waiting. And thus you came, and saw, and conquered. But even then were you not content. Now you have raised the efficiency and the accomplishments of my plantation. Now you bestride the narrow world of planting like the colossus you are. You have no more fields to conquer, where sugar-cane is concerned. Nor have you anything left to accomplish as regards my bed. You have made me the happiest woman in the world, and the most content. You have brought from my belly two splendidly healthy children. You thrill me with desire and with love and with admiration whenever I look upon you.'

  'But yet you are not satisfied,' he suggested.

  She frowned at him. 'What makes you say that?'

  'Your tone, sweetheart. The suggestions that you are leaving something unsaid.'

  She sat up, violently, her hair flying and her undressing-robe trembling. She seized his hands. 'Yes. Yes, my darling.

  Now I would have you take your talents and your courage to a wider field.' 'You are seeking another plantation?'

  'Sometimes I wonder if you are deliberately dense, or if you merely seek to mock me. Listen to me, Kit. You are master of the richest plantation in this island. Nay, in the entire Leewards. Yet you have no say in the management of the island which protects you and from which you take your wealth. There is a dangerous imbalance. Listen to me,' she insisted as he would have kissed her.' 'Tis not of you I speak. 'Tis of Green Grove itself. It is twenty years since the master of Green Grove took his seat in the Assembly. Poor Harry had no interest in politics, and besides, twenty years ago things were different. Harry, and my father, and his brother, made their way here despite politics, not because of them. They used to smile, in the old days, at the King's Commissioners, and agree with what they said, and then ignore them. Then when the King's head was cut off, and Ayscue's Commonwealth fleet ranged these waters, there was no choice but to smile once again, and rely on the fact that three thousand miles is a deal of salt water. Then, with the restoration, when the new King also sought to impose his iniquitous taxes on us, to lease us yet again to his court favourites, we were accomplished in the arts of dissembling.'

  'I had heard that the new lessor, Willoughby, came himself to manage his new estates.'

  Marguerite smiled. 'Pie did, and found us rather more than he had bargained for. He settled in Barbados, and soon took to buccaneering, and disappeared at sea. No doubt he was drowned, although it suits certain parties to pretend that he may yet languish in a Spanish prison. Certain it is that he accomplished nothing for either good or evil in these parts. But then, then, Kit, politics began to hit home. The four and a half per cent tax, why, 'tis nothing while we prosper. Yet it is an iniquitous example of blatant despotism. The quarrel between King James and his people. That were bad enough. But now this infernal Dutchman has got us involved in a seemingly endless war with the French ...'

  'When I first came here, your uncle told me that our only friends in these islands were the Dutch.'

  'Oh, indeed, the Dutch of Eustatius. Believe me, Kit, they abhor our forcible involvement in European politics no less than we. Our business is to make what profit we may. God knows in accomplishing that we receive no assistance from Europe. But they are quick enough to get their fingers into our money. And if their squabbling should mean that our plantations are burned and our profit lost, be sure that they will still want their taxes.' She paused for breath, her face flushed.

  Now at last he could manage his kiss. 'It seems to me that it is you they require in the House.'

  'Aye,' she said. 'I'd sing them a song. But, being men, they have turned the Assembly into a men's club, to which no woman can be admitted. There you have the saga of Green Grove. Harry would take no part in politics during the last ten years of his life, and I was barred by my sex. While these last ten years you have been concentrating, rightly, my love, believe me when I say that, on the plantation and on me. I would have you neglect neither of us. But it behoves me to spread your protecting, your encouraging, your advancing wings over a larger canvas.'

  'The Assembly?' he wondered.

  'The scat is yours, by right, Kit. Every owner of a plantation has a seat, by right.'

  'I know that, sweetheart. My imagination was but failing at the thought of Kit Hilton, buccaneer and matelot, robber and rapist, pretending to Parliament.'

  'Oh, what rubbish you do talk,' she cried, and slipped a stage further, to her knees beside the couch, while Anthony and Rebecca abandoned their games to stare at their parents with wide eyes. 'Today you are only Kit Hilton, planter and gentleman. The past is the past. Only the present and the future is of importance. Say you will go, Kit. The House always sits as soon as the ships are loaded with the crop, and we all have more time to ourselves. Say you will go, my darling.'

  Kit poured them each a glass of sangaree. 'Why,' he said, 'perhaps it is a secret ambition of mine, to strut a wider stage. Let us drink to the political career of Captain Christopher Hilton.'

  **

  The Negro majordomo, resplendent in dark blue coat over white breeches and white stockings, banged the floor four times with his staff, and the room fell silent. 'Captain Christopher Hilton.'

  Kit stepped through the doorway, and stopped, and took a long breath. It had been Marguerite's idea that he should arrive late. 'For I know you too well,' she had said. 'Left to yourself you will sneak into the Assembly like a thief in the night. You must arrive as the master of Green Grove.'

  He was simply enough dressed, in a plain blue broadcloth coat over buckskin trousers, and he wore no wig. He carried his black tricorne under his left arm, and was unarmed, apparentl
y. But the right-hand pocket of his coat sagged beneath the weight of a loaded pistol. He was well enough aware that he had enemies, merely by being what he was, and he doubted that the next time someone elected to murder him Agrippa would be standing by.

  And he had accomplished her desire. The ripple of whispering ran across the benches in front of him, uncomfortable looking things, but it was no part of the Assembly's plans to have its members falling asleep on a hot afternoon. Now the heads turned and the muttering commenced, while the speaker, John Trumbull of Plantation Paradise, peered at the newcomer. Nor was the disturbance confined to the chamber; in the gallery which looked down on it, and where the ladies were seated, together with such of the town merchants who conceived themselves interested in what was likely to happen to their island, there was a ripple of comment. There Marguerite had just taken her seat, and was smiling at him.

  "Welcome, Captain Hilton,' Mr Trumbull said. 'It is too long since we have had the pleasure of the company of the master of Green Grove. Pray take a seat.'

  'Here. Kit, here,' Edward Chester said, and Kit sat on the bench beside him.

  'You may continue, Mr Harding,' Trumbull said.

  The planter who had been speaking bowed towards the chair, and turned to face his fellows, and more particularly Kit. 'May I also," he said, grasping the lapels of his coat, 'welcome the master of Green Grove to our midst. And indeed, sir, he could not have come at a more appropriate time. For be sure that Green Grove's future welfare is at much at stake as are any of ours, in this crisis. I repeat gentlemen, this war is no affair of ours. This ... this Dutchman came to the throne by virtue of his being the husband of Queen Mary, God bless her soul. Thus the sanctity of the English crown, of the succession, of die divine right that governs the succession, was preserved. No doubt we feared then, and rightly, the consequences of this over-close identification of England with Europe. Traditionally have we stood apart from the endless quarrels which have destroyed all that is of value to that tortured continent. None of the devastation of the Thirty Years' War ever afflicted England's green and pleasant land. And no doubt the accession of Dutch William was necessary, to prevent the equal horrors of a religious conflict at home, which might in course of time have spread its destruction to these beautiful islands. But the Queen has now been dead these several years. That man has no legal or historical justification for remaining on the throne, for involving us further in his schemes.'

  'Was he not elected?' someone asked.

  'Bah,' Harding said. 'Kings are not elected, sir. We are not members of some savage tribe of antiquity. And even they preserved a proper sequence of events. How may a man be king, if the blood of kings does not run through his veins? If he has not been bred to it?'

  'Yet is William surely a ruling prince in his own right,' Kit suggested. 'And indeed, is he not a member of the English royal house in his own right?'

  Harding frowned at him. 'I was not aware, sir, that a knowledge of English domestic history was included in your many and dazzling accomplishments.'

  'Yet is my friend entirely correct,' Chester said. 'His Majesty's mother was the Princess Mary, daughter of King Charles the First. The Queen, God bless her memory, was his own first cousin.'

  'That may be so,' Harding declared. 'But I have not heard it expressed as a principle of succession that the crown should pass to cousins. No, no. King James had proved himself an unlucky monarch, and England must have a monarch, so Dutch William was installed, as the consort of Queen Mary ...'

  'Not so, sir,' interrupted another voice. 'They were jointly installed, as equal authority on the throne.'

  'Expedience, sir,' Harding shouted. 'Expedience. Then it was necessary, for the good of the realm. Now it is no longer necessary. But now we are fatally embroiled in a war with France.'

  'Fatally, sir?' Chester inquired.

  'Name me a Dutch victory, sir, in the last five years,' Harding demanded. 'This William prides himself upon extricating his armies, summer after summer, from the worst consequences of defeat. Yet are the defeats continual. But that, sir, is not the question we debate here today. England, Europe, are three thousand miles away. We are here, surrounded by perils enough, God knows. There is at this moment a French fleet rampaging through the Caribbean Sea. And it is not even a fleet of war. It is a fleet of buccaneers, commanded by the dreadful DuCasse. It will visit upon us the frightful calamities which Morgan was wont to inflict upon the Spaniards. We have all heard what happened in Jamaica. The graves were torn open and the very bodies of the dead violated. Common decency forbids me relating what happened to the living. Jamaica is not so very far from us here, and be sure, that when a French fleet appears off our shores, there will be no succour to be expected from St Kitts, divided as it is between the two nations. Why, I have heard that they already face each other along a line of entrenchments, but awaiting the first shot.'

  'They have done that often enough,' a voice said.

  'Aye, to their ruination,' Harding declared. 'But, sirs, the point I put to you now is this. We are, so we are told, part of England. We must pay taxes for the support of this abominable war, this abominable foreign government. We must transport our goods in English bottoms and none other. But, gentlemen, what do we receive in return?'

  'Admiral Benbow,' said a voice.

  'Benbow?' Harding demanded contemptuously. 'There is indeed the measure of King William's regard for us. We appeal for a fleet and an admiral, and he sends us a few worm-eaten second-raters commanded by a man who has risen from the lower deck. A common seaman, by God, intended to protect cane-planters. Why, tell me this? Where was Benbow when DuCasse landed in Jamaica?'

  'Out looking for the French,' someone said.

  'Aye,' Harding said. 'Port Royal is the home of the English fleet, yet when the French land, they are away, looking for the French. There is an example of Benbow's genius. Think not of him as your protection, gentlemen.'

  'There is the revenue frigate in St Kitts,' a voice said, and brought general laughter.

  'Aye, the revenue frigate,' Harding said. 'Did not a respected member of our own assembly show that tub the strength in his teeth, the speed of his heels, when occasion demanded?'

  There was a storm of applause, and Chester slapped Kit on the back. He frowned, and stared at the Speaker in confusion. He had not expected to be congratulated on his illegal activities in this body.

  'Indeed that is so,' Mr Trumbull said. 'And it occurs to me, gentlemen, that this would be a good opportunity for Captain Hilton to give us the benefit of his experience. I have heard it said that you know DuCasse, Captain. There you are a measure more knowledgeable than us all.'

  Kit stood up. 'Indeed, gentlemen,' he said. 'I have known Jean DuCasse since boyhood. We were matelots, in Hispaniola. We sailed with Morgan. Our paths only separated after the disbandment of that fleet. Jean elected to stay with the sea, I elected to take the path of planting and peace.'

  'Well said, indeed. Captain,' Chester said. 'But what of this man you know so well? Is he the brilliant admiral, the devil incarnate, we are led to believe?'

  'We were matelots,' Kit repeated. 'Without Jean DuCasse at my side, gentlemen, I would not have survived to be here today. He is a man of many parts, sirs. Give him a pistol and he will have your eye at twenty paces. Give him a cutlass and he will fight until you drop from weariness. Give him a ship, and yes, sirs, he will navigate her to safety. And give him a task, as he has now been given by his country, and gentlemen, he will carry it to a successful conclusion or die in the attempt. He is a born leader of men. That I can assure you without hesitation. But a devil incarnate? By no means. He is more of a gentleman than I would claim to be.'

  'Yet are the atrocities in Jamaica attested by eye witnesses,' Harding insisted.

  'No doubt the French were there assisted by their allies, the Caribs,' someone said.

  'Perhaps Captain Hilton can tell us of these also,' Mr Trumbull remarked.

  'To my knowledge, sir,' Kit said. 'I have
never yet set eyes on a Carib.'

  'Yet you have a Carib relative, at least by marriage,' a voice muttered.

  Instantly there was uproar, with Trumbull banging on the desk with his gavel, and gentlemen shouting at each other from opposite sides of the room, and being assisted in their cacophony by their wives from the gallery.

  'Order,' bellowed Mr Trumbull. 'Order. And gentlemen, I must ask you to be so good as to leave our Deputy Governor and his family from these debates. A man is not responsible for the excesses of his parents, unless he chooses to continue such excesses. Colonel Warner has shown us where his heart and his strength lies, time and again. It is here, in Antigua. He loathes and abhors the name of Indian Warner as much as any man present. I'd lay my life on that. Now I thank Captain Hilton for his exposition upon the talents and restraints of Monsieur DuCasse. I would but remind the gallant captain that a man can be considered only as good as the company he keeps, and in that regard we must anticipate in Monsieur DuCasse not only an enemy, but an enemy of a peculiarly vicious and bloodthirsty stamp. It behoves us, as responsible for the well-being and prosperity of our colony, to keep that thought ever-present in our minds, and to seek our best solution to the problem it presents. But emotions are running too high today for a continuance of this debate. The House is adjourned until tomorrow week.'