Caribbee Page 9

CHAPTER FIVE

  Katherine held on to the mizzenmast shrouds, shielding her eyes against the glitter of sun on the bay, and looked at Hugh Winston. He was wearing the identical shabby leather jerkin and canvas breeches she remembered from that first morning, along with the same pair of pistols shoved into his belt. He certainly made no effort to present a dignified appearance. Also, the afternoon light made you notice even more the odd scar across one weathered cheek. What would he be like as a lover? Probably nothing so genteel as Anthony Walrond.

  Good God, she thought, what would Anthony, and poor Jeremy, say if they learned I came down here to the Defiance, actually sought out this man they hate so much. They’d prob­ably threaten to break off marriage negotiations, out of spite.

  But if something's not done, she told herself, none of that's going to matter anyway. If the rumor from London is true, then Barbados is going to be turned upside down. Hugh Win­ston can help us, no matter what you choose to think of him.

  She reflected on Winston's insulting manner and puzzled why she had actually half looked forward to seeing him again. He certainly had none of Anthony's breeding, yet there was something magnetic about a man so rough and careless. Still, God knows, finding him a little more interesting than most of the dreary planters on this island scarcely meant much.

  Was he, she found herself wondering, at all attracted to her?

  Possibly. If he thought on it at all, he'd see their common ground. She finally realized he despised the Puritans and their slaves as much as she did. And, like her, he was alone. It was a bond between them, whether he knew it now or not. . . .

  Then all at once she felt the fear again, that tightness under her bodice she had pushed away no more than half an hour past, when her mare had reached the rim of the hill, the last curve of the rutted dirt road leading down to the bay. She'd reined in Coral, still not sure she had the courage to go and see Winston. While her mare pawed and tugged at the traces, she took a deep breath and watched as a gust of wind sent the blood-red blossoms from a grove of cordia trees fleeing across the road. Then she'd noticed the rush of scented air off the sea, the wide vista of Carlisle Bay spreading out be­low, the sky full of tiny colored birds flitting through the azure afternoon.

  Yes, she'd told herself, it's worth fighting for, worth jeopardizing everything for. Even worth going begging to Hugh Winston for. It's my home.

  "Do you ever miss England, living out here in the Carib­bees?" She tried to hold her voice nonchalant, with a lilt intended to suggest that none of his answers mattered all that much. Though the afternoon heat was sweltering, she had deliberately put on her most feminine riding dress—a billow­ing skirt tucked up the side to reveal a ruffle of petticoat and a bodice with sleeves slashed to display the silk smock be­neath. She'd even had the servants iron it specially. Anthony always noticed it, and Winston had too, though he was trying to pretend otherwise.

  "I remember England less and less." He sipped from his tankard—he had ordered a flask of sack brought up from the Great Cabin just after she came aboard—and seemed to be studying the sun's reflection in its amber contents. "The Americas are my home now, for better or worse. England doesn't really exist for me anymore."

  She looked at him and decided Jeremy had been right; the truth was he'd probably be hanged if he returned.

  He paused a moment, then continued, "And you, Miss Bedford, have you been back?"

  "Not since we left, when I was ten. We went first to Ber­muda, where father served for two years as governor and chief officer for the Sommers Island Company. Then we came down here. I don't really even think of England much any­more. I feel I'm a part of the Americas now too." She shaded her face against the sun with one hand and noticed a bead of sweat trickling down her back, along the laces of her bodice. "In truth, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see England again."

  "I'd just as soon never see it again." He rose and strolled across the deck, toward the steering house. Then he settled his tankard on the binnacle and began to loosen the line se­curing the whipstaff, a long lever used for controlling the rudder. "Do you really want to stay aboard while I take her out?"

  "You've done it every day this week, just around sunset. I've watched you from the hill, and wondered why." She casually adjusted her bodice, to better emphasize the plump fullness of her breasts, then suddenly felt a surge of dismay with herself, that she would consider resorting to tawdry fe­male tricks. But desperate times brought out desperate mea­sures. "Besides, you've got the only frigate in the bay now that's not Dutch, and I thought I'd like to see the island from offshore. I sometimes forget how beautiful it is."

  "Then you'd best take a good, long look, Miss Bedford," he replied matter-of-factly. "It's never going to be the same again, not after sugar takes over."

  "Katherine. You can call me Katherine." She tried to mask the tenseness—no, the humiliation—in her voice. "I'm sufficiently compromised just being down here; there's scarcely any point in ceremony."

  "Then Katherine it is, Miss Bedford." Again scarcely a glimmer of notice as he busied himself coiling the line. But she saw John Mewes raise his heavy eyebrows as he mounted the quarterdeck companionway, his wide belly rolling with each labored step. Winston seemed to ignore the quarter­master as he continued, "Since you've been watching, then I suppose you know what to expect. We're going to tack her out of the harbor, over to the edge of those reefs just off Lookout Point. Then we'll come about and take her up the west side of the island, north all the way up to Speightstown. It's apt to be at least an hour. Don't say you weren't warned."

  Perfect, she thought. Just the time I'll need.

  "You seem to know these waters well." It was rhetorical, just to keep him talking. Hugh Winston had sailed up the coast every evening for a week, regardless of the wind or state of the sea. He obviously understood the shoreline of Barbados better than anyone on the island. That was one of the reasons she was here. "You sail out every day."

  "Part of my final preparations, Miss Bedford . . . Kather­ine." He turned to the quartermaster. "John."

  "Aye." Mewes had been loitering by the steeringhouse, trying to stay in the shade as he eyed the opened flask of sack. Winston had not offered him a tankard.

  "Weigh anchor. I want to close-haul that new main course one more time, then try a starboard tack."

  "Aye, as you will." He strode gruffly to the quarterdeck railing and bellowed orders forward to the bow. The quiet was broken by a slow rattle as several shirtless seamen began to haul in the cable with the winch. They chattered in a med­ley of languages—French, Portuguese, English, Dutch.

  She watched as the anchor broke through the waves and was hoisted onto the deck. Next Mewes yelled orders aloft. Moments later the mainsail dropped and began to blossom in the breeze. The Defiance heeled slowly into the wind, then began to edge past the line of Dutch merchantmen anchored along the near shoreline.

  Winston studied the sail for a few moments. "What do you think, John? She looks to be holding her luff well enough."

  "I never liked it, Cap'n. I've made that plain from the first. So I'm thinkin' the same as always. You've taken a fore-and-aft rigged brigantine, one of the handiest under Christian sail, and turned her into a square-rigger. We'll not have the handling we've got with the running rigging."

  Mewes spat toward the railing and shoved past Katherine, still astonished that Winston had allowed her to come aboard, governor's daughter or no. It's ill luck, he told himself. A fair looker, that I'll grant you, but if it's doxies we'd be taking aboard now, I can think of plenty who'd be fitter company. He glanced at the white mare tethered by the shore, wishing she were back astride it and gone. Half the time you see her, the wench is riding like a man, not sidesaddle like a woman was meant to.

  "If we're going to make Jamaica harbor without raising the Spaniards' militia, we'll have to keep short sail." Win­ston calmly dismissed his objections. "That means standing rigging only. No tops'ls or royals."

  "Aye, and she'l
l handle like a gaff-sailed lugger."

  "Just for the approach. While we land the men. We'll keep her rigged like always for the voyage over." He maneuvered the whipstaff to start bringing the stern about, sending a groan through the hull. "She seems to work well enough so far. We need to know exactly how many points off the wind we can take her. I'd guess about five, maybe six, but we've got to find out now."

  He turned back to Katherine and caught her eyes. They held something—what was it? Almost an invitation? But that's not why she's here, he told himself. This woman's got a pur­pose in mind, all right. Except it's not you. Whatever it is, though, the looks of her’d almost make you wonder if she's quite so set on marrying some stiff royalist as she thinks she is?

  Don't be a fool. The last thing you need to be thinking about now is a woman. Given the news, there's apt to be big trouble ahead here, and soon. You've got to be gone.

  "So perhaps you'd care to tell me . . . Katherine, to what I owe the pleasure of this afternoon's visit. I'd venture you've probably seen the western coast of this island a few hundred times before, entirely without my aid."

  "I was wondering if you'd heard what's happened in Lon­don?" She held on to the shrouds, the spider-web of ropes that secured the mast, and braced herself against the roll of the ship as the Defiance eased broadside to the sun. Along the curving shoreline a string of Dutch merchantmen were riding at anchor, all three-masted fluyts, their fore and main masts steeped far apart to allow room for a capacious hatch. In the five weeks that had passed since the Zeelander put in with the first cargo of Africans, four more slavers had ar­rived. They were anchored across the bay now, their round sterns glistening against the water as the afternoon light caught the gilding on their high, narrow after-structure. Rid­ing in the midst of them was the Rotterdam, just put in from London. The sight of that small Dutch merchantman had brought back her fear. It also renewed her resolve.

  "You mean about King Charles? I heard, probably before you did." He was watching her tanned face, and secretly admiring her courage. She seemed to be taking the situation calmly. "I was working down here yesterday when the Rot­terdam put in."

  "Then I'd like your version. What exactly did you hear?"

  "Probably what everybody else heard. They brought word England's new 'Rump' Parliament, that mob of bloodthirsty Puritans installed by Cromwell's army, has locked King Charles in the Tower, with full intentions to chop off his head. They also delivered the story that Parliament has de­clared Barbados a nest of rebels, since your Assembly has never recognized the Commonwealth. Virginia and Bermuda also made that select list of outcasts." He glanced toward the bow, then tested the steering lever. "So, Miss Katherine Bed­ford, I'd say the Americas are about to see those stormy times we talked about once. Only it's a gale out of England, not here." He turned and yelled forward, "John, reef the foresail as we double the Point. Then prepare to take her hard about to starboard."

  She watched as he shoved the steering lever to port, flip­ping the rudder to maneuver around the reefs at the edge of the bay, then reached for his pewter tankard, its sides dark with grease. And she tried to stifle her renewed disgust with him, his obvious unconcern, as she watched him drink. Maybe it really was all a game to him. Maybe nothing could make him care a damn after all. In the silence that followed, the creaks of the weathered planking along the deck grew louder, more plaintive.

  "Given some of that may be true, Captain, what do you think will happen now?"

  "Just call me Hugh. I presume I can enjoy my fair share of Barbados' democracy. While it lasts." He shrugged. "Since you asked, I'll tell you. I think it means the end of everything we know about the Americas. Breathe the air of independence while you still can. Maybe you didn't hear the other story going around the harbor here. The Dutchmen are claiming that after Parliament gets around to beheading the king, it plans to take over all the patents granted by the Crown. It's supposedly considering a new law called a 'Nav­igation Act,' which is going to decree that only English bot­toms can trade with the American settlements. No Hollanders. That means the end of free trade. There's even talk in London that a fleet of warships may head this way to enforce it."

  "I've heard that too. It sounds like nothing more than a Thames rumor."

  "Did you know that right now all the Dutchmen here are lading as fast as they can, hoping they can put to sea before they're blockaded, or sunk, by a score of armed English men-of-war?"

  "Nobody in the Assembly thinks Cromwell would go that far."

  "Well, the Dutchmen do. Whatever else you might say, a Hollander's about the last man I'd call a fool. I can tell you Carlisle Bay is a convocation of nervous Netherlanders right now." He squinted against the sun. "And I'll pass along something else, Katherine. They're not the only ones. I'd just as soon be at sea myself, with my men."

  She examined him, her eyes ironic. "So I take it while you're not afraid to stand up to the Council, men with pistols practically at your head, you're still worried about some navy halfway around the world."

  "The difference is that the Council owed me money." He smiled wanly. "With England, it's more like the other way around."

  "That's not the real reason, is it?"

  "All right, how's this? For all we know, their navy may not be halfway around the world anymore." He glanced at the sun, then checked the sail again. "It's no state secret I'm not Mother England's favorite son. The less I see of the Eng­lish navy, the happier I'll be."

  "What'll you do if a fleet arrives while you're still here?"

  "I'll worry about it then." He turned back. "A better question might be what does Barbados plan to do if a fleet arrives to blockade you and force you into line." His voice grew sober. "I'd say this island faces a difficult choice. If Parliament goes ahead and does away with the king, the way some of its hotheads reportedly want to, then there'll no longer be any legal protection for you at all. Word of this new sugar project has already gotten back to London, you can be sure. I'd suspect the Puritans who've taken over Parlia­ment want the American colonies because they'd like a piece of Barbados' sudden new fortune for themselves. New taxes for Commons and new trade for English shippers. Now that you're about to be rich here, your years of being ignored are over." He lifted the tankard and took another drink of sack. "So what are you going to do? Submit? Or declare war on Parliament and fight the English navy?"

  "If everybody here pulls together, we can resist them."

  "With what?" He turned and pointed toward the small stone fortress atop Lookout Point. The hill stood rocky and remote above the blue Caribbean. "Not with that breastwork, you won't. I doubt a single gun up there's ever been set and fired. What's more, I'd be surprised if there're more than a dozen trained gunners on the whole of the island, since the royalist refugees here were mostly officers back home. The way things stand now, you don't have a chance."

  "Then we'll have to learn to fight, won't we?" She tried to catch his eye. "I suppose you know something about gun­nery."

  "Gunners are most effective when they've got some ord­nance to use." He glanced back, then thumbed toward the Point. "What's in place up there?"

  "I think there're about a dozen cannon. And there're maybe that many more at the Jamestown breastwork. So the leeward coast is protected. There's also a breastwork at Oistins Bay, on the south." She paused, studying his profile against the sun. An image rose up unbidden of him commanding a bat­tery of guns, her at his side. It was preposterous yet exhila­rating. "Those are the places an invasion would come, aren't they?"

  "They're the only sections of shoreline where the surf's light enough for a troop ship to put in."

  "Then we've got a line of defense. Don't you think it's enough?"

  "No." He spoke quietly. "You don't have the heavy ord­nance to stop a landing. All you can hope to do without more guns is just try and slow it down a bit."

  "But assuming that's true, where would we get more can­non? Especially now?" This was the moment she'd been dreading. Of c
ourse their ordnance was inadequate. She al­ready knew everything he'd been saying. There was only one place to get more guns. They both realized where.

  "Well, you've got a problem, Katherine." He smiled lightly, just to let her know he was on to her scheme, then looked away, toward the shoreline. On their right now the island was a mantle of deep, seemingly eternal green reach­ing down almost to the water's edge, and beyond that, up the rise of the first hill, were dull-colored scatterings of planta­tion houses. The Defiance was making way smoothly now, northward, holding just a few hundred yards off the white, sandy shore. "You know, I'm always struck by what a puny little place Barbados is." He pointed toward a small cluster of clapboard houses half hidden among the palms along the shore. "If you put to sea, like we are now, you can practi­cally see the whole island, north to south."

  She glanced at the palm-lined coast, then back. "What are you trying to say?"

  "That gathering of shacks we're passing over there is the grand city of Jamestown." He seemed to ignore the question as he thumbed to starboard. "Which I seem to recall is the location of that famous tree everybody here likes to brag about so much."

  Jamestown was where stood the massive oak into whose bark had been carved the inscription "James, King of E.," and the date 1625. That was the year an English captain named John Powell accidentally put in at an empty, forested Caribbean island and decided to claim it for his king.

  "That tree proclaims this island belongs to the king of England. Well, no more. The king's finished. So tell me, who does it belong to now?"

  "I'll tell you who it doesn't belong to. Cromwell and the English Parliament." She watched the passing shoreline, and tried to imagine what it would be like if her dream came true. If Barbados could make the stand that would change the Americas permanently.

  When she'd awakened this morning, birds singing and the island sun streaming through the jalousies, she'd suddenly been struck with a grand thought, a revolutionary idea. She had ignored the servants' pleas that she wait for breakfast and ordered Coral saddled immediately. Then she'd headed inland, through the moss-floored forests whose towering ironwood and oak trees still defied the settlers' axes. Amidst the vines and orchids she'd convinced herself the idea was right.

  What if all the English in the New World united? Declared their independence?

  During her lifetime there had been a vast migration to the Americas, two out of every hundred in England. She had never seen the settlement in "New England," the one at Plymouth on the Massachusetts Bay, but she knew it was an outpost of Puritans who claimed the Anglican Church smacked too much of "popery." The New Englanders had always hated King Charles for his supposed Catholic sym­pathies, so there was no chance they'd do anything except applaud the fanatics in England who had toppled the mon­archy.

  But the settlements around the Chesapeake were different. Virginia was founded because of profit, not prayer books. Its planters had formed their own Assembly in 1621, the first in the Americas, and they were a spirited breed who would not give in easily to domination by England's new dictatorship. There was also a settlement on Bermuda, several thousand planters who had their own Assembly too; and word had just come they had voted to banish all Puritans from the island, in retaliation against Cromwell.

  Hugh Winston, who thought he knew everything, didn't know that Bermuda had already sent a secret envoy to Dalby Bedford proposing Barbados join with them and form an al­liance with Virginia and the other islands of the Caribbees to resist the English Parliament. Bermuda wanted the American colonies to stand firm for the restoration of the monarchy. The Barbados Assembly appeared to be leaning in that direc­tion too, though they still hoped they could somehow avoid a confrontation.

  But that was wrong, shed realized this morning. So very wrong. Don't they see what we really should do? This is our chance. We should simply declare the richest settlements in the Americas—Virginia, Barbados, St. Christopher, Nevis, Bermuda—independent of England. A new nation.

  It was an idea she'd not yet dared suggest to Dalby Bed­ford, who would likely consider it close to sedition. And she certainly couldn't tell a royalist like Anthony. He'd only fight for the monarchy. But why, she asked herself, do we need some faraway king here in the Americas? We could, we should, be our own masters.

  First, however, we've got to show Cromwell and his illegal Parliament that they can't intimidate the American settle­ments. If Barbados can stand up to them, then maybe the idea of independence will have a chance.

  "I came today to ask if you'd help us stand and fight. If we have to." She listened to her own voice and knew it was strong and firm.

  He stood silent for a moment, staring at her. Then he spoke, almost a whisper above the wind. "Who exactly is it wants me to help fight England? The Assembly?"

  "No. I do."

  "That's what I thought." He shook his head in disbelief, or was it dismay, and turned to check the whipstaff. When he glanced back, his eyes were skeptical. "I'll wager nobody knows you came down here. Am I correct?"

  "I didn't exactly make an announcement about it."

  "And that low-cut bodice and pretty smile? Is that just part of your negotiations?"

  "I thought it mightn't hurt." She looked him squarely in the eye.

  "God Almighty. What you'd do for this place! I pity Crom­well and his Roundheads." He sobered. "I don't mind telling you I'm glad at least one person here realizes this island can't defend itself as things stand now. You'd damned sure better start trying to do something." He examined her, puzzled. "But why come to me?"

  She knew the answer. Hugh Winston was the only person she knew who hated England enough to declare indepen­dence. He already had. "You seem to know a lot about guns and gunnery." She moved closer and noticed absently that he smelled strongly of seawater, leather, and sweat. "Did I hear you say you had an idea where we could get more can­non, to help strengthen our breastworks?"

  "So we're back to business. I might have expected." He rubbed petulantly at his scar. "No, I didn't say, though we both know where you might. From those Dutchmen in the harbor. Every merchantman in Carlisle Bay has guns. You could offer to buy them. Or just take them. But whatever you do, don't dally too long. One sighting of English sail and they'll put to sea like those flying fish around the island."

  "How about the cannon on the Defiance? How many do you have?"

  "I have a few." He laughed, then reflected with pride on his first-class gun deck. Twenty-two demi-culverin, nine- pounders and all brass so they wouldn't overheat. He'd trained his gunners personally, every man, and he'd shot his way out of more than one harbor over the past five years. His ord­nance could be run out in a matter of minutes, primed and ready. "Naturally you're welcome to them. All you'll have to do is kill me first."

  "I hope it doesn't come to that."

  "So do I." He studied the position of the waning sun for a moment, then yelled forward for the men to hoist the stay­sail. Next he gestured toward Mewes. "John, take the whipstaff a while and tell me what you think of the feel of her. I'd guess the best we can do is six points off the wind, the way I said."

  "Aye." Mewes hadn't understood what all the talk had been about, but he hoped the captain was getting the best of the doxy. "I can tell you right now this new rigging of yours makes a handy little frigate work like a damn’d five-hundred- ton galleon."

  "Just try taking her about." He glanced at the shoreline. They were coming in sight of Speightstown, the settlement at the north tip of the island. "Let's see if we can tack around back south and make it into the bay."

  "But would you at least help us if we were blockaded?" She realized she was praying he would say yes.

  "Katherine, what's this island ever done for me? Besides, right now I've got all I can manage just trying to get the hell out of here. I can't afford to get caught up in your little quar­rel with the Commonwealth." He looked at her. "Every time I've done an errand for Barbados, it's always come back to plague me."

  "So y
ou don't care what happens here." She felt her disappointment surge. It had all been for nothing, and damned to him. "I suppose I had a somewhat higher opinion of you, Captain Winston. I see I was wrong."

  "I've got my own plan for the Caribbean. And that means a lot more to me than who rules Barbados and its slaves."

  "Then I'm sorry I bothered asking at all."

  "I've got a suggestion for you though." Winston's voice suddenly flooded with anger. "Why don't you ask your gentleman fiance, Anthony Walrond, to help? From what I hear, he was the royalist hero of the Civil War."

  "He doesn't have a gun deck full of cannon." She wanted to spit in Winston's smug face.

  "But he's got you, Katherine, doesn't he?" He felt an unwanted pang at the realization. He was beginning to like this woman more than he wanted to. She had brass. "Though as long as you're here anyway, why don't we at least toast the sunset? And the free Americas that're about to vanish into history." He abruptly kissed heron the cheek, watched as she flushed in anger, then turned and yelled to a seaman just entering the companionway aft, "Fetch up another flask of sack."