Caribbee Read online

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  Benjamin Briggs stood in the open doorway of the curing-house, listening to the "sweee" call of the long-tailed fly­catchers as they flitted through the groves of macaw palms. The long silence of dusk was settling over the sugarworks as the indentures and the slaves trudged wearily toward their thatched huts for the evening dish of loblolly mush. Down the hill, toward the shore, vagrant bats had begun to dart through the shadows.

  In the west the setting sun had become a fiery disk at the edge of the sea's far horizon. He watched with interest as a single sail cut across the sun's lower rim. It was Hugh Win­ston's Defiance, rigged in a curious new mode. He studied it a moment, puzzling, then turned back to examine the dark­ening interior of the curing house.

  Long racks, holding wooden cones of curing sugar, ex­tended the length of one wall. He thought about the cones for a time, watching the slow drip of molasses into the tray beneath and wondering if it mightn't pay to start making them from clay, which would be cheaper and easier to shape. Though the Africans seemed to understand working clay— they'd been using it for their huts—he knew that only whites could be allowed to make the cones. The skilled trades on Barbados must always be forbidden to blacks, whose tasks had to be forever kept repetitive, mind-numbing. The Afri­cans could never be allowed to perfect a craft. It could well lead to economic leverage and, potentially, resistance to slav­ery and the end of cheap labor.

  He glanced back toward the darkening horizon, but now Winston's frigate had passed from view, behind the trees. Winston was no better than a thieving rogue, bred for gallows-bait, but you had to admire him a trifle nonetheless. He was one of the few men around who truly understood the need for risk here in the Americas. The man who never chanced what he had gained in order to realize more would never prosper. In the Americas a natural aristocracy was ris­ing up, one not of birth but of boldness.

  Boldness would be called for tonight, but he was ready. He had done what had to be done all his life.

  The first time was when he was thirty-one, a tobacco im­porter in Bristol with an auburn-haired wife named Mary and two blue-eyed daughters, a man pleased with himself and with life. Then one chance-filled afternoon he had discov­ered, in a quick succession of surprise and confession, that Mary had a lover. The matter of another man would not have vexed him unduly, but the fact that her gallant was his own business partner did.

  The next day he sold his share of the firm, settled with his creditors, and hired a coach for London. He had never seen Bristol again. Or Mary and his daughters.

  In London there was talk that a syndicate of investors led by Sir William Courteen was recruiting a band of pioneers to try and establish a new settlement on an empty island in the Caribbees, for which they had just received a proprietary patent from the king. Though Benjamin Briggs had never heard of Barbados, he joined the expedition. He had no fam­ily connections, no position, and only a few hundred pounds. But he had the boldness to go where no Englishman had ever ventured.

  Eighty of them arrived in the spring of 1627, on the Wil­liam and John, with scarcely any tools, only to discover that the entire island was a rain forest, thick and overgrown. Nor had anyone expected the harsh sunshine, day in and day out. They all would have starved from inexperience had not the Dutch helped them procure a band of Arawak Indians from Surinam, who brought along seeds to grow plantains and corn, and cassava root for bread. The Indians also taught the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, cash crops. Perhaps just as importantly, they showed the new adventurers from London how to make a suspended bed they called a hammock, in order to sleep up above the island's biting ants, and how to use smoky fires to drive off the swarms of mosquitoes that appeared each night. Yet, help notwithstanding, many of those first English settlers died from exposure and disease by the end of the year. Benjamin Briggs was one of the survi­vors. Later, he had vowed never to forget those years, and never to taste defeat.

  The sun was almost gone now, throwing its last, long shadows through the open thatchwork of the curing-house walls, laying a pattern against the hard earthen floor. He looked down at his calloused hands, the speckle of light and shade against the weathered skin, and thought of all the labors he had set them to.

  The first three years those hands had wielded an axe, clearing land, and then they had shaped themselves to the handle of a hoe, as he and his five new indentures set about planting indigo. And those hands had stayed penniless when his in­digo crops were washed away two years running by the au­tumn storms the Carib Indians called huracan. Next he had set them to cotton. In five years he had recouped the losses from the indigo and acquired more land, but he was still at the edge of starvation, in a cabin of split logs almost a decade after coming out to the Caribbees.

  He looked again at his hands, thinking how they had borrowed heavily from lenders in London, the money just enough to finance a switch from cotton to tobacco. It fared a trifle better, but still scarcely recovered its costs.

  Though he had managed to accumulate more and more acres of island land over the years, from neighbors less pru­dent, he now had only a moderate fortune to show for all his labor. He'd actually considered giving up on the Americas and returning to London, to resume the import trade. But always he remembered his vow, so instead he borrowed again, this time from the Dutchmen, and risked it all one last time. On sugar.

  He scraped a layer from the top of one of the molds and rubbed the tan granules between his fingers, telling himself that now, at last, his hands had something to show for the two long decades of callouses, blisters, emptiness.

  He tasted the rich sweetness on a horned thumb and its savor was that of the Americas. The New World where every man started as an equal.

  Now a new spirit had swept England. The king was dethroned, the hereditary House of Lords abolished. The peo­ple had risen up . . . and, though you’d never have expected it, new risk had risen up with them. The American settle­ments were suddenly flooded with the men England had re­pudiated. Banished aristocrats like the Walronds, who'd bought their way into Barbados and who would doubtless like nothing better than to reforge the chains of class privilege in the New World.

  Most ironic of all, these men had at their disposal the new democratic institutions of the Americas. They would clamor in the Assembly of Barbados for the island to reject the gov­ernance of the English Parliament, hoping thereby to hasten its downfall and lead to the restoration of the monarchy. Worse, the Assembly, that reed in the winds of rhetoric, would doubtless acquiesce.

  Regardless of what you thought of Cromwell, to resist Parliament now would be to swim against the tide. And to invite war. The needful business of consolidating the small tracts on Barbados and setting the island wholesale to sugar would be disrupted and forestalled, perhaps forever.

  Why had it come down to this, he asked himself again. Now, of all times. When the fruits of long labor seemed almost in hand. When you could finally taste the comforts of life—a proper house, rich food, a woman to ease the nights.

  He had never considered taking another wife. Once had been enough. But he had always arranged to have a comely Irish girl about the house, to save the trouble and expense of visiting Bridgetown for an evening.

  A prudent man bought an indentured wench with the same careful eye hed acquire a breeding mare. A lusty-looking one might cost a few shillings more, but it was money well in­vested, your one compensation for all the misery.

  The first was years ago, when he bought a red-headed one straight off a ship from London, not guessing till he got her home that he’d been swindled; she had a sure case of the pox, the French disease. Her previous career, it then came out, included Bridewell Prison and the taverns of Turnbull Street. He sent her straight to the fields and three months later carefully bought another, this one Irish and seventeen. She had served out her time, five years, and then gone to work at a tavern in Bridgetown. He had never seen her since, and didn't care to, but after that he always kept one about, sending her on to t
he fields and buying a replacement when he wearied of her.

  That was before the voyage down to Pernambuco. Brazil had been an education, in more ways than one. You had to grant the Papists knew a thing or so about the good life. They had bred up a sensuous Latin creation: the mulata. He tried one at a tavern, and immediately decided the time had come to acquire the best. He had worked hard, he told himself; he had earned it.

  There was no such thing as a mulata indenture in Pernambuco, so he'd paid the extra cost for a slave. And he was still cursing himself for his poor judgment. Haughtiness in a servant was nothing new. In the past he'd learned you could easily thrash it out of them, even the Irish ones. This mulata, though, somehow had the idea she was gifted by God to a special station, complete with high-born Latin airs. The plan to be finally rid of her was already in motion.

  She had come from Pernambuco with the first cane, and she would be sold in Bridgetown with the first sugar. He already had a prospective buyer, with an opening offer of eighty pounds.

  He'd even hinted to Hugh Winston that she could be taken as part payment for the sight drafts, but Winston had refused the bait. It was men and provisions, he insisted, nothing else.

  Winston. May God damn his eyes. . . .

  Footsteps sounded along the gravel pathway and he turned to examine the line of planters approaching through the dusk, all wearing dark hats and colorless doublets. As he watched them puffing up the rise of the hill, he found himself calcu­lating how much of the arable land on the island was now controlled by himself and these eleven other members of the Council. Tom Lancaster owned twelve hundred acres of the rolling acres in St. George's parish; Nicholas Whittington had over a thousand of the best land in Christ's Church parish; Edward Bayes, who had ridden down from his new plantation house on the northern tip of the island, owned over nine hundred acres; John lynes had amassed a third of the arable coastal land on the eastern, windward side of the island. The holdings of the others were smaller, but together they easily owned the major share of the good cane land on Barbados. What they needed now was the rest.

  "Your servant, sir." The planters nodded in chorus as they filed into the darkened curing house. Every man had ridden alone, and Briggs had ordered his own servants to keep clear of the curing house for the evening.

  "God in heaven, this much already." Bayes emitted a low whistle and rubbed his jowls as he surveyed the long rows of sugar molds. "You've got a fortune in this very room, sir. If this all turns out to be sugar, and not just pots of molasses like before."

  "It'll be white sugar or I'll answer for it, and it'll be fine as any Portugal could make." Briggs walked to the corner of the room, returning with two flasks of kill-devil and a tray of tankards. "The question now, gentlemen, is whether we'll ever see it sold."

  "I don't follow you, sir." Whittington reached for a brown flask and began pouring himself a tankard. "As soon as we've all got a batch cured, we'll market it to the Dutchmen. Or we'll ship it to London ourselves."

  "I suppose you've heard the rumor working now amongst the Dutchmen? That there might be an embargo?"

  "Aye, but it's no more than a rumor. There'll be no em­bargo, I promise you. It'd be too costly."

  "It's not just a rumor. There was a letter from my London broker in the mail packet that came yesterday on the Rotter­dam. He saw fit to include this." Briggs produced a thin roll of paper. "It's a copy he had made of the Act prepared in the Council of State, ready to be sent straight to Commons for a vote." He passed the paper to Whittington, who un-scrolled it and squinted through the half-light. Briggs paused a moment, then continued, "The Act would embargo all shipping into and out of Barbados till our Assembly has moved to recognize the Commonwealth. Cromwell was so sure it'd be passed he was already pulling together a fleet of warships to send out and enforce it. Word has't the fleet will be headed by the Rainbowe, which was the king's flagship before Cromwell took it. Fifty guns."

  A disbelieving silence enveloped the darkened room.

  "And you say this Act was set to pass in Parliament?" Whittington looked up and recovered his voice.

  "It'd already been reported from the Council of State. And the letter was four weeks old. More'n likely it's already law. The Rainbowe could well be sailing at the head of a fleet right now as we talk."

  "If Cromwell does that, we're as good as on our knees." Tynes rubbed his neck and took a sip from his tankard. "What do you propose we can do?"

  "As I see it, there're but two choices." Briggs motioned for the men to sit on a row of empty kegs he had provided. "The first is to lie back and do nothing, in which case the royalists will probably see to it that the Assembly here votes to defy Commons and declare for Charles II."

  "Which means we'll be at war with England, God help us." Lancaster removed his hat to wipe his dusty brow.

  "Aye. A war, incidentally, which would force Cromwell to send the army to subdue the island, if he hasn't already. He'd probably post troops to try and invade us, like some people are saying. Which means the Assembly would doubt­less call up every able-bodied man on the island to fight. All the militia, and the indentures. Letting the cane rot in the fields, if it's not burned to cinders by then."

  "Good Jesus." Whittington's face seemed increasingly haggard in the waning light. "That could well set us back years."

  "Aye, and who knows what would happen with the inden­tures and the slaves? Who'll be able to watch over them? If we have to put the island on a war footing, it could endanger the lives of every free man here. God knows we're outnum­bered by all the Irish Papists and the Africans."

  "Aye, the more indentures and slaves you've got, the more precarious your situation." Lancaster's glazed eyes passed down the row of sugar molds as he thought about the feeble security of his own clapboard house. He also remembered ruefully that he owned only three usable muskets.

  "Well, gentlemen, our other choice is to face up to the situation and come to terms with Parliament. It's a bitter draught, I'll grant you, but it'll save us from anarchy, and maybe an uprising."

  "The Assembly'll never declare for the Commonwealth. The royalist sympathizers hold a majority." Whittington's face darkened. "Which means there's nothing to be done save ready for war."

  "There's still a hope. We can do something about the Assembly." Briggs turned to Tynes, a small, tanned planter with hard eyes. "How many men do you have in your regi­ment?"

  "There're thirty officers, and maybe two hundred men."

  "How long to raise them?"

  "Raise them, sir?" He looked at Briggs, uncomprehend­ing. "To what purpose? They're militia, to defend us against attack by the Spaniards."

  "It's not the Spaniards we've to worry about now. I think we can agree there's a clear and present danger nearer to hand." Briggs looked around him. "I say the standing As­sembly of Barbados no longer represents the best interests of this island. For any number of reasons."

  "Is there a limit on their term?" Lancaster looked at him questioningly. "I don't remember the law."

  "We're not adjudicating law now, gentlemen. We're dis­cussing the future of the island. We're facing war. But beyond that, it's time we talked about running Barbados the way it should be, along economic principles. There'll be prosperity, you can count on it, but only if we've got a free hand to make some changes." He took a drink, then set down his tankard.

  "What do you mean?" Lancaster looked at him.

  "Well sir, the main problem now is that we've got an As­sembly here that's sympathetic to the small freeholders. Not surprisingly, since thanks to Dalby Bedford every man here with five acres can vote. Our good governor saw to that when he drew up the voting parishes. Five acres. They're not the kind who should be in charge of governing this settlement now. I know it and so does every man in this room."

  "All the same, they were elected."

  "That was before sugar. Think about it. These small free­holders on the Assembly don't understand this island wasn't settled just so we'd have a batch of
five-acre gardens. God's blood, I cleared a thousand acres myself. I figured that some­day I'd know why I was doing it. Well, now I do."

  "What are you driving at?" Bayes squinted past the rows of sugar cones.

  "Well, examine the situation. This island could be the fin­est sugar plantation in the world. The Dutchmen already claim it's better than Brazil. But the land here's got to be assembled and put to efficient use. If we can consolidate the holdings of these small freeholders, we can make this island the richest spot on earth. The Assembly doesn't understand that. They'd go to war rather than try and make some prosperity here."

  "What are you proposing we do about it?" Lancaster interjected warily.

  "What if we took action, in the interests of the island?" Briggs lowered his voice. "We can't let the Assembly vote against the Commonwealth and call down the navy on our heads. They've got to be stopped."

  "But how do we manage it?" Tynes' voice was uneasy.

  "We take preventive action." He looked around the room. "Gentlemen, I say it'd be to the benefit of all the free En­glishmen on Barbados if we took the governor under our pro­tection for the time being, which would serve to close down the Assembly while we try and talk sense with Parliament."

  "We'd be taking the law into our own hands." Tynes shifted uncomfortably.

  "It's a question of whose law you mean. According to the thinking of the English Parliament, this Assembly has no legal standing anyway, since they've yet to recognize the rule of Commons. We'd just be implementing what's already been decided."

  "I grant you this island would be wise not to antagonize Cromwell and Parliament just now." Whittington searched the faces around him. "And if the Assembly won't take a prudent course, then . . ."

  "What we're talking about here amounts to overturning the sitting governor, and closing down the Assembly." Lancas­ter's voice came through the gloom. "We've not the actual authority, even if Parliament has . . ."

  "We've got something more, sir." Briggs met his troubled gaze. "An obligation. To protect the future of the island."

  What we need now, he told himself, is responsible lead­ership. If the Council can deliver up the island, the quid pro quo from Cromwell will have to be acting authority to govern Barbados. Parliament has no brief for the Assembly here, which fits nicely with the need to be done with it anyway.

  The irony of it! Only if Barbados surrenders do we have a chance to realize some prosperity. If we stand and fight, we're sure to lose eventually, and then none of us will have any say in what comes after.

  And in the long run it'll be best for every man here, rich and poor. When there's wealth—as there's sure to be if we can start evicting these freeholders and convert the island over to efficient sugar plantations—everybody benefits. The wealth will trickle down, like the molasses out of these sugar cones, even to the undeserving. It's the way things have to be in the Americas if we're ever to make a go of it.

  But one step at a time. First we square the matter of Bed­ford and the Assembly.

  "But have we got the men?" Lancaster settled his tankard on a keg and looked up hesitantly.

  "With the militia we already have under our command, I'd say we've got sympathetic officers, since they're all men with sizable sugar acreage. On the other hand, it'd probably not be wise to try calling up any of the small freeholders and freemen. So to get the numbers we'll be wanting, I'd say we'll just have to use our indentures as the need arises."

  "You've named a difficulty there." Whittington took a deep breath. "Remember the transfer over to Winston takes place day after tomorrow. That's going to leave every man here short. After that I'll have no more than half a dozen Chris­tians on my plantation. All the rest are Africans."

  "Aye, he'll have the pick of my indentures as well," Lan­caster added, his voice troubled.

  "He'll just have to wait." Briggs emptied his tankard and reached for the flask. "We'll postpone the transfer till this thing's settled. And let Winston try to do about it what he will."