Caribbee Part 18

"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 a.s.sembly 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 d.a.m.n 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 wars.h.i.+ps 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?"

"n.o.body in the a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ppers.

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 sh.o.r.eline where the surf's light enough for a troop s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.suming that's true, where would we get more cannon? Especially now?" This was the moment she'd been dreading. Of course 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 sh.o.r.eline. 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 sh.o.r.e. "You know, I'm always struck by what a puny little place Barbados is." He pointed toward a small cl.u.s.ter of clapboard houses half hidden among the palms along the sh.o.r.e. "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 pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sing sh.o.r.eline, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 a.s.sembly 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 dictators.h.i.+p. There was also a settlement on Bermuda, several thousand planters who had their own a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly?"

"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 n.o.body knows you came down here. Am I correct?"