Beyond the Savage Sea Page 10

  Drake added a suggestion, “Make Macaw understand he is to have no day off this week. Instead, on the Sabbath he is to get wood from the carpenter and build a separate hut for Juba. If he cannot keep peace in his own hut, he must build two huts.” An intelligent scamp, not overly fond of work, Macaw understood perfectly and his face fell.

  “That was a sensible order,” Edwinna complimented him as they walked back to Crawford Hall under the starry sky, the cane fields whispering in the wind. “I didn’t think of two huts.”

  He smiled. “Comes of experience. Two women rarely get along living in the same house. Arthur and Verity lived with us for a time. Anne and Verity used to scrap like a pair of cats.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve always lived among men. My...father, my brothers.”

  “Your mother died when you were young?”

  “She...was gone when I was ten.”

  Gone? It was a peculiar way to put it, he thought. He looked up at the unfamiliar stars of the southern hemisphere. The night was as balmy as July in London. He remembered a starry summer evening when he’d taken Anne boating on the Thames. They’d made love on a blanket in the privacy of a grove of willows on the south shore. He liked tobelieve Katherine had been conceived that night, out there under the stars.

  “I was a grown man when my mother died. Even so, I felt somehow that a part of my world had fallen away, irretrievable, gone forever.”

  “I felt that way, too. As if the world had ended.”

  He glanced at her. He felt a stirring. The starlight was lovely on her hair. Almost as if she’d sensed his thoughts, she increased her speed, striding faster, as if to put safe space and distance between them. What was wrong with her? Didn’t she have a woman’s normal needs? Striding faster, he caught up, and they said little more on the way back.

  When they’d let themselves in the gate and into the house, Drake led the way upstairs in the cave-like darkness. He let her pass, then leaned a shoulder against the frame of his bedroom door, crossed his arms, and said quietly, “By the way, what was the trouble between Macaw’s wives?”

  “A domestic dispute.”

  “Exactly, but what?”

  She hesitated. “If you must know...”

  “Yes, I must. I didn’t take that two o’clock trot for my health, Edwinna.”

  “They were fighting over whose turn it was to—to sleep with him.”

  Drake sighed. “Lucky devil. No one ever fights to get into my bed.”

  She went into her room and shut the door smartly. Drake uncrossed his arms, ambled into his room, stripped, and got into the bed. One minute later he heard the bolt shoot across Edwinna’s door. He sighed. Evidently she’d decided he was a randy son-of-a-bitch and wasn’t taking any chances. He lofted his arms, laced his hands under his head, and lay looking up at the tester.

  * * * *

  Word came from Simon Tarcher in Speightstown that an English slaver had rounded the northern point of the island and was heading for Carlisle Bay. She had signaled by flag that she had a full load of slaves to sell.

  The men left at once for Bridgetown, Matthew Plum and Drake on horseback; Valentine O’Brien, David Alleyne, and Jeremy on foot; the affingoes gracefully plodding behind, loaded with barrels of sugar that would be used to purchase the slaves. Jacka, Yates, and Hastings brought up the rear.

  Edwinna watched them go. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Drake. She wondered if he would break his word and escape. He would be tempted in Bridgetown, with so many ships setting sail for England.

  When he’d stepped up to bid her a courteous farewell, she’d tried to think of something nice to say—something to make him want to come back—but everything had come out stiff.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to purchase for you in Bridgetown?” he’d offered.

  “Mr. Plum does that. He has the list.”

  “I see. Any messages you wish me to deliver?”

  “No. None.”

  They’d parted without a smile, and when the last of the affingoes had trotted off, she quickly hiked up the grassy hill to the windmill. From the hill she could see the ocean, Dinny Fraser’s plantation, her uncle’s plantation, and the cane paths that crisscrossed the island, eventually leading to Bridgetown. She watched Drake Steel’s figure grow smaller and smaller, until the cane fields swallowed him up.

  * * * *

  The distance to Bridgetown was only eight miles, but the travel took half a day. No roads existed on the island—only cane paths that cut through plantations and descended into and out of ravines.

  Drake despised being in Jacka’s proximity. The little weasel harbored a deep grudge about the runaway slave. But to hell with him and Yates and Hastings. He concentrated on enjoying the beauty of the island and Plum’s company. He liked and respected Plum more with each passing day. Drake had also brought Jeremy along, and the boy didn’t walk to Bridgetown, he bounced. He had never been to town, and he was excited. Also, Jeremy had carefully tied his coin in the handkerchief around his neck. He intended to buy something pretty for Marigold. Drake had to smile at that. This was true love—a boy willing to spend on a girl the only coin he’d ever owned.

  Drake was hot and sweaty and unimpressed with Bridgetown by the time he rode out of the cane fields and down into it. True, the harbor was excellent. Crescent-shaped and sheltered by a spit of land, its defensive location was superb. Any foreign ships meaning to attack the colony would have to tack into the trade winds, making themselves sitting ducks for shore cannon. But the town itself was a joke. Of the three hundred buildings that comprised the town, one hundred fifty were drinking houses and brothels. A few decent homes clustered at the tip of the crescent harbor where the governor’s house stood, but the mud flats of Bridgetown stank to high heaven with the tide out.

  Edwinna had a sugar storehouse near the wooden bridge from which Bridgetown took its name. They drove the affingoes there, left them with Jacka and his cronies, and found a drinking house that let rooms. Drake hoped his bed would be free of lice, but hadn’t high hopes of it. The place was slovenly, but the best Bridgetown offered, according to Plum. They ordered a roasted goose and fresh fish for their supper later that night, then he and Plum rode down to the harbor.

  They counted twenty-two ships at anchor, the slave ship among them. It would not unload until morning, and the moans and wails that drifted from the ship made his hair stand on end.

  “Christ!”

  “A slave ship is an unpleasant place, Mr. Steel.”

  “Unpleasant? It’s vile!”

  “Ay. Well, poor things. They’ll be off the ship and sold by morning.”

  “Sold into a lifetime of slavery.”

  Drake listened a while longer, then rode into Bridgetown to hunt for a tailor’s shop. He found a decent one on Swan Street, where he selected fine quality, lightweight black serge cloth and had himself measured for a suit. Next he hunted a bootmaker, then a linen draper’s shop, where he bought three shirts of fine soft cotton—shirts that were finally roomy enough for his shoulders. He also bought soft, expensive drawers, silk stockings, and two linen shirts of the best quality the shop offered. He liked quality in clothes and in wine. He would sooner go without than settle for less than the best.

  As he signed the voucher to Crawford Plantation, he felt a ripple of irritation that Edwinna should pay for these things.

  He was a man who liked to take care of a woman, not vice versa. He sent the purchases to his inn and bought a cup of wine in a drinking house. Newly arrived, the claret had not yet succumbed to the tropical heat, so Drake was able to enjoy it. He had a second cup and mellowed.

  He fell into conversation with a sea captain who regularly sailed to the Orient. When the man invited him to his ship to see his collection of erotica, Drake went. He was interested in sensual things.

  Aboard the ship, he spent a pleasant, arousing hour looking at the man’s treasures—in particular, an exquisite hand-painted scroll of a sloe-eyed, bl
ack-haired beauty in the throes of pleasuring her lord and being pleasured by him. He studied the positions foreign to his knowledge. Sweat broke on his forehead. He was a fool to do this to himself. He hadn’t a prayer of having a woman in his bed, and he refused to chance a prostitute; they carried disease. He came to the most beautiful picture of all— the delicate Chinese beauty on her knees before her lord, her hair unbound and flowing like black silk, her head bowed, the nape of her neck exposed, her mouth eagerly taking her lord’s erect, swollen root.

  “Is the scroll for sale?” he asked reverently.

  “Nay. Wouldn’t part with it for the world.”

  “I can understand that.”

  Reluctantly he returned the scroll and thanked the man for a pleasant erotic visit.

  He was about to climb down into the captain’s dinghy to be rowed back to shore when he spotted a tarp shading a row of cages. Raisin brown eyes like Priscilla’s stared out at him. An idea came to him.

  “Are the monkeys for sale?”

  “Ay. Three shillings each.”

  “Do you have a male?”

  “Got a fine one. His name’s Jocko.”

  The captain pulled out the cage. Drake chuckled. Jocko proved to be a bored, complacent little fellow who looked patient and long-suffering enough to put up with anything Priscilla might do.

  “He doesn’t bite, does he?”

  “Wouldn’t harm a flea.”

  Drake tested him—put his finger into the cage and scratched the underside of Jocko’s chin. Jocko leaned into the scratch, as blissful as an old house cat.

  “I’ll take him. Send him to the Crawford Plantation storehouse at sunrise, day after tomorrow.”

  “Done.”

  The slave sale the next morning proved to be a wrenching experience. Shackled and terrified and many of them sick, five hundred Africans were rowed to shore in longboats that went back and forth. Brandishing whips and cudgels, slavers drove them into herds, the females in one mass, the males in another. All were young. Drake judged them to be no younger than fourteen, no older than twenty-five—prime slavery material.

  When all were ashore, the slavers ordered them to strip off what little clothing they wore—loincloths for the males, bark-cloth skirts for the females. It was plain that their tribal customs forbade showing themselves in public. The women wailed, covered their faces with their hands, and wept copiously. None was spared—not even pregnant women with their bodies swollen with child.

  “For God’s sake!” he said to Plum.

  “Ay, Mr. Steel. Tisn’t pleasant to watch.”

  Some of the young black males refused to strip, and the slavers fell upon them with cudgels, beating them into obedience. Incensed, Drake started forward, but Plum grabbed his arm.

  “Mr. Steel, there are thirty of them, and only one of you.”

  He breathed hotly, but accepted Plum’s wise advice. Plum was right. There was nothing he could do. What came next was worse. When the young people stood stripped and humiliated, the women weeping, the men terrified, the slavers signaled and slave buyers swarmed into the mass to select what they wanted to buy. They prodded and poked at the slaves, male and female, pulling their hair, thrusting fingers into their mouths.

  “Damn it to hell! They shop as if they are buying cattle.”

  “Ay, Mr. Steel, let’s be done with it. I’ll make my selection. Mr. Alleyne?” The young, fair-haired doctor stepped forward, his gentle face constricted with shock. David Alleyne, had never before attended a slave sale, either.

  They stepped into the hot, fetid mass of humanity, Drake with them. The air reeked of unwashed bodies. Here and there, a sick or weak black fainted. Alleyne went down on one knee quickly, but what could one doctor do among so many?

  Plum made his selections swiftly and humanely. He didn’t prod or poke. He examined the eyes. “Health shows in the eye, Mr. Steel.” He chose four strong young field hands, and, examining the terrified men gently, Alleyne corroborated the choice. Plum signaled a slaver and made his purchase. As Valentine O’Brien led them off, a wild cry erupted from the women’s side of the beach. A young pregnant woman lunged in her shackles, her arms outstretched and begging, and one of Plum’s new slaves whirled in his shackles, a guttural cry bursting from his throat as he tried to go to her. Valentine jerked the shackles tight, preventing him.

  “I will take her, also,” Plum told the slaver, then went to arrange payment.

  Drake didn’t go with him. He’d seen enough. Putting the stench and the noise behind him, he strode to the nearest drinking house and ordered a brandy. It came with a clump of sugar in it, dissolving in trails of bubbles. Sugar again. He shoved it aside and ordered another brandy without sugar. This time, the sugar clump came served on the side, in a dish. Drake shoved it away, took a mouthful of brandy, let it burn like fire on his tongue for a moment, then swallowed it down. He breathed deeply, cleansing his lungs. God in heaven, what devils men were.

  When Plum came in and joined him, Drake shoved the sugared brandy at him. Plum added the dish sugar, swirled it until it dissolved, and tossed the brandy down in a swallow. Evidently he, too, needed cleansing from the morning’s event. Drake signaled for two more brandies and they tossed them down before they sat back and began to talk.

  “That was a decent thing you did out there, Plum, buying the man’s wife.”

  “Nay.” Plum denied it shaking his head. “It was merely common sense. If a slave’s wife is taken from him, he will run away to find her, first chance he gets. If his wife is with him, he will stay. I was merely protecting my primary purchase.”

  Drake gazed at him. “You’re a lying son-of-a-bitch. You did it out of the goodness of your heart.” Plum’s smile as much as acknowledged it. Drake signaled for a third round of brandy. This time when it came, they sipped it slowly, companionably.

  “Edwinna would have wished me to do it,” Plum said. “She objects to breaking up families.” To which, Drake raised a skeptical, sardonic eyebrow. “You don’t think much of Edwinna, do you, Mr. Steel?”

  Drake glanced away impatiently. “She’s a slave owner. Right now, I’ve no inclination to like any slave owner.”

  Unwinding with the brandy, Plum settled mellowly into his chair, his eyes on Drake. “I think it’s time I told you about Edwinna, Mr. Steel.”

  “What about her?” He glanced as the drinking house began to fill with loud, noisy slave buyers. They brought the stench of the slave market with them. Drake wanted to torch the place.

  “Did she tell you about her mother?”

  “Little. I only know her mother is dead.”

  “She is not dead, Mr. Steel.” Drake swiveled his gaze to Plum. “Lydia Crawford ran away with her lover. Edwinna was nine or ten years old when it happened. Thomas and Harry were two or thereabouts, too young to miss their mother for long. But Edwinna took it hard—very hard.”

  Drake stared at him. He tried to imagine his own mother abandoning him when he was ten years old, and he couldn’t. His family had been close-knit, loving, his parents devoted to each other and to him and Verity.

  “Nobody blamed Lydia Crawford for running. I’m not one to speak evil of my employer. I don’t hold with that. But Peter Crawford was a difficult man. Overfond of kill-devil. When he drank, the whole plantation shook in their shoes. Drunk, he could rage like a madman.”

  Drake’s thoughts expanded. So that explained it all—Edwinna’s flash of wariness every time he took a drink, her abstemious habits, her avoidance of even a drop of wine. He’d chalked it up to prudery. It wasn’t. It was outright fear. She feared what men could do under the influence.

  “That must have been hard on Edwinna, growing up with a drunkard for a father.”

  “Hard?” Plum smiled bitterly. “I remember a time when she was eleven or twelve. She came to my cabin in the middle of the night, running scared through the darkness, clutching her wrist, sobbing and crying, her face bruised, her lips white with pain. Her wrist was broken, Mr. Steel.�
��

  “An accident?”

  “She would not tell us. I only know that after the plantation doctor and I splinted her wrist, I held her in my lap the whole night long. She sobbed and sobbed. Not from the physical pain, Mr. Steel, but from a broken heart.”

  Drake stared at him. “Her father beat her?”

  “I’m not saying that,” Plum hedged. “I’m only saying Edwinna had more than her share of bruises and broken bones as a child.”

  “Why didn’t you do something?”

  “I did. When I made my complaint to Peter Crawford he threatened me with dismissal. I thought it better to bite my tongue and stay on Crawford Plantation for Edwinna’s sake. There I could help her, gone I could not.”

  “Why didn’t she go somewhere, get help?”

  “Loyalty, Mr. Steel. She loved Thomas and Harry. She was a regular little mother, bringing them up proper after Lydia Crawford ran off, though she was but a child herself and in need of mothering. She stayed for Thomas and Harry’s sake. But I’ll tell you this. Not one tear was shed on Crawford Plantation the day Peter Crawford took that fall from his horse and broke his back. He spent his final years a cripple in bed, unable even to wield his walking stick. Edwinna got no more broken bones or bruises.” Feeling his brandy, Plum said, “Add George Crawford and Clive to the picture, and you can understand why Edwinna is the way she is with men. She don’t trust a jack one of ’em.”

  Drake uttered a healthy curse. He got out of his chair, paced to the open window, and breathed in a deep draught of the trade winds. Plum’s story bothered him more than he wanted to admit. He’d not been prepared to feel anything for Edwinna. Until now, she’d been an enigma, a puzzle, a challenge. But now he felt differently. He felt outraged, angry on her behalf.

  Drake couldn’t sleep that night in Bridgetown. The air was sultry. Plum snored away next to him in the bed they shared. Mosquitoes abounded, finding their way through the holes in the window netting. The day weighed too heavily upon him. The brutality of the slave sale. Edwinna. Her father.