‘You cannot do this,' Edward said. 'Susan?’

But the expression on Susan's face confirmed Tony's words, that it had been at least partly her decision, and perhaps even her suggestion,

'But you have....' he gazed at her belly, and thought better of bringing their relationship into the open. 'At least offer me a berth with you.'

Hilton smiled. ‘Your father has just mapped out your future, Ned. Maybe for the next century. He’ll need you, boy. And this is your land. But it is not mine.'

'But....' he chewed his lip. He did not love the girl any more. He could never love her again, after knowing what she and Tony had done to him. But for the child he would wave goodbye to them with a lifting heart. But the child was lost to him in any event.

'And when there is peace?" Tom asked.

"Why, then, maybe I’ll settle down. But while there is a war on, I'll be serving King and country.' Again that magnificent grin. 'And my own pockets, Tom Warner. Come, Susan, we'll see to our goods. You can bid us farewell in the morning.'

He helped his wife to her feet. She hesitated for a moment, staring at Edward, and then hurried behind her husband.

'By God,' Tom said.

‘I do not doubt that it is all to the good,' Anne Warner said. 'He is nothing more than a pirate. He will do well, until they catch him and hang him. And the red-headed whore. And I for one have no doubt at all we shall do better without him. But we must not leave Nevis deserted. His Majesty was adamant about that. Edward, what say you to a deputy governorship, of Nevis?"

He gaped at her. 'Madam? I am still under trial.'

'Oh, fie upon you,' she smiled. ‘I am sure the Governor has it far more in his mind to honour you for preserving our colony than for attempting to oust an obvious incompetent like Hal Ashton.' She spoke without the slightest suggestion, certainly in her mind, that Tom Warner would disagree with her. And without, indeed, any of the respect Edward bad been used to hearing in Mama's tone. He glanced at his father.

'Oh, indeed,' Tom said. ‘I have been considering that very point while we sat here. You showed great courage, Edward, And more than that. You showed ability and responsibility. I only wish you had done so sooner. What say you to Nevis?'

Nevis? Where every tree, every stone on the beach, would remind him of Susan? ‘I thank you for your trust, sir. But Nevis is not for me. If you would forgive me.'

'Why, of course we shall,' Anne Warner smiled. ‘I am sure we shall find a willing governor from amongst our people here. And now I think we have sat talking long enough, and to be sure these mosquitoes have found me out.' She looked up the beach. ‘I observe that our people have pitched tents and made an encampment. We shall retire, and resume our deliberations in the morning.'

She rose, and the men followed her example.

There is but one more matter of great importance, Father,' Edward said.

'Can it not wait?"

'No, sir. It affects a lady's honour. Mademoiselle Galante.'

"The French girl?' Tom Warner peered into the gloom, where Aline had remained standing throughout the conference. 'By God. I assume she is a prisoner of war. And will be treated as such.'

'On the contrary, sir.' Edward sucked air into his lungs and wondered what devil made him take up these indefensible positions. 'She is my betrothed wife.'

'What?" Tom demanded.

'Marry a Frenchwoman?' Anne Warner asked. 'And a papist? Surely you are letting your notions of honour run away with you. So no doubt you have had your pleasure with her....'

'Madam?"

'Mother, Edward. Mother. Or, as I would prefer it, Anne, as we are so much of an age. Your father told me that we indulge in no false words, no false sentiments, upon Warner's land, and that is a point of view I greatly welcome. Now, if this girl has found it necessary to share her bed to survive, that is oft the lot of prisoners of war, or indeed of women in war generally. Yet should you always remember that she belongs to a nation which foully betrayed a sacred treaty between your father and themselves.'

'As her name is Galante....' Tom growled.

‘Indeed you are quite correct, sir,' Edward said. 'Her father is Joachim Galante. Yet does this alter my resolution not a whit. We are betrothed, and seek to make our marriage legal as soon as possible.'

'By God,' Tom said.

‘You love this girl?' Anne Warner demanded. 'A papist?’

Edward hesitated. ‘I wish to make her my wife,' he said.

Anne Warner stared at him for a moment, and then turned away. 'We shall discuss it further in the morning.'

'And Yarico?' Yarico asked in a low voice.

Anne Warner checked, and looked over her shoulder. 'Why, Princess Yarico, you may be sure that you will be treated now and always, with the deference your rank deserves. As will the French girl. I will arrange a tent for you to share.'

Aline remained standing by the fire. ‘I am surprised and delighted by your generosity, Edward.'

'Did you ever doubt that it was my intention?'

Her turn to hesitate. 'No,' she said at last. ‘I did not doubt that, in my heart, at the least. Yet I observe you found it difficult to express your love for me. If you are driven entirely by your notions of honour, I would not have it so.'

'Now, there is a change of attitude,' he remarked.

‘Perhaps I am coming to understand the differences which exist, which must exist, between your life here and the life I knew in France.'

'None the less, you will marry me, now,' Edward said. 'Because I wish a wife, and there is none better than you. None more suited, either, as you know the worst of life in these islands, as well as the best, and there can be little promise of the one in the future without very probably the other as well.'

She tossed her head. 'And you still will not say the word that matters.'

'No, mademoiselle, I will not say the word that matters. You yourself told me it was unimportant, once the event was arranged. Thus you may regard this event as being arranged, in either heaven or hell, as you choose. It is now inevitable.'

She gazed at him for several seconds, before walking up the beach. Why, he wondered. Why treat her so? Do you not love her? Do you know the meaning of the word? Have you been bewitched? Is she to suffer because of what you have suffered, from Susan? But did not Susan suffer because of you in the first place? And Yarico . . . did she not give you her love, entirely and without reservation, and did you not accept that love, until something more compelling came along?

She stood at his elbow. 'Ed-ward, stu-pid,' she remarked, 'A-line happy for love Ed-ward.' ‘I know that.'

Yarico smiled. 'Anne happy for love Ed-ward, too.'

He glanced at her, sharply. "You'd do well to keep your evil thoughts to yourself.'

Yarico shrugged. 'What happen with Yarico, now? Yarico ain't got no man. Yarico ain't got no people. Yarico best go to forest, Ed-ward.' She pointed to the north end of the island,

'No,' he said. 'You'll not do that. You'll ... I will arrange it for you, Yarico.' 'What?’

‘I’ll... I'll speak to my father. Something will be arranged, I promise you.'

She smiled. 'Yarico, Ed-ward. Ed-ward, A-line.' She gave a shriek of delightful laughter, and went to find her son.

Edward watched his father standing in front of the tent, talking with Judge. New people, once again. And father was the newest of all. Sir Thomas Warner, by God. When would the lordship follow? He had found favour at court, as he had always found favour at court; but once he had been too forthright, too honest, ever to capitalize on that hypocritical advancement. Now that too had changed. And Merwar's Hope? Why, that no longer existed. Merwar's Hope was to become nothing but a copy of all the Spanish colonies in the Americas, breeding grounds for hate and fear and cruelty. He had fought the Dons with a savagery he had not supposed he had possessed, to preserve a dream which had already been ended. His only achievement was to free the Irishmen. But in that cause even Paddy O'Reilly had died. There was a sorry history.

He walked up the beach. And now, to preserve himself and his friends, he must also play the courtier. Thank God his friends were so few.

'Edward,' Tom said. ‘I had hoped you'd stop by. You'll excuse us, Harry.'

'Of course, Sir Thomas. A good evening to you, Master Warner.' Judge bowed and withdrew into the darkness.

'Sit down, boy. Sit down. You'll take a pipe?'

‘I'd not keep you, sir.'

Tom Warner smiled. ' 'Tis best I wait a while. She is a ravishing creature, is she not?" 'Oh, indeed, sir.'

'But young. And passionate. This day I am all but exhausted. But then, so is she, I imagine. Give her an hour and she will be fast asleep. And we have much to discuss, you and I.' He lowered himself to the sand with a sigh, began filling his pipe. ‘I am not a man who finds words easy. You'll know the number of times we have quarrelled, and indeed come close to blows. But I have always borne in mind the lad who came with me from Plymouth those long years ago. A boy of singular courage and ability. I never doubted that in time that boy would return, and by God he has done so. I am proud of you, Edward. I would have you know that. By God, I have ever been quick enough to speak my mind when displeased.'

‘I have no doubt that I deserved every word of condemnation, sir. Perhaps your original judgment was no more than right, and I was too young to embark upon such an adventure. I thought myself a man while still some years away from that state.'

'Ah, but without such precocity would you yet have achieved such a state of manhood where you would defend an island like this against a fleet of Spain? I doubt that.' Tom held out his hand. There'll be no more differences between us. You have my word and here is my hand.'

Edward grasped the hand, and sucked on his pipe. ‘I did not have the chance to congratulate you, properly, on the honour done you.'

'My knighthood? If you'd know the truth, it is nothing but a farce. Our noble King has made it a law that every man in the kingdom possessing forty pound a year must present himself for this honour, as you call it. A means of raising income, you'll understand, as it cost me a pretty penny, I can assure you.'

‘You no longer favour the King?’

‘I’ll hear no talk against him, if that is what you mean. There is enough of that already in England But he arrogates for himself rights and authorities not even claimed by her late majesty, God bless her. We'll not talk of Charles Stuart, Edward. We will but thank God we are so far removed from Whitehall.'

'And my lord of Carlisle's tax collectors?'

'Will be back, and will be paid. I but secured us a stay on the grounds of changing from tobacco to cane. Capital expansion, you'll understand, which will hardly involve a profit for a year or two.'

'But it will involve a profit?'

'Oh, indeed, if all the figures of which I am possessed are in the least accurate. A profit many times that of tobacco. There is too much waste, and too much replanting, required in tobacco. But in cane now, the only problem is labour. Why, the very fires which evaporate the liquid into crystals are fed by the discarded crushed stalks. It is a self supporting industry.'

'And you have solved the labour problem.'

‘You have an Englishman's dislike of the word slavery.’

‘I’ll not deny that, Father.'

'But these people are not like us.' 'They are human beings, surely.'

‘Indeed they are. But they have no knowledge of civilization, or Christianity; they live their lives in superstition and bloodshed. We will be doing them a service. I do assure you. And providing they work with a will, they will come to no harm. Would that same precept not apply to an English servant? And if you suppose that Painton intends to invade Africa with gun and chain, you are mistaken. The slaves come from the interior of that dark continent, and are secured by the coastal tribes of their own people. This trade has been going on since time began. In days gone by the buyers were usually Arab merchants, and the fate of the slaves was to die in the desert. Or be gelded as playthings for the women of the harems. We offer them an altogether more noble future. But if we did not, be sure that they would still be sold, to other, less Christian masters.'

'You have an answer for everything, Father, and I have no doubt at all I shall become accustomed to the idea, as indeed I must. I’ll not quarrel with it, believe me. Now, sir, if I can mention the matter on which I came here to talk with you.'

‘I'd not supposed it was an entirely social call. You have ever been a forthright young man. Why change your style now?’

‘I am concerned for Yarico.'

Tom knocked out his pipe, and commenced filling it. 'She will be treated with all the respect due to her rank. As will her son. He will take his place behind you and Philip.'

'Yet....'

‘Yet is she distressed at this moment. That is a perfectly normal female reaction to her situation. She will outgrow it.'

'She conceives herself quite alone in the world, her people disappeared, her lover, whom I have no doubt she thought of as a husband, now allied to another woman....'

'Hardly the way to talk of your new mother, Edward. I perceive a certain dislike here. Indeed, I thought I saw as much over dinner, and concluded that I must be mistaken. Come now, speak frankly.'

Edward sighed. 'Perhaps I remember Mama too well.'

'As do I. I also remember my first wife, whom you never knew. But to some men, marriage is an important part of life. I am one of those men. I need the constant comfort of a woman's arms, the unending encouragement of her spirit at my back.'

'She is less than half your age, Father.' 'Which means what, exactly?"

‘I... I merely meant that she cannot have seen enough of life to give you the comfort and encouragement you require.'

'She will learn what I require, and that is more than half of the delights to be obtained from her. But there is more. She is well. connected, Edward. So was Sarah, and hence my feet were planted on an upward road.'

'And Mama?"

Tom's turn to sigh. "Less so. Her father was a merchant. Oh, a very respectable man, and with some solid wealth behind him. But no influence at court. Indeed, I doubt he had ever been there. Anne now, she grew up in Whitehall, to all hi tents and purposes. Her mother was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne, God bless her memory, hence my charmer's name. She will not only be good for me, Edward, she will be good for all of us. You will but wait and see. I make this request of you.'

Edward nodded. 'And Yarico?"

'For the third time, boy, she has naught to fear. She will have a house of her own, and will be treated as a princess of the Caribs. And believe me, Anne will also attend to that.'

1 hope so, Father. Well, I will leave you to your charmer.'

'And seek yours?'

'No, sir. I will wait until, like you, I am wed.' 'To a French woman? By God, boy, I had hoped for better. That scoundrel Belain....' 'She is his niece.'

'By God, but you amaze me, Edward, truly you do. Your spirit is the most wayward I have ever encountered. By God, sir..' he checked himself and laughed. 'But I'll not quarrel with you. You're a man now, by God. Even in the eyes of the law. Take whoever you wish to wife, by God. I’ll have Sweeting see to the banns in the morning.'

The morning. The dawn of a new day on St Kitts, of a new era, of prosperity and progress. Somehow, this time he did not doubt that, Edward realized. His instincts told him that this new brood of colonists, bearing none of the guilt of Blood River, and lacking even the disturbing turbulence of Tony Hilton, as well as the constant problem of the Irish, would be set upon far firmer foundations than the previous ones. Because here was nothing but purpose. Merwar's Hope had been too much of an accident. There was nothing accidental about any of these people being here. Even Father had changed, was no longer the same man who had landed here with dreams and hopes. Now he knew what had to be done, what had to be avoided. Over the past fortnight a new town had already commenced to spring from the ruins of the old, and Brimstone Hill was once again armed. And now Tom even had a new wife.

So, out of all the past, only three remained. Yarico, reminder of the horrors which had gone before; Aline, an accidental intruder upon the scene; and Edward. Philip had already found himself quite at home with the newcomers. Only three, to stick out like sore thumbs for the rest of their days. No doubt these new settlers would respect him. They all knew how he had defended the island, their island, against several thousand Spaniards. They might respect him, and they might even fear him, the white savage, Caribee. But they would not know, and no doubt they would not wish to know, how to become his friend. He would be alone in the future, as he had been alone in the past, as he was alone this night. He had no need for a tent as he had seldom slept in one in the past. He preferred to stay away from the encampment, away from Yarico, and Aline, who waited for her approaching wedding, with what emotions, he wondered? The banns had been twice read, and in that time they had hardly exchanged a word. He was unsure of his feelings himself, beyond a certainty that this must be done. But he was also away from Father, and Mother.

He lay on the sand, and watched the moon drifting across the sky before beginning its plunge into the ocean beyond. Watched, too, the first pale fingers of dawn creeping across the Caribbean Sea before him. Those fingers he had watched too often, and not many of the memories were pleasant.

He got up, stood on the water's edge, gazed at the endless dark sweep of the Caribbean, and listened to the soft crunching on the sand behind him.

'An early riser?' Anne Warner asked.

'As are you, madam.'

'Anne,' she said. ‘I sleep badly. I am too excited. I have dreamed of this island for too long.'

He turned. She wore an undressing robe, and her hair was loose. 'And now it is all yours.'

She smiled. 'Surely it is yours as well? Will you walk with me?"

'Madame....'

'Anne. If you will not call me Anne, then you must call me Mother. The choice is yours, but be sure I shall respond to your choice. Your father is disturbed by your aloofness, and I am disturbed when your father worries. I would walk, and I know nothing of this island or its creatures. I wish you to accompany me.'

He fell into step at her side. 'There is nothing on this island for you to fear. No animal, at any rate.'

'You have destroyed them all? But then, have you not also destroyed anything human I might fear?'

'Yes,' he said. ‘I have destroyed them all.'

She walked up the beach, and gazed into the forest. They were beyond the limits of the burnt out tobacco fields, now, and where the path hacked through the trees commenced. 'What lies beyond there?'

'Another house, once. Hal Ashton's plantation.'

'Can we go there?'

‘If you feel you can walk five miles.'

'Ah.' But she walked down the path anyway. In a moment they were lost to sight from the beach. 'Why do you dislike me, Edward?’

‘I do not dislike you, Anne. Perhaps I am still too surprised at discovering you here. My Father had not suggested that he was proposing to marry again.'

'And of course, he had the Indian woman to warm his bed,' she remarked. 'But a savage can only be a poor substitute for comfort.'

'And you seek to give him, comfort?'

‘It is my duty, as a wife.'

'And duty is everything.'

She stopped. ‘I would have you explain that remark.'

‘I meant that you made a strange choice of husband, to come half way across the world to a life which must necessarily lack the refinement of that you have known, and which does possess a certain aspect of danger as well, all for a man old enough to be your Father, and indeed, I would estimate, somewhat past the age at which he can be a father.'

'There is quite a speech. Would you have me repeat it to Sir Thomas?'

'You may if you choose, madam. I am known for my forthrightness.'

Her forehead was clear, although her cheeks were pink. ‘I see,' she said, and continued her walk. ‘I am well aware that it is unlikely I shall be blessed with motherhood. But then, it is a mixed blessing, is it not, leaving as it does the woman incapacitated for long periods, and no doubt shortening her life into the bargain, and leaving her, too, at the mercy of that most debilitating of instincts, the desire to protect her child.' Her head half turned. ‘I assume you have no objection to my being forthright?’

‘I respect you for it.'

'Good. And then, of course, I may also claim to have a ready made family, might I not?" ‘Indeed, madam, if you choose.'

Once more she stopped. ‘I do so choose, but I would order it, also, as I choose. I see myself as the link between your father and yourself, between his ideas of how such a colony as this, such as a community as tins, should be governed, and yours. For make no mistake. I am aware that your points of view are as different as it is possible to suppose. He has told me all he can remember of you, and every opinion he has ever held of you. He respects you from the bottom of his heart for the part you played in recent events here, but he knows too that you are less of his son than, say, Philip, when it comes to opinions and ambitions.'

'My brother and I are different, madam, most certainly. Yet we have proved that we can work well in harness.'

'As brothers should. But there cannot be a joint governor, in St Kitts.'

'Madam, you project too far and too fast. My father may not provide you with all the satisfaction you desire in your bed, but he is very far from approaching death.'

Her head came up and her eyes seemed to gloom around him. 'You are very blunt, sir.'

‘It was a quality you desired, but a moment gone.'

'And you, of course, know much about satisfying a woman in her bed, Edward, with your French lass.'

‘I am a man, madam. As perhaps you have observed.'

‘Indeed I have.' She moved suddenly, grasped his hands. ‘I would not quarrel with you. Edward. I shall not quarrel with you, no matter what may occur. I brought you here this morning because this last fortnight I have sensed your mistrust. You have asked yourself questions about me, and found no answers. I would have you ask them of me. Indeed, there is no need. I married a man old enough to be my father. As you have just said, he is still a man, and at the Court of King Charles there are not so many of those to be found. Besides, England is an oppressed country; the very air is heavy with the taint of treason and mistrust. Your father promised me a new life in a place where the air is sweet. I believed him. I still believe him. Do I love him? I will say truly, perhaps I do not, as a girl should love her husband.' The fingers were eating into his flesh as she reached for breath. Her voice lowered. 'And yet I would be an empty-headed little fool did I not consider my situation in its every aspect. I have left all behind, for the sake of Tom Warner, and his St Kitts. And his family. He is not an old man, yet he is approaching age. And who may say when death will strike? Then indeed I would be at your mercy.'

'My mercy, madam?'

She smiled. Her breath rushed against his face. 'Perhaps not in law. Your father has written a new will, in winch he has appointed me executrix. I have a certain knowledge in these matters.'

How casually she let it slip. But her eyes continued to shroud him, seeking his reactions. 'You are fortunate, madam.'

She pretended to pout. 'How many times have I asked you to call me Anne? Now I beg you, Edward. I look to that future, while determined to play my full part in the present. Thus I could not bear to have you opposed to me. Give me your friendship, Edward. More. Give me your love. Do not look on me as a mother. And especially as a stepmother. Look on me as a sister, and be sure that I shall be the truest sister man could ever possess, could ever desire, an eternal source of aid and comfort, and of love, Edward.'

He gazed at her, from a distance of not more than six inches, shrouded in breath and eyes, in perfume and anxious womanhood; her lips were parted and her teeth gleamed at him. By Christ, he thought; Yarico was right. Sister? She means to make more sure of me than that

With a violent tug he freed his hands. 'Are you mad, madam? As well as criminal?'

She frowned, and stepped back. ‘You had best explain.'

'No, no, madam. You take me for a fool, I think. Is my father that old and decrepit? Are you that voracious? I have a sister, who lies dying in England. I shall have no other. And I do not lack for lovers, I assure you.'

She smiled yet again; her mouth widened while her eyes remained cold. 'You should be careful how wildly you speak, Edward. Sir Thomas is presently well disposed towards you, but he still has much to remember, and he would take it badly should you insult his bride.'

'His....'

‘I am that still. Certainly to him. He trusts me, for that very patience with which I submit to his inarticulate desires. For the very frustrations which I so willingly suppress in order not to embarrass him. He values me above all other creatures, Edward. You would do well to remember that.

Only those who have my trust and support can prosper here.'

He stood in impotent rage, and then turned and stamped down the path.

'And be sure you regain control of your temper and your expression before you reach the beach,' she called after him. 'Or shall I have to explain to your father how you sought me privily in order to assault me, at least with words?’

He checked. But to go back would be fatal. And yet, now that their enmity had come into the open ... he burst through the trees and ran down the beach. Tom Warner looked up from the plans over which he brooded with Harry Judge, while early as it was the sound of axes rang through the still air, and the morning chattered with vibrant activity.

'Edward? What has happened? You look as if you have met a ghost.'

'And did not Lady Warner accompany you?' Judge demanded. 'No harm has befallen her?'

'No harm, sir.' Edward said. 'Father, I have come to a decision.'

'A decision?' Tom queried.

To leave this place.'

To leave St Kitts? By God.' He looked past his son to where Anne Warner was just emerging from the path. 'You have quarrelled with your stepmother. I saw it coming. Now come, I will have a reconciliation.'

'No, Father,' Edward said. 'She but confirmed a resolution which has been running through my mind for some days.' He became aware of people, downing then tools and waiting, and listening, to hear the outcome of this crisis.

'And you'd leave? To go where? These islands are your home. Your past and your future. Above all, your future. I'll not have it.'

'Nor would I leave these islands, sir. You offered me Nevis.'

'And you refused. I have appointed Tom Hawley.'

‘I know that, sir. But does not your dream encompass more than just these islands?' He chopped to his knees, marked the sand. 'Here is St Kitts with Nevis just south of it, and Montserrat farther south yet. Bastions, you could say. Here on the west is the open sea. Naught to fear from there, once this island is held. But to the east, where the remainder of the Leewards cluster fast... you'd do well to have an outpost in Antigua.'

'Antigua, by God,' Tom said.

The boy is right,' Judge said. ‘It is something I meant to discuss with you.

'But it will take more force than I can spare. There are Caribs on Antigua.'

'Not many, to be sure. And I am used to dealing with the Indians, Father.'

'And I will go,' Yarico said.

Tom gazed at her, frowning.

‘Philip?' Edward asked.

Philip flushed, and glanced up the beach to where Anne Warner waited. I'd as soon have done with fighting and pioneering.'

So he had already been made the object of her advances.

'Well, then,' Edward said. ‘I must recruit from amongst your people, Father. Not more than a dozen will be needed. With Yarico and my wife.'

"There is another problem,' Tom said. "The banns are not yet completed.'

"Then forget the banns,' Edward shouted. 'We can be married this afternoon. You are ruler here. You make the laws and you dispense with them, when the occasion arises.'

'And this is such an occasion?" Tom demanded. 'You come bursting out of that wood with all of the impetuous haste I remember and dislike from your youth, and claim that everything must be done to your satisfaction on the instant? I had looked for your support, here in St Kitts.'

'You shall have my support, in Antigua. I swear it.'

'And will you not need mine, in even greater proportion, while I have not the means to provide it?'

‘I shall call upon you for nothing, Father.'

'By Christ, if I could understand what is happening,' Tom said. 'Anne, sweetheart, can you explain this situation? You have heard what this madman wishes?'

Anne Warner came down the beach, her hair fluttering in the slight breeze. ‘I have heard, Sir Thomas. And I understand. I think your son feels constricted by his surroundings, since our arrival. He is too used to having the entire island at his disposal, at his command. You have told me how he was ever a wayward youth. And how he was ever a disappointing youth, while bound by your laws and your penalties. And we have all seen how he has blossomed forth into a veritable leader of men, when forced to his own devices.' She was close now, and smiling at Edward. ‘I say let him fulfil his ambition, and yours, and spread the Warner wings a few miles farther afield.' The smile was cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

11

 

The Carib

 

' ‘Tis not so mountainous as St Kitts, to be sure,' remarked Peter Willett. He stood on the poop deck of his ship and conned the approaching shore through his glass.

'And green,' Edward said. If anything, greener than St Kitts.'

'Unless it is merely because it has not been burned out so many times,' the sailing master observed. 'And like all these pesky islands, it has naught but an open beach. It is my opinion, Master Warner, that the true reason the Spaniards have ever passed the Leewards by, and the Windwards, is that they like their ships to he secure during the storm months. And so do I, or any sailor. Lacking proper harbours, these colonies you and your Father plan will never be aught but huts scattered along a shore.'

‘I have no doubt that you are right,' Edward agreed, peering through his own glass at Antigua. 'But as these islands are all our present situation permits us to inhabit, why, we must do the best we can, and hope that one day fortune will be our friend.' He frowned, his eye pressed hard against the copper rim of the telescope. 'As, by God, she may well have elected to do. Is that not a break in the shoreline, Mr. Willett?’

The sailing master frowned in turn, and checked his compass. They had sailed round the southern end of St Kitts, taking the narrows between the Christ child and Nevis, and with the wind, unusually, in the north west, they were now beating up towards the southern part of Antigua, where the island was to some extent flat in the front it presented to the sea. ' 'Tis a fact the beach ends, and then resumes some distance farther along. But I would say it is naught but an outcrop of rock, and best avoided.'

'Mr. Willett,' Edward said. ‘I do believe you are a pessimist. Look at the beach, man. Even on the sand there is a thin line of white. If that darker area were rock there would be endless surf. But there the water is unbroken. We'll stand towards it, if you please.'

' 'Tis your father's ship we risk.'

'And my father's instructions were for you to set me ashore where I chose. And I choose that bay, if indeed it is a bay. If not, with the wind where it is, we shall have ample time to run back out to deeper water. I would have you stand in. Now.' He left the poop and went down the ladder to the waist, pausing for a moment at the top of the next ladder to consider the group huddled there, staring at the land which was to be their home. If they could make it so. There were eight of them, five of them hardly older than himself, already opting for the increased danger but, they would be hoping, increased freedom of the sub-colony, removed from Tom Warner's iron discipline. The other three men were married, and had their wives clustering close, homely females, pink cheeked and buxom, peering with anxiety at the forested slopes ahead of them. They too were young enough to work hard, and not yet burdened with the problems of motherhood. He had had to refuse two couples because they already had children. He had no means of knowing whether survival, even for adults, was possible on Antigua.

Much would depend on Yarico, the only mother. She stood by herself, as she nearly always stood by herself. Except for little Tom, of course. He never left her side, and whenever he seemed tired, he was in her arms. Father had insisted that she wear a gown on St Kitts, but today she had once again reverted to her loin cloth, and remained, as ever, an entrancing and bewildering sight, the more so to the white women than to anyone else, he supposed. She gazed at the approaching land without expression. There were her people there, and only she would be able to talk with them, freely. Not even he would know what she would be telling them, just as not even he fully understood what went on inside her mind. She looked at ease and at peace. But then, she had looked at ease and at peace when she had stood close to him at his wedding ceremony, yesterday afternoon. Throughout the festivity she had stared at him, and none other.

Aline stood by herself, close to the rail. Anne Warner had found new clothes for her to wear, but no doubt with some malice, had dressed her as one of the ordinary women, in a plain grey gown with a high white collar, which shrouded her figure in a shapeless sack. But Aline had refused the equally anonymous white cap which the other women wore, and had left her hair free and undressed, save for a bow at the nape of her neck. And no garments could hide the splendour of that face. Yet today it was not laughing. This morning, when she had dressed herself, and regarded herself in Anne's glass, she had burst into a shout of that tremendous sound he had almost forgotten. For now she was married. And yet, not married. They had spent not a moment alone since the deed had been pronounced. Of course there had been far too much to be done, with the accumulating and listing of all the equipment they would need, with the farewells, with the celebrating which had gone on long into the night. But for that morning on Mount Misery she would yet be a virgin, although a bride of more than twelve hours. Yet she had herself shown no great anxiety to be with him. No doubt she was as apprehensive as himself. And now? She glanced at him, as he approached, and then looked away again, pink spots in her cheeks. Aline Warner. Assuming that Anne Warner would see to it that Little Tom never took his rightful place, Aline was the cornerstone of the Warner dream, the woman on whom the continuation of the family in the West Indies would depend.

And at this moment she did not wish to speak with him. He stood next to Yarico instead. 'What do you know of Antigua?"

'An-tigua people, pouf,' she remarked,

'Your people have fought them?'

'My people rule. . ..' she waved her arm. 'Until War-nah.’ ‘We think we see a break in the shoreline. Have you heard of this?’

She shook her head. The breeze caught the heavy black hair and floated it. Edward patted Little Tom on the head and returned to the poop. The sailors were already aloft, trimming the sails, and the orders were being passed down to the helmsman. Now the little ship came as close to the wind as she could manage, heeling as she approached the shore.

Willett closed the telescope with a snap. ' Tis a gap, all right, Mr Warner, but once we enter there we shall lose the wind, and if there should be a current we shall be at its mercy.'

Then break out your boat and have it ready,' Edward said. ‘You can always anchor until the oars are ready to take the strain. By God, man, are you a ship's captain or a inexperienced apprentice?'

Willett flushed, and went to the rail to give his orders. Edward remained staring at the approaching shore. Now the gap could clearly be seen; the sand and the outcrops of rocks on either side, with the ripple of surf against them, allowed in the centre a deep green gash, and the land in there was farther off. Willett, in addition to swinging out the longboat, also ordered sail to be shortened, and with the wind coming ever more onto the bow the ship slowly lost speed But there were no breakers, no heads, peering through the waters of the gap. It scarce seemed to move, indeed, a slow sway of deep water, to and fro, and beyond, a wonderland, once again of sandy beaches and outcrops of rock, but curving round to form a vast lagoon, to which access could only be gained by this one narrow entrance.

The ship was now almost without way, and the longboat entered the water with a splash. The crew were already at their oars, and a moment later the towing warp took up the strain, while a leadsman climbed into the bows to call the depths. But there was no need, surely.

'By God,' Willett said. ‘I have seen nothing like it. You could hide the Spanish Armada in here, in comfort and security.'

'Aye,' Edward said. Antigua. His island. In all the group, to their knowledge, the one island with a natural harbour. And it was his.

And once he had called himself unfortunate.

Willett chose his spot, dropped the bower anchor in four fathoms of clear green water, onto a bed of the most perfect white sand. It reminded Edward of the interior of Susan's cave. Now they were in, there was no breeze to be felt at all. Nothing moved; the trees in their profusion on the shore, the unscarred sandy beach, the endless tree covered hills beyond, the quiet, sheltered sea. No mountains on Antigua. No hills to be called misery, no hills to be defended with brimstone. Was the island, then, defensible? It looked larger than St Kitts.

So, then, would it be defended?

Willett was all of a bustle, now his ship was safe. "You'll require a large armed force, to begin with,' he said. ‘I’ll give the orders. The women and the child had best remain behind until we have taught these Indians a thing or two.'

'Your instructions from my father were to bring us here, nothing more, Mr Willett. Although I thank you for your wish to see us safe ashore, the Indians, if they are hostile, are not likely to come out and be shot at, and unless you are to stay here forever, with your guns trained on those trees, why, then, we must make some other arrangements. I shall come to an agreement with these people.'

'As your father did with the people of St Kitts?" Willett asked. And had the grace to flush.

'Aye,' Edward said. 'And perhaps mine shall be the more lasting. Ladies, your bundles, if you please. I will carry yours, Aline.'

‘I am quite capable of carrying my own belongings, Mr Warner,' she said. ‘I am sure you have a deal to do.'

Difficult times ahead, but not to be thought of now. 'You’ll keep Tom by your side, always, Yarico,' he said.

Tom good.' She continued to stare at the shore.

'And what of the Caribs?'

She shrugged. ‘If they there, they there, Ed-ward. They come.'

'Well, we'd best give them something to come for.'

They embarked, a nervous huddle in the centre of the longboat, while the seamen pulled to the beach. Willett himself took the tiller, but there was no surf to be navigated, and only seconds after they left the ship they grounded on the sand.

They waited, the sailors with their oars backed, the colonists with their cloth bundles and their weapons clutched to their breasts. Edward stood up, made his way to the bow, and jumped ashore. He was fully armed and armoured, but he left his sword in his sheath. In his right hand he carried the staff of St George fluttering from its top. He walked up the sand, slowly and deliberately, raised the flag high, and then thrust the stock hard into the ground. He turned to face them.

‘I, Edward Warner, take possession of this land, in the name of His Majesty King Charles I of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and in the name of his Lieutenant of the Caribee Isles, Sir Thomas Warner of Framlingham. And I name this place . . .' he hesitated. All manner of grandiose titles had flitted through his mind as the ship had entered the land-locked bay. But simplicity were best. 'English Harbour. You'll disembark, if you please, ladies and gentlemen.'

The colonists climbed out of the longboat and lifted their wives ashore, and then returned for their weapons and their goods. The pile of stuff, enough food and wine for several weeks, muskets and shot, pikes and swords, saws and hatchets, grew on the sand, but remained pitifully small.

"I’ll not return tins night,' Willett declared. 'We shall lie at anchor until dawn, and our guns will remain loaded and directed at this forest. Bear that in mind, Mr Warner.'

'And I thank you, Mr Willett. But I say again, we must surely make our own way here. You'll tell my father that we are safely ashore, and you will tell him more, of the wondrous harbour we have discovered. I prophesy here and now that Antigua is the future of the Caribee colony. You may tell him I said so.'

Willett nodded, and gave orders to return to the ship.

‘I doubt that is wise, Mr. Warner,' Aline remarked. 'As it will but encourage your father to supersede you in the governorship.'

'My father is a man of his word.'

‘Indeed?' she asked. 'But is it his word which now rules St Kitts?"

He glanced at her, and she returned his gaze without altering her expression. His wife, by God. His bride of not yet twenty-four hours, and already setting up to be a shrew.

He turned away from her. 'Joseph Brown, you'll see about setting up these tents. For this night well place them midway between the beach and the trees. The Indians, should they prove hostile, lack distance with their missiles. Hal Leaming, you'll take one of these young men and secure us wood for a fire. It will drive away the sandflies. Mistress Ganner, you'll see to our supper this night. And one bottle only. We are here to work, not to get drunk.'

They stared at him. 'And you, Mr Warner?' Robert Ganner asked.

‘I will investigate the forest behind us, and locate fresh water. You will accompany me, madam.' 'Me?' Aline asked.

‘You are experienced in forests, are you not? Put your goods with the others.' He walked up the beach, not deigning to glance at them. They had volunteered to follow him, or at any rate, to escape St Kitts. The first few days here would prove what they would make of this colony. Their respect for him was based on hearsay. No doubt he would have to knock one or two heads together, beginning, he suspected, with Ganner, a short, thickset man with a thin wife—ever a bad combination. But his first priority must to be to make sure of those who stood behind him. He could not depend on Yarico alone.

'And the Indian girl?' Harriet Ganner was flanked by the other two women.

'Will also investigate the forest,' Edward said. 'She knows it better than any of us.'

Yarico glanced from him to the women, and then to Aline, who, skirts held in her hands, was walking up the sand behind him.

‘I go so,' she said, and set off in the opposite direction, little Tom as usual toddling by her side.

Edward parted the first of the bushes, forced his way through them, extricating his feet from the clawing branches which covered the earth. Behind him Aline came crackling.

‘I doubt you need me, sir,' she panted. 'When last I knew a forest I was not encumbered by a gown.'

He stopped. The beach was already lost to sight. 'Then take it off.'

'Sir?'

'Take it off,' he said. ‘I command you as your husband and your governor.'

'You seek to humiliate me, sir. Those people.. ..'

'Will not leave the beach, I assure you of that. We are as secure from their prying eyes as if we were on the moon. And I am your husband.'

She stared at him, a flush rising out of her neck, then she slowly released the ties on the back of her gown, shrugged it free of her bodice, and lowered it past her hips.

'And the shift,' he said.

The flush deepened. 'Do you then, mean once again to make me lie upon the ground, Mr Warner?'

‘It may well come to that. I would see if you, once again, will excite me to that pitch.' As if there could be any doubt. As if he was not already as excited as a young boy. As if he had not been so for the past months.

'And you are my husband, so I must obey, or risk a whipping.' She raised the shift over her head, threw it on the ground behind her gown. And then faced him, deliberately inflating those swelling breasts while sucking her belly flat. And watching his eyes. 'Although, sir,' she said, ‘If such a course of action would relieve your mind, then would I lie content. It is a sad thing, to be taken with hatred. To be married with hatred.'

And how well she understood him. He hated her at the very moment that he loved her. And why? Were the two emotions indistinguishable? Hardly likely. He had known no hate with Susan. But he had always feared Yarico's love. Because he feared to be possessed, and he knew that this girl but waited to possess him, and more, knew her power? Or because she had tormented him from the first, and tormenting, had set his feet upon a path from which there was no turning?

Or because, above everything else in life, he wanted possession of her, and not her body, which was there for the taking, but her mind, which could laugh, and in that magnificent sound raise life itself from the level of the ditch and the pasture, which was all he knew, onto the mountain peaks and the high valleys, above the clouds, and where the sun and the moon held eternal, equally magnificient sway? Possession. But possession of Aline Galante's mind was not to be had by wishing it. There was a door there, with a key in it, and he did not have the knowledge to turn it

And yet, no doubt to her sorrow, she was no longer Aline Galante, but Aline Warner, as she knew too well. The flush had faded into a paleness which spread down to the still glowing white contours of her breasts. 'Do I then, disgust you, sir?'

'No,' he said. 'No, I should have to be a sorry man were that possible. But as you say, here is neither the time nor the place. The wife of the Governor should lie on soft sheets, and as those are not available as yet, she should at least lie in her own tent. But as you are here with me, I would speak with you.'

‘You do not have to take me away secretly, and force me to inflame your passion, to speak with your wife, Mr Warner.'

'You think so?’ He came closer, put his hand on the nape of her neck to grasp her hair and hold her, only niches from him. 'You have just proved how necessary it is, Aline. You can use words, and expressions, and even glances, in a manner that is beyond me.'

Her eyes were wide from the pressure on her scalp, but she never flinched, nor asked him to release her.

'So now that I am to be Governor,' he said. 'And in addition I am married, it may be possible for a sharp tongue and a more ready, and educated, wit than my own to make sport of me. I will not have it so. Those men on the beach I can handle. If need be I can destroy them. And in doing that I can frighten their women into submission. My own wife is a different matter. If it pleases you to chide me, to make fun of

me or to ignore me, when we are alone together, that is your privilege. I will not encroach upon it, I promise you. But in public, at all times, you will be my faithful wife, and my most devoted supporter. And my most loving helpmate. Understand that, madam, or I shall indeed bring you into this forest and tie you to a tree and whip the flesh from your back.'

His fingers relaxed. Slowly she put her hands behind her head, to straighten her hair and rub her scalp.

‘I understand you, Mr Warner, and as, on occasion, you frighten me more than anyone, you may be sure that I shall obey you.'

He nodded. Then there should be no more cause of difference between us. Now get yourself dressed.'

Still she stood there. 'And yet, sir, as we are alone, and you promised me the privilege of an independent mind hi such circumstances, I would observe that you cannot treat life, and more especially marriage, as if it were a military campaign. Indeed. I have heard it said that even the most successful military commanders rely upon the love rather than the fear of their men. How much more important must it be for the people of a country to love their leader. And where a wife finds it impossible to love her husband, then indeed they are both doomed to a lifetime of loneliness.'

Almost could she be said to be threatening him. He chewed his lip in indecision, and was relieved by the rustling of the bushes which announced the presence of Yarico. She glanced at Aline with interest, but her mind was clearly occupied. ‘Indian come,' she said.

'By God.' He started to follow her, checked and looked over his shoulder. 'You'll chess yourself, and approach the beach, but cautiously, Aline.'

He hurried away from her before she could protest, reached the sand only a few seconds later, to see his colonists accumulated into a circle around their belongings and the first of the tents, weapons hi their hands, gazing at the twenty odd Caribs, men and women, who stood farther down the beach.

'Are they peaceable?" he asked Yarico. 'An-tigua people, pouf," she said. 'You come.'

She walked towards them, confidently enough, and he followed, with an equal show of bravado. She halted when some yards short of the group, who watched her approach while muttering amongst themselves and fingering their weapons. Yarico now stepped in front of Edward, spread her arms wide, and began to speak, loudly, and with fierce declamations, every few words turning round to point at Edward, and the ship which still lay at anchor, punctuating her sentences with the one angry pronouncement, 'War-nah . . . War-nah ... War-nah... .'

The Caribs watched and listened, and then one of them replied, briefly, and the whole group turned and made their way back along the beach.

'They not trouble us,' Yarico said. 'Not War-nah, who is Caribee.'

'But well post guards, none the less.'

She shrugged. And then smiled, and placed a finger on his chest. 'War-nah, Caribee, much feared. Much man.' How she smiled, and how she knew, how much he wanted. And indeed, why else had she come? ‘I find water,' she said. 'You come, Ed-ward? I show?' She put her head on one side.

He looked down the beach, to where his colonists still stared at him, and beyond, to where Aline was just returning from the bushes. 'Get back to work,' he shouted. 'The Indians will not trouble us. The princess has located a spring, and would show it to me. We shall not be long.' He glanced down at her. 'Aye, sweetheart. You show me.'

The moon dipped low over the entrance to English Harbour, cutting its brilliant silver road across the calm sea, beginning to illuminate even St Kitts in its path as it dropped towards its bed. Another dawn, soon approaching. Dawn was the most fateful time of a man's life. His life, certainly, but Edward believed it applied to all men. The dawn of a new day, of another day, of, eventually, the last day. Except for those who died in their sleep. But he did not suppose that would be his fate.

How would he the? Cut down by some Spaniard? Or by some rebellious colonist? Or indeed, as Father would have it, some escaping slave? Any one of those fates would be deserved. Even the thrust of a woman's knife between the ribs, a wife's knife, perhaps, urged on by jealousy and hatred. Not undeserved.

And the other? To he in a vast bed surrounded by wife and children, and grandchildren and great grandchildren, and watch them weep, knowing that they all loved you too well? Now there was a dream.

But dawn was the time when men stirred, and planned deeds, whether great or small, magnificent or murderous. Dawn excited him even as it frightened him.

But he was anticipating. It wanted yet four hours to dawn, and as the moon was declining fast the utter darkness welled up out of the forest and the sea to envelope the island.

Footsteps crunched on the sand as Robert Ganner approached. 'By God, 'tis dark, Mr Warner.'

'So you'll keep a sharp lookout. No sleeping, Mr Ganner. I'd treat that as a military offence.'

Til not sleep, sir.' Ganner sat down, his back against a tree, his musket across his knees. ‘I wonder any of us do that. Would you not estimate that those people we saw today constituted the entire Carib nation on this island?"

'Possibly,' Edward said. ‘I had heard they were not numerous.'

Then, sir, would it not be a sound idea . . . well, sir, as at this moment we have the support of Mr Willett and his sailors, and his cannon, whereas from tomorrow we shall be left to our own devices....'

'And seeing that we Warners have already practised such a manoeuvre, with success,' Edward said.

'Why, since you put it that bluntly, sir, yes. Surely there can be little prospect of two peoples as diverse as are we and them ever living together in peace and harmony. Which means that we must continually look to ourselves.'

‘I think you are wrong, Mr Gamier.' Edward stood up. ‘I think there is every prospect of the Caribs and the English living together, in peace and in harmony. I think we proved that, in St Kitts. Our action there was hasty, and undertaken through a combination of fear and ambition. My ambition can be contained by what we already have, and I am not afraid of any Carib. And I'll not have my people fearing them, either. Or hating them. You'll remember that, Mr Ganner. They but require treating as human beings to be our friends.'

He walked down the sand, towards his tent. Not afraid of any Carib. What bold words. Was it not the very fear he felt for Wapisiane which made him want to be friends with these people? But Wapisiane was surely dead, by now. Nothing had been seen or heard of him since that raid on Hilton's plantation, and that was close on a year ago. And he had no certain knowledge that Wapisiane had been a party to that, even. It was merely his conscience dictating his feelings.

He parted the tent flap, entered the even more utter darkness of the interior, inhaled the perfume. Her wedding present, from Anne Warner. At her own request. So now they would smell alike, and in the darkness it would be impossible to tell them apart. He lay down, rolled on his back, and watched the faint white loom of the tent above his head. He was tired, but not sleepy. Was he apprehensive of a Carib raid? Yarico had said no, and Yarico knew her people. Nor, in this case, was there any reason for her to he. If the Warners fell, then she must fall as well.

'Do you love her, Edward?" The voice was soft, whispering through the darkness.

‘I did not mean to awaken you.'

‘I have not slept. And I would have you answer my question.'

‘I would know why you ask it'

‘I ask it because, if you do not love her, then surely you must hate me. No one doubts why you took her into the forest this afternoon. If there are any doubts about you, it is that Tom is not your brother, but your son. Indeed, I wonder if that might not be your reason for leaving St Kitts so precipitately.'

'And you spend your leisure listening to such rumours?"

'Should I not, sir, as that is all the conversation I am granted, or indeed am likely to be granted, so far as I can see? So I ask you again, do you hate me? Have you married me merely to be revenged upon Monsieur Belain? And my father? If you have, why do you not beat me and torture me into the bargain?’

He sighed. 'Sometimes I hate you, Aline. Sometimes, I hate every living soul on earth. Sometimes I hate Yarico. I loved her once. She was the first woman I ever loved, and she taught me how to love. And I believe she loves me still. But her love is a terrible thing, and she can be a terrible creature. So there you have it. I also fear her. And yet I know that I can trust her, in every way. She is there, and I am here, and she understands me as no other human being can do. I am a savage. Your father was right about that, and when my people call me Caribee they speak no more than the truth. I came to these islands while I was still young enough to be formed, and these islands took me and formed me. I lived with the Indians for a while, as you know, and I became attached to their way of life, brutal and heathen as it is. There is no hypocrisy amongst the Indians, no false values, no obscure treasons and no absurd notions of honour. A man has but to live his life, as a man, and a woman has but to be, a woman. Nor, indeed, are the women the chattels that they are hi our society. They fight shoulder to shoulder with their men, when the occasion arises, and they live then own lives, mating with whom they choose when they choose and are able. No doubt you will say, that is a society of animals.'

'And that leads you to hate me?’

That leads me to confusion, within myself, Aline. When I am in the company of Europeans. And now I am forced to such company forever more, and must behave as them, and practice their laws and their religion and their morals. And know that they look at me, and wonder, what does he really feel, what does he really wish to do.'

'So, on occasion, you seek the company of the one person who has no questions to ask of you,' Aline said.

He rose on his elbow. 'You can understand that?’

‘I would share that, Edward. I too, will have no more questions to ask of you, if you will but treat me as your wife.'

Surrender. What he had wanted and worked for. Without knowing what he would do with his victim when victory was achieved. For now he felt only humility. 'Then I am indeed fortunate,' he said.

'And I?" she whispered. 'Cannot I be granted, fortune?'

He crawled across the tent to he beside her, and her arms went round his neck. She was naked beneath the blanket, and warm, and moist, and eager. How eager. He had known nothing like this, from Yarico, carelessly enjoying herself, to Susan, all tensed anxiety. But here, suddenly was love without apprehension or regret, conscience or ambition. And here were the largest breasts, the hardest nipples, the tightest belly and the most welcoming thighs he had ever known, the whole enveloped in the sweetest smell and the most delicious taste he had ever known. And here, above all, was time, not merely the four hours to dawn, but the certain knowledge that here was an eternity, forty, fifty years of possession. As she also was certain.

And yet it was, only four hours to dawn. Four hours in which he felt her shudder beneath him more than a score of times in which he himself achieved orgasm on five occasions; in which their sweat mingled to soak the blanket and the ground, and their lips and tongues grew sore with the passion of their caresses. Four hours which ended in a tumult, which still left them uncaring or unmoving until the tent flap was torn aside.

'Mr Warner. Mr Warner? By God. My apologies, sir. I did not know.'

Edward sat up and reached for his breeches, blinking at Ganner in the sudden daylight 'What ails you, man? Are the Indians upon us?"

'No, sir. No, sir. But....' he gazed in stupefaction at Aline, only now reaching for the blanket to cover herself.

Then get outside.' Edward followed him. The entire colony was awake, standing before their tents and staring at the entrance to English Harbour. Edward stared with them, at the canoes, more than a dozen of them, oars flashing in the morning sun as they hurried towards the open sea.

They are leaving,' Aline whispered. She stood in the entrance to the tent, shrouded in her blanket, her wet hair plastered to her shoulders and neck, her face bruised and puffy.

'By God,' Edward said. 'But why?’

Yarico stood by herself, little Tom clutching her hand. 'War-nah come, Carib go,' she said. 'Carib fear War-nah.' She turned her gaze on Aline, and smiled. 'Now, War-nah truly rule this land.'

This land. Shakespeare had described it, without knowing of its existence. This blessed isle. Not quite so fertile as St Kitts, perhaps, but for that reason easier to clear and to cultivate. And with more arable land, as it lacked the backbone of mountain winch dominated the sister isle. As yet the harbour was empty, save for the sloop they had built to communicate with the senior colony, but this was his decision. He did not encourage casual visitors from St Kitts, or indeed visitors at all. St Kitts was the depot, from which they obtained their more essential supplies, and through which they shipped their tobacco. And from whence, also, they obtained their colonists. For the Antigua settlement had grown, and would continue to do so. In the three years an additional forty families had joined the original settlers around English Harbour, so that he had planted a sub-colony on the northern coast, as a precaution; they had found another possible harbour over there, and named it St John's.

As a precaution against what, he sometimes wondered? Since the day the Caribs had emigrated, fleeing from the very name he represented, they had seen no intruders. At least, none who would invade Antigua.

Three years, in which he had not left the island. Aline chided him for this. She could, now, for was she not his wife, and the mother of his children? Joachim was two, a sturdy fellow; Joan was not two months old—this evening he waited for her to finish with her mother's breasts and be sent to bed. But never were breasts more certainly made for motherhood, for feeding, than Aline's. Unless they had also been specifically shaped for caressing, for filling a man's hand with endless delight.

So then, they were lovers. Of a sort, Her love for him could not be gainsaid. Even he did not doubt that, any more. In some strange and entirely feminine way, she had fallen in love with him during the hours and days after he had raped her, when she had understood the endless complexities of his personality, and understood, too, the good things about him, the virtues which largely dominated the rages and the lusts. Now, if anything, she understood him too well, was too passive regarding his relationship with Yarico, and thus postponed her own dominance in his mind and in his life. Or perhaps, being considerably more intelligent than he was, she understood that his mind was still not yet ready for her alone, and was prepared to wait. True happiness had still not found her; she seldom loosed that magnificent laugh. Never might be closer the mark. Now she smiled, and after twenty years of life and two of motherhood, she bubbled less.

Because to love Aline would mean the abandonment of all else. This he understood. Hence her gentle chiding. The colony had prospered and would continue to do so. There could be no shame in governing Antigua, and he could meet his father on terms of equality. Yet he kept aloof from St Kitts. Those who came from Sandy Point, and those who travelled from English Harbour to supervise the shipment of the tobacco, brought tales of prosperity, of a colony numbering more than three thousand souls, of endless fields of gracefully waving sugar cane, of large ships and larger houses, of gangs of Negro slaves slowly making their way to work in the morning, and back to their huts in the evenings. Was it this kept him away? Was he then a paragon who would suffer no man to be his slave? There were floggings enough in Antigua. His colonists had found in him a man who could be every bit as hard as his father, when driven to it. As Aline had warned him, his people felt little love for him, however much they feared him and welcomed the good life his strict management ensured them.

Or was it, despite that progress, jealousy? Father had certainly been right in his prophecy, that sugar was the crop of the future. But to grow sugar on Antigua would mean asking Father for slaves, asking Father for credit. It would mean asking.

Or was it the presence of the French? For they too had returned. Their ships often filled the narrow passage, but always with peaceful intent. His colonists said that Basseterre was taking all the shape that Pierre Belain had intended for it, but not under Belain's direction, and with even more beauty than he had hoped. The new Governor-General was the Sieur de Poincy, a man of distinction whose greatest love was botany. He and Tom Warner were close friends, it was said, and where Tegramond's nation had died there now stood a garden of flaming blooms, shared by both the conquering nations. But no Belain, and no Galante. The Sieur d'Esnambuc was dead, but Aline's father knew, by now, that his daughter was alive and married to Edward Warner. There had been an exchange of letters which had left her unnaturally solemn for a few days, and into the contents of which he had preferred not to pry. But without their presence, was there any reason why she could not visit her countrymen across the passage? He had forbidden it.

Why? Or did everyone know the real reason, and prefer not to whisper it, at least in his presence? For wherever Tom Warner went, or sat, or gave judgement, or granted rights and privileges, there too went his wife, and by her side, always, her remaining stepson. They were the heirs to that land and that grant. And they meant to make sure of it. Thus he must make sure of his own. Already his thoughts roamed to the possibility of a return to England, in search of a grant for himself and his heirs. And no doubt more. Sir Edward Warner. It was not a matter of friendship with the King or his ministers, according to Father. It was a matter of possessing forty pound a year, and his tobacco was worth that.

And yet, Father was and always had been a friend of the court, and so he could joke about it and treat it with contempt. Edward Warner would appear in London as a savage, no matter how fine his clothes. He lacked manners and he lacked polish. His very skin, burned the colour of the mahogany wood by the unending sun, would set him apart from the courtiers at St James, even more firmly than it set him apart from his own colonists.

And to travel to England would mean leaving Antigua to what? And to whom? Robert Ganner, a reincarnation of William Jarring, if ever there was one? Father's appointee? That was impossible. He watched little Tom walking up the beach, dangling three fish from the line he carried round his waist. Tom was seven, and until Joachim could grow to responsibility, he was the natural aide and successor to his half-brother. But even Tom meant a wait of ten years. He almost smiled. He could leave the colony to a joint governorship of Aline and Yarico. Petticoat government. Now he was being fanciful. And yet, he could not really do better, could he possibly suppose that Father would accept such an arrangement.

So what did it come down to but fear? Fear that with his back turned—no, his eyes shut for a few seconds—his every possession would be whipped away. Perhaps he was deluding himself, and far from Aline being unwilling to dominate his life until he was ready for it, she was unwilling to involve herself that closely with him until he had conquered his fear. Susan's words. But Susan was as perceptive as any of them. She had loved him too. She had given him several chances to prove himself her kind of man, and in the end she had given him up and gone with a man who truly knew no fear. To be hanged? Not Tony Hilton. They had heard how he had settled on a rock called Tortuga, just north of the Spanish mother colony of Hispaniola, and there gathered around him a band of the remarkable boucaniers, the shipwrecked seamen and escaped prisoners who for so long had roamed the jungles of the huge island and slaughtered the Spanish cattle, which occupation had given them their name. Now they called themselves the Brethren of the Coast, and in their fast little sloops were said, if it could be believed, to prey upon even large Spanish merchantmen, were the Dons so unfortunate as to find themselves becalmed as they left the windswept Atlantic for the uncertain breezes which eddied down from the mountain peaks of the islands. No wonder the Viceroy had no longer the time or the men to waste on the peaceful English and French and Dutch tobacco and cane farmers, with this band of vipers sitting on his doorstep. And dominating even the vipers was the tall, thin man with the gash of a mouth, accompanied always by the red-haired beauty who shared his bed, and now, no doubt, by a son as well. Would the son have fair hair or black? Or would he be safely concealed beneath his mother's red?

'What have you there, Tom?' he called.

The boy stopped, half turning his head to glance at his stepbrother. ‘I got grouper.'

'Now that I had supposed,' Edward said. 'That big fellow looks like no flatfish to me. But you'd not catch a grouper in your shallow nets.'

‘I dive.' Tom made the motion with his hand.

'You're more than half Indian, that's to be sure. But your mother would not be pleased about that. You're still a trifle young to go diving after big fish.'

'Mother there,' little Tom said, and hurried up the beach.

'Now, what do you suppose is ailing him,' Edward remarked, rubbing his son's mat of fresh black hair. 'How goes it, sweetheart?'

'She is hungry,' Aline pointed out. 'She is always hungry. She will be a large woman, like her father.'

'Which will not be so good, eh?' He watched Yarico coming up the beach. Unlike her son, she hurried. 'You'll have a stick for little Tom?'

She checked outside the porch, panting, glancing at him. 'He come?'

'And went straight by. He'd been diving.'

‘I too.'

'Now, there's a relief. I had supposed the little devil had gone in by himself.' He frowned. 'You've not hurt yourself?' 'Carib come.'

'What?" He was on his feet in the same instant She held up four fingers. 'Not many.' They were making for here?’ 'For Windward.'

'Aye.' Wapisiane, back to his tricks. He had nearly said the name itself. And he had supposed him dead. 'How far off?" 'Far,' she said. 'Long time for land.'

There's a blessing. We'll have a reception committee waiting for them this time. But the boy... did he not see them?' She nodded.

'And he'd not say a word? Why, by God... ‘

Yarico shook her head. 'He got for grow, Edward, and choose. You got for let him do that.'

Aline came outside, her undressing robe pulled across her shoulders. 'What is the matter, Edward?"

'Nothing to be alarmed about, sweet. Yarico has sighted four canoes making for the windward coast We'll be across to St John's, and lie in wait for them.'

'We?"

‘I meant such force as I command. I’ll leave Leaming in charge here, with three men. You'll stay as well, Yarico.'

Aline grasped his arm. ‘I had thought to be done with fighting and killing.'

'Life is hardly more than that, dearest Even between lovers.'

There was no humour in her eyes. 'Yet you will take care, and come back to me, Edward. I have built my life on that rock which is your determination, and should that crumble, for any reason, be sure that I would sink with it'

He kissed her on the nose. 'Then you be sure I will come back, Aline. Now I must hurry.' He seized the conch shell which waited by the door and gave a long wailing blast which counted as an alarm signal. Wapisiane. But thanks to Yarico's timely warning he could at last settle that account

‘We have to hit them, and hit them hard,' he told his men. These people understand nothing but force, and should we let them suspect for a single instant that we are not capable of destroying them, they'll be back time and again. So shoot straight And if we go in with steel, be sure that every blow counts.'

The men nodded. There were thirty-two of them, stout lads, the more so when defending their own homes and families. Thus the eight from St John's itself were his vanguard. The settlement had been abandoned, and yet left exactly as it had been to encourage the supposition that it merely slept. The women and children had been sent into the forest, and now the men crouched in the bushes, a hundred yards upwind of the little harbour, in which the small lugger, their pride and joy which they had launched only a few weeks before, lay at anchor. But to move the ship might be to alert the Indians that their arrival was expected.

And now Robert Anderson came hurrying through the trees, hot and sweating with his run from the lookout bluff. 'An hour,' he gasped. 'Four canoes, Mr Warner, as you said. Maybe a dozen men to a canoe.

"Long odds,' Peter Doughty muttered.

‘I’ve taken longer,' Edward reminded him. 'And these are not even long, when you come down to it. We wear cuirasses and helmets, to which they will oppose nothing but soft flesh. And be sure our dogs will play their parts.'

For the half-dozen mastiffs were already panting at the leash.

'Now,' Edward decided. 'Well each have a glass of wine and a biscuit, to fortify us for whatever lies ahead. And Peter, you'll grant the dogs water, and some of that raw meat; we'll not have them starving, or they'll be too hard to hold.'

'And prayer, Mr Warner,' someone said 'Should we not pray?’

‘We should,' Edward agreed. 'Did I know a prayer which would suit us all.' Did I know any prayer at all, he reflected, would be the more honest. ‘It would be best did we each ask God for guidance and strength in our own hearts.'

The sun came higher, and from an immense swathe across the water the light spread and the heat grew. Birds sang in the trees and the surf rumbled on the beach below them. Dawn. Always dawn. Men should not die at dawn, he thought. Dusk was more fitting. Just as they should always die on the ebbing tide. But here too, the tide, such as it was in these latitudes, was making, the beach slowly being covered.

A dark shape came round the headland, followed by another, and then another. A whisper of excitement drifted through the watchers, and Edward rose to his knees, 'Easy,' he said 'You'll make no noise, and fire no shot, until I say so.’

The canoes approached the shore, paddling more slowly now. Each man on board would be kneeling, using both hands for his oar, his bow and his arrows and his spear lying in the bottom of the boat beside him. But now they were within hardly more than thirty feet of the shore, rising and falling in the beginning of the surf, in the very last water where they could float, and yet they made no effort to drive their craft up the beach.

Edward frowned. Could there possibly be something about the village to betray the English alarm? But it lay quiet, bathed in the soft golden light of the dawn, utterly peaceful. Too peaceful? Perhaps they were alarmed at the absence of dogs. Perhaps he should have left one or two roaming the beach. The Indians were well aware that wherever the white man went, there too went his faithful companion.

They don't mean to land,' Anderson said in amazement.

‘Well, then, well discourage them just the same. Come on lads.' Edward rose to his feet, parted the bushes and ran down the sand. The Indians certainly saw him. One pointed, and they began a loud jabber.

'Set your pieces,' Edward shouted, and the men hastily placed their staves and lit their matches. The canoes were backing off now, but several arrows were discharged, to fall harmlessly into the surf.

'All right,' Edward commanded, sword raised high. 'Give fire.'

The cloud of black smoke accompanied the rumble of the exploding powder into the morning air, and the sea around the canoes became peppered with the falling ball; it did not appear as if anyone had been hit. In any event, the battle, if it could be so called, was over. While the dogs ran up and down the shallows barking, and the men hastily refilled their pans, the canoes turned and rowed for the open sea, with twice as much speed and energy as they had shown when approaching the shore.

'Now there is the most remarkable thing I ever saw,' Anderson said. "You'd almost suppose they came to see rather than to carry out a raid.'

‘What say you, Mr Warner?' Doughty asked. 'You've a sight more experience of these people than any of us.'

Edward stared at the canoes, already commencing to vanish around the headland. He was aware of no exhilaration, not even of that overwhelming feeling of relief which comes to a man who has prepared himself to kill, and perhaps even be killed, and discovers that such an end will not now be necessary. On the contrary, his belly had suddenly become filled with lead. Why, and from whence he did not know. The canoes had been sighted, four of them, and four of them had appeared. They had all been fully manned. But there was the point. They had been manned by the fiercest human beings on earth.

But his name was Warner, and they had run from that name before. Except that, having run once, from a name, why come back? He was being less than reasonable. They had wished to try him out, his speed and decision and determination. And no doubt someone had recognized him when he had gone running down the beach. It was as simple as that. Something to be proud of.

Except that he had only gone running down the beach when it had been apparent that they were not going to land.

'Anderson,' he said. 'They are leaving, and that is certain. You can get your people back into their homes.'

'And we'll cook you the best breakfast you ever tasted, Mr Warner.'

'No,' Edward said. ‘I must take my men back to English Harbour.'

Anderson frowned at him. 'Back to....' he glanced at the last of the canoes. 'Because of them? They cannot make the harbour before you, Mr Warner, not even if you dally here half the day.'

' 'Tis not those canoes I am afraid of, Bob. Collect your weapons, lads. We had best hurry.'

His urgency, no less than a sudden almost telepathic communication of fear, gave them haste. Within minutes they were on their way back down the rough path which joined the two settlements, and three hours later they were at the south of the island. In all that time they had exchanged not a word, but neither had they slackened a step, two dozen men driven by an unspeakable fear. So, having gained the landlocked beach, they did not speak now, either. They stopped, and panted, and stared, at the huts with their swinging doors.

Untended doors. No fire, because the Caribs had not wished to alert them too soon. No fire. But sufficient evidence of what had happened, even without the shattered wreckage of the sloop sticking up out of the shallow water.

Ganner was first to speak. Or rather to cry, as he stumbled down the shore and knelt beside his wife. Her clothes were gathered in a bundle on her chest, and above them her throat was cut. Her face revealed every single thing that had happened to her in the seconds before she died.

The other women were also scattered on the sand, with their children. The men were dead in a group, on the porch of the Governor's house. They had been killed by arrows, and in this were lucky. Lucky in that the Indians had come with a purpose, which they had intended to fulfill in haste. But there were only three dead men; Hal Leaming was missing.

A purpose. Heart swelling, very veins seeming about to burst their contents to flood his system, Edward stepped past the dead men and into the house. But the house was empty.

'Mr Warner. Mr Warner, sir.'

How hot the sun. How God damned hot. How many times would he stand upon a destroyed village site, and look at the bodies of human beings who had sought to do nothing more than grow tobacco? Was any crop, any possession, any freedom, worth this much brutal filth?

He followed the man, through the other stricken men, his own grief lurking, waiting to be released. On the beach by the water's edge there were strong wooden posts driven into the sand for the mooring of dinghies. On the sand between two of the posts lay Joachim Warner, his head a bloody pulp where it had been smashed against one of the posts.

The devils,' Doughty said. 'Oh, they are devils from hell itself.'

Doughty could utter thoughts like that. Doughty was not married, and Doughty had not been present at Blood River. 'Ed-ward?'

He turned, the tears, released by the unexpected voice, rolling down his cheeks. Little Tom staggered down the beach towards him, top heavy and lurching, because in his arms he carried Joan Warner.

Tom.' Edward bounded forward, seized his half-brother and his daughter together. 'By Christ, boy. Where is your mother? And Aline?’

‘Indians come,' Tom said. 'Three, four hours after you leave, Ed-ward. They come sudden, across the land. Our people fight, but no good. Mama run outside, and Aline pick up Joachim, she try for pick up Joan too, but then Indian come in house. He see only Aline and Joachim, so I lie on floor, on top of Joan, with rug over back, and he go again.'

'You saved her life.' Edward knelt before the boy. 'You'll never want, boy. This I swear, so long as I have my life. But you must tell me what happened with your mother and Aline.'

‘Indian take them, Ed-ward. Them and Joachim.'

Edward got up. 'No,' he said. 'They did not want Joachim. They wanted only Yarico and Aline.' They had taken Leaming as well, but out of all this, they had wanted only Yarico and Aline.

Wapisiane.

 

12

 

The Empire

 

The grating of the bottom of the canoe on the sand seemed to seep upwards, through the wooden bark and through Aline's flesh into her belly. It was the first physical feeling of which she had been aware for several hours. How many hours? Even that was not a question she could answer. Memory came to a full stop with the swinging body of Joachim. He had been half asleep, and uttered not a sound. For that, she supposed, she should be grateful.

She had screamed, and tried to run forward, and been held by fingers she would never forget. She could feel them yet, even if now they clutched their oars instead of her. They had gripped her, and bitten into her flesh, while she had been held close against their leader. And his eyes had eaten further into her body than even the fingers. She had been unable to think, had not wanted to think, had not wanted to listen, to the screams and the shrieks from all around her, had not wanted to inhale, because that would mean inhaling Indian, and inhaling blood, and inhaling fear, and inhaling lust. She had wanted only to bridge the few seconds, for surely it could only be a few seconds, between her present misery and her death.

But she had not died, and had instead been thrown into the bottom of a canoe. When? Yesterday? There it was. Yesterday morning, because in the interim there had been darkness, just as there had been unending motion, up and down and occasionally from side to side, and sheets of spray which had come flying over the bows of the canoe to scatter across the oarsmen and their captive, to drench her hair and back, and leave her gown stiff with salt.

She lay on her face, pillowed on her arms. Why her? Or had they taken other captives? The Caribs did not take captives, except . . . her stomach welled up into her throat. But she had already vomited all she could on the turbulent sea crossing. She could do no more than retch, as her brain seemed to coagulate with horror, and the fingers returned, to seize her arms and pull her to her knees.

The canoe was tilted on its side, and she was rolled out on to the sand. She lay on her back and gasped for air, and stared at the savage, grinning faces above and around her. A day and a night, and it was again dawn. They must have come a considerable distance. But without even getting up, she knew where she was, where she had to be. The colonists of Antigua lived on a single legend, the horror island of Dominica.

The man was back, the cacique. He was not tall, but his face seemed even harsher and grimmer than those of his companions, perhaps because there was more intelligence directing the bitter stare from the black eyes. He wore a necklace of human teeth, and his genitals were protected by a pouch secured round his waist. Apart from that he wore no clothes, and his only weapon was a spear. Now, without warning, he grinned at her and drove the spear downwards. She gasped, unable to move because of the terror which gripped her limbs. Her breath only slowly left her body as the sharpened wooden point bit into the sand next to her left shoulder.

'War-nah woman,' the cacique said. He withdrew the spear and brought it down again, slowly, reversing it as he did so, to direct the blunt butt into her belly. It rested on her naval. 'War-nah woman, shout.'

The butt pressed and she gasped again, and attempted to sit up, hands clasping the haft. But still it pressed, and she screamed as he wished, only a thin sound, but satisfactory. He grinned, and the paralysing pain was withdrawn. Aline rolled on her side, clutching her stomach, watched another canoe coming into the beach and more Indians get out, saw Yarico being dragged towards her. Yarico? She wanted to shout with joy. Yarico. She was not alone.

The men holding Yarico gave her a push, and she landed on her hands and knees next to Aline. But she only glanced at the white girl, so apparently bemused was she to see the cacique. 'Wapisiane?' she whispered.

The Indian grinned again, and spoke in his own language. Yarico listened, all the character seeming to drain from her face as she stared at him. There would be no strength here, to be used as a prop, Aline realized, and realized too, in that moment, just how much she, and every one else in Antigua, had relied on Yarico's strength.

A third canoe had grounded, and from it was taken a third captive, Hal Leaming, who had been left in command of the settlement while Edward was away. He was bruised and battered, and also plainly terrified, stumbling across the sand towards them, but Aline hardly saw him. Edward. Edward would have returned to English Harbour by now. He would have found the bodies of his children, scattered on the beach, and with them the bodies of his colonists. Something he was used to. So, what would he do? Edward Warner, the pragmatist? He would turn to with patient resignation, and rebuild his colony. Only that way lay ultimate success. Would he spare a thought for his wife? A thought, certainly; she was sure of that. But nothing more. She was gone, and he must expect her to be dead, long before he could ever regain her, even if such a dream were remotely possible. But he had already spelled out his philosophy in that regard, on the beach when confronted with O'Reilly's Irishmen. She was but a single life, and must be set against the chance, no, the certainty, of losing many other lives. To chase behind her was not the act of a sensible man, of a colonial governor with responsibility for so many people, and above ah, that was not the act of a Warner.

Wapisiane had moved away, and the fingers were back, dragging her to her feet, beside Yarico and Leaming.

'Oh Christ,' Leaming muttered. 'Oh, Christ. Why, mistress Yarico? Why us?"

'Bad,' Yarico agreed. 'For eat.'

'Oh, Christ,' Leaming said. 'Oh, Christ. I could not stand it. I could not. ...'

A push between the shoulder blades with the blunt end of a Spear sent him staggering forward. Yarico followed, and Aline came last. She raised her head and looked around her. Alone. She would die alone. There would be no companionship to be found from either Leaming or Yarico. They counted themselves already dead, and no doubt were wise to do so. But she ... to contemplate what might be happening to her within the hour would be to go mad. She must live for the moment, for every second as it passed. She must believe in her own survival, up to the moment the knife sliced through her buttock. For that was how it began. How often had they terrified themselves like silly children around their safe campfires with tales of Carib custom and cruelty.

She gazed at the mountains and the forest, in a profusion she would not have supposed possible. The sun was now starting to top the peaks themselves, and stream across the empty sea behind them. The mountains rose hi front of her mid on either side of her, for although they had left the beach only minutes ago they were already climbing. And these peaks would clearly dwarf even Mount Misery. Yet they were green. And damp in a way St Kitts and Antigua had never been damp. There was water everywhere, gathering on leaf and rushing down in a series of rivulets towards the sea. Here was a unique land, In the context of these islands. A land where white men dared not come, where the Indian held sway.

They climbed, up and then down. The water did little to alleviate the heat, and they steamed; perspiration gathered on their foreheads and trickled out from their hair, rolled down their legs to meet the water which had already accumulated on their calves and ankles. Her gown and her petticoat—she thanked God she wore only a single undergarment, like most of the colonists' women—had become a soaked mass, clinging to her flesh. But she could also thank God for the hardening process she had undergone in the forest of St Kitts during the Spanish campaign, for here was a country of a hardness and unevenness she had never experienced. There seemed no end. Whenever they topped a rise there was another peak rising in front of them, and between it and them there was always a deep, stony valley into which they must descend, slipping and sliding, urged onwards by their cat-footed captors.

Until, without warning, after they had walked perhaps five miles, their breaths were swept away in an appalling stench which rose from out of the earth before them. They were descending from another hilltop, crawling over fallen tree trunks and pushing damp branches and leaves from their faces, but now they checked, to look down at the valley beneath them, where the trees and the bushes ended to leave nothing but a wide, long swathe of bare rock and stunted scrub, punctuated by steaming pools of water and even a rushing stream, also sending vapour into the air, while on the far side of the valley a much greater mass of steam could be seen exploding into the morning.

'By Christ,' Leaming muttered, his terror momentarily forgotten. ' 'Tis sulphur. We are on the lip of a volcano.'

'Valley of dead,' Yarico said.

A spear butt thudded between Aline's shoulder blades and she stumbled forward. They descended the hillside and into the desolated valley, marching between the streams, careful to avoid the boiling water. The heat was intense, unlike anything she had ever experienced before, and she could almost feel her flesh beginning to blister, while breathing was ever more difficult. But the valley was, after all, no more than a half a mile long, and soon enough they emerged into the thick forest on the far side, and within minutes after this, reached the clearing of the Carib village.

And here, whatever terrors, whatever discomforts, they might have experienced earlier, were very rapidly forgotten in the horror of their present. The tribe had anticipated their coming, and now surged around them with shouts and peals of wild laughter, tearing at their clothes, prodding and pinching at their bodies, stroking their faces and pulling their hair. A woman brought a gourd of water, and Aline reached for it with relief, but this was not the Carib way. Her arms and shoulders were seized and she was forced to her knees, while her hair was pulled to drag her head backwards, and the water was emptied on to her face, to the accompaniment of more peals of wild laughter. It clogged her eyes and nostrils, and only a little got down her parched throat. She shook her head to clear her breathing, and gazed at Hal Leaming, Stripped naked, and secured to a stake not fifty feet from where she knelt, the rope pressed round his wrists and neck as she had so often heard described, his body held upright, his feet free and able to move, and they did as he twisted to and fro, and she watched his mouth opening and closing, but it was impossible to hear what he was saying because of the din around her. She closed her eyes, and kept them closed, and heard a scream and then another, and forced her lids ever tighter together, and breathed, and gasped, and was then jerked to her feet again by hands on her shoulders, with such force that her eyes flopped open.

But Leaming was dead, his body a tattered skeleton, coming closer as she was thrust forward. Oh, God, she thought. But it can only have lasted a few seconds. Less than that. Oh, God, she thought, give me courage, for those few seconds. I do not wish to scream and beg. Oh, God.

There was another stake, set only a few feet from the first, and to this she was marched. Her arms were held wide while her clothes were torn from her body, cut free with sharp knives wherever knot or pad would have restricted the tugging fingers. But to be thus humiliated and manhandled seemed irrelevant at this moment. She was aware of some relief at losing the sweat-sodden garments, and even a momentary feeling of coolness before the heat of the sun mid the naked bodies pressing close had her panting again. Then her arms were dragged behind her back and secured, and her shoulders touched the stake. Another cord was being passed round her throat, and dragged tighter than she had expected, so that she had to stand on tiptoe to prevent herself being strangled. And now, without warning, there was a puff of breeze, which blew her hair in a cloud across her face, and left it there for a few precious seconds, shutting out all the horror around her, before dying to allow the strands to drift back onto her shoulders.

Now, if ever, was the time to close her eyes. But now she could not. She gazed at the men surrounding her, shouting and screaming, waving knives and shells, and gourds, to catch her blood. They surged right up to her, pulled the hair on her head and the hair on her body, squeezed her belly and her breasts; she tensed her muscles against the coming cut which would be the signal for her destruction, and stared at them with as much resolution as she could manage, and discovered that she was still alive. Yet still they danced around her, driving thought from her brain with their maddening cacaphony. And still the terrifying cadaver that had been Hal Leaming hung to the stake only a few feet away. Were they trying to make her scream, as they had made him scream? Were they, after all, only children?

Edward had told her, often enough, about the Caribs. 'They are not cannibals,' he had said, 'for the love of human flesh. It is almost a religious act, with them. They eat the flesh of a conquered enemy to obtain his strength, his speed, his brain, perhaps. For instance, you will never hear of a woman being eaten. Why should they, when they would expect to obtain nothing of value from her?"

She sucked air into her lungs. She had been so wrapped up in her own terror that she had forgotten those words. She raised her head and looked through the throng, and found Wapisiane, standing by himself beyond the immediate crowd, arms folded across his chest, staring at her. He sought only to terrify her. Warner's woman must be made to grovel for her life. Whatever fate he intended for her, afterwards, this was a necessary first stage. Aline stared at him for several seconds, summoning all her resolution. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

'You'll find the place has changed,' Robert Anderson said as he put the tiller over and brought the lugger round on the starboard tack. The wind was off the shore, and now they were moving into the shelter of the Christ child.

‘I'd not expected less,' Edward said, and shaded his eyes. Changed, was hardly a reasonable description. He saw first of all the French trading vessels anchored in a cluster in Great Road, and beyond, a series of docks and jetties protruding from the beach, and only then the houses of Basseterre. Here were dainty balconies and sloping roofs, a clock tower and what appeared to be a cathedral, all in white wood, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. But already Brimstone Hill was looming into sight, and even this was different to his memory of it. In place of a bare rock with two cannon peering over its lip he looked at crenellated battlements sheltering a broadside, and behind the roof of a barracks, while above the fortress the cross of St George fluttered lazily in the wind. Soon they were off Sandy Point, scarcely inferior to Basseterre, although the houses were perhaps less imposing, and the streets more haphazard. Streets, where there had been but one? But now the town stretched in every direction, quite overlying the old tobacco field, while the forest itself had been cleared back to the very foothills of old Misery, and replanted entirely in the slow waving, graceful canestalks.

A sloop was standing out of the roadstead, and now she hove to and hailed them. 'Dandy, of St Kitts. What ship is that?’

Anderson glanced at his governor.

"You'd best tell him, and warn him,' Edward said.

Anderson cupped his hands. 'Susannah, of Antigua. You'll keep a watch for Caribs.'

'Caribs, you say?" queried the captain of the Dandy.

'Aye. They attacked us yesterday, destroyed the settlement, and took prisoner the Governor's wife.'

Edward walked away from the tiller. There was a sensation: The Governor's wife. He looked down into the waist of the lugger, where the men and women clustered to stare at the shore. They were crawling back, with their tails between their legs. And as yet no one in St Kitts was even aware of their plight. What sort of a welcome would they find? What sort of a welcome would he find? Home the prodigal, the beaten man, who wanted only blood. But where would he find those willing to spill their blood for Edward Warner?

The sloop was gone, and the lugger's draft was shallow enough to allow her alongside the largest of the jetties. Edward scooped Joan into his arms—she had wailed the night, a mixture of hunger and alarm, no doubt, and only recently fallen into an exhausted sleep—took little Tom by the hand, and stepped ashore, to be stopped by the armed guard on the dock.

'You'll be from Antigua. Your business, if you please.'

'My name is Edward Warner,' Edward said. 'And I'd be obliged if you'd stand out of my way. And out of the way of my people.'

The man scratched his head. But he stood aside. Edward handed Joan to Tom, and walked up the dock to the sand, to gaze in amazement at the series of buildings which dominated the foreshore, some distance to his right. The first stood close to the edge of the nearest canefield, separated from it by a stream of water, clearly man-made, for he recollected no stream there in the past, but which now came tumbling down the sloping fields, perhaps laid out from the very spring where Yarico had first taken him swimming, when they had been children. Now its purpose was less to irrigate than to drive, for the rushing water forced a huge wheel into constant rotation, and this in turn drove three massive rollers, round and round, placed so close to each other that the stalks of cane being fed into the first by the attentive slaves were ground into straw; while the juice dripped through the slatted floor into a wooden duct which ran off for a distance of some twenty yards to the next shed, where it entered a huge copper vat, beneath which was an immense fire, constantly being fed, as Father had prophesied, by the crushed cane stalks, while the boiling juice was stirred and skimmed by another group of black men. At the far end another duct took the by now thickened liquid into cooling pans, where it slowly solidified, and waiting here there were several more slaves to cart off each filled pan to the third shed, where more of their compatriots were waiting to put it through a final purifying process, separating the molasses from the crystals, these last being placed in casks, over the top of which a clay paste was set in place, to keep the sugar fine until it was ready for shipment.

The whole scene was one of such bustle and endeavour on the part of the blacks, and such evident discomfort too, for the heat was intense, the fires adding their efforts to that of the sun, and naturally the aroma as well as the presence of so much sweetness seemed to attract every insect from the entire forest, that Edward almost forgot his own misery.

'Edward? Edward? By God, but what brings you to St Kitts?'

Philip, wearing a white shirt over loose white breeches, and brown boots, and carrying no weapon save a whip. His hat was a broad-brimmed straw.

Edward squeezed his hand. ‘I was but admiring the industry.' He glanced at the whip. 'Are they lazy, then?'

'As lazy a pack of devils as you'll ever have encountered. But they respect the lash.' He peered at his brother. 'But what ails you, man?' He stared at the Antigua people, already surrounded by a crowd of women from the town. 'And all your people? There has been trouble?'

‘I would speak with Father.'

‘I shall send for him on the instant. Meanwhile....' he waved his hand. 'Mother will be pleased to care for you.'

Mother. She too had adapted herself to the climate and her circumstances. She wore the pale blue which was her favourite colour, in linen, with certainly nothing more than a single shift beneath; the sunlight silhouetted her legs through her skirt. No gloves, but a wide-brimmed hat, to which was added a parasol carried by an attentive Negress. And of course, all the perfume she had ever enjoyed.

'Edward.' She extended her hand and he bent his head to kiss it. 'How good to see you, and after all these years. How is Aline? And the children?’

Edward turned; little Tom staggered up the road behind him, carrying Joan.

'But....' Anne Warner's mouth opened into a round O, and she laughed. 'You use the lad as a nursemaid? Capital.'

'He saved her life,' Edward said.

Anne's smile faded as quickly as it had come, and she frowned as she glanced from him to the boy, and then to the jabbering crowd by the waterfront. 'There has been some catastrophe here.'

‘If I could speak with my father....'

‘I am here, boy.' Tom Warner came bustling down from the canefields; he was dressed very much as his younger son, except that he carried a gold headed cane rather than a whip, and his face wore too deep a flush for health. But he moved with all the vigorous haste Edward remembered from the past. 'Edward. Tis good to see you. But there has been trouble?'

'A Carib raid, Father.'

'By God. You suffered losses?’

'We have buried fifteen women, seven children, and three men, Father.'

'Fifteen ... by Christ. You were defeated?'

'Outwitted, Father. They made a feint attack on St John's, and we marched across to repel them, and in the absence of our main force they landed at English Harbour. There were only four men left to defend the settlement.'

'By God,' Tom said. 'Strategy, from savages. They took prisoners?'

'There are three people unaccounted for,' Edward said, speaking very slowly. 'Hal Leaming, who was in command in my absence, Yarico, and Aline.'

'Oh, my God,' Anne Warner whispered.

'By God,' Tom said, and stared at little Tom and Joan. ‘Your son....'

is dead.'

‘You'll take some wine,' Anne said. 'Come, Edward, dear Edward.' She grasped his arm. 'Tom. ...'

' Tis not the Carib custom to take female prisoners.'

These are not usual circumstances, Father.'

Tom frowned. There is some mystery here. You had dealings with them in Antigua?'

‘I have neither seen nor spoken with an Indian for two years, saving Yarico. But this business goes back farther than that. It is the work of Wapisiane.'

'Wapisiane? Wapisiane? Was that not the name of Tegramond's heir?’

'You never found his body, amongst the dead at Blood River.'

‘I had assumed he had been.. . .' Tom glanced at his wife, and flushed. ‘You mean you think he escaped?’

‘I know he escaped, Father, because I assisted him. I could not send him to his death. We met in the forest at the moment the assault started, and I persuaded him to leave. We had been friends.' 'By God,' Tom said.

'And yet he swore vengeance, against everything Warner.'

'And now he has claimed that vengeance,' Anne Warner said. 'Oh poor, poor Edward.'

'By God,' Tom said. 'We'll call a council. Aye, well call a council.'

Harry Judge took off his hat, and wiped sweat from his forehead. 'They're assembled, Tom,' he said. 'And I've sent messengers to Nevis and Montserrat, by fast sloop, to see how they feel down there, and also to be sure that the Caribs have gone south,'

'They will have gone south,' Edward said. He had drunk three glasses of wine, but refused food. He could not permit a single morsel to pass his lips without risking the break down of the cocoon in which he had wrapped himself. He dared not risk thought, or imagination, or worst of all, memory. He could remember too much about the Caribs.

'Well, it'd be best to make sure. I've also doubled the sentries in the fort, Tom, and alerted the guard on Windward.'

'And the French?'

'Monsieur de Poincy is outside now.'

'You'd best meet him, Edward,' Tom said, rising from the table. 'He's a good man. No Belain there. Come in, monsieur, come in.'

De Poincy was as tall as Edward, thin, with a pointed beard and a curiously arrogant toss to his head whenever he spoke. But his voice was soft and his manner entirely courteous. He bowed to Anne Warner, and then held out his hand. 'Mr Warner. I have heard a great deal about you, and about your beautiful wife. It grieves me that our first meeting must take place in circumstances of such gravity.'

‘I am honoured by your grief, monsieur.'

De Poincy gazed into his eyes for a moment, and then nodded. ‘I have brought my principal officers with me, but you must speak with them later. We are very eager to discover what action you intend, what aid you seek, from us in St Kitts.'

There was a moment's silence, as the Warners exchanged glances. This question had been carefully avoided during the hours since Edward's arrival.

'Why, sir,' he said. It is my intention to regain possession of my wife.'

They stared at him. 'From the Caribs?' Philip asked at last.

'You must know that is impossible,' Judge said. 'The Caribs do not take prisoners, except. . . .' he hesitated.

'To eat them at the stake,' Edward said. 'Believe me, sir, I know the Caribs a deal better than yourself. And I grieve for poor Hal Leaming. But they do not eat women, sir. They can perceive no advantage in it to themselves. Nor, as you say, do they take them prisoner. Their rule is to commit whatever mayhem they may choose upon their victims on the spot, and then murder them, on the spot.'

'And the only two taken were Aline and Yarico,' Tom Warner mused.

The one because she is my wife, and the other because she betrayed her people.'

‘I must confess,' de Poincy said, 'that I do not follow this conversation.'

'My son is convinced that this is no mere raid, monsieur,' Tom explained. 'But the result of a long-standing feud between our people, and yours, and a certain Carib by name of Wapisiane. He is the sole survivor of his people here on St Kitts, following their destruction by myself and the Sieur Belain.'

'Mon Dieu' De Poincy said. ‘I was not aware that there was any survivor, other than the Princess Yarico.'

'Neither was I, up to this moment,' Tom said. 'But it appears that there was, through some misguided generosity on the part of my son. And it would seem that events have confirmed his fears.'

'But this changes matters entirely. I had supposed that your son had come to warn us of the opening shots in perhaps an Indian war, in which my people and I would be willing to play the fullest part. But if indeed this affair is the result of a feud, concerning an event with which no Frenchman now in these islands has the slightest connection, why, then, sir, I do not see how I can ask my people to risk then lives.'

'Can you not see that their lives are already at risk?' Edward shouted. 'Wapisiane makes no distinction between those who were here when Tegramond was killed and those who were not.'

'Yet is he also a man of some ability and common sense,' de Poincy observed. 'Judging by the way he out-manoeuvred your people on Antigua. And as such, believe me, sir, he will always have more sense than to attack a colony as heavily populated and as well defended as St Kitts.'

'That is true, in my estimation,' Judge agreed. ‘I have observed this when I was with the Dons, that the Indians would never risk an attack upon any force they were not sure they could overcome.'

'Monsieur, one of the women Wapisiane took was a French girl, my wife, the daughter of Captain Joachim Galante. Can you condemn her to.. ..'

‘I condemn her to nothing, Mr Warner. You may rest assured that she is already dead. Of this I have no doubt at all. I grieve for you, young man, believe me, but you are young, and your heart and your spirit will recover. And, no doubt, you will know better than ever to show generosity to a Carib again.'

'But she is not dead,' Edward insisted. ‘I am sure of it. What more terrible punishment could Wapisiane have inflicted on me other than to spreadeagle my wife upon the sand as he did all those other women, if only to kill her? His only possible reason for taking her was to make his revenge even more complete.'

De Poincy half bowed towards Anne Warner. 'You will excuse my bluntness, madame, but if that is the case, then she is more than ever dead, to European eyes. What, would you risk dozens, perhaps scores of lives to regain possession of a woman who has been bedded by a savage? What would you do with her? Chop off her head?'

Edward gaped at him in impotent despair.

'Monsieur de Poincy is right, Edward,' Anne Warner said gently. 'This is a terrible, horrible, ghastly event, but it is not one which can be altered, now it has happened. We can only be more determined to make sure that it never happens again. Antigua is clearly in need of strengthening. Believe me, we all understand your desire to make the colony a success on your own, but now that has failed, why, you must accept help from your father. He will send you fresh people, in sufficient numbers to make the colony impregnable against further attacks. You must build again. God knows you have done that often enough in the past. As for Joan, you may leave her with me for the time being. It will be my pleasure to care for her, and to secure for her a wet nurse.'

‘I intend to regain possession of my wife and Yarico,' Edward said, speaking very slowly and clearly. 'Alive, if they are yet alive, and I am sure they are. If not, their bodies. I could not live knowing I had condemned them to a living death. Nor am I acting entirely selfishly in this matter. Wapisiane may regard his success of yesterday as vindication of his revenge. The Indians who accompanied him will see it only as a great victory over the white man. Their thoughts will already be turning towards the accomplishment of other triumphs. Unless we show them, and show them quickly, that the white man is not to be trifled with, that he will hit back, twice as hard as he was hit.'

'Could we show them that,' Philip said. 'But how is it to be done? We assume these savages came from Dominica. Why not St Vincent? Or St Lucia? There are Carib tribes there.'

Tell them, Tom,' Edward commanded.

The boy had been silent throughout the meal, watching and listening to the talk. Now he licked his lips. 'People of smoke come to Antigua.'

'People of smoke?' Anne Warner asked.

'Major Judge will have heard of them,' Edward said.

'That I have,' Judge agreed. "They are from Dominica, to be sure, and inhabit the crater of a still active volcano, 'tis said. But how can this boy know that?"

'Because he speaks their language? Edward said. 'Does that also answer your question, Philip?'

'So we know they came from Dominica. Is that not an island every bit as large as St Kitts, if not larger, and entirely covered with forest and mountain? Did not you and I, Edward, with a score of men, successfully resist over a thousand Spaniards here in St Kitts? How can you consider leading a force which will necessarily be much smaller into the forests of Dominica?"

'Because I know the forest and I know the Carib,' Edward said. ‘I know how to fight him, and I know how much he wants to fight me.'

‘It will involve meaningless bloodshed,' Judge said. 'On military grounds, Edward, I would have to say that your plan has small chance of success.'

'Believe us, Edward,' Anne said. 'We honour and respect your desire to go after Aline, but you must see that it is impossible.'

Edward looked at his father.

Tom Warner pulled his beard. ‘It is indeed a terrible position in which to find oneself,' he said. 'Supposing you were Governor of St Kitts, Edward. What would you do?"

‘I'd call for volunteers.'

Tom nodded, thoughtfully. 'Then you have my permission to do so.'

'Sir Thomas,' Anne exclaimed. 'Surely....'

'Hush, woman. These are men's affairs.'

‘I thank you, sir,' Edward said. 'And your own part? For this will be important.'

Tom sighed. 'You and I have seldom followed the same path, Edward, saving on that first and most important occasion, when we set sail for these islands. And no matter what trials have come upon us in the years between, I have never regretted that momentous step. Nor can I convince myself that I have always been right and you wrong. I know now that the massacre at Blood River was a mistake. In allowing Wapisiane to live, you attempted to assuage your conscience, and I cannot blame you for that. Nor can I ever do less than honour to your spirit which has preserved this colony for me.

The day you set foot upon Dominica, be sure that I shall be at your side.'

'Father.' Edward thrust out his hand.

Philip chewed Ins lip. ' 'Tis certain suicide.'

Tom did not look at him. 'You shall not accompany us, Philip, no matter how hard you beg. I cannot risk the destruction of my entire family at one blow. You will stay here and care for your stepmother and your stepbrother, and your niece. And care for them well. And you, Harry. I must leave an experienced soldier behind.'

'Oh, what rubbish you men do talk,' Anne Warner cried angrily. 'What, will the pair of you storm Wapisiane's stronghold? You'll not get a man to follow you. They have more sense. God curse the day you were born, Edward Warner. You have ever been nothing more than a troublemaker. Go on, then, call for your volunteers, and let us have this mad scheme buried within the hour.'

"Aye,' Tom said. The people are waiting.' He stepped outside, on to the raised porch of the new Government House, from whence he commanded a view down the main street, which began in the square immediately beneath him. Here the entire populace of Sandy Point seemed to have gathered, milling about, jostling, and babbling into the still evening air. Tom clapped his hands, and again, and then seized a stick and struck the gong which stood close to the steps. The reverberations echoed across the rooftops, and the crowd slowly grew silent.

'You'll all know why we are assembled here,' Tom shouted. 'Our neighbouring colony of Antigua has been attacked by the Carib Indians, and English Harbour destroyed. Women were slaughtered there, as well as children and men. But what is worse, two of the women were carried off by the savages. Mrs Warner, wife of the deputy governor of the colony, and my daughter-in-law, and the Princess Yarico. God alone knows, and I hesitate to suppose, what terrible sufferings have already been inflicted upon these two unfortunate ladies, but our knowledge of the Carib leads us to suppose they may still be alive. As Christian men we cannot remain here in that knowledge, without making some attempt to rescue them.'

He paused, and the crowd stared at him, although immediately there were whisperings, mostly by the women.

Tom licked his lips, and held up his hands. 'However, this responsibility we have is of small account when set beside the responsibility we have to our own women and children. Were this expedition to be purely punitive it would not have my backing for an instant. But it must be more than that. As of yesterday we must consider ourselves at war with the Indians. No doubt this is a tragedy some of us long foresaw. We must not shrink from it now. The Indians in Dominica must be made to know that we will not permit them to attack English colonies, no matter how small and isolated, with impunity. That we will visit them with twice the destruction even.' time they dare take the field against us. Believe me, my friends, this is a necessary act, or you may well awake one day to see Sandy Point itself in flames. It has happened before.'

Again the anxious pause, and again the whisperings.

‘It will be dangerous,' Tom shouted. 'Make no mistake about that. But we have the advantage of being led by the fore most Indian fighter in these islands, Captain Edward Warner. I do not have to tell you, lads, that Captain Warner defended this island against the entire might of Spain, with but twenty men at his back, and those unarmed when the campaign started. We can rely upon him. He has lived amongst the Indians, can think like them, anticipate their every move. He will lead us to victory.'

'And it is his wife we are going to regain,' someone shouted.

Tom scanned their faces. 'Why, yes,' he agreed. ‘It is his wife. Now, lads, you came here to plant sugar, and grow rich. By the terms of the agreements you signed with me, you are duty bound to take up your arms in defence of St Kitts when I call upon you to do so. Nothing more. But I would ask you to volunteer to accompany my son and myself to Dominica, resting sure hi your minds that this is the surest way of defending this island that we have, and that any other course were to invite the Indians to descend upon us at will. Now, then, who'll be first to volunteer?'

He stopped, and wiped his brow, and the crowd stared back at him.

‘If Captain Warner is so big an Indian fighter,' someone called, ‘How come he got beat in Antigua?'

'We were attacked in two places at once,' Edward replied. ‘I lacked the men.'

'And will you not lack the men on this occasion, no matter how many go with you?’ asked someone else.

'This time we will be attacking, not defending,' Edward said. 'The Indians will not anticipate such an action on our part. No white people save the Spaniards, and then only on occasion, have assaulted the Caribs themselves.'

'Because it is too difficult,' called a voice. 'And for those of us who are taken, 'tis the stake. Long odds, Captain Warner.'

'We are not here to argue,' Tom bellowed. 'Who'll volunteer? What about you Antigua people? Your wives were killed by those savages. Will you not seek to avenge them? Who'll volunteer?’

To save a French whore and a savage?' Someone muttered.

'By God, sir, I’ll have your tongue,' shouted one of the French officers who had accompanied de Poincy.

'Save your anger, monsieur,' Tom called. 'For the Caribs. Will you volunteer?'

To save a French lady, sir? Why, that I will. And my friend here.'

Two blades. There's a start,' Tom muttered. 'Now, come my friends. Who'll join our force?’

'Force?' someone shouted. 'Four madmen? You brought us this distance to grow cane, Sir Thomas. Not to be eaten by savages. Twas that one certain fate you promised would never be mine.'

'Aye,' someone else agreed.' Tis best we all go home to our beds.'

The crowd was already breaking up, talking and laughing amongst themselves, while Edward and Tom stared at them in impotent fury.

'Hold there,' shouted a familiar voice. Tell not lack for support from us, Ted, lad.'

'Brian Connor,' Edward yelled in delight.

The same, your honour. I came as soon as I heard the sad news. Tis sorry I am to bring so few, but I could not leave my people without defence.' Connor forced his way up the sheet, clad in helmet and breastplate, and followed by five of the Irishmen.

'Six men?' Tom asked.

'Good men,' Edward said, and ran down from the porch. 'Brian.' He clasped his friend's hand. 'By God, but it is good to see you. You know our purpose?'

To rescue your lady wife, and the princess. Aye. We'll have a share in that, Ted, even if the lass did put an arrow in my thigh, and through poor Paddy O'Reilly. By Christ, it'll be good to get back to campaigning.'

'With ten men you'll storm Dominica?' Anne Warner asked contemptuously.

Edward hesitated, glancing from her to the men. 'We'll make our plans in the morning, Brian. And I'll be pleased if you two gentlemen will attend us then as well. For this night you are our guests. But once again, I thank you.'

He walked back under the sweep of the roof. De Poincy waited. 'A sad business, Mr Warner. But you can expect no more from these people. They are colonists who will, we trust, make good militiamen when the tune comes. Not soldiers playing at colonists.'

'You'll take a glass with us, monsieur,' Tom said.

The slaves,' Edward said. 'Would they not fight, if given weapons and promised their freedom?'

'Mon Dieu,' de Poincy said. 'But the young man has gone mad.'

‘Indeed, it sounds so,' Philip agreed. 'Arm the slaves? Promise them their freedom? Where would our lives and indeed our profit be in that event?"

'The people would not stand for it, Edward,' Tom said. 'And to say truth I do not think it would be possible. Our slaves are not yet reconciled to their fate here, and it would be idle to pretend they would fight for us.'

'So, then, admit that you are defeated, and abandon this wild scheme,' Anne Warner said. 'Surely you can see it is an impossibility, now, Edward. More, it is a dereliction of duty. While you stand here dreaming, Antigua lies deserted and undefended. Who can say what forces are already descending upon it? And what of those who survived, and who have abandoned their homes? Should you not be preparing to lead them back, suitably reinforced? I have no doubt that you will find volunteers for that purpose. You have been appointed governor. You must accept the responsibilities of that honour.'

There was a short silence, broken only by the gurgle of the liquid as Tom Warner poured the wine.

'Your stepmother is right, sir,' de Poincy observed. 'Chivalry is an admirable concept, but as de Camoens has so admirably illustrated, the age is dead, and our gallantry must now be tempered with that due sense of responsibility to others of which Lady Warner spoke.'

Edward drained his glass and went to the window. By Christ, what do they know, he thought. What do they know of love? What did I know of love, up to yesterday morning? So will she be worth loving, when she is regained? She will have been spared nothing by Wapisiane. And no doubt not by Wapisiane alone. She will have been humiliated a dozen, a hundred times, her body made the receptacle for every insult the Indians can think of. Yet will she still be alive, and living, she will prevent herself from going mad by a single thought, a single hope, that of rescue by her husband, by the one man in all the Caribee Isles, perhaps, capable of accomplishing so much. ‘I have built my life upon the rock which is your determination.' That hope, that dream, that belief, would maintain at once her sanity and her life. To fail such a responsibility would surely be to damn himself forever.

Tom Warner stood at his shoulder, a full glass in either hand. ‘I'm afraid they are right, boy. We have done all we could. Now it is time to cease being husbands and fathers, and become what we are also, governors and leaders, men of responsibility. I know, and you know, that the task of leading involves some painful decisions. Can we truthfully balance two lives against the probable cost of regaining them? Have we the slightest justification for so doing? Have we. . . .'

He checked as the rumble of the explosion came rolling up the shallow lull, and even as they stared through the window into the darkness, they saw the next flash and heard the next roar.

'Cannon, by God,' Philip cried. 'We are assailed.' 'With blank shot?' Edward demanded. 'That is an empty charge.'

'But who in the name of God....' Tom led them outside, but the first boats were already ashore, and running up the street came a dozen seamen, led by a short, thickset man with a heavy moustache. 'John Painton.'

'None other, Tom Warner,' Painton shouted. 'And right glad am I to see you still here, old friend. Edward, is that you? By God, boy, I am truly grieved to hear of your trouble.'

'But how. . . .' Edward squeezed the proffered hand.

‘I spoke with the Dandy sloop but this morning, while running south, and put all sail on to get here before your expedition left.'

'Expedition?'

Painton frowned. 'You are going after those savages, are you not?'

'Why, such is my intention, certainly,' Edward said. ‘If it can be done. I will confess I am experiencing some difficulty in recruiting an army.'

‘You have one, Ned. And a ship. The Plymouth Belle is yours, and its crew. Why, man, I have seventy fighting men there, who only want to sharpen their cutlasses on some red devil's hide. We'll sail in the morning.'

'By God,' Tom said. 'You are the answer to a prayer, John.'

'A prayer,' Edward whispered. He had not thought to pray. But perhaps Aline had been doing that.

'The answer to a prayer,' Anne Warner said in disgust. 'To a death wish, you mean. You go, Tom Warner. Go and spend your life uselessly. Go and the in some fever-ridden swamp. God curse you, Edward Warner, for bringing your troubles down on our shoulders. God curse you.'

The Plymouth Belle weighed anchor at dawn. She carried eighty men, every one armed and equipped to the best standards the Warners could manage, and twelve dogs. Her guns were loaded and spare ball was piled on her decks beside each piece. The sky was clear and the breeze was light and from the north east as she slipped out of Great Road and directed herself to the passage between the Islands.

Almost every inhabitant of the two towns turned out to watch her go, and give her a cheer, even if no doubt the majority of those who stayed behind had little faith in the success of the expedition. Yet eighty men was no mean force. Edward stood on the poop and watched the green land slipping astern, watched the waving flags, the cross of St George and the fleur-de-lis, flapping in the breeze, the skirts of the women and the waving arms of the men.

His father was beside him. 'Well, boy, do you remember the first morning we stood upon this poop, and watched Guyana dropping below the horizon?'

'Aye,' Edward said. 'What a long, and uneven, road lay ahead of us.'

'You have regrets?'

Edward glanced at him. 'No. I have no regrets, Father. I've done a deal with my life. Not so much as you, perhaps, but then I am somewhat younger.'

Tom Warner pulled his beard. 'Ned, you and I have not had many opportunities of speaking, as men. But these next few days will be a time for manhood, if ever it was needed.'

'Do you doubt our success?'

‘In the field? Rather do I fear it. You are acting here from an obligation. Tis your heritage, your very manhood, drives you on. Not your heart.'

'My heart is scarcely a relevant matter, at this moment, Father.'

'But if our expedition is to be truly successful, it wall be most relevant at the end.' He sighed, and pulled his beard some more. ‘It is too easy to give advice. To admonish. I would but say this, and then I am done. This is a mighty undertaking, and although, believe me, I do not doubt its success for one instant, yet am I too aware that it must cost lives, and perhaps make the attainment of peace between ourselves and the Caribs forever impossible. None of these dungs daunt me in the least where the wife of my son is concerned. Yet are they of great importance, not only to us, but to our grandchildren. They can only be tossed away to the accomplishment of some even more important end. That end is the prosperity of you and your family, and through you, your colonists. However Aline conies back to you, Edward, she is the reason for our venture, and your love for her, no less than hers for you, will be the cause of the deaths that will occur. There can be no quibbling with that point. And I will say this in conclusion: However she conies back to you, if you loved her when you married her, three years ago, and when, no doubt, you first made love to her even before that, she will be the same woman now, beneath whatever scars Wapisiane may have inflicted upon her. To forget that for an instant were to make a mockery of this entire expedition. Now I have done.'

He stumped for the ladder, and Edward turned back to lean on the rail and watch St Kitts dwindle. Now he could see Antigua as well, green on the eastern horizon, just as by looking to the ship's head he could see the peaks of the other islands unfolding, and perhaps, already, even, the greenest of all, the mountains of Dominica. The Caribee Isles. Thomas Warner's grant. This was their dream, to spread over all these green mid fertile islets, to make the Carib ocean into an English lake, to succeed, where the Dons had failed, because the Dons had sought only to wring the wealth from the land mid then return to Seville and Madrid, where the Warners and their people sought new homes. There was the future, and it depended as his father had so truly said, on the quality of the families, on the love of man for woman, of parents for children, on their determination to succeed no matter what the odds opposed to them. Only that way could they found a nation.

And as Tom Warner's eldest son, as heir to all this, it was above all his responsibility to lead the way down that domestic padi. How much of that knowledge had driven him from the beginning? How much of the certainty that Englishmen mid Frenchmen must be rivals for this paradise had caused him to select before all others a French girl as his wife? There was nonsense, sound reasoning after the event. It took no account of flowing mahogany brown hair, of swelling breasts and thin white legs, of that echoing laugh, of the spirit which had created such a rapport with life itself. But to consider those things, now, must be to consider them as they were, now, spreadeagled before Wapisiane. Would he need four of his men to hold her down? Or would he first beat her into submission? Or would he need to do either? Christ, what a thought. So, when she came back, would there be bruises on her body? There would be bruises inside her body, where his weapon had gone questing. These would not be for the seeing, but his own weapon would know they were there, whenever it sought comfort. And what of the mind? Would he ever know whether she had wept or sighed as Wapisiane had forced her from her knees to her belly to chewing the dust? Would she ever admit that? Or worse yet, suppose with her habitual candour she admitted it freely? What then? Where does honour and manhood end, and hatred begin?

He remained by the rail all night, doing no more than drink a glass of wine. Not even his father came near him. They could appreciate his feelings even if, no doubt, they could not exactly share them. But his was a position in which any one of them could find themselves, should they not complete this task with dreadful certainty.

In the hour before dawn he dozed, his knees buckling so that he knelt on the deck by the gunwale, to be awakened with a cry of 'Sail ho' from the masthead, to struggle to his feet, muscles cramped and head swinging, and watch the three masted ship bearing down from the north east.

Tom Warner hurried on deck, accompanied by John Painton and the French officers. 'A Spaniard, you think?’

Painton levelled his glass. 'No. Why be God. . . .' he frowned into the eyepiece. 'The Caribee Queen. Tony Hilton.'

Edward snatched the telescope. Tony? By God....' he did not recognize the ship. But there was no doubt about its strength. Fifteen cannon bristled at him from each broadside. She could have blown the Plymouth Belle clear out of the water. 'You'll shorten sail, John, and speak with her?'

‘I shall, Ned. But I doubt we need to, as she is catching us in any event. My bottom is too foul for speed.'

They lined the rail and watched the privateer approach. Even at a mile distance they could see the tall figure in the rigging. 'Ned Warner, by God,' Hilton shouted.

'What brings you south?' Edward called, Ins whole body throbbing with hope.

'The Dandy sloop put into Tortuga yesterday afternoon,' Hilton bellowed. 'We heard there was work to be done.'

'By God,' Tom muttered. 'He must have close on a hundred men in that ship. With his force.. ..'

Painton slapped him on the back. 'Well knock a few Indians on the head, for sure, Tom. Aye, we're back where we started, by God. Wapisiane will not stand before us.' He pointed forward, to the massive deep green slopes of Dominica. 'There's our enemy.'

There were no natural harbours in Dominica. As the breeze held in the north east the two ships stood on for the south western comer, and there dropped their anchors close to an open beach, and disembarked their men.

'Mon Dieu,' muttered Jean Solange, one of the Frenchmen. 'But this is sand?’

The beach was black.

Edward was first ashore. "Volcanic ash. This island is hardly more than a large volcano, 'tis said. As are St Lucia and St Vincent and Martinique, to the south.'

Solange stared at the tree-clad slopes rising above them, and crossed himself.

‘I hope there is no chance of an eruption during our stay,' remarked his companion, Lafitte.

‘It'd be rumbling and smoking already,' Painton pointed out. 'Come on, lads, let's get those weapons ashore.'

Edward walked down the beach to greet Hilton as he landed. 'Tony. I could hardly believe my eyes. But this is not your fight.'

'Any Warner fight is Tony Hilton's fight as well, Ned. You kept Susan safe for me. I'll do no less to get Aline back safe for you. If it is possible.'

His face was solemn. Edward nodded. ‘I am prepared for the worst. And Susan?’

Is queen of the largest community of cut-throats ever assembled in one place.' Hilton's face split into that enormous grin. 'And beloved by all, so that she enjoys every minute of it.'

'And she was safely delivered?'

'And again. Both sons. We called the eldest Edward.'

And what colour hair has he got? Edward wanted to ask. ‘I, too, had a son. The Indians dashed out his brains.'

Hilton's fingers ate into his shoulder. 'You will have others, Ned, when there are no more Indians to trouble you. Why, Brian Connor, you old devil. Back to the fighting, eh?’

'And proud to serve under Captain Warner again, Mr Hilton, seeing as how ye're at his side.'

That goes for all of us. Well, Ned, your Father is looking anxious.'

They joined the other officers, who were peering upwards at the forested mountains, glowing in the midday sun; but already there were heavy clouds ringing the horizon, promising rain before night.

'You've a plan of campaign, I have no doubt,' Tom suggested.

‘It is dictated for us,' Edward said. 'We cannot use the forests as do the Caribs, so we must persuade them to attack us, and rely upon our superior strength at close quarters. You may be sure they know we have landed, and are at this moment watching us. Nor will they permit us a free passage through the forest, you may also be certain. So through the forest we shall go. We rely on the dogs for a while, and then, I have no doubt, our nostrils will guide us to the sulphur. We'll leave adequate crews for both vessels, but no one on the beach. John, will you take charge here?"

‘I had hoped to be in at the death.'

‘You may well be yet. I'd have you keep your cannon loaded, and should we return in haste, which could well happen, your fire will cover our embarkation. How many men will you need?"

'Give me thirty to each ship, and I'll fight them, and sail them home, too, if need be.'

Then our numbers are settled at four score for the expedition. Brian, your Irish will form the advance guard, with myself. Father, I'd be pleased if you'd command the main battle in the centre, with the people from John's ship. Tony, will your buccaneers bring up the rear, with yourself?' 'Willingly, if that is how you wish it.'

'Now there are things we must remember. First and foremost, we must keep up. We can afford no stragglers. Secondly, at the first alarm, drop to the ground and fire your pieces from there. The Indians' weapons have no long range, and should an arrow strike any one of us, be sure that our muskets, if fired soon enough, will send a ball twice as far as the archer. And there are enough of us to make the forest hum. The third point is a melancholy one, but is the most important of all. No man of us must be taken alive. Should anyone be too badly wounded to continue on the march, he must be prepared to end his own life on the instant. Believe me, the alternative is far more terrible.'

'But by the same token, we take no prisoners either,' Hilton growled.

'We are about a war, not a parade,' Edward agreed. 'Well, then, shall we fall to"

Without giving time for further argument, or further fearful glances at the forest, he commanded the dogs to be loosed, and followed them on the path leading upwards through the trees. Brian Connor immediately took his place at his shoulder, bearing the standard with the cross of St George, and the other five Irishmen were close behind.

' 'Tis strange how the wheel turns a full circle, Ted,' Brian muttered. 'Now we could be the Dons, armour and all.'

'Saving that we shall fall for no shallow devices. And that we must be certain there is a Carib village at the end of our march, and our dogs will find it.'

He spoke more confidently than he felt. And yet, was there not cause for confidence? The dogs ran in front of him, maintaining a steady baying as they cast from side to side of the path, and yet always scurrying upwards. Enough there to terrify the Indians, apart from the armoured mass coming behind. Yet surely Wapisiane would have anticipated nothing less than this, and would have made his preparations.

First of which, undoubtedly, was this forest. There was nothing like it in the more northerly islands. Here was a combination of the wet, clinging, Guyanese jungle with the unending, wearisome slopes of Mount Misery, only these hills did not even go uniformly upwards, but rather rose and then fell, sending the column up and down, undulating like a steel clad snake, while swords and pikes and muskets clanked against armour, and men cursed, and above the column there rose a cloud of steam as sweat dribbled down their faces and bodies and rose into the still air. After no more than an hour he was forced to call a halt, and permit the men to drink from the gourds of water they carried, and to rest for ten minutes, or he had no doubt they would be far too weary to carry out any command competently. So then, he decided, there can be little chance of deciding the issue this night.

'An empty forest,' Tom said. 'They will be waiting behind some easily defensible position, farther on.'

‘I doubt that, Father,' Edward said. 'The dogs show too much interest in the forest, on either side of this path.'

'No doubt because the forest is full of game.' Hilton had removed his helmet and emptied water over his head. ' 'Tis certain to me that our severest casualties will be caused by heat stroke.'

'Aye.' Tom mopped his brow. This is not a march I'd consider for longer than a day.'

Edward went back to the Irish, who were already on their feet.

'Ye'd think the varmints would have hit us by now,' Connor grumbled. 'We're well away from any support the ships can give us.'

Edward stared at the empty tree wall. Suppose Wapisiane did not mean to fight at all, but just to have them march forever, until they dropped from exhaustion and lack of food and water? But surely that was utterly unlike the Indian? The Carib fought wherever he could, but also whenever conditions were most suited to his style of fighting. So then, what conditions could be better than this concealing forest? Unless ... he discovered that the sun had disappeared, although it was yet only the middle of the afternoon. But the entire sky had become blotted out by the heavy black clouds. It was not the hurricane season, so the Indians could hardly be expecting more than a little rain. A little rain, by Christ, he thought, and hurried back down the column.

"You'll keep your powder dry should it rain,' he told the musketeers.

They gazed at him, and panted, and sweated. He must bring them to action soon, or what discipline they possessed would very rapidly disintegrate.

'We'll move on,' he told his father and Hilton, and took his place once again at the head of the column. The dogs were released, and went baying up the path. Now it was cooler, and yet not sufficiently so for true relief. And now the clouds were something to fear, as they stumbled forward.

'By Christ,' Connor said. 'But what is that?"

The dogs had smelt it too, and checked their baying, although they continued to cast around, as the dreadful, dead stench of the sulphur began to drift towards them.

The people of the smoke,' Edward said. 'Why, we are at their volcano.'

Tom had hurried forward, his face crimson, his breath coming in great pants. 'And it wants yet two hours to dark. 'You'll command a general assault, Ned.'

‘I suspect it is farther off than we hope or think,' Edward said. The smell will get stronger. But at least we know we are on the right path.'

Something struck him on the helmet with such force that he thought he had been hit by an arrow. He half turned, and looked up, and was hit another stinging blow on the face.

'Rain, by God,' he shouted. 'Halt. Halt the march. Stay close. Guard your powder.' But already he doubted his words were being heard, as the entire afternoon seemed to dissolve.

He had known ram like this, in Guyana. But only his father and Hilton were similarly experienced. For as in Guyana, there was no wind. Just the solid sheets of water which came pouring down, thudding on then helmets to shut out even the possibility of thought, much less conversation, crashing on to breastplates, driving into necks mid thighs,

trickling down boots, filling scabbards, and turning the earth beneadi their feet into a swamp as they crouched beneath the trees. Even the dogs had come scurrying back to their masters, and sat with hanging heads, bays exchanged for mournful wails. Again as in Guyana, time became irrelevant. They might have sat in the forest for an eternity, for days or months, or merely for a few minutes. The noise was incessant, seeming to raise a curtain around them, shutting out the rest of the island just as the teeming water shut out the heavens and most of the daylight. There was no hope of powder staying dry in this heavenly waterfall, and little hope of it drying for some hours afterwards, either. As the Indians would have known.

As the Indians would have known. The rain was slackening. It was possible to raise his head and look into the steaming green forest. So, had they ignored the march of the white men for this day, because they had known the rain would come? Or had they but postponed their attack?

He stood up. 'Loose those dogs, Brian. Send word back down the column to resume the march.'

' 'Tis still raining, Ted, lad,' Connor protested. 'Should we not wait a while longer?'

"That's what Wapisiane will be hoping,' Edward said. 'His bow strings will also have to be dried. We'll march, now. Loose those dogs.' He hurried back down the column himself, roused men to their feet with slaps and curses.

Even Tom Warner was slow to react. 'Youll press on now?' he demanded. 'We've no useful powder.'

'And Wapisiane will know that, Father. He will be using the rain as a weapon. We must march.'

He got them all on their feet at last, and hurried back up to the head of the column, panting, and each breath now searing his lungs as a slight breeze had arisen to chase away the last of the clouds, but at the same nine to blow gusts of pure sulphur across the forest.

The dogs remained unhappy, no longer baying with the confidence of an hour before, but staying closer together, and casting from side to side of the padi almost fearfully.

'People, you dunk?' Connor wanted to know.

'Could be just the sulphur. With the smell this strong we cannot be far away.'

Edward had not finished his sentence before he heard the hiss of the first arrow, and one of the Irishmen gave a cry. 'Down,' he yelled. 'Down. Pass the word back. Down.'

He threw himself full length on the sodden earth, jarring his shoulder against his cuirass, and watching an arrow thud into the bole of the tree before which he had just been standing. From farther back along the column there came shouts and curses, but whetiier they were caused by actual wounds or the discomforts of the earth he could not be sure.

'You'll get diose dogs back, Brian,' he said.

'Aye.' Connor commenced whistling, and the dogs came back tinough the bushes, but now there were only ten of them.

'Who was it hurt?' Brian demanded.

' 'Tis me, your honour. Gerald Murphy.'

‘Is is bad?' Edward asked.

'Sticking up out of me shoulder, your honour, and hurting like the devil.'

'We'll have it out in a moment. Keep down.'

But the arrows had stopped. Wapisiane was also waiting.

One of the sailors came crawling up the path, his knees making huge sucking noises every time they left the mud, his clothes and armour covered with the glutinous brown. 'Sir Thomas sends his compliments, Captain Warner,' he said. 'He wishes to know why we do not clear these savages from the bushes, if indeed they are as close as you suggested.'

'Because that is what Wapisiane hopes we will attempt,' Edward said. 'The arrows will do us little harm, but should we enter the forest hi small groups, we would become easy victims. Tell Sir Thomas to spare no effort to dry his powder.'

‘If such a thing is possible,' Connor grunted. 'Now then, Gerry me boy, it's coming out.'

Murphy uttered a thin wail. 'D'ye think it's poisoned, your honour? I have heard tell. ...'

'Spread about by the Dons, Gerald,' Edward reassured him. 'You'll survive, providing we stop that bleeding. Spare a piece of your shirt, Brian.'

'Oh, aye, my shirt, to be sure.'

They at least had suffered no diminution in morale. And neither, basically, had the dogs, who seemed glad of the rest, and lay on the wet earth panting and licking themselves. And now the arrows came again, whispering through the trees, striking branches and falling to the earth with gentle thuds.

Hilton came crackling through the bushes, also on his hands and knees. 'What sorry business is this, Ned?’ he demanded. 'Are we to lie here, skulking, before a pack of naked savages? That were no way to win a campaign.'

‘It is the only way to win this one, Tony,' Edward said. 'Patience. And ours is already proving the superior. Else why should Wapisiane waste his arrows on the empty air? Well move on the moment it gets dark.’

'You'd go through this forest at night? Why, man, that is suicide.'

'For whom? Do you imagine the Indians have some supernatural power which enables them to see in the dark?' They will certainly hear us.'

‘I am counting on it. Can you not understand? They will hear the tramp of armoured men, the baying of the dogs, coming ever closer, and yet have no certain knowledge of where we are. And we will be guided both by the dogs and by our own nostrils. Remember, they are fighting for their homes, against a force they count at least equal but more likely superior to their own. You must instil this into your people, Tony. We have no cause to fear them, and their puny sticks and arrows. But they know they have every cause to fear our steel and our lead and our dogs.'

'By God,' Hilton said. ' Tis a point I had not considered. You are general here, Ned, and right glad am I that it should be so.'

The arrows continued to whisper through the trees for more than an hour, and several men were wounded, but only slightly. They grumbled, and fingered their weapons, and stared into the forest, but they obeyed their commanders and lay still, while the afternoon grew cool, and the light began to fade. And always the heavy smell of the sulphur lay across the day to remind them of how close they were to their goal. Edward wondered what thoughts were running through Wapisiane's mind. The Indian had no means of knowing how many of the white men had been hurt in his attack; would it not lie a temptation to launch an assault through the trees? There would be a rapid and certain conclusion to the campaign; Edward had no doubt at all of the outcome could he but oppose his steel to the Caribs' wood and flesh.

But the forest remained silent, and in time even the steam ceased to rise from the ground and the arrows to strike the trees with their gentle thuds. And now the sun was gone, settled at last behind the mountains over which they had come, plummeting downwards towards the quiet sea. He almost smiled. Here he was fighting a battle on his very own terms, at sun down rather than at sun up.

He crawled into the midst of the Irishmen, sprawled on the wet ground, each man holding two of the dogs' leashes. 'You'll give me those, Brian,' he said. 'And make your way down the column to tell them to prepare to move on. Now mark me well. It will be dark in a few minutes. Each one of us must keep close to the man in front. More than ever, there must be no straggling. Tell Mr Hilton.'

‘I'll do that, Ted,' Connor agreed. 'We'll be ending it soon, then?'

'God willing.'

'Aye. He will be, if He's on our side. I tell ye straight, Ted, I'd not like to spend a night in tins dismal, foul-smelling place.'

He crawled down the column, and Edward took the leashes. The movement had altered the dogs, and they were straining and winning. But Edward waited for Connor to return before giving the order to advance. Wearily the men rose to their feet, stretching their cramped muscles, adjusting their breastplates, replacing their helmets. The column gave out a gigantic whisper of sound which surely penetrated far into the forest, and Edward had the command once again ready on his lips, but the trees on either side remained silent. The Indians had withdrawn. Yet this too was an important pointer to the coming night; Wapisiane had his people as much in hand as Edward had his. There was no easy path here.

He gave the command and loosed the dogs. They bounded forward, and then slowed again, their nostrils clogged by the ever increasing stench of the sulphur. But their task of scenting was finished; they were approaching their role of destroyers.

Now once again the path led upwards, as uncertain and as broken as ever, with shattered tree trunks lying across it and sudden soft pits into which the men stumbled with curses. It was a miracle that no one had as yet broken a leg; judging by the comments it seemed certain there were a few sprains. But the principal obstacle to speed was the air, which grew more difficult to breathe with every step.

The dogs stopped, clustered at the top of the rise. Edward hurried forward to reach them at the same time as the Irishmen. It was now quite dark, and the moon had not yet risen, yet he could tell he was at the edge of a shallow precipice, and he could tell too that he looked down on no forest, but on an empty area filled with clouds of slowly floating vapour. Yet the path had led here, and clearly they were meant to scramble down the steep slope in front of them.

'By Christ,' Connor muttered. 'But this place grows more miserable with every yard. What do we do now, Ted?"

'Halt the column, for a start,' Edward commanded. 'And ask Sir Thomas and Mr Hilton to join me here.'

They came forward a moment later, accompanied by the French officers. 'By God, what a dismal place,' Hilton remarked. 'Do we cross that?"

‘It would seem there is no other way.'

'Mon Dieu,' Solange said. 'But that is the crater of a volcano.'

'And it smokes,' Lafitte pointed out.

‘It rather steams,' Edward argued. 'At the least there is no movement of the earth, which must surely accompany a potential eruption. But I would not risk the entire force in such a venture. I will lead a reconnaissance, and see if I can find a suitable way across this valley, and indeed, see if we can find what lies beyond, before returning to you.'

That is madness,' Tom declared. ‘Is it not just what the Caribs will be hoping for, that we will detach small scouting parties which they can destroy?'

‘In any event,' Hilton objected. 'You are our general. If you are determined upon such a course, certain it is you cannot lead it yourself.'

Edward chewed his lip. There was sound sense in both their arguments, but he could send no one else, with any promise of success, and the alternative was to admit his plan had been faulty, and wait here for daylight. Worse, it would mean that Wapisiane had once again outwitted him.

‘You must know,' Yarico said, 'how bad you want for come to Wapisiane.'

They turned in confusion, reaching for swords and pistols. Not even the dogs had heard her approach—it was asking too much of them to have smelt her amidst the stench of the sulphur—but there she was, a wisp of a figure in the darkness, wearing nothing more than her apron, and unarmed.

'Yarico?' Edward whispered. 'Are you not a spirit?'

She tossed her head.

'But how come you here, girl?' Tom demanded. ‘Wapisiane send,' she said.

'Now, that you'll have to explain,' Hilton said. ‘We had supposed you his captive.'

She shrugged. 'He beat. He treat like dog. But Yarico not cry. Yarico got for live. So he say, Yarico live, Yarico princess again, if Yarico help.'

'Help?" Tom asked.

Oh, Christ, Edward thought, why cannot they be quiet? Why cannot we let her speak, so that she will tell us the one thing we must know, but dare not ask.

'Wapisiane say, why white men not stop? Indian not fight by night. I say, War-nah never stop. So Wapisiane say, then War-nah come more quick. Path through forest. Round dead valley. I lead War-nah and few men, say for surprise attack on village.'

'By God,' Hilton said. "There's a cunning devil.' 'And he will be waiting to overwhelm the few men,' Tom said. 'But supposing the entire force takes that way?"

Again the contemptuous shrug. Then you see nobody. Empty village.'

‘I begin to get his drift. And supposing we wait for daylight, and make a frontal assault across the valley? I'm assuming the village is on the farther side.'

'Village there,' she said. 'But valley bad. Hot stream, no air. Wapisiane wait on far side, fire arrow, run into forest.'

‘I begin to wonder if this scoundrel is a savage after all,' Tom remarked. ' 'Tis certain he has the makings of a general. Well, Edward? What is your decision?'

Edward licked his lips. 'Wapisiane sent you to us, Yarico. You betrayed him once. Did he not expect you to betray him again?'

Yarico's eyes gloomed at him in the darkness. 'He for care? War-nah come, War-nah die. War-nah leave, Wapisiane big man. But he know War-nah come for A-line.'

'And she is there?' he shouted. 'By Christ, tell me she is there.'

Yarico nodded.

'And well?"

'A-line tie to stake,' Yarico said. 'And then she laugh.' 'She laughed? By God.'

There is a woman,' Hilton said. 'Now is my last doubt dispelled.'

'And what then?' Edward asked.

Yarico gazed at him. 'War-nah woman is bitch-dog,' she said.

'Oh, Christ,' he muttered.

'We shall have their blood,' Solange vowed.

'Or they will have ours,' Hilton said. ‘It seems that this Wapisiane has circumstances very much under his own control.'

'Well, boy?' Tom asked.

Edward pulled his beard. 'How many men does Wapisiane command?'

She shrugged. 'Many people.' 'More than we have here?'

Yarico looked over such of the column as she could see. 'Perhaps.'

'But not many, I swear,' Edward said. 'Or he'd not be so anxious to get at us piecemeal. Well, then, he is dictating events, at this moment. We must attempt to weaken his control, and we can only accomplish that by surprise. He is expecting you to return some time this night with perhaps a dozen of us. Am I right, Yarico?'

She nodded.

'And no doubt he is watching this secret path of yours?’ 'Men watch,' she agreed.

'And there is no other way to the village, save across the valley below us?’

She shook her head.

'And that too is overlooked?’

'Nobody cross valley in dark,' she asserted.

'Because of the boiling water? But surely there is a way.'

'Boiling stream cross valley,' she said. 'But not possible in dark. Then spirits of dead rise up in steam. Nobody go in valley at night.'

There was no doubt that she believed what she was saying, and thus that the other Indians also believed it. Edward pulled his beard some more. 'Where exactly is the village, Yarico? On the far side of the valley?’

'Over there, yes. Village beyond Boiling Lake, where air is clean.'

"You have a plan in mind?' Hilton asked.

‘I need first of all twelve volunteers to accompany Yarico,' Edward said. 'Led by you, Tony. Tins is a most dangerous assignment I give you, because if the rest of my plan does not succeed you will be cut off.'

'While you lead the rest of us across the valley?' Tom demanded. 'You have heard that is impossible.'

‘I fear no Indian ghosts, Father.'

'Neither do I. But seventy men, will they not hear us?"

'Probably, should the entire force attempt to cross. I will need another ten volunteers who will brave the valley in the dark, with the certainty of an assault on the Indian village beyond.'

'You'd pit twenty-two men against close on a hundred savages?'

‘For a start. Our purpose is to make Wapisiane commit his people, and prevent their withdrawal into the forest until we have regained Aline. The advantage of surprise in this will be ours. How long will it take to traverse this path of yours, Yarico?'

'Not long,' she said.

'But it must take a long time, the first time. Someone must fall, and seem to hurt himself. Tony, I leave this in your care.'

'Aye. We shall take a long time.'

'And then,' Edward said. 'The moment there can be no doubt as to Tony's party finding the village, Yarico, I wish you to slip away into the forest and return here with all speed, and bring on the remainder of the force, with the dogs. By then we shall have forced Wapisiane to give battle, and there will be no disappearing into the forest'

Yarico nodded, thoughtfully.

'You will be in command of the main force, Father,' Edward said. 'And once Yarico returns you will make all haste to the scene of action, allowing the dogs as much noise as they wish; the sound of your approach cannot help but be discouraging to the savages. But all depends upon my leading my party across the valley before Tony is engaged. We shall start immediately.'

'On the contrary,' Solange observed. 'All depends on the Princess Yarico here.'

The men gazed at him.

'She was carried off by this Wapisiane,' Solange said. 'To suffer his revenge, you say, because she betrayed his people. Yet she lives, and does not appear unduly harmed. Now she has come at his bidding, to command us to divide our forces, and to make sure we understand that there is no other course open to us. What proof have you that she has not made her peace with her people? What proof have you that she did not invite them into English Harbour in the first instance, in the full knowledge that Captain Warner and most of his men were on the far side of the island? And now, it seems to me, our entire operation depends upon her fidelity. There will be twelve of us in the Indian village, and another ten approaching from the valley, if they are able, and our fate will be certain should Sir Thomas not be able to bring up the main body.' He paused, glancing from one to the other.

'You must reply, Yarico,' Edward said. 'Why is Wapisiane trusting you?"

'Wapisiane, pouf,' she said. 'He not know who cause Blood River. He think War-nah take me like other women. And now, he know you will come, Ed-ward. Because A-line there. You come with few men, he say, or she die, and Indian go in forest.'

'And he thinks it is not possible to cross the valley of the dead at night?'

'Not possible,' she said. 'Much spirit there. You go, you die.'