HF - 03 - The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

  'Hush, child,' Miss Johnson insisted. No doubt she was not as old as she looked and pretended, but she was older than either Kit or Marguerite, and was severely conscientious in her duties as governess; her father was the manager of the Ice House, and so she occupied a privileged position, by no means a planter's daughter, but by no means a poor white either; she approximated Lilian on the social scale, he supposed, although she would never have admitted to equality with a Quaker.

  'Aye,' he said. 'You'd best obey Miss Johnson, or she'll have her stick to you, I've no doubt. I'm back, Tony. I'm back.'

  He took off his hat, and went inside. Lilian, Lilian, Lilian. Then what was he doing here? There was an unanswerable question. Save that here was the fount of his strength, and if he was to put this behind him, then must he be sure what he was doing.

  If he must put this behind him. There was the opportunist speaking.

  Ellen Jane waited at the foot of the stairs. 'Is good to see you home, Captin,' she said. 'You going aback?'

  'No. I'll have a bath, I think. And a jug of sangaree.' He went upstairs, into the great bedroom. The bed was made, and the room might never have been touched by human hand. But Marguerite's perfume filled the air. Was he afraid of her? Of her reactions? Of her denunciations? Or was he more afraid of what he had done to Lilian? Of what he had caused Lilian to do to herself.

  He took off his coat, threw it across the bed, and sat beside it, staring through the window at the canefields. Now he was sober, and sufficiently tired to be dispirited. Thus true evaluation of the situation should wait until he had had a rest, and a chance to think. And before these, a hot bath. There was the solution.

  He stripped off his shirt, turned to face the still open door, and gazed at Marguerite, hatless, her coat open. 'Welcome home,' she said.

  He licked his lips. Christ, how nervous he was, on a second. 'Am I then, welcome.'

  'Silly darling,' she said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. 'I apologize for yesterday, without reservation. It was the one thing I was determined we should never do, air our differences in public. Be sure that on our next appearance in St John's I shall be the most contrite of wives.'

  'I disappointed you,' he said. 'You were entitled to anger.'

  'No wife is entitled to do anything but support her husband,' she insisted. 'I had forgot that.' She picked up his shirt, held it close for a moment, and then put it down again. 'Was your dinner satisfactory?' Her head half turned. 'I had George Frederick return to oversee the situation. I should also ask, was her bed soft?'

  Kit inhaled. There was never any possibility of subterfuge or dissembling, with Marguerite. In that she was superior to any of her sex.

  'I returned to speak with you of that.'

  'Indeed?' She sat on the bed, her hands on her lap. 'Your bath is ready. I will assist you, and you can say what you want, then.'

  'Will you want to listen? It must be mainly goodbye.'

  A slight frown, but gone in a moment. 'Is she then, so much softer than I? So much more willing than I? So much more passionate, than I?'

  He cursed the flush on his cheeks. 'None of those things, Meg.'

  'Is she, then, insistent that you declare your love, and make an honest woman of her to the world?' 'Of course not.'

  'Are you, then, bent on becoming a Quaker yourself?' 'Good lord, no. But ...'

  'But you fear my displeasure, my jealousy, will remain ever between us, like a bolster across our bed.'

  'I ..." he chewed his lip. 'No doubt you have said it.'

  'Then tell me this, my darling. Do you love your Danish mate?'

  He sighed. 'I wish I knew. God, I wish I knew. I have liked her, admired her, perhaps even have I wanted her, since the day we met, and this is a long while ago. I have felt guilty in my friendship with her, because I am not of her people, her faith, even her persuasion about life.'

  'And you have loved me since the day we met, which was well before you knew that creature existed. Or can a man's love only burn for a limited number of years?'

  'I told you,' he shouted. 'I do not know. I do not know anything, for certain, at this moment. Last night I was drunk. I got drunk because of our quarrel. And then there was Lilian ...'

  'And you are still the buccaneer,' she said. 'When drunk. Oh, do not suppose I am carping. That is why I love you. But when you are sober you are the man who would set the world to rights, and you imagine this particular world can be set right by leaving me to live with that girl.'

  'Can you suggest an alternative?'

  'To such folly? That would be hard. I told you, when first we lay together in this bed, Kit, when the time comes, you may lie on whom you please. Only do not love her as you love me. I do not believe that you do love this girl as you love me. If you must have her body, then do so. Build her a house, and set her up as your mistress. If I may offer a word of advice, do it down in Falmouth, where she will be removed from the immediate criticism of the Quakers or those who thoroughly dislike them. Visit her as you please. But be sure you come back to Green Grove when you are done. And be sure that I will be waiting for you.'

  'You would accept such a situation?'

  Marguerite smiled at him. 'You are my husband, my darling. Those children down there on the verandah are yours as much as mine. This plantation is held in our joint names, our joint strengths, for our joint purpose. I have had the best ten years of your life, and you have had the best ten years of mine. We shall come together again, God willing. I shall not throw you over for the first hole that attracts you, when drunk. And I shall expect you to possess, or to cultivate, a similar sense of

  perspective.' She got up, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek. 'Now come, and I will assist you in your bath.'

  So, then, there were two qualities of fear. Or apprehension. Or concern. This was a much more gentle emotion.

  It was a glorious morning, with the sun reaching out of the ocean to dominate a cloudless sky. His horse nibbled grass by the road, and to his left he could just make out the steeple of the St John's church. But on the beach to the south of the town and the harbour was he sufficiently alone. And here he waited. He had left the message with Agrippa, and Agrippa had looked at him for some seconds, his eyes sadly aware of the truth. And yet, what more could he do? He would have to be a man of steel to turn his back on this.

  And yet he could not doubt the evil he was setting in motion at this moment.

  For she was here, walking her horse along the side of the road, right knee high on the saddle, left toes firmly thrust into her stirrup. She wore her grey gown and her grey hat; seen from a distance she was no more than a woman. Only as she turned off the road to walk her mount down the beach did he recognize the glint of golden hair at her shoulder, the solemn face relaxing into a smile as she saw him.

  He stood beside the horse, held up his hands, and she slipped from the saddle. He caught her under the armpits, and as he set her on the sand, brought her close. How tall she was. He had not noticed before. To kiss her on the mouth he had to do no more than bend his head, whereas to kiss Marguerite on the mouth involved the movement of his own body.

  'I was not sure you'd come,' he said.

  He could feel her breath on his face. And now memory come flooding back like a wave from the sea. So it had been four days, and he had been drunk, when it had begun. He had spent the four days thinking of her, and he had been sober when it had finished. He remembered the silence, so unlike the murmurs and gasps of Marguerite, somewhat salutary in itself, but then he remembered too the strength in her arms as he would have released her, the power in her legs, as they wrapped themselves around him.

  'Could I do otherwise?' she whispered.

  And he remembered too, the blood on the sheet. For the second time in his life, he had taken a virgin, brutally and savagely. But this one had not sought an end to her own life.

  He kissed her on the mouth, and her arms went round his waist.

  'What of yo
ur parents?'

  'I explained that you had chosen to return to Green Grove early, and had taken the mule. They asked no questions.' 'And could they not see?'

  Gently she freed herself from his embrace, and walked across the sand, to stand by the rippling wavelets on the beach. 'That I was exhilarated, excited, delighted, delirious with joy, Kit? Oh, they could see that. And accurately guessed its source. But again, no more. They know that I have loved you for ten years, since that day in St Eustatius. Who else on this island of demons and blacks might a woman love, Kit? You are like this breeze which blows in from the Atlantic, fresh and clean where all is sweat and filth. But they trust my good sense, my good judgement. Even as they trust yours. I was happy to have you in the house, no more.'

  'Then am I doubly damned,' he said, walking beside her.

  'Marguerite?'

  He gave a short laugh. 'She bears you no grudge, Lilian. Oh, I did not tell her. She greeted me with a simple statement of fact. She judges all others in the light of herself, and who knows that she is not entirely correct.'

  'And she was not angry?'

  'Not in the least. I think she almost knew it must happen, one day.'

  Lilian stopped, and turned to face him. 'But she will not let you go.'

  'She produced convincing arguments to prove not only how impossible it was, but how unnecessary.'

  Lilian gazed at him for some seconds. 'I never doubted she was a woman of character. And now she demands of us a similar character. Am I right?'

  'Lilian ...'

  'I understand my situation, Kit, believe me. I also understand yours, and hers. She is your wife. She has the first call upon your protection and your honour and your love. I am in a position of a second mortgagee. And yet, what am I to do without you? I shall never marry. I shall never know another man. I had resigned myself to never knowing one at all, before last week. How can I resign myself to that again, having known you?'

  'Lilian ...' he seized her hands. 'I must be several kinds of a cur.'

  She smiled at him. 'You are a man, Kit. I think and believe that you are an honourable man, so it is your misfortune to attract women. And latecomers must be trespassers. What would you have me do?'

  He sucked air into his lungs. 'I could build you a house, Lilian. In Falmouth, or in the English Harbour. A house of your own, where ...'

  'Where I could be alone, except when you chose to visit me, and where I would hoist a banner, here lies Christopher Hilton's mistress.'

  'Lilian ...' but he bit his lip. She was speaking nothing less than the truth.

  'And yet the alternative, of not seeing you again, is no less unthinkable. And I cannot see you again in my parents' house, or even secretly like this, more than once or twice. Antigua is too small.'

  'Would you brave your father's displeasure? He certainly cannot take a stick to you.'

  'He has that right,' she argued. 'As long as I acknowledge him as my father. But I am not afraid of sticks. I am afraid of his understanding that I, and you, Kit, are after all merely bits of flesh. He counts us both higher than that, as he counts my mother also, and Agrippa. He is a man who sees people as very very white or very very black; I am talking of their characters, you understand.'

  Behind her, in St John's, a bell began to toll, steadily, incessantly.

  'But if I left Marguerite, turned my back on all my responsibilities, on my children and my plantation, on my entire past and a good deal of my future, you would still be, only my mistress, Lilian.'

  'Oh, of course,' she said. 'I should curse the day you sailed into St Eustatius harbour, Kit. I wish I could.' She looked along the beach towards the town. 'It is not Sunday.'

  For still the bell tolled, unceasingly, urgently. And now they heard the sound of hooves, and watched Agrippa spurring his horse along the track, leaving the road to kick great clouds of sand into the air as he located them.

  'Kit,' he bellowed. 'Kit. The French have landed.'

  Kit released Lilian's hand, ran forward. 'The French? DuCasse, you mean?'

  'Who knows, Kit? A fleet, they say, of five French ships, down at Falmouth. But that is not the worst of it. You will remember that Mr Harding claimed they have been in these waters for some time. No doubt he was right. They were waiting for assistance. There are Carib war canoes with them.'

  'Caribs?' For a moment his imagination could not grasp the fact. There had been no Carib raid on Antigua for forty years. 'Christ Almighty. I must ..." he checked, and turned, and felt her hand on his arm.

  'You must go to Green Grove, Kit. And quickly. You yourself said St John's would be safe enough. It is the plantations they will attack.'

  Still he hesitated.

  'She is right, Kit,' Agrippa said. 'You must defend your wife and family. I will see Lilian safely home, and protect her afterwards, and come to your aid as soon as it may be done.'

  Marguerite, in the hands of naked red men. He had heard all the talcs from the past. Anthony and Rebecca, their brains carelessly dashed away. He hesitated for the last time, kissed Lilian on the mouth, and then ran for his horse.

  8

  The Avengers

  Wisps of smoke, clinging to the clear morning air. Goodwood? Goodwood was surely farther inland. And even if it was Goodwood, Kit could spare no aid in that direction. In front of him the sky remained clear. For how long?

  He reined at the top of the rise, drew the back of his hand across his forehead. Now the smoke clung to his right. And now too he looked down on Green Grove. And on a scene he had not expected to witness in his life. He watched the slaves streaming out of the fields, running carelessly across the ratoons, across the paths, shouting and screaming as they made for the village. But what would they find there? Even the leper colony would be safer.

  And then the house. The shutters were being closed, and muskets were emerging at the loopholes. He watched two of the overseers driving the horses from the stables; they bore the Green Grove brand and could be easily rounded up again after the invaders had gone. But time was already short. There were people moving to the right, on the very borders of the plantation. People or ants? Their numbers seemed to grow as he watched; a horde of little specks. Red ants.

  Kit kicked his horse and sent it down the road, bending low over the animal's neck. This day he was unarmed. He had not left the plantation to fight anyone this morning.

  He thundered through the opened gate and up the drive, scattering the fleeing slaves, while the men on the verandah of the Great House stopped work to stare at him.

  'Kit.' Marguerite ran out of the front door. 'Oh, thank God you are here. I did not know ...' She checked, aware that her overseers were staring at her, at the unaccustomed sight of their mistress afraid. She wore her planting clothes but yet looked more untidy than usual; Rebecca clung to her skirt. She knew where he had gone this morning, and why. She had not known which he would choose at a moment like this. An invasion was beyond the experience of even Marguerite Hilton.

  'I came as soon as I heard the news.' He hurried up the steps. 'There are Indians not a mile away.'

  'Oh, Christ,' she said. 'Oh, Christ. Kit, what are we to do?'

  He turned, gazed at the plantation, at the slaves flooding through the gate. They seemed to lose their purpose as they entered the compound itself, and milled around, shouting and weeping.

  'Give me that,' Kit snapped, and whipped a musket from Burns' trembling hands, pointed it in the air, and fired. The hubbub stopped, and the crowd faced the verandah. 'Go to the village,' Kit shouted. 'Go to your huts and stay there. These people have no quarrel with you. Their fight is with us. Stay inside until the Indians have been beaten off.'

  The Negroes stared at him, but already the foremen were marshalling them and pushing them down the hill.

  'Their huts will not save them,' Marguerite said.

  'From what? Slavery by the Indians? Their lot will hardly be worsened,' Kit said. 'And it is our best hope of retaining any of them afterwards.'

  'If
we are alive to do so. Look there.' She pointed up the hill behind the house, at the smoke rising from the fields, and at the row of figures which stood on the skyline, constantly growing in numbers, naked men, carrying hatchets and bows and arrows, their copper-brown bodies glinting in the sun.

  'Quickly,' Kit snapped. 'Women and children into the cellar. Mr Burn, you will stand by the trap and make ready to close it. And be sure, Burn, when I give the order to bolt the trap, do so and open it for no one save your mistress or myself, and even then when you are sure the savages have withdrawn. Mr Passmore, get those windows shuttered, and quickly. Muskets, lads, muskets. Three to every man, and loaded. A man to each window. They may well assault all four walls at once.' Christ, to remember, what Susan would have done. What Susan had done, once. Without success. But surely, as he had boasted, this house resolutely defended, would prove too strong for naked savages.