Caribee

by Christopher Nicole

  'You,' Hilton said contemptuously. 'You have no stomach for revolution.'

  Edward looked through the window again. How empty the street looked, on a sudden. But there were faces at the windows of the houses, women and children, and now from below there came the explosion of a musket as one of the Irishmen fired.

  'Big fight,' Yarico said from the bed. She had prudently lain down to keep out of the way of the bullets; Philip sat on the floor beside the bed. Young Tom, remarkably, seemed to have gone back to sleep.

  'Many dead,' Yarico said, and smiled. "You dead, Edward?"

  ‘I did not intend this,' he muttered. 'Wait,' he shouted. 'Cease firing.'

  Still the explosions rang out, and still the bullets crumped into the thick wooden walls. And now there was firing from the church, while at the far end of the street Jarring and Hal Ashton reappeared, with a dozen men and three bound prisoners; clearly the three labourers who had been arrested trying to alert their compatriots and were now bound for the gallows.

  Edward ran down the stairs. His heart pounded and sweat rolled down his cheeks. He was afraid, and yet he had become filled with a wild exhilaration. He had tossed, and lost. This seemed to be the entire story of his life. But he had no right to involve countless others in his defeat. And most of all, he had no right to involve Susan, and her unborn child. His unborn child, maybe. She believed it to be so. Else why tell him, and not her husband? And indeed, only that made sense; Tony and Susan had lived together for three years, without result. Edward had but to appear on the scene, to impregnate her.

  He burst into the parlour. Connor had arranged his men well, one to each window, front and back; they crouched there, muskets at the ready, firing whenever they saw a movement in the village.

  'Hold your fire,' Edward said. 'And unbar the door.'

  'Ye're crazy, sir,' Connor said. They'll shoot ye down like a dog.'

  They'll not shoot a Warner,' Edward insisted. 'And I must stop this business. I know how it can be done. Now open that door.'

  Connor looked past him, to where Hilton stood in the doorway.

  ‘You'd best let him through,' Hilton said. ' Tis sure he's all the hope we have of surviving this fiasco.'

  Connor shrugged, and moved the bar to the door. Edward pulled it open, took a deep breath, and stepped outside. There was an immediate explosion from down the street, and the bullet smacked into the wood beside him.

  'Hold your fire,' he shouted, and reversed his sword. ‘I'd speak with you, Hal.'

  He walked out from under the porch, to stand on the street. It was well into the morning now, and the sun was above Mount Misery, already steaming heat from the ground and sending it back through the still air.

  'You'll surrender?' Ashton called.

  ‘I’ll negotiate, Hal'

  'From there?’

  ‘I'm but one man, Hal. There are twenty others, armed and desperate. You'd do well not to push them to extremities.'

  There was a short silence, and Edward took three more steps into the street; his heart pounded; he was an easy target for anyone so minded. But he kept his head high. He was the Warner heir, and no matter what had happened in the past, or might happen in the future, they could not afford to forget that. And what would happen in the future? He was sure of nothing. Only that he had made a dreadful mistake this day.

  Hal Ashton emerged from a house farther down the street. His sword was sheathed, and he carried no other weapon. 'Well?'

  ‘I'd talk with you, Hal, not the entire colony.' He went forward again, was now opposite the church, which was perhaps the most dangerous place of all. O'Reilly and his five men were in there, and should they take it into their heads that he would betray them, they might well shoot him down. But Ashton was also coming forward, to halt not ten feet away. Two men on a lonely street.

  'What have you to say, boy?" Ashton demanded. "This is mutiny. Revolution, indeed. There can be no mercy for revolutionaries.'

  ‘I had thought the watchword of this colony, and its rulers, was expediency,' Edward said. ‘You followed that course with

  the Caribs.'

  'And you've hated ever since, boy. Tis unnatural for a man to hate his own kind.'

  ‘I’m yet to find out who are my kind, Hal Ashton,' Edward said. 'But I did not come here to quarrel. These Irishmen, and Tony Hilton, will fight, as you know. They'll fight much harder than anyone at your back. They'll happily die, with weapons in their hands, rather than return to slavery or the noose. And for every one of them that dies be sure at least two of your people will go too. Would you offer my father a colony populated by women?"

  ‘I'll not offer him a colony seized by revolution, Edward.'

  'Nor need you. We realize that we cannot win, here. We had been informed there was popular support for me in the town, but it seems we were optimistic. So you'll allow Tony and his men, and his wife, a ship, and let them depart. Hear me out, Hal. We have committed treason and revolution, at my command. It was my doing, and my will, and it is my will that we now end it. I will take the responsibility for all that happened here.'

  "You think it will be an easy matter?" Ashton asked. 'On your surrender you'll be an admitted felon.'

  "Yet you'll not try Tom Warner's son until he returns,' Edward said.

  Ashton hesitated. 'Aye,' he said at last. 'You can wait for your father. In that gaol over there. But if you suppose he'll encourage leniency towards you, you'll be making a mistake. Tom has had a bellyful of you, Edward. You'll hang. I do not wish you to be under any misapprehension concerning that.'

  'Nor am I. You're that angry, at this moment, Hal. But I'll also have freedom for the people in gaol now. They must be allowed to go or stay as they choose.'

  Ashton frowned at him. 'You're demented for sure, lad. There is no one in that gaol.'

  'But'

  ‘It was the Governor's express wish that we proceed to extremes against no one until his return. If you believed differently, you've been misled.'

  ‘Misled. Oh, yes, he'd been misled. To the very steps of the gallows. By Susan as well? He could no longer doubt that. But she carried his child.

  'Do you agree to my people manning one of those ships?’

  Ashton pulled his nose. 'They'll be going to their deaths. Hilton is no navigator.'

  ‘I suspect he'll live. He means to go no farther than Nevis, for the time being. There's diplomacy for you, Hal. At least in a way you can put to Tom. No bloodshed here, and should he return with sufficient men and a ship of war, why, then, you can easily take the sea against them, over there. Why man, here's your opportunity to rid the colony of all its malcontents. Offer your own people, such of them as wish to take the risk, passage to Nevis with Tony.'

  Ashton frowned. 'You play a deep game here, Edward.'

  Edward smiled. 'Have you no confidence in those at your back? You can disarm them first.'

  Ashton pulled his nose some more. ‘It is certainly a way out of our problem. And we'll have the leader.' He glanced at Edward, apparently understanding what had been agreed for the first time. 'And you'll stay? To face your father and then the noose? By God, lad, you've courage after all. Of a sort'

  Of a sort. The cell was pleasantly large, when he was alone, some eight feet square, room for a man to walk, to and fro, and to breathe. When he was alone. But this was seldom. Only the twenty Irish who had followed Hilton from Windward had been allowed to depart; those who had not immediately jumped to arms at the bidding of their compatriots had been allowed to regret at leisure; now they were more harshly treated than before, and not a day passed but one was hauled to the whipping post or locked in the stocks, or clapped into the cell with Edward. Then only his size and his ability with his fists allowed him survival; it was the law in Sandy Point, as indeed it was in England, that once the door closed on a prisoner, he was left to the mercy of his friends.

  He'd have starved, but for Yarico. She came every day with food. The first morning he had stared at her in amazement and mist
rust. The boy Tom lurched at her side, hanging on to her skirt. But then, the skirt itself was unnatural, shrouding as it did those muscular brown legs which had first made him a man.

  'Food,' she had said. 'You eat, Ed-ward.'

  'Why?' he had asked.

  'Ed-ward, Yarico.'

  'Oh, for Christ's sake, don't start that again. Aren't you my father's woman? By God, you're all of a stepmother to me.'

  'Ed-ward, Yarico,' she said firmly. And shrugged. 'Edward, Susan, Yarico, War-nah. You eat, Ed-ward. You must not die.'

  They are going to hang me, Yarico. Hadn't you thought of that?"

  She tossed her head, scornfully. 'War-nah not hang his son.'

  'But he has others, of whom he is more proud.' Yet he had by then picked up the bread and fried fish. It had smelt so good, and he had been starving. And then she had stood so close. Yarico, the savage. Yarico, the lover. Yarico would survive, as she had always survived. And he still did not even know her age. No doubt she was unaware of it herself. But as he was only twenty he doubted she was any older.

  And now her gaze was as soft as ever he remembered it. 'You want, Yarico?' she had asked softly.

  Yarico, who had destroyed her entire nation to ensure her own existence.

  ' Tis neither the rime nor the place,' he had said. 'But you'll come again, Yarico?'

  'Every day,' she had promised. 'Every day, Ed-ward.'

  Thus she was able to keep him informed of events in the colony, of the departure of Hilton and Susan, and their followers. Quite a band, apparently, for a dozen of the colonists, with their wives and three children, had elected to accompany the rebels. Not one of them, not even Susan, had come to say goodbye. No doubt, had he led them to battle, against their friends, and seen half of them killed, they'd have called him a hero. He wondered that he hated none of them, Hilton most of all. Certainly he had been completely hoodwinked into accepting responsibility for a hare-brained scheme which he now knew had never the slightest chance of popular support, and very little more of success even had they discovered Ashton asleep in his bed.

  But the scheme had worked, for the Hiltons and their followers. They had put to sea and gained Nevis easily enough, and Sandy Point had been left in self-righteous security, glowering across the narrow passage, remembering and preparing to avenge. As no doubt Hilton was well aware. Yarico brought news, after only six weeks, that the ship they could see anchored off the smaller island had left again, under full sail, for the north east. Another dream gone forever, Edward thought. Only one amongst hundreds. But on board that ship would be Susan, and with her, growing in her belly, his son. He had to believe this, as he wanted so desperately to believe it. Without that, his life was indeed wasted, and his brain doomed to extinction.

  Those that remained behind found themselves in a new world, dominated by William Jarring and the Reverend Mailing. Jarring might have given out that he favoured the freedom advocated by Hilton, but clearly he had decided it was more worth his while to support the parson; whatever Mr Mailing's professed repugnance for the high-church principles of Archbishop Laud, he now introduced a rigorous system of attendance at Chapel, refusal to comply being punished without fail by a term in the stocks for a first offence, and a spell in gaol for the second, while similar measures were meted out for the slightest case of drunkenness, or the slightest altercation. Hal Ashton, however good his intentions and however great his desire to obey the precepts of Tom Warner, very rapidly found himself a cypher in his own colony. The limit to drink no doubt slightly interfered with Jarring's profits, but he clearly regarded this as a worthwhile investment in his future, for with the parson's backing there could be no bounds to the heights at which he might aim.

  He visited Edward regularly, to talk of the plans he had for the colony, as if Edward were already hanged, and Philip . .. there was no mention of Philip, and he never visited his brother; while there was no window in the prison, merely a skylight which did not admit of looking at the street. Yet the boy was well, and seemed hardly disconcerted by the turn of events, according to Yarico. But she herself was an enemy of Jarring's, permitted her liberty and her place in the community only by the fear of Tom Warner's return. Edward wondered just what would happen should news arrive that his father was dead, or too ill, perhaps, to resume his duties? Then would this ill-assorted group utterly disintegrate, he had no doubt. He wondered, too, if Father had ever really understood how precarious was the peace of this colony, even with the rebels departed. There were far too many factions, too many memories, too many ambitions, for there ever to be peace here. What had they said so contemptuously of Walter Raleigh's Virginia colony? An ill-chosen lot, hence failure. What would they say of Tom Warner's Merwar's Hope? Nothing different. But at least their leader lived in the colony himself, and could hold them together.

  His importance was sounded with the explosion of a cannon from the summit of Brimstone Hill, and a moment later the door opened to admit Mr Mailing, another regular and unwelcome visitor. 'You'll be pleased to learn, Edward, that a fleet has been sighted, and is approaching Great Road. 'Tis your father, returning with six big ships. You'd best prepare yourself to meet your trial.'

  ‘I'd have thought you'd say my maker,' Edward remarked. ‘You are that determined to have my blood.'

  'Aye,' Mailing said. 'You'll hang, and stay in chains until you rot, boy, as a warning to all other would be troublemakers. And you'll not be alone. There are people yet on Nevis, we have learned, left behind by Tony Hilton. They'll be brought back to dangle beside you. We'll have no revolution on Merwar's Hope.'

  He banged the door behind him, and Edward was left to wait, and remember Father's last return from England, when he had been such a bubbling mass of energy and determination. And optimism. Not the sort of man to hang his own son. But then, he had never supposed that was possible. Or he would not have sacrificed himself? There was an admission of cowardice. But perhaps there was no argument with that. Any other man would have defied the worst the colonists could do, and gone down fighting, rather than tamely surrender himself and his dreams. Because Father might not hang him, but there could be no question as to his exclusion from the succession, now.

  Meanwhile he had naught to do but wait. Yarico had already been, and would not return before tomorrow. If then. By tomorrow the fleet would have anchored, and Tom Warner come ashore. Tomorrow. He listened to a hubbub outside, to noise and excitement. Tomorrow. Or this evening? Things might happen more rapidly than he had supposed. But then, would not Tom Warner's first action on landing be to seek his errant son?

  Footsteps, at the door. Many footsteps. The Governor, and his advisors come to see the leader of the revolution. Edward stood up, his back to the wall.

  The door was thrown in. There were a great many people outside. Strangers, most of them, but very well armed, and very well dressed, too. And closer at hand, Hemy Ashton, looking pale and worried, and Joachim Galante.

  The Frenchman smiled, and bowed. ‘You are surprised, Mr Warner? Did you not suppose I would return? We made a treaty with your father.'

  'A treaty you would now destroy,' Ashton growled.

  Galante continued to smile. 'Circumstances have changed, Mr Ashton. Our two countries are at war. It is my duty to call for the surrender of this colony, and I should prefer to receive such a surrender from you, Mr Warner, rather than from any temporary deputy governor appointed in your father's absence.'

  8

  The Guns of Spain

  The French fleet lay at anchor, perhaps half a mile from the shore. But even at this distance the watchers on the beach could see that every gun was run out, and that the sails remained ready to be unfurled.

  'Christ, to know what to do.' Ashton chewed his lip.

  'By God, that seems simple enough.' Edward sucked fresh air into his lungs. To be free, away from the foetid atmosphere of the goalhouse and its uncovered cess bucket. To see blue sky and feel the trade wind on his face. He felt that he could challenge the world. 'Mon
sieur Galante, you seek to bluff us, I assume. Were we to man those cannon which your leader so graciously granted to my father, you'd not land here without loss.'

  Galante shrugged. ‘Perhaps not, Mr Warner. Yet I do assure you that there are three hundred fighting men to be spared from those ships, and still leave them capable of manoeuvre and action. Should you defy us, why, we shall land farther down the beach, and assault you from the land.'

  'We are capable of turning our cannon to command the beach,' Edward said.

  Then will our ships approach and bombard you from the flank.'

  ‘In the name of God,' Mr Mailing shouted. That would be nothing less than a massacre.'

  'Aye,' Jarring said. 'There are the women and children.'

  'Of course, gentlemen,' Galante agreed. 'And we are not murderers. Hence you will observe that we have not even fired into your ships. There are two of them. Sufficient to permit you to evacuate the island.'

  'And go where?" Edward demanded.

  Once again the gentle shrug. That is entirely up to you, Mr Warner. It is a large world, full of empty islands. This merely happens to be one of the most attractive of them, and more, it is the one chosen by the Sieur d'Esnambuc on which to create a new France.'

  'And if we decide to surrender but remain?' Jarring asked.

  That also you are welcome to do,' Galante replied. 'Our colony will certainly need all the labour it may obtain. Indeed, I am instructed to inform you that the offer of evacuation does not extend to your Irishmen.'

  'By God,' Ashton said. 'You'd seek to set us alongside those rascals?"

  Galante permitted himself a smile. 'To us, Mr Ashton, it is all a matter of degree. You are both from islands off the coast of Europe, and you both possess a certain indiscipline which renders you bad neighbours, except under duress."

  'We are wasting time," Edward said. 'My name is Warner, Monsieur Galante, and this island was granted to my father, firstly by Chief Tegramond and then by King James, for him and his heirs in perpetuity. We'll fight, by God. You'll get nothing but a desert, when you force your way in here, and be sure your people will also have suffered.'