'This time,' he said, 'if they get inside, you must kill yourselves. I may not be able to get to you.'
'I will not kill myself,' Cartarette said.
'Mama . . .'
'Nor will I permit your mother to murder me, Dick.'
His turn to sigh. 'Aye. Well. . .' he had expected nothing different. Not from Cartarette. He did not even suppose she would scream, when they cut her body. But that thought made him sweat, made him fume with impotent rage. It must not happen. And only he could stop it. Unless the military came. But the troopers had more than enough to do.
The air cooled, the night grew darker, some of the men slept. Dick watched the clock. At midnight he almost made himself believe they had, after all, been bypassed.
Suzanne went upstairs to bed. Cartarette slept in a chair. Dick watched her face in the glimmering candlelight. When she slept she regained her youth, was again the girl who had been his slave. Who Gislane had tied to the lovebed. A woman to love.
His head jerked. There was again sound, seeping through the morning. The wailing of a conch shell, but close at hand.
He closed the shutter, bolted it. Suzanne came down the stairs. Cartarette sat up. 'You'll take to the cellar if the house burns,' he said. 'And make your move the moment you hear a door break. Promise me.'
The women hesitated, looking at each other.
'We promise, Dick.'
'Aye, you've children, Cartarette. Remember them. And you have a husband, Mama. Remember him.' He walked round the walls. 'They are close. Check your priming. No man is to go outside, and no man is to show himself more than enough to fire his weapon. They will not know how many we have inside, what they have to beat. Remember what I have told you. Point the musket at their bellies, and squeeze the trigger. The ladies will load for you.'
The slaves fingered their weapons in bewilderment.
Dick went into the front hall, found Harris. Between them they opened the door.
'What is your plan?' Harris breathed deeply.
'To hold.'
'You have done this before?'
Dick shook his head. 'My family has. Our history is nothing but holding. But we have made mistakes. Our plantation Green Grove in Antigua, was overrun by Caribs, a hundred and fifty years ago. Christopher Hilton made the mistake of trying to gain the maximum fire power. He assembled his men on the front verandah. His first volley halted the Indians, but before he could reload, his men were scattered and the house was taken. My uncle-in-law, Louis Corbeau, made the same mistake in St Domingue, in 1791. We will sit behind our windows, and sit and sit.'
'They will destroy your plantation,' Harris said. 'They will do that anyway.' Dick pointed. Flames flickered in the canefields.
How many? He levelled his telescope; the nearest field was over a mile away. Hundreds? Thousands? He caught the glint of steel. But only machetes.
Flames clouded the sky. Cartarette stood beside him, her fingers tight on his arm. She knew the worst that could happen to a woman, should the house be overrun. Or did she consider him the worst that could happen? He had not raised the question of her happiness since that night on the boat.
People were pouring out of the burning canefields. Many men, dark-skinned and dark-faced. They flooded towards the slave village, and paused there, giving shrill shouts and yells, punctuated with peals of near hysterical laughter. They could not believe what they were doing. In their hearts, they knew they were committing suicide.
'Inside,' he commanded, and they obeyed. Cartarette gave his arm a last squeeze and withdrew to the drawing room. Dick walked up and down behind his men crouching at the loop-holed shutters in the dining room, and beyond, in the kitchen. The kitchen, built away from the main building to reduce the risk of fire, formed a salient. It was the most vulnerable part of the house, a relatively small area which could be assailed from three sides at once. Here he had seven men, and here Suzanne would act as loader.
He stooped to a loophole, looked down the hillside. Flames began to issue from the village. They had got over their surprise at discovering it empty. And men were coming up the bill, pausing at the white town, to break down doors and rampage through houses, to destroy the church. They were revolting in the name of a Baptist parson; they regarded the established church as their enemy. The factory would be next. This day's damage would take half of next year's crop to put right; this year there would be no crop at all.
The noise was loud now, shrieking voices, loud laughter, the crashings and hangings of a hundred homes being destroyed. Cartarette's fingers were back on his shoulders. 'Why do they not come?'
He straightened. 'You aren't afraid?'
'Oh, aye. I'm afraid,' she said. 'Yesterday there seemed so much to live for.'
'There is more today. They'll soon be here. Do not let these people see your fear.'
She gave a grimace, and returned to the drawing room. Dick looked through the loophole once again, watched the flames in the factory. They were burning the roof, because they could not burn the machinery. A pall of smoke lay over the town, mingled with the smoke drifting down from the canefields; he could not see it in the dark, but he could smell it. Come dawn, Hilltop would be marked for miles, by the smoke drifting over it. But how many plantations would be similarly marked?
The first man came up the hill. He walked confidently, wearing only cotton drawers, swinging a cutlass, holding a bottle from which he drank from time to time. The village and the town was deserted. No doubt the house was similarly empty, even if the shutters were closed.
Others came behind him. But he was a good way in front. Time. There was the essence. How to make them withdraw for another hour.
Dick stood up. 'No man fires until I tell him to,' he called. 'I will see to that one.'
He walked through the hall, boots dull on the parquet floor. He opened the front door, signalled Boscawen to stand close, to shut it again at a signal.
He took a long breath, stepped on to the verandah. He remembered the morning before he had assaulted the frontier post, and found Cartarette. Then he had wondered what it must feel like, to watch death and destruction approaching, to know there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He had wondered, then, if he would be afraid, if he would truly be a brave man, until he had known that experience.
And here it was. And he was not afraid. Only preoccupied, with all the things that must be done, with the importance of this first shot.
The man stopped, twenty feet from the steps, gazed at the white man.
'Throw down your machete,' Dick called. 'Tell your friends to surrender. Or they will die.'
The slave looked past Dick at the opened door, the darkened hallway. His head turned, left and right. Dick could read the thoughts passing through his brains as if they were printed. No horses, no people that he could see. A white man, but the town was empty. Just one white man.
The slave turned his head to look over his shoulder. His friends were coming closer, and more and more people were moving up the hill. The town burned merrily now; the crash of the factory roof as it fell in boomed across the morning.
'Aiiieeeee,' screamed the slave, and ran at the steps. It occurred to Dick that he must have sounded just like that, when leading his cavalry into the charge. But his thought, and the black man's scream, were already history. His arm was levelled, the pistol was kicking against his fingers, black smoke was eddying into his face. The man had reached the steps when the ball struck him square in the chest, at a range of eight feet. His head went back and both arms went up. The machete arced through the air behind him. His chest exploded into red, and he hit the earth with his shoulder blades.
The crowd moving up the hill checked. But it would only be for an instant. Dick stepped inside, and Boscawen slammed the door. Dick dropped the heavy bolts into place, looked back at the house, the tense faces; Cartarette, standing in the centre of the drawing room, a musket in each hand. Suzanne, looking through from the pantry, Barker and Harris, staring at him. Of them all, only he h
ad ever killed in battle. Only he and Cartarette and Suzanne had ever been under fire.
'Hold,' he said. 'And wait.' He stood by the front door, watched the black army swarming up the hill, spreading out as they ran to cover the house from every angle, forming a gigantic enveloping movement.
'Present,' he shouted. 'But hold.'
There was an explosion from the drawing room.
'Hold, God damn you,' he yelled. 'Change your weapon. Reload, Cartarette, Reload. Hold.'
The black men reached the top, panting now, waving their cutlasses; they had all been at the rum. A man climbed over the verandah rail, screaming at the wooden shutters, for the first time noticing that every loophole contained a musket barrel. Now he was joined by his fellows. The verandah was full, and creaking. The first man banged at the front door. At this range a blind man could not miss.
'Fire,' Dick screamed. 'Change your weapons.'
The entire house shook. The crash of the explosions whanged around his ears, and he was surrounded in a seemingly solid cloud of powder smoke, turning his face and hands as black as his assailants. Yet even the noise of the explosions was drowned by the unearthly screams from outside.
'Present,' Dick bawled, the noise ringing in his ears. He left the door, and ran round the house. 'Present,' he bawled, slapping men on the shoulders to bring them back to their, senses. 'Present.'
The fresh muskets went back through the loopholes. Cartarette and her aides were already gathering the used weapons, cramming ball down the barrels, thudding away with their rods, while her titian hair tumbled about her ears; it too was streaked with black powder.
Dick stooped by a loophole, gazed at a scene of destruction not even his experienced eyes could remember. Men lay dead and dying all over the verandah; blood ran into hollows and dripped under the rail. Those left were still standing, dazed, one or two already edging back. 'Fire,' Dick shouted again.
This time he stayed, looking through the aperture. Noise eddied about his head, accompanied by the endless smoke. He watched men collapse, men fall to their knees, men jump from the verandah and stagger down the hill. There were still hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, gathered at a safe distance from the house. And now was the dangerous moment, when all muskets were emptied, save for the few Cartarette and Suzanne had managed to reload. But the slaves were retreating. They had lost perhaps forty men in those two deadly volleys. But far more than mere numbers, they knew that the next time they charged, the leading forty would die again.
He straightened, slowly. His men were withdrawing their muskets through the loopholes, staring at each other in delight. They had used the white man's weapons, and they had killed.
'Well done,' he said. 'Well done. Mr Boscawen, a ration of rum for every man.' He crossed the room, stood beside Cartarette, watched her work, ramming home ball after ball, priming musket after musket, face and hair and dress blackened with smoke, sweat dribbling down her temples, mouth flat with concentration.
She saw his boots, raised her head. 'Will they come again?'
'Not for a while. They'll have to regain their courage.'
He walked into the hall, unbolted the front door, threw it open. Some of the smoke found its way out, the atmosphere became lighter. He wondered if he would ever get his ceilings clean again.
He stepped outside, looked at the dead men. Soon they would smell, whenever the sun rose. Josh had told him that, on his first night here. How many eternities ago.
Someone moved. A hand came up, holding a cutlass. Dick levelled his pistol, squeezed the trigger. The man gave a little leap, and lay still again.
The noise brought Cartarette running through the hall, to check in the doorway in total horror. 'My God,' she said. 'My God.'
He put his arm round her shoulders, the pistol into his belt, took her back inside. Boscawen waited with a tray of rum. Dick took it from him, and the old man closed the door.
'Them boys done, Mr Richard,' he said.
'Aye.' Dick held a glass to Cartarette's lips, and she drank, and coughed, and drank some more.
Suzanne stood in the inner doorway. 'Are all battles like that?'
'All victories.'
'Listen.' Harris had been upstairs to oversee the blacks. 'They're leaving. Listen.'
They could hear the drumming of hooves. Boscawen was hastily withdrawing bolts again. Dick stepped outside, his arm still round Cartarette. Blood dribbled across the floor to wet their boots. 'Oh, God,' she said. 'I am going to vomit.'
He squeezed her against him, went down the steps. The black men were streaming into the fields, running as hard as they could. And galloping up the road was a company of horse, accompanied by a score of white men.
'Barraclough?' he said. 'Hardy? I've almost a mind to forgive your sins.'
'When I forgive yours, Hilton,' Hardy said.
The colonel dismounted, peered at the corpses. 'My God. What happened here?'
The soldiers stared at the Negroes, who now came out of the house, muskets in their hands.
'Present,' Hardy screamed. 'Present.'
'Put them down,' Dick snapped. 'They fought for me.'
'You armed slaves?'
'I used what I had. And they fought well.'
'By God,' Hardy said. 'There's a confession, Colonel. A confession. Serve your warrant, man. Serve your warrant.'
'What madness is he spouting?' Dick demanded.
Barraclough shifted from foot to foot, gazed at Cartarette, then at Suzanne, standing on the verandah in the midst of the black men, then back at Dick again.
'Hardy's doing,' he muttered. 'He met me on the road. Brought me back here. But not to rescue you, Mr Hilton.' He unbuttoned his jacket, felt inside, pulled out the rolled parchment. 'There is a warrant for your arrest.'
18
The Day of Retribution
Dick could only gape at the officer, for the moment too taken back to speak.
'For his arrest?' Cartarette cried. 'You must be out of your mind.'
'Count yourself grateful you are not included,' Hardy said.
'Why, you . . .' Dick reached for his pistol, and was halted by the sight of a score of musket barrels levelled at his chest.
'They won't take you, Dick,' Suzanne called from the verandah. 'We have thirty men in here, Colonel. All armed, and all experienced; they have just repulsed the rebels. Look at the verandah.'
Barraclough licked his lips. He had already looked at the verandah.
'Mr Hilton, I beg of you,' he said. 'Humour me, for the moment. Things are not going well, sir. You may have saved Hilltop, but at least a dozen plantations are in the hands of the insurgents. White people have been killed. More have been insulted. Kingston is in a ferment, and the whole island has been placed under martial law. The militia has been called out. If we exchange shots here, I would not like to say what will happen.'
'Show me the warrant,' Dick said.
Barraclough gave him the parchment, and he looked at the signature.
'John Tresling?'
'Countersigned by the Governor, Mr Hilton. It is legal.' Dick glanced at the charge. It described him as an incendiary who had roused the blacks to revolt.
'You must know this is utter nonsense, Barraclough.'
'I know it, Mr Hilton, and so does the Governor.'
'Then why did he attest his signature?'
Barraclough sighed. 'Perhaps I would wish he could have shown more spirit, sir. The earl . . . well, his prime concern is the preservation of peace. All soldiers are needed on the plantations, Mr Hilton. Therefore Kingston must be defended by the militia. And the militia refused to mobilize unless all incendiaries are confined. Your name heads the list.'
Dick hesitated, still gazing at the paper.
'And who will guard my husband in the Kingston gaol?' Cartarette asked. 'This same militia?'
'He will be safe, Mrs Hilton. The Governor gives his word. But surrender, sir, and show that you have confidence at once in your own innocence and in our triumph. Tho
se are the earl's own words, sir.'
Cartarette's fingers bit into his arm. 'Defy them, Dick. They'll not take you. They'll not move, if you say the word.'
'Aye,' he agreed. 'And then I would indeed be a revolutionary.'
'Dick, the mob will lynch you.' Her voice was urgent.
He smiled at her. 'I've survived worse than Kingston mobs,' he said. 'Belmore may not be the strongest of characters, but he is an honest man. And there are more lives than just mine at stake. But I leave the children, and indeed my defence, if it comes to that, in your care.'
Her tear-filled eyes were only inches from his face. 'I'll get you back, Dick,' she promised. 'I have grown to love this new man.'
He kissed her forehead. 'Then make it soon.' He released her. 'I'll ride with you, captain. But provide me with a horse.'
'You'll hand over your weapons,' Hardy demanded.
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