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CHAPTER THREE

  Katherine gazed past the pewter candlesticks and their flickering tapers, down the long cedar table of Briggs' dining hall, now piled high with stacks of greasy wooden plates spilling over with half-finished food. The room was wide and deep, with dark oak beams across the ceiling and fresh white plaster walls. Around the table were rows of grim men in black hats and plump Puritan women in tight bodices and starched collars. For all its surface festivity, there was some­thing almost ominous about the evening. Change was in the air, and not change for the better.

  At the head of the table were the most prominent members of the Council, the owners of Barbados' largest plantations. She knew the wealthiest ones personally: Edward Bayes, his jowls protruding beneath his whisp of beard, owned the choicest coastal lands north around Speightstown; Thomas Lancaster, now red-cheeked and glassy-eyed from the liquor, had the largest plantation in the rolling plains of St. George's parish, mid-island; Nicholas Whittington, dewlapped and portly, was master of a vast acreage in Christ's Church par­ish, on the southern coast.

  Anthony Walrond had not been invited, nor any other of the new royalist emigres—which she should have known was exactly what was going to happen before she went to all the bother of having a new dress and bodice made up. No, to­night the guests were the rich planters, the old settlers who arrived on Barbados in the early years and claimed the best land. They were the ones that Dalby Bedford, now seated beside her, diplomatically sipping from his tankard, liked to call the "plantocracy." They had gathered to celebrate the beginnings of the sugar miracle. And the new order.

  The room was alive with an air of expectancy, almost as palpable as the smoke that drifted in through the open kitchen door. Benjamin Briggs' banquet and ball, purportedly a celebration, was in truth something more like a declaration: the Assembly, that elected body created by Dalby Bedford from among the small freeholders, would soon count for nothing in the face of the big planters' new wealth and power. Hence­forth, this flagship of the Americas would be controlled by the men who owned the most land and the most slaves.

  The worst part of all, she told herself, was that Briggs' celebration would probably last till dawn. Though the ban­quet was over now, the ball was about to commence. And after that, Briggs had dramatically announced, there would be a special preview of his new sugarworks, the first on the island.

  In hopes of reinforcing her spirits, she took another sip of Canary wine, then lifted her glass higher, to study the room through its wavy refractions. Now Briggs seemed a distorted, comical pygmy as he ordered the servants to pass more bot­tles of kill-devil down the table, where the planters and their wives continued to slosh it into their pewter tankards of lemon punch. After tonight, she found herself thinking, the whole history of the Americas might well have to be rewritten. Bar­bados would soon be England's richest colony, and unless the Assembly held firm, these few greedy Puritans would seize control. All thanks to sugar.

  Right there in the middle of it all was Hugh Winston, look­ing a little melancholy and pensive. He scarcely seemed to notice as several toasts to his health went round the table—salutes to the man who'd made sugar possible. He obviously didn't care a damn about sugar. He was too worried about getting his money.

  As well he should be, she smiled to herself. He'll never see it. Not a farthing. Anybody could tell that Briggs and the Council hadn't the slightest intention of settling his sight bills. He didn't impress them for a minute with those pretty Span­ish pistols in his belt. They'd stood up to a lot better men than him. Besides, there probably weren't two thousand pounds in silver on the whole island.

  Like all the American settlements, Barbados' economy ex­isted on barter and paper; everything was valued in weights of tobacco or cotton. Metal money was almost never seen; in fact, it was actually against the law to export coin from Eng­land to the Americas. The whole Council together couldn't come up with that much silver. He could forget about settling his sight bills in specie.

  "I tell you this is the very thing every man here'll need if he's to sleep nights." Briggs voice cut through her thoughts. He was at the head of the table, describing the security fea­tures of his new stone house. "Mind you, it's not yet fin­ished." He gestured toward the large square staircase leading up toward the unpainted upper floors. "But it's already se­cure as the Tower of London."

  She remembered Briggs had laid the first stone of his grand new plantation house in the weeks after his return from Bra­zil, in anticipation of the fortune he expected to make from sugar, and he had immediately christened it "Briggs Hall." The house and its surrounding stone wall were actually a small fortress. The dining room where they sat now was sit­uated to one side of the wide entry foyer, across from the parlor and next to the smoky kitchen, a long stone room set off to the side. There were several small windows along the front and back of the house, but these could all be sealed tight with heavy shutters—a measure as much for health as safety, since the planters believed the cool night breeze could induce dangerous chills and "hot paroxysms."

  Maybe he thought he needed such a house. Maybe, she told herself, he did. He already had twenty indentures, and he'd just bought thirty Africans. The island now expected more slave cargos almost weekly.

  As she listened, she found herself watching Hugh Winston, wondering what the Council's favorite smuggler thought of it all. Well, at the moment he looked unhappy. He seemed to find Briggs' lecture on the new need for security either pa­thetic or amusing—his eyes were hard to make out—but she could tell from his glances round the table he found some­thing ironic about the need for a stone fort in the middle of a Caribbean island.

  Briggs suddenly interrupted his monologue and turned to signal his servants to begin placing trenchers of clay pipes and Virginia tobacco down the table. A murmur of approval went up when the planters saw it was imported, not the musty weed raised on Barbados.

  The appearance of the tobacco signaled the official end of the food. As the gray-shirted servants began packing and firing the long-stemmed pipes, then kneeling to offer them to the tipsy planters, several of the more robust wives present rose with a grateful sigh. Holding their new gowns away from the ant-repellent tar smeared along the legs of the table and chairs, they began retiring one by one to the changing room next to the kitchen, where Briggs' Irish maidservants could help loosen their tight bodices in preparation for the ball.

  Katherine watched the women file past, then cringed as she caught the first sound of tuning fiddles from the large room opposite the entryway. What was the rest of the evening going to be like? Surely the banquet alone was enough to prove Briggs was now the most powerful man in Barbados, soon perhaps in all the Americas. He had truly outdone him­self. Even the servants were saying it was the grandest night the island had ever seen—and predicting it was only the first of many to come.

  The indentures themselves had all dined earlier on their usual fare of loblolly cornmeal mush, sweet potatoes, and hyacinth beans—though tonight they were each given a small allowance of pickled turtle in honor of the banquet. But for the Council and their wives, Briggs had dressed an expensive imported beef as the centerpiece of the table. The rump had been boiled, and the brisket, along with the cheeks, roasted. The tongue and tripe had been minced and baked into pies, seasoned with sweet herbs, spices, and currants. The beef had been followed by a dish of Scots collops of pork; then a young kid goat dressed in its own blood and thyme, with a pudding in its belly; and next a sweet suckling pig in a sauce of brains, sage, and nutmeg mulled in Claret wine. After that had come a shoulder of mutton and a side of goat, both cov­ered with a rasher of bacon, then finally baked rabbit and a loin of veal.

  And as though that weren't enough to allow every planter there to gorge himself to insensibility, there were also deep bowls of potato pudding and dishes of baked plantains, prickly pear, and custard apples. At the end came the tradi­tional cold meats, beginning with roast duck well larded, then Spanish bacon, pickled oysters, and fish roe.
With it all was the usual kill-devil, as well as Canary wine, Sherry, and red sack from Madeira.

  When the grease-stained table had been cleared and the pipes lighted, Briggs announced the after-dinner cordial. A wide bowl of French brandy appeared before him, and into it the servants cracked a dozen large hen eggs. Then a gen­erous measure of sugar was poured in and the mixture vig­orously stirred. Finally he called for a burning taper, took it himself, and touched the flame to the brandy. The fumes hovering over the dish billowed into a huge yellow blossom, and the table erupted with a cheer. After the flame had died away, the servants began ladling out the mixture and passing portions down the table.

  Katherine sipped the sweet, harsh liquid and watched as two of the planters sitting nearby, their clay pipes billowing, rose unsteadily and hoisted their cups for a toast. The pair smelled strongly of sweat and liquor. They weren't members of the Council, but both would also be using the new sugar-works—for a percentage—after Briggs had finished with his own cane, since their plantations were near Briggs' and nei­ther could afford the investment to build his own. One was Thomas Lockwood, a short, brooding Cornwall bachelor who now held a hundred acres immediately north of Briggs' land, and the other was William Marlott, a thin, nervous Suffolk merchant who had repaired to Barbados with his consumptive wife ten years before and had managed to accumulate eighty acres upland, all now planted in cane.

  "To the future of sugar on Barbados," Lockwood began, his voice slurred from the kill-devil. Then Marlott joined in, "And a fine fortune to every man at this table."

  A buzz of approval circled the room, and with a scrape of chairs all the other men pulled themselves to their feet and raised their cups.

  Katherine was surprised to see Hugh Winston lean back in his chair, his own cup sitting untouched on the boards. He'd been drinking all evening, but now his eyes had acquired an absent gaze as he watched the hearty congratulations going around.

  After the planters had drunk, Briggs turned to him with a querulous expression.

  "Where's your thirst, Captain? Will you not drink to the beginnings of English prosperity in the Caribbees? Sure, it's been a long time coming."

  "You'll be an even longer time paying the price." It was virtually the first time Winston had spoken all evening, and his voice was subdued. There was a pause, then he contin­ued, his voice still quiet. "So far all sugar's brought you is slavery. And prisons for homes, when it was freedom that Englishmen came to the Americas for. Or so I've heard claimed."

  "Now sir, every man's got a right to his own mind on a thing, I always say. But the Caribbees were settled for profit, first and foremost. Let's not lose sight of that." Briggs smiled indulgently and settled his cup onto the table. "For that mat­ter, what's all this 'freedom' worth if you've not a farthing in your pocket? We've tried everything else, and it's got to be sugar. It's the real future of the Americas, depend on it. Which means we've got to work a batch of Africans, plain as that, and pay mind they don't get out of hand. We've tried it long enough to know these white indentures can't, or won't, endure the labor to make sugar. Try finding me a white man who'll cut cane all day in the fields. That's why every spoon of that sweet powder an English gentlewoman stirs into her china cup already comes from a black hand in chains. It's always been, it'll always be. For sure it'll be the Papist Span­iards and Portugals still holding the chains if not us."

  Winston, beginning to look a bit the worse for drink, seemed not to hear. "Which means you're both on the end of a chain, one way or another."

  "Well, sir, that's as it may be." Briggs settled back into his chair. "But you've only to look at the matter to under­stand there's nothing to compare with sugar. Ask any Papist. Now I've heard said it was first discovered in Cathay, but we all know sugar's been the monopoly of the Spaniards and Portugals for centuries. Till now. Mind you, the men in this room are the first Englishmen who've ever learned even how to plant the cane—not with seeds, but by burying sections of stalk."

  Katherine braced herself for what would come next. She had heard it all so many times before, she almost knew his text by heart.

  "We all know that if the Dutchmen hadn't taken that piece of Brazil from the Portugals, sugar'd be the secret of the Papists still. So this very night we're going to witness the beginning of a new history of the world. English sugar."

  "Aye," Edward Bayes interrupted, pausing to wipe his beard against his sleeve. "We've finally found something we can grow here in the Caribbees that'll have a market world­wide. Show me the fine lord who doesn't have his cook lade sugar into every dish on his table. Or the cobbler, one foot in the almshouse, who doesn't use all the sugar he can buy or steal." Bayes beamed, his red-tinged eyes aglow in the candlelight. "And that's only today, sir. I tell you, only to­day. The market for sugar's just beginning."

  "Not a doubt," Briggs continued. "Consider the new fashion just starting up in London for drinking coffee, and chocolate. There's a whole new market for sugar, since they'll not be drunk without it." He shoved aside his cup of punch and reached to pour a fresh splash of kill-devil into his tan­kard. "In faith, sugar's about to change forever the way En­glishmen eat, and drink, and live."

  "And I'll wager an acre of land here'll make a pound of sugar for every pound of tobacco it'll grow." Lockwood rose again. "When sugar'll bring who knows how many times the price. If we grow enough cane on Barbados, and buy our­selves enough of these Africans to bring it in, we'll be un­derselling the Papists in five years' time, maybe less."

  "Aye." Briggs seconded Lockwood, eyeing him as he drank. It was common knowledge that Briggs held eight­een-month sight drafts from the planter, coming due in a fortnight. Katherine looked at the two of them and won­dered how long it would be before the better part of Lockwood's acres were incorporated into the domain of Briggs Hall.

  "Well, I kept my end of our bargain, for better or worse." Winston's voice lifted over the din of the table. "Now it's time for yours. Two thousand pounds were what we agreed on, in coin. Spanish pieces-of-eight, English sovereigns--there's little difference to me."

  It's come, Katherine thought. But he'll not raise a shilling.

  Briggs was suddenly scrutinizing his tankard as an uneasy quiet settled around the table. "It's a hard time for us all just now, sir." He looked up. "Six months more and we'll have sugar to sell to the Dutchmen. But as it is today . . ."

  "That's something you should've thought about when you signed those sight drafts."

  "I'd be the first one to grant you that point, sir, the very first." Briggs' face had assumed an air of contrition. "But what's done's done." He placed his rough hands flat down on the table, as though to symbolize they were empty. "We've talked it over, and the best we can manage now's to roll them over, with interest, naturally. What would you say to . . . five percent?"

  "That wasn't the understanding." Winston's voice was quiet, but his eyes narrowed.

  "Well, sir. That's the terms we're prepared to offer." Briggs' tone hardened noticeably. "In this world it's the wise man who takes what he can get."

  "The sight bills are for cash on demand." Winston's voice was still faint, scarcely above a whisper. Katherine listened in dismay, realizing she'd secretly been hoping he could stand up to the Council. Just to prove somebody could. And now . . .

  "Damn your sight bills, sir. We've made you our offer." Briggs exchanged glances with the other members of the Council. "In truth, it'd be in the interest of all of us here to just have them declared worthless paper."

  "You can't rightfully do that." Winston drank again. "They have full legal standing."

  "We have courts here, sir, that could be made to take the longer view. To look to the interests of the island."

  "There're still courts in England. If we have to take it that far."

  "But you'll not be going back there, sir. We both know it'd take years." Briggs grinned. "And I'll warrant you'd get more justice in England than you bargained for, if you had the brass to try it."

&nb
sp; "That remains to be seen." Winston appeared trying to keep his voice firm. "But there'll be no need for that. I seem to recall the terms give me recourse—the right to foreclose. Without notice."

  "Foreclose?" Briggs seemed unsure he had caught the word.

  "Since you co-signed all the notes yourself, I won't have to bother with the rest of the Council," Winston continued. "I can just foreclose on you personally. Remember you pledged this plantation as collateral."

  "That was a formality. And it was two years past." Briggs laughed. "Before I built this house. And the sugarworks. At the time there was nothing on this property but a thatched-roof bungalow.''

  "Formality or not, the drafts pledge these acres and what's on them."

  "Well, damn you, sir." Briggs slammed down his tankard. "You'll not get . . ."

  "Mind you, I don't have any use for the land," Winston interjected. "So why don't we just make it the sugarworks? That ought to about cover what's owed." He looked back. "If I present the notes in Bridgetown tomorrow morning, we can probably just transfer ownership then and there. What do you say to that arrangement?"

  "You've carried this jest quite far enough, sir." Briggs' face had turned the color of the red prickly-pear apples on the table. "We all need that sugarworks. You'll not be getting your hands on it. I presume I speak for all the Council when I say we'll protect our interests. If you try foreclosing on that sugarworks, I'll call you out. I've a mind to anyway, here and now. For your damned impudence." He abruptly pushed back from the table, his doublet falling open to reveal the handle of a pistol. Several Council members shoved back also. All had flintlock pistols in their belts, the usual precau­tion in an island of unruly indentures.

  Winston appeared not to notice. "I see no reason for any­one to get killed over a little business transaction."

  Briggs laughed again. "No sir, I suppose you'd rather just try intimidating us with threats of foreclosure. But by God, if you think you can just barge in here and fleece the Council of Barbados, you've miscalculated. It's time you learned a thing or two about this island," he continued, his voice ris­ing. "Just because you like to strut about with a pair of fancy flintlocks in your belt, don't think we'll all heel to your bluff." He removed his dark hat and threw it on the table. It matched the black velvet of his doublet. "You can take our offer, or you can get off my property, here and now.''

  Katherine caught the determined looks in the faces of sev­eral members of the Council as their hands dropped to their belts. She suddenly wondered if it had all been planned. Was this what they'd been waiting for? They must have known he'd not accept their offer, and figured there was a cheaper way to manage the whole business anyway. A standoff with pistols, Winston against them all.

  "I still think it'd be better to settle this honorably." Win­ston looked down and his voice trailed off, but there was a quick flash of anger in his bloodshot eyes. Slowly he picked up his tankard and drained it. As the room grew silent, he coughed at the harshness of the liquor, then began to toy with the lid, flipping the thumb mechanism attached to the hinged top and watching it flap open and shut. He heaved a sigh, then abruptly leaned back and lobbed it in the general direc­tion of the staircase.

  As the tankard began its trajectory, he was on his feet, kicking away his chair. There was the sound of a pistol ham­mer being cocked and the hiss of a powder pan. Then the room flashed with an explosion from his left hand, where a pistol had appeared from out of his belt. At that moment the lid of the tankard seemed to disconnect in midair, spinning sideways as it ricocheted off the post of carved mastic wood at the top of the stairs. The pistol clicked, rotating up the under-barrel, and the second muzzle spoke. This time the tankard emitted a sharp ring and tumbled end over end till it slammed against the railing. Finally it bounced to rest against the cedar wainscot of the hallway, a small, centered hole directly through the bottom. The shorn lid was still rolling plaintively along the last step of the stairs.

  The entire scene had taken scarcely more than a second. Katherine looked back to see him still standing; he had dropped the flintlock onto the table, both muzzles trailing wisps of gray smoke, while his right hand gripped the stock of the other pistol, still in his belt.

  "You can deduct that from what's owed." His eyes went down the table.

  Briggs sat motionless in his chair staring at the tankard, while the other planters all watched him in expectant silence. Finally he picked up his hat and settled it back on his head without a word. Slowly, one by one, the other men closed their doublets over their pistols and nervously reached for their tankards.

  After a moment Winston carefully reached for his chair and straightened it up. He did not sit. "You'll be welcome to buy back the sugarworks any time you like. Just collect the money and settle my sight bills."

  The room was still caught in silence, till finally Briggs found his voice.

  "But the coin's not to be had, sir. Try and be reasonable. I tell you we'd not find it on the whole of the island."

  "Then maybe I'll just take something else." He reached out and seized the motley gray shirt of Timothy Farrell, now tiptoeing around the table carrying a fresh flask of kill-devil to Briggs. The terrified Irishman dropped the bottle with a crash as Winston yanked him next to the table. "Men. And provisions."

  Briggs looked momentarily disoriented. "I don't follow you, sir. What would you be doing with them?"

  "That's my affair. Just give me two hundred indentures, owned by the men on the Council who signed the sight drafts." He paused. "That should cover about half the sum. I'll take the balance in provisions. Then you can all have your sight bills to burn."

  Now Briggs was studying the tankard in front of him, his eyes shining in the candlelight. "Two hundred indentures and you'd be willing to call it settled?"

  "To the penny."

  In the silence that followed, the rasp of a fiddle sounded through the doorway, followed by the shrill whine of a re­corder. Briggs yelled for quiet, then turned back.

  "There may be some merit in what you're proposing." He glanced up at Farrell, watching the indenture flee the room as Winston released his greasy shirt. "Yes sir, I'm thinking your proposal has some small measure of merit. I don't know about the other men here, but I can already name you a num­ber of these layabouts I could spare." He turned to the plant­ers next to him, and several nodded agreement. "Aye, I'd have us talk more on it." He pushed back his chair and rose unsteadily from the table. The other planters took this as a signal, and as one man they scraped back their chairs and began to nervously edge toward the women, now clustered under the arches leading into the dancing room. "When the time's more suitable."

  "Tomorrow, then."

  "Give us till tomorrow night, sir. After we've had some time to parlay." Briggs nodded, then turned and led the crowd toward the sound of the fiddles, relief in his eyes.

  Katherine sat unmoving, dreading the prospect of having to dance with any of the drunken planters. She watched through the dim candlelight as Winston reached for an open flask of kill-devil, took a triumphant swig, then slammed it down. She suddenly realized the table had been entirely va­cated save for the two of them.

  The audacity! Of course it had all been a bluff. Anyone should have been able to tell. He'd just wanted the indentures all along. But why?

  "I suppose congratulations are in order, Captain."

  "Pardon?" He looked up, not recognizing her through the smoke and flickering shadows. "Forgive me, madam, I didn't catch what you said."

  "Congratulations. That was a fine show you put on with your pistol."

  He seemed momentarily startled, but then he laughed at his own surprise and took another swig of kill-devil. "Thank you very much." He wiped his mouth, set down the bottle, and glanced back. "Forgive me if I disturbed your evening."

  "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"

  "I used to do a bit of hunting."

  "Have you ever actually shot a man?"

  "Not that I choose to reme
mber."

  "I thought so. It really was a bluff." Her eyebrows lifted. "So may I enquire what is it you propose doing now with your two hundred men and provisions?"

  "You're Miss Bedford, if I'm not mistaken." He rose, finally making her out. "I don't seem to recall our being introduced." He bowed with a flourish. "Hugh Winston, your most obedient servant." Then he reached for the flask of kill-devil as he lowered back into his chair. "I'd never presume to address a . . . lady unless we're properly ac­quainted."

  She found the hint of sarcasm in his tone deliberately provoking. She watched as he took another drink directly from the bottle.

  "I don't seem to recall ever seeing you speak with a lady, Captain."

  "You've got a point." His eyes twinkled. "Perhaps it's because there're so few out here in the Caribbees."

  "Or could it be you're not aware of the difference?" His insolent parody of politeness had goaded her into a tone not entirely to her own liking.

  "So I've sometimes been told." Again his voice betrayed his pleasure. "But then I doubt there is much, really." He grinned. "At least, by the time they get around to educating me on that topic."

  As happened only rarely, she couldn't think of a suffi­ciently cutting riposte. She was still searching for one when he continued, all the while examining her in the same obvious way he'd done on the shore. "Excuse me, but I believe you enquired about something. The men and provisions, I believe it was. The plain answer is I plan to take them and leave Barbados, as soon as I can manage."

  "And where is it you expect you'll be going?" She found her footing again, and this time she planned to keep it.

  "Let's say, on a little adventure. To see a new part of the world." He was staring at her through the candlelight. "I've had about enough of this island of yours. Miss Bedford. As well as the new idea that slavery's going to make everybody rich. I'm afraid it's not my style."

  "But I gather you're the man responsible for our noble new order here, Captain."

  He looked down at the flask, his smile vanishing. "If that's true, I'm not especially proud of the fact."

  At last she had him. All his arrogance had dissolved. Just like Jeremy, that time she asked him to tell her what exactly he'd done in the battle at Marsten Moor. Yet for some reason she pulled back, still studying him.

  "It's hard to understand you, Captain. You help them steal sugarcane from the Portugals, then you decide you don't like it."

  "At the time it was a job. Miss Bedford. Let's say I've changed my mind since then. Things didn't turn out exactly the way I'd figured they would." He took another drink, then set down the bottle and laughed. "That always seems to be the way."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's something like the story of my life." His tone waxed slightly philosophical as he stared at the flickering candle. "I always end up being kicked about by events. So now I've decided to try turning things around. Do a little kicking of my own."

  "That's a curious ambition. I suppose these indentures are going to help you do it?" She was beginning to find him more interesting than she'd expected. "You said just now you learned to shoot by hunting. I know a lot of men who hunt, but I've never seen anything like what you did tonight. Where exactly did you learn that?"

  He paused, wondering how much to say. The place, of course, was Tortuga, and these days that meant the Cow-Killers, men who terrified the settlers of the Caribbean. But this wasn't a woman he cared to frighten. He was beginning to like her brass, the way she met his eye. Maybe, he thought, he'd explain it all to her if he got a chance someday. But not tonight. The story was too long, too painful, and ended too badly.

  His memories of Tortuga went back to the sultry autumn of 1631. Just a year before, that little island had been taken over by a group of English planters—men and women who'd earlier tried growing tobacco up on St. Christopher, only to run afoul of its Carib Indians and their poisoned arrows. After looking around for another island, they'd decided on Tortuga, where nobody lived then except for a few hunters of wild cattle, the Cow-Killers. Since the hunters themselves spent a goodly bit of their time across the channel on the big Spanish island of Hispaniola, Tortuga was all but empty.

  But now these planters were living just off the northern coast of a major Spanish domain, potentially much more dan­gerous than merely having a few Indians about. So they pe­titioned the newly formed Providence Company in London to swap a shipment of cannon for a tobacco contract. The Company, recently set up by some Puritan would-be priva­teers, happily agreed.

  Enter Hugh Winston. He'd just been apprenticed for three months to the Company by his royalist parents, intended as a temporary disciplining for some unpleasant reflections he'd voiced on the character of King Charles that summer after coming home from his first term at Oxford. Lord Winston and his wife Lady Brett, knowing he despised the Puritans for their hypocrisy, assumed this would be the ideal means to instill some royalist sympathies. As it happened, two weeks later the Providence Company posted this unwelcome son of two prominent monarchists out to Tortuga on the frigate de­livering their shipment of guns.

  No surprise, Governor Hilton of the island's Puritan settle­ment soon had little use for him either. After he turned out to show no more reverence for Puritans than for the mon­archy, he was sent over to hunt on Hispaniola with the Cow- Killers. That's where he had to learn to shoot if he was to survive. As things turned out, being banished there probably saved his life.

  When the Spaniards got word of this new colony, with Englishmen pouring in from London and Bristol, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, the large Spanish city on Hispaniola's southern side, decided to make an example. So in January of 1635 they put together an assault force of some two hundred fifty infantry, sailed into Tortuga's harbor, and staged a surprise attack. As they boasted afterward, they straightaway put to the sword all those they first captured, then hanged any others who straggled in later. By the time they'd finished, they'd burned the settlement to the ground and killed over six hundred men, women and children. They also hanged a few of the Cow-Killers—a mistake that soon changed history.

  When Jacques le Basque, the bearded leader of Hispanio- la's hunters, found out what had happened to his men, he vowed he was going to bankrupt and destroy Spain's New World empire in revenge. From what was heard these days, he seemed well on his way to succeeding.

  Hugh Winston had been there, a founding member of that band of men now known as the most vicious marauders the world had ever seen. That was the piece of his life he’d never gotten around to telling anyone. . . .

  "I did some hunting when I was apprenticed to an English settlement here in the Caribbean. Years ago."

  "Well, I must say you shoot remarkably well for a tobacco planter, Captain." She knew he was avoiding her question. Why?

  "I thought I'd just explained. I also hunted some in those days." He took another drink, then sought to shift the topic. "Perhaps now I can be permitted to ask you a question, Miss Bedford. I'd be interested to know what you think of the turn things are taking here? That is, in your official capacity as First Lady of this grand settlement."

  "What exactly do you mean?" God damn his supercilious tone.

  "The changes ahead. Here on Barbados." He waved his hand. "Will everybody grow rich, the way they're claiming?"

  "Some of the landowners are apt to make a great deal of money, if sugar prices hold." Why, she wondered, did he want to know? Was he planning to try and settle down? Or get into the slave trade himself? In truth, that seemed more in keeping with what he did for a living now.

  "Some? And why only some?" He examined her, puz­zling. "Every planter must already own a piece of this sud­denly valuable land."

  "The Council members and the other big landowners are doubtless thinking to try and force out the smaller freehold­ers, who'll not have a sugarworks and therefore be at their mercy." She began to toy deliberately with her glass, uncom­fortable at the prospect she was describing. "It's really quite simple, Captain. I
'm sure you can grasp the basic principles of commerce . . . given your line of work."

  "No little fortunes? just a few big ones?" Oddly, he re­fused to be baited.

  "You've got it precisely. But what does that matter to you? You don't seem to care all that much what happens to our small freeholders."

  "If that's true, it's a sentiment I probably share with most of the people who were at this table tonight." He raised the empty flask of kill-devil and studied it thoughtfully against the candle. "So if Briggs and the rest are looking to try and take it all, then I'd say you're in for a spell of stormy weather here, Miss Bedford."

  "Well, their plans are far from being realized, that I prom­ise you. Our Assembly will stand up to them all the way."

  "Then I suppose I should wish you, and your father, and your Assembly luck. You're going to need it." He flung the empty flask crashing into the fireplace, rose, and moved down the table. The light seemed to catch in his scar as he passed the candle. "And now perhaps you'll favor me with the next dance."

  She looked up, startled, as he reached for her hand.

  "Captain, I think you ought to know that I'm planning to be married."

  "To one of these rich planters, I presume."

  "To a gentleman, if you know what that is. And a man who would not take it kindly if he knew I was seen with you here tonight."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. Anthony Walrond."

  Winston erupted with laughter. "Well, good for him. He also has superb taste in flintlock muskets. Please tell him that when next you see him."

  "You mean the ones you stole from his ship that went aground? I don't expect he would find that comment very amusing."

  "Wouldn't he now." Winston's eyes flashed. "Well, damned to him. And if you want to hear something even less amusing than that, ask him sometime to tell you why I took those muskets." He reached for her hand. "At any rate, I'd like to dance with his lovely fiancee."

  "I've already told you . . ."

  "But it's so seldom a man like me is privileged to meet a true lady." His smile suddenly turned gracious. "As you were thoughtful enough to point out only a few moments ago. Why not humor me? I don't suppose you're his property. You seem a trifle too independent for that."

  Anthony would doubtless be infuriated, but she found her­self smiling back. Anyway, how would he ever find out? None of these Puritans even spoke to him. Besides, what else was there to do? Sit and stare at the greasy tankards on the table? . . . But what exactly had Hugh Winston meant about Antho­ny's muskets?

  "Very well. Just one."

  "I'm flattered." He was sweeping her through the arch­way, into the next room.

  The fiddles were just starting a new tune, while the plant­ers and their wives lined up facing each other, beginning the country dance Flaunting Two. As couples began to step for­ward one by one, then whirl down the room in turns to the music, Katherine found herself joining the end of the wom­en's line. Moments later Winston bowed to her, heels to­gether, then spun her down the makeshift corridor between the lines. He turned her away from him, then back, elegantly, in perfect time with the fiddle bows.

  The dance seemed to go on forever, as bodies smelling of sweat and kill-devil jostled together in the confinement of the tiny room. Yet it was invigorating, purging all her misgivings over the struggle that lay ahead. When she moved her body to her will like this, she felt in control of everything. As if she were riding, the wind hard against her cheek. Then, as now, she could forget about Anthony, the Council, about everything. Why couldn't all of life be managed the same way?

  When the dance finally concluded, the fiddlers scarcely paused before striking up another.

  "Just one more?" He was bending over, saying some­thing.

  "What?" She looked up at him, not hearing his words above the music and noise and bustle of the crowd. Whatever it was he'd said, it couldn't be all that important. She took his hand, guiding him into the next dance.

  A loud clanging resounded through the room, causing the fiddles to abruptly halt and startling Katherine, who found herself alarmed less by the sound than by the deadening re­turn of reality. She looked around to see Benjamin Briggs standing in the center of the floor, slamming a large bell with a mallet.

  "Attention gentlemen and ladies, if you please." He was shouting, even though the room had gone silent. "All's ready. The sugarworks start-up is now. "

  There was general applause around the room. He waited till it died away, then continued, in a more moderate tone.

  "I presume the ladies will prefer to retire above stairs rather than chance the night air. There's feather beds and hammocks ready, and the servants'll bring the candles and chamber pots."

  Winston listened in mock attentiveness, then leaned over toward Katherine.

  "Then I must bid you farewell, Miss Bedford. And lose you to more worthy companions."

  She looked at him dumbly, her blood still pumping from the dance. The exhilaration and release were the very thing she'd been needing.

  "I have no intention of missing the grand start-up." She tried to catch her breath. "It's to be history in the making, don't you recall?"

  "That it truly will be." He shrugged. "But are you sure the sugar-works is any place for a woman?"

  "As much as a man." She glared back at him. "There's a woman there already, Captain. Briggs' mulatto. I heard him say she's in the boiling house tonight, showing one of the new Africans how to heat the sap. She supposedly ran one once in Brazil."

  "Maybe she just told him that to avoid the dance." He turned and watched the planters begin filing out through the wide rear door. "Shall we join them, then?"

  As they walked out into the courtyard, the cool night air felt delicious against her face and sweltering bodice. At the back of the compound Briggs was opening a heavy wooden gate in the middle of the ten-foot-high stone wall that circled his house.

  "These Africans'll make all the difference, on my faith. It's already plain as can be." He cast a withering glance at Katherine as she and Winston passed, then he followed them through, ordering the servants to secure the gate. The plant­ers were assembled in a huddle now, surrounded by several of Briggs' indentures holding candle-lanterns. He took up his place at the front of the crowd and began leading them down the muddy road toward the torch-lit sugarworks lying to the left of the plantation house.

  Along the road were the thatched cabins of the indentured servants, and beyond these was a cluster of half-finished reed and clay huts, scarcely head high, that the Africans had be­gun constructing for themselves.

  "They're sound workers, for all their peculiar ways." Briggs paused and pointed to a large drum resting in front of one of the larger huts. It was shaped like an hourglass, and separate goatskins had been stretched over each mouth and laced together, end to end. "What do you make of that con­trivance? The first thing they did was start making this drum. And all this morning, before sunup, they were pounding on it. Damnedest racket this side of hell."

  "Aye, mine did the very same," Lancaster volunteered. "I heard them drumming all over the island."

  Briggs walked on. "They gathered 'round that Yoruba called Atiba, who's shaking some little seashells on a tray and chanting some of their gabble. After a time he'd say something to one of them and then there'd be more drum­ming." He shook his head in amazement. "Idolatry worse'n the Papists."

  "I've a mind to put a stop to it," Whittington interjected. "The indentures are already complaining."

  "It's a bother, I grant you. But I see no harm in their customs, long as they put in a day's work. The place I drew the line was when they started trying to bathe in my pond every night, when any Christian knows baths are a threat to health. But for it all, one of them will cut more cane than three Irishmen." He cast a contemptuous glance backward at Timothy Farrell, who was following at a distance, holding several bottles of kill-devil. "From sunup to sundown. Good workers, to the man. So if they choose to beat on drums, I say let them. It's nothin
g from my pocket."

  Katherine watched Winston shake his head in dismay as he paused to pick up the drum, turning it in his hands.

  "You seem troubled about their drumming, Captain. Why's that?"

  He looked up at her, almost as though he hadn't heard. "You've never been to Brazil, have you, Miss Bedford?"

  "I have not."

  "Then you probably wouldn't believe me, even if I told you." He looked back at the huts and seemed to be talking to himself. "God damn these Englishmen. They're fools."

  "It's surely some kind of their African music."

  "Obviously." His voice had a sarcastic cut, which she didn't particularly like. But before she could reply to him in kind, he had set down the drum and moved on, seeming to have forgotten all about whatever it was that had so distressed him the moment before. Then he turned back to her. "May I enquire if you yourself play an instrument, Miss Bedford?"

  "I once played the spinet." She reached down and picked up a small land crab wandering across their path. She ex­amined it, then flung it aside, its claws flailing. "But I don't bother anymore."

  He watched the crab bemusedly, then turned back. "Then you do know something about music?"

  "We're not without some rudiments of education here on Barbados, Captain."

  "And languages? Have you ever listened to these Yoruba talk? Theirs is a language of tones, you know. Same as their drums."

  "Some of these new Africans have a curious-sounding speech, I grant you."

  He stared at her a moment, as though preoccupied. "God help us all."

  He might have said more, but then he glanced after the crowd, now moving down the road. Ahead of them a gang of blacks could be seen through the torchlight, carrying bun­dles of cane in from the field and stacking them in piles near the new mill, situated atop a slight rise. A group of white indentured workers was also moving cane toward the mill from somewhere beyond the range of the torchlight, whipping forward a team of oxen pulling a large two-wheeled cart stacked with bundles. She noticed Winston seemed in no great hurry, and instead appeared to be listening absently to the planters.

  "Would you believe this is the very same cane we brought from Brazil?" Briggs was pointing toward a half-cut field adjacent to the road. "I planted October a year ago, just before the autumn rains. It's been sixteen months almost to the day, just like the Dutchmen said." He turned back to the crowd of planters. "The indentures weeded and dunged it, but I figured the Africans would be best for cutting it, and I was right. Born field workers. They'll be a godsend if they can be trained to run the sugarworks." He lowered his voice. "This is the last we'll need of these idling white indentures."

  They were now approaching the mill, which was situated inside a new thatched-roof building. Intended for crushing the cane and extracting the juice, it would be powered by two large white oxen shipped down specially from Rhode Island.

  The mill was a mechanism of three vertical brass rollers, each approximately a foot in diameter, that were cogged to­gether with teeth around their top and bottom. A large round beam was secured through the middle of the central roller and attached to two long sweeps that extended outward to a circular pathway intended for the draft animals. When the sweeps were moved, the beam would rotate and with it the rollers.

  "We just finished installing the rollers tonight. There was no chance to test it. But I explained the operation to the indentures. We'll see if they can remember."

  An ox had been harnessed to each of the two sweeps; as Briggs approached he signaled the servants to whip them forward. The men nodded and lashed out at the animals, who snorted, tossed their heads, then began to trudge in a circular path around the mill. Immediately the central roller began to turn, rotating the outer rollers against it by way of its cogs. As the rollers groaned into movement, several of the inden­tures backed away and studied them nervously.

  "Well, what are you waiting for?" Briggs yelled at the two men standing nearest the mill, holding the first bundles of cane. "Go ahead and try feeding it through."

  One of the men moved gingerly toward the grinding rollers and reached out, at arm's length, to feed a small bundle consisting of a half dozen stalks of cane into the side rotating away from him. There was a loud crackle as the bundle began to gradually disappear between the rollers. As the crushed cane stalks emerged on the rear side of the mill, a second indenture seized the flattened bundle and fed it back through the pair of rollers turning in the opposite direction. In mo­ments a trickle of pale sap began sliding down the sides of the rollers and dripping into a narrow trough that led through the wall and down the incline toward the boiling house.

  Briggs walked over to the trough and examined the running sap in silence. Then he dipped in a finger and took it to his lips. He savored it for a moment, looked up, triumph in his eyes, and motioned the other men forward.

  "Have a taste. It's the sweetest nectar there could ever be." As the planters gathered around the trough sampling the first cane juice, indentures continued feeding a steady progression of cane bundles between the rollers. While the planters stood watching, the trough began to flow.

  "It works, by Christ." Marlott emitted a whoop and dipped in for a second taste. "The first English sugar mill in all the world."

  "We've just witnessed that grand historic moment, Miss Bedford." Winston turned back to her, his voice sardonic. "In a little more time, these wonderful sugarmills will prob­ably cover Barbados. Together with the slaves needed to cut the cane for them. I'd wager that in a few years' time there'll be more Africans here than English. What we've just wit­nessed is not the beginning of the great English Caribbees, but the first step toward what'll one day be the great African Caribbees. I suggest we take time to savor it well."

  His voice was drowned in the cheer rising up from the cluster of planters around Briggs. They had moved on down the incline now and were standing next to the boiling house, watching as the sap began to collect in a tank. Briggs scru­tinized the tank a moment longer, then turned to the group. "This is where the sap's tempered with wet ashes just before it's boiled. That's how the Portugals do it. From here it runs through that trough,"—he indicated a second flow, now start­ing—"directly into the first kettle in the boiling house." He paused and gestured Farrell to bring the flasks forward. "I propose we take time to fortify ourselves against the heat before going in."

  "Shall we proceed?" Winston was pointing down the hill. Then he laughed. "Or would you like some liquor first?"

  "Please." She pushed past him and headed down the in­cline. They reached the door of the boiling house well before the planters, who were lingering at the tank, passing the flask. Winston ducked his head at the doorway and they passed through a wide archway and into a thatched-roof enclosure containing a long, waist-high furnace of Dutch brick. In the back, visible only from the light of the open furnace door, were two figures: Briggs' new Yoruba slave Atiba and his Portuguese mistress, Serina.

  Katherine, who had almost forgotten how beautiful the mu­latto was, found herself slightly relieved that Serina was dressed in perfect modesty. She wore a full-length white shift, against which her flawless olive skin fairly glowed in the torchlight. As they entered, she was speaking animatedly with Atiba while bending over to demonstrate how to feed dry cane tops into the small openings along the side of the fur­nace. When she spotted them, however, she pulled suddenly erect and fell silent, halting in mid-sentence.

  The heat in the room momentarily took away Katherine's breath, causing her to stand in startled disorientation. It was only then that she realized Hugh Winston was pulling at her sleeve. Something in the scene apparently had taken him completely by surprise.

  Then she realized what it was. Serina had been speaking to the tall, loincloth-clad Yoruba in an alien language that sounded almost like a blend of musical tones and stops.

  Now the planters began barging through the opening, congratulating Briggs as they clustered around the string of copper cauldrons cemented into the to
p of the long furnace. Then, as the crowd watched expectantly, a trickle of cane sap flowed down from the holding tank and spattered into the first red-hot cauldron.

  The men erupted with a cheer and whipped their hats into the air. Again the brown flask of kill-devil was passed appre­ciatively. After taking a long swallow, Briggs turned to Serina, gesturing toward Atiba as he addressed her in pidgin Portuguese, intended to add an international flavor to the eve­ning.

  “Ele compreendo? ''

  "Sim. Compreendo." She nodded, reached for a ladle, and began to skim the first gathering of froth off the top of the boiling liquid. Then she dumped the foam into a clay pot beside the furnace.

  "She's supposed to know how fast to feed the furnaces to keep the temperature right. And when to ladle the liquor into the next cauldron down the row." He stepped back from the furnace, fanning himself with his hat, and turned to the men. "According to the way the Portugals do it in Brazil, the clar­ified liquor from the last cauldron in the line here is moved to a cistern to cool for a time, then it's filled into wooden pots and moved to the curing house."

  "Is that ready too?" A husky voice came from somewhere in the crowd.

  "Aye, and I've already had enough pots made to get started. We let the molasses drain out and the sugar cure for three or four months, then we move the pots to the knocking house, where we turn them over and tap out a block of sugar. The top and bottom are brown sugar, what the Portugals call muscavado, and the center is pure white." He reached again for the bottle and took a deep swallow. "Twenty pence a pound in London, when our tobacco used to clear three far­things."

  "To be sure, the mill and the boiling house are the key. We'll have to start building these all over the island." Thomas Lancaster removed his black hat to wipe his brow, then pulled it firmly back on his head. "And start training the Africans in their operation. No white man could stand this heat."

  "She should have this one trained in a day or so." Briggs thumbed toward Atiba, now standing opposite the door ex­amining the planters. "Then we can have him train more."

  "I'll venture you'd do well to watch that one particularly close." Edward Bayes lowered his voice, speaking into his beard. "There's a look about him."

  "Aye, he's cantankerous, I'll grant you, but he's quick. He just needs to be tamed. I've already had to flog him once, ten lashes, the first night here, when he balked at eating lob­lolly mush."

  "Ten, you say?" Dalby Bedford did not bother to disguise the astonishment in his voice. "Would you not have done better to start with five?"

  "Are you lecturing me now on how to best break in my Africans?" Briggs glared. "I paid for them, sir. They're my property, to manage as I best see fit."

  Nicholas Whittington murmured his assent, and others concurred.

  "As you say, gentlemen. But you've got three more Dutch slavers due within a fortnight. I understand they're supposed to be shipping Barbados a full three thousand this year alone." Bedford looked about the room with a concerned expression. "That'll be just a start, if sugar production ex­pands the way it seems it will. It might be well if we had the Assembly pass Acts for ordering and governing these slaves."

  "Damn your Assembly. We already have laws for property on Barbados."

  Again the other planters voiced their agreement. Bedford stood listening, then lifted his hand for quiet. Katherine found herself wishing he would be as blunt with them as Winston had been. Sometimes the governor's good manners got in the way, something that hardly seemed to trouble Hugh Winston.

  "I tell you this is no light matter. No man in this room knows how to manage all these Africans. What Englishman has ever been responsible for twenty, thirty, nay perhaps even a hundred slaves? They've to be clothed in some manner, fed, paired for offspring. And religion, sir? Some of the Quakers we've let settle in Bridgetown are already starting to say your blacks should be baptized and taught Christianity."

  "You can't be suggesting it? If we let them be made Christians, where would it end?" Briggs examined him in disbe­lief. "You'd have laws, sir, Acts of your Assembly. Well there's the place to start. I hold the first law should be to fine and set in the stocks any of these so-called Quakers caught trying to teach our blacks Christianity. We'll not stand for it."

  Katherine saw Serina's features tense and her eyes harden, but she said nothing, merely continued to skim the foam from the boiling surface of the cauldron.

  "The Spaniards and Portugals teach the Catholic faith to their Negroes," Bedford continued evenly.

  "And there you have the difference. They're not English. They're Papists." Briggs paused as he studied the flow of cane sap entering the cauldron from the holding tank, still dripping slowly from the lead spout. "By the looks of it, it could be flowing faster." He studied it a moment longer, then turned toward the door. "The mill. Maybe that's the answer. What if we doubled the size of the cane bundles?"

  Katherine watched the planters trail after Briggs, out the doorway and into the night, still passing the flask of kill-devil.

  "What do you think, Captain? Should an African be made a Christian?"

  "Theology's not my specialty, Miss Bedford." He walked past her. "Tell me first if you think a Puritan's one." He was moving toward Serina, who stood silently skimming the top of the first cauldron, now a vigorous boil. She glanced up once and examined him, then returned her eyes to the froth. Katherine just managed to catch a few words as he began speaking to her quietly in fluent Portuguese, as though to guard against any of the planters accidentally overhearing.

  "Senhora, how is it you know the language of the Afri­cans?"

  She looked up for a moment without speaking, her eyes disdainful. "I'm a slave too, as you well know, senhor." Then she turned and continued with the ladle.

  "But you're a Portugal."

  "And never forget that. I am not one of these preto." She spat out the Portuguese word for Negro.

  Atiba continued methodically shoving cane tops into the roaring mouth of the furnace.

  "But you were speaking to him just now in his own lan­guage. I recognized it."

  "He asked a question, and I answered him, that's all."

  "Then you do know his language? How?"

  "I know many things." She fixed his eyes, continuing in Portuguese. "Perhaps it surprises you Ingles that a mulata can speak at all. I also know how to read, something half the branco rubbish who were in this room tonight probably can­not do."

  Katherine knew only a smattering of Portuguese, but she caught the part about some of the branco, the whites, not being able to read. She smiled to think there was probably much truth in that. Certainly almost none of the white inden­tures could. Further, she suspected that many of the planters had never bothered to learn either.

  "I know you were educated in Brazil." Winston was pressing Serina relentlessly. "I was trying to ask you how you know the language of this African?"

  She paused, her face a blend of haughtiness and regret. She started to speak, then stopped herself.

  "Won't you tell me?"

  She turned back, as though speaking to the cauldron. "My mother was Yoruba."

  "Is that how you learned?" His voice was skeptical.

  "I was taught also by a babalawo, a Yoruba priest, in Brazil."

  "What's she saying?" Katherine moved next to him, shielding her eyes from the heat.

  "Desculpe, senhora, excuse me." Winston quickly moved forward, continuing in Portuguese as he motioned toward Katherine. "This is . . ."

  "I know perfectly well who Miss Bedford is." Serina in­terrupted him, still in Portuguese.

  Katherine stared at her, not catching the foreign words. "Is she talking about me?"

  "She said her mother was a Yoruba." Winston moved between them. "And she said something about a priest."

  "Is she some sort of priest? Is that what she said?"

  "No." Serina's English answer was quick and curt, then she said something else to Winston, in Portuguese.

  "She said she was
not, though the women of her mother's family have practiced divination for many generations."

  "Divination?" Katherine studied him, puzzled. Then she turned back to Serina,"What do you mean by that?"

  Serina was looking at her now, for the first time. "Divi­nation is the way the Yoruba people ask their gods to tell the future."

  "How exactly do they go about doing such a thing?"

  "Many ways." She turned back to the cauldron.

  Winston stood in the silence for a moment, then turned to Katherine. "I think one of the ways is with shells. In Brazil I once saw a Yoruba diviner shaking a tray with small sea-shells in it."

  Serina glanced back, now speaking English. "I see you are an Ingles who bothers to try and understand other peo­ples. One of the few I've ever met. Felicitacao, senhor, my compliments. Yes, that is one of the ways, and the most sa­cred to a Yoruba. It's called the divination of the sixteen cowrie shells. A Yoruba diviner foretells the will of the gods from how the shells lie in a tray after it has been shaken—by how many lie with the slotted side up. It's the way the gods talk to him."

  "Who are these gods they speak to?" Katherine found herself challenged by the mulatto's haughtiness.

  Serina continued to stir the cauldron. "You'd not know them, senhora."

  "But I would be pleased to hear of them." Katherine's voice was sharp, but then she caught herself and softened it. "Are they something like the Christian God?"

  Serina paused, examining Katherine for a moment, and then her eyes assumed a distant expression. "I do not know much about them. I know there is one god like the Christian God. He is the high god, who never shows his powers on earth. But there are many other gods who do. The one the Yoruba call on most is Shango, the god of thunder and light­ning, and of fire. His symbol is the double-headed axe. There also is Ogun, who is the god of iron." She hesitated. "And the god of war.''

  Katherine studied her. "Do you believe in all these African deities yourself?"

  "Who can say what's really true, senhora?" Her smooth skin glistened from the heat. She brushed the hair from her eyes in a graceful motion, as though she were in a drawing room, while her voice retreated again into formality. "The Yoruba even believe that many different things can be true at once. Something no European can ever understand."

  "There's something you may not understand, senhora," Winston interjected, speaking now in English. "And I think you well should. The Yoruba in this room also knows the language of the Portugals. Take care what you say."

  "It's not possible." She glanced at Atiba contemptuously, continuing loudly in Portuguese. "He's a saltwater preto."

  Before Winston could respond, there was an eruption of shouts and curses from the direction of the mill. They all turned to watch as Benjamin Briggs shoved through the door­way, pointing at Atiba.

  "Get that one out here. I warrant he can make them un­derstand." The sweltering room seemed frozen in time, ex­cept for Briggs, now motioning at Serina. "Tell him to come out here." He revolved to Winston. "I've a mind to flog all of them."

  "What's wrong?"

  "The damned mill. I doubled the size of the bundles, the very thing I should’ve done in the first place, but now the oxen can't turn it properly. I want to try hooking both oxen to one of the sweeps and a pair of Africans on the other. I've harnessed them up, but I can't get them to move." He mo­tioned again for Atiba to accompany him. "This one's got more wit than all the rest together. Maybe I can show him what I want."

  Serina gestured toward Atiba, who followed Briggs out the door, into the fresh night air. Katherine stared after him for a moment, then turned back. Winston was speaking to Serina again in Portuguese, but too rapidly to follow.

  "Will you tell me one thing more?"

  "As you wish, senhor." She did not look up from the cauldron.

  "What was going on last night? With the drums?"

  She hesitated slightly. "I don't know what you mean."

  Winston was towering over her now. "I think you know very well what I mean, senhora. Now tell me, damn it. What were they saying?"

  She seemed not to hear him. Through the silence that filled the room, there suddenly came a burst of shouts from the direction of the mill.

  Katherine felt fear sweep over her, and she found herself seizing Winston's arm, pulling him toward the doorway. Out­side, the planters were milling about in confusion, vague shadows against the torchlight. Then she realized Atiba was trying to wrench off the harness from the necks of the two blacks tied to the sweeps of the mill, while yelling at Briggs in his African language.

  She gripped Winston's arm tighter as she watched William Marlott, brandishing a heavy-bladed cane machete, move on Atiba. Then several other planters leapt out of the shadows,

  grabbed his powerful shoulders, and wrestled him to the ground.

  "You'd best flog him here and now." Marlott looked up, sweat running down his face. "It'll be a proper lesson to all the rest."

  Briggs nodded toward several of the white indentures and in moments a rope was lashed to Atiba's wrists. Then he was yanked against the mill, his face between the wet rollers. One of the indentures brought forward a braided leather horse­whip.

  Katherine turned her face away, back toward the boiling house, not wanting to see.

  Serina was standing in the doorway now, staring out blankly, a shimmering moistness in her eyes.