Caribbee Part 2

He reflected on the memory of that afternoon for a moment himself, delighted, then turned back to the governor with as solemn an air as he could manage. "I suppose this island'll soon be more in debt than ever to the Hollanders. I think it's time we started giving English s.h.i.+ppers a chance, now that it's likely to be worth their bother."

"Aye, doubtless you'd like that." Briggs flared. "I know you still own a piece of a London trading company. You and that pack of English merchants would be pleased to charge us double the s.h.i.+pping rates the Hollanders do. d.a.m.n the lot of you. Those of us who've been here from the start know we should all be on our knees, thankin' heaven for the Dutchmen. The English settlements in the Americas would've starved years ago if it hadn't been for them." He paused to spit onto the sand, just beside Anthony's gleaming boots. "Let English bottoms compete with the Dutchmen, not wave the flag."

"Your servant, Katherine." Jeremy Walrond had moved beside her, touching his plumed hat as he nodded. A cloud of perfume hovered about him, and his dark moustache was waxed to perfection. Though he had just turned twenty, his handsome face was still boyish, with scarcely a hint of sun.

"Your most obedient." She nodded lightly in return, trying to appear formal. Over the past year she had come to adore Jeremy as though he were a younger brother, even though she knew he despised the wildness of Barbados as much as she gloried in it. He was used to pampering and yearned to be back in England. He also longed to be thought a man; longed, in truth, to be just like Anthony, save he didn't know quite how.

They all stood awkwardly for a moment, each wondering what the s.h.i.+p would signify for their own future and that of the island. Katherine feared that for her it would mean the end of Barbados' few remaining forests, hidden groves upland where she could ride alone and think.

Cultivated land was suddenly so valuable that all trees would soon vanish. It was the last anyone would see of an island part untamed and free.

Depressed once more by the prospect, she turned and stared down the sh.o.r.e, toward the collection of clapboard taverns cl.u.s.tered around the narrow bridge at the river mouth. Adjacent to the taverns was a makes.h.i.+ft a.s.semblage of tobacco sheds, open shops, and bawdy houses, which taken together had become known as Bridgetown. The largest "town"

on Barbados, it was now all but empty. Everyone, even the tavern keepers and Irish wh.o.r.es, had come out to watch.

Then, through the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne she spotted an unexpected pair, ambling slowly along the water's edge. The woman was well known to the island--Joan Fuller, the yellow-haired proprietor of its most successful brothel. But the man? Whatever else, he was certainly no freeholder. For one thing, no Puritan planter would be seen in public with Mistress Fuller.

The stranger was gesturing at the s.h.i.+p and mumbling unhappily to her as they walked. Abruptly she reached up to pinch his cheek, as though to dispel his mood. He glanced down and fondly swiped at her tangled yellow hair, then bade her farewell, turned, and began moving toward them.

"G.o.d's life, don't tell me he's come back." Briggs first noticed the stranger when he was already halfway through the crowd. He sucked in his breath and whirled to survey the line of Dutch merchantmen anch.o.r.ed in the shallows along the sh.o.r.e. Nothing. But farther down, near the careenage at the river mouth, a battered frigate rode at anchor. The s.h.i.+p bore no flag, but the word _Defiance _was crudely lettered across the stern.

"Aye, word has it he put in this morning at first light."

Edward Bayes, a black-hatted Council member with ruddy jowls, was squinting against the sun. "What're you thinking we'd best do?"

Briggs seemed to ignore the question as he began pus.h.i.+ng his way through the crowd. The newcomer was fully half a head taller than most of the planters, and unlike everyone else he wore no hat, leaving his rust-colored hair to blow in the wind. He was dressed in a worn leather jerkin, dark canvas breeches, and sea boots weathered from long use. He might have pa.s.sed for an ordinary seaman had it not been for the two Spanish flintlock pistols, freshly polished and gleaming, that protruded from his wide belt.

"Your servant, Captain." Briggs' greeting was correct and formal, but the man returned it with only a slight, distracted nod. "Back to see what the Hollanders've brought?"

"I'm afraid I already know what they're s.h.i.+pping. I picked a h.e.l.l of a day to come back." The stranger rubbed absently at a long scar across one cheek, then continued, as though to himself, "d.a.m.n me, I should have guessed all along this would be the way."

The crowd had fallen silent to listen, and Katherine could make out that his accent was that of a gentleman, even if his dress clearly was not. His easy stride suggested he was little more than thirty, but the squint that framed his brown eyes made his face years older. By his looks and the uneasy shuffle of the Council members gathered around them, she suddenly began to suspect who he might be.

"Katy, who the devil?" Jeremy had lowered his voice to a whisper.

"I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say that's probably the smuggler you claim robbed you once." Scarce wonder Briggs is nervous, she thought. Every planter on the sh.o.r.e knows exactly why he's come back.

"Hugh Winston? Is that him?" Jeremy glared at the newcomer, his eyes hardening. "You can't mean it. He'd not have the bra.s.s to show his face on English soil."

"He's been here before. I've just never actually seen him. You always seem to keep forgetting, Jeremy, Barbados isn't part of England." She glanced back. "Surely you heard what he did. It happened just before you came out." She gestured toward the green hillsides. "He's the one we have to thank for all this. I fancy he's made Briggs and the rest of them rich, for all the good it'll ever do him."

"What he's done, if you must know, is make a profession of stealing from honest men. d.a.m.ned to their cane. He's scarcely better than a thief. Do you know exactly what he did?"

"You mean that business about your frigate?"

"The eighty-tonner of ours that grounded on the reefs up by Nevis Island. He's the one who set our men ash.o.r.e--then announced he was taking the cargo in payment. Rolls of wool broadcloth worth almost three thousand pounds sterling. And several crates of new flintlock muskets. He smuggled the cloth into Virginia, sold it for nothing, and ruined the market for months. He'd be hanged if he tried walking the streets of London, I swear it. Doesn't anybody here know that?"

She tried to recall what she did know. The story heard most often was that he'd begun his career at sea on a Dutch merchantman. Then, so word had it, he'd gone out on his own. According to tales that went around the Caribbees, he'd pulled together a band of some dozen runaway indentures and one night somehow managed to sail a small shallop into the harbor at Santo Domingo. He sailed out before dawn at the helm of a two-hundred-ton Spanish square-rigger. After some heavy refitting, it became the _Defiance_.

"They probably know he robbed you, Jeremy, but I truly doubt whether they care all that much."

"What do you mean?"

"He's the one Benjamin Briggs and the others hired to take them down to Brazil and back."

That voyage had later become a legend in the English Caribbees. Its objective was a plantation just outside the city of Pemambuco--capital of the new territory in Brazil the Dutch had just seized from the Portuguese. There the Barbados' Council had deciphered the closely guarded process Brazilian plantations used to refine sugar from cane sap. Thanks to the friendly Dutch, and Hugh Winston, Englishmen had finally cracked the centuries-old sugar monopoly of Portugal and Spain.

"You mean he's the same one who helped them get that load of cane for planting, and the plans for Briggs' sugar mill?" Jeremy examined the stranger again.

"Exactly. He also brought back something else for Briggs." She smiled.

"Can you guess?"

Jeremy flushed and carefully smoothed his new moustache. "I suppose you're referring to that Portuguese mulatto wench he bought to be his bed warmer."

Yes, she thought, Hugh Winston's dangerous voyage, outsailing several Spanish patrols, had been an all-round success. And everybody on the island knew the terms he had demanded. Sight bills from the Council, all co-signed at his insistence by Benjamin Briggs, in the sum of two thousand pounds sterling, payable in twenty-four months.

"Well, sir"--Briggs smiled at Winston as he thumbed toward the approaching s.h.i.+p--"this is the cargo we'll be wanting now, if we're to finish converting this place to sugar. You could be of help to us again if you'd choose. This is where the future'll be, depend on it."

"I made one mistake, helping this island." Winston glanced at the s.h.i.+p and his eyes were momentarily pained. "I don't plan to make another."

Then he turned and stared past the crowd, toward the green fields patch-worked against the hillsides inland. "But I see your cane prospered well enough. When do we talk?"

"Why any time you will, sir. We've not forgotten our debts." Briggs forced another smile. "We'll have a tankard on it, right after the auction." He turned and motioned toward a red-faced Irishman standing behind him, wearing straw shoes and a long gray s.h.i.+rt. "Farrell, a moment of your valuable time."

"Yor Wors.h.i.+p." Timothy Farrell, one of Briggs' many indentured servants, bowed sullenly as he came forward, then

doffed his straw hat, squinting against the sun. His voice still carried the musical lilt of his native Kinsale, where he had been offered the choice, not necessarily easy, between prison for debt and indentured labor in sweltering Barbados. He had finally elected Barbados when informed, falsely, that he would receive a grant of five acres of land after his term of servitude expired--a practice long since abandoned.

Katherine watched as Briggs flipped him a small bra.s.s coin. "Fetch a flask of kill-devil from the tavern up by the bridge. And have it here when I get back."

Kill-devil was bought from Dutch s.h.i.+ppers, who procured it from Brazilian plantations, where it was brewed using wastes from their sugar-works. The Portuguese there employed it as a cheap tonic to rout the "devil" thought to possess African slaves at the end of a long day and render them sluggish. It retailed handily as a beverage in the English settlements of the Americas, however, sometimes being marketed under the more dignified name of "rumbullion," or "rum."

Briggs watched as Farrell sauntered off down the sh.o.r.e. "That's what we'll soon hear the last of. A lazy Papist, like half the lot that's being sent out nowadays." He turned to study the weathered Dutch frigate as it eased into the sandy shallows and the anchor chain began to rattle down the side. "But we've got good workers at last. By Jesus, we've found the answer."

Katherine watched the planters secure their hats against a sudden breeze and begin pus.h.i.+ng toward the sh.o.r.e. Even Anthony and Jeremy went with them. The only man who held back was Hugh Winston, still standing there in his worn-out leather jerkin. He seemed reluctant to budge.

Maybe, she thought, he doesn't want to confront it.

As well he shouldn't. We've got him to thank for this.

After a moment he glanced back and began to examine her with open curiosity, his eyes playing over her face, then her tight bodice.

Finally he s.h.i.+fted one of the pistols in his belt, turned, and began strolling down the sloping sand toward the bay.

Well, d.a.m.n his cheek.

All along she had planned to go down herself, to see firsthand what an auction would be like, but at that instant the s.h.i.+fting breeze brought a sudden stench from the direction of the s.h.i.+p. She hesitated, a rare moment of indecision, before turning back toward the carriage. This, she now realized, marked the start of something she wanted no part of.

Moving slowly toward the sh.o.r.e, Winston found himself puzzling over the arch young woman who had been with Governor Bedford. Doubtless she was the daughter you heard so much about, though from her dress you'd scarcely guess it. But she had an open way about her you didn't see much in a woman. Plenty of spirit there . . . and doubtless a handful for the man who ever got her onto a mattress.

Forget it, he told himself, you've enough to think about today.

Starting with the _Zeelander_. And her cargo.